NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People age 75 and older are more likely than younger patients to wait longer than they should in emergency rooms, according to a new study from France.

The study's lead author cautioned, however, that the finding doesn't mean older patients receive worse care or that they should avoid going to the ER.

Instead, "we want to highlight the fact that physicians may be reluctant to see difficult patients, old patients and sick patients," said Dr. Yonathan Freund, an emergency physician at the Hospital Piti-Salpetriere in Paris.

"I'm not saying that any patients should be concerned," he told Reuters Health.

Previous research has found that older patients tend to wait longer for care in ERs elsewhere, including in the U.S., the researchers write in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

That's important, they add, because studies have linked longer waiting times to delayed urgent care, more deaths and a greater risk of being admitted to the hospital.

For the new study, Freund and his colleagues analyzed data on 317,793 adults who came to one of nine ERs in and around Paris during 2011.

Of those, 173,629 waited longer than recommended for someone in their condition before being assessed by a doctor. Those target wait times vary from 0 minutes to 4 hours.

Overall, 53 percent of patients younger than 75 waited longer than recommended, compared to 64 percent of people age 75 and older.

"There are many things that can be responsible for this longer wait in time," Freund said.

"Some of this may just reflect that (doctors) are making a choice to see the simplest patient earlier but then decide to go back and spend more time with the older patient," said Dr. Tim Platts-Mills, an emergency medicine doctor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

For example, it would probably be appropriate for a doctor to take one minute to assess a younger patient with a sprained ankle if the doctor can then spend 10 minutes with an older patient, said Platts-Mills, who reviewed the new study for the journal.

"Older adults are - on average - more complicated than younger adults. They take more medication and have more (health problems). And sometimes, it takes more time to assess," he told Reuters Health.

Freund said that more research is needed to tease out the reasons behind the longer waits.

Also, he cautioned that the results may not apply to every country or every ER.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/13lfr7p Annals of Emergency Medicine, online May 28, 2013.

The sun's magnetic field caused the tail of to wiggle in strange ways during the icy wanderer's suicidal plunge through the solar atmosphere in December 2011, researchers have found, suggesting that the close approaches of such "sungrazer comets" can help astronomers better understand Earth's star.

"I liken Lovejoy and these other comets to sort of naturally occurring celestial explorers, in that they're going there for us and, in a way, returning data that we can use in a complementary way," said study lead author Cooper Downs of Predictive Science Inc. in San Diego. []

The British rider withdrew before the 13th stage of the Giro d'Italia two weeks ago due to a chest infection and team principal Dave Brailsford says "with illness, injury and treatment Brad has gone past the point where he can be ready for the Tour. It's a big loss but, given these circumstances, we won't consider him for selection."

Wiggins says "it's a huge disappointment not to make the Tour. I desperately wanted be there, for the team and for all the fans along the way - but it's not going to happen."

Wiggins became the first British rider to win the showcase race last year.

Now, the old dream is attracting a new hopeful, and this time from the other side of the world.

The Chinese company, HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Ltd., is working with the Nicaraguan government on a massive canal project experts say could take 11 years to finish, cost $40 billion and require digging about 130 miles (200 kilometers) of waterway.

Canal proponents say the waterway could create 40,000 construction jobs and essentially double the per-capita gross domestic product of Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. The government plans to grant the Chinese company a concession for 100 years.

That's sparked hopes of an economic gold rush in Nicaragua, and President Daniel Ortega has pushed approval of the canal through the country's congress. Ortega presented the canal proposal Tuesday and hopes to submit it to at least an initial vote on Monday, with final approval planned by next Thursday.

"This is a question of a project that is very important for the country, and that is why it is being given urgent priority," said congressional leader Rene Nunez, an Ortega supporter.

The opposition Sandinista Renovation Movement, which split in 1995 from Ortega, has tried to slow down the debate by demanding more information about the developers, while other critics have questioned the plan's viability just a few hundred miles northwest of the Panama Canal.

The Chinese company's director, Wang Jing, is also listed in the same role in 12 other existing or dissolved Hong Kong companies.

"If this information isn't forthcoming, we can assume this is a swindle, a deal with a front company to get a concession, and then sell the rights to someone else," the renovation movement party said in a statement. "It's a corrupt deal to make a lot of money with fake investors."

Just as the Panama Canal was a projection of growing U.S. power at the start of the 20th century, the Nicaragua project already reflects China's influence and financial clout around the world. Another Hong Kong-based company has been operating port facilities on both ends of the Panama Canal.

The Nicaraguan canal's construction would mark the end of a long push that began at least as far back as the 19th century when U.S. industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt won the right to build the waterway but gave up amid political turmoil.

Other U.S. interests then studied building a canal in Nicaragua before settling on Panama as the crossing point.

This time around, critics have been asking whether Central America needs two canals, even in an age of growing world trade.

"Forty billion dollars is an extremely high amount and based on my experience and the studies we have done on world trade flows, the amount of traffic that would be needed to pay for a project of this size doesn't exist," said Eduardo Lugo, a Panamanian private consultant who's worked on traffic-demand calculations on the ongoing Panama Canal expansion.

Jason Bittner, director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of Southern Florida, said the demand will probably be there by the time the Nicaragua project is finished. Still, any new waterway would have to compete with the Panama Canal and the "land bridge" of railway networks that connect U.S. West Coast ports with the East Coast.

"I don't anticipate there being any reduced demand in trade between the global trading partners, so East Asia and the eastern United States will continue to have significant trade," Bittner said. "If you make this large public sector investment, it will be used, as long as it's priced properly, as long as the Panama Canal isn't significantly undercutting it."

Finding enough customers may turn out to be the least of the Chinese company's worries in a country that doesn't even have a paved road connecting its Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

For example, much of Nicaragua's water is earmarked for human use, and its lush rivers are too environmentally sensitive to be simply dredged into waterways or dammed to provide water to operate locks. Panama faced few such restrictions in the early 1900s when its canal was built.

In a previous version of the project presented in 2006, the promoters acknowledged they would probably have to build some dams, perhaps on rivers as sensitive as the San Juan, which runs along the border with Costa Rica.

In fact, the builders may have decided to eliminate a lot of digging by routing the canal through that river, according to a 2012 statement by Royal HaskoningDHV, a Dutch firm hired to do technical studies. That option had been written off in earlier proposals as too conflictive.

In 2011, Nicaragua and Costa Rica came close to an armed standoff over Nicaraguan dredging of the river to improve navigation. The World Court ordered both countries to withdraw armed forces from the area.

With 1.7 billion gallons (6.6 million cubic meters) of water per day needed to run Nicaragua's proposed locks, and tens of millions of tons of excavation needed, the project certainly looks daunting. Bittner noted that it matched the challenges of other mega-construction projects such as the Three Gorges Dam in China, which nonetheless took years and huge investments to complete.

"It is really not that much different from cutting the original Panama Canal," Bittner said. "I mean these things that we have done, the entire interstate highway system, these are massive projects that, if you were trying to put a lens to them, and say 'we can't get this because they're so massive,' we probably wouldn't have done them, but nonetheless, there they sit."

In big ways, the proposed waterway outmatches the challenges of building the Panama Canal, which took 10 years and cost the lives of about 5,600 workers. According to the 2006 project details, Nicaragua's canal would have to be more than three times longer than Panama's, which cuts through Central America's narrowest point.

Lugo said the canal's length, would make the project less competitive.

"It's very long, both to dredge it and maintain it," he said. "That is going to require high maintenance costs."

Promoters point to advantages such as the incorporation of huge Lake Nicaragua into the crossing. Once inside the lake, big oceangoing freighters could travel about 50 miles (80 kilometers) before passing through a pair of locks, and into a waterway dug across the waist of the country to the low, swampy Atlantic coast.

Panama, which already has a steady income flow from its canal, thought long and hard before embarking on its seven-year, $5.2 billion expansion project, scheduled to be finished next year, to allow larger ships to use its waterway.

Nicaragua, on the other hand, has been rushing in despite the doubts. Its canal's promoters argued in their 2006 presentation that they could capture 4.5 percent of world maritime freight traffic and notch a 22-percent profit margin by 2025, though their cost estimates at the time were much lower than that of the project presented this week.

The Chinese company has said it would wait until the National Assembly votes to express an opinion, adding in its statement that it is willing to fully study the project's technological, economic, environmental and social impacts.

"Our intention is to build a world-class project, with high standards," the firm said.

In the end, President Ortega's allies control the national legislature, which means the Chinese company will likely win their concession this coming week.

All along, Ortega's allies have sold the canal as a desperately needed economic boost.

"I think it is urgently necessary to solve problems like unemployment and making Nicaragua more attractive to investors, and that's why we should approve this speedily," said Erwin Castro, a congressman from Ortega's Sandinista Front.

Opposition congressman Luis Callejas said lawmakers were only asked to discuss the bill Friday with a vote scheduled just three days later.

"I do not understand what the rush is," Callejas said. "It's such a sensitive topic that the population should be consulted."

___

Associated Press writers Juan Zamorano and Mark Stevenson contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Good Morning America" weatherman Sam Champion will host the 40th annual Daytime Emmy Awards on HLN with fellow television personalities A.J. Hammer and Robin Meade, the network announced on Wednesday.

Hammer, the host of HLN's "Showbiz Tonight," will also host the this year's live red carpet special, "Showbiz @ The Daytime Emmys," before taking the stage at the Beverly Hilton hotel on June 16.

Additionally, Kathy Griffin, Rachael Ray, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Erika Slezak, Kristen Alderson, Nancy Lee Grahn, Lindsey Morgan, Freddie Smith, the ladies of "The Talk" - including Julie Chen, Sharon Osbourne, Sara Gilbert, Aisha Tyler and Sheryl Underwood - Jason Thompson, Chandler Massey and Jacqueline MacInnes Wood have been confirmed to present during the live event.

Previously announced presenters include Steve Harvey, Betty White, Wayne Brady, Alex Trebek, Todd Newton and new daytime personalities Bethenny Frankel and Kris Jenner. Brady will introduce game show icon Monty Hall and Betty White to present legendary producer Bob Stewart with this year's Lifetime Achievement Awards.

"The Young and the Restless" stars Max Ehrich, Bryton James and Hunter King were also announced to present with Corbin Bernsen and Jess Walton to introduce the "in memoriam" tribute.

HLN will broadcast the 40th annual Daytime Emmy Awards live on June 16 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

MELBOURNE, June 7 (Reuters) - Australia's foreign minister has apologised to the Jordanian ambassador over an incident at Melbourne Airport, where the country's head soccer coach was detained by immigration officials.

Adnan Hamad was held for around four hours and questioned by officials after arriving with his team from New Zealand in preparation for Jordan's World Cup qualifier against Australia next Tuesday.

The Jordanian Football Association (JFA) said their delegation had completed all the necessary paperwork and requested clarification from Australia's soccer governing body.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr called Jordan ambassador Rima Ahmad Alaadeen as a "diplomatic courtesy" after the incident, a spokesman from Carr's office said on Friday.

"It was an expression of regret for any embarrassment or inconvenience that may have been caused," the spokesman said but stopped short of saying that the call was an official apology.

"It was conveyed to say, 'We hope you don't think that it's a reflection of your welcome in the country'."

A spokesman for Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship said the coach had been referred by customs officers to immigration officials to "confirm his immigration status".

"From time to time they might stop and question someone to confirm this," he said.

The JFA complained that no-one had been made available to help them with their entry into Australia, as agreed with Football Federation Australia (FFA).

The FFA said they had sent two personnel to meet the Jordan delegation, but had no control over customs.

Australia central defender Sasa Ognenovski gave a wry smile when asked on Friday about the incident.

"Maybe customs were trying to hold them back or something," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"Maybe (Australia coach) Holger (Osieck) had something to do with it."

Jordan and Australia are locked on seven points in Group B of the final round of Asian qualifying for the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil, with the Socceroos in third spot on goal difference.

Japan (14 points) have already claimed one of the two automatic qualifying sports for the finals with second-placed Oman on nine points, though they have played one more game than Australia and Jordan.

The team finishing third in the five-team group can still qualify for Brazil, but must win a two-legged playoff against the equivalent finisher in Group A before another playoff against the fifth-placed team in South America. (Editing by John O'Brien)

PARIS (Reuters) - If ever there was a year when Spanish dynamo David Ferrer might allow himself to dream a little it is this one.

Racing into the quarter-finals of the French Open without dropping a set, Ferrer has lived up to his top-four seeding and, with king of clay Rafa Nadal in the other half of the draw, the door to a first grand-slam final looks slightly ajar.

Ferrer cut towering South African Kevin Anderson down to size with a ruthless 6-3 6-1 6-1 victory on Sunday, playing his brand of steely claycourt tennis to perfection to reach a sixth consecutive grand-slam quarter-final.

The 31-year-old Spaniard prefers to deal in reality though.

"I don't want to dream too much," Ferrer told reporters, throwing cold water all over suggestions he could finally smash through the semi-final barrier at a slam.

"I am so very happy to have reached the quarter-finals. Of course, reaching the finals here would be okay but I wouldn't say that I would not sleep at night thinking about it, or I would sleep better."

A quarter-final against Tommy Robredo will not keep him awake at night either after his fellow 31-year-old clawed back a two-set deficit for the third round in a row to beat 11th seed Nicolas Almagro 6-7 (5) 3-6 6-4 6-4 6-4.

Ferrer has surpassed former world number five Robredo in the pecking order of Spanish tennis, leading 6-2 in their previous meetings but has huge respect for his compatriot.

"It's gonna be a physical match, sure, and a long match," he said.

In his five grand-slam semi-finals, Ferrer has lost three times to Novak Djokovic, once to Andy Murray and once to Nadal at Roland Garros last year.

He could be excused for cursing his luck at playing in an era containing three of the greatest players ever to swing a tennis racket but Ferrer is not courting sympathy.

"Tennis doesn't owe me anything; tennis is one of the fairest sports. It's given me so many extraordinary feelings," he said.

Ferrer was at his miserly best against Anderson, offering up only 11 unforced errors in a relentless onslaught that made his opponent look like a fish out of water.

Twenty-third seed Anderson, the first South African to reach the last 16 since Wayne Ferreira in 1996, possesses one of the biggest serves in the game but it resembled a pea-shooter against Ferrer who broke it at will.

(Editing by Clare Fallon and Sonia Oxley)

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, May 31 (Reuters) - Tokyo's 2020 Olympic bid has been labelled as the safe choice in contrast to rivals Istanbul and Madrid but for city governor Naoki Inose, this is not a drawback.

"Safe choices are the most important ones," Inose told Reuters in an interview on Friday. "It is only once every four years that athletes can reach glory and honour."

The safe tag has been used to describe a solid bid by Tokyo that may appear to be lacking some of the excitement of the other two concepts but which could carry less risk.

Istanbul, making its fifth bid in the last six elections, has played up its plans to become the first city in a Muslim majority nation to host the Games, sitting on the crossroads of Europe and Asia.

Madrid, bidding for the third straight time despite economic problems in Spain, has highlighted the country's sporting successes in recent years and the large number of world-class venues already in place.

The International Olympic Committee will elect the winning host at its session in Buenos Aires in September.

Inose said broadcasters, the IOC and local organisers were putting a huge effort into staging the Games with safety of delivery being the number one priority.

SMOOTH WORK

"In order for these people to work smoothly, safety is a prerequisite. Otherwise the Games may face a turning point," said the outspoken politician through a translator.

"There has to be safety and security for the Games. It is inevitable that the scale and size of the Games will expand going forward in terms of spectators and viewers," he said.

Inose, who last month had to apologise for "inappropriate" comments he had made on Istanbul and Islamic countries in an interview, said Tokyo's already existing Games fund of $4.5 billion underlined the importance of that security.

"It is there, sitting in the bank," he said, adding that a winning Tokyo bid would mean a multi-billion market for the Games.

"We have a time zone reach where we can cover roughly half the world's population," he said.

A key aspect of the Tokyo bid is that many of its venues have already been constructed. Tokyo planners also emphasise the compactness of its offer, with 85 percent of the venues located within an 8 km (5 mile) radius of the Olympic Village.

Inose said having consecutive winter and summer Games in Asia, with South Korea's Pyeongchang hosting the 2018 winter Olympics, was not an obstacle.

"It has been decided. There is nothing I can do," he said.

"But they are totally unrelated," he said, citing examples of past consecutive Games, winter and summer, held on the same continent. (Editing by Mark Meadows)

The mourners and a few musicians filed into the white clapboarded First Congregational Church in Kingston for the memorial of Nancy Lanza, the first victim of her 20-year-old son Adam's rampage. She was shot dead in their home before he blasted his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on Dec. 14. He killed himself as police closed in.

More than a dozen uniformed police officers from several agencies blocked off the street and guarded the church door, ensuring only friends and family were allowed into the service. Nancy Lanza grew up in New Hampshire and lived there before moving to Newtown in 1998.

Lanza's brother, James Champion, is a Kingston police officer and still lives in the town.

A lone police bagpiper played as the processional arrived and lined up outside the church to enter together. Media outlets were kept 60 yards back across the street and behind yellow tape, and mourners declined to talk to reporters.

A few people wiped their eyes as they left the church.

Friends have said Nancy Lanza loved the Red Sox and gardening and talked of a growing enthusiasm for target shooting. The rifle and two handguns Adam Lanza took into Sandy Hook were registered to her.

But they also said she never talked about her home life, keeping details about her son private. She occasionally said she was concerned about the future, but she didn't complain.

Nancy Lanza told a divorce mediator in 2009 that she didn't like to leave her son alone. People who met him described him as shy and introverted. The mediator recalled that Nancy and Peter, who had married in June 1981 in Kingston but divorced several years ago, were respectful of each other and concerned about Adam's needs. He'd switched schools several times and Nancy had tried home schooling.

The head of security for the district where Adam Lanza attended high school said Nancy Lanza often had to come to school to deal with him when he had episodes of anxiety or withdrawing from others.

The motive for her son's killing spree is still unclear. Investigators have said mother and son visited shooting ranges together, and the victims killed at the school were all shot with a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle that Adam Lanza took from the house he and his mother shared. That gun and the handgun he used to shoot himself had been legally purchased by his mother.

The massacre has revived the national gun control debate and led to proposals for universal background checks on gun buyers and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

The Newtown massacre was the second-worst school shooting in U.S. history after the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage, which left 33 people dead.

Adam Lanza's father claimed his remains and a family spokesman said there were private arrangements, but the burial location was not made public.

A private funeral attended by about 25 people was held for Nancy Lanza in Kingston on Dec. 20.