Many women stop their asthma meds while pregnant

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Almost a third of women on asthma control medications stop using them during the first few months of pregnancy – despite advice that a mother’s uncontrolled asthma is more dangerous to the developing fetus than the drugs, according to a new study from the Netherlands.

The researchers could not determine why moms-to-be stop taking their asthma meds, or whether it led to any negative health effects, but the findings are concerning, said Lucie Blais, a pharmacy professor at the University of Montreal, who was not involved in the study.

“Some studies show that uncontrolled asthma is bad for the fetus. You can have babies that will be small for their gestational age or low birth weight,” Blais told Reuters Health.

Both the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) and the U.S. National Asthma Education and Prevention Program recommend that women continue taking asthma medications throughout pregnancy, because the risks of exacerbated asthma are greater than the risks of the medication.

A lack of oxygen during development, known as hypoxemia, is one of the dangers to a fetus when its mother has uncontrolled asthma.

According to the GINA guidelines, there is not much evidence showing that asthma medications are harmful to the fetus, and “using medications to obtain control of asthma is justified even when their safety in pregnancy has not been unequivocally proven.”

To see how well pregnant mothers stick to their prescriptions, Priscilla Zetstra-van der Woude at the University of Groningen and her colleagues used information on more than 25,000 pregnancies from a prescription database in The Netherlands.

More than 2,000 of those pregnant women (about 8 percent) received a prescription for an asthma medication at least once during the study period, from 1994 to 2009.

Between 1994 and 2003, the women’s rate of asthma control medication prescriptions held steady before, during and after pregnancy.

From 2004 to 2009, however, the researchers saw a drop of 30 percent in the rate of asthma prescriptions filled in the first three months of pregnancy, compared to a woman’s pattern in the months before becoming pregnant.

When Zetstra-van der Woude’s group looked at the types of medications that women were cutting out, they saw that long-acting bronchodilators and combinations of these drugs with inhaled corticosteroids – used to keep moderate to severe asthma under control – were less popular during pregnancy than shortly before.

Prescriptions for these drugs declined by about 50 percent during the first trimester, from roughly 1.2 percent of pregnancies in the database down to 0.6 percent.

“Long-acting bronchodilators are usually prescribed for patients with more severe asthma, and discontinuation could lead to severe symptoms of respiratory distress,” the authors wrote in their report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Zetstra-van der Woude’s study could not say whether the drop off in asthma medications had any negative effects on the mother or baby, and it’s possible that women did not have any worsening of symptoms.

“The course of asthma often changes during pregnancy and some women may experience a relief of asthma symptoms, and as a consequence can do with less or with no medication at all. This is no problem as long as the asthma is under control,” Zetstra-van der Woude said in an email to Reuters Health.

“Doctors as well as women themselves should be informed about the importance of adequate asthma control during pregnancy and about the risks of poorly controlled asthma…for the unborn child,” said Zetstra-van der Woude.

Blais said asthma patients are not especially good at sticking to their medications to begin with, and pregnancy could add an extra hurdle because women might be afraid of taking any drugs during pregnancy.

On the other hand, pregnancy could serve as an opportunity to get women to become more adherent to their prescriptions if it means keeping their asthma in check.

“Maybe pregnancy could be a period in a woman’s life where she might listen more to the recommendations because it’s about her health, but also the fetus’s health,” she said.

SOURCE: http://tinyurl.com/9uuelcy The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, online October 15, 2012.

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

How Truth and Lies Spread on Twitter

Hurricane Sandy was a huge moment for New York City. It was also a huge moment for how we think about social media.

For many in the superstorm’s path up the Eastern seaboard, social networks quickly became an essential source of information from news organizations, civic organizations, and friends and family. As power went out in lower Manhattan on Monday evening, many residents turned to Twitter and Facebook on their smartphones to learn exactly how the hurricane was impacting their neighborhoods. CBS estimates three and a half million tweets with the hashtag #Sandy during the height of the storm; popular photo-sharing service Instagram saw 10 photos of Hurricane Sandy uploaded per second.

As my colleague Susan Berfield notes, social media’s role in distributing information reflects a growing trend in news consumption: according to the Pew Research Center’s State of the Media 2012 report, 36 percent of people who use Twitter for news said most of the links they follow come from friends and family, while 27 percent say most come from news organizations, and 18 percent mostly follow links from other organizations such as think tanks.

As vital information flooded Twitter and Facebook, misinformation soon bubbled to the top. Shashank Tripathi, a hedge fund analyst and the campaign manager of Christopher R. Wight, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House or Representatives from New York’s 12th Congressional District, pushed rumors on Twitter under the pseudonym @ComfortablySmug that the New York Stock Exchange floor was under three feet of water, a rumor that spread to CNN before an exchange official debunked his claim. Fake photos of scuba divers in the New York subways and enormous storm systems over Manhattan ricocheted across social networks at lightning speed. The entire media ecosystem became embroiled in a perpetual game of “Two Truths and a Lie.”

Twitter proved effective not just as a newswire, but as a medium for distributed fact-checking. As quickly as the falsehoods emerged, journalists and city officials moved to swat them down. BuzzFeeds Jack Steuf quickly revealed the identity of @ComfortablySmug, who issued a public apology Tuesday night. The Atlantic‘s Alexis Madrigal, aided by Atlantic social media editor Chris Heller and MSN international editor Tom Phillips—who runs a microsite ‘Is Twitter Wrong?‘ devoted to debunking rumors on social media—verified the stunning images floating across the Internet. Even the New York Post reported that Mayor Michael Bloomberg planned on barring passenger cars from entering Manhattan, only to be quickly rebuked by press secretary Marc La Vorgna.

After the storm passed, BuzzFeed’s John Herrman argued that Hurricane Sandy established Twitter is a truth machine that, under the right circumstances, systematically vets and destroys rumors as quickly as it propagates them. “Initial misinformation has consequences, and a consensus correction on Twitter won’t stop any number of these rumors from going viral on Facebook,” Herrman writes. “There, your claims are checked by your friends; on Twitter, if they spread, they’re open to direct scrutiny from people who might actually know the truth.” In the echo chamber of social media, truth is louder than fiction.

No matter what, no decentralized network like Twitter or Facebook will be totally free from misinformation, says Jeff Jarvis, associate professor at City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism and author of Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live.  But, he adds, “The lie can spread fast, but the truth can spread faster, too.” He provides his own experience with Hurricane Sandy as an example. “As I scroll down in reverse order on Twitter, I see correction after correction. I see 10 times as many corrections as erroneous reports. And the time between them is amazingly small.”

In terms of daily news consumption, a fraction of the U.S. uses Twitter, but everyone talks to their siblings, their parents, their coworkers, their friends. Text messaging, email, and ‘dark social’ networks spread misinformation just as quickly, and to more people. This is a potential problem with Twitter as a medium for truth and lies: what happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter. If we’re to continue the favored epidemiology metaphor of the Internet-employed, information that goes viral can become airborne: it leaves the Twitter network, where the journalists and reporters and ‘influentials’ who can quickly propagate corrections can’t reach.

I experienced this first-hand during Hurricane Sandy. after retweeting a message warning about muggers in Williamsburg dressed as ConEd workers as an experiment, I received two skeptical responses checking the claim within 15 minutes, both from people who work in the media industry and spend a significant amount of time on Twitter. Within an hour, I received a mass text message from friends of mine who aren’t completely plugged into the social web with the same warning: “I just read a news alert of two seperate reports of people posing as coned workers, knocking on people’s door and robbing them at gunpoint in williamsburg. I just want to pass along the info. Stay safe and maybe don’t answer your door.” Two other friends responded with thanks.

“I know a lot of people, especially on Facebook, who end up believing whatever they see first,” says Kate Gardiner, a social media journalist. “It’s almost impossible to track something back to its point of origin there.”

While the space for distributed fact-checking offered by Twitter and Facebook may not be perfect, it’s a vast improvement over the rumor mills and slow debunking of the past, says Jarvis. “Look, my dear beloved father sends out these emails that have been forwarded 87 times, and my sister, who isn’t a tech saavy person at all, goes to Snopes and says ‘Dad, not true.’ We all have fathers and uncles who send this crap around, but there’s a mechanism now to go out and debunk these things that we haven’t had before. I think it’s an improvement, and looking at the one-in-a-billion lies misses the point.”

Keller is director of social media for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Businessweek.com — Top News

Read More..

Hurricane’s death toll rises to 65 in Caribbean

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — As Americans braced Sunday for Hurricane Sandy, Haiti was still suffering.

Officials raised the storm-related death toll across the Caribbean to 65, with 51 of those coming in Haiti, which was pelted by three days of constant rains that ended only on Friday.

As the rains stopped and rivers began to recede, authorities were getting a fuller idea of how much damage Sandy brought on Haiti. Bridges collapsed. Banana crops were ruined. Homes were underwater. Officials said the death toll might still rise.

“This is a disaster of major proportions,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told The Associated Press, adding with a touch of hyperbole, “The whole south is under water.”

The country’s ramshackle housing and denuded hillsides are especially vulnerable to flooding. The bulk of the deaths were in the southern part of the country and the area around Port-au-Prince, the capital, which holds most of the 370,000 Haitians who are still living in flimsy shelters as a result of the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Santos Alexis, mayor of the southern city of Leogane, said Sunday that the rivers were receding and that people were beginning to dry their belongings in the sun.

“Things are back to being a little quiet,” Alexis said by telephone. “We have seen the end.”

Sandy also killed 11 in Cuba, where officials said it destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of houses. Deaths were also reported in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. Authorities in the Dominican Republic said the storm destroyed several bridges and isolated at least 130 communities while damaging an estimated 3,500 homes.

Jamaica’s emergency management office on Sunday was airlifting supplies to marooned communities in remote areas of four badly impacted parishes.

In the Bahamas, Wolf Seyfert, operations director at local airline Western Air, said the domestic terminal of Grand Bahamas‘ airport received “substantial damage” from Sandy’s battering storm surge and would need to be rebuilt.

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Founding Father featured in popular new video game

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Wars and video games seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. But those games usually involve tanks and machine guns and Tet offensives; not horses, bayonets and Bunker Hill.

Now, though, one of the biggest game releases of the upcoming holiday season is immersing players in the Revolutionary War, with key cameos from George Washington, Ben Franklin and other Founding Fathers.

Assassin’s Creed III is due for release Tuesday, immersing players in Colonial America and the Revolutionary War.

In some ways, the game is meticulous with historical accuracy. Great attention was paid to research to recreate the cities of New York and Boston on a one-third scale. History professors were brought in as consultants.

In other ways, the game takes liberties with history. It integrates the Revolutionary War into the overarching story of Assassin’s Creed, in which the secret society of the Knights Templar fills the role as the game’s overarching villain.

Game creators were reluctant to reveal too many details in advance of the game’s release. Review copies were not available in advance.

The game’s creative director, Alex Hutchinson, said the ability to explore a historical era that has been largely left untouched by the gaming world was one of the most exciting aspects of the project.

As for Washington himself, Hutchinson said he wanted the game to portray the fact that for the man who would become the nation’s first president, it was far from certain that America would win the war.

“He wasn’t sure he was going to win,” Hutchinson said. “When you read their letters, they were very uncertain for much of their time” how the war would turn out.

Francois Furstenberg, a history professor at the University of Montreal, who has written about the iconography that surrounds Washington, served as a consultant and said he was interested less in making sure names and dates were perfect, but more in the game’s overarching narrative. He said the game’s creators shared his desire to depict the war in a nuanced way that avoided portraying one side as the good guys and vice versa.

“Anything that complicates the narrative is a good thing,” he said. “If anything I think they were more interested in sort of a muckraking account” of the revolution, something that agreed with Furstenberg.

The game’s protagonist — Connor, half American Indian, Half British and not aligned with either side — served as a good vehicle for exploring the era in a way that avoids patriotic cliches, Hutchinson said.

The game’s international fan base also demands an even-handed approach to the Revolution, said Hutchinson, who is frequently questioned by skeptical fans who worry the game will be too pro-American.

Not to worry, said Hutchinson, who jokes that he’s an Australian living in Canada making a game about the American Revolution for a French software company.

Even where it sought to be realistic, the game’s creators took a few liberties. Washington, for instance, is first introduced as a young officer serving under General Braddock in the French and Indian war. The game makers took great care to show the youthful Washington accurately, as a redhead. Looking at the finished product, though, they felt they ought to add a touch of gray to Washington‘s hair, to more closely match the iconic image of Washington held by the public.

“We did not know how odd it is to see a red-headed George Washington,” Hutchinson said. “It was one of those instances where the fiction felt more right than the real version.”

Ubisoft takes far greater liberties in a downloadable add-on game that will be available to Assassin’s Creed players a few months after the games release. In “The Tyranny of King Washington,” players confront a scenario where Washington, rather than yielding power to civil authority, parlays his power and popularity and establishes himself as a new monarch.

At George Washington‘s Mount Vernon estate, curators are happy that the game will introduce so many kids to Washington and the Founding Fathers and hopefully get them thinking about history.

“I would love for people to focus on exactly the incredible choice Washington made to relinquish power,” said Carol Cadou, senior curator at Mount Vernon, even if the vehicle for prompting that discussion is a game that contorts and creates an alternate reality.

Historical figures certainly make appearances in some video games, but rarely from historical eras and rarely in a setting devoted to realism. The popular game “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” for instance, features John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon and former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. But in the game, the four of them team up to defeat an onslaught of zombies at the Pentagon.

Cadou says that Washington has so often been portrayed so heroically that he becomes unrelatable.

“Washington is almost so good he becomes bland,” she said. “Even if he’s depicted in a negative way, it gives us an opportunity to explore” his life that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

The Mount Vernon estate has focused in recent years on piercing the stodgy image of Washington on the dollar bill and sought to emphasize his military daring and action-hero aspects of his life story.

Mount Vernon even looked at producing its own educational video game featuring Washington, but ultimately concluded that such a game would be “a little more violent than we had the appetite for.”

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

NBC sets premiere dates for “1600 Penn,” Eva Longoria series

LOS ANGELES, Oct 30 (TheWrap.com) – NBC announced midseason premiere dates Tuesday for three new series, including the Bill Pullman presidential comedy “1600 Penn” and the new Eva Longoria relationship series “Ready for Love.”

The network also announced the premiere date for the drama “Deception,” which was formerly known as “Infamous.”

In addition to the series premieres, the network announced return dates for several shows, including the on-the-bubble comedy “Community,” which will return to its previous Thursday night timeslot.

“Deception,” a dark family mystery starring Meagan Good and Victor Garber, premieres on Monday, January 7 at 10 p.m. It will follow “The Biggest Loser,” which starts its new season with a two-night premiere on January 6 and 7.

“1600 Penn,” starring Bill Pullman as the president in a comedy about the First Family, premieres Thursday, January 10 at 9:30. The series, which also stars Jenna Elfman and Josh Gad, was co-created by “Modern Family” director Jason Winer. It will join a slightly altered Thursday lineup.

“Parks and Recreation” moves to 8:30 on January 17, and “Community,” returns to 8 p.m. on February 7.

“Ready for Love,” a reality show executive produced by former “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria, will premiere Sunday, March 31 at 8 p.m.

(Editing By Zorianna Kit)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Medications for Normal Aging Driving Up Prescription Drug Expenses

People talk a lot these days about the cost of prescription medications. The issue has been at the heart of discussions about healthcare reform and funding for Medicare. But what if many of the medications that are driving high healthcare costs weren’t even necessary?

That question may become the focus of attention based on new statistics released Tuesday which show the cost impact of optional medications used for conditions that, traditionally, have been considered a normal part of aging — such as sexual dysfunction, menopause, urinary symptoms and insomnia.

Between 2007 and 2011, utilization of drugs to treat these conditions rose 32 percent among Medicare beneficiaries and 8.5 percent among people who have private insurance. These age-related medications are now so popular they rank third in cost impact only behind diabetes and cholesterol medications among commercially insured patients.

“The trend we observed was surprising,” Reethi N. Iyengar, senior manager of health services research at Express Scripts, told Take Part. “There has been no empirical evidence on the cost impact of these medications. We hope, with this study, people will now see what has been happening over the past five years.”

RELATED: Americans Struggling to Pay for Prescription Drugs

The study was conducted by Express Scripts using pharmacy claims data from its  nationally representative sample. The analysis focused on people ages 65 and older, both privately insured and Medicare members.

Iyengar’s analysis showed diabetes medications for privately insured patients in 2011 cost, per member,  an average of $ 81.12 per person compared to $ 78.38 for cholesterol medications and $ 73.33 for aging-related conditions. Drugs for high blood pressure and heart disease ranked fourth at $ 62.84.

The $ 73.33 spent per member, per year “might not sound like much,” Iyengar notes. “But if you look at how much is spent compared to chronic conditions, it’s a high amount. People are spending more on these medications for conditions that are considering to be a normal part of aging.”

Other conditions considered age-related were mental alertness/memory issues, skin aging and hair loss. Among people on Medicare, medications for non-infection urinary symptoms, insomnia and hormone replacement therapy produced the highest expenditures in the category.

RELATED: Quick Study: More Americans Skipping Doctor Visits

 Among privately insured people, drugs for mental alertness/memory issues, non-infection urinary symptoms and hormone replacement therapy where the top three conditions for total spending.

The rising popularity of these medications will continue to weigh heavily on the nation’s overall healthcare expenditures. More than 88 million Americans will be over age 65 by 2050, Iyengar notes. The increased spending on normal aging processes could squeeze dollars available for other healthcare needs, such as immunizations and anti-obesity treatments that impact public health.

Moreover, over-spending could result in a reduction in benefits for everyone. Insurers and the federal government may need to opt for cost-containment strategies of optional, age-related medications going forward, she said.

RELATED: 5 Big Questions About Obama’s Healthcare Plan

“Prescription benefit managers are always looking to contain cost,” she says. “What this study calls for is better management of cost of utilization while insuring much-needed access to medication for patients.”

The study also hints at the Baby Boomers’ views of aging. Some people may feel the treatment of erectile dysfunction or skin wrinkles is important to quality of life while others say such therapies “medicalize” normal aging.

“It can definitely be argued that these medications enhance quality of life, some more than others,” Iyengar says. “What we think is important is that we should be monitoring this trend, not necessarily limiting these medications or limiting access.”

Question: Should insurers limit coverage for elective, age-related medications in order to hold down costs? Tell us what you think in the comments.

---

Shari Roan is an award-winning health writer based in Southern California. She is the author of three books on health and science subjects.

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Disney buys firm behind Star Wars

30 October 2012 Last updated at 17:25 ET

Disney is buying Lucasfilm, the company behind the Star Wars films, from its chairman and founder George Lucas for $ 4.05bn (£2.5bn).

Mr Lucas said: “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of film-makers.”

In a statement announcing the purchase, Disney said it planned to release a new Star Wars film, episode seven, in 2015.

That will be followed by episodes eight and nine and then one new movie every two or three years, the company said.

The last Star Wars film was 2005′s Revenge of the Sith, and Disney said it believed there was “substantial pent-up demand”.

Disney will pay about half in cash and half in stock, issuing 40 million Disney shares in the transaction.

The deal follows Disney’s acquisitions of Pixar studios for $ 7.4bn in 2006 and Marvel comics for $ 4.2bn in 2009.

“Our valuation of Lucasfilm is roughly comparable to the value we placed on Marvel when we announced that acquisition in 2009,” Disney said, adding that the valuation was almost entirely driven by the Star Wars franchise.

Transition

George Lucas launched Lucasfilm in 1971 and the first Star Wars film was released in 1977.

“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” Mr Lucas said.

“I’ve always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime.”

Mr Lucas will continue as a creative consultant.

Kathleen Kennedy, currently co-chairman of Lucasfilm, will become president of the firm and will be the executive producer on the new Star Wars films.

Lucasfilm is also the production company behind the Indiana Jones franchise, and fantasy films Willow and Labyrinth.

Michael Corty, analyst at Morning Star, said Disney’s deal was clearly part of a pattern in buying new franchises.

“Pixar was the first big one, then Marvel, and now this one here,” he said.

“Because Lucas is private, I would assume most investors would be surprised.”

BBC News – Business

Read More..

Pole gets 30 years for killing 6 on Channel Island

LONDON (AP) — A Polish builder who killed six people, including his wife and children, on the British Channel Island of Jersey has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Damian Rzeszowski, 31, carried out the knife attack in August 2011 at his home. He was said to have become depressed after his wife admitted to an affair.

Rzeszowski was convicted of six counts of manslaughter but cleared of murder. On Monday, Judge Michael Birt sentenced him to 30 years in jail for each victim, but the sentences are to run concurrently.

Rzeszowski’s victims were his wife Izabela Rzeszowska, 30; 5-year-old daughter, Kinga; 2-year-old son, Kacper; father-in-law, Marek Gartska, 56; his wife’s friend Marta De La Haye, 34; and her 5-year-old daughter, Julia.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Apple software, retail chiefs out in sweeping overhaul

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook on Monday replaced the heads of its software and retail units in the company’s most sweeping executive shake-up in a decade following embarrassing problems with its new mapping program and unpopular store-related decisions.

Software chief Scott Forstall, who oversaw the launch of the flawed mapping software and much criticized Siri voice-enabled assistant, will leave Apple next year and serve as an advisor to Cook in the meantime.

Forstall, seen as a polarizing figure inside Apple, had been billed as one of the future candidates to take the top job at Apple. He was the executive behind the panned Apple Maps app that the company announced with much fanfare in summer.

The moves, which come a little more than a year into Cook’s tenure as CEO, were described by Apple as a way to increase “collaboration” across its hardware, software and services business.

“These changes show that Tim Cook is stamping his authority on the business,” Ben Wood, analyst with CCS Insight, said. “Perhaps disappointed with the Maps issues, Forstall became the scapegoat.”

Critics of the maps debacle, which led Cook to apologize to customers, had been calling for Forstall’s head. “Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?” Fortune editor Philip Elmer Dewitt wrote on Sept 29.

The moves hand over substantially more responsibility to Cue, the head of Internet Software and Services who helped create the iTunes music store and App Store. The 23-year Apple veteran already is in charge of Cloud services and will take on Apple Maps and Siri.

Apple said a search is underway for a new retail chief to replace John Browett and that the retail team would report directly to Cook. Browett had riled up the retail store staff when he decided to reduce the number of retail employees.

Browett took over as head of Apple’s retail stores earlier this year, replacing Ron Johnson, who went on to become the CEO of JC Penney.

Last week Apple delivered a second straight quarter of disappointing financial results, and iPad sales fell short of Wall Street’s targets, marring its record of consistently blowing past investors’ expectations.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Richard Chang)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Taylor Swift to co-host Grammy nominations in Nashville

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country-pop star Taylor Swift will co-host the Grammy nominations live on television from Nashville, the capital of country music, the Recording Academy said on Monday.

Swift, 22, who has won six Grammy awards, will join rapper-actor LL Cool J to announce nominees in some of the major categories during a one-hour live telecast on December 5, featuring performances from country artist Luke Bryan and pop-rockers Maroon 5.

The singer is currently on a touring blitz to promote her latest album, “Red”, and has become an awards show favorite, most recently premiering her new single at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.

Swift’s addition to the roster is part of the Grammy organization’s celebration of country music this year, moving the nominations concert from Los Angeles to Nashville, home to the Grand Ole Opry and dozens of recording studios that have spawned artists such as Swift, Carrie Underwood and Lady Antebellum.

Organizers began televising the nominations in a live show five years ago in a bid to boost TV viewership for the annual Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in February. This year, 39.9 million viewers tuned in to see British singer Adele sweep the awards with six major wins.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Dale Hudson)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..