Connecticut Shooting: Hero Teacher Died Saving Students

By Sara Hammel and Mike Fleeman

12/15/2012 at 06:30 PM EST

Out of the chaos and horror emerged an incredible act of selflessness and bravery by one teacher, who spent her final moments trying to protect her young students from harm.

Victoria Soto, 27, a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., ushered her students into a closet and in so doing placed her body between them and the assailant.

"She was found huddled over her children, her students, doing instinctively what she knew was the right thing," her cousin Jim Wiltsie tells ABC News. "I'm just proud that Vicki had the instincts to protect her kids from harm,” he continued. “It brings peace to know that Vicki was doing what she loved, protecting the children and in our eyes she's a hero.”

Soto was among the six adults – all women – killed in Friday morning's massacre that also took the lives of 20 children – 12 girls and eight boys. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, took his own life. His mother was also found killed in a different location.

"It doesn't surprise me at all she would do this," Sabeena Ali, the parent of a girl who was in Soto's class two years ago, tells PEOPLE.

Ali calls Soto a "vibrant woman who loved the kids and would be with the kids and spend time with them and sit on the floor with them. "

Two years later, her daughter – now a third-grader – still idolized Soto.

"Every day there was some new Miss Soto story we had to listen to: 'This is what she did, this is how wonderful she was today,'" says Ali. "She would bring in snacks for the kids and do special days.

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Healthcare crisis: not enough specialists for the poor

The blurry vision began early last year. Roy Lawrence ignored it as long as he could. But after falling off a ladder at his construction job, he knew he had to see a doctor.

He went to a community health clinic in South Los Angeles, where doctors determined he had diabetes and cataracts. The clinic could manage his illness but referred him early this year to the county health system for eye surgery.

Nearly a year later, Lawrence, a Jamaican immigrant without insurance, still is waiting for the operation. His vision has deteriorated so much he is considered legally blind.

PHOTOS: Waiting in vain to be seen

"I want to see again," he said. "I've been waiting a long time."

Lawrence, 49, and patients like him are posing a critical challenge for the planned overhaul of the nation's healthcare system. Federal officials are investing billions in community health centers like the To Help Everyone (T.H.E.) Clinic, where Lawrence's problem was diagnosed, with the hope that they can keep more patients out of high-cost emergency rooms.

But a dearth of specialists available to low-income patients presents one of the bigger hurdles facing the country as it tries to bring spiraling healthcare costs under control. Doctors say meeting new government mandates to keep patients healthy and out of hospitals — a linchpin in reducing medical spending — will be virtually impossible without the ability to make timely patient appointments with specialists.

By the end of the decade, the nation will be short more than 46,000 surgeons and specialists, a nearly tenfold increase from 2010, according to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges. Healthcare reform is expected to worsen the problem as more patients — many with complex and deferred health needs — become insured and seek specialized treatment.

Many of the newly insured will receive Medi-Cal, the government plan for the needy as administered through the state of California. Clinics already struggle to get private specialists to see Medicaid patients because of the low payments to doctors. Last week, an appellate court decision that authorized the state to move forward with 10% cuts in Medi-Cal reimbursement, which could make finding doctors for those patients even more difficult.

"Specialists are paid so poorly that they don't want to take Medi-Cal patients," said Mark Dressner, a Long Beach clinic doctor and president-elect of the California Academy of Family Physicians. "We're really disappointed and concerned what it's going to do for patient access."

The healthcare overhaul includes initiatives aimed at reducing shortages of general medicine professionals but does little to increase the availability of specialists.

In Los Angeles County, the sheer volume of poor or uninsured patients needing specialist services has long overwhelmed the public health system, creating costly inefficiencies and appointment delays that can stretch as long as a year and half.

Patients' conditions often must be dire for them to see a neurologist, cardiologist or other specialist quickly. Community clinics try to bypass the backed-up formal government referral system by pleading, cajoling and negotiating to get less critically ill patients like Lawrence moved up on waiting lists.

"Where needs are absolutely critical, we are able to work out special arrangements," said Rise Phillips, chief executive of T.H.E. Clinic. "That is not the norm. That is, rather, the exception."

At times, clinic staff members are forced to work against one of their key missions by sending patients to emergency rooms to increase the odds of their seeing a specialist more quickly.

The challenge can be seen in Belinda De Leon's cubicle in a small, windowless back corner of T.H.E. Clinic. A referral specialist, De Leon spends her days trying to speed up appointments for the center's clients — and fielding calls from patients wanting to know how much longer they have to wait. At any given time, she's juggling more than 1,000 pending referrals.

One involves uninsured housekeeper Juana Barrera. Barrera, 45, has been waiting since April 2011 to see a gastroenterologist and get a colonoscopy. She has had bleeding off and on and recently started having pain in her stomach.

On a recent visit, she told De Leon she is scared to wait any longer. But she can't afford to pay for the test out of pocket. "I'm hoping it's not anything like cancer," she said.

De Leon promised to update Barrera's referral paperwork to indicate she is experiencing pain. "Hopefully that will help," she said.

Waits for specialist appointments vary dramatically, depending on the type of specialist needed. Patients willing and able to travel across L.A. County to specialty clinics may be able to see a doctor within a month or two. Others who lack transportation and must go to a nearby facility can wait up to a year for a dermatologist or neurologist and up to 18 months for a cardiologist or ophthalmologist.

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Man Stabs 22 Children in China

BEIJING (AP) — A man wielding a knife wounded 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China as students were arriving for classes on Friday, the police said.

The attack, in the village of Chengping in Henan Province, happened shortly before 8 a.m., said a police officer from Guangshan County, where the village is located.

The attacker, Min Yingjun, 36, was subdued by security guards and taken into custody by the police, said the officer, who declined to give her name, which is customary among Chinese civil servants. Guards have been posted at schools across China after a spate of attacks in recent years.

A Guangshan County hospital administrator said there were no deaths among the nine students admitted to the hospital, although two badly wounded children were transferred to better-equipped hospitals outside the county.

A doctor at Guangshan’s hospital of traditional Chinese medicine said that seven students had been admitted there, but that none were seriously injured.

It was not clear how old the wounded children were, but Chinese primary school students are generally 6 to 11.

A notice on the Guangshan County government’s Web site confirmed the number of wounded and said an emergency response team had been set up to investigate the stabbings.

No motive was given for the attack, which resembled a string of similar assaults against Chinese schoolchildren in 2010 that killed nearly 20 and wounded more than 50. The most recent such attack took place in August, when a man broke into a middle school in the southern city of Nanchang and stabbed two students before fleeing.

Most of the attackers have been mentally disturbed men involved in personal disputes or unable to adjust to the rapid pace of social change in China, underscoring grave weaknesses in the antiquated Chinese medical system’s ability to diagnose and treat psychiatric illness.

In one of the worst attacks, a man described as an unemployed, middle-aged doctor killed eight children with a knife in March 2010 to vent his anger over a thwarted romantic relationship.

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McAfee says will not return to Belize, willing to talk to police

(Reuters) – U.S. software pioneer John McAfee said that he will not return to Belize where police want to question him about a murder case, but that he is willing to let authorities from the Central American nation interview him in a “neutral country.”

McAfee, 67, went into hiding after his American neighbor Gregory Faull was fatally shot in November. He made his way secretly to neighboring Guatemala, but the authorities there deported him to Miami on Wednesday.

“I will not go back to Belize. I had nothing to do with the murder,” a relaxed-looking McAfee said in an interview on CNBC.

Police in Belize want to question McAfee as a “person of interest” in Faull’s killing, though authorities there say he is not a prime suspect. McAfee said he barely knew Faull and had “absolutely nothing” to do with his death.

Belize police say their country’s extradition treaty with the United States extends only to suspected criminals, a designation that does not apply to McAfee.

McAfee, an eccentric tech pioneer, made a fortune from the anti-virus software bearing his name and had lived in Belize for four years.

He has charged that authorities have persecuted him because he refused to pay $ 2 million in bribes, and that the extortion attempt occurred after armed soldiers shot one of his dogs, smashed up his property and falsely accused him of running a methamphetamine laboratory.

Belize’s prime minister has rejected the allegations, calling McAfee paranoid and “bonkers.”

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Was Loved By Kids: Friend

By Julia Haskins

12/14/2012 at 07:30 PM EST

Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal killed in Friday's mass shooting, will be remembered as a committed educator who was loved by her students.

The principal of the Newtown, Conn., school died trying to protect the students she cared for every day. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, started his rampage in the school's main office, where Hochsprung had reportedly come out of a meeting.

Hochsprung was killed in the shooting, the sound of which was reportedly broadcast over the school's PA system.

"She was really nice and very fun, but she was also very much a tough lady in the right sort of sense," Tom Prunty, a friend whose niece goes to Sandy Hook and was uninjured Friday, told CNN. "She was the kind of person you'd want to be educating your kids. And the kids loved her."

In all, the death toll in the tragedy has been put at 28 total: 20 children, six adults – including Hochsprung – the gunman and the gunman's mother, who was a kindergarten teacher, at a secondary location.

Safety In Mind

Hochsprung was committed to school safety, having recently installed a visual monitoring system on the campus. Visitors had to wait to be let in after the school doors locked at 9:30 a.m., and then sign in at the main office. In a letter to parents about the security system, Hochsprung said the lengthy process of the new system would take some getting used to, but that it was for the greater good of the school. And Hochsprung would have done anything to make Sandy Hook Elementary School a great place to be.

"I don't think you could find a more positive place to bring students to every day," she told the Newtown Bee when she was first hired.

Vito Kala, the owner and manager of The Villa, an Italian restaurant down the road from Sandy Hook Elementary School that was frequented by Hochsprung and other staff members, tells PEOPLE he had no doubt about Hochsprung's courage.

"It doesn't surprise me at all to hear the principal was a hero," he said. "That's [in line] with what I know. That is what she would have done, no question."

Danbury Deputy superintendent William Glass would agree. "She had a tremendous intellect and a wonderful way with children," Glass said of the always-smiling principal. "She was an amazing educator. She was everything you would want."

And a dad of triplets who go the school says of Dawn: "Every year she'd do a sock hop at the school, and she'd dress up in hoop skirts and bobby socks. She really got into it. She was so great with the kids. They loved her. It does not surprise me at all she'd do something heroic."

Hochsprung maintained an active Twitter account, where she updated followers with news about the school. Her last Tweet expressed her excitement about a school event. "Setting up for the Sandy Hook nonfiction book preview for staff... Common Core, here we come!"

Hochsprung, of Waterbury, Conn., came to Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2010 with 12 years of administrative experience. She received a bachelor's degree in special education from Central Connecticut State University in 1993, a master's in special education from Southern Connecticut State University in 1997, and a sixth-year degree in educational leadership from Southern in 1998, according to NewsTimes.

She had two daughters and three stepdaughters, according to CNN.

– With reporting from Sara Hammel

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

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Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Some chafe at downtown L.A.'s business improvement districts

At the start of each morning, a private army of workers descends on downtown Los Angeles in bright-colored shirts, providing security, collecting trash, scrubbing graffiti, power-washing sidewalks and otherwise keeping downtown presentable.

The crews work for downtown's network of business improvement districts and have become familiar parts of the area's fabric. Many in downtown credit the business improvement districts, or BIDs, with helping turn around the once-desolate downtown, providing the kind of aggressive maintenance and security services that City Hall simply cannot afford and helping to market the area to new investors.

But this extra layer of municipal services doesn't come cheap: together, the eight districts collect more than $15 million in annual tax assessments, which come on top of the regular taxes local businesses and residents pay for city services.

Now, some in downtown question whether the BIDs are worth their hefty costs. Two of the largest downtown improvement districts are facing lawsuits from property owners who no longer want to pay their fees, which in some cases top $100,000 a year.

Some critics say the BIDs have too much of a Big Brother feel, describing them as a kind of police force under the control of private executives whose aggressive cleaning up can sometimes feel like harassment. In the arts district, critics have posted bright orange "RID THE BID" banners and launched a petition online.

At the heart of the conflict is also a larger question: Should BIDs be a permanent part of downtown or something temporary — like training wheels for an area now gentrified enough that it can ride on its own.

"This concept of BIDs, for me, is kind of something of the '80s and '90s," said Yuval Bar-Zemer, a loft developer in the arts district who brought one of the lawsuits. "I think there are better ways to enhance the quality of life."

There are more than 80 business improvement districts across California, including Hollywood, Brentwood and Monterey. But they are coming under increased legal scrutiny; in addition to Bar-Zemer's case, the owners of the Angelus Plaza have targeted the Downtown Center Business Improvement District in a lawsuit, saying they should be exempt from the agency's fees. Similar disputes have been popping up throughout the state in recent years.

Cases against the BIDs generally argue that because they provide a general community benefit — such as security patrols or sidewalk sweeping — it's unfair for property owners to be asked to fund them exclusively. Legal experts said they expect the state Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue soon.

::

For Estela Lopez, it's hard to forget the way some streets in downtown L.A. looked in 1993, when she started the area's first BID on Broadway.

It was a year after the L.A. riots, and many parts of the Central City were still recovering. Downtown was a "desolate ghost town," she recalled.

The idea of the BID was to tax local businesses and use the money to keep streets clean, encourage economic development and serve as a lobbying force at City Hall and other government agencies.

As a change in state law allowed them to assess property owners, the BIDs in downtown began to spread and flex their political muscle. BID leaders became major advocates for the Staples Center and the city's adaptive reuse ordinance, which allowed for old office buildings in the Central City to be more easily converted into residential lofts and apartments.

BIDs now cover almost every foot of downtown, from the Figueroa corridor around USC to the skyscrapers of the financial district and shopping malls in Chinatown and Little Tokyo.

Lopez runs BIDs in the industrial core and arts district through an organization called the Central City East Assn. The work involves everything from networking with city officials and courting developers to overseeing security operations. She and her staff lead tours of the area for investors and home buyers, and consult regularly with Los Angeles police.

"Don't let anyone kid you, the heavy lifting is done by the BIDs," Lopez said in an interview. "We brought the developers here. We brought the investors here."

On a recent Friday morning, George Peterman, Lopez's operations director, found himself on Ceres Avenue, trying to convince a homeless man to take down a 12-foot fort he'd built on the sidewalk.

Peterman, a burly, 67-year-old former LAPD sergeant, was friendly but firm.

"It's an everyday deal," he said. "We don't take no for an answer."

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European Leaders Hail Accord on Banking Supervision

BRUSSELS — European leaders gathering here on Thursday for their year-end summit meeting hailed an agreement to place euro zone banks under a single supervisor, calling it a concrete measure to maintain the viability of the currency as well as a step in laying the groundwork for a broader economic union.

The agreement was reached during an all-night negotiating session of finance ministers that ended early Thursday after France and Germany made significant compromises. Under the agreement, 100 to 200 large banks in the euro zone will fall under the direct supervision of the European Central Bank.

A round of talks a week earlier broke up because of French and German discord over how many banks in the currency union should be covered by the new system.

In a concession to Germany, the finance ministers agreed that thousands of smaller banks would be primarily overseen by national regulators. But to satisfy the French, who wanted all euro zone banks to be held accountable, the central bank will be able to take over supervision of any bank in the region at any time.

The agreement by the finance ministers, which still requires the approval of the European Parliament and some national parliaments including the German Bundestag, made it possible for European Union leaders arriving here later Thursday to gather in a spirit of unity.

“It’s a good day for Europe,” said President François Hollande of France. “The crisis came from the banks, and mechanisms have been put in place that will mean nothing is as it was before.”

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the agreement was “a big step toward more trust and confidence in the euro zone.” The summit meeting could now focus on “strengthening economic coordination” and “set out a road map for the coming months,” she added.

In another measure to shore up the euro, the finance ministers approved the release of nearly 50 billion euros, or $65 billion, in further aid to Greece, including long-delayed payments, support that is crucial for the government to avoid defaulting on its debts.

“Today is not only a new day for Greece, it is indeed a new day for Europe,” Antonis Samaras, the Greek prime minister, said ahead of the summit meeting.

But threatening to spoil the upbeat atmosphere were questions over the future leadership of Italy, where the economy is contracting, debt levels are rising and Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, has threatened to try to reclaim the office in an election next year.

It remained unclear on Thursday whether Mr. Berlusconi would run and, if that were to happen, whether he would campaign on promises to reverse reforms put in place by Mario Monti, the current prime minister. Even so, the re-emergence of Mr. Berlusconi — who attended a summit meeting of center-right parties in Brussels on Thursday — could destabilize markets and even rekindle the financial crisis.

The bank supervision plan was first discussed in June and wrapped up in a matter of months — record time by the glacial standards of European Union rule-making. The agreement should serve as a springboard for leaders to weigh further steps toward economic integration during their meeting.

Such measures could include a unified system, and perhaps shared euro area resources, to ensure failing banks are closed in an orderly fashion. This could be followed, in time, by actions intended to reinforce economic and monetary union, including, possibly, the creation of a shared fund that could be used to shore up the economies of vulnerable members of the euro zone.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the agreement on banking supervision was “an important step towards a stable economic and monetary union, and toward further European integration.” But he noted that governments and the European Commission still had to work on the details of the supervision mechanism.

The new system should be fully operational by March 2014, but the ministers left the door open for the central bank to push that date back if it would “not be ready for exercising in full its tasks.”

A series of compromises was needed for finance ministers to reach agreement on banking supervision.

Initially, France and the European Commission had asked that all 6,000 banks in the euro area be closely regulated by the central bank. But in a concession, France agreed that only banks holding more than 30 billion euros in assets, or assets greater than 20 percent of their country’s gross domestic product, would be directly regulated by the central bank.

Germany, seeking to make the central bank’s job more manageable and facing pressure from a powerful domestic banking lobby trying to shield many small savings banks from closer scrutiny, sought a reduced portfolio for the bank. But Germany agreed to let the central bank, at its discretion, step in and take over supervision of any euro zone bank.

The Germans and Swedes also had concerns that the central bank could be tempted to alter its decisions on monetary policy to make its supervisory job easier. As a compromise, member states are to be given greater scope than originally foreseen to challenge central bank decisions.

Britain, which is not a member of the euro zone, sought assurances that the new banking supervisor would not have influence over banks operating in the City of London. Britain agreed to a formula that should allow it and other European Union members outside the euro zone to counteract most — but probably not all — rule-making by the central bank. These countries will also be able to challenge decisions pertaining to cross-border banking.

The supervisor is a prerequisite for a new European bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, to provide aid directly to the troubled banks of countries including Spain and Ireland. Such aid would allow those governments to avoid weighing down their national balance sheets with yet more debt. Those countries, along with France, successfully lobbied for direct recapitalization of banks to be mentioned in the agreement.

But in a concession to Germany, which is wary about spending more money on bailouts ahead of national elections in late 2013, and to assuage similar concerns by the Dutch and Finns, the agreement underlined the need for unanimity among states contributing to the bailout fund before any such measures can go ahead.

Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens.

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L.A. Reid: I'm Leaving The X Factor

TV Watch

12/13/2012 at 07:10 PM EST

The latest season of The X Factor is down to the wire – but L.A. Reid is already looking ahead to next season. And he's not planning to come back.

"I have decided that I will not return to The X Factor next year," Reid, who is chairman and CEO of Epic Records, tells Access Hollywood. "I have a company to run that I've kind of neglected."

Of his decision to leave the singing competition, he says, "It saddens me a little bit, but only a little bit."

One of the things he's sure to miss is spending so much time with his pal and fellow judge Simon Cowell. "I love Simon. We have a great relationship," says Reid. "We have fun together, we talk, we laugh, we do bad things, we're friends."

Reid says being on the show, which also currently stars judges Britney Spears and Demi Lovato, was "a nice break" from his day job, "but now I've got to go back to work."

Reid has been a judge on the show for two seasons with Cowell. Nicole Scherzinger and Paula Abdul lasted only one season as judges before leaving.

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Study: People worldwide living longer, but sicker

LONDON (AP) — Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health threats.

The last comprehensive study was in 1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 — more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of children dying to about 7 million.

Malnutrition was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.

With more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by smoking and alcohol.

"The biggest contributor to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

In developed countries, such conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.

The research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As in 1990, Japan topped the life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.

The research found wide variations in what's killing people around the world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the researchers: — Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.

— While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt," from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in Western Europe.

— In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).

— Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the rate is about 3 per 100,000.

Globally, heart disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the sixth leading cause two decades later.

While chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting too much of the focus away from those ailments.

"It's the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.

Still, she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a good model for chronic care," she said.

Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.

"We have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said the information in some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all the relevant health risk factors.

"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.

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Online:

www.lancet.com

http://healthmetricsandevaluation.org

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