See the best dressed baby bump on TV, the most badass aviators on the big screen and the sexiest movie wardrobe of 2013
Credit: ABC/Peter "Hopper" Stone
Updated: Wednesday Jan 16, 2013 | 12:00 PM EST
By: Zoë Ruderman
New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.
Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.
There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.
___
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/
LONDON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve's ultra-loose monetary policy is a root cause of the "currency wars" that some see as a looming threat to the world economy, but don't expect the U.S. central bank to signal a shift back to normal any time soon.
The Fed, whose policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday, said just last month that it expects to keep short-term interest rates exceptionally low until the U.S. unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent, inflation permitting.
That goal is still distant. Figures on Friday are likely to show that the jobless rate was unchanged in January at 7.8 percent, while the economy created 155,000 jobs, the same as in December, according to economists polled by Reuters.
So it would be a huge surprise if the Fed were to do anything other than reaffirm last month's decision to anchor short-term interest rates in a range of zero to 0.25 percent and to keep buying $85 billion of bonds each month to hold down long-term rates.
The only question mark is whether the FOMC vote will be unanimous now that Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, who opposes the current round of bond-buying, has rotated off the panel, said Harm Bandholz, an economist with UniCredit Bank in New York.
Most economists polled by Reuters expect the Fed to keep its open-ended bond-buying program in place well into next year, even though the economic news flow and market confidence are improving markedly.
True, Wednesday's preliminary report on fourth-quarter GDP is likely to show that growth slowed to an annualized rate of 1.2 percent from 3.1 percent in the July-September period.
And the current quarter will also be soft as the expiry of a 2 percent payroll tax cut is dampening consumer spending.
But then Bandholz expects an average growth rate of 2.8 percent over the rest of the year. That would be the strongest three-quarter period of the recovery so far, he said.
"The outlook has improved a lot in the U.S. I've been on the cautious side for the last three years, but this time I'm a bit more bullish," he said.
THE FED BIDES ITS TIME
The recovery in housing would add at least half a percentage point to GDP growth in 2013, while capital spending was likely to revive now that uncertainty over budget talks in Washington had been largely allayed, Bandholz said.
"There's a lot of pent-up demand in the system. I don't think all these investments have been abandoned; they've just been postponed," he said.
At some point, investors' exuberance over the super-easy stance of the world's major central banks will give way to worries that they are about to take away the punch bowl.
Gustavo Reis, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York, said concerns about the costs of money-printing were likely to spread but would be offset by uncertainty over the impact on growth of fiscal tightening in the United States and Europe.
"All told, although global activity seems more robust now than at any point in 2012, we expect policymakers to continue to worry predominantly about downside risks," he said in a note.
The bank does not expect the Fed to consider halting asset purchases before 2014, while the latest episode of monetary easing announced by the Bank of Japan is likely to be ‘long-lived and significant'.
Many economists argue that bold monetary action is long overdue in Japan, whose nominal output has not grown in 20 years, saddling the government with a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 220 percent.
But Douglas McWilliams, who heads the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London consultancy, fears Japan's decision will lead the global economy into unpredictable currency wars.
"It's a bit like if someone's rude to you, you're rude to them back. You get tit-for-tat behavior," McWilliams said.
CURRENCY FRICTION, BUT NO WAR
Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, last week called talk of currency wars overblown and said countries had to pull the right policy levers to get their economies back on track, with corresponding consequences for exchange rates.
However, McWilliams said the problem was that it was difficult to get countries to agree NOT to wage currency wars.
Tellingly, Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced German concerns last week that Japan might be deliberately seeking to cheapen the yen to give its exporters a competitive edge.
"So we may well find that there is a period of very heavy volatility before the authorities involved try and get some kind of agreement," McWilliams said.
In a relatively quiet week for economic data in the euro zone - money supply figures and confidence surveys from the European Commission are the highlights - the focus is likely to remain squarely on the euro, which has been rising briskly as traders price in the policy shifts that Blanchard had in mind.
While the Fed and the Bank of Japan are expanding their balance sheets, the European Central Bank is starting to soak up some of the emergency cash it lent to banks a year ago.
The central bank said on Friday that banks would repay early 137 billion euros of cheap borrowed money.
"I'm not sure if we have too strong a euro for the moment but certainly we would not want to see a currency war of competitive devaluations which would have a negative effect on the euro," the European Union's top monetary official, Olli Rehn, told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Davos; editing by Jason Neely)
Germano Rorato/Agencia RBS, via European Pressphoto Agency
A victim was carried from the scene of the nightclub fire in Santa Maria, Brazil.
RIO DE JANEIRO — A fire ignited by a flare from a band’s pyrotechnic spectacle swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students early on Sunday morning in Santa Maria, a city in southern Brazil, killing at least 232 people, police officials said.
Health workers hauled bodies from the club, called Kiss, to hospitals in Santa Maria throughout Sunday morning. Some of the survivors were taken to the nearby city of Porto Alegre to be treated for burns. Valdeci Oliveira, a local legislator, said he saw piles of bodies in the nightclub’s bathrooms.
Col. Guido Pedroso de Melo, the commander of the city’s Fire Department, said security guards had locked exits, which intensified the panic as people in the club stampeded to the doors. One police investigator at the club, Elizabeth Shimomura, told a television news channel, “It is a scene of horror.”
Survivors described a scene of mayhem as patrons rushed for the main exit. “I only got out because I am strong,” Ezequiel Corte Real, 23, told reporters. He said he helped others escape the blaze.
The disaster in Santa Maria, which is in the relatively prosperous state of Rio Grande do Sul, shocked the country. President Dilma Rousseff canceled appointments at a summit meeting in Chile to travel to Santa Maria, a city of about 260,000 residents that is known for its cluster of universities.
The disaster ranks among the deadliest of nightclub fires, comparable to the 2003 blaze in Rhode Island that killed 100 people, one in 2004 in Buenos Aires in which 194 were killed, and a fire at a club in China in 2000 in which 309 people died.
The circumstances surrounding the blaze, including the use of pyrotechnics and the reports of the locked exits, are expected to raise questions about whether the club’s owners had been negligent. While it is not clear why patrons were initially not allowed to escape, it is common across Brazil for nightclubs and bars to have customers to pay their entire tab upon leaving, instead of on a per-drink basis.
More broadly, the blaze may focus attention on issues of accountability in Brazil and point to the relaxed enforcement of measures aimed at protecting citizens in an economy that is on solid footing. Preventable disasters still commonly claim lives in Brazil, as illustrated by Rio de Janeiro’s building collapses, manhole explosions and trolley mishaps.
“Bureaucracy and corruption also cause tragedies,” said Andre Barcinski, a columnist for Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest newspapers.
Some of the survivors pointed to a heated argument over who was responsible. “Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, said in comments posted on Facebook.
Witnesses said the fire started about 2 a.m. after a rock band, Gurizada Fandangueira, began performing for an audience made up mostly of students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs at a local university.
At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and had advertised its use of pyrotechnics, was said to have been killed. Many of the victims died of smoke inhalation, officials said.
“The smoke spread very quickly,” Aline Santos Silva, 29, one of the survivors, said in comments to the Globo News television network. “Those who were closest to the stage where the band was playing had the most difficulty getting out.”
Human rights officials focused Sunday on the grief in Santa Maria. “How many families are now searching for their young one?” asked Maria do Rosário Nunes, a cabinet minister who is Ms. Rousseff’s top human rights official.
Brazilian television stations broadcast images of trucks carrying corpses to hospitals where family members were gathering. Photographs taken shortly after the blaze and posted on the Web sites of local news organizations showed frantic scenes in which people on the street outside the nightclub pulled bodies from the charred debris.
The tragedy took place in a region of Brazil where Ms. Rousseff began her political career before rising to national prominence as a top aide to the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and running for president herself. Before leaving the summit in Chile, she appeared distraught, crying in front of reporters as she absorbed details of the blaze.
“This is a tragedy,” she said, “for all of us.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 27, 2013
A picture of a hallway strewn with shoes that accompanied a previous version of this online article was used in error. It showed the aftermath of a fire in Buenos Aires in 2004, not Saturday night’s fire in Santa Maria, Brazil.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Smartphone shipments rose 36 percent worldwide in the fourth quarter as the sleek devices supplanted personal computers and other gadgets on holiday shopping lists, according to a report released Friday.
The findings from the research firm International Data Corp. are the latest sign of the technology upheaval being wrought by the growing popularity of smartphones that can perform a wide variety of tasks, including surfing the Web and taking high-quality photos.
Companies whose fortunes are tied to the PC industry have been particularly hard hit by the shift to smartphones and tablet computers.
While some smartphone models were in short supply during the holiday season, fourth-quarter PC shipments fell by 6 percent from the previous year, according to another IDC report released earlier this month.
IDC estimates 219 million smartphones were shipped during the final three months of last year. That compares with nearly 161 million in the same 2011 period. Smartphones accounted for about 45 percent of all mobile phone shipments in the fourth quarter, the highest percentage recorded by IDC.
Samsung Electronics Co. retained its bragging rights as the smartphone leader, shipping nearly 64 million devices for a 29 percent share of the global market.
Apple Inc. ranked second with nearly 48 million iPhones shipped during the fourth quarter, translating into a market share of 22 percent.
For all of 2012, IDC estimated nearly 713 million smartphones were shipped worldwide, a 44 percent increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, annual PC shipments fell 3 percent from 2011, IDC said. It was the first annual decline since 2001.
Entering 2012, Apple held a slight edge over Samsung in the smartphone market. But Samsung sprinted past Apple during the year as it introduced an array of models, most of which run on Google Inc.‘s free Android software. Samsung’s top-selling line, the Galaxy, boasts larger display screens than the iPhone and other features.
Apple alleges Samsung’s devices illegally ripped off the iPhone’s innovations. After a high-profile trial in federal court, a jury in San Jose, Calif. sided with some of the patent infringement claims last August and decided Samsung should pay more than $ 1 billion in damages. Samsung has been trying to overturn the verdict.
Lower-priced smartphones from Samsung and other device makers also have hurt Apple, whose slowing iPhone growth has contributed to a $ 250 billion decline in its market value since its stock price peaked in late September.
IDC says Huawei Technologies Ltd.‘s emphasis on less expensive handsets helped it become the third largest smartphone maker with a market share of 5 percent at the end of the fourth quarter.
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Kutcher was one of the first to arrive at the official after party, hosted by Nur Khan Presents NK on Main Street for the cast and filmmakers and sponsored by Red Touch Media.
Kutcher was captivated by a floor-to-ceiling portrait of late Apple visionary Steve Jobs, whom Kutcher portrays in the film. Guests were quick to snap a photo of the actor admiring the subject of his role.
Without Kunis by his side, Kutcher very much remained a one-man guy, focusing his attention all night on his table of male friends and colleagues and posing for pictures with fans, according to an observer. The pride he takes in jOBS was palpable, as Kutcher was incredibly excited to chat about his film and role with all the guests who came up to greet him.
Co-star Ahna O'Reilly spent the evening in a very social mood, dancing to the beats of DJ Cash and catching up with co-star Josh Gad. Not to live down his "funny man" persona, Gad went into the evening entertaining all the guests and causing an uproar of laughter with Kutcher and O'Reilly while catching up about filming and their time at Sundance.
– Jennifer Garcia
New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.
Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.
There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.
___
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks have been on a tear in January, moving major indexes within striking distance of all-time highs. The bearish case is a difficult one to make right now.
Earnings have exceeded expectations, the housing and labor markets have strengthened, lawmakers in Washington no longer seem to be the roadblock that they were for most of 2012, and money has returned to stock funds again.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> has gained 5.4 percent this year and closed above 1,500 - climbing to the spot where Wall Street strategists expected it to be by mid-year. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> is 2.2 percent away from all-time highs reached in October 2007. The Dow ended Friday's session at 13,895.98, its highest close since October 31, 2007.
The S&P has risen for four straight weeks and eight consecutive sessions, the longest streak of days since 2004. On Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 ended at 1,502.96 - its first close above 1,500 in more than five years.
"Once we break above a resistance level at 1,510, we dramatically increase the probability that we break the highs of 2007," said Walter Zimmermann, technical analyst at United-ICAP, in Jersey City, New Jersey. "That may be the start of a rise that could take equities near 1,800 within the next few years."
The most recent Reuters poll of Wall Street strategists estimated the benchmark index would rise to 1,550 by year-end, a target that is 3.1 percent away from current levels. That would put the S&P 500 a stone's throw from the index's all-time intraday high of 1,576.09 reached on October 11, 2007.
The new year has brought a sharp increase in flows into U.S. equity mutual funds, and that has helped stocks rack up four straight weeks of gains, with strength in big- and small-caps alike.
That's not to say there aren't concerns. Economic growth has been steady, but not as strong as many had hoped. The household unemployment rate remains high at 7.8 percent. And more than 75 percent of the stocks in the S&P 500 are above their 26-week highs, suggesting the buying has come too far, too fast.
MUTUAL FUND INVESTORS COME BACK
All 10 S&P 500 industry sectors are higher in 2013, in part because of new money flowing into equity funds. Investors in U.S.-based funds committed $3.66 billion to stock mutual funds in the latest week, the third straight week of big gains for the funds, data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper service showed on Thursday.
Energy shares <.5sp10> lead the way with a gain of 6.6 percent, followed by industrials <.5sp20>, up 6.3 percent. Telecom <.5sp50>, a defensive play that underperforms in periods of growth, is the weakest sector - up 0.1 percent for the year.
More than 350 stocks hit new highs on Friday alone on the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt> recently climbed to an all-time high, with stocks in this sector and other economic bellwethers posting strong gains almost daily.
"If you peel back the onion a little bit, you start to look at companies like Precision Castparts
The gains have run across asset sizes as well. The S&P small-cap index <.spcy> has jumped 6.7 percent and the S&P mid-cap index <.mid> has shot up 7.5 percent so far this year.
Exchange-traded funds have seen year-to-date inflows of $15.6 billion, with fairly even flows across the small-, mid- and large-cap categories, according to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group, in New York.
"Investors aren't really differentiating among asset sizes. They just want broad equity exposure," Colas said.
The market has shown resilience to weak news. On Thursday, the S&P 500 held steady despite a 12 percent slide in shares of Apple after the iPhone and iPad maker's results. The tech giant is heavily weighted in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx> and in the past, its drop has suffocated stocks' broader gains.
JOBS DATA MAY TEST THE RALLY
In the last few days, the ratio of stocks hitting new highs versus those hitting new lows on a daily basis has started to diminish - a potential sign that the rally is narrowing to fewer names - and could be running out of gas.
Investors have also cited sentiment surveys that indicate high levels of bullishness among newsletter writers, a contrarian indicator, and momentum indicators are starting to also suggest the rally has perhaps come too far.
The market's resilience could be tested next week with Friday's release of the January non-farm payrolls report. About 155,000 jobs are seen being added in the month and the unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.8 percent.
"Staying over 1,500 sends up a flag of profit taking," said Jerry Harris, president of asset management at Sterne Agee, in Birmingham, Alabama. "Since recent jobless claims have made us optimistic on payrolls, if that doesn't come through, it will be a real risk to the rally."
A number of marquee names will report earnings next week, including bellwether companies such as Caterpillar Inc
On a historic basis, valuations remain relatively low - the S&P 500's current price-to-earnings ratio sits at 15.66, which is just a tad above the historic level of 15.
Worries about the U.S. stock market's recent strength do not mean the market is in a bubble. Investors clearly don't feel that way at the moment.
"We're seeing more interest in equities overall, and a lot of flows from bonds into stocks," said Paul Zemsky, who helps oversee $445 billion as the New York-based head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management. "We've been increasing our exposure to risky assets."
For the week, the Dow climbed 1.8 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.5 percent.
(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)
A.M. Ahad/Associated Press
Firefighters and volunteers worked to extinguish the fire at a small garment factory in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — In the latest blow to Bangladesh’s garment industry, seven workers died on Saturday after a fire swept through a factory here not long after seamstresses had returned from a lunch break. Workers said supervisors had locked one of the factory exits, forcing some people to jump out of windows to save their lives.
The fatal fire comes roughly two months after the horrific blaze at the Tazreen Fashions factory, which left 112 workers dead and focused global attention on unsafe conditions in Bangladesh’s garment industry. Tazreen Fashions, located just outside Dhaka, the capital, had been making clothing for some of the world’s biggest brands and retailers, including Walmart.
In the aftermath of the Tazreen Fashions fire, Bangladeshi political and industrial leaders pledged to quickly improve fire safety and even conducted high-profile, nationwide inspections of many of the country’s 5,000 apparel factories. Global brands, meanwhile, promised consumers that they would not buy clothes from unsafe factories.
But Saturday’s fire in a densely populated section of Dhaka, is a grim reminder that the problems remain. The blaze erupted at about 2 p.m. at Smart Garment Export, a small factory that employed about 300 people, most of them young women who were making sweaters and jackets. All seven of the dead workers were women.
Masudur Rahman Akand, a supervisor in the Bangladesh Fire Department, said workers were returning from lunch when the blaze erupted in a storage area. The factory was located on the second-floor of a building, above a bakery, and it lacked proper exits and fire prevention equipment, Mr. Akand said.
“We did not find fire extinguishers,” he said. “We did not find any safety measures.”
With smoke filling the factory floor, workers apparently panicked. Mr. Akand said the seven workers who died either suffocated or were trampled by others trying to escape. Eight other workers were hospitalized with injuries. Workers told rescuers that many people could not quickly escape because one of the exits was blocked by a locked steel gate. Witnesses said people began jumping out of windows before the gate was finally unlocked.
Azizul Hoque, a police supervisor, said investigators initially suspected that the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit in a room where fabrics and materials were being stored. But Mr. Hoque said the investigation was continuing.
“We do not know the reason or the source or the origin of the fire,” he said.
It was unclear whether the Smart Garment factory was making clothing for international brands or retailers. Dhaka’s industrial areas are filled with factories, large and small, that produce clothing for much of the Western world. Bangladesh is now the world’s second-biggest exporter of apparel, trailing only China.
An American delegation with four members of Congress arrived in Dhaka on Saturday to meet with political leaders and garment industry executives for a discussion of trade issues, including efforts by Bangladesh to win tariff-free access to the American market for the country’s clothing exports.
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian internet company Yandex said on Friday its new experimental application to search on social networking sites from mobile devices was blocked by Facebook.
The Wonder app is a recommendation tool for devices using Apple’s iOS software that allows U.S. users of social networks to retrieve information from these sites by voice or by typing questions.
The application was released late on Thursday for users of Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter but was blocked by Facebook three hours after the launch, a Yandex spokesman said.
He added that talks between Yandex and Facebook, aimed to establish the reason of the issue and resolve it, were to begin within hours. He gave no reason for the problem.
Facebook was not available for comment.
With the new app, Yandex wants to test the opportunities offered by social networks. If successful, the company will consider offering it to users in Russia and Turkey, he said.
Shares in Yandex, Russia’s most popular search engine, gained 0.8 percent in early trade on Friday.
(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Mike Nesbit)
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