GOP Candidates Looking to 'Close the Deal' in Last-Chance Iowa Debate

The Republican presidential candidates will have one last chance on the national stage Thursday night to make their case to voters before the frantic season of caucuses and primaries gets underway. At the Fox News debate in Sioux City, Iowa, everybody but front-runner Newt Gingrich is looking to shake up the race in a big way.

In a primary campaign replete with gaffes and other "oops" moments, the candidates are under pressure to give a steady performance -- they don't want another public misstep hanging in the cold Iowa air for the three remaining weeks before the caucuses. For the middle-of-the-pack candidates, the debate is a chance to demonstrate why caucus-goers should give them a second look. For Gingrich and Mitt Romney, it's a chance to lock down notoriously fickle and straying support.

"This is a clean-up debate," said Steffen Schmidt, political science professor at Iowa State University. "It's sort of the county fair right before the state fair ... where they want to see whether that pony is lame or not."

Lawmakers Express Optimism for Deal on Budget, Tax Cut

Shifting from confrontation to cooperation, congressional leaders expressed optimism Thursday that agreement was near on extending this year's payroll tax cut, renewing unemployment benefits and averting a federal shutdown.

"We can extend payroll tax relief for American workers and create new jobs and keep the government running and, frankly, we can do it in a bipartisan way," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters, a turnabout from weeks of partisan sniping from both sides.

"No more show votes," Boehner said after praising earlier remarks by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that lingering disagreements on a mammoth spending bill could be easily resolved. "It's just time to legislate."

Reid opened the Senate's morning session by saying he and the chamber's top Republican have held talks to resolve remaining disputes. With lawmakers itching to return home before the holidays, Reid said he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., hope they can reach a deal "that would get us out of here in a reasonable time, in the next few days."

Standing just across the aisle, McConnell agreed with Reid -- a stark contrast to recent days, when the two have fired sharp partisan volleys at each other.

CDC study shows 'widespread' sexual violence in U.S.

Sexual violence is a widespread problem in the USA that strikes the majority of its victims early in life, according to a major government study released Wednesday.

Nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men report being raped in their lifetime, says the study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study is the first to examine the prevalence of rape, sexual violence other than rape, stalking and intimate partner violence, and to report the damaging health consequences that last a lifetime. It calls for prevention efforts "that should start early."

Among female victims, 30% reported being first raped when they were between 11 and 17 years old; 12% were 10 or younger. Among males, 28% of male victims were first raped when they were 10 or younger.

"The finding of this happening at an early age has huge policy implications," says Howard Spivak, director of the CDC's division of violence prevention. "We need to focus on children, not (just) teens or adults. There's already a significant number of individuals affected by the time they are teens or adults."

Study: Statins reduce flu death risk by half

Statins, the drugs that can dramatically lower cholesterol levels, may one day also prove useful in combating serious cases of the flu.

A preliminary study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases finds that patients hospitalized with influenza were less likely to die if they were taking a statin, compared with their peers who weren't taking one of the drugs. The effect held even after adjusting for heart disease.

But it's far too soon to consider adding statins to the existing anti-flu armamentarium, the authors stated.

"At this point, statins should not become the standard of care for people hospitalized with the flu," cautioned study co-author Dr. Ann Thomas, a public health physician with the Oregon Public Health Division in Portland. "We would like to see more studies, [and] I think it would be worthwhile to do these studies."

Pearl Harbor Survivors Say 'Hawaii Five-O' Show Disrespected Graves While Filming

A group of Pearl Harbor survivors say they were disrespected by the crew of the CBS drama "Hawaii Five-O" during a visit to Honolulu's National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

The Denver-based Greatest Generations Foundation took 23 veterans to the Punchbowl cemetery last week to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The veterans found it offensive that the crew members didn't stop production while the national anthem and taps were played and that they were walking on graves, said Steffan Tubbs, a foundation board member and co-host of KOA-AM's morning news show in Denver.

Tubbs visited the cemetery with the group, which conducted a small ceremony there.

The crew was filming a scene involving a lead character visiting his father's grave, "which in reality was surrounded by the real graves of WWII heroes," Tubbs said Tuesday. "It didn't seem right."

Cemetery Director Gene Castagnetti said the filming was approved beforehand. He added walking on graves is unavoidable and not considered disrespectful if done carefully.