DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend, "Doug" (24), and I (22) have been in a long-distance relationship for a year, but we were friends for a couple of years before that. I had never had a serious relationship before and lacked experience. Doug has not only been in two other long-term relationships, but has had sex with more than 15 women. One of them is an amateur porn actress.I knew about this, but it didn't bother me until recently. Doug had a party, and while he was drunk he told one of his buddies -- in front of me -- that he should watch a certain porn film starring his ex-girlfriend. ...
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Promises of Tax Cuts Popular With Italian Voters
Label: World
ROME — In recent days, millions of Italians received an official-looking envelope that boldly read “IMPORTANT NOTICE. Reimbursement of IMU 2012” with a letter inside explaining that an unpopular property tax levied last year would be refunded either through a bank transfer or in cash.
Reading the fine print, however — or noticing the small logo in the corner — Italians discovered that the sender was not the revenue agency but rather the party of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and that the letter was merely a final campaign promise ahead of the national vote this weekend.
The initiative met with howls of protest.
The departing prime minister, Mario Monti, accused Mr. Berlusconi of trying to “buy the votes of Italians with the state’s money.” Luigi Bersani, leader of the Democratic Party and the front-runner, according to polls, condemned the letter as a “fraud.”
But the letter underscored a cause — promises of lower taxes and tax amnesties — that has taken hold among not only Mr. Berlusconi’s main opponents but also smaller groups that are new to the electoral process and are garnering serious attention.
One of those is Act to Stop the Decline, a pro-business, liberal-libertarian political movement that is participating in the elections for the first time and is advocating for reducing the tax burden on Italians by 5 percent in five years. The difference with other political parties, many say, is that Stop the Decline actually has a credible road map for achieving its objectives — eliminating a regional tax and using money recovered from tax evaders to lower income taxes.
“This is one of the few parties that not only has a program that sets out what it will do, but also how they’re going to go about it.
Other parties are mostly vague,” Aldo Parisi, a bus driver, said Tuesday night at a Rome theater where Stop the Decline staged “An Italian Dinner,” a play dealing with myriad social problems, from youth unemployment to the lack of a welfare system.
One of the group’s other central goals is to reduce Italy’s staggering national debt by 20 percent of gross domestic product in five years.
To this end, the group would sell off state assets and state shares in formerly public companies, and reduce public expenditures.
The play is one of the quirky campaign strategies — also including flash mobs and an adept use of social media — that have propelled Stop the Decline into the public sphere. Founded in a matter of months last summer by a group of Italian economists, mostly university professors abroad, it has garnered 100,000 members and injected tough-economic-love messages into the electoral debate.
“We shared a sense of urgency that people who know the economy have with regards to Italy,” said Oscar Giannino, a journalist turned economic pundit who is the party’s candidate for prime minister.
The economists who founded the party include Michele Boldrin of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; Sandro Brusco of Stony Brook University in New York State; and Andrea Moro of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
Nearly two decades of ineffectual policies that slowed Italy’s economic growth into a near standstill convinced them that the country was taking the wrong path, and that they could suggest alternative — and untested — remedies.
The movement is unlikely to make huge inroads in the election, with some polls predicting it will win less than 2 percent of the vote. The big winner is expected to be the Democratic Left, at least in the lower house, followed by what most pollsters say will be the unexpected success of the comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, which is mining the deep disaffection that Italians have for their political class. Mr. Monti, who is supported by a centrist coalition, will probably trail Mr. Berlusconi in the vote.
But Stop the Decline was showing strong inroads in Lombardy, one of the swing regions, though the group’s popularity might be dented somewhat by the revelations this week that Mr. Giannino lied about his academic credentials. He resigned as party president but remains the candidate for prime minister.
Even with the resignation, a rare occurrence in Italy, Mr. Giannino has retained a loyal following.
“He has ideas, ideologies, and I think he’ll be a good leader in the future if not now,” said Camilla Beretta, 18, a Milanese student taking university courses in Rome.
“Italy needs new faces, young people, honest people,” she said. “I have to be hopeful. Even if really I am not.”
MTV Fake-Hacks Its Own Twitter Handle, Proving That MTV Is Still Terrible
Label: TechnologyOn Tuesday afternoon, just as the week of the big-brand Twitter hack was getting as old as it was useful to the “victims,” the Twitter feeds of BET and MTV — both owned by the media conglomerate Viacom — were “hacked.” Except they weren’t, in fact, hacked. They were stunt-hacked in a pre-planned, inter-office joke that turned into a viral marketing ploy gone bad.
RELATED: 4 Reasons To Praise Twitter’s New URL Shortener
On Monday hackers took to Burger King’s Twitter feed in a fake McDonald’s takeover that gained the brand 30,000 followers and a whole lot of social-media brand recognition, almost by accident. By midday Tuesday, Jeep had been “taken over” by hackers posing as Cadillac, and thousands of followers came with the very similar “attack.” But the social-media teams at BET and MTV had already noticed the bump, and had some “fun” in store. Which, because this is Twitter and jokes last about a day, didn’t end up much fun for anyone involved — and because this is MTV, definitely ended up in making the network look even more behind the times than usual.
RELATED: Does Google Have a Double Agent at Twitter?
We spotted this message (since deleted) from BET’s “social media pugilist”:
RELATED: The New York Times’s Bill Keller Riles Up Twitter
And there was this evidence, from an MTV marketing director’s feed minutes before the reality-TV channel was hacked:
MTV Marketing Director @schoprah tweets about the #MTVhack 4 minutes before the first “hacked” @mtv post:twitpic.com/c563h6
— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) February 19, 2013
And have at these musings that MTV’s social media manger, Tom Fischman, tweeted after Burger King was hacked yesterday:
Is there any real downside to the @burgerking hack? Mistake leaving the account suspended all day, would have seen a nice follower windfall.
— Thomas Fishman (@Tom_Fishman) February 18, 2013
@mcbc Nobody thinks BK tweeted that stuff, doesn’t really reflect on them at all. Just bought them a ton of publicity, sympathy if anything.
— Thomas Fishman (@Tom_Fishman) February 18, 2013
The stunt certainly earned MTV and BET a bunch of publicity — like this post that you’re reading! — but came with the price of Twitter’s scorn … and no real bump in followers to either feed, either up or down:
I knew MTV wasn’t hacked when their content continued to still be complete crap.
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) February 19, 2013
I hope @twitter suspends @mtv and @bet just for being asshats
— Peter Ha (@ThePeterHa) February 19, 2013
It’s days like today that make me hate the Internet.
— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) February 19, 2013
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Vin Diesel Re-cuts His Rihanna Rendition
Label: LifestyleRihanna and Vin Diesel
Larry Busacca/WireImage; Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic
Vin Diesel: an action star and a gentleman.
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After showing off his vocal range with a cover of Rihanna's "Stay" on Friday, The Fast and the Furious star is revealing the inspiration behind his touching performance (and his re-cut clip, below).
After seeing Rihanna perform the song at the Grammy Awards, Diesel, 45, decided to record himself singing the tune and dedicate it to his longtime girlfriend, Paloma Jimenez, in lieu of a traditional Valentine's Day card.
With the help of his daughter, Diesel obtained a mic and an amp while Jimenez was on a flight and "the rest is history," he tells PEOPLE.
And the response his romantic video has been getting has been even better.
"People say 'I didn't know you were a Rihanna fan?' " he says. "How could you not be a fan of her voice, her gift."
But while the actor says he's been putting out fun singing videos "for years" – and sang in Saving Private Ryan – he adds that "no one ever took it this [seriously]."
• With Reporting By JULIE JORDAN
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Costlier robotic surgery soars for hysterectomies
Label: HealthCHICAGO (AP) — Robotic surgery is increasingly being used for women's hysterectomies, adding at least $2,000 to the cost without offering much benefit over less high-tech methods, a study found.
The technique was used in just 0.5 percent of operations studied in 2007, but that soared to almost 10 percent by early 2010. Columbia University researchers analyzed data on more than 260,000 women who had their wombs removed at 441 U.S. hospitals for reasons other than cancer. The database covered surgeries performed through the first few months of 2010.
Women who had the robotic operations were slightly less likely to spend more than two days in the hospital, but hospital stays were shorter than that for most women. Also, complications were equally rare among robotic surgery patients and those who had more conventional surgeries. Average costs for robotic hysterectomies totaled nearly $9,000, versus about $3,000 for the least expensive method, a different type of minimally invasive technique using more conventional surgery methods.
Traditionally hysterectomies were done by removing the womb through a large abdominal incision. Newer methods include removing the uterus through the vagina and minimally invasive "keyhole" abdominal operations using more conventional surgery methods, or surgeon-controlled robotic devices.
Robotic operations involve computer-controlled long, thin robot-like "arms" equipped with tiny surgery instruments. Surgeons operate the computer and can see inside the body on the computer screen, through a tiny camera attached to the robotic arms. The initial idea was for surgeons to do these operations miles away from the operating room, but robotic operations now are mostly done with the surgeon in the same room as the patient.
Theoretically, robotic surgeries make it easier to maneuver inside the patient, and are increasingly used for many types of operations, not just hysterectomies.
The main explanation for the big increase "is that robotic surgery has been marketed extensively to not only hospitals and physicians, but also directly to patients. There is minimal data in gynecology that it is advantageous," said Dr. Jason Wright, an assistant professor of women's health and the study's lead author.
The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Our findings highlight the importance of developing rational strategies to implement new surgical technologies," the researchers wrote.
They note that 1 in 9 U.S. women will undergo a hysterectomy, usually after the age of 40. Reasons include fibroids and other non-cancerous growths, abnormal bleeding, and cancer.
Traditional abdominal operations remain common and more than 40 percent of women studied had them, costing on average about $6,600.
A JAMA editorial says the study doesn't answer whether the robotic method might be better for certain women, and says more research comparing methods is needed. Still, it says doctors and hospitals have a duty to inform patients about costs of different surgery options.
Dr. Myriam Curet of manufacturer Intuitive Surgical of Sunnyvale, Calif., said surgical robots can help surgeons overcome the limitations of other minimally invasive methods for very overweight patients, those with scarring from other surgeries and other complexities.
___
JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org
Robotic surgery: http://tinyurl.com/byuljds
___
AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner
M&A deals lift Wall Street shares nearer a record high
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday as this year's ongoing surge in merger activity suggested investors were still finding value in the market even as indexes closed in on all-time highs.
Office Depot Inc
News of the potential move came just days after Berkshire Hathaway
Deal activity has helped equities resist a pullback as investors use dips in stocks as buying opportunities. The S&P is up about 7 percent so far in 2013 and has climbed for the past seven weeks in its longest weekly winning streak since January 2011, though most of the weekly gains have been slim.
The Dow industrials closed 0.9 percent away from their record high while S&P 500 was 2.2 percent off its peak.
"Deals are good for the market," said Frank Lesh, a futures analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago. "The fact that they're being done is a positive."
More than $158 billion in deals has been announced so far in 2013, more than double the activity in the same period last year and accounting for 57 percent of global deal volumes, according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 53.91 points, or 0.39 percent, to 14,035.67. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 11.15 points, or 0.73 percent, to 1,530.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 21.56 points, or 0.68 percent, to 3,213.59.
Other stocks in the office supplies sector also rose. Larger rival Staples Inc
"Equity investors have to be encouraged by M&A since, if the number crunchers are offering large premiums, that shows how much value is still in the market," said Mike Gibbs, co-head of the equity advisory group at Raymond James in Memphis, Tennessee.
On the downside, health insurance stocks tumbled, led by a 6.4 percent drop in Humana Inc
UnitedHealth Group
Wall Street's strong start to the year was fueled by better-than-expected corporate earnings, as well as a compromise in Washington that temporarily averted automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that are predicted to damage the economy.
The compromise on across-the-board spending cuts postponed the matter until March 1, at which point the cuts take effect. Ahead of the debate over the cuts, known as sequestration, further gains for stocks may be difficult to come by.
Some investors say the debate could be the catalyst for a long anticipated sell-off after the market's recent strong run.
Carter Worth, a technical analyst at Oppenheimer, pointed to the "especially complacent action of the past six weeks," noting that, as of Friday, stocks have gone 33 sessions without a dip of more than 1.5 percent.
"We would be selling aggressively into the market's current strength," he said in a research note.
Economic data showed the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index unexpectedly edged down to 46 in February from 47 in the prior month as builders faced higher material costs.
According to the Thomson Reuters data through Monday morning, of the 391 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.
Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.
Express Scripts
About two stocks rose for everyone that fell on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. About 6.48 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, in line with the daily average so far this year.
(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak Ryan Vlastelica and Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)
Tunisian Prime Minister Resigns After Failing to Form New Cabinet
Label: World
Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters
Tunisia’s prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, center, arrived for a news conference to announce his resignation in Tunis on Tuesday.
TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned on Tuesday after failing to replace a government pulled apart by acrimony between his Islamist allies and their secular opponents.
Jebali had threatened to quit if his plan for a non-partisan cabinet of technocrats to lead the north African country into early elections foundered.
In the end it was his own party, Ennahda, that rejected the proposal, prolonging the political stand-off that has cast a shadow over Tunisia's fledging democracy and deepened an economic crisis. "I vowed that if my initiative did not succeed, I would resign and ... I have already done so," Jebali told a news conference after meeting with President Moncef Marzouki.
Tunisia's deepest political crisis since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali began when leading secular opposition politician Chokri Belaid was gunned down outside his home in Tunis on February 6.
No one claimed responsibility for the killing, but it deepened the misgivings of secularists who believe Jebali's government has failed to deal firmly enough with religious extremists threatening the country's stability.
Protesters poured onto the streets in the following days and Marzouki's secularist party threatened to quit the coalition government.
Jebali said he would try to form a cabinet of apolitical technocrats to restore calm and take Tunisia to elections, but did not consult his Ennahda allies or their secular coalition partners before making the proposal.
Several secular politicians backed the plan but Ennahda, winner of most parliamentary seats in elections that followed Ben Ali's overthrow, opposed the idea, fearing it would be sidelined from power.
Jebali bet his own job on the outcome, saying he would quit if he was rebuffed, and lost.
He quits 15 months into the job, although political experts said Marzouki was likely to re-appoint him as caretaker premier before a new leader is appointed.
Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi has said he wants to see Jebali head a new coalition. President Marzouki was due to meet Ghannouchi on Wednesday to ask him to name a prime minister.
But Jebali, announcing his resignation late on Tuesday, said he would not lead another government without assurances on the timing of fresh elections and a new constitution.
No government would be viable without Ennahda's blessing given its strength in parliament.
Ghannouchi has said it is essential that Islamists and secular parties share power now and in the future, and that his party was willing to compromise over control of important ministries such as foreign affairs, justice and interior.
"Ennahda is in negotiations with political parties to form a national coalition government", said Fethi Ayadi, a senior Ennahda official.
Iyed Dahmani, a leader of the secular Republican Party, said some kind of agreement was vital.
"We are in real trouble, politically and economically," he said.
The crisis has disrupted efforts to revitalise an economy hit hard by the disorder that followed the overthrow of veteran strongman Ben Ali.
Tunisia has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a $1.78 billion loan and politicians said Jebali's inability to re-establish a functioning government had slowed efforts to restore normality.
Credit rating service Standard and Poor's said on Tuesday it had lowered its long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit rating on Tunisia, citing "a risk that the political situation could deteriorate further amid a worsening fiscal, external and economic outlook".
(Reporting By Tarek Amara; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
Burger King plans apology after Twitter hack
Label: TechnologySomebody hacked Burger King‘s Twitter account on Monday, posting obscene messages and changing its profile picture to a McDonald‘s logo.
The tweets stopped after a little more than an hour, and Burger King said it had reached out to Twitter to suspend the account. A Twitter spokesman did not immediately respond to a phone message left on Monday.
Burger King, which usually tweets several times a week, said it was working to get the account back up. Typical tweets promoted sales on chicken sandwiches, or asked how many bites it takes to eat a chicken nugget.
But just after noon EST on Monday, someone tweeted via Burger King’s account, “We just got sold to McDonalds!” They also changed the icon to rival McDonald Corp.‘s golden arches and the account’s background picture to McDonald’s new Fish McBites.
About 55 tweets and retweets followed over the next hour and a quarter, including some that contained racial epithets, references to drug use and obscenities. The account tweeted: “if I catch you at a wendys, we’re fightin!”
Monday’s appropriation of Burger King’s Twitter account was a relatively mild example of cybersecurity problems, which are causing increasing concern in Washington and for industry. Media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have all said this year that their computer systems were breached, while several NBC websites were briefly hacked in November. White House officials and some lawmakers are pursuing legislation that would make it easier for the government and industry to share information on how to defend against hacking.
Burger King didn’t know who hacked the account, and no other social media accounts were affected, said Bryson Thornton, a spokesman for Miami-based Burger King Worldwide Inc. Its social media team and an outside agency manage the Twitter account, but Thornton declined to say how many people knew the account’s password. He said they hope to have it working again soon, and will post a statement on Facebook later Monday apologizing for the tweets.
Twitter acknowledged on Feb. 1 that cyber attackers may have stolen user names and passwords of 250,000 users. It said at the time that it notified users of the breach.
Competitors were sympathetic.
McDonald’s responded on Twitter that it empathized with its Burger King counterparts. “Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”
“My real life nightmare is playing out” on Burger King’s twitter feed, wrote Wendy’s social media worker Amy Rose Brown.
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The Bachelor: AshLee Dishes on Her Connection with Sean - and Tierra
Label: Lifestyle
TV Watch
The Bachelor
For The Bachelor's AshLee Frazier, 32, the week spent with Sean Lowe in St. Croix was a series of emotional highs and lows, from coming clean with the final skeleton in her closet to a super-charged confrontation with Tierra. The Houston-based professional organizer spoke with reporters about what she sees in her show squeeze, how it felt to tell him she'd been married before (and in high school no less!), and if she really feared elimination.
Why wait so long to tell him about your high school marriage?
Obviously, I wasn't going to tell him on our very first date. I want to know somebody and make sure the vibe is there before I divulge my story. Every other time was either a group date or the rose ceremony and that just wasn't the appropriate time to talk. He had a few more questions about it [than aired on TV], but he was so loving and genuine about it. He made me feel like a huge weight lifted, like it was OK.
Can you explain how it ended?
The details are pretty simple. I got a divorce. I was young and I didn't handle [going through the rough patch with my family] the best way. It wasn't a bad breakup. It was more like I woke up and [realized], "Oops. What did I do?" We discussed it and both came to the conclusion that we made a bad decision.
You had a great date and said, "I love you." Yet you seemed convinced you would be eliminated. Why?
One hundred percent I was scared this might be the time I go home. I felt safe up until the argument happened and even until Sean came in before the rose ceremony and said that he didn't want anyone with these dramatic spells in his life. I was part of the [drama with Tierra]. I didn't get a chance to talk to him and explain my side of it because there was no cocktail party.
How'd it feel to hear Tierra mock your age and call you high school?
I laughed because what are you gonna do? Go back in time? I'm 32. I've never thought about my age so much in my life. It doesn't bother me. It speaks for itself who was being immature. It was not a very nice thing to say, but that's the difference between her character and mine.
Ever wonder how he could dig Tierra and you simultaneously?
I couldn't sit and wonder why he was keeping Tierra. You have to compartmentalize your feelings and focus on the end and your relationship with Sean. Sean is smart. I knew he'd eventually come to and realize it.
Why do you two mesh?
We come from the same background, have a very similar strong family upbringing and are compatible. He was classy, charismatic and a solid gentleman who made me laugh all the time. You have to balance each other out. I think it was a ying to a yang. He wants to adopt and [great for] my heart to hear. That's a solid foundation to build a perfect relationship.
People have said you might not be enough of a goofball to be the one.
When it came to our relationship. I took it more seriously because this is my future. This is marriage and that's not something I want to tread into lightly. But for the most part, I'm not sure where that comes from. I joked. I laughed. I played a lot of Apples to Apples. I had a blast.
Do you see connections between him and other girls?
I see the possibility. Lindsay is very fun. She's always cracking jokes. Catherine has a big heart. Desiree has a sense of stability. Sean said he wanted someone that was genuine, nice, ready for marriage and somebody with a good heart who loved family and if that's what he wanted, I'm the best match for that.
Is everyone left ready to get married?
If they say they are, I would take it at face value. I would hope that anybody who comes on the show is ready. I can only vouch for myself. I was 100 percent ready to give my heart to somebody and fall in love.
Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior
Label: HealthSEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.
The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.
"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.
The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.
The study involved 565 Seattle parents, who periodically filled out TV-watching diaries and questionnaires measuring their child's behavior.
Half were coached for six months on getting their 3-to-5-year-old kids to watch shows like "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer" rather than more violent programs like "Power Rangers." The results were compared with kids whose parents who got advice on healthy eating instead.
At six months, children in both groups showed improved behavior, but there was a little bit more improvement in the group that was coached on their TV watching.
By one year, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups overall. Low-income boys appeared to get the most short-term benefit.
"That's important because they are at the greatest risk, both for being perpetrators of aggression in real life, but also being victims of aggression," Christakis said.
The study has some flaws. The parents weren't told the purpose of the study, but the authors concede they probably figured it out and that might have affected the results.
Before the study, the children averaged about 1½ hours of TV, video and computer game watching a day, with violent content making up about a quarter of that time. By the end of the study, that increased by up to 10 minutes. Those in the TV coaching group increased their time with positive shows; the healthy eating group watched more violent TV.
Nancy Jensen, who took part with her now 6-year-old daughter, said the study was a wake-up call.
"I didn't realize how much Elizabeth was watching and how much she was watching on her own," she said.
Jensen said her daughter's behavior improved after making changes, and she continues to control what Elizabeth and her 2-year-old brother, Joe, watch. She also decided to replace most of Elizabeth's TV time with games, art and outdoor fun.
During a recent visit to their Seattle home, the children seemed more interested in playing with blocks and running around outside than watching TV.
Another researcher who was not involved in this study but also focuses his work on kids and television commended Christakis for taking a look at the influence of positive TV programs, instead of focusing on the impact of violent TV.
"I think it's fabulous that people are looking on the positive side. Because no one's going to stop watching TV, we have to have viable alternatives for kids," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.
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Online:
Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org
___
Contact AP Writer Donna Blankinship through Twitter (at)dgblankinship
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