European shares test two-year highs, yen volatile before BOJ

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares inched towards two-year highs and German Bund futures dipped on Monday, as a political attempt to break a budget impasse in the United States revived appetite for shares and dented demand for safe-haven assets.

U.S. House Republican leaders said on Friday they would seek to pass a three-month extension of federal borrowing authority in the coming days to buy time for the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass a plan to shrink budget deficits.

European shares <.fteu3> were supported by the news <.eu>, but with no clear response from the Democrats and a thin session expected due to a market holiday in the United States, the impact on other assets such as Bunds is likely to be limited.

An early morning push by London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> was beginning to fade by mid-morning, leaving the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 up 0.1 percent and MSCI's world index <.miwd00000pus> steady at a 20-month high. <.l><.eu/>

"There's a bit of encouragement coming out of the U.S.," said Toby Campbell-Gray, head of trading at Tavira Securities in Monaco.

He added that equity markets had remained resilient in the face of an uncertain economic outlook as many investors had stepped in to buy "on the dip" on days when shares had fallen.

Ahead of the region's first finance ministers' meeting of the year, the euro was down slightly at just over $1.33 against the dollar, while the yen firmed after touching a new low, ahead of a Bank of Japan decision expected to deliver bold monetary easing.

According to sources familiar with the Bank of Japan's thinking, the government of new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the central bank have agreed to set 2 percent inflation as a new target, supplanting a softer 1 percent 'goal'.

The dollar rose to as high as 90.25 yen earlier on Monday, its highest since June 2010. It later slipped 0.7 percent on the day to 89.39 yen, as traders cut short positions given the BOJ has often fallen short of market expectations.

"Investors are being mindful that the moves we have seen over the course of the last month or two are just worth locking in at least until we understand how the BOJ are really going to play in the future," said Jeremy Stretch, head of currency strategy at CIBC World Markets.

CURRENCY WAR

Japanese equities have surged in recent weeks in anticipation of a more aggressive monetary policy stance, but not everyone is happy.

The slump in the yen has prompted Russia's deputy central bank governor to warn of a new round of 'currency wars' and the medium-term risk of running ultra-loose monetary policies is likely to be a theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which opens on Wednesday.

With little in the way of economic data or debt issuance and U.S. markets shut for the Martin Luther King public holiday, the rest of the day was expected to be a fairly quite day for investors.

In bond markets, German Bund yields rose close to the top of this year's 30 basis points range, after Republican lawmakers' efforts to give the U.S. government leeway to pay its bills for another three months. Most other euro zone bonds were trading virtually flat.

The U.S. Treasury needs congressional authorisation to raise the current $16.4 trillion limit on U.S. debt sometime between mid-February and early March. A failure to achieve that could lead to a debt default.

"This is part of the political game, it remains to be seen whether the Democrats will accept it," KBC strategist Piet Lammens said, adding that investors' working scenario was that a solution to raise the ceiling would be eventually found anyway.

OIL OVERSUPPLY

German markets showed no reaction after the country's centre-left opposition party edged Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives from power in a regional election on Sunday, reviving its flagging hopes for September's national election.

Oil prices took their cues from a report in the United States at the end of last week that showed consumer sentiment at its weakest in a year as a result of the uncertainty surrounding the country's debt crisis.

Concerns about demand overshadowed supply disruption fears reinforced by the Islamist militant attack and hostage-taking at a gas plant in Algeria, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Brent futures were down by 17 cents to $111.72 per barrel by 1030 GMT. U.S. crude shed 40 cents to $95.16 per barrel after touching a four-month high last week.

"The over-riding fundamental feeling in the market is that crude oil is over-supplied in 2013," said Tony Nunan, an oil risk manager at Mitsubishi.

Last week's data showing a pick-up in the Chinese economy helped keep growth-sensitive copper prices steady at roughly $8,058 an ounce. Gold, meanwhile, reversed Friday's losses to stand at $1,688 an ounce.

(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Marious Zaharia and Anooja Debnath; Editing by Will Waterman and Giles Elgood)

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IHT Rendezvous: Obama's Second Term: Not Necessarily Cursed

WASHINGTON — Second-term U.S. presidents encounter political turbulence, their poll ratings plummet as the public sours. Right?

Wrong.

In my latest Letter from Washington, I lay out who in Washington believes Barack Obama has a chance of actually accomplishing something in his second term and who doesn’t — and why.

(Technically, Mr. Obama has already begun his second term. He was sworn in on January 20 before noon Eastern time, per the Constitution, though the public inauguration is only at noon Monday.)

But the historical record is more nuanced than the conventional wisdom that second terms are doomed to end in failure or scandal.

Over the past 60 years, there have been five re-elected U.S. presidents: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Two fit the conventional notion: Mr. Nixon, whose ratings fell through the floor when he became ensnared in Watergate criminality, was eventually forced to resign. Mr. Bush’s second term failed after his major miscalculation in trying to partially privatize Social Security and his administration’s woeful response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The other two-termers went out on a high, with approval ratings of 60 percent or higher. Even with political setbacks, President Eisenhower maintained his status as an above-the-fray figure that he had acquired since serving as the supreme allied commander in World War II.

The re-elected President Reagan had a rough first couple of years with a flawed new chief of staff, the former Wall Street executive Donald Regan, and the Iran-contra scandal. However, led by his Treasury secretary, Jim Baker, he was able to lead the way to sweeping tax reform. And encouraged by his wife, Nancy, and Secretary of State George Shultz, Mr. Reagan signed a nuclear-arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union. He was enormously popular when he left office.

So was Bill Clinton in 2001, with a backlash against the political effort by House Republicans to impeach him for lying about an affair. Right before he left office, the Gallup poll reported that President Clinton had a 66 percent approval rating. Within weeks, his popularity plummeted when news surfaced of his final-hours pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich. Ever resilient, he came back and today there is no more popular political figure in the United States.

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Why Google Isn’t Scared of Facebook’s Graph Search

Facebook may have just released a major search product that many are saying “declares war” on Google or may at least put the social network “on a collision course” with the search giant, but Google CEO Larry Page doesn’t sound all that worried about the new competition. Because who said Facebook and Google couldn’t get along someday? In an interview for the new issue of Wired published just two days after Facebook’s Graph Search came out to so-so reviews, Page tells Steve Levy that Facebook is “doing a really bad job on their products.” But before you laugh off that swipe — Google Buzz flopped, Google killed Reader, and Google+ has a loyal but relatively small user base — Page wants to remind everyone that Facebook isn’t direct competition, that these two Silicon Valley giants are too big for either to fail. “We’re actually doing something different,” Page tells Levy. “I think it’s outrageous to say that there’s only space for one company in these areas.”

RELATED: Three Things Google+ Can Learn from Myspace

That’s not to say Page isn’t making Google go social, or that Facebook isn’t in his rearview mirror. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long talked about the rise of social search, and Page has taken a vested interest of late in getting people to use Google+ — even if they don’t want to. In an attempt to conquer the space, direct orders from Page forcefully integrated Google’s social network into its main search results… and pretty much everywhere else its products touch. If it were up to Larry Page, Google would require a Google+ account just to read reviews. His evaluation of Google+ as it stands? “I’m very happy with how it has gone. We’re working on a lot of really cool stuff. A lot of it has been copied by our competitors, so I think we’re doing a good job.”

RELATED: FTC Is Officially Looking into Google’s Self-Promoting Search Features

Critics might beg to differ — Google+ is often referred to as a lesser “Facebook copycat” from the search king — but critics are now comparing Facebook’s search product (which was announced before the Wired interview with Page was conducted) to Google’s main offering. And from a product standpoint, Facebook may have yet to train its users to give Graph Search what it needs to be great. Furthermore, business analysts seem to agree that Facebook’s social recommendation engine won’t hurt Google’s core business … in the near future. But Zuckerberg said at Tuesday’s announcement that Facebook wasn’t focused on the business side of Graph Search just now — even if it does offer huge advertising potential. At the same time, Graph Search could take away eyeballs (and ad dollars) from Google. If Facebook, with its friend-powered engine, ends up giving “better” results than Google for recommendations on restaurants, travel, books, music, and movies — a domination Google is still fighting anti-trust charges over — then why end up Googling at all?

RELATED: The New Google+ Aims to Perfect Procrastination

Well, even Page might think Facebook and Google can complement each other — sort of. To wit, he asked Levy: “For us to succeed, is it necessary for some other company to fail? No.” As Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, “our mission is to make the world more open” by giving people tools to connect. And Google’s stated mission ”is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Are those so similar that they can’t get along? After all, that could be the future of search: You go to Facebook to see what your friends and the people you trust have to say, and then you head to Google for the facts. Of course, neither Facebook or Google wants the future that way, exactly: Facebook has actually teamed up with Microsoft to complement Graph Search, sending people to Bing for those fact-finding, Google-style queries; Google, meanwhile, as Google+ as its social-search equivalent of Graph Searching. And users don’t really want to go to so many different places for basic information that’s built to make their lives easier. Part of the reason people have stuck with Google, despite all of its privacy and anti-trust issues, is that the company’s ultimately done a really good job on their products — GMail, Google Drive, Reader, and their fellow “apps” have become an integral part of our Internet lives. Facebook wants that role, and if social search ends up working — well, then why not chat on Facebook, email (and make phone calls) with Messenger, sext with Poke, and read your news via the News Feed? 

RELATED: Why Google Really Wants You to Use Google+ This Year

Of course, Page said all this stuff weeks ago. And who knows how Graph Search is going over at Google headquarters. Maybe he just he meant a different product that was so… bad. Or maybe he really just doesn’t get Poke? Either way, Larry Page knew this fight was coming. The whole world did.

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Mandy Moore & Minka Kelly Have a Makeup-Free Brunch in West Hollywood

Caught in the Act

01/21/2013 at 08:00 AM EST

Minka Kelly and Mandy Moore

Splash News Online

Mandy Moore and Minka Kelly are ladies who brunch.

Joined by another female friend, the pair stepped out for brunch at BLD in West Hollywood on Saturday.

"They were very low-key and sat in the center of the restaurant, pretty much unnoticed by fellow diners," an onlooker tells PEOPLE.

Both of the famous friends were dressed down – Moore wore her hair in a bun and a gray V-neck T-shirt, while Minka sported a cozy gray sweater with her hair down in waves – and "didn't have a stitch of makeup on," the source adds.

While deep in conversation, Moore sipped on iced tea while the table shared granola, fruit, sandwiches and salads.

– Melody Chiu

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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India Ink: Modern Lessons From Arranged Marriages

WHETHER arranged marriages produce loving, respectful relationships is a question almost as old as the institution of marriage itself. In an era when 40 to 50 percent of all American marriages end in divorce, some marriage experts are asking whether arranged marriages produce better relationships in the long run than do typical American marriages, in which people find each other on their own and romance is the foundation.

Experts also ask whether there are lessons in how arranged marriages evolve that can be applied to nonarranged marriages in the United States. Among them is Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavior Research and Technology in Vista, Calif., and author of a new study, “How Love Emerges in Arranged Marriages.”

He found that one key to a strong arranged marriage is the amount of parental involvement at its start. The most important thing parents of the couple do, he said, is to “screen for deal breakers.”

“They’re trying to figure out whether something could go wrong that could drive people apart,” Dr. Epstein said.

Some couples who have entered into satisfying arranged marriages do attribute the success of their unions to the involvement of their parents. A. J. Khubani was 25 in 1985 when his parents tried to get him to visit Inder Sen Israni and Maya Israni in Jaipur, India, friends of the Khubani family, and meet the couple’s daughter Poonam.

“I just refused,” said Mr. Khubani, who was not keen on settling down because he had just started Telebrands, a company in Fairfield, N.J., that sells inventions via infomercials on late-night television. “I didn’t see why it was so important that I had to fly across the world to see one girl,” Mr. Khubani, now 52, remembered.

Ms. Israni, now Mrs. Khubani, was not ready, either. At the time she was a soap opera star and rising Bollywood actress.

Getting them to meet took some prodding: Mr. Khubani’s father, knowing that his son was going to Asia on business, offered to pay his way if he stopped in Jaipur. The young man and woman both relented, with the casual assumption that they would just please their parents “and that would be the end of it,” Mrs. Khubani said.

When they finally met, neither was impressed. Mrs. Khubani recalled, “It wasn’t love at first sight at all.” Love did not kick in until Mr. Khubani became sick and the young woman he had just met stayed by his bedside to care for him. “Nobody understood his accent because he was so American,” she said, and so she was his translator. For Mr. Khubani, her caring and elegant manners sealed the deal.

“Spending a couple of days in the room with her, alone, I fell in love with her,” he said.

They have been married for 27 years.

Arranged marriages can work “because they remove so much of the anxiety about ‘is this the right person?’ ” said Brian J. Willoughby, an assistant professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. “Arranged marriages start cold and heat up and boil over time as the couple grows. Nonarranged marriages are expected to start out boiling hot but many eventually find that this heat dissipates and we’re left with a relationship that’s cold.”

He also credited supportive parents.

“Whether it be financial support for weddings, schooling or housing, or emotional support for either partner, parents provide valuable resources for couples as they navigate the marital transition,” Dr. Willoughby said.

But does it really take a village to build a strong marriage?

“I don’t think love marriage and arranged marriage are as different as we make them out to be,” said Michael J. Rosenfeld, an associate professor in the department of sociology at Stanford University. “The people we end up married to or partnered up with end up being similar to us in race, religion and class background and age, which means that they might not be all that different from the person that your mother would have picked for you.”

Divorce rates have climbed in countries like South Korea, Iran, China, and even in India, where parents traditionally have had a strong hand in the marriages of their children. And while India may boast of having one of the lowest divorce rates in the world — below 3 percent by some estimates — divorce there still carries a great stigma. It is also a country in which divorce sometimes is not an option for many women and those seeking dissolution have encountered violence.

In the United States, both parents and young adults still value marriage, Dr. Willoughby said. Their differences, he wrote in an e-mail, “are in sequencing and timing. It’s more about parents and children disagreeing about how they get to marriage and when it happens.”

With “free-range” marriages predominant, this approach discourages parental intervention.

“We celebrate autonomy,” noted Dr. Epstein, which, he explained, is why adult children bristle at the idea. But given the speed at which couples meet, greet, cohabitate and separate these days, he said, he thought there was some logic in trying a method that has worked for so many couples and in so many cultures.

Orthodox Jews in the United States are known for arranging marriages, with some parents using professional matchmakers.

“In the secular world, a lot of the times a couple will fall in love with each other and then at that point they lose objectivity,” said Rabbi Steven Weil, the executive vice president at the Orthodox Union in New York. In arranged marriages, however, “there is a lot of homework, a lot of energy spent, before a young man and woman fall in love with each other. For that reason, the parents are involved. But obviously it’s the decision of the young man and woman, but a parent knows a child.”

For many Korean mothers, the prospect of marriage for their children is not a wait-for-it option. These parents also call in professional matchmakers to direct their career-minded children into becoming marriage-minded.

Diane Kim of Janis Spindel Serious Matchmaking in New York reported that some 40 percent of her clients in the agency’s Asian-American division are mothers calling on behalf of their sons. Many have a “demand” list of expectations Among them: the woman must be beautiful, have an Ivy League education, come from a good family whose members are also educated, and have professional goals similar to their son.

“And then they say, ‘Can you find somebody that fits that mold?’ ” said Ms. Kim, whose matchmaking fees start at $5,000 and include 12 introductions. “My job is not just about setting people up; it’s about educating the parents.”

Bringing about these mother-tested, child-approved marriages is not easy. “I have instances where parents pay without the knowledge of their children,” Ms. Kim said, “and I would have to contact the children and tell them, ‘Hey, this might be a little awkward — and a big surprise — but your parents have signed you up. Don’t freak out.’ ”

It was through the efforts of Ms. Kim, while she was employed at another matchmaking service, Duo, that Neil Hwang, 34, a management consultant for a Manhattan investment firm, married his wife, Patty, last July.

“My mother was very proactive about getting me set up to meet women,” said Mr. Hwang, who also noted that both his parents were members of a social club that those in Mr. Hwang’s age group had nicknamed Korean Parents United for Unmarried Children.

Mrs. Hwang, a social studies teacher at a public high school in Bergen County, N.J., had also reached the crisis age of 31 and was under pressure from her parents. She was gently coerced into trying out a matchmaking service at the recommendation of her father, who had already paid for it. When the couple married last summer, Mrs. Hwang recalled her parents saying with some degree of triumph, “We knew it was going to happen!”

When his first marriage ended in divorce, Deepak Sarma, 43, a professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned a valuable lesson in doing things in accordance with family approval. When it came time to make a second go at marriage, he approached his parents, asking, “Who’s out there for me?” But as an Indian-American divorcée who was not a doctor, lawyer or engineer, it was clear to his parents that his “low desirability” would make any marital arrangement difficult.

Once, while Professor Sarma was in India, his parents arranged for him to meet with a few prospective fathers-in-law. Although his offer implicitly included “a passageway to America,” he said they immediately discarded his candidacy as a groom.

“I wasn’t good enough,” he said.

Instead, he met a woman at a networking event in Cleveland in 2004. She was an internist at a clinic nearby and happened to see Mr. Sarma, a Hindu, on a panel speaking about Jainism, a religion practiced by her family, who had long insisted on her marrying within the faith. Hearing Mr. Sarma talk about a world that had closed her off to so many people, that woman, now his wife, Dr. Rita Sarma, felt a connection.

“I could hardly stay in tune with the lecture itself because I was thinking, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Dr. Sarma said. “He was looking kind of dash. So I lingered around, and I kind of waited.”

The two bonded over their experiences in the culture of American-born confused Desis, slang for Americanized Indians.

“It was serendipitous,” Mr. Sarma said. But he still had to persuade her father, and ultimately had to call on his own father to intercede on his behalf. It was only after all of the in-laws passed one another’s criteria that the green light was given.

Dr. Epstein admitted that the tradition of arranged marriages had no hope of gaining wide acceptance in this country.

“We celebrate rugged individualism that is antithetical to the arranged marriage culture,” he said. He argues instead for deeper parental involvement. “When you realize what it is that the families are doing, it makes excellent sense,” he said.

Which is not unlike the experience of the Sarmas, who found an American-style “love marriage” with a familial twist. Mr. Sarma now revels in the fact that he is living what has long been held up as an American marriage ideal.

“The great irony is, like, I came back here and I married a doctor, right?” he said.

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Why does Michelle Obama need two Twitter accounts?

Michelle Obama is on Twitter! That was big news on Thursday, the first lady’s birthday. The White House announced that Mrs. Obama had launched a new Twitter account, @FLOTUS, and lots of folks chimed in with messages welcoming her to the world of micro-blogging social media.

But hold it – wasn’t she already on Twitter? We’ve been following @MichelleObama since the beginning of the 2012 presidential campaign. Is this a reboot, a dual account, or what? Is it the equivalent of the grand opening of a store that’s been in business for months?

Sort of, yes. Except it’s a retail establishment that has two branches kept separate for legal reasons.

RECOMMENDED: Michelle Obama: 10 quotes on her birthday

The invaluable Mashable has the full story here. The @MichelleObama feed is paid for and run by the Obama/Biden political campaign machinery. That’s why it was so active during the summer and fall, as it exhorted everybody to get out and vote, and in general pushed the fortunes of the incumbent presidential ticket. It’s an overtly political use of social media.

The first lady’s Pinterest site is run the same way. Most of those photos of her and her family, and favorite recipes (grilled peaches with yogurt and pistachios?), and exhortations about “why we vote” were put up by campaign staff.

Mrs. Obama’s new @FLOTUS handle reflects her official White House duties, however. It’s run by people from her office who are executive branch (and hence official US government) employees.

Legally speaking, @FLOTUS tweets will have to be stuff that deals with her official duties and the nation as a whole, as opposed to President Obama’s political fortunes. Thus on Thursday she tweeted “Join me and Barack for #MLK Day of Service” after thanking everyone for sending birthday wishes.

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Hmm. @FLOTUS has sent three tweets, and it’s got more than 78,000 followers. That’s a pretty good tweet-to-listener ratio.

Most of this social media stuff is done by staff, of course. The few that she sends herself are supposed to be signed “-mo.”

Is the White House actually good at social media? We think that question can be answered definitively only by someone more versed in the dark electronic arts than we are. But from our point of view, it’s a pretty shrewd operator. Take the White House petition site. You can put up a petition on anything, and if it reaches a certain signature level in a certain period of time, the White House will respond with its point of view.

Most of the coverage of this “We the People” effort has focused on the weird stuff: petitions for Texas to secede, to deport CNN’s Piers Morgan, and so forth. And responding to them has to be a pain for staff. Mother Jones has a piece on Friday in which anonymous staffers gripe about having to spend time actually writing about why the US won’t build a Death Star, and things like that.

But to us, “We the People” really is a clever technique for harvesting e-mail addresses. When creating an account to sign stuff, you can check whether you want to receive missives from the White House. Most of the petitions are in fact about real policy – the need for more or less gun control, for instance. What the White House may get out of this is a continually growing list of voter contact information segmented by policy interest. To push the president’s new gun policies, for instance, they may send targeted e-mails to pro-control addresses, urging them to contact Congress.

We think this because media organizations do the same thing with interactive questionnaires and quizzes. We figure out who’s interested in what kind of stories and we direct those subjects their way.

Surprised? Don’t be. Building brand loyalty – everybody’s got whole new ways of approaching this old problem in today’s Internet age.

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Jennifer Lawrence Trashes Her Oscar Rivals - for Laughs

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/20/2013 at 08:45 AM EST

Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Lawrence

How to get the jump on your sister Oscar nominees? Host Saturday Night Live – and come out punching.

That was Jennifer Lawrence's modus operandi this weekend, with the Silver Linings Playbook's Best Actress contender taking good-natured swipes at her competition during her silver-tongued opening monologue on the NBC comedy show.

About Jessica Chastain, she said: "In Zero Dark Thirty you caught Bin Laden. So what? In Winter's Bone I caught a squirrel, and then ate it."

Naomi Watts: You were in The Impossible. You know what else is impossible? You beating me on Oscar night."

Quvenzhané Wallis, the 9-year-old nominee for Beasts of the Southern Wild: "You think you can beat me? [In best Gary Coleman voice] 'What you talkin' 'bout, Wallis?' Also, the Alphabet called. It wants its letters back."

And Emmanuelle Riva, from the French film Amour: "An 85-year-old French lady. Um, yeah, I think I can take you."

Also in line for ribbing by the rest of the cast on the show, which featured The Lumineers as the musical guests, were disgraced athlete Lance Armstrong (played by Jason Sudeikis), reputed hoax victim Manti Te'o (Bobby Moynahan), outspoken Golden Globes honoree Jodie Foster (Kate McKinnon) and the scowling, Globes party-pooper Tommy Lee Jones (Bill Hader).

Though not personally at the end of a satirical sharp stick, Lawrence did tip her hat to her Hunger Games persona Katniss Everdeen by participating in a mock Post-Hunger Games press conference.

The running gag was how could Katniss go for Peeta (played by Taran Killam) because he's so short. The gamers were also asked if they used performance-enhancing drugs.

To see if Lawrence does topple the other actresses ... the 85th annual Academy Awards will air live on Sunday, Feb. 24, on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

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More than 140 nations adopt treaty to cut mercury

GENEVA (AP) — A new and legally binding international treaty to reduce harmful emissions of mercury was adopted Saturday by more than 140 nations, capping four years of difficult negotiations but stopping short of some of the tougher measures that proponents had envisioned.

The new accord aims to cut mercury pollution from mining, utility plants and a host of products and industrial processes, by setting enforceable limits and encouraging shifts to alternatives in which mercury is not used, released or emitted.

Mercury, known to be a poison for centuries, is natural element that cannot be created or destroyed. It is released into the air, water and land from small-scale artisanal gold mining, coal-powered plants, and from discarded electronic or consumer products such as electrical switches, thermostats and dental amalgam fillings. Mercury compound goes into batteries, paints and skin-lightening creams.

Because it concentrates and accumulates in fish and goes up the food chain, mercury poses the greatest risk of nerve damage to pregnant women, women of child-bearing age and young children. The World Health Organization has said there are no safe limits for the consumption of mercury and its compounds, which can also cause brain and kidney damage, memory loss and language impairment.

A decade ago, Switzerland and Norway began pushing for an international treaty to limit mercury emissions, a process that culminated in the adoption of an accord Saturday after an all-night session that capped a weeklong conference in Geneva and previous such sessions over the past four years.

"It will help us to protect human health and the environment all over the world," Swiss environment ambassador Franz Perrez told a news conference.

But the treaty only requires that nations with artisanal and small-scale gold mining operations, one of the biggest sources of mercury releases, draw up national plans within three years of the treaty entering force to reduce and — if possible — eliminate the use of mercury in such operations. Governments also approved exceptions for some uses such as large measuring devices for which there are no mercury-free alternatives; vaccines where mercury is used as a preservative; and products used in religious or traditional activities.

Switzerland, Norway and Japan each contributed $1 million to get the treaty started, but U.N. officials say tens of millions more will be needed each year to help developing countries comply. The money would be distributed through the Global Environment Facility, an international funding mechanism.

The U.N. Environment Program said the treaty will be signed later this year in the southern Japanese city of Minamata, for which it is to be named. After that, 50 nations must ratify it before it comes into force, which officials predicted would happen in three to four years.

So-called Minimata disease, a severe neurological disorder caused by mercury poisoning, was discovered in the late 1950s because of methylmercury escaping from the city's industrial wastewater. The illness, which sickened people who ate contaminated fish, killed hundreds and left many more badly crippled. Some 12,000 people have demanded compensation from Japan's government.

"To agree on global targets is not easy to do," Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, told reporters. "There was no delegation here that wished to leave Geneva without drafting a treaty."

Over the past 100 years, mercury found in the top 100 meters (yards) of the world's oceans has doubled, and concentrations in waters deeper than that have gone up by 25 percent, the U.N. environment agency says, while rivers and lakes contain an estimated 260 metric tons of mercury that was previously held in soils.

The treaty was originally blocked by powers such as the United States, but President Barack Obama's reversal of the U.S. position in early 2009 helped propel momentum for its adoption. China and India also played key roles in ensuring its passage; Asia accounts for just under half of all global releases of mercury.

"We have closed a chapter on a journey that has taken four years of often intense, but ultimately successful, negotiations and opened a new chapter toward a sustainable future," said Fernando Lugris, the Uruguayan diplomat who chaired the negotiations.

Some supporters of a new mercury treaty said they were not satisfied with the agreement.

Joe DiGangi, a science adviser with advocacy group IPEN, said that while the treaty is "a first step," it is not tough enough to achieve its aim of reducing overall emissions. For example, he said, there is no requirement that each country create a national plan for how it will reduce mercury emissions.

His group and some of the residents of Minamata have opposed naming the treaty for their city because they feel it does not do enough to fix the problem.

"This treaty should be called the 'Mercury Convention,' not the 'Minamata Convention," said Takeshi Yasuma, a Japanese activist. "Water pollution resulting in contaminated sediment and fish caused the Minamata tragedy, but the treaty contains no obligations to reduce mercury releases to water and no obligations to clean up contaminated sites."

Treaty proponents called it a good first step, however, and Steiner said the document would evolve over time and hopefully become a stronger instrument.

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