Not all the stars were on their best behavior! See what Ben & Bradley, Russell & Nicole and more got up to when the cameras weren't rolling
Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage
Updated: Sunday Jan 27, 2013 | 10:00 PM EST
By: Kate Hogan
New 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/
TOKYO (Reuters) - Tech-heavy South Korean shares dragged down the broader Asian share index on Monday on fears of weaker earnings, but improving economic prospects in Europe and solid U.S. profit reports underpinned sentiment.
The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> inched down 0.2 percent, after seeing its biggest weekly loss in two months last week. Asian markets were in positive territory except in Seoul and Jakarta.
The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) <.ks11> extended losses to an 8-week low with a 0.6 percent slip, as a weakening yen soured the outlook for local exporters and foreign investors reduced their holdings.
Tech-heavy South Korea was also vulnerable to a clouding outlook for high-end smartphone device shipments.
"Investors have begun preempting concerns about exporters' outlooks since automakers announced weak earnings last week, while large-caps continue to be pressured by foreign selloffs," said Kim Hyung-ryol, an analyst at Kyobo Securities.
Global investor sentiment improved on Friday when the German Ifo business morale index improved in January to its highest in more than half a year, further evidence that Europe's largest economy is gathering speed again, and European banks were set to repay the European Central Bank a larger sum of money than expected to underscore stabilising financial system in the euro zone.
In China, data on Sunday showed profits earned by industrial companies rose 17.3 percent in December from a year earlier to 895.2 billion yuan ($143.9 billion), adding to evidence of a fourth-quarter economic recovery.
The yen extended losses to fresh lows, but Japanese equities gave up earlier gains and eased ahead of Japan's corporate reporting season which enters full swing this week.
Japan's Nikkei stock average <.n225> edged down 0.1 percent after jumping 2.9 percent on Friday to log an 11th straight week of gains, its longest such run since 1971. <.t/>
Against the yen, the dollar hit 91.26 early on Monday, its highest level since June 2010 while the euro touched 122.91, its highest point since April.
New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for aggressive monetary easing and huge fiscal spending to beat deflation. The yen has fallen some 13 percent since mid-November when he began making those calls as part of his election campaign.
"The potent mix of Abenomics and strong risk appetite abroad is continuing to soften the yen, which means investors will still be buying stocks," said Masayuki Doshida, senior market analyst at Rakuten Securities.
In sharp contrast to U.S. and German equities, the Nikkei remains well below levels before the financial crisis in 2008, reflecting the magnitude of negative effect from the yen's strength. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> closed at their highest in more than five years on solid U.S. corporate earnings on Friday and Frankfurt's DAX index <.gdaxi> also scaled five-year highs.
The yen is still stronger than around 95 yen before the 2008 financial crisis, but both the euro and the dollar measured against a basket of key currencies <.dxy> hover at levels far below the pre-crisis levels.
SAFE HAVEN SUFFERS
The improving global macroeconomic environment has curbed interest in safe haven assets such as gold.
Spot gold steadied around $1,659.90 (1,053.44 pounds) an ounce on Monday, still below its 200-day moving average. As riskier equities rallied on Friday, bullion saw its biggest weekly drop this year on Friday.
U.S. crude inched up 0.1 percent to $95.95 a barrel and Brent steadied around $113.23.
London copper, another industrial commodity linked to demand prospects, rose 0.4 percent to $8,065 a tonne.
With easing stress in financial markets, investors pumped $5.65 billion into stock funds worldwide in the latest week, with most of it flowing into emerging market stock funds, data from EPFR Global showed on Friday.
The euro hovered near an 11-month high of $1.3480 hit on Friday. The Australian dollar stumbled to an eight-month low against the euro early on Monday. European shares scaled fresh multi-month peaks on Friday.
Investors will focus this week on the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee statement on Wednesday and U.S. nonfarm payrolls due on Friday.
Sluggish equities weighed on Asian credit markets, widening the spread on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index by 1 basis point.
(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul and Sophie Knight in Tokyo; Editing by Edwina Gibbs & Kim Coghill)
MUNDGOD, India — Religion and science have not always been easy friends, as Galileo could attest.
But over the last week scientists and Buddhist scholars have been working in this small Tibetan enclave in southern India to prove that these two worlds can not only co-exist — but benefit each another.
It is the 26th edition of the Mind & Life Conference and the first held in a monastery, for thousands of Buddhist monks gathered here. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, greeted the scientists last Friday and introduced the week-long dialogue about science and religion.
The examination is rooted in the personal story of the Dalai Lama. During his secluded training as a child in Tibet, he would gaze at the night sky through a telescope on the roof of the Potala Palace. He looked at the moon with such intensity he realized the shadows and asperities on its surface contradicted the Tibetan belief that it was lit from within. He took his findings to his tutors.
“When I told my tutors of my interest in science, they replied that it made sense,” said the Dalai Lama during his welcome speech to the conference. “However, although we have an interest in science, that doesn’t mean we have to devote all our energy to it. I spend the majority of my time in meditation on love, compassion and wisdom, which is the source of my interest in science.”
It is this interest he is trying to spark in all Tibetan monks by adding science to their instruction.
“In the Buddhist investigation of reality we traditionally employ four principles of reasoning: dependence, function, nature and evidence,” said the Dalai Lama. Not a far stretch from the way scientists look for evidence. “Both approaches seem to work in parallel,” he said.
The thousands of monks of the Mundgod monasteries have been asked to follow the discussions — whose topics range from Quantum physics to neuroscience — in the Drepung Loseling Monastery’s assembly hall here. Monks who can’t fit into the hall watch the discussions on overflow screens outside on the monastery grounds.
With a strong emphasis on training the mind through meditation, looking within and constant questioning, the long and arduous teaching young monks have to follow in the monasteries requires the same attention to analysis and logic as any scientific curriculum. One difference? Isolation. In Tibet, before the Chinese invasion, the monks were kept from the outside world, practicing their faith in seclusion.
According to Rato Khen Rinpoche, the abbot of Rato Drepung, another Mundgod monastery, “Monastic vocation used to be cocooned by a geographic isolation.”
Today, things have changed. “Maintaining that tradition is not the way to form the 21st century monk,” he explained during an interview at the monastery.
Rato Khen Rinpoche, the first Westerner appointed abbot of a Tibetan monastery (his given name is Nicholas Vreeland), became a monk at thirty. Before he turned to Buddhism he studied and worked as a photographer.
His worldliness did not deter him from becoming a geshe — the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Buddhism, which requires up to twenty years of study — and now an abbot.
“Bringing science to Buddhist monks does not mean bending the belief system,” he insists, “they are parallel, there is no attempt to harmonize the two.”
For the science conference, Rato Monastery has transformed its prayer hall into a conference hall where 40 monks are getting together to edit a Tibetan science and Buddhist philosophy compendium.
The monks are Tibetan scholars from all monasteries who followed a multiple-year science course and are now asked by the Dalai Lama to compile what they learned into a book for their fellow monks. “These are monks who have spent from early morning to late night memorizing ancient texts, having them explained by wise elders and debating them long into the night,” says Rato’s abbot. “They had to leave behind Tibetan beliefs in place for centuries and apply the same strict discipline they had in their Buddhist studies to modern science.”
This is the strength of mind required of the modern monk, he says: a capacity for knowledge, open mindedness and debate, carried alongside the absolute belief in Buddha’s words.
The book will cover, along with Buddhist philosophy, the history of Science — from Galileo’s discovery of the planets’ movements to Darwin’s theory on evolution — tackling basic physics, biology and chemistry topics. Once the editing is over, the monks will go back to their respective monasteries and become the first Tibetan monks science teachers for their fellow monks and nuns.
But the curiosity goes both ways. Scientists have long been fascinated by the effect of the Buddhist practice of meditation on the brain. Richard Davidson, director of the laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has conducted experiments on a dozen of Tibetan Buddhist monks’ brains.
His findings created a stir in brain science circles by suggesting that after meditating for thousands of hours, monks altered the functioning and structure of their brains.
As part of his ongoing research, Dr. Davidson last year connected French monk Matthieu Ricard to 256 sensors and asked him to meditate on compassion. The scans of his brain showed an extraordinary level of gamma waves (activity linked to consciousness, learning and memory), “levels never reported before in the neuroscience literature”, the scientist said.
The left prefrontal cortex also saw increased activity, proof of a larger capacity for “happiness.”
On Sunday, the topic of discussion between the scientists and the Buddhist scholars was the nature of consciousness. The Dalai Lama asked the scientists where the basis for consciousness lies.
Responses from the scientists differed strongly.
Christof Koch, a University of California neuroscience best know for his work on consciousness, said we could speculate but ultimately we don’t know where it lies beyond the brain, its physical basis. He added that all mammals have consciousness but it is impossible to know where it lies (for example, our immune system can function without it).
Matthieu Ricard, the French monk who was a genetics scientist before taking up the monastic life, turned towards his Buddhist teaching more than his scientific past.
“By honest introspection, by following one line of inquiry which is pure experience,” one can reach an understanding of consciousness, he said.
Ricard then addressed the topic of reincarnation and some individuals’ ability to remember past lives.
Arthur G. Zajonc, a professor emeritus of physics at Amherst College in Massachusetts, doesn’t consider himself a Buddhist he said. Yet, he added, “I meditate and through that, have come to believe in the possibility of reincarnation.”
The benefits of meditation and contemplative practice should not only be reserved to monks, Mr. Zajonc added. He explained that they could contribute to the education of any college undergraduate before quoting Albert Einstein: “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.”
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 27, 2013
An earlier version of this post said Arthur G. Zajonc is a professor emeritus of physics at Harvard. He is a professor emeritus of physics at Amherst.
Catch up with Michelle Kwan and the all-star figure skaters who attended her Jan. 19 dream wedding
Credit: Caitlin Maloney
Updated: Friday Jan 25, 2013 | 05:00 PM EST
By: NANCY MATTIA AND CYNTHIA WANG
New 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/
Video posted online appears to show fans of Cairo’s Al Ahly soccer team celebrating a court verdict.
It was one of the world’s deadliest episodes of soccer violence — a clash between fans of the Egyptian team Al Masry, of Port Said, and players and fans from Al Ahly, of Cairo, a year ago that killed 74 and wounded over 1,000.
On Saturday, a court in Cairo handed down death sentences for 21 of those involved in the riots. The violence that the verdict prompted, involving hard-core “ultra” supporters of both teams, killed at least 28 and wounded at least 300, my colleagues David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh reported.
Pictures and video from Port Said and Cairo were markedly different. In Cairo, as the video at the top of this post shows, there were widespread celebrations. In Port Said, a city of about 600,000.
Rioters looted and burned a police barracks and set fire to a police station. They attacked members of the news media, damaging television cameras that sought to film the violence and ending their broadcasts. They closed off all roads into Port Said as well as the railroad station, and the Ministry of Electricity and Energy said rioters had attacked a power facility as well.
Video posted online appears to show protesters in Port Said.
In Cairo, Mr. Kirkpatrick and Ms. El Sheikh reported, the families of those killed in the clash last year “held pictures of the victims in the air. Some danced and chanted. A few fainted. And the Cairo ultras celebrated for hours outside their team’s headquarters.”
Video posted online appears to show celebrations in Cairo.
Tara Todras-Whitehill, a photographer in Cairo, posted further pictures of the celebrations on her Twitter account.
Ultras chanting ‘Min of Interior it’s ur turn next’ and calling for execution of Tantawi. Can’t win in #Egypt #PortSaid http://t.co/Up8vK9hv
— T Todras-Whitehill (@taratw) 26 Jan 13
Ultras celebrate in their Zamalek stadium the verdict of 21 in #PortSaid massacre. #Egypt #Cairo http://t.co/bR5BtvHB
— T Todras-Whitehill (@taratw) 26 Jan 13
It was not immediately clear where the following picture also posted on Twitter, by Tom Gara of The Wall Street Journal, came from. But it apparently shows a man playing an accordion in the midst of one riot.
The craziest photo to come out of Egypt for a long time: http://t.co/PmVRM4K3
— Tom Gara (@tomgara) 26 Jan 13
(Reuters) – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, will host a fundraiser for New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie at their California home on February 13, the social networking site said on Thursday.
Zuckerberg and Christie, a potential presidential contender in 2016, have teamed up before, when the tech guru donated $ 100 million to the struggling public schools in Newark, New Jersey, in 2010.
“Mark and Priscilla … admire his leadership on education reform and other issues and look forward to continuing their important work together on behalf of Newark’s school children,” Facebook said in a statement.
The blunt-spoken Christie is seeking re-election in November to a second term as governor. He took office in 2010.
Right now, he doesn’t seem to need much help as his approval rating skyrocketed after Superstorm Sandy hit the state last October. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday found that three-quarters of New Jersey voters approved of Christie’s performance and nearly seven in 10 say he deserves to be re-elected.
New Jersey Democrats also have not rallied behind a single challenger. State Senate President Stephen Sweeney has said he is considering running, but the poll found that Christie would easily defeat Sweeney.
Christie would also trounce Barbara Buono – who has said she will run against the governor – and possible challenger Richard Codey, the poll found. Both are Democratic state senators.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Hilary Russ in New York; Editing by Eric Beech)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
By Dahvi Shira
01/25/2013 at 08:20 PM EST
Liberty 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.
New 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/
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