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Each year, nearly 100 million patients across the U.S. access websites like , , andto provide feedback about experiences with their physicians.

Only those physicians with near perfect overall and bedside manner scores, as voted by their patients, are selected for the Compassionate Doctor recognition. Of the nation's 870,000 active physicians, only 3% were accorded this honor in 2012.

The Compassionate Doctor certification is part of the Patients' Choice recognition program, where patients rate and vote for their favorite doctors.

Dr. Edwin McCreary commented on the recognition: "This is quite an honor for me. I am very pleased to have been selected and grateful to my patients who went out of their way to rate me and give me positive reviews."

For more information on this Compassionate Doctor, please visit Dr. Edwin McCreary's .

Following the publication of Dr. Edwin McCreary's selection for the Patients' Choice Award, American Registry seconded the honor and added Dr. McCreary to The Registry of Business Excellence. An exclusive recognition plaque has been designed to commemorate the honor. The doctor's custom wall plaque is .

For more information on Dr. Edwin McCreary, located in Tulsa,OK call 918-579-3850.

This press release was written by American Registry, LLC with approval by and/or contributions from Dr. McCreary and was distributed by PR Newswire, a subsidiary of UBM plc.

Patients' Choice provides in depth information on doctors in your area who have been recognized and awarded for outstanding patient care and expertise. The Compassionate Doctor certification is the honor role of physicians who have received the highest overall and bedside manner ratings by their patients. American Registry, LLC, recognizes excellence in top businesses and professionals. The Registry includes over 2 million significant business and professional recognitions. For more information, search The Registry at .

Contact Information:Dr.Edwin McCrearyPhone: 918-579-3850Email Address:

SOURCE American Registry

The network says cast members, friends and family of the actress will gather next week to tape a celebration of her life. Interviews with Cooper from the show's recent 40th anniversary and clips of her years on the show will also be included.

Cooper, who died Wednesday at 84, played grande dame Katherine Chancellor. She joined the soap six months after its March 1973 debut, staking claim to the title of its longest-tenured cast member.

The role earned her 11 Daytime Emmy nominations and a trophy for best actress in a drama series in 2008.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The more than $40 million that will go to Enron victims under a sentencing agreement with Jeffrey Skilling this week will be used to revive a depleted victims' fund, a Justice Department official said.

Spokesman Peter Carr said on Thursday the money will go to the Enron Fair Fund for investor victims, which finished paying out more than $500 million last July.

Skilling agreed to allow the funds to be released as part of a deal announced on Wednesday under which his sentence will be cut by as much as 10 years. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2006 for his role in one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history. A federal appeals court upheld Skilling's conviction but found the original sentence too harsh.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake in Houston, who must approve the deal, is scheduled to resentence Skilling on June 21.

About $450 million was paid into the Enron Fair Fund through corporate and individual settlements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Department of Justice contributed another $65 million recovered through federal forfeiture actions.

Investors who purchased Enron securities between January 20, 1998, and November 7, 2001, may be eligible for money from the fund, according to the website of the Enron Victim Trust, which distributes money from the Enron Fair Fund.

The more than $40 million that Skilling will contribute to victims pales in comparison to the amount of money he has spent on legal fees. Skilling's legal defense reportedly had cost some $70 million by 2006, the year he was sentenced. He has been involved in costly appeals since then.

Once ranked seventh on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. companies, Enron went bankrupt on December 2, 2001, in an accounting scandal that remains one of the largest and most infamous U.S. corporate meltdowns. Thousands of workers lost their jobs and retirement savings.

The case is U.S. v. Skilling, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, No. 04-cr-00025.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

The start of the campaign came as Sunday services resumed at St. Jude Thaddeus Church.Parishioners were also collecting cards and well wishes to give to families.

"God is working in and through all of life's circumstances," a message seeking donations said on the church's website. "Thank you for your prayers and concern and for answering God's call."

Police said Lawrence Capener stabbed three people on April 28 as Mass was ending because he thought a choir leader was a Mason. He has been charged with aggravated battery and was being held on $250,000 bail.

Santa Fe Archbishop Michael Sheehan re-consecrated the Albuquerque church on Wednesday by sprinkling holy water and spreading incense through the building. The move was part of a Catholic ritual required after a sacrilege has been committed at a church.

St. Jude Thaddeus' pastor, the Rev. John Daniel, said he believes parishioners have already forgiven Capener and continued to pray for him and his family.

"What can you do? This is what we are taught to do," he said.

Capener, 24, told police that he also tagged the Sandoval No. 76 Masonic Lodge in Rio Rancho with spray paint just before the stabbing attack, authorities said.

Police later found red and blue spray paint on signs, outside walls and a door. Investigators said he also left the message, "I hope you guess who I am."

Parishioners said they rarely saw Capener attend services but were aware that his mother is active in the church, which is on the city's Westside.

LONDON (Reuters) - A new strain of bird flu that is causing a deadly outbreak among people in China is a threat to world health and should be taken seriously, scientists said on Wednesday.

The H7N9 strain has killed 24 people and infected more than 125, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), which has described it as "one of the most lethal" flu viruses.

The high mortality rate, together with relatively large numbers of cases in a short period and the possibility it might acquire the ability to transmit between people, make H7N9 a pandemic risk, experts said.

"The WHO considers this a serious threat," said John McCauley, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Influenza at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research.

Speaking at a briefing in London, experts in virology said initial studies suggest the virus has several worrisome characteristics, including two genetic mutations that make it more likely to eventually spread from person to person.

"The longer the virus is unchecked in circulation, the higher the probability that this virus will start transmitting from person to person," Colin Butte, an expert in avian viruses at Britain's Pirbright Institute, said.

Of the some 125 people infected with H7N9 so far, around 20 percent have died, approximately 20 percent have recovered and the remainder are still sick. The infection can lead to severe pneumonia, blood poisoning and organ failure.

"This is a very, very serious disease in those who have been infected. So if this were to become more widespread it would be an extraordinarily devastating outbreak," Peter Openshaw, director of the centre for respiratory infection at Imperial College London, told the briefing.

Scientists who have analysed genetic sequence data from samples from three H7N9 victims say the strain is a so-called "triple reassortant" virus with a mixture of genes from three other flu strains found in birds in Asia.

Recent pandemic viruses, including the H1N1 "swine flu" of 2009/2010, have been mixtures of mammal and bird flu - hybrids that are likely to be milder because mammalian flu tends to make people less severely ill than bird flu.

Pure bird-flu strains, such as the new H7N9 strain and the H5N1 flu, which has killed about 371 of 622 the people it has infected since 2003, are generally more deadly for people.

Human cases of the H7N9 flu have been found in several new parts of China in recent days and have now been recorded in all of its provinces.

Last week a man in Taiwan became the first case of the flu outside mainland China, though he was infected while travelling there.

The H7N9 strain was unknown in humans until it was identified in sick people in China in March.

Scientists say it is jumping from birds - most probably chickens - to people, and there is no evidence yet of the virus passing from person to person.

Jeremy Farrar, a leading expert on infectious diseases and director of Oxford University's research unit in Vietnam, said the age range of those infected so far stretched from toddlers to people in their late 80s - a range that appeared to confirm the virus is completely new to the human population.

"That suggests there truly is no immunity across all ages, and that as humans we have not seen this virus before," he said.

"The response has to be calm and measured, but it cannot be taken lightly," he said.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Michael Roddy)

"I knew the stigma" that came with a hepatitis diagnosis, Nguyen said. But he thought that a medical school, of all places, would understand. "I came there expecting help. Instead, I was greeted with discrimination."

Nguyen's prospects of becoming a physician are a lot brighter today. The U.S. Department of Justice recently declared in a legal settlement that hepatitis B patients are protected by federal disability law. And, separately, federal health officials have issued a revised set of guidelines that make it clear that health care workers and students who carry the hepatitis B virus HBV for short generally pose little or no risk to patients.

Taken together, advocates say, the new health guidelines and the Justice Department settlement remove barriers to practice, handing HBV-positive health professionals and students a pair of powerful tools to combat discrimination.

"It gives us so much more leverage. We no longer have to wring our hands," said Joan Block, executive director and co-founder of the Hepatitis B Foundation, a nonprofit in Doylestown, Pa. She said Nguyen was among several students who contacted the foundation in 2011 to report they'd either been forced out of school, or had their admissions rescinded, because of an HBV diagnosis.

Hepatitis B is a contagious and potentially fatal liver disease spread through blood and other bodily fluids. The virus that causes it is most commonly transmitted through unprotected sex. Intravenous drug use is another major risk factor.

It can also be passed from an infected mother to her baby at birth, which is how Nguyen contracted it. Even though he'd been vaccinated as a child, the virus was already in his body.

As many as 1.4 million Americans have chronic hepatitis B. It's not clear how many of them are health practitioners. But some 25 percent of medical and dental students and many practicing doctors, surgeons and dentists were born to mothers from countries in Asia and other regions of the world where the virus is endemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC last issued guidelines for management of health workers and students with hepatitis B in 1991. A lot had changed in two decades. Universal infant vaccination had slashed the number of new cases by more than 80 percent. New drug therapies had proved effective at reducing the amount of virus in a carrier's blood to very low or undetectable levels, greatly minimizing the risk of transmission.

And there had been only a single case of hepatitis B transmission from a health provider to a patient at least since 1991 an orthopedic surgeon who was unaware of his hepatitis infection and had a very high amount of the virus in his body. He infected two to eight patients, according to the CDC.

While the old guidelines stated that a hepatitis B diagnosis by itself shouldn't preclude doctors, dentists, nurses and other health professionals from seeing patients, "we were concerned that with a 20-year-old set of guidance, it was not really considered as relevant as it could be," said Dr. John Ward, director of the CDC's Division of Viral Hepatitis.

He said the new guidelines offer a "powerful message that in the great majority of clinical encounters between a health care provider and a patient, there is minimal or no risk of hepatitis B virus transmission."

Released last summer, the updated CDC guidelines were cited by the Justice Department in March as the agency announced a settlement with a New Jersey medical school over claims it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by excluding two applicants with hepatitis B. While the state-run University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey denied liability, it agreed to admit qualified HBV-positive students and provide training to staff.

It was the first case in which the Justice Department pursued an ADA complaint on behalf of people with hepatitis B.

"This is a historic decision," Block said. "We can now pull out the DOJ settlement and really guide these people: 'What you're facing is discrimination, and here are the tools to help.' That's powerful."

Nguyen said he had no idea he was a carrier until he started medical school. That's when he began to feel persistently tired and lost the ability to concentrate. Given a family history of liver cancer of which hepatitis is the leading cause his doctor had him tested. It came back positive.

Nguyen alerted the school and said he was told by an administrator that he would never be able to complete the required surgical rotation because "no operating room in the country will let you in."

"That's when I started almost panicking," Nguyen said. "To this point I had been a good student. All the sudden my world was crashing, with all this debt and all the things I had worked for in jeopardy."

He said the school began making life more difficult for him, to the point where he felt he had no choice but to leave.

With successful treatment, the virus is now undetectable in his blood and Nguyen said he is feeling better and plotting a return to his medical studies. He said he's leaning toward a career in hepatology, so he can help others like him.

The specialty is "definitely at the top of the list," Nguyen said. "I understand the risk and the mental strain. I have a lot of compassion for those individuals."

The Reds dominated possession and territory for long periods but struggled to turn that superiority into points as the Force produced eye-catching big hits in a defiant display in front of their appreciative home crowd.

Reds flyhalf Quade Cooper had the opportunity to win the game but his 75th-minute conversion from near the right touchline was pulled wide.

"Our defence was great during that game ... they threw a lot at us and we were perhaps unlucky not to grab the win there," Force skipper Matt Hodgson said in a pitchside interview.

"We play good when we play the big teams like the Crusaders and the Reds, we just need that consistency week in week out and we will be a great side."

Despite surprising the seven-times champion Crusaders last month and the Reds in Brisbane in March, the Force were expected to provide little resistance after losing their eight other matches.

But they showed fighting spirit to collect two points in a competitive battle in which both sides tried to run the ball.

"They put a lot of pressure on us at the breakdown, which we knew they would, we adjusted well in the second half but we just needed to turn that possession into points." a disappointed Reds scrumhalf Will Genia said.

"They came out and were very enthusiastic and energetic and credit to them."

The Reds thought they had taken an early lead through Digby Ioane, who announced a deal to join French club Stade Francais in the week. However, the impressive winger was denied the try by the television match official who ruled he was in touch before crossing.

The Force continued to scrap and took advantage of their rare forays forward with flyhalf Sias Ebersohn knocking over penalties in the 22nd and 26th minutes to open up a 6-0 lead.

Cooper responded with one of his own as the Reds went in behind at the break but their Wallaby skipper James Horwill failed to emerge for the second period after taking a heavy blow. The lock looking dazed as he played out the final phases.

More Reds pressure followed, though, before the Force scored the game's opening try in the 52 minute after absorbing the wave of attacks.

Collecting possession near their own line, the home side moved the ball to both flanks with winger Nick Cummins making big yards down the left and number eight Ben McCalman crashing over with Wallabies flanker Liam Gill in tow.

Ebersohn missed woefully with the straightforward conversion to leave the scores at 11-3 and Cooper cut the deficit by three with a second penalty.

The Reds continued to press against the blue wall and eventually the pressure told with replacement Chris Feauai-Sautia deemed to have touch the ball down on the line under a scrum of bodies in the 74th minute by the television match official.

But Cooper failed to snatch the victory with the conversion and the Force held firm in the final minutes.(Compiled by Patrick Johnston; Editing by Ed Osmond)

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp's phone chief hates to call the new Nokia Lumia 521 cheap, but the lower-priced smartphone launching in the United States is the company's boldest move yet to win mass market share from leaders Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

The world's largest software company has so far focused on putting its Windows Phone software into expensive, high-end devices - chiefly from Nokia and HTC Corp.

But the new model will go on sale at Walmart later this month at an unsubsidized price under $150, relatively cheap for a new phone running up-to-date software without a long-term contract.

"There is an opportunity for us to offer a very high quality device in the mainstream," said Terry Myerson, head of the Windows Phone unit, at Microsoft's campus near Seattle last week. "That's where we've made progress in the last couple of months and it's a strategy we'll continue to explore in the United States."

The Nokia Lumia 521 went on sale on the Home Shopping Network (HSN) last week, where it has already sold out. The 4G phone, sold overseas as the Nokia 520, is essentially a mid-range phone with some high-end features, such as four-inch touch screen, five megapixel camera and high-definition video display.

Next week the phone will go on sale at less than $150 at Walmart, along with T-Mobile US Inc's $30 per month unlimited data and text plan, which works out much cheaper over the long run than heavily subsidized iPhones and upscale Android devices that generally come with pricy long-term contracts.

The early popularity of the Lumia 521 on HSN is a minor boost for Microsoft, whose mobile plans have stuttered and stumbled since Apple's iPhone destroyed its early dominance in the smartphone market in 2007.

After completely redesigning its software, Microsoft-powered phones now have 3.2 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, compared to 39 percent for Apple and 52 percent for Google Inc's Android system, according to comScore.

Nokia, which now only makes smartphones running Windows, sold 5.6 million of its Lumia handsets in the first quarter, up 27 percent from the previous quarter, although that is still dwarfed by 37 million iPhone sales.

Microsoft does not detail overall Windows phone sales or financials, but did say last quarter that phone-related revenue rose by $259 million, which includes licensing revenue from Android phones, which use some technology patented by Microsoft.

Windows phones tend to fare better overseas, where they have as much as 20 percent share in some markets such as Mexico and Poland, and almost 7 percent in Britain, according to Microsoft.

That is partly because the role of powerful carriers such as AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, which dominate U.S. phone retail, is less pronounced in overseas markets.

"AT&T and Verizon have been great partners," said Myerson. "But where the market dynamics are different, and where the operators play a different role, we have done better."

Heavy up-front subsidies from AT&T and Verizon, in return for long-term service contracts, mean U.S. customers can afford the best hardware from Apple and Samsung. Even though Windows phones are also subsidized, Myerson admits it has been hard to break that lock on the home market.

"It (subsidization) is a compelling business model for them. If you are Samsung, Apple, AT&T or Verizon, it's where everything's working, you are growing share, you are growing profits," said Myerson. "If you are an incumbent with a successful business model, you're not going to be jumping to throw it out."

As a challenger to those incumbents, Myerson says Microsoft has to differentiate on more than just price.

After introducing "killer hardware", he says the next task for Windows phones is to leverage Microsoft's Office and Xbox products to make a genuinely new phone experience, whether as a work tool or advanced toy.

"I don't think we've come near to the full potential," he said. "Those are our two dimensions here, Office and Xbox. We want to bring to life getting work done and bring to life that serious fun, here on this thing in your pocket. That's going to develop over time."

Myerson played down reports that Microsoft was working on a phone of its own, to follow up on its Surface tablet.

"Nokia's doing a great job," he said. "They really are receiving all of our go-to-market energy right now."

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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The U.S.-led coalition reported that five U.S. service members were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan and later said an Afghan army soldier killed two more foreign troops in the west. Their nationalities are not known.

The renewed violence came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai acknowledged that his government has been receiving funds from CIA for more than a decade as part of regular monthly assistance from the U.S. government.

Karzai told reporters at a news conference that the CIA's station chief in Kabul has assured him that regular funding the U.S. intelligence agency gives his government will not be cut off.

The coalition did not disclose the location of the roadside bombing, however, Javeed Faisal, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, said the coalition patrol hit the bomb in Maiwand district of the province, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. Capt. Luca Carniel, a spokesman for the coalition in Kabul, confirmed that all five were Americans.

Later, the coalition reported that the Afghan soldier turned his weapon on coalition troops, the latest of so-called insider attacks. Such attacks by members of the Afghan security forces against their colleagues or foreign troops threaten confidence in the Afghan forces as they work to take over responsibility from international troops.

The coalition did not disclose further details, but said the shooting was under investigation.

Karzai had earlier confirmed that his government had received such payments following a story published in The New York Times that said the CIA had given the Afghan National Security Council tens of millions of dollars in monthly payments delivered in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags.

"The help and assistance from the U.S. is for our National Directorate of Security. That is state-to-state, government-to-government regular assistance," Karzai said. "So that is a government institution helping another government institution, and we appreciate all this assistance and help, all this assistance is very useful for us. We have spent it in different areas (and) solved lots of our problems."

Karzai would not say how much assistance his government had received because it was being used for intelligence work, but acknowledged it was in cash and that "all the money which we have spent, receipts have been sent back to the intelligence service of the United States monthly."

He claimed that much of the money was used to care for wounded employees of the NDS, Afghanistan's intelligence service, and operational expenses.

"It is an official government deal between the two governments. This is happening all over the world such deals between governments and in Afghanistan, which is a needy country, these sorts of deals are very important and useful," he said.

Karzai confirmed the payments during a news conference earlier this week in Helsinki, Finland. After Karzai's confirmation in Europe, White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment on the newspaper report, referring questions to the CIA, which declined to comment on Saturday.

In his gathering with reporters at the presidential palace, Karzai said he had met earlier in the day with the Kabul station chief of the CIA. "I told him because of all these rumors in the media, please do not cut all this money because we really need it," Karzai said. "We want to continue this sort of assistance and he promised that they are not going to cut this money."

He added that negotiations for a new bilateral security agreement with the United States had been delayed because of conditions that Afghanistan had placed on such a deal. The security agreement is to govern a U.S. military presence after 2014 when nearly all foreign combat troops are to have finished their withdrawal from Afghanistan. The talks, which started in late 2012, are set to last up to a year.

President Barack Obama has not said how many troops will remain, although there have been estimates ranging from 8,000 to 12,000. It is unlikely such an announcement will be made until the security agreement is signed. Those troops would help train Afghan forces and also carry out operations against al-Qaida and other militant groups.

Karzai said Afghanistan was ready to sign a deal as long as the American government in exchange for being able to stay on bases in the country agrees to terms of Afghan security, funding assistance and help with training and equipping Afghan security forces. It is thought that the contentious issue of providing U.S. troops immunity from Afghan law is a low priority for the Afghan government in the negotiations.

The Afghan government has not said how much rent it would want for three or four U.S. bases, but it is believed to be in the billions. Afghanistan is also thought to be seeking security guarantees to protect its porous borders, including the frontier with Pakistan that is the main infiltration route for insurgents who retain sanctuary in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.

"The position of the United States about the security of Afghanistan and relations with neighboring countries, or whatever attacks are happening from the neighboring countries to Afghanistan, should be very clear," Karzai said. "So we are trying our best that the security of Afghanistan should be guaranteed, peace in Afghanistan should be guaranteed, a strengthening of the Afghan security forces should be guaranteed, as well the economy of Afghanistan should be guaranteed."

It was unclear how Karzai expected the United States or any of its allies to guarantee Afghanistan's borders against attack.

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have been severely strained in recent months, especially over the delicate issue of the demarcation of their border.

Afghan and Pakistani forces engaged in a nearly five-hour exchange of fire last Tuesday along Afghanistan's eastern border. One Afghan border policeman was killed and two Pakistani soldiers were wounded in the fighting in eastern Nangarhar province.

The main problem is that Afghanistan does not recognize the disputed Durand Line, the 19th century demarcation between present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Pakistan does.

"Since the Durand line has been imposed on Afghanistan, it was not acceptable to the Afghans and we cannot accept the Durand line," Karzai said. "No government in Afghanistan will accept the Durand Line."