Al-Qaida-Linked Militants Free 2 Filipino Hostages

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Abu Sayyaf gunmen have freed two Filipino members of a Jordanian TV journalist's crew who were kidnapped by the al-Qaida-linked militants last year as they set out to interview the extremists in their jungle lairs in the southern Philippines, police said Sunday.

Policemen found frail-looking cameraman Ramel Vela and audio technician Roland Letriro late Saturday and brought them to a hospital in southern Sulu province, where they were kidnapped in June along with Jordanian Baker Abdulla Atyani, provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Antonio Freyra said.

Atyani is believed to still be held by the gunmen in the jungles of Sulu's mountainous Patikul town, about 950 kilometers (590 miles) south of Manila.

"We're so happy. We never thought we'd make it out alive," a teary-eyed Vela said at his hospital bed, adding that he and Letriro have not seen Atyani since the Jordanian was separated from them by their kidnappers five days after they were taken hostage.

Visibly thinner, shocked and with overgrown hair and beard, the two were examined by doctors and given bread and water in the Sulu hospital, which was guarded by police and marines.

"They really lost weight because they were constantly under stress each day," Freyra told The Associated Press.

An unspecified amount was paid to secure the freedom of the two captives, according to three security officials who have been closely monitoring the kidnappings. The three spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Military officials have said Abu Sayyaf militants have demanded 130 million pesos ($3.1 million) for the release of Atyani and his two crew members.

Hundreds of rebels from the larger Moro National Liberation Front, which signed a 1996 autonomy deal with the government, have also been negotiating with the Abu Sayyaf for the release of Atyani and other foreign hostages, including two European bird watchers who were abducted last year.

Moro commander Khabir Malik said his group had taken the initiative to seek the freedom of the hostages to help the government clean up the image of Sulu, a predominantly Muslim province where the Abu Sayyaf has carried out deadly bombings, kidnappings for ransom and beheadings, primarily in the early 2000s.

U.S.-backed military offensives have crippled the Abu Sayyaf in recent years, but it remains a national security threat. Washington has listed the group as a terrorist organization.

Malik said last week that he met with an Abu Sayyaf commander, Jul-Asman Sawadjaan, to seek the release of Atyani and his two crew members, who were believed being held in the jungles of Sulu's mountainous Patikul town. But the extremists refused to release their captives to the Moro rebels, Malik said.

Malik had suggested that his armed group could consider other options, including a rescue, to secure the captives' freedom from the smaller Abu Sayyaf group.

Abu Sayyaf gunmen handed the two Filipinos to still-unknown negotiators, but not to Malik's group, angering the Moro rebels, according to the three security officials.

A gunbattle erupted between Malik's forces and the Abu Sayyaf militants Sunday in Patikul's jungles, Freyra said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, and police and the military went on alert amid the fighting.

Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan has said he will not allow Malik's group to take any drastic action like a rescue that could harm the Abu Sayyaf's hostages.

Atyani was working for the Arabic satellite channel Middle East Broadcasting Corp. when he interviewed Osama bin Laden and his aides in Afghanistan about three months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He said they told him that the coming weeks would hold "important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests in the world."

He later moved to Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV as its Asia bureau chief. He traveled to Sulu to work on a documentary about the country's volatile south and possibly interview Abu Sayyaf militants in the impoverished province, Freyra and other officials said.

The other hostages being held by the Abu Sayyaf include the two European men, who were seized from nearby Tawi Tawi province in February last year and are believed to have been taken to Sulu, a Japanese treasure hunter, a Malaysian national and a Filipino resident of Sulu, officials say.

On Friday, Washington renewed a longstanding warning to Americans not to travel to Sulu "due to the high threat of kidnapping ... and violence linked to insurgency and terrorism there."

The Abu Sayyaf, which has about 380 armed fighters in Sulu and nearby islands, is an extremist offshoot of a Muslim rebellion that has been raging in the predominantly Catholic nation's south for decades. The violence has been fueled by abject poverty, corruption, proliferation of illegal weapons and weak law enforcement.

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Meet the Man Who Designed BlackBerry’s New Phones

When BlackBerry set out to design the phones that would take the company into the next decade, it faced a big challenge. The flagship device of the new BlackBerry 10 platform needed to simultaneously satisfy what today’s customers want in a smartphone while at the same time stay true to the essence of BlackBerry — which, if the company’s market over the last few years is any indication, customers didn’t want.

The man tasked with redesigning BlackBerry phones was Todd Wood, the company’s senior vice president of design. Leading industrial design at BlackBerry since 2006, Wood is a veteran of industrial design, previously doing design work for Nokia and, before that, Nortel. Mashable sat down with Wood this week while he was in town for the BlackBerry 10 launch.

[More from Mashable: Here’s a Mysterious Image From BlackBerry’s Super Bowl Ad]

Wood speaks with the same thoughtfulness of other design leaders, such as Apple’s Jony Ive, but with none of the showiness. He’s been with BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) for long enough to see its fortunes rise and fall. As he describes the Z10, you feel that he’s heard enough praise and criticism about BlackBerry’s products that it all just bounces off.

[More from Mashable: Don’t Hold Your Breath for More BlackBerry Tablets]

When I bring up the BlackBerry Storm — the company’s previous (failed) attempt to create a touchscreen phone — Wood doesn’t bristle or even acknowledge the disaster it was. He simply describes certain design elements that a similar to the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry’s new flagship phone. And he makes them sound kind of cool.

“There’s still the ‘waterfall’ that was pronounced on Storm — these flowing surfaces,” Wood says as he points to the top and bottom of the Z10, which are ever-so-slightly sloped. “We’ve brought that with the margins [on the Z10], but it’s very subtle. There are some principles that we carry forward, but nothing’s been cut and pasted.”

As CEO Thorsten Heins described at the launch, BlackBerry faced a decision three years ago: adopt someone else’s mobile OS or go it alone. It opted for the latter, acquiring QNX software in 2010 and adapting it to build first the PlayBook, then BlackBerry 10.

Completely switching mobile platforms was risky and extremely challenging, but it was also a huge design opportunity, says Wood.

“We were starting the platform from scratch. We wanted to build on the design DNA [BlackBerry] had, and we wanted to keep certain attributes — the fit to face, fit to hand — the general comfort of the device, the build quality of the device.”

No Home Button

Key decisions about the device itself depended on how the software worked. There’s no home button on the Z10, for example — a user controls basic functions (like switching between apps) via gestures, such as swiping up from the edge of the screen.

Much of the design was influenced by the need for easy, one-handed operation.

“How can you design a system where you could multitask more elegantly?” Wood asks, rhetorically. “It’s not unlike shuffling cards. And we started to realize you can really do that with one hand and one thumb.

“Almost every phone has a UI paradigm of ‘You go home to go somewhere else.’ Here you can flow from app to app.”

Soft Touch Backside

The phone has a semi-rubberized back, a material that BlackBerry refers to as “soft touch.” The company has used it before — in the trim of the latest Bold smartphone, for example. But in the Z10, Wood’s team added a perforated pattern.

“Soft touch is a special coating that we use,” he explains. “It provides grip, and it’s very silky. What we did was add some microtexture to it, which is something that you don’t notice until you pick the phone up and run your hand across it. It’s a nice subtlety.”

Button Shapes

If you’ve ever thought the physical buttons on Samsung’s phones felt cheap, or the iPhone’s too bland, you’ll appreciate RIM’s contoured buttons for volume and media playback. The volume buttons have a slight notch on one side, and the play/pause button has a small upraised piece — all detectable by touch.

“We wanted to keep them really precise and clean,” says Wood. “We sculpted the keys so it’s always really apparent without looking, almost like braille, exactly where you are.”

Font

Wood also played a role in choosing the system font for BlackBerry 10, which is called Slate. Designed by Canadian Rod McDonald (who also designed the font for Maclean’s, one of Canada’s top national news magazines), BlackBerry chose Slate for its legibility, Wood says.

“Slate really works for screen and print, so we decided to adopt it. When you have such a high-res display, you get really accurate letterforms. When you have a really great font design, that improves productivity. You’re not squinting, and letters are not misinterpreted.”

The Q10

Of course, Wood also led the team that designed the Q10, the BlackBerry 10 phone with a physical QWERTY keyboard, coming about a month after the Z10 debuts. Although the Q10 borrows more design DNA from the BlackBerry of old, BB10 afforded some big departures as well.

For starters, the Q10′s keyboard is straight whereas most previous BlackBerry phone keyboards had a curve to them — which even led to the company calling one of its product lines the Curve.

“That is a big change,” Wood says of straightening out the keyboard for the Q10. “It was very logical, but also it signals ‘This is different.’ And there’s no performance tradeoff with it being straight — we’ve measured it.”

Besides being straight, the keyboard is larger than the ones on previous BlackBerry phones.

“What allows us to get that extra size is we’ve replaced the home key, the back key and the send/end keys, since everything in BB10 is controlled by gestures and direct manipulation of the data. Without the curve, each key is the same size, and they’re 3% larger.”

The Red LED

No BlackBerry phone would be complete without the trademark — and at times notorious — blinking red LED that indicates a message is waiting. Wood says the attribute is hard-wired into BlackBerry design at this point and at no point did the company consider ditching it.

“That’s probably the strongest, most iconic element of the DNA we carry forward,” he says. “It’s origins were ‘Let’s save on battery life,’ and it continues today. For us, we call it the spark, or the splat. It’s a hallmark of BlackBerry it makes some people excited, and it makes some people neurotic, but it’s up to end users to manage that.”

How do you like the design of BlackBerry’s new phones? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS: BlackBerry Z10 Review

Click here to view the gallery: BlackBerry Z10 Review

Lead image by Nina Frazier, Mashable

Images by Nina Frazier, Christina Warren and Pete Pachal, Mashable

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Healthier schools: Goodbye candy and greasy snacks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Goodbye candy bars and sugary cookies. Hello baked chips and diet sodas.

The government for the first time is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful, a change that would ban the sale of almost all candy, high-calorie sports drinks and greasy foods on campus.

Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending machines would start selling water, lower-calorie sports drinks, diet sodas and baked chips instead. Lunchrooms that now sell fatty "a la carte" items like mozzarella sticks and nachos would have to switch to healthier pizzas, low-fat hamburgers, fruit cups and yogurt.

The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have made improvements in their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.

Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunch rooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. And food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has not been federally regulated.

"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools, and 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.

The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.

The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.

"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.

Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.

The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.

Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.

Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says surveys done by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.

"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.

The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.

A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights.

That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January.

Late-stage bull markets are typically marked by an influx of small investors coming late to the party - such as when your waiter starts giving you stock tips. For that to happen you need a good story. The "great rotation," with its monumental tone, is the perfect narrative to make you feel like you're missing out.

Even if something approaching a "great rotation" has begun, it is not necessarily bullish for markets. Those who think they are coming early to the party may actually be arriving late.

Investors pumped $20.7 billion into stocks in the first four weeks of the year, the strongest four-week run since April 2000, according to Lipper. But that pales in comparison with the $410 billion yanked from those funds since the start of 2008.

"I'm not sure you want to take a couple of weeks and extrapolate it into whatever trend you want," said Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup. "We have had instances where equity flows have picked up in the last two, three, four years when markets have picked up. They've generally not been signals of a continuation of that trend."

The S&P 500 rose 5 percent in January, its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997, driving speculation that retail investors were flooding back into the stock market.

Heading into another busy week of earnings, the equity market is knocking on the door of all-time highs due to positive sentiment in stocks, and that can't be ignored entirely. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> ended the week about 4 percent from an all-time high touched in October 2007.

Next week will bring results from insurers Allstate and The Hartford , as well as from Walt Disney , Coca-Cola Enterprises and Visa .

But a comparison of flows in January, a seasonal strong month for the stock market, shows that this January, while strong, is not that unusual. In January 2011 investors moved $23.9 billion into stock funds and $28.6 billion in 2006, but neither foreshadowed massive inflows the rest of that year. Furthermore, in 2006 the market gained more than 13 percent while in 2011 it was flat.

Strong inflows in January can happen for a number of reasons. There were a lot of special dividends issued in December that need reinvesting, and some of the funds raised in December tax-selling also find their way back into the market.

During the height of the tech bubble in 2000, when retail investors were really embracing stocks, a staggering $42.7 billion flowed into equities in January of that year, double the amount that flowed in this January. That didn't end well, as stocks peaked in March of that year before dropping over the next two-plus years.

MOM AND POP STILL WARY

Arguing against a 'great rotation' is not necessarily a bearish argument against stocks. The stock market has done well since the crisis. Despite the huge outflows, the S&P 500 has risen more than 120 percent since March 2009 on a slowly improving economy and corporate earnings.

This earnings season, a majority of S&P 500 companies are beating earnings forecast. That's also the case for revenue, which is a departure from the previous two reporting periods where less than 50 percent of companies beat revenue expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Meanwhile, those on the front lines say mom and pop investors are still wary of equities after the financial crisis.

"A lot of people I talk to are very reluctant to make an emotional commitment to the stock market and regardless of income activity in January, I think that's still the case," said David Joy, chief market strategist at Columbia Management Advisors in Boston, where he helps oversee $571 billion.

Joy, speaking from a conference in Phoenix, says most of the people asking him about the "great rotation" are fund management industry insiders who are interested in the extra business a flood of stock investors would bring.

He also pointed out that flows into bond funds were positive in the month of January, hardly an indication of a rotation.

Citi's Levkovich also argues that bond investors are unlikely to give up a 30-year rally in bonds so quickly. He said stocks only began to see consistent outflows 26 months after the tech bubble burst in March 2000. By that reading it could be another year before a serious rotation begins.

On top of that, substantial flows continue to make their way into bonds, even if it isn't low-yielding government debt. January 2013 was the second best January on record for the issuance of U.S. high-grade debt, with $111.725 billion issued during the month, according to International Finance Review.

Bill Gross, who runs the $285 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, commented on Twitter on Thursday that "January flows at Pimco show few signs of bond/stock rotation," adding that cash and money markets may be the source of inflows into stocks.

Indeed, the evidence suggests some of the money that went into stock funds in January came from money markets after a period in December when investors, worried about the budget uncertainty in Washington, started parking money in late 2012.

Data from iMoneyNet shows investors placed $123 billion in money market funds in the last two months of the year. In two weeks in January investors withdrew $31.45 billion of that, the most since March 2012. But later in the month money actually started flowing back.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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At War Blog: Veterans in College: Share Your Stories

“Graduate, graduate, graduate,” the secretary of veterans affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, recently implored the audience at a conference of the Student Veterans of America. But what, exactly, will it take to ensure that veterans succeed in college?

Since the post-9/11 G.I. Bill took effect in 2009, about 877,000 people, mainly veterans and their dependents, have received tuition and other college benefits costing the government $23.7 billion. More than $10 billion is expected to be spent this year alone on veterans, plus about $560 million on tuition assistance for active-duty troops.

Yet just how those thousands of veterans in college are faring remains a bit of a mystery. Many colleges do not break out graduation and retention numbers for veterans, and the federal government has not tracked the numbers. Only last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced a partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse and the Student Veterans of America to collect and analyze data on veterans in school, with an eye to determining if they are succeeding — or failing — and why.

In the latest Education Life, The Times’s education supplement, two articles focus on programs intended to help veterans graduate.
One of them, “A Million Strong,” describes the panoply of programs that colleges have created to support veterans, including opening veterans centers, hiring specially trained counselors and creating veterans-only courses, orientation programs and even housing.

For traditional colleges like San Diego State University or the University of Alabama, creating brick-and-mortar centers where veterans can socialize, receive tutoring or meet counselors is one thing. But for online programs, both nonprofit and for profit, the challenge of assisting veterans and making them feel comfortable can be greater, as colleges like University of Maryland University College are finding.

The key for both traditional and online schools, says Travis L. Martin, a driving force behind a veterans studies program at Eastern Kentucky University and a veteran himself, is introducing students both to other veterans and to those who never served in the armed forces.

“I’ve learned that creating community was key for the veterans,” he said. “Those relationships will keep them in school.”

The second article, “Warrior Voices,” describes how writing workshops are providing many veterans with an alternative means of healing the psychological and spiritual wounds of war.

In writing about war, writing teachers explain, veterans must organize and analyze difficult memories, possibly gaining some control over their traumas along the way. Such was the case with Micah Owen, who served with Travis Martin in Iraq and later became his student at Eastern Kentucky.

Though Mr. Owen, who has post-traumatic stress disorder, says he has trouble talking about his war experiences, he has had no trouble writing about it. “Once the words started coming, I couldn’t stop them,” he said.

The Education Life supplement includes essays and poems from several veterans, including Mr. Martin and Mr. Owen.

Now it’s your turn.

If you are a veteran, send us your memories – about war, deployment, training or the transition to civilian life. The subject areas are wide open; we just ask that you keep your submissions under 700 words. We’ll then select some of the pieces to be published at nytimes.com.

To submit a piece, go to this site and fill out the form.

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BlackBerry 10 installed base to reach 20 million in 2013, Windows Phone to reach 45 million

Despite showing clear promise and being a tremendous upgrade compared to earlier BlackBerry software, BlackBerry 10 didn’t receive the warmest welcome when it was unveiled earlier this week. At least one leading market research firm thinks BlackBerry (RIMM) has done enough to gain some good traction in 2013, however. ABI Research released new estimates this week projecting that the BlackBerry 10 installed base will reach 20 million by the end of 2013. The firm also says Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone platform, which struggled to garner interest in its early days, will see its installed base climb to 45 million by the end of the year.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry doesn’t need to catch up with Android and iOS overnight, it needs to live to fight another day]

“2013 should be seen as relative success for both Microsoft and BlackBerry,” ABI analyst Aapo Markkanen said. ”For the end of the year, we expect there to be 45 million Windows Phone handsets in use, with BlackBerry 10 holding an installed base of close to 20 million. Microsoft will also have 5.5 million Windows-powered tablets to show for it.”

[More from BGR: GS: Ignore the chatter, BlackBerry rebound is coming]

According to ABI, these figures will be “enough to keep developers interested” as the two companies battle for the No.3 spot in the smartphone war.

“The greatest fear for both Microsoft and BlackBerry is that the initial sales of their smartphones will disappoint and thereby kill off the developer interest, which then would effectively close the window of opportunity on further sales success. Our view is that the installed bases of this scale would be large enough to keep these two in the game,” Markkanen noted. ”It will definitely also help that both firms have actively kept the developers’ interest in mind while designing and rolling out their platforms.”

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Steven Tyler Auditions in Drag for American Idol

TV Watch

American Idol

By Steve Helling

01/31/2013 at 10:35 PM EST

Steven Tyler sings before the AFC Championship NFL football game, Jan, 22, 2012

Elise Amendola/AP

Former judge Steven Tyler made a surprise cameo on American Idol Thursday night – dressed as a woman. Calling himself Pepper LaBeija after the famous drag queen featured in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, Tyler wore a blonde wig, snakeskin miniskirt and fake breasts that honked when squeezed. (There will be no "Dude Looks Like a Lady" jokes because, frankly, he didn't.) Looking eerily like Joan Rivers, Tyler blew kisses at the camera and reduced judge Keith Urban to hysterical laughter.

But Tyler's appearance was actually not the most over-the-top performance on Thursday's show. That distinction belonged to Zoanette Johnson, a 19-year-old Tulsa resident who performed an overblown version of "The Star Spangled Banner." It was unclear whether her audition, which featured exaggerated gestures throughout, was elaborate performance art or an authentic effort at singing. The judges looked ambivalent, too, but then unanimously (though reluctantly?) voted for her to advance to the Hollywood round.

Other odd auditions included Halie Hillburn a 26-year-old singing ventriloquist with a puppet named Oscar. He was either a bear or a dog. Whatever he was, the judges told her to lose Oscar and showcase her strong voice instead. Karl Skinner from Joplin, Mo., performed a fitful version of James Brown's "I Feel Good." His voice was pleasant, but he may be a contestant better in small doses.

There was none of the earlier drama between the judges during the show. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj no longer interact, not even to roll their eyes when the other one speaks. It doesn't feel like polite indifference – it feels like a calculated decision to ignore each other. Either way, their lack of drama has allowed for sweeter moments to shine through.

For example: Sign language teacher Nate Tao, who was raised by deaf parents, performed a version of Stevie Wonder's "For Once in My Life" that impressed he judges. "You're unassuming," said Randy Jackson before the panel unanimously put him through. "You looked like you were going to do my taxes."

The last contestant of the night was Kayden Stephenson, a 16-year-old battling cystic fibrosis. Looking years younger than his age – with looks reminiscent of a young Aaron Carter – he performed a nice version of Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." Minaj compared him to a "baby Michael [Jackson]," which may have been an overstatement.

In total, 45 singers from the Oklahoma auditions advanced to the next round. We only got to see five of them – which means there are surely some surprises in store when the show heads to Hollywood next week.

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Hedgehog Alert! Prickly pets can carry salmonella

NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.

In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials on Thursday say such cases seem to be increasing.

The CDC recommends thoroughly washing your hands after handling hedgehogs and cleaning pet cages and other equipment outside.

Other pets that carry the salmonella bug are frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, lizards, chicks and ducklings.

Seven of the hedgehog illnesses were in Washington state, including the death — an elderly man from Spokane County who died in January. The other cases were in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon.

In years past, only one or two illnesses from this salmonella strain have been reported annually, but the numbers rose to 14 in 2011, 18 last year, and two so far this year.

Children younger than five and the elderly are considered at highest risk for severe illness, CDC officials said.

Hedgehogs are small, insect-eating mammals with a coat of stiff quills. In nature, they sometimes live under hedges and defend themselves by rolling up into a spiky ball.

The critters linked to recent illnesses were purchased from various breeders, many of them licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDC officials said. Hedgehogs are native to Western Europe, New Zealand and some other parts of the world, but are bred in the United States.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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Asian shares retreat after China PMI, U.S. payrolls eyed

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares wiped earlier gains on Friday as a tepid Chinese manufacturing report dented sentiment, leaving investors on tenterhooks ahead of U.S. nonfarm payroll data due at 1330 GMT.

China's official purchasing managers' index (PMI) eased to 50.4 in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday, missing market expectations for a rise and underscoring the fragility of the recovery from the economy's weakest year since 1999.

But a separate private survey showed that growth in China's giant manufacturing sector hit a two-year high in January as domestic demand strengthened, underlining hopes the nation's economic recovery is slowly gaining momentum.

"It seems new orders for exports have declined even when new orders overall rose, suggesting that infrastructure spending and other investment to spur domestic demand is needed to keep (China's) economy growing," said Naohiro Niimura, a partner at research and consulting firm Market Risk Advisory.

"But it's not going to change the view about the Chinese economy recovering. The official data was just neither good nor bad."

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> slipped 0.2 percent from the morning's 0.2 percent gain.

Australian shares <.axjo> were up 0.6 percent, little changed from before the data came out, drawing support from major mining stocks which gained on a jump in iron ore prices.

But the resources-linked Australian dollar fell 0.2 percent to session lows around $1.040.

With Chinese data news done for the day, investors turned to the U.S. nonfarm payrolls report, which is forecast to show a rise of 160,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to remain steady at 7.8 percent.

U.S. stocks edged lower on Thursday on caution ahead of the jobs report, but the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> posted its best monthly gain since October 2011 with a 5.1 percent rise and the best January showing since 1997.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock average <.n225> outperformed its Asian peers with a 0.2 percent rise, supported by the yen's decline earlier to fresh lows against major currencies.<.t/>

The dollar steadied around 91.75 yen, having earlier risen as high as 91.87, a level not seen since June 2010. The euro touched 125.05, its highest since May 2010. In January alone, the common currency surged nearly 9 percent on the yen, while the dollar was up more than 5 percent.

Oil and copper prices were higher and the euro remained bid against the dollar, reflecting that jitters was not spreading beyond Asian equities as sentiment has recently been underpinned by falling stress in the euro zone and generally improved data globally.

The euro added 0.3 percent to $1.3613 to the dollar, after earlier reaching a fresh 14-month high of $1.3624. The common currency's strength has pushed the dollar index to a one-month low of 79.107 <.dxy> on Friday.

"The euro revival looks set to continue for some time, as investors return to euro zone bond markets, content with the combination of the European Central Bank backstop for sovereign risk and low inflation danger due to lack of economic growth. The dollar bloc looks to be a key loser in the portfolio reallocation back into EUR," Westpac bank said in a note.

U.S. crude futures inched up 0.1 percent to $97.56 a barrel while Brent rose 0.3 percent to $115.90.

London copper added 0.5 percent to $8,203 a tonne.

Earlier, a private survey showed South Korea's manufacturing sector activity marginally shrank in January after a small rise in December but new export orders grew for the first time in eight months.

Manufacturing purchasing managers' indexes from the United States and the euro zone, as well as the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index, are also due later in the session.

(Editing by Eric Meijer)

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Explosion in Mexico City Kills at Least 25

Guillermo Gutierrez/Associated Press

Rescue workers dig for survivors after an explosion Thursday in the basement of an administrative building downtown.

MEXICO CITY — A mysterious explosion at the headquarters of Mexico’s state-owned oil company here on Thursday killed at least 25 people and injured 101, according to government officials, as windows shattered, the ground shook and thousands of employees fled into a panicked downtown.

The cause of the explosion was not immediately known. It occurred just before 4 p.m. in the basement of an administrative building next to the 52-story tower of Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. Company officials said there was significant damage to the first floor and mezzanine of the building, and witnesses said they saw rescue workers helping trapped employees who had been pinned under falling debris, while others dragged out the injured and the dead. Officials said the dead included 17 women and 8 men.

“I saw them take out three people covered in blood,” said Trinidad Díaz, 31, the owner of a restaurant a block from the explosion. “And after that, ambulances started arriving, one after the other.”

The blast — in a highly protected but decaying office complex — comes in the middle of a heated debate over the future of Pemex, a national institution and a corporate behemoth that has been plagued by declining production, theft and an abysmal safety record that includes a major pipeline explosion almost every year, like the one in September that killed 30 workers.

Experts, while cautioning that it was too early to tell what had gone wrong, said the company would inevitably face more severe scrutiny as Mexico’s Congress returned to work in the coming weeks. The country’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has pledged to submit a plan for overhauling Pemex, opening it to more private investment and perhaps greater consolidation. But with the blast, deliberations about the company could become more elemental.

“You pull all of this together and you say, well, if they can’t even guarantee safety in their own building, their own headquarters, what does that tell us about the company?” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “It tells us there are things seriously wrong there. It tells you things need to be seriously shaken up.”

George Baker, director of Energia.com, an energy research institute in Houston, said that previous safety scandals at Pemex had been used by Mexican leaders as an argument for making controversial changes. In 1992, he said, a major explosion in a residential Guadalajara neighborhood — caused by gas leaking into the sewers — was followed by calls for change, and a plan to break Pemex into smaller pieces.

“The provocation, the pretext was that we had this terrible thing happen and now we are going to have a response from Pemex,” Mr. Baker said, adding that the explosion on Thursday would also now become part of the political calculations over what to do about the company.

“This may be used, may be manipulated, used as a pretext to do something,” he said. “Who knows what that something is, but they may exploit it to do something they were going to do anyway.”

At the scene, employees who were visibly shaken said the explosion felt like a bomb or an earthquake. After a deep rumble, a plume of smoke rose skyward and people rushed into the streets. Four rescue helicopters landed in the area to remove the dead or injured, while a half-dozen more helicopters hovered overhead. Soldiers, police officers and ambulances filled the area, and streets were quickly cordoned off.

A team of three emergency responders who had entered the building soon after the blast said that it appeared that two basement floors and parts of three upper floors had collapsed. Papers were strewed everywhere, and the scent of dust lingered in the air. Those on the emergency team said another rescue worker who had gone inside told them he saw eight lifeless bodies.

Just before dark, local news outlets reported that President Peña Nieto had arrived. He had already demanded an investigation and expressed remorse, using his Twitter account. “I profoundly lament the death of our fellow workers at Pemex,” he said on Twitter just before arriving. “My condolences to their families.”

Pemex officials, using the company’s official Twitter account to confirm that at least 14 people had died, said around the time of the explosion that its offices were being evacuated because of an electrical problem. Later, the company said forensic teams were investigating the cause, which had not been determined. “Any other explanation with respect to this is speculation.”

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