BIG DUCK FILLS THE BILL WITH LIGHTS FOR HOLIDAYS

Big Duck fills the billwith lights for holidays
A large building shaped like a duck and known simply as the Big Duck, in Flanders, N.Y., some 75 miles east of New York City's Rockefeller Center, is lighted for the holidays.
Frist gives up bidfor president in 2008
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist renounced a bid for the White House in 2008 on Wednesday, an early dropout from the most wide-open presidential race in decades. "In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close," said the Tennessee Republican, a surgeon before he entered politics in 1994.
Part of suit settledin wrongful arrest
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A lawyer the FBI wrongly arrested after the 2004 Madrid terrorist bombings because of a misidentified fingerprint has settled part of his lawsuit against the U.S. government for 2 million. Brandon Mayfield, who was detained for two weeks in 2004, maintained that he was arrested because of his Muslim faith. "Not only does my detention as a material witness in the Madrid bombing underscore the fallacy that fingerprint identification is reliable, I hope the public will remember that the U.S. government also targeted me and my family because of our Muslim religion," he said in a statement Wednesday. The local FBI office said Wednesday that it was proud of its work in the case -- other than the fingerprint error.
HIV study findsrisk in stopping meds
One of the largest studies of HIV treatment has found that patients who temporarily stop taking their powerful medicines more than double their risk of dying. Many HIV patients have sought doctors' permission to periodically take a break from the tiresome regimen of AIDS-fighting drugs, which can cause incapacitating side effects. Several small studies have suggested "holidays" from medication might be OK for patients who appear to be doing well. But the new study, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests such a strategy can be dangerous: The rate of disease progression or death was more than twice as high in patients who took medications intermittently than in those who took them every day.
Forget the chalky drinkand just have some milk
It's a new way for milk to do the body good. Anyone who's had a radiological imaging exam of the digestive tract recalls having to drink a chalky liquid laced with barium as a contrast agent. Now, researchers report that another white liquid -- cow's milk -- may work just as well for one common test done to investigate the source of abdominal pain. "We are able to achieve similar bowel distension and enhancement as we see with the commonly used contrast agent, VoLumen," said Dr. Lisa Shah-Patel, a radiology resident at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. She presented the findings Wednesday during the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.
Venomous fish bitesman at his home
EAST ROCKAWAY, N.Y. -- A man was taken to a hospital after tangling with a venomous fish in his home aquarium, police said. A one spot foxface rabbitfish bit the 19-year-old aquarist Tuesday night while he was working on his fish tank in East Rockaway, said Nassau County Police Officer Thomas Brussell. The species, known by the scientific name Siganus unimaculatus, has venomous spines on its back, according to fishbase.org, an electronic database maintained by researchers. Also called the blotched foxface rabbitfish, the fish is found in tropical seas off western Australia, the Philippines and other parts of the western Pacific Ocean. Brussell said East Rockaway firefighters took the young man to a local hospital with a bite to his left index finger around 9:25 p.m., but information on his injuries and condition wasn't available early Wednesday. Police would not release the man's name.
Combined dispatches