Stock futures rise on deals, extend seven-week rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures advanced on Tuesday, indicating the S&P 500 will build on its seven-week winning streak on optimism about M&A activity and before data on the housing market.


The S&P 500 <.spx> has risen for seven straight weeks, its longest streak since January 2011, and is up 6.6 percent for the year.


The strong start to the year was fueled by legislators in Washington temporarily averting a series of automatic spending cuts and tax hikes as well as better-than-expected earnings and economic data. The Federal Reserve's stimulus policy has also been a major factor.


But further gains for the benchmark S&P index have been a struggle as investors look for new catalysts to lift the index, which hovers near five-year highs.


The compromise by lawmakers on across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, only postponed until March 1 a resolution to the congressional budget fight.


The uptick in merger and acquisition activity, a sign of optimism about the outlook on Wall Street, has resulted in more than $158 billion in deals announced so far in 2013.


"The firm market tone continues, fueled by a lack of negative surprises as well as an increase in M&A activity, adding confidence to market valuations," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York.


"The market has been able to shrug off minor negatives as it looks ahead to a potential bigger hurdle in the sequestration -until then, the situation looks stable."


Office Depot Inc surged 26.1 percent to $5.79 in premarket trading after a person familiar with the matter said the No. 2 U.S. office supply retailer is in advanced talks to merge with smaller rival OfficeMax Inc and a deal could come as early as this week. OfficeMax shares jumped 13.7 percent to $12.22 before the opening bell.


Economic data on tap includes the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index on housing sales for February at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey expect a reading of 48 compared with 47 in January.


Improving housing data has been cited by analysts as one of the key factors in the stock market rally.


S&P 500 futures rose 3.1 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 gained 22 points and Nasdaq 100 futures added 5.75 points.


Computer maker Dell reports fourth-quarter results, expected to show earnings per share fall to $0.39 from $0.51 one year earlier. Analysts will have their first chance to question management on a buyout deal struck earlier this month by Chief Executive Michael Dell, private equity firm Silver Lake and Microsoft .


According to the Thomson Reuters data through Friday, of the 388 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 69.8 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with 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 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


European shares rose on Tuesday, lifted by gains at food group Danone and fresh signs of a German economic recovery, although broader market sentiment remained cautious ahead of Italian elections this weekend. <.eu/>


Philippine and Australian shares scaled new heights, but other Asian shares were mixed, with worries about an inconclusive outcome in Italy's election and U.S. budget talks.


(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Kenneth Barry)



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India Ink: A Conversation With: Journalist and Author Rahul Pandita

Rahul Pandita, an associate editor with the Open magazine in Delhi, is a journalist and author who belongs to the Kashmiri Pandit community, Hindus who had to flee the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s during a separatist insurgency by the Muslim majority.

In his memoir, “Our Moon has Blood Clots,” which was released last month, Mr. Pandita chronicles the loss and suffering of his own family to narrate the plight of the estimated 350,000 Kashmiri Hindus who were uprooted from their homes during the conflict.

Mr. Pandita spoke to India Ink recently about why his book was important in the Kashmir discourse and about some of the difficulties he faced in the writing process.

Why did you decide to write this book?

Writing this book has been part of the reason that I became a journalist and pursued literature in college. Otherwise, like most people in the Kashmiri community, I too would have studied engineering, which was important for us [Kashmiri Pandits] then, to regain some of what we had lost in the Kashmir Valley in 1992 after the mass exodus. I really wanted to tell this story.

There is a palpable sense of pain, loss and anger in your writing. How difficult was it for you to write this memoir?

This story has been an extremely difficult story to write. I think I started writing it very seriously from 2000 onwards, when I was a reporter with a television channel.

So I would write chapters and then give up completely because I just couldn’t write it. Then I began again in mid-2000s and again gave up because I wasn’t sure what form it would take. What I also found very unfortunate was how our story was relegated to the margins. And I was not sure if it should come out as a memoir. Many close friends suggested that I should write this as a fictional account—the truth but laced in fiction, because that would be more acceptable to the overall discourse of this country.

At one point, I was very seriously contemplating writing it in the form of a novel. But I think over the last few years I have become very conscious of my identity as a Kashmiri Pandit, and what has happened to us in Kashmir. The anger of the early 1990s and the hardships that we faced in exile have come back all of a sudden in the last few years.

What happened in the last few years that led to this seething anger that you are talking about?

I have just become conscious of the fact that nobody is interested in our story. It is so easy to align it with the right-wing narrative. This liberal discourse I feel is run by these 50, 100 people who contain anything coming from Kashmiri Pandit point of view. They say it’s a B.J.P.-R.S.S. [Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] narrative.

The bigger betrayal for us was denying us our truth, that the night of January 1990 “did not happen.” When some of the excerpts of the book were published in The Hindu and my own magazine, people started writing open letters to me, saying it never happened. For God’s sake, don’t insult the memory of 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits who have suffered it in every nook and corner of the Kashmir Valley! It is being made as if talking about Kashmiri Pandit pain will diminish the Kashmiri Muslim pain, which is not the case. I believe that both these pains have the right to coexist, but as a Kashmiri writer I am not ready to compromise on my truth, no matter how inconvenient it is.

Which portions would you say were the most difficult to chronicle?

The most difficult passages to write were of course the brutal murder of my own brother, my mother’s illness, which we are still struggling with, and it’s only because of the hardships of the exile in the initial years.

I think I also hate when I go to Jammu. I love it at one point because all of my relatives are there, and it’s like a mini Kashmir now in many ways. But when I go there, those images of the suffering of  1990, ’91, ’92, ’93 come back to me, when we had to face the ignominy of doorless toilets that I mention in my book and the way we were treated in Jammu in those one-room dwellings. All that was very difficult to write.

When I return to my book, I realize that I cannot read it any longer. Those emotions come back to me — every single incident, every single passage I write comes back to me.

What was your gut reaction when you visited your house in Kashmir for the first time since the exodus?

Till 2007 I never returned to my home in the Srinagar suburb of Chanapora. I went because I wanted to capture those memories. My mother is so unwell, and my parents have never returned to Kashmir after 1990. I have gone to Kashmir since ’98 as a journalist. I wanted to click some pictures and show it to them.

Throughout the book, I have used the word “home” for my home in Kashmir. I haven’t done it consciously; it just happened to me. I now stay in a Delhi suburb and own an apartment, but that feeling never comes back. It’s a house for me. I take care of it as anyone would do, but that feeling of uprootedness is there.

When I go to Kashmir, there is an acute sense of loss — traveling through the same roads, meeting people and a strong sense of realization that you don’t belong here any longer. Your roots are here, but you don’t own anything here. Your house is no longer your house — that’s very painful.

I think it’s going to be a very difficult journey for me when I return to Kashmir now. Because now I will look at Kashmir through the prism of my book, the memories I evoke in the book.

It is very important for the Kashmiri Pandit community not to lose sight of what happened to us in January 1990. It’s like a festering wound, and I will personally make sure that I keep festering this wound. Otherwise, you are completely lost. Then you become a refugee who has compromised, who has surrendered to destiny. My book begins and ends on a defiant note.

How is this book about Kashmir different from the ones written before?

It’s the first honest account.

Honest in what sense?

The previous books have done this balancing act. I am talking about books written in English–there are a couple of good books written in Hindi, especially “Dardpur,” by Kshama Kaul, which is very powerful.

The tendency of balancing out things — “let’s not make anyone unhappy, not talk about their pain” — is a very valid thing. But then you are compromising on your own story.

Right from the beginning there was this bitterness between the two communities [Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims], which would flare up once in a while in the form of 1986 Anantnag riots or they [Muslims] would break the window pane of our house if India won a cricket match against Pakistan. Those portions are ignored, and those are really the signals. And one needs to talk about it.

This balancing act that some of us have gotten into is because we go back to Kashmir and we have friends from the other end. I have so many Kashmiri Muslim friends. I don’t see why my truth should make them unhappy.

How has it been received in the Kashmir Valley?

It was expected to ruffle a few feathers. Only a minuscule population in Kashmir is willing to own up to what happened to Kashmiri Pandits in 1989-90.

One reason I wrote this book and the way I wrote it was to tell the world that, it is not only the Islamist Muslim with a gun in his hand who is responsible for the brutalization of Kashmiri Pandits. Not all ordinary Kashmiri Muslims took part in this ethnic cleansing, but a substantial number of them did. Otherwise, how would have so many people come out of the mosques on one night in January 1990 and raised frightening slogans against Kashmiri Pandits? And it wasn’t just that one day. All of us know how so many of us were killed.

The dominant reaction was expected. But I am also hopeful. I am in touch with a few Kashmiri youngsters who are validating my story because they know what has happened. Some of them are very vocal on social media networks.

If you had not been a journalist, would you have written this book differently?

The advantage of being a journalist is that you know your story well. You know how to present it well. Writing is about the structure, something you learn while you are at it.

I have written this book with a strict journalistic rigor. Memory is very slippery at times, so I have validated and re-validated everything that came from my memory. I have tallied and re-tallied everything from newspaper archives and official documents from that time.

If I was not a journalist or a writer, I don’t think the book would have been so raw.

(The interview has been condensed and lightly edited.)

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Kate Looks Great at First Official Outing Since Babymoon









UPDATED
02/19/2013 at 08:45 AM EST

Originally published 02/19/2013 at 08:25 AM EST



Making her first official public appearance since her Caribbean babymoon, a tanned and healthy-looking Duchess of Cambridge showed off her blooming baby bump Tuesday morning during a visit to a residential treatment center run by one of her patronages, Action on Addiction.

Just back from a winter break in Mustique, Kate, 31, chose a gray MaxMara Studio dress paired with pearl drop earrings.

"She looked really relaxed and rested after her break. She could have worn a coat, but she looked happy to show off her bump," says Judy Wade, the royals writer for the Observer.

"It's nice to be back," Kate said as she greeted Action on Addiction's chief executive, Nick Barton. "It's a lovely day for it."

Kate also acknowledged how she felt about having a baby as she chatted with those at the center.

Said Lisa, 34, a mother of three: "I asked her if she was nervous about having a child, and she said it would unnatural if she wasn't. It's just human, isn't it?"

Another woman, Natalie, 28, is carrying a baby due in late July, and said after speaking to Kate, "She was saying she had been feeling unwell but was feeling better now."

Next month, the Palace is set to make an announcement on another group of charities and interests that Kate will support.

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Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women


CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.


The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.


"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.


Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.


After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.


"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."


Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.


That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.


The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.


"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."


___


Online:


Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com


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Euro, dollar up after G20, stocks ease on growth concern

LONDON (Reuters) - The yen resumed falling on Monday after Japan signaled it would push ahead with expansionist monetary policies having escaped criticism from the world's 20 biggest economies at the weekend.


European shares and industrial metals dropped on lingering worries about the economic outlook, especially for the euro zone. The risk of an inconclusive outcome in Italian elections at the weekend also added to investor concerns.


However, activity was curtailed by the closure of markets in the United States for the Presidents' Day holiday.


The yen, which has dropped 20 percent against the dollar since mid-November, fell further after financial leaders from the G20 promised not to devalue their currencies to boost exports and avoided singling out Japan for any direct criticism.


"Future yen direction will continue to be driven by domestic monetary policy from the Bank of Japan and improving international investor confidence, which are both driving the yen weaker," said Lee Hardman, currency analyst at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.


Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe seized the opportunity to keep pressure on the central bank to loosen policy, telling the Japanese parliament that buying foreign bonds could be among options the Bank of Japan could adopt.


The result was the dollar rising 0.5 percent to 93.98 yen, near a 33-month peak of 94.47 yen set a week ago. The euro rose 0.2 percent to 125.32 yen, roughly midway between Friday's two-week low of 122.90 and a 34-month high of 127.71 yen hit earlier this month.


Strategists said that while the yen was likely to stay weak, its decline could lose momentum as investors wait for more clarity on who will be taking the helm at the Bank of Japan when the current governor steps down on March 19.


"The big unknown is who will get appointed as the new BoJ governor, so it is difficult to put on massive positions beforehand," said Saeed Amen, currency strategist at Nomura.


Abe is poised to nominate the new governor in the coming days. Sources have told Reuters that former financial bureaucrat Toshiro Muto, considered likely to be less radical than other candidates, was leading the field.


Elsewhere in the currency market, sterling hit a seven-month low against the dollar, after a key policymaker made comments about the need for further weakness and recent poor data which has kept alive worries of another British recession.


Sterling fell 0.15 percent to $1.5492 having earlier touched $1.5438, its lowest since July 13.


DATA LOOMS


A big week for data on the outlook for the world's economy weighed on other riskier asset markets following the recent dire fourth-quarter growth numbers for the euro zone and Japan, along with Friday's soft U.S. manufacturing figures.


In European markets, attention is focused on the euro area Purchasing Managers' Indexes for February and German sentiment indices due later in the week. These could affect hopes for a recovery this year.


Analysts expect Thursday's euro area flash PMI indices, which offer pointers to economic activity around six months out, to show growth stabilizing across the recession-hit region, leaving hopes for a recovery in the second half of 2013 intact.


Concerns over an inconclusive outcome in the Italian elections on Sunday and Monday have added to the weaker sentiment as a fragmented parliament could hamper a future government's efforts to reform the struggling economy.


The worries about the outlook for Italy were encouraging investors back into safe-haven German government bonds on Monday, with 10-year Bund yields easing 3.6 basis points to be around 1.63 percent.


"Political uncertainty will keep Bunds well bid this week," ING rate strategist Alessandro Giansanti said, adding that only better than expected economic data could create selling pressure on German debt in the near term.


Italian 10-year yields were 7 basis points higher on the day at 4.44 percent.


EARNINGS HIT


European equity markets were taking their lead from corporate earnings reports which have been reflecting the sluggish economic conditions across the region.


Danish brewer Carlsberg , which generates just over 60 percent of its sales in western Europe, became the latest to report a weaker-than-expected quarterly profit, sending its shares to their lowest level in almost a month.


The 6.8-percent drop for shares in the world's fourth biggest brewery helped send the FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> of top European shares down 0.3 percent at midday. Germany's DAX <.gdaxi>, France's CAC-40 <.fchi> and UK FTSE-100 <.ftse> ranged between 0.1 percent up and 0.3 percent lower.


Earlier, the effect of the G20 statement and the comments from Abe indicating a renewed drive to stimulate the Japanese economy lifted the Nikkei stock index <.n225> by 2.1 percent, near to its highest level since September 2008.


MSCI's world equity index <.miwd00000pus> was flat as markets extended a two-week period of consolidation that has followed the big run-up in January, when demand was buoyed by the efforts of central banks to stimulate the world economy.


Data from EPFR Global, a U.S.-based firm that tracks the flows and allocations of funds globally, shows investors pulled $3.62 billion from U.S. stock funds in the latest week, the most in 10 weeks after taking a neutral stance the prior week.


But demand for emerging market equities remained strong, with investors putting $1.81 billion in new cash into stock funds, the fund-tracking firm said.


CHINA RETURN


In the commodity markets, traders played catch-up after a week-long holiday last week in China, the world's second biggest consumer of many raw materials, which had kept activity subdued, with worries about the economic outlook weighing on sentiment.


Copper, for which China is the world's largest consumer, dipped to a near three-week low of $8,127.50 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) on the London futures market. Benchmark tin and nickel also touched three-week lows.


Bargain hunters helped gold rise from a six-month low to be up 0.2 percent to $1,611.87 an ounce with jewelers in China returning to the physical market after the Lunar New Year holiday.


Crude oil markets were mostly steady after some weak U.S. industrial production data on Friday [ID:nL1N0BF44A] was seen dampening demand, while tensions in the Middle East lent some support.


"We continue to see a mixed picture out of the United States. Industry output was lower than expected but that shouldn't affect the general upward direction," Olivier Jakob, analyst at Geneva-based Petromatrix, said.


Brent crude was flat at $117.66 a barrel after posting its first weekly loss since the first half of January. U.S. crude slipped 19 cents to $95.67.U.S. crude.


(Additional reporting by Marius Zaharia and Ron Bousso. Editing by Philippa Fletcher)



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IHT Rendezvous: Holding Obama's Feet to the Climate-Change Fire

At first glance, it was hard to tell whether they had come to bury Obama or to praise him.

Thousands of activists from hundreds of environmental, social justice and community groups marched on Washington yesterday in the biggest climate rally ever held in the U.S. capital. Activists both called on President Obama to make good on his climate change policy promises and protested the Keystone XL pipeline project.

“For 25 years our government has basically ignored the climate crisis: now people in large numbers are finally demanding they get to work,” Bill McKibben, head of 350.org, one of the environmental groups organizing the event, told the crowd.

The “Forward on Climate” rally comes less than a week after President Obama urged American leaders to “act before it is too late,” on climate change during his State of the Union address.

The demonstration’s timing — early in the administration’s second term — was important. While many say Mr. Obama achieved important green goals in his first term (Rendezvous wrote about tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars), critics say he did not achieve enough in the fight to address climate change. Many blame an uncooperative Congress and the always-looming re-election campaign. (The words “climate change” were not uttered during any of the three presidential debates between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney.

The secretaries of the interior and energy — portfolios where green leadership is seen as important — are being replaced. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, announced her resignation late last year.

Despite the President’s recent emphatic address to the nation, critics point out that his speech was short on details. And for many of the organizers of yesterday’s rally, the fact that the President did not mention the controversial Keystone XL pipeline — a pipeline that is to bring crude oil from Canada to Texas refineries — was a warning sign.

At the rally on the National Mall, activists from the ‘Backbone Campaign’ carried a 70-foot model of a spine, with an anti-Keystone XL pipeline message painted on the side, imploring the President to stand strong against the project.

As my colleagues John M. Broder, Clifford Krauss and Ian Austen reported, the Keystone XL pipeline issue is particularly thorny for Mr. Obama because the project is so detested by environmentalists, but supported by so many other players, including the government of Canada, one of the United States’ most important trading partners.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed an energy bill that would allow Congress, rather than the White House, to issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The President had put plans for the pipeline on hold temporarily.

On the same day in the Senate, several senators co-sponsored legislation for a carbon tax program that would finance clean-energy projects, in a move largely seen as symbolic because of the legislation’s scant chance of passing either house of Congress.

Partially due to recent extreme weather events, the issue of climate change is once more at the forefront of American politics. A survey carried out by the League of Conservation voters found that 65 percent of American voters were in favor of “the President taking significant steps to address climate change now.”

“Twenty years from now on President’s Day, people will want to know what the President did in the face of rising sea levels, record droughts and furious storms brought on by climate disruption,” said Michael Brune, head of the Sierra Club, an environmental organization that helped organized Sunday’s rally.

A man dressed as the grim reaper held a sign that read: “the only steady job on a dying planet will be mine.”

While no official attendance numbers were recorded, participating organizations estimated that more than 35,000 people attended. On its Facebook page, 350.org claimed that 50,000 protesters took part in the event.

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Mindy McCready's Ex 'Not Shocked' by Her Suicide















02/18/2013 at 08:20 AM EST



Mindy McCready's ex-boyfriend and the father of her 6-year-old son said Monday morning that he wasn't surprised when he heard that the troubled country singer had apparently taken her own life.

"As sad as it is, it didn't come as a major shock," Billy McKnight told the Today show. "She's just been battling demons for so long."

He added, "I was around her when she attempted suicide twice, so I knew it was in her."

Cleburne County, Arkansas, sheriff's deputies responded to a report of gunshots Sunday at 3:31 p.m. and discovered McCready's body on the front porch of her Heber Springs house. Neighbors reportedly had heard two shots, and the deputies found dead at the scene McCready's dog and the singer herself.

"The demons that she hasn't beaten were there," McKnight said of McCready, 37, who had battled substance abuse.

Following last month's death of her fiancé David Wilson, which is currently under investigation as either a suicide or a murder, the courts ordered McCready to be institutionalized.

Asked on Today if she might have been released too early, McKnight said he knew McCready could talk her way out of anything.

"I feel for her mother and her family and especially my son," said McKnight, whose boy, Zander, was the subject of a bitter and prolonged custody battle with McCready.

After the death of Wilson, Zander and his 10-month-old half-brother, Zayne, whose father was Wilson, were placed in foster care, where they remain. McKnight said that he wants his son returned to him: "He needs to come home."

As for the other child, "I don't know what is going to happen to Zayne," he said.

Mindy McCready's Ex 'Not Shocked' by Her Suicide| Death, Mindy Mccready

Zander and Billy McKnight, summer 2011

Courtesy Billy McKnight

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Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior


SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.


The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.


"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.


The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.


The study involved 565 Seattle parents, who periodically filled out TV-watching diaries and questionnaires measuring their child's behavior.


Half were coached for six months on getting their 3-to-5-year-old kids to watch shows like "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer" rather than more violent programs like "Power Rangers." The results were compared with kids whose parents who got advice on healthy eating instead.


At six months, children in both groups showed improved behavior, but there was a little bit more improvement in the group that was coached on their TV watching.


By one year, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups overall. Low-income boys appeared to get the most short-term benefit.


"That's important because they are at the greatest risk, both for being perpetrators of aggression in real life, but also being victims of aggression," Christakis said.


The study has some flaws. The parents weren't told the purpose of the study, but the authors concede they probably figured it out and that might have affected the results.


Before the study, the children averaged about 1½ hours of TV, video and computer game watching a day, with violent content making up about a quarter of that time. By the end of the study, that increased by up to 10 minutes. Those in the TV coaching group increased their time with positive shows; the healthy eating group watched more violent TV.


Nancy Jensen, who took part with her now 6-year-old daughter, said the study was a wake-up call.


"I didn't realize how much Elizabeth was watching and how much she was watching on her own," she said.


Jensen said her daughter's behavior improved after making changes, and she continues to control what Elizabeth and her 2-year-old brother, Joe, watch. She also decided to replace most of Elizabeth's TV time with games, art and outdoor fun.


During a recent visit to their Seattle home, the children seemed more interested in playing with blocks and running around outside than watching TV.


Another researcher who was not involved in this study but also focuses his work on kids and television commended Christakis for taking a look at the influence of positive TV programs, instead of focusing on the impact of violent TV.


"I think it's fabulous that people are looking on the positive side. Because no one's going to stop watching TV, we have to have viable alternatives for kids," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.


____


Online:


Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org


___


Contact AP Writer Donna Blankinship through Twitter (at)dgblankinship


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Florida hit by "tsunami" of tax identity fraud


MIAMI (Reuters) - Bruce Parton was only a few weeks from retirement after 30 years as a mail carrier in sunny Florida.


He never lived to fulfill his retirement plan of moving back to a quiet life in the Catskill mountains of New York, not far from where he grew up on Long Island.


Instead, he was gunned down on his daily mail route in December 2010 by members of an identity theft ring who stole his master key as part of a scheme to claim fraudulent tax refunds.


Using stolen names and Social Security numbers, criminals are filing phony electronic tax forms to claim refunds, exploiting a slow-moving federal bureaucracy to collect the money before victims, or the Internal Revenue Service, discover the fraud.


Parton was a victim of what officials say has ballooned into a massive, and dangerous, illegal industry that could cost the nation $21 billion over the next five years, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.


While that is a relatively small sum compared to the $1.1 trillion collected from individual tax payers in the last fiscal year, the crime has been growing by leaps and bounds in the last three years.


"We are on the top of a national trend that is causing a hemorrhage of tax dollars," said Wifredo Ferrer, United States Attorney for south Florida. "It's a tsunami of fraud."


While the IRS says it has detected cases in every state except North Dakota and West Virginia, the fraud's epicenter is Florida, and it is mostly concentrated in Miami and Tampa.


Miami has 46 times the per-capita rate of false tax refund claims than the rest of the country, and 70 times the national average in dollar terms, Ferrer told Reuters.


"For whatever reason, we always tend to lead the nation when it comes to fraud," he said, noting that his office has been battling massive Medicare fraud in recent years that has since spread to other parts of the country.


Florida's high proportion of older residents, who can be more vulnerable to fraud, may be one reason for the high levels of fraud in the state.


Nationwide, the number of cases of tax identity theft detected by authorities sky-rocketed to more than 1.2 million cases in 2012 from only 48,000 in 2008, according to the Treasury Department.


The real number of phony tax filings is likely much higher as the fraud is hard to track, according to a November General Accountability Office report.


GANG LINKS


The tax ID theft problem is particularly troubling as, unlike Medicare fraud, it is associated with violent crime and armed gangs.


Tampa police first detected it in 2010 when officers discovered wanted street criminals engaged in tax fraud. "They were holed up in hotels with laptops churning out tax claims," said congresswoman Kathy Castor, who represents the area and is pressing the IRS to get tougher on the fraud.


When agents raided a Howard Johnson in East Tampa in late 2010, they found suspects smoking marijuana and four laptop computers being used to file fraudulent tax returns on Turbo Tax, the tax preparation software, according to police records.


The suspects had lists of personal information containing more than 1,000 names and confidential personal information, multiple re-loadable debit cards, and records of numerous financial transactions. The investigation revealed that the suspects had been camped out in the hotel room for more than a week filing claims.


Tax identity fraudsters are apparently drawn by the ease of the crime, officials say.


"The scheme is very basic, it works virtually the same in almost every case," said Ferrer. "All they need is your name and the tax ID number."


Armed with that information a refund claim can be filed electronically, making up other details on the form, including addresses, employer data, income and deductions.


Criminals obtain the vital numbers using various tactics, often by bribing office workers with access to personnel files inside companies, as well as large public institutions such as hospitals and schools, according to prosecutors.


Last summer a hacker stole 3.8 million unencrypted tax records from the South Carolina Department of Revenue in what is believed to be the largest security breach of a U.S. tax agency. Authorities say they do not know the hacker's motive.


One North Miami man, Rodney Saint Fleur, was charged last year with using the LexisNexis research service account at the law firm where he worked to access names and Social Security numbers of 26,000 people as part of an identity theft scheme, according to court documents.


Victims in Florida have varied from hospital patients, to Holocaust survivors at an elderly Jewish community center, as well as active duty military serving overseas.


In December, a former U.S. Marine from North Miami was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for stealing the identities of more than 40 fellow Marines stationed at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan as part of a plot to claim $54,000 in fraudulent income-tax refunds.


In Parton's case the criminals were after his master key that gives postal workers access to mail drop-off boxes and apartment mailboxes. He was shot twice in the chest by a gunman as part of a plot to steal identities in people's mail for tax refund fraud.


The gunman, Pikerson Mentor, 31, was sentenced last month to life plus 42 years.


More than 600 people turned up for Parton's funeral, including postal workers and people who got to know him on his route. "He had been doing that mail route for 10 years and he always had a smile for everyone," said his daughter, Nina Parton.


The criminals stay under the radar using identities of the elderly or the very young, who are unlikely to be filing for earned income, as well as the deceased. They typically claim small refunds, around $3,000, but use multiple identities, with payments often made to pre-paid debit cards.


FIGHTING BACK


The IRS said last week it is intensifying a crackdown on identify theft, with 3,000 agents devoted to tackling the problem, double the number assigned in 2011.


The number of IRS criminal investigations into identity theft more than tripled in the year to September 2012, and it was on pace to double again this year, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller told reporters.


The tax collection agency prevented $20 billion in attempted tax refund fraud in fiscal year 2012, up from $14 billion a year earlier, he said.


"It's one of the biggest challenges that faces the IRS today," Miller said. "We're doing much better on all fronts but we have much more to do."


Despite the increase in investigations, the agency still had a backlog of 300,000 cases of people waiting for legitimate refunds after they were victims of fraud. It takes an average of six months to resolve a case, Miller said.


"The IRS have put a lot of resources on it, but they always seem to be behind the curve," said Keith Fogg, a tax professor at Villanova University School of Law.


Electronic filing, which now accounts for 80 percent of returns and was introduced to speed up delivery of refunds, has made the system more vulnerable to fraud.


The IRS is seeking to speed up the loading of data from W-2 payroll forms issued at the beginning of the tax season, a time lapse which gives fraudsters a window of opportunity to file using false data.


The IRS is also looking for ways to authenticate the identity of tax filers at the time of filing to pre-empt fraud, as well as working with the Social Security Administration to limit access to a registry of social security data of deceased tax payers, the so-called "Death Master File", a frequent target of fraud.


"We will not be prosecuting our way out of this. That's not going to be the answer. We're going to have to make it more and more difficult for criminals to profit from this behavior," said Miller. "If they're not successful they will move onto something else."


(Editing by Mary Milliken and Claudia Parsons)



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IHT Rendezvous: In Singapore's Immigration Debate, Sign of Asia's Slipping Middle Class?

BEIJING — Immigration is a hot-button issue nearly everywhere in the world, though the contours of the debate vary from place to place. In the United States, sweeping changes to the law may offer legal residency for millions of people who have entered the country illegally, my colleague Ashley Parker reports.

In Singapore, the debate looks somewhat different: The government plans to increase the population from just over five million to a possible high of nearly seven million by 2030, via regulated, legal immigration, and this is provoking opposition.

So much so that on Saturday, about 3,000 people turned out for what some commentators said was one of the biggest demonstrations in the nation’s history. (If the number seems small, it reflects the tight political control exerted over Singapore life by the People’s Action Party, which has run the country for about half a century and discourages public protest.)

What are the contours of the debate in Singapore?

Concern over booming immigration, often focused on new arrivals from increasingly rich China, has been simmering in the nation, with many feeling that the immigrants do not play by the same rules, that their manners are poor and that they are pushing up prices. That feeling crystallized last year when a wealthy Chinese man driving a Ferrari at high speed killed three people (including himself) in a nighttime accident.

(Similar sentiments are found in Hong Kong, as my colleagues Bettina Wassener and Gerry Mullany wrote.)

Vividly illustrating the resentment, Singaporeans sometimes call the wealthy immigrants “rich Chinese locusts,” according to an article in the Economic Observer’s Worldcrunch.

So the Singapore government’s Population White Paper that passed in Parliament earlier this month, just before Chinese New Year, was bound to stir things up.

The government is presenting the rise in immigration as a target that is needed if Singapore, where immigrants already make up about 40 percent of the population, and which has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world, is to continue to flourish, reports said. Singaporeans just are not having enough children, said the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

“In my view, in 2030, I think six million will not be enough to meet Singaporeans’ needs as our population ages because of this problem of the baby boomers and bulge of aging people,” Mr. Lee said in Parliament, adding that 6.9 million was not a target but a number to be used to help plan for infrastructure.

“Do we really need to increase our population by that much?” wrote a person called Chang Wei Meng in a letter to The Straits Times, according to Reuters. “What happened to achieving the Swiss standard of living?”

Gilbert Goh, a main organizer of the rally Saturday at Singapore’s Speaker’s Corner in a public park, said the protesters had a message: “They want to tell the government, please reconsider this policy. The turnout is a testimony that this policy is flawed and unpopular on the ground,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Goh as saying.

Yet amid the familiar rhetoric about immigrants, heard around the world – they don’t fit in, they’re rude, they’re different – might something more important be going on here?

In a blog post on Singapore News Alternative, Nicole Seah, a politician who has run for Parliament and comments on social issues, wrote: “Along with many other Singaporeans, I oppose the White Paper.”

Why? She is looking for “a society that lives in harmony, rather than tense and overcrowded conditions,” she writes.

“Not the Singapore Inc. that has been aggressively forced down our throats the past few years – a Singapore which is in danger of becoming a transient state where people from all over, come, make their fortunes, and leave.”

Not “a Singapore that has become a playground for the rich and the people who can afford it. A Singapore where the middle class is increasingly drowned out because they do not have the social clout or sufficient representatives in Parliament to voice their concerns.”

Ms. Seah’s statements raise an interesting question: Is this part of a phenomenon that the columnist Chrystia Freeland has written about so ably for this newspaper, the ascendancy of a wealthy, “plutocrat” class and the slipping status of the middle class?

As Ms. Freeland wrote last week: “The most important fact about the United States in this century is that middle-class incomes are stagnating. The financial crisis has revealed an equally stark structural problem in much of Europe.” Is it hitting Asia, too, and does Singapore’s protest speak, at least in part, to this? Hong Kong’s dissatisfaction too?

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