S&P 500 eases, ends longest winning run in eight years

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eased slightly on Monday after an eight-day run of gains, while the Nasdaq edged higher as Apple shares rebounded.


The index remained above 1,500, however, after closing above that level on Friday for the first time in more than five years. The S&P 500's eight sessions of gains was its longest winning streak in eight years.


Caterpillar shares helped limit losses on the Dow industrials even as the company posted a 55 percent drop in quarterly profit due to a charge connected with accounting fraud at a Chinese subsidiary and weak demand among its dealers. Caterpillar's shares, down 2.2 percent in the past three sessions, rose 2 percent Monday to $97.45.


"I think this multi-year high is really something that's in play both for shorter-term traders and with folks with money on the sidelines," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.


Bargain hunters lifted Apple after the tech giant's stock dropped 14.4 percent in the previous two sessions. With Apple's stock up 2.3 percent at $449.83, the iPad and iPhone maker regained the title as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization as Exxon Mobil fell 0.7 percent to $91.11 and slipped back to second place.


On the down side, Boeing fell 1.4 percent to $74 on worries about the potential hit from delays in its 787 Dreamliner program.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 14.05 points, or 0.10 percent, at 13,881.93. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.78 points, or 0.18 percent, at 1,500.18. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 4.59 points, or 0.15 percent, at 3,154.30.


Investors poured $55 billion in new cash into stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in January, the biggest monthly inflow on record, research provider TrimTabs Investment Research said.


"What we have seen this year is, it appears the individual investor is allocating some 401(k) money to equities. Hopefully that's a decision that will be with us for a while," Hellwig said.


Data on Monday pointed to growing economic momentum as companies sensed improved consumer demand.


U.S. durable goods orders jumped 4.6 percent in December, a pace that far outstripped expectations for a rise of 1.8 percent. Pending home sales, however, unexpectedly dropped 4.3 percent. Analysts were looking for an increase of 0.3 percent.


Corporate earnings so far have mostly been stronger than expected. Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 150 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 67.3 percent have beaten analysts' expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


After the bell, shares of Yahoo rose 4.4 percent to $21.21 following the release of its results.


During the regular session, Hess Corp shares shot up 6.1 percent to $62.48 after the company said it would exit its refining business, freeing up to $1 billion of capital. Separately, hedge fund Elliott Associates is looking for approval to buy about $800 million more in Hess stock.


Stocks have also gained support from a recent agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power. On Monday, Fitch Ratings said that agreement removed the near-term risk to the country's 'AAA' rating.


Volume was roughly 6.1 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.


Decliners outpaced advancers on the NYSE by nearly 4 to 3, while advancers beat decliners on the Nasdaq by about 7 to 5.


(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal and Nick Zieminski)



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Egyptian protesters defy curfew, attack police stations


CAIRO/ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Egyptian protesters defied a nighttime curfew in restive towns along the Suez Canal, attacking police stations and ignoring emergency rule imposed by Islamist President Mohamed Mursi to end days of clashes that have killed at least 52 people.


At least two men died in overnight fighting in the canal city of Port Said in the latest outbreak of violence unleashed last week on the eve of the anniversary of the 2011 revolt that brought down autocrat Hosni Mubarak.


Political opponents spurned a call by Mursi for talks on Monday to try to end the violence.


Instead, huge crowds of protesters took to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and in the three Suez Canal cities - Port Said, Ismailia and Suez - where Mursi imposed emergency rule and a curfew on Sunday.


"Down, down with Mohamed Mursi! Down, down with the state of emergency!" crowds shouted in Ismailia. In Cairo, flames lit up the night sky as protesters set police vehicles ablaze.


In Port Said, men attacked police stations after dark. A security source said some police and troops were injured. A medical source said two men were killed and 12 injured in the clashes, including 10 with gunshot wounds.


"The people want to bring down the regime," crowds chanted in Alexandria. "Leave means go, and don't say no!"


The demonstrators accuse Mubarak's successor Mursi of betraying the two-year-old revolution. Mursi and his supporters accuse the protesters of seeking to overthrow Egypt's first ever democratically elected leader through undemocratic means.


Since Mubarak was toppled, Islamists have won two referendums, two parliamentary elections and a presidential vote. But that legitimacy has been challenged by an opposition that accuses Mursi of imposing a new form of authoritarianism, and punctuated by repeated waves of unrest that have prevented a return to stability in the most populous Arab state.


WEST UNNERVED


The army has already been deployed in Port Said and Suez and the government agreed a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians as part of the state of emergency.


The instability unnerves Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of powerful regional player that has a peace deal with Israel. The United States condemned the bloodshed and called on Egyptian leaders to make clear violence is not acceptable. ID:nW1E8MD01C].


In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of teargas at stone-throwing protesters near Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising. Demonstrators stormed into the downtown Semiramis Intercontinental hotel and burned two police vehicles.


A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot early on Monday, a security source said. It was not clear who fired.


"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from teargas wafting towards him.


The political unrest in the Suez Canal cities has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting in Port Said a year ago.


Mursi's invitation to opponents to hold a national dialogue with Islamists on Monday was spurned by the main opposition National Salvation Front coalition, which rejected the offer as "cosmetic and not substantive".


The only liberal politician who attended, Ayman Nour, told Egypt's al-Hayat channel after the meeting ended late on Monday that attendees agreed to meet again in a week.


He said Mursi had promised to look at changes to the constitution requested by the opposition but did not consider the opposition's request for a government of national unity.


The president announced the emergency measures on television on Sunday: "The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Mursi said.


His demeanor in the address infuriated his opponents, not least when he wagged a finger at the camera.


Some activists said Mursi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.


"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," said Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanize the 2011 uprising. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."


(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Abdelrahman Youssef in Alexandria; Writing by Edmund Blair, Yasmine Saleh and Peter Graff)



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TSX little changed, RIM positioning offsets banks






TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index finished little changed on Monday, as gains in the financial group were partially offset by Research In Motion Ltd shares, which sagged ahead of its critical BlackBerry 10 launch this week.


The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> was down 0.72 of a point at 12,815.91. Half of the index’s 10 key sectors climbed higher.</.gsptse>






(Reporting by Solarina Ho)


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Elisa Donovan Blogs: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists

Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
With Scarlett on Christmas – Courtesy Elisa Donovan


Thanks for welcoming one of our newest celebrity bloggers, Elisa Donovan!


Best known for her roles as Amber in Clueless and Morgan on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Donovan currently stars in the ABC Family franchise The Dog Who Saved Christmas. Following that, she will costar in MoniKa, set for release this year.


Donovan, 41, is also a writer and yogi. A recovered anorexic, she assists in counseling and supporting young women struggling with eating disorders.


She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Charlie Bigelow, and their 8-month-old daughter Scarlett Avery.


She can be found on Facebook, as well as Twitter @RedDonovan.



Okay — I want to talk about my body. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to get weird.


I hate to state the obvious, but women’s bodies — especially after they’ve had a baby — still seem to be an obsession of society. It’s a challenge to find a women’s magazine that doesn’t have at least one item about weight loss or body on its cover; or a women’s talk show that doesn’t have at least one feature on the same thing.


Since I had Scarlett, more people have wanted to talk to me about my body than anything else, so I thought I should jump on the bandwagon. (If you’ve read my previous blog, you’ll know how I feel about a bandwagon…)


Having recovered from anorexia many years ago, I’ve made it a way of life not to talk about my body, or your body or anybody else’s body. I learned long ago that at their core, eating disorders and “body image” issues have very little to do with the physical body at all. They’re about control, perfection and the size of our feelings and desires — not the size of our hips. For years, any comments made to me about my body — positive or negative — were twisted into a soup of insanity that only made me feel more fat; further convincing me that my restricted and unhealthy ways were the path to perfection.


It took many years of therapy, determination and love to overcome my disorder. Through my persistence and care, I have come to be grateful for the challenges I once faced. For my recovery brought me not only to the spiritual basis from which I now lead my life, but also gave me great knowledge and insight into the true goals and desires I have for my future.


One of the more literal and quantifiable assets to my recovery is this: I never judge anyone (including myself) by the physical body one walks around in. I am far more concerned with what is going on inside rather than outside. Skinny or fat, tall or short, sculpted or curvy — the body is truly one of the last things I focus on.


When I was anorexic and bulimic, I had a field day listening to what other people ate — creating my own contorted diets and restrictions in comparison. Then I would berate myself when I would inevitably fail at sticking to any of them; a process which inevitably led me back down the dangerous dead-end road of starving.


This is why today, in general, I don’t think that talking about food and body is healthy. I believe putting the focus on feelings, desires and goals is far more useful. So whenever I’m asked what I eat I usually dodge the question, not wanting to give women more reasons to create obsessions with their bodies, food and exercise.


But not even when I was severely anorexic and people would whisper things like, “I just want to give her a sandwich” was my body such a template for commentary, as it has been since I got pregnant and had a baby. So I thought maybe this was the time to break my silence in discussing this directly. I hope that by sharing my personal experience it may help to demystify the process of being healthy and fit.


Of course, every woman’s body is different. Hence, my experience is unique to me. As yours is to you. But it’s my hope that anyone who might be struggling with this can find the places they identify with what I’m writing and be brought some comfort; maybe our dialogue about this will help propel a shift in the collective consciousness.


Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
Collage I made for Scarlett while I was pregnant – Courtesy Elisa Donovan


This stuff is really tough to talk about. See how I’m talking in circles around the subject so far? I’m cagey because, well — everyone goes bananarama-looney-tunes about this issue. We are all hyper-sensitive. And the last thing I want is to contribute to any of the insanity. I’m actually trying to stop the insanity, and bring us back down to earth. So here goes…


Throughout my pregnancy and post, it has been revelatory to discover just how much the body is what everyone — both men and women alike — feel most compelled to focus on. I’m not suggesting that people are instinctively mean-spirited in doing this. In fact, I’m trying to point out that I don’t think most people even realize it.


When someone comments about a woman’s pregnant or post-baby body, they think it is perfectly acceptable to do so. As if simply because a woman is about to have a child, or just had one, that makes her an open target for public discussion and invasion of her privacy.


I once watched a man at a party dig himself an Olympic-sized hole as he compared the bodies of two expectant women standing next to him (one of which was his wife). “You’re SO much bigger,” he said to the other woman. “You must be due really soon.” A bit stunned, the woman replied, “No, not for another three months.” “No way, really? It’s just that you’re so much bigger than her,” he said, pointing to his wife (who was mortified). “Maybe it’s the color of your sweater that’s making you look huge,” he offered, totally unaware of the gigantic gaping pit he had created for himself.


One friend told me that when she was six months pregnant a woman said to her, “You are ENORMOUS!! You look like you’re having twins!!” (She wasn’t.) Another woman, a complete stranger, said to me when I was almost five months, “You must be having a girl — you’re carrying it sort of … everywhere,” as she gesticulated grotesquely around her entire frame.


I’m just asking — in what universe are these appropriate things to say to a person?


Comments from “You barely look pregnant!” to “Oh my God — you’re huge!” to “You barely gained an ounce!” and “She gained a ton!” lead to “How did you lose the baby weight?” “Are you worried about losing the baby weight?” “Don’t worry — you will lose the baby weight!!” — and they all pre-suppose that one’s physical body is the main concern.


I can say with 100 percent honesty: I never worried about my weight when I was pregnant. Not once. Even during those periods where I felt like a water mammal trapped on land laboriously straining to lumber down the sidewalk, I didn’t worry about it. This is not because I have a super-human sized ego and gargantuan self-esteem. It is because of two things:


1) Everything I’ve already stated about my lessons in body image, and 2) I never looked at the scale when the nurse weighed me at each doctor visit. I told her I didn’t want to know what I weighed, unless there was something abnormal or unhealthy about it. I understood it was necessary for the doctor to know my weight, but it was virtually useless for me to know the number. I hadn’t looked at the numbers on a scale in over 15 years, so why should I start now?


Though I was never one of those women that felt AMAZING while pregnant (I did not see unicorns and rainbows all day and feel “sexier than ever!”), I did feel extraordinarily lucky that for the most part (aside from that brutal first trimester), I felt okay. Though much of this could just be chalked up to the luck of the draw, I believe my choices were an equal contributor.


Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
Charlie and Scarlett at SFMOMA – Elisa Donovan


I didn’t change the quality of what I ate (aside from several fierce cravings which I will get to later, I am an organic and non-processed foods person). I didn’t take “eating for two” to mean “overindulge in every sugary, fatty food I can get my hands on for 10 months.” I ate when I was hungry (which was often) and made sure I got the proper vitamins and minerals from the foods I ate. (Roasted chicken was a favorite, I could not get enough of it. And lemon water. I would have swallowed an entire lemon tree if I could have.)


I also practiced vinyasa yoga nearly every day, when I wasn’t working. Especially on the days when I didn’t feel like getting off of the couch — those were the times it actually felt the best. I even practiced the day before I gave birth. (I loved knowing that I was carrying a baby in my belly in yoga, as I moved through the age-old postures and chanted at the opening and close of class.) I walked a lot. These things cleared my head, energized my body and lifted my spirit. They made me feel like an active participant in nourishing this little being, rather than sitting back and letting something just happen TO me.


Just so you don’t think I’m some out-of-touch-granola-hippie — you should also know that during my second trimester, I developed an insatiable desire for chocolate bars. This trimester fortuitously coincided with Halloween. I would send text messages to my girlfriends with photos of mini-Milky Ways, with the title “FUN SIZE!.” (To be clear: I believed I was maximizing the fun by eating three or four of them.) I would text my husband while he was at the office, “Can you bring me home a Snickers? Don’t judge me.”


For anyone that knows me, it was hilarious and a great source of joy for them to see me delight in eating these things. My chocolate bar fetish was soon replaced by a wild rampage in pursuit of anything red velvet. This is a story that requires its own blog altogether — so I will just tell you this: I have tasted every red velvet cupcake in the greater San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles County areas, and was known to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge just to purchase mini-bundt cakes.


After I had Scarlett, people very quickly said they couldn’t believe I had just had a baby. “OHMYGOD I hate you!” some women would even say, as if I had committed some personal crime against them by physically recovering what they considered to be too quickly. I know these sorts of comments were meant to be compliments, and on one level they were very nice to hear. But this didn’t mean I didn’t feel like a cow.


The reality was, I HAD just had a baby. So regardless of what my body looked like, I still felt predominantly crazy and pudgy. Emotionally, I was no different than anyone else who just had a baby, but because my body seemed to come back quicker, people equated that with everything going back to normal. Back to pre-pregnancy.


Let me take a moment to rally on behalf of striking the term “back to pre-pregnancy” from the lexicon we are allowed to use with regard to — well, anything. Because guess what—nothing is the same as it was before. Nothing. So why do we even pretend it is, or strive to make it so? People have told me I look just like I did before having the baby, that “you can’t even tell!.” This is both very kind and very false.


For one thing, my hips will never be the same … simply never be the same! I also think that my face, my boobs, and my everything else are all forever altered. And I don’t mean to say it’s all change for the worse. I think women’s faces change in a really deep and lovely way once they’ve had a baby; there’s an openness and a brightness that, even amidst the exhaustion and insanity of those first couple of months, is beautiful. I wouldn’t take my pre-pregnancy face back for anything … even for the circumference of my pre-pregnancy hips.


Like most women, I didn’t have an expensive trainer barking at me and kicking my ass into squats at 5 a.m. to “lose that pregnancy weight.” I didn’t have a fancy chef cooking me tastily gourmet but calorically feather-light meals; nor did I have full time help to watch my kid so I could run to the gym and yoga and spinning in order to “get my body back.”


But also like most women, I did have the natural workout (which felt like what I imagine prepping for a marathon might feel like) of suddenly being responsible for the survival and well-being of this tiny human. Between that stunning revelation, the sleep deprivation, and the sheer adrenaline required to metabolize both, my body was operating at maximum capacity from the second Scarlett was born.


To me, it felt like the constant actions of carrying her, walking up and down stairs while lifting car seats and strollers around, burned more calories than an hour on the treadmill could ever hope to.


Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
Upside-down reading – a good start – Elisa Donovan


I guess what I’m trying to get at here is this: are we so concerned with what we look like that even a woman who has just given birth is supposed to make her primary focus and primary source of pride be “getting her body back?”


I am not condoning using childbirth as an excuse to not take care of yourself, nor am I suggesting that we completely stop complimenting one another altogether. But I am talking about the danger of body obsession taking over the psyche and trickling out into everything we do, and I am asking if we can find additional ways to support and applaud each other, not just for our physical appearance.


How did we get so far away from what matters, that living up to some ill-conceived standard of physical perfection has become so important? I wonder about how I will instill my beliefs in Scarlett, when there is an epidemic of body obsession surrounding her everywhere she looks.


How will I make sure she understands that an emaciated waistline and injected lips are not what make for a fulfilling and inspired life? Charlie and I can infuse our values in her daily and teach her by our own example what we believe is right; but how do I make sure she knows that our values are better, if the majority of images and words around her defy them?


Rather than focusing on diets and losing dress sizes, wouldn’t our energies be better spent figuring out how to love one another more, and how to enjoy the wealth of opportunities that are afforded us in 2013? Can’t we do better at encouraging curiosity and inner strength? Couldn’t we focus just a little more on cultivating expression and gaining wisdom, rather than on how to lose 20 pounds in 20 minutes?


I’d like Scarlett to know that her mom isn’t a total loon, just because she is not in constant search of the perfect diet. I hope that Scarlett grows up asking me about books and art and achieving goals, and not whether her stomach is too fat for the dress she is wearing.


I realize this may be a tall order. And I know I can not and should not shelter my child from everything the world will reveal to her. But I can strive to make sure she knows what her mom believes: That her brain, her spirit and her heart are far more valuable than the size of her behind.


– Elisa Donovan


More from Elisa’s PEOPLE.com blog series:


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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West


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.


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


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Fed waits for job market to perk up


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)



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Nightclub fire kills 233 in Brazil


SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A nightclub fire killed at least 233 people in southern Brazil early on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked and overcrowded exits in the ensuing panic, officials said.


The blaze in the university town of Santa Maria was ignited by sparks from pyrotechnics used by the band for visual effects. They set fire to soundproofing on the ceiling and the club rapidly filled with toxic smoke, local fire officials said.


Most of those who died were suffocated by fumes, fire brigade Sergeant Robson Muller told Reuters. Others were crushed in the stampede.


"Smoke filled the place instantly, the heat became unbearable," survivor Murilo Tiescher, a medical student, told GloboNews TV. "People could not find the only exit. They went to the toilet thinking it was the exit and many died there."


Fire officials said at least one exit was locked and that club bouncers, who at first thought those fleeing were trying to skip out on bar tabs, initially blocked patrons from leaving. The security staff relented only when they saw flames engulfing the ceiling.


The tragedy, in a packed venue in one of Brazil's most prosperous states, comes as the country scrambles to improve safety, security and logistical shortfalls ahead of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics, both intended to showcase the economic advances and first-world ambitions of Latin America's largest nation.


In Santa Maria, a city of more than 275,000 people, rescue workers and weary officials wept alongside family and friends of the victims at a local gymnasium being used as a makeshift morgue.


"It's the saddest, saddest day of my life," said Neusa Soares, the mother of one of those killed, 22-year-old Viviane Tolio Soares. "I never thought I would have to live to see my girl go away."


President Dilma Rousseff cut short an official visit to Chile and flew to Santa Maria, where she wept as she spoke to relatives of the victims at the gym.


"All I can say at the moment is that my feelings are of deep sorrow," said Rousseff, who began her political career in Rio Grande do Sul, the state where the fire occurred.


News of the fire broke on Sunday morning, when local news broadcast images of shocked people outside the nightclub called Boate Kiss. Gradually, grisly details emerged.


"BARRIER OF THE DEAD"


"We ran into a barrier of the dead at the exit," Colonel Guido Pedroso de Melo, commander of the fire brigade in Rio Grande do Sul, said of the scene that firefighters found on arrival. "We had to clear a path to get to the rest of those that were inside."


Officials said more than 1,000 people may have been in the club, possibly exceeding its legal capacity. Though Internet postings about the venue suggested as many as 2,000 people at times have crammed into the club, Pedroso de Melo said no more than half that should have been inside.


He said the club was authorized to be open but its permit was in the process of being renewed.


However, Pedroso de Melo did point to several egregious safety violations - from the flare that went off during the show to the locked door that kept people from leaving.


The club's management said in a statement that its staff was trained and prepared to deal with any emergency. It said it would help authorities with their investigation.


When the fire began at about 2:30 a.m., many revelers were unable to find their way out in the chaos.


"It all happened so fast," survivor Taynne Vendrusculo told GloboNews TV. "Both the panic and the fire spread rapidly, in seconds."


Once security guards realized the building was on fire, they tried in vain to control the blaze with a fire extinguisher, according to a televised interview with one of the guards, Rodrigo Moura. He said patrons were getting trampled as they rushed for the doors, describing it as "a horror film."


Band member Rodrigo Martins said the fire started after the fourth or fifth song and the extinguisher did not work.


"It could have been a short circuit, there were many cables there," Martins told Porto Alegre's Radio Gaucha station. He said there was only one door and it was locked. A band member died in the fire.


CLUB OWNER QUESTIONED


One of the club's owners has surrendered to police for questioning, GloboNews reported.


TV footage showed people sobbing outside the club before dawn, while shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit.


Rescue officials moved the bodies to the local gym and separated them by gender. Male victims were easier to identify because most had identification on them, unlike the women, whose purses were left scattered in the devastated nightclub. Local authorities said 120 men and 113 women died in the fire.


Piles of shoes remained in the burnt out club, along with tufts of hair pulled out by people fleeing desperately. Firemen who removed bodies said victims' cell phones were still ringing.


The disaster recalls other incidents including a 2003 fire at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people [ID:nL1N0AW2NR], and a Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 that killed nearly 200. In both incidents, a band or members of the audience ignited fires that set the establishment ablaze.


The Rhode Island fire shocked local and federal officials because of the rarity of such incidents in the United States, where enforcement of safety codes is considered to be relatively strict. After the Buenos Aires blaze, Argentine officials closed many nightclubs and other venues and ultimately forced the city's mayor from office because of poor oversight of municipal codes.


The fire early on Sunday occurred in one of the wealthiest, most industrious and culturally distinct regions of Brazil. Santa Maria is about 186 miles west of Porto Alegre, the capital of a state settled by Germans and other immigrants from northern Europe.


Local clichés paint the region as stricter and more organized than the rest of Brazil, where most residents are a mix descended from native tribes, Portuguese colonists, African slaves, and later influxes of immigrants from southern Europe.


Rio Grande do Sul state's health secretary, Ciro Simoni, said emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene. States from all over Brazil offered support, and messages of sympathy poured in from foreign leaders.


(Additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Gustavo Bonato, Jeferson Ribeiro, Eduardo Simões, Brian Winter and Guido Nejamkis.; Writing by Paulo Prada and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)



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Twitter launches advertising services in Middle East






DUBAI (Reuters) – Twitter Inc launched advertising services in the Middle East and North Africa on Sunday as the social media firm seeks to exploit a tripling of its regional subscriber base following its widespread use during the Arab Spring protests.


Digital advertising is relatively undeveloped in the region, accounting for an estimated 4 percent of its total advertising spending, but a young, tech-savvy population and rising Internet penetration points to significant potential for growth.






“The two are interconnected – the rapid growth of our user base with the timing of why we want to help brands connect with that audience,” said Shailesh Rao, Twitter vice-president for international operations.


Twitter does not provide a regional breakdown of its more than 200 million users worldwide, but Rao said its MENA subscriber base had tripled in the past 12 months.


The company has recruited Egypt’s Connect Ads, which is ultimately owned by Cairo-listed Orascom Telecom Media and Technology, to launch advertising initially in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.


Pepsi and Saudi telecom operator Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) are among its confirmed clients, the company said.


Twitter says the products it promotes typically have an audience response rate of 1 to 3 percent, significantly higher than traditional advertising rate of 0.1 to 0.5 percent.


“Social media advertising is totally different because it relies on what people say. It’s about two-way, not one-way, communication,” said Mohamed El Mehairy, Connect Ads managing director.


(editing by Jane Baird)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi Explains How She Lost 44 Lbs. After Baby















01/27/2013 at 05:30 PM EST







Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi


Kristina Bumphrey/StarTraks


No meatball here!

Just five months after giving birth to son Lorenzo, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi says she's shed the 44 lbs. she gained during her pregnancy.

"Right now I'm 109 lbs., and I've been working out with a trainer since Halloween," Polizzi, 25, told PEOPLE at Logo's season 5 premiere party for RuPaul's Drag Race in New York on Friday. "I go four times a week, and we do legs, arms and everything. And after every one-hour workout, I do an hour of cardio."

But she's the first to admit earning her post-baby body was hard work.

"It wasn't easy. I'm still working my ass off, but it's all worth it," she says. "I'm now motivated and I want to change my body. It's a good feeling to work out because I feel much better. Plus, my guy Jionni likes it."

As for wedding planning, Polizzi, who got engaged early last year, has no plans to walk down the aisle any time soon.

"We're not ready right now. We need our house first. We're still living in [Jionni's] basement," she said. "We already bought land, but they still have to knock down the trees and build. So it's probably going to take a year and a half to two years. Once we get our house, we'll do all the planning for the wedding and worry about those things later."

Although wedding planning may be in the future, one thing Polizzi can't wait to do is expand her family.

"I want to pop out another baby right now! I'm hoping for twins this time," she said. "It would be cool to have my kids to grow up close in age, so that's my plan. I don't want to wait to have kids."

But for now, Polizzi is taking things one day at a time.

"I'm so happy with everything in my life," she said. "I love being a mom and I love my son. My life is awesome."

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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West


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.


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


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