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ORLANDO, Fla. – Orlando Magic point guard Jameer Nelson needs surgery again.
The All-Star will have arthroscopic surgery Wednesday on torn cartilage in his left knee, the team said. He is expected to miss four to six weeks.
Nelson was injured in the fourth quarter of Monday night's win against Charlotte. But he finished the game on the court and showed no signs of injury.
"I feel pretty good," Nelson said after the game. "My energy level just physically wasn't there, but mentally ... I think that's one of the parts of my game that adds toughness to this team."
This is the second straight season he has been sidelined.
Nelson injured his right shoulder in February and had surgery. In a surprise move, he returned for the NBA finals, struggling to regain his form as Orlando lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games. Nelson is averaging 13.7 points and 5.5 assists this season.
This is the latest in a series of setbacks this season for the Magic.
Rashard Lewis missed the first 10 games of the season, suspended by the NBA for testing positive for an elevated testosterone level. Vince Carter and forwards Ryan Anderson, Mickael Pietrus and Brandon Bass all have missed time with injuries, and backup center Marcin Gortat is out indefinitely with the flu.
That leaves Jason Williams, who will turn 34 on Wednesday, to start at point guard. Anthony Johnson will move to the backup spot.
After taking a year off, Williams has returned to give Orlando (8-3) a solid guard who brings energy off the bench. Williams, who helped the Miami Heat win the championship in 2005-06 as a starter, is averaging 5.4 points and four assists in 18.4 minutes.
The Magic were off Tuesday. They host the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday, the same team that beat them by 28 points in their first meeting this season.

WASHINGTON – Pollution typically declines during a recession. Not this time.
Despite a global economic slump, worldwide carbon dioxide pollution jumped 2 percent last year, most of the increase coming from China, according to a study published online Tuesday.
"The growth in emissions since 2000 is almost entirely driven by the growth in China," said study lead author Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia. "It's China and India and all the developing countries together."
Carbon dioxide emissions, the chief man-made greenhouse gas, come from the burning of coal, oil, natural gas, and also from the production of cement, which is a significant pollution factor in China. Worldwide emissions rose 671 million more tons from 2007 to 2008. Nearly three-quarters of that increase came from China.
The numbers are from the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
According to the study, the 2008 emissions increase was smaller than normal for this decade. Annual global pollution growth has averaged 3.6 percent. This year, scientists are forecasting a nearly 3 percent reduction, despite China because of the massive economic slowdown in most of the world and in the United States.
The U.S. is still the biggest per capita major producer of man-made greenhouse gases, spewing about 20 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. The world average is 5.3 tons and China is at 5.8 tons
Last year, the U.S. emissions fell by 3 percent, a reduction of nearly 192 million tons of carbon dioxide. Overall European Union emissions dropped by 1 percent. The U.S. is still the No. 2 biggest carbon polluter overall, emitting more than the next four largest polluting countries combined: India, Russia, Japan and Germany. China has been No. 1, since pushing past the United States in 2006.
The world remains on a dangerous path, despite the recession, scientists said.
"There's a very clear gap between the path we are on and the path we should be on if the goal is to limit global warming to 2 degrees (1.3 degrees Celsius)," said Le Quere, who also works for the British Antarctic Survey.
The world has spewed 715.3 trillion tons of industrial carbon dioxide since 1982, which is the same amount civilization produced in all the previous years, said study co-author Gregg Marland of the Oak Ridge National Lab.
Outside scientists said the study was thorough and the results sobering.
"Basically these numbers are screaming out at decision makers that whatever they are doing now is not working," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who wasn't involved in the study.
The report comes as countries from around the world prepare for a December U.N. conference on reducing carbon emissions. Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen of Denmark, who will host the conference in Copenhagen, said Tuesday that President Barack Obama supported his proposal for a sweeping political deal that would include commitments by industrial countries to reduce carbon emissions and to provide funds for less developed countries to fight the effects of global warming.
Obama, who was in China, said after a meeting with President Hu Jintao Tuesday that he wanted an all-encompassing agreement in Copenhagen, even if it falls short of a legal treaty. And he said he wants something "that has immediate operational effect."
Le Quere said the numbers point specifically to developing world as the cause for the most recent growth.
China is opening up new coal-fired power plants at a breakneck pace and carbon dioxide emissions in that country have doubled since 2001.
Not all the emission increases in China and other developing countries come from new power plants. About one-quarter of the emissions growth is because western countries, like the United States, buy more manufactured products from those countries, Le Quere and Marland said.

"We're shipping our emissions offshore," Marland said.

Other countries beside China to increase their carbon dioxide emissions by more than 5 million tons in 2008 were India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Iran, Poland, Mexico, Canada and the Netherlands.

The paper also raised concerns because it shows that the percentage of carbon dioxide emissions that hang in the air — compared to those sucked into the oceans and forests — is growing.

Fifty years ago, only 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions stayed in the air. Now in this decade it's up to 45 percent, Le Quere said.

That steady rise is alarming because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer it gets, and the warmer it gets, the higher percentage of carbon dioxide stays in the air, Le Quere said.

It's a feedback loop that is not good news for global warming, she said.

___

On the Net:

Nature Geoscience: http://www.nature.com/ngeo

NEW YORK – Ashlee Simpson-Wentz is ready to show some razzle-dazzle on Broadway.
The pop singer who was recently booted from "Melrose Place," is set to play Roxie Hart in the long-running musical revival of "Chicago."
Producer Barry Weissler says Simpson-Wentz will join the production on Nov. 30 for a 10-week engagement ending in early February. The performer played Roxie in the London production of "Chicago" in 2006.
Among her best-selling singles are such songs as "Pieces of Me," "Boyfriend" and "L.O.V.E." She is married to musician Pete Wentz.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
People who have had repeated flu infections -- or repeated flu vaccines -- may have some protection against the new pandemic swine influenza, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

They found evidence that the human immune system can recognize bits of the new H1N1 virus that are similar to older, distantly related H1N1 strains.

"What we have found is that the swine flu has similarities to the seasonal flu, which appear to provide some level of pre-existing immunity. This suggests that it could make the disease less severe in the general population than originally feared," said Alessandro Sette, director of the Center for Infectious Disease at California's La Jolla Institute.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may also help explain why many older people are less likely to have severe disease, said Allison Deckhut-Augustine of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"Adults may have some pre-existing immunity for H1N1," Deckhut-Augustine said in a telephone interview.

That does not mean older people are protected from infection, and Deckhut-Augustine stressed that people should still be vaccinated against H1N1.

Swine flu has infected millions of people globally and killed an estimated 3,900 in the United States alone, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drug makers are struggling to make vaccines and governments are working to vaccinate their populations.

Bjoern Peters and colleagues at the La Jolla Institute looked at flu epitopes -- molecular markers or structures that the immune system recognizes -- dating back 20 years.

"We found that the immune system's T-cells can recognize a significant percent of the markers in swine flu," Peters said in a statement.

DUAL PROTECTION

The human immune system has two kinds of protection. Antibody response can prevent infection, while T-cells fight infection once it has occurred.

Peters and colleagues found T-cell protection but not antibody response.

"This T-cell response decreases severity of disease but doesn't prevent infection," said Deckhut-Augustine, whose agency helped pay for the study and maintains the public database that Peters used.

The effect could be cumulative, Peters said, which could explain why people over 50 seem to be less likely to get noticeable H1N1 infections.

"This may also suggest why children are more susceptible to severe infection and why they might need two boosts," Deckhut-Augustine said. "They haven't been around as long and they haven't been exposed to different strains of H1N1 as long as adults."

Influenza is a very mutation-prone virus and from year to year the circulating strains drift, or change slightly. This is why new vaccines must be formulated each year and why people can catch flu again and again.

The new H1N1 was a never-before-seen combination of swine flu viruses, with a sprinkling of human and avian flu virus genetic sequences. But its long-ago ancestor was an H1N1 virus first seen in the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed upwards of 50 million people.

The researchers found that the new H1N1 swine flu shared 49 percent of its epitopes with older, seasonal H1N1 strains.

Using blood from healthy donors, they found that T-cells could recognize about 17 percent of these markers.

(Editing by Eric Beech)