Fed minutes short-circuit Wall Street rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dipped on Thursday after signs the Federal Reserve has growing concern about its highly stimulative monetary policy, giving investors reason to pull back after a two-day rally.

The minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting, released on Thursday, showed increasing reticence about adding to the central bank's $2.9 trillion balance sheet, which it expanded sharply in response to the financial crisis and recession of 2007-2009.

Some policymakers thought asset buying should be slowed or stopped before the end of 2013 while others highlighted the need for further stimulus. The Fed's policy of easy credit has helped push the S&P 500 to a 13.4 percent gain in 2012. Ending that policy would remove an incentive for investors to purchase riskier assets like stocks.

"The surprise was the changes to duration and extent of that program in 2013, but given the tone in previous Fed meeting minutes, it should not have been an entire surprise," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Despite the concerns about the effects of its asset purchases, the Fed look set to continue its open-ended stimulus program for now.

Stocks pushed the S&P 500 index 4.3 percent higher in the previous two sessions. On Thursday investors turned their focus to coming battles in Congress, including the likelihood of bitter fights over budget cuts and raising the federal debt ceiling.

"We were definitely technically extended and ripe for a little bit of a consolidation and today is very orderly - traders and investors are still trying to digest the language and the details from the 2012 taxpayer act," Dickson said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 21.19 points, or 0.16 percent, to 13,391.36. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> shed 3.05 points, or 0.21 percent, to 1,459.37. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 11.70 points, or 0.38 percent, to 3,100.57.

Economic data showed U.S. private-sector employers shrugged off a looming budget crisis and stepped up hiring in December, offering further evidence of underlying strength in the economy as 2012 ended.

The government's broader monthly payrolls report, due on Friday, is expected to show the economy created 150,000 jobs compared with 146,000 in November, according to a Reuters poll. The U.S. unemployment rate is seen holding steady at 7.7 percent.

Retailers advanced after several major companies in the sector beat expectations of modest sales increases in December, with the S&P retail index <.spxrt> up 0.4 percent.

Shares in Costco Wholesale Corp rose 1 percent to $102.49 after the company reported a better-than-expected 9 percent rise in December sales at stores open at least a year.

Gap Inc stock climbed 2.3 percent to $32.09 following news that the retailer will buy women's fashion boutique Intermix Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Family Dollar Stores Inc stumbled 13 percent to $55.74 on the company's report of lower-than-expected quarterly profit.

Volume was relatively strong, with about 6.68 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq, slightly above the 2012 daily average of 6.42 billion.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,692 to 1,321, while on the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers 1,287 to 1,187.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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South Korean Court Rejects Extradition in Attack on Japanese War Shrine

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court sided with China on Thursday in a fight between Beijing and Tokyo over the custody of a Chinese man accused of an arson attack at the Yasukuni Shrine for Japan’s war dead.

The man, Liu Qiang, 38, completed a 10-month prison term in South Korea in November after hurling four gasoline bombs at the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul. His attack in January last year left burn marks on the embassy wall but hurt no one.

Mr. Liu had told South Korean police that his late maternal grandmother, a Korean, was one of Asia’s “comfort women,” who were forced into sexual slavery for Japan’s Imperial Army during World War II. He said that he attacked the Japanese Embassy to show his anger at Tokyo’s refusal to apologize and compensate properly for the wrongs done against the women.

Even before Mr. Liu was released from a South Korean prison, Tokyo and Beijing had filed competing requests for his extradition.

During the investigation by the South Korean police, Mr. Liu said that he had carried out an arson attack that burned the main wooden gate of the shrine in Tokyo in December 2011. The shrine, which commemorates several Japanese war criminals from World War II, as well as the common war dead, is seen by many Koreans and Chinese as a symbol of Japan’s past aggression, and Japanese politicians’ frequent visits there have prompted anti-Japanese emotions in the neighboring countries.

During his extradition hearings at the Seoul High Court in recent weeks, Mr. Liu argued that his attack should be treated as a political crime and that he would not be given a fair trial in Japan. His lawyers, reportedly hired by the Chinese government, cited a provision at the South Korea-Japan extradition treaty that allowed each country not to extradite people accused of political crimes.

South Korean prosecutors, who sought his extradition to Japan, argued that Japan sought his custody to punish him not for his political opinion but for arson.

On Thursday, the presiding justice, Hwang Han-sik, rejected the request, opening the door for Mr. Liu to leave for China.

In his verdict, Mr. Hwang said a decision to extradite Mr. Liu to Japan for “his political crime would be tantamount to denying the political order and Constitutional ideas of South Korea, as well as the universal values of most of the civilized nations.”

He also said the Yasukuni Shrine carried some “political symbolism” even if it was listed as a religious property in Japan.

Mr. Liu’s extradition trial came amid concern in South Korea over the growing political power of right-wing nationalists in Japan, as demonstrated by Shinzo Abe’s return as prime minister.

During Mr. Liu’s hearings, right-wing South Korean activists demonstrated outside the courthouse, opposing his extradition to Japan and calling for South Korea to instead give him an “award.”

At his trial, Mr. Liu appealed to the South Korean judge “to understand, as a fellow Korean who shares the same blood, the anger my grandmother and I felt.” He linked his attack at the shrine to the acts of some South Korean nationalist activists who have in recent years cut their fingertips to show anger at some Japanese politicians’ annual visits to the shrine.

The “comfort women” remain the most emotional issue left unresolved from Japan’s often brutal colonial rule of Korea from 1910 until 1945. Historians say that about 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines and other countries were forced to work in Japanese Army brothels.

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HTC rumored to debut flagship ‘M7′ smartphone at CES

HTC (2498) will reportedly unveil a new flagship smartphone code-named “M7″ at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. The rumor comes to us from XDA-Developers forum member “Football,” who reported accurate information about unreleased HTC devices in the past. The phone is believed to the be the successor to the One X and could be equipped with a 4.7-inch full HD 1920 x 1080-pixel display, a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, a 13-megapixel rear camera, LTE and HSPA+ connectivity, Beats Audio, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory and a 2,300 mAh battery. The M7 is also said to be HTC’s first smartphone to utilize on-screen navigation keys in place of traditional hardware buttons. 

[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]

The problem for HTC in the past has been the company’s ability to market its high-end devices to consumers. Despite class-leading features and hardware, HTC’s smartphone sales have stalled in the past year and the company has continued to lose market share. It will be interesting to see if it can turn things around in 2013.

[More from BGR: Microsoft lashes out at Google’s decision to spurn Windows Phone]

The Consumer Electronics Show is scheduled to take place from January 8th to January 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Patti Page, '50s Pop Star, Dies at 85

01/02/2013 at 05:50 PM EST

Patti Page

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Patti Page, one of the most successful pop stars of the '50s – famed for hits such as "Tennessee Waltz" and "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" – died on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif., the New York Times reports. She was 85.

Seacrest VIllage Retirement Communities, where she lived, confirmed her death to the Times on Wednesday.

Page's songs sold millions – "Tennessee Waltz" spent months atop the pop, country and R&B charts and sold a total of 10 million copies – but her singing style and sentimental hits, though favored by the public, did not always receive critical praise.

''A couple of critics back then said my voice was like milquetoast,'' Page told the Times in 2003. ''My music was called plastic, antiseptic, placid. It was only five or so years after the war, a different time. A simpler time. The music was simpler, too.''

Born Clara Ann Fowler on Nov. 8, 1927, in Claremore, Okla., Page was one of 11 children. She began her career at Tulsa radio station KTUL, where she took over a country-music radio show called "Meet Patti Page," which is where she adopted her pseudonym. She went on to be signed by Mercury Records, where she had her first platinum-selling hit, "With My Eyes Wide Open, I'm Dreaming," in 1950. Among her other notable musical accomplishments: she recorded the theme to Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, the 1964 thriller starring Bette Davis, which was nominated for an Oscar. In 1965, Page performed the song on the Academy Awards telecast.

Page also had a television career, hosting 1952's Music Hall on CBS, a 15-minute show that followed the evening news. She also hosted The Big Record, which ran for one season in 1957 and 1958, and The Patti Page Show on NBC in the summer of 1956.

Meanwhile, she continued to sing professionally into her early 70s. In 1999, she won a Grammy, her first and only one, for Live at Carnegie Hall, an album she recorded in 1997 celebrating 50 years in the music business.

Page was married twice, first to Charles O'Curran, a choreographer, in 1956. They divorced in 1972. She married Jerry Filiciotto, a retired aerospace engineer, in 1990. Together, they co-founded a company that marketed maple syrup products. He died in 2009.

Page is survived by her son, Danny O'Curran; her daughter Kathleen Ginn; and some grandchildren.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

___

Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

___

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

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Wall Street starts new year with a bang after "cliff" deal

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks kicked off the new year with their best day in over a year on Wednesday, sparked by relief over a last-minute deal in Washington to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts that threatened to derail the economy's growth.

In 2013's first trading session, the S&P 500 achieved its biggest one-day gain since December 20, 2011, pushing the benchmark index to its highest close since September 14.

Concerns over Washington's ability to sidestep the cliff had driven the S&P 500 down for five straight sessions, before signs that a resolution was near sent the benchmark index higher on the final trading session of 2012.

The CBOE Volatility Index or the VIX <.vix>, Wall Street's favorite gauge of investor anxiety, dropped 18.5 percent to 14.68 at the close. The VIX has fallen 35.4 percent over the past two sessions, the biggest 2-day percentage drop in the history of the index.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> jumped 308.41 points, or 2.35 percent, to 13,412.55 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 36.23 points, or 2.54 percent, to finish at 1,462.42. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> climbed 92.75 points, or 3.07 percent, to end at 3,112.26.

U.S. markets were closed on Tuesday for New Year's Day.

Market breadth reflected the strong rally, with 10 stocks rising for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. All 10 of the S&P 500 industry sector indexes gained at least 1 percent. The S&P financial index <.gspf> shot up 2.9 percent.

The S&P Information Technology index <.gspt> gained 3.2 percent, including Hewlett-Packard , which climbed 5.4 percent to $15.02. HP's gain followed a miserable 2012 when the stock fell nearly 45 percent as one of the S&P 500's worst performers for 2012.

On Tuesday, Congress passed a bill to prevent huge tax hikes and delay spending cuts that would have pushed the world's largest economy off a "fiscal cliff" and possibly into recession.

The vote avoided steep income-tax increases for a majority of Americans, but failed to resolve a major showdown over cutting the budget deficit, leaving investors and businesses with only limited clarity about the outlook for the economy. Spending cuts of $109 billion in military and domestic programs were temporarily delayed, and another fight over raising the U.S. debt limit also looms.

"We got through the fiscal cliff. The next big thing, and probably more contentious thing, is negotiating the debt ceiling and possibly entitlement reform in early 2013," said Jim Russell, senior equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.

Hard choices about budget cuts and the critical need to raise the debt ceiling will confront Congress about the same time in two months "so the fur will be flying," Russell said.

U.S. stocks ended 2012 with the S&P 500 up 13.4 percent for the year, as investors largely shrugged off worries about the fiscal cliff. For the year, the Dow gained 7.3 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 15.9 percent.

Bank shares rose following news that U.S. regulators are close to securing another multibillion-dollar settlement with the largest banks to resolve allegations that they unlawfully cut corners when foreclosing on delinquent borrowers.

Bank of America Corp rose 3.7 percent to $12.03 and Citigroup Inc gained 4.3 percent to $41.25. The KBW bank index <.bkx> rose 3.2 percent.

Shares of Zipcar Inc surged 47.8 percent to $12.18 after Avis Budget Group Inc said it would buy Zipcar for about $500 million in cash to compete with larger rivals Hertz and Enterprise Holdings Inc. Avis advanced 4.8 percent to $20.77.

Shares of Apple rose 3.2 percent to $549.03, helping to lift the S&P information technology index <.gspt> up 3.2 percent following a report that the most valuable tech company has started testing a new iPhone and a new version of its iOS software.

Economic data from the Institute for Supply Management showed U.S. manufacturing ended 2012 on an upswing despite fears about the fiscal cliff, but the Commerce Department reported that construction spending fell in November for the first time in eight months.

Volume was heavy, with about 7.8 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE MKT and the Nasdaq, well above the 2012 daily average of 6.42 billion.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Mendrisio Journal: In Mendrisio, Switzerland, Gold Can Be Solid and Liquid

MENDRISIO, Switzerland — The Swiss like to think their country is to gold what Bordeaux, France, is to wine. Thanks to a dark red merlot produced in the hills surrounding this town in the south of Switzerland, it has both, the real gold and the wine.

The real gold is here because four of the world’s major gold refineries are on Swiss soil, three of them here in Mendrisio, turning roughly one-third of the world’s gold into bars and ingots. The wine is here because over the past several decades this Italian-speaking region has emerged as the largest wine-growing area in Switzerland, and the local merlot has carved a big place in the Swiss wine market.

Merlot, said Luigi Zanini Jr., 40, whose father began making wine here in the 1980s after importing Italian wines for decades, “is king, queen, prince and all of the nobility.” The company he and his father run, Vinattieri Ticinesi, is now Switzerland’s largest winemaker, producing about 500,000 bottles a year.

If Mr. Zanini deals in bottled gold, across town, at a sprawling factory with gray concrete walls seven feet high, Erhard Oberli handles the real thing, as the chief executive of Argor-Heraeus, a major refiner processing hundreds of tons of gold every year.

Gold refining flourished here, Mr. Oberli said, because of the proximity to Italy, where jewelry is a major industry and labor is cheap. “Italy, traditionally, was by far the biggest consumer of gold, taking about 800 tons a year, half legally and half illegally,” he said. The illegal part has largely been cleaned up, but Italy remains a big customer, as do makers of jewelry and watches in Swiss cities like Geneva.

The price of gold is now hovering at nearly $1,700 an ounce, compared with less than $300 a dozen years ago. That is not a direct benefit to Mr. Oberli, because his company is a processor of gold, not a trader. But the demand for melted-down gold and fresh ingots from raw gold has soared, so he now has a new $32 million enlargement of his factory to go along with the growth in the number of employees, to 229 from 152 five years ago.

Both the gold and the wine are feeding a prosperity here that contrasts sharply with the slump in surrounding regions, most notably northern Italy, long a powerhouse of the European economy.

Mendrisio, with its charming old downtown streets ringed by state-of-the-art factories, embedded in steep valleys ringed with vineyards, has long been a magnet for Italians in search of work. In recent years as Europe’s borders have grown increasingly porous, and Italy suffers the effects of a debt crisis, the numbers have soared.

Every day more than 7,500 Italians clog the roads, making the trek across the border in their Hyundais and Toyotas and the occasional Fiat, coming to jobs in Mendrisio, where the local population is only 11,600. About a decade ago, before Switzerland began joining various European agreements to eliminate border controls, most were unskilled workers in farming or construction, but they are now increasingly skilled people — engineers, chemists, accountants.

Meinrad Perler is the son of a farmer in western, French-speaking Switzerland who went into banking. When that career soured, he turned to his passion, winemaking, settling in Mendrisio in the 1980s. “It’s not the ideal location, too much rain in the wrong seasons, and hot, dry summers,” he said, steering his sport utility vehicle through steep vineyards.

Still, the climate has not prevented Mr. Perler, 75, from building an annual production of 210,000 bottles a year, mostly merlot. Of his 14 full-time employees, 8 are Italians, including his chief oenologist. When he recently advertised for an accountant, 132 letters came in, more than two-thirds from Italians.

“They’ll accept a job that is lower than their qualification,” he said, and for less money.

Over at the Zanini winery, of 72 employees, about half are cross-border Italians. “The tendency is to try and find people from Ticino,” the region Mendrisio lies in, Mr. Zanini said. “But maybe there’s more desire in Italy.”

At Argor-Heraeus, Mr. Oberli badly needs engineers, chemists and metallurgists, and cannot find them locally. “In Italy now it’s a catastrophe, and given the unemployment, you easily find young, well-trained people,” he said, turned out by schools like the Technical University in Milan. About two-thirds of his employees are Italians, who drive back to their homes in Italy when the workday is done.

Of course there are benefits to employing Italians, like lower pay. The Swiss federal statistical office released figures recently showing that while the average disposable income of a Swiss is roughly $55,000, that of cross-border workers like the Italians is about $48,000.

While this gap annoys Swiss employees, who see the foreigners as competitors, employers say the difference is justified. “Taxes are less in Italy than in Switzerland,” said Marco Nauer, 49, a metals expert at Argor-Heraeus who is responsible for hiring. The cost of living is lower in Italy as well, so earnings in Swiss francs go further.

Behind Mendrisio’s neo-Classical town hall, a large parking garage is being built. The dozen or so cars of the construction workers all have Italian plates. “With the crisis in Italy, there just isn’t any work,” said Davide Grassi, 33, a cement mason from Milan who in July began driving the 40 minutes to work here every day.

For some, it is more than money. Last September, Roberta Pellin, who lives in Olgiate Comasco, Italy, a 20-minute drive across the border, opened a little vaulted flower shop along Corso Bello, a pedestrian street in Mendrisio’s old town center, after working for 25 years in the flower business in Italy.

“I evaluated the situation in Italy and decided it’s far easier in Switzerland,” said Ms. Pellin, 44. The Italian bureaucracy is crushing, she said, and the professionalism is greater in Switzerland. Moreover, Swiss laws require stores to close Sundays, unlike in Italy, where they stay open seven days a week.

“I have two kids,” she said. “It’s about quality of life.”

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9 Apps to Fast-Track Your New Years’ Resolutions

Whether your goal in 2013 is to lose five pounds, manage your finances, or spend more time with friends and family, there are a growing number of apps that fall into the self-help category and can assist you in accomplishing these resolutions.

At Mashable we’ve tested a lot of them out, but we’re still always hearing about new ones. There are a ton of fitness and health apps to chose from, but you might be pleasantly surprised to know they’re not all about weight loss. A device and app called Tinke monitors your stress levels and how deeply you’re breathing. An app called Fig will remind you to drink more water, skip fried foods and take breaks at work to keep you feeling good. Arianna Huffington also released an app called, “GPS for the Soul” that focuses on wellbeing.

[More from Mashable: Time Machine App Transports You Back to 2012]

Other apps can help you organize your social life, make new friends or save money for a vacation.

We’ve compiled a list of apps that can help you accomplish all sorts of goals this year. Check it out and let us know if we missed any that you plan on using in 2013.

[More from Mashable: It’s Easy to Save Videos From Facebook Poke Permanently]

OurGroceries

If you’re trying to eat out less and cook at home more often, make sure you always have a current grocery list at your fingertips. Mashable wrote about several grocery list apps this year. The standout seems to be OurGroceries for Android and iOS. If you have roommates or a significant other, everyone can download the app and sync lists. That way if you’re making a quick after-work trip to the grocery store you’ll not only be able to see the items you added, but also see what they’ve added, too.

Click here to view this gallery.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, hocus-focus

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Jessica Simpson and Kendall & Kylie Jenner Make Readers Smile - and Frown

01/01/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Splash News Online; Michael Simon/Startraks

What's on the minds of PEOPLE readers this week? We love getting your feedback, and as always, you weighed in – even while celebrating during the holidays – with plenty of reactions to all of our stories.

From Kelly Osbourne's dramatic weight loss to Jessica Simpson's happy baby news to the tragic death of hero surfer Dylan Smith in Puerto Rico, readers responded to what made them happy, what made them laugh out loud and what made them sad this week.

Check out the articles with the top reactions on the site this week, and keep clicking on the emoticons at the bottom of every story to tell us what you think!

Kelly Osbourne says loving herself was the key to her 60-lb. weight loss. She had to get to a place where she respected herself enough to take care of her health – and she emerged a fierce style star who is not afraid to rock a bikini.

Jessica Simpson became a new mom just 8 months ago – so the news that she's expecting baby No. 2 with fiancé Eric Johnson made readers say, "Wow!"

Reality stars Kendall and Kylie Jenner showed off expensive Christmas gifts on Instagram, and their pricey public display turned many readers off. From a pair of Louboutin spike heels to Balenciaga boots with a more than $1,000 price tag, the teens cleaned up with lavish presents that most could only dream about.

Dylan Smith captured our hearts with his heroic efforts during Superstorm Sandy, saving six people on his surfboard. But the Queens, N.Y., lifeguard, 23, who was named one of PEOPLE's Heroes of the Year, drowned on Dec. 24 in a surfing accident off Puerto Rico.

Does the idea of Tom Cruise dating a new woman make you laugh? Maybe. A story that falsely linked the actor romantically to a 26-year-old restaurant manager, had readers clicking LOL. Or maybe the funny part was this quote from a source, who told told PEOPLE: "He's single and will be talking to women – all of whom he won't be instantly dating."

Check back next week for another must-read roundup, and see what readers are reacting to every day here.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

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

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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