German economic woes erode market gains

LONDON (AP) ? Evidence that Germany's economy contracted in the last three months of 2012 hurt global stock markets on Tuesday, offsetting more upbeat U.S. figures showing retail sales rose during the holiday month of December.

Germany's main stock index, the DAX, fell 0.7 percent to close at 7,675.91 after the government said the economy grew only 0.7 percent in 2012, which indicates activity dropped in the last three months of the year by as much as 0.5 percent. The government did not break out the quarterly figure.

The figures show the European financial crisis is weighing down even the strongest economies on the continent. Analysts, however, say the country is unlikely to fall into recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

"The German economy will continue to steer its course this year ? despite a very weak year-end 2012," said Andreas Rees, chief German economist at UniCredit.

Elsewhere in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 closed 0.2 percent higher at 6,117.31 while France's CAC-40 lost 0.3 percent to 3,697.35.

Wall Street traded lower, with the Dow shedding 0.1 percent to 13,500.36 and the broader S&P 500 losing 0.1 percent to 1,469.17 after a report showed retail sales rose 0.5 percent in December from the previous month.

The increase shows the drawn-out "fiscal cliff" debate in the U.S. had little impact on consumer spending. A series of tax hikes and spending cuts, due to come into effect Jan. 1, were only averted by a last-minute deal. The positive effect of the figures on market sentiment was not strong enough, however, to bring stock indexes into positive territory.

Earlier in Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 rose 0.7 percent to finish at 10,879.08, its highest close in nearly three years, after Masaaki Shirakawa, governor of Japan's central bank, pledged to take action to combat the country's deflationary slump.

In a boost for Japanese exporters, the yen has slid against the U.S. dollar and euro since the Liberal Democratic Party returned to power in national elections last month. Its leader, Shinzo Abe, has been lobbying the central bank for aggressive action to end Japan's years of deflation, demanding that it meet an inflation target of about 2 percent.

In announcing a 20 trillion yen ($225 billion) economic stimulus package last Friday, Abe reiterated his calls for the Bank of Japan to do more to boost growth.

Monetary stimulus programs in major economies have helped buoy stock markets over the past year and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was careful this week not to suggest his own central bank's efforts were ending.

In a speech in the U.S. on Monday, Bernanke made no mention of winding down the Fed's bond-buying program, dubbed quantitative easing, even though some Fed officials recently said they favor doing that.

The Fed has been buying $85 billion a month in Treasurys and mortgage bonds to try to keep borrowing costs low and encourage more spending.

Analysts at Credit Agricole CIB said markets found some relief in Bernanke's speech as it did not repeat the views of some Fed officials in hinting at an early ending of quantitative easing.

Looking ahead, investors will on Friday assess a slew of data for signs of growth in China, the world's second-largest economy. China will issue fourth-quarter growth data for 2012 as well as GDP growth for the year. Factory output, investment and retail sales will also be released.

Elsewhere in Asia, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.1 percent to 4,716.60 and South Korea's Kospi dropped 1.1 percent to 1,986. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 0.1 percent to 23,381.51.

Benchmarks in Indonesia, mainland China and New Zealand rose while the Philippines, Taiwan and Singapore fell.

Benchmark oil for February delivery was down 41 cents to $93.73 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3342 from $1.3378 late Monday in New York. The dollar fell against the Japanese yen to 88.69 yen from 89.41 yen.

___

Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/german-economic-woes-erode-market-gains-114932735--finance.html

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Bieber calls for tough rules after paparazzo death

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2012 file photo, Justin Bieber arrives at the 40th Anniversary American Music Awards in Los Angeles. Police say a paparazzo was hit by a car and killed after taking photos of Justin Bieber's white Ferrari on a Los Angeles street Tuesday evening Jan. 1, 2013. Los Angeles police Officer James Stoughton says the photographer, who was not identified, died at a hospital shortly after the crash Tuesday evening. Stoughton says Bieber was not in the Ferrari at the time. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2012 file photo, Justin Bieber arrives at the 40th Anniversary American Music Awards in Los Angeles. Police say a paparazzo was hit by a car and killed after taking photos of Justin Bieber's white Ferrari on a Los Angeles street Tuesday evening Jan. 1, 2013. Los Angeles police Officer James Stoughton says the photographer, who was not identified, died at a hospital shortly after the crash Tuesday evening. Stoughton says Bieber was not in the Ferrari at the time. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Canadian singer Justin Bieber attends at the Premiere of his film 'Justin Bieber: Never Say Never' in this Feb. 17, 2011 file photo taken in Paris. Police say a paparazzo was hit by a car and killed after taking photos of Justin Bieber's white Ferrari on a Los Angeles street Tuesday evening Jan. 1, 2013. Los Angeles police Officer James Stoughton says the photographer, who was not identified, died at a hospital shortly after the crash Tuesday evening. Stoughton says Bieber was not in the Ferrari at the time. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The 29-year-old photographer had just snapped shots of Justin Bieber's exotic white Ferrari when he was struck and killed by a passing car ? a death that has spurred renewed debate over dangers paparazzi can bring on themselves and the celebrities they chase.

The accident prompted some stars including the teen heartthrob himself on Wednesday to renew their calls for tougher laws to rein in their pursuers, though previous urgings have been stymied by First Amendment protections.

In a statement, Bieber said his prayers were with the photographer's family. Ironically, the singer wasn't even in the Ferrari on Tuesday.

"Hopefully this tragedy will finally inspire meaningful legislation and whatever other necessary steps to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders, and the photographers themselves," Bieber said in the statement released by Island Def Jam Music Group.

Authorities have withheld the name of the photographer, killed after being hit by a Toyota Highlander, pending notification of relatives.

Much of Hollywood was abuzz about the death, including Miley Cyrus, who sent several tweets critical of some of the actions of paparazzi and lamenting that the unfortunate accident was "bound to happen."

"Hope this paparazzi/JB accident brings on some changes in '13," Cyrus said on her Twitter page. "Paparazzi are dangerous! Wasn't Princess Di enough of a wake-up call?!"

Paparazzi roaming the streets of Southern California have been commonplace for more than a decade as the shutterbugs looked to land exclusive shots that can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Industry veterans recalled incidents where paparazzi chasing celebrities have been injured, but they couldn't remember a photographer being killed while working.

"Here in the state of California, I'm surprised this hasn't happened before," said Giles Harrison, a celebrity photographer and owner of London Entertainment Group.

Harrison is familiar with the backlash against paparazzi. He and another photographer were convicted of misdemeanor false imprisonment and sentenced to jail for boxing in Arnold Schwarzenegger and his family as they sat in their Hummer in 1998.

Citing that incident and the death of Princess Diana, the state Legislature passed its first anti-paparazzi measure a year later. It created hefty civil penalties that could be paid to stars whose privacy was invaded.

Six months ago, a paparazzo was charged with reckless driving in a high-speed pursuit of Bieber and with violating a separate, 2010 state law that toughened punishment for those who drive dangerously in pursuit of photos for commercial gain.

However, a judge last month dismissed the paparazzi law charges, saying the law was overly broad.

The judge cited problems with the statute, saying it was aimed at newsgathering activities protected by the First Amendment, and lawmakers should have increased penalties for reckless driving rather than target those who photograph celebrities.

City prosecutors said they would appeal the judge's ruling.

The law was prompted by the experiences of Jennifer Aniston, who provided details to a lawmaker about being unable to drive away after she was surrounded by paparazzi on Pacific Coast Highway.

On Tuesday, a friend of Bieber's was behind the wheel of the Ferrari when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled it over for speeding along Interstate 405, authorities said.

"This photographer evidently had been following the white Ferrari" and when it was pulled over after sundown he stopped, parked and crossed the street to snap photos, Los Angeles police Detective Charles Walton said.

The photographer stood on a low freeway railing to shoot photographs of the traffic stop over a chain-link fence, authorities said.

"The CHP officer told him numerous times that it wasn't safe for him to be there and to return to his vehicle," Walton said.

There were no sidewalks or pedestrian crossings along the street where the photographer had parked, so the driver of the car that struck him had no reason to expect a pedestrian, Walton said of the accident.

"It would have been very difficult for her to see him," the detective said.

It wasn't immediately clear how fast the motorist, a 69-year-old woman, was traveling, but she was not believe to be at fault and was unlikely to be cited, police said.

Harrison said he routinely tells his photographers to be safe when they are working.

"In any job you have to exercise a degree of common sense and caution," he said.

Harrison hopes celebrities and paparazzi examine their actions to ensure a similar event doesn't happen again. No photo is worth someone's life, he said.

"Everybody wants to be the first one to get that shot, get that scoop," Harrison said. "But at the end of the day, you can't spend money if you are dead."

___

Associated Press Writer Robert Jablon contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-03-Paparazzo-Killed/id-1281e7291df64720b2d800b78b336c84

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New health laws praised | law, abuse, elder - Life - The Orange ...

New health-related California laws will force insurers to cover mammograms for younger women, require nursing homes to quickly report elder abuse to police, and protect lactating mothers from workplace discrimination.

Here's a look at local reaction to some of the 2013 legislation:

Entertainer Mickey Rooney testified on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 2, 2011, about elder abuse, before the Senate Aging Committee.

FILE: ALEX BRANDON, ASSOCIATED PRESS

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ELDER ABUSE

AB40 resolves a longstanding conflict between state and federal laws related to elder-abuse reports, according to the office of Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, the Northern California Democrat who authored the bill. The law took effect Jan. 1.

When elder abuse occurs in a nursing home, employees are required by law to file a report with the police or the long-term care ombudsman. When reports go to the ombudsman, strict federal confidentiality rules prevent the ombudsman from sending the report to law enforcement for a criminal investigation. The new law requires long-term care facilities to report suspected abuse that results in serious injury within two hours to police.

Kerry Burnight, a UC Irvine gerontologist, said it's unknown how often elder abuse occurs within nursing homes. In Orange County, 28,000 older adults live in long-term care facilities. In private residences, 800 elder abuse complaints are made each month, she said.

"Dementia is the greatest risk factor of elder abuse," Burnight said. "It's really important to listen to older adults; even with dementia, if they express fear or concern, to dig into it more."

Burnight said abuse can occur because some people with cognitive impairment may be resistant to care. They can also be perceived as "less than."

"We see elder abuse in multimillion-dollar homes in Newport and in the most expensive facilities," Burnight said. "It's really across the board of economic strata and all ethnicities."

BREAST-FEEDING

Previous law allows working mothers a reasonable amount of break time to pump breast milk. Additionally, employers must make a reasonable effort to provide a private place other than a toilet stall.

But AB2386, which took effect Jan. 1, forbids employers from discriminating against or harassing an employee due to breast-feeding.

Todd Scherwin, an Irvine labor lawyer, said state law forbids an employer to discriminate on the basis of sex, which includes gender, pregnancy and childbirth. The law expands the definition of "sex" to include breast-feeding.

Scherwin said the change in law was triggered by a 2009 case where a cashier at a Los Angeles taqueria was fired for nursing her premature infant during her lunch break. The Fair Employment and Housing Commission found that she experienced discrimination on the basis of her sex. The employer was fined and ordered to pay her back wages.

"I think employers just need to be more cognizant of making sure they're allowing proper space and proper time and whether it's conscious or subconscious, they're not doing anything that would be seen as retaliation or discrimination against a mother who returns to work and needs that time to breast-feed or pump," Scherwin said.

MAMMOGRAMS

Health plans were already required to cover mammograms, but AB137 removes age guidelines and calls for insurers to provide policyholders with information on when they should be screened for breast cancer.

The law goes into effect July 1.

Lisa Wolter, executive director of Orange County's affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, said some women under 40 with health insurance have been unable to get mammograms. The American Cancer Society recommends that women begin getting an annual mammogram at 40.

Wolter said in some cases Komen has paid for mammograms for those younger women with high risk or a family history of breast cancer even though they were insured.

"It's difficult for them to get a mammogram approved under their insurance," she said. "The benefit of this law is that rather than defining this by age, it defines it by need as determined by their medical provider."

She also praised the provision in the law that requires health plans to reach out to women about breast cancer screenings either by letters, phone calls or information in a newsletter.

"We do like that it does require education on the recommended timeline," she said. "Anything that will remind a woman that this is an important part of her health care."

Contact the writer: cperkes@ocregister.com 714-796-3686

Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/law-382380-abuse-elder.html

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Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery ? A Business Not a ...

Hackers, hurricanes, fires, flooding, power outages, denial of service attacks, application failures, employee error, sabotage and now terrorism are helping companies to focus on the necessity of a business continuity plan.

Through the late 1990s as companies prepared for Y2K, many IT executives, risk managers, CFOs and corporate managers realized that recovering computing systems, networks and data was not enough. As Y2K approached, it became more apparent that a disciplined approach was needed to recover not only data and systems, but also business processes, facilities and manpower to restore and maintain critical functions.

The starting point is a risk assessment. Identify and define your mission critical business processes and systems. Review them for vulnerabilities and identify steps required for restoration and recovery. For your data, make sure it is backed up to secure and separate locations. Evaluate various storage solutions including storage area networks, data replication systems, new virtualization systems, network attached storage devices and managed storage. Pay significant attention also to your telecommunications providers to ensure they have built diversity and redundancy into their networks and have well developed and tested contingency plans.

The risk assessment will start to drive out real questions on the business impacts and losses

that could result from disruptions. Mission critical impacts, key business functions, processes and records must all be identified. This is also the time to determine resource requirements and acceptable recovery time frames.

Various recovery strategies should be evaluated to achieve your cost, reliability and time to recover objectives. Include physical, technological, legal, regulatory and personnel considerations when you evaluate alternatives. Common points of failure are a lack of executive and budget support and not fully engaging employees. Along with your data, employees are your most valuable asset. An excellent checklist ?Considerations for senior management during a time of crisis? is at www.globalcontinuity.com (enter checklists in the search box, click on DR & BC checklists).

Business continuity planning sounds expensive and it can be time-consuming. However, losing your business functions, processes and systems as well as your company, customer and financial data can be devastating. Build your plan. Train, test, train and test again.

About The Author

Robert Mahood has significant technology and management experience in data communications, internet, storage, disaster recovery and data recovery. He is currently the president of Midwest Data Recovery. www.midwestdatarecovery.com

bmahood@midwestdatarecovery.com, 866 786 2595 or 312 907 2100

Source: http://www.mwstm.com/2013/01/02/Business-Continuity-and-Disaster-Recovery-A-Business-Not-a-Technology-Issue/

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Cute quotient overload: eyes-on with the Street Fighter x Sanrio Fightstick for Xbox 360

Thought the holidays were over? So did we. Imagine our surprise, then, when we returned to the office to find one last, special package lying in wait: Mad Catz Street Fighter x Sanrio Arcade Fightstick Pro. As ridiculous explosions of cute go, this one takes the sugoku kawaii cake -- even the box is a Hello Kitty collector's wet dream. Obvious overall otaku appeal aside, Xbox 360 gamers interested in the Fightstick Pro will find an eight button "authentic Japanese-style Sanwa Denshi" layout, switches for button lock / unlock and three joystick configuration settings (d-pad, left or right analog stick), turbo functionality, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack upfront and a storage compartment housing the 13-foot long USB cable around back. Really though, no amount of English words will do this kitsch item justice. So check out the gallery below for a photo tour of this adorable collision of anime worlds.

Gallery: Street Fighter x Sanrio Fightstick for Xbox 360 eyes-on

Filed under: Gaming

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/swPW1adRksw/

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Breast Cancer: What We Learned In 2012

Side-by-side comparisons of a conventional mammogram in which a breast cancer is hidden, and a new 3-D mammogram of the same breast that reveals a malignant tumor.

The past year has seen more debate about the best way to find breast cancers.

A recent analysis concluded that regular mammograms haven't reduced the rate of advanced breast cancers but they have led more than a million women to be diagnosed with tumors that didn't need to be treated.

"For mammography screening to work, it must take women who are destined to develop late-stage cancers and find them when they're early-stage," Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, co-author of that analysis, tells Shots. "Unfortunately, it looks like screening has had very little impact on the rate at which women present with late-stage cancer."

Mammography's defenders say that analysis is deeply flawed.

"They just used the wrong numbers," says Dr. Daniel Kopans of Massachusetts General Hospital. "Had they used the correct estimate, they would have found there's been a major decrease in advanced cancers."

Kopans is promoting a new technology which he invented that promises to find even more and smaller breast tumors. We'll come back to that shortly.

The 2012 mammography debate is a continuation of a controversy touched off three years ago when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said women under 50 don't need regular mammograms. That panel says the risks of needless biopsies and unnecessary treatment outweigh the benefits in lives saved.

Faced with such conflicting claims, some women are forgoing regular mammograms. But the fear of breast cancer is so great that other women are doubling down. They're getting radical treatments, even double mastectomies, for precancerous tumors that some authorities think would never cause them harm.

Health writer Shannon Brownlee of the New America Foundation says the issue is a prime example of what she calls American medicine's tendency to overdiagnose and overtreat disease. She's the author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer.

Currently, Brownlee says, most doctors present annual mammograms as a "got-to-do-it" thing, not an individual choice.

Brownlee, who's 56, has made up her mind. She doesn't get regular mammograms. But she says it wasn't easy.

"We have been told for, oh, almost a century now that catching cancer early is always a good thing," she tells Shots. "So when people come along and say, 'Well, maybe screening may not always be such a great thing,' it's very, very difficult to contemplate that."

As she delved into the subject, Brownlee was impressed with the downside of routine mammograms.

Otis Brawley, an oncologist and chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, tells Shots that 60 percent of women in their 40s who get yearly mammograms for 10 years will be told at some point that the test has found something suspicious requiring further tests. And 35 percent will be told they need a breast biopsy.

In the end, about 0.5 percent of these women will have breast cancer. And, many experts believe some of those would never have caused a problem if they hadn't been diagnosed.

When Brownlee decided she didn't want an annual mammogram, that put her at loggerheads with her doctor.

"She would say, 'You have to get a mammogram,' and I would demur," Brownlee explains. "And she would say, 'Not a week goes by that a patient of mine didn't have her life saved by getting a mammogram.' And I wanted to say, 'How do you know?' Because you can't know after the fact."

That, in fact, is true. While studies show routine mammograms do save lives overall, even their staunchest advocates acknowledge you can't know in a particular case.

Eventually, Brownlee and her doctor worked it out. She said she'd get an occasional mammogram in her 50s, and promised the doctor that she'd get treated if an invasive cancer was found. (The doctor had assumed that she wouldn't.)

Kopans, the mammography specialist in Boston, has an answer to those who lament the high rate of false positives from mammograms those indicating something suspicious that turns out not to be cancer. He's invented a 3-D mammogram called tomosynthesis.

It uses a computer to create 3-D pictures of the breast. It subtracts a lot of the visual fuzziness, or noise, in 2-D mammograms that obscures many breast tumors.

"With tomosynthesis, I can page through the breast as if it's the pages in a book," Kopans says, demonstrating the technology in a closet-sized room at Massachusetts General Hospital. "Now I'm pointing to a cancer that's much more easily seen because we've gotten what's in front and what's in back [of it] out of the way."

Kopans, who says he has no financial stake in companies marketing tomosynthesis machines, says 3-D mammograms will drastically reduce the percentage of women who are called back after a routine mammogram for further tests, including biopsies.

"It's pretty clear we detect more cancers with it," he says.

But some, like Brawley, worry that as doctors find more and smaller breast tumors, they'll also increase the detection of breast cancers that probably don't need to be treated. Specialists call that overdiagnosis.

"Some of the 3-D imaging machines are just spectacular in diagnosing small lesions," he tells Shots. "Now we don't know that they're diagnosing small lesions that need to be diagnosed and need to be treated."

Brawley says research is under way to answer that important question.

"We're on the verge of some tests to actually be able to say, 'Mrs. Smith, you've got breast cancer, but it's the kind we need to watch. Mrs. Jones, you've got breast cancer, it's the kind we need to treat.' "

He thinks that's five to 10 years away. Meanwhile, the American Cancer Society recommends that women get regular mammograms, starting in their 40s as long as they understand it may lead them into difficult choices about what to do next.

Copyright 2013 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Source: http://www.gpb.org/news/2013/01/01/breast-cancer-what-we-learned-in-2012

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