Stocks end higher for sixth straight week, tech leads

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Nasdaq composite stock index closed at a 12-year high and the S&P 500 index at a five-year high, boosted by gains in technology shares and stronger overseas trade figures.

The S&P 500 also posted a sixth straight week of gains for the first time since August.

The technology sector led the day's gains, with the S&P 500 technology index <.splrct> up 1.0 percent. Gains in professional network platform LinkedIn Corp and AOL Inc after they reported quarterly results helped the sector.

Shares of LinkedIn jumped 21.3 percent to $150.48 after the social networking site announced strong quarterly profits and gave a bullish forecast for the year.

AOL Inc shares rose 7.4 percent to $33.72 after the online company reported higher quarterly profit, boosted by a 13 percent rise in advertising sales.

Data showed Chinese exports grew more than expected, a positive sign for the global economy. The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in December, suggesting the U.S. economy likely grew in the fourth quarter instead of contracting slightly as originally reported by the U.S. government.

"That may have sent a ray of optimism," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Trading volume on Friday was below average for the week as a blizzard swept into the northeastern United States.

The U.S. stock market has posted strong gains since the start of the year, with the S&P 500 up 6.4 percent since December 31. The advance has slowed in recent days, with fourth-quarter earnings winding down and few incentives to continue the rally on the horizon.

"I think we're in the middle of a trading range and I'd put plus or minus 5.0 percent around it. Fundamental factors are best described as neutral," Dickson said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> ended up 48.92 points, or 0.35 percent, at 13,992.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 8.54 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,517.93. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 28.74 points, or 0.91 percent, at 3,193.87, its highest closing level since November 2000.

For the week, the Dow was down 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 was up 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq up 0.5 percent.

Shares of Dell closed at $13.63, up 0.7 percent, after briefly trading above a buyout offering price of $13.65 during the session.

Dell's largest independent shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, said it plans to oppose the buyout of the personal computer maker, setting up a battle for founder Michael Dell.

Signs of economic strength overseas buoyed sentiment on Wall Street. Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand. German data showed a 2012 surplus that was the nation's second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe's biggest economy.

Separately, U.S. economic data showed the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Earnings have mostly come in stronger than expected since the start of the reporting period. Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies now are estimated up 5.2 percent versus a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. That contrasts with a 1.9 percent growth forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Molina Healthcare Inc surged 10.4 percent to $31.88 as the biggest boost to the index after posting fourth-quarter earnings.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, was down 3.6 percent at 13.02. The gauge, a key measure of market expectations of short-term volatility, generally moves inversely to the S&P 500.

"I'm watching the 14 level closely" on the CBOE Volatility index, said Bryan Sapp, senior trading analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "The break below it at the beginning of the year signaled the sharp rally in January, and a rally back above it could be a sign to exercise some caution."

Volume was roughly 5.6 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.

Advancers outpaced decliners on the NYSE by nearly 2 to 1 and on the Nasdaq by almost 5 to 3.

(Additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Nick Zieminski, Kenneth Barry and Andrew Hay)

Read More..

Egypt Court Orders Block on YouTube Over Anti-Islam Video

CAIRO (AP) — A Cairo court on Saturday ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing Web site YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that set off deadly riots last year, but the ruling can be appealed and, based on precedent, may not be enforced.

Judge Hassouna Tawfiq described the video as “offensive to Islam” and to the Prophet Muhammad. The first protests against the film erupted in Cairo last September, before spreading to more than 20 countries, leaving more than 50 people dead.

The 14-minute video, said to be a trailer for a movie called “Innocence of Muslims,” portrays Muhammad as a religious fraud, a womanizer and a pedophile. It was produced in the United States by an Egyptian-born Christian who is now a United States citizen.

Egypt’s new Constitution includes a ban on insulting “religious messengers and prophets.” Broadly worded blasphemy laws also were in effect under President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in a popular revolt two years ago.

Similar orders to censor pornographic Web sites have not been enforced because of the high costs associated with technical applications, although blocking YouTube may be easier.

YouTube’s parent company, Google, last year declined requests to remove the video from the Web site, but restricted access to it in certain countries, including Egypt, Libya and Indonesia, because it said the video broke laws in those countries. At the height of the protests in September, YouTube was ordered blocked in several countries, including Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia issued an order blocking all Web sites with access to the film.

Mohammed Hamid Salim, a lawyer who filed the lawsuit in Cairo, charged that the film constituted a threat to Egypt’s security. When the video was released, protesters in Cairo scaled the American Embassy’s walls and brought down the flag.

Some liberal and secular Egyptians fear that Egypt’s new Islamist leaders will try to curb freedoms related to religion. An Egyptian court last year convicted in absentia seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and an American pastor based in Florida, sentencing them to death on charges linked to the film. The case was seen as largely symbolic because the defendants, most of whom live in the United States, were unlikely to ever face the sentence.

In a related case, a Cairo court convicted a Coptic Christian blogger who shared the film online. The blogger was sentenced to three years in prison, but was released on bail.

Read More..

Egypt court suspends YouTube over anti-Islam film

CAIRO (Reuters) – An Egyptian court ordered the suspension of online video service YouTube for a month on Saturday for broadcasting a film insulting the Prophet Mohammad, state media reported.

The country’s administrative court ordered the ministries of communication and investment to block YouTube, owned by Google, inside Egypt because it had carried the film “Innocence of Muslims,” said state news agency MENA.

The 13-minute video, billed as a film trailer and made in the United States, provoked a torrent of anti-American unrest in Egypt, Libya and dozens of other Muslim countries in September.

The video depicts the Prophet as a fool and a sexual deviant. For most Muslims, any portrayal of the Prophet is considered blasphemous.

The court said it was ruling on a case brought about the film several months ago, without going into further detail.

YouTube had “insisted on broadcasting the film insulting Islam and the Prophet, disrespecting the beliefs of millions of Egyptians and disregarding the anger of all Muslims” the court said, according to MENA.

Egypt’s National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority said it would abide by the ruling as soon as it received a copy of the verdict.

Maha Abouelenein, a Google spokeswoman in Cairo, said the company had yet to receive any formal notification of the ruling.

(Additional reporting by Kevin Gray; Writing by Marwa Awad; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Egypt court suspends YouTube over anti-Islam film
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/egypt-court-suspends-youtube-over-anti-islam-film/
Link To Post : Egypt court suspends YouTube over anti-Islam film
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Manhunt Escalates for Former L.A. Cop Christopher Dorner

By Stephen M. Silverman

02/08/2013 at 12:40 PM EST

Undated photo of Christopher Dorner

LAPD/AP

A massive manhunt continues Friday in Southern California for Christopher Dorner, a rage-filled former Los Angeles police officer on a self-confessed vendetta that left one policemen dead, another seriously wounded and another two people dead.

San Bernadino County Sheriffs confirmed in a Friday morning news conference that cabins are being scoured in the snowy mountains surrounding Big Bear, where Dorner, a former LAPD officer with military training, has a cabin of his own.

Police earlier found Dorner's burned-out pickup truck and tracks leading away from the vehicle off a wooded road near Big Bear. Authorities say Dorner's alleged wave of violence was retribution for having been fired in 2008 after making false statements.

Dorner said he would stop the killing when the LAPD publicly proclaimed his innocence and restored his reputation. "The department has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse," Dorner wrote in a document that he called his "Manifesto."

He continued: "I know I will be vilified by the LAPD and the media. Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name."

Police departments throughout the sprawling Los Angeles area continue to help try and capture Dorner, who is said to be armed with assault rifles and multiple other weapons.

Dorner's alleged victims are said to be two Riverside, Calif., police officers, ages 35 and 27, who were parked in their squad car. The elder officer, an 11-year-veteran of the force, was killed, and his partner seriously wounded. In addiiton, Monica Quan and her fiancé, Keith Lawrence, were found shot to death in their car Sunday night, according to Irvine Police Chief David L. Maggard.

Read More..

Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.

It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.

Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.

"We're talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs," bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study's leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.

In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk.

"It's a very big difference," Judd said. "The message for people in the middle is there's a graded risk" — the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week.

Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them. More than 20,000 people 45 or older — half of them black — from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles:

—Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.

—Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.

—Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and whole-grain bread.

—Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.

—Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.

"They're not mutually exclusive" — for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.

Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn't seem to affect stroke risk.

There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it.

There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plant-based meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.

The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed.

Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure — a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cuisine — revealed she had a year ago.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc. funded the study.

"This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content," said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital.

"I don't mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I'm in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don't have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff."

___

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

Read More..

Market rises on data but caution settles on Wall Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged higher on Friday, with the benchmark S&P index hitting a five-year high after a batch of positive economic reports, but gains were capped as investors grew cautious about a further advance.

Data showing stronger international trade from China and Germany and a report showing a smaller U.S. trade deficit in December were seen as encouraging signs of global demand.

Among stocks on the rise, the technology sector was boosted by gains in LinkedIn Corp and AOL Inc following their quarterly results.

The S&P 500 <.spx>, up 6.3 percent for the year, is on track for six straight weeks of gains. But the index has found it tougher to climb in recent days as investors await strong trading incentives to drive it further upward.

"We are going to have this churn and this consolidation, which actually isn't a bad thing," said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O'Neil Securities in New York.

The market is building a base by consolidating and showing less volatility, he said.

"If it builds a base, from there it is easier to make the argument that you move ahead," Polcari said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 34.83 points, or 0.25 percent, at 13,978.88. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 6.06 points, or 0.40 percent, at 1,515.45. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 25.90 points, or 0.82 percent, at 3,191.04.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, was down 4.2 percent at 12.94. The gauge generally moves inversely to the S&P 500.

Still, there were concerns whether the market would stride higher.

"I'm watching the 14 level closely. The break below it at the beginning of the year signaled the sharp rally in January, and a rally back above it could be a sign to exercise some caution," said Bryan Sapp, senior trading analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Healthcare stocks also performed well. The Morgan Stanley healthcare payor index <.hmo> was up 2.3 percent. Molina Healthcare Inc surged 9.7 percent to $31.67 as the biggest boost to the index after posting fourth-quarter earnings.

McDonald's Corp said January sales at established hamburger restaurants around the world fell 1.9 percent, a steeper decline than analysts had expected. Still, shares edged up 0.7 percent to $95.31.

Data showed Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand, while German data showed a 2012 surplus that was the nation's second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe's biggest economy.

Another positive sign was U.S. economic data which showed the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Shares of LinkedIn jumped 18.8 percent to $147.40 after announcing quarterly profits and giving a bullish forecast for the year.

AOL Inc shares also jumped 7 percent to $33.60 after the online company said its quarterly profit had jumped, boosted by a 13 percent rise in advertising sales.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Friday morning, of 339 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 69.9 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 grew 5.2 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Read More..

India Ink: Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests

SRINAGAR —Online abuse and a fatwa aimed at a rock band of Muslim teenage girls in Kashmir have led to arrests and a threat of a lawsuit.

Three men were arrested this week for posting threatening messages on the Facebook page of Praagaash, an amateur rock band in Indian-occupied Kashmir made of up Muslim girls. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Manoj Pandita, spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir police, indicating that more arrests may follow.

The three men were charged under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which applies to “offensive” messages being sent through communication services, and Section 506 of the Ranbir Penal Code, which applies to criminal intimidation. Mr. Pandita said that it had been easy to track the I.P. addresses of the Facebook users.

A prominent human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, is planning to sue the top religious leader in Kashmir, who called for the fatwa, for “demonizing Kashmir before the international community” and for “running a parallel judicial system in the valley.”

Mr. Imroz told India Ink that human rights organizations like his needed support from the international community to highlight their concerns, and such fatwas reflected badly on the Kashmiri society. “He is diverting attention away from real issues of human rights to nonissues like music and purdah,” Mr. Imroz said.

The fatwa against the band was issued by the Grand Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad.

In his fatwa, Mr. Ahmad advised women to only sing inside the house to other female members of the family, and wear a veil whenever they left the house. “They must stay within limits,” he said.

Following the band’s first live performance in December, Aneeqa Khalid, Noma Nazir and Farah Deeba, 10th-grade students who are 15 and 16 years old, became the target of abuse and threats on Facebook by people who accused them of being un-Islamic because they had performed in public, especially before men. Some commenters called them “sluts” and “prostitutes;” others suggested that they should be raped.

The band Praagaash, which means “darkness into light,” disbanded following a national controversy surrounding these threatening messages. The threats were condemned by many, including the state’s chief minister.

To many Kashmiris, both the fatwa and the arrests by the government are unnecessary. Some say that the controversy erupted after the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, got involved by expressing his support for the band on Twitter and then calling for investigation against those writing the threatening messages.

“Nobody here had a problem with the rock band,” said Aala Fazili, a doctorate student at Kashmir University, pointing out that the band’s performance in December had not led to any protests or physical threats against them.

Mr. Fazili, 32, added that people shouldn’t be arrested for writing abusive posts on Facebook. “You cannot call an abuse a threat,” he said.

Mr. Pandita, the Kashmir police spokesman, said the investigators were making a distinction between a threat and abuse on the basis of “gravity.”

Pranesh Prakash, from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, asked whether people who hold protests calling for the death of the author Salman Rushdie should also be arrested for making threats.

“I would hold that no expression of violent thoughts, online or offline, should be made criminal, even if it is repugnantly misogynistic, unless it takes the form of a credible threat that causes harm, or is harassment that constitutes harm,” he said.

Read More..

What If the Wii U Were Just Its Tablet Controller? Meet the 7-Inch Wikipad

The Wii U made a splash with its personal tablet controllers. Sandwiching a 6.2-inch touchscreen in between a regular analog stick and buttons, the Wii U’s GamePad is like a Nintendo DS’ lower touchscreen for a home console, and even lets you play games right on its screen. It streams those games from the Wii U itself, though, meaning it’s basically useless when it’s out of range of the console.

Imagine a Wii U GamePad that was a self-contained console, and used an iPad-style capacitive touchscreen instead of a Nintendo DS-style resistive one. That’s the new 7-inch Wikipad in a nutshell, at least hardware-wise. It’s not made by Nintendo, however, and in terms of what games it plays — and how much it costs — it’s still very different.

Hardware differences

Besides being slightly taller and wider and a lot thicker than a GamePad, the Wikipad has one more major difference: The tablet part is detachable. Unlatch it from the surrounding game controller part, and it becomes a 7-inch Android tablet with an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor and 16 GB of flash memory, sort of like Google‘s popular Nexus 7.

It’s still a 7-inch Android tablet when the controller part is attached, though, and that’s the biggest difference.

Android software

Despite its resemblance to a certain popular game console accessory, the Wikipad is still a tablet running Google’s open-source Android operating system, when it comes down to it. It just happens to be one (of several) which includes its own game controller. And while some well-known games — like a few of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog titles and Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy games — have made it to the Google Play app store, for the most part you’d be playing mobile games, like the included Dead Trigger and ShadowGun: Dead Zone. Which is unfortunate, because most Android games don’t support game controllers, seeing as how they were designed for touchscreen-only gadgets like the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7.

On the plus side

Many of top-tier mobile publisher Gameloft’s titles support game controllers, which is unsurprising since they tend to be knockoffs of popular console games like Halo and Modern Warfare. And unlike most Android gadgets, the Wikipad is PlayStation Certified, which means it can run PlayStation Mobile games (small minigames designed for the PS Vita) plus a handful of old PSone titles.

Wikipad’s website has a list of more than 60 games which currently support its controller. You may have to consult it before playing each one, however, in order to find out which button does what.

Still worth getting?

The Wikipad will be available “from leading retailers in spring 2013 at a launch price of $ 249,” according to the company’s press release. That’s about $ 50 more than you’d pay for a similarly-specced Nexus 7, which doesn’t have PlayStation Mobile, expandable memory via microSD card slot, or a game controller. The Nexus 7 has 32 GB and 3G options available, however, and you can always buy a separate game controller for it.

A 10-inch Wikipad was announced late last year, but never made it to market. According to Droid Gamers, “some flaws were found during production.”

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.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: What If the Wii U Were Just Its Tablet Controller? Meet the 7-Inch Wikipad
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/what-if-the-wii-u-were-just-its-tablet-controller-meet-the-7-inch-wikipad/
Link To Post : What If the Wii U Were Just Its Tablet Controller? Meet the 7-Inch Wikipad
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Rihanna & Chris Brown Go from the Courthouse to the Studio Together

By Maggie Coughlan

02/07/2013 at 12:15 PM EST

Chris Brown (far left) and Rihanna (right) at Brown's court hearing

Splash News Online

That's one way to stand by your man.

Rihanna attended boyfriend Chris Brown's court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday – and later stepped out with him after a late night in the studio.

Brown, 23, was charged with failing to complete his community service after domestically abusing Rihanna, 24, in 2009. Joined by Brown's mother, Joyce Hawkins, and two other women, Rihanna sat stoically as the judge discussed Brown's case.

Then, hours later, the couple was photographed leaving a recording studio together in Brown's Porsche around 4:30 a.m., after having spent five hours together inside.

Following the assault in 2009, the couple parted ways. But in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, the "Diamonds" singer revealed they rekindled their romance.

"Even if it's a mistake, it's my mistake. After being tormented for so many years, being angry and dark, I'd rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle it," she said.

But Rihanna insists that things are "different now."

"We don't have those types of arguments anymore. We have each other. We know exactly what we have now, and we don't want to lose that," she told the magazine.

Rihanna and Chris Brown

RACHPOOT / XPOSUREPHOTOS.COM

Read More..

Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.

It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.

Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.

"We're talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs," bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study's leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.

In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk.

"It's a very big difference," Judd said. "The message for people in the middle is there's a graded risk" — the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week.

Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them. More than 20,000 people 45 or older — half of them black — from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles:

—Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.

—Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.

—Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and whole-grain bread.

—Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.

—Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.

"They're not mutually exclusive" — for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.

Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn't seem to affect stroke risk.

There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it.

There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plant-based meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.

The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed.

Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure — a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cuisine — revealed she had a year ago.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc. funded the study.

"This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content," said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital.

"I don't mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I'm in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don't have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff."

___

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

Read More..