MUMBAI — India on Saturday hanged a man who was convicted of a 2001 attack on India’s Parliament that killed nine people.
The hanging of Afzal Guru, a 43-year-old militant with the group Jaish-e-Mohammad, came more than a decade after the Dec. 13, 2001, suicide attack on India’s Parliament in which five gunmen opened fire, killing nine people, including security officials and a journalist. The execution drew protests from human rights groups concerned about the growing use of capital punishment in such cases.
Mr. Guru was convicted of conspiracy in the plot and sentenced to death by a special court in 2002. In 2004, the Supreme Court of India upheld the death sentence.
After the execution, clashes broke out in Mr. Guru’s hometown Sopore, in the northern part of the Kashmir, and police and paramilitary units were called to restore order. Days before the execution, President Pranab Mukherjee had rejected a mercy plea by Mr. Guru’s wife, according to reports from The Press Trust of India, paving the way for Mr. Guru’s hanging in the Tihar Jail complex, officials said.
The clashes in Mr. Guru’s hometown after his death came despite the region in Kashmir being placed under strict curfew in the anticipation of trouble from separatist leaders, according to reports. Authorities in the Srinagar asked citizens to remain indoors. They also closed the national highway for one day.
Omar Abdullah, the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, appealed for peace and calm.
“I understand there is certain degree of angst and there are some people who would like to take advantage of the situation,” Mr. Abdullah said. “I appeal to the people to allow us to get through this with peace and not to restore to violent protests.”
Congress Party officials said that the execution was a sign that India would not tolerate acts of terror.
“Anybody committing any acts of terror will be punished,” a Congress Party spokesman, Rashid Alvi, said. “People of our country and government have zero tolerance for terrorism.”
But the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party criticized the government’s delay in carrying out the execution.
“The attack on the Indian Parliament happened in 2001, that is 12 years ago, which was an attack on India,” the Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said.
On Nov. 21, 2012, India hanged Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving gunman from the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, ending an eight-year moratorium on the death penalty and drawing criticism from rights groups, which they reiterated Saturday.
“The hanging of Afzal Guru, following closely behind the hanging of Ajmal Kasab in November, shows a very worrying trend by the Indian government,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an inherently irreversible, inhumane punishment.”
Minka Kelly as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Pacific Coast News
"I'm not worthy. I feel so lucky and grateful. I was like, 'What am I doing here?!' " Kelly tells PEOPLE of starring alongside Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda and more in the upcoming film, which tells the story of a butler who served eight presidents.
The movie also features another major star: the one and only Oprah Winfrey. "I didn't get to meet Oprah because our shooting schedules were different, but she's a pretty loved lady," Kelly says. "I have yet to hear a bad thing about her!"
Kelly found that the most difficult part of playing Jackie Kennedy was nailing the former first lady's distinct accent. "I think she spoke in a way she thought she should speak, so getting that down was hard. There's a musicality and rhythm to the way she speaks," Kelly explains. "I went to sleep listening to her."
Another tough task? Slipping into the retro costumes. "My body is so different from her because I have curves, so fitting into those vintage clothes was actually really hard," she shares. "Also it was hot – and there was a lot of wool!"
Jennifer Graylock / Getty
For the month of February, Diet Coke will donate $1 for every person who uploads a heart-inspired photo to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #showyourheart. Visit to dietcoke.com/showyourheart for more information.
NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.
The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.
The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.
But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.
For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.
Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.
"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.
In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.
Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications
But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.
So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.
Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.
The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says
On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.
According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.
Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
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Online:
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/
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
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
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
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)
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – LinkedIn Corp extended its hot streak on Thursday, announcing both blow-out quarterly profits and a bullish forecast for the new year that exceeded Wall Street’s already lofty expectations.
The results reaffirmed the “professional” social network’s reputation as a fast-growing but sure-footed business — and the star exception in a mostly disappointing social media sector.
Excluding certain items, net income was $ 40.2 million, or 35 cents a share, well above the 19 cents expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The results meant LinkedIn beat analyst estimates for the seventh quarter in a row and sent shares of the company, which have doubled in the past 12 months, soaring 9 percent higher to $ 135 after hours.
Revenue rose a better-than-expected 81 percent from a year ago to $ 303.6 million, as millions of new job seekers and corporate recruiters around the world signed up with LinkedIn to post resumes or poach competitors’ employees.
The company offered bullish forecasts for the first quarter as well, projecting revenue between $ 305 million and $ 310 million, above analyst estimates of $ 301 million.
“You can pick out a lot of things that were great, from customer adds to accelerating revenue to growth in international,” said Kerry Rice, an analyst at Needham & Co. “On top of that, guidance is pretty outstanding. And from a historical perspective, they’ll likely beat those numbers too.”
TURBOCHARGED GROWTH
Founded by former PayPal employees in 2002, LinkedIn remains one of the most profitable Web companies, with gross margins approaching 90 percent.
At a time when Facebook Inc stock trades 25 percent below its initial public offering price and basic questions loom over the business models of online gaming group Zynga Inc and daily deals company Groupon Inc, LinkedIn has proved it can consistently make money by selling access to its 200 million users’ resumes since it went public in May 2011 at $ 45 a share.
The size of LinkedIn’s user base has reinforced its position against competitors, few of whom pose a serious challenge. Facebook only recently announced a “Jobs Board” tool in November. And on Thursday, shares of Monster Worldwide Inc fell 7 percent after the human resources company reported a quarterly loss and said it would pull out of several countries.
Analysts in recent months, however, have begun to question how long LinkedIn can sustain its turbocharged growth as it becomes saturated in some U.S. markets.
On Thursday’s earnings call, company executives said the majority of LinkedIn’s users are now based outside of the United States, and the company is aggressively targeting job markets in Hong Kong and Brazil.
Sales from international markets more than doubled over the past year to $ 114.6 million, or 38 percent of total revenue in the quarter, the company said.
In response to a slowdown in user growth and the slide in page views, LinkedIn has introduced some social media features to encourage visitors to click more on its site, as opposed to uploading their resumes and never coming back.
LinkedIn has introduced personal blogs by successful businesspeople like Sir Richard Branson, whom users can “follow” for updates.
Chief Executive Jeff Weiner told analysts on Thursday’s earnings call that the blog series, called “Influencers,” has exceeded expectations and now features contributions from business luminaries like GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt and investor Mark Cuban.
Other social mechanics, such as a recent addition that encouraged users to endorse their colleagues for their professional skills, also helped keep users coming back to the site more frequently, Weiner said.
The endorsements feature had the effect of “creating the right kind of viral loops,” he said.
(Editing by Matthew Lewis and Richard Pullin)
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
An electrical power failure at the Indian capital’s main airport disrupted the radar system on Friday, delaying some flights.
“There was a power failure,” which was rectified quickly, said Harbhajan Singh, the public relations officer of the Airports Authority of India.
He explained that the Indira Gandhi International Airport has a three-tier system for electricity so when the power went out, the airport switched from the main supply to one of its two standby sources. The Airports Authority said in a statement that the power supply switched over from 12:21 p.m. to 12:31 p.m., but travelers reported experiencing much longer delays.
The power failure affected the servers that control the radar system, said Arun Mishra, director general of Civil Aviation, the regulatory body for airlines.
Mr. Mishra said the servers were affected for about 30 minutes in the morning, starting from about 6:50 a.m.
The Airports Authority of India denied in a statement that the radar system had failed, saying that flight arrivals had continued normally, although a few departures were delayed.
A spokesman from Air India said that four of the national air carrier’s flights were delayed by 10 minutes because of the radar problem.
Two New York Times reporters aboard an Allahabad-bound flight operated by the domestic airline Spicejet had to wait for an hour and a half on the runway before the plane took off from the Delhi airport.
The same airport last month handled 73 flights within an hour, which is believed to be a record for an Indian airport, according to a Press Trust of India report.
Spokespersons at the ministries of Civil Aviation and Home Affairs said that they had no immediate information about the power failure.
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
LONDON (Reuters) - European shares rose and the euro hovered near a two-week low on Friday after the European Central Bank rekindled expectations that it could cut interest rates again.
Strong Chinese trade data also helped lift optimism about global growth prospects, boosting oil, copper and Asian shares, while the yen rose sharply after Japan's finance minister said the currency's recent drop had been overdone.
The ECB left rates at a record low 0.75 percent on Thursday but the bank's President Mario Draghi levered the door to a cut back open by saying it would monitor whether the euro's rise over recent months could push inflation below its comfort zone.
European shares were enjoying their best session of an otherwise low-key week as midday approached, on the hopes lower borrowing rates -- or at least the threat of them -- would reverse some of the 8 percent trade-weighted rise in the euro since August.
"The ECB had quite an impact on the euro-dollar and the positive Chinese data we have had has helped shares," said ABN Amro economist Aline Schuiling.
"Draghi signaled quite clearly yesterday that with the rise in the euro, the risks to price stability are to the downside. We expect the dollar to continue to strengthen, but if that reverses then markets would price in a rate cut."
London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were up 0.5, 0.6 and 0.2 percent respectively by 1100 GMT pushing the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 <.fteu3> up 0.5 percent, though it was still on course for its second consecutive weekly fall.
U.S. stock futures pointed to a steady start on Wall Street.<.n/>
Draghi said the euro's recent surge was a sign of a return of confidence, but cautioned: "We certainly want to see whether the appreciation is sustained and will alter our risk assessment as far as price stability is concerned."
The comments saw the currency tumble to $1.33705, the lowest since January 25, although a modest mid-morning rebound lifted it back to $1.3404. It had earlier also hit a two-week low against sterling and a one-week low versus the yen.
The yen, the other key focus of foreign exchange markets following the push by Japan's government to ease monetary policy, rose sharply after the country's finance minister said the currency's recent drop had been overdone.
The euro fell 1.5 percent against the yen to 123.54 yen with traders reporting selling by Asian funds. The dollar shed 1 percent to hit a session low of 92.17 yen as a U.S.-based investor sold the greenback.
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR
Helping to bolster strengthening global growth hopes, China said its exports grew 25 percent in January from a year ago, the strongest showing since April 2011 and well ahead of market expectations, while imports also beat forecasts, surging 28.8 percent on the year.
It lifted commodities, including copper, which ended a four day losing streak. Brent crude oil edged towards $118 per barrel.
Brent has gained over the last three weeks as positive data suggested the global economy had turned a corner, which augurs well for fuel demand, while supply worries stemming from tensions in the Middle East have also supported prices.
Earlier MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> added 0.3 percent and Australian shares rallied 0.7 percent to 34-month highs. Chinese markets are closed next week for the Lunar New Year holiday, while Hong Kong will resume trading on Thursday. Despite Friday's rises, MSCI's world equity index <.miwd00000pus> was on course for a weekly fall of about one percent, which would be its biggest drop since November and the first weekly decline of 2013.
However, the global index is still up four percent for the year to date and is not far from its best levels since mid-2008.
"China's economic conditions are improving and the trade data confirms the continuation of a recovery trend. Not just the trade data but retail, production and investment flows clearly show that the economy bottomed out in the third quarter last year," said Hirokazu Yuihama, a senior strategist at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo.
BANK REPAYMENTS
Money markets rates reversed some of their recent gains following Draghi's insistence that the ECB's policy will remain accommodative.
The central bank also said on Friday that banks will return another 5 billion euros of its crisis loans next week, suggesting the initial flood of repayments has turned into a steady trickle.
In the bond market, benchmark German Bund futures continued to push higher as Draghi's cautious tone on the euro zone's economy underpinned demand for low risk assets.
Nagging concerns about political stability in Spain and Italy were piling pressure on higher-yielding peripheral bonds to the benefit of Bunds, overshadowing an Irish bank debt deal that will cut Dublin's borrowing costs over the next decade.
"On the 10-year Spanish bonds, we could go significantly above 5.50 percent and reach the 5.60 area and it can be quite fast and on the BTP 4.70-75 area could be reached as well," BNP Paribas strategist Patrick Jacq said.
But "On a longer-term view we still expect market friendly outcomes of the political issues and the setbacks offer some opportunities to enter long positions."
Spanish 10-year yields were last at 5.42 percent while equivalent Italian yields were about 1 basis point up at 4.58 percent.
(Additional reporting by Richard Hubbard and Emelia Sithole-Matarise; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
India’s Gross Domestic Product is expected to drop significantly to 5 percent for the fiscal year ending in March 2013, according to advance estimates released by India’s Central Statistics Office on Thursday, declining from 6.2 percent growth rate seen in 2011-2012.
The estimate by the Central Statistics Office represents a marked drop from earlier growth projections issued by the government for this year. In January, the central bank projected G.D.P. growth of 5.5 percent for the current fiscal year, a decline from an earlier estimate of 5.8 percent.
The provisional estimates are contingent upon the “anticipated level of agricultural and industrial production, analysis of budget estimates of government expenditure and performance of key sectors like, railways, transport other than railways, communication, banking and insurance, available so far,” the report said.
According to the preliminary data released on Thursday, national income registered a growth rate of 4.2 percent in the current fiscal year as compared to 6.1 percent in the previous year, and per capita income grew at a rate of 2.9 percent as compared to 4.7 percent growth last year. Meanwhile, capital investment in the country is expected to drop to 2.48 percent from 4.39 percent in the previous year.
Slow growth may be attributed to the sluggish performance of the manufacturing, agriculture and services sector. The manufacturing sector is expected to grow by 1.9 percent this year, while India’s farm sector is projected to grow at an estimated 1.8 percent.
The services sector saw a decline in its growth rate from previous years, expanding by 6.6 percent, the lowest in over a decade. Other sectors that are expected to have performed relatively poorly include electricity, gas & water supply (4.9 percent growth) and mining and quarrying (0.4 percent growth).
Sectors that have performed relatively well with a growth rate of over 5 percent are construction, the trade, hotels, transport and communication sector, the financing, insurance, real estate and business services sector, and the community, social and personal services sector.
As India prepares to for a national election in 2014, slowing economic growth is putting pressure on the current government to push for reform. The projection of 5 percent GDP growth is the lowest figure since 2002-2003 when the GDP grew at 4 percent, after which the Indian economy has grown at an average of 6 percent each year.
This year, the government has taken measures to rein in the fiscal deficit to 5.3 percent of GDP, has raised the price of fertilizer and diesel, and has allowed further foreign investment in the retail sector by opening up the insurance, pension and aviation sectors for foreign investment. On Jan. 29, India’s central bank lowered its benchmark interest rate for the first time in nine months to fuel higher growth.
If India continues on the reform path, analysts believe that strong growth will resume in the coming year.
“The government’s advance estimates for real GDP growth at 4.9% is disappointing, especially coming on the back of a downward revision in growth for FY2012 from 6.5 percent to 6.2 percent,” said Ms. Bhupali Gursale, an economist at Angel Broking. “On a positive note though, with the government pushing ahead its reform agenda, the outlook for growth in FY2014 is likely to improve.”
Bethenny Frankel
Justin Steffman/Splash News Online
The reality TV star stepped out for dinner at Indochine in New York on Monday night.
Dressed all in black, the "very chic"-looking Skinnygirl mogul dined at a table in the center of the restaurant with a gentleman around 8 p.m.
But although the evening "didn't look romantic," an onlooker tells PEOPLE, Frankel, who recently separated from husband Jason Hoppy, "did look refreshed and happy to be out and about."
As Frankel and her companion – a middle-aged balding man – enjoyed their meals, the pair was "deep in conversation that looked fairly serious," the source adds. "She seemed very focused on whatever they were discussing."
– Jennifer Garcia
NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers have discovered the first U.S. cases of whooping cough caused by a germ that may be resistant to the vaccine.
Health officials are looking into whether cases like the dozen found in Philadelphia might be one reason the nation just had its worst year for whooping cough in six decades. The new bug was previously reported in Japan, France and Finland.
"It's quite intriguing. It's the first time we've seen this here," said Dr. Tom Clark of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The U.S. cases are detailed in a brief report from the CDC and other researchers in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Whooping cough is a highly contagious disease that can strike people of any age but is most dangerous to children. It was once common, but cases in the U.S. dropped after a vaccine was introduced in the 1940s.
An increase in illnesses in recent years has been partially blamed on a version of the vaccine used since the 1990s, which doesn't last as long. Last year, the CDC received reports of 41,880 cases, according to a preliminary count. That included 18 deaths.
The new study suggests that the new whooping cough strain may be why more people have been getting sick. Experts don't think it's more deadly, but the shots may not work as well against it.
In a small, soon-to-be published study, French researchers found the vaccine seemed to lower the risk of severe disease from the new strain in infants. But it didn't prevent illness completely, said Nicole Guiso of the Pasteur Institute, one of the researchers.
The new germ was first identified in France, where more extensive testing is routinely done for whooping cough. The strain now accounts for 14 percent of cases there, Guiso said.
In the United States, doctors usually rely on a rapid test to help make a diagnosis. The extra lab work isn't done often enough to give health officials a good idea how common the new type is here, experts said.
"We definitely need some more information about this before we can draw any conclusions," the CDC's Clark said.
The U.S. cases were found in the past two years in patients at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. One of the study's researchers works for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which makes a version of the old whooping cough vaccine that is sold in other countries.
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JournaL: http://www.nejm.org
PARIS (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street on Thursday. Futures for the S&P 500 were down 0.05 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.07 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.05 percent at 0933 GMT.
European shares steadied on Thursday as investors awaited the European Central Bank's policy meeting later in the day and President Mario Draghi's views on the region's growth prospects.
Draghi faces a grilling over the euro's sharp rise and his connection to an Italian banking scandal at the ECB meeting where interest rates are almost certain to be unchanged.
Visa Inc's
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp
Boeing Co
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd , the main manufacturer of Apple Inc products, said on Thursday consolidated January sales dropped 8.19 percent from a year earlier.
A U.S. judge threw out a lawsuit from South Korea's Woori Bank accusing Bank of America Corp's
CVS Caremark Corp
Michael Dell and his investment firm are putting up $750 million in cash toward the $24.4 billion purchase of Dell Inc
Yelp Inc
Chipmaker TriQuint Semiconductor Inc
Allstate Corp's quarterly profit fell 45 percent on losses from superstorm Sandy, but the home and auto insurer said it has paid out about 95 percent of Sandy claims and is seeing rate increases across businesses.
Herbalife Inc
On the macro front, investors awaited weekly jobless claims, due at 1330 GMT, as well as quarterly data on productivity and unit labor costs, also due at 1330 GMT.
Among the companies set to report results on Thursday feature Coca-Cola Enterprises
U.S. stocks ended mostly flat on Wednesday, taking another pause in the recent rally that has driven the S&P 500 to five-year highs, as transportation and technology shares lost ground.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 7.22 points, or 0.05 percent, at 13,986.52. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.83 points, or 0.05 percent, at 1,512.12. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 3.10 points, or 0.10 percent, at 3,168.48.
(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; editing by Stephen Nisbet)
BlackBerry (BBRY) hasn’t yet announced launch details for its second BlackBerry 10 smartphone, the QWERTY-equipped BlackBerry Q10, but it still wants to make sure that developers are ready for the new phone once it becomes available. Apropos, the vendor on Tuesday announced a new “Dev Alpha C” developer handset that features a QWERTY keyboard and the same display dimensions as the upcoming BlackBerry Q10. The handset will allow developers to get acclimated with the BlackBerry 10/QWERTY combination and prep apps that work as well with the Q10 as they do on the BlackBerry Z10.
[More from BGR: Google’s big potential problem: The ‘Galaxy’ brand is starting to beat the ‘Android’ brand]
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Paul Nixon Photography
Paul Mason in 2012, two years after gastric bypass surgery stripped him of the unofficial title of “the world’s fattest man.”
IPSWICH, England — Who knows what the worst moment was for Paul Mason — there were so many awful milestones, as he grew fatter and fatter — but a good bet might be when he became too vast to leave his room. To get him to the hospital for a hernia operation, the local fire department had to knock down a wall and extricate him with a forklift.
That was nearly a decade ago, when Mr. Mason weighed about 980 pounds, and the spectacle made him the object of fascinated horror, a freak-show exhibit. The British news media, which likes a superlative, appointed him “the world’s fattest man.”
Now the narrative has shifted to one of redemption and second chances. Since a gastric bypass operation in 2010, Mr. Mason, 52 years old and 6-foot-4, has lost nearly two-thirds of his body weight, putting him at about 336 pounds — still obese, but within the realm of plausibility. He is talking about starting a jewelry business.
“My meals are a lot different now than they used to be,” Mr. Mason said during a recent interview in his one-story apartment in a cheerful public housing complex here. For one thing, he no longer eats around the clock. “Food is a necessity, but now I don’t let it control my life anymore,” he said.
But the road to a new life is uphill and paved with sharp objects. When he answered the door, Mr. Mason did not walk; he glided in an electric wheelchair.
And though Mr. Mason looks perfectly normal from the chest up, horrible vestiges of his past stick to him, literally, in the form of a huge mass of loose skin choking him like a straitjacket. Folds and folds of it encircle his torso and sit on his lap, like an unwanted package someone has set there; more folds encase his legs. All told, he reckons, the excess weighs more than 100 pounds.
As he waits to see if anyone will agree to perform the complex operation to remove the skin, Mr. Mason has plenty of time to ponder how he got to where he is. He was born in Ipswich and had a childhood marked by two things, he says: the verbal and physical abuse of his father, a military policeman turned security guard; and three years of sexual abuse, starting when he was 6, by a relative in her 20s who lived in the house and shared his bed. He told no one until decades later.
After he left school, Mr. Mason took a job as a postal worker and became engaged to a woman more than 20 years older than him. “I thought it would be for life, but she just turned around one day and said, ‘No, I don’t want to see you anymore — goodbye,’ ” he said.
His father died, and he returned home to care for his arthritic mother, who was in a wheelchair. “I still had all these things going around in my head from my childhood,” he said. “Food replaced the love I didn’t get from my parents.” When he left the Royal Mail in 1986, he said, he weighed 364 pounds.
Then things spun out of control. Mr. Mason tried to eat himself into oblivion. He spent every available penny of his and his mother’s social security checks on food. He stopped paying the mortgage. The bank repossessed their house, and the council found them a smaller place to live. All the while, he ate the way a locust eats — indiscriminately, voraciously, ingesting perhaps 20,000 calories a day. First he could no longer manage the stairs; then he could no longer get out of his room. He stayed in bed, on and off, for most of the last decade.
Social service workers did everything for him, including changing his incontinence pads. A network of local convenience stores and fast-food restaurants kept the food coming nonstop — burgers, french fries, fish and chips, even about $22 worth of chocolate bars a day.
“They didn’t deliver bags of crisps,” he said of potato chips. “They delivered cartons.”
His life became a cycle: eat, doze, eat, eat, eat. “You didn’t sleep a normal sleep,” he said. “You’d be awake most of the night eating and snacking. You totally forgot about everything else. You lose all your dignity, all your self-respect. It all goes, and all you focus on is getting your next fix.”
He added, “It was quite a lonely time, really.”
He got infections a lot and was transported to the hospital — first in a laundry van, then on the back of a truck and finally on the forklift. For 18 months after a hernia operation in 2003, he lived in the hospital and in an old people’s home — where he was not allowed to leave his room — while the local government found him a house that could accommodate all the special equipment he needed.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 6, 2013
The headline on an earlier version of this article misstated Paul Mason’s current weight relative to what he weighed nearly a decade ago. He is now about one-third, not two-thirds, the weight he was then.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence, inset: Snoop Lion (Dogg)
Valerie Goodloe/PictureGroup; Frederick M. Brown/Getty
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence both attended the Hollywood Reporter's Nominees' Night 2013 at Spago in Beverly Hills on Monday.
It was a low-key affair at first, with Affleck holding court in a central area of the soiree, where he was animated while chatting with people and seemed excited and genuinely happy.
The Argo star and director, looking handsome in a suit, also obliged guests who approached him for photos.
Lawrence was spotted embracing her Silver Linings Playbook costar Julia Stiles. "You're so stunning!" Stiles told Lawrence just before taking a snapshot together.
As the evening continued, it was clear that Lawrence was the darling of event. Fellow guests were going up and telling her she is beautiful and they're so proud of her and Lawrence was ever the gracious guest, chatting with anyone who approached her.
But it wasn't until Snoop Lion (Dogg) arrived, who went by the deejay name Snoopadelic, that the party really went into full gear. After a lengthy intro that included a clip-filled video, Snoop emerged, gave an intro of his own – he praised Argo and shouted for Affleck to come take a photo with him before the night's end – and began playing an eclectic mix of songs, which included everything from Pat Benatar to 2 Chainz.
– Dahvi Shira
NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.
With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until there's a ruling on their lawsuit seeking to block it altogether. The measure would bar many eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces.
"It would be a tremendous waste of expense, time, and effort for our members to incur all of the harm and costs associated with the ban if this court decides that the ban is illegal," Chong Sik Le, president of the New York Korean-American Grocers Association, said in court papers filed Friday.
City lawyers are fighting the lawsuit and oppose postponing the restriction, which the city Board of Health approved in September. They said Tuesday they expect to prevail.
"The obesity epidemic kills nearly 6,000 New Yorkers each year. We see no reason to delay the Board of Health's reasonable and legal actions to combat this major, growing problem," Mark Muschenheim, a city attorney, said in a statement.
Another city lawyer, Thomas Merrill, has said officials believe businesses have had enough time to get ready for the new rule. He has noted that the city doesn't plan to seek fines until June.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials see the first-of-its-kind limit as a coup for public health. The city's obesity rate is rising, and studies have linked sugary drinks to weight gain, they note.
"This is the biggest step a city has taken to curb obesity," Bloomberg said when the measure passed.
Soda makers and other critics view the rule as an unwarranted intrusion into people's dietary choices and an unfair, uneven burden on business. The restriction won't apply at supermarkets and many convenience stores because the city doesn't regulate them.
While the dispute plays out in court, "the impacted businesses would like some more certainty on when and how they might need to adjust operations," American Beverage Industry spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger said Tuesday.
Those adjustments are expected to cost the association's members about $600,000 in labeling and other expenses for bottles, Vice President Mike Redman said in court papers. Reconfiguring "16-ounce" cups that are actually made slightly bigger, to leave room at the top, is expected to take cup manufacturers three months to a year and cost them anywhere from more than $100,000 to several millions of dollars, Foodservice Packaging Institute President Lynn Dyer said in court documents.
Movie theaters, meanwhile, are concerned because beverages account for more than 20 percent of their overall profits and about 98 percent of soda sales are in containers greater than 16 ounces, according to Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners of New York State.
___
Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz
LONDON (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a slightly higher open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.1 percent at 5.06 a.m EST.
* Dow Jones futures added 0.3 percent while contracts on the Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.2 percent.
* Visa
* Media groups Time Warner Inc. and News Corp.
* Liberty Global
* Walt Disney Co
* Take-Two Interactive Software Inc
* Online gaming firm Zynga Inc
* Nasdaq OMX Group Inc
* Online photo-sharing service provider Shutterfly Inc's
* European stocks were a touch higher on Wednesday, with shares in the world's largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal
* Japan's Nikkei average surged 3.8 percent to its highest close since October 2008 after the yen fell sharply on bets the early exit of the central bank governor would open the way for a successor who pursues aggressive monetary easing.
* The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> closed 99.22 points, or 0.71 percent, higher at 13,979.30 on Tuesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 15.58 points, or 1.04 percent, at 1,511.29. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 40.41 points, or 1.29 percent, at 3,171.58.
(Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Susan Fenton)
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Every day, Kagonya Awori and her tech-savvy team trawl through Facebook and Twitter for warning signs that Kenya‘s elections in March may unleash the same ethnic violence that took the country to the brink of civil war five years ago.
Sifting through blogs and social media sites, the group of six search for hate speech and inflammatory postings – or any early indications that inter-tribal tensions are escalating.
Awori and her colleagues have reason to be worried.
The last presidential vote in late 2007 when incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared the re-elected victor was disputed by opponents and erupted into bloodletting.
More than 1,200 people were slaughtered, many butchered by machete, burnt alive or shot with bows and arrows as the country’s biggest tribes turned on one another.
“The amount of dangerous speech is going up but, this time, the people who are saying these things are not hiding at all,” said Awori. She heads Umati, a web-based project monitoring dangerous speech for research firm iHub Research, which conducts Africa-focused tech research out of Nairobi.
“There are outright calls to kill, forcefully evict and steal as well as discriminate against members of particular communities,” she said.
Most of the hate speech Awori’s group has come across so far has been on Facebook, with users frequently revealing their names, and often their location.
Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy, has ranked second for Twitter use in Africa in recent years, out-tweeting oil-producing powerhouse Nigeria and Egypt, where social media helped galvanise supporters of the Arab Spring revolution.
Kenyan authorities have passed legislation banning media outlets from re-printing hate speech, to curb the spread. But thus far they have been largely powerless to stop ordinary Kenyans from voicing tribal animosities on social media.
Kenyan law prohibits media from re-printing tribal hate speech in full.
Examples of online vitriol include calls to “chinja chinja”, or “butcher butcher” in Swahili, as well as to beat, loot, riot, kill, and drive out other tribes.
A repeat in March of the inter-tribal violence that bloodied the 2007 elections cannot be ruled out.
Alliances forged by Kenya’s main presidential contenders for the 2013 vote are lining up for a rerun of a largely ethnic-based contest for political power.
The two main opposing camps are headed by Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who is backed by Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta whose running mate is William Ruto, a former cabinet minister.
The head-on rivalry between Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s founder president and from the predominant Kikuyu tribe, and Odinga, a Luo, raises the spectre again of ethnic confrontation.
Contributing to the tensions, both Kenyatta and Ruto face trial after the March vote at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague for their alleged role in fomenting the election violence five years ago.
EYE ON THREATS
Kenyan authorities say journalists should choose their words with care so as not to inflame tensions.
“We will set you on fire before you set us on fire,” government spokesman Muthui Kariuki warned international journalists at a breakfast meeting on Wednesday.
“We believe to a greater extent that (the violence of) 2007-08 was a result of a lot of information that journalists wrote and passed on to our people,” he said.
In the Kenyan blogosphere online users blast opposing tribe members as “snakes”, “maggots” and “vultures”, among other names.
“These are actually telling people to re-enact what happened in 2007, so it’s very vicious,” Mary Ombara, secretary of Kenya’s media monitoring body, said.
Ombara receives daily reports on online hate speech. The government has hired bloggers to monitor sites for inflammatory content. The government two weeks ago also enlisted the help of Awori’s Umati team and Kenya’s National Human Rights Commission.
Civil society NGOs are also helping.
A national agency formed to reconcile tribes after the last election violence said it was working with police to identify threats and hate speech to avoid a repeat of the 2007 mayhem.
Particular attention is being paid to political rallies and social media, Alice Nderitu, an official at National Cohesion and Integration Commission, told Reuters.
“We are monitoring and will take people to court for using abusive language on social media,” said Nicholas Kamwende, head of the police’s criminal investigations department in Nairobi.
FEAR THE TWEET
Radio has traditionally been the leading medium for the dissemination of hate speech in Kenya – a trend reflected by the inclusion of a local radio presenter among the ICC indictees in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 post-election violence.
Joshua Arap Sang faces charges of crimes against humanity alongside Kenyatta and Ruto. They all say they are innocent.
During the 2007-08 clashes, mobile phone text messages were a powerful tool for organising vigilante groups and mobs, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
To curb this, Kenya has ordered that all lines that cannot be traced to a known user be de-registered in a bid to clamp down on people sending out provocative texts.
However, the arrival of affordable smart phones on the Kenyan market has increased internet use on cell phones and caused an explosion of social media.
Some fear Facebook and Twitter will take the place of the SMS text this time around.
Awori’s team are part of a network called Ushahidi, which is Swahili for “testimony” or “witness,” that uses SMS, e-mail and social media to map out where violence is breaking out.
Created in 2008 as way for Kenyans to report instances of post-election violence, it has since been used to map acts of war in Gaza, earthquake devastation in Haiti and currently U.S. activist use it to chart human rights abuses in Syria.
During Kenya’s 2010 constitutional referendum, Ushahidi also showed it could play a key role in curbing aggression. When it received an SMS message of rumours that machete-wielding men had rushed to a polling station in western Kenya, it verified the threat with its sources on the ground and alerted the police.
Fifteen minutes later, dozens of police officers swooped on the polling station to halt any possible trouble.
“It looked like magic for the guy who sent the SMS,” recalled Daudi Were, Ushahidi’s project manager.
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
While much has changed in New York and Mumbai over the past 50 years, the bazaar, or the marketplace, is still the center of commercial activity for both these cities.
In both these cities, the commercial capitals of their respective nations, you can get almost anything you want, at any time, day or night – as long as you know the right person to procure it, or “walla” in India. And in both cities, sometimes these wallas drive a hard bargain. In this edition of the Mumbai/New York photo project, Nisha Sondhe documents some of these marketplaces where products and services range from the brilliant to the bizarre.
In Mumbai, the wholesale flower market in Dadar, where one can buy flowers brought in from all over Maharashtra and Gujarat, opens each morning at 4:30 and closes at 8 p.m. The market, under the overpass next to Dadar station, is a window into India’s thriving flower trade. The Chelsea flower district, a century-old institution in Manhattan, is hub for unusual flowers, exotic plants, vases and garden accessories. This market opens at 5 a.m. and is also best visited early in the day, when the produce is the freshest.
Crawford Market, established in 1869 by the first municipal commissioner of Mumbai, Arthur Crawford, is still the best place for wholesale bargains in the city.
The market, which is now called the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, was in danger of being demolished a few years ago but was saved thanks to the efforts of conservationists. While the market is traditionally meant for wholesale fruit and vegetable trading, these days many stores are stocked with foreign goods like Camay soap, Kraft cheese, Fa deodorant or a pack of Pampers diapers.
Change is also under way at New York’s Chelsea Market, which specializes in gourmet food and is housed in a collection of industrial buildings that once was home to the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco. In November, the owner of Chelsea Market, Jamestown Properties, an acquisition and management firm based in Cologne, Germany, and Atlanta, ignited public outrage when the city approved plans to add office towers to the landmark structure. Construction on the towers is scheduled to begin in 2015.
The market, which attracts approximately 120,000 visitors a week, sells products ranging from fine foods and baked goods, to books, flowers and kitchen accessories.
Dhobi Ghat, a famous open-air laundry where dhobis (washerfolk) wash and dry clothes in full view of the public, is a source of much fascination for visitors to Mumbai. Rows upon rows of concrete wash pens come together to make the world’s largest outdoor laundry.
Meanwhile, laundromats in New York, while not as visually interesting, have their own inherent drama. They are places where “irregular things happen,” according to a New York Times article, and where people “flirt, debate, gossip, argue, break up, discover love, loiter, do business and just about anything else that can be squeezed into 27-minute heavy-soil cycles.” In the older apartment buildings in New York City, personal washing equipment was often prohibited, and the city now has 2,654 self-service laundries to fulfill that need.
The act of washing clothes has inspired art as well. In 2011, a dhobi is one of the main characters in “Dhobi Ghat: Mumbai Diaries,” a 2011 movie directed by Kiran Rao, and a 1985 cable TV movie directed by Robert Altman, “Laundromat,” explored the drama that ensues when two women air out their dirty laundry.
Eva Longoria
Denise Truscello/WireImage
The actress visited the new restaurant and nightclub, She by Morton's, in Las Vegas – in which she is a part owner – on Saturday night, and revealed what's on her agenda for the heartfelt holiday.
"Eva said she would be spending Valentine's Day with her girlfriends – like she always does," a source tells PEOPLE. But that's not the only thing on her agenda. The former Desperate Housewives star also said she's also made plans for her March birthday.
"She's taking a charity trip to South America, which she is really excited about," the source says. "She joked that you shouldn't celebrate birthdays after a certain age because we don't want to remind people how old we are!"
– Patrick Gomez
CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.
The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.
The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.
In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.
That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.
In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.
"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."
The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.
But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.
In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.
The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.
Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.
"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.
Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.
"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.
Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.
"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.
___
Online:
Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org
It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org
___
AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 rising 0.2 to 0.3 percent.
U.S. stocks slid on Monday, giving the S&P 500 its worst day since November, as renewed worries about the euro zone crisis caused the market to pull back from recent gains. Europe's main markets were marginally in the black after the latest batch of corporate results on Tuesday.
NYSE Euronext
ICSC/Goldman Sachs release chain store sales for the week ended February 2 at 7.45 a.m EST. Sales fell 1.0 percent in the previous week.
The U.S. government has launched a civil lawsuit against Standard & Poor's and parent The McGraw-Hill Companies
Redbook releases its Retail Sales Index of department and chain store sales for January at 1355 GMT. Sales fell 0.5 percent in the previous month.
Major companies announcing results on Tuesday included Walt Disney Company
The Institute for Supply Management releases its January non-manufacturing index at 1500 GMT. Economists forecast a reading of 55.2, versus 55.7 in December.
John Malone's cable group Liberty Global
Technology services provider IBM
Japan's transport safety agency said it is still unclear whether battery chemistry or an electrical issue caused a main battery on a Boeing Co
European shares <.fteu3> rose 0.5 percent on Tuesday, stabilizing after the previous session's sharp sell-off, as investors digested a raft of earnings reports.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 129.71 points, or 0.93 percent, at 13,880.08 on Monday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 17.46 points, or 1.15 percent, at 1,495.71. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 47.93 points, or 1.51 percent, at 3,131.17.
(Reporting by Atul Prakash)
NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Estonian man pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. federal court for his role in a massive Internet scam that targeted well-known websites such as iTunes, Netflix and The Wall Street Journal.
The scheme infected at least four million computers in more than 100 countries, including 500,000 in the United States, with malicious software, or malware, according to the indictment. It included a large number of computers at data centers located in New York, federal prosecutors said.
Valeri Aleksejev, 32, was the first of six Estonians and one Russian indicted in 2011 to enter a plea. They were indicted on five charges each of wire and computer intrusion. One of the defendants, Vladimir Tsastsin, was also charged with 22 counts of money laundering.
In U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Friday, Aleksejev pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 25 years in prison, deportation and the forfeiture of $ 7 million.
The scam had several components, including a “click-hijacking fraud” in which the malware re-routed searches by users on infected computers to sites designated by the defendants, prosecutors said in the indictment. Users of infected computers trying to access Apple Inc’s iTunes website or Netflix Inc‘s movie website, for example, instead ended up at websites of unaffiliated businesses, according to the indictment.
Another component of the scam replaced legitimate advertisements on websites operated by News Corp’s The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com Inc and others with advertisements that triggered payments for the defendants, prosecutors said.
The defendants reaped at least $ 14 million from the fraud, prosecutors said. However, Aleksejev’s lawyer, William Stampur, said in court on Friday that Aleksejev has no assets.
Estonian police arrested Aleksejev and the other Estonians in November 2011. One other Estonian, Anton Ivanov, has been extradited, and the extradition of the other four is pending, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. The Russian, Andrey Taame, remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Aleksejev told Magistrate Judge James Francis he assisted in blocking anti-virus software updates on infected computers. Francis asked Aleksejev if he knew what he was doing was illegal.
“I thought it was wrong,” Aleksejev said in broken English after a long pause. “But of course I didn’t know all the laws in the U.S.”
Francis set a tentative sentencing date of May 31 for Aleksejev.
The case is USA v. Tsastsin et al, U.S. District Court in Manhattan, No. 11-00878.
(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Jamil Ahmad is the author of “The Wandering Falcon,” a novel that delves into the lives of the tribal population living in the border region of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. This is the debut novel of the former Pakistani bureaucrat, now in his 80s. He has spent more than 20 years in the Balochistan and Frontier provinces in Pakistan during his service.
The novel was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011 and was also a finalist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature this year.
India Ink interviewed Mr. Ahmad during the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Why does the Jaipur Literature Festival matter to you?
When I got the invite, there was a feeling that I should make it. My family was very involved, and they felt that I should be here.
What are the occupational hazards of being a writer?
I don’t think there are any.
What is your writing ritual?
I had time on my hands. I wrote in longhand, and my wife typed it with a manual typewriter, which was a German make.
The manuscript took 40 years to publish. I started writing in 1971, finished in ’73.
The Atlantic wanted to publish a short story. One British publisher said, “Change it to nonfiction.” Another British publisher said, “Change it to the modern idiom.” Tribes don’t speak English! The tribes had their own language. Their entire language has changed now.
Then I lost track. It was sheer luck that Penguin India published my work.
How do you deal with critics?
I am not disturbed by them. I reread them. Good reviews sometimes puff you up. Some reviews in India have been far too complimentary. It is ironic that of the negative reviews, the majority came from Pakistan.
Why should we read “The Wandering Falcon”?
People should buy it if they find the cover attractive when they see it in a bookstore. It is a short book, about 200 pages. It is an easy read.
I want people to understand that tribes are not savage. Left to themselves, the tribes will adjust to changes in the periphery. There should not be attempts to socially engineer them.
(The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)
02/03/2013 at 09:06 PM ET
One thing was certain going into Super Bowl XLVII: Beyoncé was going to put on a killer halftime show, and she was going to look amazing doing it. And if she practiced until her feet bled, there was no sign of it as she danced in her towering heels.
To strut out onstage during ‘Crazy In Love,’ the star wore an uncharacteristically demure belted lamé mini with wide lapels, but she quickly tore it away to reveal a leather bodysuit with a black lace skirt worn over her signature fishnets. She completed the look with thigh-highs and sexy black booties.
Destiny’s Child fans missing the trio’s epic matching outfits were given a treat when Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams proved the rumors true, joining Beyoncé onstage for a medley that included ‘Bootylicious’ and ‘Single Ladies.’ Their costumes echoed Bey’s: Rowland wore a revealing V-neck Emilio Pucci bodysuit, while Williams was glam in a tough-girl ribbed leather mini.
And to ensure that Beyoncé’s hair was supremely whip-able (as demonstrated during ‘Baby Boy’ and ‘Halo’), stylist Kim Kimble gave her a “soft glam” look by curling it, then brushing out the curls and smoothing them with Kimble Hair Care Brazilian Nut and Acai serum. She sprayed it with L’Oréal’s classic Elnett hairspray to ensure it wouldn’t budge no matter what the superstar put it through.
Tell us: What did you think of Beyoncé’s Super Bowl outfit — and the Destiny’s Child reunion looks?
–Alex Apatoff
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CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.
The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.
The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.
In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.
That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.
In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.
"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."
The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.
But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.
In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.
The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.
Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.
"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.
Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.
"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.
Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.
"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.
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Online:
Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org
It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org
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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner
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