Stock futures imply lower open on weak economic data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Friday, indicating a weak start to March, as lackluster U.S. and global data indicated an economic recovery that continues to struggle.

Investors were also looking ahead to U.S. government budget cuts that were widely expected to take effect at the end of the day, barring an unlikely last-minute deal. The International Monetary Fund has said that if the cuts take effect, it would reevaluate growth forecasts for the U.S. and the global economy.

Adding to concerns about U.S. growth was data showing that January personal income fell 3.6 percent, its biggest drop in 20 years.

Overseas, China's factory growth cooled to multi-month lows in February as domestic demand dipped, and euro zone manufacturing activity appeared no closer to recovery last month, as a dire performance in France offset a return to growth in Germany.

"The weakness overseas really spooked things, and that's what's directing the ball right now," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management in Philadelphia, who helps oversee $115 billion in assets.

"There are also jitters, with the Dow at the doorstep of all-time highs. Given the speed of the advance we've seen, there's plenty of room for a pullback."

Equities have been on a tear lately, rising for four straight months to approach five-year highs while the Dow is now about 1 percent away from its all-time intraday high of 14,198.10. Any declines have been shallow or short-lived, with investors jumping in to seek value on any dips.

The gains have come on the back of strong corporate earnings and an accommodative Federal Reserve. In that environment, many investors have shrugged off the potential impact of the sequester, $85 billion in spending cuts across federal government agencies that economists expect will shave half a percentage point off U.S. economic growth.

Cyclical companies like banks and materials stocks, which are closely tied to the pace of economic growth, are likely to be among the hardest hit in the short term. Bank of America fell 1.2 percent to $11.10 in premarket trading while Chevron Corp slid 0.6 percent to $116.43.

S&P 500 futures fell 6.6 points 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 slid 58 points and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 13 points.

For the week, the Dow is up 0.4 percent while both the S&P and Nasdaq are down less than 0.1 percent. Both the Dow and S&P climbed more than 1 percent in February, slimmer gains than in January as equities grappled with uncertainties in Europe and Federal Reserve policy.

Other data on tap for Friday includes the final Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment index, which is seen holding steady at 76.3. The Institute for Supply Management's February manufacturing index is expected to dip to 52.5 from 53.1 in the previous month.

Groupon Inc gained 2.6 percent to $4.65 in premarket trading a day after the online coupon company fired its chief executive officer in the wake of weak quarterly results.

Gap Inc rose 3.9 percent to $34.20 before the bell after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations and boosting its dividend by 20 percent, while Salesforce.com Inc posted sales that beat forecasts, sending shares up 4.6 percent to $177.

U.S. stocks ended flat on Thursday, giving up modest gains late in the session. The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt>, seen as a bet on future growth, hit a record intraday high earlier in the session.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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British By-Election Shows New Support for Rightist Party

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives took a harsh pummeling on Friday with a by-election result that showed surging support for the United Kingdom Independence Party, a right-wing group whose deep inroads into the Conservative vote, if sustained at a general election in two years’ time, could oust the Conservative government and usher the Labour Party back into 10 Downing Street.

Midterm by-elections in Britain have been notoriously quirky for decades, providing an opportunity for protest voting that have often been poor predictors of general election outcomes.

And that was the line taken by Mr. Cameron as senior figures in his party were acknowledging privately that the result from Thursday’s vote in Eastleigh, a mainly suburban constituency near the coastal city of Southampton, had thrown the deeply divided Conservatives into further disarray.

“This is a by-election. It’s midterm. It’s a protest. That’s what happens in by-elections,” Mr. Cameron said after the Eastleigh results showed the independence party, known as UKIP, taking 28 percent of the vote, pushing the Conservatives, with 25 percent, into third place in a contest for a seat that they hoped they could win. The winners were the Liberal Democrats, a left-of-center party that has been in an increasingly fractious governing coalition with the Conservatives since the general election in 2010.

Commentators attributed the UKIP surge — their best result in a contest for a parliamentary seat — to the party’s relentless campaigning on two issues that have a powerful resonance among right-of-center voters: high levels of immigration and Britain’s membership in the 27-nation European Union.

European directives on a wide range of social, economic and judicial issues have been a persistent source of discontent among British voters generally and a cause of long-standing strife among Conservatives.

Mr. Cameron, whose leadership has been widely questioned among a powerful bloc of mainly right-wing Conservative legislators, said he would not be changing the policies that have stirred discontent against him and suggestions that the party should seek a new leader before the 2015 election.

Among policies that have alienated many traditionalists in the party – and boosted UKIP support – have been Mr. Cameron’s decision to support a same-sex marriage bill that is now moving through Parliament and to seek to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership in the European Union rather than quit the European bloc altogether, as the UKIP and many right-wing Conservatives advocate.

Some of his critics say that in seeking to placate his Liberal Democrat partners and hold the coalition together by adopting policies that are taken from the Liberal Democrat playbook, notably on same-sex marriage, Mr. Cameron has abandoned core Conservative beliefs.

“It’s disappointing for Conservatives,” Mr. Cameron said, referring to the Eastleigh vote. “But we will remain true to our principles, true to our course in a way that can bring back” the sort of Conservative voters who defected to UKIP in Eastleigh.

One of the most powerful Conservatives in the Cameron cabinet, Education Minister Michaelove, compared Mr. Cameron’s mood to that of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative prime minister in the 1980s, who met an incipient revolt among Conservative backbenchers – then composed of centrists who rejected some of her policies – by saying, “The lady’s not or turning.”

 “There were times when Margaret Thatcher was challenged by by-election results in the 1980s, but she stuck to her course,” Mr. Gove said.

I n recent months, the general election expected in 2015 has increasingly become a magnetizing force in British politics, with all parties watching opinion polls with a view to gaining advantage in what is expected to be a tight contest. The Conservatives have been running up to 12 percentage points behind Labour in recent national opinion polls, a gap that has not been insuperable for some governing parties in the past.

But their uphill battle to retain the power they won in 2010, after 13 years in opposition, could founder if the UKIP surge continues and turns the election into a four-cornered battle, with UKIP, hitherto seen as a mainly marginal protest group, contending as a mainstream force alongside the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. While it drew support from all three major parties in the Eastleigh vote, early analyses of the voting suggested that it inflicted most damage on the Conservatives.

Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, described the by-election result as a watershed moment for the party, particularly as it came in a southern, heavily middle-class constituency that has not seen the influx of immigrants that has helped boost the UKIP vote in other recent electoral contests, particularly in rundown industrial centers where competition for jobs and housing have contributed to making immigration a contentious issue. In Britain’s last round of by-elections, in November, UKIP came second to Labour in the northern city of Rotherham, with 22 percent of the vote.

The Eastleigh result took on a particularly ominous cast for the Conservatives — the party has never won a general election outright without winning Eastleigh since the constituency was established in 1955. Among UKIP officials, the result was seen as a bellwether. “We have really connected with voters in this constituency,” Mr. Farage told the BBC after the Eastleigh vote. “And that is because we are talking about issues that other parties would like to brush under the carpet.”

 

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Paris Jackson Rocks a New Punk Look

By Andrea Billups

03/01/2013 at 08:30 AM EST

Punk rock Paris!

Michael Jackson's daughter Paris, now 14, debuted a more edgy and downtown look this week when she Tweeted photos of herself wearing a knotted Pink Floyd T-shirt with a short, spiked jet black coif and exposed back tattoo.

Titling her Wednesday Tweet "late night creativity," Paris sported a new look that included black liner rimming her striking light-blue eyes, and dagger-style earrings.

Her transformation from long-haired and girlie draws comparisons to the latest cropped, rock-inspired look of Miley Cyrus.

Paris, an aspiring actress, Tweeted in August that she got her back tattoo to honor her late father. She had previously posted photos of herself on Valentine's Day in a short black wig, perhaps a tryout for her future makeover.

Paris is Michael Jackson's only daughter with former wife Debbie Rowe. She has said in the past that she loves her famous family but hopes to be taken seriously in her own right.

To that end, she shot her first movie role last year, for Lundon's Bridge and the Three Keys, a mixed live-action and animation film. She plays a girl who survives being brainwashed by a jellyfish queen in the ocean.

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

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Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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S&P 500 index futures briefly turn negative

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures pointed to a flat open on Thursday as investors found few reasons to keep pushing markets higher following a sharp two-day rally and a read on economic growth that was weaker than expected.

Analysts said a pullback may be in store a day after major equity indexes posted their biggest daily advance since early January. Over the past two sessions, the S&P 500 has gained 1.9 percent, rising back above the closely watched level of 1,500.

Wall Street has largely resisted expectations it would undergo a correction, with the Dow Jones industrial average within striking distance of an all-time high.

The U.S. economy grew 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, a weaker pace than expected, although a slightly better performance in exports and fewer imports led the government to scratch an earlier estimate of an economic contraction.

Separately, the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, suggesting the labor market recovery was gaining some traction.

"The GDP revision is positive but nothing to write home about, especially since it missed estimates," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York.

While markets suffered steep losses earlier in the week on concerns over European debt, they have since recovered, with the gains fueled by strong data and comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that showed continued support for the Fed's economic stimulus policy.

"Bulls are still leading the market with the pullback bought up quickly, but we're in a wait-and-see period after the big move we've had," said Sarhan.

S&P 500 futures rose 0.8 point 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 dipped 1 point and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 4.25 points.

So far in February, the S&P 500 has gained 1.2 percent, the Dow is up 1.6 percent and the Nasdaq has added 0.6 percent.

Investors will also be keeping an eye on the debate in Washington over sequestration - U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect starting on Friday if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on spending and taxes. President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders arranged to hold last-ditch talks to prevent the cuts, but expectations were low that any deal would be produced.

"Investors have come to the realization that sequestration isn't the end of the world and that it will eventually be fixed," said Oliver Pursche, president of Gary Goldberg Financial Services in Suffern, New York. "But going into March the risk is that the economy slows down and disappoints investors."

Pursche noted that on February 18, about 80 percent of S&P 500 components were above their 50-day moving averages, a rate that has since dwindled to 60 percent. "Market breadth has narrowed, and which suggests that a correction of as much as 5 to 6 percent is very likely," he said.

J.C. Penney Co Inc shares slumped 17 percent to $17.61 in premarket trading after the department store reported a steep drop in sales on Wednesday. Groupon Inc also slumped on weak revenue, with the stock off 29 percent at $4.23 before the bell.

Sears Holding Corp rose 2.8 percent to $48.79 in premarket trading after its earnings and sales beat expectations.

With 93 percent of the S&P 500 companies having reported results so far, 69.5 percent have beaten profit expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 6.2 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 28

NEWS Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 52, the top contender to succeed the Castros in Cuba, will need to display the authority of a future president while acting as if he does not want the job. Damien Cave reports from Mexico City.

In the waning hours of his troubled tenure, tens of thousands of believers gathered in St. Peter’s Square for Pope Benedict XVI’s valedictory address. Daniel J. Wakin reports from Vatican City.

The former mayor of Greece’s second city, Salonika, and two of his top aides were sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday after being found guilty of embezzling almost €18 million, or $23.5 million, in public money — a rare conviction in a case involving the political corruption that has contributed to the country’s dysfunction and economic decline. Niki Kitsantonis reports from Athens.

After Lars Hedegaard, a Danish polemicist, faced an attack for his anti-Islamic views, Muslim groups rallied to defend his right to free speech. Andrew Higgins reports from Copenhagen.

Islamic bonds, or sukuk, have long been popular with investors in the Middle East. Now they are being discovered in Europe and the United States. Sara Hamdan reports from Dubai.

The European Commission on Wednesday blocked the third attempt by Ryanair to acquire Aer Lingus, saying a union of the two Irish airlines would damage competition and raise prices on air routes to Ireland. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

At the Mobile World Congress, the industry’s largest convention in Europe, Samsung appears to be taking a page from Apple. Kevin J. O’Brien reports from Barcelona.

FASHION Fifteen years after much of its fashion manufacturing left for cheaper markets, Spain is trying to rebuild the sector and train new craftsmen. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid.

ARTS Van Cliburn, the American pianist whose first-place award at the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow made him an overnight sensation and propelled him to a phenomenally successful and lucrative career, though a short-lived one, died on Wednesday at his home in Fort Worth, Texas. He was 78. Anthony Tommasini reports.

Giuseppe De Nittis was an original and innovative force and responsible for evocative images, persuasively demonstrated by an exhibition of 118 of his works in Italy. Roderick Conway Morris reviews from Padua, Italy.

SPORTS Real Madrid beat its archrival, 3-1, in Barcelona, less than a week after the Catalan club lost in the Champions League. Rob Hughes reports from Barcelona.

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HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.

LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.

HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.

“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.

“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.

Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”

Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.

HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.

The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.

HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.

(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

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Debbie Reynolds: Carrie Fisher Will Be 'Just Fine' After Hospitalization

By Elaine Aradillas

02/28/2013 at 08:40 AM EST

Carrie Fisher (left) and Debbie Reynolds

Ethan Miller/Getty

Carrie Fisher was briefly hospitalized last week for her bipolar disorder after a bizarre performance aboard a cruise ship, but her mother Debbie Reynolds says she'll be fine.

"She's had manic depression bipolar since she was 13. It's an illness, and she's doing much better," Reynolds told PEOPLE exclusively Wednesday night. "I'm very proud of her, and she's doing exceptionally well. She'll be just fine, just great, and continue her writing as she always does."

Fisher, 56, who has spoken openly about her mental illness, performed on the Holland American cruise liner Eurodam in the Caribbean. The actress and author gave a rambling performance, leaving many in the audience wondering what was wrong.

"She clearly had trouble remembering things," says Chris Smith, a guest on the cruise. "She tried to tell some stories about her parents and Hollywood, but was having a hard time."

After a video of the performance went viral, her publicist released the following statement: "There was a medical incident related to Carrie Fisher's bipolar disorder. She went to the hospital briefly to adjust her medication and is feeling much better now."

Reynolds, 80, who spoke Wednesday to a sold-out audience attending the Rancho Mirage Lecture Series at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., talked about the effects of mental illness.

"[It's] really dreadful, and you are so alone because you're criticized, and people think you're doing it on purpose, and that you're misbehaving or having a spell because you want attention," she says. "It's not true. It's extremely difficult for everyone to deal with."

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Medicare paid $5.1B for poor nursing home care

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Medicare paid billions in taxpayer dollars to nursing homes nationwide that were not meeting basic requirements to look after their residents, government investigators have found.

The report, released Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general, said Medicare paid about $5.1 billion for patients to stay in skilled nursing facilities that failed to meet federal quality of care rules in 2009, in some cases resulting in dangerous and neglectful conditions.

One out of every three times patients wound up in nursing homes that year, they landed in facilities that failed to follow basic care requirements laid out by the federal agency that administers Medicare, investigators estimated.

By law, nursing homes need to write up care plans specially tailored for each resident, so doctors, nurses, therapists and all other caregivers are on the same page about how to help residents reach the highest possible levels of physical, mental and psychological well-being.

Not only are residents often going without the crucial help they need, but the government could be spending taxpayer money on facilities that could endanger people's health, the report concluded. The findings come as concerns about health care quality and cost are garnering heightened attention as the Obama administration implements the nation's sweeping health care overhaul.

"These findings raise concerns about what Medicare is paying for," the report said.

Investigators estimate that in one out of five stays, patients' health problems weren't addressed in the care plans, falling far short of government directives. For example, one home made no plans to monitor a patient's use of two anti-psychotic drugs and one depression medication, even though the drugs could have serious side effects.

In other cases, residents got therapy they didn't need, which the report said was in the nursing homes' financial interest because they would be reimbursed at a higher rate by Medicare.

In one example, a patient kept getting physical and occupational therapy even though the care plan said all the health goals had been met, the report said.

The Office of Inspector General's report was based on medical records from 190 patient visits to nursing homes in 42 states that lasted at least three weeks, which investigators said gave them a statistically valid sample of Medicare beneficiaries' experiences in skilled nursing facilities.

That sample represents about 1.1 million patient visits to nursing homes nationwide in 2009, the most recent year for which data was available, according to the review.

Overall, the review raises questions about whether the system is allowing homes to get paid for poor quality services that may be harming residents, investigators said, and recommended that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tie payments to homes' abilities to meet basic care requirements. The report also recommended that the agency strengthen its regulations and ramp up its oversight. The review did not name individual homes, nor did it estimate the number of patients who had been mistreated, but instead looked at the overall number of stays in which problems arose.

In response, the agency agreed that it should consider tying Medicare reimbursements to homes' provision of good care. CMS also said in written comments that it is reviewing its own regulations to improve enforcement at the homes.

"Medicare has made significant changes to the way we pay providers thanks to the health care law, to reward better quality care," Medicare spokesman Brian Cook said in a statement to AP. "We are taking steps to make sure these facilities have the resources to improve the quality of their care, and make sure Medicare is paying for the quality of care that beneficiaries are entitled to."

CMS hires state-level agencies to survey the homes and make sure they are complying with federal law, and can require correction plans, deny payment or end a contract with a home if major deficiencies come to light. The agency also said it would follow up on potential enforcement at the homes featured in the report.

Greg Crist, a Washington-based spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association, which represents the largest share of skilled nursing facilities nationwide, said overall nursing home operators are well regulated and follow federal guidelines but added that he could not fully comment on the report's conclusions without having had the chance to read it.

"Our members begin every treatment with the individual's personal health needs at the forefront. This is a hands-on process, involving doctors and even family members in an effort to enhance the health outcome of the patient," Crist said.

Virginia Fichera, who has relatives in two nursing homes in New York, said she would welcome a greater push for accountability at skilled nursing facilities.

"Once you're in a nursing home, if things don't go right, you're really a prisoner," said Fichera, a retired professor in Sterling, NY. "As a concerned relative, you just want to know the care is good, and if there are problems, why they are happening and when they'll be fixed."

Once residents are ready to go back home or transfer to another facility, federal law also requires that the homes write special plans to make sure patients are safely discharged.

Investigators found the homes didn't always do what was needed to ensure a smooth transition.

In nearly one-third of cases, facilities also did not provide enough information when the patient moved to another setting, the report found.

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On the Web:

The OIG report: http://1.usa.gov/VaztQm

The Medicare nursing home database: http://www.medicare.gov/NursingHomeCompare/search.aspx?bhcp=1&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

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Follow Garance Burke on Twitter at —http://twitter.com/garanceburke.

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Iran and Six Nations Agree to Continue Nuclear Talks

Pool photo by

The European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, at the start of the talks.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan – Two days of talks between six world powers and Iran over its nuclear program ended on Wednesday with specific agreement for further meetings in March and April over a proposal that would sharply constrain Iran’s stockpile of the most dangerous enriched uranium in return for a modest lifting of some sanctions.

But the six powers dropped their demand that Iran shut down its enrichment plant at Fordo, built deep into a mountain, instead insisting the Iran suspend enrichment work there and agree to unspecified conditions that would make it hard to quickly resume enrichment there. The six also agreed, in another apparent softening, that Iran could produce and keep a small amount of 20 percent enriched uranium for use in a reactor to produce medical isotopes.

The two sides agreed that technical experts would meet to discuss the proposal on March 18 and 19 in Istanbul, while the negotiations at this higher political level will resume, again in Almaty, on April 5 and 6.

The chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, called this meeting positive, asserting that the six powers, representing the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, had offered a revised proposal that was “more realistic” and “closer to the Iranian position.” Mr. Jalili, whose press conference was notably short of the aggressive rhetoric he has used in the past, called the meeting “a turning point.”

But senior Western diplomats were less enthusiastic, saying that Iran had not in fact responded to the proposal of the six and that real bargaining had not yet begun. A senior American official described the meeting as “useful” — refusing to call it positive — and emphasized that it was “concrete results” that count, not atmospherics.

A senior European diplomat was even more skeptical than the American official, saying that the technical meeting was essentially to explain the proposal to the Iranians once again, and that Iran may very well come back in April with an unacceptable counterproposal that swallows the “carrots” of the six and demands more.

The senior American official said that as a first step toward confidence-building and reducing the urgency around the issue, the six were demanding that Iran “significantly restrict” its accumulation of uranium enriched to 20 percent – which can quickly be turned into bomb-grade materiel – and limit its production to what is needed for fuel for the small Tehran Research Reactor to make medical isotopes.

Iran must also “suspend enrichment at Fordo,” a plant deep inside a mountain and very difficult to attack from the air, and accept conditions that “constrain the ability to quickly resume enrichment there,” the official said. Third, Iran must allow more regular and thorough access to monitoring from the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that it keeps its promises and cannot suddenly “break out” quickly to create a nuclear warhead, so that there is “early warning of any attempt to rapidly or secretly abandon agreed limits and prodece weapons-grade uranium,” the official said.

In return, the official said, the six would suspend some sanctions, but not those involving oil or financial transactions, which are the harshest, and would promise not to vote new sanctions through the United Nations Security Council or the European Union.

“What matters are concrete results on the most urgent issues, on 20 percent enrichment and on Fordo,” the official said, which are “the most destabilizing and urgent elements of Iran’s nuclear program.”

The proposal is a slightly softer modification of the proposal the six made eight months ago in Moscow. There it was described as “stop, shut, ship” – demanding that Iran stop enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity, shut the Fordo facility and ship abroad its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium to be turned into nuclear fuel.

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