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. 


RELATED: After His Vulgar Assault on Jenny Johnson, Chris Brown Quits Twitter












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.)


RELATED: The Internet–Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be


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. 


RELATED: Is Twitter for Girls?


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?


RELATED: Only Six Percent of Americans Use Twitter


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?


RELATED: Friday’s Top Tweets


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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Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel Will Film Girl Meets World Pilot















11/27/2012 at 04:00 PM EST







Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel


Michael Kovac/WireImage; Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage


Big news for Cory and Topanga!

Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel – who starred as the fictional couple on the '90s hit series Boy Meets World – are reuniting.

Both actors have officially signed on to reprise their roles on the Disney Channel pilot Girl Meets World, TVLine reports.

The potential new series would pick up more than 10 years after Boy Meets World left off (it aired from 1993-2000), with Cory and Topanga married and raising a 13-year-old daughter, Riley.

The story would be told from Riley's perspective, and that role has yet to be filled … a nationwide casting search is underway for Riley.

Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel Will Film Girl Meets World Pilot| Boy Meets World, TV News, Ben Savage, Danielle Fishel

Danielle Fishel and Ben Savage in their Boy Meets World days

Everett

Michael Jacobs, the original series' creator, is on board for the sequel. And Fishel couldn't be more excited at the prospect.

"When the news leaked that GMW was in the making, literally days after I first heard about the project myself, Michael Jacobs and I had a conversation and we talked about how we were both so blown away by the reactions from all of you," she writes on her blog about fans of the series.

"We felt honored. We felt nostalgic. We felt touched by the excitement in your comments, tweets, Tumblr, and Facebook posts. But most of all, we felt inspired. We felt inspired to bring these characters back to life and to tell you more of their stories."

Will you watch the new series? Who should play Riley? Tell us in the comments below.

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

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Wall Street falls, hit by Reid's "fiscal cliff" comments

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks slid on Tuesday in a choppy session, losing ground in the last hour before the close after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed disappointment that there has been "little progress" in dealing with the "fiscal cliff."


The market was flat for most of the session but fell sharply after Reid's comments, a signal that investors remain skittish about the wrangling in Washington. The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, rose on Reid's words.


"It may be that the market feels the goodwill before (last week's) Thanksgiving is evolving into more political intransigence," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark.


"The clock is ticking on Wall Street, regarding a framework for (political) consensus," she said.


Markets are focused on whether Congress and the White House can agree on ways to avoid some $600 billion in automatic spending cuts and tax increases that are due to kick in early next year.


As budget talks linger, Las Vegas Sands and Supertex added their names to a growing list of companies announcing special dividends aimed at helping investors avoid a possibly higher tax burden next year.


Higher dividend and capital gains taxes are part of the negotiations in Washington and may rise even if a deal is crafted.


Las Vegas Sands jumped 5.3 percent to $46.36. Supertex rose 6.9 percent to $18.


The S&P 500's modest losses on Tuesday marked its worst day in eight sessions - indicating traders are unwilling to sell aggressively as a deal probably would trigger a rally. The benchmark S&P 500 once again closed below 1,400, a key psychological level that it had reclaimed last week as it rose nearly 4 percent.


The VIX <.vix> shot up 2.7 percent to 15.92 at the close. Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. in New York, the VIX was up 3.9 percent.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 89.24 points, or 0.69 percent, to 12,878.13 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> dropped 7.35 points, or 0.52 percent, to finish at 1,398.94. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> lost 8.99 points, or 0.30 percent, to end at 2,967.79.


Dealings in Washington obscured strong economic figures, including an increase in planned business spending and consumer confidence hitting its highest level in more than four years.


Strengthening the case for a sustained rebound in housing, single-family home prices rose for an eighth straight month in September. Shares of M/I Homes gained 2.1 percent to $22.36. KB Home added 1.1 percent to $14.61.


"As long as you have interest rates as low as they are right now, housing is definitely back," said Brian Amidei, managing director at HighTower Advisors in Palm Desert, California.


In another good sign for consumer demand, Corning Inc shares rose 6.9 percent to $12.13 after the specialty glass maker said it expects full-year sales of its Gorilla glass, used in smartphones and tablets, to approach $1 billion.


Food maker Ralcorp Holdings shares jumped 26.4 percent to $88.80 after long-time suitor ConAgra Foods sealed a deal to buy it for $5 billion. ConAgra shares gained 4.7 percent to $29.63.


McMoRan Exploration Co shares tumbled 15.2 percent to $8.18 a day after the oil and gas driller gave a disappointing update on a key gas prospect in a Gulf of Mexico well.


About 5.9 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 6.5 billion shares.


On the NYSE, roughly five issues fell for every four that rose. On Nasdaq, six stocks fell for every five that rose.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal)


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Protesters Gather Again in Cairo Streets to Denounce Morsi





CAIRO — Thousands of people flowed into the streets of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, Tuesday afternoon for a day of protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to assert broad new powers for the duration of the country’s political transition, dismissing his efforts just the night before to reaffirm his deference to Egyptian law and courts.




By early Tuesday afternoon in Cairo, a dense crowd of hundreds had gathered outside the headquarters of a trade group for lawyers, and thousands more had filed in around a small tent city in Tahrir Square. In an echo of the chants against Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian’s ousted president, almost two years ago, they shouted, “Leave, leave!” and “Bring down the regime!” They also denounced the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr. Morsi.


A few blocks away, in a square near the American Embassy and the Interior Ministry headquarters, groups of young men resumed a running battle that began nine days ago, throwing rocks and tear gas canisters at riot police officers. Although those clashes grew out of anger over the deaths of dozens of protesters in similar clashes one year ago, many of the combatants have happily adopted the banner of protest against Mr. Morsi as well.


Egyptian television had captured the growing polarization of the country on Monday in split-screen coverage of two simultaneous funerals, each for a teenage boy killed in clashes set off by disputes over the new president’s powers. Thousands of supporters of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of the Nile Delta city of Damanhour to bury a 15-year-old killed outside a Brotherhood office during an attack by protesters. And in Tahrir Square here in Cairo, thousands gathered to bury a 16-year-old killed in clashes with riot police officers and to chant slogans blaming Mr. Morsi for his death. “Morsi killed him,” the boy’s father said in a video statement circulated over the Internet.


“Now blood has been spilled by political factions, so this is not going to go away,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a professor at the American University in Cairo and a left-leaning activist, adding that these were the first deaths rival factions had blamed on each other and not on the security forces of the Mubarak government since the uprising began last year. Still larger crowds were expected in the evening, as marchers from around the city headed for the square. Many schools and other businesses had closed in anticipation of bedlam, and on Monday, the Brotherhood called off a rival demonstration in support of the president, saying it wanted to avoid violence.


Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council met again on Tuesday to consider its response to the president, and the leader of Al Azhar, a center of Sunni Muslim learning that is regarded as the pre-eminent moral authority here, met with groups of political leaders in an effort to resolve the battle over the president’s decree and the deadlock in the constitutional assembly, which is trying to draw up a new constitution.


But even as Mr. Morsi met with top judges Monday night in an effort to resolve the crisis, a coalition of opposition leaders held a news conference to declare that preserving the role of the courts was only the first step in a broader campaign against what Abdel Haleem Qandeil, a liberal intellectual, called “the miserable failure of the rule of the Muslim Brothers.” Mr. Morsi “unilaterally broke the contract with the people,” he declared. “We have to be ready to stand up to this group, protest to protest, square to square, and to confront the bullying.”


Mr. Morsi’s effort to remove the last check on his power over the political transition had brought the country’s fractious opposition groups together for the first time in a united front against the Brotherhood. But the show of unity papered over deep divisions between groups and even within them, said Ms. Mahdi of the American University.


“This is not a united front, and I am inside it,” she said. “Every single political group in the country is now divided over this — is this decree revolutionary justice or building a new dictatorship? Should we align ourselves with folool” — the colloquial term for the remnants of the old political elite — “or should we be revolutionary purists? Is it a conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Mubarak judiciary, or is this the beginning of a fascist regime in the making?”


Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.



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