The Mexico City government removed a large statue of a former president of Azerbaijan from a central boulevard early Saturday, giving in after months of complaints by critics who said that Mexico’s capital was no place for the likeness of a man accused of suppressing democracy and committing human rights abuses. City workers, accompanied by police officers, arrived shortly after midnight at the little park that Azerbaijan’s embassy had paid to renovate. They pried up the statue of Heydar Aliyev, who ruled Azerbaijan from 1993 until just before his death in 2003, and then loaded it onto a trailer and carted it off to a city warehouse. Talks are continuing with Azeri officials to find a new home for the statue. As to whether the embassy wants its money back for the park renovations, the city government’s legal director, José Ramón Amieva, told the local news media on Saturday that the city had not yet received a request for reimbursement.
World Briefing | The Americas: Mexico: Statue of Ex-Leader of Azerbaijan Removed
Label: WorldVine Is Teaching Everyone This Terrible Habit
Label: Technology“No more vertical videos.” – Joan Crawford’s message for the digital generation.
Twitter’s new snap-and-share video service, Vine, has forced users to break the first rule of iFilm making: never shoot vertical videos.
[More from Mashable: 10 Awesome Pranks to Play On Your Facebook Friends]
Of course, Vine’s videos appear as a square, so you could argue it doesn’t really matter. But after years of comment shaming and PSAs to break novice video shooters of this deplorable habit, will Vine reverse all the progress made?
[More from Mashable: Vinepeek Opens a Window on the World, Six Seconds at a Time]
BONUS: How to Use Vine
Click here to view the gallery: How To Use Vine
Mashable image
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Guy Fieri Says His Beef Sandwich Recipe Is 'the Bomb!'
Label: LifestyleGuy Fieri's Beef Sandwich
Andrew Purcell; Inset: Michael Tran/Getty
The co-host of Food Network's Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off shares one of his all-time favorite recipes – his beef sandwich.
"The rye bread, the horseradish, the onions – it's the bomb!" he says.
Guy Fieri's Beef Sandwich
Ingredients•1 ¾ tsp. fine sea salt, divided
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 ½ tsp. onion powder
• 1 ½ tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 ½ tsp. paprika
• ½ tsp. chili powder
• 1 ¼ lb. beef top round
• ¼ cup sour cream
• ¼ cup mayonnaise
• ½ tsp. lemon juice
• ¼ cup hot horseradish
• ½ tsp. minced garlic
• 8 slices rye bread, lightly toasted
• 1 white onion, sliced paper-thin
Instructions
1. Combine 1 ½ tsp. sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, 1 ½ tsp. onion powder, 1 ½ tsp. garlic powder, 1 tsp. dried oregano, 1 ½ tsp. paprika, and ½ tsp. chili powder in a resealable 1-gallon plastic bag. Add meat and shake it around in the bag. Marinate in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours.
2. In a medium bowl, combine sour cream, mayonnaise, lemon juice, horseradish, garlic, ¼ tsp. sea salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate for at least four hours.
3. Remove meat from refrigerator 20 minutes before grilling. Pre-heat grill or large grill pan to high. Grill for 15 minutes (7½ minutes per side) for medium rare. Cover meat and let rest 10 minutes. Slice paper-thin. Divide meat among four bread slices. Top with sauce, onion slices and remaining bread.
CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West
Label: HealthNew government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.
Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.
There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.
___
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/
Wall Street Week Ahead: Bears hibernate as stocks near record highs
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks have been on a tear in January, moving major indexes within striking distance of all-time highs. The bearish case is a difficult one to make right now.
Earnings have exceeded expectations, the housing and labor markets have strengthened, lawmakers in Washington no longer seem to be the roadblock that they were for most of 2012, and money has returned to stock funds again.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> has gained 5.4 percent this year and closed above 1,500 - climbing to the spot where Wall Street strategists expected it to be by mid-year. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> is 2.2 percent away from all-time highs reached in October 2007. The Dow ended Friday's session at 13,895.98, its highest close since October 31, 2007.
The S&P has risen for four straight weeks and eight consecutive sessions, the longest streak of days since 2004. On Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 ended at 1,502.96 - its first close above 1,500 in more than five years.
"Once we break above a resistance level at 1,510, we dramatically increase the probability that we break the highs of 2007," said Walter Zimmermann, technical analyst at United-ICAP, in Jersey City, New Jersey. "That may be the start of a rise that could take equities near 1,800 within the next few years."
The most recent Reuters poll of Wall Street strategists estimated the benchmark index would rise to 1,550 by year-end, a target that is 3.1 percent away from current levels. That would put the S&P 500 a stone's throw from the index's all-time intraday high of 1,576.09 reached on October 11, 2007.
The new year has brought a sharp increase in flows into U.S. equity mutual funds, and that has helped stocks rack up four straight weeks of gains, with strength in big- and small-caps alike.
That's not to say there aren't concerns. Economic growth has been steady, but not as strong as many had hoped. The household unemployment rate remains high at 7.8 percent. And more than 75 percent of the stocks in the S&P 500 are above their 26-week highs, suggesting the buying has come too far, too fast.
MUTUAL FUND INVESTORS COME BACK
All 10 S&P 500 industry sectors are higher in 2013, in part because of new money flowing into equity funds. Investors in U.S.-based funds committed $3.66 billion to stock mutual funds in the latest week, the third straight week of big gains for the funds, data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper service showed on Thursday.
Energy shares <.5sp10> lead the way with a gain of 6.6 percent, followed by industrials <.5sp20>, up 6.3 percent. Telecom <.5sp50>, a defensive play that underperforms in periods of growth, is the weakest sector - up 0.1 percent for the year.
More than 350 stocks hit new highs on Friday alone on the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt> recently climbed to an all-time high, with stocks in this sector and other economic bellwethers posting strong gains almost daily.
"If you peel back the onion a little bit, you start to look at companies like Precision Castparts
The gains have run across asset sizes as well. The S&P small-cap index <.spcy> has jumped 6.7 percent and the S&P mid-cap index <.mid> has shot up 7.5 percent so far this year.
Exchange-traded funds have seen year-to-date inflows of $15.6 billion, with fairly even flows across the small-, mid- and large-cap categories, according to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group, in New York.
"Investors aren't really differentiating among asset sizes. They just want broad equity exposure," Colas said.
The market has shown resilience to weak news. On Thursday, the S&P 500 held steady despite a 12 percent slide in shares of Apple after the iPhone and iPad maker's results. The tech giant is heavily weighted in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx> and in the past, its drop has suffocated stocks' broader gains.
JOBS DATA MAY TEST THE RALLY
In the last few days, the ratio of stocks hitting new highs versus those hitting new lows on a daily basis has started to diminish - a potential sign that the rally is narrowing to fewer names - and could be running out of gas.
Investors have also cited sentiment surveys that indicate high levels of bullishness among newsletter writers, a contrarian indicator, and momentum indicators are starting to also suggest the rally has perhaps come too far.
The market's resilience could be tested next week with Friday's release of the January non-farm payrolls report. About 155,000 jobs are seen being added in the month and the unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.8 percent.
"Staying over 1,500 sends up a flag of profit taking," said Jerry Harris, president of asset management at Sterne Agee, in Birmingham, Alabama. "Since recent jobless claims have made us optimistic on payrolls, if that doesn't come through, it will be a real risk to the rally."
A number of marquee names will report earnings next week, including bellwether companies such as Caterpillar Inc
On a historic basis, valuations remain relatively low - the S&P 500's current price-to-earnings ratio sits at 15.66, which is just a tad above the historic level of 15.
Worries about the U.S. stock market's recent strength do not mean the market is in a bubble. Investors clearly don't feel that way at the moment.
"We're seeing more interest in equities overall, and a lot of flows from bonds into stocks," said Paul Zemsky, who helps oversee $445 billion as the New York-based head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management. "We've been increasing our exposure to risky assets."
For the week, the Dow climbed 1.8 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.5 percent.
(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)
DealBook: On Lookout in Davos for Next Growth Story in Emerging Markets
Label: WorldDAVOS, Switzerland — With Europe in a sharp slowdown and the United States forging only a slow recovery, the business and academic elites gathering here are scouring the global landscape for any new economic success story. And a number of countries are stepping forward here at the World Economic Forum to peddle their tales — even if the smart money knows that betting on emerging markets continues to be risky.
Just a few years ago, Brazil and Argentina generated much of the buzz here in Davos, as their growth rates exceeded 7 percent. There was talk of a new economic engine that could help offset lagging growth in the United States and Europe.
Fast forward to today, and Brazil and Argentina have stumbled. It is an economic renaissance in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Panama and Peru that has become the focus in Latin America.
Half a world away, sub-Saharan Africa has also flashed onto the radar screen, with an average 5 percent growth rate that many hope will improve in the coming decade as investment deepens, perhaps finally fostering a new middle class.
Whether those trends are sustainable, though, remains an open question.
As far as the opinion-makers here are concerned, Africa is coming of age. At a dinner Thursday night feting ‘‘Africa’s Promise,’’ the economist Lawrence H, Summers of Harvard waved an iPhone at the audience. ‘‘By the end of the decade, half the African people will have this,’’ he predicted. ‘‘Africa can leapfrog in terms of economic growth.’’
Joe Saddi, chairman of the global management consultancy Booz, is equally bullish. ‘‘The buzz in the business community is that the time of Africa is coming soon,’’ he said. ‘‘Everyone is interested in exploring it.’’
But others at the dinner, which gathered many African heads of state, acknowledged that the road could be rocky.
‘‘There is no doubt that Africa is on the move and making progress, but there will also be trouble spots,’’ President Paul Kagame of Rwanda said. ‘‘We can’t talk about Africa versus China, when Africa is still a place in which each country is on its own.’’
Kandeh Yumkella, director-general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna, said the region was turning heads because of its 5 percent growth rate. ‘‘But it’s almost entirely from a commodities boom,’’ he said. ‘‘There is no creation of high-value growth.’’
Africa still sorely needs infrastructure and an industrial base so that it can export more than just oil and minerals to markets around the world, African officials say. What is lacking is a cohesive industrial policy that investors can grasp. ‘‘I don’t see a strategic vision being forged for Africa,’’ Mr. Yumkella said.
Small loans that are typically aimed at financing cottage industries are simply not enough to lift sub-Saharan Africa into an emerging-market powerhouse, he added. ‘‘Microfinance is basically poverty management,’’ he said of that tactic. ‘‘We define poverty alleviation for Africans as basket weaving. Lending someone $50 a month will not create large numbers of jobs for the future.’’
But with lingering corruption and poor governance, significant flows of private investment may be slow in coming. ‘‘As long as the priority of African heads of state is to have bank accounts in Europe, there will be hurdles,’’ President Alpha Condé of Guinea said. ‘‘The problem with Africa is the leaders of Africa.’’
Pointing to the deadly conflict in Mali, they fretted that all of Africa tends to be painted with the same brush.
‘‘People say there was a terrorist event in Mali, so don’t come to Africa,’’ Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga of Kenya said. ‘‘But when things deteriorate in Venezuela, people don’t say, ‘Don’t invest in Latin America.’ Africa is held to a different standard.’’
Latin America, though, is going through some turbulence of its own, as growth in its two largest economies trails off sharply after several boom years, as exports wane and as domestic demand slackens. In Brazil, global uncertainties and earlier fiscal tightening had an impact larger than expected, especially on private investment, the International Monetary Fund said in a recent report on Latin America.
Argentina, for its part, recently turned toward economic nationalism and retaliatory protectionism after growth slumped.
Widespread controls in Latin America on imports and foreign exchange are also adversely affecting investment and consumer confidence, the I.M.F. said.
Growth in Venezuela has been slowed by a number of factors. ‘‘The problems there are aggravated by an absent president, an impossible macroeconomic situation with ridiculous fiscal deficit, and rising inflation,’’ said Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Center for International Development at Harvard.
Latin American officials say the region is divided into several markets with divergent trends. ‘‘It’s absolutely clear that there are two speeds in Latin America,’’ Finance Minister Felipe Larraín Bascuñán of Chile said in an interview. ‘‘The question is what is sustainable.’’
His country has experienced an average growth rate of 5 percent for the last three years. As in Africa, much of that success has been based on exports of commodities, especially to China.
He cited Chile as an example of an economy that is modifying its contours for the future. Among other things, Mr. Larraín said, private investment has become the main driver of growth after the government amended tax laws to make it easier for small and medium-size businesses to operate.
Smaller Chilean companies that reinvest in themselves pay little or no corporate taxes. A credit tax on loans was slashed to 0.4 percent from 1.2 percent. The middle class has been gaining ground in Chile. And unemployment, around 6 percent, is near its lowest level in a decade, while wages are rising.
‘‘It’s a virtuous circle’’ Mr. Larraín said. Still, he added, ‘‘we don’t want this to be a big fiesta’’ where growth is driven only through consumption. ‘‘We are working to make this sustainable.’’
Investors have also been prowling Mexico after President Enrique Peña Nieto pledged a series of energy and tax measures to lift growth and began a crackdown on violence.
Luis Videgaray Caso, finance minister of Mexico, said the changes were bearing fruit. ‘‘We are attracting investments that 10 years ago went to China,’’ he said at a forum on Latin America. ‘‘The feeling now is that China is a complement, not a competitor.’’
Still, the risks of a slowdown remain, given how sharply growth has been curbed not only in the United States, but also in Europe and in major emerging economies, including the powerhouses of Latin America.
While South America’s more nimble economies have profited by opening their markets and cutting regulations, ‘‘some countries are starting to ask if they should put in more protectionist measures,’’ José Luis Silva Martinot, Peru’s trade and tourism minister, said at the same forum. ‘‘In Peru we want to continue with a free market.’’
And despite the problems afflicting the region’s biggest economies, he added, ‘‘what happens in one country will not lead to contagion — unlike in Europe.’’
BlackRock to buy $80 million Twitter stake: source
Label: TechnologySAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, has taken an $ 80 million stake in Twitter Inc, a person with knowledge of the deal said Friday.
The six-year old social media company will not raise new capital as part of the private deal that values the firm at more than $ 9 billion. BlackRock will buy shares directly from early Twitter employees seeking to liquidate their stock holdings and options.
Twitter’s new valuation represents a slight rise from late 2011, when the company facilitated a similar tender offer with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia that valued the company at a reported $ 8.4 billion.
Twitter sought investors for another tender offer last summer in the wake of Facebook Inc‘s botched initial public offering in May, but did not complete the deal until recently, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
In recent years other tech companies including Facebook, Groupon Inc and SurveyMonkey have used similar transactions to cash out existing employees and delay an initial public offering. Twitter itself is rumored to be a potential IPO prospect within two years.
Several hundred Twitter employees, including many who joined the company before 2009, will be eligible to sell their shares as part of the transaction.
(Reporting By Gerry Shih; editing by Andrew Hay)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Liberty Ross Files for Divorce from Rupert Sanders
Label: LifestyleLiberty Ross
Michael Buckner/Wireimage
The Snow White and the Huntsman actress, 34, filed for divorce Friday from her director-husband Sanders, 41, in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday, PEOPLE confirms.
News of the filing comes about six months after Sanders's highly publicized cheating scandal with Huntsman's star, Kristen Stewart.
Stewart has since patched things up with boyfriend Robert Pattinson, who she was dating during the fling.
In the court documents, Ross seeks joint custody of the couple's two kids, 5 and 7, TMZ reports. She also asks for spousal support and attorney's fees.
Sanders, who has filed his response to the divorce petition, also seeks joint custody of the kids, and wants to share legal fees with Ross, according to TMZ.
CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West
Label: HealthNew government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.
Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.
There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.
___
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/
Wall Street Week Ahead: Bears hibernate as stocks near record highs
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks have been on a tear in January, moving major indexes within striking distance of all-time highs. The bearish case is a difficult one to make right now.
Earnings have exceeded expectations, the housing and labor markets have strengthened, lawmakers in Washington no longer seem to be the roadblock that they were for most of 2012, and money has returned to stock funds again.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> has gained 5.4 percent this year and closed above 1,500 - climbing to the spot where Wall Street strategists expected it to be by mid-year. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> is 2.2 percent away from all-time highs reached in October 2007. The Dow ended Friday's session at 13,895.98, its highest close since October 31, 2007.
The S&P has risen for four straight weeks and eight consecutive sessions, the longest streak of days since 2004. On Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 ended at 1,502.96 - its first close above 1,500 in more than five years.
"Once we break above a resistance level at 1,510, we dramatically increase the probability that we break the highs of 2007," said Walter Zimmermann, technical analyst at United-ICAP, in Jersey City, New Jersey. "That may be the start of a rise that could take equities near 1,800 within the next few years."
The most recent Reuters poll of Wall Street strategists estimated the benchmark index would rise to 1,550 by year-end, a target that is 3.1 percent away from current levels. That would put the S&P 500 a stone's throw from the index's all-time intraday high of 1,576.09 reached on October 11, 2007.
The new year has brought a sharp increase in flows into U.S. equity mutual funds, and that has helped stocks rack up four straight weeks of gains, with strength in big- and small-caps alike.
That's not to say there aren't concerns. Economic growth has been steady, but not as strong as many had hoped. The household unemployment rate remains high at 7.8 percent. And more than 75 percent of the stocks in the S&P 500 are above their 26-week highs, suggesting the buying has come too far, too fast.
MUTUAL FUND INVESTORS COME BACK
All 10 S&P 500 industry sectors are higher in 2013, in part because of new money flowing into equity funds. Investors in U.S.-based funds committed $3.66 billion to stock mutual funds in the latest week, the third straight week of big gains for the funds, data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper service showed on Thursday.
Energy shares <.5sp10> lead the way with a gain of 6.6 percent, followed by industrials <.5sp20>, up 6.3 percent. Telecom <.5sp50>, a defensive play that underperforms in periods of growth, is the weakest sector - up 0.1 percent for the year.
More than 350 stocks hit new highs on Friday alone on the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt> recently climbed to an all-time high, with stocks in this sector and other economic bellwethers posting strong gains almost daily.
"If you peel back the onion a little bit, you start to look at companies like Precision Castparts
The gains have run across asset sizes as well. The S&P small-cap index <.spcy> has jumped 6.7 percent and the S&P mid-cap index <.mid> has shot up 7.5 percent so far this year.
Exchange-traded funds have seen year-to-date inflows of $15.6 billion, with fairly even flows across the small-, mid- and large-cap categories, according to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group, in New York.
"Investors aren't really differentiating among asset sizes. They just want broad equity exposure," Colas said.
The market has shown resilience to weak news. On Thursday, the S&P 500 held steady despite a 12 percent slide in shares of Apple after the iPhone and iPad maker's results. The tech giant is heavily weighted in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx> and in the past, its drop has suffocated stocks' broader gains.
JOBS DATA MAY TEST THE RALLY
In the last few days, the ratio of stocks hitting new highs versus those hitting new lows on a daily basis has started to diminish - a potential sign that the rally is narrowing to fewer names - and could be running out of gas.
Investors have also cited sentiment surveys that indicate high levels of bullishness among newsletter writers, a contrarian indicator, and momentum indicators are starting to also suggest the rally has perhaps come too far.
The market's resilience could be tested next week with Friday's release of the January non-farm payrolls report. About 155,000 jobs are seen being added in the month and the unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.8 percent.
"Staying over 1,500 sends up a flag of profit taking," said Jerry Harris, president of asset management at Sterne Agee, in Birmingham, Alabama. "Since recent jobless claims have made us optimistic on payrolls, if that doesn't come through, it will be a real risk to the rally."
A number of marquee names will report earnings next week, including bellwether companies such as Caterpillar Inc
On a historic basis, valuations remain relatively low - the S&P 500's current price-to-earnings ratio sits at 15.66, which is just a tad above the historic level of 15.
Worries about the U.S. stock market's recent strength do not mean the market is in a bubble. Investors clearly don't feel that way at the moment.
"We're seeing more interest in equities overall, and a lot of flows from bonds into stocks," said Paul Zemsky, who helps oversee $445 billion as the New York-based head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management. "We've been increasing our exposure to risky assets."
For the week, the Dow climbed 1.8 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.5 percent.
(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)
Czech Prince, Schwarzenberg, Runs a Punk Campaign
Label: World
PRAGUE — His face stares out from campaign posters in music clubs and hip cafes, a 75-year-old prince retooled as a punk rocker with a hot pink mohawk and lofty presidential ambitions.
As Czechs head to the polls in presidential elections on Friday and Saturday, advisers to the prince, Karel Schwarzenberg, who is also the Czech Republic’s foreign minister, hope that the jarring image — modeled on a Sex Pistols album cover — will resonate with young voters and help catapult him to Prague Castle, the office of the president.
Quick to disarm anyone who might dismiss him as fusty, Mr. Schwarzenberg, whose full name and title in German is Karel Johannes Nepomuk Joseph Norbert Friedrich Antonius Wratislaw Menas Fürst zu Schwarzenberg, says he prefers Karel.
Mr. Schwarzenberg, whose family once ranked among the wealthiest aristocrats in Europe, is a pro-European member of the center-right governing coalition. He has emerged as a surprisingly strong contender in the race to succeed President Vaclav Klaus, who has equated the European Union with the former Soviet bloc.
Although the Czech presidency is largely a ceremonial post, it carries deep moral authority. The president also wields some influence in foreign policy, makes appointments to the central bank and approves the appointment of judges.
Mr. Schwarzenberg is battling Milos Zeman, 68, the front-runner, a leftist former prime minister who narrowly beat him in the first round of the elections, gaining 24.2 percent of the vote against 23.4 percent for Mr. Schwarzenberg, who more than doubled his predicted share.
David Cerny, a Czech artist who created the punk-prince image and is a campaign adviser, said the rebranding was an appeal to younger Czechs who still regarded Mr. Schwarzenberg as an old and conservative uncle. “The depiction of Karel as a punk was meant to be ironic, but it is also fitting, as Karel has always been a rebel, stubborn and determined, an indestructible bulldozer,” Mr. Cerny said.
The elections, the first direct vote for president here, signal the end of an era, that of the two Vaclavs — Havel and Klaus — who have dominated Czech politics for the past two decades. Vaclav Havel, the idealist-dreamer and playwright who led the Velvet Revolution in 1989 before becoming the first post-Communist president, died in late 2011. Mr. Klaus, his nemesis, steps down in March after two five-year terms.
“We are seeing the end of the era of the giant and unquestioned names in Czech politics,” said Erik Tabery, a leading journalist. “The country is in a bad mood because of a feeling that more than two decades after the revolution, things should be better than they are.”
Although the Czech Republic has not suffered from the same sharp economic pain as the southern European economies, it has been buffeted by 9.4 percent unemployment, weak economic growth and a series of corruption scandals.
Against that backdrop, the avuncular and urbane Mr. Schwarzenberg has emerged as a conciliatory candidate of unexpectedly wide appeal. Yet he has several challenges to overcome, including his exile to Austria during the Communist period, which some critics, including Mr. Klaus, have seized on to dismiss him as a foreigner. Therese, his Austrian wife, does not speak Czech.
He himself still speaks the somewhat archaic Czech of his childhood and has been criticized for incoherence and for dozing off during debates. (His aides say he closes his eyes when faced with strong spotlights.)
That sort of haziness extends to his political career, in the minds of his critics, who portray him as a political opportunist who has flip-flopped between parties in the pursuit of power.
“He has been linked to three or four different parties on both left and right, from Greens to conservatives, in the aim of attaining high office,” said Tomas Jirsa, former vice chairman of a national conservative youth group. “Today he is a conservative, but who knows tomorrow?”
At best, Mr. Jirsa said, Mr. Schwarzenberg has shown a desire to emulate his previous boss, Mr. Havel, and transcend ideology. But that, he says, is politically naïve.
Mr. Schwarzenberg’s life has been deeply influenced by what he has described as his involuntary departure from Czechoslovakia in 1948, when his family fled its castle in Prague after the Communists took over.
Yet Mr. Schwarzenberg never lost a strong sense of civic duty to the country of his birth.
While in exile in Vienna in 1984, he became president of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and cast himself as an important liaison between the West and Czechoslovak dissidents, including Mr. Havel.
After the fall of Communism in 1989, he returned to Czechoslovakia to work for Mr. Havel, offering up his glittering foreign contacts. He became a senator in 2004 and three years later foreign minister and a keen supporter of the United States.
After helping found TOP 09, a conservative political party, in 2009, he became foreign minister in the current center-right coalition government of Prime Minister Petr Necas, which has been criticized for passing tough austerity measures. Mr. Schwarzenberg, however, has not always agreed with all the government’s policies. His support for the Dalai Lama and the Russian punk band Pussy Riot led Mr. Necas to warn that his advocacy could threaten Czech exports to Russia and China. But Mr. Schwarzenberg refused to back down.
Such an independent streak has appealed to young people, and on a recent night at a concert in his honor, the crowd was dominated by people in their 20s.
Wearing a “punk Karel” pin, Lada Bily, 25, said he was voting for Mr. Schwarzenberg, in part because his wealth would make him immune from corruption. His advanced age, he added, was no disadvantage.
Mr. Schwarzenberg himself has dismissed those who have criticized his age and soporific tendencies.
“I fall asleep,” he was once quoted on a billboard as saying, “when others talk nonsense.”
Beyond Google Fiber: Google looks to create its own experimental wireless network
Label: TechnologyLook out, wireless carriers: Google (GOOG) may have its eye on shaking up your business as well. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google “is trying to create an experimental wireless network covering its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters” that “could portend the creation of dense and superfast Google wireless networks in other locations that would allow people to connect to the Web using their mobile devices.” But before anyone gets too excited about “Google Wireless” coming to their neighborhoods, the Journal notes that documents Google filed with the Federal Communications Commission show that the network will “use frequencies that wouldn’t be compatible with nearly any of the consumer mobile devices that exist today, such as Apple’s (AAPL) iPad or iPhone or most devices powered by Google’s Android operating system.” So for now it looks as though Google’s wireless network is still squarely in the experimental phase and won’t be rolling out across the country anytime soon.
[More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will be illegal starting next week]
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Baby Born with Heart Outside Her Chest Goes Home from Hospital
Label: LifestyleAshley and Audrina Cardenas
The infant, delivered on Oct. 15 with a rare genetic deformity called "ectopia cordis," was born with part of her heart outside of her body. Following a successful surgery in November, Cardenas finally left the hospital on Wednesday.
At the time of her procedure, the Texas Children's Hospital in Houston released a statement explaining, "A multidisciplinary team of surgeons saved Audrina's life during a miraculous six-hour, open-heart surgery where they reconstructed her chest cavity to make space for the one-third of her heart that was outside of her body."
Cardenas's mother Ashley told ABCNews.com that she knew about her daughter's condition when she was 16 weeks pregnant.
"They gave me the option to terminate the pregnancy [or] continue with the pregnancy and do something called comfort care at the time of delivery, where instead of doing anything painful to her or do surgery, they let you spend as much time with her until she passes, or opt for a high-risk surgery to help repair the heart," Ashley Cardenas said.
Although she's been released from the hospital, Audrina will still be on oxygen and use a feeding tube, according to her mom, who spoke to HLN affiliate KTRK.
With Audrina wearing a pink chest shield made by doctors, Ashley said, "She doesn't have the sternum. She doesn't have anything over her heart besides the skin and a little muscle that they put over, so this is very important for her to wear. Especially for a car seat, the straps go right on her heart, and if she didn't have anything hard, it would damage her heart."
Penalty could keep smokers out of health overhaul
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.
The Affordable Care Act — "Obamacare" to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.
For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.
Younger smokers could be charged lower penalties under rules proposed last fall by the Obama administration. But older smokers could face a heavy hit on their household budgets at a time in life when smoking-related illnesses tend to emerge.
Workers covered on the job would be able to avoid tobacco penalties by joining smoking cessation programs, because employer plans operate under different rules. But experts say that option is not guaranteed to smokers trying to purchase coverage individually.
Nearly one of every five U.S. adults smokes. That share is higher among lower-income people, who also are more likely to work in jobs that don't come with health insurance and would therefore depend on the new federal health care law. Smoking increases the risk of developing heart disease, lung problems and cancer, contributing to nearly 450,000 deaths a year.
Insurers won't be allowed to charge more under the overhaul for people who are overweight, or have a health condition like a bad back or a heart that skips beats — but they can charge more if a person smokes.
Starting next Jan. 1, the federal health care law will make it possible for people who can't get coverage now to buy private policies, providing tax credits to keep the premiums affordable. Although the law prohibits insurance companies from turning away the sick, the penalties for smokers could have the same effect in many cases, keeping out potentially costly patients.
"We don't want to create barriers for people to get health care coverage," said California state Assemblyman Richard Pan, who is working on a law in his state that would limit insurers' ability to charge smokers more. The federal law allows states to limit or change the smoking penalty.
"We want people who are smoking to get smoking cessation treatment," added Pan, a pediatrician who represents the Sacramento area.
Obama administration officials declined to be interviewed for this article, but a former consumer protection regulator for the government is raising questions.
"If you are an insurer and there is a group of smokers you don't want in your pool, the ones you really don't want are the ones who have been smoking for 20 or 30 years," said Karen Pollitz, an expert on individual health insurance markets with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "You would have the flexibility to discourage them."
Several provisions in the federal health care law work together to leave older smokers with a bleak set of financial options, said Pollitz, formerly deputy director of the Office of Consumer Support in the federal Health and Human Services Department.
First, the law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times as much as their youngest customers.
Second, the law allows insurers to levy the full 50 percent penalty on older smokers while charging less to younger ones.
And finally, government tax credits that will be available to help pay premiums cannot be used to offset the cost of penalties for smokers.
Here's how the math would work:
Take a hypothetical 60-year-old smoker making $35,000 a year. Estimated premiums for coverage in the new private health insurance markets under Obama's law would total $10,172. That person would be eligible for a tax credit that brings the cost down to $3,325.
But the smoking penalty could add $5,086 to the cost. And since federal tax credits can't be used to offset the penalty, the smoker's total cost for health insurance would be $8,411, or 24 percent of income. That's considered unaffordable under the federal law. The numbers were estimated using the online Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator.
"The effect of the smoking (penalty) allowed under the law would be that lower-income smokers could not afford health insurance," said Richard Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions, a nonpartisan research group that called attention to the issue with a study about the potential impact in California.
In today's world, insurers can simply turn down a smoker. Under Obama's overhaul, would they actually charge the full 50 percent? After all, workplace anti-smoking programs that use penalties usually charge far less, maybe $75 or $100 a month.
Robert Laszewski, a consultant who previously worked in the insurance industry, says there's a good reason to charge the maximum.
"If you don't charge the 50 percent, your competitor is going to do it, and you are going to get a disproportionate share of the less-healthy older smokers," said Laszewski. "They are going to have to play defense."
___
Online:
Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator — http://healthreform.kff.org/subsidycalculator.aspx
S&P rises for seventh day but 1,500 too steep a climb
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - The smallest of gains gave the Standard & Poor's 500 its seventh straight winning day on Thursday, but the index failed to hold above the 1,500 line, restrained by Apple's worst day in more than four years.
Apple Inc slid 12.4 percent to $450.50 a day after it posted revenue that missed Wall Street's forecast as iPhone sales were poorer than expected.
The sharp drop wiped out nearly $60 billion in Apple's market capitalization to less than $423 billion, leaving the company vulnerable to losing its status as the most valuable U.S. company to second-place ExxonMobil
The S&P 500, however, managed to hit its longest winning streak since October 2006.
"The market has sent the message it is no longer driven by the whims of Apple," said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O'Neil Securities in New York.
The S&P 500 briefly traded above 1,500 for the first time since December 12, 2007, but failed to hold above it, indicating that momentum is waning and a pullback is in the charts.
"If the market had a little bit more excitement to it, momentum players would have jumped after it broke through 1,500. Investors know the market is a little bit ahead of itself," Polcari said.
Economic data helped buoy equities as U.S. factory activity grew the most in nearly two years in January and new claims for jobless benefits dropped to a five-year low last week, giving surprisingly strong signals on the economy's pulse.
At the same time, Chinese manufacturing grew this month at the fastest pace in about two years, while data suggesting German growth picked up boosted hopes for a euro-zone recovery.
"PMI in Asia, Europe, and obviously, here in the United States, is moving in the right direction, and that's stuff people should be excited about," Polcari said.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 46 points or 0.33 percent, to 13,825.33 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> inched up just 0.01 of a point, or 0 percent, to finish at 1,494.82. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 23.29 points or 0.74 percent, to end at 3,130.38, with most of that loss on Apple's slide.
The broader Russell 2000 index <.rut> also hit a milestone as it closed above 900 points for the first time.
Video streaming service Netflix Inc
Earnings have helped drive the stock market's recent rally. Thomson Reuters data through early Thursday showed that of the 133 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 66.9 percent have exceeded expectations - above the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.
About 6.8 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average during January 2012 of about 6.93 billion shares.
Roughly five issues rose for every four that fell on both the NYSE and Nasdaq.
(Editing by Jan Paschal)
At War Blog: Women Have Always Served in Combat Roles
Label: World8:51 p.m. | Updated Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s ban on women in combat, a groundbreaking decision that overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such roles.
As Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker of The Times report, the move means that hundreds of thousands of frontline jobs will now be open to women. Yet women have long been serving in combat, just not officially.
“I respect and support Secretary Panetta’s decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat,” Senator John McCain said in a statement. “The fact is that American women are already serving in harm’s way today all over the world and in every branch of our armed forces. Many have made the ultimate sacrifice, and our nation owes them a deep debt of gratitude.”
Carey Lohrenz, a former Navy lieutenant, told NPR: “People are trying to make it an argument about whether or not women should be in combat. But women are in combat, and they’ve always been in combat, since the American Revolutionary War – the entire history of our country.”
Representative Niki Tsongas, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Panetta’s announcement would “finally acknowledge the reality of the current nature of war, where the lines between combat and support personnel are not clearly drawn.”
More than 20,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them in combat. As of last year, more than 800 women had been wounded in the two wars and more than 130 had died.
Share your thoughts about Mr. Panetta’s announcement in the comments.
Related Coverage
Pentagon Lifts Ban on Women Serving in Combat Roles
Marines Moving Women Toward the Front Lines
Women at Arms: How the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Have Profoundly Redefined the Role of Women
Google dominates the mobile app market, has 5 of the top 6 apps in the U.S.
Label: TechnologyWondering why Apple (AAPL) is sinking so much effort into building its own Maps application? Because it doesn’t want Google (GOOG) to gobble up all the revenue from big-name mobile applications. ComScore has published its most recent monthly review of the top iOS and Android apps in the United States ranked by unique visitors and has found that Google captured 5 of the top 6 spots with Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Gmail and YouTube. In fact, Facebook (FB) was the only non-Google app to crack the top 6, although it also had the benefit of being the most-visited app in the entire country by a margin of more than 10 million unique visitors. iTunes was the only Apple app to crack the top 10, meanwhile, as it ranked eighth with roughly 46 million unique visitors last month.
[More from BGR: As data gets cheaper for Verizon to transmit, customers are paying more]
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Women have caught up to men on lung cancer risk
Label: HealthSmoke like a man, die like a man.
U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.
Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.
"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.
The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.
The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.
Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.
They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.
One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.
A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods — 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 — using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.
Among the findings:
— The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.
—A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.
—Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.
—Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.
—Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.
—The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.
Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.
Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.
The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.
Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.
"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.
Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years — to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.
"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.
It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."
___
Online:
American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org
National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung
Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org
___
Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
S&P up for sixth day, Apple slip could halt rally
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 rose for a sixth day on Wednesday after stronger-than-expected profits from IBM and Google but the rally could be halted as Apple's after-hours miss sent its shares lower.
The S&P was just 4.7 percent from its all-time closing high as IBM's and Google's earnings, released after Tuesday's close, followed on the heels of stronger U.S. economic data.
"People were kind of nervous about earnings coming into this quarter but numbers have shown so far strength in earnings," said King Lip, chief investment officer at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco.
But Apple , still the largest U.S. publicly traded company, fell 8 percent in extended trading after sales of its flagship iPhone came in below analyst targets and quarterly revenue slightly missed Wall Street expectations.
"One thing that stands out is the company's ballooning balance sheet, where they now have $137 billion dollars in cash and investments," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut. "You've got to wonder when they're going to put some more of that to work."
Declining issues beat advancers in both the NYSE and Nasdaq during regular market hours, in a sign the market's rally may be overstretched. The broad Russell 2000 index <.rut> closed the day down 0.3 percent after earlier hitting and intraday historic high just below 900 points.
Shares in IBM Corp
Also helping the tech sector was a 5.5 percent jump in Google Inc
The S&P technology sector <.splrct> rose 1.2 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 67.12 points or 0.49 percent, to 13,779.33, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 2.25 points or 0.15 percent, to 1,494.81, and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 10.49 points or 0.33 percent, to 3,153.67.
The benchmark S&P 500 is a mere 0.35 percent away from hitting 1,500, a level not seen since December 12, 2007.
S&P 500 futures fell 4.1 points, or 0.3 percent, while Nasdaq 100 futures fell 20 points or 0.7 percent.
Netflix
LED maker Cree Inc
Upscale leather goods maker Coach Inc
Clearing a market hurdle, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Republican-led plan to extend the country's borrowing authority until mid May. This delays a confrontation in Congress similar to one in 2011, which generated a stalemate that triggered the first-ever U.S. debt rating downgrade.
Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday showed that of the 99 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 67.7 percent have topped expectations, above the 65 percent average beat over the past four quarters.
Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings rose 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season.
Top U.S. manufacturers sounded a confident note about their expectations for 2013 on Wednesday as fears of the year-end "fiscal cliff" faded into memory.
In the regular session, about 6.1 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the 2012 daily average of about 6.45 billion.
On the NYSE, roughly 15 issues fell for every 14 that rose and on Nasdaq seven declined for every five gainers.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Diane Craft)
Worker at Algerian Gas Facility Describes Escape
Label: World
BERGEN, Norway — After militants stormed his remote desert workplace last week, Liviu Floria, a Romanian gas worker, locked the door and sought refuge under a desk. For five hours, as he stayed hidden, he communicated by text message with a Romanian co-worker in another part of the sprawling In Amenas gas facility.
Then an ominous final message flashed on his cellphone from the colleague. “I am a hostage,” it said.
That colleague would later be found dead, Mr. Floria said, along with at least 36 other foreigners whom the Algerian government has identified as victims of the attack. But Mr. Floria’s story is one of both terror and salvation as he and seven others managed to scale the fence surrounding the compound, trek through the desert and escape death.
Mr. Floria saw the attack as it began last Wednesday. He and a colleague, George Iachim, were making their morning coffee when an alarm sounded. They rushed to the window and saw what looked like an action movie unfolding before them. Four men with assault rifles had gotten out of a car and were shooting at the guards stationed at the entrance.
“Out of a peaceful place, a normal place to work, in a few seconds it was transformed into a cemetery,” Mr. Iachim later told Romanian television.
After nearly two days of hiding from the hostage-takers, Mr. Floria and seven others decided their only chance at survival would come from climbing the fence and running away. They left around 2 a.m. for what became a harrowing desert trek, guided only by the flickering flame atop a gas well in the distance and a compass application on Mr. Floria’s iPhone.
Algerian officials said Tuesday that they were searching the Sahara for five missing foreigners, in the hopes that others might have escaped into the desert as Mr. Floria and the others did. “It’s ongoing,” said a senior Algerian official. “They’ve disappeared. We’re not going to just abandon them like that.”
Helge Lund, chief executive of Statoil, the Norwegian company that is one of the operators of the In Amenas plant, said Monday in a televised news conference that 12 of Statoil’s 17 employees had returned home, while “extensive searches in and around the plant at In Amenas and at hospitals in Algeria are taking place” for the other five. It was unclear whether the Algerians were referring to the Norwegians, who as of late Tuesday were still classified as missing rather than dead.
Mr. Floria recounted his experiences from back home in Romania on Tuesday. He was clearly still shaken by the experience and traumatized about the deaths of his colleagues, including two Romanians, and on Monday he had gone to a monastery to pray.
Mr. Floria, 45, said that he was no wildcat cowboy, no thrill seeker or adventurer, just a hard-working man hoping to provide a better life for his family. He had been employed in the oil and gas industry in Pitesti, Romania, for nearly 20 years when he was contacted through the job-networking Web site LinkedIn by an international recruiting agency.
The new job in Algeria as a mechanical foreman paid five times as much as he was making in Romania, where the industry was struggling and the future looked uncertain. With the money he earned, Mr. Floria hoped that he could send his teenage daughter to Britain for college and eventually buy himself a little house in the mountains. Safety was not a concern, he said.
He began work in 2010 and before long was used to the routine, one month in the Sahara working 12-hour days and one month back home.
The night before the attack, Mr. Floria went to bed early. It was a decision he said he believed might have saved his life. He woke up early, at 5:15 a.m., and he and Mr. Iachim drove in a Toyota Land Cruiser from the living area to the central processing facility a few miles away. They drove through the very gate that the militants would storm minutes later.
The two Romanians stayed all day and all night in the office, trying to keep quiet, subsisting on water and a few cookies they had with them. Long periods of silence were interrupted by minutes of gunfire and explosions. Mr. Floria tried to suppress his emotions and remain focused on staying alive.
“In my mind, the fate was we should escape from here,” Mr. Floria said. “I must stay calm, manage my feelings and we see what happens next.”
On Thursday afternoon, after more than 24 hours in hiding, they heard someone calling: “Anybody here? Anybody here?”
It was Lou Fear, one of the Britons. “When we heard his voice, we were very happy,” Mr. Floria said, relieved to have been found by others who had eluded capture.
Google’s fourth quarter results shine after ad rate decline slows
Label: TechnologySAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – 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 more than 4 percent.
The world’s largest Internet search company introduced new product listings during the fourth quarter – typically its strongest – and also benefited from business growth in international markets, analysts said.
Excluding traffic-acquisition costs, the business generated net revenue of $ 9.83 billion, up from $ 8.13 billion a year earlier, Google reported on Tuesday. That surpassed a $ 9.6 billion average forecast from six analysts polled by Reuters.
“Business looked really strong, especially from a profitability perspective. They really grew their margins in the core business,” said Sameet Sinha, an analyst with B. Riley Caris. “Most of that strength seems to be coming from international markets which grew revenues quite substantially: up 23 percent year over year, versus the 15 percent growth in the third quarter.”
Average cost-per-click, a critical metric that denotes the price advertisers pay Google, declined 6 percent from a year ago, the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.
Google executives told analysts on a conference call that the company had focused on improving the metric – shoring up margins – while lowering the overall growth rate of paid clicks in the holiday quarter.
“Click prices are still declining, but it’s better than expected,” said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis.
MOTOROLA MOBILITY “STILL LOSING MONEY”
Consolidated net income in the fourth quarter was $ 2.89 billion or $ 8.62 per share, compared with $ 2.71 billion, or $ 8.22 per share, in the year-ago period when Google had not yet acquired Motorola.
Excluding certain items, Google said it earned $ 10.65 per share in the fourth quarter.
“The core business is a great business and the fourth-quarter is always a time for Google to shine. However, Motorola is still losing money and click rates still declined. They only declined 6 percent, but go back four or five quarters and click prices were improving. So mobile is still pressuring click prices,” Gillis said.
The company posted consolidated revenue – which includes its Motorola Mobility mobile phone business but not the television set-top box business it recently agreed to sell – of $ 14.42 billion on Tuesday.
Motorola Mobility had an operating loss of $ 353 million during the quarter.
Shares of Google were up roughly 4.5 percent at $ 734.46 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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PEOPLE's Music Critic: Why We're Upset About Beyoncé's Lip-Synching Drama
Label: LifestyleThat'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.
Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws
Label: HealthNEW 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."
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Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.
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Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz
Banks, commodity stocks lift S&P 500 to five-year high
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - 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.
Travelers' shares climbed after the insurer's results and lifted the Dow Jones industrial average to a new five-year closing high.
On Friday, both the Dow and the S&P 500 ended at five-year highs after the quarterly earnings season got off to a solid start. On Monday, the U.S. stock market was closed in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.
In Tuesday's session, the market also gained on signals that Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives aim on Wednesday to pass a bill to extend the U.S. debt limit by nearly four months to May 19. The White House welcomed the move, saying it would remove uncertainty about the issue.
Investors, however, were cautious ahead of an increase in earnings reports and as the S&P 500 rose for a fifth straight session.
Jack de Gan, chief investment officer of Harbor Advisory Corp, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said better economic numbers in the United States and China, as well as more stabilization in Europe, were driving buyers into sectors associated with economic growth.
"Any (bearish) news could turn us down for a day or so," he said, referring to the recent string of gains.
Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 62.51 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,712.21 at the close. 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.
Tuesday's session marked the highest closes for both the Dow and the S&P 500 since December 2007.
Technology shares underperformed as concerns about Apple's ability to continue to grow at hyper speed and a weak outlook from Intel Corp
But Google
"We expected Q4 for many tech vendors would be weak because we were expecting a lot of companies sitting on their wallets until it became clear what was going to become of the fiscal cliff," Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels said about IBM.
"Given the fact it's Q4 and the cloud of fiscal cliff within it, it's a positive indication that especially tech software will be doing better in the next couple of months."
During the regular session, shares of blue chips Travelers, DuPont
Travelers rose 2.2 percent to $77.95, a closing high. DuPont's shares gained 1.8 percent to $47.82. Verizon's stock rose 0.9 percent to $42.94.
Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning showed that of the 74 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 62.2 percent have topped expectations, roughly even with the 62 percent average since 1994, but below the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.
Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 2.6 percent. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast from the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings forecast from October 1, the data showed.
U.S.-listed shares of Research in Motion
About 6.2 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below last year's daily average of about 6.45 billion shares.
On the NYSE, advancers outnumbered decliners by a ratio of roughly 9 to 4. On the Nasdaq, five stocks rose for every three that fell.
Signs of improved sentiment toward world growth were also seen in European bond markets. The yield on Portugal's benchmark 10-year note fell below 6 percent for the first time since late 2010 on news that the country was set to tap the bond market this week for the first time since it was bailed out in 2011.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Jennifer Saba; Editing by Jan Paschal)
Algeria Defends Tough Response to Hostage Crisis as Toll Rises
Label: World
Ramzi Boudina/Reuters
Rescue workers with the coffin of one of the slain hostages.
ALGIERS — The prime minister of Algeria offered an unapologetic defense on Monday of the country’s tough actions to end the Sahara hostage crisis, saying that the militants who had carried out the kidnappings intended to kill all their captives and that the army saved many from death by attacking.
But the assertion came as the death toll of foreign hostages rose sharply, to 37, and as American officials said they had offered sophisticated surveillance help that could minimize casualties, both before and during the military operation to retake a seized gas field complex in the Algerian desert.
At least some of the assistance was accepted, they said, but there were still questions about whether Algeria had taken all available steps to avert such a bloody outcome.
American counterterrorism officials and experts said they would have taken a more cautious approach, using detailed surveillance to gain an information advantage and hopefully outmaneuver the militants. But others declined to second-guess the Algerians, saying events had unfolded so rapidly that the government might have felt it had no choice but to kill the kidnappers, even if hostages died in the process.
The debate over how the Algerians handled one of the worst hostage-taking episodes in recent memory reflects conflicting ideas over how to manage such mass abductions in an age of suicidal terrorist acts in a post-9/11 world.
The Algerians — and some Western supporters — argue that the loss of innocent lives is unavoidable when confronting fanatics who will kill their captives anyway, while others say modern technology provides some means of minimizing the deaths.
At a news conference in Algiers, the prime minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, portrayed the military’s deadly assaults on the Islamist militants who had stormed and occupied an internationally run gas-producing complex last Wednesday in remote eastern Algeria as a matter of national character and pride.
“The whole world has understood that the reaction was courageous,” Mr. Sellal said, calling the abductions an attack “on the stability of Algeria.”
“Algerians are not people who sell themselves out,” he said. “When the security of the country is at stake, there is no possible discussion.”
It was the Algerian government’s first detailed public explanation of its actions during the siege, a brazen militant assault that has raised broad new concerns about the strength of extremists who have carved out enclaves in neighboring Mali and elsewhere in North Africa.
Mr. Sellal said that the 37 foreign workers killed during the episode — a toll much higher than the 23 previously estimated — came from eight countries and that five captives remained unaccounted for. It was unclear how many had died at the hands of the kidnappers or the Algerian Army. The United States said that three Americans were among the dead and that seven had survived.
The prime minister also said that 29 kidnappers had been killed, including the leader, and that three had been captured alive. The militants were from Egypt, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Tunisia and Canada, he said — an assertion the Canadian government said it was investigating. Mr. Sellal said the group began the plot in Mali and entered Algeria through Libya, close to the site.
Other countries, notably Japan and Britain, have raised concerns about what they considered Algeria’s harsh and hasty response. The United States has not publicly criticized Algeria, which it regards as an ally in the fight to contain jihadist groups in Africa. But law enforcement and military officials said Monday that they almost certainly would have handled such a crisis differently.
First, the United States would have engaged in longer discussions with the captors to identify the leaders and buy time, the officials said. In the meantime, the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and possibly allied security services could have moved surveillance drones, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and electronic eavesdropping equipment into place to help identify the locations of the hostages and the assailants.
“It would have been a precision approach as opposed to a sledgehammer approach,” said Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney, a retired deputy commander of the United States military’s Special Operations Command.
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