NEW YORK ? A union official says NBA owners and players will resume negotiations Saturday to try to end the labor lockout.
The union's executive committee met Thursday in New York. As union official and Knicks guard Roger Mason Jr. was leaving the session to catch a flight, he said the two sides would get together again Saturday. Owners and players haven't met since talks broke off last Friday over splitting the league's revenue.
Mason also said he was "100 percent" behind union president Derek Fisher and leadership is "absolutely" unified.
Fisher and executive director Billy Hunter each sent a letter to union members earlier this week disputing reports of a rift.
FILE - In this Sept. 8, 2011 file photo, singer Justin Bieber attends the Fashion Night Out Dolce & Gabbana event at the Dolce & Gabbana store in New York. A spokeswoman for Bieber says there is no truth that the singer fathered a baby by a woman who has filed a paternity suit against the teen heartthrob. Melissa Victor said in a statement Wednesday, Nov. 2, that Bieber's camp will pursue all legal remedies in response to the allegation. Online court records show Mariah Yeater filed a paternity lawsuit against Bieber on Monday in San Diego Superior Court. (AP Photo/Donald Traill, file)
FILE - In this Sept. 8, 2011 file photo, singer Justin Bieber attends the Fashion Night Out Dolce & Gabbana event at the Dolce & Gabbana store in New York. A spokeswoman for Bieber says there is no truth that the singer fathered a baby by a woman who has filed a paternity suit against the teen heartthrob. Melissa Victor said in a statement Wednesday, Nov. 2, that Bieber's camp will pursue all legal remedies in response to the allegation. Online court records show Mariah Yeater filed a paternity lawsuit against Bieber on Monday in San Diego Superior Court. (AP Photo/Donald Traill, file)
FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2011 file photo, singer Justin Bieber performs during his My World Tour concert at the National Stadium in Lima, Peru. A spokeswoman for Bieber says there is no truth that the singer fathered a baby by a woman who has filed a paternity suit against the teen heartthrob. Melissa Victor said in a statement Wednesday, Nov. 2, that Bieber's camp will pursue all legal remedies in response to the allegation. Online court records show Mariah Yeater filed a paternity lawsuit against Bieber on Monday in San Diego Superior Court. (AP Photo/Enrique Castro Mendivil, Pool)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A spokeswoman for Justin Bieber calls "demonstrably false" an allegation the singer fathered a baby with a woman who has filed a paternity suit against him.
Melissa Victor said in a statement Wednesday that while Bieber's camp has yet to see the lawsuit, it will "vigorously pursue all available legal remedies" in response.
Online court records show Mariah Yeater filed a paternity lawsuit against the teen heartthrob on Monday in San Diego Superior Court. California law keeps paternity matters confidential, but the website Radar Online posted a copy of the lawsuit on its site.
Phone and email messages left for Yeater's two attorneys were not immediately returned.
Bieber tweeted Wednesday that he was going to ignore the rumors.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Belgian biotech firm Ablynx said on Friday that it had regained the rights for its TNF-Alpha targeting nanobodies from Pfizer, which form the basis of a rheumatoid arthritis drug currently undergoing clinical trials.
Pfizer said it returned the rights to Ablynx after a portfolio review.
As part of the agreement, Ablynx will share with Pfizer up to $50 million in future milestone payments it may receive from other third-party deals related to the product.
Ablynx said it will review its programs related to the nanobodies before deciding how to proceed.
The Belgian company, which is using the DNA of camels and llamas to develop a new class of drugs, said in May that the rheumatoid arthritis drug ATN-103 met its goals in a mid-stage, Phase II test.
(reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)
Unsaturated fat breakdown leads to complications of acute pancreatitis in obese patientsPublic release date: 2-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anita Srikameswaran SrikamAV@upmc.edu 412-578-9193 University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
PITTSBURGH -- The toxic byproducts produced by the breakdown of unsaturated fats lead to a higher likelihood of severe inflammation, cell death and multi-system organ failure among acute pancreatitis patients who are obese, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings, published online today in Science Translational Medicine, provide new insight into how fat can induce complications after sudden inflammatory, non-infectious illnesses.
Doctors have observed that obese people are at greater risk for adverse outcomes after trauma, severe burns, critical illnesses and acute pancreatitis, which is an inflammatory condition of the pancreas typically brought on by gallstones and alcohol, said senior author and UPMC gastroenterologist Vijay Singh, M.D., assistant professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Pitt School of Medicine.
"The mortality rate among patients with severe acute pancreatitis is 40 to 50 percent when kidney failure and respiratory failure develop," he said. "Our findings indicate that the breakdown of unsaturated fat in acute inflammatory conditions can lead to tissue damage throughout the body."
Dr. Singh's team examined pancreas tissue from 24 patients who died with acute pancreatitis and compared them to 50 people who died of other causes. They found that the diseased pancreases of patients who were obese, meaning a body mass index equal to or greater than 30, contained more fat cells, and confirmed the presence of fat from CT imaging scans from the patients taken before their deaths. Autopsy tissue showed also that there was more pancreatic cell death in the areas around fat cell destruction.
Pancreatic fluids from six obese patients with severe acute pancreatitis who had surgical procedures to remove dead tissue revealed high amounts of unsaturated fatty acids, produced from the breakdown of unsaturated fat, than saturated fatty acids. When the researchers combined healthy pancreatic cells with the unsaturated fatty acids in a test tube, the pancreatic cells died.
Then, they induced pancreatitis in obese mice and found that like the human patients, they had high amounts of fat in their pancreases. The fat in obese mice was mostly unsaturated. Kidneys of the mice with pancreatitis were damaged and contained fat deposits, an unexpected finding supported by studies in human autopsy tissue. Infusing unsaturated fatty acids into the bloodstream of the animals leads to lung injury akin to the problems seen in human patients, while administration of saturated fatty acids does not.
"Now that we better understand why these complications arise, we might be able to prevent them and reduce deaths," Dr. Singh said. "We must find ways to stop this toxic process from happening."
He and his team are studying ways to prevent the generation of unsaturated fatty acids in obese rodents to see what happens when they develop acute pancreatitis.
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The team includes researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine's departments of Pathology, Medicine, Cell Biology and Physiology, Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Surgery and Radiology.
Funding for the research was provided by the National Center for Research Resources and the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, both parts of the National Institutes of Health; and the Department of Medicine, Pitt School of Medicine.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Unsaturated fat breakdown leads to complications of acute pancreatitis in obese patientsPublic release date: 2-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anita Srikameswaran SrikamAV@upmc.edu 412-578-9193 University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
PITTSBURGH -- The toxic byproducts produced by the breakdown of unsaturated fats lead to a higher likelihood of severe inflammation, cell death and multi-system organ failure among acute pancreatitis patients who are obese, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings, published online today in Science Translational Medicine, provide new insight into how fat can induce complications after sudden inflammatory, non-infectious illnesses.
Doctors have observed that obese people are at greater risk for adverse outcomes after trauma, severe burns, critical illnesses and acute pancreatitis, which is an inflammatory condition of the pancreas typically brought on by gallstones and alcohol, said senior author and UPMC gastroenterologist Vijay Singh, M.D., assistant professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Pitt School of Medicine.
"The mortality rate among patients with severe acute pancreatitis is 40 to 50 percent when kidney failure and respiratory failure develop," he said. "Our findings indicate that the breakdown of unsaturated fat in acute inflammatory conditions can lead to tissue damage throughout the body."
Dr. Singh's team examined pancreas tissue from 24 patients who died with acute pancreatitis and compared them to 50 people who died of other causes. They found that the diseased pancreases of patients who were obese, meaning a body mass index equal to or greater than 30, contained more fat cells, and confirmed the presence of fat from CT imaging scans from the patients taken before their deaths. Autopsy tissue showed also that there was more pancreatic cell death in the areas around fat cell destruction.
Pancreatic fluids from six obese patients with severe acute pancreatitis who had surgical procedures to remove dead tissue revealed high amounts of unsaturated fatty acids, produced from the breakdown of unsaturated fat, than saturated fatty acids. When the researchers combined healthy pancreatic cells with the unsaturated fatty acids in a test tube, the pancreatic cells died.
Then, they induced pancreatitis in obese mice and found that like the human patients, they had high amounts of fat in their pancreases. The fat in obese mice was mostly unsaturated. Kidneys of the mice with pancreatitis were damaged and contained fat deposits, an unexpected finding supported by studies in human autopsy tissue. Infusing unsaturated fatty acids into the bloodstream of the animals leads to lung injury akin to the problems seen in human patients, while administration of saturated fatty acids does not.
"Now that we better understand why these complications arise, we might be able to prevent them and reduce deaths," Dr. Singh said. "We must find ways to stop this toxic process from happening."
He and his team are studying ways to prevent the generation of unsaturated fatty acids in obese rodents to see what happens when they develop acute pancreatitis.
###
The team includes researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine's departments of Pathology, Medicine, Cell Biology and Physiology, Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Surgery and Radiology.
Funding for the research was provided by the National Center for Research Resources and the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, both parts of the National Institutes of Health; and the Department of Medicine, Pitt School of Medicine.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense under former President George W. Bush, told The Daily Caller that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?s diplomacy, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been ?a failure.?
Watch:
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TheDC asked Rumfeld if President Barack Obama should have continued?any Bush administration policies.
?Clearly there?s some things that have stayed the same ? the Patriot Act and Guantanamo and military commissions and the like. There are some things that are being done quite differently, in my view, and I would certainly mention ? how our diplomacy could be such a failure with respect to developing a status of forces agreement with Iraq,? he told TheDC at the American Spectator?s Robert L. Bartley annual dinner on Tuesday in Washington.
?We have ?status of forces? agreements all over the world with countries. And had our president and our secretary of state been leaning forward, working with the Iraqis, there?s no question we could have managed to arrange a proper arrangement between the United States military in our country and the Iraqis. The failure of diplomacy in Afghanistan is notable.?
Rumsfeld specifically expressed disappointment in the Obama administration?s treatment of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai before the Senate confirmed Ryan Crocker as U.S. Ambassador to his country on June 30, 2011.
?We now have a terrific ambassador there in Ryan Crocker. But for the preceding period, people spent their time criticizing President Karzai. He?s the president, he was elected by the Afghan people, it?s a tough job,? Rumsfeld said. (RELATED: Rumsfeld?s interview with TheDC?s Ginni Thomas)
?It?s a tribal country. They [are] not used to a central government. And it?s disturbing that our people seem to spend their time weakening him instead of strengthening him, instead of dealing with him. If you have things to say in private diplomacy, you say that, but you don?t say it in public. And I?ve been very disappointed in their diplomacy ? I must say I think our diplomacy?s been failing.?
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Public release date: 2-Nov-2011
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