OTTAWA (Reuters) - A European Union plan to label crude from the Alberta oil sands as dirty is unfair and could damage Canada's bid to find new export markets, the Canadian resources minister said at the start of a mission to lobby against the idea.

As part of a plan to cut greenhouse gases from transport fuel, the EU's executive commission has developed a Fuel Quality Directive that would single out oil from Alberta's tar sands as more polluting than conventional crude.

Canada, whose oil sands are the world's third-largest proven reserves of crude, strongly opposes the move.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, speaking at the start of a week-long trip to Paris, Brussels and London, said the directive should be changed to ensure it does not discriminate against crude from the oil sands.

"We think that's critical as an alternative to what we view as a flawed and ineffective approach that's proposed by the commission," he told Reuters in an interview from Paris.

Extracting crude from the clay-like Alberta oil sands requires more energy than conventional oil production. Environmentalists say that increases greenhouse gas emissions, making the oil sands a top target for the green movement.

Ottawa is unhappy the directive would not penalize Russia, which both burns and releases natural gas while extracting oil. Oliver said this means Russian crude extraction produces at least as many emissions as tar sands oil, if not more.

"If you're giving a free pass to a high emitter who happens to be one of the biggest exporters into the Union, then how are you achieving your objectives? This is all very logical, it's hard to argue against," he said.

Last year, amid heavy Canadian lobbying, the EU held an inconclusive vote on the directive and then decided to assess the full impact of the plan. That assessment is due in the next few months, paving the way for another vote.

Although Canada sends almost no crude to the EU now, that could change if proposals to create pipeline capacity from Alberta to Canada's East Coast are successful.

"We're not exporting to the EU at the moment but we don't want to see our crude oil stigmatized, which could possibly have implications elsewhere," said Oliver, adding that Canada did not oppose the goals of the fuel quality directive.

"What we want is a scientific fact-based approach that makes its judgment based on the scientific realities and not sort of a preconceived idea ... that our oil should be treated differently," he told Reuters.

Canada sends 99 percent of its oil exports to the United States. But a glut of supply and full pipelines are cutting prices, a problem that underlines the Canadian industry's need to find new markets.

The EU vote on the directive last year ended in stalemate amid misgivings from Britain and the Netherlands. Both nations have stakes in Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which operates in the oil sands, as does France's Total SA.

Oliver is meeting senior executives from both companies during his mission, as well as officials from the European Commission and industry groups. He declined to predict how successful his trip would be.

"I've got this great hand but the final results aren't yet in. We're arguing from logic and we're arguing from equity, in all fairness. You hope that prevails," he said.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Peter Galloway)

Facebook, which reported first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, has more than 1 billion people logging in each month. It's a rapid growth for a service that began in a Harvard dorm room less than nine years ago.

Here are some key developments over the years:

February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard University.

March 2004: Facebook begins expansion to other colleges and universities.

June 2004: Facebook moves headquarters to Palo Alto, Calif.

September 2004: Facebook introduces the Wall, which allows people to write personal musings and other tidbits on profile pages. Lawsuit filed against Facebook claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from a company co-founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a third person at Harvard.

September 2005: Facebook expands to include high schools.

May 2006: Facebook introduces work networks, allowing people with a corporate email address to join.

September 2006: Facebook begins letting anyone over 13 join. It also introduces News Feed, which collects friends' Wall posts in one place. Although that led to complaints about privacy, News Feed becomes one of Facebook's most popular features.

May 2007: Facebook launches Platform, a system for letting outside programmers develop tools for sharing photos, taking quizzes and playing games. The system creates a Facebook economy and allows companies such as game maker Zynga Inc. to thrive.

October 2007: Facebook agrees to sell a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft for $240 million and forges advertising partnership.

November 2007: Facebook unveils its Beacon program, a feature that broadcasts people's activities on dozens of outside sites. Yet another privacy backlash leads Facebook to give people more control over Beacon, before Facebook ultimately scraps it as part of a legal settlement.

March 2008: Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer, snatching the savvy, high-profile executive from Google Inc.

April 2008: Facebook Chat introduced.

February 2009: Facebook introduces "Like," allowing people to endorse other people's posts.

June 2009: Facebook surpasses News Corp.'s Myspace as the leading online social network in the U.S.

August 2010: Facebook launches location feature, allowing people to share where they are with their friends and strangers.

October 2010: "The Social Network," a movie about Zuckerberg and the legal battles over Facebook's founding, is released. It gets eight Academy Awards nominations and wins three.

June 2011: Google launches rival social network called Plus. The Winklevoss twins end their legal battle over the idea behind Facebook. They had settled with Facebook for $65 million in 2008, but later sought more money.

September 2011: Facebook introduces Timeline, a new version of the profile page. It shows highlights from a person's entire Facebook life rather than recent posts.

November 2011: Facebook agrees to settle federal charges that it violated users' privacy by getting people to share more information than they agreed to when they signed up to the site. As part of a settlement, Facebook will allow independent auditors to review its privacy practices for two years. It also agrees to get approval from users before changing how the company handles their data.

December 2011: Facebook completes its move to Menlo Park, Calif. Its address is 1 Hacker Way.

January 2012: Facebook begins making Timeline mandatory.

February 2012: Facebook files for an initial public offering of stock. A few weeks later, it unveils new advertising opportunities for brands, allowing messages from them to mix in with Facebook status updates and photos.

April 2012: Facebook announces plans to buy Instagram, a photo-sharing social network, for $1 billion in cash and stock. It also discloses it plans to list its stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "FB."

May 2012: Facebook sets a price range of $28 to $35 for its IPO, then increases it to $34 to $38. On May 17, Facebook prices its IPO at $38 per share, and the stock begins trading the next day. The following week, the stock price starts dropping amid concerns about Facebook's ability to keep growing revenue and sell ads on mobile devices.

That month, Facebook also updates its policy to give users more clarity on how information they share is used by the company. The company also signals that it may start showing people ads on websites other than Facebook. Other companies already do this. How would that work? Users who click on an ad on Facebook.com could see the advertised product pop up in ads on other sites.

August 2012: Facebook updates its app for iPhones and iPads to make it speedier and less clunky. Government clears Facebook's Instagram deal.

September 2012: Facebook closes on Instagram deal, whose value has dropped to about $740 million, with Facebook's falling stock price. Unlike many other acquisitions, Facebook has promised to keep it going, rather than shut it down. Facebook plans to use Instagram's dozen or so employees to help improve Facebook's own mobile applications.

October 2012: Facebook says it has 1 billion active users.

December 2012: Facebook rolls out a messaging app called "Poke" to lukewarm reviews.

January 2013: Facebook unveils a search feature that lets users quickly sift through their social connections for information about people, interests, photos and places.

March 2013: Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg publishes book urging women to take leadership roles.

April 2013: Facebook unveils a new experience for Android phones. The idea behind the new Home service is to bring content right to you, on the phone's home screen, rather than require you to check apps on the device.

BSI’s EDI Suite provides Electronic Data Interchange capabilities for multiple versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and now also for NAV 2013. This integration provides the same user-friendly capabilities and support for numerous industries and usage scenarios, including 3PL, retail/grocery and supplier onboarding, with one of the deepest, most robust integrations in the market.The additional integration that BSI has with Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, 10.0, 2010 and AX 3.0, 4.0, 2009, 2012 and NAV shows the company’s parallel positioning with Microsoft’s history of providing cutting-edge, agile and easy-to-use solutions for the Microsoft Dynamics user community.

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NUEVA YORK (Reuters Health) - Los hospitales de Estados

Unidos tendran un incentivo econmico para no implementar las

estrategias y las tcnicas que reducen las complicaciones

quirrgicas.

Eso no quiere decir que "los hospitales estn considerando

'Podemos ganar ms dinero si tenemos ms complicaciones'", dijo

el autor principal de un nuevo estudio, el doctor Atul Gawande,

del Hospital de Brigham y de la Facultad de Salud Pblica de

Harvard, Boston.

Pero el equipo de Gawande hall que el sistema hospitalario

del sur de Estados Unidos termin con ms ganancia por paciente,

lo que tcnicamente se conoce como "margen de contribucin",

cuando sus pacientes tenan una o ms complicaciones

postquirrgicas.

En JAMA, el equipo publica que entre el 3 y el 17 por ciento

de las intervenciones tiene complicaciones, lo que suma unos

11.500 dlares por paciente.

El equipo revis cunto dinero gastaban y reciban 12

hospitales del sur del pas despus de atender a 34.000

pacientes operados en el 2010. Unos 1.820 pacientes sufrieron de

una o ms complicaciones postquirrgicas, desde infecciones en

el sitio quirrgico hasta infartos cerebrales y paros cardacos.

Los autores hallaron que los hospitales obtenan una

ganancia por paciente cuando los pacientes tenan una cobertura

privada o de Medicare. Los hospitales obtuvieron unos 17.000

dlares por paciente en aquellos casos con seguro privado y sin

complicaciones postquirrgicas, y 56.000 dlares por paciente en

los casos con cobertura privada y una o ms complicaciones.

Por cada beneficiario de Medicare, los hospitales ganaron

unos 1.900 dlares en los casos sin complicaciones y unos 3.600

dlares en los casos con una o ms complicaciones.

En cambio, los centros perdieron dinero, independientemente

de si surga o no una complicacin, cuando sus cirujanos

operaban a pacientes que haban pagado la ciruga o eran

beneficiarios de Medicaid. Esos pacientes eran apenas el 10 por

ciento de los pacientes hospitalarios. Los centros ganaron unos

8.000 dlares por cada complicacin.

INCENTIVOS

A pesar de esa aparente ganancia, los autores aseguran que

el sistema hospitalario estudiado termin perdiendo dinero al

final del ao tras considerar los costos fijos, como el agua o

la electricidad, y otros gastos.

Pero la ganancia por paciente es lo que ms preocupa a los

hospitales.

Nancy Foster, vicepresidente de polticas de calidad y

seguridad de los pacientes de la Asociacin Estadounidense de

Hospitales, dijo que el estudio demuestra que los hospitales son

castigados cuando aplican programas de mejora de la calidad

porque sus prdidas son an mayores.

"La estructura de pagos se dise para que, a veces, cuando

los hospitales actan en beneficio de los pacientes (...)

reciban un impacto financiero por hacer algo correcto para sus

pacientes", dijo Foster, que no particip del estudio.

Gawande, que escribi el libro The Checklist Manifesto, dijo

que sus resultados sugieren que los hospitales no estaran

interesados en cambiar a un sistema de reembolsos que incentive

la aplicacin de medidas de control de calidad, como las listas

de control.

En un editorial sobre el estudio, Reinhardt escribe que

Medicare, que reune los pagos desde mediados de la dcada de

1980, sera un "pagador ms inteligente" que las aseguradoras

privadas a partir de estos resultados. "Medicare habra evitado

durante mucho tiempo recompensar a los hospitales por los

errores evitables", escribi Reinhardt.

Gawande coment que el equipo detect una reduccin de las

complicaciones y la mortalidad luego de trabajar con los

hospitales del sur del pas para renegociar contratos con los

aseguradores y aplicar programas de mejora de la calidad.

"Ignoramos la respuesta a la segunda parte de la pregunta:

si la reduccin se mantendr en el tiempo y si ayudar a

transformar la prdida en ganancia", dijo.

FUENTE: The Journal of the American Medical Association,

online 16 de abril del 2013.

(notasdesalud2006@yahoo.com.ar)

[More from BGR: ]

This article was

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's annual inflation rate in March slowed to 1.0 percent from 1.2 percent in February, further underlining how little pressure there is on the Bank of Canada to raise rates any time soon.

The main reason for the drop in the annual rate was lower gas prices, Statistics Canada said on Friday. The March rate was slightly less than the 1.1 percent predicted by economists.

The Bank of Canada - which has kept its overnight lending rate at a near record low since September 2010 - this week said it did not expect inflation to hit its 2 percent target until mid-2015. The central bank is not expected to raise rates until the second half of 2014.

"After quite a bit of volatility in the prior few months, Canadian inflation has shown its true colors a little more clearly this month - and those colors are pretty bland," said Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.

"Inflation, like growth, is at the very low end of what the Bank of Canada is comfortable with."

The Canadian economy is struggling to cope with weak foreign markets and a strong domestic dollar. The Bank of Canada central bank this week also cut its economic forecasts on signs of a slackening economy.

Gasoline prices in the year to March fell by 0.3 percent after rising 3.9 percent in the 12 months to February. Food prices grew by 1.8 percent in the year to March, down from the 1.9 percent recorded in February.

The Bank of Canada's closely watched core rate, which strips out volatile prices of energy and some foodstuffs, stayed unchanged at 1.4 percent.

After the figures were released the Canadian dollar remained steady at C$1.0260 to the U.S. dollar, or 97.47 U.S. cents.

Overnight index swaps, which trade based on expectations for the central bank's key policy rate, showed that after the announcement traders trimmed their very small bets on an interest rate cut later this year.

"Certainly these low inflation readings argue for the bank to keep policy highly accommodative, to try to get a bit more momentum into the economy," said Paul Ferley, assistant chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada.

Separately, Canadian wholesale trade unexpectedly remained flat in February from January, held back by lower sales of machinery, equipment and supplies.

Market operators had expected a 0.4 percent increase. Statscan revised January's advance to 0.5 percent from an initial 0.3 percent. The volume of sales remained stable.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp, Euan Rocha, Andrea Hopkins and Solarina Ho in Toronto; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Scorers:

Wellington Hurricanes - Tries: Jeffrey Toomaga-Allen, Brad Shields, Tusi Pisi; Conversions: Beauden Barrett (2); Penalties: Barrett

Western Force - Tries: Alby Mathewson; Conversions: Jayden Hayward; Penalties: Hayward (3)

(Compiled by Greg Stutchbury; Editing by xxxxxxxx)

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is entirely non-invasive and takes between 1-3 hours to perform correctly. When the patient arrives for their treatment, the device is placed onto the target area where it will stay for the remainder of their stay. When the device is on, it’s common for the patient to feel a cold, sucking sensation, though this diminishes as the procedure continues. During a CoolSculpting treatment at the CENTER with Nurse Jodi, patients are free to read a book, work on a laptop, and even nap.

“The ideal candidate for CoolSculpting is an individual who wants to target small areas rather than large areas of excess fat. If you go to the gym and work out regularly but just can’t seem to shake fat in certain areas, that person might be an excellent candidate for the treatment,” said Jodi Slavica, RN in Beverly Hills.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama proposed a $3.77 trillion budget on Wednesday that combines controversial cuts to social safety net programs with tax increases on the wealthy in a package the White House hopes will jumpstart deficit-reduction talks.

The proposal, an annual attempt to identify and fund the president's policy desires, is unlikely ever to become law.

Its deficit cutting measures mirror an outline Obama put forward last year that was rejected by John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives. There were no major departures from that plan, which the White House has stressed for weeks is still on offer.

Obama's budget included cuts in Social Security, the pension program for retirees and in Medicare, the health insurance program for seniors. While Obama has made these proposals before, their prominence in Wednesday's budget was designed to demonstrate his seriousness about negotiating with Republicans on ways to reduce the federal deficit.

"I don't believe that all these ideas are optimal, but I'm willing to accept them as part of a compromise," Obama said during brief remarks in the White House Rose Garden.

"When it comes to deficit reduction, I've already met Republicans more than halfway. So in the coming days and weeks, I hope that Republicans will come forward and demonstrate that they're really as serious about the deficits and debt as they claim to be," he said.

The budget predicts the deficit would fall to $744 billion in 2014, or 4.4 percent of gross domestic product, from an estimated $973 billion in 2013. Fiscal 2014 begins on October 1.

It aims to achieve $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. Added to the $2.5 trillion in deficit cuts from past efforts, the total reduction would be more than the $4 trillion both parties have said would be an acceptable goal.

The ratio of deficits to GDP would fall to 2.8 percent in 2016, below the 3 percent level economists say is necessary to put debt on a path to shrinking as a share of the economy.

The proposal revives Obama's call that wealthier people help more with deficit reduction. It would require those making $1 million a year or more to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes, after gifts to charity

Obama's budget also included proposals to cap tax breaks for wealthier taxpayers, increase the estate tax and end the tax break for "carried interest," profits earned by fund managers like those who run private equity and other investment firms.

Republicans, who are wary of any push to raise taxes after passing a rate increase for the wealthy at the beginning of this year, largely dismissed Obama's proposal.

Boehner, Obama's main opponent in deficit talks, said the president's proposed cuts to entitlement programs such as Social Security were praiseworthy but not sufficient.

"I would hope that he would not hold hostage these modest reforms for his demand for bigger tax hikes," Boehner said.

"The president got his tax hikes in January, we don't need to be raising taxes on the American people. So I'm hopeful in the coming weeks we'll have an opportunity, through the budget process, to come to some agreement," he said.

LOOKING FOR A DEAL

Obama's hope is to build a coalition of lawmakers willing to move toward his position, although most observers see that as unlikely. He has invited 12 Republican senators to dinner at the White House on Wednesday.

Both sides were unable to prevent some $85 billion in across-the-board "sequestration" spending cuts from going into effect on March 1.

Obama's budget proposal would replace those cuts with his original deficit-reduction proposal from December. That offer included $930 billion in spending reductions and some $580 billion in tax revenues.

Controversially, it proposes using a less generous measure of inflation to calculate cost-of-living benefit increases for the beneficiaries of some federal programs. This change would have the effect of shrinking payments to some who receive Social Security benefits.

Although Obama has pledged to shield the most vulnerable beneficiaries, the proposal has drawn strong opposition from fellow Democrats and groups representing labor.

Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee last year and a potential 2016 presidential candidate, said Obama's budget was "worse than status-quo" because of its tax and spending hikes, but he said there were some small areas of common ground for further discussion on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

"At least he's put something here that shows his willingness to address entitlements," Ryan said.

"So that gives me a glimmer of hope that there's a way of getting to an agreement at the end of the day, but we're obviously a long way from there right now."

Obama's budget is a clear contrast with a rival blueprint by Ryan, whose plan aims to balance the budget in 10 years through deep cuts to healthcare and social programs while lowering tax rates.

"There are three enormous roadblocks - revenues, entitlement reforms, and the sequester," said Chris Krueger, a Washington analyst for Guggenheim Partners, referring to prospects for an agreement. "They're all just miles apart."

NEW SPENDING, BETTER ECONOMY

In line with proposals from his State of the Union address, Obama's budget includes spending on policy priorities such as infrastructure and expanded pre-school programs.

A proposal for $77 billion to expand early childhood education would be financed by nearly doubling the federal tobacco tax to $1.95 from $1.01 per pack of cigarettes.

The budget also includes a 10 percent tax credit for small businesses that raise wages or hire new workers.

The administration would also raise $79 billion in revenues by raising taxes on large estates that are passed on to heirs. The president's budget would lower to $3.5 million from $5 million the threshold for estates hit by the tax, and would raise the tax rate to 45 percent from 40 percent.

The budget also suggests capping the value of the tax exemption for interest paid by municipal bonds, an idea that has rattled the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market.

The budget envisions a steady pickup in economic growth but only a gradual decline in the unemployment rate.

The White House sees growth rising to 3.4 percent in 2014 from 2.6 percent this year, while the jobless rate would drop to 7 percent at the end of 2014 from 7.5 percent in the last three months of 2013.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Richard Cowan, David Lawder, Steve Holland and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Fred Barbash and Tim Dobbyn)

The season started about a month earlier than usual, sparking concerns it might turn into the worst in a decade. It ended up being very hard on the elderly, but was moderately severe overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Six of the pediatric deaths were reported in the last week, and it's possible there will be more, said the CDC's Dr. Michael Jhung said Friday.

Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season. One exception was the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010, when 348 children died.

The CDC recommends that all children ages 6 months and older be vaccinated against flu each season, though only about half get a flu shot or nasal spray.

All but four of the children who died were old enough to be vaccinated, but 90 percent of them did not get vaccinated, CDC officials said.

This year's vaccine was considered effective in children, though it didn't work very well in older people.And the dominant flu strain early in the season was one that tends to cause more severe illness.

The government only does a national flu death count for children. But it does track hospitalization rates for people 65 and older, and those statistics have been grim.

In that group, 177 out of every 100,000 were hospitalized with flu-related illness in the past several months. That's more than 2 1/2 times higher than any other recent season.

This flu season started in early December, a month earlier than usual, and peaked by the end of year. Since then, flu reports have been dropping off throughout the country.

"We appear to be getting close to the end of flu season," Jhung said.

___

Online:

CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm