Yen resumes fall after G20, U.S. holiday thins trade

LONDON (Reuters) - The yen resumed falling on Monday after Japan signaled it would push ahead with expansionist monetary policies having escaped criticism from the world's 20 biggest economies at the weekend.

Industrial metals also dipped and European shares were soft on lingering worries about the economic outlook, especially for the euro zone. While the risk of an inconclusive outcome in Italy's forthcoming election added to investor concerns.

However, activity was curtailed by the closure of markets in the United States for the Presidents' Day holiday.

The yen, which has dropped 20 percent against the dollar since mid-November, fell further after financial leaders from the G20 promised not to devalue their currencies to boost exports and avoided singling out Japan for any direct criticism.

The dollar rose 0.5 percent to 93.95 yen, near a 33-month peak of 94.47 yen set a week ago. The euro added 0.3 percent to 125.40 yen, to be midway between Friday's two-week low of 122.90 and a 34-month high of 127.71 yen hit earlier this month.

Strategists said the yen was likely to stay weak, though its decline could lose momentum until it becomes clear who will be taking the helm at the Bank of Japan when the current governor steps down on March 19.

"The yen probably will weaken a little further in anticipation of more aggressive easing under a new leadership team at the Bank of Japan," said Julian Jessop, chief global economist at Capital Economics.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is poised to nominate the new governor in the next few days. Sources have told Reuters that former financial bureaucrat Toshiro Muto, considered likely to be less radical than other candidates, was leading the field.

Meanwhile the euro dipped slightly against the dollar when European Central Bank president Mario Draghi said the currency's recent gains made any rise in inflation less likely and added that he had yet to see any improvement in the euro zone economy.

Speaking before the European Parliament, Draghi said the euro's exchange rate was not a policy target but was important for growth and stability, adding that appreciation of the euro "is a risk".

The comments left the euro down 0.2 percent at $1.3334.

Elsewhere in the currency market, sterling hit a seven-month low against the dollar, after a key policymaker made comments about the need for further weakness and recent poor data which has kept alive worries of another British recession.

Sterling fell 0.25 percent to $1.5476 having earlier touched $1.5438, its lowest since July 13.

DATA LOOMS

A big week for data on the outlook for the world's economy weighed on other riskier asset markets following the recent dire fourth-quarter growth numbers for the euro zone and Japan, along with Friday's soft U.S. manufacturing figures.

In European markets, attention is focused on the euro area Purchasing Managers' Indexes for February and German sentiment indices due later in the week which could affect hopes for a recovery this year.

Analysts expect Thursday's euro area flash PMI indices, which offer pointers to economic activity around six months out, to show growth stabilizing across the recession-hit region, leaving intact hopes for a recovery in the second half of 2013.

Concerns over an inconclusive outcome in the Italian election on Sunday and Monday have added to the weaker sentiment as a fragmented parliament could hamper a future government's efforts to reform the struggling economy.

The worries about the outlook for Italy were encouraging investors back into safe-haven German government bonds on Monday, with 10-year Bund yields easing 3.5 basis points to be around 1.63 percent.

"Political uncertainty will keep Bunds well bid this week," ING rate strategist Alessandro Giansanti said, adding that only better than expected economic data could create selling pressure on German debt in the near term.

Italian 10-year yields were 4 basis points higher on the day at 4.41 percent.

EARNINGS HIT

European equity markets were taking their lead from corporate earnings reports which have been reflecting the sluggish economic conditions across the region.

Danish brewer Carlsberg , which generates just over 60 percent of its sales in western Europe, became the latest to report a weaker-than-expected quarterly profit, sending its shares to their lowest level in almost a month.

The 5.8-percent drop for shares in the world's fourth biggest brewery helped send the FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> of top European shares down 0.2 percent. Germany's DAX <.gdaxi>, France's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Britain's FTSE-100 <.ftse> ranged between 0.4 percent up and 0.15 percent lower.

Earlier, the G20 statement and subsequent comment from Prime Minster Abe indicating a renewed drive to stimulate the Japanese economy lifted the Nikkei stock index <.n225> by 2.1 percent, near to its highest level since September 2008.

MSCI's world equity index <.miwd00000pus> was flat as markets extended a two-week period of consolidation that has followed the big run-up in January, when demand was buoyed by the efforts of central banks to stimulate the world economy.

Data from EPFR Global, a U.S.-based firm that tracks the flows and allocations of funds globally, shows investors pulled $3.62 billion from U.S. stock funds in the latest week, the most in 10 weeks after taking a neutral stance the prior week.

But demand for emerging market equities remained strong, with investors putting $1.81 billion in new cash into stock funds, the fund-tracking firm said.

CHINA RETURN

In the commodity markets, traders played catch-up after a week-long holiday last week in China, the world's second biggest consumer of many raw materials, which had kept activity subdued, with worries about the economic outlook weighing on sentiment.

Copper, for which China is the world's largest consumer, dipped to a near three-week low at $8,125.25 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) on the London futures market. Benchmark tin and nickel also touched three-week lows.

Gold managed to edge away from six-month lows as jewelers in China returned to the physical market after the Lunar New Year holiday but a lack of demand from U.S. markets saw the precious metal slip back to be down 0.1 percent to $1,607.06 an ounce.

Crude oil markets were mostly steady after the weak U.S. industrial production data on Friday [ID:nL1N0BF44A] was seen dampening demand, while tensions in the Middle East lent some support.

"We continue to see a mixed picture out of the United States. Industry output was lower than expected but that shouldn't affect the general upward direction," Olivier Jakob, analyst at Geneva-based Petromatrix, said.

Brent crude was down 20 cents at $117.46 a barrel after posting its first weekly loss since the first half of January. U.S. crude slipped 24 cents to $95.62.

(Additional reporting by Marius Zaharia and Ron Bousso; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Alastair Macdonald)

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As Assad Holds Firm, Obama Could Revisit Arms Policy

Reuters

A member of the Free Syrian Army inside a weapons factory in Aleppo on Monday. President Obama has decided against providing arms to rebels in the past.

WASHINGTON — When President Obama rebuffed four of his top national security officials who wanted to arm the rebels in Syria last fall, it put an end to a months-long debate over how aggressively Washington should respond to the strife there that has now left nearly 70,000 dead.

But the decision also left the White House with no clear strategy to resolve a crisis that has bedeviled it since a popular uprising erupted against President Bashar al-Assad almost two years ago. Despite an American program of nonlethal assistance to opponents of the Syrian government and $365 million in humanitarian aid, Mr. Obama appears to be running out of options to speed Mr. Assad’s exit.

With conditions continuing to deteriorate, officials said, the president could reopen the question of whether to provide weapons to select members of the resistance in an effort to break the impasse in Syria. The question is whether a wary Mr. Obama, surrounded by a new national security team, would come to a different conclusion.

“This is not a closed decision,” a senior administration official insisted. “As the situation evolves, as our confidence increases, we might revisit it.”

Mr. Obama’s refusal to provide arms when the proposal was broached before the November election, officials said, was driven by his reluctance to get drawn into a proxy war and his fear that the weapons would end up in unreliable hands, where they could be used against civilians or Israeli and American interests.

As the United States struggles to formulate a policy, however, Mr. Assad has given no sign that he is ready to yield power, and the Syrian resistance is adamant that it will not negotiate a transition in which he has a role. Mr. Obama, in his State of the Union address, did not repeat his oft-stated confidence that Mr. Assad’s days are numbered.

Even if Mr. Assad was overthrown, the convulsion could fragment Syria along sectarian and ethnic lines, each supported by competing outside powers, said Paul Salem, who runs the Beirut-based Middle East office for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Syria,” he said, “is in the process, not of transitioning, but disintegrating.”

The State Department has funneled $50 million of nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, including satellite telephones, radios, broadcasting equipment, computers, survival equipment and the training in how to use them. This support, officials say, has helped Syrians opposed to the Assad regime communicate with one another and the outside world, despite efforts by Syrian forces to target rebel communications using Iranian-supplied equipment. A Syria-wide FM radio network is to connect broadcasting operations in several cities in the next several days. The State Department has also helped train local councils in areas that have freed from the Syrian government’s control.

But the State Department does not provide non-lethal assistance to armed rebel factions. This has greatly limited the influence the United States has with armed groups that are likely to control much of Syria if Mr. Assad is ousted.

“The odds are very high that, for better or worse, armed men will determine Syria’s course for the foreseeable future,” said Frederic C. Hof, a former senior State Department official and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “For the U.S. not to have close, supportive relationships with armed elements, carefully vetted, is very risky.”

Because units of the anti-Assad Free Syria Army have captured prisoners and detained criminals in the areas they control, Mr. Hof said, it is essential that either the United States or an ally train rebel staff officers in judicial procedures and make them sensitive to human rights concerns.

While the White House has focused on the risks of providing weapons, other nations have had no such reservations. Russia has continued to provide arms and financial support to the Assad government. Iran has supplied the regime with weapons and Quds Force advisers. Hezbollah has sent militants to Syria to help Mr. Assad’s forces. On the other side of the struggle, anti-government Qaeda-affiliated fighters have been receiving financial and other support from their backers in the Middle East.

The arming plan that was considered last year originated with David H. Petreaus, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was supported by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The goal was to create allies in Syria with whom the United States could work during the conflict and if Mr. Assad was removed from power. Each had their reasons for supporting it.

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Play puts Russian justice system in dock over lawyer’s death

MOSCOW (Reuters) – In a poorly lit basement theatre in central Moscow, actors play out a symbolic trial of Russia‘s justice system over its failure to protect an anti-corruption lawyer who died in custody.

Without costumes or a set, the actors in “One Hour and Eighteen Minutes” take on the roles of judges, an investigator, doctor and medical assistants, reciting lines cobbled together from legal documents, media and public pronouncements on the case of Sergei Magnitsky.

His death in 2009, while awaiting trial on charges of tax evasion and fraud, has outraged human rights campaigners who see it as an example of arbitrary justice in Russia, and contributed to a rift in U.S.-Russian relations.

A nervous giggle runs through the audience, perched on wooden chairs and benches, when an actor playing a judge says that the justice system is the only thing that is still working in Russia.

The audience is visibly taken aback when a second judge, who prolonged Magnitsky‘s detention four days before his death, dismisses accusations of acting inhumanly when she says the judge’s role is not to act like a human being but as an executor of the state’s authority.

“The most horrifying moment for me was this judge saying she is not a human because she is a judge. This is very frankly put and how things really are,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a veteran Russian human rights campaigner.

“Nowadays, theatre based on documents, on real life here, is more telling and, unfortunately, more scary than thrillers.”

No one has been convicted over the death of Magnitsky, who was arrested after accusing Russian police of stealing $ 230 million from the state in 2007 through fraudulent tax refunds.

But Russia is now pressing ahead with plans to stage a posthumous trial of the lawyer, putting a dead man in the dock.

This prompted Mikhail Ugarov, the director of Teatr.doc, to revive a play first staged in 2010 because it seemed to him that true justice was now more distant than ever.

“In the very heart of Russia a man is killed, and not by thieves and bandits, but by doctors and prison workers, people who are in general obliged to safeguard the lives of those arrested,” Ugarov told Reuters.

“We used to think there would at least be some justice done, but it turned out completely the other way, it went horribly wrong. So our logic was that if they were not able to give justice to Magnitsky, we will instead.”

SEEKING JUSTICE

Rights campaigners and critics of President Vladimir Putin say the Russian judiciary is weak and open to abuse by politicians, and suggest that the Kremlin uses it to intimidate or persecute adversaries.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied those accusations, saying the judiciary is completely independent and that the government does not intervene in legal cases.

“Judges are independent and subject only to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the federal law,” the Russian Justice Ministry said in response to a request to comment on the play.

The Kremlin also denies that there has been a crackdown on dissenters since Putin returned to the presidency last May, facing the largest protests since he first rose to power 13 years ago.

Magnitsky’s prison death has, however, damaged Russia’s image and, for critics of the Kremlin, come to symbolize what they see as the impunity of the Russian authorities and the dangers faced by those who challenge them.

It has also resulted in a political spat with Washington. The United States, in response to Magnitsky’s treatment, passed legislation late last year that is designed to punish officials linked to his case as well as other Russians deemed rights violators.

Russia hit back with a law to punish Americans it suspects of similar abuses.

The play’s title, “One Hour and Eighteen Minutes”, alludes to the time just before Magnitsky died when he was left without medical help in his cell despite repeated complaints about his health deteriorating while in custody.

Putin said in December that Magnitsky died of a heart attack, but the head of the Kremlin’s own human rights council had earlier said he was probably beaten to death.

Putin called the death a tragedy but said the late lawyer, who had two sons, was not tortured.

All the defendants in the symbolic court in the play deny any responsibility, saying it was not their job to help Magnitsky, that they were busy with other cases, or were paid too poorly to care. Some suggest he was asking for trouble.

In the play, the first judge at a pre-trial hearing denies a glass of water to Magnitsky, saying such requests are not his concern.

Later on, an investigator involved in the case laughs with contempt at the lawyer’s repeated complaints about the conditions of Magnitsky’s detention and lack of medical care, saying a prison is not meant to be comfortable.

One actor exclaims ironically: “A dead man is good for being tried, and should be, just like someone who is alive – or is even better for being tried.”

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, editing by Paul Casciato)

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See The Dress Only Jennifer Lopez Could Wear

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/15/2013 at 06:00 PM ET

Dave Allocca/Startraks; Amanda Edwards/WireImage; Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

Judging by the red carpet looks seen at the Grammys and the creations sent down the runways at New York Fashion Week, we have a sneaking suspicion we’ll be spotting a lot more navy and a lot more menswear-inspired getups in the coming weeks. But there’s one style you can pretty much write off (and don’t expect to see much of it at the Oscars): Studio 54-esque dresses.

Up: Navy Instead of Black. The LBD and LWD better watch out: There’s another shade gunning for the spotlight. This week everyone from Emmy Rossum and Anne Hathaway to Oprah Winfrey and Miranda Lambert slipped into midnight blue. And we totally understand the appeal of the color. It’s a bit more interesting and unexpected than black, but equally flattering on all shapes and sizes.

Up: Menswear-Inspired Looks. Beyoncé wore a pantsuit to the Grammys and a number of other stars (including Jessica Alba, Julianne Hough and Solange Knowles) quickly followed, well, suit. We doubt that tons of actresses will forgo gowns for dude duds at the Oscars, but our money is on at least one woman in menswear on that red carpet.

Down: Disco Ball Dresses. They had their moment, but that moment seems to have passed. So, take a long look at Jennifer Lopez in her printed sequin Preen dress (sparkly enough to be hung from the ceiling over any dance floor) because as amazing as it is, the creation is probably the last you’ll see of its kind for some time.

For more on which trends to follow check out our thoughts on platforms, polka dots, and furry accents.

Tell us: Which trend do you hope to see more of? Vote in our poll below! 

PHOTOS: SEE OUR FAVORITE DRESSES OF AWARDS SEASON — SO FAR!

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

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G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.

Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.

Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.

"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."

After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.

A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.

"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.

As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.

As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.

"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.

"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."

Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.

NO FISCAL TARGETS

The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.

The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.

"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.

A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.

The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.

"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."

The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.

Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.

QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.

A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.

"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.

Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.

On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".

It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.

(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)

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Death Toll Grows in Pakistan Explosion

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A bomb killed scores of people on Saturday at a market in Quetta, Pakistan, in a Shiite minority neighborhood.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Hundreds of Shiite women staged a sit-in in the western city of Quetta on Sunday evening to mourn the 84 people who were killed in an explosion a day earlier in a crowded market there, and they demanded that the government arrest the attackers.

Grieving relatives declined to bury their dead until the government promised to track down those responsible for carrying out brazen attacks against Hazaras, a Shiite ethnic minority, in the city.

Government officials said a team, led by a high-ranking police official, was investigating.

Protests and sit-ins were also held in other major cities on Sunday, as Shiite leaders condemned the government’s inability of the government to curb the killings.

The attack on Saturday took place in Hazara Town, one of two enclaves in Quetta for Hazaras, who have suffered numerous attacks at the hands of Sunni death squads in recent years.

The police said that explosives were hidden in a water-supply truck. It remained unclear how the truck had managed to enter the busy market, avoiding detection by police and intelligence specialists. The police said the bomb was apparently set off by a remote-controlled device, possibly hidden in a rickshaw. The explosion caused a building to collapse, and three other structures were heavily damaged.

Shiite leaders have also called for a strike in Karachi, the southern port city, on Monday. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Karachi’s most powerful political party, said it would support a strike.

The growing sense of insecurity and vulnerability felt by Shiites was evident in angry speeches by leaders across the country on Sunday.

Allama Asghar Askari, a Shiite leader, sharply criticized the country’s law enforcement authorities at a rally here in the nation’s capital. “If the law-enforcement forces had targeted the militant strongholds with real intent, people would not have seen such a day,” Mr. Askari said to hundreds of protesters. One was holding up a placard that said “Stop Shiite genocide.”

Some Shiites have suggested that Army troops should be sent to Quetta to quell the sectarian violence, but for now neither the government nor the military has given any indication of a deployment.

The police in Quetta and the Frontier Corps, a provincial paramilitary force, have come under heavy criticism as violence has escalated and militants belonging to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the largest sectarian group, have targeted Shiites with impunity in Baluchistan Province, where Quetta is the capital.

“Militants term Hazaras as ‘impure’ and have vowed to ‘cleanse Quetta of their presence,’ ” Tahir Hussain, the city’s representative for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said in an interview.

The killings have forced at least 20,000 Hazaras to leave the city, Mr. Hussain said, adding that militants have a heavy presence in the Mastung district of Baluchistan Province. More than 300 Shiites, many of them Hazaras, have been killed in Baluchistan since 2008, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Frontier Corps and the police have shown little willingness to clamp down on militant strongholds in Mastung, Mr. Hussain said.

“They know who are the perpetrators,” he said. “But apart from giving empty assurances, the high-ups of law-enforcement have not done anything.”

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BlackBerry Z10 not seen as a success, BlackBerry’s services business again called into question

BlackBerry (BBRY) shares continued down on Thursday morning after a research note from Wednesday evening called the company’s comeback prospects into question once again. In a note to investors picked up by Barron’s, National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson cut his revenue and profit forecast for BlackBerry’s upcoming fiscal year while casting doubt on its prospects with the BlackBerry Z10 in light of what he calls a delayed U.S. launch.

[More from BGR: Huge iPhone security vulnerability discovered in iOS 6.1 [video]]

“For the record, we like the Z10. It’s a great upgrade for BlackBerry subscribers,” Thompson wrote. “But we don’t see the product reversing BlackBerry’s market share decline; only providing a short-term stabilization from BB6/7 upgrades. We do not expect the platform to win over many iOS or Android users. The apps just aren’t there; and apps are not moving to the web browser soon enough to fill this void.”

[More from BGR: Samsung reportedly plans to sell 100M Galaxy S IV phones, could pull resources away from Apple]

He continued, “Z10 product launch delay an ominous sign. The bulls will say that the Z10 launched in Canada and the UK first because those are very loyal bases, production runs couldn’t support the U.S. launch, or kinks can be worked out ahead of the U.S. launch. We’d say the U.S. carriers have enough smartphones that they test new ones to their own drum beat and aren’t too interested in paying the monthly BlackBerry subscriber fee.”

Elaborating on his comment regarding BlackBerry’s services business, Thompson went on to paint a dark picture of BlackBerry’s earnings moving forward.

“The product delays do not have a major impact on our estimates (although sell-through may be worse than expected given the multitude of competing devices that will now launch at the same time),” he wrote. “Our prelim F2015 estimates suggest earnings will worsen as the high-margin service revenue is subject to a significant decline as the install base dumps BB7 (and predecessor) handsets and adopt BB10 handsets.”

Thompson noted that since BlackBerry executives have not been forthcoming with details surrounding BlackBerry 10 service fees or legacy fee concessions considering carriers will likely no longer pay fees for non-enterprise users, National Bank Financial has had to make some assumptions.

“Many BB10 users will not pay a monthly fee – we have assumed consumer BB10 subs pay nothing and enterprise (BES10) subs pay $ 3/month (less than half of historical, which is a guess… data plans need to be re-negotiated because the BB10 devices require more data since, for instance, the browser no longer compresses data, which was a major drag on browser performance),” the analyst wrote.

Thompson reiterated his Underperform rating on BlackBerry shares along with his $ 10 price target.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Make Sheila G. Main's Truffles

02/16/2013 at 06:30 PM EST

Andrew Purcell; Inset: Courtesy Sheila G. Main

Oscar night is just around the corner so start prepping your viewing party menu now! Take inspiration from any of the films nominated or replicate what Sheila G. Main, the creator of the Original Brownie Brittle snack, will serve at studio head Harvey Weinstein's Oscar party!

Brownie Truffles

Makes 22 to 24 truffles

• 6 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 8 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into quarters
• 3 large eggs
• 1 ¼ cups sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 cup flour
• 2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1–2 tbsp. Grand Marnier
• 1 oz. (2 tbsp.) champagne

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease an 8x8-in. baking pan. In a bowl, melt chocolates and butter in microwave on high for 2 minutes. Stir until smooth. Let cool.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt. Stir in the chocolate mixture. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour and cocoa powder. Stir it into the chocolate mixture. Do not over mix. Pour batter into pre-pared pan. Bake for 25 minutes. (Brownies will be slightly underbaked.) Let cool.

3. Cut brownies into pieces and mix in food processor, along with Grand Marnier and champagne until creamy. Chill for at least 1 hour. Use an ice cream scoop to make truffles. Roll into balls, then roll in sanding sugar or a coating of your choice.

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

Read More..