“Rescue Me” singer Fontella Bass dies aged 72

(Reuters) – American soul singer Fontella Bass, who topped the R&B chart in 1965 with the song “Rescue Me,” died in St. Louis. She was 72.Bass died in hospice care on Wednesday night from complications of a heart attack she suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, told Reuters. Bass had also suffered from strokes in recent years.“She’s going to be missed,” Mitchell said. “Her big...

Read More..

Senator McConnell says still time to avert “fiscal cliff”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top Republican in the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, on Thursday said that there is still time to avert the “fiscal cliff” and a “wholly preventable economic crisis.”In a speech on the Senate floor McConnell warned, however, that Senate Republicans “aren’t about to write a blank check for anything Senate Democrats put forward just because we find ourselves at the edge of...

Read More..

House back Sunday night, will have 29.5 hours to strike deal on fiscal cliff

President Barack Obama salutes as he returns via Marine One from a Christmas visit with his family in Hawaii, to …Will parachutes be provided? Republican House leaders informed their rank-and-file on a conference call Thursday that they have to be back at work at 6:30 p.m. Sunday – giving them, oh, 29.5 hours to forestall the “fiscal cliff.”Absent a last-minute compromise, Americans will see...

Read More..

Afghan bomber attacks near major US base

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded at the gate of a major U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing the attacker and three Afghans, Afghan police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.Police Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizai said a local guard who questioned the vehicle driver at the gate of Camp Chapman was killed along with two...

Read More..

Web-based info may not increase cancer screening

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Offering women information on colon cancer screening via the web does not get them to take up screening any more effectively than printed materials, according to a new study.“It’s disappointing that the web didn’t have more effect,” said Dr. David Weinberg of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, the report’s lead author.Although the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force...

Read More..

Powerful winter storm throttles Midwest travelers

CINCINNATI (AP) — A powerful winter storm system pounded the nation's midsection Wednesday and headed toward the Northeast, where people braced for the high winds and heavy snow that disrupted holiday travel, knocked out power to thousands of homes and were blamed in at least six deaths.Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, scores of motorists got stuck on icy roads or slid off into drifts,...

Read More..

Toronto reaches skyward, but how dark the clouds?

TORONTO (Reuters) – Barry Fenton walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in his 30th-floor uptown Toronto penthouse suite and declared, “This is the best view of the city.”To the south, a mass of steel-and-glass skyscrapers glinted in the bright autumn sun. Several cranes were in motion on unfinished buildings, a common sight in a city in the midst of a residential building boom.“If you look...

Read More..

Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An outage at one of Amazon‘s web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.’s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies...

Read More..

Queen delivers 1st Christmas message in 3D

LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II has hailed the holidays in a new dimension, delivering her Christmas message for the first time in 3D.In the annual, prerecorded broadcast, the monarch paid tribute to the armed forces, “whose sense of duty takes them away from family and friends” over the holidays, and expressed gratitude for the outpouring of enthusiasm for her Diamond Jubilee celebrations.The queen...

Read More..

One in 12 in military has clogged heart arteries

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Just over one in 12 U.S. service members who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had plaque buildup in the arteries around their hearts – an early sign of heart disease, according to a new study.None of them had been diagnosed with heart disease before deployment, researchers said.“This is a young, healthy, fit group,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Bryant Webber,...

Read More..