57 candidates and Iraqi soldiers were killed and 123 injured after a suicide bomber at army recruitment center in Baghdad

Baghdad At least 57 candidates and Iraqi soldiers were killed and 123 injured after a suicide bomber blew himself up at army recruitment center in Baghdad, Tuesday, two weeks before U.S. combat duty in Iraq ended.The blast, which ravage the ranks recruits, is the one that claimed the most victims of this year and it happens when the unexpected guerrillas also launched a murder of the judges in the Iraqi capital and the restive provinces in northern Iraq.Bloodshed adds to the tension that has got worse after the general elections which did not complete more than five months ago. General elections were not yet produced a new government.

Guerrillas have been targeting Iraqi army and police as they prepared to assume full security responsibilities on 1 September, when the United States end the combat mission 7.5 years.The number of U.S. troops will be reduced to be 50 000 personnel to the mission of training before a full withdrawal is planned for next year.

“We’re waiting in line. Also, there officers and soldiers. Suddenly there was an explosion. Thanksgiving is just my hand injury,” said Aziz Saleh, one of which will be recruited, told Reuters Television, while doctors at al-Karkh hospital care victim injury.As many as 57 people were killed and 123 injured in an attack on an Army base in the field Maidan, the central part of Baghdad, according to information from the media office of the Ministry of Health.

The White House said U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the attack, but U.S. withdrawal timetable has not changed.”Our combat mission ended at the end of the month, but we’re still going to put forces in there that will help support the (Iraqi forces) as needed,” said spokesman Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One.(AFP)

Chicago Bulls vs Sacramento 98-87

Derrick Rose (1)

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – When the Chicago Bulls won in Sacramento on Nov. 14, they were hoping they’d get their next road victory before Thanksgiving. Instead, it took until New Year’s Eve. “I wasn’t thinking about the streak – I just wanted to get a win,” Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro said. “This was just a nice, solid win for us.” Derrick Rose scored 22 points, and Joakim Noah added 15 points and 21 rebounds to help the Bulls end a six-week road drought with a 98-87 victory over Detroit. “This feels good,” Noah said after Chicago won its third in a row overall. “I think we are just playing better basketball right now for whatever reason.” Rose finished with a point more than Ben Gordon, who joined Detroit from Chicago this summer. “Ben’s role is to score the ball, and I’m playing point guard, so no one said anything about this being me against him,” Rose said. “I’ll do whatever it takes for us to win, and today that took being aggressive.”

Chicago had lost eight straight on the road, but never trailed while handing Detroit its ninth straight loss. The Pistons (11-21) are 10 games under .500 for the first time since the 2000-01 season, but coach John Kuester was still encouraged. “I saw a number of positive things out there,” he said. “I’m sure people are going to hear that and say, ‘You must be kidding,’ but we did some good things. We lost Rip (Hamilton), Tayshaun (Prince) and Ben Gordon for extended periods of time, and there’s no chance that they were going to come right back in midseason form.” Tyrus Thomas added 19 points for Chicago (13-17), and John Salmons had 17.

Rodney Stuckey led the Pistons with 22 points despite leaving the game twice in the first half after spraining his left ankle. “The first time Stuck went down, I was really concerned, because the way he fell, I thought this was going to be another long-term injury for us,” Kuester said. “He not only went back in, he hurt it again and he still came back. No one would have blinked if he had taken the rest of the day off, so he earned our admiration.” Stuckey acknowledged playing through severe pain in the second half. “It hurt a lot – it always does when you sprain your ankle – and then it just gave out on me the second time,” he said. “I was going to play though it if I could even walk, though, because we need to get something going. There’s no way this group of players should only be scoring 87 points.” The Bulls led 44-39 after a sloppy first half that saw the teams combine for 22 turnovers. Detroit got to 46-44 in the third quarter, but Chicago led 69-56 at the end of the period. The Bulls led by 20 as the Palace emptied during the fourth quarter.

NOTES: Charlie Villanueva, who had stopped wearing the mask protecting his broken nose, put it back on for the second half, but only wore it for a few possessions. … Detroit has not led in the second half of any of its last six games. Their only lead in the last two games – at home against the struggling Knicks and Bulls – was 2-0 against New York. … Thomas had 10 points in the first three quarters without making a field goal. He was 0-for-2 from the floor and 10-for-12 from the line.

Selling,Buying, and Twittering All the Way

Once upon a time, people mailed their holiday wishes to the North Pole and hoped for a reply on Christmas Day. Nowadays they are sending their wishes into cyberspace and are apt to get a reply in minutes.America’s first Twitter Christmas got under way in earnest on Friday. Across the land, retailers and their customers used the social networking site to talk to one another about bargains, problems, purchases and shopping strategies.

After buying a new navigation system at 6 a.m. on the most frenzied shopping day of the year, Laura S. Kern of Los Angeles could not figure out why it was not giving her traffic updates. She sent a message to Best Buy’s Twitter account and within five minutes not one, but two Best Buy employees responded with fix-it advice.In Bloomington, Minn., Mall of America used its Twitter page to tell consumers two of its parking areas were at capacity and that their best bet was to park near Ikea.Twitter permits public communication via short, to-the-point messages. Many people use it to send mundane updates to their friends, but increasingly, the nation’s retailers see it as a business tool.It gives customers a practical way to cajole a retailer, complain about something or ask questions.

A Twitter post can in theory be seen by millions, and thus packs more punch than an e-mail message or a phone call to a store. The big retailers are all scrambling this Christmas to come up with Twitter plans. They are designating tech-savvy employees to respond to the posts, sometimes by providing up-to-minute inventory information from a sales floor, for example, or by offering help with some balky gadget.“It’s one of the greatest emerging communication channels out there,” said Greg Ahearn, senior vice president of marketing and e-commerce for Toys “R” Us. “This is a way people can stay connected with the brand in a way they’ve never been able to before.”So far this shopping weekend, special deals have been posted on Twitter from stores as varied as Best Buy, J.C. Penney, Toys “R“ Us, Staples, Gap, Bloomingdale’s, and Barneys. (Links to the retailing Twitter accounts mentioned in this article can be found in the Web version of the story on NYTimes.com.)

For the uninitiated, Twitter.com is a Web site where each member has a password-protected page. It has a blank box for typing in a message of 140 characters or fewer, an act known as tweeting.

To see a retailer’s messages, Twitter users “follow” the retailer, which means that the chain’s posts show up on their Twitter home page when they log in. And the system allows users to send messages in the other direction, so that a retailer’s employees will see them.

“I think in this economy you need to leverage every asset that you have,” said James Fielding, president of Disney Stores Worldwide, who sends messages under the Twitter name, or handle, DisneyStorePrez.

On Friday morning, as consumers flooded Disney Stores around the country, Mr. Fielding messaged: “We have amazing ONE DAY ONLY deals previewing on our Facebook page — become a fan today and find out more!”

Retailers hope that if they send Twitter messages, consumers will come. About 47 percent of retailers said they would increase their use of social media this holiday season, according to a study by Shop.org, part of the National Retail Federation, an industry group. And more than half of retailers said they added or improved their Facebook and Twitter pages. There are advantages for consumers too, like discounts. For instance, those who decided to follow Gap Outlet received an offer for 15 percent off purchases of $75 or more.

As shoppers jammed the aisles on Friday at a Best Buy store in Arlington Heights, Ill., an employee, Jerry DeFrancisco, went up to a computer kiosk and used his Twitter account to tell customers about Best Buy’s home theater deals. Then he resumed his in-store duties, helping a customer decipher a sales circular.

A few months ago, Best Buy began piloting a Twelpforce — a Twitter-inspired play on “help force” — of some 2,500 employees that answer consumers’ questions in real time.

“It’s 24-hour access to our employees,” said Brad Smith, director of interactive marketing and emerging media for Best Buy. The Twelpforce had fielded about 25,000 questions even before gearing up for Thanksgiving weekend.

Ms. Kern in Los Angeles used the service on Friday. After she could not get her new navigation system to work, she tried Best Buy’s telephone support line, only to receive a warning that her wait would be an hour. So she posted on Twitter instead, and within minutes, Best Buy employees were sending her useful links and details about her gadget. “It’s amazing,” she said later in the day. (Her interaction with the employees ultimately helped her realize she would need to go back to the store for help.)

Many retailers will be posting to their Twitter pages throughout the weekend and the entire holiday season. Some chains have an official Twitter account. Others have many, like one for each store, or one for each employee who wants to post messages. There are Twitter pages for designers, like Nicole Miller and Diane von Furstenberg.

Retailers also use Facebook to interact with their customers. But Facebook, with its photo albums and various applications, does not have the same no-frills immediacy as Twitter — which is why Twitter is ideal for instantaneously announcing sales.In addition to bargains, stores are also using Facebook and Twitter to promote contests and games that they hope will keep consumers engaged and coming back. Best Buy has an interactive Secret Santa application on its Facebook page. Gap is using Twitter to inform New York City residents and visitors where its “Gap Cheer” bus (filled with dancers and drummers) will be parked and giving away sweaters and jeans.

Of course, sometimes retailers simply use their Twitter posts to capture the spirit of the season. At 3:30 Thursday morning, an employee posted seven words on the Macy’s Twitter page, about a marching band that was practicing hours before the chain’s Thanksgiving day parade.It said: “Is he really running with a tuba?”

Mobile apps help people track H1N1, prevent flu

Rumors of a disease outbreak a century ago probably would have left the general populace feeling frightened, wondering whether their town would be the next to be hit.Now the well but worried can download a flu-tracking application and find out where in their state an H1N1 outbreak has occurred and learn the best ways to avoid it. They also can learn when vaccines will be available nearby and get news on how some of the afflicted are doing.

Outbreaks Near Me, a new, free application developed by non-profit HealthMap, is among a slew of flu-themed applications available on the iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch owners.A couple of dozen other flu-related apps have been created recently, including HMSMobile Swine Flu Center, by Harvard Medical School, which offers medical advice with animations. Others include flu games and jokes such as Swine Scan, which supposedly scans your body to detect infection.Outbreaks Near Me works like a GPS. It finds your location and tells you where H1N1 and other infectious outbreaks are occurring nearby with a display of pushpins on a map. Click on a pushpin and you can read news reports as well as personal accounts submitted by users. It also lets you set up an alert system, so if H1N1 arrives in your area, you’ll get a heads-up.

“Our app is all about giving people real-time alerts. We didn’t develop this to increase fear. It’s about helping people arm themselves,” says John Brownstein, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, who developed the app with colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab.H1N1, popularly known as swine flu, has infected an estimated 22 million Americans this year from April to October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has reported that the outbreak is linked to almost 4,000 deaths, including 540 children.

Since Outbreaks Near Me launched Sept. 1, about 100,000 people have downloaded it, Brownstein says. Though the app also reports recent E. coli, malaria and other outbreaks, H1N1 has by far been the most-searched disease, he says.Brownstein says the app has received more than 2,000 submissions. “People take photos of themselves in bed sick, or e-mail in to say their school is closed, or that there’s a vaccine shortage in their area,” he says.Outbreaks Near Me co-developer Clark Freifeld, a graduate student in media art and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says developers are analyzing submissions now and say the information appears to correlate with CDC data. It suggests the iPhone may be a sensitive tool for monitoring early outbreak trends, Freifeld says.

For big-picture influenza news, most people probably get information the traditional way, from CDC reports, says influenza expert William Schaffner, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. Apps may be best when you want more focused information, he says. “Like what is happening in grandma’s town, where you’re going for Thanksgiving.”The CDC does not comment on products such as apps, spokeswoman Karen Hunter says. Hunter says the agency is in the prototype stage of several new flu apps for iPhone and the Google Android, and they’re already using mobile text messaging (to sign up, text HEALTH to 87000) and a mobile website (http://m.cdc.gov) to distribute flu updates to tens of thousands of subscribers.