Jodie Foster Is 'Real,' Says Adoring Mel Gibson

By Melody Chiu

01/14/2013 at 08:35 AM EST

Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster

Jeff Vespa/Wireimage; Jason Merritt/Getty

After giving close friend Mel Gibson a shout-out in her moving speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, Jodie Foster's Beaver costar is returning the love.

"I kiss the ground she walks on," the actor, 57, told PEOPLE at the InStyle/Warner Brothers after party. "I adore her."

The double Oscar-winning actress, 50, who has supported Gibson through his dark times, brought many in the ballroom to tears with her emotional speech in which she opened up about her personal life, including her sexuality.

"If you had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, than maybe you too would value privacy above all else," said Foster, who has been in the spotlight since she was 3.

"I thought [her speech] was great," he said. "I love her."

Gibson, who called his longtime friend's support of him "so flattering," shared why he thought Foster was so deserving of the Cecil B. DeMille Award and outpouring of support at her revelation.

"Because she's real," he said simply.

Read More..

Flu more widespread in US; eases off in some areas

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu is now widespread in all but three states as the nation grapples with an earlier-than-normal season. But there was one bit of good news Friday: The number of hard-hit areas declined.

The flu season in the U.S. got under way a month early, in December, driven by a strain that tends to make people sicker. That led to worries that it might be a bad season, following one of the mildest flu seasons in recent memory.

The latest numbers do show that the flu surpassed an "epidemic" threshold last week. That is based on deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 122 U.S. cities. However, it's not unusual — the epidemic level varies at different times of the year, and it was breached earlier this flu season, in October and November.

And there's a hint that the flu season may already have peaked in some spots, like in the South. Still, officials there and elsewhere are bracing for more sickness

In Ohio, administrators at Miami University are anxious that a bug that hit employees will spread to students when they return to the Oxford campus next week.

"Everybody's been sick. It's miserable," said Ritter Hoy, a spokeswoman for the 17,000-student school.

Despite the early start, health officials say it's not too late to get a flu shot. The vaccine is considered a good — though not perfect — protection against getting really sick from the flu.

Flu was widespread in 47 states last week, up from 41 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. The only states without widespread flu were California, Mississippi and Hawaii.

The number of hard-hit states fell to 24 from 29, where larger numbers of people were treated for flu-like illness. Now off that list: Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina in the South, the first region hit this flu season.

Recent flu reports included holiday weeks when some doctor's offices were closed, so it will probably take a couple more weeks to get a better picture, CDC officials said Friday. Experts say so far say the season looks moderate.

"Only time will tell how moderate or severe this flu season will be," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said Friday in a teleconference with reporters.

The government doesn't keep a running tally of adult deaths from the flu, but estimates that it kills about 24,000 people in an average year. Nationally, 20 children have died from the flu this season.

Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Since the swine flu epidemic in 2009, vaccination rates have increased in the U.S., but more than half of Americans haven't gotten this year's vaccine.

Nearly 130 million doses of flu vaccine were distributed this year, and at least 112 million have been used. Vaccine is still available, but supplies may have run low in some locations, officials said.

To find a shot, "you may have to call a couple places," said Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, who tracks the flu in Iowa.

In midtown Manhattan, Hyrmete Sciuto got a flu shot Friday at a drugstore. She skipped it in recent years, but news reports about the flu this week worried her.

During her commute from Edgewater, N.J., by ferry and bus, "I have people coughing in my face," she said. "I didn't want to risk it this year."

The vaccine is no guarantee, though, that you won't get sick. On Friday, CDC officials said a recent study of more than 1,100 people has concluded the current flu vaccine is 62 percent effective. That means the average vaccinated person is 62 percent less likely to get a case of flu that sends them to the doctor, compared to people who don't get the vaccine. That's in line with other years.

The vaccine is reformulated annually, and this year's is a good match to the viruses going around.

The flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in flu-like illnesses caused by other bugs, including a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." Those illnesses likely are part of the heavy traffic in hospital and clinic waiting rooms, CDC officials said.

Europeans also are suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo have also reported increasing flu.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

Most people with flu have a mild illness. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.

Some shortages have been reported for children's liquid Tamiflu, a prescription medicine used to treat flu. But health officials say adult Tamiflu pills are available, and pharmacists can convert those to doses for children.

___

Associated Press writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati, Catherine Lucey in Des Moines, and Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

___

Online:

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

Read More..

Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street.

The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets.

Equities have risen in the new year, rallying after the initial resolution of the fiscal cliff in Washington on January 2. The S&P 500 on Friday closed its second straight week of gains, leaving it just fractionally off a five-year closing high hit on Thursday.

An array of financial companies - including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase - will report on Wednesday. Bank of America and Citigroup will join on Thursday.

"The banks have a read on the economy, on the health of consumers, on the health of demand," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

"What we're looking for is demand. Demand from small business owners, from consumers."

EARNINGS AND ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS

Investors were greeted with a slightly better-than-anticipated first week of earnings, but expectations were low and just a few companies reported results.

Fourth quarter earnings and revenues for S&P 500 companies are both expected to have grown by 1.9 percent in the past quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Few large corporations have reported, with Wells Fargo the first bank out of the gate on Friday, posting a record profit. The bank, however, made fewer mortgage loans than in the third quarter and its shares were down 0.8 percent for the day.

The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, is up about 30 percent from a low hit in June, rising in six of the last eight months, including January.

Investors will continue to watch earnings on Friday, as General Electric will round out the week after Intel's report on Thursday.

HOUSING, INDUSTRIAL DATA ON TAP

Next week will also feature the release of a wide range of economic data.

Tuesday will see the release of retail sales numbers and the Empire State manufacturing index, followed by CPI data on Wednesday.

Investors and analysts will also focus on the housing starts numbers and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve factory activity index on Thursday. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers are due on Friday.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said he expected to see housing numbers continue to climb.

"They won't be that surprising if they're good, they'll be rather eye-catching if they're not good," he said. "The underlying drive of the markets, I think, is economic data. That's been the catalyst."

POLITICAL ANXIETY

Worries about the protracted fiscal cliff negotiations drove the markets in the weeks before the ultimate January 2 resolution, but fear of the debt ceiling fight has yet to command investors' attention to the same extent.

The agreement was likely part of the reason for a rebound in flows to stocks. U.S.-based stock mutual funds gained $7.53 billion after the cliff resolution in the week ending January 9, the most in a week since May 2001, according to Thomson Reuters' Lipper.

Markets are unlikely to move on debt ceiling news unless prominent lawmakers signal that they are taking a surprising position in the debate.

The deal in Washington to avert the cliff set up another debt battle, which will play out in coming months alongside spending debates. But this alarm has been sounded before.

"The market will turn the corner on it when the debate heats up," Prudential Financial's Krosby said.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> a gauge of traders' anxiety, is off more than 25 percent so far this month and it recently hit its lowest since June 2007, before the recession began.

"The market doesn't react to the same news twice. It will have to be more brutal than the fiscal cliff," Krosby said. "The market has been conditioned that, at the end, they come up with an agreement."

(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; editing by Rodrigo Campos)

Read More..

Thousands of Russians Rally Against Adoption Ban

MOSCOW – Thousands of Russians marched on Sunday in condemnation of the Russian Parliament’s move to ban adoption of Russian children by American families, an event dubbed a “March Against Scoundrels,” where participants chanted, “Take your hands off children,” and carried posters showing the faces of lawmakers stamped with the word “Shame.”

Marchers flooded tree-lined boulevards for many blocks on a bitterly cold day. The police estimated the turnout for the march, which was sanctioned by city authorities, at 9,500; a group of activists who made a count told Interfax that there were about 24,000 participants.

The sight gags and clever slogans of last year’s anti-government rallies were gone Sunday, and many participants had emotional answers for why they had come to march. Many questioned the moral principles of a ban on adoptions by Americans in a country with so many children in foster care or orphanages.

“Even I can’t afford to adopt, and I’m supposedly middle class,” Yekaterina Komissarova, 31, said, adding that perhaps the issue angered her so deeply because she was the mother of two children.

Marina Lukanova, a teacher, said many of her friends had tried to adopt and found it nearly impossible. “What they found was endless bureaucracy – they fill out forms and nothing happens,” she said. “And now they have given up.”

The adoption ban has underlined a growing division in Russian society, as the government has embraced conservative rhetoric tailored to voters in the heartland, and turned away from prosperous city-dwellers who have mobilized over the Internet. State-controlled television has regaled Russians with reports of American parents who abuse or neglect Russian children, and a top official derided the marchers as “child-sellers.”

“I am especially surprised to see people gather at such a large action in support of American business — because for them, our children, Russian children, are factually, let’s put it this way, an object of trade,” said Yekaterina Lakhova, the United Russia lawmaker who sponsored the ban, in an interview with Kommersant FM radio station shortly after Sunday’s march began.

“Economically developed countries – and we do not consider ourselves a third-world country, we are in the top 20 – do not give up their children to foreign adoption as much as we do,” she said. “Excuse me, but in the past years, we have given the United States a small city with a population of up to 100,000, that is how many children we have given up to foreign adoptions.”

President Vladimir V. Putin approved the adoption ban in late December, as part of a broader law retaliating against the United States for the so-called Magnitsky Act, an effort to punish Russian officials accused of human rights violations.

Russian leaders have complained bitterly for years about light sentences handed down in cases where American adoptive parents abused or neglected children adopted from Russia, and named the ban after Dmitri Yakovlev, a toddler who died of heatstroke in Virginia in 2008 after his adoptive father left him in a parked car for nine hours.

But the decision has proven divisive in Russia, even within government circles. More than 650,000 children live in foster care or orphanages in Russia, of whom about 120,000 are eligible for adoption. Many children in orphanages are sick or disabled, and most have little hope of finding permanent homes.

“We hope that these people, who came out to express their opinion, are aware of the plans of our nation’s leaders to bring order to the adoption process, and the implementation of a range of measures aimed to improve the lives of orphans,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin press secretary, said.

The protesters on Sunday, however, were not likely to be convinced. One woman carried a sign that read, “Stop the repressions, you’re making revolutionaries out of us.” Many said they support the Magnitsky Act, which was passed by the American Congress late last year, as a way to hold Russian officials accountable for crimes that would otherwise never be punished.

“I truly think they have lost touch with society, and they use these laws to divert society’s anger toward ‘our enemies,’ the Americans,” said Boris Komberg, a physicist who was distributing a poem he had written.

A series of high-ranking officials openly expressed their disagreement before the ban was enacted, and figures from the art and entertainment world have recorded emotional messages of dissent and published them on the Internet. Opposition groups have hoped that outrage sparked by the adoption ban would reinvigorate a Moscow-based protest movement that has sagged in recent months, as the government began to prosecute and impose tough sentences on street activists.

A poll released in December by the Public Opinion Foundation showed that 56 percent of Russians approved of the adoption ban. A top official from United Russia, Andrei Isayev, last week described Sunday’s protest as a “March of Child-Sellers,” and tried to refocus attention on the Magnitsky Act, which he described as a “public, demonstrative humiliation of the Russian Federation.”

“All the enemies of Russian sovereignty showed themselves the ardent supporters of American adoption,” Mr. Isayev wrote on a party Web site.

Read More..

Facebook tests $100 charge to message Zuckerberg

NEW YORK (AP) — Would you pay $ 100 to message Mark Zuckerberg? Facebook says it’s testing some “extreme price points” to let users pay to have their messages seen by people who are not their friends.

The tech blog Mashable reported early Friday that some users trying to message Zuckerberg are offered the option to pay $ 100 to ensure that their missive reaches the Facebook CEO’s inbox. Without paying, the message would likely end up in Zuckerberg’s “other” message folder, an oft-overlooked purgatory between the spam folder and the inbox.

Facebook says it’s testing the “extreme” prices to “see what works to filter spam. The company is also testing a service that lets people pay $ 1 per message to route communications to non-friends’ inboxes.

Zuckerberg has more than 16 million followers on the site.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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What to Watch and What to Skip on TV in Super Busy January

TV Watch

By Tom Gliatto

01/13/2013 at 08:45 AM EST

Timothy Olyphant in Justified; AnnaSophia Robb in The Carrie Diaries

Prashant Gupta/FX; Eric Liebowitz/Warner Bros.

Don't worry, America. The networks didn't forget you over the holidays – they were just waiting for the new year to stuff their presents down the chimney.

This year, midseason starts with an extremely bustling January that brings back established hits, including American Idol and Justified, and introduces new series such as The Carrie Diaries.

Here's a quick rundown of which ones to watch – and which ones to skip. No re-gifting!

• DOWNTON ABBEY (PBS Masterpiece): Yes
The snob appeal of British actors wearing expensive clothes in rooms larger than a South Beach condo is undeniably one reason for the popularity of this manor-house soap opera. But the period setting also allows us to draw in much more closely to these aristocrats and their servants. No one has the modern convenience of text-messaging: If bad news arrives at dinner, everyone is forced to remain seated and digest the calamity along with the port and cheeses. And the news in this superb third season is often very, very bad. (Smith, by the way, has a remarkable scene as old matriarch Viola; grief-stricken, she enters the house, and every cautious step is that of a woman who has seen many people, young and old, precede her into the grave.)

• THE CARRIE DIARIES (CW): No
A great concept – baby Sex and the City – generated a lot of buzz when the network announced this comedy-drama about Carrie Bradshaw as a teenager in 1984. But young Carrie (AnnaSophia Robb) is merely a nice suburban girl who inherits a funky wardrobe from her dead mother. You can say a lot of things about '80s style, but it wasn't maudlin, and it wasn't a hand-me-down.

• JUSTIFIED (FX): Yes
A casting miracle: Put a wide-brimmed Western hat on handsome Timothy Olyphant's head, hang a holster around his lean hips – and dang if you don't have an iconic character, just like that. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens pursues criminals who seem to become more eccentrically loathsome with each season, but Olyphant’s cool, unmannered performance is still what makes it all work.

• 1600 PENN (NBC): No, no, no
A sitcom about a First Family that doesn't know what to do about its excruciatingly immature First Son, Skip (Josh Gad). He runs, whirls, dances and skips around the White House causing mischief and somehow also solving problems. Don't you love him? I kept wishing he would gambol too close to the edge of the fiscal cliff.

• SCANDAL (ABC): Yes
With great regret, I have taken my Revenge obsession and transferred it to this galloping Thursday-night melodrama from Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. Kerry Washington (Django Unchained) is a political fixer who has a thing for the president (Tony Goldwyn). In an ideal world, they would be married and hosting the Kennedy Center Honors and appearing together on The View. Instead, poor Kerry must brave one crisis after another. It's all nonsense ... and totally addictive.

• DECEPTION (NBC): No
Like Scandal, like Revenge, but inert and without conviction. You could stage a more compelling drama by making your pancakes pretend to talk to the sausages.

• GIRLS (HBO): Sure
This season is not as radically fresh as season 1, but it gets better – and then turns brilliant – as it goes. I think I want to be Zosia Mamet, who plays Shoshanna Shapiro.

• AMERICAN IDOL (FOX): Uh-huh
The new season introduces a revamped panel, adding Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban along with the Dawg. You'll tune in for the hair and makeup, and maybe stay for the singing.

• THE FOLLOWING (FOX): Yes, but with an advisory
An intense and unnerving new crime drama about an ingenious serial killer (James Purefoy) who doesn't do his own murders. Not for young viewers or Skip.

• BUCKWILD (MTV): Seriously?
Moonshine distillation of Jersey Shore with a hint of Here Come Honey Boo Boo and the kick of neither.

Read More..

Flu more widespread in US; eases off in some areas

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu is now widespread in all but three states as the nation grapples with an earlier-than-normal season. But there was one bit of good news Friday: The number of hard-hit areas declined.

The flu season in the U.S. got under way a month early, in December, driven by a strain that tends to make people sicker. That led to worries that it might be a bad season, following one of the mildest flu seasons in recent memory.

The latest numbers do show that the flu surpassed an "epidemic" threshold last week. That is based on deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 122 U.S. cities. However, it's not unusual — the epidemic level varies at different times of the year, and it was breached earlier this flu season, in October and November.

And there's a hint that the flu season may already have peaked in some spots, like in the South. Still, officials there and elsewhere are bracing for more sickness

In Ohio, administrators at Miami University are anxious that a bug that hit employees will spread to students when they return to the Oxford campus next week.

"Everybody's been sick. It's miserable," said Ritter Hoy, a spokeswoman for the 17,000-student school.

Despite the early start, health officials say it's not too late to get a flu shot. The vaccine is considered a good — though not perfect — protection against getting really sick from the flu.

Flu was widespread in 47 states last week, up from 41 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. The only states without widespread flu were California, Mississippi and Hawaii.

The number of hard-hit states fell to 24 from 29, where larger numbers of people were treated for flu-like illness. Now off that list: Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina in the South, the first region hit this flu season.

Recent flu reports included holiday weeks when some doctor's offices were closed, so it will probably take a couple more weeks to get a better picture, CDC officials said Friday. Experts say so far say the season looks moderate.

"Only time will tell how moderate or severe this flu season will be," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said Friday in a teleconference with reporters.

The government doesn't keep a running tally of adult deaths from the flu, but estimates that it kills about 24,000 people in an average year. Nationally, 20 children have died from the flu this season.

Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Since the swine flu epidemic in 2009, vaccination rates have increased in the U.S., but more than half of Americans haven't gotten this year's vaccine.

Nearly 130 million doses of flu vaccine were distributed this year, and at least 112 million have been used. Vaccine is still available, but supplies may have run low in some locations, officials said.

To find a shot, "you may have to call a couple places," said Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, who tracks the flu in Iowa.

In midtown Manhattan, Hyrmete Sciuto got a flu shot Friday at a drugstore. She skipped it in recent years, but news reports about the flu this week worried her.

During her commute from Edgewater, N.J., by ferry and bus, "I have people coughing in my face," she said. "I didn't want to risk it this year."

The vaccine is no guarantee, though, that you won't get sick. On Friday, CDC officials said a recent study of more than 1,100 people has concluded the current flu vaccine is 62 percent effective. That means the average vaccinated person is 62 percent less likely to get a case of flu that sends them to the doctor, compared to people who don't get the vaccine. That's in line with other years.

The vaccine is reformulated annually, and this year's is a good match to the viruses going around.

The flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in flu-like illnesses caused by other bugs, including a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." Those illnesses likely are part of the heavy traffic in hospital and clinic waiting rooms, CDC officials said.

Europeans also are suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo have also reported increasing flu.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

Most people with flu have a mild illness. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.

Some shortages have been reported for children's liquid Tamiflu, a prescription medicine used to treat flu. But health officials say adult Tamiflu pills are available, and pharmacists can convert those to doses for children.

___

Associated Press writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati, Catherine Lucey in Des Moines, and Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

___

Online:

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

Read More..

Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street.

The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets.

Equities have risen in the new year, rallying after the initial resolution of the fiscal cliff in Washington on January 2. The S&P 500 on Friday closed its second straight week of gains, leaving it just fractionally off a five-year closing high hit on Thursday.

An array of financial companies - including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase - will report on Wednesday. Bank of America and Citigroup will join on Thursday.

"The banks have a read on the economy, on the health of consumers, on the health of demand," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

"What we're looking for is demand. Demand from small business owners, from consumers."

EARNINGS AND ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS

Investors were greeted with a slightly better-than-anticipated first week of earnings, but expectations were low and just a few companies reported results.

Fourth quarter earnings and revenues for S&P 500 companies are both expected to have grown by 1.9 percent in the past quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Few large corporations have reported, with Wells Fargo the first bank out of the gate on Friday, posting a record profit. The bank, however, made fewer mortgage loans than in the third quarter and its shares were down 0.8 percent for the day.

The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, is up about 30 percent from a low hit in June, rising in six of the last eight months, including January.

Investors will continue to watch earnings on Friday, as General Electric will round out the week after Intel's report on Thursday.

HOUSING, INDUSTRIAL DATA ON TAP

Next week will also feature the release of a wide range of economic data.

Tuesday will see the release of retail sales numbers and the Empire State manufacturing index, followed by CPI data on Wednesday.

Investors and analysts will also focus on the housing starts numbers and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve factory activity index on Thursday. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers are due on Friday.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said he expected to see housing numbers continue to climb.

"They won't be that surprising if they're good, they'll be rather eye-catching if they're not good," he said. "The underlying drive of the markets, I think, is economic data. That's been the catalyst."

POLITICAL ANXIETY

Worries about the protracted fiscal cliff negotiations drove the markets in the weeks before the ultimate January 2 resolution, but fear of the debt ceiling fight has yet to command investors' attention to the same extent.

The agreement was likely part of the reason for a rebound in flows to stocks. U.S.-based stock mutual funds gained $7.53 billion after the cliff resolution in the week ending January 9, the most in a week since May 2001, according to Thomson Reuters' Lipper.

Markets are unlikely to move on debt ceiling news unless prominent lawmakers signal that they are taking a surprising position in the debate.

The deal in Washington to avert the cliff set up another debt battle, which will play out in coming months alongside spending debates. But this alarm has been sounded before.

"The market will turn the corner on it when the debate heats up," Prudential Financial's Krosby said.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> a gauge of traders' anxiety, is off more than 25 percent so far this month and it recently hit its lowest since June 2007, before the recession began.

"The market doesn't react to the same news twice. It will have to be more brutal than the fiscal cliff," Krosby said. "The market has been conditioned that, at the end, they come up with an agreement."

(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; editing by Rodrigo Campos)

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: Hostages Caught Up in France's African Intervention

LONDON — The widespread satisfaction expressed in France at the government’s decision to intervene militarily against Islamic militants in Mali was tempered on Saturday by news of a failed overnight French hostage rescue mission on the other side of Africa.

After reports emerged from Somalia of a helicopter-borne commando raid in the south of the country, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defense minister announced that a hostage was believed to have been killed by his captors in an operation in which a French soldier died and another was missing.

The hostage, identified as Denis Allex, was a French secret service agent who had been held by Somalia’s Islamist Al Shabab militia since 2009. His captors, who may have seized the missing French soldier during the raid, claimed Mr. Allex was still alive and they planned to put him on trial.

Mr. Le Drian said there was no connection between the military operations in Mali and Somalia. The hostage rescue mission would have happened earlier, he told a news conference, if the conditions had been right.

However, news of the Somali raid prompted speculation that the action might have been prompted by France’s concern that its Mali intervention would spur retaliation against its citizens held captive in Africa.

These include eight hostages seized in Mali and neighboring states by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the groups involved in last year’s Islamist takeover of northern Mali.

The decision of President François Hollande to send French forces into action in Mali to counter an offensive by Islamist militias that control the north of the country has been greeted with broad cross-party support at home.

Libération newspaper said it could represent a positive turning point in the presidency of Mr. Hollande, “who did not hesitate in the face of the very real risk of seeing the establishment of a terrorist state in the heart of the dark continent.”

Families of the hostages, however, expressed fears for the fate of their loved ones, with some demanding why military action to free them had not been taken earlier.

Jean-Pierre Verdon, the father of one captive, Philippe Verdon, told France’s RTL broadcaster: “Making war on terrorists is a matter for the state, but our obsession is the hostages.”

A leader of the regional Al Qaeda group last month accused France of blocking negotiations on a deal that would have led to freeing the captives.

Mathieu Guidère, a French academic expert on the region, speculated at the time that the government wanted to send a message to the militants that the capture of French citizens would not affect its foreign policy.

The government was trapped in an “infernal logic,”, according to Mr. Guidère, a professor at the University of Toulouse.

“The more the government declares it will intervene in Mali to support African forces, the more French citizens will be kidnapped,” he told Le Figaro in December. “If you want to fight terrorism, you don’t go about announcing it in advance.”

Before news came through of the abortive overnight raid in Somalia, the intervention in Mali had attracted support across the political spectrum in France.

Jean-François Copé, head of the center-right opposition U.M.P., said: “It was high time to act to prevent the establishment of a narco-terrorist state.”

François Fillon, a former U.M.P. prime minister said: “The fight against terrorism demands national unity beyond partisan differences.”

With Mr. Hollande now facing a second crisis in Africa, it is a political honeymoon that may not last.

Read More..

The Worst ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Player Ever

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:  

RELATED: Movie and Television Characters Need a Lesson in Talking Trash

If we’re ever on Wheel of Fortune we would hope that we were on with the worst players. In part, because deep down, we know we’d be pretty bad at it—all that pressure, all that Sajak, and Vanna staring at you with her vacant eyes… it’s just too much, really. But even we know Johnny Cash never made a song called “I Have the Wine.” 

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Movies? We can explain:

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Oh, broadcast journalists, you may never know the pain of an embarrassing typo, but we don’t envy you. Not even one bit:

And, finally, this video makes us think of the time we were first introduced to after-work drinks. Which is where we will now be going. Enjoy!

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Title Post: The Worst ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Player Ever
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