The video game publisher announced Wednesday that the next installment in its successful "Call of Duty" franchise will be titled "Call of Duty: Ghosts" and feature a new story and characters.

Activision Blizzard Inc. said "Ghosts" will be released Nov. 5 for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and next-generation consoles.

The game is being developed by Infinity Ward, the Encino, Calif., studio that created the original "Call of Duty" and reignited the military first-person shooter franchise with 2007's "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" and its two sequels.

"'Ghosts' delivers an all-new story, all-new characters, an all-new 'Call of Duty' world, all powered by a next generation 'Call of Duty' engine, which is a leap forward for the franchise," Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said in a statement. "Infinity Ward is going all-in to create the next generation of 'Call of Duty' worthy of the world's greatest fans."

For more than five years, the action-packed "Call of Duty" franchise has garnered unprecedented success.

The previous "Call of Duty" game, Treyarch's futuristic "Call of Duty: Black Ops II," crossed the $1 billion mark in worldwide retail sales 15 days after its release last year. Infinity Ward's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" hit the $1 billion mark in 16 days after its 2011 debut.

Activision said more details about "Ghosts" will be revealed May 21 at a Seattle presentation where Microsoft is expected to unveil the next Xbox.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang .

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Online:

http://www.callofduty.com/ghosts

A neutral venue was requested by SAFA due to the political unrest in the central African country and after much deliberation, FIFA and the Confederation of African Football agreed upon the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde with the match scheduled to take place at Stade Ahmadou Ahidjo on 9 June 2013.

Bafana Bafana coach Gordon Igesund revealed his delight at the news.

He said: "I am happy that the venue issue has finally been settled. I must commend SAFA, FIFA and CAF for making this happen because we lost our loved ones there not so long ago and the environment is still too tense to have a match in that country. It would definitely not have been the right atmosphere to play there.

"But it would be silly of me to say that now that we are playing at a neutral venue, it will favour us. It will still be a very tough match, but the advantage is, it will be away from the intimidation of the home crowd.

"We will definitely be having our own supporters in the stands; which is a plus for us. We played well against them in the home leg but they showed they are a formidable side, so we need to be on guard and not take things lightly. We should get all three points here and keep the pressure on Ethiopia who are two points ahead of us in the group. We cannot afford to lose this match."

South Africa face Ethiopia in Addis Ababa on Sunday, 16 June before hosting Botswana in September.

Igesund added: "We are going to need warriors going into those two matches and we have to be mentally strong. I believe I have those players so I am not worried. In fact things are looking good for us.

"Also we have been inspired by the heroics of Orlando Pirates in Lubumbashi on Sunday (5 May 2013). They showed a lot of character when the odds were heavily stacked against them. We should take a leaf off their book."

In U.S. hospitals, an estimated 1 in 20 patients pick up infections they didn't have when they arrived, some caused by dangerous 'superbugs' that are hard to treat.

The rise of these superbugs, along with increased pressure from the government and insurers, is driving hospitals to try all sorts of new approaches to stop their spread:

Machines that resemble "Star Wars" robots and emit ultraviolet light or hydrogen peroxide vapors. Germ-resistant copper bed rails, call buttons and IV poles. Antimicrobial linens, curtains and wall paint.

While these products can help get a room clean, their true impact is still debatable. There is no widely-accepted evidence that these inventions have prevented infections or deaths.

Meanwhile, insurers are pushing hospitals to do a better job and the government's Medicare program has moved to stop paying bills for certain infections caught in the hospital.

"We're seeing a culture change" in hospitals, said Jennie Mayfield, who tracks infections at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

Those hospital infections are tied to an estimated 100,000 deaths each year and add as much as $30 billion a year in medical costs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency last month sounded an alarm about a "nightmare bacteria" resistant to one class of antibiotics. That kind is still rare but it showed up last year in at least 200 hospitals.

Hospitals started paying attention to infection control in the late 1880s, when mounting evidence showed unsanitary conditions were hurting patients. Hospital hygiene has been a concern ever since, with a renewed emphasis triggered by the emergence a decade ago of a nasty strain of intestinal bug called Clostridium difficile, or C-diff.

The diarrhea-causing C-diff is now linked to 14,000 U.S. deaths annually. That's been the catalyst for the growing focus on infection control, said Mayfield, who is also president-elect of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

C-diff is easier to treat than some other hospital superbugs, like methicillin-resistant staph, or MRSA, but it's particularly difficult to clean away. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers don't work and C-diff can persist on hospital room surfaces for days. The CDC recommends hospital staff clean their hands rigorously with soap and water or better yet, wear gloves. And rooms should be cleaned intensively with bleach, the CDC says.

Michael Claes developed a bad case of C-diff while he was a kidney patient last fall at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital. He and his doctor believe he caught it at the hospital. Claes praised his overall care, but felt the hospital's room cleaning and infection control was less than perfect.

"I would use the word 'perfunctory,'" he said.

Lenox Hill spokeswoman Ann Silverman disputed that characterization, noting hospital workers are making efforts that patients often can't see, like using hand cleansers dispensers in hallways. She ticked off a list of measure used to prevent the spread of germs, ranging from educating patients' family members to isolation and other protective steps with each C-diff patient.

The hospital's C-diff infection rate is lower than the state average, she said.

Westchester Medical Center, a 643-bed hospital in the suburbs of New York City has also been hit by cases of C-diff and the other superbugs.

Complicating matters is the fact that larger proportions of hospital patients today are sicker and more susceptible to the ravages of infections, said Dr. Marisa Montecalvo, a contagious diseases specialist at Westchester.

There's a growing recognition that it's not only surgical knives and operating rooms that need a thorough cleaning but also spots like bed rails and even television remote controls, she said. Now there's more attention to making sure "that all the nooks and crannies are clean, and that it's done in as perfect a manner as can be done," Montecalvo said.

Enter companies like Xenex Healthcare Services, a San Antonio company that makes a portable, $125,000 machine that's rolled into rooms to zap C-diff and other bacteria and viruses dead with ultraviolet light. Xenex has sold or leased devices to more than 100 U.S. hospitals, including Westchester Medical Center.

The market niche is expected to grow from $30 million to $80 million in the next three years, according to Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm.

Mark Stibich, Xenex's chief scientific officer, said client hospitals sometimes call them robots and report improved satisfaction scores from patients who seem impressed that the medical center is trotting out that kind of technology.

At Westchester, workers still clean rooms, but the staff appreciates the high-tech backup, said housekeeping manager Carolyn Bevans.

"We all like it," she said of the Xenex.

At Cooley Dickinson Hospital, a 140-bed facility in Northampton, Mass., the staff calls their machines Thing One, Thing Two, Thing Three and Thing Four, borrowing from the children's book "The Cat in the Hat."

But while the things in the Dr. Seuss tale were house-wrecking imps, Cooley Dickinson officials said the ultraviolet has done a terrific job at cleaning their hospital of the difficult C-diff.

"We did all the recommended things. We used bleach. We monitored the quality of cleaning," but C-diff rates wouldn't budge, said nurse Linda Riley, who's in charge of infection prevention at Cooley Dickinson.

A small observational study at the hospital showed C-diff infection rates fell by half and C-diff deaths fell from 14 to 2 during the last two years, compared to the two years before the machines.

Some experts say there's not enough evidence to show the machines are worth it. No national study has shown that these products have led to reduced deaths or infection rates, noted Dr. L. Clifford McDonald of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

His point: It only takes a minute for a nurse or visitor with dirty hands to walk into a room, touch a vulnerable patient with germy hands, and undo the benefits of a recent space-age cleaning.

"Environments get dirty again," McDonald said, and thorough cleaning with conventional disinfectants ought to do the job.

Beyond products to disinfect a room, there are tools to make sure doctors, nurses and other hospital staff are properly cleaning their hands when they come into a patient's room. Among them are scanners that monitor how many times a health care worker uses a sink or hand sanitizer dispenser.

Still, "technology only takes us so far," said Christian Lillis, who runs a small foundation named after his mother who died from a C-diff infection.

Lillis said the hospitals he is most impressed with include Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, where thorough cleanings are confirmed with spot checks. Fluorescent powder is dabbed around a room before it's cleaned and a special light shows if the powder was removed. That strategy was followed by a 28 percent decline in C-diff, he said.

He also cites Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill., where the focus is on elbow grease and bleach wipes. What's different, he said, is the merger of the housekeeping and infection prevention staff. That emphasizes that cleaning is less about being a maid's service than about saving patients from superbugs.

"If your hospital's not clean, you're creating more problems than you're solving," Lillis said.

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Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/hai/

Bishop Tony Yazigi of the Damascus-based Greek Orthodox Church said Tuesday that the bishops, both working in the northern city of Aleppo, had been released. But later on Tuesday, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate in the capital said in a statement on its website that it had not received "any official document indicating the (bishops') release."

Gunmen pulled Bishop Boulos Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church and Bishop John Ibrahim of the Assyrian Orthodox Church from their car and killed their driver on Monday while they were traveling outside Aleppo. It was not clear who abducted the priests and who is holding them.

But Bishop Tony Yazigi, who is related to one of the abductees, said the gunmen are believed to be Chechen fighters from the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra group, one of the most powerful of the myriad of rebel factions fighting in Syria to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad. Yazigi declined to say what made it appear that Nusra Front was involved.

The main Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, condemned the kidnapping and blamed Assad's regime.

However, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, reported that foreign fighters had abducted the bishops near a checkpoint near Aleppo. The Observatory's chief, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said Wednesday that activists in the area where the bishops were kidnapped say the gunmen were foreign fighters from the Caucuses.

Pope Francis called for the rapid release of two bishops. In his appeal Tuesday, the pope called the abduction "a dramatic confirmation of the tragic situation in which the Syrian population and its Christian community is living."

There has been a spike in kidnappings in northern Syria and around Damascus in the past months. Residents blame criminal groups that have ties to both the regime and the rebels for the abductions of wealthy residents traveling to Syria from neighboring Turkey and Lebanon.

Opposition forces control large areas of land in the north and control whole districts inside Aleppo, Syria largest city.

The government still holds large parts of the northern city and its forces daily clash with the opposition fighters, who also control several border crossings with Turkey.

Syrian conflict began in March 2011 as peaceful uprising against Assad's rule. It turned into civil war after some opposition supporters took up arms to fight a harsh government crackdown on dissent.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in fighting, the United Nations says. Nearly 5 million Syrians fled their homes, seeking shelter in neighboring countries or in other parts of Syria where fighting has temporarily subsided.

Lawmakers in Cape Town passed the bill by a 189-74 vote, with one abstention, on Thursday. The bill now goes to President Jacob Zuma to be signed into law.

The bill provides for prison terms for those who disseminate classified information as well as those convicted of espionage. The government describes the measure as a balance between openness and national security.

Opponents worry that the bill could make whistleblowers, activists and journalists more vulnerable to prosecution if they expose cases of official corruption.

The bill was revised after a public outcry over its provisions several years ago.

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And then: What if you could watch the consequences of your actions on TV the next week?

That's the premise behind "Defiance" (for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, $59.99), a collaboration between the online game studio Trion Worlds and cable TV's Syfy. By the time "Defiance" the TV show debuts Monday, "Defiance" the video game will have been out for a few weeks enough time for players to make their own mark on this new universe.

Both the game and the TV drama are set in 2046, some 30 years after the Votan collective of alien species arrived in the skies over Earth. After a brutal war, the humans and aliens have settled into an uneasy peace, but alien technology that crashed to Earth has drastically changed the landscape.

The "Defiance" game shows the effects of these "arkfalls" on California's Bay Area, now a wasteland packed with bloodthirsty mutants, hostile cyborgs and overgrown, fire-spewing insects. Your character male or female, human or Votan is an ark hunter who makes a living by scavenging from crash sites, and the search for a particular alien artifact brings you to the West Coast.

Soon after your arrival, the game's sprawling map opens up, letting you choose from dozens of missions. You can race dune buggies around the wilderness. You can infiltrate raider strongholds and steal their loot. You can rescue farmers from "hellbug" infestations. Most missions can be handled solo, but if you stumble across a major arkfall you're going to need help from other online players.

You'll also discover "episode missions" that relate to the next week's installment of the "Defiance" TV show. In the first such adventure, you meet military veteran Joshua Nolan and his partner, an alien named Irisa. They ask for your help retrieving a lost Votan doohickey, which turns out to be a significant plot device in the premiere of the Syfy drama.

The titular town of Defiance was built on the ruins of St. Louis, so I don't know how many of its characters will visit us ark hunters out West. But both sides of the "Defiance" team have collaborated on building an impressive world, and I'm eager to see where they go from week to week.

I was able to battle through the initial batch of episode missions in just a few hours, but there's plenty more to do. As with any online shooter, you can engage in raucous death matches with your fellow humans. Or you can enroll in the Shadow War, in which huge teams of up to 64 players each battle for control of sites all over the map.

Such massively multiplayer epics are popular among computer gamers, but we haven't seen many on consoles. I've been playing "Defiance" on the Xbox 360, and I love being able to use an Xbox controller instead of a PC's keyboard and mouse. On the other hand, I was frequently unable to log onto Trion's servers during the first few days after the game went on sale. That problem has eased up, but there are still too many glitches, from unresponsive controls to disappearing inventory items.

There's also a wearying sameness to the bulk of the missions, which typically consist of racing to a location, killing a bunch of monsters and retrieving some object. The action is intense and challenging, often reminiscent of 2K Games' fine "Borderlands." But it's missing that series' twisted sense of humor, and I'm hoping Trion delivers more variety in future episodes. It's a work in progress; for now, I give it two stars out of four.

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Online:

http://www.defiance.com/en/

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Follow Lou Kesten on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lkesten

Some 50,000 years ago, aboriginal human settlers arrived on the continent, but how many people it took tois unknown. The new study, published Tuesday (April 23) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that about 1,000 to 3,000 individuals originally landed on Australia's shores.

"This is largely speculative, but I think this suggests something more than accidental colonization by a small group on a raft of vegetation or other unplanned voyage," study researcher Alan Williams, a doctoral candidate at The Australian National University, wrote in an email. "For me, this suggests a deliberate attempt at exploration (if not migration) more akin to those we see in the recent past from ." []

Arriving in Australia

Europeans did not discover Australia until 1606, when Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon spotted the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland. A few landings andfollowed, but the indigenous people of the continent remained largely undisturbed until the British colonized it in the late 1700s, setting up a penal colony in New South Wales in 1788.

Even thein 1788 is a bit of a mystery, with estimates of the population ranging from 250,000 to 1.2 million. Further back, the story of Australia's human population is shrouded, though gene studies suggest a relatively large founder population would have been necessary to result in the genetic diversity seen today. It's not clear whether the original inhabitants of Australia multiplied and spread across the continent rapidly or remained small in number until the last 5,000 years or so, Williams told LiveScience.

Williams approached the question by using 4,575 radiocarbon dates from 1,750 sites around the continent. Radiocarbon dating works by measuring variations in carbon called isotopes that change predictably with age.

Williams assumed that more sites dating to a certain time reflected a larger population at that time. (It's possible, Williams said, that this assumption is flawed; though he doesn't believe it himself, some researchers have suggested that a small group of highly mobile people might account for spikes in the number of archaeological sites seen in a given time, without any population growth.)

Climate and colonization

Using this large database of dates, Williams reconstructed a timeline of Australia's population in prehistory. Assuming a single wave of colonization 50,000 years ago, he found that Australia stayed sparsely populated until about 11,000 years ago. The population then started increasing gradually to reach a peak of about 3 million individuals 500 years ago. (Today, 23 million people live in Australia.)

The data then show a decline to about 700,000 to 1 million individuals at the time of European contact. The reason for the drop is still unclear: It could be due to a quirk in the database, or it might reflect a real decline. In the 1700s before major European intrusion into Australia Indonesian sailors, known as Macassans, ventured to Australia to hunt sea cucumber, and that cultural contact may have brought disease that hit the indigenous population hard, Williams said.

Australiasshows a number of dips and spikes, some of which correspond with known climate changes, Williams said. Among the most pronounced population changes is a major decline from 21,000 years ago to 12,000 years ago, when the population dropped by 60 percent. This decline may have been due to the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets were at their most extensive point and Australia cooled and dried, Williams said. (This is also when the currentformed.) Its likely that fewer than 500,000 people lived in Australia at that time, so the effect wasnt quite as pronounced as it would be today, when a 60 percent decline in population would correspond to the loss of 14 million Australians today, he said.

The results raise new questions, Williams said, including what prompted the gradual increase in population about 11,000 years ago. Given that the founding population would have numbered in the thousands, the results also require a look at what might have motivated an organized exploration and colonization effort 50,000 years ago.

"Was it climatic? Was it cognitive?" Williams said. "It looks less like an accidental discovery."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on and . Follow us , & . Original article on .

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former Washington schoolteacher on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for child pornography is scheduled to appear in a U.S. court on Tuesday after being extradited from Nicaragua, officials said.

The man, Eric Justin Toth, 31, was arrested on Saturday in Esteli, a city some 90 miles north of Managua, after almost five years on the run and faces an initial appearance in Washington's U.S. District Court.

"This is just one more example that, hopefully, will send a message to criminals that you can't run far enough to get away from federal law enforcement," Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, told a news conference.

Nicaraguan police who arrested Toth said he had been caught with a fake U.S. passport, a fake driving license, and fake bank and credit cards.

Toth had taught at Beauvoir, a private elementary school at the National Cathedral, and had also worked as a camp counselor. He had been a fugitive since the District of Columbia and Maryland issued arrest warrants in 2008.

He is alleged to have had a school camera in his possession in June 2008 that had pornographic images on it. He is also charged with producing child pornography in Maryland.

Ronald Machen, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters Toth would face a federal child pornography production charge shortly.

Valerie Parlave, assistant director of the FBI field office in Washington, said that "an aware and astute individual" had tipped off authorities to Toth's whereabouts two days before his arrest.

She said it was unclear how long he had been in Nicaragua or how he had been supporting himself. Nicaraguan police have said that Toth entered the country in February.

On its website, the FBI said Toth had often been described as a computer expert and was able to integrate himself into social groups. He was added to the Most Wanted list in April 2012.

A U.S. federal law enforcement source had said Toth was last seen in 2009 at an Arizona homeless shelter where he had briefly lived and worked as a volunteer. The shelter alerted authorities and Toth vanished, the source said.

Toth attended Cornell University for a year and then transferred to Purdue University, where he earned an education degree, the FBI said.

The maximum penalty for production of child pornography is 30 years in prison; the maximum sentence for possession of child pornography is 20 years.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Leslie Gevirtz)

MIAMI (Reuters) - LeBron James began the Miami Heat's playoff campaign with a display of deadly efficiency on Sunday, leading the defending NBA champions to a 110-87 win over the Milwaukee Bucks.

James had 27 points, snaffled 10 rebounds and dished eight assists, leading all players in those categories. He also finished nine-of-11 shooting.

His performance may have lacked the dominance of some of his previous displays but cracking 80 percent shooting for the first time in a postseason game left Bucks head coach Jim Boylan wondering how he could stop James.

"He was incredibly efficient, nine from 11, when you have a game like that what can you do?" he told reporters.

"I thought Luc (Mbah a Moute) and Marquis (Daniels) battled him well, tried to make him as uncomfortable as possible, but the guy is the best player in the world right now, so what can you do? You just tip your hat to him."

Ray Allen put up 20 points for Miami with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade making 15 and 16 points. Chris Andersen made his heavily-tattooed presence felt with 10 points and seven rebounds in lively bursts from the bench.

"He is in playoff mode. We love him in that mode," said Wade. "Now he is focused on his goal and his goal is to dominate every game and help take this team to a championship."

James, who was critical of the team's 19 turnovers, including five from himself, joked that he was making a rod for his own back with his shooting percentage.

"I'm setting the bar, actually too high for myself, shooting nine-of-11, if I go nine-for-18, you'll look at me crazy," he said.

"We have so many threats out on the floor it just allows me to go out there without stress, we have so many guys who can also make plays."

But that team element works both ways for the Heat, with James' presence looming so large that opponents sometimes find it tough to keep their focus across the court.

"It's not so much his scoring, it's the way he gets everyone else involved," said Brandon Jennings, who led Milwaukeee with 26 points.

"Every time he has the ball he draws so much attention to himself so sometimes you can be falling asleep out there because you are just so worried about what LeBron is going to do."

The series continues with Game Two in Miami on Tuesday.

(Editing by Peter Rutherford)