Wall Street flat, trading cautious; Obama to speak on "cliff"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Friday as investors were hesitant to make big bets ahead of a statement by President Obama on the progress of budget talks in Washington that have recently driven volatility in financial markets.

U.S. President Barack Obama, visiting a factory in Pennsylvania, will press his case on raising taxes on the wealthy to narrow the deficit. He is expected to make a statement around midday that is likely to impact markets.

"There is always hope in those situations that he (Obama) is going to announce some type of positive development," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York. "We see how violently the market swings on positive and negative announcements."

Trading has been choppy as investors react to mixed statements from policymakers in Washington about discussions on averting the "fiscal cliff," spending cuts and tax hikes that will come into effect in the new year and could cause a recession, according to worst-case predictions.

Corporations continued to anticipate a harsher tax regime next year. Whole Foods Market Inc was the latest to announce a special cash dividend of $2.00 per share to skirt higher dividend tax rates in 2013. The stock was up 0.6 percent at $93.60.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 5.63 points, or 0.04 percent, to 13,027.45. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dropped 0.58 points, or 0.04 percent, to 1,415.37. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dropped 3.43 points, or 0.11 percent, to 3,008.59.

The S&P 500 was on track to end the month 0.3 percent higher, after declining nearly 2 percent in October. The index has recovered 4.5 percent since shedding 8 percent following the U.S. presidential election earlier in November.

"The correction from the S&P 500's September peak has allowed overbought momentum and optimistic sentiment conditions to recede, and we believe the index is closer to an intermediate-term buy signal than a sell signal," said Ari Wald, analyst at PrinceRidge Group.

Yum Brands Inc shares slumped 9.4 percent to $67.42. The company said late Thursday it expects fourth-quarter sales at established restaurants to drop in China, where a cooling economy is making it difficult to exceed the 21-percent gain it enjoyed there a year earlier.

After a close relationship for several years, Facebook Inc and Zynga Inc revised terms of a partnership agreement between the companies. Under the new pact, Zynga will have limited ability to promote its site on Facebook.

Zynga shares dropped 5.3 percent to $2.48. Facebook shares were down 1.2 percent at $26.99.

The markets' reaction to data on Friday was muted.

A report showed business activity in the U.S. Midwest expanded for the first time since August, buoyed by an improvement in the labor market.

Separately, data showed U.S. consumer spending fell in October for the first time in five months as income growth stalled, suggesting slower economic growth in the fourth quarter.

Apple Inc's latest iPhone has received final clearance from Chinese regulators, paving the way for a December debut in a highly competitive market where the lack of a new model had severely eroded its share of product sales. Shares of Apple were down 0.7 percent at $585.29.

Verisign Inc said the U.S. Department of Commerce had approved its agreement with ICANN to run the .com internet registry, but the company wouldn't be able to raise prices as before. The stock dropped 14.1 percent to $33.80 in late morning trading.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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U.N. Court Frees Former Leader of Kosovo Ramush Haradinaj

Hazir Reka/Reuters

Ramush Haradinaj, center, being greeted by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo at the airport in Pristina on Thursday.

PARIS — A United Nations war crimes tribunal on Thursday acquitted the former prime minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, for the second time of charges of torturing and killing Serb civilians while he was a commander of the NATO-backed Kosovo Liberation Army during its fight for independence in 1999.

Two of his associates, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj, were also acquitted, although Mr. Brahimaj has already served a six-year sentence for torture handed down in an earlier trial. The judges ordered the three men released immediately and by evening Mr. Haradinaj, who spent almost four years in jail, had already returned to Kosovo, retrieved by a government plane. He was welcomed by the prime minister, Hashim Thaci, a longtime rival, and cheered by large crowds on the streets of Pristina, the capital.

“I have mixed feelings, because an injustice was done to me and my people,” Mr. Haradinaj said in a telephone interview after his arrival. “It took a long time and I am looking forward to helping to build Kosovo society.”

People close to Mr. Haradinaj said that with his reputation as a freedom fighter intact, he would soon return to politics.

The acquittal was bitterly denounced by Serbians, who have long believed that the Hague tribunal is biased against them.

The decision came after the court released two Croatian generals, Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, this month after an appeals chamber threw out their convictions. The generals had led a 1995 military campaign that recaptured Serb-occupied Croatian land, killed several hundred Serbian civilians and drove more than 150,000 Serbs from Croatia.

President Tomislav Nikolic of Serbia, a nationalist long skeptical of the Hague process, said in a statement that Thursday’s ruling showed that the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had evidently been “formed to try the Serbian people” for the wars of the 1990s. Now, he said, “nobody will be convicted for the horrible crimes against Kosovo Serbs.”

Amnesty International has estimated that 800 non-Albanians were abducted and killed by Kosovo rebels, and it said that few people suspected of such crimes had been prosecuted in Kosovo.

The overturning of the Croatian and the Kosovo convictions are seen as serious setbacks for the tribunal’s ability to prosecute cases. The court has said recently that it will seek a review of the Croatian appeals ruling, in which two of the five judges wrote unusually sharp dissenting opinions. One judge bluntly called the acquittal of the Croatian generals “grotesque,” saying that the findings of the majority “contradict any sense of justice.”

Inevitably, the acquittals have provoked criticism beyond Serbia that the verdicts were politically inspired, because the militaries of both countries were backed by the West. The Croatian campaign of 1995 was planned with the help of active and retired American military advisers, and the Kosovo Liberation Army was backed by NATO in the war that established Kosovo, a former Serbian province, as an independent state.

But lawyers who formerly worked for the tribunal have said that the case against the Kosovo fighters was weak from the start.

Geoffrey Nice, a former senior trial attorney at the tribunal, questioned why Mr. Haradinaj was indicted at all. Mr. Nice and others said that before Mr. Haradinaj was charged, lawyers in the prosecution office cautioned on several occasions that there was not enough evidence to build a case against him.

But Mr. Haradinaj, at the time prime minister of a United Nations-administered Kosovo, became the most senior Kosovo Albanian to be charged when Carla del Ponte, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, indicted him in 2005. She called him a “gangster in uniform” and accused him and two of his lieutenants of crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, rape and expulsion of civilians.

Mr. Haradinaj, who had just served 100 days in office, agreed to step down and surrender to The Hague to face his first trial. Before leaving, he said that he was innocent and that his indictment was “a result of the trade-off that some have made with the Serbian government” to make sure that Belgrade would extradite high-ranking Serbian war crimes suspects. Tribunal officials declined to comment.

It seemed like an abrupt end to a career for the man who had done a stint in the Yugoslav Army and spent almost a decade as an immigrant in Switzerland, where he worked as a nightclub bouncer, carpenter and martial arts teacher. By the time he joined the Kosovo separatist rebellion against Serbia, he had taught himself English and French and read books on guerrilla tactics. He soon established himself as a zone commander in the rebel army.

Mr. Haradinaj was cleared of those charges in 2008, after prosecutors had called for a 20-year sentence. But an appeals court overturned the verdict and ordered a retrial in 2010, saying that extensive intimidation of witnesses had led to a miscarriage of justice.

It was the tribunal’s first retrial, and it concluded with Thursday’s acquittal. The judges said they found that crimes had occurred, including 16 civilians abducted and mistreated in the rebels’ Jablanica prison camp and eight civilians killed there in captivity. But they said they found no evidence that Mr. Haradinaj had directly participated in the crimes or could be held criminally responsible. Rather, they said, there was evidence he had tried to prevent crimes by his underlings.

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Study: DVRs now in half of US pay-TV homes

NEW YORK (AP) — A new survey finds that digital video recorders are now in more than half of all U.S. homes that subscribe to cable or satellite TV services.

Leichtman Research Group‘s survey of 1,300 households found that 52 percent of the ones that have pay-TV service also have a DVR. That translates to about 45 percent of all households and is up from 13.5 percent of all households surveyed five years ago by another firm, Nielsen.

The first DVRs came out in 1999, from TiVo Inc. and ReplayTV. Later, they were built into cable set-top boxes. The latest trend is “whole-home” DVRs that can distribute recorded shows to several sets.

Even with the spread of DVRs, live TV rules. Nielsen found last year that DVRs accounted for 8 percent of TV watching.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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PHOTOS: Meet Miley Cyrus's Hottest Sibling

Stylewatch
Style News Now

11/29/2012 at 12:45 PM ET

Courtesy Vijat Mohindra

Nothing personal, Miley, but you might not be our favorite Cyrus now that we’ve seen these pics of your younger brother.

Eighteen-year-old Braison Cyrus just signed a modeling contract with Wilhelmina Models, E! News reports, and the agency released two promo photos that give a sneak peek of what’s to come when he makes his official modeling debut in the January and February issues of Troix magazine.

In the first pic, Cyrus — who has a serious head of hair — poses against a wall wearing a gray blazer, jeans and a black shirt. (Anyone else getting a young James Franco vibe?) And in a black-and-white headshot (below) he glances off the side and works his version of “Blue Steel.”

This isn’t the first time the younger Cyrus has had a taste of the spotlight: E! News notes that he did have a few background parts on his sister’s show, Hannah Montana. Tell us: Do you think Braison Cyrus will make it big as a model? 

Courtesy Vijat Mohindra

PHOTOS: EAT UP MORE EYE CANDY WITH OUR SEXIEST MEN ALIVE!

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Clinton releases road map for AIDS-free generation

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic over the next three to five years.

"An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ordered the blueprint, said in the report.

"Make no mistake about it, HIV may well be with us into the future but the disease that it causes need not be," she said at the State Department Thursday.

President Barack Obama echoed that promise.

"We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end," Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.

Some 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and despite a decline in new infections over the last decade, 2.5 million people were infected last year.

Given those staggering figures, what does an AIDS-free generation mean? That virtually no babies are born infected, young people have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and that people who already have HIV would receive life-saving treatment.

That last step is key: Treating people early in their infection, before they get sick, not only helps them survive but also dramatically cuts the chances that they'll infect others. Yet only about 8 million HIV patients in developing countries are getting treatment. The United Nations aims to have 15 million treated by 2015.

Other important steps include: Treating more pregnant women, and keeping them on treatment after their babies are born; increasing male circumcision to lower men's risk of heterosexual infection; increasing access to both male and female condoms; and more HIV testing.

The world spent $16.8 billion fighting AIDS in poor countries last year. The U.S. government is the leading donor, spending about $5.6 billion.

Thursday's report from PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, outlines how progress could continue at current spending levels — something far from certain as Congress and Obama struggle to avert looming budget cuts at year's end — or how faster progress is possible with stepped-up commitments from hard-hit countries themselves.

Clinton warned Thursday that the U.S. must continue doing its share: "In the fight against HIV/AIDS, failure to live up to our commitments isn't just disappointing, it's deadly."

The report highlighted Zambia, which already is seeing some declines in new cases of HIV. It will have to treat only about 145,000 more patients over the next four years to meet its share of the U.N. goal, a move that could prevent more than 126,000 new infections in that same time period. But if Zambia could go further and treat nearly 198,000 more people, the benefit would be even greater — 179,000 new infections prevented, the report estimates.

In contrast, if Zambia had to stick with 2011 levels of HIV prevention, new infections could level off or even rise again over the next four years, the report found.

Advocacy groups said the blueprint offers a much-needed set of practical steps to achieve an AIDS-free generation — and makes clear that maintaining momentum is crucial despite economic difficulties here and abroad.

"The blueprint lays out the stark choices we have: To stick with the baseline and see an epidemic flatline or grow, or ramp up" to continue progress, said Chris Collins of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

His group has estimated that more than 276,000 people would miss out on HIV treatment if U.S. dollars for the global AIDS fight are part of across-the-board spending cuts set to begin in January.

Thursday's report also urges targeting the populations at highest risk, including gay men, injecting drug users and sex workers, especially in countries where stigma and discrimination has denied them access to HIV prevention services.

"We have to go where the virus is," Clinton said.

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Wall Street trims gains, volatile after Boehner remarks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed on Thursday, but shed some earlier gains, after John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, poured cold water on hopes that lawmakers were getting closer to cutting a budget deal that would avert a possible recession next year.

Boehner's comment - that no "substantive" progress had been made in fiscal talks with the White House - was the latest in a string of contrary pronouncements by policymakers that have wobbled the markets as investors attempt to speculate over whether Washington will finally cut a deal.

There have been some signs that leaders are moving closer to a fiscal agreement. The S&P 500 has gained nearly 5 percent after dropping almost 8 percent following the U.S. election in November. But investors remain wary that ad hoc statements from politicians can spark quick reversals in the market.

"When the sentiment is that nothing is going to get done, it does create a lot of anxiety and selling pressure. If there's any sense of progress, then the market seems to rally," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago. "I think we're hostage to this for the rest of the year."

Discussions are ongoing in Congress over avoiding big spending cuts and tax hikes, known as the "fiscal cliff," that will begin to take effect from January.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 6.95 points, or 0.05 percent, to 12,992.06. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 3.40 points, or 0.24 percent, to 1,413.33. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 11.82 points, or 0.40 percent, to 3,003.60.

U.S.-listed shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion surged 5.9 percent to $11.75 after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral" on optimistic ahead of the launch of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

Shares of top retailers retreated in the wake of data showing a weak start to November sales after superstorm Sandy. Target fell 1.6 percent to $61.80 percent and Kohl's Corp dropped 8.2 percent to $46.94.

The U.S. economy grew faster than initially thought in the third quarter as businesses restocked, but consumer and business spending were revised lower in a sobering reminder of the economic recovery's underlying weakness.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the quarter, the Commerce Department said, as export growth helped offset the weakest consumer spending and first drop in business investment in more than a year.

Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose more than expected in October, a sign the housing market recovery advanced into the fourth quarter despite a mammoth storm and concerns over looming tax hikes.

Shares of companies that build homes rose. The PHLX housing index <.hgx> rose 0.4 percent, shedding some earlier gains in line with the pullback in the broader market.

Tiffany shares slumped 6.7 percent to $59.48 after the upscale jeweler reported quarterly results and cut its full-year sales and profit forecasts.

Although domestic events largely dominated investors' attention, the euro zone is still on the radar. The yield on Italy's 10-year bonds fell to the lowest in two years at an auction, amid relief that international lenders reached agreement this week to reduce Greece's debt by more than 40 billion euros.

"The fact that the bond sales in Europe went well suggest confidence is beginning to reenter some of the peripheral nations and that is a good sign," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Hacking Report Criticizes Murdoch Newspaper and British Press Standards

LONDON — The leader of a major inquiry into the standards of British newspapers triggered by the phone hacking scandal offered an excoriating critique of the press as a whole on Thursday, saying it displayed “significant and reckless disregard for accuracy,” and urged the press to form an independent regulator to be underpinned by law.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson on Thursday with his inquiry on press standards.

The report singled out Rupert Murdoch’s defunct tabloid The News of the World for sharp criticism.

“Too many stories in too many newspapers were the subject of complaints from too many people with too little in the way of titles taking responsibility, or considering the consequences for the individuals involved,” the head of the inquiry, Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, said in a 46-page summary of the findings in his long-awaited, 1,987-page report published in four volumes.

“The ball moves back into the politicians’ court,” Sir Brian said, referring to what form new and tighter regulations should take. “They must now decide who guards the guardians.”

The report was published after some 337 witnesses testified in person in 9 months of hearings that sought to unravel the close ties between politicians, the press and the police, reaching into what were depicted as an opaque web of links and cross-links within the British elite as well as a catalog of murky and sometimes unlawful practices within the newspaper industry.

“This inquiry has been the most concentrated look at the press this country has ever seen,” Sir Brian said after the report was made public.

But in a first reaction, Prime Minister David Cameron resisted the report’s recommendation that a new form of press regulation should be underpinned by laws, telling lawmakers that they “should be wary” of “crossing the Rubicon” by enacting legislation with the potential to limit free speech and free expression.

Mr. Cameron’s remarks drew immediate criticism from the leader of the Labour opposition, Ed Miliband, who said Sir Brian’s proposals should be accepted in their entirety.

Mr. Cameron ordered the Leveson Inquiry in July, 2011, as the phone hacking scandal at The News of the World blossomed into broad public revulsion with reports that the newspaper had ordered the interception of voice mail messages left on the cellphone of Milly Dowler, a British teenager who was abducted in 2002 and later found murdered. Sir Brian said there had been a “failure of management and compliance” at the 168-year-old News of the World, which Mr. Murdoch closed in July, 2011, accusing it of a “general lack of respect for individual privacy and dignity.”

“It was said that The News of the World had lost its way in relation to phone hacking,” the summary said. “Its casual attitude to privacy and the lip service it paid to consent demonstrated a far more general loss of direction.”

Speaking after the report was published, Sir Brian said that while the British press held a “privileged and powerful place in our society,” its “responsibilities have simply been ignored.”

“A free press in a democracy holds power to account. But, with a few honorable exceptions, the U.K. press has not performed that vital role in the case of its own power.”

“The press needs to establish a new regulatory body which is truly independent of industry leaders and of government and politicians,” he said. “Guaranteed independence, long-term stability and genuine benefits for the industry cannot be realized without legislation,” he said, adding: “This is not and cannot reasonably or fairly be characterized as statutory regulation of the press.”

In the body of the exhaustive report, reprising at length the testimony of many of the witnesses who spoke at the hearings, the document discusses press culture and ethics; explores the press’s attitude toward the subjects of its stories; and discusses the cozy relationship between the press and the police, and the press and politicians.

John F. Burns, Sandy Lark Turner and Sandy Macaskill contributed reporting.

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Video Games: Art-Tested, MoMA-Approved

Citing a palpable “aesthetic experience” in classic games while eschewing others, the Museum of Modern Art announced Thursday that it has assembled a new collection of video games. The museum’s initial collection includes 14 classics like Pac-Man and Tetris, but also more recent additions to the canon like Passage and Canabalt. The museum has a “wish list” of about 40 total games, which include Pong, The Legend of Zelda, and Minecraft. The games will be exhibited starting in March 2013, but the selections aren’t necessarily what you’d expect.

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Video games are art. That’s a fact (which has some notable dissenters) that’s even been determined by the Supreme Court in a a case decided in 2011. And games have been embraced by art institutions before. In an exhibition this year, the Smithsonian American Art Museum explored The Art of Video Games. But in a blog post today, Paola Antonelli, senior curator in MoMA‘s department of design, explained that the museum’s intention is not as simple as evaluating the artistic value of certain video games. They want to look at games from a design perspective: “Our criteria, therefore, emphasize not only the visual quality and aesthetic experience of each game, but also the many other aspects—from the elegance of the code to the design of the player’s behavior—that pertain to interaction design.” 

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Because the museum is looking for specific design traits, Antonielli explained that MoMA has not acquired, and is not looking for, some games that might seem like “no-brainers to video game historian.”

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Here are some images of the games MoMA has acquired, via the museum: 

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Tetris

RELATED: Filmmaker and San Francisco in a Graffiti Gridlock

flOw

Myst

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nanny Yoselyn Ortega Pleads Not Guilty to Killing Children

By Stephen M. Silverman

11/28/2012 at 12:40 PM EST

Scene of children's stabbing

Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny charged with first-degree murder for allegedly killing the two young children she cared for, faced a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Tuesday morning – and entered a plea of not guilty.

Still in the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center bed a month after police said she fatally stabbed Lucia, 6, and Leo Krim, 2, before she turned the knife on herself, Ortega had her plea entered on her behalf by her public-assistance lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg.

"My client is profoundly mentally impaired and in need of medical attention," the attorney said, reports the New York Post. The paper also says that during the 10-minute legal proceeding in the hospital Ortega, 50, appeared alert though remained silent and under a blanket.

Judge Lewis Bart Stone ordered Ortega to undergo a psychiatric exam to determine if she is mentally fit to stand trial. He also set the next court date for Jan. 16.

No motivation for what caused the Oct. 25 incident has been explained. "She snapped," her tearful sister, Celia Ortega, said on Oct. 26. "We don’t understand what happened to her mind."

Police say that the stabbings took place while the children's mother, Marina Krim, was gone from the family's Upper West Side apartment with a third child, a 3-year-old. When they returned, Marina found Lucia and Leo dead in the bathtub and Ortega on the bathroom floor, with stab wounds to the neck. A kitchen knife was nearby, they said.

The children's father, CNBC digital media executive Kevin Krim, was on an out-town business trip when the killings occured. Police met him at the airport to break the news to him.

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing infections from surgery is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million.

The measures included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Practices were standardized at the seven hospitals.

The Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons directed the project. They announced results on Wednesday.

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Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

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