Apple takes investors on a wild ride

SAN FRANCISCO — With only modest expectations, Robert Leitao of Santa Clarita made a decision in 1994 that would change his life. He bought Apple stock.

This was several years before Steve Jobs returned to resurrect Apple, long before the iPod, the iPhone or the iPads that would make Apple the most valuable company in the world. A $1 investment in Apple at the start of 1994 is now worth about $70.

"Even with the recent sell-off, I'm still doing very well with the stock," said Leitao, who works as director of operations at a Catholic church in Burbank. "Apple provided for a down payment on our home for our blended family of four kids."

Leitao is one of the countless people whose lives have been touched by Apple's stock, which has become a global economic force. It is now one of the most widely held stocks, and the most valuable. Even as Apple Inc.'s market value fell to $480 billion on Friday, it was still larger than the gross domestic product of Norway or Argentina, and more than the combined value of Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Yet that astonishing size and economic influence is also what, many analysts believe, contributes to the extraordinary volatility that can make owning Apple's stock a hair-raising experience.

It was inevitable, analysts say, that after Apple's stock rose 74% in the first nine months of this year, a huge wave of selling would occur as fund managers locked in their profits. And yet, in recent years, these huge dips have been followed by even bigger run-ups that led to new record highs, a dynamic that one trader refers to as the "Apple slingshot."

That pattern has some analysts betting Apple will soar above $1,000 a share in 2013, a scenario almost guaranteed to drive the global obsession with the company's stock into an even greater frenzy.

"The impact on shareholders and on the economy is incredible," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. "We've not seen anything like this in the modern trading era. Ever."

Even after the remarkable decade of Apple's revival, the company's stock managed to reach new milestones this year. Early in 2012, Apple became the sixth company ever to surpass $500 billion in market value. In August, it became the only company in history with a market value topping $622 billion.

That performance affects just about anyone who has a 401(k) account or a pension. According to FactSet, a research firm that tracks investment funds, 2,555 institutional investors — mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds, among others — owned stock in Apple, just behind the 2,590 that held Microsoft stock, as of Sept. 30, the most recent date funds had to disclose their holdings. However, the value of that Apple stock held by institutional investors on that day was $427 billion, compared with $172 billion for Microsoft, according to FactSet.

Silverblatt said the only company that has come close to having such a strong influence on the broader stock markets since World War II is IBM in the early 1980s, when the PC revolution was just getting started. But not only is the value of Apple's stock remarkable, so is its volatility. Such large stocks rarely have such big, quick swings.

Apple shares peaked at $702.10 on Sept. 19, up from $401.44 at the start of the year, a run that astonished analysts. But just as remarkable has been its collapse, falling as low as $505.75 in intra-day trading Nov. 16.

"It's just amazing because it's such a large company," said Brian Colello, a senior research analyst at Morningstar. "The company lost about $35 billion in market cap in one day. That's the size of some large-cap stocks."

Yet such swings have become commonplace for Apple stock. Before its latest swoon of 23.4% since its September high, Apple had experienced three previous corrections of more than 10% over the last two years.

The value of Apple's stock and its extreme swings have made researching it and trading it almost a full-time job for some people. Jason Schwarz of Marina del Rey edits EconomicTiming.com, which sends out up to five newsletters each week to its 1,000 clients that focus in large measure on Apple. He also helps run Lone Peak Asset Management, which has about $500 million in assets.

Schwarz says that what he calls the "Apple slingshot" is actually a virtue of the shares.

"The extraordinary volatility is the result of Apple's strength," Schwarz said. "People try to blame the volatility on Apple's weaknesses."

Schwarz and many other Apple believers argue that people are making a big mistake when they try to understand the stock's behavior by focusing on various bits of bad news such as an executive shake-up, the Maps controversy or questions about market share or competition. They have almost nothing to do with the regular hits taken by Apple shares, the argument goes.

Instead, folks like Schwarz say more technical factors are at work, such as the fact that the fiscal year for many stock funds ends Oct. 31. When the stock peaked in September, many fund managers rushed to sell to lock in profits for the year. Apple stock makes so much money for so many people, then plummets when shareholders pause to reap their profits, Schwarz says.

The volatility has continued in recent weeks, the argument goes, because fears of higher taxes next year have many fund managers trying to take advantage of short-term swings to make bigger profits. That volatility offers tantalizing windows for huge, short-term profits for investors willing to take the risk.

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Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space

To a geologist, glaciers are among the most exciting features on Earth. Though they seem to creep along at impossibly slow speeds, in geologic time glaciers are relatively fast, powerful landscape artists that can carve out valleys and fjords in just a few thousand years.

Glaciers also provide an environmental record by trapping air bubbles in ice that reveal atmospheric conditions in the past. And because they are very sensitive to climate, growing and advancing when it’s cold and shrinking and retreating when its warm, they can be used as proxies for regional temperatures.

Over geologic time, they have ebbed and flowed with natural climate cycles. Today, the world’s glaciers are in retreat, sped up by relatively rapid warming of the globe. In our own Glacier National Park in Montana, only 26 named glaciers remain out of the 150 known in 1850. They are predicted to be completely gone by 2030 if current warming continues at the same rate.

Here we have collected 13 stunning images of some of the world’s most impressive and beautiful glaciers, captured from space by astronauts and satellites.

Above: Bear Glacier, Alaska

This image taken in 2005 of Bear Glacier highlights the beautiful color of many glacial lakes. The hue is caused by the silt that is finely ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the lake. The particles in this “glacial flour” can be very reflective, turning the water into a distinctive greenish blue. The lake, eight miles up from the terminus of the glacier, was held in place by the glacier, but in 2008 it broke through and drained into Resurrection Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park.

The grey stripe down the middle of the glacier is called a medial moraine. It is formed when two glaciers flow into each other and join on their way downhill. When glaciers come together, their lateral moraines, long ridges formed along their edges as the freeze-thaw cycle of the glacier breaks off chunks of rock from the surrounding walls, meet to form a rocky ridge along the center of the joined glaciers.

Image: GeoEye/NASA, 2005.

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As Conn. story unfolds, media struggle with facts

NEW YORK (AP) — The scope and senselessness of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting challenged television journalists’ ability to do much more than lend, or impose, their presence on the scene.

Pressed with the awful urgency of the story, TV, along with other media, fell prey to reporting “facts” that were often in conflict or wrong.

How many people were killed? Which Lanza brother was the shooter: Adam or Ryan? Was their mother, who was among the slain, a teacher at the school?

Like the rest of the news media, television outlets were faced with intense competitive pressures and an audience ravenous for details in an age when the best-available information was seldom as reliable as the networks’ high-tech delivery systems.

Here was the normal gestation of an unfolding story. But with wall-to-wall cable coverage and second-by-second Twitter postings, the process of updating and correcting it was visible to every onlooker. And as facts were gathered by authorities, then shared with reporters (often on background), a seemingly higher-than-usual number of points failed to pan out:

— The number of dead was initially reported as anywhere from the high teens to nearly 30. The final count was established Friday afternoon: 20 children and six adults, as well as Lanza’s mother and the shooter himself.

— For hours on Friday, the shooter was identified as Ryan Lanza, with his age alternatively reported as 24 or 20. The confusion seemed partly explainable when it was determined that 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the shooter who had then killed himself, was carrying identification belonging to his 24-year-old brother.

This case of mistaken identity was painfully reminiscent of the Atlanta Olympics bombing case in 1996, when authorities fingered an innocent man, and the news media ran with it, destroying his life. Such damage was averted in Ryan Lanza’s case largely by his public protestations on social media, repeatedly declaring “It wasn’t me.”

— Initial reports differed as to whether Lanza’s mother, Nancy, was shot at the school, where she was said to be a teacher, or at the home she shared with Adam Lanza. By Friday afternoon, it was determined that she had been shot at their home.

Then doubts arose about whether Nancy Lanza had any link to Sandy Hook Elementary. At least one parent said she was a substitute teacher, but by early Saturday, an official said investigators had been unable to establish any connection with the school.

That seemed to make the massacre even more confusing. Early on, the attack was said to have taken place in her own classroom and was interpreted by more than one on-air analyst as possibly a way for Adam Lanza to strike back at children with whom he felt rivalry for his mother’s affection.

— Lanza’s weapons were listed as two pistols (a Glock and a Sig Sauer) as well as a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle, but whether that rifle was used in the school or left in the trunk of Lanza’s car remained unclear.

— There were numerous versions of what Lanza was wearing, including camouflage attire and black paramilitary garb.

With so many unanswered questions, TV correspondents were left to set the scene and to convey the impact in words that continually failed them.

However apt, the phrase “parents’ worst nightmare” became an instant cliche.

And the word “unimaginable” was used countless times. But “imagine” was exactly what the horrified audience was helpless not to do.

The screen was mostly occupied by grim or tearful faces, sparing everybody besides law enforcement officials the most chilling sight: the death scene in the school, where — as viewers were reminded over and over — the bodies remained while evidence was gathered. But who could keep from imagining it?

Ironically, perhaps the most powerful video came from 300 miles away, in Washington, where President Barack Obama delivered brief remarks about the tragedy. His somber face, the flat tone of his voice, the tears he daubed from his eyes, and his long, tormented pauses said as much as his heartfelt words. He seemed to speak for everyone who heard them.

But TV had hours to fill.

Children from the school were interviewed. It was a questionable decision for which the networks took heat from media critics and viewers alike. But the decision lay more in the hands of the willing parents (who were present), and there was value in hearing what these tiny witnesses had to say.

“We had to lock our doors so the animal couldn’t get in,” said one little boy, his words painting a haunting picture.

In the absence of much hard information, speculation was a regular fallback. Correspondents and other “experts” persisted in diagnosing the shooter, a man none of them had ever met or even heard of until hours earlier.

CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” scored an interview with a former classmate of Lanza’s — with an emphasis on “former.”

“I really only knew him closely when we were very, very young, in elementary school together,” she said.

Determined to unlock Lanza’s personality, Morgan asked the woman if she “could have ever predicted that he would one day flip and do something as monstrous as this?”

“I don’t know if I could have predicted it,” she replied, struggling to give Morgan what he wanted. “I mean, there was something ‘off’ about him.”

The larger implications of the tragedy were broached throughout the coverage — not least by Obama.

“We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics,” he said, which may have gladdened proponents of stricter gun laws.

But CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes noted, “There’s often an assumption that after a horrific event like this, it will spark a fierce debate on the issue. But in recent years, that hasn’t been the case.”

Appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” Friday night, Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera voiced his own solution.

“I want an armed cop at every school,” he said.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination. More Photos »

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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Connecticut school shooting: 18 children among at least 24 dead

At least one gunman attacked a suburban Connecticut elementary school Friday, killing at least two dozen people, including 18 children, law enforcement sources said.

At a televised news conference from Newtown, Conn., State Police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance refused to give an exact number pending notification of the families. Other reports place the number of dead at 27, including the children.

“There were several fatalities at scene, students and staff,” Vance said. “There will be no other information until families are told.”

PHOTOS: Shooting at Connecticut elementary school

The gunman was dead at the scene, Vance said, adding that there was no longer any danger to the public.

“It’s still an evolving crime scene and it’s just hours old,” Daniel Curtin, a FBI special agent in Connecticut, said. “And it’s obviously very tragic. All we’re saying is that the FBI and our agents have a presence there to assist in any way possible. Because right now it’s a Connecticut state and local investigation at this point. But in times of trial like this we work together.”

Law enforcement sources in Washington said the gunman was in his early 20s and was the father or another relative of one of the children.  He had four or more weapons and was wearing a bulletproof vest.

A weapon was recovered at the scene.

According to sources, the event began with an argument with the principal. Some of the staffers were shot first, then the gunman advanced on a classroom, shooting.

TIMELINE: Deadliest U.S. mass shootings

In Washington, President Obama was briefed on the shooting, spokesman Jay Carney said.

Carney wouldn't say whether the shooting would make gun control a higher priority on the president's agenda, but he said there would be a day for discussion on that policy issue.

“But I don't think today is that day,” he said.

At least three wounded have been taken to a hospital in Danbury, Newtown Mayor Mark D. Boughton confirmed.

“I can’t discuss who they are but some injuries are serious,” Boughton said.

In a statement posted on its website, Danbury Hospital said: “To date, three patients have been transported to Danbury Hospital from the scene.

"Out of abundance of caution and not because of any direct threat our building is under lockdown. This allows us simply to focus on the important work at hand,” the hospital stated.

Officials were still investigating the incident, which began at about 9:40 a.m. EST at the school in Newtown, a town of about 27,000 people.

Within hours, officials were reporting that the gunman was found dead and two handguns were recovered at the scene.

Stephen Delgiadice told reporters that his  8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.

“It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Conn., which we always thought was the safest place in America,” he said.

The superintendent's office said the district had locked down schools in Newtown, about 60 miles from  New York City. Nearby schools also were locked down as a security measure.

michael.muskal@latimes.com

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New <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> Trailer Has More Substance, Also Metallica

So far the clips released for director Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty have been of the voiceover-and-ominous-music variety — little more than a few cuts and a bit of dialog about how “Maya” (Jessica Chastain) is such a great and confident CIA operative.

Finally, we have a bit more to go on. Despite the fact that critics have been talking about Bigelow’s already critics’-award-winning account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden for weeks now, the film hasn’t been seen by common folk. So having this new trailer (above) – chock-full of CIA intrigue and actual bin Laden hunting – gives the average Joe something to go on until the movie is actually in theaters.

Also, for the trained ear, the trailer has a bit of an Easter egg. Maybe. In contrast to the heavy “duh, duh, duuuhh” drone of the music in the first trailers, the track that sneaks up halfway through the clip is the Scala & Kolacny Brothers choir covering Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” was famously used as part of detainee interrogations, but in Zero Dark Thirty the only track used for interrogation is “Pavlov’s Dogs” by the hardcore band Rorschach so maybe this soundtrack is a subtle nod to the forbears? Seems possible.

There are not, however, many glimpses of the much-debated torture scenes in the flick (presumably because they’re not safe for all audiences). But there is much more about the Maya character, who is essentially a catch-all stand-in for the CIA agents who actually tracked down bin Laden. Judging by this brief glimpse, it looks as though she could be one of the toughest women on screen in a year full of tough women.

We’ll find out soon. Zero Dark Thirty will have a limited release on Dec. 19 and hit theaters nationwide Jan. 11.

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“X Factor” judge L.A. Reid quitting TV talent show

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – L.A. Reid, “The X Factor” judge, says he is leaving the TV talent show next season after two years on the panel.

Reid, 56, chairman and chief executive of Epic Records, told “Access Hollywood,” the television program and website, he has decided to leave the Fox reality singing show to return to the record label full time.

“I have decided that I will not return to ‘The X Factor’ next year,” Reid told “Access Hollywood” late Thursday. “I have to go back and I have a company to run that I’ve kind of neglected, and it saddens me a little bit, but only a little bit.”

He added that the show was “a nice break, it was a nice departure from what I’ve done for the past 20 years, but now I gotta go back to work.”

Fox declined to comment on Reid’s departure on Friday.

Reid joined “The X Factor” when Cowell introduced the show in the United States in September 2011. Reid sat alongside Paula Abdul, former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger and Cowell.

Cowell fired Abdul and Scherzinger after a disappointing first season and brought in pop stars Britney Spears and Demi Lovato.

But “The X Factor” audiences have dropped this year to an average 9.7 million from about 12.5 million an episode in 2011.

The show broadcasts a two-part finale next week with the winner earning a $ 5 million prize and record contract.

Epic Records, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, which commands a roster of artists including Avril Lavigne, will sign the winners of “The X Factor.”

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Jeffrey Benkoe)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Paper Links Nerve Agents in ’91 Gulf War and Ailments

Reviving a 20-year debate over illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a new scientific paper presents evidence that nerve agents released by the bombing of Iraqi chemical weapons depots just before the ground war began could have carried downwind and fallen on American troops staged in Saudi Arabia.

The paper, published in the journal Neuroepidemiology, tries to rebut the longstanding Pentagon position, supported by many scientists, that neurotoxins, particularly sarin gas, could not have carried far enough to sicken American forces.

The authors are James J. Tuite and Dr. Robert Haley, who has written several papers asserting links between chemical exposures and gulf war illnesses. They assembled data from meteorological and intelligence reports to support their thesis that American bombs were powerful enough to propel sarin from depots in Muthanna and Falluja high into the atmosphere, where winds whisked it hundreds of miles south to the Saudi border.

Once over the American encampments, the toxic plume could have stalled and fallen back to the surface because of weather conditions, the paper says. Though troops would have been exposed to low levels of the agent, the authors assert that the exposures may have continued for several days, increasing their impact.

Though chemical weapons detectors sounded alarms in those encampments in the days after the January 1991 bombing raids, they were viewed as false by many troops, the authors report.

But a significant number of medical experts have cast doubts on the sarin gas theory over the years, and several said Thursday that the new paper did little to change their minds.

Dr. John Bailar, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago who led a group that studied gulf war illnesses in 1996, said there was still no clear evidence that troops might have been exposed to levels of sarin significant enough to have a biological effect.

Dr. Bailar said that the stress of war rather than chemical agents might be a more likely cause of the veterans’ problems. “Gulf war syndrome is real,” he said, using the term for a constellation of symptoms. “And the veterans who have it deserve appropriate medical care. But we should not kid ourselves about its causes or about the most effective means of treatment.”

Nearly half of the 700,000 service members who were deployed in 1990 and 1991 for the gulf war have filed disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and more than 85 percent of those have been granted benefits, the department has reported.

Many of those veterans have reported long-lasting problems, including chronic pain, memory loss, persistent fatigue and diarrhea, some of which had no clear causes. Many veterans insist that their problems are not the result of stress but have a biological basis.

Paul Sullivan, a gulf war veteran who has advocated for more research into the illnesses, said the new paper provided “overwhelming scientific evidence” that exposure to chemical agents sickened those troops and that the Department of Veterans Affairs should ensure that all receive health care and benefits.

Panels of medical experts have come down on both sides of the issue, with one group in 2000 questioning whether low levels of sarin could cause long-term health problems and another in 2004 concluding that toxic chemicals had caused neurological damage in many troops.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that the postwar demolition of a chemical weapons depot at Kamisiya, in southern Iraq, may have exposed 100,000 troops to nerve gas. But the military has said it was unlikely that nerve gas caused long-term illnesses in troops, a position it reiterated on Thursday.

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European Leaders Back Banking Regulation but Delay Further Measures

BRUSSELS — E.U. leaders pledged Friday to take further steps to set up common banking rules for the bloc. But they delayed plans for a shared budget for the euro zone nations, amid signs of easing pressure on the single currency.

At the end of a two-day summit meeting, the leaders fully endorsed a deal, hashed out early Thursday by E.U. finance ministers, to place the region’s biggest banks under the supervision of the European Central Bank.

The leaders also agreed on the need to put in place by 2014 a central means for shutting down failing euro zone banks. That policy is aimed at stopping banks from accumulating so much debt that they put the finances of states like Ireland and Spain at risk, in turn threatening the future of the single currency.

But the leaders also appeared to take advantage of the relative calm in financial markets to avoid rushing toward any further central integration of banking in the region.

At a news conference Friday at the end of the meeting, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany brushed off suggestions that leaders were complacent. She acknowledged, however, the ongoing difficulties of pushing 27 different nations to adopt similar fiscal and economic systems in the middle of a period of low growth and high unemployment.

“On the one hand, we have accomplished a lot,” she said. “But we also have tough times ahead of us that can’t be solved with one big step.”

Analysts were mostly unimpressed by the results.

“The E.U. summit failed to deliver any big decisions,” Gizem Kara, an analyst with BNP Paribas, wrote in a research note Friday. “Certainly, some countries — Germany, in particular, with its election in September — may want to postpone major decisions as much as possible.”

Pursuing a more integrated banking framework could entail even more difficult negotiations than in the case of the banking supervisor because it implies that nations share some liability for failing lenders in other countries and that they give up some sovereign rights over how those decisions would be made.

As part of efforts to make it acceptable, the E.U. leaders said the resolution system should receive significant funding by banks, in advance. A financial “backstop” to ensure failing banks do not endanger national finances should be “fiscally neutral over the medium term” and ensure that “public assistance is recouped by means of ex post levies on the financial industry,” the leaders said in their formal conclusions.

But other plans, such as for a grander budget for the euro area, would have to wait amid continuing disagreement on what it should be used for.

France has continued to emphasize the need for a budget to counter economic shocks and better manage unemployment. But Germany wants the money mainly available for countries that carry out painful structural reforms.

Leaders agreed to establish a so-called solidarity fund for euro area countries, which would be limited to between €10 billion and €20 billion, or $13 billion and $26 billion. The fund would be linked to countries signing contracts in exchange for carrying out reforms.

“To me it seems rather intelligent to start with a specific fund dedicated to these contracts for employment, growth and competitiveness, more than waiting for an eventual budget for the euro zone that perhaps will never come,” the French president, François Hollande, said during a news conference Friday.

The current atmosphere of calm still could be broken by events in Italy, where the economy is contracting, debt levels are rising and Silvio Berlusconi, the scandal-tainted former prime minister, has threatened to try to reclaim his old office in an election next year.

It remained unclear Friday whether Mr. Berlusconi would run and, if that were to happen, whether he would campaign on promises to reverse reforms put in place by Mario Monti, the current prime minister.

But leaders are aware that the re-emergence of Mr. Berlusconi — who attended a meeting of center-right parties in Brussels on Thursday — could destabilize markets and even rekindle the financial crisis.

Ms. Merkel praised Mr. Monti during a press conference on Friday, but she said it was not her role to endorse him as a potential candidate. “What Mario Monti and his government have done in recent months has greatly contributed to a growing confidence in Italy,” she said.

Ms. Merkel said she would “not interfere as the head of the German government in the question of who is a candidate in Italy and how the elections are structured there.”

Mr. Hollande also said he did not wish to interfere in internal Italian matters, though he did take a swipe at the former prime minister. “I don’t think Berlusconi is all that serious,” Mr. Hollande told journalists in Brussels. “With him, what’s true one day is not necessarily true the next.”

David Jolly contributed reporting from Paris.

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Angels reportedly agree to deal with outfielder Josh Hamilton

One day after General Manager Jerry Dipoto said he didn’t feel like a major move was "imminent, pressing or required," the Angels reportedly made a major move on Thursday.

ESPN Dallas is reporting that highly sought free-agent outfielder Josh Hamilton has informed the Texas Rangers that he's signing with the Angels.

Multiple reports, the first by Joe McDonnell of Fox Sports West, said the Angels have been in “serious” negotiations with Hamilton on a five-year, $125-million deal, a move that would free up the team to use a young outfielder such as Mark Trumbo or Peter Bourjos in a trade for a pitcher.

Among the possible trade targets under such a scenario would be New York Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, who won the 2012 National League Cy Young Award but has been unable to reach an agreement on a contract extension with the club.

Dipoto has said throughout the winter that he was pleased with his position-playing club, which features slugging first base baseman Albert Pujols and star outfielder Mike Trout, but the addition of the left-handed-hitting Hamilton would provide more balance to a predominantly right-handed-hitting lineup.

Hamilton, 31, was the first overall pick in the 1999 draft by the Tampa Bay Rays, but injuries and an addiction to drugs and alcohol derailed his career for several years beginning in 2001, and he was on baseball’s restricted list from 2003 through 2005.

When he finally reached the big leagues in 2007, Hamilton quickly emerged as a star, batting .304 with 32 home runs and 130 runs batted in for the Rangers in 2008 and winning American League most valuable player honors in 2010, when he hit .359 with 32 homers and 100 RBIs.

Hamilton, who was also being pursued by Texas, Seattle and Philadelphia, hit .285 with 43 homers and 128 RBIs this past season, which included a torrid April in which he hit .395 with nine homers and 25 RBIs and a memorable May 8 game in Baltimore, when he became the 16thplayer in major-league history to hit four home runs in a game.

But after hitting .308 with 27 homers and 75 RBIs in the first half, Hamilton cooled considerably in the second half, hitting .259 with 16 homers and 53 RBIs. He also had a career-high 162 strikeouts on the season, and for much of July, August and September, left-handed pitchers often retired him with ease.

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Companies Inch Closer to NASA Contracts for Manned Spaceflight

Three American companies continue their relentless slog forward to develop a spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station. And this week, NASA awarded contracts focused on working toward certification as part of its goal to once again have the capability to launch astronauts from the U.S. into low earth orbit.

The latest contracts for Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SpaceX aim to certify the spacecraft to meet the agency’s safety requirements. All three companies have received previous funding under the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), and according to Phil McAlister, the director of NASA’s Commercial Spaceflight Development Division, the contracts are another step in ending NASA’s reliance on the Russian space program for transporting crews to the ISS.

“NASA and its industry partners are committed to the goal of safely and cost-effectively launching astronauts from home within the next five years,” McAlister said in a statement.

A few of the main safety challenges the companies are facing include launch abort capabilities and creating a spacecraft that can serve as a “safe haven” for the astronauts on board for at least 24 hours. The spacecraft will also have to be able to stay docked to the ISS for at least 210 days.

Both Boeing and SpaceX are developing a more traditional capsule spacecraft design, while Sierra Nevada is developing a lifting body vehicle more comparable to traditional shuttle orbiters.

This latest phase of the CCP will begin in January and continue through mid-2014. All aspects of the space flight are included in the process, ranging from the minutiae of craft itself to mission operations. The open competition will begin in mid-2014 and will include the testing and verifications needed for crewed demonstration flights to the ISS.

Earlier this summer NASA awarded more than $1 billion in funding for the development of the three space-launch systems.

With the demise of the space shuttle and the beginning of the NASA’s invitation for commercially operated services to develop new spacecrafts, the U.S. program has become, well, a bit confusing. And NASA’s love of acronyms has made the programs about as clear as alphabet soup. Both the manned and cargo missions are managed by NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office. And yes, they call it C3PO.

The manned commercial program had seven participants as of last year and has used acronyms including CCP, CCDev2 and CCiCap. That number has now been narrowed down to the three partners participating in these final phases. Though a few companies, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, continue to work on their orbital spacecraft designs.

NASA has also awarded commercial contracts for hauling cargo to the ISS. These contracts are separate from the manned program being developed, and use the acronyms COTS and CRS. SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecrafts, is the only company participating in both the manned and cargo contracts. SpaceX made its first official cargo delivery to the ISS in October, though it was the second time the company had been to the station after a demonstration flight in the spring. Orbital Sciences is the other company awarded a cargo contract and is expected to begin its demonstration flights early next year.

In addition to the two commercial programs NASA will be using to fly people and cargo the ISS, it’s also developing a new manned space program for trips beyond low earth orbit. The Space Launch System will boost the Orion spacecraft for exploration trips to deeper space, and NASA claims the moon and an asteroid are both on the list of destinations for an Orion crew.

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“Lincoln” leads Golden Globe movie nominations

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Lincoln,” the tale of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s battle to end slavery, ruled at the Golden Globe nominations on Thursday, while a very different movie take on slavery – “Django Unchained” – got a big boost in Hollywood’s crowded awards season.

Steven Spielberg’s portrayal of one of America’s most revered presidents won a leading seven nominations, including best drama, best director, best screenplay and best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.

But “Lincoln” faces stiff competition at the Golden Globes from Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage drama “Argo” and Quentin Tarantino‘s dark and quirky slavery-era Western, “Django Unchained.”

The best drama nominees were rounded out by thriller “Zero Dark Thirty” about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, with four mentions, and the shipwreck tale, “Life of Pi,” with three.

The Golden Globe Awards, which will be given out by about 80 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) on January 13, are among the most widely watched honors programs leading up to the Oscars in February, although their ultimate choices for best movie rarely coincide.

‘LINCOLN’ SEEN AS OSCAR FRONTRUNNER

“Lincoln” is already regarded as an Oscar frontrunner after picking up multiple accolades from U.S. critics’ groups and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

Producer Kathleen Kennedy said the film’s portrayal of Lincoln’s battles in Congress to get slavery abolished had struck a chord with Americans at a time of political gridlock in Washington.

“People have become frustrated with the political process, and the movie takes you on a journey that shows the democratic process is difficult but the end result is a very satisfying process…I think that’s what people are excited about after watching ‘Lincoln,’” Kennedy told Reuters on Thursday.

Tarantino’s violent and sometimes comic “Django Unchained,” starring Jamie Foxx, has fared less well – until now.

“This was a huge boost. ‘Django Unchained‘ was very much SAG snubbed. But now they are really back in the game,” Thelma Adams, contributing editor at Yahoo! Movies, told Reuters.

“It’s very gratifying to get this many nominations from the HFPA for a film I worked so hard on and am so passionate about,” Tarantino said in a statement.

Unlike the Academy Awards, the HFPA has separate categories for film dramas and comedies.

“Les Miserables,” the movie version of the worldwide hit stage musical, earned four Golden Globe nominations in the comedy/musical category, as did “Silver Linings Playbook,” about an unlikely romance between a man suffering from bipolar disorder and a young widow.

The stars of both films – Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway for “Les Miserables,” and Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper for “Silver Linings Playbook,” – will be among those competing for acting awards.

FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

“Les Mis” director, Tom Hooper, who failed to get a nomination for his work on the movie, acknowledged the challenge of translating the beloved musical to the big screen.

“Millions of people hold this musical so close to their heart. I had to make a film that honors that experience…and I needed to find a way to work, which is why I chose to do all live singing,” Hooper told Reuters.

The HFPA also opened the door to smaller, sometimes overlooked movies and performances, while largely snubbing high profile contenders such as the James Bond film “Skyfall,” which got just one mention, for Adele’s best original song.

Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” and admired British senior ensemble film, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” were both nominated in the best musical or comedy category.

“They are precious little films that now have to be taken seriously,” said Tom O’Neil of awards website Goldderby.com.

In the acting race, Jessica Chastain’s CIA agent in “Zero Dark Thirty” will square off against Helen Mirren in “Hitchcock,” British actress Rachel Weisz in period drama, “The Deep Blue Sea,” France’s Marion Cotillard for “Rust and Bone,” and Naomi Watts in tsunami survival tale “The Impossible.”

Chastain said that aside from being a true-life thriller, “Zero Dark Thirty” also aimed at asking questions about society.

“To be involved in a movie that does that – the 9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden pretty much defined this decade for us – and to be playing the woman who sacrificed so much to find him is such an honor,” the actress told Reuters.

Day-Lewis’s performance as Lincoln will compete against Denzel Washington’s alcoholic airline pilot in “Flight,” Richard Gere’s role as a corrupt financial executive in “Arbitrage,” John Hawkes as a severely disabled man in “The Sessions,” and Joaquin Phoenix’s drifter in the cult tale, “The Master.”

The Golden Globes also honor the year’s best TV shows. “Game Change,” the HBO film about Sarah Palin’s 2008 bid to become U.S. vice-president, led the nominations with five, followed by post-9/11 psychological thriller, “Homeland,” with four.

(Additional reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Kelsey; Editing by Paul Simao and David Brunnstrom)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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World’s Population Living Longer, New Report Suggests

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases more associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are dramatic: infant mortality has declined by more than half between 1990 and 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

But while developing countries made big strides – the average age of death in Brazil and Paraguay, for example, jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in 1970 – the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. The two years of life they gained was less than in Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years of life and Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organizationfinanced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women in this country formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said.

The World Health Organization issued a statement Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differ substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others are similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries – representing about 15 percent of the world’s population – produce quality cause-of-death data.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which measured disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published Thursday in the Lancet, a British health publication.

The one exception to the trend was sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternal causes of death still account for about 70 percent of all illness. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death there rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared to a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The change means that people are living longer, an outcome that public health experts praised. But it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing noncommunicable diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s not something that medical services can address as easily.”

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Oregon shooter ID'd; he wielded AR-15, sparking chaos -- but why?

The gunman who killed two people and himself in a shooting rampage at an Oregon mall was 22 years old and used a stolen rifle

By Michael Muskal and Andrew Khouri

December 12, 2012, 11:07 a.m.

A young masked man, bent on a mission of destruction and death, entered an Oregon mall and opened fire, turning the holiday shopping season into a chaotic horror that could have been much worse, police officials said Wednesday.

Police identified the shooter as Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, who killed two people and seriously wounded a third before turning a weapon on himself and ending his life Tuesday afternoon, officials said.

The man entered the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland, on Tuesday afternoon. He was wearing a hockey-style mask and a protective vest and began firing with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, stolen from someone the suspect knew, police said. There were also several magazines of ammunition.

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PHOTOS: Deadly shooting at Oregon mall

Police said it was unclear how many shots were fired, but there were estimates of between 10 to 20 shots before Roberts turned the weapon on himself.

Police were still searching for a motive but have ruled out the idea that the shooter was specifically targeting anyone.

“We do not understand the motive of this attack,” Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said at a televised news conference. “There is no apparent relationship between suspect and victims.”

People at the mall helped push shoppers out of the building, according to a variety of videos shot on cellphones by some of the shoppers fleeing. Shoppers, including two emergency room nurses and one physician who happened to be at the mall, provided medical assistance to victims who had been shot, Roberts said.

He praised the 10,000 shoppers “who kept a level head, got themselves out of the mall, got others out. There are a number of heroes,” Roberts told reporters. “There is a whole group of people coming together to make a difference.”

While saying that the deaths and injuries were tragedies, Roberts noted: “We all need to be very thankful that this incident was not much worse.”

It was a typical shopping day some two weeks before Christmas as more than 10,000 people crowded through the stores at the mall with more than 1.4 million square feet of commercial space. It was 3:29 p.m. when the first call went to 911, police said.

TIMELINE: Deadliest U.S. mass shootings

“For all of us, the mall is supposed to be a place where we can take our families, especially during the holiday season,” Roberts said earlier on televised interviews. “Things like this are not supposed to happen.”

Witnesses told reporters of seeing a masked man carrying a long gun through the Macy’s toward the mall’s food court. Austin Patty, 20, who works at Macy's, told the Associated Press. There was a series of rapid-fire shots in short succession as Christmas music played, he said. Patty said he dove for the floor and then later fled.

The mall’s Santa, Brance Wilson, told reporters he was waiting for the next child to ask for Christmas presents when he heard shots ring out and the mall erupted into chaos.

“I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target,” said Wilson, 68.

Families waiting for Santa scattered. More shots followed, and Wilson said he sought better cover.

Witnesses said they heard the gunman yell, “I am the shooter.”

More than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the scene, and at least four local agencies were working on the investigation, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is working to trace the shooter's weapon.

At his news conference, the sheriff said the rapid and large turnout helped keep the body count low by limiting the shooter’s ability to move around.

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Eric Schmidt Says Google Fiber Won't Stop With Kansas City

Kansas City is just the first stop for Google’s ultra-fast Google Fiber broadband network, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said today.

Speaking at The New York Times‘ Dealbook Conference on Wednesday, Schmidt corrected himself after initially referring to the first, and thus far only, Google Fiber network as an experiment.

“It’s actually not an experiment; we’re actually running it as a business,” Schmidt said. He described the influx of bandwidth hungry startups to the parts of Kansas City where the fiber has been laid and hinted at expansion of the service to “hopefully more cities.”

Sadly, Schmidt dodged the all-important question of where. “We’re trying to decide now,” he said.

There will be no lack of places dying to get the service, especially after Netflix just designated Google Fiber the “most consistently fast ISP in America.” The average speed in November of Netflix streaming over Google Fiber was 2.55 megabits per second. Second place was Verizon’s own fiber network at 2.19 megabits per second.

Still, just calling Google Fiber a business doesn’t mean it will be a viable one.

A recent report from Goldman Sachs highlighted by Business Insiderestimated that bringing the service to 50 million homes, or less than half of all U.S. homes, could cost as much as $70 billion. In its most recent quarter, Google had about $45 billion in cash on hand. In other words, Google would need to borrow money to embark on a massive fiber build out.

Is that really the business Google wants to be in? Not likely, at least not at that expense and scale. Google’s bread-and-butter is still its online advertising business, and its nascent content business. But if it turns out Google Fiber helps Google sell more (and more valuable) ads and content, that gives Schmidt’s comments a bit more weight. Google can justify funding a modest expansion of Google Fiber. Will it blanket the nation? Probably not. But just ask those happy Kansas City web heads; there’s always the chance your neighborhood could get lucky.

Michael V. Copeland is a senior editor at WIRED, where he focuses on all things related to the business of technology, but especially making sense of data analytics, where social is going next, and the collision between computer science and biological science. Prior to WIRED he was a senior writer at Fortune Magazine covering everything from electric cars to genomics and the latest in jet-powered surfboards.

Read more by Michael V. Copeland

Follow @MVC on Twitter.

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Why Netflix’s future is in “House of Cards,” “Arrested Development” – not Disney

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Netflix hailed as a “game-changer” its landmark deal last week to bring Disney movies to the streaming service. But while that deal may be significant, it pales in importance next to another looming development – the February debut of its original series “House of Cards.”

The economic benefits of the Disney deal, which gives the company streaming rights to much of Disney‘s catalog and straight-to-DVD movies as well as the exclusive rights to the studio’s new movies from 2016 to 2018, won’t be felt for years.

But the rollout of new, made-for-Netflix shows, which moves the company into a game owned by broadcast and cable – and follows a model set by everyone from HBO to AMC – will be a near-term bellwether of the company’s future success, analysts and observers say.

“You don’t identify a movie you watch on TV with a channel, but you definitely identify an original series with a channel,” Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, told TheWrap. “What Netflix is doing with its original series is getting something exclusive that makes you have to go to Netflix if you want to see it. It’s branding.”

They include the long-awaited rebirth of cult favorite “Arrested Development” and original pieces like Eli Roth’s “Hemlock Grove,” Jenji Kohan’s “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” from director David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey.

Like “Lilyhammer,” all episodes of the shows’ first seasons will be released at once, allowing for binge viewing by Netflix subscribers.

The Disney deal is momentous in that it marks the first time a digital pay-TV distributor has earned exclusive rights to a major studio’s new releases. Both analysts and studio executives say Netflix will pay more than $ 300 million a year for those rights, a startling sum for a company that has minimized the importance of films. Netflix has declined to discuss any figures.

Some analysts argue the Disney deal is a positive development, but one that will not move the needle when it comes to attracting new members.

“Netflix customers will like it when Disney movies show up, but not many people will want to sign up for Netflix because they have 15 new movies a year I want to see,” Pachter said.

That’s why Netflix bankrolled “Arrested Development,” a show canceled by Fox in 2006 that still has a small but loyal audience, one that will assuredly watch the new season on Netflix. That’s also why it has invested in so many new shows from established artists like Kohan, who created “Weeds,” and Roth, a successful horror filmmaker.

While the company’s first foray into original programming – Steven Van Zandt’s “Lilyhammer” – didn’t make much of a splash, the new shows debuting next year look far more promising.

It also has committed a reported $ 100 million for two seasons of “House of Cards,” as well as offering complete creative freedom to Fincher and his team.

The money the streaming service spends on its own shows is a pittance compared to what it shells out in licensing deals, but that original content will distinguish Netflix from competitors in broadcast, like HBO, and in digital, like Amazon.

“Everybody is trying to get their brand to the top of people’s minds, and sometimes that requires a substantial expenditure and doing something different, like original production,” Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming at Katz Television Group, told TheWrap.

More than any of its competitors in the streaming-video market, Netflix is attempting to transform itself into a digitized form of HBO, which began by airing studio movies.

HBO later added lower-cost programming, such as stand-up comedy shows, and eventually original series and films. Showtime, Starz and others soon followed.

Because it is not locked into a schedule, Netflix can host an unlimited amount of programming and owns a wealth of information about its subscribers to tailor its offerings to specific viewers and track their success.

Figuring out just what constitutes a “hit,” however, will be difficult. As it has with previous original shows like “Lilyhammer,” Netflix will not release viewing numbers for its upcoming shows. The company stresses that immediate viewing is less important than developing a loyal following over time.

As for the Disney deal, Netflix already had rights to films from that studio and Sony under an agreement with Starz, which in September 2011 opted not to renew its deal.

“They got something they used to have and had to pay a lot more money for it,” Seth Willenson, a library-valuation expert, producer and former studio executive told TheWrap.

So what changed? Exclusivity.

Disney’s new releases will appear on Netflix during the same window when they would have been showing on an HBO or another pay channel. It also means that new rivals, such as Amazon and Hulu Plus, won’t be getting the latest “Avengers” sequel at the same time – or the upcoming series of new “Star Wars” films.

“The argument is that what they are getting now from Disney will only be on Netflix,” Vasily Karasyov, an analyst with Susquehanna told TheWrap. “What they were getting before was only on Starz. It’s more exclusive. They are trying to do what Starz did in the ’90s and buy up rights and put it on the map.”

At the UBS conference last week in New York, Chief Creative Officer Ted Sarandos teased the possibility of pursuing exclusive deals with more studios as well.

This new attraction to movies represents a change of tune for the Los Altos, Calif.-based company. After all, Netflix has been publicly dismissive in recent months of film’s importance to its service, stressing its viewers’ penchant for binge-watching television shows, like AMC’s “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men.”

About 60 percent of Netflix viewing time is spent on TV, a number that has only grown in recent years. Exclusivity increasingly motivates its decision-making on the TV side as well, which is one reason it allowed its deal with A&E Networks to expire in September, taking shows like “Storage Wars” and “Hoarders” off Netflix.

And nothing is more exclusive than content you fund yourself.

“It wants content unique to its platform,” Karasyov said. “No one says, ‘Come to my website because we have the same stuff everyone else does.’”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age: The Gift of Reading

This is the year of the tablet, David Pogue of The Times has told us, and that may be good news for seniors who open holiday wrappings to find one tucked inside. They see better with tablets’ adjustable type size, new research shows. Reading becomes easier again.

This may seem obvious — find me someone over 40 who doesn’t see better when fonts are larger — but it’s the business of science to test our assumptions.

Dr. Daniel Roth, an eye specialist and clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., offered new evidence of tablets’ potential benefits last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

His findings, based on tests conducted with 66 adults age 50 and over: older people read faster (a mean reading speed of 128 words per minute) when using an iPad, compared to a newspaper with the same 10-point font size (114 words per minute).

When the font was increased to 18 points — easy to do on an iPad — reading speed increased to 137 words per minute.

“If you read more slowly, it’s tedious,” Dr. Roth said, explaining why reading speed is important. “If you can read more fluidly, it’s more comfortable.”

What makes the real difference, Dr. Roth theorizes, is tablets’ illuminated screen, which heightens contrast between words and the background on which they sit.

Contrast sensitivity — the visual ability to differentiate between foreground and background information — becomes poorer as we age, as does the ability to discriminate fine visual detail, notes Dr. Kevin Paterson, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, who recently published a separate study on why older people struggle to read fine print.

“There are several explanations for the loss of sensitivity to fine detail that occurs with older age,” Dr. Paterson explained in an e-mail. “This may be due to greater opacity of the fluid in the eye, which will scatter incoming light and reduce the quality of the projection of light onto the retina. It’s also hypothesized that changes in neural transmission affect the processing of fine visual detail.”

Combine these changes with a greater prevalence of eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy in older adults, and you get millions of people who cannot easily do what they have done all their lives — read and stay connected to the world of ideas, imagination and human experience.

“The No. 1 complaint I get from older patients is that they love to read but can’t, and this really bothers them,” Dr. Roth said. The main option has been magnifying glasses, which many people find cumbersome and inconvenient.

Some words of caution are in order. First, Dr. Roth’s study has not been published yet; it was presented as a poster at the scientific meeting and publicized by the academy, but it has not yet gone through comprehensive, rigorous peer review.

Second, Dr. Roth’s study was completed before the newest wave of tablets from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others became available. The doctor made no attempt to compare different products, with one exception. In the second part of his study, he compared results for the iPad with those for a Kindle. But it was not an apples to apples comparison, because the Kindle did not have a back-lit screen.

This section of his study involved 100 adults age 50 and older who read materials in a book, on an iPad and on the Kindle. Book readers recorded a mean reading speed of 187 words per minute when the font size was set at 12; Kindle readers clocked in at 196 words per minute and iPad readers at 224 words per minute at the same type size. Reading speed improved even more drastically for a subset of adults with the poorest vision.

Again, Apple’s product came out on top, but that should not be taken as evidence that it is superior to other tablets with back-lit screens and adjustable font sizes. Both the eye academy and Dr. Roth assert that they have no financial relationship with Apple. My attempts to get in touch with the company were not successful.

A final cautionary note should be sounded. Some older adults find digital technology baffling and simply do not feel comfortable using it. For them, a tablet may sit on a shelf and get little if any use.

Others, however, find the technology fascinating. If you want to see an example that went viral on YouTube, watch this video from 2010 of Virginia Campbell, then 99 years old, and today still going strong at the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ms. Campbell’s glaucoma made it difficult for her to read, and for her the iPad was a blessing, as she wrote in this tribute quoted in an article in The Oregonian newspaper:

To this technology-ninny it’s clear
In my compromised 100th year,
That to read and to write
Are again within sight
Of this Apple iPad pioneer

Caregivers might be delighted — as Ms. Campbell’s daughter was — by older relatives’ response to this new technology, a potential source of entertainment and engagement for those who can negotiate its demands. Or, they might find that old habits die hard and that their relatives continue to prefer a book or newspaper they can hold in their hands to one that appears on a screen.

Which reading enhancement products have you used, and what experiences have you had?

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'Right-to-work' measure passes in Michigan Legislature

Controversial "right-to-work" legislation covering public-sector employees passed the Michigan House of Representatives on Tuesday, bringing it one step closer to being signed into law.

The House passed the bill, 58 to 51, as union opponents of the measure booed inside the Capitol and an estimated 12,000 people rallied outside. The state's Senate approved the bill last week.

The House is now scheduled to vote on a right-to-work bill for private-sector employees, which would cover Michigan's auto industry. If that measure passes, Michigan would become the 24th right-to-work state, meaning unions cannot require members to pay dues as a condition of employment.

Michigan is the fourth state in the Midwest to become embroiled in labor controversy since 2010, when a slate of Republican governors were swept into statehouses across the nation. The speed with which the right-to-work measure are being passed worries some labor experts, who say that it was once unimaginable that Michigan, where 17.5% of the workforce is unionized, would become a right-to-work state.

"Michigan could prove defining," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at UC Berkeley. "What happens here, given the role of unions historically in Michigan, and the larger political implications of right-to-work, will mean a lot."

But even as the Rev. Jesse Jackson rallied protesters on the steps of Lansing City Hall, labor leaders were hurriedly seeking ways to reverse the legislation down the road.

Michigan can't go the way of Ohio, where a referendum last year reversed legislation that would have restricted collective bargaining. Michigan's right-to-work legislation is attached to an appropriations bill, meaning it can't be reversed by referendum. Also, it may be too risky to wait and go the way of Wisconsin, where litigation continues after a judge struck down parts of a collective bargaining law.

However, in Michigan, there is an option of a "statutory initiative," which would be permitted if opponents of the bills can collect enough signatures to equal 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, union leaders say. A so-called veto referendum could be triggered by collecting signatures equal to 5% of the votes cast.

A statutory initiative would allow voters to cast a ballot on right-to-work legisation in November 2014, when Gov. Rick Snyder, who has said he would support the legislation, will be up for reelection.

"There are multiple options for a referendum," a senior labor leader said Tuesday. "All options are on the table. This fight is far from over."

It’s unclear whether unions are promoting a referendum now to warn Snyder of the repercussions that signing the legislation would have.

Democrats including Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Dingell met with Snyder on Monday to urge him to veto the legislation. The governor promised to "seriously" consider their concerns, but Democrats remained worried that he would sign the bills.

“The governor has a choice: He can put this on the ballot, and let the voters make the determination, or he can jam it through a lame-duck session,” Dingell said Monday.

Snyder, a businessman before he became governor, was elected in 2010 by a landslide, beating his opponent by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. But only 35.5% of respondents said they thought he was doing an "excellent" or "good" job in a Michigan State University survey this fall, and that figure could fall as the controversy continues.

"I think this will pass, and be signed, and there will be a long struggle with the United Auto Workers and other unions,” said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group at the Center for Automotive Research. "They’re going to focus their attentions on overturning this. I don’t think the war has even begun."

ALSO:

Obama blasts right-to-work in Michigan

Ohio votes to overturn new collective bargaining law

Protests re-ignite as Michigan right-to-work bill nears final OK

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Watch Live: Asteroid Toutatis Gives Earth a Cosmically Close Shave

Watch live as the 3-mile-wide asteroid 4179 Toutatis zips by the Earth today during a show from the Slooh Space Camera collaboration starting at noon PT (3 p.m. ET).

Toutatis is a well-known asteroid because it makes a flyby of our planet roughly every four years. The passing is often very near, with the object coming within just 10 million miles of Earth — about four times the distance between our planet and the moon — back in 2004. This year’s flyby will be a more ample yet still cosmically close 37 million miles, or about 18 times the Earth-moon distance. Toutatis was first spotted back in 1934 but then considered lost and only officially discovered in 1989.

Because it comes so close to Earth, Toutatis is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, though this does not imply that it will hit us. The chances of the object smashing into the planet are effectively zero for the next 600 years, but Toutatis has a somewhat chaotic orbit that makes long-term predictions difficult. The asteroid is about half the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. A separate 65-foot asteroid named 2012 XE54, discovered only a few days ago, made a close approach to Earth earlier this morning.

Slooh will be tracking the asteroid from their telescopes in the Canary Islands during the afternoon show. Slooh president Patrick Paolucci will be on hand with Astronomy magazine columnist Bob Berman to discuss the asteroid. The Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Massachusetts will also be providing a live-streaming high-definition video of Toutatis from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. PT (5 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET).

Video: Slooh Space Camera

Adam is a Wired reporter and freelance journalist. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.

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FX orders “Tyrant” from “Homeland” producers

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – FX has ordered the Middle Eastern drama pilot “Tyrant” from “Homeland” producers Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff, as well as “Six Feet Under” and “Lost” producer Craig Wright.

The pilot follows an American family drawn into the troubles of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation. The series, written and created by Raff, was developed by Gordon and Wright. The pilot comes from Gordon’s shingle at 20th Century Fox Television, Teakwood Lane.

Gordon, Raff and Wright are executive producers in association with Keshet Broadcasting. If “Tyrant” becomes a series, Wright will serve as showrunner.

“We are thrilled to bring ‘Tyrant’ to FX,” said Nick Grad, FX’s executive vice president of original programming. “The brilliant and wholly original concept just blew us all away. It’s pretty amazing when you read a script and can instantly imagine it becoming one of the best shows on television. We’re grateful to the producers for choosing to bring it to FX and look forward to continuing our partnership with our friends at Fox 21.”

“‘Tyrant’ is exactly the type of project we aim to do at Fox 21 – working with extremely talented writer/creators to create provocative material with big, breakout characters and themes,” said Bert Salke, president of Fox 21. “This script has excited everyone who’s read it and it’s particularly gratifying to be back working with FX, with whom we have had such a successful partnership on the fantastic ‘Sons of Anarchy.’”

Production is tentatively slated to begin in the spring.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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News Analysis: A Debate on Coated Aspirins and Aspirin Resistance

Millions of Americans take low-dose aspirin every day to prevent heart attacks and strokes. But a study published last week challenges some cherished beliefs about the familiar remedy, leaving some consumers to wonder if they should throw out their coated pills and others concerned that they unnecessarily may be taking expensive substitutes.

The study, published in the journal Circulation, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, tested 400 healthy people for evidence that aspirin did not work in them, a phenomenon called “aspirin resistance.” Aspirin prevents blood platelets from sticking together, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes. Previous studies have estimated that anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of the population is resistant to aspirin’s effects.

But the study essentially found that the condition doesn’t exist: they could not document a single case of true aspirin resistance in their sample. What had appeared to be aspirin resistance, they said, actually was caused by the coating commonly used on aspirin pills intended to protect the stomach. The coating slowed the drug’s absorption into the body.

The study didn’t evaluate whether coated aspirin was less likely to prevent heart attacks or strokes, said Dr. Garret FitzGerald, one of the authors. And people who took the coated aspirin in his study eventually showed a response to it.

But people who seek out coated aspirin may be doing so unnecessarily, he said, especially since previous studies have not consistently shown that the coating even prevents gastric problems.

“There’s no rationale for you to be on coated aspirin,” said Dr. FitzGerald, who is a cardiologist and chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Some cardiologists have begun advising patients to seek out uncoated aspirin because other studies have suggested that the uncoated type may be more effective. But finding it isn’t so easy. Even cheaper store brands, like those sold by CVS and Wal-Mart, come with a so-called enteric coating. One of the few uncoated aspirins on the market is St. Joseph’s chewable variety — the old orange-flavored baby aspirin.

But other experts, like Dr. Steven E. Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, see no real harm in taking coated aspirin, which is cheap and readily available. Many major studies of aspirin have been conducted using the coated variety.

The new study also calls into question the very idea of aspirin resistance. Testing for the condition became more widespread in the early 2000s, as expensive prescription alternatives like the blood thinner Plavix (also called clopidogrel) gained popularity. Many cardiologists suspected that the timing was not a coincidence.

“Before clopidogrel, we had never heard of aspirin resistance,” said Dr. Sanjay Kaul, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “It seemed to be that this was driven mostly by marketing considerations.” The new study raises the possibility that many patients may have been falsely told that aspirin doesn’t work on them, Dr. Kaul and other experts said.

The University of Pennsylvania study was partially financed by Bayer, the world’s largest manufacturer of branded aspirin, much of which is coated. In a statement, Bayer challenged some of the study’s conclusions and methods, and also said there was evidence that the enteric coating can reduce gastric side effects.

Critics of Dr. FitzGerald’s study also argue that he should have studied aspirin resistance in patients with conditions like heart disease, rather than in healthy people.

But even these critics acknowledge that testing for resistance is probably not worthwhile. Dr. Nissen, who is critical of Dr. FitzGerald’s study, doesn’t test his patients for aspirin resistance. But he said he would be reluctant to switch a patient from another drug back to aspirin now if a test had previously shown they were aspirin-resistant. Changing treatments is always risky, he said.

“If the patient is not bleeding, is not having a complication, am I going to take it away?” Dr. Nissen wondered. “That’s the dilemma we face.”

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