UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


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G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.


Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.


Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.


"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."


After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.


A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.


"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.


As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.


As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.


"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.


"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."


Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.


NO FISCAL TARGETS


The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.


The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.


"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.


A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.


The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.


"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."


The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.


Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.


QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.


A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.


"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.


Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.


On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".


It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.


(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)



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Russians Seek Clues and Count Blessings After Meteor Blast





CHEBARKUL, Russia —After a brilliant flash illuminated the sky on Friday morning like a second sun, Alyona V. Borchininova and several others in this run-down little town in the rust belt of western Siberian wandered outside, confused and curious.




They followed the light’s path to the town’s lakefront, where they trudged for about a mile over the open ice until they came to a startling sight: a perfectly round hole in the ice, about 20 feet in diameter, its rim glossy with fresh ice that had crusted on top of the snow.


“It was eerie,” Ms. Borchininova, a barmaid, said Saturday. “So we stood there. And then somebody joked, ‘Now the green men will crawl out and say hello.’ ”


Russians are still coming to terms with what NASA scientists say was a 7,000-ton chunk of space rock that came hurtling out of the sky at 40,000 miles an hour, exploding over the Ural Mountains, spraying debris for miles around and, amazingly, killing no one.


As the Russian government pursued the scientific mysteries of Friday’s exploding meteor by sending divers into the inky waters of the hole in Lake Chebarkul on Saturday, residents reacted with a kind of giddy relief and humor over their luck at having survived a cosmic near miss.


NASA estimates that when the meteor entered the atmosphere over Alaska, it weighed 7,000 to 10,000 tons and was at least 50 feet in diameter, a size that strikes the Earth about once every hundred years. They said it had exploded with the force of 500 kilotons of TNT.


The shock wave injured hundreds of people about 54 miles away in the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, most from broken glass; collapsed a wall in a zinc factory; set off car alarms; and sent dishes flying in thousands of apartments. Broken windows exposed people and pipes to the Siberian winter; many residents focused Saturday on boarding windows and draining pipes, to preserve heating systems.


If pieces of meteorite reached the surface, as NASA said was likely, they fell largely into the sea of birch and pine trees of Siberia, now blanketed in snow.


Lake Chebarkul is one of four sites the government believes to felt a significant impact, the minister of emergency situations, Vladimir Pushkov, told Interfax.


As the sun rose Saturday, the snow crystals sparkling in the sun like a million tiny mirrors, steam wafted from the site, apparently related to the work of divers, but the lake yielded little to shed light on the mystery.


Mr. Pushkov later said divers found nothing on the lake bed, but did not rule out meteor shrapnel as the cause of the hole.


“Experts are studying all possible places of impact,” he said. “We have no reports of confirmed discoveries.”


The discovery of a confirmed fragment could help scientists better apprehend the composition of the meteor, perhaps shedding light on how close it was to descending further before exploding from the heat, or of hitting the surface, potentially causing vastly more casualties in this region of military and industrial towns, a major nuclear research site and waste repository and other delicate infrastructure.


In Chelyabinsk, the worst hit town, most who had sought medical attention were released from hospitals by Saturday, the Ministry of Health reported. A total of 1,158 people, including 298 children, asked for medical assistance. Of these 52 people were hospitalized. By Saturday afternoon, 12 adults and three children remained in hospitals.


Health officials evacuated to Moscow a woman who broke two vertebrae after falling down a flight of stairs. One man’s finger was cut off by broken glass.


Overshadowing these misfortunes, a fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, was being hailed as a hero for saving 44 children from glass cuts by ordering them to crawl under their desks after she saw the flash. Having no idea what it was, she executed a cold war-era duck-and-cover drill, with salutary results.


Ms. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated by glass that severed a tendon in her arm, Interfax reported; not one of her students suffered a cut.


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Facebook says it was a target of sophisticated hacking






SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Friday hackers had infiltrated some of its employees’ laptops in recent weeks, making the world’s No.1 social network the latest victim of a wave of cyber attacks, many of which have been traced to China.


It said none of its users’ data was compromised in the attack, which occurred after a handful of employees visited a website last month that infected their machines with so-called malware, according to a post on Facebook’s official blog released just before the three-day U.S. President’s Day weekend.






“As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day,” Facebook said.


It was not immediately clear why Facebook waited until now to announce the incident. Facebook declined to comment on the reason or the origin of the attack.


A security expert at another company with knowledge of the matter said he was told the Facebook attack appeared to have originated in China.


The attack on Facebook, which says it has more than 1 billion members, underscores the growing threat of cyber attacks aimed at a broad variety of targets.


Twitter, the micro blogging social network, said earlier this month it had been hacked and that about 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information, including user names and email addresses.


Newspaper websites, including those of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also been infiltrated. Those attacks were attributed by the news organizations to Chinese hackers targeting coverage of China.


Earlier this week, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order seeking better protection of the country’s critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.


“INFILTRATED”


Facebook noted in its blog post that it was not alone in the attack, and that “others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well,” although it did not specify who.


The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a call seeking comment.


In its blog post, Facebook described the attack as a “zero-day” attack, considered to be among the most sophisticated and dangerous types of computer hacks. Zero-day attacks, which are rarely discovered or disclosed by their targets, are costly to launch and often suggest government involvement.


While Facebook said no user data was compromised, the incident could raise consumer concerns about privacy and the vulnerability of personal information stored within the social network.


Facebook has made several privacy missteps in the past because of the way it handled user data. It settled a privacy investigation with federal regulators in 2011.


According to one person familiar with the situation, the type of information on the employee laptops that were compromised included “snippets” of Facebook source code and employee emails.


Facebook said it spotted a suspicious file and traced it back to an employee’s laptop. After conducting a forensic examination of the laptop, Facebook said it identified a malicious file, then searched company-wide and identified “several other compromised employee laptops”.


Another person briefed on the matter said the first Facebook employee had been infected via a website where coding strategies were discussed.


The company also said it identified a previously unseen attempt to bypass its built-in cyber defenses and that new protections were added on February 1.


Because the attack used a third-party website, it might have been an early-stage attempt to penetrate as many companies as possible.


If they followed established patterns, the attackers would learn about the people and computer networks at all the infected companies. They could then use that data in more targeted attacks to steal source code and other intellectual property.


Another fear for such a popular website is that hackers could use central controls to infect wide swathes of its user base at once.


In January 2010, Google reported it had been penetrated via a “zero-day” flaw in an older version of the Internet Explorer Web browser. The attackers were seeking source code and were also interested in Chinese dissidents. Google reduced its operations in China as a result.


(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Tim Reid in Los Angeles; Editing by Paul Tait)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Reeva Steenkamp's Reality Show Will Still Air This Weekend in Tribute to Her, Says Producer















02/15/2013 at 01:00 PM EST



The show must go on, according to the creator of Tropika Island of Treasure 5.

The producer of the South African reality show, Samantha Moon, issued a statement, announcing that pre-taped series, which features Reeva Steenkamp, who was murdered on Thursday, will indeed air on Saturday as planned.

"Reeva was an intelligent, beautiful and amazing woman, and we feel it would be an injustice to keep that unknown from those who did not know her personally," Moon says in the statement. "Every episode that she is in, every frame that she so ably dominates – shines with her light and her laughter echoes in every conversation, and we want to share these special memories with the rest of South Africa."

In addition, Moon says, this week's episode of Tropika Island "will be dedicated to Reeva's memory, coupled with a special tribute to her."

The model's boyfriend Oscar Pistorius, 26, has been charged with her murder. A weeping Pistorius appeared in court Friday morning, where prosecutors said they would pursue a charge of premeditated murder. In a statement released on Friday afternoon, his family disputes the killing in the "strongest terms."

Steenkamp's death has left her show crew "absolutely devastated," as Moon goes on to say in another statement.

"Reeva was a wonderful human being and an extremely talented and intelligent woman. Her kind and loving spirit was evident to all who knew her and her zest for life will be truly missed," she says.

Reeva will be cremated at a private ceremony in Port Elizabeth, her family tells PEOPLE. And they plan to tune in to Tropika when it premieres.

• Reporting by MIKE BEHR

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Study: Fish in drug-tainted water suffer reaction


BOSTON (AP) — What happens to fish that swim in waters tainted by traces of drugs that people take? When it's an anti-anxiety drug, they become hyper, anti-social and aggressive, a study found. They even get the munchies.


It may sound funny, but it could threaten the fish population and upset the delicate dynamics of the marine environment, scientists say.


The findings, published online Thursday in the journal Science, add to the mounting evidence that minuscule amounts of medicines in rivers and streams can alter the biology and behavior of fish and other marine animals.


"I think people are starting to understand that pharmaceuticals are environmental contaminants," said Dana Kolpin, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey who is familiar with the study.


Calling their results alarming, the Swedish researchers who did the study suspect the little drugged fish could become easier targets for bigger fish because they are more likely to venture alone into unfamiliar places.


"We know that in a predator-prey relation, increased boldness and activity combined with decreased sociality ... means you're going to be somebody's lunch quite soon," said Gregory Moller, a toxicologist at the University of Idaho and Washington State University. "It removes the natural balance."


Researchers around the world have been taking a close look at the effects of pharmaceuticals in extremely low concentrations, measured in parts per billion. Such drugs have turned up in waterways in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere over the past decade.


They come mostly from humans and farm animals; the drugs pass through their bodies in unmetabolized form. These drug traces are then piped to water treatment plants, which are not designed to remove them from the cleaned water that flows back into streams and rivers.


The Associated Press first reported in 2008 that the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans carries low concentrations of many common drugs. The findings were based on questionnaires sent to water utilities, which reported the presence of antibiotics, sedatives, sex hormones and other drugs.


The news reports led to congressional hearings and legislation, more water testing and more public disclosure. To this day, though, there are no mandatory U.S. limits on pharmaceuticals in waterways.


The research team at Sweden's Umea University used minute concentrations of 2 parts per billion of the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam, similar to concentrations found in real waters. The drug belongs to a widely used class of medicines known as benzodiazepines that includes Valium and Librium.


The team put young wild European perch into an aquarium, exposed them to these highly diluted drugs and then carefully measured feeding, schooling, movement and hiding behavior. They found that drug-exposed fish moved more, fed more aggressively, hid less and tended to school less than unexposed fish. On average, the drugged fish were more than twice as active as the others, researcher Micael Jonsson said. The effects were more pronounced at higher drug concentrations.


"Our first thought is, this is like a person diagnosed with ADHD," said Jonsson, referring to attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. "They become asocial and more active than they should be."


Tomas Brodin, another member of the research team, called the drug's environmental impact a global problem. "We find these concentrations or close to them all over the world, and it's quite possible or even probable that these behavioral effects are taking place as we speak," he said Thursday in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


Most previous research on trace drugs and marine life has focused on biological changes, such as male fish that take on female characteristics. However, a 2009 study found that tiny concentrations of antidepressants made fathead minnows more vulnerable to predators.


It is not clear exactly how long-term drug exposure, beyond the seven days in this study, would affect real fish in real rivers and streams. The Swedish researchers argue that the drug-induced changes could jeopardize populations of this sport and commercial fish, which lives in both fresh and brackish water.


Water toxins specialist Anne McElroy of Stony Brook University in New York agreed: "These lower chronic exposures that may alter things like animals' mating behavior or its ability to catch food or its ability to avoid being eaten — over time, that could really affect a population."


Another possibility, the researchers said, is that more aggressive feeding by the perch on zooplankton could reduce the numbers of these tiny creatures. Since zooplankton feed on algae, a drop in their numbers could allow algae to grow unchecked. That, in turn, could choke other marine life.


The Swedish team said it is highly unlikely people would be harmed by eating such drug-exposed fish. Jonsson said a person would have to eat 4 tons of perch to consume the equivalent of a single pill.


Researchers said more work is needed to develop better ways of removing drugs from water at treatment plants. They also said unused drugs should be brought to take-back programs where they exist, instead of being flushed down the toilet. And they called on pharmaceutical companies to work on "greener" drugs that degrade more easily.


Sandoz, one of three companies approved to sell oxazepam in the U.S., "shares society's desire to protect the environment and takes steps to minimize the environmental impact of its products over their life cycle," spokeswoman Julie Masow said in an emailed statement. She provided no details.


___


Online:


Overview of the drug: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682050.html


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Wall Street flat after data, S&P on pace for seventh weekly gain

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were little changed on Friday and the S&P 500 remained on track for a seventh week of gains after upbeat consumer sentiment data, as equities continued a phase of consolidation after a strong start to the year.


The S&P 500, up nearly 7 percent so far this year, is facing strong technical resistance near the 1,525 level. But investors, expecting the index to advance further in the quarter, have held back from locking in profits.


"The market has run awfully hard on a year-to-date basis and certainly some consolidation, a couple of percentage points of pullback, is probably at hand, probably healthy and is probably where we are," said Jim Russell, senior equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.


Data released Friday illustrated the bumpy road the U.S. economic recovery continues to take.


The New York Federal Reserve said manufacturing in New York state expanded for the first time in seven months, while Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading of consumer sentiment rose from the prior month and beat expectations.


But data also showed U.S. manufacturing fell in January after a rise in the prior month.


"We are at a point where the macro news will continue to be a two-steps forward, one-step back kind of progression, with most of the news showing a firmness, but an occasional data point that will represent a step back," Russell said.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> added 5.07 points, or 0.04 percent, to 13,978.46. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> shed 0.20 points, or 0.01 percent, to 1,521.18. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 1.02 points, or 0.03 percent, to 3,199.68.


The benchmark S&P 500 is on track to register its seventh straight week of gains by the close of trading Friday, a feat not seen since a run of consecutive weekly gains between December 2010 and January 2011.


A surge in merger and acquisition activity, with more than $158 billion in deals announced so far in 2013, has given further support to the equity market as it points to healthy valuations and bets on the economic outlook.


Herbalife shares jumped 13.1 percent to $42.27 a day after billionaire investor Carl Icahn said in a regulatory filing that he now owns 13 percent of Herbalife and was ready to put it in play.


MeadWestvaco Corp climbed 10.6 percent to $35.04 as the biggest percentage gainer on the S&P index after activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management LP said in an SEC filing it had bought about 1.6 million shares of the packaging company.


Burger King Worldwide shares gained 2.4 percent to $16.98 after it beat estimates with a 94 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit, thanks to new menu additions.


Oil service stocks declined, weighed by a 5.8 percent drop in shares of Transocean to $55.89, after the rig contractor reported its fleet update and Deutsche Bank cut its rating on the stock to "sell." The PHLX oil service sector <.osx> lost 1.9 percent.


(Editing by Bernadette Baum)



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India Ink: Image of the Day: Feb. 15

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Verizon’s Galaxy S IV detailed in purported benchmarks






Samsung’s (005930) upcoming Galaxy S IV smartphone for Verizon (VZ) may have been detailed in newly discovered benchmark test results. The device carries the model number SCH-i545 and is similar to the model number SCH-i535, which is found on the carrier’s Galaxy S III smartphone. According to results from the Nenamark benchmark site, the Galaxy S IV will be equipped with a 1920 x 1080-pixel full-HD display, a 1.9GHz quad-core processor and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The specs match up to earlier rumors, however there are some discrepancies.


[More from BGR: Flagship HTC One smartphone revealed in leaked photo]






The benchmarks reveal that the device will include Adreno 320 graphics, which means that the processor could be a Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon CPU rather than Samsung’s new Exnyos 5 Octa. The company has previously turned to Qualcomm for processors in its U.S. Galaxy S III models and could very well do the same for the Galaxy S IV.


[More from BGR: Samsung to reportedly take on BlackBerry with new enterprise platform]


Samsung’s latest flagship device is rumored to include a 4.99-inch screen, 2GB of RAM, NFC, LTE connectivity, wireless charging capabilities, a microSD slot and a 13-megapixel rear camera.


The Galaxy S IV is expected to be announced on March 15th.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Has Miley Cyrus Chosen Her Wedding Dress Designer?







Style News Now





02/14/2013 at 12:00 PM ET











Miley Cyrus Marchesa Fashion Week
Christopher Polk/Getty


Until now, Miley Cyrus has been fairly tight-lipped about her impending nuptials to fiancé Liam Hemsworth, but it seems she’s ready to dish about the part we most care about: her bridal gown.


“[Marchesa] is definitely one of our options,” Cyrus told PEOPLE at the Marchesa fashion show in N.Y.C. on Monday. “[They're] amazing.”


If Cyrus does walk down the aisle in Marchesa, she certainly wouldn’t be the first celebrity to do so: Blake Lively, Nicole Richie, Petra Nemcova and Molly Sims all wore custom gowns from the romantic, feminine line for their weddings.


But don’t start collecting from your Miley Cyrus Wedding Dress Pool just yet; it’s hardly a done deal: “I have so many options of different people who want to be involved in it,” she said. “I’ll probably have 30 [dresses]!”


Tell us: Who do you hope designs Cyrus’s wedding dress?


–Jennifer Cress, reporting by Catherine Kast


PHOTOS: SEE MORE STAR STYLE!




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Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women


NEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.


The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.


The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.


In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.


White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.


"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.


One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.


The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.


At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.


Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.


The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.


The study also found:


—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.


—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.


—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.


A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.


Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.


___


Online:


CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/


Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html


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Wall Street flat as takeovers offset weak overseas data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Thursday as a flurry of merger deals and better-than-expected jobs data offset signs of economic weakness in Europe and Japan


Shares of H.J. Heinz Co jumped 20 percent to $72.51 after it said Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital will buy the food company for $72.50 a share, or $28 billion including debt.


Also supporting the market was data showing the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected in the latest week.


Stocks fell earlier after a report the euro zone's gross domestic product contracted by the steepest amount since the first quarter of 2009. In addition, Japan's GDP shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, crushing expectations of a modest return to growth.


"The only reason a company buys another company is because they see an upside. Even though we are at multiyear highs, this kind of activity shows that there is more room for a rally, feeding optimism to the market," said Randy Frederick, director of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.


But Frederick added the market would have to see small corrections before breaking above current levels, where indexes have been hovering for almost two weeks. The S&P 500 is up more than 6 percent so far this year, near its highest level since November 2007.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 13.75 points, or 0.10 percent, at 13,969.16. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.45 point, or 0.03 percent, at 1,519.88. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.35 points, or 0.04 percent, at 3,195.53.


Constellation Brands soared more than 35 percent to $43.20 after terms of its takeover of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo were revised, granting it perpetual rights to distribute Corona and other Modelo brands in the United States. AB InBev ADRs gained 5.5 percent to $93.08.


American Airlines and US Airways Group said they plan to merge in a deal that will form the world's biggest air carrier, with an equity valuation of about $11 billion. US Airways shares fell 6.8 percent to $13.67.


Weakness in Europe contributed to a 5 percent drop in revenue from the region for Cisco Systems , which nonetheless beat estimates as it reported its results late Wednesday. The company's shares slid 1.4 percent to $20.85.


General Motors Co reported a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, also citing bigger losses in Europe alongside lower prices in its core North American market. The stock was off 1.7 percent at $28.19.


(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)



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Way of the World: Technology, Trade and Fewer Jobs







NEW YORK — President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech this week confirmed it: The pre-eminent political and economic challenge in the industrialized democracies is how to make capitalism work for the middle class.




There is nothing mysterious about that. The most important fact about the United States in this century is that middle-class incomes are stagnating. The financial crisis has revealed an equally stark structural problem in much of Europe.


Even in a relatively prosperous age — for all of today’s woes, we have left behind the dark, satanic mills and workhouses of the 19th century — this decline of the middle class is more than an economic issue. It is also a political one. The main point of democracy is to deliver positive results for the majority.


All of which is why understanding what is happening to the middle class is urgently important. There is no better place to start than by talking to David Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Autor is one of the leading students of the most striking trend bedeviling the middle class: the polarization of the job market. That is a nice way of saying the economy is being cleaved into high-paying jobs at the top and low-paying jobs at the bottom, while the middle-skill and middle-wage jobs that used to form society’s backbone are being hollowed out.


But when I asked him this week what had gone wrong for the U.S. middle class, he gave a different answer: “The main problem is we’ve just had a decade of incredibly anemic employment growth. All of a sudden, around 2000 and 2001, things just slowed down.”


Academics can usually be counted on to have a confident explanation for everything. That is why I was surprised and impressed by Mr. Autor’s answer when I asked him where the jobs had gone. “No one really understands why that is the case,” he said.


It was a winningly modest reply. But work by Mr. Autor and two colleagues — David Dorn, a visiting professor at Harvard, and Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego — is starting to untangle the two forces that both the conventional wisdom and the academy agree are probably responsible for a lot of what is happening to the middle class.


Those forces are technological change and trade. The easy assumption is that the two go together. After all, trade needs technology — it is hard to imagine outsourcing without the Internet, sophisticated logistics systems and jet travel. Technology is dependent on trade, too: The opportunity for global scale is one reason technological innovation has yielded such outsize rewards.


But in a careful study of local labor markets in the United States, Mr. Autor, Mr. Dorn and Mr. Hanson have found that trade and technology had very different consequences for jobs.


“We were surprised at how distinct the two were,” Mr. Autor said. “We found that the trade shock had a very measurable impact on the employment rate. Technology led to job polarization, but its employment effect was minimal.” Trade, at least in the short term, really did ship jobs overseas. Technology did not kill jobs per se, but it did hollow out those essential jobs in the middle.


The big surprise, at least for believers (like me) in the classic liberal economic view that trade benefits both parties, is the strong and negative impact of globalization on U.S. workers — Mr. Autor estimates it accounts for 15 to 20 percent of jobs lost.


“The rise of China was such a huge change. It really did matter,” Mr. Autor said. “First, China is such a huge country. Two, China was 40 or 50 years behind in technology, so it had a lot of catching up to do. Third, it happened so fast.”


What is striking, and frightening, is the extent to which, at least in the U.S.-China trade relationship, the knee-jerk, populist fears intellectuals tend to deride actually turned out to be true.


“U.S.-China trade is almost a one-way street. This trade relationship doesn’t clearly give you the benefit that you can sell a lot of stuff to your trade partner,” Mr. Dorn said. “If you talk to someone who is somehow involved in the promotion of free trade, they may say that maybe the headquarters of Apple benefits. That may be true. But the first-order effect is of job loss.”


The impact of technology is more familiar. Mr. Autor, Mr. Dorn and Mr. Hanson found that it did not create fewer jobs overall, but it did hollow out the jobs in the middle.


“Technology has really changed the distribution of occupation. That doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with reduced unemployment, but it creates a more bimodal set of opportunities,” Mr. Autor said. “There is an abundance of work to do in food service and there is an abundance of work in finance, but there are fewer middle-wage, middle-income jobs.”


What is challenging about both of these trends, and what makes the hollowing out of the middle class a political problem as well as an economic one, is how different they look depending on whether you own a company or work for one.


Shipping middle-class jobs to China, or hollowing them out with machines, is a win for smart managers and their shareholders. We call the result higher productivity. But looked at through the lens of middle-class jobs, it is a loss. That profound difference is why politics in the rich democracies are so polarized right now. Capitalism and democracy are at cross-purposes, and no one yet has a clear plan for reconciling them.


Chrystia Freeland is editor of Thomson Reuters Digital.


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The Pope’s Legacy, a Buddhist Scandal, and the Science of Violent Video Games






Behind the New York Times pay wall, you only get 10 free clicks a month. For those worried about hitting their limit, we’re taking a look through the paper each morning to find the stories that can make your clicks count.


RELATED: The Republican National Convention, Ryanomics, and K-pop






Top Stories: Though his written teachings were praised, Pope Benedict XVI “often appeared to carom from one crisis to the next” when facing real-life challenges. 


RELATED: Afghanistan Casualties, ‘Call Me Maybe,’ and Michael J. Fox


World: Allegations of sexual harassment by Joshu Sasaki, an influential Buddhist teacher, has “upset and obsessed Zen Buddhists across the country, who are part of a close-knit world in which many participants seem to know, or at least know of, the principal teachers.”  


RELATED: Seattle Cops on Twitter, Skulls, and Hunting


U.S.: At the State of the Union Washington will also be looking to see the “the state of Barack Obama.”


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New York: In communities still trapped by snow residents turned to plowing the roads themselves and using mass transit. 


RELATED: Violence in China, Barbra Streisand, and the Nationals


Business: A Japanese television series about a company that “turns to advanced lithium-ion” is all too real for the country. 


Technology: Though the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program is supposed to bring Internet to places private companies deemed too expensive, it is now being characterized as wasteful. 


Science: Benedict Carey takes a look at the research on video games and violence, some of which “has begun to clarify what can and cannot be said about the effects of violent gaming.” 


Sports: Holding the breed judging for Westminster at Piers 92/94 added a new hiccup to the competition: “crosstown dog schlepping on a rainy day.” 


Opinion: James Martin on Benedict XVI’s resignation and legacy. 


Music: An interview with Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music, whose The Jazz Age re-imagines some of his most famous songs “in the style of 1920s jazz.”


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News




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Dear Jessica Chastain, We've Found Your Oscars Gown!







Style News Now





02/13/2013 at 12:05 PM ET











Jessica Chastain Oscar de la RentaKristina Bumphrey/Startraks; Inset: WireImage


As we pull together our Academy Awards gown predictions, we’ve had the hardest time picking one for Jessica Chastain. She’s gorgeous, talented and impossible to anticipate on the red carpet, not favoring any one designer or color, and we were stumped.


But the moment we watched this rich violet peplum number sashay down the Oscar de la Renta runway Tuesday night, we knew we’d found the perfect look for her big night on Feb. 24. First of all, the color was practically made to complement her fair complexion — and in a sea of nudes, blacks and reds, the vivid hue is sure to stand out.


It’s also a blend of fashion-forward and body-conscious, a combination the actress seems to favor. Finally, that neckline is just begging for some major diamond chandeliers or a beautiful diamond choker (by Harry Winston, of course — her go-to jeweler for big events).


Now that we’ve pictured it, we’ll be devastated if our wish doesn’t come true, so let’s just hope she’s an avid reader of the site. Tell us: Do you agree with our pick for Jessica Chastain’s Academy Awards gown? If not, what do you want to see her wear?


–Alex Apatoff


SEE MORE MAJOR STAR RED CARPET MOMENTS HERE!




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Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs


WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.


The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.


Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.


The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.


"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.


A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.


"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.


Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.


The report also concluded that:


—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.


—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.


__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.


The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.


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Wall Street flat, S&P 500 touches November 2007 high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday after the S&P 500 index hit a November 2007 intraday high, but volume was low and investors stayed cautious with indexes near multi-year closing highs.


The benchmark index got a boost from Comcast Corp when the cable company said it will buy the rest of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion from General Electric Co .


Equities have been strong performers until recently, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, which helped the S&P 500 to rise 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow industrials are about 1 percent away from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.


Those gains could leave the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors take profits amid a dearth of new catalysts. While analysts see an upward bias in stocks, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes light with indexes at multi-year highs.


"I was expecting a 12-15 percent return on the S&P for the whole year of 2013, and we have done about half of that in just 5-6 weeks," said Jack De Gan, principal at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.


"We will hit resistance, but the fundamentals and micro picture are looking good, so if there is a correction it's going to be a brief one."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 52.99 points, or 0.38 percent, at 13,965.71. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.61 points, or 0.04 percent, at 1,518.82. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 3.35 points, or 0.11 percent, at 3,189.85.


Economic data proved no catalyst giving investors direction. The government said retail sales rose 0.1 percent in January, as expected. Tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending.


The S&P 500 was well over its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, a sign the market could be overbought.


Comcast agreed late Tuesday to buy General Electric Co's remaining 49 percent stake in NBC Universal for $16.7 billion. Comcast jumped 6.2 percent to $41.40 as the S&P's top percentage gainer while Dow component GE was up 3 percent to $23.26.


Deere & Co reported earnings that beat expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook. After initially rallying in premarket trading, the stock fell 2.3 percent to $91.80.


According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


Industrial and construction shares were lower even though in his State of the Union address President Barack Obama called for $50 billion in spending to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges.


The Dow Jones Home Construction index <.djushb> was off 0.2 percent.


(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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International Military Officials Investigate Afghan Deaths





KABUL, Afghanistan — International military officials are investigating two episodes in which as many as 11 Afghan civilians may have been killed in what appeared to be American-led military actions.




In the more lethal episode, Afghan officials said 10 civilians were killed overnight in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan in a village where two known Taliban commanders were visiting family members.


“Ten civilians were killed last night in a joint Afghan and American operation that took place in Chogam Valley in Shigal District,” said Fazullah Wahidi, the provincial governor. He said four women, one man and five children between the ages of 8 and 13 were killed; four teenagers were wounded, three of whom were girls.


Increasingly over the last two years, foreign insurgents, sometimes with links to Al Qaeda and other non-Afghan groups, have taken refuge in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan Province. Both provinces have a long border with Pakistan, and insurgents can hide easily in the rugged and forested mountain terrain Mr. Wahidi said the target of Kunar operation was a Taliban leader named Shahpour, “a known and really dangerous Afghan Taliban commander with links to Al Qaeda operatives in Kunar” and another Taliban commander, known as “Rocketi,” a Pakistani citizen from the Northwest Frontier Province. Both men were killed in the attack.


Mr. Wahidi said that the operation was not coordinated with Afghan security forces, but that locally hired Afghan paramilitaries were involved in the raid, which included an airstrike and a ground operation. Sometimes other United States government agencies rather than the military use special commandos.


Maj. Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said they had no information on the operation but “were aware of the reports” of civilian deaths and were looking into it.


Local officials in Kunar said that Shahpour was believed to have links to Al Qaeda and narrowly escaped being killed last year when the Americans attacked another Al Qaeda-linked Taliban commander known as Abu Hafez Al-Najde, who also went by the name Commander Ghani. Shahpour was the Taliban leader in charge of nearby Dangam district but was visiting relatives at the time of the raid.


People from Chogam, who brought injured from the remote village where the attack took place to the main hospital in the provincial capital of Asadabad, described a precise but damaging hit on two adjacent houses.


“Two homes were totally destroyed; air power was used during the operation,” said a man who brought a boy with cuts to the hospital for treatment, but refused to give his name. “There are still dead bodies under the rubble and human flesh scattered in the area.”


The other episode in which an Afghan civilian was killed by foreign troops occurred on Tuesday during daylight hours.


It took place as NATO-led forces were checking a stretch of heavily traveled highway between Kandahar and Spin Boldak for explosives during a road clearance mission and shot at an oncoming car that did not stop when signaled to do so, Major Wojack said.


An Afghan policeman, Taj Mohammed, the local Border Police commander, corroborated much of the ISAF account, but did not see the shooting himself. He said the car was carrying people from a wedding party.


Major Wojack said that the forces had followed standard procedure of signaling to the car to stop. After the driver stopped, he then started to accelerate toward the convoy, at which point the soldier ISAF shot at the car, Mr. Wojack said.


Reporting was contributed by Taimoor Shah in Kandahar and by an employee of The New York Times in Kunar Province.



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Baby on the Way for Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Cutter Dykstra




Celebrity Baby Blog





02/12/2013 at 12:30 PM ET



Cutter Dykstra Jamie-Lynn Sigler Pregnant Expecting First Child
Jason Merritt/Getty


First an engagement and now a baby on the way — 2013 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Jamie-Lynn Sigler.


The Guys with Kids star, 31, is expecting a baby with her brand-new fiancé, minor league baseball player Cutter Dykstra, her rep confirms to PEOPLE.


“She couldn’t be more excited!” a source tells PEOPLE.


The actress, best known for her role on The Sopranos, recently took to Twitter to announce her engagement to Dykstra, 23.


There’s no wedding date set yet. But one thing’s for certain: “Jamie can’t wait to be a mom,” the source adds.


– Aili Nahas


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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life


The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.


There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.


"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.


Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.


Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.


When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."


One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.


The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."


In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."


"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.


Experts on aging agreed.


"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."


Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.


But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.


"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.


"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.


Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.


In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.


Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.


The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.


Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.


Other leaders who are still working:


—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.


—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.


—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.


—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.


__


Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Wall Street pauses after gains, awaits Obama address

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 holding near multi-year highs ahead of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.


The economy will be a major topic of Obama's speech before a joint session of Congress set for 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Wednesday). Investors will listen for any clues on a deal with Republicans to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1.


The S&P 500 has risen in the past six weeks and is up 6.5 percent so far this year. But gains have been harder to come by since the benchmark S&P index hit a five-year high on February 1. The market has to consolidate strong gains at the year's start while investors search for reasons to drive stocks higher.


"The market itself at this point has got to digest this six-plus percentage point move ... we are due for that pause," said Drew Nordlicht, managing director at HighTower Advisors in San Diego.


Investors are "looking for more data at this point going forward to support the thesis that corporate profits will continue to grow and the economy has turned the corner."


The White House has signaled Obama in his speech will urge U.S. investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education. He is also expected to call for comprehensive trade talks with the European Union.


With earnings season moving to its latter stages, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters according to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 27.65 points, or 0.20 percent, to 13,998.89. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> added 1.03 points, or 0.07 percent, to 1,518.04. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dipped 1.60 points, or 0.05 percent, to 3,190.41.


Coca-Cola Co shares fell 1.9 percent to $37.88 and were the biggest drag on the Dow after the world's largest soft drink maker reported quarterly revenue slightly below analysts' estimates, hurt by a weaker-than-expected performance in Europe.


Housing shares climbed, led by a 12.9 percent jump in Masco Corp to $20.09 after the home improvement product maker posted fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects new home construction to show strong growth in 2013. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> gained 2.7 percent.


Avon Products shares surged 16.7 percent to $20.16 after the beauty products company reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit.


Goodyear Tire & Rubber shares lost 3.1 percent to $13.48 after it posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit but cut its 2013 forecast due to weakness in the European automotive market.


Michael Kors Holdings shares jumped 10.9 percent to $63.24 after the fashion company handily beat Wall Street's estimates and raised its full-year outlook.


(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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India Ink: In Kashmir, Clashes and Dwindling Supplies As Curfew Continues

The Kashmir Valley is on the fourth day of a government-imposed shutdown begun immediately after the hanging of the militant Muhammad Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, who comes from the town of Sopore in Baramulla district.

Many residents are running out of food and milk in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Meanwhile, dozens have been injured and at least one killed in protests against Mr. Afzal’s hanging, which happened secretly in Delhi on Saturday and was announced afterward.

Mr. Afzal, from the Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to death by a special court in 2002 for his role in planning an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001.

Schools, colleges and most shops in Kashmir are closed by government order, and people have been asked to stay inside their homes. Rows of shops and restaurants were shuttered.

Vehicles have been banned from the streets, cable news channels have gone dark, Internet service on cellphones has been blocked and newspapers were not being delivered. Hospitals, pharmacies and emergency services remain open.

In Srinagar, the only people in the deserted streets were security forces.

Officials in the area said they were taking preventive measures. During the past decade, many Kashmiris have opposed the death sentence for Mr. Afzal, saying he was being unfairly accused of the crime. His wife had requested a pardon from the Indian government, but her plea was denied.

Many Kashmiris were also outraged that the government letter carrying the news of execution reached Mr. Afzal’s widow in Sopore only after he died. The central government said Tuesday that Mr. Afzal’s family could visit his grave at Tihar Jail in Delhi, but a date has yet to be decided, according to the Press Trust of India.

The ban on the movement of people and vehicles was imposed under Section 144 of India’s criminal procedure code, the same section invoked after protests over the recent Delhi gang rape, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people.

It was invoked by the administration to prevent “a law and order problem,” Suresh Kumar, principal secretary in Jammu and Kashmir’s Department of Home Affairs, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. 

Mr. Afzal’s death was mourned across the valley through organized street protests that involved stone pelting, in defiance of the ban.

Three civilians have died and many have been injured over the last four days, officials said. Some news reports attributed all three deaths to protest-related activities, but Mr. Kumar said only one man died of injuries caused by the police. The other two drowned when their boat capsized, an incident unrelated to the violence, he said.

Obair Mushtaq, from the Baramulla district, died after he was shot, his relatives said. Farooq Ahmed, his uncle, said Obair was 13.

Mr. Ahmed said that on Sunday evening, a handful of children, including his nephew, were throwing stones at a passing military convoy. “It was not aggressive. We were laughing at them,” he said, crying over the phone. “We can’t understand why there is so much fighting. Why are our children dying?”

A Kashmir police official told India Ink that 60 people have been injured since Saturday in clashes between police and civilians. Forty of those were security officials and 20 were civilians, he said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his life.

Additionally, there were about 60 incidents of stone pelting across the valley. “Most of the violence erupted in Sopore and Baramulla,” he said.

“People are not allowed to step out of their homes,” he added.Many residents described the past four days as the longest curfew since 2010, when the valley was shaken by mass pro-independence demonstrations. 

Manzoor Ahmed, who drives an auto-rickshaw, said that he hasn’t earned any money since the curfew was imposed on Saturday. “I haven’t stepped out of the house so I cannot even make the little money I do,” he said during a telephone interview. “The children cannot go to school.”

Mr. Ahmed said that his family was surviving on dal, a stew made of lentils, because there are no fresh vegetables available. “We have a backup supply of dal because we know things like this can happen,” he said.

In some areas, for a few hours in the evening, residents said they were allowed out of their homes to shop. Vegetables and milk are generally shipped into Srinagar, which is nestled in the mountains, from villages and other states during the winter months.

Mr. Mohammed, a hotel manager near the Dal Lake, who requested his first name not be used to avoid any retaliatory action, said that his hotel was running out of vegetables like peas and cauliflower, and guests were only being served beans and potatoes from storage. “The situation is quite bad,” he said.

For around two hours in the evening, a few stores selling basic groceries were open. But these shops have limited resources because the supply chain had been disrupted because of the ban on vehicles.

One businessman, who requested not be named to avoid possible retaliatory action by the police, said he hasn’t opened his crockery shop in downtown Srinagar in the past four days. “What choice do I have? They won’t let us step out,” he said. He estimated he has lost 60,000 rupees ($1,000) since Saturday.

The hanging of Mr. Afzal came as Kashmiris were planning protests to mark the death of Maqbool Bhatt, a pro-Kashmir independence leader who was hanged on Feb. 11, 1984. His death is considered the spark for two decades of unrest. Both men are buried at Tihar Jail in Delhi.

“Maqbool Bhatt inspired the insurgency while Afzal Guru was the product of it,” said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a law professor at Kashmir University. 

He warned that Mr. Afazal’s hanging and the subsequent curfew would make the Kashmiri people’s “alienation with the government more deep rooted.”

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Android 4.2.2 Update Now Being Deployed to Nexus Devices






The immediate precursor to the upcoming “Key Lime Pie” version of Android, an update to Android 4.2.2, is now being rolled out to GSM models of the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10, according to Liam Spradlin of Android Police. It’s as yet unknown if the update brings any new features, but it is expected to fix at least one bug with the devices’ Bluetooth connections.


Why Nexus devices?






Google‘s Nexus series of devices are made in close partnership with hardware manufacturers like Asus and Samsung, the makers of the Nexus 7 tablet and Galaxy Nexus smartphone respectively. These gadgets eschew most non-uninstallable “crapware” and UI layers like Touchwiz and MotoBLUR, even the ones those manufacturers normally install, in favor of a pure “Made for Google Play” (Google‘s version of Apple’s iTunes and its App Store) experience.


Nexus devices have historically stopped receiving updates faster than Apple’s iPhones and iPads have. But relatively frequent operating system updates — and the accompanying features and bug fixes — are still one of their major selling points compared to other Android devices, as most seldom if ever receive such upgrades.


Why these particular Nexus devices?


The GSM versions of the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10 are the ones reported so far to have received the update. If the software update is now in the process rolling out to all recent Nexus devices worldwide, it may take some time for each individual Nexus to get it, and for an official changelog to be posted.


Certain carriers’ Nexus devices may have to wait months for the upgrade, the way that Galaxy Nexus owners on Verizon had to last time.


Does the Android 4.2.2 update add any new features?


None have been reported so far. But Jerry Hildenbrand of Android Central recently posted a screenshot of something which was spotted on a Google support page: A home screen widget added for the popular Google Now app, which is basically Google’s answer to Siri.


The support page Jerry links to now gives visitors an error message, which suggests that Google may not be ready to reveal that yet. It’s not clear, however, whether it will be part of Android 4.2.2 or a future update, or whether it will be added to Google Now via a Google Play app update (the same way other apps are individually updated).


Which bugs does the Android 4.2.2 update fix?


Google confirmed last month that “the a2dp streaming stutter problem” would be fixed in the next release of Android. Android Police‘s Cameron Summerson explains that this was a bug where audio “lag and cuts out constantly” when listened to over Bluetooth headsets. A similar bug affected Bluetooth game controllers, which tended to either not work or lag horribly on devices running Android 4.2.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.


Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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What Wardrobe Memo? See the Style Rule Breakers at the Grammys





The email requested that "buttocks and female breasts are adequately covered," but Katy Perry, Kelly Rowland and more ignored that appeal and flaunted their assets








Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP



Updated: Sunday Feb 10, 2013 | 10:00 PM EST
By: Zoë Ruderman




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What heals traumatized kids? Answers are lacking


CHICAGO (AP) — Shootings and other traumatic events involving children are not rare events, but there's a startling lack of scientific evidence on the best ways to help young survivors and witnesses heal, a government-funded analysis found.


School-based counseling treatments showed the most promise, but there's no hard proof that anxiety drugs or other medication work and far more research is needed to provide solid answers, say the authors who reviewed 25 studies. Their report was sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.


According to research cited in the report, about two-thirds of U.S. children and teens younger than 18 will experience at least one traumatic event, including shootings and other violence, car crashes and weather disasters. That includes survivors and witnesses of trauma. Most will not suffer any long-term psychological problems, but about 13 percent will develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress, including anxiety, behavior difficulties and other problems related to the event.


The report's conclusions don't mean that no treatment works. It's just that no one knows which treatments are best, or if certain ones work better for some children but not others.


"Our findings serve as a call to action," the researchers wrote in their analysis, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.


"This is a very important topic, just in light of recent events," said lead author Valerie Forman-Hoffman, a researcher at RTI International, a North Carolina-based nonprofit research group.


She has two young children and said the results suggest that it's likely one of them will experience some kind of trauma before reaching adulthood. "As a parent I want to know what works best," the researcher said.


Besides the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, other recent tragedies involving young survivors or witnesses include the fatal shooting last month of a 15-year-old Chicago girl gunned down in front of a group of friends; Superstorm Sandy in October; and the 2011 Joplin, Mo., tornado, whose survivors include students whose high school was destroyed.


Some may do fine with no treatment; others will need some sort of counseling to help them cope.


Studying which treatments are most effective is difficult because so many things affect how a child or teen will fare emotionally after a traumatic event, said Dr. Denise Dowd, an emergency physician and research director at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Mo., who wrote a Pediatrics editorial.


One of the most important factors is how the child's parents handle the aftermath, Dowd said.


"If the parent is freaking out" and has difficulty controlling emotions, kids will have a tougher time dealing with trauma. Traumatized kids need to feel like they're in a safe and stable environment, and if their parents have trouble coping, "it's going to be very difficult for the kid," she said.


The researchers analyzed 25 studies of treatments that included anti-anxiety and depression drugs, school-based counseling, and various types of psychotherapy. The strongest evidence favored school-based treatments involving cognitive behavior therapy, which helps patients find ways to cope with disturbing thoughts and emotions, sometimes including talking repeatedly about their trauma.


This treatment worked better than nothing, but more research is needed comparing it with alternatives, the report says.


"We really don't have a gold standard treatment right now," said William Copeland, a psychologist and researcher at Duke University Medical Center who was not involved in the report. A lot of doctors and therapists may be "patching together a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and that might not add up to the most effective treatment for any given child," he said.


___


Online:


Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org


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Wall Street flat near highs as investors seek catalysts

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Monday as investors scrambled to find catalysts to move the market higher after a six-weeks-long advance that has taken the S&P 500 index near record highs.


The benchmark index is up more than 6 percent so far this year after a steep rally in January that has stalled as the S&P and Dow industrials near multiyear highs.


Trading volume was relatively low, which could make the market volatile and exaggerate moves.


Google Inc shares fell 0.9 percent at $777.94 after the company said in a filing former chief executive Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his Google stake, a move that could potentially net him $2.51 billion.


But the decline was offset by gains in Apple , up 1.8 percent at $483.68 after a New York Times report that the iPhone maker is experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch.


"It's really the valuation and indications that the economy is improving that have pushed the market higher. We would have to see a probable correction before heading higher and that could come from weak economic data in the future," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management.


No economic data or major earnings reports are scheduled for Monday, but Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen is due to speak about the economic recovery at 1 p.m. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will describe his plan for spurring the economy in his State of the Union address. He is expected to offer proposals for investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 18.09 points, or 0.13 percent, at 13,974.88. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.71 point, or 0.05 percent, at 1,517.22. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 2.32 points, or 0.07 percent, at 3,191.55.


Upbeat U.S. and Chinese data last week helped the S&P 500 extend its weekly winning streak to six.


Opposition has grown to the $24.4 billion buyout of Dell Inc , the No. 3 personal computer maker, as three of the largest investors joined Southeastern Asset Management on Friday in raising objections. Dell said in a regulatory filing it had considered many strategic options before opting to go private in a buyout led by Chief Executive Michael Dell.


Dell shares hovered near $13.65, the buyout offer price.


Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc shares jumped 3.9 percent at $172.39 after it said longtime drug development partner Sanofi plans to boost its stake in Regeneron by open market purchases of its stock.


(Reporting By Angela Moon)



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