The Civil Wars cancel tour using divorce language

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Grammy-winning duo The Civil Wars have canceled their upcoming tour dates, citing irreconcilable differences.

The folk-pop duo Joy Williams and John Paul White released a statement Tuesday announcing that because of "internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition" they were unable to "continue as a touring entity at this time."

Although they used the language of divorce, the duo added, "Our sincere hope is to have new music for you in 2013."

Williams and White are both married, but to other people. Williams had a baby this summer with husband Nate Yetton, the duo's manager.

Earlier this year the pair canceled part of their European tour.

The duo found unexpected success with their 2011 debut album, "Barton Hollow." With backgrounds in gospel and rock, they met when they were both asked to contribute to a country project and found chemistry.

Back then, the pair framed their partnership in terms of courting. White told The Associated Press that after two songwriting sessions, "I finally got up the nerve to ask her out, as it were."

"In a musical way," Williams said.

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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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Four more years for Obama

President Barack Obama handily defeated Gov. Mitt Romney and won himself a second term Tuesday after a bitter and historically expensive race that was primarily fought in just a handful of battleground states. Obama beat Romney after nabbing almost every one of the crucial battleground states.

The Romney campaign's last-ditch attempt to put blue-leaning Midwestern swing states in play failed as Obama's Midwestern firewall sent the president back to the White House for four more years. Obama picked up the swing states of New Hampshire, Michigan, New Mexico, Iowa, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Ohio. Of the swing states, Romney only picked up North Carolina. Florida is still too close to call, but even if Romney won the state, Obama still handily beats him in the Electoral College vote. The popular vote will most likely be much narrower than the president's decisive Electoral College victory.

The Obama victory marks an end to a years-long campaign that saw historic advertisement spending levels, countless rallies and speeches, and three much-watched debates.

The Romney campaign cast the election as a referendum on Obama's economic policies, frequently comparing him to former President Jimmy Carter and asking voters the Reagan-esque question of whether they are better off than they were four years ago. But the Obama campaign pushed back on the referendum framing, blanketing key states such as Ohio early on with ads painting him as a multimillionaire more concerned with profits than people. The Obama campaign also aggressively attacked Romney on reproductive rights issues, tying Romney to a handful of Republican candidates who made controversial comments about rape and abortion.

These ads were one reason Romney faced a steep likeability problem for most of the race, until his expert performance at the first presidential debate in Denver in October. After that debate, and a near universal panning of Obama's performance, Romney caught up with Obama in national polls, and almost closed his favoribility gap with the president. In polls, voters consistently gave him an edge over Obama on who would handle the economy better and create more jobs, even as they rated Obama higher on caring about the middle class.

But the president's Midwestern firewall--and the campaign's impressive grassroots operation--carried him through. Ohio tends to vote a bit more Republican than the nation as a whole, but Obama was able to stave off that trend and hold an edge there over Romney, perhaps due to the president's support of the auto bailout three years ago. Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan all but moved to Ohio in the last weeks of the campaign, trying and ultimately failing to erase Obama's lead there.

A shrinking electoral battleground this year meant that only 14 states were really seen as in play, and both candidates spent most of their time and money there. Though national polls showed the two candidates in a dead heat, Obama consistently held a lead in the states that mattered. That, and his campaign's much-touted get out the vote efforts and overall ground game, may be what pushed Obama over the finish line.

Now, Obama heads back to office facing what will most likely be bitterly partisan negotiations over whether the Bush tax cuts should expire. The House will still be majority Republican, with Democrats maintaining their majority in the Senate.

The loss may provoke some soul searching in the Republican Party. This election was seen as a prime opportunity to unseat Obama, as polls showed Americans were unhappy with a sluggish economy, sky-high unemployment, and a health care reform bill that remained widely unpopular. Romney took hardline positions on immigration, federal spending, and taxes during the long Republican primary when he faced multiple challenges from the right. He later shifted to the center in tone on many of those issues, but it's possible the primary painted him into a too-conservative corner to appeal to moderates during the general election. The candidate also at times seemed unable to effectively counter Democratic attacks on his business experience and personal wealth.

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Elephant in South Korean zoo imitates human speech

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An elephant in a South Korean zoo is using his trunk to pick up not only food, but also human vocabulary.

An international team of scientists confirmed Friday what the Everland Zoo has been saying for years: Their 5.5-ton tusker Koshik has an unusual and possibly unprecedented talent.

The 22-year-old Asian elephant can reproduce five Korean words by tucking his trunk inside his mouth to modulate sound, the scientists said in a joint paper published online in Current Biology. They said he may have started imitating human speech because he was lonely.

Koshik can reproduce "annyeong" (hello), "anja" (sit down), "aniya" (no), "nuwo" (lie down) and "joa" (good), the paper says.

One of the researchers said there is no conclusive evidence that Koshik understands the sounds he makes, although the elephant does respond to words like "anja."

Everland Zoo officials in the city of Yongin said Koshik also can imitate "ajik" (not yet), but the researchers haven't confirmed the accomplishment.

Koshik is particularly good with vowels, with a rate of similarity of 67 percent, the researchers said. For consonants he scores only 21 percent.

Researchers said the clearest scientific evidence that Koshik is deliberately imitating human speech is that the sound frequency of his words matches that of his trainers.

Vocal imitation of other species has been found in mockingbirds, parrots and mynahs. But the paper says Koshik's case represents "a wholly novel method of vocal production" because he uses his trunk to reproduce human speech.

In 1983, zoo officials in Kazakhstan reportedly claimed that a teenage elephant named Batyr could reproduce Russian to utter 20 phrases, including "Batyr is good." But there was no scientific study on the claim.

Researchers believe Koshik learned to reproduce words out of a desire to bond with his trainers after he was separated from two other elephants at age 5.

Koshik emerged as a star among animal enthusiasts and children in South Korea after Everland Zoo claimed in 2006 that he could imitate words, two years after his trainers noticed the phenomenon. His growing reputation prompted Austrian biologist Angela Stoeger-Horwath and German biophysicist Daniel Mietchen to study him in 2010, zoo officials said.

Oh Suk-hun, a South Korean veterinarian who co-authored the research paper with Stoeger-Horwath and Mietchen, said the elephant apparently started imitating human speech to win the trust of his trainers.

In April, a children's science book called "Joa Joa, Speaking Elephant" was published. The cover photo showed Koshik opening his mouth wide while raising a trunk over his trainer's head.

Researchers said Koshik was trained to obey several commands and "exposed to human speech intensively" by trainers, veterinarians and zoo visitors.

Shin Nam-sik, a veterinary professor at Seoul National University who has seen Koshik, agreed with researchers' finding that the elephant was able to mimic human speech.

"In Koshik's case, the level of intimacy between him and his trainer was the key factor that made the elephant want to sound like a human," Shin said.

Kim Jong-gab, Koshik's chief trainer, said the elephant was timid for a male when he first came to Everland Zoo, so trainers often slept in the same area with him. Kim thinks that contact helped Koshik feel closer to humans.

Kim said he has another phrase he wants to teach Koshik: "Saranghae," or "I love you."

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Apple sells three million iPads over first weekend

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Composer, Pulitzer winner Carter dies in NY at 103

NEW YORK (AP) — Classical composer Elliott Carter, whose challenging, rhythmically complex works earned him widespread admiration and two Pulitzer Prizes, died Monday at age 103.

His music publishing company, Boosey & Hawkes, called him an "iconic American composer." It didn't give the cause of his death.

In a 1992 Associated Press interview, Carter described his works as "music that asks to be listened to in a concentrated way and listened to with a great deal of attention."

"It's not music that makes an overt theatrical effect," he said then, "but it assumes the listener is listening to sounds and making some sense out of them."

The complex way the instruments interact in his compositions created drama for listeners who made the effort to understand them, but it made them difficult for orchestras to learn. He said he tried to give each of the musicians individuality within the context of a comprehensible whole.

"This seems to me a very dramatic thing in a democratic society," he said.

While little known to the general public, he was long respected by an inner circle of critics and musicians. In 2002, The New York Times said his string quartets were among "the most difficult music ever conceived," and it hailed their "volatile emotions, delicacy and even, in places, plucky humor."

Carter had remained astonishingly active, taking new commissions even as he celebrated his 100th birthday in December 2008 with a gala at Carnegie Hall.

"I'm always proud of the ones I've just written," he said at the time.

In 2005, his "Dialogues," which had premiered the previous year, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in music. And in 2006, his "Boston Concerto" was nominated for a Grammy Award as best classical contemporary composition.

Carter won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for his Second String Quartet; his second award was in 1973 for his Third String Quartet. The Juilliard String Quartet chose to mark its 45th anniversary in 1991 with a concert of all four Carter string quartets. A fifth quartet came out in 1995.

When the first National Medal of Arts awards were given in 1985, Carter was one of 10 people honored, along with such legends as Martha Graham, Ralph Ellison and Georgia O'Keeffe. The awards were established by Congress in 1984.

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music said that at its best, Carter's music "sustains an energy of invention that is unrivaled in contemporary composition."

Carter said he found Europeans more receptive to his works than his fellow Americans because music in Europe is not purely entertainment but part of the culture, "something that people make an effort to understand."

The lack of widespread attention didn't seem to bother him.

"I don't think it means anything to be popular," he said. "When we see the popular tastes and the popular opinion constantly being manipulated by all sorts of different ways, it seems to me popularity is a meaningless matter."

In 1992, Carter said his favorite piece of music was his Concerto for Orchestra, written in 1969. It was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary season.

"It particularly expresses a picture of the United States as an evolving world of not only people but of nature," he said.

Among his early works were two ballets, "The Minotaur" and "Pocahontas," and his First Symphony. His First String Quartet in 1951 started him on the road to greater critical attention.

Besides composing, Carter wrote extensively about 20th-century music. A collection of articles, "The Writings of Elliott Carter: An American Composer Looks at Modern Music," was published in 1977.

Carter as born in New York in 1908. As a young man he became acquainted with composer Charles Ives, who encouraged his ambitions. He studied literature at Harvard and then studied music in Paris under famed teacher Nadia Boulanger, who also guided Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Virgil Thompson.

As Carter turned 100, he recalled a visit to the hall in 1924 to see the New York premiere of Igor Stravinsky's revolutionary work "The Rite of Spring."

"I thought it was the greatest thing I ever heard, and I wanted to do like that, too," Carter recalled. "Of course, half the audience walked out, which was even more pleasant to me. It seemed much more exciting than Beethoven and Brahms and the rest of them."

In 1939, he married sculptor Helen H. Frost Jones. They had one son. He is survived by his son and a grandson.

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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 .

___

Online:

Heart Association: http://www.heart.org

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

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Small margin splits dramatically different candidates

WASHINGTON (AP) — Suspense over the too-close-to-call presidential race has partly obscured the fact that Americans on Tuesday will choose between two dramatically different visions of government's proper role in our lives. The philosophical gulf between the two nominees is wide, even if the vote totals may be razor-thin.

With record numbers of people on food stamps and other assistance, President Barack Obama emphasizes "we're all in this together" — code for sweeping government involvement. His campaign theme song is "We Take Care of Our Own." Romney wants smaller government, including fewer regulations — rejecting Obama's contention that they're needed after the meltdowns in financial and mortgage markets and a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His theme song is the individualist anthem, "(I Was) Born Free."

For all their philosophical differences, neither man has hit Americans between the eyes with the painful truth of what it will take to tame deficit spending, driven by the public's demand for low taxes and high services.

This year's voters are unlikely to make big changes in Congress. After dramatic swings in the past three congressional elections, and ongoing assessments of the tea party's influence, power may not end up shifting on Capitol Hill for a while. The fiercely divided Congress may continue to block major presidential initiatives, regardless of who's in the White House, unless there's the type of bipartisan breakthrough that has proven elusive.

An Obama win presumably would keep the government roughly on its current course. Congressional Republicans would be unable to rescind his biggest domestic achievement, "Obamacare," which eventually will require everyone to have health insurance.

Writ large, Obama's approach to governing is a new generation of the New Deal and the Great Society. The federal government tries to balance interests such as energy exploration and the environment, private enterprise and consumer protection.

Romney's approach echoes Ronald Reagan's declaration that government is the problem, not the solution.

In a January GOP debate, Romney said: "Government has become too large. We're headed in a very dangerous direction. I believe to get America back on track, we're going to have to have dramatic, fundamental, extraordinary change in Washington to be able to allow our private sector to once again re-emerge competitively, to scale back the size of government."

Romney later said, "I was a severely conservative governor" of Massachusetts (a label at odds with his actual record there).

It's unlikely that a Romney presidency would reshape the federal government to the extent such rhetoric suggests. Like many politicians, Romney is more expansive with his promises than with details for achieving them.

He vows to slash spending and put the nation on a path to balanced budgets, for instance. Pressed for details, Romney offers few beyond ending the tiny federal subsidy to public television and "Big Bird."

Obama has gone a bit further in specifying how he would reduce the deficit. Unlike Romney, he would raise taxes on the wealthiest.

In a 50-50 nation, however, no politician wants to be the first to forcefully tell voters why it's impossible to achieve their three-pronged desire of keeping taxes low, keeping government services level and balancing the budget.

No matter who is president, the huge domestic challenge of 2013 will be to persuade Congress to compromise on tax and spending issues.

Many GOP lawmakers are adamant about keeping tax rates lower for everyone — including the richest households — than they were in Bill Clinton's presidency, which produced the last balanced budget. Congressional Democrats insist that any deficit-reduction plan include increased revenues, from the wealthiest taxpayers if no one else, along with spending cuts.

The package of major tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to hit on Jan. 1 — the "fiscal cliff," which could start a new recession -- will pose a huge challenge to whoever wins Tuesday.

Because of congressional gridlock, a Romney presidency might produce more dramatic changes through the other branches of government. Romney repeatedly has said he'd like to see a reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. He might be able to appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court to fulfill that wish.

It's hard to know how U.S. society, so accustomed to the abortion status quo of four decades, would react to states suddenly outlawing the procedure.

Hurricane Sandy is a reminder of how different political philosophies can affect people at more mundane, day-to-day levels. Romney has suggested shifting much of the responsibility for emergency management from the federal government to the states. That approach might have severely tested New Jersey this fall. But conservatives grow weary of looking to Washington to solve problem after problem.

In unguarded moments, politicians sometimes show their clearest philosophical leanings. Romney's much discussed remarks at a private fundraiser — criticizing the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes — suggested he sees a world of givers and takers. Such societies, he says, are in danger of having the government-dependent takers overwhelm the job-creating givers.

Republicans, on the other hand, pounced on Obama's non-scripted "you didn't build that" comment, his contention that people who built businesses had help, from teachers, family and other supporters — and sometimes the government. Obama said he was noting that successful businesses rely on government roads, schools, water, police protection and other tax-paid amenities.

The "you didn't build that" controversy underscored philosophical differences that voters will choose between Tuesday. Obama and Romney look at the same set of facts — in this case, successful businesses — and seize on different aspects.

The election winner may have a hard time pushing his agenda through a divided Congress. But voters have a vivid choice about what that agenda should look like.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Charles Babington covers national politics for The Associated Press.

An AP News Analysis

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Methane warnings ignored before NZ mine disaster

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand coal mining company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels before an underground explosion killed 29 workers two years ago, an investigation concluded.

The official report released Monday after 11 weeks of hearings on the disaster found broad safety problems in New Zealand workplaces and said the Pike River Coal company was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets.

Labor minister Kate Wilkinson resigned from her labor portfolio upon the report's release, saying she felt it was the right and honorable thing to do after the tragedy occurred on her watch. She plans to retain her remaining government responsibilities.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said the primary blame lies with the mining company. "The company completely and utterly failed to protect its workers," he said.

The Royal Commission report said New Zealand has a poor workplace safety record and its regulators failed to provide adequate oversight before the explosion.

At the time of the tragedy, New Zealand had just two mine inspectors who were unable to keep up with their workload, the report said. Pike River was able to obtain a permit with no scrutiny of its initial health and safety plans and little ongoing scrutiny.

Key said he agrees with the report's conclusion that there needs to be a philosophical shift in New Zealand from believing that companies are acting in the best interests of workers to a more proscriptive set of regulations that forces companies to do the right thing.

The commission's report recommended a new agency be formed to focus solely on workplace health and safety.

In the seven weeks before the explosion, the Pike River company received 21 warnings that methane gas had built up to explosive levels below ground and another 27 warnings of dangerous levels, the report said. The warnings continued right up until the morning of the tragedy.

The company used unconventional methods to get rid of methane, the report said. Some workers even rigged their machines to bypass the methane sensors after the machines kept automatically shutting down — something they were designed to do when methane levels got too high.

The company made a "major error" by placing a ventilation fan underground instead of on the surface, the report found. The fan failed after the first of several explosions, effectively shutting down the entire ventilation system. The company was also using water jets to cut the coal face, a highly specialized technique than can release large amounts of methane.

The report did not definitively conclude what sparked the explosion itself, although it noted that a pump was switched on immediately before the explosion, raising the possibility it was triggered by an electrical arc.

The now-bankrupt Pike River Coal company is not defending itself against charges it committed nine labor violations related to the disaster. Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 violations and his lawyers say he is being scapegoated.

An Australian contractor was fined last month for three safety violations after its methane detector was found to be faulty at the time of the explosion.

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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