Google’s 4Q earnings rise despite Motorola woes

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google eked out slightly higher earnings in the fourth quarter, despite a financial drag caused by the Internet search leader’s expansion into device manufacturing and a decline in digital ad prices as more people gaze into the smaller screens of smartphones.

The results announced Tuesday pleased investors, helping to lift Google’s stock by 5 percent in extended trading.

More advertising poured into Google during the holiday shopping season, fueling a moneymaking machine that has steadily churned out higher profits since the company went public in 2004. Google’s fourth-quarter ad revenue totaled $ 12.1 billion, a 19 percent increase from the previous year.

Some of that money, though, has been shifting away from personal computers as advertisers try to connect with an expanding audience that relies on smartphones and tablet computers to reach Google’s search engine, email and other online services. By some estimates, about one-fourth of the clicks on Google’s search ads are now coming from mobile devices.

So far, advertisers have been unwilling to pay as much money to market their wares on mobile devices, largely because the smaller screens leave less room for commercial links and other marketing messages. The trend is one of the reasons that the average price for the ads that Google shows next to its search results has fallen from the previous year in five consecutive quarters, including the final three months of last year.

In a positive sign, though, Google’s average ad prices in the most recent quarter dropped by just 6 percent from the same period in 2011. That’s the smallest decline during the pricing downturn, raising hopes that Google may be starting to solve the pricing problems posed by the growing usage of mobile devices.

In a conference call Tuesday, Google CEO Larry Page predicted ad prices will gradually rise as the devices become even more sophisticated to unleash new ways to reach potential customers at the times they are most likely to buy something.

“In today’s multi-screen world, the opportunities are endless,” Page said.

Google earned nearly $ 2.9 billion, or $ 8.62 per share, during the fourth quarter. That compared to net income of $ 2.7 billion, or $ 8.22 per share, at the same time last year.

If not for the costs of employee stock compensation and certain other accounting items, Google said it would have earned $ 10.65 per share. On that basis, Google exceeded the average earnings estimate of $ 10.54 among analysts surveyed by FactSet.

It proved to be a difficult quarter to decipher because of an accounting quirk and the additions of new business lines that muddied the comparisons with the previous year.

For instance, Google Inc. didn’t own Motorola Mobility in 2011, having completed its $ 12.4 billion acquisition of the troubled handset maker eight months ago. What’s more, the Google is bringing in more revenue from tablet computers, which it began selling under the Nexus brand during the final half of last year.

Things were further complicated by Google’s recent agreement to sell a part of the Motorola Mobility division that makes cable TV boxes. That division is now accounted for as a discontinued operation whose revenue wasn’t booked in the latest quarter, even though it will remain a part of Google until the $ 2.35 billion sale is completed later this year.

Under that equation, revenue surged 36 percent from the previous year to $ 14.4 billion.

After subtracting advertising expenses, Google’s revenue totaled $ 11.3 billion. That figure was well below the average analyst estimate of $ 12.1 billion, according to FactSet.

But many of the analyst forecasts included revenue from Motorola Mobility’s set-top division, which Google excluded from its breakdown. Had the set-top division been included in Google’s accounting, the company’s net revenue would have matched analyst estimates.

The performance boosted Google’s stock by $ 35.33 to $ 738.20 in Tuesday’s extended trading.

Google would be doing even better if not for problems at Motorola Mobility, a cellphone pioneer that has been struggling since Apple revolutionized the industry with the release of the iPhone in 2007.

Motorola Mobility suffered an operating loss of $ 353 million on revenue of $ 1.5 billion in the fourth quarter

Google has been able to offset the slump in its search advertising prices by selling more video advertising on its YouTube subsidiary and other more graphical forms of marketing. The number of clicks on Google ads has still been rising, too. That’s important because the company typically gets paid by the click. In the fourth quarter, Google’s total ad clicks rose 24 percent from the previous year.

To gain a foothold in the mobile market, Google bakes its services into its Android software, an operating system that it gives away to makers of smartphones and tablets.

Android is now powers more than 500 million mobile devices worldwide, giving it a wide lead over Apple’s software for iPhones and iPads. Through September, Apple had shipped about 370 million iPhones and iPads. Apple Inc., which has morphed from a Google ally to bigger rival in the past five years, is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter results after the stock market closes Wednesday.

Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., didn’t update how many more Android devices were activated in the fourth quarter..

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IHT Rendezvous: A Crystal Award for Charlize Theron

DAVOS, Switzerland — The actress Charlize Theron and two documentary filmmakers received awards for their humanitarian work as the World Economic Forum opened in Davos Tuesday.

Ms. Theron, who won the best actress Oscar in 2004 for the film “Monster,” was honored Tuesday for her work fighting H.I.V. among impoverished young people in South Africa, where she was born.

Ms. Theron’s appearance was a bit of a departure for the World Economic Forum, which had dialed back the celebrity glamour after the appearance in 2006 by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie threatened to overshadow the rest of the annual meeting.

Ms. Theron was decidedly lowkey and humble as she accepted the Forum’s Crystal award from a stage in the Davos Congress Center.

“There is an incredible brain trust in this room,” she said, referring to the Davos participants. “I feel like I’m getting smarter just by osmosis.”

Wearing a simple blue dress and heels, Ms. Theron noted, with some understatement, that she was often in the spotlight. “I decided the best thing you can do with that spotlight is to stand in the shadow of something and shed some light,” she said.

The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project finances programs designed to prevent the spread of H.I.V. among young Africans, particularly in South Africa, which has 5.9 million infected people, Ms. Theron said. According to the organization’s Web site, charlizeafricaoutreach.org, the programs include mobile health services in an exceptionally impoverished region of South Africa.

The World Economic Forum also honored two other artists: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a Pakistani filmmaker; and Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist.

Ms. Obaid-Chinoy’s film “Saving Face” chronicles the efforts of a plastic surgeon to help women disfigured by acid thrown by abusive husbands or other family members. In her acceptance remarks, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy said the film, which won an Oscar in 2012 for best short documentary, had prompted Pakistan to increase criminal penalties for such acts.

Mr. Muniz and his work was featured in “Waste Land,” a documentary about the lives of scavengers at the world’s largest garbage dump, outside Rio de Janeiro. In 2011 the film was nominated for an Academy Award.

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PEOPLE's Music Critic: Why We're Upset About Beyoncé's Lip-Synching Drama

By Chuck Arnold

01/22/2013 at 08:40 PM EST

Did she lip-synch or didn't she?

That's the question surrounding Beyoncé after reports surfaced that she didn't sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" live at yesterday's presidential inauguration.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Marine Band, which backed the pop diva at the ceremony, said Tuesday that Mrs. Jay-Z decided to use a previously recorded vocal track before delivering the national anthem, but later on another spokesperson, this one for the Pentagon, said there was no way of knowing whether the 16-time Grammy winner was guilty of lip-synching or not.

Should it matter? Let's remember that Whitney Houston, in what is widely considered one of the best renditions of "The Star-Spangled Banner" of all time, didn't sing it live either at the 1991 Super Bowl.

There are all sorts of technical reasons why it can be challenging to perform a song as difficult as this on such a large scale, and there are many extenuating circumstances that could have played a role in any decision to lip-synch. Certainly no one is questioning whether Beyoncé – who, in removing her earpiece midway through, may have been experiencing audio problems – has the chops to sing it.

Lip-synching – or at least singing over pre-recorded vocal tracks – has long been acceptable for dance-driven artists like Madonna, Janet Jackson and Britney Spears, whose emphasis on intense, intricate choreography makes it hard to execute the moves fans have come to expect while also singing live. Huffing and puffing into the microphone or barely projecting for the sake of keeping it real just isn't gonna cut it. Of course, there have been other instances – such as Ashlee Simpson's 2004 Saturday Night Live debacle – where faking it crossed the line.

Surely there wouldn't be the same controversy about Beyoncé had she been hoofing across the stage performing "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" on one of her tour stops. But this was the presidential inauguration, the national anthem, and there was no choreography involved.

Some things have to remain sacred, and for "the land of the free and the home of the brave," this was one of them.

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Foes of NYC soda size limit doubt racial fairness

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents of the city's limit on the size of sugary drinks are raising questions of racial fairness alongside other complaints as the novel restriction faces a court test.

The NAACP's New York state branch and the Hispanic Federation have joined beverage makers and sellers in trying to stop the rule from taking effect March 12. With a hearing set Wednesday, critics are attacking what they call an inconsistent and undemocratic regulation, while city officials and health experts defend it as a pioneering and proper move to fight obesity.

The issue is complex for the minority advocates, especially given obesity rates that are higher than average among blacks and Hispanics, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. The groups say in court papers they're concerned about the discrepancy, but the soda rule will unduly harm minority businesses and "freedom of choice in low-income communities."

The latest in a line of healthy-eating initiatives during Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration, the beverage rule bars restaurants and many other eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces. Violations could bring $200 fines; the city doesn't plan to start imposing those until June.

The city Board of Health OK'd the measure in September. Officials cited the city's rising obesity rate — about 24 percent of adults, up from 18 percent in 2002 — and pointed to studies linking sugary drinks to weight gain. Care for obesity-related illnesses costs more than $4.7 billion a year citywide, with government programs paying about 60 percent of that, according to city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley.

"It would be irresponsible for (the health board) not to act in the face of an epidemic of this proportion," the city says in court papers. The National Association of Local Boards of Health and several public health scholars have backed the city's position in filings of their own.

Opponents portray the regulation as government nagging that turns sugary drinks into a scapegoat when many factors are at play in the nation's growing girth.

The American Beverage Association and other groups, including movie theater owners and Korean grocers, sued. They argue that the first-of-its-kind restriction should have gone before the elected City Council instead of being approved by the Bloomberg-appointed health board.

Five City Council members echo that view in a court filing, saying the Council is "the proper forum for balancing the city's myriad interests in matters of public health." The Bloomberg administration counters that the health board, made up of doctors and other health professionals, has the "specialized expertise" needed to make the call on limiting cola sizes.

The suit also argues the rule is too narrow to be fair. Alcohol, unsweetened juice and milk-based drinks are excluded, as are supermarkets and many convenience stores — including 7-Eleven, home of the Big Gulp — that aren't subject to city health regulations.

The NAACP and the Hispanic Federation, a network of 100 northeastern groups, say minority-owned delis and corner stores will end up at a disadvantage compared to grocery chains.

"This sweeping regulation will no doubt burden and disproportionally impact minority-owned businesses at a time when these businesses can least afford it," they said in court papers. They say the city should focus instead on increasing physical education in schools.

During Bloomberg's 11-year tenure, the city also has made chain restaurants post calorie counts on their menus and barred artificial trans fats in french fries and other restaurant food.

In general, state and local governments have considerable authority to enact laws intended to protect people's health and safety, but it remains to be seen how a court will view a portion-size restriction, said Neal Fortin, director, Institute for Food Laws and Regulations at Michigan State University.

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Stock index futures signal lower Wall Street open

LONDON (Reuters) - Stock futures pointed to a slightly lower open on Wall Street on Wednesday after gains in the previous session, with futures for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 falling 0.1 to 0.2 percent.

A measure to extend the U.S. debt limit for nearly four months moved closer to a vote and the White House said the president would sign the bill if it cleared Congress, easing uncertainty that could have threatened the U.S. economy.

Focus will be on Apple results. Analysts on average estimate Apple's fiscal first-quarter earnings per share at $13.41, down slightly from $13.87 in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue is seen up 18 percent at $54.7 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Other major companies announcing results include Well point , McDonald's and Abbott .

Revenue from Google Inc's core Internet business outpaced many analysts' expectations during the crucial holiday quarter and advertising rates fell less than in previous periods, pushing its shares up roughly 5 percent. Google shares in Frankfurt were up 4.7 percent on Wednesday.

IBM , the world's largest technology services company, gave a better than expected 2013 outlook after a solid fourth quarter that analysts say has more to do with Big Blue's smooth execution than a vibrant tech spending environment. IBM's shares in Frankfurt were 4 percent higher on Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association releases Weekly Mortgage Market Index for the week ended January 18 at 1200 GMT. The index read 836.5 and the refinancing index was 4,563.7 in the previous week.

JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon apologized to shareholders for the $6 billion loss caused by the so-called "whale" trade, calling it a "terrible mistake," but said the bank has moved on and is still highly profitable.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday he would hold a referendum before the end of 2017 to decide whether Britain remains a member of the European Union, provided he wins the next election.

ICSC/Goldman Sachs release chain store sales for the week ended January 18 at 1245 GMT. In the previous week, sales fell 0.6 percent.

Redbook releases its index of department and chain store sales for January at 1355 GMT. In December, sales fell 0.3 percent.

At 1455 GMT, the Institute for Supply Management Chicago releases annual revisions to its index of manufacturing activity. In December, the index read 51.6.

European shares <.fteu3> were flat in early trading on Wednesday, with encouraging earnings reports from some companies underpinning the market.

Bank and commodity shares led the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index to a fresh five-year closing high on Tuesday on hopes that the global economy continues to mend.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 62.51 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,712.21 at the close on Tuesday. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained 6.58 points, or 0.44 percent, to 1,492.56. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 8.47 points or 0.27 percent, to 3,143.18.

(Reporting by Atul Prakash/editing by Chris Pizzey, London MPG Desk, +44 (0)207 542-4441)

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Cycling-No sympathy for Armstrong on social media

LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Lance Armstrong’s televised doping confession has done nothing to restore his shattered reputation, a study of responses posted to the Twitter social media site showed.

“What was particularly noticeable in our analysis of the Armstrong revelation was the sheer lack of sympathy out there,” said Charlie Dundas of sports market research company Repucom.

“The tone of the discussion around the Oprah Winfrey interview highlighted the level of disappointment and anger that exists. It’s clear the public are far from ready to forgive Lance Armstrong,” he added.

In the interview, Armstrong admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs on his way to his seven Tour de France titles. The Texan also said he hoped a lifetime ban would one day be lifted to allow him to compete in events like marathons.

The Armstrong interview generated 1.9 million Twitter posts between Jan. 14-20, Repucom said. America accounted for more than a quarter of these, with Australia the second most active nation on the site. (Writing by Keith Weir, editing by Mark Meadows)

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France’s National Library Hopes to Buy Sade’s ‘120 Days’

PARIS — “The 120 Days of Sodom,” by the Marquis de Sade, is one of the most perverse works of 18th-century literature.

It tells the story of four rich “libertines” who lock themselves in a remote medieval castle with 46 victims (including eight boys and eight girls, ages 12 to 15). The men are assisted by four female brothel keepers who arouse their hosts by recounting their outlandish (and embellished) experiences.

The work describes orgies and acts of abuse — sexual and otherwise — including pedophilia, necrophilia, incest, torture, rape, murder, infanticide, bestiality, violent anal and oral sex acts and the use of urination and defecation to humiliate and punish.

Sade called it “the most impure tale that has ever been told since our world began.”

There is nothing erotic about it.

Even Bruno Racine, director of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the National Library, calls it “depraved.”

But that hasn’t stopped him from negotiating long and hard to buy Sade’s manuscript. He has convinced the Foreign and Culture Ministries of its importance. He has argued in front of the Commission of National Treasures to declare it provisionally a “national treasure” that needs to be preserved in the library. And he is ready to pay more than $5 million to get it.

“The document is Sade’s most atrocious, extreme, radical work,” Mr. Racine said. “But we make no moral judgment about it.” A rambling, unfinished draft, “120 Days” has been praised and vilified. Simone de Beauvoir defended it as an important contribution to the dark side of humanity in her essay “Must We Burn Sade?”

The American feminist writer Andrea Dworkin branded it a “vile” story written by a woman-hating pornographer. In a 1975 film Pier Paolo Pasolini set the story in an imaginary Italian republic as a condemnation of Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

Sade wrote the draft in 37 days in 1785 in the Bastille, where he had been imprisoned under a royal order initiated against him by his mother-in-law. He wrote in tiny script on both sides of a sheaf of narrow paper, whose sheets he attached into a single 39-foot-long roll. Fearing that his work would be confiscated, he hid the roll in a crevice in a stone wall of his cell.

Days before the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, Sade was transferred at night to a prison for the insane. He wrote that he “wept tears of blood” over the manuscript’s loss, and he went to his grave in 1814 without knowing its fate.

But it was recovered, sold, resold and then published for the first time by a German doctor in an error-filled version in 1904.

In 1929 Viscount Charles de Noailles, whose wife, Marie-Laure, was a direct descendant of Sade’s, bought the manuscript. The couple, wealthy and passionate patrons of the arts, handed it down to their daughter, Natalie, who kept it in a drawer at the family’s estate in Fontainebleau. She would sometimes unroll it and show it to guests; the Italian writer Italo Calvino was one of them.

“My mother showed me the manuscript when I was a boy,” Carlo Perrone, an Italian newspaper publisher who is Natalie de Noailles’s son, said in a telephone interview from Rome. “I remember the handwriting was so small, and that there were no corrections. It gave you the impression that paper was very scarce and precious for him, and that he had to fill up every space.”

Ms. de Noailles eventually entrusted both that manuscript and the manuscript of Stravinsky’s ballet “Les Noces” to a friend, the publisher Jean Grouet.

Mr. Grouet turned out to be a swindler. In 1982 he smuggled the Sade manuscript into Switzerland and sold it to Gérard Nordmann, a Swiss collector of erotica, for about $60,000.

Ms. de Noailles sued. After a long legal case, France’s highest court ruled in 1990 that the work had been stolen and must be returned. (The family was able to retrieve the Stravinsky manuscript, which had remained in France.)

Since Switzerland had not yet signed the Unesco convention requiring the restitution of stolen cultural objects, Ms. de Noailles was forced to sue again in that country. In 1998 the Swiss federal court ruled in Mr. Nordmann’s favor, saying that he had bought the manuscript in good faith.

Afterward, the manuscript was kept at a cultural foundation in Switzerland.

Then, last January, Mr. Nordmann’s heirs offered to sell the manuscript to a French collector. Mr. Perrone intervened.

“Anyone who wants to buy the manuscript in France needs my consent,” he said in the interview. “My mother had a very strong wish that one day the manuscript would be given to the Bibliothèque Nationale, which is my wish as well. It’s an important historical document, a piece of French history.”

Enter Mr. Racine. Since taking over as director of the Bibliothèque Nationale in 2007, he has sought to have important manuscripts classified as “national treasures” in order to acquire them for the library.

Among other purchases, he has bought Casanova’s memoirs with $9.6 million from an anonymous donor; the archives of the French philosopher Michel Foucault; and the archives of the French Marxist theorist, writer and filmmaker Guy Debord (preventing them from leaving the country and going to Yale).

“I don’t know of any director of a world-class library today who is making the kind of brilliant strategic acquisitions that Bruno Racine is making at the Bibliothèque Nationale,” said Paul Le Clerc, the former head of the New York Public Library and the director of Columbia University’s programs in Europe.

Now Mr. Racine is negotiating with Mr. Perrone and the heirs of Mr. Nordmann to buy the Sade manuscript and give each party a cut. The estimated sale price — more than $5 million — would be raised from private donors.

Mr. Racine’s goal is to put the manuscript on display, along with other Sade works in the library’s collection, for the 200th anniversary of Sade’s death next year.

“It is a unique, exceptional work, and a miracle that it survived,” he said. “It is part of our cultural heritage. Whether we like it or not, it belongs in the Bibliothèque Nationale.”

Emerik Derian contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 22, 2013

An earlier version of this story misstated the offenses for which Marquis de Sade was imprisoned in 1785. He had been imprisoned under a royal order initiated against him by his mother-in-law, not for assaulting women and girls.

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Vera Wang Reveals Details of Michelle Kwan's Wedding Dress

By Cynthia Wang

01/21/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Michelle Kwan and Clay Pell

Courtesy of Caitlin Maloney

Although she was a singles figure skater throughout her successful career, Michelle Kwan did have one steadfast partner on the ice – fashion designer Vera Wang.

"I wore so many skating dresses designed by her, whole skating shows and everything," Kwan, 32, tells PEOPLE. "I have a long relationship with her."

And that made picking a wedding dress designer a fairly easy decision.

For Kwan's Rhode Island nuptials on Jan. 19 to Clay Pell, 31, Wang put plenty of consideration into her creation.

"She is marrying someone whose family has a political history, and Michelle is living and working in Washington, D.C.," the designer says. "[The dress] had to have a certain dignity and a certain classicism, and I think it was a lot about a new way of looking at tradition."

So Wang created an ivory, strapless mermaid gown for Kwan, made with layers of silk organza and featuring lace appliqué.

"The fact that it's got an inordinate amount of handwork in terms of lace is really a tribute to the art of hand-piecing lace," Wang says. "There is a princess-slash-queenly level of sophistication and quiet without sacrificing a lot of detail."

To complement the formal wedding gown, Kwan asked Wang what she thought of designing a second dress for the reception. "She said, 'Yeah, I got it,' " Kwan says. "She said, 'First dance, yes, and then you've got to change into something else.' "

Her history with the skater was not lost on Wang. "I'm really very honored and very thrilled that a, Michelle has found the love of her life and b, that I am the one to dress her for that special day just as I did for world championships, national championships, and Olympics," she said. "It's just the ongoing saga of our friendship."

For more on Kwan's wedding, including photos and details from the ceremony, pick up a copy of next week's PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

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Stock index futures signal mixed open

PARIS (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street on Tuesday after Monday's holiday. S&P 500 futures were up 0.1 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.22 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.21 percent at 1035 GMT.

European shares fell in morning trade, with Germany's blue-chip DAX <.gdaxi> among the laggards, dragged down by large futures trades and led by Deutsche Bank shares. <.eu/>

Investors awaited a raft of company results on Tuesday from bellwethers such as CSX , DuPont , Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson , Texas Instruments and Verizon .

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives said they aim to pass on Wednesday a nearly four-month extension of the U.S. debt limit allowing the government to borrow enough to meet its obligations during that period.

Boeing will be in focus again after U.S. and Japanese aviation safety officials investigating problems with the 787 Dreamliner visited the headquarters of the plane's battery maker on Monday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc plans to cut ties immediately with suppliers who subcontract work to factories without the retailer's knowledge, changing its policy after a fire killed more than 100 garment workers in Bangladesh, the Wall Street Journal reported.

On the macro side, investors awaited existing home sales for December, due at 1500 GMT, while the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is set to release its January indexes on area manufacturing and service sectors, also at 1500 GMT.

The Dow and S&P 500 closed at five-year highs on Friday as the market registered a third straight week of gains on a solid start to the quarterly earnings season.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 53.68 points, or 0.39 percent, at 13,649.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 5.04 points, or 0.34 percent, at 1,485.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.30 points, or 0.04 percent, at 3,134.71.

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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