Stock futures little changed with “cliff” talks to resume






NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures were little changed on Thursday with legislators due to return to Washington to restart negotiations over the “fiscal cliff“.


President Barack Obama will attempt to make another push to resume talks on the cliff, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts set to begin on January 1 which may tip the economy into a recession, on Thursday after returning from a shortened Christmas holiday in Hawaii.






In a sign that there may be a way through deadlock in Congress, Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner urged the Democrat-controlled Senate to act to pull back from the cliff and offered to at least consider any bill the upper chamber produced.


The Treasury Department, led by Secretary Timothy Geithner, announced steps essentially designed to buy time to allow Congress to resolve its differences and raise the debt ceiling.


Economic data expected on Thursday includes weekly initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 360,000 new filings, compared with 361,000 filings in the previous week.


Also due at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) is the Chicago Fed Midwest Manufacturing Index for November.


Later in the session at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT), investors will eye December consumer confidence and November new home sales data. The Conference Board’s main consumer confidence index is expected to show a reading of 70 versus the 73.7 reported in November while new home sales are expected to show a total of 378,000 annualized units.


The benchmark S&P 500 index has fallen 1.7 percent over the past three sessions as negotiations over the budget crisis have stalled, its longest losing streak since mid-November.


But the S&P has recouped nearly all of its declines suffered in the wake of the U.S. elections and is up 12.9 percent for the year, putting it on track for its best year since 2009.


S&P 500 futures rose 3.2 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 4 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.5 point.


Marvell Technology Group fell 5.4 percent to $ 7.00 in premarket trading, extending its decline in the prior session after a federal jury found the company infringed two patents held by Carnegie Mellon University, and ordered the chipmaker to pay $ 1.17 billion in damages.


European shares steadied early in their first trading session following the Christmas break, with investors focusing on Washington’s last-ditch efforts to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. <.eu></.eu>


Asian shares rose amid caution ahead of the U.S. fiscal negotiations, while the yen hit a 21-month low against the dollar on the prospect of drastic monetary easing and massive state spending.


(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)


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VP says Chavez up, walking; doubts persist






CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Vice President Nicolas Maduro surprised Venezuelans with a Christmas Eve announcement that President Hugo Chavez is up and walking two weeks after cancer surgery in Cuba, but the news did little to ease uncertainty surrounding the leader’s condition.


Sounding giddy, Maduro told state television Venezolana de Television that he had spoken by phone with Chavez for 20 minutes Monday night. It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed talking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation, his fourth cancer surgery since 2011.






“He was in a good mood,” Maduro said. “He was walking, he was exercising.”


Chavez supporters reacted with relief, but the statement inspired more questions, given the sparse information the Venezuelan government has provided so far about the president’s cancer. Chavez has kept secret various details about his illness, including the precise location of the tumors and the type of cancer. His long-term prognosis remains a mystery.


Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, said it was an encouraging sign that Chavez was walking, and it indicated he would be able to return to Venezuela relatively soon. But he said the long term outlook remained poor.


“It’s definitely good news. It means that he is on the road to recover fully from the surgery,” Pishvaian said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “The overall prognosis is still pretty poor. He likely has a terminal diagnosis with his cancer that has come back.”


Pishvaian and other outside doctors have said that given the details Chavez has provided about his cancer, it is most likely a soft-tissue sarcoma.


Chavez first underwent surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and went back this month after tests had found a return of malignant cells in the same area where tumors were previously removed.


Venezuelan officials said that, following the six-hour surgery two weeks ago, Chavez suffered internal bleeding that was stanched and a respiratory infection that was being treated.


Maduro’s announcement came just hours after Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying Chavez was showing “a slight improvement with a progressive trend.”


Dr. Carlos Castro, director of the Colombian League against Cancer, an association that promotes cancer prevention, treatment and education, said Maduro’s announcement was too vague to paint a clear picture of Chavez’s condition.


“It’s possible (that he is walking) because everything is possible,” Castro told AP. “They probably had him sit in up in bed and take two steps.”


“It’s unclear what they mean by exercise. Was it four little steps?” he added. “I think he is still in critical condition.”


Maduro’s near-midnight announcement came just as Venezuelan families were gathering for traditional late Christmas Eve dinners and setting off the usual deafening fireworks that accompany the festivities. There was still little outward reaction on a quiet Christmas morning.


Danny Moreno, a software technician watching her 2-year-old son try out his new tricycle, was among the few people at a Caracas plaza who said she had heard Maduro’s announcement. She said she saw a government Twitter message saying an announcement was coming and her mother rushed to turn on the TV.


“We all said, thank God, he’s okay,” she said, smiling.


Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas, said if Chavez is talking, it suggests he is breathing on his own despite the respiratory infection and is not in intensive care. But Medrano said he remained skeptical about Maduro’s comments and could deduce little from them about Chavez’s prognosis for recovery.


“I have no idea because if it was such a serious, urgent, important operation, and that was 14 days ago, I don’t think he could be walking and exercising after a surgery like that,” Medrano said.


Over the weekend, Chavez’s ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that only added to the uncertainty.


Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure in Havana, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales’ itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.


Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came “to express his support” for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details. He left Sunday without making any public comments.


For the second day in a row Tuesday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba during public events in Bolivia.


Yet more questions surround Chavez’s political future, with the surgery coming two months after he won re-election to a six-year term.


If he is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan Constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.


Venezuelan officials have said Chavez might not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.


Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president’s swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.


But government officials have said the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.


___


Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Havana, Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Camilo Hernandez in Bogota, Colombia, and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.


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Apps to help achieve New Year’s resolutions






(Reuters) – Whether it is improving health or managing finances better, about 87 percent of Americans will make resolutions for 2013 and there are plenty of apps to help them achieve their goals.


Nearly half of New Year’s resolutions are about setting health-related goals, which is the most popular category, according to a recent survey by online broker TD Ameritrade.






Rather than jumping into a rigorous fitness routine, a new app called 5K Runner suggests it might be better to ease into things slowly and focus on building sustainable habits. The iPhone app helps couch potatoes ramp up their running distance to 5 km over the course of eight weeks.


“You’re slowly building this routine into your daily life with a lot of success and after eight weeks you’re literally running 5K, which is pretty big if (initially) you’re not running at all,” said David-Michel Davies, the executive director of The Webby Awards, an annual ceremony honoring Internet companies.


The app guides runners through each run, alternating periods of running and walking for 35 minutes.


Davies also recommends Nike+ Running and RunKeeper, two popular and free fitness apps, which use GPS to track distance traveled, speed and calories burned. Both apps are available for iOS and Android devices.


Diet is another component of good health and a focus of many apps. Fooducate is an iPhone and Android app that helps shoppers make healthier purchases at the supermarket by allowing them to scan the barcodes of products and get insight into how healthy the product is.


Their database, which contains over 200,000 products, displays a grade for the product and information on its contents. It can show whether there are hidden additives or the probability of containing genetically modified ingredients.


“There are a lot of healthy people out there who unknowingly buy products that have an inordinate amount of salt in them,” Davies said.


DietBet is an app for people with a competitive streak. Available for iPhone and on the Web, it allows its users to join in a four-week weight loss challenge to lose 4 percent of weight. Everyone bets money, which goes into a fund, and submits proof of weight lost. People who meet the challenge split the money.


“It comes back again to how people get motivated,” Davies said. “Gamification is something that technology has really enabled and for some people it really works.”


To stay on top of finances, Davies recommends Mint, which provides a visual view of all financial accounts and is available for iOS, Android and on the Web.


(Reporting by Natasha Baker in Toronto; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Beech)


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Britain’s royal family attends Christmas services






LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s royal family is attending Christmas Day church services — with a few notable absences.


Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, Queen Elizabeth II arrived at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk. She was accompanied in a Bentley by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie.






Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other members of the royal family.


Three familiar faces were missing from the family outing. Prince William is spending the holiday with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury. Prince Harry is serving with British troops in Afghanistan.


Later Tuesday, the queen will deliver her traditional, pre-recorded Christmas message, which for the first time will be broadcast in 3D.


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Early Childhood Obesity Rates Might Be Slowing Nation-Wide






About one in three children in the U.S. are now overweight, and since the 1980s the number of children who are obese has more than tripled. But a new study of 26.7 million young children from low-income families shows that in this group of kids, the tidal wave of obesity might finally be receding.Being obese as a child not only increases the risk of early-life health problems, such as joint problems, pre-diabetes and social stigmatization, but it also dramatically increases the likelihood of being obese later in life, which can lead to chronic diseases, including cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Children as young as 2 years of age can be obese–and even extremely obese. Early childhood obesity rates, which bring higher health care costs throughout a kid’s life, have been especially high among lower-income families.”This is the first national study to show that the prevalence of obesity and extreme obesity among young U.S. children may have begun to decline,” the researchers noted in a brief report published online December 25 in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. (Reports earlier this year suggested that childhood obesity rates were dropping in several U.S. cities.)The study examined rates of obesity (body mass index calculated by age and gender to be in the 95th percentile or higher–for example, a BMI above 20 for a 2-year-old male–compared with reference growth charts) and extreme obesity (BMI of more than 120 percent above that of the 95th percentile of the reference populations) in children ages 2 to 4 in 30 states and the District of Columbia. The researchers, led by Liping Pan, of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, combed through 12 years of data (1998 to 2010) from the Pediatric Nutritional Surveillance System, which includes information on roughly half of all children on the U.S. who are eligible for federal health care and nutrition assistance.A subtle but important shift in early childhood obesity rates in this low-income population seems to have begun in 2003. Obesity rates increased from 13.05 percent in 1998 to 15.21 percent in 2003. Soon, however, obesity rates began decreasing, reaching 14.94 percent by 2010. Extreme obesity followed a similar pattern, increasing from 1.75 percent to 2.22 percent from 1998 to 2003, but declining to 2.07 percent by 2010.Although these changes might seem small, the number of children involved makes for huge health implications. For example, each drop of just one tenth of a percentage point represents some 26,700 children in the study population alone who are no longer obese or extremely obese. And if these trends are occurring in the rest of the population, the long-term health and cost implications are massive.Public health agencies and the Obama Administration have made battling childhood obesity a priority, although these findings suggest that early childhood obesity rates, at least, were already beginning to decline nearly a decade ago. Some popular prevention strategies include encouraging healthier eating (by reducing intake of highly processed and high-sugar foods and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption) and increased physical activity (both at school and at home).The newly revealed trends “indicate modest recent progress of obesity prevention among young children,” the authors noted. “These finding may have important health implications because of the lifelong health risks of obesity and extreme obesity in early childhood.”


Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs.Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
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Stock futures edge higher ahead of “cliff” talk resumption






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures edged higher on Wednesday, indicating the S&P 500 may stem its worst two-day drop since mid-November, ahead of the resumption of “fiscal cliff” negotiations.


U.S. President Barack Obama is cutting short his Hawaiian holiday to leave for Washington on Wednesday to address the unfinished negotiations with Congress.






Obama is due to arrive in Washington on Thursday to resume talks on the cliff, a sharp rise in taxes and deep spending cuts due to begin on January 1 that could tip the U.S. economy into recession.


“This is what we’ve come to – the President might get on a plane today and this is what the markets might react to,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.


“It’s all about the fiscal cliff.”


A Republican plan that failed to gain traction last week triggered the recent decline in the S&P 500 <.spx>, highlighting market sensitivity to headlines centered around the talks.</.spx>


Investors will also look to housing data for signs of improvement in that sector of the economy, with the S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index for October expected at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT).


Housing data has shown modest improvement in recent months, and continued strength could help support the sagging economy.


“The data is two months old, so it’s interesting, but I don’t know that people will react to it given these other more timely events,” said Forrest.


S&P 500 futures rose 3 points and were slightly above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 17 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 3.25 points.


The benchmark S&P index is up 13.4 percent for the year, and has recouped nearly all of the losses suffered in the wake of the U.S. elections, when the fiscal cliff concerns moved to the forefront of investors’ focus.


China’s Sinopec Group and ConocoPhillips will research potentially vast reserves of shale gas in southwestern China over the next two years, state news agency Xinhua reported.


An outage at one of Amazon.com Inc’s web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc’s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas Day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.


In Asian markets, the Nikkei moved to a new nine-month high but shares elsewhere in the region were capped in thin holiday trade, with investors focusing on the fate of U.S. negotiations to avert a budget crunch looming at the end of the year.


(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)


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U.N. General Assembly voices concern for Myanmar’s Muslims






UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. General Assembly expressed serious concern on Monday over violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar and called upon its government to address reports of human rights abuses by some authorities.


The 193-nation General Assembly approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which Myanmar said last month contained a “litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified.”






Outbreaks of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingyas have killed dozens and displaced thousands since June. Rights groups also have accused Myanmar security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas after the riots. Myanmar said it exercised “maximum restraint” to quell the violence.


The unanimously adopted U.N. resolution “expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality.”


At least 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas live in Rakhine State along the western coast of Myanmar, also known as Burma. But Buddhist Rakhines and other Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh who deserve neither rights nor sympathy.


The resolution adopted on Monday is identical to one approved last month by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights. After that vote, Myanmar’s mission to the United Nations said that it accepted the resolution but objected to the Rohingyas being referred to as a minority.


“There has been no such ethnic group as Rohingya among the ethnic groups of Myanmar,” a representative of Myanmar said at the time. “Despite this fact, the right to citizenship for any member or community has been and will never be denied if they are in line with the law of the land.”


(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Paul Simao)


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Mundie, one of Gates’ successors, to retire from Microsoft






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Craig Mundie, one of two Microsoft Corp executives who took over Bill Gates‘ role at the company, has relinquished control of Microsoft’s large research organization and is to retire from the company in 2014.


Mundie is taking on a new role as a senior adviser to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, according to a memo circulated internally earlier this month but only made public on Monday.






Eric Rudder, another Microsoft veteran, is taking on responsibility for Microsoft Research, Trustworthy Computing, and the Technology Policy Group, which were all run by Mundie.


A 20-year Microsoft veteran, Mundie was one of two men hand-picked by co-founder Gates to take over leadership of the technical side of Microsoft when he retired from day-to-day work at the company in 2008.


Mundie took over responsibility for the company’s long-term research activities, while Ray Ozzie became chief software architect. Ozzie left Microsoft in 2010. According to Ballmer’s memo, Mundie will retire from Microsoft in 2014, when he will be 65.


Mundie’s new role was first reported on Monday by the All Things D tech blog.


(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)


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A huge collection of odd TV stuff needs a home






LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Comisar is the first to acknowledge that more than a few have questioned his sanity for spending the better part of 25 years collecting everything from the costume George Reeves wore in the 1950s TV show “Superman” to the entire set of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”


Then there’s the pointy Spock ears Leonard Nimoy wore on “Star Trek” and the guns Tony Soprano used to rub out a mob rival in an episode of “The Sopranos.”






“Along the way people thought I was nuts in general for wanting to conserve Keith Partridge’s flared pants from ‘The Partridge Family,’” the good-natured former TV writer says of the 1970s sitcom as he ambles through rows of costumes, props and what have you from the beginnings of television to the present day.


“But they really thought I needed a psychological workup,” Comisar, 48, adds with a smile, “when they learned I was having museum curators take care of these pieces.”


A museum is exactly where he wants to put all 10,000 of his TV memorabilia items, everything from the hairpiece Carl Reiner wore on the 1950s TV variety program “Your Show of Shows” to the gun and badge Kiefer Sutherland flashed on “24″ a couple TV seasons ago.


Finding one that could accommodate his collection, which fills two sprawling, temperature-controlled warehouses, however, has sometimes been as hard as acquiring the boots Larry Hagman used to stomp around in when he was J.R. on “Dallas.” (The show’s production company finally coughed up a pair after plenty of pleading and cajoling.)


Comisar is one of many people who, after a lifetime of collecting, begin to realize that if they can’t find a permanent home for their artifacts those objects could easily end up on the trash heap of history. Or, just as bad as far as he’s concerned, in the hands of private collectors.


“Some of the biggest bidders for Hollywood memorabilia right now reside in mainland China and Dubai, and our history could leave this country forever,” says Comisar, who these days works as a broker and purchasing expert for memorabilia collectors.


What began as a TV-obsessed kid’s lark morphed into a full-fledged hobby when as a young man writing jokes for Howie Mandel and Joan Rivers, and punching up scripts for such producers as Norman Lear and Fred Silverman, Comisar began scouring studio back lots, looking for discarded stuff from the favorite shows of his childhood. From there it developed into a full-on obsession, dedicated to preserving the entire physical spectrum of television history.


“After a couple years of collecting, it became clear to me,” he says, “that it didn’t much matter what TV shows James watched in the early 1970s but which shows were the most iconic. In that way, I had sort of a curator’s perspective almost from the beginning.”


In the early days, collecting such stuff was easy for anyone with access to a studio back lot. Many items were simply thrown out or given away when shows ceased production. When studios did keep things they often rented them out for small fees, and if you lost or broke them you paid a small replacement fee. So Comisar began renting stuff right and left and promptly losing it, acquiring one of Herman Munster’s jackets that way.


These days almost everything has a price, although Comisar’s reputation as a serious collector has led some people to give him their stuff.


If he simply sold it all, he could probably retire as a millionaire several times over. Just last month someone paid $ 480,000 for a faded dress Judy Garland wore in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” What might Annette Funicello’s original Mickey Mouse Club jacket fetch?


He won’t even think about that.


“I’ve spent 25 years now reuniting these pieces, and I would be so sick if some day they were just broken up and sold to the highest bidder,” he says.


He, and every other serious collector of cool but somewhat oddball stuff, face two major obstacles, say museum curators: Finding a museum or university with the space to take their treasures and persuading deep-pocketed individuals who might bankroll the endeavor that there’s really any compelling reason to preserve something like Maxwell Smart’s shoephone.


“People hold television and popular culture so close to their hearts and embrace it so passionately,” says Dwight Bowers, curator of entertainment collections for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who calls Comisar’s collection very impressive. “But they don’t put it on the same platform as military history or political history.”


When the Smithsonian acquired Archie Bunker’s chair from the seminal TV comedy “All in the Family,” Bowers said, museum officials took plenty of flak from those offended that some sitcom prop was being placed down the hallway from the nation’s presidential artifacts.


The University of California, Santa Cruz, took similar heat when it accepted the Grateful Dead archives, 30 years of recordings, videos, papers, posters and other memorabilia gifted by the band, said university archivist Nicholas Meriwether.


“What I always graciously say is that if you leave the art and the music aside for one moment, whatever you think of it, what you can say is they are still a huge part of understanding the story of the 1960s and of understanding the nation’s counterculture,” says Meriwether.


Comisar sees his television collection serving the same purpose, tracing societal changes TV shows documented from the post-World War II years to the present.


The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation looked into establishing such a museum some years back, and Comisar’s collection came up at the time, said Karen Herman, curator of the foundation’s Archive of American Television.


Instead, the foundation settled on an online archive containing more than 3,000 hours of filmed oral history interviews with more than 700 people.


While the archive doesn’t have any of Mr. Spock’s ears, anyone with a computer can view and listen to an oral history from Spock himself, the actor Leonard Nimoy.


Comisar, meanwhile, believes he’s finally found the right site for a museum, in Phoenix, where he’s been lining up supporters. He estimates it will cost $ 35 million and several years to open the doors, but hopes to have a preview center in place by next year.


Mo Stein, a prominent architect who heads the Phoenix Community Alliance and is working with him, says one of the next steps will be finding a proper space for the collection.


But, really, why all the fuss over a place to save one of the suits Regis Philbin wore on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”?


“In Shakespeare’s time, his work was considered pretty low art,” Comisar responds.


Oh, he’ll admit that “Mike and Molly,” the modern TV love story of a couple who fall for each other at Overeaters Anonymous, may never rank in the same category as “Romeo and Juliet.”


“But what about a show like ‘Star Trek’?” he asks.


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