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U.S., Global Health Care Leaders to Convene in Washington D.C., April 4-6, for 8th Annual World Health Care Congress

Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, among 1,800 senior leaders from all sectors of health care industry to attend

WASHINGTON, March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The 8th Annual World Health Care Congress (WHCC)will convene next week, April 4-6, 2011 in Washington D.C. with more than 1,800 health care leaders to address the challenges of health reform, cost, quality and delivery. This event presents leading-edge news and insights from all industry sectors, including Fortune 500 companies, insurers, hospitals and health systems, pharmaceutical and biotech executives, academics, analysts and government officials.

WHAT: The 8th Annual World Health Care Congress

WHEN: April 4-6, 2011

WHERE: Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, MD

For a more detailed Congress agenda, keynote sessions and key speakers available for interview, please visit .

The faculty of 200 speakers includes:

John Mackey, CEO, Whole Foods Market

Mark Bertolini, CEO and President, Aetna

David Cordani, CEO, CIGNA

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana)

Douglas Elmendorf, Director, Congressional Budget Office

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, Chair, Clinical Center Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health

Toby Cosgrove, CEO and President, Cleveland Clinic

George Halvorson, Chairman and CEO, Kaiser Permanente

Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Phil Bredesen, 48th Governor, Tennessee

Jonathan B. Perlin, MD, President, Clinical Services and Chief Medical Officer, HCA

New focuses for 2011 include:

The Status of health reform after one yearAccountable Care OrganizationsState health policy issuesStrategies for prevention, wellness and health promotionNext generation health IT and mHealthThe World Health Innovation SummitThe 8th Annual World Health Care Congress (WHCC) is World Congress' flagship event in which more than 1,800 health care, government and corporate leaders formulate solutions to the challenges of health care cost, quality and delivery. WHCC convenes the major sectors in health care to determine actionable goals and implementation strategies to demonstrate quality, consumer choice, cost-effectiveness and transparency. The 8th Annual World Health Care Congress is organized with support from: Presidential Sponsor Alere, Official Well-Being Sponsor Healthways, Official Healthcare Decisions Sponsors Health Dialog, Official Innovation Series Sponsor UnitedHealth Group, and educational underwriters, McKessson, VITAS Innovative Hospice Care, Kaiser Permanente, Cisco, TriZetto, Accretive Health, Booz & Company, GE healthymagination, Alcatel-Lucent, Healthstat, Access MediQuip, Allscripts, VSP Vision Care, Eliza, Aetna, AmericanWell, Thomson Reuters, Companion Data Services, CareLogistics, Ortho-McNeil, HealthHub powered by PayFlex, and Healthwise.

Contact: Patrick Golden, Director of Communications, World Congress

SOURCEWorld Health Care Congress

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Ford to idle Belgian plant to conserve parts

Ford Motor Co (F.N) will idle its auto plant in Genk, Belgium, for five days starting April 4, to conserve parts following the earthquake and nuclear crisis in Japan that has disrupted supplies for numerous automakers.

The shutdown had been set for May but the automaker chose to idle the plant sooner "to ensure we have sufficient parts availability," Ford spokesman Todd Nissen said on Saturday.

"Given the current situation in Japan, we took this as a precautionary measure. To be clear, we haven't experienced any plant disruptions as a result of a parts shortage at this point," he said.

Ford's Genk Assembly plant, about 50 miles east of Brussels, produces the S-MAX and Galaxy minivans and the Mondeo sedan.

The severe earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 and the ensuing crisis at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant has disrupted supplies of auto parts and other materials for much of the automotive industry.

Ford has thus far felt only a minimal impact from the Japanese crisis, although the No. 2 U.S. carmaker has stopped taking orders for certain color vehicles due to shortages of a specialty pigment produced at an evacuated plant near the crippled reactor.

(Reporting by Karl Plume; Editing by Xavier Briand)

Review: NYCO mixes familiar with far-out

The New York City Opera has kicked off its spring season with a one-two punch that shows the scrappy company staying true to its historic dual mission.

Donizetti's delightful comedy "The Elixir of Love" showcases a cast of promising young singers in a repertory staple, while a triple bill of short pieces for solo soprano offers a chance to hear challenging, less-familiar works.

"Elixir," in a cute though derivative production by Jonathan Miller, updates the action to the American Southwest, where the heroine, Adina, runs a diner and the lovesick Nemorino works at a gas station.

At Saturday afternoon's performance, the best singing came from baritone Jose Adan Perez as the preening Sergeant Belcore, Nemorino's rival for Adina's affections. Perez has a compact, vibrant sound with secure high notes and fine technical agility.

Tenor David Lomeli, the audience favorite, makes an endearingly oafish Nemorino and has a pleasant voice with lots of potential, but at this performance he tended to wander off pitch. Soprano Stefania Dovhan is a pert Adina, with a powerful voice that lacks only sweetness to make her ideal in the role. Baritone Marco Nistico sounded dry and disengaged as the jovial huckster, Doctor Dulcamara.

Conductor Brad Cohen led an energetic performance, marred by a surprising number of coordination problems between the pit and the stage.

It's a bit of a chronological jump from Donizetti's 1832 opera to the three 20th-century works performed Sunday afternoon under the title "Monodramas." But in musical terms it's an even greater leap — from the richly tuneful to the relentlessly atonal.

By far the highlight among the pieces is Arnold Schoenberg's "Erwartung" (Waiting), composed in 1909. It's a powerful half-hour psychodrama in which a disturbed woman searches for her lover at night in a forest, only to come upon his body. By the end, it appears he had betrayed her and she may have killed him.

The program opened with a composition written in 2000 by John Zorn called "La Machine de l'etre" (The Machine of Being). As the composer explains in a program note, the work has "no text, no plot and no stage directions predetermined whatsoever." Instead, a soprano sings a wordless aria in three movements that lasts about 10 minutes and ends with a scream.

After intermission came the longest work, "Neither," a one-act opera (or "anti-opera") by composer Morton Feldman set to the only libretto ever written by Samuel Beckett and first performed in 1977.

Beckett said he hoped his 10 brief lines of text (It begins: "to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow ...") would provide "something that just hovered." And that ominously suspended sense of expectancy is precisely what Feldman captures in his music. It's an effective piece for about 20 minutes, but unfortunately it goes on twice that long. (Feldman, after all, is the man who composed a string quartet that lasts more than six hours!)

The company assembled a strong group of sopranos to present these daunting works. Anu Komsi poured great feeling into the cryptic utterances of Zorn; Kara Shay Thompson was a strikingly haunted figure in "Erwartung"; and Cyndia Sieden carried off the Feldman work with charismatic presence and considerable vocal allure.

Each piece got its own abstract production, designed by Michael Counts and choreographed by Ken Roht, with costumes by Jessica Jahn and lighting by Robert Wierzel. An ensemble of mimes played various roles in the different dramas.

Counts' efforts to provide a visual counterpart to the music seemed at times overly elaborate. But there were intriguing elements, such as the array of women in Muslim garb in "La Machine"; the red petals falling from the night sky in "Erwartung"; and the shiny metallic walls reflecting cubes that descended from the ceiling in "Neither."

The company's music director, George Manahan, conducted the orchestra, which sounded terrific in this difficult music.

The two programs are running through April 8-9. Then the final offering of the brief season opens April 19, "Seance on a Wet Afternoon," composed by Stephen Schwartz, best known as the man behind such Broadway blockbusters as "Godspell," "Pippin" and "Wicked."

Legendary Tech Execs Join Advisory Board of Hosting Pioneer AIS Network

Hosting pioneer AIS Network today announced that revered technology executives Doug Humphrey and William L. Schrader are joining its advisory board and will advise the company on cloud computing and other strategic issues.The company specializes in Microsoft SharePoint hosting, among other applications.

Reston, VA (PRWEB) February 16, 2011

Hosting pioneertoday announced that revered technology executives Doug Humphrey and William L. Schrader have joined its advisory board.The expert panel was formed this week to guide AISN’s rapid growth and offer strategic insight on cloud computing product development and other issues impacting the business.

“AISN feels honored to have early Internet pioneers and visionaries such as Bill and Doug join our board of advisors.We are confident their wisdom will help us continue to grow AISN intelligently.Bill and Doug have proven that they know what’s required to transform business practices and define an entire industry, and we are delighted to have them at our side," said AISN Chairman Kurt Baumann.

"Building a foundation with two bold, pioneering visionaries like Bill and Doug — men who are serial entrepreneurs, and in their own right, are widely recognized as ‘the father of managed hosting’ and ‘the father of the commercial Internet’ — dramatically enhances the diversity of thought leadership and experience that we have within AISN.”

CEO Jay Atkinson indicated that AISN would be unveiling new hosted applications and cloud computing products over the coming year.“For competitive advantage,” he said, “We will draw upon our advisory board’s decades of strategic insight for critical input on key business issues, particularly as we expand the company’s enterprise cloud computing products and move into new markets within North America."

Humphrey:Father of Managed HostingAcclaimed technologist and speaker, Humphrey is widely recognized as the “father of managed hosting.”In 1991, he founded DIGEX, an early national Internet services provider credited with creating the “managed hosting” business. The company was a very early — if not the earliest — provider of “hosting” services, which, in time, grew to dominate the company’s offerings.DIGEX was acquired by Intermedia Communications in July 1997.

Humphrey founded several other companies, including Cidera Inc. (formerly SkyCache, Inc.), which WebUseNet acquired in 2003; and Coloco, which AiNET acquired in 2007.His roles in those companies ranged from chief executive officer and chief technology officer to president and chairman of the board.

Humphrey serves as a member of several technology and investment advisory boards. A frequent speaker at Internet conferences, business and law school seminars, and private investor forums, he seeks to provide others with the advice and wisdom of a seasoned entrepreneur.

Schrader: Father of the Commercial InternetA chairman and CEO for more than 25 years, Schrader is perhaps best known as the “father of the commercial Internet.”In 1989, he founded PSINet, an early Internet service provider, which was the first of its kind to provide commercial Internet access to companies.The publicly traded company was a major player in the commercialization of the Internet.

Schrader developed his skills, insights and decision-making acumen in a broad scope of endeavors ranging from bio-chemical and nuclear physics labs, massively parallel supercomputing, global internetworking, and software development and marketing.

The scale of Schrader’s experience has ranged from private to public, small to very large, stable to exponential growth, one office to 30 countries, and from economic boom to financial ruin and recovery.In both the growth and downsizing phases, Schrader has successfully led multiple organizations through the analytic processes to establish strategies and engage in tactics resulting in successful exits while minimizing risks and providing gain.

With network operations centers in the Chicago and Washington, DC metropolitan areas, 18-year-old AISN is recognized as a pioneer in managed hosting technologies.

About AIS Network, LLCAIS Network frees organizations from buying and hassling with servers, so those companies can run their business more efficiently.AISN clients no longer maintain applications servers in their office, because we secure and care for those servers 24x7x365 in a world-class, disaster-resistant facility and ensure their capacity grows with the client’s business.Fully managed hosting is what we do best, and AISN has been delivering it in the form of managed, cloud and applications hosting since 1993.Unlike most hosting companies, AISN, a SAS 70 Type II-certified organization, personalizes client service at every level, inspiring full confidence that mission-critical data, applications and email are in reliable hands.Visit.

The names of actual products and companies mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective registered owners.

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Laurie HeadAIS Network301-523-3165Email Information

Armstrong officially off bike — 'Retirement 2.0'

Lance Armstrong is calling this one "Retirement 2.0."

Almost a month after finishing 65th in his last competitive race in Australia, and nearly six years removed from the last of an unprecedented seven straight Tour de France titles, the 39-year-old cyclist made clear there is no reset button this time.

This time, he's leaving professional racing behind for good.

"Never say never," Armstrong laughed at the start of an exclusive interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, then quickly added, "Just kidding."

His retirement ends a comeback effort that failed to produce an eighth title or diminish talk that performance-enhancing drugs helped his career. The timing has as much to do with his growing responsibilities and family as it does with the physical limitations time has imposed. He's tired, and tired of being hounded. Armstrong will miss competing — let alone dominating a sport like none before him — but not the 24/7/365 training regimen that made it possible.

"I can't say I have any regrets. It's been an excellent ride. I really thought I was going to win another tour," Armstrong said about his comeback attempt in 2009, four years after his first retirement. "Then I lined up like everybody else and wound up third.

"I have no regrets about last year, either," he added, despite finishing 23rd. "The crashes, the problems with the bike — those were things that were beyond my control."

Armstrong spoke to the AP in a telephone interview and in a videotaped interview from his office in Austin, Texas.

Armstrong zoomed out of relative obscurity after a life-threatening bout with testicular cancer to win his first tour in 1999, then set about recalibrating both the popularity of his sport and how much influence athletes can wield as advocates for a cause — in his case, on behalf of cancer survivors and researchers worldwide.

International Cycling Union President Pat McQuaid had high praise for Armstrong.

"His contribution to cycling has been enormous, from both the sporting point of view and his personality. All sports need global icons and he has become a global icon for cycling," said McQuaid, speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from the Tour of Oman. "The sport of cycling has a lot to be thankful for because of Lance Armstrong."

Along the way, Armstrong also became one of the most controversial figures in the evolving battle against doping in sports. He claims to be the most-tested athlete on the planet during his career. Armstrong came back clean every time, and vehemently denies ever using performance-enhancing drugs.

Even so, he remains shadowed by a federal investigation into the sport launched last year following accusations by former teammate and disgraced 2006 tour champion Floyd Landis that Armstrong used drugs and taught other riders how to beat testing. Though the probe is continuing, lawyers familiar with the case told the AP recently that any possible indictments are a long way off.

"I can't control what goes on in regards to the investigation. That's why I hire people to help me with that. I try not to let it bother me and just keep rolling right along. I know what I know," Armstrong said. "I know what I do and I know what I did. That's not going to change."

What won't change, either, is his tenacious campaigning to raise funds and awareness in the fight against a disease his doctors once believed would keep Armstrong from competing at anything more strenuous than gin rummy.

That was 1996. A year later, he set up the Livestrong Foundation and raised $10,000. In the intervening years, Armstrong used his story, his celebrity and hard work to sell millions of those ubiquitous plastic yellow wrist bracelets and enlist lawmakers in Texas and global policymakers on the scale of Bill Clinton in the cause.

By the end of last year, despite tough economic times, the foundation had raised nearly $400 million total. But the real heavy lifting may just be beginning.

After lobbying successfully for a Texas state constitutional amendment to provide $3 billion for cancer research over a 10-year period, Armstrong now has his sights set on California. This summer, he'll work with legislators there to draw up and put on the ballot a measure mandating a cigarette tax with the proceeds to fund further research. Come September, Armstrong will also plead his case before a United Nations General Assembly special session on non-communicable diseases that he provided much of the impetus for.

"We knew we'd be able to have some impact, but we didn't know we'd pick up so much momentum," he said.

That's how Armstrong broke through nearly every barrier the sport had erected over a century and more — by leading with his chin. He spilled blood on the roads, came back from crashes and more than once, crossed the finish line of a stage race draped over his handlebars like a man hanging on for life instead of an unbreakable machine.

One thing that never changed, though, was how Armstrong's withering gaze controlled the pack of riders around him. He doled out favors, like stage wins, or withheld them as the mood struck him. He could command the peloton to speed up to chase a breakaway rider or slow down with an ease the old-time cycling bosses — respectfully called patrons — would have envied.

That was just one reason Armstrong leaves the sport with nearly as many enemies as friends.

"A lot of that has been overanalyzed and inaccurately portrayed, but it's part and parcel of cycling. It's how cycling operates," Armstrong said. "There's too much infighting, jealousy and bitterness within the sport, so everybody tries to pick apart a person or a spectacular performance.

"And some of it," he added, "we bring on ourselves."

Cycling made Armstrong wealthy several times over, and many of the sponsors he brought into the sport continue to use him as a pitchman. A second career in politics someday does not seem out of the question.

"I don't think so. I get asked that question a lot. It's a job. It's probably many times a thankless job. ... If I were to run for any kind of office, it's impossible or very difficult to run right down the middle," he said.

"I would have to immediately alienate half of our constituents: 'Wait a minute, we thought this guy was a Republican. Wait a minute, we thought he was a Democrat.' I think the effect there would be a negative effect for the foundation. For now, absolutely not on my radar."

Armstrong will be at this year's tour, bringing the oldest of his five kids, 11-year-old Luke, back to the race this summer. He may even climb into a team car to do reconnaissance work for some of the Radio Shack riders he used to race alongside.

One thing Armstrong vowed not to do was spend much time reliving his accomplishments on the bike.

"In 10 years time," he said, "if I'm sitting around saying, 'I was so strong on L'Alpe d'Huez in 2001,' then I got a problem."

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AP Sports Writers Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, and Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed to this report.