Apple takes investors on a wild ride

SAN FRANCISCO — With only modest expectations, Robert Leitao of Santa Clarita made a decision in 1994 that would change his life. He bought Apple stock.

This was several years before Steve Jobs returned to resurrect Apple, long before the iPod, the iPhone or the iPads that would make Apple the most valuable company in the world. A $1 investment in Apple at the start of 1994 is now worth about $70.

"Even with the recent sell-off, I'm still doing very well with the stock," said Leitao, who works as director of operations at a Catholic church in Burbank. "Apple provided for a down payment on our home for our blended family of four kids."

Leitao is one of the countless people whose lives have been touched by Apple's stock, which has become a global economic force. It is now one of the most widely held stocks, and the most valuable. Even as Apple Inc.'s market value fell to $480 billion on Friday, it was still larger than the gross domestic product of Norway or Argentina, and more than the combined value of Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Yet that astonishing size and economic influence is also what, many analysts believe, contributes to the extraordinary volatility that can make owning Apple's stock a hair-raising experience.

It was inevitable, analysts say, that after Apple's stock rose 74% in the first nine months of this year, a huge wave of selling would occur as fund managers locked in their profits. And yet, in recent years, these huge dips have been followed by even bigger run-ups that led to new record highs, a dynamic that one trader refers to as the "Apple slingshot."

That pattern has some analysts betting Apple will soar above $1,000 a share in 2013, a scenario almost guaranteed to drive the global obsession with the company's stock into an even greater frenzy.

"The impact on shareholders and on the economy is incredible," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. "We've not seen anything like this in the modern trading era. Ever."

Even after the remarkable decade of Apple's revival, the company's stock managed to reach new milestones this year. Early in 2012, Apple became the sixth company ever to surpass $500 billion in market value. In August, it became the only company in history with a market value topping $622 billion.

That performance affects just about anyone who has a 401(k) account or a pension. According to FactSet, a research firm that tracks investment funds, 2,555 institutional investors — mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds, among others — owned stock in Apple, just behind the 2,590 that held Microsoft stock, as of Sept. 30, the most recent date funds had to disclose their holdings. However, the value of that Apple stock held by institutional investors on that day was $427 billion, compared with $172 billion for Microsoft, according to FactSet.

Silverblatt said the only company that has come close to having such a strong influence on the broader stock markets since World War II is IBM in the early 1980s, when the PC revolution was just getting started. But not only is the value of Apple's stock remarkable, so is its volatility. Such large stocks rarely have such big, quick swings.

Apple shares peaked at $702.10 on Sept. 19, up from $401.44 at the start of the year, a run that astonished analysts. But just as remarkable has been its collapse, falling as low as $505.75 in intra-day trading Nov. 16.

"It's just amazing because it's such a large company," said Brian Colello, a senior research analyst at Morningstar. "The company lost about $35 billion in market cap in one day. That's the size of some large-cap stocks."

Yet such swings have become commonplace for Apple stock. Before its latest swoon of 23.4% since its September high, Apple had experienced three previous corrections of more than 10% over the last two years.

The value of Apple's stock and its extreme swings have made researching it and trading it almost a full-time job for some people. Jason Schwarz of Marina del Rey edits EconomicTiming.com, which sends out up to five newsletters each week to its 1,000 clients that focus in large measure on Apple. He also helps run Lone Peak Asset Management, which has about $500 million in assets.

Schwarz says that what he calls the "Apple slingshot" is actually a virtue of the shares.

"The extraordinary volatility is the result of Apple's strength," Schwarz said. "People try to blame the volatility on Apple's weaknesses."

Schwarz and many other Apple believers argue that people are making a big mistake when they try to understand the stock's behavior by focusing on various bits of bad news such as an executive shake-up, the Maps controversy or questions about market share or competition. They have almost nothing to do with the regular hits taken by Apple shares, the argument goes.

Instead, folks like Schwarz say more technical factors are at work, such as the fact that the fiscal year for many stock funds ends Oct. 31. When the stock peaked in September, many fund managers rushed to sell to lock in profits for the year. Apple stock makes so much money for so many people, then plummets when shareholders pause to reap their profits, Schwarz says.

The volatility has continued in recent weeks, the argument goes, because fears of higher taxes next year have many fund managers trying to take advantage of short-term swings to make bigger profits. That volatility offers tantalizing windows for huge, short-term profits for investors willing to take the risk.

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Meet the World?s Cheapest Venture Capitalist

Maciej Cegłowski’s new startup fund was the toast of Silicon Valley on Friday, lighting up Twitter, winning top billing on the elite Hacker News forum, and drawing dozens of applications from would-be portfolio companies. The fund’s draw: Extreme stinginess.

The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud, as the fund is called, offers chosen startups all of $37 in venture capital. Not $37 million, like you might get from the uber-investors on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road, or $37,000, like what YCombinator and other incubators offer. Thirty-seven crisp George Washingtons.

“The thing that has really changed in the past couple of years that hasn’t been internalized by everyone is that startup costs are really very, very low,” says Cegłowski. “Even compared to 2008 it costs very little money to do stuff. You have these technologies that are pretty good at scaling up … but it’s still free, open source software. So as long as the labor is free, you’re fine.”

‘I want to promote ideas that aren’t game changers.’

— Maciej Cegłowski

The Co-Prosperity Cloud is more than a statement on the rapidly falling cost of scaling software. It’s also about a crucial shift in the role played by startup investors. The importance of the actual capital distributed by venture capitalists continues to fall along with the costs of deploying, distributing, and scaling up apps, websites, other software, and even hardware. Less tangible aspects of an investment, like the endorsement, expertise, and social graph of the investor have become correspondingly more important.

If Cegłowski can prove there is an extreme version of this trend — that there are compelling startups for which investment dollars are borderline meaningless, and for which social capital is paramount – he could help remake the tech investment pipeline from a glorified money hose into a system for primarily distributing social capital like prestige, attention, taste, and advice.

The Co-Prosperity Cloud is an experiment in distributing just that sort of social capital. It offers not just the $37, but also Cegłowski’s vote of confidence – he’s only picking six winners – and “as much publicity as I can provide,” as the fund webpage says. That publicity will presumably come via the devoted online following Cegłowski has built over the years for his articles on bootstrapping his bookmark service Pinboard.in, as well as for his wide-ranging personal essays, including an indispensable meat-lover’s guide to visiting Argentina.

“I want to see if I can give people the social boost to get a chance to explain their idea and attract that initial group of customers,” Cegłowski says. “Because once you have a handful of people who use your product you can kind of claw your way up from that. It’s just that the first part is really tough.”

The former Yahoo engineer is hardly the first to capitalize on the changing nature of startup funding. YCombinator pioneered the pairing of tiny, low-five-figure funding rounds with intensive mentoring and an unconventional selection process. Its success stories include Dropbox, SocialCam, and Airbnb. The venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, meanwhile, bolsters its monetary investments with exceptional expertise in areas like human resources and public relations. Its investments have included Facebook, Twitter, and Skype.

Where the Co-Prosperity Cloud is different is in its lower ambitions. It aims to fund what Cegłowski calls “barely successful … modest” companies like his own Pinboard, a one-man operation that he says couldn’t pay a second employee but that covers his costs, salary, plus a contribution to his savings. Where YCombinator encourages two-founder teams and follow-on venture capital rounds that push startups toward a big-money exit, the Co-Prosperity Cloud actively encourages solo founders and slow-building, sustainable companies.

“I’m interested in this world of niche businesses no one will really fund,” Cegłowski says. “[I] want to promote ideas that aren’t game changers and aren’t going to grow into a giant business but are a perfectly great business.”

The fund is off to a promising start. As of this morning, it was a brand-new idea that had popped into Cegłowski’s head during an a.m. jog around San Francisco. By the end of the evening, he had upward of 40 applications, as well as offers to supplement each of his investments, to the tune of $50 apiece, from venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (of the aforementioned Andreessen Horowitz) and tech entrepreneur Thomas Ptacek.

The Co-Prosperity Cloud’s application deadline is Jan. 1, and Cegłowski anticipates announcing winners shortly thereafter. He jokes about how poorly things could go, but in the end resolved that this would be OK: “I decided I could spend $200 for this experiment.” That small outlay could result in big savings for future entrepreneurs. Or, at the very least, another blockbuster entry on Cegłowski’s blog.

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School shooting postpones Cruise premiere in Pa.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. premiere of the Tom Cruise action movie “Jack Reacher” is being postponed following the deadly Connecticut school shooting.

Paramount Pictures says “out of honor and respect for the families of the victims” the premiere won’t take place Saturday in Pittsburgh, where “Jack Reacher” was filmed.

The premiere would’ve been Cruise’s first U.S. media appearance since his split from Katie Holmes over the summer. It was to be more contained with select outlets covering and a location away from Hollywood or New York.

A proclamation ceremony for Cruise had been planned with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

No new date for the premiere has been set. The movie opens Dec. 21.

Friday’s massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school killed 20 children and several adults.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Neediest Cases: Disabled Young Man and His Protective Mother Deal With Life’s Challenges

Though he would prefer to put his socks on without his mother’s help, Zaquan West, 25, does not have a choice.

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Joann West is a constant caretaker for her son, Zaquan. Though Ms. West works as a receptionist, the family fell behind on rent.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$3,104,694

Recorded Thursday:

$137,451

*Total:

$3,242,145

Last year to date:

$2,862,836

*Includes $596,609 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

The Youngest Donors

If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.

A genetic disorder has encumbered Mr. West all his life, but he has needed assistance with this particular task since only last year. In November 2011, he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his left thigh that was as big as a football, but he was left less flexible.

“He doesn’t do well with disability, with the label,” his mother, Joann West, 55, said. “He doesn’t tell people that he has a disability. If they can’t see it, they just can’t see it.”

When her son was 13 months old, Ms. West learned he had neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes tumors to grow on the nerves and, in some cases, to infringe on vital organs, or as was the case last year, to become malignant. It also creates large bumps on the skin known as nodules.

At ages 5 and 8, Zaquan had operations to remove neurofibromatosis clusters that were eating away at his left hip bone. The disease has left his left leg a few inches shorter than his right. After each operation, he had to relearn how to walk.

Because of his physical disability, he was placed in a special-education class at school and given the same homework every night, his mother said.

“I advocated for him,” Ms. West said. “I kept fighting, because he was no dummy. He was physically impaired, not mentally. I went out of my way to try to give him a better life. The system would have failed him more than it did if I hadn’t stepped in.” Her efforts led to his being moved from a special-education classroom to a regular one in second grade.

Ms. West, a single mother, acknowledges that her protective instincts made her a very controlling parent, and she did not allow Zaquan out of the house much, which limited his friendships.

“I was afraid for him,” she said. “The streets, they don’t care about your disability.”

When Mr. West entered high school, it was the first time he had truly been away from his mother’s watchful eyes. He began skipping class, often going to the park or wandering their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, neighborhood with truant friends. He eventually dropped out of school.

“It was just me being out on my own and making my own choices,” Mr. West recalled.

Though she did not agree with her son’s decisions, Ms. West said that his need to explore was in some ways a result of her actions. “At a point, I stepped back,” she said, “to allow him to do certain things on his own and do what he wanted to do.”

In 2007, a couple of years after he dropped out, Mr. West joined the Door, an organization focused on empowering young people to reach their potential. There, he obtained his high school equivalency diploma.

Today, Mr. West is job hunting so that he can help pay his and his mother’s expenses.

But paying the monthly bills has become a struggle, Ms. West said, in part because of a recent change in her budget. In August, after an increase in income, they stopped receiving $324 a month in food stamps. The additional income did not cover all their expenses, however, and Ms. West eventually fell behind in the rent on their apartment.

Ms. West, who has been employed in various administrative jobs, currently works as a receptionist for Howie the Harp Advocacy Center, an agency that provides employment help to people with psychiatric disabilities. Her annual salary is about $25,000 before taxes. Her son receives $646 in Social Security disability benefits. After the family’s food stamps were cut off, Mr. West applied individually, and he now receives $200 in food stamps each month.

With the addition of Mr. West’s disability benefits and food stamps, their net monthly income is $2,213. Their contribution for the Section 8-subsidized apartment Ms. West has lived in for the past 30 years is $969.

Knowing she was in need of help, Ms. West’s boss told her about the Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. And the society drew $1,598 from the fund to cover her debt.

Ms. West remains a constant caretaker for her independent-minded son, who, she says, has come to accept her help grudgingly. She says that even if they are not on speaking terms after a disagreement, she is there to lend him a hand.

Both are continuing to deal with the inevitable challenges: Mr. West is awaiting word from doctors on whether a new growth in his lungs is cancerous. But one of his greatest assets, given all that he has overcome, is that he is comfortable in his own skin.

“I’m just always going to be me,” he said, “so why deal with somebody else?”

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Microsoft Battles Google by Hiring Political Brawler Mark Penn

SEATTLE — Mark Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing enemies of the Clintons. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft.

Since Mr. Penn was put in charge of “strategic and special projects” at Microsoft in August, much of his job has involved efforts to trip up Google, which Microsoft has failed to dislodge from its perch atop the lucrative Internet search market.

Drawing on his background in polling, data crunching and campaigning, Mr. Penn created a holiday commercial that has been running during Monday Night Football and other shows, in which Microsoft criticizes Google for polluting the quality of its shopping search results with advertisements. “Don’t get scroogled,” it warns. His other projects include a blind taste test, Coke-versus-Pepsi style, of search results from Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

The campaigns by Mr. Penn, 58, a longtime political operative known for his brusque personality and scorched-earth tactics, are part of a broader effort at Microsoft to give its marketing the nimbleness of a political campaign, where a candidate can turn an opponent’s gaffe into a damaging commercial within hours. They are also a sign of the company’s mounting frustration with Google after losing billions of dollars a year on its search efforts, while losing ground to Google in the browser and smartphones markets and other areas.

Microsoft has long attacked Google from the shadows, whispering to regulators, journalists and anyone else who would listen that Google was a privacy-violating, anticompetitive bully. The fruits of its recent work in this area could come next week, when the Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce the results of its antitrust investigation of Google, a case that echoes Microsoft’s own antitrust suit in the 1990s. A similar investigation by the European Union is also wrapping up. A bad outcome for Google in either one would be a victory for Microsoft.

But Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., has realized that it cannot rely only on regulators to scrutinize Google — which is where Mr. Penn comes in. He is increasing the urgency of Microsoft’s efforts and focusing on their more public side.

In an interview, Mr. Penn said companies underestimated the importance of policy issues like privacy to consumers, as opposed to politicians and regulators. “It’s not about whether they can get them through Washington,” he said. “It’s whether they can get them through Main Street.”

Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s actions specifically, but said that while Google also employed lobbyists and marketers, “our focus is on Google and the positive impact our industry has on society, not the competition.”

In Washington, Mr. Penn is a lightning rod. He developed a relationship with the Clintons as a pollster during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, when he helped identify the value of “soccer moms” and other niche voter groups.

As chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign for president, he conceived the “3 a.m.” commercial that raised doubts about whether Barack Obama, then a senator, was ready for the Oval Office. Mr. Penn argued in an essay he wrote for Time magazine in May that “negative ads are, by and large, good for our democracy.”

But his approach has ended up souring many of his professional relationships. He left Mrs. Clinton’s campaign after an uproar about his consulting work for the government of Colombia, which was seeking the passage of a trade treaty with the United States that Mrs. Clinton, then a senator, opposed.

“Google should be prepared for everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them,” said a former colleague who worked closely with Mr. Penn in politics and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Actually, they should be prepared for the kitchen sink to be thrown at them, too.”

Hiring Mr. Penn demonstrates how seriously Microsoft is taking this fight, said Michael A. Cusumano, a business professor at M.I.T. who co-wrote a book about Microsoft’s browser war.

“They’re pulling out all the stops to do whatever they can to halt Google’s advance, just as their competition did to them,” Professor Cusumano said. “I suppose that if Microsoft can actually put a doubt in people’s mind that Google isn’t unbiased and has become some kind of evil empire, they might very well get results.”

Nick Wingfield reported from Seattle and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco.

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L.A. County transit officials OK more funds for Blue Line safety

Los Angeles County transit officials Thursday budgeted $6.78 million more for improvements on the Blue Line — one of the busiest light-rail lines in the nation, with 26 million riders annually and a history of accidents and fatalities.

There have been eight deaths along the Blue Line so far this year, at least four of which were suicides, according to Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials.

The most recent fatality occurred Thursday about 12:45 a.m., when officials said a woman apparently tried to swerve her Hyundai around lowered gate arms at a crossing in Compton and was struck by a Blue Line train.

Last summer, county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the Metro Board of Directors, warned his colleagues that the Blue Line was on track to have more fatalities in 2012 than any other year in its history. The 22-mile-long Blue Line, the county's first light-rail line, opened in 1990 and travels from Long Beach to Los Angeles. In November, it averaged 93,201 weekday trips, the most ever for the line.

During its first dozen years, the Blue Line — which earned the dubious title of California's deadliest rail transit route in 1999 with 10 fatalities and 50 accidents — averaged 50.9 accidents a year, but over the next decade that dropped to an average of 27.9 accidents annually.

Metro has made several safety improvements that have reduced accidents, including putting photo enforcement cameras at street crossings to discourage drivers from trying to race trains across the tracks.

The line had some of its lowest accident totals between 2008 and 2011. But Yaroslavsky earlier this year said he saw the numbers rising again in 2012 and seemed frustrated that the issue was still around, saying: "This has been an ongoing open ... sore for us."

Also drawing attention to the issue were families such as the one that showed up at a board meeting wearing T-shirts with the picture of a dead teenage relative who had been struck by a Blue Line train while walking in Willowbrook.

After a Blue Line task force came up with several ideas to improve safety, the Metro board budgeted the money Thursday for more barriers, sidewalk improvements, new types of electric signs, better lighting around crossings, suicide prevention signs and audible warning devices, among other things.

Another factor fueling the safety changes were the results of a survey that showed that hundreds of Metro transit workers have concerns about their on-the-job safety. While most of the workers gave Metro high marks for safety, nearly half of the respondents still reported that they had had a close call that could have killed them or seriously injured someone.

Metro spokesman Marc Littman said that putting millions of dollars toward improvements shows that the agency is taking the issue seriously. He added that Art Leahy, Metro's chief executive officer, has also been focused on decreasing a backlog of maintenance issues on the Blue Line and across the system, including purchasing new cars.

But Yaroslavsky is not convinced that the added millions of dollars will change much on the Blue Line.

"These are things that should have been done a long time ago and whether they're going to be sufficient or not, I don't know.... We had another fatality last night," Yaroslavsky said Thursday. "It's the most dangerous rail line in our system."

"I want to see the number of fatalities and accidents along this line drop precipitously," he said, adding that although it is difficult to stop suicides, "we've got to try."

Mike Cano, transit deputy for county Supervisor and Metro Board Chairman Mike Antonovich, said that the agency lacks a strong culture of safety and that its leaders have been too focused on building projects and transit lines instead of ensuring the quality of existing operations.

"We're not doing the groundwork in terms of figuring out what happens to fares, what happens to maintenance … what happens to make sure our systems are retrofit" and safe, Cano said, adding that no one wants to look back after a major transit accident and wish that more had been done.

In an unrelated agenda item Thursday, the board awarded an advertising contract worth more than $100 million over five years to CBS Outdoor Group, which after several rounds of negotiating and voting beat out Titan Outdoor, which had bid several million dollars more. Metro analysts said they were concerned about Titan's finances.

And in a separate motion, Yaroslavsky said that next month he will ask the board to eliminate the $3 monthly maintenance fee assessed to those who use the new experimental ExpressLanes on the 110 and 10 freeways.

ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com

Times staff writer Dan Weikel contributed to this report.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 14

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Adele’s “21″ is top-selling U.S. iTunes album of 2012

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – British singer Adele notched another accolade on Thursday as iTunes announced that her Grammy-winning album “21″ was the top-selling record of 2012 in its U.S. store, extending the disc’s successful run almost two years after it was released.

Adele, 24, who last year became the first artist to secure three iTunes milestones with top-selling album, single and artist of the year, came in ahead of country-pop star Taylor Swift‘s “Red” and British folk band Mumford & Sons‘ “Babel.”

ITunes did not reveal its sales or download figures.

British boy band One Direction’s debut album “Up All Night” and current Grammy nominees fun.’s debut “Some Nights” rounded out the five top-selling albums on iTunes in the United States.

“21,” released in February 2011, has performed strongly in the U.S. music charts this year following the singer’s Grammy-sweeping win in six categories in February 2012.

Adele also landed Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations for her sultry James Bond theme song “Skyfall” this week, becoming a strong contender in the best song category for Hollywood’s awards season.

“Thank you so much for the honor of being included in something as brilliant as the Golden Globes! Never in a million years did I ever think I’d come close to such a thing! Truly wonderful … thank you to the Bond family for giving me the opportunity,” the singer said in a statement on Thursday.

ITunes U.S. compiled their Best of 2012 list by looking at the most downloaded items from the Apple iTunes store.

Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen had the top-selling track for her infectious breakthrough summer single “Call Me Maybe.”

Post-apocalyptic action film “The Hunger Games” was the best-selling movie while the second season of British aristocratic period drama “Downton Abbey,” another Hollywood awards favorite, was iTunes’ top-selling television series.

The iTunes Best of 2012 lists can be seen at www.itunes.com/AppStoreBestof2012

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Recipes for Health: Red Cabbage, Carrot and Broccoli Stem Latkes — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I love finding things to do with broccoli stems. I find that allowing the cabbage mixture to sit for 10 to 15 minutes before forming the latkes allows the cabbage to soften a bit, and the latkes hold together better.

5 cups shredded red cabbage

1/2 pound carrots, shredded (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 1/2 cups shredded peeled broccoli stems

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

1 teaspoon baking powder

Salt to taste

3 tablespoons oat bran

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons cornmeal

2 tablespoons buckwheat flour

3 eggs, beaten

About 1/4 cup canola, grape seed or rice bran oil

1. Heat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment and place a rack over another sheet pan.

2. In a large bowl mix together the shredded cabbage, carrots, broccoli stems, baking powder, sesame seeds, caraway seeds, salt, oat bran, flour, cornmeal and buckwheat flour. Taste and adjust salt. Add the eggs and stir together. Let the mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Begin heating a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Take a 1/4 cup measuring cup and fill with 3 tablespoons of the mixture. Reverse onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining latke mix. You should have enough to make about 30 latkes.

4. Add the oil to the pan and heat for 3 minutes or until hot. When it is hot (hold your hand a few inches above – you should feel the heat), slide a spatula under one portion of the latke mixture and transfer it to the pan. Press down with the spatula to flatten. Repeat with more mounds. In my 10-inch pan I can cook four at a time without crowding; my 12-inch pan will accommodate four or five. Cook on one side until golden brown, about four to five minutes. Slide the spatula underneath and flip the latkes over. Cook on the other side until golden brown, another two to three minutes. Transfer to the rack set over a baking sheet and place in the oven to keep warm.

5. Serve hot topped with low-fat sour cream, Greek yogurt or crème fraîche.

Yield: about 30 latkes, serving 6

Advance preparation: You can prep the ingredients and combine everything except the eggs and salt several hour ahead. Refrigerate in a large bowl. Do not add salt until you are ready to cook, or the mixture will become too watery, as salt draws the water out of the vegetables.

Nutritional information per serving: 226 calories; 14 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 4 grams polyunsaturated fat; 8 grams monounsaturated fat; 93 milligrams cholesterol; 20 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 151 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 7 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Fed to tie interest rate to job gains

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve said it will continue aggressive measures to stimulate the economy and made a major policy shift to focus more directly on boosting the job market.

Fed policymakers said they would keep interest rates at historically low levels until unemployment drops below 6.5%.

It's likely to keep the Fed's short-term interest rates at historically low levels well into 2015.

The move marked the first time that Fed policymakers have tied themselves to an explicit unemployment goal. It appeared to end the long-running debate within the central bank over how aggressively to target the nation's lagging job market.

The jobless figure was 7.7% in November, and the Fed's new forecast doesn't see that dropping below 6.5% for about three years.

The decision was made easier by the slow pace of inflation, which remains below 2% on an annual basis. Critics of the Fed's policies have argued that efforts to stimulate the economy would lead to inflation, but so far, that has not happened, and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has argued that the risk is much smaller than the dangers posed by high unemployment.

"The conditions now prevailing in the job market represent an enormous waste of human and economic potential," Bernanke said Wednesday during a news conference after the central bank's last policy meeting of the year.

Under its new policy, the Fed would let its inflation outlook rise to 2.5% before taking action to curtail it — giving the nation's employers more time to create jobs.

The move to link interest rate policies directly to the jobless rate is meant to give the public and businesses greater confidence about how long interest rates will remain exceptionally low, and that by itself could act as a kind of stimulus to the economy.

The new push got a warm welcome from both economists and Wall Street.

Economist Bernard Baumohl at the Economic Outlook Group said the previous time frame for action was "self-defeating because it provided no incentive for employers to start spending any time soon to avoid higher interest rates. It just didn't create any sense of urgency to accelerate investments or increase the rate of hiring."

The Fed has kept its federal funds rate, which influences rates for credit cards, mortgages and business and other loans, near zero since December 2008. Unemployment has been near 8% or above since early 2009.

Bernanke and his colleagues also decided Wednesday to continue the controversial large-scale bond-buying programs in the new year. Specifically, the Fed will buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion of long-term Treasury bonds a month.

The purchases are intended to drive down long-term interest rates to spur spending, investment and lending, boosting economic activity as well as hiring.

The central bank launched the purchase of mortgage-backed securities in September to give a lift especially to the housing market, which Fed policymakers said Wednesday "has shown further signs of improvement." They said they would continue to buy bonds until the job market "improved substantially."

The Fed, which has a dual mandate to maximize employment and keep inflation in check, also forecast a somewhat stronger growth for next year.

Its policy statement Wednesday noted a slowing in U.S. business investment and "significant downside risks" in the global economy, but made no mention of the so-called fiscal cliff, the automatic federal budget cuts and tax hikes scheduled to take effect beginning Jan. 1.

In a 75-minute news conference, however, Bernanke said it was clearly evident that concerns about the fiscal impasse already had hurt the economy, weakening business investments and consumer confidence.

He said that whatever the Fed did, it was not enough to offset the full effects of a U.S. economy failing to resolve fiscal issues. But he was cautiously optimistic: "I actually believe that Congress will come up with a solution, and I certainly hope they will."

For years, the Fed didn't give any indication of its future interest-rate path and only in recent years signaled what it might do by using somewhat vague language. In June 2011, the Fed said that it would keep rates exceptionally low for an "extended period." In August 2011, policymakers said no change was likely until at least mid-2013. And that date has since been extended twice, to late 2014 and then mid-2015.

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Hallelujah! Google Maps Returns to Apple's iPhone

The wait is now, finally over. Google Maps is in Apple’s App Store, available for both the iPhone and iPad, bringing hope to those who have been having trouble getting around since the Apple mapocalypse.

Google’s app, which arrived late Wednesday night, improves on the Google-powered maps app that Apple shipped included in iOS before version 6 — when Apple ditched Google to go out on its own.
The most important new feature, of course, is turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation.

Unlike Apple’s maps app, Google’s navigation feature isn’t integrated with Siri. But it’s also much less likely to direct you into the Pacific ocean.

Other differences: Google Maps uses Zagat listings, and Google’s own local search, for charting and rating restaurants and retailers, while Apple uses Yelp. And if you have a Google account you can sign in to sync searches, directions, and favorite places between your iPhone, iPad and other computers.

Public transit, a glaring omission from Apple Maps, shows up on iOS’s Google Maps too. So bus, subway, train, walking and driving directions are all here. And what would Google Maps be without Street View integration? Google Maps on iOS has that too, with the ability to view 360-degree panoramas of both outside streets and the inside of businesses.

Google is also releasing a Google Maps SDK for iOS, which will allow third-party app developers to incorporate Google Maps inside of Apple Maps. The new Google Maps app runs on any iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that can run iOS 5.1 or newer and its available in 40 countries and 29 languages.

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Margo Martindale joins FX’s “The Americans”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Margo Martindale, who won an Emmy for her role on FX’s “Justified,” is returning to the network on the new spy series “The Americans.”

The show, which stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as an undercover KGB couple in Reagan-era America, premieres January 30. Martindale has signed on to appear in at least eight episodes as “Claudia,” a KGB illegal who delivers assignments to the couple.

The casting reunites Martindale with “Justified” creator Graham Yost, an executive producer of “The Americans.” Martindale won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her performance as Mags Bennett on “Justified.”

Since her exit from the show, Yost has talked about how much he misses working with the actress.

“What I do regret is just not having Margo on the show, in that she’s such a tremendous actress and such a great person,” he told TheWrap. “That was the hard part.”

Since leaving “Justified,” Martindale has appeared on CBS’s now-canceled “A Gifted Man” and has signed on for Showtime’s “Masters of Sex.”

“The Americans” was created by former CIA agent Joe Weisberg, who also executive produces. Besides Yost, it is also executive produced by Joel Fields and Amblin Television heads Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank. The series is produced by Fox Television Studios and FX Productions.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, a nonprofit Web site, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

About 10,000 chemicals are allowed to be added to foods, about 3,000 of which have never been reviewed for safety by the F.D.A., according to Pew’s research. Of those, about 1,000 never come before the F.D.A. unless someone has a problem with them; they are declared safe by a company and its handpicked advisers.

“I worked on the industrial and consumer products side of things in the past, and if you take a new chemical and put it into, say, a tennis racket, you have to notify the E.P.A. before you put it in,” Mr. Neltner said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “But if you put it into food and can document it as recognized as safe by someone expert, you don’t have to tell the F.D.A.”

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State of the Art: Google Maps App for iPhone Goes in the Right Direction - Review

It was one of the biggest tech headlines of the year: in September, Apple dropped its contract with Google, which had always supplied the data for the iPhone’s Maps app. For various strategic reasons, Apple preferred to write a new app, based on a new database of the world that Apple intended to assemble itself.

As everybody knows by now, Apple got lost along the way. It was like a 22-car pileup. Timothy Cook, Apple’s chief executive, made a quick turn, publicly apologizing, firing the executive responsible and vowing to fix Maps. For a company that prides itself on flawless execution, it was quite a detour.

Rumors swirled that Google would create an iPhone app of its own, one that would use its seven-year-old, far more polished database of the world.

That was true. Today, Google Maps for the iPhone has arrived. It’s free, fast and fantastic.

Now, there are two parts to a great maps app. There’s the app itself — how it looks, how it works, what the features are. In this regard, few people complain about Apple’s Maps app; it’s beautiful, and its navigation mode for drivers is clear, uncluttered and distraction-free.

But then there’s the hard part: the underlying data. Apple and Google have each constructed staggeringly complex databases of the world and its roads.

The recipe for both companies includes map data from TomTom, satellite photography from a different source, real-time traffic data from others, restaurant and store listings from still more sources, and so on. In the end, Apple says that it incorporated data from at least 24 different sources.

Those sources always include errors, if only because the world constantly changes. Worse, those sources sometimes disagree with one another. It takes years to fix the problems and mesh these data sources together.

So the first great thing about Google’s new Maps is the underlying data. Hundreds of Google employees have spent years hand-editing the maps, fixing the thousands of errors that people report every day. (In the new app, you report a mistake just by shaking the phone.) And since 2006, Google’s Street View vehicles have trawled 3,000 cities, photographing and confirming the cartographical accuracy of five million miles of roads.

You can sense the new app’s polish and intelligence the minute you enter your first address; it’s infinitely more understanding. When I type “200 W 79, NYC,” Google Maps drops a pin right where it belongs: on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Apple’s Maps app, on the other hand, acts positively drunk. It asks me to clarify: “Did you mean 200 Durham Road, Madison, CT? Or 200 Madison Road, Durham, CT?”

Um, what?

And then there’s the navigation. Lots of iPhone owners report that they’ve had no problem with Apple’s driving instructions, and that’s great. But I’ve been idiotically misdirected a few times — and the trouble is, you never know in advance. You wind up with a deep mistrust of the app that’s hard to shake. Google’s directions weren’t great in the app’s early days either, and they’re still not always perfect. But after years of polishing and corrections, they’re right a lot more often.

The must-have features are all here: spoken driving directions, color-coded real-time traffic conditions, vector-based maps (smooth at any size). But the new app also offers some incredibly powerful, useful features that Apple’s app lacks.

Street View, of course, lets you see a photograph of a place, and even “walk” down the street in any direction. Great for checking out a neighborhood before you go, scoping out the parking situation or playing “you are there” when you read a news article.

Along with driving directions, Google Maps gives equal emphasis to walking directions and public transportation options.

This feature is brilliantly done. Google Maps displays a clean, step-by-step timeline of your entire public transportation adventure. If you ask for a route from Westport, Conn., to the Empire State Building, the timeline says: “4:27 pm, Board New Haven train toward Grand Central Terminal.” Then it shows you the names of the actual train stops you’ll pass. Then, “5:47 pm, Grand Central. Get off and walk 2 min.” Then, “5:57 pm, 33rd St: Board the #6 Lexington Avenue Local towards Brooklyn Bridge.” And so on.

Even if public transportation were all it did, Google Maps would be one of the best apps ever. (Apple kicks you over to other companies’ apps for this information.)

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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Ravi Shankar, sitar master, dies at 92

Ravi Shankar was already revered as a master of the sitar in 1966 when he met George Harrison, the Beatle who became his most famous disciple and gave the Indian musician-composer unexpected pop-culture cachet.

Suddenly the classically trained Shankar was a darling of the hippie movement, gaining widespread attention through memorable performances at the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.

Harrison called him "the godfather of world music," and the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin once compared the sitarist's genius to Mozart's. Shankar continued to give virtuoso performances into his 90s, including one in 2011 at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

PHOTOS: Ravi Shankar | 1920 - 2010

Shankar, 92, who introduced Indian music to much of the Western world, died Tuesday at a hospital near his home in Encinitas. Stuart Wolferman, a publicist for his record label Unfinished Side Productions, said Shankar had undergone heart valve replacement surgery last week.

Well-established in the classical music of his native India since the 1940s, he remained a vital figure on the global music stage for six decades. Shankar is the father of pop music star Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, his protege and a sitar star in her own right.

Before the 1950s, Indian classical music — with its improvised melodic excursions and complex percussion rhythms — was virtually unknown in America. If Shankar had done nothing more than compose the movie scores for Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy in the 1950s, he "would be remembered and revered," Times music critic Mark Swed wrote last fall.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

Shankar was on a path to international stardom during the 1950s, playing the sitar in the Soviet Union and debuting as a soloist in Western Europe and the United States. Two early albums also had considerable impact, "Three Classical Ragas" and "India's Master Musician."

During his musical emergence in the West, his first important association was with violinist Menuhin, whose passion for Indian music was ignited by Shankar in 1952. Their creative partnership peaked with their "West Meets East" release, which earned a Grammy Award in 1967. The recording also showed Shankar's versatility — and the capacity of Indian music to inspire artists from different creative disciplines.

He presented a new form of classical music to Western audiences that was based on improvisation instead of written compositions. Shankar typically played in the Hindustani classical style, in which he was accompanied by a player of two tablas, or small hand drums. Concerts in India that often lasted through the night were generally shortened to a few hours for American venues as Shankar played the sitar, a long-necked lute-like stringed instrument.

At first, he especially appealed to fans of jazz music drawn to improvisation. He recorded "Improvisations" (1962) with saxophonist Bud Shank and "Portrait of a Genius" (1964) with flutist Paul Horn, gave lessons to saxophonist John Coltrane (who named his saxophone-playing son Ravi), and wrote a percussion piece for drummer Buddy Rich and Alla Rakha.

On the Beatles' 1965 recording "Norwegian Wood," Harrison had played the sitar and met Shankar the next year in London.

Shankar was "the first person to impress me," among the impressive people the Beatles met, "because he didn't try to impress me," Harrison later said. The pair became close and their friendship lasted until Harrison's death in 2001.

Harrison was instrumental in getting Shankar booked at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. They partnered in organizing the Concert for Bangladesh and were among the producers who won a Grammy in 1972 for the subsequent album. They toured together in 1974, and Harrison produced Shankar's career-spanning mid-1990s boxed set, "In Celebration."

But Shankar came away from his festival appearances with mixed feelings about his rock generation followers. He expressed hope that his performances might help young people better understand Indian music and philosophy but later said "they weren't ready for it."

"All the young people got interested … but it was so mixed up with superficiality and the fad and the drugs," Shankar told The Times in 1996. "I had to go through several years to make them understand that this is a disciplined music, needing a fresh mind."

When Shankar was criticized in India as a sellout for spreading his music in the West, he responded in the early 1970s by lowering his profile and reaffirming his classical roots. He followed his first concerto for sitar and orchestra in 1971 with another a decade later.

"Our music has gone through so much development," Shankar told The Times in 1997. "But its roots — which have something to do with its feelings, the depth from where you bring out the music when you perform — touch the listeners even without their knowing it."

In the 1980s and '90s, Shankar maintained a busy performing schedule despite heart problems. He recorded "Tana Mana," an unusual synthesis of Indian music, electronics and jazz; oversaw the American premiere of his ballet, "Ghyanshyam: The Broken Branch"; and collaborated with composer Philip Glass on the album "Passages."

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The Guy to Blame for Those FiveFinger Shoes Is Back With More

You probably don’t know who Tony Post is, but chances are you have very strong feelings – love or hate – about the geeky status symbol and much-mocked Vibram FiveFinger shoes he used to sell. Now he’s leaving those barefoot, man-ape shoes behind for a new footwear venture called ToPo Athletic (Tony Post, get it?). The company launches Wednesday with a still-secret product line and $5 million in the bank from Norwest Venture Partners.

But don’t get your fashion knickers in a twist. “This is not another toe shoe,” says Post, a 30-year footwear veteran of Rockport and Vibram USA (the American outfit of the Italian shoe sole company). “This is completely different.”

Though exactly what it is is hard to put your finger (or toe) on. Post’s hook for his new line of shoes is something he calls “innate amplification” — a mysterious concept that enhances your natural body movements. “Innate amplification takes the body’s own natural biomechanics and tries to amplify and support them,” says Post. “We don’t try to correct or change the way you run or train, but we try to work with what nature gave you.”

The catch is that we have no idea what these shoes will look like – yet. ToPo Athletic won’t launch its first footwear products until January 2013 at the Outdoor Retailer trade show  They’ll go on sale by next May. However, Post has given us a few clues of what we can expect.

First, we know the new shoes will “amplify your natural movements,” so we can assume these won’t be like the Skechers Shape Up toning shoes, which destabilize you with every step in an effort to workout your legs and butt. According to Post, the shoes will also most definitely be lightweight and possibly minimalist – similar to Nike’s Free line.

Lastly, ToPo Athletic is going after the geeky, early-adopter fitness consumer – some of the same people who jumped on the FiveFingers bandwagon. “Our narrowest consumer focus is really the early adopter, someone who isn’t scared to take a risk,” says ToPo marketing director Georgia Shaw.

So if you’re a footwear nerd, fitness geek, or one of the few FiveFinger evangelists, keep an eye out in January to see what ToPo Athletic pulls out from behind its curtain. If Post can do as well with ToPo as he did with Vibram, literally a company stuck in the mud that he moved to the top of the shoe food chain, he’ll have another hit on his hands.

Just remember, “It’s not Tony Post coming out with another minimalist line of footwear,” says Post referring to himself in the third-person like the shoe celebrity he is. No doubt we’ll love it, and hate it.

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‘Evita’ to close in January when Big 3 leave

NEW YORK (AP) — The Broadway revival of “Evita” — faced with trying to replace Ricky Martin, Elena Roger and Michael Cerveris — will instead close when the Big Three leave early next year.

Producers of the Tony Award-nominated revival of Tim Rice‘s and Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s landmark musical said Tuesday night they have decided against plans for an open-ended run after Martin, Roger and Cerveris leave after the Jan. 26 performance.

“Our extensive search for a new cast presented the significant challenges of not only replacing a high-caliber trio of stars but also synchronizing the schedules of potential replacements with that of the production,” producer Hal Luftig said in a statement. “Despite going down the road with a variety of artists, the planets have simply not aligned for us to engage the right talent at the right time.”

When it closes, the musical will have played 26 previews and 337 performances, far less than the original’s more than 1,580 shows played between 1979 and 1983.

A national tour will launch in September 2013 at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, R.I., and a cast album has been released, including the songs “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” and “High Flying Adored.” The cast for the tour has not been announced.

The revival opened March 12 at the Marquis Theatre, directed by Michael Grandage and choreographed by Rob Ashford. It has broken the theater’s box office record seven times, though has seen the box office slump at times.

Last week, it pulled in $ 920,994, or a little more than half its $ 1,666,936 potential. The average ticket price was $ 111.73 and the top premium went for $ 275.

The musical tells the story of Argentina’s Eva Peron, who rose from the slums to the presidential mansion. Roger plays Eva, Cerveris her husband and Martin is Che.

___

Online: http://evitaonbroadway.com

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: The Gift of Reading

This is the year of the tablet, David Pogue of The Times has told us, and that may be good news for seniors who open holiday wrappings to find one tucked inside. They see better with tablets’ adjustable type size, new research shows. Reading becomes easier again.

This may seem obvious — find me someone over 40 who doesn’t see better when fonts are larger — but it’s the business of science to test our assumptions.

Dr. Daniel Roth, an eye specialist and clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., offered new evidence of tablets’ potential benefits last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

His findings, based on tests conducted with 66 adults age 50 and over: older people read faster (a mean reading speed of 128 words per minute) when using an iPad, compared to a newspaper with the same 10-point font size (114 words per minute).

When the font was increased to 18 points — easy to do on an iPad — reading speed increased to 137 words per minute.

“If you read more slowly, it’s tedious,” Dr. Roth said, explaining why reading speed is important. “If you can read more fluidly, it’s more comfortable.”

What makes the real difference, Dr. Roth theorizes, is tablets’ illuminated screen, which heightens contrast between words and the background on which they sit.

Contrast sensitivity — the visual ability to differentiate between foreground and background information — becomes poorer as we age, as does the ability to discriminate fine visual detail, notes Dr. Kevin Paterson, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, who recently published a separate study on why older people struggle to read fine print.

“There are several explanations for the loss of sensitivity to fine detail that occurs with older age,” Dr. Paterson explained in an e-mail. “This may be due to greater opacity of the fluid in the eye, which will scatter incoming light and reduce the quality of the projection of light onto the retina. It’s also hypothesized that changes in neural transmission affect the processing of fine visual detail.”

Combine these changes with a greater prevalence of eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy in older adults, and you get millions of people who cannot easily do what they have done all their lives — read and stay connected to the world of ideas, imagination and human experience.

“The No. 1 complaint I get from older patients is that they love to read but can’t, and this really bothers them,” Dr. Roth said. The main option has been magnifying glasses, which many people find cumbersome and inconvenient.

Some words of caution are in order. First, Dr. Roth’s study has not been published yet; it was presented as a poster at the scientific meeting and publicized by the academy, but it has not yet gone through comprehensive, rigorous peer review.

Second, Dr. Roth’s study was completed before the newest wave of tablets from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others became available. The doctor made no attempt to compare different products, with one exception. In the second part of his study, he compared results for the iPad with those for a Kindle. But it was not an apples to apples comparison, because the Kindle did not have a back-lit screen.

This section of his study involved 100 adults age 50 and older who read materials in a book, on an iPad and on the Kindle. Book readers recorded a mean reading speed of 187 words per minute when the font size was set at 12; Kindle readers clocked in at 196 words per minute and iPad readers at 224 words per minute at the same type size. Reading speed improved even more drastically for a subset of adults with the poorest vision.

Again, Apple’s product came out on top, but that should not be taken as evidence that it is superior to other tablets with back-lit screens and adjustable font sizes. Both the eye academy and Dr. Roth assert that they have no financial relationship with Apple. My attempts to get in touch with the company were not successful.

A final cautionary note should be sounded. Some older adults find digital technology baffling and simply do not feel comfortable using it. For them, a tablet may sit on a shelf and get little if any use.

Others, however, find the technology fascinating. If you want to see an example that went viral on YouTube, watch this video from 2010 of Virginia Campbell, then 99 years old, and today still going strong at the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ms. Campbell’s glaucoma made it difficult for her to read, and for her the iPad was a blessing, as she wrote in this tribute quoted in an article in The Oregonian newspaper:

To this technology-ninny it’s clear
In my compromised 100th year,
That to read and to write
Are again within sight
Of this Apple iPad pioneer

Caregivers might be delighted — as Ms. Campbell’s daughter was — by older relatives’ response to this new technology, a potential source of entertainment and engagement for those who can negotiate its demands. Or, they might find that old habits die hard and that their relatives continue to prefer a book or newspaper they can hold in their hands to one that appears on a screen.

Which reading enhancement products have you used, and what experiences have you had?

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Eastern Congo rebels thrive on fear, chaos

Los Angeles Times

RUTSHURU, Democratic Republic of Congo — The rebels materialized out of the moist, heavy air, startling the woman as she tended her crops in the lush volcanic hills near the Rwandan border.

They wanted a bag of salt. No salt, and they'd kill her.

"You just do what they say," said Solange, a widow struggling to support a family in the midst of war.

To people like her who live in eastern Congo's North Kivu province, the M23 fighters who have taken control of their region are bandits, not rebels. After they seized Solange's village of Rutshuru in July and plundered all her beans, she fled south to the provincial capital, Goma.

It would prove to be no refuge. The rebels and the violence followed her.

The awesome serenity of the cloud-swathed emerald hills, twittering with bird life, home to mountain gorillas, is almost deep enough to erase, for a moment, successive waves of gruesome violence.

The region, an important source of minerals used in laptops and cellphones, was swept up in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Since then, it has become the scene of one of the great tragedies of the last century: Wars fueled by a toxic blend of resource riches, ethnic hatred and interfering neighbors have killed 5 million people.

In recent years, the area settled into a fragile peace. But militias still drain the country's wealth. There now are fears that eastern Congo could spiral into another long and bloody conflict.

United Nations experts say Rwanda armed and commanded M23, which rebelled against the Congolese army in April, and directly supported the rebels' attack on Goma.

Rwanda has been accused of backing militias and fueling conflict in the region for years, but it denies interfering. It has a security interest because Hutu militias responsible for the 1994 genocide fled into eastern Congo, where they continue to mount attacks. And with few mineral resources of its own, Rwanda has a strong economic interest in the region.

Among M23's reputed leaders is Bosco Ntaganda, a commander nicknamed the Terminator who was indicted in July by the International Criminal Court on suspicion of atrocities including murder, rape, sexual slavery and pillaging.

The M23 political leaders wear shiny silk suits, with labels like "High Class" left ostentatiously on the sleeve. They made Rutshuru their base, imposed compulsory weekend cleanup brigades for the entire population, planted grass around the administrative building and put up signs condemning corruption. They made the town look like a miniature copy of Rwanda, a country so tidy that all plastic bags are banned and seized at the border.

They also looted villages and killed an undetermined number of people.

Solange is 35 and belongs to the Nande tribe, the main ethnic group in North Kivu. Her husband was a government soldier who earned $55 a month before his death three years ago from malaria. They had no children.

On the farm, she grew cassava and beans to sell in the local market and always had plenty to eat. "Life was good," she said. After her husband's death, she had to support not only her family, including her parents and a younger sister with children, but her late husband's family too. In all, there were 15 mouths to feed.

M23 disrupted all that.

After fleeing to Goma, she stayed at a friend's house. She registered with an aid agency, hoping to get food assistance, but never received any.

"It's very difficult. Sometimes we don't have enough food," said Solange, who preferred not to use her last name out of concern for her safety.

Goma's idyllic lakeside setting could be a tourist haven in a parallel universe. But in this one, teenage boys and grimy men push heavy loads of water, wooden poles or potatoes. Women pound cassava leaves or fry tennis-ball-size lumps of dough in bubbling oil.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 11

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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“The Colbert Report” mames new co-executive producer, head writer

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “The Colbert Report” has promoted former supervising producer and head writer Barry Julien to co-executive producer, series host, writer and executive producer Stephen Colbert said Monday. In addition to Jullien’s promotion, Opus Moreschi, previously a writer for the series, has been moved up to head writer on the Comedy Central news-show spoof.

Julien joined “The Colbert Report” as a writer in 2007, moving to head writer in 2009 and picking up the supervising producer title last year. Moreschi came aboard the show in 2008.

“Barry Julien and Opus Moreschi are tireless, visionary producers and incredibly talented writers,” Colbert said of the promotions. “For instance they wrote this sentence.”

Both Julien and Moreschi have won Writers Guild Awards and Emmy Awards during their “Colbert Report” stints.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Personal Health: When Daily Stress Gets in the Way of Life

I was about to give an hourlong talk to hundreds of people when one of the organizers of the event asked, “Do you get nervous when you give speeches?” My response: Who, me? No. Of course not.

But this was a half-truth. I am a bit of a worrier, and one thing that makes me anxious is getting ready for these events: fretting over whether I’ve prepared the right talk, packed the right clothes or forgotten anything important, like my glasses.

Anxiety is a fact of life. I’ve yet to meet anyone, no matter how upbeat, who has escaped anxious moments, days, even weeks. Recently I succumbed when, rushed for time just before a Thanksgiving trip, I was told the tires on my car were too worn to be driven on safely and had to be replaced.

“But I have no time to do this now,” I whined.

“Do you have time for an accident?” my car-savvy neighbor asked.

So, with a pounding pulse and no idea how I’d make up the lost time, I went off to get new tires. I left the car at the shop and managed to calm down during the walk home, which helped me get back to the work I needed to finish before the trip.

It seems like such a small thing now. But everyday stresses add up, according to Tamar E. Chansky, a psychologist in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., who treats people with anxiety disorders.

You’ll be much better able to deal with a serious, unexpected challenge if you lower your daily stress levels, she said. When worry is a constant, “it takes less to tip the scales to make you feel agitated or plagued by physical symptoms, even in minor situations,” she wrote in her very practical book, “Freeing Yourself From Anxiety.”

When Calamities Are Real

Of course, there are often good reasons for anxiety. Certainly, people who lost their homes and life’s treasures — and sometimes loved ones — in Hurricane Sandy can hardly be faulted for worrying about their futures.

But for some people, anxiety is a way of life, chronic and life-crippling, constantly leaving them awash in fears that prevent them from making moves that could enrich their lives.

In an interview, Dr. Chansky said that when real calamities occur, “you will be in much better shape to cope with them if you don’t entertain extraneous catastrophes.”

By “extraneous,” she means the many stresses that pile up in the course of daily living that don’t really deserve so much of our emotional capital — the worrying and fretting we spend on things that won’t change or simply don’t matter much.

“If you worry about everything, it will get in the way of what you really need to address,” she explained. “The best decisions are not made when your mind is spinning out of control, racing ahead with predictions about how things are never going to get any better. Precious energy is wasted when you’re always thinking about the worst-case scenarios.”

When faced with serious challenges, it helps to narrow them down to specific things you can do now. To my mind, Dr. Chansky’s most valuable suggestion for emerging from paralyzing anxiety when faced with a monumental task is to “stay in the present — it doesn’t help to be in the future.

“Take some small step today, and value each step you take. You never know which step will make a difference. This is much better than not trying to do anything.”

Dr. Chansky told me, “If you’re worrying about your work all the time, you won’t get your work done.” She suggested instead that people “compartmentalize.” Those prone to worry should set aside a little time each day simply to fret, she said — and then put aside anxieties and spend the rest of the time getting things done. This advice could not have come at a better time for me, as I faced holiday chores, two trips in December, and five columns to write before leaving mid-month. Rather than focusing on what seemed like an impossible challenge, I took on one task at a time. Somehow it all got done.

Possible Thinking

Many worriers think the solution is positive thinking. Dr. Chansky recommends something else: think “possible.”

“When we are stuck with negative thinking, we feel out of options, so to exit out of that we need to be reminded of all the options we do have,” she writes in her book.

If this is not something you can do easily on your own, consult others for suggestions. During my morning walk with friends, we often discuss problems, and inevitably someone comes up with a practical solution. But even if none of their suggestions work, at least they narrow down possible courses of action and make the problem seem less forbidding. “If other people are not caught in the spin that you’re in, they may have ideas for you that you wouldn’t think of,” Dr. Chansky said. “We often do this about small things, but when something big is going on, we hesitate to ask for advice. Yet that’s when we need it most.”

Dr. Chansky calls this “a community cleanup effort,” and it can bring more than advice. During an especially challenging time, like dealing with a spouse’s serious illness or loss of one’s home, friends and family members can help with practical matters like shopping for groceries, providing meals, cleaning out the refrigerator or paying bills.

“People want to help others in need — it’s how the world goes around,” she said. Witness the many thousands of volunteers, including students from other states on their Thanksgiving break, who prepared food and delivered clothing and equipment to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Even the smallest favor can help buffer stress and enable people to focus productively on what they can do to improve their situation.

Another of Dr. Chansky’s invaluable tips is to “let go of the rope.” When feeling pressured to figure out how to fix things now, “walk away for a few minutes, but promise to come back.” As with a computer that suddenly misbehaves, Dr. Chansky suggests that you “unplug and refresh,” perhaps by “taking a breathing break,” inhaling and exhaling calmly and intentionally.

“The more you practice calm breathing, the more it will be there for you when you need it,” she wrote.

She also suggests taking a break to do something physical: “Movement shifts the moment.” Take a walk or bike ride, call a friend, look through a photo album, or do some small cleaning task like clearing off your night table.

When you have a clear head and are feeling less overwhelmed, you’ll be better able to figure out the next step.

This is the first of two columns about anxiety.

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Boeing 787 Plane Works to Overcome Snags

Stuart Isett for The New York Times

The upper deck of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner being assembled in Everett, Wash. The basic model, called the 787-8, can carry 210 to 250 passengers.

After years of delays in producing its much-anticipated 787 aircraft, Boeing seemed in recent months to be turning a corner, streamlining production and increasing the pace of deliveries.

But a pair of embarrassing problems last week revived concerns about the reliability of the plane, the first commercial aircraft to make extensive use of lightweight carbon composites that promise big fuel savings for airlines.

A United Airlines 787 flying from Houston to Newark was diverted to New Orleans last Tuesday after one of its six electric generators failed midflight. That same day, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of fuel line connectors on all 787s, warning of a risk of fuel leaks and fires.

Aviation experts cast these issues as minor hiccups and said it was typical for new planes to experience such problems, particularly in the first few years of production.

On Monday, an aerospace analyst, David E. Strauss of UBS, raised another concern — whether the cost of building the planes was coming down fast enough for individual plane sales to become profitable by early 2015, as Boeing has projected.

Boeing officials have said that the company will earn enough on subsequent sales to average a percentage profit in the low single digits on the first 1,100 planes, which includes deliveries into 2021. Company officials said late Monday that they remained confident in their projections.

But in a research report, Mr. Strauss said that Boeing’s costs did not appear to be declining rapidly enough for sales to turn profitable in 2015 and that the program could continue to spend $4 billion to $5 billion more than it gained in revenue over the next three years. Unless the company can bring down the costs more quickly as it gains experience in building the planes, Mr. Strauss wrote, Boeing may not begin to make a profit on each plane until 2021.

A lot is riding on the success of the 787 Dreamliner, a risky technological and commercial bet for Boeing, which is based in Chicago. The company has so far delivered 38 of the jets to eight airlines, including United Airlines, All Nippon Airways of Japan and Poland’s LOT. It has outlined ambitious plans to double its production rate to 10 planes a month by the end of 2013. It is also starting to build a stretched-out version and mulling an even larger one after that, to make the venture more profitable.

But with the combination of the problem on the United flight and the F.A.A. directive, “This was too much news about the 787 in one day,” said Addison Schonland, an aviation analyst and a partner at Airinsight.com. “But remember, it’s a brand-new airplane. When you start flying it around, you start discovering things. Over all, the number of hiccups has been fantastic.”

The basic model, called the 787-8, can carry 210 to 250 passengers about 8,000 nautical miles, the distance from New York to Singapore, and has a list price of $206.8 million. Early customers, however, are receiving big discounts to make up for the delays caused by a series of manufacturing problems. The first stretched version for 250 to 290 passengers, the 787-9, is listed at $243.6 million and could be ready in early 2014.

Mr. Strauss estimated that Boeing was recently spending $232 million to build each plane but charged customers, on average, only about half that.

Given Wall Street’s concerns, Boeing’s stock has been in limbo for more than three years, trading in a narrow range around $75 a share.

“Boeing has not had a major snafu on the 787 for over a year now, but we think most investors remain skeptical as to whether Boeing can keep this up,” Robert Stallard, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note to clients last month.

Boeing has acknowledged that it outsourced too much of the work on the plane to suppliers who were willing, collectively, to cover billions of dollars of the development costs. Many parts needed reworking. That and other design changes forced the company to set up a separate line in Everett, Wash., to handle the extra work on the first 65 jets. It has also built a 787 plant in Charleston, S.C., with an entirely new work force.

Still, even with all of the headaches, the 787 has enabled Boeing to jump ahead of its European rival, Airbus, in exploiting the lightweight carbon composites. Half of the plane by weight is made with composites instead of aluminum and other metals. Airbus said last week that it had finished assembly on the first A350, its rival to the 787. Its entry into commercial service is not expected before the second half of 2014.

Passengers who have flown on 787s this year have raved about the experience, and the first airlines using them also seem satisfied.

United will begin using the 787 internationally in January, with flights from Houston to Lagos, Nigeria. “There is a tremendous amount of promise for customers preferring this airplane over others,” said Jeff Smisek, chief executive of United. “It still has a new-plane smell.”

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