Newt Gingrich has momentum as South Carolina goes to the polls

Polls show the South Carolina primary Saturday is now Newt Gingrich's to lose after Mitt Romney stumbled this week. But Romney still is favored to win Florida's primary and the nomination.

What a difference a week can make!

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When he got up Monday morning, Mitt Romney had a comfortable 23-point Gallup poll advantage over GOP presidential rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum in national tracking polls.

By the end of the week, and as South Carolinians went to the polls in the first southern primary election, that margin had been cut by more than half to 10 points. Worse yet, some South Carolina polls had Romney dropping behind Gingrich ? 26-32 percent in the latest Clemson University Palmetto Poll.

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What happened?

? Rick Perry dropped out and endorsed Gingrich ? not only shifting at least some primary votes to the former House speaker but reducing the number of candidates among whom the more conservative vote likely would have been split to Romney?s advantage.

? On Monday and Thursday, Gingrich performed solidly in debates, winning standing ovations while Romney stumbled over questions about his wealth and the amount of income taxes he pays. Gingrich even turned what could have been an ?open marriage? blow to his already-questionable marital history into a well-received blast at the ?destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media.?

? It turned out that Santorum, not Romney, had won the most votes in the Iowa caucuses. In the overall scheme of things, it wasn?t a big deal. But it was a distraction that helped deflate Romney?s supposed front-runner status.

?Clearly things are collapsing? for Romney, Gallup?s Editor-in-chief Frank Newport told MSNBC.

?The margin for Romney has evaporated this week, and we believe that Gingrich will win the South Carolina primary,? says Clemson University political scientist Dave Woodard.?

That?s the prediction from two other prominent sources.

Nate Silver, who writes the closely-watched FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times now gives Gingrich a 64 percent chance of winning South Carolina (compared to just 36 percent chance for Romney). The prediction market Intrade (which can change moment-to-moment) says Gingrich has an 86 percent chance of winning the first southern primary.

"If we get every conservative to decide Newt Gingrich is the right person to stop a Massachusetts moderate, we will win by a surprising margin, and that's going to set the stage for us winning the nomination," Gingrich said as he campaigned Friday.

For their part, Romney and his aides have spent the hours since Thursday night?s debate scrambling to lower expectations.

"I expect that Newt will win some primaries and contests and I expect I will as well," Romney said on the Laura Ingraham radio show Friday. "I'm not expecting to win them all."

But if Romney can recover from this predicted upset (or if he can surprise the pundits and pollsters and win by a slim margin Saturday), he still has a good chance of winning the nomination.

Intrade says he has a 63 percent chance of taking the next big primary ? Florida ? and a 70 percent chance of being nominated (compared to just 26 percent for Gingrich). Nate Silver gives Romney a whopping 93 percent chance of winning the Sunshine State.

In all of the polls tracked by Real Clear Politics, Romney wins the Republican nomination by an average of 11 percentage points. In all of the general election surveys pitting each of the GOP candidates against Barack Obama, Romney comes much closer than Gingrich, Santorum, or Ron Paul to defeating the incumbent president?? the clearest gauge of his electability.

?I think anything is possible,? says Gallup?s Frank Newport. ?It wouldn?t be out of the realm of possibility if Romney recovers. We?ll wait and see.?

RECOMMENDED: Newt Gingrich: 8 of the GOP idea man's more unusual ideas

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Ohio voters want fracking halted for safety studies: poll (Reuters)

CLEVELAND (Reuters) ? Ohio voters by a wide margin want a halt to hydrofracking until more impact studies are conducted, though they believe there are economic benefits to drilling for natural gas and oil, a Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday found.

The poll comes just weeks after Ohio ordered the shutdown of five wells around Youngstown that accept waste materials from the fracking process, after a series of earthquakes that could be related to their operation.

Seventy-two percent of voters polled said there should be a halt in hydraulic fracturing, or simply fracking, in Ohio until more was known about the impact of the process, Quinnipiac found. Fracking uses massive, high-pressure injections of water, chemicals and sand to release trapped oil and gas.

Sixty four percent of respondents supported drilling for natural gas and oil because of the potential economic benefits to Ohio, and 29 percent opposed drilling due to the possible environmental impact.

"They recognize the economic value of drilling for fossil fuels in the state, but are worried about potential environmental risks of the specific technique -- hydro-fracking," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the university's polling institute.

Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,610 registered Ohio voters from January 9 to January 16 for the poll, which has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

Youngstown has experienced 11 earthquakes since the wells started using extremely high-pressure injection to force the waste materials into permeable rock, the latest on December 31.

Scientists monitoring the seismic activity in the Youngstown area found that the last two earthquakes were near the same depth and location of a disposal well. Since the shutdown, material has been removed from the well to relieve pressure.

State officials have not yet decided whether the wells will be shutdown permanently.

Fracking is widely used in the oil and gas industry and has sparked controversy in other parts of the country including in Pennsylvania, where it is used in natural gas exploration.

(Editing by David Bailey and Greg McCune)

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Jesse Metcalfe engaged to Cara Santana

Will she ever become a "Desperate Housewife?"

Jesse Metcalfe, known for his role as John Rowland on the ABC drama, is engaged to girlfriend Cara Santana, a source confirms exclusively to Us Weekly.

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The 33-year-old actor previously dated Courtney Robertson, a model who is currently a contestant on Ben Flajnik's season of "The Bachelor."

PHOTOS: Courtney and other girls' vying for Ben Flajnik's heart

A source tellsUs Metcalfe and Santana "have been dating for four to five years and living together for at least three."

Story: Gabby suspects Carlos of murder on 'Housewives'

His fiancee grew up in El Paso, Texas and moved to L.A. to become an actress.

Copyright 2012 Us Weekly

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Romney may not have won Iowa after all, Santorum now ahead (Americablog)

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Study: Indoor Tanning Linked With Early Onset of Skin Cancer (Time.com)

Given that indoor tanning beds were officially classified as a human carcinogen in 2009 -- up there with cigarettes and asbestos -- it should be fairly obvious that frequent tanning-booth exposure would increase your risk of skin cancer.

Indeed, the evidence linking indoor tanning with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, and squamous cell carcinoma, one of the more common forms of the disease, is "convincing," according to the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer. But the research concerning tanning beds and basal cell carcinoma, the third and most frequent major type of skin cancer -- which accounts for some 80% of all skin cancer cases in the U.S. -- has thus far been inconsistent. (See pictures of a photographer's intimate account of her mother's cancer ordeal.)

Basal cell carcinoma, a slow-growing cancer, has traditionally been a disease of middle age. But it's been appearing with increasing frequency in people under 40, especially in women -- a demographic that also happens to like indoor tanning -- suggesting a link. So researchers at the Yale School of Public Health sought to study the association.

The study included 376 people under 40, who had been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma between 2006 and 2010. They were matched with a control group of 390 dermatology patients who were diagnosed with minor skin conditions like cysts and warts. All participants had skin biopsies, and all were drawn from a Yale University database.

The researchers interviewed each participant about their UV exposure -- both in tanning beds and outdoors. They also asked about their history of sunburns, sunscreen use, family history of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers, and their self-reported eye, skin and hair color.

The conclusion: people who had ever used a tanning booth were 69% more likely to develop early-onset basal cell carcinoma than never tanners. Those who used tanning booths more regularly -- for at least six years -- were more than twice a likely to develop basal cell carcinoma, compared with never tanners.

The study found that women were far more devoted than men to indoor tanning, which might help explain why 70% of all early onset basal cell carcinomas occur in females. The authors concluded that about 27% of cases of early onset disease -- including 43% of cases in women -- could be prevented if people simply stopped using tanning booths.

That's a tall order, considering that some 30 million Americans use indoor tanning beds each year. Policy changes, such as the recent California ban on teen tanning, may help, the authors suggest. So would behavioral interventions aimed at women -- at least one study in 2010 found that the best way to get young women to tan less was to warn them about the skin-wrinkling effects of tanning-bed exposure, not the risk of skin cancer.

"Importantly, indoor tanning is a behavior that individuals can change. In conjunction with the findings on melanoma, our results for [basal cell carcinoma] indicate that reducing indoor tanning could translate to a meaningful reduction in the incidence of these two types of skin cancer," said Leah M. Ferrucci, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Public Health, in a statement.

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How 3-D Imaging Helped Halt Germany's War Machine in World War II [Video]

Features | More Science

Historians, pilots and interpreters recall the early days of surveillance and aerial photography, which helped the British curb Nazi Germany's military advance. A video from NOVA

By Rose Eveleth ?| January 16, 2012?|

Before satellite images and drones could pinpoint the exact location of enemy targets, warfare was often more like a game of Battleship: a complex series of guesses based on spotty information.

During World War II the British began to change that. They sent their fastest planes not to drop bombs, but to take pictures. By flying over German territory in planes outfitted with several cameras, pilots built a set of images that overlapped one another and could be viewed stereoscopically?that is, in 3-D. These three-dimensional images enabled the British to see for instance, camouflaged ships that would have not been easily spotted in 2-D images.

In this clip from "3D Spies of WWII" by PBS's NOVA, historians and pilots relive the early days of surveillance imaging to explain how those stereoscopic images worked and how they were used. The entire program, airing on PBS Wednesday, January 18 at 9 P.M. Eastern time, reveals more examples of how these images bolstered British war efforts.

Watch Sneak Peak: 3D Spies of WWII on PBS. See more from NOVA.

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Eurozone inflation drops back further in December

BRUSSELS (AP) ? Inflation in the 17 countries that use the euro eased by more than expected during December, official figures showed Tuesday in a welcome development for a currency union struggling in the face of a raging debt crisis.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said inflation in the eurozone fell to 2.7 percent in the year to December from the previous month's 3 percent largely on the back of lower energy prices. The fall was bigger than the initial estimate of 2.8 percent.

Though inflation has been running above the European Central Bank's target of just below 2 percent, the bank cut interest rates in both November and December, taking the benchmark rate back to the joint record low of 1 percent.

The bank expects inflation to drop back further in the coming months as high unemployment keeps a lid on wage demands and last year's spike in energy and commodity prices drop out of the annual comparison.

Further cuts in the main euro interest rate, the refi rate, are widely predicted over the coming months as the eurozone economy appears to be heading back into recession in the face of a debt crisis that's dented economic confidence.

"We believe that, with the ECB feeling (relatively) at ease about inflation prospects over the medium term, it will cut the rate down to 0.50 percent," said Gustavo Bagattini, European economist at RBC Capital Markets.

Associated Press

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