NH bills: Bosses can’t seek social media passwords

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire is considering joining a handful of states that bar employers from asking job applicants and employees for their social media user names and passwords.

The House’s labor committee is holding a hearing on two similar bills Tuesday that would prohibit an employer from requiring the disclosure. Maryland, California, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey and Illinois have similar laws and two dozen besides New Hampshire are considering legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In their effort to vet job applicants, some companies and government agencies have started asking for passwords to log into a prospective employee’s accounts on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Critics call it an invasion of privacy akin to handing over the keys to the person’s house.

State Sen. Donna Soucy, a co-sponsor on both New Hampshire bills, said Monday that employers can gain access to information about an employee or job applicant through social media accounts like Facebook that they otherwise could not legally obtain. She said people post personal information about themselves on Facebook or others post on the person’s page that should be protected.

She said she has not heard of any New Hampshire employers demanding the information.

“I think the issue is something we need to consider a lot more seriously than we used to” with the growth of social media accounts, she said. “At the very least, I would hope we would have a study.”

Soucy, D-Manchester, said employers can use information on social media accounts to discriminate. For example, the applicant might be obese but the person’s weight would not be required on the application. The employer might not know until seeing a picture on Facebook, she said.

“Would they interview them if they saw their picture on Facebook?” she said.

Soucy said other people can post information on the person’s page that the person might not delete before a prospective employer saw it.

“As responsible as somebody might trying to be, it is still a reflection on them,” she said.

Allowing employers access to social media accounts also gives them access to others linked to the account at the infringement on their privacy, she said.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Is Adele's New Tattoo a Tribute to Her Son?

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/11/2013 at 10:00 AM ET

Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP. Inset: Christopher Pol

A is for … Angelo?

During Sunday’s Grammy Awards, Adele brought some serious flower power to the red carpet.

But her Valentino embroidered floral dress, which she accessorized with matching printed pumps, burgundy diamond flower earrings, a black ruffled pouch purse and a vintage up ‘do, wasn’t the only thing that caught our attention.

The singer — who nabbed an award for best solo pop performance for her hit, “Set Fire to the Rain” — showed off some new ink: a discreet “A” in script behind her right ear.

The new mom is mum on the inspiration for her latest tattoo, but could it be another ode to her baby boy’s name?

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Days after she scored a Golden Globe in January, Adele was spotted sporting a gold nameplate “Angelo” necklace.

– Anya Leon

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study. The pope's comments about strength of mind "does make one worry that he is concerned about his mind," Perls said.

But aging alone is reason enough. It has driven many from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire.

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

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Wall Street ends flat as investors seek new catalysts

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended a quiet session with slight moves on Monday as investors found few reasons to keep pushing shares higher following a six-week advance, though the longer-term trend was still viewed as positive.

The benchmark index is up more 6.4 percent in 2013, putting both the S&P 500 and Dow industrials near multi-year highs. The S&P is less than 4 percent from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, hit in October 2007.

"This is still a market that looks terrific, but when you're up for six weeks in a row, everyone is going to want to take a pause going into the seventh week even if there is no bad news out there," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago.

Volume was light, with about 4.812 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

Wall Street was modestly lower throughout the session but regained some ground in the final hour of trading as Google Inc rebounded off earlier losses. Shares of the Internet search giant dipped 0.4 percent to $782.42, recovering from earlier declines of 1 percent after the company said in a filing former chief executive Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his stake in the company.

Also in the tech space, Apple Inc rose up 1 percent to $479.93 after the New York Times reported the iPhone maker was experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch.

The Federal Reserve's Vice Chair Janet Yellen, seen as a potential successor to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke next year, said the Fed is still aggressively stimulating an anemic U.S. economic recovery that has failed to bring rapid progress on employment.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 21.81 points, or 0.16 percent, at 13,971.16. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.92 points, or 0.06 percent, at 1,517.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.87 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,192.00.

Upbeat U.S. and Chinese data last week helped the S&P 500 extend its weekly winning streak to six. The index gained about 8 percent over that period.

Equities have been strong performers lately and many investors have used any declines in the market as opportunities to buy.

"Everyone wants to buy on a dip in this market, but if you're on the sidelines right now, the decline we're seeing today just isn't the kind you would jump in on," Kuby said.

President Barack Obama will describe his plan for spurring the economy in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He is expected to offer proposals for investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education.

Opposition has grown to the $24.4 billion buyout of Dell Inc , the No. 3 personal computer maker, as three of the largest investors joined Southeastern Asset Management on Friday in raising objections. Dell said in a regulatory filing it had considered many strategic options before opting to go private in a buyout led by Chief Executive Michael Dell.

Dell shares hovered near $13.65, the buyout offer price.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc shares rose 2.7 percent at $170.35 after it said longtime drug development partner Sanofi plans to boost its stake.

Moody's Corp was one of the strongest percentage gainers on the S&P 500, rising 4.9 percent to $45.49. Last week the stock plunged 22 percent after the U.S. government launched a civil lawsuit against the company. The sell-off marked the stock's worst week since October 2008.

About 53 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed lower while slightly more Nasdaq-listed stocks closed in negative territory.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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The Lede: Latest Updates on the Pope’s Resignation

The Lede is providing updates on Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement on Monday that he intends to resign on Feb. 28, less than eight years after he took office, the first pope to do so in six centuries. (Turn off auto-refresh to watch videos.)

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Tech wizards honored by Oscars organizers

BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) – Some of the most ingenious behind-the-scenes innovators, whose breakthroughs in computer technology and other fields were key to the making of movies such as “Shrek” and “Avatar,” were awarded at an early Oscar organizers’ ceremony in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

From the team who developed a system to bring to life computerized digital stunt doubles for fantastic creatures in movies such as “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” to the man who simply developed one of the most versatile lighting delivery systems in film production, the Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards showcased emotional speeches and lifetimes of work for those whose lives are spent behind the camera.

The Beverly Hills ceremony honored 25 individuals with nine awards. Unlike the main Oscars ceremony, which will be held on Sunday, February 24 and will only recognize movie achievements from 2012, the Scientific and Technical Awards honored those with a proven record of achievement in the process of making feature films.

The ceremony was hosted by actors Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana, who respectively played Captain James T. Kirk and Uhura in “Star Trek” in 2009 and who will reprise those roles in this May’s sequel. Saldana payed tribute to the night’s honorees, saying they made it possible for life in front of the camera.

Richard Mall received perhaps the greatest applause of the night, for his invention of the Matthews Max Menace Arm, a portable device which allows studio lights to be moved and positioned all over a set, often where normal lighting cannot be used because of on-site restrictions of other difficult conditions.

“I am a little humbled to be up here with all this technology, because basically I built something in my garage,” Mall said to applause and cheers. He thanked his wife for all the strange noises that had come out of that garage. His invention has been sold to over 40 countries and used in more than 300 films.

The evening was also devoted to people who had invented systems such as “Tissue: A Physically-Based Character Simulation Framework,” which has made huge advances in bringing to life computer-generated characters such as Gollum in “The Hobbit“. An Academy Plaque for Scientific and Engineering went to Simon Clutterbuck, James Jacobs and Dr. Richard Dorling for this technique.

The team of Daniel Wexler, Lawrence Kesteloot and Drew Olbrich that created the Light system for computer graphics at PDI/DreamWorks was awarded for technical achievement. Their work, which combines light, color and rendering in one, was used in “Shrek,” “Madagascar” and other animated DreamWorks pictures.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Helen Mirren's Surprising Pink Hair Inspiration Revealed

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/10/2013 at 03:49 PM ET

Ian Gavan/Getty

What do Dakota Fanning, Katy Perry and Helen Mirren have in common? Until Sunday’s BAFTA awards in London, not a whole lot, but Mirren’s bright new do put them all in a rarefied group of stars who have rocked pink hair.

“I saw it on America’s Next Top Model, so I decided to have a go,” Mirren, 67, told reporters of her tress inspiration. The cotton-candy hue highlighted her brand-new choppy pixie cut, which she showed off to great effect in a white crew-neck Nicholas Oakwell Couture gown with floral embroidery. “I know I won’t win tonight,” she said of her best actress nomination for Hitchcock, “but I’m going to have lots of fun and celebrate anyway.”

Though we’re used to the star’s bold fashion choices, her colorful locks (rumored to be temporary) still managed to surprise us — if only because we’d bet she’s the first-ever Dame Commander of the British Empire to sport a pastel pink pixie.

Tell us: What do you think of Mirren’s new do?

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: VOTE ON MORE STAR HAIR CHANGES HERE!

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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G20 to skirt potholes and follow growth signposts

LONDON (Reuters) - With the road ahead looking a bit smoother, G20 finance ministers will be happy to ignore the wreck in the rear-view mirror when they meet this week to steer a course for the world economy.

The euro zone as a whole and a clutch of its members, including France, Italy and the Netherlands, are expected to report that their economies shrank last quarter - joining Germany and the United States - while Japan's barely grew, according to economists polled by Reuters.

But the Group of 20 leading economies, which meets in Moscow on Friday, should be able to take heart from a pair of more timely indicators - a New York Fed manufacturing survey and a University of Michigan poll on consumer sentiment.

Economists expect both to show an improvement, despite the gnawing uncertainty of how long-running U.S. deficit reduction negotiations will affect taxes and spending.

Luca Paolini, chief strategist at Pictet Asset Management in London, said he was more positive on the global outlook on balance but a sense of perspective was needed. Buoyant markets risked getting ahead of themselves.

"Our own leading indicators are going up, but we don't think we're in a strong growth environment. We see weak growth, and that's not going to change this year," he said.

PASSING THE GROWTH BATON

Simon Hayes, an economist with Barclays Capital, broadly agreed. "On the whole, recent activity data have been encouraging of our view that the global economy is improving, albeit slowly," he said in a report.

January U.S. retail sales figures are likely to underline this point. Hobbled by the January 1 increase in payroll taxes, economists expect a rise of just 0.1 percent on the month.

By contrast, U.S. capital spending is finally perking up from a low level as corporations, realizing that protracted cost-cutting is hurting productivity and growth prospects, give the green light to pent-up investments, Paolini said.

"But we're not overly optimistic because investment is based on confidence. You can have all the money you want, but you're not going to invest if you expect growth to be weak. So if we have any kind of shock - it can be politics or something else - investment will fall again," he said.

China delivered a boost to confidence on Friday with a batch of strong trade and money data for January.

Economists are wary of reading too much into China's figures at the start of the year because of distortions due to the variable timing of the long Lunar New Year holidays.

But Ting Lu, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's chief China economist, said they supported his view that gross domestic product growth could accelerate to 8.3 percent in the first half of this year from 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

China is not the only developing economy that is doing its bit for global growth.

Mark Williams, chief Asia economist with Capital Economics in London, said there had been signs of a rebound across the emerging world in the past month. Goldman Sachs, too, said there had been a marked improvement in consumer confidence across emerging markets coming into 2013.

"It had been the case that Latin America and Asia were looking up at the end of last year but emerging economies in Europe were still looking very weak. But even they are now joining in the recovery. So it's looking increasingly broad-based," Williams said.

CURRENCY SKIRMISHES

One obvious pothole on the road to recovery is the threat of a spate of competitive devaluations, as growth-hungry countries seek to give their exporters an edge by talking down their currencies or actively pushing them lower by bold monetary easing.

Japan has come in for fierce criticism in some quarters for that very reason, but Finance Minister Taro Aso sought to restore calm on Friday by saying the recent slide in the yen had gone too far.

His emollient words reinforced expectations that the G20 will not point the finger at Tokyo.

At the same time, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi's success in reversing the euro's climb with a few well-chosen words last Thursday has eased the worries of France and others for now that the single currency was approaching levels that would do real damage to the euro area.

So, although Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega fears global currency wars could intensify, the betting is on an anodyne statement from the Moscow meeting that avoids rattling confidence.

"There will be something very vague reminding everybody that if you start getting into currency wars everybody is going to lose," Paolini with Pictet said.

(Editing by Toby Chopra)

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IHT Rendezvous: Sharper Tongues in China's Year of the Snake?

BEIJING — The Snake is determined and smart, according to traditional Chinese beliefs. Today is New Year’s Day in China, the first day in the Year of the Snake, and a good day to ask: Will Xi Jinping, a “snake” set to become president in March (Mr. Xi was born in a Year of the Snake, in 1953) bring change to China?

Whether or not one believes in feng shui — the thought system based on geomancy, astronomy and folk wisdom of which the 12-yearly animal cycle is part — many here swear by it, and that makes the confluence of the man and the year important.

As the rational economist He Fan said last year, at the beginning of the Year of the Dragon: Feng shui may not be rational, but it is “symbolic,” “and that’s important, because that’s how China’s political culture works.”

So as ordinary people across the nation settle into their hard-earned, weeklong holiday amid the thunder of festival firecrackers, some are wondering whether recent calls by Mr. Xi to attack corruption and “criticize sharply” the ruling Communist Party will bring unwelcome shocks to members of the privileged classes in China, including the party, the government and state-run companies, widely seen as too powerful and too corrupt.

Skepticism about real change is rife, for sure, but signs say maybe, at least to some degree. And if that sounds woolly, it is because making predictions in China is notoriously difficult. Yet it is also important as the nation grows in international stature: As Bloomberg News notes, 2012 may have marked the year when China became the world’s largest trading nation. China was last the world’s biggest economy during the Qing dynasty, Bloomberg noted (though back then it didn’t focus on trade, Bloomberg wrote).

Some say the change has already begun, amid a deepening campaign against corruption announced by Mr. Xi after he was appointed general secretary of the party in November. The state’s anti-corruption warnings are being taken more seriously now than at any time in the past decade because they come from Mr. Xi, who is regarded as potentially a strong leader fast establishing his dominance, already the most eminent member of the seven-man Standing Committee of the Politburo, China’s inner circle of power.

One sign: Traditionally lavish end-of-the-year parties thrown by powerful state-owned companies, and thus paid for from the public purse, have been canceled in large numbers, causing great satisfaction among ordinary people as high-end restaurants in Beijing are suddenly available for traditional New Year family dinners. In previous years, getting a booking was impossible. This year, it’s not.

Another sign: a recent call by Mr. Xi for “sharp criticism” of the Communist Party.

“Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged the Communist Party of China (CPC) to be more tolerant of criticism and receptive to the views of non-communists,” Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported last week.

“The CPC should be able to put up with sharp criticism, correct mistakes if it has committed them and avoid them if it has not,” Xinhua quoted Mr. Xi as saying, adding that nonparty members should “have the courage to tell the truth, speak words jarring on the ear, and truthfully reflect public aspirations.”

The call has been — what else? — sharply criticized, in fast and furious microblog postings showing just how deep is the well of resentment against the state’s heavy hand in some quarters.

Shortly after 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day, Ai Weiwei, the artist, snapped on his Twitter account: “First sentence of the New Year, release all political prisoners.”

The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, gathered more acerbic responses:

The venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee: “Will you stop silencing and shutting down microblog accounts?”

Xu Xiaonian, an economics professor: “Will you stop censoring books and media reports?”

Chen Tongkui, an academic: “Will you stop press censorship?”

Wang Xiaoyu, another academic: “Can you not delete the comments on this microblog post?”

The real estate magnate Ren Zhiqiang: “Will you stop criminalizing people’s speech and sentencing them to re-education through labor?”

Cui Weiping, an academic: “Will you put an end to police harassment” of activists and netizens?

Yet, for many ordinary Chinese, there is hope. Incomes are rising, and there is a whiff of, yes, change in the air. In a recent, colorfully presented survey by TNS, part of Kantar, an information and consulting group, 88 percent of people surveyed in China were positive about the Year of the Snake, the company said.

As Mr. He said of last year, which saw the dramatic downfall of the political scion Bo Xilai, seen by some as a contender for Mr. Xi’s position, amid a murder and corruption scandal: “Something happens in every Dragon Year, even if it’s just a turning point.” Often, the real action begins a year or two later.

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