Palm-sized baby among the world's smallest

14-week-old Melinda Star Guido holds her mother's little finger while lying in an incubator at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. At birth, Melinda Star Guido tipped the scales at only 9 1/2 ounces, a tad less than the weight of two iPhone 4S. Melinda is believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the United States and the third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

14-week-old Melinda Star Guido holds her mother's little finger while lying in an incubator at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. At birth, Melinda Star Guido tipped the scales at only 9 1/2 ounces, a tad less than the weight of two iPhone 4S. Melinda is believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the United States and the third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Haydee Ibarra, looks at her 14-week-old daughter, Melinda Star Guido, at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. At birth, Melinda Star Guido tipped the scales at only 9 1/2 ounces, a tad less than the weight of two iPhone 4S. Most babies her size don?t survive, but doctors are preparing to send her home as soon as the end of the month. Melinda is believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the United States and the third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

This undated photo provided by Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center shows shows Melinda Guido shortly after her birth in late August with the hand of Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan as a comparison. Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks weighing only 9.5 ounces. She's believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the United States and third in the world. (AP Photo/Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center )

This undated photo provided by Melinda Guido?s family shows Melinda, with her mother's fingers in the scene, in the neonatal intensive care unit at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks weighing 9.5 ounces. She?s believed to be the second smallest surviving baby in the United States and third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Haydee Ibarra)

This undated photo provided by Melinda Guido?s family shows Melinda in the neonatal intensive care unit at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks weighing 9.5 ounces. She?s believed to be the second smallest surviving baby in the United States and third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Haydee Ibarra)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? At birth, Melinda Star Guido was so tiny she could fit into the palm of her doctor's hand. Weighing just 9 1/2 ounces ? less than a can of soda ? she is among the smallest babies ever born in the world.

Most infants her size don't survive, but doctors are preparing to send her home by New Year's.

Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks in late August and is believed to be the second-smallest baby to survive in the U.S. and third smallest in the world. She spent the early months cocooned in an incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit in Los Angeles.

Despite hurdles, Melinda lived to her original Thursday due date. Doctors say it is too early to say how she will fare developmentally and physically when she grows up.

For now, her 22-year-old mother sits at her bedside almost every day and stays overnight whenever she can.

On Wednesday, Haydee Ibarra caressed Melinda through the portholes of the incubator where nurses pinned up a homemade sign bearing her name. Now 3 ? months old and weighing 4 pounds, Melinda gripped Ibarra's pinky finger and yawned.

"Melinda, Melinda," she cooed at her daughter dressed in a polka dot onesie. "You're awake today."

During her pregnancy, Ibarra suffered from high blood pressure, which can be dangerous for mother and fetus. She was transferred from a hospital near her San Fernando Valley home to the county's flagship hospital, which was better equipped to handle high-risk pregnancies.

There was a problem with the placenta, the organ that nourishes the developing fetus. The fetus, however, was not getting proper nutrition, blood and oxygen. Doctors knew Melinda would weigh less than a pound, but they were surprised at how small and fragile she was.

"The first few weeks, it was touch and go. None of us thought the baby was going to make it," said Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan, who oversees premature infants at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

Even if she survived, doctors told Ibarra and her husband Yovani Guido, children born this extremely premature can have developmental delays and impairments such as blindness, deafness or cerebral palsy.

Ibarra, who previously had a stillborn, told doctors to do whatever necessary to help her baby.

"They said, 'We'll take the chance. Please try.' So we said. 'OK we'll try,'" Ramanathan recalled.

Melinda was delivered by cesarean section at 24 weeks and was immediately transferred to the NICU where a team of doctors and nurses kept watch around the clock. Infants born before 37 weeks are considered premature.

Melinda was kept insulated in an incubator and was hooked up to a machine to aid her breathing. She got nutrition through a feeding tube. Her mother said her skin felt like plastic because it was so thin.

"It takes a lot of good care and a lot of good luck. Most of them don't survive," said pediatrician Dr. Edward Bell of the University of Iowa who keeps an online database of the world's smallest surviving babies who were less than a pound at birth.

The list currently contains 126 babies dating back to 1936. Since submission is voluntary, it does not represent all survivors.

Ten babies weighing less than a pound were born last year and survived. Melinda joins three other tiny survivors delivered this year in Berkeley; Seoul, South Korea; and Iowa City, Iowa. All are bigger than Melinda, who is not eligible to be listed until she gets discharged.

Most tiny babies who survive tend to be female. That's because female fetuses mature faster than males of the same gestational age. Having more developed lungs and other vital organs increases odds of survival.

Bell published a study last year that found many survivors struggle with health and learning problems. For those for whom growth data are available, many are short and underweight for their age.

There are some success stories.

The smallest surviving baby born weighing 9.2 ounces is now a healthy 7-year-old and another who weighed 9.9 ounces at birth is an honors college student studying psychology. Their progress was detailed in a study published this week in the journal Pediatrics by doctors at Loyola University Medical Center in Illinois where the girls were born.

In the past three years, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center cared for two other babies with extremely low birth weight who survived, but Melinda holds the record at the hospital.

Prematurity comes with high costs. Ramanathan estimates it costs $3,000 to $5,000 a day to care for a premature infant.

A month after birth, Melinda was treated for an eye disorder that's common in premature babies. She faced her biggest test last month when she underwent surgery to close an artery that usually seals after birth.

Ybarra held her daughter for the first time after the surgery. Before that, she could only touch her through the incubator.

The next challenge is learning to bottle feed before discharge. Ramanathan predicted at least another two-week stay, dashing her parents' hopes of taking her home by Christmas.

Ramanathan said doctors don't know how Melinda will fare when she's older. Since she did not have major complications such as bleeding in the brain, he held out hope.

Melinda can breathe by herself, but still uses an oxygen tube as a precaution. On Wednesday, an ophthalmologist checked out her eyes and said everything looked good.

After the checkup, Ibarra lifted Melinda out of the incubator and sat in a rocking chair, cradling her.

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Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

___

Online:

Tiniest Babies Registry: http://bit.ly/rvglZQ

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2011-12-15-Tiny%20Baby/id-cc7037860a1a448b926f669ee98a55dc

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Fox News Uses an Obama Image to Identify Mitt Romney (The Atlantic Wire)

The dutiful Media Matters researchers who stare at Fox News all day have flagged another humorous mistake made by cable news network: Fox accidentally swapped Mitt Romney's face with Barack Obama's in an Iowa polling segment today. As the progressive think tank later reported, Megyn Kelly apologized for the error on air, saying that "we put a graphic on the air ... that, as it turns out, was incorrect. It identified Mitt Romney with a picture of Barack Obama. As it turns out, they are not the same man. Not philosophically, not ideologically, not in any other way. So we apologize for that error." ?Feel free to read as little or as much conspiracy into the mix up: it still ranks below the time the cable network used a Tina Fey picture for a Sarah Palin segment.

Related: Media Matters Instantly Declares War on Ed Henry

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20111214/pl_atlantic/foxnewsusesobamapictureidentifymittromney46212

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High oil prices may threaten growth: BP (Reuters)

DOHA (Reuters) ? The fragile economic recovery could be negatively affected by high oil prices, especially in the United States, BP's (BP.L) chief executive said on Tuesday.

Despite the looming threat of a sharp economic slowdown in Europe affecting demand for oil around the world, oil prices have remained above $100 for most of 2011 thanks largely to strong growth in Asia and instability in producing countries.

Stubbornly high oil prices now have the potential to affect economic growth and hit demand for oil, Bob Dudley told executives from the world's largest oil and gas producers gathered in Qatar.

"It is important in the current situation of a fragile global economy and I think right now we are probably walking a fine line," Bob Dudley told the World Petroleum Congress in Doha.

"It is impossible to say what price exactly will affect the economic recovery but we do know which regions will be affected most," he said, adding that the United States was most vulnerable because of its slim fuel tax buffer to soften the blow of rising oil prices through pump price tax cuts.

"There is a risk that in the world's largest economy and largest oil consumer, the United States, could be hit by a lack of supplies and a high price of oil with consequences for the rest of the world," he said, adding that any slowdown in the U.S. economy would inevitably weigh on global growth.

Standard & Poor's on Monday warned it may carry out an unprecedented mass downgrade on the credit ratings of euro zone countries if EU leaders fail to reach an agreement on how to solve the region's debt crisis in a summit later this week.

 nTOPEURO]                 
 Brent crude oil has is on track for its highest average price in 2011 despite growing economic woes in Europe.
                 
 (Reporting by Daniel Fineren) 
                 

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AP Interview: Chou taps inner child for 11th album (omg!)

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) ? The Number 11 seems to be a lucky number for Mandarin pop's biggest star, Jay Chou.

Chou released "Wow," his 11th Mandarin album on Nov. 11, and 2011 marks his 11th year in show business. Over that time, he has revolutionized the business in ways not even he could have foreseen and has heavily influenced a generation of musicians and song writers who followed.

Although his musical style is loosely categorized as R&B or pop, the 32-year-old Taiwanese singer/song writer is a classically trained pianist who often injects classical music and traditional Chinese instruments into his tracks.

With "Wow," Chou says he is "getting back to basics" and making music for a younger audience.

"I believe that a musician should have a child's heart," Chou said in an interview in Taipei with The Associated Press. "I've made a lot of more sophisticated tracks in the last 10 albums. There were a lot of songs that adults love. The 11th album is more for the kids."

Since becoming a huge star and developing a following across Asia, Chou has fallen victim to the growing paparazzi culture in Taiwan. He is often followed and chased by photographers and reporters who would go to great lengths to dig up stories about his personal life.

Chou doesn't hide his disdain for the paparazzi, and he vents his frustrations in lyrics, or, in the case of the music video for the album's title track, by blowing up a fictitious paparazzi "office building."

It's an "immature" thought, he acknowledges, but one he says will resonate with fellow celebrities. "I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way," he said.

Chou has also ventured into acting and directing. His directorial debut "Secret," is a story about star-crossed high school sweethearts who re-connect with the help of a magical piano. He revealed to AP that a sequel is planned for next year.

"I will use the same cast and crew," he said. "because I think we've already got pretty good chemistry."

Playing Kato alongside Seth Rogen's "Green Hornet" gave Jay Chou his first big Hollywood break, and more offers are coming in. But Chou hasn't yet found another project that appeals to him.

"I want to pick something that's suitable and something that I like," he said.

He's hoping "Green Hornet 2" gets the green light so he can reprise the role of Kato. Until then, Chou can be seen in the "Viral Factor," co-starring Hong Kong actor Nicholas Tse, in January 2012.

__

Associated Press writer Angela Chen contributed to this report from Hong Kong.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_ap_interview_chou_taps_inner_child11th_album_070050175/43805801/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/ap-interview-chou-taps-inner-child-11th-album-070050175.html

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'Grim new precedent': Dozens killed at Afghan shrine

Three coordinated suicide bombings across Afghanistan have killed at least 58 people, making the attacks the worst on civilians there in more than a decade.? NBC's Atia Abawi reports.

By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

Summary: A suicide bomber attacked a Shiite Muslim shrine in central Kabul, where a crowd of hundreds had gathered Tuesday for the festival of Ashoura, killing at least?55 people and injuring dozens more in an unprecedented sectarian attack.

The attacker blew himself up in the midst of a crowd of men, women and children. The mosque had been packed with worshippers and many who could not fit inside were?outside the building.

---

The blast came shortly after a bicycle bomb?near a mosque in the?northern city of?Mazar-i-Sharif killed at least four people and wounded 21.?Another?bomb in a motorcycle exploded in the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday afternoon, injuring six people.

Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shiite minority, but while such attacks have become commonplace in neighboring Pakistan and parts of the Middle East such as Iraq, they have not occurred in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan has been at war for 30 years and terrible things have happened, but one of the things that Afghans have been spared generally has been what appears to be this kind of very targeted sectarian attack," Kate Clark, from the Afghanistan Analysts Network, told?Reuters.?"We don't know who planted the bomb yet and it is dangerous to jump to conclusions but if it was Taliban, it marks something really serious, and dangerous, and very troubling."?

Updated at 8:50 a.m. ET:? The Ministry of Interior said 55 were killed in Kabul?? including two women and four children. Sayed Kabir Amiri, who is in charge of Kabul hospitals, told the Associated Press that more than 160 were wounded in the blast. Police confirm that a second bomb was defused in Mazar-i-Sharif near the one that blew up.

Updated at?7:05 a.m. ET: A Taliban spokesman tells Reuters that the group did not carry out the Kabul or Mazar-i-Sharif attacks.

"People were killed by the enemy's un-Islamic and inhuman activity," Zabihullah Mujahid?writes in an emailed statement. He?adds that the?Taliban "strongly condemns such a cruel, indiscriminate and un-Islamic attack."

Updated at 6:30 a.m. ET: Gareth Price,?a senior research fellow at?London-based?think tank Chatham House, says the?attacks may have come now because Afghan and Western forces aren't the easy targets they once were.

"Shia shrines are a softer target than foreign troops or the Afghan army," he tells msnbc.com.

However,?discrimination against?Shiites?--? and in particular the largely Shiite Hazaras --? has deep roots in Afghan history. "All the groups pick on the Hazaras," Price says.

Updated at 6:25 a.m. ET: Citing an official with Afghanistan's health ministry, NBC News reports that the Kabul shrine blast killed 54 people and injured 150 others.

Updated at 5:55 a.m. ET: Afghan officials tell The Associated Press that the death toll in Kabul?suicide bombing has reached 48.?Mohammed Zahir, chief of the Kabul Criminal Investigation Department, adds that more than 100 people were wounded.

Updated at 5:15 a.m. ET: "The shrine's loudspeaker continued to blast a recitation of the Quran as ambulances carried bodies and wounded away," The Associated Press reports.?It adds that the Abul Fazl shrine is located close to the palace where President Hamid?Karzai lives.?Its blue minaret is one of Kabul's better known landmarks.??

S. Sabawoon / EPA

A body is covered at the scene of an attack near a shrine in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Updated at 4:55 a.m. ET:?Britain's Telegraph newspaper reports that?"Shiites were banned from marking Ashoura in public under the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan until 2001. This year, there are more Ashoura monuments around the city than usual including black shrines and flags."

Updated at 4:35 a.m. ET: Jonathan Boone (@jon_boone), a Kabul-based correspondent for The Guardian, tweets quoting US General John Allen as describing the attack as "the latest example of the insurgents' blatant disregard for human life."

Updated at 4:25 a.m. ET:? Mohammad Bakir Shaikzada, the top Shiite cleric in Kabul, says that Shiites haven't been attacked in decades in Afghanistan.?"This is a crime against Muslims during the holy day of Ashoura. We Muslims will never forget these attacks. It is the enemy of the Muslims who are carrying them out," he said. He says he does not know who could have carried out such an attack.

Updated at 4:15 a.m. ET: Afghan President Hamid Karzai says it is first time that "terrorism" of this kind has occurred in the country on such a religious day, Reuters reports.

Updated at 4:10 a.m. ET:?Ahmad Shuja (@ahmadshuja),?director of Foundation for Afghanistan, tweets: "My hunch: Today's attacks WON'T, per se, touch off chain of sectarian violence. No Shiite group organized enough or duly experienced."

Updated at 4:00 a.m ET: NBC News cites a health official as saying that at least 50 people were injured in the Kabul blast.

Updated at 3.55 a.m. ET: Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's Criminal Investigation Department,?tells Reuters?that he?counted up to 20 bodies at a Kabul hospital, and expected the toll to rise following the explosion at a Shiite shrine in the Afghan capital. A?second attack near the main mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif?killed four people and injured 17 others.

Reuters journalists Mirwais Harooni and?Emma Graham-Harrison?point out that although "Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shiite minority ... since the fall of the Taliban the country had been spared the large-scale sectarian attacks that have troubled neighboring Pakistan. The noon bomb in a riverside shrine, in the heart of old Kabul, appears to set a grim new precedent."

Updated at 3:47 a.m. ET:?At least?34 people were killed on Tuesday after blasts hit Shiite shrines in Afghanistan during the festival of Ashoura,Al Jazeera English reports citing local media reports and police.

Published at 3:30 a.m. ET: A blast at a shrine in Afghanistan's capital during the Shiite festival of Ashoura killed up to 24 people Tuesday, according to reports.

Meanwhile, four others were killed in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif when a bomb on bicycle exploded, Reuters said. The victims included a soldier.

The Kabul explosion was caused by a suicide bomber, Al Jazeera reported. It put the death toll at 24.

However, Hashmatullah Stanekzai, a spokesman for Kabul police, told the Associated Press that it wasn't clear if the explosives were planted in the shrine or if a suicide bomber was behind the attack.

The AP reported that at least 15 had been killed in the attack on the shrine, where worshippers were gathering for Ashoura, the Shiite Muslim holiday marking the death of Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad.

NBC News, msnbc.com staff, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Read more content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/06/9240718-worshippers-killed-as-blast-hits-afghan-shrine

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Organize your gift-giving this holiday season with these iPhone apps (Appolicious)

It?s way too easy to get carried away with holiday gift purchases. The next thing you know your credit card is maxed-out and you?re eating ramen noodles throughout January. There?s also the stress of receiving a gift from someone when you haven?t budgeted one for them, and the horror of sending someone a present, only to hear that it never arrived. To stay on track this holiday gift-giving season, check out some of these iPhone apps to get organized, stick to your budget, and ensure all gifts arrive in a timely manner.

Do you have any endless holiday shopping list? Don?t stress this Christmas, get the mGifts ? Gift List Manager app ($2.99) for your iPhone. It?s like having a hundred little elves helping to organize your holiday shopping in the palm of your hand. You can actually use this handy app to organize gift giving all year round for birthdays, anniversaries and more. My favorite features include tracking your holiday gift spending and adding a security pin code to keep out snooping loved ones.

Related: Use these iPhone apps to manage your weight during the holidays

Big families can cause otherwise sane people to go crazy with shopping stress overload during the holiday season. If you take a little time throughout the year to organize your gift-giving profiles with the Gift Plan iPhone app ($2.99), you will save yourself a lot of troubles come December. This app even integrates with Facebook to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries. I love that you can keep track of gift ideas throughout the year so you have a list of possibilities when a special event arrives. You can also view adorable photos of your nieces and nephews while browsing their gift profile.

Are you a visual organizer? I absolutely love the way The Christmas List app ($0.99) displays your gift profiles by budgeted items and your progress towards procuring each gift. It also offers a quick reminder of how many days you have left to shop to get said gifts. It rounds gifts up by store so you can organize your shopping trips across family members. This is a delightful app with great visual appeal.

Are you a holiday bargain shopper that didn?t finish your Christmas shopping haul on Black Friday? Check out the free ShopAdvisor iPhone app to search for the best deals on all the gifts you missed. The best part is that you can set up an alert to tell you when the price meets your ideal present budget for each missing item on your holiday gift-giving (and -getting) list.

If most of your family and friends are away this holiday season and you are sending Christmas gifts far and away to them, you must get the Delivery Status Touch, a Package Tracker iPhone app ($4.99). This shipping tracker app keeps all your package tracking in one convenient spot and alerts you when packages arrive at their final destination. If your busy sister forgets to let you know when your nephew?s holiday gifts arrive, give her a call when the app says the package was delivered to follow up. I wonder if Santa has this iPhone app?

Own a lot of shopping apps? Create a list of your favorites here.

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ESA abandons Russian space probe, hopes it doesn't plummet to earth

Things have gone from bad to worse for the orbit locked Phobos-Grunt space probe, having lost contact with the European Space Agency, the probe faces abandonment and disaster. The soviet star-gazer got stuck in Earth's orbit shortly after launch, stunting its two and a half year jaunt to the Martian moon Phobos. Attempts to send commands that would break the craft loose of the Earth's grip have failed, and the ESA has since given up hope of contacting the probe. The Russians will continue to try and reestablish contact with the probe, hopefully avoiding an expensive disaster. Weighing 13.2 metric tons, most of which is fuel, the probe threatens to return to Earth with a bang, crashing down to terra firma with a toxic payload. It's certainly not been a good couple of months for Euro based space travel. In the meantime let's just hope it doesn't bump into anything else while it's up there, or you might miss the big game.

ESA abandons Russian space probe, hopes it doesn't plummet to earth originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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