Timing is awkward for Robert Wagner "NCIS" episode (omg!)

By Chris Willman

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Robert Wagner will have dueling appearances on CBS this week: As a handcuffed character on "NCIS" on Tuesday and as the subject of a "48 Hours" segment that aired on Saturday night exploring Natalie Wood's death almost 30 years ago.

The network put together what now seems like a rather jolting promo spot for Tuesday night's episode of "NCIS," which show Wagner's character being handcuffed and brought in for questioning on suspicion of murder.

His guest-starring role on TV's top crime drama is not, of course, to be confused with his appearance on the same network's "48 Hours Mystery," which looked into whether his wife's death, deemed an accidental drowning in 1981, warrants a criminal investigation.

Is this the kind of situation for which the word "awkward" was invented?

"The episode is running as scheduled," CBS spokesperson Chris Ender said Saturday, asked by The Wrap if any thought had been given to postponing the Wagner-centered "NCIS" or re-editing the commercial spots.

Saturday's episode of "48 Hours," meanwhile, reflected a change in schedule. The segment about Wood's death originally was slated to air during Thanksgiving weekend, which would have allowed for Wagner's "NCIS" guest spot and promotion to be over and done with before CBS' news division raised any provocative questions.

But the news show was bumped up a week after the L.A. County Sheriff's office held a news conference on Friday announcing their reopening of the Wood case -- an announcement that, in turn, was likely spurred by the imminence of the "48 Hours" segment.

"Timing is everything," Susan Zirinsky, the executive producer of "48 Hours" told TheWrap on Saturday afternoon during a quick break in the editing room as her team rushed the Wood segment toward completion.

Zirinsky acknowledged the irony of Wagner's being a featured actor on the network within days of her news program's airing interviews that revive insinuations about his actions before and after his wife's death in 1981. But she said that never figured in the initial decision to run the segment after "NCIS" aired, nor did her team worry when it became clear that they would move their "48 Hours" episode closer to Wagner's appearance on "NCIS."

"That's what's great about CBS: There is a division of church and state," said Zirinsky. "We in the news division would never be asked to hold a show because of something in the entertainment world. There was never a discussion about 'Should we not air this "48 Hours" this week?'"

Another source close to "NCIS" said that they fielded questions about whether the commercials should be recut, but with Wagner's character being so central to the show, those thoughts weren't seriously entertained -- "and anyway, the sheriff's office said he isn't a suspect" in the Wood case.

Still, much of the speculation around Wood's death continues to pivot on Wagner's actions that night, before her disappearance and after everyone on board the boat was aware that she was missing.

The "48 Hours" segment includes an interview with an EMT who believes Wood survived adrift in the ocean for hours and might have been saved if a search had been called earlier. Also interviewed is the captain of the boat, who says he lied to authorities during the initial police investigation and has co-authored a book largely dedicated to putting the blame for Wood's death on his former friend Wagner.

Meanwhile, "NCIS" and Wagner have been very good to each other in recent years, as he's become the most popular recurring guest star on TV's most popular scripted show.

The former "Hart to Hart" star made his first appearance two seasons ago as Anthony DiNozzo Sr., the lovable-scoundrel dad of Michael Weatherly's character. That episode proved to be one of the most acclaimed in the show's nine-season run, so Wagner has been brought back for annual appearances, last season and again now.

TV watchers may also recall that Weatherly played Wagner in the 2004 TV movie "The Mystery of Natalie Wood," directed by Peter Bogdanovich and co-produced by Lana Wood, Natalie's sister. The "NCIS" actor has said in the past that the telepic was a touchy subject he and Wagner avoided discussing after they began working together.

Knowing what they know now about the news flurry of recent days, CBS might have avoided promoting Wagner's "NCIS" appearance with plot synopses like: "When DiNozzo's dad ... is found in a car, minus his memory but plus one dead body, the NCIS team must determine whether the man is capable of murder."

By the end of Tuesday's "NCIS," Wagner's much-loved character will have been found blameless. Only a public opinion poll will reveal whether viewers walked away from "48 Hours" with the same sense of relief.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_timing_awkward_robert_wagner_ncis_episode195201035/43663084/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/timing-awkward-robert-wagner-ncis-episode-195201035.html

miles austin ellen degeneres patti stanger washington redskins doritos confederate flag confederate flag

Obama sending Clinton to repressive Myanmar

U.S. President Barack Obama stands with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as he announces that she will travel to Myanmar, on the sidelines of the ASEAN and East Asia summit in Nusa Dua, on the island of Bali, Indonesia, Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

U.S. President Barack Obama stands with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as he announces that she will travel to Myanmar, on the sidelines of the ASEAN and East Asia summit in Nusa Dua, on the island of Bali, Indonesia, Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Myanmar President Thein Sein, left, and U.S. President Barack Obama attend the U.S.-ASEAN meeting in Nusa Dua, on the island of Bali, Indonesia, Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at her National League for Democracy (NLD) party's headquarters to attend a meeting on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, in Yangon, Myanmar. Senior members of the National League for Democracy gathered Friday to decide whether to register it as a legal body so that it can take part in future elections. (AP Photo/Khin Maung Win)

U.S. President Barack Obama stands with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as he announces that she will travel to Myanmar, on the sidelines of the ASEAN and East Asia summit in Nusa Dua, on the island of Bali, Indonesia, Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

BALI, Indonesia (AP) ? Seizing an opportunity for historic progress in repressive Myanmar, President Barack Obama is dispatching Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the long-isolated nation next month in an attempt to accelerate fledgling reforms.

The move is the most dramatic sign yet of an evolving relationship between the United States and Myanmar, also known as Burma, which has suffered under brutal military rule for decades. Obama said Friday there had been "flickers of progress" since new civilian leadership took power in March.

Responding to signs of reform, Myanmar's main opposition party, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, decided on Friday to register again for future elections after boycotting last year's voting.

"If Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America," Obama said as he announced Clinton's trip while on a diplomatic mission to southeast Asia.

Clinton will be the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Myanmar in more than 50 years.

In exploring a breakthrough engagement with Myanmar, Obama first sought assurances of support from Suu Kyi. She spent 15 years under house arrest by the nation's former military dictators but is now in talks with the civilian government about reforming the country.

A U.S. opening with Myanmar would also contribute to Obama's goals of rebalancing power in the region, as Burma's military leaders for long had close ties to China.

Beijing has poured billions of dollars of investment into Myanmar to operate mines, extract timber and build oil and gas pipelines. China has also been a staunch supporter of the country's politically isolated government and is Myanmar's second-biggest trading partner after Thailand.

Administration officials stressed that the new engagement with Myanmar was not about China. They said the Obama administration consulted with China about the move and said they expected China to be supportive. They argued that China wants to see a stable Burma on its borders, so that it doesn't risk problems with refugees or other results of political instability.

Obama and democracy leader Suu Kyi spoke by phone on Thursday night while he was flying to Bali on Air Force One.

By sending in Clinton, his chief diplomat, Obama is taking a calculated political risk in a place where repression is still common. He warned that if the country fails to commit to a true opening of its society, it will continue to face sanctions and isolation. But he said that the current environment is a rare opening that could help millions of people "and that possibility is too important to ignore."

Myanmar is subject to wide-ranging trade, economic and political sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations, enforced in response to brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in 1988 and 2007 and its refusal to hand power to Suu Kyi's party after the 1990 elections.

Clinton said that while there may be an opening for a democracy push in Myanmar, the U.S. was proceeding cautiously.

"We're not ending sanctions. We're not making any abrupt changes," she said during an interview with Fox News. "We have to do some more fact-finding and that's part of my trip."

Suu Kyi's lawyer, Nyan Win, welcomed news of Clinton's visit.

"It is time for the U.S. to make such a high-level visit. This is going to be a very crucial visit," Win said.

Senior Obama administration officials said the U.S. wants to see a number of actions from Myanmar, including the release of more political prisoners; serious internal domestic diplomacy between the government and ethnic groups, some of which have been in civil war for decades; and further assurances with regards to interactions with North Korea.

The administration's policy toward Myanmar has focused on punishments and incentives to get the country's former military rulers to improve dire human rights conditions. The U.S. imposed new sanctions on Myanmar but made clear it was open to better relations if the situation changed.

Myanmar's nominally civilian government has declared its intention to liberalize the hardline policies of the junta that preceded it. It has taken some initial steps, such as easing censorship, legalizing labor unions, suspending an unpopular, China-backed dam project, and working with Suu Kyi.

Officials said Clinton would travel to Myanmar Dec. 1, making stops in Yangon and Naypyitaw.

Human rights groups welcomed Obama's announcement as an opportunity to compel further reforms.

"We've been arguing a long time that political engagement and political pressure are not mutually exclusive," Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International's Southeast Asia researcher, told The Associated Press, adding that Clinton "should not miss the opportunity in this historic visit to pressure the government and speak very clearly that the human rights violations taking place there need to stop."

Elaine Pearson, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the Burmese government must realize that a visit by Clinton "puts them on notice, not lets them off the hook for their continually atrocious human rights record."

Obama was to see Burma's president during the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, that brought him to Bali. The two have met before, at an ASEAN meeting in Singapore, when Thein Sein was prime minister.

ASEAN announced Friday that Myanmar would chair the regional bloc in 2014, a significant perch that Myanmar was forced to skip in 2006 because of intense criticism of its rights record.

Obama attended a meeting Friday afternoon with the heads of ASEAN, whose 10 members include host Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The group will expand for the East Asia Summit, a forum that also counts China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the U.S. as members.

The president held one-on-one meetings on the sidelines of the summit with leaders from Indonesia, India, Malaysia and the Philippines. Administration officials said Obama discussed the issue of Myanmar in his meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Philippine President Benigno Aquino III.

Earlier, in a move promoting American trade, Obama presided over a deal that will send Boeing planes to an Indonesian company and create jobs back home, underscoring the value of the lucrative Asia-Pacific market to a president needing some good economic news.

Obama stood watch as executives of Boeing and Lion Air, a private carrier in Indonesia, signed a deal that amounts to Boeing's largest commercial plane order. Lion Air ordered 230 airplanes, and the White House said it would support tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S.

____

Associated Press writers Aye Aye Win in Yangon and Alisa Tang in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-11-18-Obama/id-e2e2bd1d0c2549488b26879c31a3387c

torrey smith torrey smith packers bears boeing 787 johnny appleseed hank baskett scrimshaw

Change in Medical Students' Readiness for Self-directed Learning after a Partially Problem-based Learning First Year Curriculum at the KIST Medical College In Lalitpur, Nepal.

Review The educational effects of portfolios on undergraduate student learning: a Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) systematic review. BEME Guide No. 11.

Buckley S, Coleman J, Davison I, Khan KS, Zamora J, Malick S, Morley D, Pollard D, Ashcroft T, Popovic C, et al. Med Teach. 2009 Apr; 31(4):282-98.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?tmpl=NoSidebarfile&db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=22081659&dopt=Abstract

battlefield 3 review real housewives of new jersey coraline coraline wedding crashers jacqueline laurita mcfadden

Hackers modify iPhone 4S to run on T-Mobile

If you want an iPhone 4S but don't want to give up your T-Mobile contract and switch to Verizon, AT&T or Sprint, you're not entirely out of luck. All you have to do is follow two hackers' directions.

On Pastebin and in a YouTube video, hackers Michael Capozzi and Daniel Scaleb posted step-by-step instructions showing how to hack an iPhone 4S and make it compatible with T-Mobile, the major U.S. carrier that doesn't support the Apple smartphone.

The modification requires a user to insert the original AT&T SIM card, dial 611 for customer service and then drop the call. The next step involves turning on "Airplane" mode, removing the legitimate SIM card and inserting a T-Mobile SIM card.

Scaleb writes on Pastebin that the next step is to switch off "Airplane" mode, which will cause the iPhone to search for a network. The EDGE network will activate automatically, after which the user should turn off the phone after 20 to 30 seconds, turn it on again, and tap "Use Cellular Connection" when the "Activation Required" screen pops up.

From there, ejecting the SIM card and reinserting it should unlock the phone and make it compatible with T-Mobile's network.

The modification seems simple enough, but tech site Gizmodo, which was among the first sites to report it, said it has received conflicting reports about whether or not the unlocking trick works.

If you want to avoid the hack and get a T-Mobile-compatible iPhone 4S, there's another way: as of last week, unlocked GSM iPhone 4S smartphones are available for $650.

? 2011 SecurityNewsDaily. All rights reserved

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45361423/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/

meteor shower somaya reece kathy griffin playstation network down martin scorsese kim zolciak kim zolciak

Teen in Calif. school attack ordered to pay $122K (AP)

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. ? A judge has ordered a teenager convicted in a bomb attack on a Northern California high school to pay the school district $122,000 in restitution.

San Mateo County Judge Stephen Hall ruled on Wednesday that 19-year-old Alexander Youshock was responsible for teacher and staff salaries and maintenance costs resulting from the Aug. 24, 2009, attack on Hillsdale High School.

The school was closed for two days, but no one was injured.

The San Mateo Daily Journal reports (http://bit.ly/umaXIb) that Youshock's attorney had said his client should not be made to pay $98,000 in teacher and staff salaries for those days since the employees were still paid by the district.

Youshock was ordered committed to a state mental hospital in May after pleading no contest to an attempted murder charge and six bomb charges. Authorities say he detonated two pipe bombs at his former school while armed with a chain saw and sword.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/education/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111117/ap_on_re_us/us_california_school_evacuation

who do you think you are frank mccourt ricin in god we trust ben gibbard zooey deschanel damian mcginty

Research firm: Amazon tablet costs $201.70 to make

FILE - This file photograph taken Sept. 28, 2011, shows the Kindle Fire at a news conference, in New York. Research firm IHS said the Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet, which started shipping this week, costs $201.70 to make, $2.70 more than Amazon charges for it. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

FILE - This file photograph taken Sept. 28, 2011, shows the Kindle Fire at a news conference, in New York. Research firm IHS said the Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet, which started shipping this week, costs $201.70 to make, $2.70 more than Amazon charges for it. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet, which started shipping this week, costs $201.70 to make, a research firm said Friday. That's $2.70 more than Amazon charges for it.

The analysis by IHS indicates that Amazon is, at least initially, selling the tablet at a loss that it hopes to cover through sales of books and movies for the device. The manufacturing cost of a new gadget usually comes down over time as chips become cheaper.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told The Associated Press in September that the company's goal was to make a small profit from the hardware, but as a retail company, Amazon was willing to live with a smaller margin than most electronics companies would.

"We want the hardware device to be profitable and the content to be profitable. We really don't want to subsidize one with the other," Bezos said.

IHS's estimate includes the cost of components and assembly, but not the costs of development, marketing or packaging. The most expensive part of the Kindle Fire is the 7-inch (17-centimeter) color touch screen, which costs $87.

Amazon kept the cost of the tablet low compared to Apple Inc.'s iPad and similar tablets by making it smaller ? the screen is half the size of that for the iPad ? keeping the amount of memory low and excluding a camera and microphone.

But the difference in manufacturing cost is much smaller than the difference in retail price: IHS puts the cost of the basic iPad 2 model at just under $300, while Apple sells it for $499.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-11-18-Amazon-Kindle%20Fire/id-e451fb1d84cc4093b102fdf2dff3dfa8

barbados resorts tiger woods helen mirren the call surrogates surrogates james garner

Late Bloomers: "New" Genes May Have Played a Role in Human Brain Evolution

News | More Science

Sixty "de novo" genes, many active in the cerebral cortex, arose from once-quiet stretches of DNA after humans split off from chimpanzees more than five million years ago

By Charles Q. Choi ?| November 18, 2011?|

Image: ghutchis, courtesy Flickr

Billions of years ago, organic chemicals in the primordial soup somehow organized themselves into the first organisms. A few years ago scientists found that something similar happens every once in awhile in the cells of all living things: bits of once-quiet stretches of? DNA sometimes spontaneously assemble themselves into genes. Such "de novo" genes may go on to play significant roles in the evolution of individual organisms?even humans. But how many are there?

More than anyone thought, it turns out.

The most prolific source of new genes in animals, plants, fungi and other life whose cells have nuclei involves the shuffling or duplication of bits of DNA from existing genes. It was widely thought that de novo evolution of genes was quite rare, because the proteins they code for are often large and complex?most fail to function properly if a single key component is out of place, so randomly evolving a working gene seemed implausible.

When an international team of researchers scanned the human genome for de novo genes, however, they putatively uncovered 60, three times more than once estimated. More surprising, many of these genes are active in the cerebral cortex, suggesting that de novo genes might have played a key role in the evolution of the human mind.

"The cerebral cortex in the brain plays key roles in learning, memory, language, thought, emotion, perceptual awareness and consciousness," says researcher Dong-Dong Wu, a geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Science's Kunming Institute of Zoology, co-author of a November 10 report in PloS Genetics. "Our results suggest that de novo?originated genes may be responsible for some of these characters."

A flurry of research in the past five years also had suggested that recent de novo evolution of genes was not impossible. De novo genes were first discovered in fruit flies, and have since been seen in yeast, rice, mice and primates. They were first reported in humans in 2009.

To find more de novo human genes, Wu and his team started with known human genes and eliminated those resembling genes in other primate lineages. Then they excluded human genes that also exist in primate relatives, but are disabled. The resulting 60 de novo genes were short and relatively simple. They were found to be active in a variety of tissues, including fat, lung, colon, breast, liver, muscle and lymph, but were most active in the testes and the cerebral cortex.

Sixty might not seem much given the 20,000 to 25,000 genes making up the human genome, but "we didn't used to think there were any," says geneticist Aoife McLysaght at Trinity College Dublin, who did not take part in this study. Given this number and the length of time between the split of human and chimpanzee lineages five million to six million years ago, the rate of origin of de novo genes seems to be approximately 10 to 12 such genes per million years, three times higher than past estimates from McLysaght and others suggested.

On the other hand, all the de novo genes were active only at relatively low levels in the tissues analyzed. "Thus, it could be argued that they play only weak biological roles," Wu notes. It remains uncertain what functions they do have?for instance, the researchers have not yet linked mutations of these genes with any known diseases.?

Discovering what roles the de novo genes play will likely prove difficult. Tinkering with these genes in lab-grown cells might shed light on their activity, but the effects might be subtle at best and perhaps only seen at the larger scales of tissues and organs. Researchers, of course, cannot perform experiments on people, and it may prove impossible to perform effective experiments on lab animals to which these human genes are introduced; the de novo genes may have to interact with partner genes to function properly. One could try figuring out what other genes these de novo genes interact with to get an idea of what they might do, McLysaght suggests.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=6d646f4ecb1d1369716dd73289c3b7ce

last minute halloween costumes rum diary klipsch image s4 chris bosh world series october 28 2011 october 28 2011