Newark mayor says beating, witness silence are “evil”

(Reuters) – Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Wednesday condemned the failure of witnesses to alert police after seeing a young man forced to strip naked and whipped over a $ 20 debt – violence revealed only after a cell phone video went viral on the Internet.

The two and a half minute video of the beating, which took place in Newark in August, got 40,000 views on YouTube before it was removed from the website, according to the Star-Ledger newspaper, which posted it on its own site.

“We have strong reason to believe there were others who saw this crime happen” but said nothing, never calling 911 or alerting police, the mayor said at a news conference on Wednesday to announce arrests in the case.

“In the face of evil, those who remain quiet are participants in that evil,” Booker said.

The video shows the victim complying with a man’s orders to strip naked, admit he owes $ 20 and repeatedly say “(It’s a) dog eat dog world.” The man then whips the victim, using a belt borrowed from another man, the video shows. Laughter from those watching the beating is heard throughout the video.

“This is not who we are. We are Newark, New Jersey. We do not tolerate this level of cruelty, of callous disregard for the dignity of humanity,” Booker said at the press conference.

Four people responsible for “this heinous, vicious, cruel crime” were recently apprehended and charged with robbery, assault and other crimes, Booker said.

Charged in the violence were Ahmad Holt, 22, who is believed to have carried out the whipping, Raheem Clark, 31, who is believed to have supplied the belt, Jamaar Grey, 23, accused as the cameraman, and Nicole Smith, 25, according to Booker’s office.

Newark, eight miles from Manhattan and New Jersey’s largest city, was once a thriving manufacturing center, but in recent decades it has battled an image of urban blight and high crime.

Since becoming mayor in 2006, Booker – a likely candidate for U.S. Senate next year – has made crime reduction a central priority. In March 2010, Newark experienced its first murder-free month since 1944.

But since then, amid cuts to the police force, crime has remained a significant problem in the city.

(Additional reporting by Paul Thomasch; Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Bernard Orr)

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Kim Kardashian & Kanye West Involved in Security Breach at JFK

By Tim Nudd

02/14/2013 at 08:00 AM EST

Kim Kardashian and Kayne West

Splash News Online

Sorry, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. You'll have to endure the normal hassles of air travel, too.

The couple, returning from Brazil, were involved in a security breach at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday morning, when a TSA employee allowed them to skip a security checkpoint while transferring flights.

"An airline employee escorted the two travelers through a non-public area in order to provide expedited access to their domestic flight," a TSA spokesman said, according to New York's Daily News.

The spokesman said the employee was to blame – not Kardashian, 32, and West, 35.

The couple, who are expecting a baby, had returned from Carnival in Brazil and were transferring to a flight to Los Angeles. They made the connection but were forced to disembark and be screened privately, delaying the flight for an hour.

TMZ.com first reported the incident.

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Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women

NEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.

The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.

The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.

In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.

White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.

"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.

One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.

The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.

At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.

Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.

The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.

The study also found:

—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.

—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.

—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.

A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.

Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html

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Stock futures point to modest gains at open

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to slight gains at the open on Wednesday, suggesting the market would continue a recent advance that lifted benchmark indexes to multi-year highs.

Equities have been strong performers of late, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, with the S&P 500 gaining 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow is about 1 percent from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.

Those gains could leave the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors take profit amid a dearth of new trading catalysts. While analysts continue to see an upward bias in markets, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes have been light, with the S&P near its highest since November 2007.

"This is a market that refuses to go down, and the trend suggests that we'll not only hit a new high on the Dow, but move well beyond it," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York.

The S&P 500 was well over its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, which was a sign the market was overbought, he said.

"A light-volume pullback should be expected and embraced at these levels," Sarhan said.

Industrial and construction shares will be in focus following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, during which he called for a $50 billion spending plan to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges. He also backed higher taxes for the wealthy.

Investors have cheered strength in recent company results, even as economic data, including recent reads on gross domestic product, have indicated weakening conditions.

Deere & Co reported earnings that beat expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook. After initially rallying in premarket trading, the stock turned 0.9 percent lower to $93.15.

S&P 500 futures rose 2.5 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures added 13 points and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 8 points.

Comcast Corp agreed late Tuesday to buy General Electric Co's remaining 49 percent stake in NBC Universal for $16.7 billion. Comcast jumped 8.9 percent to $42.43 in premarket trading while Dow component GE was up 3.1 percent to $23.27.

Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said Tuesday the company's search partnership with Microsoft Corp was not delivering the market share gains or the revenue boost that it should.

Companies scheduled to report quarterly results on Wednesday include MetLife Inc , Applied Materials and Whole Foods Market .

According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Retail sales rose 0.1 percent in January, as expected, as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending. The data barely moved the futures market.

Also in economic news, business inventories are seen rising 0.3 percent in December, a repeat of the November increase. The data will be released at 10:00 a.m. ET (1500 GMT).

U.S. stocks closed modestly higher Tuesday as investors awaited President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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IHT Rendezvous: Mario Draghi Takes the E.C.B.'s Message to Spain

MADRID—The European Central Bank and its president, Mario Draghi, want to ensure that their voices get heard beyond the financial district of Frankfurt.

But their efforts to travel around Europe and spread their message more directly to its citizens have ended up backfiring, at least when it comes to visiting Spain, one of the countries at the center of the Continent’s debt crisis.

Last May, the E.C.B. held one of its regular meetings in Barcelona, under the kind of police surveillance worthy of a city at war and in a convention center on the outskirts of the city, in order to shield Mr. Draghi and his fellow central bankers from anti-austerity street protests. About 7,500 police officers were deployed around Barcelona, with helicopters hovering above, while only a few hundred students gathered in the city center to protest spending cuts by the Spanish government in areas like health and education.

On Tuesday, Mr. Draghi was again in Spain, this time in Madrid to address lawmakers in Congress. The security was less fearsome, but the meeting was held behind closed doors, and Parliament did not provide the usual transcript of such an official session. As a result, regardless of what was said inside, Mr. Draghi’s visit ended up generating more controversy because of its format than its content.

Afterward, Spain’s opposition lawmakers lambasted the president of the Parliament, Jesús Posada, for using frequency-scrambling technology to block any cellphone transmissions within the chamber during Mr. Draghi’s session, to thwart the plans of some parliamentarians who had promised to send Twitter messages and upload videos to keep people informed about what Mr. Draghi was saying.

Valeriano Gómez, the spokesman on the economy for lawmakers from the main opposition group, the Socialist Party, said the restrictions surrounding Mr. Draghi’s appearance had done “no favor to the E.C.B., nor to the prestige of our chamber.” Other leftist lawmakers denounced the format of the event as a violation of parliamentary rules and an insult to democracy.

Mr. Draghi, meanwhile, later spoke to reporters to detail his views on the Spanish economy, while the E.C.B. also published the text of Mr. Draghi’s opening speech to Spanish lawmakers.

Asked about the lack of transparency, Mr. Draghi insisted that that he had not set the rules and would have had no problem speaking more openly before lawmakers if the Spanish Parliament had wanted. Given that videos of his session were eventually released by some frustrated lawmakers, Mr. Draghi concluded that, “I don’t believe anybody missed out on anything.”

Except perhaps Mr. Posada, the Parliament president, who may have hoped to see Mr. Draghi showing a bit more solidarity and helping to justify his communications strategy.

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Telenor ramps up investments to support shift to data

OSLO (Reuters) – Mobile telecoms firm Telenor expects to accelerate investments in data and digital services this year as customers flock to its higher margin products, it said on Wednesday.

Telenor, which has around 150 million customers in Europe and Asia, will continue to roll out its third generation (3G) service in Thailand and fibre network in Norway to take advantage of “exploding” demand, and could also invest in 3G services elsewhere in Asia and in Denmark.

“The world is going all out on data. There are new digital concepts on every corner. It will be all about data in the future,” Chief Executive Jon Fredrik Baksaas told Reuters.

“People are becoming more dependent on data access; I compare it to electricity, people will take it for granted,” Baksaas said after the firm published quarterly results and released its initial 2013 guidance.

The transition to data, particularly in Thailand and Norway, the firm’s biggest markets, could push capital spending to between 12 and 14 percent of revenues this year from 12 percent in 2012, Baksaas said.

The shift to data, along with smaller losses in India, will allow Telenor to improve margins this year and the firm sees its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin widening to 34 percent from 32 percent.

The margin increase and a record 20 billion crown ($ 3.64 billion) cash flow in 2012 gives Telenor ample cash and it plans to pay a record dividend of 6 crowns per share after the previous year’s 5 crowns, it said.

UPSIDE

“We believe few investors will argue with the company’s decision to accelerate investment to support growth and the excellent returns in robust markets where demand for smartphones and data is accelerating,” Nomura said in a note to clients.

“The case for generating a positive return on this type of investment is more secure,” it said, maintaining a buy rating on the stock.

At 0942 GMT, Telenor shares were 2.2 percent higher at 121.7 crowns, outperforming a 0.1 percent fall by the broader telecom index.

Still, Morgan Stanley said the upside was limited given that Telenor has outperformed the telecom index by 30 percent over the past year and its valuation at 6 times it EBITDA puts it above the sector’s ratio of 5.

Fourth-quarter results, though short of expectations, had only a muted impact on valuation, particularly as they contained several one-off items, analysts said.

Analysts said they would be watching out for further clarity on Telenor’s Indian operations, as it may still seek to buy further licenses, or plans for its stake in Russia-focused Vimpelcom.

(Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters and Helen Massy-Beresford)

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One Direction, Taylor Swift Among Kids' Choice Awards Nominees

By Andrea Billups

02/13/2013 at 08:50 AM EST

One Direction, (from left) Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Harry Styles

Jon Furniss/AP

Time to get slimed!

Wednesday brought the nominations for Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards, set to air March 23 with Josh Duhamel as host.

For favorite musical group, nominees include Big Time Rush, Bon Jovi, Maroon 5 and One Direction. Favorite Song nominees include: "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, "Gagnan Style" by PSY, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift, and "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction.

"We are delighted with our nominations for the Kids' Choice Awards," One Direction's Harry Styles said in a statement to PEOPLE. "It was amazing to perform 'What Makes You Beautiful' at last year’s show. Thank you as always to our incredible fans and supporters!"

Voting opens in 22 categories on nick.com on Thursday, allowing for a little Valentine's Day love for your favorite TV actors, musicians, sports and film stars. New categories added this year include favorite app and favorite villain.

Voters may also mark their ballots on Facebook using embeddable wall posts and on Twitter with custom hashtags.

This year mark's Nickelodeon's 26th annual awards. The show will be broadcast live from the University of Southern California's Galen Center on March 23, starting at 8 p.m. ET, on Nickelodeon, of course.

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly

In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.

Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.

After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.

The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.

The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.

"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."

He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.

In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.

However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.

Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.

They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.

Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.

After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.

Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.

The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.

One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.

"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."

Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.

___

Online:

Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney

Study: http://gucasym.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Stock futures dip before Obama speech, Coca-Cola shares off

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock futures dipped in low volume on Tuesday, hovering near multi-year highs as traders awaited President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

The economy will be one of the main themes of Obama's speech at 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Wednesday). Investors will listen for any clues on a deal with Republicans in Congress to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1.

"Things are really quiet, waiting to see what the marching orders are for the next four years," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

Equities were mostly flat on Monday but the trend for the S&P 500, after six straight weeks of gains, has been upward. The index is up 6.4 percent so far this year.

S&P 500 futures fell less than 1 point and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures dipped 4 point and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 3 points.

Coca-Cola Co shares dipped 0.5 percent to $38.42 in premarket trading after the world's largest soft drink maker reported quarterly earnings that were slightly better than expected as strength in emerging markets offset a decline in its European business.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber shares fell 1.9 percent in premarket trading after it posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit but cut its 2013 forecast due to weakness in the European automotive market.

Fossil Inc shares rose 3.5 percent after the fashion accessory maker and retailer reported a rise in quarterly profit.

On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 21.81 points, or 0.16 percent, to 13,971.16. The S&P 500 <.spx> dipped 0.92 points, or 0.06 percent, to 1,517.01 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> edged down 1.87 points, or 0.06 percent, to 3,192.00.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Kenneth Barry)

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The Female Factor: Dancing on Behalf of a Billion

LONDON — Anyone who happens to be passing through Westminster at 11 o’clock on Valentine’s Day may — if things go as planned — catch an unusual glimpse of a few members of Parliament gathered somewhere in the shadow of Big Ben, dancing along the footpath.

The actress Thandie Newton will be leading members of the public and a few politicians in a flash mob dance on Thursday to mark the One Billion Rising day of action, highlighting violence against women. Rossana Abueva, the British event’s organizer, says she hopes a couple of baronesses from the House of Lords will also take part.

Some participants have been rehearsing moves for the newly composed anthem, “Break the Chain,” for weeks, but the occasion is meant to be inclusive. “People who don’t know the moves can sway,” Ms. Abueva said. Demonstrators will release 109 red balloons in memory of the 109 women killed in Britain last year as a result of male violence.

Elsewhere in London, volunteer dance troupes will be popping up in museums, at a spot near the London Eye, at theaters and at train stations, performing bursts of flamenco and contemporary dance, wearing One Billion Rising T-shirts, and trying to educate passers-by about the scale of domestic violence in Britain and abroad. Dancers aim to draw attention to the United Nations’ assessment that one in three women in the world suffers some kind of violence at the hands of men during her lifetime (a figure they have loosely rounded down to a billion).

While supermarket shelves bend beneath the weight of heart-shaped, praline-filled chocolates, campaigners internationally have co-opted Feb. 14 to highlight the global problem of violence against women. If the link between Valentine’s Day and violence seems somewhat puzzling, organizers explain that campaigning against violence toward women is a good way of showing women you like them.

The initiative comes from Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues,” and aims to be a “feminist tsunami.” There will be events all over Britain, as well as 190 countries across the world, places as varied as the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Philippines and the United States. In India, the raw anger over the gang rape of a 23-year-old physical therapy student has given extra energy to the campaign. In Los Angeles, Jane Fonda will be dancing; Yoko Ono is also on board.

Ms. Ensler describes dancing as “a way of being very powerful and a little dangerous without being violent.” Promotional material promises that by participating in the Valentine’s Day dance, women “will join in solidarity, purpose and energy and shake the world into a new consciousness,” adding that dance is “contagious, and it spreads quickly.”

It is easy to feel dubious about whether this optimistic vision of the transformative power of dance will take off in London, which remains at heart reserved and staid in character. It is possible that, rather than making the not-totally-obvious connection between flash mobs and the complex issue of violence against women, most bystanders here will not be shaken into a new consciousness but will simply be bemused by the spectacle.

Organizers have thought about this. While they are cheerfully enthusiastic about the impact of celebratory dancing, there is also a drive to make sure the occasion ends up being more than an ephemeral day of protest, and a determination to combine the event with something practical and more enduring. Campaigners in most participating countries are also attempting to improve legislation protecting women against violence.

A Labour member of Parliament, Stella Creasy, who will be dancing outside the House of Commons on Thursday morning, has joined colleagues from all parties to organize a debate in Parliament later that day, calling for compulsory sex and relationship education in British schools.

“We need to do more than simply wring our hands and say violence against women is wrong. We need to do something about it,” Ms. Creasy said. After workshops held here in the autumn by the One Billion Rising campaign, there was agreement that a concerted effort to improve and expand sex education in Britain would be a pragmatic step toward preventing future violence.

The motion calls on the British government to “make personal, social and health education, including a zero-tolerance approach to violence and abuse in relationships, a requirement in schools.”

Currently, sex education does not embrace any discussion of relationships, and parents are at liberty to request that their children opt out of classes. Campaigners are proposing that lessons should include mandatory discussion not only of biology, but of relationships, discussing with children what kind of behavior is and is not acceptable, spelling out that there should be zero tolerance of violence in relationships.

Explaining why the vote matters, the campaign Web site says recent academic research has uncovered “worrying trends of increased sexual exploitation of young people by their peers.” It cites a 2010 YouGov poll that found that almost a third, or 29 percent, of 16- to 18-year-old girls said they had been “subjected to unwanted sexual touching at school,” as well as a finding by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that a third of girls in relationships ages 13 to 17 had “experienced physical or sexual violence in relationships.”

The debate will not have the power to bring about legislation, but campaigners hope it will help focus politicians’ minds on a part of the curriculum that is due to be reviewed.

Will dance protests and the global day of action make a difference? The answer may be clearer on Friday. But as a romantic gesture, 10 minutes’ participation in a flash mob is certainly more original than a dozen roses.

Amelia Gentleman is a journalist with The Guardian. Katrin Bennhold is on sabbatical leave.

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