Euro dips, oil steady in holiday-thinned trade

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil and equities dawdled on Monday near multi-month highs scaled after robust Chinese trade data last week, while the euro slipped to a two-week low as uncertainty surrounded a political scandal in Spain and a looming election in Italy.

With the Lunar New Year holiday shutting most Asian financial centers, including those in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, trading was light and potentially volatile on those exchanges that remained open.

Australian shares <.axjo> were flat after closing at a 34-month high on Friday following positive data from China, the most important consumer of Australia's commodity exports.

S&P 500 index futures inched up 0.1 percent after the Wall Street benchmark reached a five-year high on Friday.

Brent crude oil, which touched its highest in nine months on Friday, was unchanged just below $119 a barrel.

Foreign exchange trading was choppy in thin volumes, with what traders interpreted as slightly dovish comments from the European Central Bank last week also weighing on the euro, which has shed around 2.5 percent since reaching a 15-month high above $1.37 on February 1.

The euro briefly fell to $1.3325 on Monday, after stop-loss selling was triggered below $1.3340, traders said, before recovering to stand little changed around $1.3370.

There are growing worries about Spain as a scandal on secret cash payments engulfs the prime minister, while confidence in Italy has been shaken in the run-up to a February 24-25 election. "The euro's upside is likely to be limited and short-lived," said Aroop Chatterjee, an analyst at Barclays Capital.

"Better financial conditions are likely to be offset by rising political risks, market positioning and a weaker economy. We expect the euro to be on a declining trend beginning in Q2."

(Reporting by Alex Richardson and Ian Chua in Sydney; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

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‘Les Militaribles,’ South Korean Video Spoof, Goes Viral

SEOUL, South Korea — The “Gangnam Style” video has spawned seemingly endless remakes; there are even sites that allow viewers to insert photos of themselves onto the animated bodies of people performing the famous horse dance.

Now the viral video has inspired another South Korean blockbuster, a parody of the movie musical “Les Misérables” featuring members of the air force. After just five days on YouTube, the video had been viewed almost three million times. (It probably did not hurt that one of the stars of the Hollywood movie,Russell Crowe, reposted a tweet with a link to the video.)

The video, “Les Militaribles,” opens by spoofing the dramatic first scene of the movie version of Victor Hugo’s epic novel, set in a jail where men live under the tyranny of the guards.

Video by rokafplay

Les Miserables ROK Air Force Parody Les Militaribles / 공군 레미제라블 '레밀리터리블'

In the 13-minute South Korean version, the nemesis is a taskmaster officer who keeps his exhausted conscripts clearing snow — a chore that many young South Korean men face while serving mandatory time in a military on guard against a militaristic North Korea.

“Dig down, dig down, raise your shovels high. Dig down, dig down, and clear the snow below,” the airmen chant as they struggle to clear a runway. “There is no end to this accursed snow. Dig down, dig down, you still have two service years to go.”

At first glance, the video — based on a novel about an often unfeeling bureaucracy — would appear to be the work of young men unhappy with their lot, serving in a hierarchical military that has been accused of sometimes brutal treatment of conscripts in the past.

But “Les Militaribles” was produced by the South Korean Air Force’s official blog team, and is a celebration of sorts of airmen’s shared sacrifice during two years of service.

“Clearing snow is especially important for the air force,” said First Lt. Chung Da-hoon, 26, who directed the video. “We must keep our runways free of snow so our jets can take off any time to deal with North Korean threats.”

“Through this parody,” he said, “we wanted to tell our families, our girlfriends and the people that what we do in the military is hard work, but is necessary for national defense.”

His boss, Maj. Cheon Myeong-nyeong, the planning officer for the air force’s Media Content Team, said, “Our ‘Les Militaribles’ triggered nostalgia among millions of people who have served in the military.”

With nearly all male adults having served in the armed forces, there is a fair amount of nostalgia for time in the service, and the months spent in military barracks in remote parts of the country are a common theme in jokes and daily conversation.

But public relations efforts like “Les Militaribles” also reflect the military’s increasing difficulty in inspiring a sense of duty among those who are serving or awaiting their call-up. After six decades of peace on the divided peninsula, many young men regard their service as an inconvenient interruption of civilian life, rather than a “sacred duty,” as their fathers’ generation did.

The air force’s media team gathered talent for the video from air bases across the country. The director majored in video arts in graduate school and many of the singing airmen were music school students.

The airmen said “Gangnam Style” (at 1.3 billion views) raised hopes that their video might gain at least a small international following, and they included subtitles in English to help it gain popularity.

The creators also were careful to include a several-minute love story.

In a divergence from the Hugo plot, “Airman Jean Valjean” can spend only 10 minutes with his girlfriend “Cosette,” a beauty who came to visit him despite a heavy snowfall. He begs for more time, but “Lieutenant Javert” says snow shoveling cannot wait.

As it turns out, that plot twist has a foothold in South Korean reality: one of conscripts’ greatest fears is that their girlfriends will not wait for their return. With an eye toward the lovelorn, the makers of the video billed it as “a super military blockbuster” about “the choices Airman Valjean has to make between snow and love, the love story that the heavens forbid!”

Shreeya Sinha contributed reporting from New York.

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The Truth About Your Facebook Friends

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Tiger Woods & Lindsey Vonn Are 'Spending More Time' Together: Source

Buzz

By Steve Helling

02/09/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn

Mick Tsikas/Reuters/Landov; Luis Guerra/Ramey

It was quite the gesture.

After Lindsey Vonn suffered a devastating injury during the Alpine World Championships in Austria, she got a bit of help from Tiger Woods. Walking on crutches, Vonn – who tore two ligaments in her right knee and fractured her shin when she crashed on Tuesday ­– boarded Woods's private jet to return home.

Is it a sign that the rumored relationship between Woods and Vonn is heating up?

"Tiger and Lindsey have been friends for a while, and nothing started out romantically at all," a source tells PEOPLE. "But they really have a lot in common and got closer and closer. He still refers to her as 'my very good friend,' but he's been spending more and more time talking to her – and talking about her."

Last month, Vonn's reps kept mum about the rumored relationship, telling PEOPLE that her "focus is solely on competing and on defending her titles and thus she will not participate in any speculation surrounding her personal life at this time."

But the source close to Woods tells PEOPLE that Woods, 37, and Vonn. 28, talk and text frequently.

"Tiger really does want a woman who he can have good conversations with," he says. "He wants shared interests and outlooks. He is finding that with [Lindsey]."

Woods made international headlines in 2009 when he was linked to dozens of women while still married to his ex-wife, Elin Nordegren.

Since then, he has dated sporadically, but struggled to find someone who wanted a relationship for the right reasons.

"She's not freaked out by his past, and that's really appealing to him," says the source. "He really does deserve to be happy. He has been flogging himself for three years, and it's good to see him moving forward."

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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New Focus in Mali Is Finding Militants Who Have Fled Into Mountains

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A fish market in Konna, Mali, that had been occupied by Islamist rebels. It was the seizure of Konna, in the Mopti region, that provoked France’s military intervention last month.

DAKAR, Senegal — Just as Al Qaeda once sought refuge in the mountains of Tora Bora, the Islamist militants now on the run in Mali are hiding out in their own forbidding landscape, a rugged, rocky expanse in northeastern Mali that has become a symbol of the continued challenges facing the international effort to stabilize the Sahara.

Expelling the Islamist militants from Timbuktu and other northern Malian towns, as the French did swiftly last month, may have been the easy part of retaking Mali, say military officials, analysts and local fighters. Attention is now being focused on one of Africa’s harshest and least-known mountain ranges, the Adrar des Ifoghas.

The French military has carried out about 20 airstrikes in recent days in those mountains, including attacks on training camps and arms depots, officials said. On Thursday, a column of soldiers from Chad, versed in desert warfare, left Kidal, a diminutive, sand-blown regional capital, to penetrate deep into the Adrar, said a spokesman for the Tuareg fighters who accompanied them.

“These mountains are extremely difficult for foreign armies,” said the spokesman, Backay Ag Hamed Ahmed, of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, in a telephone interview from Kidal. “The Chadians, they don’t know the routes through them.”

These areas of grottoes and rocky hills, long a retreat for Tuareg nomads from the region and more recently for extremists from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, will be the scene of the critical next phase in the conflict. It will be the place where the Islamist militants are finally defeated or where they slip away to fight again, military analysts say.

French special forces are very likely already operating in the Adrar des Ifoghas, performing reconnaissance and perhaps preparing rescue operations for French hostages believed to be held in the area, said Gen. Jean-Claude Allard, a senior researcher at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris. But African forces are likely to be assigned the brunt of the combat operations, going “from well to well, from village to village,” General Allard said.

The few Westerners who have traveled in this inaccessible region bordering Algeria say it differs from Afghanistan in that the mountains are relatively modest in size. But its harsh conditions make it a vast natural fortress, with innumerable hide-outs.

“The terrain is vast and complicated,” said Col. Michel Goya of the French Military Academy’s Strategic Research Institute. “It will require troops to seal off the zone, and then troops for raids. This will take time.”

The number of militants who remain is in dispute, with estimates varying from a few hundred fighters to a few thousand. They are becoming more dispersed and are hiding themselves ever more effectively, Western military officials say.

The French military has been flying fewer sorties over the region in recent days, “from which I deduce a lack of targets,” said a Western military attaché in Bamako, Mali’s capital, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “They are just not finding the same targets. Clearly they are hiding better and dispersing more widely.”

A ranking Malian officer stationed in the northern town of Gao said: “We don’t know how many there are. They have learned to hide where the French can’t find them.”

The militants are versed in survival tactics in the hills, supplying themselves from the nomads who pass through and getting water from the numerous wells and ponds, said Pierre Boilley, an expert on the region from the Sorbonne. Still, the sources of water are an opportunity for the French and Chadian forces, as they can be monitored without too much difficulty, experts said.

“It’s a sort of observation tower on the whole of the Sahara,” General Allard said. The fighters have had years to build installations, modify caves, and stock food, weapons and fuel, he said, and the precise locations of their refuges remain a mystery.

Even if the bulk of the militants have retreated into the mountains, pockets remain around the liberated towns of Timbuktu and Gao, said a French military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard. Last week, French forces patrolling the area around Gao engaged in firefights with militants, some of whom fired rockets, officials said.

“We’re encountering residual jihadist groups that are fighting,” said Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s defense minister.

On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a military checkpoint in Gao, wounding a soldier, an act that provided further evidence of the continued threat of the militants.

Adam Nossiter reported from Dakar, and Peter Tinti from Gao, Mali. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Scott Sayare and Steven Erlanger from Paris.

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New next-gen Xbox details emerge, reinforcing reports that used games will be unplayable

The mystery surrounding Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 4 will soon dissipate when the company unveils its next-generation video game console on February 20th. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s (MSFT) upcoming rival console is still very much a mystery, though pieces of the puzzle continue to come together. The latest report comes from Edge, which cites multiple unnamed people with “first-hand experience of Microsoft’s next generation console” in claiming that the new Xbox will require an always-on internet connection to check disc registration in order to function. The report reinforces earlier rumors that Microsoft will restrict or even completely block owners’ ability to play used games.

[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface Pro review]

Edge also reaffirms specs reported earlier, including a 1.6GHz eight-core AMD CPU, D3D11.x 800MHz graphics and 8GB of RAM, and it says we should expect a new Kinect sensor to launch alongside the console.

[More from BGR: New reports throw cold water on BlackBerry Z10 sell-outs]

Microsoft’s next Xbox is expected to be unveiled during the E3 gaming conference this summer.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Minka Kelly: 'I'm Not Worthy' of Acting with Oprah

By Jennifer Cress

02/08/2013 at 07:40 PM EST

Minka Kelly as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Pacific Coast News

It's intimidating enough to play Jackie O, but Minka Kelly felt even more pressure to perform when she found out who was joining the cast of her latest film, The Butler.

"I'm not worthy. I feel so lucky and grateful. I was like, 'What am I doing here?!' " Kelly tells PEOPLE of starring alongside Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda and more in the upcoming film, which tells the story of a butler who served eight presidents.

The movie also features another major star: the one and only Oprah Winfrey. "I didn't get to meet Oprah because our shooting schedules were different, but she's a pretty loved lady," Kelly says. "I have yet to hear a bad thing about her!"

Kelly found that the most difficult part of playing Jackie Kennedy was nailing the former first lady's distinct accent. "I think she spoke in a way she thought she should speak, so getting that down was hard. There's a musicality and rhythm to the way she speaks," Kelly explains. "I went to sleep listening to her."

Another tough task? Slipping into the retro costumes. "My body is so different from her because I have curves, so fitting into those vintage clothes was actually really hard," she shares. "Also it was hot – and there was a lot of wool!"

Jennifer Graylock / Getty

But Kelly had no issue slipping into the stunning Oscar de la Renta gown (left) she strutted down the runway in at the Red Dress Collection fashion show in N.Y.C. on Wednesday night. The actress walked for the second year in a row in honor of The Heart Truth campaign, which encourages women to monitor their heart health.

For the month of February, Diet Coke will donate $1 for every person who uploads a heart-inspired photo to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #showyourheart. Visit to dietcoke.com/showyourheart for more information.

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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Stocks end higher for sixth straight week, tech leads

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Nasdaq composite stock index closed at a 12-year high and the S&P 500 index at a five-year high, boosted by gains in technology shares and stronger overseas trade figures.

The S&P 500 also posted a sixth straight week of gains for the first time since August.

The technology sector led the day's gains, with the S&P 500 technology index <.splrct> up 1.0 percent. Gains in professional network platform LinkedIn Corp and AOL Inc after they reported quarterly results helped the sector.

Shares of LinkedIn jumped 21.3 percent to $150.48 after the social networking site announced strong quarterly profits and gave a bullish forecast for the year.

AOL Inc shares rose 7.4 percent to $33.72 after the online company reported higher quarterly profit, boosted by a 13 percent rise in advertising sales.

Data showed Chinese exports grew more than expected, a positive sign for the global economy. The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in December, suggesting the U.S. economy likely grew in the fourth quarter instead of contracting slightly as originally reported by the U.S. government.

"That may have sent a ray of optimism," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Trading volume on Friday was below average for the week as a blizzard swept into the northeastern United States.

The U.S. stock market has posted strong gains since the start of the year, with the S&P 500 up 6.4 percent since December 31. The advance has slowed in recent days, with fourth-quarter earnings winding down and few incentives to continue the rally on the horizon.

"I think we're in the middle of a trading range and I'd put plus or minus 5.0 percent around it. Fundamental factors are best described as neutral," Dickson said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> ended up 48.92 points, or 0.35 percent, at 13,992.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 8.54 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,517.93. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 28.74 points, or 0.91 percent, at 3,193.87, its highest closing level since November 2000.

For the week, the Dow was down 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 was up 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq up 0.5 percent.

Shares of Dell closed at $13.63, up 0.7 percent, after briefly trading above a buyout offering price of $13.65 during the session.

Dell's largest independent shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, said it plans to oppose the buyout of the personal computer maker, setting up a battle for founder Michael Dell.

Signs of economic strength overseas buoyed sentiment on Wall Street. Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand. German data showed a 2012 surplus that was the nation's second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe's biggest economy.

Separately, U.S. economic data showed the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Earnings have mostly come in stronger than expected since the start of the reporting period. Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies now are estimated up 5.2 percent versus a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. That contrasts with a 1.9 percent growth forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Molina Healthcare Inc surged 10.4 percent to $31.88 as the biggest boost to the index after posting fourth-quarter earnings.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, was down 3.6 percent at 13.02. The gauge, a key measure of market expectations of short-term volatility, generally moves inversely to the S&P 500.

"I'm watching the 14 level closely" on the CBOE Volatility index, said Bryan Sapp, senior trading analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "The break below it at the beginning of the year signaled the sharp rally in January, and a rally back above it could be a sign to exercise some caution."

Volume was roughly 5.6 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.

Advancers outpaced decliners on the NYSE by nearly 2 to 1 and on the Nasdaq by almost 5 to 3.

(Additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Nick Zieminski, Kenneth Barry and Andrew Hay)

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