梅州宫颈糜烂的表现症状梅州做双眼皮到哪里好,梅州整鼻子花多少钱,梅州女朋友小心怀孕咋办,梅州专业医疗盆腔炎附件炎,梅州妇产科人流的价格,梅州二个月打胎的费用是多少,梅州少女妊娠第二个月流产

A new shareholder complaint against AT&T claims the company encouraged employees to create fake accounts for its DirecTV Now streaming service to juice its subscriber numbers and mislead investors ahead of its acquisition of Time Warner, shareholders allege in an amended complaint filed last week as part of a lawsuit against the company.According to the lawsuit, employees — who faced aggressive sales quotas — were "taught and actively encouraged" to convert activation fees that customers paid to upgrade their phones into the price for multiple DirecTV Now subscriptions. This was allegedly executed by "waiving the fee, but charging the customer anyway, and applying the payment to up to three DirecTV Now accounts using fake email addresses."The complaint claims customers were not told they had been signed up for a subscription, and that the company is said to have fielded regular complaints from customers who said that they were billed for accounts they did not sign up for. The complaint also details other alleged methods for increasing subscriptions without clients' consent.The purpose of these efforts, the lawsuit alleges, was to create the false impression that the service was compensating for declines in the legacy DirecTV satellite business, and to help justify the company's acquisition of Time Warner, now called WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia is CNN's parent company.CNN Business asked AT&T to respond to the merits of the lawsuit as well as for comment on specific allegations within it, such as claims the company pressured employees by setting aggressive sales targets and that employees were encouraged to use unrelated fees to create DirecTV Now accounts."We plan to fight these baseless claims in court," AT&T said in a statement in response.Plaintiffs include Local 449, a union pension fund based in Pittsburgh, and Melvin Gross, an investor who exchanged Time Warner stock for AT&T stock as part of the acquisition.DirecTV Now, which AT&T launched in late 2016, was billed as a key part of the company's pivot to entertainment. The lawsuit alleges that executives, including CEO Randall Stephenson, were deceitful in claiming that DirecTV Now's growth was stable, and that it was driven by "organic" demand and only limited promotions.But beyond the alleged inflation of subscriber numbers at unwitting consumers' expense, the service also suffered from significant turnover as customers jumped from one discounted streaming service to another, according to the complaint.The complaint says the plaintiffs and their attorneys spoke with a number of current or former AT&T employees who gave information about the alleged scheme. It refers to one former employee in Michigan who allegedly estimated that around 40% to 50% of the customers he dealt with starting in early 2017 complained of being billed for DirecTV Now subscriptions that they said they had not signed up for.The allegations come at what is for several reasons a delicate time for the company.Stephenson just 3043

Americans spent .4 billion on the most popular brands of children's fruit drinks and flavored waters last year. Yet according to nutritional guidelines, none of the drinks were healthy.Why would loving parents do this? Perhaps because US beverage companies spent .7 million to advertise fun, fruity drinks with added sugars to families in 2018, according to 375

A United States Postal Service mail carrier has been chased by a turkey for months in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, according to a resident's Facebook post. 160

A pinch in the leg, a squeal and a trickle of tears. One baby after another in Malawi is getting the first and only vaccine against malaria, one of history’s deadliest and most stubborn of diseases.The southern African nation is rolling out the shots in an unusual pilot program along with Kenya and Ghana. Unlike established vaccines that offer near-complete protection, this new one is only about 40% effective. But experts say it’s worth a try as progress against malaria stalls: Resistance to treatment is growing and the global drop in cases has leveled off. With the vaccine, the hope is to help small children through the most dangerous period of their lives. Spread by mosquito bites, malaria kills more than 400,000 people every year, two-thirds of them under 5 and most in Africa.Seven-month-old Charity Nangware received a shot on a rainy December day at a health clinic in the town of Migowi. She watched curiously as the needle slid into her thigh, then twisted up her face with a howl.“I’m very excited about this,” said her mother, Esther Gonjani, who herself gets malaria’s aches, chills and fever at least once a year and loses a week of field work when one of her children is ill. “They explained it wasn’t perfect, but I feel secure it will relieve the pain.”There is little escaping malaria -- “malungo” in the local Chichewa language -- especially during the five-month rainy season. Stagnant puddles, where mosquitoes breed, surround the homes of brick and thatch and line the dirt roads through tea plantations or fields of maize and sugar cane. In the village of Tomali, the nearest health clinic is a two-hour bike ride away. The longer it takes to get care, the more dangerous malaria can be. Teams from the clinic offer basic medical care during visits once or twice a month, bringing the malaria shot and other vaccines in portable coolers. Treating malaria takes up a good portion of their time during the rainy season, according to Daisy Chikonde, a local health worker.“If this vaccine works, it will reduce the burden,” she said.Resident Doriga Ephrem proudly said her 5-month-old daughter, Grace, didn’t cry when she got the malaria shot.When she heard about the vaccine, Ephrem said her first thought was “protection is here.” Health workers explained, however, that the vaccine is not meant to replace antimalarial drugs or the insecticide-treated bed net she unfolds every night as the sun sets and mosquitoes rise from the shadows. “We even take our evening meals inside the net to avoid mosquitoes,” she said.It took three decades of research to develop the new vaccine, which works against the most common and deadly of the five parasite species that cause malaria. The parasite’s complex life cycle is a huge challenge. It changes forms in different stages of infection and is far harder to target than germs.“We don’t have any vaccines against parasites in routine use. This is uncharted territory,” said Ashley Birkett, who directs PATH’s Malaria Vaccine Initiative, a nonprofit that helped drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline develop the shot, brand-named Mosquirix. The bite of an infected mosquito sends immature parasites called sporozoites into the bloodstream. If they reach the liver, they’ll mature and multiply before spewing back into the blood to cause malaria’s debilitating symptoms. At that point, treatment requires medicines that kill the parasites.Mosquirix uses a piece of the parasite — a protein found only on sporozoites’ surface — in hopes of blocking the liver stage of infection. When a vaccinated child is bitten, the immune system should recognize the parasite and start making antibodies against it.Scientists also are searching for next-generation alternatives. In the pipeline is an experimental vaccine made of whole malaria parasites dissected from mosquitoes’ salivary glands but weakened so they won’t make people sick. Sanaria Inc. has been testing its vaccine in adults, and is planning a large, late-stage study in Equatorial Guinea’s Bioko Island.And the U.S. National Institutes of Health soon will start initial tests of whether injecting people periodically with lab-made antibodies, rather than depending on the immune system to make them, could offer temporary protection during malaria season. Think of them as “potentially short-term vaccines,” NIH’s Dr. Robert Seder told a recent meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.For now, only babies in parts of Malawi, Kenya and Ghana are eligible for the Mosquirix vaccine. After the vaccine was approved in 2015, the World Health Organization said it first wanted a pilot roll-out to see how well it worked in a few countries — in real-world conditions — before recommending that the vaccine be given more widely across Africa. “Everyone is looking forward to getting it,” said Temwa Mzengeza, who oversees Malawi’s vaccine programs. Those eager for the shots include her husband, whom she had to stop from trying to get them, she said.Mzengeza used to come down with malaria several times a year until she started following her own advice to sleep under a net every night. Unlike many other kinds of infections, people can get malaria repeatedly, building up only a partial immunity.In the pilot program that began last year, 360,000 children in the three countries are meant to be vaccinated annually. The first dose is given at about age 5 months and the final, fourth booster near the child’s second birthday.Experts say it is too early to know how well the vaccine is working. They’re watching for malaria deaths, severe infections and cases of meningitis, something reported during studies but not definitively linked to the vaccine.“To do something completely new for malaria is exciting,” said researcher Don Mathanga, who is leading the evaluation in Malawi. The rainy season has brought new challenges, making some rural roads impassable and complicating efforts to track down children due for a shot. So far in Malawi, the first dose reached about half of the children targeted, about 35,000. That dropped to 26,000 for the second dose and 20,000 for the third. That’s not surprising for a new vaccine, Mzengeza said. “It will pick up with time.”At the health clinic in Migowi in Malawi’s southern highlands, workers see signs of hope. Henry Kadzuwa explains the vaccine to mothers waiting at the clinic. He said there was a drop in malaria cases to 40 in the first five months of the program, compared to 78 in the same period in 2018.Even though he wishes his 3-year-old daughter, Angel, could receive the vaccine, “it’s protecting my community. It also makes my work easier,” Kadzuwa said. The Migowi area has one of the country’s highest rates of malaria, and a worn paper register in the clinic’s laboratory lists scores of cases.At the clinic, Agnes Ngubale said she had malaria several years ago and wants to protect her 6-month-old daughter, Lydia, from the disease.“I want her to be healthy and free,” she said. “I want her to be a doctor.”And she has memorized the time for Lydia’s second dose: “Next month, same date.”___Neergaard reported from Washington.___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives 7200

A North Carolina animal shelter is looking for a forever home for one moody cat.According to a Facebook post from Mitchell County Animal Rescue, Perdita is available to adopt for free, but she dislikes a lot of things.Among the dislikes are "the color pink, kittens (yuk they are so chipper), dogs, children, the Dixie Chicks, Disney movies, Christmas and last but NOT least...HUGS," the shelter said. "She's single and ready to be socially awkward with a socially awkward human who understands personal space."The shelter also revealed what things she likes. They include "staring into your soul until you feel as if you may never be cheerful again; the song Cat Scratch Fever, the movie Pet Cemetery (Church is her hero), jump scares (her specialty), lurking in dark corners, being queen of her domicile, fooling shelter staff into thinking she's sick (vet agrees...she's just a jerk)," the shelter said. 918