Wall Street ends slightly higher, helped by acquisitions

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eked out a small gain for a third straight session on Thursday, helped by a flurry of merger activity, though investors see no catalysts to lift the market further with major averages near multi-year highs.


The market's slowed advance took the S&P 500 to its highest intraday level since November 2007 on Wednesday. While the index notched its third straight day of gains, none was more than 0.2 percent.


Shares of H.J. Heinz Co jumped 20 percent to $72.50 after it said Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital will buy the food company for $72.50 a share, or $28 billion including debt. Berkshire's class B shares rose 1.3 percent to $99.21.


Also supporting the market was data showing the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected in the latest week. The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> fell 2.4 percent, dropping to 12.67.


"While I'm not bearish, I don't see many upside motivations at these levels," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, who cited the low level of the VIX as a sign the market was overbought.


Equities have struggled to break above current levels where they have been hovering for almost two weeks. The S&P 500 is up more than 6 percent so far this year.


"We need to digest some of our gains to go higher, but people are so eager to buy on the dips that we're not even seeing dips anymore. People are just chasing the market higher," said Selkin, who helps oversee about $3 billion in assets.


Stocks fell earlier after a report the euro zone's gross domestic product contracted by the steepest amount since the first quarter of 2009. In addition, Japan's GDP shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, crushing expectations of a modest return to growth.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 9.52 points, or 0.07 percent, at 13,973.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 1.05 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,521.38. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 1.78 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,198.66.


Constellation Brands soared 37 percent to $43.75 after AB InBev's deal to take over Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo was revised to grant Constellation perpetual rights to distribute Corona and other Modelo brands in the United States. U.S. shares of AB InBev gained 5.1 percent to $92.77.


American Airlines and US Airways Group said they plan to merge in a deal that will form the world's biggest air carrier, with an equity valuation of about $11 billion. US Airways shares fell 4.6 percent to $13.99.


Weakness in Europe contributed to a 5 percent drop in revenue from the region for Cisco Systems , which nonetheless beat estimates as it reported its results late Wednesday. The company's shares dipped 0.7 percent to $20.99.


General Motors Co reported a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, also citing bigger losses in Europe alongside lower prices in its core North American market. The stock was off 3.3 percent to $27.73.


Only five more stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange, while 51 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed higher.


Volume was light, with about 6.36 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.


(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)



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India Ink: Powering an Enclave With Dosas


Brian Harkin for The New York Times


Krish Doshi, left, with his brother Karan Doshi, both 8, at Usha Foods in Floral Park, Queens. More Photos »







After much debate, it was decided: masala dosas all around.




The retirees clustered in front of the counter at Usha Foods, then got down to business: Who was paying? Seven credit cards appeared and seven hands waved them at the cashier, until one gray-haired man succeeded in swatting his friends away. Behind them, a scrum waited to order, chattering above the whir of the microwave and the warble of Bollywood hits. Over it all, a young man behind the counter raised a tray high and shouted: “Mr. Kamal! Two chole bhature!”


Usha Foods was one of the first Indian-owned businesses in Floral Park, Queens. Today, it’s where the city’s newest Little India gathers.


On a recent Saturday, Indira Mathur, 54, presided over the cash register in gold-rimmed glasses and a blazer, ringing up plate lunches, flatbreads and black pepper cashews. Her nephew Vardan, 34, speedily dished out plates of spiced chickpeas and creamy pakora curry while her husband, Anil, 57, ran the kitchen. Her son Abhinav, 28, manned the takeout sweets counter. The family bought the shop in 2001, and have already expanded twice.


Floral Park is perched on the far edge of the city, on the Nassau County line. The main thoroughfare of Hillside Avenue is lined with snack shops and kebab houses, sari boutiques and discount salons. A few months ago, a Hindu temple dedicated to the monkey-faced god Hanuman opened in an old supermarket space. Next door, the accurately named Variety Shop sells colorful statuary of Hindu gods and goddesses as well as luggage and watches. If you’re in need of a carrom board — an Indian game of tabletop billiards — you could stop in Butala Emporium down the block.


Intrepid eaters make the trip from Manhattan to visit restaurants like Mumbai Xpress, New Kerala Kitchen, Madras Woodlands and Southern Spice. But for all the cooking going on in this enclave, Usha Foods is one of the few places that is consistently full.


The shop serves pan-Indian, vegetarian comfort food designed to satisfy all comers, like the South Asian version of a diner. There are southern Indian dosas, saucy Punjabi dishes like baingan bharta and Gujarati snacks like dabeli (spiced potato patties served on hamburger buns). “People call and ask if we are a Punjabi shop or a Gujarati shop,” said Ms. Mathur, who moved from New Delhi to the United States in 1986. “I say we are a Hindustani shop,” using the Hindi word for all of India.


On a recent frigid Sunday afternoon, customers streamed in from the cold, salwar kameez and saris peeking out from puffy jackets. Many lined up for to-go boxes of crunchy snacks for Super Bowl parties; others sat at the simple wooden tables tucking into their orders. Outside, Fawad Taj smoked a postprandial cigarette and chatted with two friends. “The food is pretty close to what our mothers would cook,” Mr. Taj, who was born in Lahore, Pakistan, said. “And we’re having a lazy Sunday.”


After their own meal, Indu and D. P. Singh hugged their son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren goodbye. “Every two weeks we meet them here for lunch,” Ms. Singh said. “They have everything: Punjabi as well as southern cooking.”


Ms. Mathur said she particularly liked to see American-born children come in with their Indian parents: “We thought that when our generation gets old, the kids wouldn’t carry on with our foods. But now we see they follow our traditions — when they have a party, they want this food.”


Sridevi Krishna, 8, seemed to agree: Asked if she liked the sweets her father was carrying out, she offered only a huge, bucktoothed grin.


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NBA star Kobe Bryant comes to China’s social media






BEIJING (AP) — Kobe Bryant has stirred plenty of excitement by joining a Chinese-language microblogging site.


His first message came Friday morning Beijing time, about an hour and a half before Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers were due to play the Clippers.






“Valentine’s day sneaks ready to break Clippers hearts. Big game tonight,” the first message on his account said.


Sina Weibo verified that the NBA superstar has set up an individual account on its hugely popular microblogging site. Bryant’s followers numbered more than 100,000 within hours on Thursday, and by Friday they had surpassed 200,000.


The account came just a few days after a message appeared on Nike Basketball‘s Sina Weibo account, named Black Mamba, on Lunar New Year’s Day: “Hey it’s Kobe, I’ve decided to take over Nike basketball’s Weibo handle for a few days and I wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year.”


Bryant is widely known and extremely popular in China, rivaling hometown star Yao Ming. During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, billboards of Bryant dominated China’s commercial districts.


The Los Angeles Lakers star has several fan pages on Sina Weibo.


One of them — “Home of Kobe” — has more than 200,000 followers. Along with other sites, it posted a welcome message for Bryant. By Friday, it was translating fans’ comments into English.


“Hello, Black Mamba, welcome to SINA WEIBO. It’s been a long time for Chinese fans to wait for this moment,” the page wrote.


Sina Weibo says it has more than 400 million users.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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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

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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


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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)



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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.”

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









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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."

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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.


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Online:


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


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


Study: http://gucasym.org


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


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