Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park

Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.

A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.

"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.

The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.

The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.

The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.

"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."

The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.

But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.

Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.

"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."

The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.

At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."

During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.

And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.

"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."

mike.anton@latimes.com

rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com

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Iranian Captives Freed in Major Prisoner Exchange in Syria

ISTANBUL — More than 2,000 prisoners incarcerated by the Syrian authorities were being released on Wednesday in return for 48 Iranians freed by rebels after five months in captivity in what appeared to be the biggest prisoner swap since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began almost two years ago.

The exchange, brokered by Turkey and Qatar, came days after Mr. Assad warned on Sunday that he would not abandon the fight against armed adversaries pressing on the approaches to the Syrian capital, Damascus, and brushed aside calls for him to quit.

Word of the exchange dominated news in Iran, the Syrian government’s only Middle East ally, leading the Web site of the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Iran state television showed a brief clip of the released hostages at the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus, grinning, flashing victory signs and holding flowers. In an interview on Iran state TV, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, thanked those involved in the swap for the hostages and expressed happiness that “we managed to get them released.”

Precise details of the exchange, including when the 48 Iranians would be repatriated, remained unclear. Mr. Mehmanparast also said two Iranian engineers who had been abducted earlier in Syria remained captive. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a regional power broker allied to the Western and Arab nations seeking Mr. Assad’s departure, said he hoped the exchange on Wednesday would lead to freedom for more prisoners in Syria.

“We wish many other innocent people, and people in need, to be released from Syrian jails without delay,” Mr. Erdogan said in a televised news conference in Niamey, Nigeria, where he arrived on an official visit.

“This process needs to be appreciated. We are not in a position to say anything more than, ‘May this produce some good.’ ”

The exchange emerged from months of behind-the-scenes negotiations involving a Turkish charitable foundation, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an Islamist-leaning aid organization based in Istanbul and widely known as I.H.H.

The aid group had set up an operation center in Damascus to unite 2,130 prisoners, including 73 women, at one base while another aid team remained in Douma, near the Syrian capital, to oversee the return of the 48 Iranians.

“Captivity is a hard thing,” said Bulent Yildirim, the foundation’s director, who coordinated the exchange in Damascus.

“I saw young women crying, many people lost a lot of weight, and there were also many sick people.”

The Syrian opposition has claimed that the Iranians are members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, but Tehran has denied the assertion, saying the captives are Shiite civilian pilgrims. The Iranians were seized in August while traveling on a bus from Damascus International Airport to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of the capital, Iran’s Press TV said.

Opposition fighters had threatened to kill the Iranians unless Mr. Assad’s forces halted military operations. But since then the fighting around Damascus has intensified.

Iran is Mr. Assad’s main ally in a region where most Arab states and neighboring Turkey have turned against him. The Iranian captives offered the rebels holding them a source of powerful pressure on the Syrian leader to release opposition prisoners in return.

“We expect the swap to be completed in the next hour,” Huseyin Oruc, a member of the aid group’s executive board said in a telephone interview around midday. He said the captives released by the Syrian authorities included four Turks and a Palestinian.

By midafternoon it was not clear whether the 2,130 prisoners had been freed.

“It is the first time that the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ we initiated succeeded in releasing such a large group of people at once,” Mr. Oruc said. “There are many more held captive and our efforts to free them will continue without delay.”

The Turkish aid group gained international attention in 2010 for organizing a flotilla of boats heading to Gaza, ostensibly with relief supplies, that prompted a deadly Israeli commando raid in which eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent died. At the time of the raid, the group was reported to have extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite. The episode began an unraveling of Turkey’s once close ties with Israel.

In recent months, the organization has also been part of negotiations to free smaller numbers of prisoners, including two Turkish journalists held in Syria, Reuters reported. It has been active since the early 1990s in charitable works in the Middle East and Africa, focusing most recently on Gaza.

Since the start of the uprising against Mr. Assad, the organization has also cast itself as a leading private charitable organization in Syria, delivering food and other basic supplies and pursuing what it calls “humanitarian diplomacy” to help free captive civilians.

While the numbers involved in Wednesday’s exchange seemed dramatic, some rebel commanders said more modest prisoner exchanges had become a feature of the conflict.

The leader of a rebel fighting group in the central city of Hama, reached via Skype, said pro-government militia members had captured his uncle and two other relatives in a village in the northern Idlib province more than a month ago.

 “The  only  way to release them is capturing  hostages,” the commander said, adding that negotiations were under way to win the release of his relatives in return for 12 captives held by the rebels. Two months ago, the commander said, nine members of the pro-government militia, known as shabiha, were  exchanged for five captured rebels. Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful demonstrations, but a harsh suppression broadened into civil war with an estimated 60,000 people killed, according to United Nations estimates.

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul and Alan Cowell from London. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.

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Nintendo president describes Wii U sales as ‘not bad’

Nintendo’s (NTDOY) new Wii U gaming console came out of the gate strong and saw first-week sales reach 400,000 units in the U.S., however sales have since stalled and the system has been labeled a flop by some. While consumer interest in the company’s new console has slowed right out of the gate, Nintendo’s president recently said that he isn’t worried even though sales aren’t where he hoped they would be.

[More from BGR: Smooth sailing is over for Apple]

“At the end of the Christmas season, it wasn’t as though stores in the U.S. had no Wii U left in stock, as it was when Wii was first sold in that popular boom,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said in an interview with Reuters. “But sales are not bad, and I feel it’s selling steadily.”

[More from BGR: New ‘higher-end’ iPhone reportedly launching by June, low-end model could be coming as well]

The executive declined to give specific details on sales or forecasts, although he did say that Nintendo plans to focus on developing attractive software for its 3DS handheld to appeal to new users, and will seek new ways to increase Wii U sales in a changing market.

Nintendo previously announced that it hopes to sell 5.5 million Wii U devices by the end of March and more than 24 million Wii U games in the same timeframe.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Mark Wahlberg Does Weather and Traffic Reports in Philadelphia

TV Watch

01/09/2013 at 02:30 PM EST

The weather is nice and mild in Philadelphia but things got pretty rowdy inside the weather room at local news station Fox 29's Good Day Philadelphia on Wednesday.

Mark Wahlberg and his Broken City director, Allen Hughes, took over the forecasting duties for weather anchor Sue Serio. (Watch his full report below.)

"This is perfect golf weather ... by the way," Wahlberg noted of a high of 54 degrees in the City of Brotherly Love.

Once the seven-day forecast was done, Wahlberg and Hughes lightened traffic reporter Kacie McDonnell's load and let Philadelphians know where they would find trouble on their morning commute.

"Look at this congestion here," Wahlberg said. "We're expecting 40- to 45-minute delays if you're coming east bound on the 676 here. You're going to have some serious problems. Why don't you stop and get yourself a hoagie?"

Broken City, which also stars Russell Crowe, opens Jan. 18.

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported a tantalizing hint that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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Judge weeps at "Dating Game" serial killer's 'horrific acts'

California serial killer Rodney Alcala was sentenced to additional prison time in New York for the murders of two more women, a case that brought a veteran judge to tears during the hearing.

Alcala, who is already on death row in California for the murders of four women and a girl, pleaded guilty in December to the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover, both in New York. On Monday, New York Supreme Court Judge Bonnie Wittner handed down a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"This kind of case is something I've never experienced, hope to never again. I just want to say I hope these families find some peace and solace for these inexplicably brutal and horrific acts," Wittner said, according to the Journal.

PHOTOS: California serial killers

Wittner then dissolved into tears. "As I said, in 30 years I've never had a case like this," she said.

Alcala raped and strangled Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, inside her Upper East Side apartment in 1971. Six years later, he killed Hover, also 23 and living in Manhattan. Her body was found in Westchester County, not far from her family's estate. 

The Journal reported that many in attendance at Monday's sentencing wore stickers bearing the black-and-white photograph that initially appeared in stories about Crilley's death. "Cornelia Always in Our Hearts," the stickers read.

Crilley's sister, Katie Stigell, spoke to the court, using most of her time talking about her sister, who "was in her prime" and "wouldn't hurt anybody." But Stigell also had words for Alcala.

"Mr. Alcala, I want you to know you broke my parents' hearts," Stigell said. "They never really recovered."

Hover's stepsisters declined to appear in court. Instead, prosecutor Alex Spiro read a letter on their behalf, the Journal reported.

"Ellen was a sweet, kind, generous, compassionate, loving and beautiful young woman. She chose to see the good in everyone she met because she had a huge and open heart," the letter read. "Her senseless murder irreparably damaged our family."

Alcala, a self-styled playboy who once appeared on "The Dating Game" TV match-making show, spent much of the 1970s eluding police by changing identities and locales. He has been behind bars since 1979, when he was arrested in the death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach.

Twice he was sent to death row for murder, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. In February 2010, he was convicted again for Samsoe's murder and for the murders of four women in Los Angeles County. He is now awaiting execution.

At a news conference after Monday's hearing, Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus Vance said Alcala would be returned to California, where he is appealing his death-penalty conviction. Should that conviction be overturned, Vance said, Alcala would return to New York for his sentence.

The extent of Alcala's crimes were revealed as a task force formed by the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies that was examining cold cases tied him to slayings across Southern California. New York police had long considered Alcala a suspect in the slayings of Crilley and Hover and had taken impressions of his teeth in 2003. Alcala had lived in New York periodically between 1968 and 1977. 

During that period, Crilley was found raped and strangled with her nylon stockings in her Manhattan apartment. Around that time, Alcala was working at a summer camp for girls in New Hampshire, authorities said.

Hover went missing in July 1977 and her body was discovered the following year. Before she disappeared, she had written the name "John Berger" in a planner, a name police believe Alcala used as an alias while in New York.

The Southern California killings began just a few months later.

THE ALCALA CASE: A TIMELINE

---

1972 — Alcala is convicted in the 1968 rape and beating of an 8-year-old girl.

Nov. 10, 1977 — The body of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb is found in the Hollywood Hills. She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled with a pair of blue pants.

Dec. 16, 1977 — Georgia Wixted, 27, is found beaten to death at her home in Malibu. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

1978 — Alcala appears in an episode of “The Dating Game” as Bachelor No. 1.

June 24, 1978 — Charlotte Lamb, a 32-year-old legal secretary from Santa Monica, is found in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace. 

June 14, 1979 — Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank is found strangled on the floor of her Burbank apartment.

June 20, 1979 – Robin Samsoe, 12, disappears near the Huntington Beach Pier. Her body is found 12 days later in the Sierra Madre foothills.

July 24, 1979 — Rodney James Alcala, an unemployed photographer, is arrested at his parents’ Monterey Park home.

September 1980 – Alcala is convicted of the 1978 rape of a 15-year-old Riverside girl and sentenced to nine years in state prison.

June 20, 1980 — Orange County Superior Court Judge Philip E. Schwab sentences Alcala to death after he is convicted of Samsoe's murder.

July 11, 1980 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder, burglary and sexual assault charges against Alcala in the slaying of Parenteau.

April 15, 1981 — The L.A. district attorney’s office tells a judge that prosecution of Alcala in the Parenteau case could not proceed because a key witness admitted that he had committed perjury in another case.

Aug. 23, 1984 — The state Supreme Court reversed Alcala’s murder conviction in connection with Samsoe, ruling that the jury was improperly told about Alcala’s prior sex crimes.

June 20, 1986 — For the second time, Alcala is convicted for Samsoe’s murder and sentenced to death in Orange County Superior Court.

Dec. 31, 1992 — The California Supreme Court unanimously upholds Alcala’s death sentence.

April 2, 2001 — A federal appellate court overturns Alcala’s death sentence in the Samsoe case, ruling that the Superior Court judge precluded the defense from presenting evidence “material to significant issues.”

June 5, 2003 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder charges against Alcala alleging that he killed Wixted during a burglary and rape.

Sept. 19, 2005 — Additional murder charges are filed against Alcala in connection to the deaths of Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb.

Jan. 11, 2010 — Alcala’s trial for the five murders begins. He represents himself.

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— Kate Mather and Richard Winton

Photo: Convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala appears in a New York courtroom on Monday, where he was sentenced for two murders in the 1970s. Credit: David Handschuh / Associated Press

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Face-off in Chinese City Over Censorship of Newspaper

Jonah M. Kessel for The New York Times

A free speech advocate outside of Southern Weekend newspaper in Guangzhou, China, on Tuesday.

GUANGZHOU, China — Protests over censorship at one of China’s most liberal newspapers descended into ideological confrontation on Tuesday, pitting advocates of free speech against supporters of Communist Party control who wielded red flags and portraits of Mao Zedong.

The face-off between liberals and leftists at the headquarters of a newspaper company in southern China came after disgruntled editors and reporters at Southern Weekend last week decried what they alleged was crude meddling by the head of party propaganda in Guangdong Province, which has long had a reputation as a bastion of a relatively free press.

The protesting journalists at Southern Weekend have called for the dismissal of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong Province. They blame Mr. Tuo, a former journalist, for making a drastic change in a New Year’s editorial that had originally called for greater respect for constitutional rights. The revised editorial instead praised Communist Party policies.

A former editor with the Southern Daily group of newspapers, which includes Southern Weekend, said negotiations continued on Tuesday between representatives of the disgruntled journalists and newspaper managers and provincial propaganda officials.

The former editor, who asked that his name not be used for fear it could jeopardize his new job, said the talks focused on the protesting journalists’ demands that the paper’s managers rescind a statement that denied that Mr. Tuo was responsible for the New Year editorial and for an inquiry into the incident.

“They want that statement to be removed, and they also want assurances about relaxing controls on journalists — not removing party oversight, but making it more reasonable, allowing reporters to challenge officials,” he said. “The other main demand is for an impartial explanation of what happened, an accounting so it won’t happen again.”

The former editor said a continued standoff into Wednesday could jeopardize the newspaper’s usual publication on Thursday. “In effect, it’s a strike,” he said. “It looks unclear whether it can come out on Thursday.”

Senior Chinese officials have so far not commented publicly on the censorship dispute at the newspaper, which has tested how far the recently appointed Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping, will extend his vows of economic reform into a degree of political relaxation. But self-proclaimed defenders of Communist orthodoxy who turned up at the newspaper headquarters said on Tuesday that they were there to make the party’s case.

“We support the Communist Party, shut down the traitor newspaper,” said one of the cardboard signs held up by one of 10 or so protesters who came to defend the government.

“Southern Weekend is having an American dream,” said another of the signs. “We don’t want the American dream, we want the Chinese dream.”

Some of the group held up portraits of Mao, the late revolutionary leader who remains a symbol of communist zeal, while others waved the red flags of China and of the Communist Party. Most of the party supporters refused to give their names. They said they came on their own initiative, and not at the behest of officials.

The dueling protests outside the newspaper’s headquarters in this provincial capital reflected the political passions and tensions churned up by the quarrel over censorship, which has erupted while Mr. Xi is trying to win public favor and consolidate his authority.

Hundreds of bystanders watched and took photos on mobile phones as the leftists shouted at the 20 or more protesters who had gathered to denounce censorship, and shoving matches broke out between the demonstrators.

At one point, leftists were showered with 50-cent renminbi currency notes. The “Fifty Cent Party” has become a popular term for disparaging pro-party leftists, who are alleged by critics to be willing to take 50 cents in payment for each pro-party message they send onto the Internet.

“It’s the only newspaper in China that’s willing to tell the truth,” said Liang Taiping, 28, a poet from the southern city of Changsha who said he took the train to Guangzhou to show his support for Southern Weekend, which is widely read nationwide.

“What’s the point of living while you can’t even speak freely?” he said.

About 70 police officers and security guards stood nearby. They did not try to break up the protests, but officers recorded them with video cameras and occasionally stepped in to stop shoving and fisticuffs. Later, the rival protesters broke into separate camps concentrated on different sides of the gate to the newspaper headquarters.

The protests at Southern Weekend broke out while Mr. Xi, the party’s general secretary appointed in November, has been sending mixed signals about his intentions. He has repeatedly said he supports faster and bolder reform, but on Saturday he gave a speech defending the party’s history and Mao’s standing in it.

The Central Propaganda Department, which administers the censorship apparatus, issued instructions telling news media that the dispute at Southern Weekend was “due to the meddling of hostile outside forces,” according to China Digital Times, a group based in Berkeley, Calif., that monitors media and censorship issues.

Both supporters and critics of Southern Weekend journalists have claimed that Mr. Xi would back their cause.

“I don’t believe that Xi is totally hypocritical when he talks about reform,” said Chen Min, a prominent former opinion writer for Southern Weekend who was forced out of the newspaper in 2011.

“The Southern Weekend journalists have said that they accept party control, but the question is what kind of control and how far should it go unchallenged,” Mr. Chen added.

Jonah Kessel reported from Guangzhou, China, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong. Mia Li contributed reporting from Guangzhou, and Patrick Zuo from Beijing.

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Sony unveils Xperia Z Android phone with full HD display

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Matthew McConaughey Getting Strength Back, But Not by Changing Diapers

By Tim Nudd

01/08/2013 at 02:30 PM EST

Matthew McConaughey

George Pimentel/WireImage

Matthew McConaughey is slowly getting stronger after his incredible weight loss. But his workout regimen doesn't include much heavy lifting as a new father.

Asked at Monday night's New York Film Critics Circle Awards dinner if he's running home to change diapers, the actor, 43, told reporters: "I was there this morning, so I guess I am running home. But I'm not changing the diapers."

So, who is?

"Somebody," he said.

For now, the father of 11-day-old son Livingston – as well as older siblings Levi, 4, and Vida, 3 – is focused on getting his own body back to normal.

Asked if he misses his old hunky physique, he replied: "I have less [physical] leverage, but my mind is way sharper … You know, I love to wrestle. It's a good time to wrestle me now. I was 135 lbs., and now I'm up to 160 lbs, so I'm done with that and on my way back."

McConaughey says his target weight is 165 lbs., so he's only 5 lbs. shy of that.

The actor lost the weight for a role in Dallas Buyers Club through an intense diet. When that was over, he knew exactly what he wanted to eat first.

"A cheeseburger," he said. "That was it. I got the cheeseburger, and then I sat there for 25 minutes and doozied it up."

Reporting by MICHELLE WARD

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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