Anthony Hopkins writes 'Breaking Bad' love letter

TV

Kurt Schlosser
TODAY

6 hours ago

Getty Images, AMC

British actor Anthony Hopkins, left, has heaped high praise on Bryan Cranston for his work as Walter White on "Breaking Bad."

Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins is no slouch in the acting department, but after binge-watching all six seasons of "Breaking Bad" recently, he couldn't resist writing a letter to star Bryan Cranston to tell him it was the best acting he had seen — ever.

The letter showed up Sunday on the Facebook page of actor Steven Michael Quezada, who played DEA agent Steve Gomez on the AMC hit. It was quickly picked up across the web, but on Monday the post, along with a tweet about it from Quezada, disappeared.

Arnold Robinson, a publicist for Hopkins, confirmed to TODAY on Monday that the letter was indeed real. And a source at United Talent Agency, which represents both Hopkins and Cranston, told TODAY that Hopkins wanted to write Cranston because he admired his work so much. Hopkins was complimentary of the entire cast, and the UTA source said Cranston shared it, not expecting the letter to go viral.

Hopkins writes that he was compelled to reach out after what he refers to as two weeks of "addictive" viewing.

I have never watched anything like it. Brilliant!

Your performance as Walter White was the best acting I have seen — ever.

I know there is so much smoke blowing and sickening bull---- in this business, and I've sort of lost belief in anything really.

But this work of yours is spectacular — absolutely stunning. What is extraordinary, is the sheer power of everyone in the entire production. What was it? Five or six years in the making? How the producers (yourself being one of them), the writers, directors, cinematographers.... every department — casting etc. managed to keep the discipline and control from beginning to the end is (that over used word) awesome.

Hopkins is no stranger to portraying crafty monsters — he won his Academy Award for the role of Hannibal Lecter in 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs."

"Thank you," the 75-year-old actor writes. "That kind of work/artistry is rare, and when, once in a while, it occurs, as in this epic work, it restores confidence. You and all the cast are the best actors I've ever seen."

Cranston, 57, won three Emmys for his work as the high-school-teacher-turned-meth-kingpin Walter White. Last month he lost out to Jeff Daniels of HBO's "The Newsroom," but "Breaking Bad" won the Emmy for best drama series.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/anthony-hopkins-binges-breaking-bad-writes-bryan-cranston-glowing-letter-8C11390530
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Officials: Attacks across Iraq kill at least 42

A young woman sweeps debris from the site of a car bomb attack in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. A string of bombings in mostly Shiite-majority cities across Iraq on Sunday killed and wounded dozens of people, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

A young woman sweeps debris from the site of a car bomb attack in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. A string of bombings in mostly Shiite-majority cities across Iraq on Sunday killed and wounded dozens of people, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

An Iraqi soldier inspects the site of a car bomb attack in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. A string of bombings in mostly Shiite-majority cities across Iraq on Sunday killed and wounded dozens of people, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

Civilians and security forces inspect the site of a car bomb attack in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. A string of bombings in mostly Shiite-majority cities across Iraq on Sunday killed and wounded dozens of people, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

Security forces inspect the site of a car bomb attack in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. A string of bombings in mostly Shiite-majority cities across Iraq on Sunday killed and wounded dozens of people, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

People and security forces inspect the site of a car bomb attack in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. A string of bombings in mostly Shiite-majority cities across Iraq on Sunday killed and wounded dozens of people, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A string of bombings Sunday across Iraq, many in Shiite-majority cities, killed at least 42 people and wounded dozens, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attacks, but waves of bombings are frequently used by al-Qaida's Iraq branch.

The Sunni militant group and other Sunni extremists often targets Shiite civilians in an effort to undermine the Shiite-led government. Al-Qaida's extremist ideology considers Shiites heretics.

The deadliest of Sunday's attacks, many of which struck busy commercial areas, happened in the southern city of Hillah, 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad. Back-to-back car bombings hit an outdoor market there, killing eight people and wounding 22, police said.

Two parked car bombs ripped through a commercial area in the city of Suwayrah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 14. Two other car bombs exploded simultaneously in the city of Kut, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, killing four and wounded 16, according to police.

In the nearby city of Samawah, 370 kilometers (230 miles) southeast of Baghdad, four people were killed and 13 wounded when two car bombs exploded. Two other car bombs killed three and wounded 13 in the city of Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital.

Samarra was struck twice Sunday, a day after a car bombing in the Sunni-dominated city left 17 dead. The memory of the 2006 bombing of the city's al-Askari Shiite shrine still haunts many Iraqis because it set off years of retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite extremists.

Two people were killed and 15 were wounded in the morning when a car bomb exploded near a group of mourners at a funeral for some of the previous day's dead. A suicide bomber struck a security checkpoint near the shrine in the Sunni-dominated city later in the day, killing four and wounding 10, said Mizhar Fleih, the deputy head of the municipal council there.

In other violence Sunday, police reported five people killed and 34 wounded in the southern city of Basra and the central towns of Mahmoudiyah and Madain.

In the western Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiyah, police said a bomb went off near a row of shops, killing two people and wounding nine others. Three others were killed in a blast near a soccer field in Baghdad's mainly Shiite southeastern suburb of Nahrwan. Yet another bomb exploded in the western Amariyah neighborhood, killing two and wounding 10, police said.

Medical officials confirmed the causalities. The police and hospital officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in Iraq since attacks began accelerating in April following a deadly security crackdown against a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija.

With today's death toll, at least 267 people were killed so far in October. The latest surge in violence has raised fears that Iraq could be returning to widespread sectarian killings similar to those that brought country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007.

___

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-13-ML-Iraq/id-6afecf9587ad4c37828ca9a45745caff
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FDA probing serious adverse events linked to Ariad's cancer drug

(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it is investigating an increasing number of reports of serious and life-threatening adverse events in patients taking Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc's leukemia drug, Iclusig.

Ariad's shares fell 7 percent in early trade on Friday.

In a safety notice posted on its website, the regulator advised patients taking Iclusig to seek immediate medical attention if they experience symptoms suggesting a heart attack.

The notice comes after Ariad disclosed on Wednesday that the FDA asked the company to stop enrolling patients in clinical trials of Iclusig. The agency had identified a number of patients who had experienced blood clots and heart damage after taking the drug.

Iclusig was approved by the FDA in December 2012 to treat adults with two rare types of blood cancers - chronic myeloid leukemia and Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The drug's label contains information about the risks of blood clots.

The company is testing the drug in seven mid-stage studies for lung cancer, thyroid cancer and another form of blood cancer.

The FDA said that the most recent clinical trial data Ariad had submitted showed at least 20 percent of patients developed blood clots or narrowing of blood vessels.

The agency also said it recently received reports showing that patients treated with Iclusig experienced serious eye problems, including decreased vision and clots in blood vessels of the eye. (http://r.reuters.com/cup73v)

Postmarket reports show that Iclusig patients experienced heart attacks resulting in death, worsening coronary artery disease, stroke, narrowing of large arteries of the brain among others, the FDA said.

The company's shares were down 4 percent at $5.18 at 10:20 a.m. ET, recouping from a low of $5.05.

Ariad's stock lost three-quarters of its value on Wednesday to trade at a three-year low.

(Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fda-probing-serious-adverse-events-linked-ariads-cancer-145043042--finance.html
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A Brief History of Speech Recognition's Glorious Retrofuture

In the two decades following World War II, it seemed there was no limit to technological growth. Sure, a computer was still the size of an entire room, and no one had telephones in their pockets. But techno-utopian ideas like flying cars and jetpacks and meal pills were all being taken very seriously as the inevitable fruits of science's labor.

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Source: http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/a-brief-history-of-speech-recognitions-glorious-retrof-791905826

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Croatia celebrates its EU membership

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) ? Fireworks lit the sky and festive crowds gathered on the streets to mark Croatia's entry Monday into the European Union, a major milestone some 20 years after the country won independence in a bloody civil war that shook the continent.

Croatia became the 28th EU member, the bloc's first addition since Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007. Though enthusiasm for the country's achievement has been dampened by the EU's financial turmoil, it is a historic turning point for the small Balkan nation of 4.2 million, which endured years of carnage after declaring independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

"As midnight struck, your country crossed an important threshold," European Council President Herman Van Rompuy told the cheering crowd in Croatia's capital Zagreb. "It will change the life of this nation for good."

"In the history of a nation, there are a few events such as this one," Croatia's President Ivo Josipovic said. "The accession of Croatia to the European Union is confirmation that each one of us belongs to the European democratic and cultural set of values."

A decade back, when Croatia started negotiating the entry, the once war-torn country was overjoyed at the prospect of becoming a member of the European elite. With the EU in deep financial trouble and Croatia's own economy in recession for five consecutive years, the excitement has dimmed.

Thousands of people waving small EU and Croatian flags nonetheless joined celebrations across the country, including in Zagreb's main square. There, artists performed for some 100 visiting foreign leaders until midnight when big fireworks and the singing of Beethoven's Ode to Joy ? EU's anthem ? marked the official entry into the bloc.

Customs posts were removed from Croatia's borders with EU neighbors Slovenia and Hungary, while EU signs and flags were put on its borders with non-EU states Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro.

The festivities were much more modest and less jubilant than when Bulgaria and Romania ? currently EU's poorest states ? became members. With the entry, Croatia becomes the third poorest country in the EU.

"There are not too many festivities because the general situation is not brilliant," Josipovic told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "We have to develop our economy, take care of those people who are jobless now, and there is no time and money for big celebrations."

With an unemployment rate hovering at around 20 percent, plunging living standards, endemic corruption among its political elite and its international credit rating reduced to junk, many Croats are not in the mood to celebrate.

Some economists have warned that Croatia could seek an EU financial bailout as soon as it becomes a member. But Croatia's Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic rejected those claims, saying that the country would qualify for bailouts only if it is a member of the eurozone, a separate 17-country group that uses the EU's common currency, the euro.

"Croatia is not a member of the eurozone, and will not become a member of the eurozone until all the conditions are met," she said.

President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz called Croatia's accession a "historic day."

"EU membership will offer no magic solution to the crisis," he said in a statement. "But it will help to lift many people out of poverty and modernize the economy."

Pro-EU voices in Croatia note that joining the bloc means Croatians could find jobs in more prosperous EU countries, that their country could attract more foreign investment, and that the EU's leadership in Brussels could help keep widespread corruption and economic mismanagement in check.

But protest movement Occupy Croatia argued in a statement that "the European Union is not a solution to our problems."

"The entry into the European Union is an economic genocide over the people living in our country," the group said, blasting the EU as a "union tailored for rich corporations and their politicians."

The EU is in the grips of a recession, with many countries struggling to stimulate growth while grappling with a debt crisis that has led governments to slash spending and raise taxes. The EU countries account for 60 percent for Croatia's exports, which has sent the Balkan country's economy into a steady decline.

"It's important that we remember that Croatia is joining at the strangest time for the European Union in history," said Paul Stubbs, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Economics in Zagreb. He said Croatians "might see some increased prices, some increased competition, I wouldn't expect some huge increase in investment overnight."

But for many Croatians, pragmatism is winning out.

"We really had no choice," said Nino Vidic, a Zagreb resident. "Croatia is a small country, and logically as a Catholic country, we strive toward the West."

___

Associated Press writers Jovana Gec and Raf Casert contributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/croatia-celebrates-eu-membership-101549636.html

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Can watching an avatar translate to real-life weight loss?

July 1, 2013 ? An estimated two-thirds of all Americans are overweight or obese and many find it difficult to lose weight and keep it off. They've tried fad diets, exercise programs, diet pills and other methods but the battle continues. Now, a new study suggests that watching an avatar model weight-loss behavior in a virtual community might help some women shed pounds in the real world.

"This pilot study showed that you don't have to be a gamer to use virtual reality to learn some important skills for weight loss," said Melissa Napolitano, PhD, an associate professor of prevention and community health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS). "This small study suggests that virtual reality could be a promising new tool for building healthier habits."

If proven effective, such a program might offer an inexpensive way to help millions of Americans -- including overweight men--learn the skills and behavior they need to lose weight over the long run.

Previous research had suggested that using virtual reality to model skills or provide reinforcement was effective. For example, people who watched an avatar that resembled them run on a treadmill were more likely to exercise the next day than if they watched an unfamiliar avatar, according to a Stanford University study.

Napolitano, who did the study while at Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education, in collaboration with Temple's Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, and her colleagues, wondered if avatars could be used as a tool to model weight loss behavior for overweight women.

To find out, the team first conducted a survey among 128 overweight women. Most of them had tried to lose weight during the last year and the majority had never used a virtual reality game. Despite the fact that most of these women had no experience using virtual reality or even playing online games, the researchers found that 88 percent said they would be willing to use a program with an avatar modeling habits that might give them an edge in the battle to lose weight.

Many of the study participants thought that watching an avatar could help them visualize and then put in place healthy behavior, such as taking a walk every day or picking healthy options when food shopping. And in fact, theory and research tells us that modeling or seeing the steps one needs to take in order to achieve a desired goal makes behavioral change easier to accomplish, Napolitano said.

But to test the concept, the team first had to create videos that showed an avatar in a variety of different situations such as walking on a treadmill or navigating a cart through the aisles of a grocery store. The end result was a partnership from the treatment side drawing on Napolitano's expertise as well as the experts on the technical programming front to show the avatars in action. Using their extensive expertise in virtual reality, Director Antonio Giordano, MD, PhD, and Giuseppe Russo, PhD, of Temple's Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, developed a virtual reality simulation featuring such an avatar.

"With our vast experience in creating custom virtual reality environments for eHealth, we were able to assist Dr. Napolitano in this pilot study from the technical point of view," said Russo. "This study is a perfect example of how virtual reality can be used in promoting human health."

Given that not all the woman who participated were avid tech users, the team created a DVD that showed the avatar in four real-world environments. The women did not have to manipulate the avatar, they just watched the video; however they did pick out the skin color and shape of the avatar to more closely resemble their own appearance--a feature that might help the study participants visualize and learn a new behavior, Napolitano said.

In the next part of the trial, the team enrolled eight overweight women in a four-week pilot test to see if watching the videos could help these women learn new skills that could lead to weight loss. The women came to the clinic once a week and watched a 15-minute DVD featuring an avatar demonstrating healthy weight loss behaviors.

For example, in one lesson the women watched the avatar sitting down for dinner and learned about portion sizes. Participants watched as the avatar viewed a plate with a serving size that was too large and one that was just right. In another lesson, they watched an avatar walk with moderate intensity on a treadmill and learned the walking pace needed to help with weight loss goals, Napolitano said. The women in this pilot study also set weight-loss and exercise goals and kept a food and exercise log.

Based on theory and previous research, the team thought that watching the avatar in the virtual world might make it more likely women would practice those skills in real life. The virtual "model" was the key to helping participants break healthy behaviors into manageable steps, Napolitano noted.

And after four weeks of treatment, the women in this pilot study had lost an average of 3.5 pounds, a fairly typical amount for traditional diet plans, Napolitano said. However, the researchers hope that by watching the avatar the women using this program will be much more likely to put healthy habits in place over the long run -- keep the weight off for good.

Additional studies must be conducted in order to solidify these early findings and show that men and women who use the tool really do lose weight and maintain that loss. "This is just the first step to show that women, even those who are not gamers, are interested in an avatar-based technology to help them with a weight-loss plan," said Napolitano. "We are excited by the potential of this technology as a scalable tool to help people learn the skills to be successful at weight loss over the long run."

The study, "Using Avatars to Model Weight Loss Behaviors: Participant attitudes and technology development," appears in the July 1 Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. Other authors of the study include Sharon Hayes and Gary Foster, both at Temple's Center for Obesity Research and Education, and Giuseppe Russo, Debora Muresu and Antonio Giordano of Temple's Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/CnQsx7DuYJE/130701080840.htm

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WEATHER: Toppled the record highs once again in Central Texas, this time at Mab...

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