Study: Stem cells from strangers can repair hearts

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Researchers are reporting a key advance in using stem cells to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks. In a study, stem cells donated by strangers proved as safe and effective as patients' own cells for helping restore heart tissue.

The work involved just 30 patients in Miami and Baltimore, but it proves the concept that anyone's cells can be used to treat such cases. Doctors are excited because this suggests that stem cells could be banked for off-the-shelf use after heart attacks, just as blood is kept on hand now.

Results were discussed Monday at an American Heart Association conference in California and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study used a specific type of stem cells from bone marrow that researchers believed would not be rejected by recipients. Unlike other cells, these lack a key feature on their surface that makes the immune system see them as foreign tissue and attack them, explained the study's leader, Dr. Joshua Hare of the University of Miami.

The patients in the study had suffered heart attacks years earlier, some as long as 30 years ago. All had developed heart failure because the scar tissue from the heart attack had weakened their hearts so much that they grew large and flabby, unable to pump blood effectively.

Researchers advertised for people to supply marrow, which is removed using a needle into a hip bone. The cells were taken from the marrow and amplified for about a month in a lab at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, then returned to Miami to be used for treatment, which did not involve surgery.

The cells were delivered through a tube pushed through a groin artery into the heart near the scarred area. Fifteen patients were given cells from their own marrow and 15 others, cells from strangers.

About a year later, scar tissue had been reduced by about one-third. Both groups had improvements in how far they could walk and in quality of life. There was no significant difference in one measure of how well their hearts were able to pump blood, but doctors hope these patients will continue to improve over time, or that refinements in treatment will lead to better results.

The big attraction is being able to use cells supplied by others, with no blood or tissue matching needed.

"You could have the cells ready to go in the blood bank so when the patient comes in for a therapy — there's no delay," Hare said. "It's also cheaper to make the donor cells," and a single marrow donor can supply enough cells to treat as many as 10 people.

Dr. Elliott Antman of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who heads the heart conference, praised the work.

"That opens up an entire new avenue for stem cell therapy, like a sophisticated version of a blood bank," he said. There's an advantage in not having to create a cell therapy for each patient, and it could spare them the pain and wait of having their own marrow harvested, he said.

The study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Hare owns stock in a biotech company working on a treatment using a mixture of cells.

Juan Lopez received his own cells in the study, and said it improved his symptoms so much that at age 70, he was able to return to his job as an engineer and sales manager for a roofing manufacturer and ride an exercise bike.

"It has been a life-changing experience," said Lopez, who lives in Miami. "I can feel day by day, week by week, month by month, my improvement. I don't have any shortness of breath and my energy level is way up there. I don't have any fluid in my lungs."

And, he said happily, "My sex drive has improved!"

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP .

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Three myths about women voters that wouldn’t go away in 2012

Protesters stand together during a Planned Parenthood rally at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. (Joe …

In the bitterly fought battle for women voters this election season, both candidates dwelled on issues like equal pay, abortion, access to contraception and women's unemployment. And the news media eagerly speculated on the candidates' chance of success with female voters, who made up 53 percent of the electorate in 2008.

In the process, a few major myths emerged about the female voter, from their views on abortion to whether their dating life influences them in the voting booth. Here are three of the biggest ones:

Myth No. 1: Women are more in favor of abortion rights than men are

For the past year, Democrats argued Republicans are waging a "war on women" for wanting to make all abortions illegal, while Republicans  countered that Democrats don't want any restrictions on abortion. Each side is attempting to paint the other as extreme, hoping to pick up on-the-fence women voters in the process.

But, despite how they're sometimes portrayed in the news media and by political candidates, female voters are about as divided on abortion as men are.

"One of the central myths in American politics is that women are more pro-choice than men," Karen Kaufman, an associate professor at the University of Maryland who has researched the gender gap, told Yahoo News.

In 2011, 59 percent of men and 56 percent of women said in a Gallup poll that abortion should be legal in no circumstances or only in a few.

Men and women are much more divided on the issue of war (women oppose military interventions) and the role of government (women are more wary of federal spending cuts) than on abortion.

That fact may come as a surprise in this election in particular, as abortion and reproductive issues took on a huge role. Mitt Romney criticized President Barack Obama for requiring employers' insurance plans to provide free contraception, calling the health care reform's mandate an infringement on employers' freedom of religion. Meanwhile, to paint Romney as extreme and out of touch, Obama seized on the abortion-related comments of a handful of Republicans like Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, who said women who are raped should not be allowed to access legal abortions because he believed, falsely, that they could not physically become pregnant.

Rutgers political scientist Susan Carroll told Yahoo News she has not seen a presidential election contest as focused on abortion and reproductive rights since 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade was decided.

"Candidates have wanted to run away from abortion in previous elections," Carroll sad. "When you talk about it, you alienate someone."

Despite the fact that women are about equally split on abortion, it still makes sense that the Obama campaign has relentlessly highlighted comments from Akin, Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, and a few other Republicans explaining why they think abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. The majority of both men and women think abortions should be legal in cases of rape or the health of the mother, so the ads paint the candidates—and by extension, Romney—as outside of the mainstream.

Playing defense, Romney put up TV ads in three key swing states saying he would not outlaw abortion in these cases and does not oppose contraception. (An anti-abortion group, meanwhile, bought ads in swing states calling Obama "an abortion radical" for sending federal funding to clinics that perform abortions.)

According to a CBS News poll, more women than men (38 percent) will only support a candidate who shares their views on abortion. One such voter is Susan Moore, an anti-abortion physical education teacher in the Columbus, Ohio, suburb of Groveport. She told Yahoo News that she's voting for Romney even though she disagrees with the Republicans' tough line on teachers unions.

"It's economics versus values," she said. "I'd vote conviction over jobs, I guess." Moore said she would support Obama if he were against abortion.

Polls suggest that birth control and funding for Planned Parenthood are more clearly winning issues for the Obama campaign. A majority of both women and men in a Gallup/USA Today poll from last month rate Obama higher than Romney on his handling of birth control policy. (The poll found that more than 30 percent of women in 12 swing states said a candidate's birth control policy would be "very important" for how they vote.)

Myth No. 2: The gender gap is about the "war on women"

Carroll says the Obama campaign's focus on reproductive rights is ultimately a way to motivate women who already support Obama to vote on Election Day, rather than a way to sway women in the middle away from Romney. "The people in the base turn out the vote and they need to mobilize them," Carroll said. "Those issues, the fact that women might not be able to get contraception, that can help to motivate women in the base."

That prediction seems to be supported by polling. The latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll shows that the female gender gap in favor of Obama has held steady at 7 percentage points. Meanwhile, men back Romney by six points more than women, which keeps the race at a dead heat.

The 7-point female gap in favor of Obama is in line with the female-male spread that political scientists have observed for 30 years. (Women began consistently voting for Democrats in higher proportions than men starting in the 1980 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.)

But you wouldn't know that if you turned on cable news, where pundits wonder whether women don't support Romney because Democrats say he and other Republicans are waging a "war on women" on abortion and contraception.

Right now, "the average gender gap is approximately the average of the past nine presidential elections," ABC News/Washington Post pollster Gary Langer told Yahoo News. "It doesn't come from any dynamic in this election. Women are about 10 percentage points more likely to describe themselves as Democrats than Republicans. [The gap] comes from a substantial sense among women that the Democratic party is better attuned to women's issues."

Political scientists say more women than men vote Democratic in part because men and women see the role of government fundamentally differently. Women are more wary of federal spending cuts, and tend to support safety net programs more than the average male voter. Women are also more opposed to military interventions than men.

Shirley Hutner, a manager at a manufacturing company in Indiana, told Yahoo News she voted for John McCain in 2008 but is voting for Obama this time around in part because of his stance on welfare programs.

"I've never been unemployed, I've always been lucky, I've always had a job," Hutner, 40, said. "But if I ever needed help, I would feel like I would be able to get help from the Obama administration and not so much from Romney."

Hutner said she also worries about older workers who were laid off and can't get companies to hire them.

Two of Hutner's female friends adamantly disagreed, however, saying many people on welfare feel "entitled" and are riding the system. "The problem is, everybody counts on that," said Hutner's friend Beverly Brouse, who is voting for Romney. "At some point, that's going to blow up."

Myth No. 3: Women vote like they date

Pundits often conflate a woman's voting and dating preferences. Matthew Dowd, a former aide to President George W. Bush, wrote in an ABC News article ("What women want in a president") that women "want to be in a relationship with a man who is clear, strong, kind ... and can make a woman feel protected and safe." Dowd used this dating prism to postulate that women voters moved to Romney after the first presidential debate in Denver because he came across as strong and the president as weak.

Kevin D. Williamson at National Review argued that because women select reproductive mates for their "status," Romney should emphasize his personal wealth to win the female vote by a landslide.

"From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. ... You can insert your own Mormon polygamy joke here, but the ladies do tend to flock to successful executives and entrepreneurs," Williamson wrote.

We're not quite sure where the trope that women approach the ballot box like it's an episode of "The Bachelorette" comes from. But pollsters are skeptical of the claims.

"I don't know where that comes from," Langer said.  "I think women base their political attitudes on substantive issues."

Studies have shown that both men and women tend to unconsciously vote for more attractive candidates, which fits in with a large body of research that shows physical attractiveness is rewarded in the workplace.

Because the major presidential candidates over the past 20 years have been wealthy, there's not much research on how a candidate's personal wealth affects voters, male or female.

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China relentlessly harries Japan in island dispute

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese patrol boats have harried the Japanese Coast Guard many times a week for more than a month in an unusually relentless response to their latest maritime spat.

Four Chinese craft typically push to within hailing distance of Japan's ships. They flash illuminated signs in Japanese to press Beijing's argument that it has ancient claims to a set of tiny East China Sea islands now controlled by Tokyo. China says its craft have tried to chase the Japanese away at least once, although Japan denies any of its ships fled.

The huge uptick in incidents has brought the sides into dangerously close proximity, reflecting a campaign by Beijing to wear down Japanese resolve with low-level, non-military maneuvers but also boosting the risk of a clash.

Although China wields a formidable arsenal, it has yet to deploy military assets in such encounters. Instead, Beijing has dispatched ships from government maritime agencies — only one of which is armed — to keep a lid on gunfire. Those agencies are now receiving added attention, with new ships on order and a national call going out for recruits.

China says ships from its Marine Surveillance service are merely defending Chinese sovereignty and protesting illegal Japanese control over the uninhabited islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. The missions began after Japan's government purchased three of the five islands from their private Japanese owner in September, enraging a Chinese government that saw it as an attempt to boost Japan's sovereignty claim. It also sparked violent anti-Japanese protests in dozens of Chinese cities.

China's short-term goal has been primarily to force Japan to at least acknowledge that the islands are in dispute — something it has refused to do — but the boost in patrols raises the likelihood of a bigger confrontation, said Wang Dong, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Strategic Studies at Peking University.

"I'm very concerned about the current situation. The possibility of escalation cannot be ruled out," Wang said.

With emotions running high, any accident or miscalculation in these maritime missions could yield unexpected outcomes.

"One side might deploy a naval vessel in a support fashion, a move that the other would match," said M. Taylor Fravel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is closely following the dispute.

Japan has made it clear that it intends to meet the Chinese challenge in kind.

Japanese Coast Guard spokesman Yasuhiko Oku said the dispute was a factor behind the government's allocation last week of 17 billion yen ($212 million) to beef up the Coast Guard fleet with seven new patrol ships and three helicopters, though he said the new assets are not only for use around the islands.

Oku declined, for national security reasons, to say how many ships patrol the islands. But he said the dispute has been a "significant draw" on resources.

Tensions in the region were highlighted by U.S.-Japan naval exercises that began Monday at various locations, involving some 37,400 Japanese and 10,000 U.S. troops. At the same time, Japanese and Chinese diplomats were in consultation in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.

China's Foreign Ministry said the exercises were "not conducive to mutual trust in regional security," and urged the parties to "do more that helps regional peace and stability."

Already, the near-constant presence of Chinese ships around the disputed islands has stretched the Japanese Coast Guard, which pulled out of a recent fleet review to free up ships for patrols. That's a victory of sorts for Beijing's vow to claim what it calls sacred territory, between Taiwan and Japan's Okinawa. Taiwan also claims the islands, which were under U.S. administration after World War II before reverting to Japanese control in 1972.

Chinese outrage stems partly from lingering resentment over Japan's brutal World War II occupation of much of China, feelings that are constantly stoked by China's education system and state-controlled media. But control of sea lanes and potentially rich undersea minerals are also at play, along with China's burning desire for respect as a world power.

China and Japan have no formal agreement on preventing unintended incidents at sea, making it easier for events to spin out of control as they did when a Chinese fishing boat rammed a Japanese cutter in 2010, leading to a diplomatic standoff and anti-Japanese protests in China.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said last week that the sides need to calm down. "It's incredibly important that both countries appreciate what they have built and step back from the brink," Campbell said in Washington.

Chinese craft entered waters near the islands for the third consecutive day on Sunday, marking at least the 11th incursion in recent weeks. The Japanese Coast Guard has described all the incidents as routine without a risk of clashes, and said none of its ships have backed down.

However, the Chinese government said last week that its boats had performed "expulsion measures" against Japanese ships.

"Chinese law enforcement vessels have a foothold in the waters around Diaoyu and are expanding their activities to safeguard Chinese sovereignty," China's stridently nationalistic Communist Party tabloid Global Times said last Wednesday. It called that a warning to the Philippines, Vietnam and other neighbors to "think twice before they provoke China."

Some scholars say China's apparent strategy to gradually erode Japanese control through low-key actions has been abetted by a non-committal response from Washington, who has said it takes no stance on the islands' sovereignty despite recognizing its treaty obligations to back Tokyo in a conflict.

China uses a similar approach in the South China Sea where it has maritime disputes with several other nations.

Earlier this year, Beijing managed to nudge the Philippines out of a disputed shoal by entering a lengthy but nonviolent maritime standoff. After both sides stood down, China set up barriers with ropes and buoys to block further access. Chinese ships have also sought to cut sonar cables and otherwise harass ships of the U.S. Navy.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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Apple sells 3 million iPads over first weekend

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MTV to air fundraiser for devastated Jersey shore

NEW YORK (AP) — MTV, home of the "Jersey Shore" reality show, plans to air a fundraising special to help rebuild New Jersey's devastated shoreline.

The one-hour program will air Nov. 15 from MTV's Times Square studio in New York City. It will feature the cast of "Jersey Shore" along with other guests.

The network said Monday the program will solicit contributions for the rebuilding of Seaside Heights, the heart of the Jersey shore and the principal setting for the "Jersey Shore" series.

For this effort, MTV will be partnering with Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that provides design and construction services to communities in need.

Seaside Heights was among numerous coastal areas devastated by Sandy last week.

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Doctors debate value of 'fringe' heart treatment

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A heart disease treatment that many doctors consider to be fringe medicine unexpectedly showed some promise in a federal study clouded by ethical and scientific controversy, causing debate about the results.

The study took 10 years, cost taxpayers $30 million, involved several doctors convicted of felonies and spurred a federal probe into patient safety. Even the lead researchers say the treatment cannot be recommended without further research.

The study tested chelation (pronounced "kee-LAY'shun") — periodic intravenous infusions that proponents say may help remove calcium from hardened arteries around the heart. Chelation has long been used to treat lead poisoning but its safety and value for heart disease are unproven.

The heart disease version involves a different drug that does not have government approval for any use in the United States. However, alternative medicine practitioners have been ordering it custom-mixed from compounding pharmacies — businesses like the Massachusetts one involved in the current meningitis outbreak — and treating people with it.

More than 100,000 Americans use chelation, often out of distrust of conventional medicine and sometimes in place of established treatments such as cholesterol-lowering medicines and stents to open clogged arteries. Treatments cost $90 to $150 apiece, usually are done weekly for 30 weeks and then less often, and are not covered by insurance.

On Sunday at an American Heart Association conference in Los Angeles, researchers said that a chelation mixture they tested in a study of 1,708 heart attack survivors led to fewer complications — repeat heart attacks, strokes, deaths, hospitalization for chest pain or need for an artery-opening procedure.

Four years after treatment, 26.5 percent of the chelation group had one of these problems versus 30 percent of those given dummy infusions.

However, 17 percent of participants dropped out before the study ended, and only 65 percent had all 40 infusions they were supposed to get. The missing and incomplete results make it unclear whether the benefit credited to chelation could have occurred by chance alone. The results have not been published in a medical journal or vetted by independent scientists, another reason doctors are leery.

"The study in my view is inconclusive," said Dr. Steven Nissen, the Cleveland Clinic's cardiovascular chief who had no role in the research.

"Chelation has been practiced by physicians on the extreme fringes of medicine" and many involved in this study offer "a variety of other quack therapies," Nissen said. "I'm really worried about harm coming to the public. Patients should not seek this therapy on the basis of this trial."

Others including the Heart Association praised the government for doing the study.

"Patients are doing this with or without our permission" so it's important to test, said Dr. John G. Harold, president-elect of the American College of Cardiology and a doctor at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles. He said at least two of his patients had suffered heart failure after getting chelation in Mexico.

Dr. Gary Gibbons, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the study with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, called it "a first step" and urged caution about results that suggest "a marginal benefit."

This chelation seemed safe in this study, where steps were taken to minimize complications and exclude people likely to suffer them, he said. "Further research needs to be done before this can join the mainstream of cardiovascular care."

Other experts questioned the results, especially because 60 more people in the group getting dummy infusions withdrew from the study than in the group getting chelation. Usually, more people in a treatment group drop out because of side effects, said Dr. Christie Ballantyne, a Baylor College of Medicine heart specialist. To find the opposite is "a red flag" that suggests those who got dummy treatments found that out and decided to drop out.

"There's something funky going on here," Ballantyne said. "It raises questions about study conduct," especially since a difference of one or two people or complications could have nullified the small overall benefit researchers reported.

Dr. Clyde Yancy, a Northwestern University cardiologist and a former Heart Association president, agreed.

"It's funny business," he said. "I've never seen a study in which one in five people withdrew consent."

The study's leader, Dr. Gervasio Lamas of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, said: "The trial needs to be taken for what it is — a step towards future investigation."

It initially aimed to enroll 2,400 people in the United States and Canada but recruitment lagged and the goal was reset to 1,700.

In 2008, a group of scientists published a long article criticizing the trial, saying participants had not been warned that others had died from chelation. More than half of the doctors running the study make money by selling chelation treatments — a conflict of interest, they complained.

Investigations by the Office for Human Research Protections and the Food and Drug Administration found that several doctors doing the study had been accused of poor practices by state medical boards or involved in insurance fraud, and at least three were convicted felons. That did not prevent them from doing federal research, the government decided, and let the study go on after corrective steps. By that time, 1,500 participants had already been enrolled.

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Sandy could cast doubt on election results

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The devastating storm that slammed into the U.S. East Coast last week could send winds of uncertainty through Tuesday's presidential election, narrowing an already close contest and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome.

Though superstorm Sandy is unlikely to determine whether President Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney wins the White House, experts said it could expose flaws in how the United States conducts elections, leading to protracted legal wrangling and lingering bitterness in a country already fractured along partisan lines.

In a worst-case scenario, the storm disruption could cause Obama to lose the popular vote and still win re-election, stirring up vitriolic memories of the contested 2000 battle that allowed Republican George W. Bush to triumph over Democrat Al Gore.

Last-minute changes imposed by election officials also could

further arm campaign lawyers looking to challenge the result.

At minimum, low turnout would add another wild card to an election projected to be among the closest in U.S. history. Voting could be an afterthought for hundreds of thousands of people still struggling with power outages, fuel shortages and plummeting temperatures.

"It's a possibility that we'll see significant drops in turnout in some of these densely populated areas," said George Mason University professor Michael MacDonald, a voter turnout expert.

"The effects could be quite dramatic in terms of the popular vote," he said.

ONE MORE HEADACHE

Tuesday's election presents yet another headache for local officials in New York and New Jersey, which were hardest hit by the storm. Rescue workers are still recovering bodies, 1.9 million homes and businesses have no power, and tens of thousands of people are without heat as temperatures dip near freezing.

Sandy, one of the most damaging storms to hit the United States, hammered the region with 80-mile-per-hour (129-kph) winds, while walls of water overran seaside communities. At least 113 people in the United States and Canada died.

Election authorities now face unprecedented challenges. In New York City, 143,000 voters have been assigned new polling stations. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday called the city's elections board "dysfunctional" and warned that it needs to clearly communicate changes to poll workers.

In New Jersey, where 25 percent of homes and businesses have no power, officials are allowing displaced voters to cast their ballots by email. In battered Monmouth County, officials are spreading the word about new polling locations in at least 29 towns and setting aside paper ballots to use if electronic voting machines fail.

"Whatever it takes, Asbury Park is voting," City Manager Terence Reidy said.

Legal experts said the late changes, however well-intentioned, may give the losing candidate a basis to challenge results.

"The devil is in the details and no doubt these new rules will be fertile ground for those who choose to challenge the results in the election." said Angelo Genova, a New Jersey election law expert who represents Democratic candidates in this election.

The post-Sandy chaos also could expose flaws in the arcane electoral college system the United States uses to elect presidents.

Candidates are not required to win the popular vote nationwide, but they must amass a majority of the 538 "electoral votes" that are awarded to each state based on population. The system was set up when the United States was founded, as a compromise between slave states and free states.

Usually the electoral college winner also wins the popular vote. But in two elections - 1876 and 2000 - the results diverged, creating historic controversies.

This year, Obama is expected to handily win New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the states most impacted by the storm. But his popular vote total could fall by hundreds of thousands if large numbers of storm-hit voters in Democratic areas are unable to participate. Conceivably, Obama could win the White House while losing the popular vote.

Several experts said they consider that outcome unlikely.

"You'll see lower turnout, yes, but it's not going to change the outcome of the election," said Hunter College political-science professor Jamie Chandler, who predicts Obama will win by at least 1 million votes.

If Obama carries the popular vote by a narrow margin, it could have implications on his ability to govern effectively, according to Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress.

"The more Obama has a solid popular margin the better his victory," he said.

On Sunday, several Republicans said the storm gave Obama an advantage in the campaign's final week by shifting public attention away from the sluggish economy and other topics they hoped to emphasize.

"The hurricane is what broke Romney's momentum," former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said on CNN.

Obama campaign officials said that they are confident the storm will not interfere with the voting process. But they intend to have legal experts on standby just in case.

"We're going to have lawyers who are ready to make sure people can exercise their right to vote. We're going to protect that as fiercely as we can," Obama senior adviser David Plouffe said on Friday.

(Fixes typo in quote in 14th paragraph) (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Erin Smith, Jonathan Spicer, Philip Barbara and Andrew Longstreth; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Paul Simao)

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China's Communists endorse Bo Xilai's expulsion

BEIJING (AP) — China's ruling Communist elite have endorsed the expulsion of former high-flying politician Bo Xilai and approved final preparations for the party's upcoming congress.

The closed-door meeting of the Central Committee that ended Sunday was the last before Communist Party leader Hu Jintao and others in his government begin to cede power to Vice President Xi Jinping and others at the congress, which opens Thursday.

The Central Committee said in a statement by the official Xinhua News Agency that it endorsed decisions to expel Bo and former Railways Minister Liu Zhijun from the Communist Party. Bo is accused of a range of misdeeds including covering up his wife's murder of a British businessman. Liu faces corruption charges.

Xinhua said Hu presided over the meeting and delivered a work report. It said Xi introduced a report of the current five-year session and an amendment to the party charter, both of which will be discussed at the congress. It gave no details.

Xinhua said delegates agreed that the past five years had been "extraordinary" because China had faced a difficult international environment as well as arduous tasks of reform, development and stability.

It also said the economy had grown stably and rapidly, there had been major progress on reform and opening-up, and people's living conditions had improved remarkably.

The policy-setting committee also promoted two generals to the party commission that oversees the military: air force Gen. Xu Qiliang and Gen. Fan Changlong, a career soldier who runs the Jinan Military Area Command and took part in relief efforts after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.

The Central Committee is comprised of about 370 people from the upper ranks of the party, government and military.

Bo's ouster earlier this year widened rifts within a leadership that likes to project an image of unity. It also complicated the bargaining over the roster of new leaders.

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Foxx, Wonder among stars honoring Eddie Murphy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — However riotous the Eddie Murphy stories from Arsenio Hall, Tracy Morgan, Adam Sandler and Russell Brand, the highlight of Spike TV's tribute to Eddie Murphy was the comedian's duet with Stevie Wonder.

Murphy joined the subject of one of his most classic impressions for a rousing rendition of Wonder's 1973 hit "Higher Ground" during the taping of the Spike TV special "Eddie Murphy: One Night Only," which is set to air Nov. 14. The Roots served as the house band.

Jamie Foxx, Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock and Keenan Ivory Wayans were also among those paying tribute to Murphy Saturday at the Saban Theater.

Accompanied by a pretty blonde, Murphy beamed throughout the two-hour program Saturday, saying he was touched by the tribute.

"I am a very, very bitter man," he said with a beguiling smile. "I don't get touched easily, and I am really touched."

Morgan called Murphy "my comic hero" and came onstage wearing a replica of Murphy's red leather suit from his standup show "Delirious."

"He set the tone for the whole industry a long time ago," Morgan said before Saturday's tribute. "He inspired me in a fearless way."

Sandler said he was still in high school when he first saw "Delirious," which he described as "one of the most legendary standup specials of all time."

"Everybody on the planet wanted to be Eddie," he said. "He funnier than us. He's cooler than any of us."

Samuel L. Jackson said Murphy "changed the course of American film history" by giving Jackson his first speaking role on the big screen, in 1988's "Coming to America."

"If it weren't for Eddie, we might not have all the wonderful films that I've made," Jackson said.

"He is a true movie star," Jackson continued, lauding Murphy's performance in "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop." ''You became an inspiration for all young African-American actors."

The program featured clips of Murphy's standup shows, his film appearances in "Shrek" and "Nutty Professor" and his work on "Saturday Night Live."

Murphy insisted before the tribute that he is retired.

"I'm just a retired old song and dance man," he said, adding that he only makes rare appearances these days. "That's what you do when you're retired: You come out every now and then and talk about the old days."

The 51-year-old entertainer took the stage at the conclusion of the tribute to say that he was moved by the honor.

"This is really a touching moving thing, and I really appreciate it," he said. "You know what it's like when you have something like this? You know when they sing happy birthday to you? It's like that for, like, two hours... and I am Eddied out."

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter at www.twitter.com/APSandy.

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