Lady Gaga Cancels Born This Way Ball Tour Due to Severe Injury















02/13/2013 at 08:50 PM EST



It's a somber week for Lady Gaga – and her Little Monsters.

Following Tuesday's Facebook announcement that she was "devastated and sad" because she couldn't walk and had to postpone several Born This Way Ball concerts, the pop star, 26, has officially canceled the remaining dates of her world tour.

"After additional tests this morning to review the severity of the issue, it has been determined that Lady Gaga has a labral tear of the right hip," the singer's rep told PEOPLE Wednesday in a statement. "She will need surgery to repair the problem, followed by strict down time to recover. This unfortunately, will force her to cancel the tour, so she can heal."

Refunds for the cancelled performances will be available at point of purchase starting on Thursday.

"I hope you can forgive me, as it is nearly impossible for me to forgive myself," she wrote the previous day of postponing the dates. "I hate this. I hate this so much. I love you and I'm sorry."

Get well, Gaga!

Reporting by CHUCK ARNOLD

Read More..

Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women


NEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.


The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.


The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.


In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.


White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.


"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.


One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.


The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.


At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.


Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.


The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.


The study also found:


—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.


—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.


—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.


A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.


Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.


___


Online:


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


Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html


Read More..

Asian shares gain on improving sentiment, G20 eyed

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on improving risk sentiment while the yen steadied ahead of the weekend meeting of G20 finance and central bank officials, whose views on global growth and differences over currencies will be scrutinized by investors.


"Asian markets have extended gains with risk sentiment remaining resilient as markets continue to push to new highs. Ahead of the European open, we are calling the major bourses relatively flat with GDP numbers in focus," Stan Shamu, market strategist at IG Markets, said in a note.


Financial spreadbetters were predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open little changed ahead of European gross domestic data. U.S. stock futures were also steady, suggesting a similarly quiet Wall Street open. <.l><.eu><.n/>


The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> extended gains, rising 0.6 percent as its materials sector <.mispjmt00pous> outperformed with a 1.6 percent increase partly on a jump in shares of top miners ahead of earnings news from Rio Tinto .


Australian shares rose 0.7 percent to their highest since September 2008, as a strong earnings season and receding fears about European and U.S. debt woes bolstered investor sentiment.


South Korean shares <.ks11> were flat after Wednesday's three-week closing high and biggest daily percentage gain since January 2 when investors cheered a pause in the yen's decline.


Market reaction was muted after monetary policy decisions from South Korea and Japan during Thursday's sessions.


The Bank of Korea held interest rates steady for a fourth straight month as expected, as global economies show signs of improvement and domestic inflation remains low. But the decision was not unanimous, its governor told a news conference.


The Bank of Japan also kept monetary policy steady and upgraded its economic assessment, as recent falls in the yen and signs of a pick-up in global growth give it some breathing space after expanding stimulus just a month ago.


A pause in the yen's rebound positively affected Japanese equities on Thursday, with the Nikkei average <.n225> advancing 0.7 percent after Wednesday's 1 percent slump when the firming yen prompted investors to take profits on exporters. <.t/>


"Usually the BOJ doing nothing causes a bit of disappointment, but since there are concerns about the flak Japan might get at the G20 this weekend for the weakening yen, standing pat will actually be a relief to the market," said Masayuki Doshida, senior market analyst at Rakuten Securities.


Markets in China and Taiwan remain shut for the Lunar New Year holiday but Hong Kong resumed trading on Thursday.


YEN IN SPOTLIGHT


The dollar recouped earlier losses to inch up 0.1 percent to 93.49 yen after marking its highest level since May 2010 of 94.465 on Monday. The euro steadied at 125.60 yen, below its peak since April 2010 of 127.71 yen touched last week.


The yen lost nearly 20 percent against the dollar between November and early February, and more than 20 percent against the euro.


The yen began its steady fall in mid-November as expectations built for a new government to take aggressive steps to bring Japan out of years of slump. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for strong reflationary steps, pressuring the BOJ to take unprecedented expansionary measures.


The yen's rapid depreciation, after years of sharp appreciation, has drawn some criticism from overseas, with rhetoric heating up ahead of the Group of 20 nations meeting on Friday and Saturday in Moscow.


Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak told reporters on Wednesday in Moscow that the yen was "definitely overvalued" and that "there are no signs" that Japan's monetary authorities were intervening on the foreign exchanges.


Yuji Saito, director of foreign exchange at Credit Agricole in Tokyo, said various interpretations this week over what the G20 may say about Japan's policy and a weak yen trend "have been used as an excuse to adjust positions ahead of the meeting, and I expect forex to be in ranges."


"Currency will be discussed but I think Russia wants the meeting to focus on broader economic issues involving emerging markets as it is the G20 gathering," he said.


Traders and analysts say 90-95 yen to the dollar appeared to be a comfortable range for now, unless upside surprises emerge in the U.S. economy or Japan quickly implements unexpectedly drastic reflationary policies, both of which will swing the dollar higher above the range.


They said the yen's upside was also capped around 87 yen, halfway between its slump from mid-November to early February.


Market reaction was muted to comments from Jack Lew, President Barack Obama's pick to run the Treasury Department, who on Wednesday said he would support a strong U.S. dollar, in line with longstanding U.S. policy.


Data published on Thursday showed Japan's economy shrank 0.1 percent in October-December from the previous quarter, falling for a third straight quarter.


U.S. crude was up 0.1 percent to $97.13 a barrel and Brent added 0.1 percent to $117.98.


London copper rose 0.2 percent to $8,240.50 a metric ton (1.1023 tons).


Gold regained some strength as recent losses attracted buying interest from Asian jewellers after the Lunar New Year break, but firmer equities could limit gains.


(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul and Tomo Uetake in Tokyo; Editing by Eric Meijer and Richard Borsuk)



Read More..

India Ink: Falling Far Short of the Whole Truth





She had been called to the bar in a formal ceremony at Middle Temple Hall, a grand room where little has changed since 1602, when the first known performance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” was staged there. With her dark hair covered by a barrister’s foppish white wig, she signed the registry of barristers who had stood in the same spot across the centuries, including John Rutledge, a signer of the United States Constitution, and Sir William Blackstone, the 18th-century legal scholar who wrote the seminal legal tome, “Commentaries on the Laws of England.”




She began to handle criminal cases, nearly one a day over three months. In 90 more days, she would become a full-fledged barrister, the apex of a carefully curated career.


And then it all collapsed, undone by the chance discovery of a simple lie, that led to many more. A clerk for the British firm that had accepted Ms. Sengupta stumbled upon her application file, and noticed that she had listed a date of birth that put her age at 29.


“Seriously?” the clerk thought, according to Edmund Blackman, a barrister with the firm, One Inner Temple Lane. “There is no way she’s as young as she’s saying on this form.”


Questions were asked, which Ms. Sengupta, who was, in fact, in her late 40s at the time, declined to answer. Eventually, it became clear that she had not only shaved nearly two decades off her age but that nearly everything about her work and education history was not as she had claimed.


Ms. Sengupta had, in fact, submitted many phony documents. The fraud was so comprehensive that the Bar Standards Board of England and Wales threw out an element of the application process that presumed a certain level of honor among its applicants; the board now requires that college transcripts come directly from the schools in a sealed envelope, without passing through an applicant’s hands.


“The more information I obtained, the less clear the whole thing became,” said Andrea Clerk, the Bar Standards Board official who investigated the case. “It was a very serious matter, indeed.”


Ms. Sengupta, 52, is on trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, where she faces forgery and other charges, the most severe of which carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years. Her boyfriend, Manuel Soares, a former vice president of BNY Mellon, faces the same charges in a coming trial.


Her lawyer has argued the case on technical legal issues, and has not challenged prosecutors’ assertions that Ms. Sengupta forged documents and misrepresented her work history and age.


“We are conceding that some of this conduct, in fact, did occur,” the lawyer, James Kousouros, told Justice Thomas Farber, who will decide the case without a jury.


A few facts about Ms. Sengupta’s life seem certain. She was born in India and grew up mostly in Jersey City, the daughter of an engineer. She did indeed graduate from Georgetown Law School in 1998. And though she overstated other achievements, she had also passed the New York State bar exam and became a licensed lawyer in 2000.


The deceptions described in the criminal case against her began the same year. She applied for a job as a paralegal for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, even though the office does not allow lawyers to work as paralegals. Ms. Sengupta claimed that she had left law school before graduating, and wrote that she was born in 1969, making her eight years younger than she actually was, according to trial testimony.


In the prosecutor’s office, she handled somewhat more challenging work than most paralegals because her supervisor, Melissa Paolella, then an assistant district attorney handling white-collar fraud cases, knew that Ms. Sengupta had taken classes in a law school.


In 2003, Ms. Sengupta was fired from the office after it became known that she was, in fact, a lawyer. She asked Ms. Paolella to write reference letters to help her apply for several staff lawyer positions, including with the American Civil Liberties Union in New Jersey and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. Ms. Paolella did so, knowing that Ms. Sengupta longed to practice public interest law.


“Absolutely, I knew what her passion as a lawyer was,” she testified.


None of the jobs materialized. In 2004, Ms. Sengupta began doing volunteer work two days a week for the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project. She did not appear in court or write briefs, her supervisor, Dori Lewis, testified.


But when Ms. Sengupta applied for admission to the British bar, she transformed her work after passing the bar into a remarkable saga of courtroom derring-do.


She claimed that she had been an assistant district attorney and had prosecuted “gang and white-collar fraud cases,” which included working to convict 27 gang members who had controlled a section of East Harlem.


She wrote that as a staff lawyer at the Legal Aid Society she had defended “all felonies including murder and sexual offences,” including handling the defense of a “man charged with commissioning the murder of a judge.”


“I have over six years of advocacy experience in a common law system and I am in court on an almost daily basis,” she wrote in her application to the Bar Standards Board of England and Wales.


She also claimed that she had graduated in the top 1 percent of her class at Georgetown Law, which prosecutors have suggested was not true. She filed a reference letter from Robert F. Drinan, a former United States representative from Massachusetts and Georgetown law professor; it was dated a year after his death.


Other reference letters, purportedly written by Ms. Paolella and Ms. Lewis, called Ms. Sengupta an accomplished trial lawyer. Both testified that the letters had been forged.


Her overstatements went undetected, and she won a highly competitive spot in a one-year training program, known as a pupilage, in which a prospective barrister works with a law firm, or chamber. She was scheduled to start in October 2007, but she repeatedly failed a battery of tests that had to be passed before her pupilage could begin. She hid the failures from the firm, saying she could not begin because she had been injured in a car accident.


“Given that we have over 100 applicants for each place,” Mr. Blackman, of One Inner Temple Lane, said in court, “the likelihood is that had we known that, we would have withdrawn the offer.”


Rather than pass all elements of the test, Ms. Sengupta successfully appealed to the Bar Standards Board to waive one part, which she had failed twice. She began training with barristers in the firm. Halfway through her training, in July 2008, Ms. Sengupta was formally called to the bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court entitled to call members to the Bar of England and Wales.


After six months, Ms. Sengupta began handling cases on her own. She was assigned some 80 criminal cases over three months, defending people accused of minor crimes.


Mr. Blackman testified that his firm grew somewhat reluctant to assign more difficult cases to Ms. Sengupta, but she continued to practice. “In a general manner, her performance would not be what you would expect from someone with the experience she claimed to have,” he said.


But it was Ms. Sengupta’s age, not her job performance, that proved to be her undoing. After the clerk first aroused his suspicion of her, Mr. Blackman found that she had entered different years of birth on several forms.


“In the absence of an explanation as to why she had four different dates of birth, she was done,” Mr. Blackman said during the trial. He added: “We had suffered a financial loss, but more importantly, she had been appearing in court when unqualified to do so.”


His firm suspended her pupilage and reported its concerns to the Bar Standards Board, which opened an investigation. But Ms. Sengupta, aided by Mr. Soares, who had transferred to BNY Mellon’s London office, pushed on.


According to prosecutors, the two obtained a phony Georgetown seal from a Web-based business, rubberstamp.com, and created a fake diploma to match the misstatements on her application, including one that she had earned an undergraduate degree from Georgetown, a falsehood. They e-mailed one another drafts of forgeries, one with “My Masterpiece” written in the subject line. They forged an Indian birth certificate. They created a Web site for a fictional law firm in the name of a fictional former prosecutor, and submitted a reference letter in his name.


They forged a letter, according to prosecutors, from the office of Eliot Spitzer, then the attorney general, attesting to how Ms. Sengupta “exercised rights of audience” in New York, using a term associated with British courts. Ms. Sengupta’s lawyer, Mr. Kousouros, said the document was authentic.


In December 2010, the Manhattan district attorney obtained indictments of Ms. Sengupta and Mr. Soares after learning that their former paralegal had claimed to be a prosecutor for the office, and that the forged documents had passed through Manhattan. Three months later, the two were arrested at Kennedy Airport, where they had flown from London, as they awaited a connecting flight to Puerto Rico.


Citing the criminal trials here and an open disciplinary case in Britain, bar officials in London declined to discuss the matter, or to say whether it has caused other policy changes.


When Mr. Blackman was asked during the trial whether One Inner Temple Lane verified pupilage applicants’ prior employment claims, he answered dryly.


“Stupidly, we did not,” he said. “We do now.”

Read More..

Verizon now rates apps by how much data, battery life they consume









Title Post: Verizon now rates apps by how much data, battery life they consume
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/verizon-now-rates-apps-by-how-much-data-battery-life-they-consume/
Link To Post : Verizon now rates apps by how much data, battery life they consume
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Westminster Names Affenpinscher Banana Joe Best in Show















02/12/2013 at 11:55 PM EST



Westminster has its top dog!

After two days of meticulous primping, prizes and the less-pretty realities of any spirited championship, the 137th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show came to its finale Tuesday night, declaring Affenpinscher Banana Joe the best in show.

The competition proved fur-rocious as the pint-sized, black-haired furball bested six other finalists (and 2,721 entries total) for the honor, including Old English Sheepdog Swagger, who was named the reserve best in show. It’s the first time the breed has ever taken home the top prize in Westminster history.

Earning top marks at Westminster is the latest accolade in Banana Joe's storied run. The paw-dorable pooch, who is 5 years old, has been named best in show 86 times in his career, and his Westminster win will go down as his last.

"It's all so indescribable. It's just a wonderful thing as a tribute for a small breed with such a big heart," handler Ernesto Lara said post-victory. "The plans for him now is for him to retire back home where he was born, and that's in the Netherlands."

Describing his little buddy, Lara praised the breed for its commendable qualities as a canine companion.

"An Affenpinscher is a very human-like dog," he said. "It's definitely a breed you don’t want to tame or train, in the proper sense."

"You want to befriend it," Lara continued. "Once you gain the friendship, they're loyal just like a human friend."

As for Banana Joe's big victory, "Nobody told him he's small," said Lara, "and I don't think he'll believe that."

Read More..

Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly


In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.


Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.


After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.


The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.


The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.


"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."


He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.


In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.


However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.


Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.


They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.


Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.


After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.


Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.


The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.


Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.


One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.


"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."


Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.


___


Online:


Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer


and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney


Study: http://gucasym.org


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


Read More..

Firmer yen boosts Korean shares, underpins Asia stocks

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares outside of Japan rose on Wednesday, led by South Korean exporters as the yen firmed amid conflicting interpretations of G7 comments about the currency's recent weakness.


The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> gained 0.9 percent.


Seoul shares <.ks11> outperformed with a 1.5 percent jump while Australian shares jumped 0.9 percent after record first-half earnings from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia boosted sentiment.


The Nikkei stock average <.n225> slumped 1.1 percent as the firming yen prompted investors to take profits on exporters. <.t/>


China, Taiwan and Hong Kong markets remain closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.


European markets will be mixed, with financial spreadbetters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open between a 0.1 percent fall and a 0.4 percent gain. U.S. stock futures were up 0.1 percent to suggest a somewhat firmer Wall Street open. <.l><.eu><.n/>


Investors continued to seek cues from currency markets before a meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in Moscow on Friday and Saturday, with growing international tensions over exchange rates.


At the center of the debate is Japan, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government has made it clear that it will push for aggressive policies to beat stubborn deflation through drastic monetary expansion. Anticipation of much bolder Bank of Japan monetary policy has sent the yen into a steady decline, helping boost Japanese stocks to 33-month highs.


"The Japanese stock market may have rallied too strongly on expectations alone. I don't believe the Japanese government is manipulating currency rates, but it is maybe time that an equilibrium point may be sought for the yen's level given that some other countries may see weaker currencies as beneficial to their economies," said Yuuki Sakurai, CEO at Fukoku Capital Management in Tokyo.


The yen's respite from heavy selling eased concerns for investors in South Korea.


"The main board's rebound was driven by a break in the yen's weakness, following signs that the won's strength has abated somewhat," said Lim Dong-rak, an analyst at Hanyang Securities in Seoul.


The yen rallied on Tuesday, reversing the previous day's late selloff against the dollar and euro, after an official with the Group of Seven said it is worried about excess moves in the Japanese currency.


G7 governors and ministers reaffirmed their commitment that fiscal and monetary policies would not be directed at devaluing currencies, a statement meant to reassure investors that Tokyo was not aiming to guide the yen lower with its aggressive expansion of monetary policy.


"All these comments are merely stating the obvious and are not to be taken in the context of whether they are endorsing a weaker yen or not," said Yuji Saito, director of foreign exchange at Credit Agricole in Tokyo.


"What is being said is that monetary policy should be used to achieve domestic objectives and Japan is undertaking reflationary policies, not manipulating currency rates, and the result of that is a weak yen. What is asked for from Japan is to explain its policy clearly at the G20," Saito said.


The dollar dropped 0.6 percent to 92.95 yen after marking its highest level since May 2010 of 94.465 on Monday. The euro tumbled 0.6 percent to 125.01 yen, moving further away from its highest since April 2010 of 127.71 yen touched last week.


The BOJ ends a two-day policy meeting on Thursday, with markets expecting no fresh easing steps this time. But expectations are running high that further unprecedented measures will be taken under a new BOJ regime due to start next month after the terms of current top officials end.


"So far, the yen has been weakening on expectations for a bold monetary policy, and from now, Japan has to implement actual policy to justify such expectations," said Naohiko Baba, Japan chief economist at Goldman Sachs.


The euro steadied around $1.3450, keeping overnight gains made after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said talk of a currency war was overdone, and that Spain was on the right track toward economic recovery.


In his annual State of the Union address, U.S. President Barack Obama proposed on Tuesday to hike the minimum wage by more than 20 percent, invest $50 billion on crumbling roads and bridges and spend $15 billion on a construction jobs program in a bid to boost economic growth.


U.S. crude was up 0.1 percent to $97.60 a barrel and Brent was steady around $118.61.


Palladium extended gains to a 17-month high as supply concerns sparked speculative buying, while gold edged up on demand from jewellers.


(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul; Editing by Eric Meijer & Kim Coghill)



Read More..

Thai Soldiers Repel Attack in Major Blow to Insurgents





BANGKOK — Thai soldiers repelled an attack on a military outpost early Wednesday, killing at least 16 gunmen in what appeared to be a significant setback for ethnic insurgent groups leading a bloody uprising now in its ninth year.




Col. Pramote Promin, the spokesman of the army’s southern command, said the army had been expecting the attack after being tipped off by villagers and “former insurgents fed up with the violence.”


“This helped us to be fully prepared,” Colonel Pramote said.


Thai authorities said that one of the men killed in the attack, Maroso Jantarawadee, was an important leader of the insurgency.


Srisompob Jitpiromsri, the associate dean at Prince of Songkla University in the southern city of Pattani and one of the foremost experts on the insurgency, described Wednesday’s failed insurgent attack as a “tactical defeat” for them.


“This operation failed but that doesn’t mean they will fail in the long term,” Mr. Srisompob said. “They will try again and again.”


About 50 insurgents, who wore ballistic vests and military-style uniforms and had military assault weapons, attacked the outpost soon after midnight Wednesday, Colonel Pramote said. The attack lasted 20 minutes and those not killed fled into the jungles, some leaving trails of blood. Thai authorities declared a curfew in the area and said they were checking hospitals and clinics for the injured attackers.


Colonel Promote said no Thai soldiers were wounded or killed in the attack. “All the soldiers are safe,” he said.


Thailand’s southern insurgency, one of Asia’s most deadly and intractable ethnic conflicts, has left more than 5,000 people dead since the upswing of violence in 2004.


The precise motives of the insurgents remained unclear but centered on longstanding resentment by Malay Muslims toward the majority Thai Buddhists in the country.


Insurgents often target symbols of the Thai state, including the police, soldiers, government officials and teachers.


More than 150 teachers have been killed since 2004 and many schools have been burned. A school near the site of Wednesday’s attack was set afire just before dawn.


Thai authorities said Mr. Maroso, the insurgent leader killed in the attack, was a suspect in the killing of a teacher on Jan. 23.


Mr. Srisompob of Prince of Songkla University said there were two competing trends in the three violence-wracked provinces.


The insurgents are picking higher profile targets, including conducting an attack on a shopping mall last year in the city of Hat Yai that killed 5 people and injured 354, including many Malaysian tourists.


The number of overall attacks increased last year, according to data compiled by Mr. Srisompob. At the same time Mr. Srisompob said he saw impatience escalating with the insurgency among Malay Muslims.


“An increasing number of Malay Muslims are fed up with the violence,” he said. “The voices of the community are getting stronger.”


The number of militants involved in the insurgency was not clear. The military had a list of about 9,000 people it considered likely insurgents.


Thailand has flooded the area with soldiers in recent years. There are about 150,000 security personnel in the three provinces, including military, police and village protection volunteer forces.


Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.



Read More..

Facebook stock slides after analysts’ downgrades






NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Facebook Inc. fell Tuesday after two analysts downgraded the stock amid concerns about the company’s ability to grow ad revenue quickly enough, especially on mobile devices.


THE SPARK: Bernstein Research analyst Carlos Kirjner said that while Facebook’s advertising business still presents “significant untapped” opportunities, mobile ad revenue in the most recent quarter didn’t grow as fast as he’d expected. He cut his rating on the world’s largest online social network to “Market-Perform” from “Outperform” and lowered his target price to $ 27 from $ 33.






BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield, meanwhile, downgraded the stock to “Sell” from “Neutral.” He has a target price of $ 22.


ANALYST COMMENT: “Facebook management continues to focus investors on the increased ‘engagement’ with Facebook, as consumers shift from desktop usage to mobile usage,” Greenfield wrote in a note to investors.


That means people end up “touching” Facebook far more as they move to mobile use, since the Facebook app sends many of them notifications when their friends respond to their posts or for other reasons.


“Yet, the question Facebook has yet to answer is how mobile is affecting aggregate engagement, meaning total time spent on a monthly basis,” Greenfield added. “We suspect the more consumers shift to mobile, the less total time they are spending with Facebook.”


Facebook declined to comment. The company says it does not comment on stock price movements or analyst reports.


STOCK MOVEMENT: Facebook shares fell 89 cents, or 3.2 percent, to close at $ 27.37. The stock has lost close to 12 percent so far this month after enjoying an upswing since last October. Facebook went public at $ 38 last May and has not hit that price since.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Facebook stock slides after analysts’ downgrades
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/facebook-stock-slides-after-analysts-downgrades/
Link To Post : Facebook stock slides after analysts’ downgrades
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..