NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks hit a five-year high at the open on Thursday after better-than-expected results from online marketplace eBay
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 31.80 points, or 0.24 percent, to 13,543.03. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 3.67 points, or 0.25 percent, to 1,476.30. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 12.66 points, or 0.41 percent, to 3,130.20.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive used his first policy address on Wednesday to outline a series of populist proposals to try to alleviate the severe housing shortages and air pollution that have been bedeviling the city.
The chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, who took office in July and has already weathered one legislative vote of no confidence, one vote to start an impeachment process and a series of large street protests, pledged to help produce 100,000 units of housing over the next five years by streamlining approvals, opening up undeveloped lands for housing and even tapping rock caverns and underground spaces for development.
His address came in the wake of a steadily increasing drumbeat of criticism over his administration, centering on his perceived close ties to the Chinese leadership and his actions during his election campaign. During the race, he concealed the fact that he had expanded his $64 million home without receiving government planning permission, while at the same time criticizing his opponent for similar transgressions, prompting charges of hypocrisy.
Mr. Leung has already taken steps to curtail housing speculation by imposing steep taxes on short-term real estate purchases by anyone who is not a permanent Hong Kong resident. Despite a moderation in apartment prices, demand for housing remains intense, he said.
“Many families have to move into smaller or older flats, or even factory buildings,” he said. “Cramped living space in cage homes, cubicle apartments and subdivided flats has become the reluctant choice for tens of thousands of Hong Kong people.”
Mr. Leung also promised to reduce air pollution, notably through the retirement of diesel trucks. He said his government would offer $1.29 billion in payments to the owners of more than 80,000 old, heavily polluting trucks, who will be required to retire them or replace them with new models.
The plan will reduce roadside emissions of particulates 80 percent and emissions of smog-causing nitrogen oxides 30 percent, the government said.
While cars tend to draw more attention than trucks as pollution sources because of their greater numbers, American air pollution researchers working in Asia have found that the diesel engines in trucks and buses are a far bigger threat. They account for over 90 percent of vehicular emissions of particulates and nitrogen oxides in mainland China, studies there have found. Some studies have also found that diesel exhaust is carcinogenic, but this aspect of Chinese air pollution has been studied less.
In his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Leung tried to change the political narrative by addressing the bread-and-butter concerns of the residents of Hong Kong, where an influx of money, much of it from the Chinese mainland, has led to yawning wealth disparities.
“While Hong Kong is a generally affluent society, there are still many people who live a hand-to-mouth existence,” he said. “Public resources should be devoted to those who cannot provide for themselves.”
Large-scale developments in Hong Kong take 10 to 20 years to approve and build because they involve considerable public consultation, elaborate engineering to adapt to the challenges of building on the city’s steep slopes, and sometimes the construction of additional subway stops. Mr. Leung cautioned in his speech that his suggested measures might not bring quick relief from the city’s housing shortage.
Teenagers and people in their 20s have become increasingly active in the past year in street protests that previously had more middle-aged demonstrators, and Mr. Leung tried to seek the support of the city’s young people. They face higher unemployment than previous generations and more worries about housing affordability. But they also tend to be sympathetic to environmental concerns about encroachment on the city’s many hillside parks, which real estate developers regard as a source of delay.
“Our young people should recognize that the planning proposals and development options under discussion today are intended to address their future needs,” Mr. Leung said. “It is all too easy for the government to sidestep the problem, but it is today’s young people who will have to bear the adverse consequences in the future.”
Following recent reports from Nikkei and The Wall Street Journal that suggested Apple (AAPL) slashed iPhone 5 component orders in half due to weak demand, the company’s stock fell significantly and opened below $ 500 for the first time in nearly a year. The reports have been called into question, however, with many believing they do not represent true consumer interest. Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday, per Apple Insider, that his supply chain checks have indicated that demand for the iPhone 5 “remains robust.” The analyst believes the recent reports are a result of improved yield rates and possibly Apple’s recent supplier changes.
[More from BGR: PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 could cost just $ 350, expected to launch this fall]
Despite the recent concerns, Wu expects Apple to post better-than-expected earnings for the December quarter led by sales of 47.5 million iPhones with a gross margin of 38.7%. Both estimates are above Wall Street’s expectations of between 46 to 47 million iPhones and a 38.3% gross margin.
[More from BGR: HTC One SV review]
Sterne Agee reiterated its Buy rating on shares of Apple with a price target of $ 840.
Wu’s expectations remain bullish compared to other Wall Street analysts. Stuart Jeffrey of Nomura is the most recent analyst to cut his outlook on Apple stock. Nomura reduced the company’s price target to $ 530 from $ 660 Tuesday morning, citing weak demand for the iPhone 5 and increased pressure on Apple’s margins.
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Fans, keep your eyes on the ladies during the new season of American idol. That's the advice from several of the show's judges, who think a woman will win the singing competition this year.
"Girls, do not disappoint the Dawg. I think it's the girls' year," Randy Jackson tells PEOPLE of the new crop of contestants on the reality show, which premieres Wednesday (8 p.m. ET) on Fox.
"There are some talented boys, but I must say, I think the girls could really win one," he adds. "We haven't had a girl winner in so long."
Of course, some of the female Idol winners went on to have some of the most successful careers, including country superstar Carrie Underwood and the first-ever Idol winner, Kelly Clarkson.
New judge Nicki Minaj agrees that the women contestants really bring their A-game to the show. "The girls are exceptional. I mean, a girl will definitely win this year, I think," she says.
Minaj finds the ladies are "more seasoned, more poised, more professional" – and some of them combine that maturity with a great voice.
According to Keith Urban, the level of talent was so high overall this season that the judges struggled to figure out who should be cut.
"All four of us had the conversation, 'What are we looking for?' " he said. "Because we can't send two million people to Hollywood."
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A new government survey suggests the number of people seeking emergency treatment after consuming energy drinks has doubled nationwide during the past four years, the same period in which the supercharged drink industry has surged in popularity in convenience stores, bars and on college campuses.
From 2007 to 2011, the government estimates the number of emergency room visits involving the neon-labeled beverages shot up from about 10,000 to more than 20,000. Most of those cases involved teens or young adults, according to a survey of the nation's hospitals released late last week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The report doesn't specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency room but calls energy drink consumption a "rising public health problem" that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care.
Several emergency physicians said they had seen a clear uptick in the number of patients suffering from irregular heartbeats, anxiety and heart attacks who said they had recently downed an energy drink.
More than half of the patients considered in the survey who wound up in the emergency room told doctors they had downed only energy drinks. In 2011, about 42 percent of the cases involved energy drinks in combination with alcohol or drugs, such as the stimulants Adderall or Ritalin.
"A lot of people don't realize the strength of these things. I had someone come in recently who had drunk three energy drinks in an hour, which is the equivalent of 15 cups of coffee," said Howard Mell, an emergency physician in the suburbs of Cleveland, who serves as a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. "Essentially he gave himself a stress test and thankfully he passed. But if he had a weak heart or suffered from coronary disease and didn't know it, this could have precipitated very bad things."
The findings came as concerns over energy drinks have intensified following reports last fall of 18 deaths possibly tied to the drinks — including a 14-year-old Maryland girl who died after drinking two large cans of Monster Energy drinks. Monster does not believe its products were responsible for the death.
Two senators are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to investigate safety concerns about energy drinks and their ingredients.
The energy drink industry says its drinks are safe and there is no proof linking its products to the adverse reactions.
Late last year, the FDA asked the U.S. Health and Human Services to update the figures its substance abuse research arm compiles about emergency room visits tied to energy drinks.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's survey was based on responses it receives from about 230 hospitals each year, a representative sample of about 5 percent of emergency departments nationwide. The agency then uses those responses to estimate the number of energy drink-related emergency department visits nationwide.
The more than 20,000 cases estimated for 2011 represent a small portion of the annual 136 million emergency room visits tracked by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA said it was considering the findings and pressing for more details as it undertakes a broad review of the safety of energy drinks and related ingredients this spring.
"We will examine this additional information ... as a part of our ongoing investigation into potential safety issues surrounding the use of energy-drink products," FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in a statement.
Beverage manufacturers fired back at the survey, saying the statistics were misleading and taken out of context.
"This report does not share information about the overall health of those who may have consumed energy drinks, or what symptoms brought them to the ER in the first place," the American Beverage Association said in a statement. "There is no basis by which to understand the overall caffeine intake of any of these individuals — from all sources."
Energy drinks remain a small part of the carbonated soft drinks market, representing only 3.3 percent of sales volume, according to the industry tracker Beverage Digest. Even as soda consumption has flagged in recent years, energy drinks sales are growing rapidly.
In 2011, sales volume for energy drinks rose by almost 17 percent, with the top three companies — Monster, Red Bull and Rockstar — each logging double-digit gains, Beverage Digest found. The drinks are often marketed at sporting events that are popular among younger people such as surfing and skateboarding.
From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which data was available, people from 18 to 25 were the most common age group seeking emergency treatment for energy drink-related reactions, the report found.
"We were really concerned to find that in four years the number of emergency department visits almost doubled, and these drinks are largely marketed to younger people," said Al Woodward, a senior statistical analyst with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration who worked on the report.
Emergency physician Steve Sun said he had seen an increase in such cases at the Catholic hospital where he works on the edge of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
"I saw one young man who had mixed energy drinks with alcohol and we had to admit him to the hospital because he was so dehydrated he had renal failure," Sun said. "Because he was young he did well in the hospital, but if another patient had had underlying coronary artery disease, it could have led to a heart attack."
___
Follow Garance Burke on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garanceburke
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell off five-year highs on Wednesday as concerns about global economic growth offset strong bank results and shares of Boeing
Goldman Sachs
JPMorgan shares were last down 0.8 percent at $46 and Goldman added 2 percent to $138.26.
Concern about global economic growth was weighing on the markets, said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments in Lisle, Illinois.
A slow economic recovery in developed nations is holding back the global economy, the World Bank said on Tuesday, as it sharply scaled back its forecast for world growth in 2013 to 2.4 percent from an earlier forecast of 3.0 percent.
Shares of Dow component Boeing fell 3.5 percent to $74.25 on concerns about the safety of its new Dreamliner passenger jets. Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of 787s after an emergency landing, adding to safety concerns triggered by a ream of recent incidents.
"It's certainly going to pull averages down, given Boeing's large market cap, but I don't see it as having broader market implications," Jankovskis said.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 61.79 points or 0.46 percent, to 13,473.1, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 4.39 points or 0.3 percent, to 1,467.95 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 2.72 points or 0.09 percent, to 3,108.06.
Losses on Nasdaq were limited by gains in Apple shares, which were up 2 percent at $495.75.
Talks to take Dell Inc
U.S. consumer prices were flat in December, pointing to muted inflation pressures that should give the Federal Reserve room to prop up the economy by staying on its ultra-easy monetary policy path.
(Editing by Bernadette Baum)
LONDON — Only an estimated 15 percent of female victims of rape and sexual assault in England and Wales report the crime to the police. Many of the rest say they chose not to because it was “embarrassing” or they considered the attack “too trivial or not worth reporting,” or because they “didn’t think the police could do much to help,” according to new official statistics released last week.
The publication by the Justice Ministry and the Home Office for the first time of “An Overview of Sexual Offending” also revealed that one in five of all women had been the victim of a sexual offense since the age of 16 and that there were about 400,000 adult female victims of sex crimes every year, including 69,000 victims of rape or attempted rape.
The release of these startling figures was followed a day later by the police report on the full scale of the sexual crimes committed by the late BBC host Jimmy Savile, which noted 34 rapes among 450 individual complaints and disclosed that the vast majority of victims who overcame their embarrassment to report assaults during Mr. Savile’s lifetime were not believed.
The information has triggered a wave of sober introspection about attitudes toward rape here — forcing a judderingly abrupt shift of geographical focus. For the past month, newspapers and news channels in Britain have devoted considerable attention to the unfolding details of the gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in New Delhi, with commentators lining up to discuss how India is a country battling deep-seated misogyny and to condemn official reluctance to tackle seriously the issue of violence against women.
Blithely criticizing failings in attitudes toward women thousands of miles away is easy. Focusing on why it is that so few women come forward to report crimes in this country has proved harder.
The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, last Friday apologized to Mr. Savile’s victims and called for victims of any sexual abuse who felt that their complaints had not been dealt with seriously to contact the police again and have their cases reviewed by new panels that are to be set up across the country. This would be a “watershed moment” in the way that victims of sexual assault would be dealt with, he promised, stressing that it was important that victims be believed.
Campaign groups are also hoping that this will be a turning point.
“We must change the cultures and attitudes which allow abusive behavior to go unchecked,” a statement from the End Violence Against Women Coalition declared. “There is a real opportunity now to make the U.K. a global leader in how it deals with sexual and other violence against women and girls.” The low conviction rates for rape are probably part of the reason that so many women here believe that the police cannot “do much to help.”
Campaigners have previously estimated that only 6 percent of allegations of rape reported to the police resulted in a conviction for rape, but this widely cited figure has always been controversial, contested by the police and increasingly seen as part of the problem because it makes victims so cynical about the system that they decide not to press charges.
The latest statistics from the report last week suggest that conviction rates are improving, if you look at cases that get to court; of those cases prosecuted in court, 62.5 percent ended in a conviction.
Police guidelines for the sensitive handling of rape cases have been in use for some time. Staff members investigating sexual violence are trained how to talk to victims who have been raped. Those interviewers know that while they can ask any of the when, where, what and how questions, they must never ask “Why?” and particularly “Why did you do that?” because this questions a woman’s own decisions and suggests shifting some of the blame from attacker to victim.
A visit to one of Britain’s well-respected sexual assault referral centers (where victims are sensitively fast-tracked through police questioning and medical examination so no evidence is lost) shows that where they are well staffed and funded, they provide an excellent service.
But while considerable work has been done to improve police attitudes toward rape cases, the general public (which makes up the juries that listen to rape cases in court) remains very judgmental. Burglary victims are not expected to prove that they have been burgled, because people tend to believe them; rape victims still find themselves having to prove that something has happened to them and needing to justify their actions.
And it is remarkable how frequently unhelpful attitudes are revealed by people who should know better. The senior Conservative politician Kenneth Clarke got into trouble last year when he was justice secretary for giving an interview in which he talked about “serious rape,” inadvertently suggesting that he thought there were categories of less serious rape.
Then there was the senior BBC editor who, when explaining why he had chosen not to air a program about Mr. Savile’s crimes last year, breezily said there was not enough substance to the material, using the now notorious line that there were “just the women” — only the testimonies of the victims themselves.
With attitudes like these, it is hardly surprising that so many of the 85 percent of victims who were asked why they did not report the attack indicated that the process was too embarrassing and ultimately futile to undertake.
Amelia Gentleman is a journalist with The Guardian. Katrin Bennhold is on sabbatical leave.
We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:
RELATED: The Way the World Could Have Ended
Now, we know what you’re thinking. Forget the rest of the show. And the red carpet. And the after-parties. And Lena Dunham, and maybe even Unimpressed Tommy Lee Jones. Now if only someone could just put together all the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler bits from last night’s Golden Globes — what little their was after that fantastic monologue, anyway. Well, you’re in luck. Don’t thank us, thank Flavorwire. Oh, fine, thank us a little bit:
RELATED: The Only ‘Kiss From a Rose’ Cover You’ll Ever Need
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If you were wondering, we were totally rooting for the fish:
RELATED: ‘Roseanne’ Predicted Internet Addiction; A Weather Alert from Hell
RELATED: Yes, Someone Turned Their Dead Cat Into a Helicopter
As you may have heard, it is very cold in Los Angeles. As you also may have heard, cold in Los Angeles is very different than cold anywhere else, and, well, it’s quite funny watching them squirm:
And, finally, here is a cat using its feline agility to maneuver itself into a hammock. Yes, we are jealous:
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Michael Simon/Startraks
Elizabeth Banks has hit official mom status.
Since welcoming her second son Magnus Mitchell in November, the actress — also mom to son Felix — admits she’s feeling the full effects of motherhood.
“Two is very different from one. When you have one kid, you feel like you can jet set around and you can throw him on the hip and you get your life done,” Banks told PEOPLE at the launch of babyGap’s Peter Rabbit collection at Gap at The Grove in L.A. Saturday.
“You don’t realize how easy one is until you have two. Now I’m really a mom. Oh, I am a mom now! This is for serious — I am responsible for two people now.”
The reality of her new family of four finally hit home when Banks and her husband Max Handelman decided to celebrate the holidays with their sons — sans hired help.
“[We] had no help, no nannies, no babysitters. It was crazy. You forget how difficult it is to wake up in the middle of the night, how exhausting it is,” she admits, adding being a hands-on mom took on a whole new meaning. “I lost all my nails. I did dishes and cleaned bottles for 10 days so I lost all those nails!”
Fortunately, making life easier has been Felix’s smooth transition into his role as the “sweetest” big brother. “He loves to say how cute Magnus is and he loves to give him kisses and he’s very gentle,” Banks, 38, shares.
“He loves to bring him gifts — sometimes that means shoes that are thrown in the bassinet, but that’s okay.”
The 22-month-old’s tough love tactics may be seemingly sweet now, but Banks isn’t holding out hope the brotherly bond will last long.
“I would say [Felix] is mostly unaware of what’s going on because Magnus doesn’t touch his stuff,” she explains. “I’ve heard that around 10 months — when baby can actually influence the realm of Felix — that Felix will not be happy. We’ll see how that goes.”
One thing that’s for sure? Banks and Handelman hit a home run when playing the name game. “Felix means happy in Latin and he is very happy go lucky,” the proud mom says.
“Magnus is definitely more serious. He’s going to be the deep thinker of the family for sure.”
– Anya Leon with reporting by Jennifer Garcia
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