Huge Wave of Google App Updates Hits iOS, Android

Google just brought iPhone and Android phone users a holiday gift. Google Maps has returned to the iPhone, this time in the form of its own separate app, while Google Currents — the company’s Flipboard-style online magazine app for Android — received a substantial update as well.

Besides the two big updates, about a half-dozen other apps for Android and Google TV received bug fixes and new features, according to Android Police blogger Ryan Whitwam. Here’s a look at what to expect, and where the rough edges still lay.

Google Maps is back

It was technically never there to begin with; the iPhone simply had a “Maps” app included, which used Google Maps’ data. But a few months ago, Apple switched from using Google’s map data to its own, which caused no end of problems as Apple’s data was incorrect much more often. These problems were sometimes hilarious, but in at least one case they were dangerous, as several motorists had to be rescued after becoming stranded inside an Australian national park (where Apple’s maps said the town they were trying to get to was).

Google Maps has also received a thumbs-down from the Victoria police in Australia, but is regarded as more reliable overall. It’s a completely new app this time, and while it has at least one “Android-ism” according to tech expert John Gruber (an Ice Cream Sandwich-style menu button), it’s reported to work well and doesn’t show ads like the YouTube app does.

It does, however, keep asking you to log in to your Google account so that it can track your location data.

Google Currents has a new look and new features

The update to digital magazine app Google Currents brings its features more in line with Google Reader, the tech giant’s online newsreader app which can monitor almost any website for updates. Like Google Reader, Currents can now “star” stories to put them in a separate list, can show which stories you’ve already read, and has a widget to put on your Android home screen. Other added features include new ways to scan editions and stories, and filter out sections you aren’t interested in.

Bugfixes and updates for other Google apps

Google Earth and Google Drive received miscellaneous bugfixes “and other improvements,” while Google Offers (a Groupon competitor) now features a “Greatly improved purchase experience.”

The Google Search app received a slew of additions to its Siri-like Google Now feature, including new cards to help while you are out and about and new voice actions (like asking it to tell you what song is playing nearby). The Field Trip augmented reality app now uses less battery life, and lets you “save cards” and favorite places you visit, as well as report incorrect data to Google. Finally, Google TV Search and PrimeTime for Google TV both received performance and stability updates.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Connecticut Shooting: Hero Teacher Died Saving Students

By Sara Hammel and Mike Fleeman

12/15/2012 at 06:30 PM EST

Out of the chaos and horror emerged an incredible act of selflessness and bravery by one teacher, who spent her final moments trying to protect her young students from harm.

Victoria Soto, 27, a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., ushered her students into a closet and in so doing placed her body between them and the assailant.

"She was found huddled over her children, her students, doing instinctively what she knew was the right thing," her cousin Jim Wiltsie tells ABC News. "I'm just proud that Vicki had the instincts to protect her kids from harm,” he continued. “It brings peace to know that Vicki was doing what she loved, protecting the children and in our eyes she's a hero.”

Soto was among the six adults – all women – killed in Friday morning's massacre that also took the lives of 20 children – 12 girls and eight boys. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, took his own life. His mother was also found killed in a different location.

"It doesn't surprise me at all she would do this," Sabeena Ali, the parent of a girl who was in Soto's class two years ago, tells PEOPLE.

Ali calls Soto a "vibrant woman who loved the kids and would be with the kids and spend time with them and sit on the floor with them. "

Two years later, her daughter – now a third-grader – still idolized Soto.

"Every day there was some new Miss Soto story we had to listen to: 'This is what she did, this is how wonderful she was today,'" says Ali. "She would bring in snacks for the kids and do special days.

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Holiday "on standby" as clock ticks on cliff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The last two weeks of December are traditionally quiet for stocks, but traders accustomed to a bit of time off are staying close to their mobile devices, thanks to the "fiscal cliff."

Last-minute negotiations in Washington on the so-called fiscal cliff - nearly $600 billion of tax increases and spending cuts set to take effect in January that could cause a sharp slowdown in growth or even a recession - are keeping some traders and analysts from taking Christmas holidays because any deal could have a big impact on markets.

"A lot of firms are saying to their trading desks, 'You can take days off for Christmas, but you are on standby to come in if anything happens.' This is certainly different from previous years, especially around this time of the year when things are supposed to be slowing down," said J.J. Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.

"Next week is going to be a Capitol Hill-driven market."

With talks between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner at an apparent standstill, it was increasingly likely that Washington will not come up with a deal before January 1.

Gordon Charlop, managing director at Rosenblatt Securities in New York, will also be on standby for the holiday season.

"It's a 'Look guys, let's just rotate and be sensible" type of situation going on," Charlop said.

"We are hopeful there is some resolution down there, but it seems to me they continue to walk that political tightrope... rather than coming up with something."

Despite concerns that the deadline will pass without a deal, the S&P 500 has held its ground with a 12.4 percent gain for the year. For this week, though, the S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent.

BEWARE OF THE WITCH

This coming Friday will mark the last so-called "quadruple witching" day of the year, when contracts for stock options, single stock futures, stock index options and stock index futures all expire. This could make trading more volatile.

"We could see some heavy selling as there is going to be a lot of re-establishing of positions, reallocation of assets before the year-end," Kinahan said.

RETHINKING APPLE

Higher tax rates on capital gains and dividends are part of the automatic tax increases that will go into effect next year, if Congress and the White House don't come up with a solution to avert the fiscal cliff. That possibility could give investors an incentive to unload certain stocks in some tax-related selling by December 31.

Some market participants said tax-related selling may be behind the weaker trend in the stock price of market leader Apple . Apple's stock has lost a quarter of its value since it hit a lifetime high of $705.07 on September 21.

On Friday, the stock fell 3.8 percent to $509.79 after the iPhone 5 got a chilly reception at its debut in China and two analysts cut shipment forecasts. But the stock is still up nearly 26 percent for the year.

"If you owned Apple for a long time, you should be thinking about reallocation as there will be changes in taxes and other regulations next year, although we don't really know which rules to play by yet," Kinahan said.

But one indicator of the market's reduced concern about the fiscal cliff compared with a few weeks ago, is the defense sector, which will be hit hard if the spending cuts take effect. The PHLX Defense Sector Index <.dfx> is up nearly 13 percent for the year, and sits just a few points from its 2012 high.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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As Gold Is Spirited Out of Afghanistan, Officials Wonder Why

Zalmai for The New York Times

A Kabul jewelry shop. Officials are concerned about gold being flown out of Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Packed into hand luggage and tucked into jacket pockets, roughly hewed bars of gold are being flown out of Kabul with increasing regularity, confounding Afghan and American officials who fear money launderers have found a new way to spirit funds from the country.

Most of the gold is being carried on commercial flights destined for Dubai, according to airport security reports and officials. The amounts carried by single couriers are often heavy enough that passengers flying from Kabul to the Persian Gulf emirate would be well advised to heed warnings about the danger of bags falling from overhead compartments. One courier, for instance, carried nearly 60 pounds of gold bars, each about the size of an iPhone, aboard an early morning flight in mid-October, according to an airport security report. The load was worth more than $1.5 million.

The gold is fully declared and legal to fly. Some, if not most, is legitimately being sent by gold dealers seeking to have old and damaged jewelry refashioned into new pieces by skilled craftsmen in the Persian Gulf, said Afghan officials and gold dealers.

But gold dealers in Kabul and current and former Kabul airport officials say there has been a surge in shipments since early summer. The talk of a growing exodus of gold from Afghanistan has been spreading among the business community here, and in recent weeks has caught the attention of Afghan and American officials. The officials are now puzzling over the origin of the gold — very little is mined in Afghanistan, although larger mines are planned — and why so much appears to be heading for Dubai.

“We are investigating it, and if we find this is a way of laundering money, we will intervene,” said Noorullah Delawari, the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank. Yet he acknowledged that there were more questions than answers at this point. “I don’t know where so much gold would come from, unless you can tell me something about it,” he said in an interview. Or, as a European official who tracks the Afghan economy put it, “new mysteries abound” as the war appears to be drawing to a close.

Figuring out what precisely is happening in the Afghan economy remains as confounding as ever. Nearly 90 percent of the financial activity takes place outside formal banks. Written contracts are the exception, receipts are rare and statistics are often unreliable. Money laundering is commonplace, say Western and Afghan officials.

As a result, with the gold, “right now you’re stuck in that situation we usually are: is there something bad going on here or is this just the Afghan way of commerce?” said a senior American official who tracks illicit financial networks.

There is reason to be suspicious: the gold shipments track with the far larger problem of cash smuggling. For years, flights have left Kabul almost every day carrying thick wads of bank notes — dollars, euros, Norwegian kroner, Saudi Arabian riyals and other currencies — stuffed into suitcases, packed into boxes and shrink-wrapped onto pallets. At one point, cash was even being hidden in food trays aboard now-defunct Pamir Airways flights to Dubai.

Last year alone, Afghanistan’s central bank says, roughly $4.5 billion in cash was spirited out through the airport. Efforts to stanch the flow have had limited impact, and concerns about money laundering persist, according to a report released last week by the United States Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The unimpeded “bulk cash flows raise the risk of money laundering and bulk cash smuggling — tools often used to finance terrorist, narcotics and other illicit operations,” the report said. The cash, and now the gold, is most often taken to Dubai, where officials are known for asking few questions. Many wealthy Afghans park their money and families in the emirate, and gold dealers say more middle-class Afghans are sending money and gold — seen as a safeguard against economic ruin — to Dubai as talk of a postwar economic collapse grows louder.

But given Dubai’s reputation as a haven for laundered money, an Afghan official said that the “obvious suspicion” is that at least some of the apparent growth in gold shipments to Dubai is tied to the myriad illicit activities — opium smuggling, corruption, Taliban taxation schemes — that have come to define Afghanistan’s economy.

There are also indications that Iran could be dipping into the Afghan gold trade. It is already buying up dollars and euros here to circumvent American and European sanctions, and it may be using gold for the same purpose.

Yahya, a dealer in Kabul, said other gold traders were helping Iran buy the precious metal here. Payment was being made in oil or with Iranian rials, which readily circulate in western Afghanistan. The Afghan dealers are then taking it to Dubai, where the gold is sold for dollars. The money is then moved to China, where it was used to buy needed goods or simply funneled back to Iran, said Yahya, who like many Afghans uses a single name.

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McAfee says will not return to Belize, willing to talk to police

(Reuters) – U.S. software pioneer John McAfee said that he will not return to Belize where police want to question him about a murder case, but that he is willing to let authorities from the Central American nation interview him in a “neutral country.”

McAfee, 67, went into hiding after his American neighbor Gregory Faull was fatally shot in November. He made his way secretly to neighboring Guatemala, but the authorities there deported him to Miami on Wednesday.

“I will not go back to Belize. I had nothing to do with the murder,” a relaxed-looking McAfee said in an interview on CNBC.

Police in Belize want to question McAfee as a “person of interest” in Faull’s killing, though authorities there say he is not a prime suspect. McAfee said he barely knew Faull and had “absolutely nothing” to do with his death.

Belize police say their country’s extradition treaty with the United States extends only to suspected criminals, a designation that does not apply to McAfee.

McAfee, an eccentric tech pioneer, made a fortune from the anti-virus software bearing his name and had lived in Belize for four years.

He has charged that authorities have persecuted him because he refused to pay $ 2 million in bribes, and that the extortion attempt occurred after armed soldiers shot one of his dogs, smashed up his property and falsely accused him of running a methamphetamine laboratory.

Belize’s prime minister has rejected the allegations, calling McAfee paranoid and “bonkers.”

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bethenny Frankel & Jason Hoppy Step Out with Daughter Bryn Amid Relationship Rumors

TV Watch
Buzz

By Lesley Messer

12/14/2012 at 06:00 PM EST

Bethenny Frankel and husband Jason Hoppy with daughter Bryn

Jae Donnelly/INF

Are Bethenny Frankel and husband Jason Hoppy experiencing another rough patch?

Amidst rumors that the reality stars' two-year marriage is in trouble, the couple were photographed while out with daughter Bryn, 2½, Friday in New York City.

And though Hoppy is smiling and holding tight to his daughter, Frankel, 42, didn't exactly seem upbeat. It makes some sense: sources tell PEOPLE that the couple's relationship has been strained in recent months, echoing what Frankel herself told PEOPLE earlier this year.

"We've both been scared," she said this past summer. "The second year of marriage was not easy. We hit bottom."

Still, Frankel was hopeful that the couple would be able to withstand the hardships.

"I don't want to run," she said. "Jason's a great father and an amazing partner. Without him, life as I know it couldn't happen."

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

Read More..

Wall Street succumbs to Apple's fall, "cliff" uncertainty

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Friday as another slide in Apple took a toll and investors unloaded some shares because of the uncertainty surrounding the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.

For the Nasdaq, this marked the second losing week in a row. All three major U.S. stock indexes ended the week slightly lower.

Apple's stock slid 3.8 percent to $509.79 after UBS cut its price target on the stock to $700 from $780. The stock of the most valuable U.S. company has been hit hard in the last three months. On Friday, Apple's stock fell after a tepid reception for the iPhone 5 in China.

The S&P Information Technology Index <.gspt> lost 1 percent as Apple fell and Jabil Circuit Inc shed 5.5 percent to $17.51 after UBS cut its price target.

The possibility of a fiscal cliff deal not taking place until early 2013 is rising. The back-and-forth negotiations over the fiscal cliff in Washington have kept markets on hold in what would already be a quiet period for stocks.

"We're faced with uncertainty ... and that's going to continue now into January. It basically puts everybody on hold and (you) just have the markets kind of thrash around," said Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrera Capital Markets Inc in Boston.

President Barack Obama and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner held a "frank" meeting on Thursday at the White House to discuss how to avoid the tax hikes and spending cuts set to kick in early in 2013.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 35.71 points, or 0.27 percent, to 13,135.01 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 5.87 points, or 0.41 percent, to 1,413.58. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 20.83 points, or 0.70 percent, to close at 2,971.33.

For the week, the Dow slipped 0.2 percent, while the S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq declined 0.2 percent.

Among other Nasdaq decliners, shares of chipmaker Qualcomm slid 4.7 percent to $59.83. A semiconductor index <.sox> dropped 0.7 percent.

American Express Co shares fell 1.9 percent to $56.65 and ranked as the heaviest weight on the Dow.

Investors are concerned that going over the cliff could tip the economy back into recession. While a deal is expected to ultimately be reached, a drawn-out debate - like the one over 2011's debt ceiling - can erode confidence.

Best Buy Co Inc slid 14.7 percent to $12.05 after the electronics retailer agreed to extend the deadline for the company's founder to make a bid. Shares jumped as much as 19 percent on Thursday after initial reports of a bid this week from founder Richard Schulze.

Among the day's economic data, consumer prices fell in November for the first time in six months, indicating U.S. inflation pressures were muted. A separate report showed manufacturing grew at its swiftest pace in eight months in December.

Data out of China was encouraging, as Chinese manufacturing grew at its fastest pace in 14 months in December. The news was deemed as helpful for U.S. materials companies, including U.S. Steel , which rose 6.8 percent to $23.85. An S&P material sector index <.gspm> rose 0.9 percent.

Volume was roughly 5.8 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.52 billion.

Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a ratio of about 8 to 7. On the Nasdaq, decliners barely held an edge over advancers, with 1,241 stocks falling and 1,196 shares rising.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Syrian Rebel Seeks Prisoner Exchange to Free Hostages

Lebanese Captives in Syria Speak Out:
C.J. Chivers, a correspondent for The New York Times, spoke with two Lebanese men held captive in Syria for seven months. Syrian rebels accuse them and seven others of being members of Hezbollah.

BAB AL-SALAM, Syria — When Syrian rebels stopped two buses of Lebanese travelers in the spring and took 11 passengers hostage, they set off a cascade of fallout: riots at the Beirut airport, retaliation kidnappings against Syrians in Lebanon and a deepening of the sectarian character of the war.

Since that day in May, as civil war has raged and opposition fighters have gained momentum in their bid to oust President Bashar al-Assad, the rebels have continued to detain most of their prisoners, having released two as a good-will gesture. The rest, nine men who the captors insist are members of Hezbollah — which the prisoners deny — will be released only as part of a prisoner exchange, the rebel commander holding the group said.

The commander, Amar al-Dadikhi of the North Storm brigade, which has been holding the prisoners at an undisclosed location in Syria’s northern countryside, said in interviews that he would free the hostages if the Syrian government released two prominent opposition figures and if Lebanon freed all Syrian activists in government custody.

The men’s prospects for freedom, he said, are “in the Syrian government’s hands, and the Lebanese government’s hands.”

Their detention began after they were removed at gunpoint from buses driving though Syria while returning from a Shiite religious pilgrimage to Iran. The case has remained stubbornly unresolved, even as it has raised questions about the character and criminality of some of the rebels whom the West has hesitatingly backed.

The taking of the hostages also sullied the reputation of the Free Syrian Army, the loosely organized antigovernment fighting groups. Without any public evidence to support the claim that the hostages are members of Hezbollah, the case has exposed the limits of the Free Syrian Army’s influence over rebels who fly its banner.

The Free Syrian Army’s leadership appears not to have been able to persuade Mr. Dadikhi to release the men, even as it seeks international recognition and tangible military aid, two desires undermined by the hostage case.

Mr. Dadikhi, a large and scarred man who is alternately praised by many opposition activists for battlefield bravery and whispered about as an accomplished smuggler who once maintained extensive ties to the government, claims to have 1,300 armed fighters and a network of cross-border contacts. His control of the border crossing that leads to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, makes him a power broker by default.

Col. Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi, a former Syrian military officer and one of the Free Syrian Army commanders in the Aleppo region, declined to comment on the case beyond saying that he was aware of the demands of Mr. Dadikhi, whom he called Abu Ibrahim.

“Abu Ibrahim has his requests,” he said. “If they are taken care of, he will free the Lebanese.”

Relatives of the hostages, reached by telephone in Beirut, expressed deep anger upon hearing Mr. Dadikhi’s demands. “Let them capture someone from the regime. Why abduct Lebanese? What do we have to do with the revolution?” said the wife of one of the hostages. “They are liars; they won’t release them. It is just blackmail.”

Mr. Dadikhi allowed two journalists from The New York Times to meet with two of the hostages — Ali Abass, 30, and Ali Tormos, 54 — for about 30 minutes on Thursday afternoon. The men appeared to be in good health, and they said they and the other hostages had not been harmed.

They expressed weariness and asked that Lebanon and Syria meet their captors’ demands. “It has been a long time, and we want to go home,” Mr. Abass said.

The interview was held in a former government office at the border crossing from Syria to Kilis, Turkey. Mr. Dadikhi agreed to leave the room while the hostages spoke. The meeting remained all but scripted.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

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iPhone 5 hits China as Apple market share slips

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The China release of its iPhone 5 on Friday should win Apple Inc some respite from a recent slide in its share of what is likely already the world’s biggest smartphone market, but its longer-term hopes may depend on new technology being tested by China‘s top telecoms carrier.

Cupertino, California-based Apple has been in talks about a tie-up with China Mobile for four years. A deal with China’s biggest carrier is seen as crucial to improve Apple’s distribution in a market of 290 million users – which is forecast to double this year.

China is Apple’s second-largest and fastest-growing market – it brings in around 15 percent of total revenue – but the company’s failure to strike a deal with China Mobile means it is missing out on a large number of phone users. As the China pie grows, Apple’s sales increase, but without China Mobile, it’s losing ground at a faster rate compared to other brands.

“In absolute terms, this (iPhone 5) launch will certainly result in strong sales for Apple in China. However, in relative terms, I don’t believe it will move the needle enough in market share,” said Shiv Putcha, a Mumbai-based analyst at Ovum, a global technology consultant.

China Mobile and Apple initially said they were separated only by a technical issue – as the Chinese carrier runs a different 3G network from most of the world – but that has evolved into a broader and more complex issue of revenue-sharing.

“China Mobile and Apple still have to solve many issues, such as the business model, articles of cooperation and revenue division, but I believe we will reach an agreement eventually,” China Mobile CEO Li Yue was reported by Chinese media as saying in Guangzhou last week.

Apple China declined to comment. China Mobile said it had no update to the Apple discussions.

STRONG PRE-ORDERS

Apple’s ranking in China’s smartphone market slipped to sixth in July-September, according to research firm IDC, [ID:nL4N09G1QK] but investors, primed to look to China product launches for an uptick in Apple’s quarterly sales, have good headline numbers to digest – more than 300,000 iPhones pre-ordered on one carrier alone. But it’s the lack of a deal with the No.1 carrier that prevents those numbers being stronger.

The iPhone is currently sold through Apple’s seven stores, resellers and through China Unicom and China Telecom – which together have fewer than half the mobile subscribers of bigger rival China Mobile.

“Apple’s market share declined because of the transition between the iPhone 4S and 5. Their market share will recover (with the iPhone 5), but if you don’t have China Mobile, the significant market share gains will be very difficult,” said Huang Leping, an analyst at Nomura in Hong Kong.

TD-LTE: STILL DISTANT

Cutting a deal with a Chinese state-owned carrier may be less optimal than the deals Apple is used to in other markets, and analysts note that China Mobile wouldn’t necessarily open the flood gates for Apple.

Ovum’s Putcha believes Apple and China Mobile will eventually strike a deal – though this would be for an iPhone running on China Mobile’s next-generation network rather than its current 3G network.

Of China Mobile’s 704 million subscribers, only 79 million are on its 3G network, and Apple has been reluctant to sign up to China Mobile’s under-utilized, homegrown TD-SCDMA technology. “Apple likely doesn’t see the return-on-investment in extending themselves for TD-SCDMA,” Putcha said.

China Mobile is currently trialling its next-generation network, TD-LTE, which could be of more interest to Apple, but full-scale commercial use – and an iPhone tie-up – could still be years away.

ANDROID THREAT

Meanwhile, rivals are circling, eating away at Apple’s smartphone market share. Samsung Electronics, Lenovo Group and little-known Chinese brand Coolpad held the top three slots in the third quarter, according to IDC.

All three have relationships with China Mobile and offer smartphone models at different price points. Apple competes exclusively at the high-end, and even there, rivals are rolling out models with China Mobile. Last week, Nokia said it planned to release its latest Lumia smartphone with China’s top carrier, which is also expected to launch Research in Motion’s new Blackberry 10, analysts predict.

“The threat will still come more from the Android camp where they have many vendors already working with China Mobile and offering high-end phones,” said TZ Wong, a Singapore-based IDC analyst.

While these smartphones don’t generate the buzz of a new iPhone, Chinese buyers are not known for their brand loyalty, and this could siphon away users considering an Apple upgrade.

“I’ve used a Blackberry, Android and iOS and, personally, I want to try the Windows 8,” said Andy Huang, a 37-year-old fund manager, who owns most iPad models, an iPhone 4 and a 4S. “I think the Windows 8 is very innovative.”

With a China Mobile deal looking some way off, Apple could always boost market share by offering cheaper models – the basic iPhone 5 will cost 5288 yuan ($ 850) without a contract – though this appears an unlikely route for a high-end brand.

“If they want to expand market share, probably the only way to do it here dramatically would be to put out a lower cost phone,” said Michael Clendenin, managing director at RedTech Advisors. “It’s really uncertain if they’d decide to go that route … Apple’s a mystery in that regard.”

($ 1 = 6.2518 Chinese yuan)

(Additional reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom and Jane Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Ian Geoghegan)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hillary Clinton Doesn't Mind You Talking About Her Hair

Stylewatch
Style News Now

12/13/2012 at 01:15 PM ET

Kristin Callahan/ACE/INF

A lot of women in politics (we’re not naming names!) have been criticized for spending too much time and money on their hair, but Hillary Clinton certainly isn’t one of them.

“I do not travel with any hairdresser, or anybody, to help me do that,” Clinton said during the Barbara Walters 10 Most Fascinating People of 2012 special, which aired Wednesday night on ABC News.

And get this: She doesn’t even stop by a salon while traveling to get her hair done before a big event. “It just got to be really burdensome to try to find a hairdresser in some city, somewhere, oftentimes not being able to speak English, that at least I could communicate with,” she added.

That’s why Clinton decided to take matters into her own hands. “It became simpler to just grow it so that I can pull it back, and I can stick rollers in.”

But Clinton made it clear that hair styling is not her forte. “I’m not very competent myself. I’ve been admitting that for years, which should be obvious to everyone,” she joked.

And though she deals with much more important issues than what she wears or how she does her hair, Clinton doesn’t mind that her appearance is often a hot topic. “It’s fascinating to me how people are so curious about it,” she shared. Tell us: Are you surprised that Clinton does her own hair?

–Jennifer Cress

PHOTOS: SHOP LUXE BEAUTY PRODUCTS!

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Study: People worldwide living longer, but sicker

LONDON (AP) — Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health threats.

The last comprehensive study was in 1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 — more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of children dying to about 7 million.

Malnutrition was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.

With more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by smoking and alcohol.

"The biggest contributor to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

In developed countries, such conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.

The research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As in 1990, Japan topped the life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.

The research found wide variations in what's killing people around the world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the researchers: — Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.

— While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt," from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in Western Europe.

— In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).

— Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the rate is about 3 per 100,000.

Globally, heart disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the sixth leading cause two decades later.

While chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting too much of the focus away from those ailments.

"It's the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.

Still, she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a good model for chronic care," she said.

Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.

"We have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said the information in some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all the relevant health risk factors.

"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.

___

Online:

www.lancet.com

http://healthmetricsandevaluation.org

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S&P 500 ends six-day winning streak on "cliff" anxiety

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 ended its six-day winning streak on Thursday, retreating as worries intensified that Washington's "fiscal cliff" negotiations were dragging on with little progress.

Anxiety about the drawn-out talks between Democrats and Republicans was enough to offset encouraging data on retail sales and jobless claims on Thursday.

There is concern that tax hikes and spending cuts, set to begin in 2013 if a deal is not reached in Washington, will hurt growth. The stock market has taken the heated rhetoric in stride of late, but downbeat remarks from Republican House Speaker John Boehner prompted some selling on Thursday.

Boehner accused President Barack Obama of "slow walking" the economy off the fiscal cliff. He is scheduled to meet with Obama later on Thursday.

"There is no conviction here and Boehner's comments - as harsh as they were - were realistic," said Jason Weisberg, managing director at Seaport Securities Corp., in New York.

"The fiscal cliff is already built in. That being said, people don't like to be told the apocalypse is coming over and over and over again. The real players in this market have already closed their books."

After coming close to a 1 percent decline for the day, the S&P 500 pared losses late in the session. The index had posted six straight sessions of gains through Wednesday's close, and at one point on Wednesday, the S&P touched its highest intraday level since October 22.

While the Federal Reserve's announcement on Wednesday of a new round of economic stimulus bolstered stocks, Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments that monetary policy would not be sufficient to offset the impact of the fiscal cliff weighed on sentiment.

Apple's stock , down 1.7 percent at $529.69, was among the biggest drags on the Nasdaq in Thursday's session, while International Business Machines , down 0.5 percent at $191.99, was among the biggest weights on the Dow. A U.S. jury found that Apple's iPhone infringed three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas.

Among the day's biggest gainers, Best Buy Co shares shot up 15.9 percent to $14.12 after a report that the company's founder is expected to offer to buy the consumer electronics retailer by the end of the week.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> tumbled 74.73 points, or 0.56 percent, to 13,170.72 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 9.03 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,419.45. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> slid 21.65 points, or 0.72 percent, to end at 2,992.16.

Energy and information technology sectors were the S&P 500's weakest performers, with the S&P energy index <.gspe> down 0.9 percent.

In the energy sector, shares of Nabors Industries Ltd dropped 4.7 percent to $13.85 after Jefferies cut the drilling company's rating. Shares of U.S. refining company Phillips 66 lost 1.6 percent to $52.21.

The day's economic data sent some positive signals on the economy, with weekly claims for jobless benefits dropping to nearly the lowest level since February 2008, and retail sales rising in November after an October decline, improving the picture for consumer spending.

In Europe, European Union finance ministers reached agreement to make the European Central Bank the bloc's top banking supervisor, which could boost confidence in EU leaders' ability to confront the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis.

After the bell, shares of Adobe Systems Inc rose 5.8 percent to $37.60 after the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat software posted a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit. The stock ended the regular session at $35.53, down 1.2 percent.

Volume was roughly 6.16 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.52 billion.

Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a ratio of about 7 to 3, and on the Nasdaq, more than five stocks fell for every three that rose.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Jan Paschal)

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IHT Rendezvous: 'Secret' Arms Deals Provoke Germans

LONDON — There is at least one European export sector that continues to find a ready market around the world — weapons.

In the week in which the European Union received the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, protestors in the Norwegian capital were not alone in pointing out the irony that its member states account for a third of global arms exports.

It is an irony that has a particular resonance in Germany right now, where the government’s decisions on a series of weapons deals have created unease among parliamentarians who complain they were kept in the dark.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was among the European leaders in Oslo for Monday’s Nobel award ceremony, has been described as the architect of a new doctrine to boost the country’s weapon sales.

“Germany used to be extremely careful about where it exported its weapons,” wrote Der Spiegel, the German magazine, which has been at the forefront of revelations about Berlin’s weapons policy. “In recent years, however, Chancellor Angela Merkel has shown a preference for sending high-tech armaments abroad rather than German soldiers — even if that means doing business with questionable regimes.”

Legislators and German media have seized on the magazine’s reporting of a secretive federal security committee, chaired by Ms. Merkel, allegedly involved in discussions of high-tech arms sales to countries that include Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.

The latest is the possible sale of state-of-the-art Boxer armored vehicles to the Saudi Royal Guard, which is responsible for protecting the royal family.

Berlin has already approved the sale of up to 270 Leopard 2 tanks to the kingdom in a deal that provoked a fierce debate in Germany.

“Merkel wants to bolster countries that — at least from the German point of view — can provide for stability in their regions,” according to Der Spiegel, which warned it was a risky policy.

But the argument for boosting German weapons exports is economic as much as it is strategic.

“At the end of the day, it’s elementary budgeting,” according to Ben Knight of Deutsche Welle, the German broadcaster.

“Germany, along with most European countries, is in the middle of making drastic cuts in order to bring down its national debt,” he wrote last week. “So instead of costly military operations in the world’s many conflict zones, it has apparently decided to sell more weapons to ‘partner countries’ in those regions. What was once hefty expenditure suddenly becomes vast revenue.”

The so-called Merkel Doctrine has prompted an inevitable backlash from peace advocates and others concerned that German weapons could be used to suppress civil unrest.

Jürgen Grässlin, spokesman for a campaign that opposes arms exports, told Deutsche Welle, “The German government is essentially abetting mass murder in various conflict zones in the world.”

Legislators have also expressed concern that potentially far-reaching decisions are being taken by an inner circle of government without the benefit of parliamentary oversight.

In its latest report on what it described as the secret weapons deals, Der Spiegel this week quoted Markus Löning, the government’s human rights commissioner, as saying, “Citizens have a justified interest in being informed earlier on about arms sales.”

Germany is not alone, of course, in wanting to maximize its weapons sales.

Mark Bromley, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told Deutsche Welle, “A number of countries in western Europe are seeing declines in defense spending, which is having an impact on both defense acquisitions and production.”

“In an attempt to counter that, several governments — including Germany’s — are getting more focused on the promotion of arms exports to regions where budgets haven’t been cut, including parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America.”

As my colleague Judy Dempsey wrote from Berlin earlier this year, not all these markets are in stable, conflict-free, democratic countries.

“This raises the question,” she wrote, “of how Europe can square its commitment to defending human rights with selling weapons to such countries.”

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‘The Hobbit’: Like One Bad Video Game

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Peter Jackson‘s landmark, blockbuster Lord of the Rings films was that they made fans, through a combination of stunning landscapes and intricate special effects and soaring music and dramatic spectacle, feel as though we were seeing an almost impossible elevation of the potential size and scope of movies. Here was a rich, dense, sprawling series of films that thundered like myths, that were breathtaking in their realization of some pretty huge ambitions. Sure, they were massive corporate projects that earned lots of people millions of dollars, but to the regular moviegoer they were feats that proved the majesty of the movies, the potential to tell enthralling stories that also played like art. And so it’s hugely disappointing, if not all that surprising, that Jackson’s first foray back into the land of Middle Earth, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is such a sullenly, basely commercial and junky affair, a movie that feels not crafted with Jackson’s seemingly divine inspiration but by the hands of studio executives. Perhaps the reason that Warner Bros. is forgoing the usual console video-game tie-ins for simple mobile games is because the damn movie already looks like a video game, and not a very fun one at that.

RELATED: ‘The Hobbit’ Trailer Needs to Get Out of the Shire

The Lord of the Rings series succeeded aesthetically because it was such an elegant, painting-like wonder to behold. The textures and palettes all had the look of a particularly vibrant illustrated story book, the kind of immersive vision that exists somewhere between imagination and the real world. For The Hobbit, though, Jackson chose to film at a high frame rate and with Real 3D technology in mind — because 3D movies are doing well these days and, hell, doesn’t hurt that the tickets cost more — but the results are frequently hideous. Those among us who have bought shiny new flatscreen TVs over the past few years are likely familiar with the dreaded “Soap Opera Effect,” which turns what should be stunning, glossy images into cheap-looking messes, all strange movement and lighting, like any network soap or cheap British show. (Think Children of Men looking like Torchwood.) It’s the problem of technology over-thinking or over-performing, and it is on startling, gruesome display in The Hobbit. When you’re wearing the 3D glasses (and admittedly sitting a little off to the side), this hugely expensive movie looks like it was shot on a nice handheld digital camera on the cheap. Actors stand in strange contrast to the digital backgrounds behind them, motion looks too slick or unnatural. Gone are the somber vistas and rugged terrain, replaced by eye-aching shine and plastic-y smoothness. The most special effects-heavy sequences look very much like the non-playable parts of modern video games — the exposition bits that can amp up the graphics a bit because they don’t have to worry about the randomness of play, the stuff you see in the commercials, right before the “rated T for teen” part. I don’t know if I just had a bad projector or what, but I spent the bulk of this long movie distracted by how dreadful everything looked. With a few small exceptions — The Shire glows with lovely green, a mountain cave fight/chase sequence is bracingly rich — this is a dismally unattractive movie, featuring too many shots that I’m sure were lovely at some point but are too often ruined and chintzified by the terrible technology monster.

RELATED: Jon Hamm Has a Roger Clemens Story; Here Come the 007 Novelty Themes

So on its aesthetic merits, The Hobbit comes up more than short. The trouble is, it’s not rescued by many narrative successes. Jackson has taken largely from the first third of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s novel — about an expedition to reclaim a lost dwarf kingdom from a dragon — but he’s also added in some elements found in appendices detailing an expanded universe that Tolkien included in an edition of The Lord of the Rings. This is partly to flesh out the story as Jackson believes Tolkien meant it to be, but it’s also meant to satisfy the needs of a supersize film trilogy based on one mere book. And so we get several pointless and uninteresting diversions, mostly about dwarves and their bitter enemies the orcs, that read exactly like the filler they are. Jackson is trying to flesh out dwarf mythology, because we spend so much of our time with these little guys, but it feels tediously synthetic, as if there are two movies competing for attention with neither one getting its due. We go to the goblin caves of The Hobbit and then, upon deliverance from that dark place, are thrust right into some kind of honor-and-revenge-based conflict with a snarling, giant, one-armed orc. It’s all very crowded and strangely hurried for a movie that, all told, takes its sweet time.

RELATED: No One Likes Peter Jackson’s New ‘Hobbit’ Footage

I suspect that another of Jackson’s reasons for including all this extra dramatic battling is that, on its own, The Hobbit is something of a children’s book. We’ve got wacky, food-crazed dwarves, a mean old dragon, and a funny little guy to take us along on the journey. Jackson doesn’t deny his movie the kiddie flourishes — there’s snot humor and butt jokes and lots of other goofy stuff involving some trolls, plus two little musical numbers involving all the dwarves — but he then tries to complement them with the big, booming faith and honor stuff and it never properly congeals. One moment we’re on a sprightly children’s adventure, the next we’re talking in big fashion about all that warlike serious business. It’s a discordant mix, and I’d imagine it will leave both kids and adults out in the cold.

RELATED: All the Comic-Con News That Matters

The film is not without its bright spots, rare as they may be. Ian McKellen is a feisty, spirited, mysterious Gandalf as ever before, and Martin Freeman nicely and genially projects everyday hobbit-ness, even if he’s a tad underused in the film. (Yeah, in the movie called The Hobbit, there’s barely any time to focus on the darn Hobbit.) Cate Blanchett turns up once more as the ethereal elf Galadriel, lending the movie a cool classiness and a welcome dose of feminine energy. And, of course, we’re back, for one mesmerizing scene, with our beloved Gollum, so winningly and creepily played by Andy Serkis, and here yet another marvel of computer innovation. In some ways Gollum’s innate cartoonishness works better now than it did in the original trilogy, which is probably the only time that can be said of this movie. There are one or two moments in Gollum’s pivotal scene where he’s given a bit too much modern humor to play, but all told he’s the most welcome sight in the film. Maybe that’s just the newfound purist in me, yearning for the old days, but I suspect it has more to do with Gollum being the only genuinely realized character we’ve so far encountered in this new trio of films. Everyone else is a snoozy lesser version of someone else, especially the ridiculous bloodthirsty orc leader, who snarls and growls like something out of the Underworld movies. Sometimes, in the jumble of the The Hobbit‘s many cluttered and dull action scenes, the frantic blur looks like any sequence from one of those schlocky ’00s B-movies; all roughly hewn CGI clashing around nonsensically, with this orc fellow leading the charge.

RELATED: ‘The Hobbit’ Might Be Three Movies Now?

Despite all the technical advancements, if we can call them that, most moments in The Hobbit feel like Peter Jackson is sadly trying to make all those familiar LOTR elements work for him once more, without ever really being able to reignite the old flame. The supposedly awe-inducing visit to the elf city of Rivendell is a ho-hum experience in this new frame-rate-ruined world. A silly battle sequence involving a wizard, a silly Radagast the Brown, riding around pell-mell on a rabbit-drawn sled looks like an interstitial from late-era Super Mario. Even Elijah Wood, appearing briefly as Frodo, looks strange — a pale ghost of himself, as if stitched in from another movie by some forlorn and desperate hand. The film is inevitably resonant with memories of the original trilogy, and little about it can hold up to the comparison. There’s too much effort in the wrong places — action instead of story, technical tricks instead of actual design — and the constant rhythm of arbitrary event after arbitrary event becomes tiresome well before the film’s two hours and forty minutes have lurched to a halt. I’m sure there are kids who will like this wan, distracted effort — they might not yet have anything else to compare it to, depending on their age — but as a human who remembers what came before, I’m afraid The Hobbit left me nothing but frustrated, sad, and tired. Frustrated that these big-budget visionaries seem to consistently feel they have to taint their earlier masterpieces with techno-junk followups, sad that once magical lands now flicker cheap and garish in my head, and tired at the prospect of two more of these things. I exited the theater trying to remind myself that Attack of the Clones was way better than Phantom Menace and that Revenge of the Sith was better still. I then realized how depressing it was that I was making that comparison. Oh, Middle Earth. What has become of you?

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West & More Perform for Sandy Relief

By Andrea Billups

12/12/2012 at 06:30 PM EST

Kanye, Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys and Bruce Springsteen

Kevin Mazur/WireImage; Jamie McCarthy/Getty; WireImage; Tim Mosenfelder/Getty

It's time for a concert for a great cause.

On Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., musicians including Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Alicia Keys and Kanye West will take the stage at Madison Square Garden for the 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief.

The concert will raise money to benefit those affected by the superstorm in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The show will be broadcast for free at movie theaters in the tri-state area, offering those impacted by Sandy the opportunity to enjoy a night of music, but you can watch a live stream here on PEOPLE.com.

Other performers include Bon Jovi, Dave Grohl, Billy Joel, Coldplay's Chris Martin, Eddie Vedder, Roger Waters and The Who.

Join us tonight for this historic event.

For more information, visit www.121212concert.org, and check back on PEOPLE.com Thursday morning for highlights from star-studded concert!

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Congress examines science behind HGH test for NFL

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional committee has opened a hearing to examine the science behind a human growth hormone test the NFL wants to start using on its players.

Nearly two full seasons have passed since the league and the players' union signed a labor deal that set the stage for HGH testing.

The NFL Players Association won't concede the validity of a test that's used by Olympic sports and Major League Baseball, and the sides haven't been able to agree on a scientist to help resolve that impasse.

Among the witnesses before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday is Pro Football Hall of Fame member Dick Butkus. In his prepared statement, Butkus writes: "Now, let's get on with it. The HGH testing process is proven to be reliable."

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Wall Street ends almost flat as Bernanke warns on "cliff"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended nearly flat on Wednesday, giving up most of the day's gains after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke reiterated that monetary policy won't be enough to offset damage from the "fiscal cliff."

His comments followed the Federal Reserve's announcement of a new stimulus plan, which briefly pushed the S&P 500 to a seven-week high.

The plan, the latest attempt to boost the country's struggling economy, will replace a more modest program set to expire with a fresh round of Treasury purchases that will increase its balance sheet. The program is known as "quantitative easing" or QE.

In comments after the announcement, Bernanke said he hopes that markets won't have to tank to get a fiscal cliff deal.

"Initially the addition of QE was certainly favorable. I think, though, in the press conference, what came out is that there still seems to be a level of uncertainty with regard to the exit strategy (and) the efficacy of the current policy," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

Bernanke "reiterated the fact that monetary policy has its hands tied as far as addressing the seriousness of going over the fiscal cliff," Hellwig added.

The S&P financial sector index <.gspf>, which had been up more than 1 percent after the Fed's announcement, ended up just 0.5 percent.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc's stock was the biggest drag on the Dow, falling 2.8 percent to $68.94 following the Indian government's announcement of an inquiry into the company's lobbying practices.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 2.99 points, or 0.02 percent, to 13,245.45 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> inched up just 0.64 of a point, or 0.04 percent, to 1,428.48. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> shed 8.49 points, or 0.28 percent, to end at 3,013.81.

Though the S&P 500 ended up just slightly, it was the sixth day of gains for the index - its longest winning streak since August.

The central bank committed to monthly purchases of $45 billion in Treasuries on top of the $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed bonds it started buying in September. It also said it will keep its near-zero interest-rate program in place until the U.S. unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent from its current 7.7 percent.

"The actions by the Fed were more aggressive than investors anticipated," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.

"The asset-purchasing program is probably larger and more comprehensive than some might have thought."

Negotiations over plans to avoid the fiscal cliff intensified in Washington, but U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Wednesday that "serious differences" remain with President Barack Obama in their talks. If no agreement is reached, steep tax hikes and budget cuts will fall into place early next year.

Shares of Aetna , the third-largest U.S. health insurer, gained 3.2 percent to $45.91, a day after the company gave a higher forecast for profit and revenue growth in 2013.

Volume was roughly 6.58 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.52 billion.

Decliners slightly outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by about 16 to 15, and on the Nasdaq, by about 3 to 2.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Leah Schnurr Editing by Jan Paschal)

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IHT Rendezvous: In China, Fears Ours Would Be a 'One-Week Puppy'

BEIJING — China has many genuine pet lovers who care well for their dogs, but also many owners who don’t. The dog trade is virtually unsupervised and selling sick animals to unsuspecting customers is common. Animal shelters are full. The pet scene is tough. Buying a dog, which I write about in my latest Letter from China, can be a risky business.

“Some breeders just want to make money. Some are real animal lovers,” said Xing Xiaosi, an editor and marketer at goumin.com, a Web site for dog lovers in China that offers an interactive education and information platform.

“But in general, the situation isn’t that positive or optimistic,” she said.

A week after we bought our boxer puppy, Xiao Tongzhi, or Little Comrade, he fell ill.

Knowing the horror stories, I took him to the vet, feeling queasy.

Here’s how Ms. Xing described an all-too common scenario: “Many dogs are not well treated in kennels and if the owners feel the dog looks sick, they may give it an injection to stimulate it, and make it more active. It usually lasts for about a week. They hope to sell the dog within a week to make their money, but the dog may die very soon after the week. If the buyer takes it to an animal hospital for treatment it may live. But if he doesn’t want to spend the money, it won’t.”

The serious — possibly deadly — illnesses include puppy distemper, canine parvovirus and canine coronavirus, usually contracted in dirty and crowded conditions at kennels.

Was Little Comrade a “one-week puppy,” as they are called?

Thankfully, the vet said he had only caught a cold. He tested negative for parvovirus and distemper, though he had been exposed to coronavirus, she said. Beijing’s cold had turned even harsher the weekend we bought him in early December, with temperatures dropping below freezing.

Still, the vet didn’t take any chances, administering anti-distemper serum and large amounts of antibiotics. The bottom line was — all puppies are vulnerable to serious disease because of the conditions they are often kept in before sale.

Overall, animal rights awareness here is low, said Ms. Xing.

“Many people are not responsible towards their pets,” she said. “They buy them as if they were toys. Then, once they have them back home, they feel they are difficult to care for because they urinate and defecate and they feel that’s dirty.”

“Some people throw their pets away when the family gets a baby,” she added. “When they’re abandoned some people do try to look for a new home. But many just throw them into the streets.”

As a result, animal shelters in Beijing and other cities are full.

“People’s consciousness about keeping pets needs to be raised,” Ms. Xing said. “They need to feel responsible for their lives.”

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Microsoft ups Surface production, to sell in more stores

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp has stepped up manufacturing of the Surface tablet, its new device designed to counter Apple Inc‘s iPad, and will introduce it to third-party retailers this week.

The moves suggest Microsoft is seeing some demand for its first own-brand computer in the crucial holiday shopping season, although it has yet to divulge any sales figures.

“The public reaction to Surface has been exciting to see,” said Panos Panay, general manager of Microsoft’s Surface project, which forms part of the company’s Windows unit.

“We’ve increased production and are expanding the ways in which customers can interact with, experience and purchase Surface,” said Panay, but gave no details of how many extra units were being produced.

Panay did not mention names of retailers that will sell the Surface, but separately office equipment retailer Staples Inc said it would stock the tablet from Wednesday.

He said the Surface would also be on sale at retailers in Australia from mid-December, with more countries to follow in the next few months.

Since launch in late October, the Surface has only been sold by Microsoft itself, in its own brick and mortar stores in the United States and Canada and online in Australia, China, France, the UK and Germany.

The only Surface model available now – officially called Surface with Windows RT – runs a version of Windows created to work on the low-power chips designed by ARM Holdings, which dominate smartphones and tablets but are incompatible with old Windows applications.

It starts at $ 499 for the 32 gigabyte version plus $ 120 for a thin cover that doubles as a keyboard.

A larger, heavier tablet – called Surface with Windows 8 Pro – will be introduced in January, running on an Intel Corp chip that works with all Microsoft’s Windows and Office applications. Microsoft plans to price the new Surface from $ 899 for a 64 gigabyte version.

The world’s largest software company also said it would keep its chain of ‘pop-up’ holiday stores open into the new year and will convert them into permanent retail outlets or what it called “specialty store locations”.

Microsoft’s recent push into physical retail – following Apple’s great success – has resulted in 31 permanent stores plus 34 holiday ‘pop-up’ stores in the U.S. and Canada.

If Microsoft converted each of the temporary stores into permanent outlets it would have 65 stores, still well below Apple with almost 400 worldwide.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle, Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hugh Hefner's Engagement Ring to Crystal Harris Revealed

By Mike Fleeman

12/11/2012 at 07:00 PM EST

The wedding's back on – though it may be a good idea to save that gift receipt.

Hugh Hefner, 86, officially confirms that he is once again engaged to Crystal Harris, 26, telling his Twitter followers, "I've given Crystal Harris a ring. I love the girl."

And to prove it, Harris posted photos of the big diamond sparkler, calling it "my beautiful ring."

Neither announced a wedding date, though sources tell PEOPLE they're planning to tie the knot at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve.

Whether that still happens remains to be seen.

This is the plan they had in 2011 – a wedding at the mansion – except that Harris called it off just days before the nuptials were scheduled to happen in front of 300 invited guests.

Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris

David Livingston / Getty

The onetime Playmate of the Month then ripped Hef's bedroom skills, calling him a two-second man, to which Hefner replied, "I missed a bullet" by not marrying her.

A year later, Hefner's "runaway bunny" bounded back to him.

• Reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA

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DA investigating Texas' troubled $3B cancer agency

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.

No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.

That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.

"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.

Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.

His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."

Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.

Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.

Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.

"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.

Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.

Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.

Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.

The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.

"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.

Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.

Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.

Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.

Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.

Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.

"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.

Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.

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Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber

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