The 20 Most-Shared Ads of 2012












1. Kony 2012 (Invisible Children)



Most Americans had never heard of Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, before. This March video from advocacy group Invisible Children changed that.












Click here to view this gallery.


[More from Mashable: The 12 Most Memorable Marketing Campaigns of 2012]


Is Kony 2012 an ad? If so, it was the most-viral ad of the year. If not, it was just an extremely effective advocacy video and a Belgian video for cable network TNT was actually the most-viral ad of 2012.


Unruly, which keeps tabs on viral video activity, thinks Kony is, so it tops this year’s list. Indeed, Kony’s numbers are pretty staggering — 10 million shares and 94 million views on YouTube make it the Gangnam Style of charity videos. Not bad for a 30-minute film that doesn’t have a cat in sight and doesn’t introduce a new dance move.


[More from Mashable: 14 Bizarrely Awesome Rap Cover Videos]


Speaking of which, there are two tributes to Carly Rae Jepsen‘s “Call Me Maybe” on this list. There are also a few examples of borrowed equity, including Hobbit director Peter Jackson (for Air New Zealand), OK Go (Chevrolet), James Bond (Coke Zero) and various European soccer stars for Nike. There are also viral ad stalwarts Ken Block and GoPro. As usual, though, there are a lot of surprises. Who would have guessed, for instance, that a public service announcement for Melbourne Metro (as in Melbourne, Australia), would rack up 30 million views in less than a month?


This story originally published on Mashable here.


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie's Wedding Will Be 'All About Family'



Brad Pitt recently told PEOPLE he has a "good feeling" his wedding with Angelina Jolie will happen "soon."

"One thing for sure, he says it's going to be all about family: a simple affair with Angie and the kids," PEOPLE senior writer Jennifer Garcia says, adding that the official "I do" date is still being kept a secret.

But a "jovial" Pitt, who was "in a great mood throughout the interview" (which is this week's revealing cover story) shared other personal details aside from just his upcoming walk down the aisle.

Garcia says that the Killing Them Softly star "talked to PEOPLE about a range of topics – everything from the kids and the holidays, to politics." Not to mention his thoughts on turning the big 5-0.

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Psychiatrists OK vast changes to diagnosis manual

CHICAGO (AP) — For the first time in almost two decades the nation's psychiatrists are changing the guidebook they use to diagnose mental disorders. Among the most controversial proposed changes: Dropping certain familiar terms like Asperger's disorder and dyslexia and calling frequent, severe temper tantrums a mental illness.

The board of trustees for the American Psychiatric Association voted Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., on scores of revisions that have been in the works for several years. Details will come next May when the group's fifth diagnostic manual is published.

The trustees made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several task force groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses.

Board members were tightlipped about the update, but its impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide.

The manual "defines what constellations of symptoms health care professionals recognize as mental disorders and more importantly ... shapes who will receive what treatment. Even seemingly subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care," said Dr. Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor who was not involved in the revision process.

The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education.

The guidebook's official title is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The new one is the fifth edition, known as the DSM-5. A 2000 edition made minor changes but the last major edition was published in 1994.

The manual "seeks to capture the current state of knowledge of psychiatric disorders. Since 2000 ... there have been important advances in our understanding of the nature of psychiatric disorders," Olfson said.

Expected changes include formally adopting a term for children and adults with autism — "autism spectrum disorder," encompassing those with severe autism, who often don't talk or interact, and those with mild forms including Asperger's. Asperger's patients often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on quirky subjects but lack social skills.

Some Asperger's families opposed the change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services. And some older Asperger's patients who embrace their quirkiness vowed to continue to use the label.

But experts say the change won't affect the special services available to this group.

Catherine Lord, an autism expert at Weill Cornell Medical College who was on the psychiatric group's autism task force, said anyone who met criteria for Asperger's in the old manual would be included in the recommended new diagnosis.

One reason for the recommended change is that in some states and some school systems, children and adults with Asperger's receive no services or fewer services than those given an autism diagnosis, she said.

Other proposed changes include:

—A new diagnosis — disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, which critics argued would medicalize kids' normal temper tantrums. Supporters said it would address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings from feeling sad and depressed to unusually happy or energetic. Affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums. The new diagnosis would be given to children and adults who can't control their emotions and have frequent temper outbursts in inappropriate situations.

—Eliminating the term "dyslexia," a reading disorder that causes difficulty understanding letters and recognizing written words. The term would be encompassed in a broader learning disorder category.

—Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender — they dispute their normal biological anatomy. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

___

Online:

Diagnostic manual: http://www.dsm5.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Cliff fight may knock out December rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In normal times, next week's slew of U.S. economic data could be a springboard for a December rally in the stock market.


December is historically a strong month for markets. The S&P 500 has risen 16 times in the past 20 years during the month.


But the market hasn't been operating under normal circumstances since November 7 when a day after the U.S. election, investors' focus shifted squarely to the looming "fiscal cliff."


Investors are increasingly nervous about the ability of lawmakers to undo the $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that are set to begin in January; those changes, if they go into effect, could send the U.S. economy into a recession.


A string of economic indicators next week, which includes a key reading of the manufacturing sector on Monday, culminates with the November jobs report on Friday.


But the impact of those economic reports could be muted. Distortions in the data caused by Superstorm Sandy are discounted.


The spotlight will be more firmly on signs from Washington that politicians can settle their differences on how to avoid the fiscal cliff.


"We have a week with a lot of economic data, and obviously most of the economic data is going to reflect the effects of Sandy, and that might be a little bit negative for the market next week, but most of that is already expected - the main focus remains the fiscal cliff," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.


Concerns about the cliff sent the S&P 500 <.spx> into a two-week decline after the elections, dropping as much as 5.3 percent, only to rally back nearly 4 percent as the initial tone of talks offered hope that a compromise could be reached and investors snapped up stocks that were viewed as undervalued.


On Wednesday, the S&P 500 gained more than 20 points from its intraday low after House Speaker John Boehner said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avoid big spending cuts and tax hikes could be worked out. The next day, more pessimistic comments from Boehner, an Ohio Republican, briefly wiped out the day's gains in stocks.


On Friday, the sharp divide between the Democrats and the Republicans on taxes and spending was evident in comments from President Barack Obama, who favors raising taxes on the wealthy, and Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, who said Obama's plan was the wrong approach and declared that the talks had reached a stalemate.


"It's unusual to end up with one variable in this industry, it's unusual to have a single bullet that is the causal factor effect, and you are sitting here for the next maybe two weeks or more, on that kind of condition," said Sandy Lincoln, chief market strategist at BMO Asset Management U.S. in Chicago.


"And that is what is grabbing the markets."


BE CONTRARY AND MAKE MERRY


But investor attitudes and seasonality could also help spur a rally for the final month of the year.


The most recent survey by the American Association of Individual Investors reflected investor caution about the cliff. Although bullish sentiment rose above 40 percent for the first time since August 23, bearish sentiment remained above its historical average of 30.5 percent for the 14th straight week.


December is a critical month for retailers such as Target Corp and Macy's Inc . They saw monthly retail sales results dented by Sandy, although the start of the holiday shopping season fared better.


With consumer spending making up roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy, a solid showing for retailers during the holiday season could help fuel any gains.


Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, believes the recent drop after the election could be a market bottom, with sentiment leaving stocks poised for a December rally.


"The concerns on the fiscal cliff - as valid as they might be - could be overblown. When you look at a lot of the overriding sentiment, that has gotten extremely negative," said Detrick.


"From that contrarian point of view with the historically bullish time frame of December, we once again could be setting ourselves up for a pretty nice end-of-year rally, based on lowered expectations."


SOME FEEL THE BIG CHILL


Others view the fiscal cliff as such an unusual event that any historical comparisons should be thrown out the window, with a rally unlikely because of a lack of confidence in Washington to reach an agreement and the economic hit caused by Sandy.


"History doesn't matter. You're dealing with an extraordinary set of circumstances that could very well end up in the U.S. economy going into a recession," said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors in New York.


"And the likelihood of that is exclusively in the hands of our elected officials in Washington. They could absolutely drag us into a completely voluntary recession."


(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: charles.mikolajczak(at)thomsonreuters.com )


(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)


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Opinion: In Brazil, Poverty Is Deadly for Police Officers


Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Brazilian mounted military police officers patrolled the streets in a shantytown in São Paulo, Brazil, last month.







SÃO PAULO, Brazil

ON the evening of Saturday, Nov. 3, Marta Umbelina da Silva, a military police officer here and a single mother of three, was shot in front of her 11-year-old daughter outside their house in Brasilândia, a poor community on the north side of the city. Records show that Ms. da Silva, 44, had never arrested anyone in her 15-year career. Instead, she was one of hundreds of low-level staffers, who mostly handled internal paperwork.




São Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, continues to descend into a violent blood feud between the police and an organized crime group, the First Command of the Capital, known by its Portuguese initials P.C.C. In 2012, 94 police officers have been killed in the city — twice as many as in all of 2011. Between July and September, on-duty police officers killed 119 people in the metropolitan area. In the first three days of November, 31 people were murdered in the city. These statistics conceal a deeper story about Latin American cities, their police forces and the war on drugs.


Ms. da Silva’s only mistake was that she lived in a poor community. And as a police officer, she was not alone. Almost all killings of São Paulo police officers in 2012 happened while they were off duty. The killings have been concentrated in poorer parts of the city, often occurring on officers’ doorsteps. The dead tended to be known in their communities and lived in neighborhoods controlled by organized crime, far from the protection afforded in wealthy parts of the city.


In cities like São Paulo, poorly paid police officers often live cheek by jowl with members of organized crime in sprawling urban peripheries that have been neglected by the government. They are often assigned to work in areas far from their homes. While on duty, they are well protected, but when off duty, they have virtually no security.


In the 1990s, criminal groups like the P.C.C. emerged from violent prisons and began competing for urban turf. Lax control of firearms, porous borders and a lucrative drug trade made the situation worse.


“We played soccer together growing up,” a police officer named Andre recently told me of local drug dealers, “but I managed to go down the right path.” Andre grew up in Jardim Ângela, a neighborhood in São Paulo that was once named the most dangerous on earth by the United Nations.


His childhood resembled that of many poor kids. He lived in a house built by his migrant grandparents and went to a public school. As a teenager, he evaded rival drug gangs as well as the roving extermination squads of off-duty police officers. Common in many Brazilian cities, these anti-crime squads range from local vigilantes to paramilitary groups known as militias.


Andre recently had to flee Jardim Ângela after gang members thought he had ratted them out. Now, in order to live in relative anonymity in another part of the city, he must moonlight working three or four other jobs.


Many current police officers were childhood friends and schoolmates of today’s organized crime members. Officers often have family members who are married to criminals and sometimes they still live next door or across the street from one another. Brazil’s police entry exams sort recruits by levels of education, and create barriers to career advancement and economic mobility. Without leaving work to study for several years there is no way to climb the professional ladder in Brazil’s police force.


WITH few ways out of poor communities, police officers find other ways to get by. Some leave their guns and badges at the station to avoid being identified as police. Others assume different identities in their neighborhoods — as history teachers, taxi drivers or private security guards — or fly under the radar of criminal groups by not socializing at all. And there are corrupt officers on the payroll of organized crime groups as well as those who choose to become vigilantes.


In June, before the current crisis, one police officer told me that coexisting with the P.C.C. had the deterrence dynamics of a cold war and the real-life consequences of mutually assured destruction.


Although they try, political leaders cannot avoid responsibility. The state’s governor, Geraldo Alckmin, has seen such violence before. Mr. Alckmin ruled the state before a series of P.C.C. attacks in 2006. And while he has raised police wages modestly in recent years, he has done little to alleviate the exposure of low-level officers.


There is a huge gulf between what policy makers think should happen and the consequences of their actions for police officers in poor areas. Indeed, vowing to beat gangs into submission, as Mr. Alckmin has promised, stokes the fires of retaliation. His recent claim that “Anyone that hasn’t resisted arrest is alive,” a phrase also used by a former governor to describe the 1992 massacre of 111 inmates at Carandiru prison, has inflamed the P.C.C., sent the body count soaring and returned São Paulo to an era of repressive policing. And the victims are often the closest and easiest targets — people like Ms. da Silva.


Police officers cannot live up to the public’s expectations when they are preoccupied with hiding their own identities. Approaches to public security need to reflect this reality. Increasing wages and removing career barriers would be helpful. Ultimately though, Brazil and other Latin American governments must find ways to make police officers more valued and respected in their own communities by presenting a more sympathetic image of the police force. One possible way is to have them deliver other respected community services as a second or third job.


Last week’s announcement that the São Paulo public security secretary and the region’s two police chiefs had been fired is promising. Openness to new ideas and a cold reckoning with the system’s shortcomings are desperately needed.


Indeed, without a new outlook, the violence may never truly subside.


Graham Denyer Willis is a doctoral candidate in urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.



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Jelly Bean update for DROID RAZR HD and MAXX HD set to roll out next week












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Powerball Winners Want to Go to the Beach, Set Up Scholarships with $300 Million















11/30/2012 at 04:35 PM EST







Cindy and Mark Hill


David Eulitt/Kansas City Star/Landov


Just in time for the holiday season the Hill family of Dearborn, Mo., got quite the gift: nearly $300 million, after winning half of the $587.5 million Powerball jackpot.

"We're still stunned by what's happened," Cindy Hill, 51, said during a press conference Friday alongside her family, according to an NBC News report. "People keep asking us, 'What are you going to buy with it?' I just want to go home and be back to normal."

Hill, who was an office manager until she was laid off in 2010, and her husband Mark, a mechanic, have three adult sons and a daughter, Jaiden, 6, whom they adopted from China.

On their list of possible purchases since their record win: a beach vacation for Jaiden (who has never visited the beach) and a red Camaro for Mark. The family has also spoken about possibly adopting again and setting up college funds for their extended family members, as well as a scholarship fund at their local high school.

As for their winning ticket, Cindy said she checked on Thursday morning after learning that one winning ticket was sold in Missouri.

"I didn't have my glasses, and I was thinking, is that the right number?" Cindy, who had bought five tickets, said, according to NBC.

The other winning ticket was sold in Arizona, and no winner has claimed the prize yet. On Thursday, however, a man in Upper Marlboro, Md., went into a gas station to check a handful of tickets (watch the CCTV video), reportedly presenting a ticket with the winning numbers (5-23-16-22-29-Powerball 6), CNN reports.

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Kenya village pairs AIDS orphans with grandparents

NYUMBANI, Kenya (AP) — There are no middle-aged people in Nyumbani. They all died years ago, before this village of hope in Kenya began. Only the young and old live here.


Nyumbani was born of the AIDS crisis. The 938 children here all saw their parents die. The 97 grandparents — eight grandfathers among them — saw their middle-aged children die. But put together, the bookend generations take care of one another.


Saturday is World AIDS Day, but the executive director of the aid group Nyumbani, which oversees the village of the same name, hates the name which is given to the day because for her the word AIDS is so freighted with doom and death. These days, it doesn't necessarily mean a death sentence. Millions live with the virus with the help of anti-retroviral drugs, or ARVs. And the village she runs is an example of that.


"AIDS is not a word that we should be using. At the beginning when we came up against HIV, it was a terminal disease and people were presenting at the last phase, which we call AIDS," said Sister Mary Owens. "There is no known limit to the lifespan now so that word AIDS should not be used. So I hate World AIDS Day, follow? Because we have moved beyond talking about AIDS, the terminal stage. None of our children are in the terminal stage."


In the village, each grandparent is charged with caring for about a dozen "grandchildren," one or two of whom will be biological family. That responsibility has been a life-changer for Janet Kitheka, who lost one daughter to AIDS in 2003. Another daughter died from cancer in 2004. A son died in a tree-cutting accident in 2006 and the 63-year-old lost two grandchildren in 2007, including one from AIDS.


"When I came here I was released from the grief because I am always busy instead of thinking about the dead," said Kitheka. "Now I am thinking about building a new house with 12 children. They are orphans. I said to myself, 'Think about the living ones now.' I'm very happy because of the children."


As she walks around Nyumbani, which is three hours' drive east of Nairobi, 73-year-old Sister Mary is greeted like a rock star by little girls in matching colorful school uniforms. Children run and play, and sleep in bunk beds inside mud-brick homes. High schoolers study carpentry or tailoring. But before 2006, this village did not exist, not until a Catholic charity petitioned the Kenyan government for land on which to house orphans.


Everyone here has been touched by HIV or AIDS. But only 80 children have HIV and thanks to anti-retroviral drugs, none of them has AIDS.


"They can dream their dreams and live a long life," Owens said.


Nyumbani relies heavily on U.S. funds but it is aiming to be self-sustaining.


The kids' bunk beds are made in the technical school's shop. A small aquaponics project is trying to grow edible fish. The mud bricks are made on site. Each grandparent has a plot of land for farming.


The biggest chunk of aid comes from the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has given the village $2.5 million since 2006. A British couple gives $50,000 a year. A tree-growing project in the village begun by an American, John Noel, now stands six years from its first harvest. Some 120,000 trees have already been planted and thousands more were being planted last week.


"My wife and I got married as teenagers and started out being very poor. Lived in a trailer. And we found out what it was like to be in a situation where you can't support yourself," he said. "As an entrepreneur I looked to my enterprise skills to see what we could do to sustain the village forever, because we are in our 60s and we wanted to make sure that the thousand babies and children, all the little ones, were taken care of."


He hopes that after a decade the timber profits from the trees will make the village totally self-sustaining.


But while the future is looking brighter, the losses the orphans' suffered can resurface, particularly when class lessons are about family or medicine, said Winnie Joseph, the deputy headmaster at the village's elementary school. Kitheka says she tries to teach the kids how to love one another and how to cook and clean. But older kids sometimes will threaten to hit her after accusing her of favoring her biological grandchildren, she said.


For the most part, though, the children in Nyumbani appear to know how lucky they are, having landed in a village where they are cared for. An estimated 23.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV as of 2011, representing 69 percent of the global HIV population, according to UNAIDS. Eastern and southern Africa are the hardest-hit regions. Millions of people — many of them parents — have died.


Kitheka noted that children just outside the village frequently go to bed hungry. And ARVs are harder to come by outside the village. The World Health Organization says about 61 percent of Kenyans with HIV are covered by ARVs across the country.


Paul Lgina, 14, contrasted the difference between life in Nyumbani, which in Swahili means simply "home," and his earlier life.


"In the village I get support. At my mother's home I did not have enough food, and I had to go to the river to fetch water," said Lina, who, like all the children in the village, has neither a mother or a father.


When Sister Mary first began caring for AIDS orphans in the early 1990s, she said her group was often told not to bother.


"At the beginning nobody knew what to do with them. In 1992 we were told these children are going to die anyway," she said. "But that wasn't our spirit. Today, kids we were told would die have graduated from high school."


___


On the Internet:


http://www.trees4children.org/

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Wall Street ends flat as "fiscal cliff" focus lingers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 wrapped up its fifth positive month in the last six on Friday, although it ended the day flat as politicians remain at odds about how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.


Trading has been choppy in the last two weeks as investors react to statements from policymakers on the state of discussions on how to avert a series of tax hikes and spending cuts that could pull the economy back into recession.


The S&P 500 was up 0.29 percent in November even as it suffered a slide of more than 6 percent from the month's high to its low.


"Given the 'on again, off again' fiscal cliff (negotiations), it's rather surprising how resilient this market has been," said David Rolfe, chief investment officer at St. Louis-based Wedgewood Partners.


"Between now and the end of the year, there's going to be an information vacuum outside the fiscal cliff, and I believe that resiliency will be tested."


In contrast to the apparent calm in equities, the CBOE Volatility Index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, jumped 5.4 percent, its largest daily gain in two weeks.


The VIX also rose for the week, but posted a whopping 14.7 percent decline for November.


On Friday, President Barack Obama accused a "handful of Republicans" in the U.S. House of Representatives of holding up legislation to extend tax cuts for middle-class Americans in order to try to preserve them for the wealthy.


Speaking shortly after the president, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said: "There is a stalemate; let's not kid ourselves."


Despite the divisive language, many market participants are betting that a deal will be struck - if only at the eleventh hour.


Corporations continue to react to what is expected to be a harsher tax regime next year. Whole Foods Market was the latest to announce a special cash dividend - of $2.00 per share in this case - ahead of expected higher tax rates in 2013.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 3.76 points, or 0.03 percent, to 13,025.58 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained a mere 0.23 of a point, or 0.02 percent, to finish at 1,416.18. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dipped 1.79 points, or 0.06 percent, to end at 3,010.24.


For the month of November, the S&P 500 rose 0.29 percent, its smallest monthly variation since March 2011. The Dow fell 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq gained 1.1 percent.


For the week, though, all three major U.S. stock indexes advanced, with the Dow up 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 up 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq up 1.5 percent.


VeriSign shares dropped 13.2 percent to $34.15 after the company said the U.S. Department of Commerce approved its agreement with ICANN to run the .com internet registry, but VeriSign won't be able to raise prices as it did before.


Yum Brands slid 9.9 percent to $67.08 a day after the parent of the KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut chains said it expects a drop in fourth-quarter sales at established restaurants in China.


After a close relationship for several years, Facebook and Zynga revised terms of a partnership agreement, according to regulatory filings on Thursday. Under the new pact, Zynga, creator of the "Farmville" game, will have limited ability to promote its site on Facebook.


Zynga's stock fell 6.1 percent to $2.46. Facebook's stock gained 2.5 percent to $28.


Apple Inc's latest iPhone received final clearance from Chinese regulators, paving the way for a December debut in a highly competitive market where the lack of a new model had severely eroded its share of product sales. Apple's stock fell 0.7 percent to $585.28.


The markets' reaction to data on Friday was muted.


U.S. consumer spending fell in October for the first time in five months and income growth stalled, leading some economists to cut already weak estimates of fourth-quarter economic growth.


Slightly more than 7 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, more than the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares and the largest in two weeks.


On the NYSE, roughly six issues rose for every five that fell, while on Nasdaq, the ratio was nearly 1 to 1.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)


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Demographic Shifts Redefine Society in South Korea


Woohae Cho for the International Herald Tribune


Assemblywoman Jasmine Lee of South Korea attended a joint wedding for 20 multicultural couples in Seoul.










SEOUL, South Korea — Jasmine Lee realizes just how Korean she’s become when she breaks out in the language, forgetting that her Filipino mother on the other end of the phone can’t understand her. But she is reminded of the limits of assimilation when Koreans, impressed by her fluency, comment: “You sound more Korean than Koreans do.”




Ms. Lee, 35, who was born Jasmine Bacurnay in the Philippines, made history in April when she became the first naturalized citizen — and the first non-ethnic Korean — to win a seat in South Korea’s National Assembly. Her election reflected one of the most significant demographic shifts in the country’s modern history, a change Ms. Lee says “Koreans understand with their brain, but have yet to embrace with their heart.”


Only a decade ago, school textbooks still urged South Koreans to take pride in being of “one blood” and ethnically homogeneous. Now, the country is facing the prospect of becoming a multiethnic society. While the foreign-born population is still small compared with countries with a tradition of immigration, it’s enough to challenge how South Koreans see themselves.


“It’s time to redefine a Korean,” said Kim Yi-seon, chief researcher on multiculturalism at the government-financed Korean Women’s Development Institute. “Traditionally, a Korean meant someone born to Korean parents in Korea, who speaks Korean and has Korean looks and nationality. People don’t think someone is a Korean just because he has a Korean citizenship.”


Among the factors driving this development is the influx of women from Southeast Asia who have come to marry rural South Korean men who have difficulty attracting Korean women willing to embrace country life. The number of marriage migrants grew to 211,000 last year from 127,000 in 2007, most of them women from Vietnam and other poorer Asian countries drawn to a better life in South Korea.


In industrial towns, young men from Bangladesh and Pakistan toil at jobs shunned by Koreans as too dirty and dangerous, providing cheap labor that South Korea’s export-driven economy needs to compete with China. The number of such workers almost doubled to 553,000 last year from 260,000 in 2007 — not counting those who overstay their visas and work illegally.


One of every 10 marriages in South Korea now involves a foreign spouse. Although overall numbers of schoolchildren in South Korea have been declining — to 6.7 million this year from 7.7 million in 2007 — as a result of one of the world’s lowest birth rates, the number of multiethnic students has been climbing by 6,000 a year in the same period.


“A multicultural society is not just coming; it’s already here,” Ms. Lee, a member of the governing Saenuri Party, said in an interview at her office in the National Assembly.


Still, her election exposed how far South Korea remains from that ideal, suggesting a rough road ahead as it grapples with the demographic changes.


After Ms. Lee’s election, anti-immigration activists warned that “poisonous weeds” from abroad were “corrupting the Korean bloodline” and “exterminating the Korean nation” and urged political parties to “purify” themselves by expelling Ms. Lee from the National Assembly.


Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik has condemned such xenophobic outbursts as “pathological,” and he urged South Koreans to take the transition to a multicultural society “not as a choice, but as an imperative.”


The role of ethnicity in South Koreans’ self-image explains why they take such pride in the success of ethnic Koreans abroad, like the new president of the World Bank, the Korean-American Jim Yong Kim. It also explains why they considered it a national shame that a Korean-born American resident,  Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 in a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in 2007 before killing himself, even though he had emigrated with his family when he was 8.


Given this cultural backdrop, Korean policy makers face a difficult task integrating multiethnic families while avoiding the social and economic turmoil often blamed on immigrants elsewhere.


“They bring religious and ethnic strife to our country, where we had none before,” said Kim Ky-baek, publisher of the nationalist Web site Minjokcorea and a critic of the government’s policy of admitting and providing social benefits to foreign-born brides and migrant workers. “They create an obstacle to national unification. North Korea adheres to pure-blood nationalism, while the South is turning into a hodgepodge of mixed blood.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 29, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Seung-Hui Cho. He was a permanent resident of the United States, but not a citizen.



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Sony sells over half a million PlayStation 3 consoles over Black Friday week












Both Microsoft (MSFT) and Nintendo (NTDOY) had a big week of console sales during Black Friday’s week of shopping madness in the U.S. So how did Sony (SNE) do in comparison? Sony Computer Entertainment of America president and CEO Jack Tretton announced on Thursday that the company sold 525,000 PlayStation 3 consoles and 160,000 PS Vita handhelds during the Black Friday week. Overall PlayStation sales of hardware, software and accessories are up 9% over the same period last year. Tretton was also happy to reveal that subscriptions to its PlayStation Plus grew 259% since last year with customer satisfaction flying high at 95% after Sony added the Instant Game Collection to the service earlier this year.


Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PS Vita sales were largely bolstered by $ 199.99 bundles packaged with free games that the company pushed to retails on Black Friday. The sell-out of the bundles within minutes at retailers such as Amazon (AMZN) is a good indicator that there is huge demand for a sub-$ 200 PlayStation 3. Currently, the lowest-priced PS3 is a second-gen 160GB slim model with an MSRP of $ 249.99. The redesigned third-gen PS3s start at $ 269.99 with a 250GB hard drive.












In terms of which home console did the best over Black Friday, it looks like the Xbox 360′s 750,000 consoles took first place, while Sony came in second with 525,000 PS3s and Nintendo came in third with 400,000 Wii U systems.


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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Stephen Fishbach Blogs: Abi-Maria Gomes Has 'Subtlety of a Wounded Walrus' on Survivor






Survivor










11/29/2012 at 04:45 PM EST







Abi-Maria Gomes (left) and Lisa Whelchel


Monty Brinton/CBS (2)


Stephen Fishbach was the runner-up on Survivor: Tocantins and has been blogging about Survivor strategy for PEOPLE.com since 2009. Follow him on Twitter @stephenfishbach.

"You need to pick one side or the other. You can't keep flipping."
– Amanda Kimmel, Survivor: Micronesia

Hey guys – I have a secret. It's a really, really big secret. You'll never discover it. Not even if you follow me around all day. Look – just follow me a little. Please? For your sake. This secret is frickin' huge. It's going to change everything.

Okay, here's a hint. Starts I. Ends with DOL.

It's an immunity idol, alright?! And I have this secret paper here, which proves it. But I'm going to rip it up into little pieces. Because it's soooo secret.

Poor Abi. Is there anything more heartbreaking in this broken world than someone pretending that they have a secret? The dreamy Malcolm said it best on Survivor: she's like a wounded ex-girlfriend.

As much as Abi is playing at strategy, she really craves attention. Everyone wants to feel wanted. Who hasn't done the whole "I have a secret immunity idol in my pocket, so you'd better be my friend" trick?

Abi's "hints" reminded me of Heroes vs. Villains, when Amanda "hinted" to Parvati about 18 times that she was a target. At the time, I said that Amanda "clobbered Parvati with the Amanda bat."

Okay, so she has the subtlety of a wounded walrus. Nevertheless, Abi wins her first Fishy Award for showing impressive discipline at the food auction. While Denise and Skupin blow their cash on cheap carbs, Abi saves up for that special something. She buys a valuable advantage in the immunity challenge, and wins three more days on the island. In Survivor, three days can change everything.

On Wednesday's episode, Abi also lost her title as the season's most annoying player. Lisa Whelchel turned in another weepy, woe-is-me performance – and let me be the first to say, "Enough!" I threw up a little in my mouth when Lisa went sobbing to Penner ... that she had to vote out Penner. Tears might win you Emmys, Lisa, but on Survivor they only win you enemies.

She's even starting to repeat the same lines. Did you notice she trotted out her old remark about how "Survivor is bigger than I am?" I get that she was a sitcom star, but that doesn't mean she needs a catch phrase. Moreover, the remark basically makes no sense, since Survivor is an abstract concept and Lisa is a physical being. It's just a lazy excuse for not having the will to play the game.

The real victim of Lisa's hemming and hawing is poor Jonathan Penner. With only a couple episodes left, I already miss the lovable goon. What makes Penner such a great player is that, at every moment, he's willing to do whatever it takes to advance himself.

He makes mistakes; he misjudges people's motivations; he fails to make alliances when he needs to most. But he is always scheming, always evaluating. He is always ready to completely rewrite the rulebook of the entire game, so long as it advances Jonathan Penner one space further on the board.

And he always engages his fellow contestants. I loved Penner's brief conversation with Abi after the auction. Abi was feeling petulant and abused. Penner didn't placate her, but by simply representing his intentions, he managed to foster a bond with the outcast Brazilian.

I can't think of many contestants who are better talkers than Penner. Even when he's making mistakes and uttering nonsense, he sounds brilliant.

And is there any more perfect summation of the experience of Survivor than Penner's closing remarks? "It's been fun – and extremely painful," he says. I'm sorry for his pain, but watching him has been a real pleasure.

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Clinton releases road map for AIDS-free generation

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic over the next three to five years.

"An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ordered the blueprint, said in the report.

"Make no mistake about it, HIV may well be with us into the future but the disease that it causes need not be," she said at the State Department Thursday.

President Barack Obama echoed that promise.

"We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end," Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.

Some 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and despite a decline in new infections over the last decade, 2.5 million people were infected last year.

Given those staggering figures, what does an AIDS-free generation mean? That virtually no babies are born infected, young people have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and that people who already have HIV would receive life-saving treatment.

That last step is key: Treating people early in their infection, before they get sick, not only helps them survive but also dramatically cuts the chances that they'll infect others. Yet only about 8 million HIV patients in developing countries are getting treatment. The United Nations aims to have 15 million treated by 2015.

Other important steps include: Treating more pregnant women, and keeping them on treatment after their babies are born; increasing male circumcision to lower men's risk of heterosexual infection; increasing access to both male and female condoms; and more HIV testing.

The world spent $16.8 billion fighting AIDS in poor countries last year. The U.S. government is the leading donor, spending about $5.6 billion.

Thursday's report from PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, outlines how progress could continue at current spending levels — something far from certain as Congress and Obama struggle to avert looming budget cuts at year's end — or how faster progress is possible with stepped-up commitments from hard-hit countries themselves.

Clinton warned Thursday that the U.S. must continue doing its share: "In the fight against HIV/AIDS, failure to live up to our commitments isn't just disappointing, it's deadly."

The report highlighted Zambia, which already is seeing some declines in new cases of HIV. It will have to treat only about 145,000 more patients over the next four years to meet its share of the U.N. goal, a move that could prevent more than 126,000 new infections in that same time period. But if Zambia could go further and treat nearly 198,000 more people, the benefit would be even greater — 179,000 new infections prevented, the report estimates.

In contrast, if Zambia had to stick with 2011 levels of HIV prevention, new infections could level off or even rise again over the next four years, the report found.

Advocacy groups said the blueprint offers a much-needed set of practical steps to achieve an AIDS-free generation — and makes clear that maintaining momentum is crucial despite economic difficulties here and abroad.

"The blueprint lays out the stark choices we have: To stick with the baseline and see an epidemic flatline or grow, or ramp up" to continue progress, said Chris Collins of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

His group has estimated that more than 276,000 people would miss out on HIV treatment if U.S. dollars for the global AIDS fight are part of across-the-board spending cuts set to begin in January.

Thursday's report also urges targeting the populations at highest risk, including gay men, injecting drug users and sex workers, especially in countries where stigma and discrimination has denied them access to HIV prevention services.

"We have to go where the virus is," Clinton said.

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Wall Street ends higher after swings on 'fiscal cliff'

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks finished higher on Thursday as investors bought on sporadic dips in a market roiled by conflicting comments from Washington about negotiations on an agreement to avoid the "fiscal cliff."


Tech shares, including Research In Motion and Advanced Micro Devices , helped the Nasdaq outperform the broader market. Telecommunications and health-care stocks were the day's best-performing sectors.


Reflecting the uncertainty surrounding U.S. budget talks, trading was choppy. Wall Street reversed early gains and fell shortly after House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, dashed hopes that lawmakers were getting closer to a budget deal that would avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts set for early 2013 - the fiscal cliff - that could push the U.S. economy into a recession next year. But the market rebounded by afternoon and the three major U.S. stock indexes rebounded to near their session highs.


"There is an emotional part in buying on the small dips here. Investors are more worried about missing the rally than losing money as they believe that the 'fiscal cliff' will be solved eventually," said James Dailey, portfolio manager at TEAM Asset Strategy Fund in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.


"Until the fiscal cliff is solved, the madness of the crowd will not subside."


Discussions on Capitol Hill are aimed at avoiding big automatic spending cuts and tax hikes, known as the fiscal cliff, that will start taking effect beginning in January.


Boehner's comment about a lack of progress in talks with the White House was one of a series of contrary pronouncements by lawmakers and the Obama administration over whether Washington will finally cut a deal.


There have been some signs that leaders are moving closer to a fiscal agreement. The S&P 500 has gained about 5 percent recently after a sell-off that took it down almost 8 percent following the U.S. election on November 6. But investors remain wary that politicians' ad hoc statements can spark quick reversals in the market.


U.S.-listed shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion rose 4 percent to $11.54 after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral" on optimism ahead of the launch of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone.


Advanced Micro Devices Inc shares gained 4.1 percent to $2.04 on plans to sell and lease back its campus in Austin, Texas. The sale and lease-back will raise cash and fund its chipmaking business as Advanced Micro Devices diversifies beyond the struggling PC industry into new markets.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 36.71 points, or 0.28 percent, to 13,021.82 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 6.02 points, or 0.43 percent, to 1,415.95. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 20.25 points, or 0.68 percent, to close at 3,012.03.


So far this week, the Dow is up 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 is up 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq is up 1.5 percent.


But shares of top retailers retreated in the wake of data showing a weak start to November sales after Superstorm Sandy. Kohl's Corp fell 12 percent to $45.02.


Tiffany shares dropped 6.2 percent to $59.80 after the upscale jeweler reported quarterly results and cut its full-year sales and profit forecasts.


Supervalu shares sank 18.6 percent to $2.28 after a report that Cerberus Capital Management was having difficulty obtaining financing to buy out the troubled grocery chain.


Data showed the U.S. economy grew faster than initially thought in the third quarter as businesses restocked, but consumer and business spending were revised lower in a sobering reminder of the economic recovery's underlying weakness.


Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose more than expected in October, a sign the housing market recovery advanced into the fourth quarter despite a mammoth storm and concerns over looming tax hikes. Homebuilders' shares rose. The PHLX housing index <.hgx> rose 0.8 percent.


About 6.15 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.


On both the NYSE and the Nasdaq, roughly three stocks rose for every one that fell.


(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Jan Paschal)


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U.N. Will Vote on Status for Palestinians, Defying U.S.


Chang W. Lee/The New York Times


President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority spoke at the United Nations before the General Assembly voted on Palestine's status as a “nonmember observer state” on Thursday.







UNITED NATIONS — An overwhelming majority of countries are expected on Thursday to vote to recognize Palestine as a “nonmember observer state” at the United Nations. Palestinian leaders say the step advances a two-state solution with Israel, but Israeli and American officials condemn it as detrimental to peaceful coexistence.




President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly before the vote, called the moment a “last chance” to save the two-state solution and said that the window of opportunity was narrowing.


“The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine,” he said just before the vote was scheduled to take place.


The resolution is expected to win backing from a number of European countries, among them France, Spain and Switzerland — a rebuff to intense American and Israeli diplomacy. Others, like Germany, say they will abstain, and a tiny handful of countries are expected to join Israel and the United States in voting no.


The resolution comes shortly after an eight-day Israeli military assault on Gaza that Israel described as a response to stepped-up rocket fire into Israel. The operation killed scores of Palestinians and was aimed at reducing the arsenal of Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, a part of the territory that the United Nations resolution expects to make up a future state of Palestine.


Mr. Abbas directed harsh criticism toward Israel, saying that the “aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip has confirmed once again the urgent and pressing need to end the Israeli occupation and for our people to gain their freedom and independence.”


“This aggression also confirms the Israeli Government’s adherence to the policy of occupation, brute force and war, which in turn obliges the international community to shoulder its responsibilities toward the Palestinian people and toward peace,” Mr. Abbas said early in his speech.


The Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, was politically weakened by the Gaza fighting, with its rivals in Hamas seen by many Palestinians as more willing to stand up to Israel and fight back. That shift in sentiment is one reason that some Western countries give for backing the United Nations resolution, to strengthen Mr. Abbas and his more moderate colleagues in their contest with Hamas.


“We have not heard one word from any Israeli official expressing any sincere concern to save the peace process,” Mr. Abbas said.


“On the contrary, our people have witnessed, and continue to witness, an unprecedented intensification of military assaults, the blockade, settlement activities and ethnic cleansing, particularly in Occupied East Jerusalem, and mass arrests, attacks by settlers and other practices by which this Israeli occupation is becoming synonymous with an apartheid system of colonial occupation, which institutionalizes the plague of racism and entrenches hatred and incitement.”


“The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: Enough of aggression, settlements and occupation,” he said.


The vote is taking place exactly 65 years after the General Assembly voted to divide the former British Mandate of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab — a vote that Israel considers the international seal of approval for its birth.


At the time, Arabs rejected the division of the land and the creation of Israel. But since the late 1980s, the Palestine Liberation Organization has officially endorsed two states, with the state of Palestine defined as comprising the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — areas beyond Israel’s pre-1967 borders that it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.


Mr. Abbas said the Palestinians wanted to breathe new life into the negotiations. He said the Palestinians would accept “no less than the independence of the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, to live in peace and security alongside the State of Israel,” adding they were also seeking a solution to the refugee issue based on the resolutions.


Reporting was contributed by Michael R. Gordon and Mark Landler from Washington, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin.



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Microsoft CEO defends its innovation record, financial results












BELLEVUE, Washington (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer defended his company’s record on innovation and financial performance at the annual shareholders’ meeting, but conceded that he should have moved faster to get into the booming tablet market dominated by Apple Inc‘s iPad.


Bill Gates, co-founder and now chairman of the world’s largest software company, was one of the first to champion tablet-sized devices more than 10 years ago, but Microsoft failed to come up with a product that worked as well as the iPad. Gates was silent throughout the meeting, attended by about 450 shareholders.












“We’re innovating on the seam between software and hardware,” said Ballmer, asked why his company had fallen behind rival Apple. “Maybe we should have done that earlier.”


A month ago, Microsoft launched the Surface tablet – its first own-brand computer – but has not revealed sales figures.


In the tablet market, “we see nothing but a sea of upside,” Ballmer said, an acknowledgement that until now Microsoft has effectively had zero presence in the tablet market.


“I feel pretty good about our level of innovation,” he added.


Ballmer said smartphones running Microsoft’s new Windows software were selling four times as much as they did at this time last year. Microsoft has never given sales numbers of Windows phones, primarily made by Nokia, Samsung and HTC.


Windows currently has 2 to 4 percent of the global smartphone market, according to various independent data providers. Its overall market share will not likely grow in proportion to its own sales, given that sales of other smartphones – mostly running Google’s Android system – are also growing quickly.


Ballmer, flanked by Gates and Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein, was asked by several shareholders to explain Microsoft’s lackluster share price, which has been stuck for a decade, and has been outperformed by Apple and Google Inc stock in recent years.


“I understand your comment,” he told one shareholder. He went on to explain that Microsoft had “done a phenomenal job of driving product volumes” and was focusing on profiting from that growth.


He suggested that whether investors recognized that value at any given time was out of his hands.


“The stock market‘s kind of a funny thing,” he said, adding that Microsoft had handed back $ 10 billion in dividends and share buybacks to investors in the last fiscal year.


Several shareholders at the meeting in Bellevue, an upscale suburb of Seattle, complimented the executives on how they had grown and managed the company.


Microsoft’s shares rose almost 18 percent during fiscal 2012, which ended in June of this year, compared with a 3 percent rise in the Standard & Poor’s 500.


Despite such fluctuations, Microsoft’s shares stand around the same level they did 10 years ago.


To see a graphic on U.S. tech share price performance, 1990 to present, click on http://link.reuters.com/rug53t


(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Gary Hill)


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Harley Pasternak Blogs: How to Use Technology to Get You Fit






Celebrity Blog










11/28/2012 at 04:15 PM EST







Harley Pasternak


Courtesy Harley Pasternak


Celebrity trainer and PEOPLE.com blogger Harley Pasternak shares his favorite fitness trackers and video games for having fun while staying in shape.

In this day and age, we don't even have to get up from our computers to go to work, do our shopping, find entertainment or socialize with friends.

While these advancements may have made us more productive, they're also contributing to our national weight gain. Many of the daily tasks we used to do physically can now be done while sitting on our ever-widening butts.

Let's face it, there's no use in trying to pry the smartphones, tablets, and game controllers out of our hands now – so let's embrace it all and use it to get us back in to shape!

Here are a few examples of some tech savvy workout tools that will get you up off the couch while having fun and staying motivated! If your New Year's resolution is to get in better shape, what better way than to put some of these on your holiday gift list?

Fitness Trackers
Fitness trackers are super helpful – whether it be a basic pedometer or a full-feature gadget that can impress tech geeks and fitness enthusiasts alike.

• I recommend that all my clients get a good pedometer, like the New Balance Via Slim Pedometer. Studies show that just wearing a pedometer motivates you to take more steps. Aim for 10,000 a day.

• The FitBit is more than just a pedometer. It also tracks your distance, calories burned, and even monitors how long and well you sleep. And as we all know, good sleep is essential to good health. It also syncs automatically to your computer or mobile device.

Exer-Games
Chances are you're in one of the millions of homes with a video game system that supports motion-based play – consoles like Kinect for Xbox360 and Nintendo's Wii. Long gone are the days when video games were limited to couch-potato gamers! There are some fantastic games available to get you off the couch and get you in shape and they are a lot of fun!

• My video game, Hollywood Workout, gives you access to the 5-Factor fitness workouts that I use with my clients from the comfort of your living room (or basement, or wherever you have space to move).

You can follow the actual workout programs I've used to get my clients, whether you want to get a superhero bod or shed new mom weight. You can train with me 25 minutes a day, five days a week and get into the best shape of your life. Check out HarleyPasternakGame.com for more details.

• Prefer to dance your way into shape? The Zumba Fitness video game series is a fun and effective way to get moving without leaving the house. These interactive games offer contagious music, a huge range of dance styles and multiplayer support that let you work out with friends and family. It's available on Kinect for Xbox 360 and Wii.

• The Wii Fit Plus offers a ton of personalized which range from strength training to yoga. It's hard to get bored with so many options!

Wearable Tech
• I know the Nike + SportWatch is on many of my clients' wish lists this year. Using an accelerometer, it tracks your daily activity including running, walking, basketball and dancing, as well as counting steps taken and calories burned. The major plus here is that it was designed in collaboration with TomTom, whose built-in GPS technology tracks run data.

• Jawbone Up tracks physical movement, sleep duration and quality, what you eat and even claims to monitor your mood. This one wins on style points, too.

• For all you swimmers out there, The FINIS Swimsense uses accelerometers, magnetometers to track your swim stats – time, pace, distance, stroke rate, calories – and can even detect what stroke you're using! Upload your info to the online training log and analyze your performance!

Have a favorite fitness gadget that didn't make my list? Tweet me @harleypasternak.

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing surgery-linked infections is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million, the Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons announced Wednesday. The two groups directed the 2 1/2-year project.

Solutions included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Some hospitals used special wound-protecting devices on surgery openings to keep intestine germs from reaching the skin.

The average rate of infections linked with colorectal operations at the seven hospitals dropped from about 16 percent of patients during a 10-month phase when hospitals started adopting changes to almost 11 percent once all the changes had been made.

Hospital stays for patients who got infections dropped from an average of 15 days to 13 days, which helped cut costs.

"The improvements translate into safer patient care," said Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission. "Now it's our job to spread these effective interventions to all hospitals."

Almost 2 million health care-related infections occur each year nationwide; more than 90,000 of these are fatal.

Besides wanting to keep patients healthy, hospitals have a monetary incentive to prevent these infections. Medicare cuts payments to hospitals that have lots of certain health care-related infections, and those cuts are expected to increase under the new health care law.

The project involved surgeries for cancer and other colorectal problems. Infections linked with colorectal surgery are particularly common because intestinal tract bacteria are so abundant.

To succeed at reducing infection rates requires hospitals to commit to changing habits, "to really look in the mirror and identify these things," said Dr. Clifford Ko of the American College of Surgeons.

The hospitals involved were Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; Mayo Clinic-Rochester Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn.; North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY; Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago; OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill.; and Stanford Hospital & Clinics in Palo Alto, Calif.

___

Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

American College of Surgeons: http://www.facs.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Wall Street jumps in another "fiscal cliff" swing

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rallied on Wednesday after comments from House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, on a possible compromise to avoid the "fiscal cliff" turned the market around.


The S&P 500 rebounded from a 1 percent decline, gaining more than 20 points from its low after Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avoid big spending cuts and tax hikes can be worked out. President Barack Obama added to the good feelings, saying he hoped to get a deal done in the next four weeks.


Whether or not those remarks reflect the reality of negotiations is another story.


"The fiscal cliff is dominating the discussion, and short term, we're a little bit too optimistic on it being fixed right away," said John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds in New York.


In expectation of higher dividend tax rates in 2013, companies have been shifting dividends or announcing special payouts to shareholders.


Costco Wholesale Corp , up 6.3 percent at $102.58, was the S&P 500's biggest percentage gainer after it became the latest company to announce a special dividend.


The market's move marked the second straight day where a leading legislator dictated trading action. On Tuesday, stocks fell on pessimistic remarks from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada.


The market has been swinging for weeks now on headlines from Washington, with Wednesday's gyrations once again highlighting the importance that Wall Street is giving to finding a solution to avoid the series of tax increases and spending cuts that could push the U.S. economy into recession.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 106.98 points, or 0.83 percent, to 12,985.11 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained 10.99 points, or 0.79 percent, to 1,409.93. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 23.99 points, or 0.81 percent, to close at 2,991.78.


The S&P 500 bounced off a strong support area near 1,385 that includes both its 200- and 14-day moving averages. It closed above 1,400 for the third session in four - an optimistic sign for stock bulls.


Knight Capital Group Inc shares jumped 15.2 percent to $3.42 on news that Getco Holding proposed a $1.4 billion merger with Knight, while Virtu Financial offered to buy Knight for at least $1.1 billion.


Apparel retailer Express Inc rose 8.9 percent to $14.15 after it forecast strong earnings for the current quarter as lower prices and easy-to-understand discounts led to robust Black Friday sales.


The S&P retail index <.spxrt> gained 1.4 percent.


Green Mountain Coffee Roasters surged 27.3 percent to $36.86 a day after it forecast quarterly and full-year earnings well ahead of analysts' expectations.


Nearly 6.1 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.


On the NYSE, roughly seven stocks rose for every three that fell, and on Nasdaq, five issues rose for every three that fell.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)


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As Opposition Meets in Cairo, More Violence Mars Syria





The Syrian opposition pushed ahead on military and political fronts on Wednesday, as rebels shot down a government warplane in the north of Syria and a newly formed coalition started talks in Cairo on how to pick a transitional government to replace that of President Bashar al-Assad.




The coalition, whose official name is the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, was formed at a meeting in Qatar earlier this month, and has already been anointed with official recognition from Britain, France, Turkey and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. But in order to encourage further recognition internationally, it must tackle the broader problem of uniting multiple groups in exile and rebels on the ground in Syria.


That challenge was apparent on the first day of what are expected to be two days of talks in Egypt. Disagreements emerged over the composition of the coalition when the Syrian National Council, one of its members, tried to increase the number of its representatives.


“Nothing will proceed until we work this out,” said one council member at the talks, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.


The talks took place against the backdrop of a 20-month civil war in which about 40,000 people have been killed so far in clashes between armed rebels and jihadist forces on one side and Mr. Assad’s military on the other. The conflict has flared at various times along Syria’s borders with Lebanon, Israel, Turkey and Jordan and in most of the country’s cities, including deadly car bombings on Wednesday near Damascus, the capital.


In Turkey, once an ally of the Assad government, a team of NATO inspectors visited sites on Wednesday where the alliance might install batteries of Patriot antiaircraft missiles that Turkey, a member, has requested to prevent any incursions by the Syrian air force, which has become the Assad government’s main weapon against the rebels. Patriot missiles have also been discussed as a way of enforcing a no-fly zone over rebel-held areas of Syria near the Turkish border if one is imposed.


Meanwhile, opposition politicians gathered in a Cairo hotel to shape an alternative government. Ahmad Ramadan, a member of the national council, said in an interview with Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language broadcaster sponsored by the United States government, that the talks were more likely to decide on the selection process than to choose actual candidates.


Khaled Khoja, a coalition member attending the talks, said: “I don’t think we’ll be discussing the election of a transitional government during the meeting today. We’re still discussing whether to have a government or to have committees instead.”


State media said on Wednesday that at least 34 people, and possibly many more, died in the two car bombings in Jaramana, a suburb of Damascus that is populated by minorities.


The official SANA news agency said the explosions struck at about 7 a.m. and were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Assad.


The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood was home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.


The death toll was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.


There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and antigovernment activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.


Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting out of the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.


“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.


Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says, “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”


The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed each other for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”


On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.


In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.


Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy.


Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris; Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.



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Welcome to the Twisted Age of the Twitter Death Threat












Never believe anyone who tells you that the Internet is all nice or all terrible. Just like real life, there are good people and bad ones here. The majority of people behave badly occasionally and decently most of the time. Yes, there are some truly horrible people lurking and behaving in ways consistent to their form, but the thing is, we’re complicated creatures, online and off. So I don’t buy into theories that the Internet is all nice anymore than I believe all commenters are trolls. Still, there is something worrisome going on online, and if you were the Chicken Little type (which none of us here are, obviously), you might be covering your head and hiding from the Twitterverse. It’s this matter of death threats online. 


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The most recent example of this, of course, is the recent Chris Brown/Jenny Johnson nastiness. Brown has his share of on- and offline haters, but he has plenty of adamant supporters, too. This became apparent when Johnson, a comedian who’d been on a Twitter crusade of sorts against Brown since his physical attack on Rihanna, after a stream of tweets intended to shame/provoke the singer, finally hit pay-dirt with a response (other than Brown blocking her at one point). Over the weekend, Chris Brown tweeted: “I look old as fuck! I’m only 23,” to which Johnson tweeted, “I know! Being a worthless piece of shit can really age a person.” (That tweet’s been retweeted by Johnson followers more than 7,000 times.)


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You probably know what happened next, even if you don’t: After a pretty gross back-and-forth that doesn’t make either side look great, Brown deactivated his account. But his followers started to pile on, threatening Johnson with—what else?—death. There is no irony here about the followers of a guy who beat his girlfriend offering up a stream of brutish death threats; it is only sad. 


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Enter the age of the online death threat. It’s scary, yeah, because it’s a death threat. Humans rarely like being threatened with an end to their basic essence, no matter the delivery method for that announcement. And yet, on Twitter, this becomes such a weird, surreal concept: It’s deeply impersonal (these people don’t even know each other and probably never will; NONE of them know each other, likely), fueled by a false kind of rage spawned by the way the Internet works (one side gets self-righteously mad, another side self-righteously madder, and repeat). Fortunately, in most cases, the threat is also incredibly unlikely to be fulfilled. That doesn’t make it pleasant. One might be prone to try to laugh away the kind of death threats Johnson received, from people she doesn’t know (people who don’t know Chris Brown either), who might not recognize her on the street, who most likely live nowhere near where she does and probably also don’t plan to actually kill her. Yet a death threat is pretty much the ultimate “I hate you,” and it’s worth wondering, when “I hate you” doesn’t serve to deliver the message strongly enough and we start saying “I’m going to kill you”/”you deserve to die,” how far has humanity gone down some sick drain?


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As David Knowles writes for The Daily in a piece titled “Twitter Terror,” Johnson is hardly the first person to be threatened on Twitter. President Obama, Mitt Romney, Ellen Page, Tom Daley, and Taylor Swift can claim this dubious badge of fame, too. The list goes on. But before the little bird was the death-threat method of the year, death threats would arrive to famous people, politicians, and those in the public eye, particularly controversial figures, as a matter of course—on paper, perhaps by telephone, and in the movies, via the weird scrawlings or puzzle-piece letter constructions of madmen. Of course, there’s no handwriting to decipher on Twitter, there are only assumptions of power and education based on icons and followers, word choice and spelling, what the person says and has said, as well as their affiliations. But again, probably, the people threatening Jenny Johnson shouldn’t scare her (if you’re really going to try to kill someone and are dumb enough to publicize it on Twitter, that’s a clear benefit to your intended victim). If there’s anything to be afraid of, it’s this idea that death threats are this kind of new online norm. I think part of that fear, the fear that this is just a regular thing nowadays, is what subconsciously creates the need in us to assume a such a horrified shock-and-outraged position about such death threats. Knowles quotes digital media expert Jeanette Castillio as calling “the Twitterverse … a very uncivil place.” Is it any more uncivil than anywhere else, though? The Internet hardly created hate, or hate-speak, or bullying. Further, do we only increase the levels of that incivility by freaking out about what a bunch of random people are raging about behind the protection, and often anonymity, of Twitter?


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As Knowles writes, also, Twitter does have a rule against this sort of thing; people aren’t supposed to “publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.” Still, like everything online, there is too much information, and not enough time for comprehensive monitoring. Knowles adds, “A small percentage of violent tweets are investigated by police, but even then Twitter is reluctant to betray what it believes is a sacred duty to protect a user’s privacy.” 


That’s the other thing about online threats: They manage to be so incredibly cowardly, and an utterly ineffectual form of communication—until, suddenly, the media is paying attention to said threats and in some ways legitimizing them. I’m honestly not sure what the media’s role should be in acknowledging tweets of the sort that Brown and Johnson and Brown’s followers and Johnson exchanged. Sometimes it seems like that old “ignoring” tactic your mom taught you could work out to everyone’s benefit—and yet these things are bound to go viral; badly behaving celebrities are something TMZ taught us people want to know about. These things are also, when discussed calmly and rationally, fodder for good conversations about how we live now.


Like a rude comment, a Twitter death threat is a way of hiding in your comfy-safe basement in your comfy-safe boxers and saying really gross things to someone in the hopes that they will get upset. These people are bullying, or hope to bully. Which means we shouldn’t take the bait, a thing far more difficult to do than say. Turning the other cheek was hard in real life, too, and you never know, better safe than sorry. But more important than preventing “actual Twitter murders” (which I dare say and hope will not become the norm), it’s worth paying attention to this ratcheting up of the hate ante as a new kind of communication norm. A cynical person would say we no longer need to touch people, instead, we reach out to them online. We no longer need to talk on the phone, we simply tweet or email or text. We certainly don’t write letters, and we hardly write on paper. Instead we blog and Tumbl and Instagram and Facebook. And so, when we get angry, irrationally or otherwise, we take to those methods of communication to speak out, retaliate, vow revenge. The most worrisome thing about the Twitter death threat, I think, that if it’s just something people do now. I don’t want to be in the Age of the Twitter Death Threat. It makes me pretty nostalgic for the good old days of the handwritten love letter, actually. 


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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