You set out with a crew from the birthday party, but find you?re a booster short. Do you make sure your own child gets one? Or do you let all the kids use belts only? A new survey found half the parents of 4- to 8-year-olds questioned sometimes let passengers go booster free.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/46195653#46195653
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? EU leaders will sign off on a permanent rescue fund for the euro zone at a summit on Monday and are expected to agree on a balanced budget rule in national legislation, with unresolved problems in Greece casting a shadow on the discussions.
The summit - the 17th in two years as the EU battles to resolve its sovereign debt problems - is supposed to focus on creating jobs and growth, with leaders looking to shift the narrative away from politically unpopular budget austerity.
The summit is expected to announce that up to 20 billion euros ($26.4 billion) of unused funds from the EU's 2007-2013 budget will be redirected toward job creation, especially among the young, and will commit to freeing up bank lending to small- and medium-sized companies.
But discussions over the permanent rescue fund, a new 'fiscal treaty' and Greece will dominate the talks.
Negotiations between the Greek government and private bondholders over the restructuring of 200 billion euros of Greek debt made progress over the weekend, but are not expected to conclude before the summit begins at 9:00 a.m. EST.
Until there is a deal between Greece and its private bondholders, EU leaders cannot move forward with a second, 130 billion euro rescue program for Athens, which they originally agreed to at a summit last October.
Instead, they will sign a treaty creating the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a 500-billion-euro permanent bailout fund that is due to become operational in July, a year earlier than first planned. And they are likely to agree the terms of a 'fiscal treaty' tightening budget rules for those that sign up.
PERMANENT RESCUE FUND
The ESM will replace the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a temporary fund that has been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal and will help in the second Greek package.
Leaders hope the ESM will boost defenses against the debt crisis, but many - including Italian premier Mario Monti, IMF chief Christine Lagarde and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner - say it will only do so if its resources are combined with what remains in the EFSF, creating a super-fund of 750 billion euros ($1 trillion).
The International Monetary Fund says an agreement to increase the size of the euro zone 'firewall' will convince others to contribute more resources to the IMF, boosting its crisis-fighting abilities and improving market sentiment.
But Germany is opposed to such a step.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will not discuss the issue of the ESM/EFSF's ceiling until leaders meet for their next summit in March. In the meantime, financial markets will continue to fret that there may not be sufficient rescue funds available to help the likes of Italy and Spain if they run into renewed debt funding problems.
"There are certainly signals that Germany is willing to consider it and it is rather geared toward March from the German side," a senior euro zone official said.
The sticking point is German public opinion which is tired of bailing out the euro zone's financially less prudent. Instead, Merkel wants to see the EU - except Britain, which has rejected any such move - sign up to the fiscal treaty, including a balanced budget rule written into constitutions. Once that is done, the discussion about a bigger rescue fund can take place.
After nearly three years of crisis, some economists believe the combination of tighter budget rules, a bigger bailout fund and a commitment to broader structural reforms to boost EU productivity could help the region weather the storm.
"The fiscal compact and the ESM will shape a better future," said Carsten Brzeski, a euro zone economist at ING.
"Combined with ongoing austerity measures and structural reforms in peripheral countries, and, of course, with a lot of ECB action, the euro zone could master this stage of the crisis."
Economists say the pivotal act in recent months was the European Central Bank's flooding of the banking sector with cheap three-year money, a measure it will repeat next month.
GREEK DEAL?
While EU leaders are managing to put together pieces of legislation and financial barriers that might help them stave off a repeat of the debt crisis, immediate concerns - especially over Greece and potentially Portugal - remain.
By far the most pressing worry is the seven-month-long negotiation over private sector involvement in the second Greek rescue package. A deal in the coming days may help restore investor confidence, although Greece will still struggle to reduce its debts to 120 percent of GDP by 2020 as planned.
"If there is a deal, the heads of state and government can endorse it, welcome it and say that now it is up to Greece to agree to and deliver on reforms to get the second financing package," the euro zone official said.
Negotiators believe they have until mid-February to strike a deal. Failure to do so by then would likely force Greece to miss a 14.5 billion euro repayment on its debt due in mid-March.
Even if Athens can strike a deal with private bondholders to accept a 50 percent writedown on the nominal value of their bonds, it may still not be enough to close Greece's funding gap.
The IMF has suggested it may be necessary for public sector holders of Greek bonds - including the ECB and national central banks in the euro zone - to write off some of their holdings in order to close the gap.
Such a move would not necessarily involve the ECB or national central banks incurring losses, they would just be expected to forego any profit on the bonds they have bought.
But German ECB board member Joerg Asmussen told Reuters there was no possibility of the ECB taking part in the private-sector restructuring of Greece's debt.
(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, editing by Mike Peacock)
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After lagging the growth in spending, personal income rose solidly in December.
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer
American consumers caught a break in their paychecks in December ? and the money went right into their saving accounts.
That could help ease the recent squeeze on household finances. But it?s not at all clear whether the trend will continue.
Personal income rose by?0.5 percent in December, after edging up just 0.1 percent in November, according to the Commerce Department. For months, wage gains have been meager, forcing consumers to lean more heavily on their credit cards to pay the bills. The income bump last month could help spur a bigger pickup in consumer spending, which would help keep the economic recovery on track.
?We need worker compensation to pick up if consumption is to rise,? said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, ?and that may finally be happening.?
Household budgets got some additional relief on prices, which edged up just 0.1 percent in December after holding steady in the prior two months. A decline in gas prices helped offset price rises elsewhere as energy prices fell 1.3 percent. For all of 2011, the Commerce Department?s price gauge?rose 2.4 percent. (The government?s best-known inflation tracker, the Consumer Price Index, rose 3 percent in 2011, double the increase in 2010.)
But even as their spending power increased in December, consumers took the extra wages and stashed them in their savings accounts, leaving?consumer spending?flat for the month. The?savings rate rose to?4 percent, the highest reading since August.
The boost in income was a welcome relief. Sluggish wage gains last year forced households to draw down their savings to pay the bills. Over the past 18 months the savings rate had fallen from 5.8 percent to just 3.5 percent in November. That trend was unsustainable, according to Capital Economics? senior economist Paul Dales.
?Now households are devoting part of their additional income to boosting their savings,? he said. ?That?s still not high enough, suggesting that real consumption probably won?t grow by much more than 1.5 percent this year.?
Continued sluggish consumer spending doesn?t bode well for the U.S. economy, which most economists believe will slow to a growth pace of just 2 percent this year. If income growth remains weak, so will the growth in consumer spending - which accounts for roughly 70 percent of gross domestic product.
?We expect consumer spending adjusted for inflation to increase about 2.2 percent this year,? said Chris Christopher Jr., a senior economist with IHS Global Insight. ?This is nothing to write home about. However, compared to our counterparts in Europe ? the American consumer and economy are looking relatively good.??
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Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10271191-wage-gains-offer-welcome-relief-to-workers
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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) ? High winds reportedly topping 50 mph forced organizers to temporarily evacuate two tents at the NFL Experience interactive fan exhibit in downtown Indianapolis.
NFL Experience spokesman Noah Gold said visitors were ushered out of sponsor and memorabilia tents Sunday after tent operators read high wind speeds on gauges attached to the tents. The tents reopened about an hour later.
Gold said he wasn't sure how fast the winds were blowing prior to evacuation, but WTHR-TV reported downtown wind gusts up to 51 mph were recorded Sunday afternoon.
Parts of the NFL Experience featuring football games and shopping inside the Indiana Convention Center were not evacuated.
Gold said he didn't know how many people were evacuated.
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NEW ORLEANS?? A federal judge declared a mistrial Friday in the case against a retired police sergeant charged with helping cover up deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina, the last of 20 New Orleans police officers who were charged by the Justice Department's civil rights division to get his day in court.
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Gerard Dugue was on trial for charges he wrote a false report on the shootings of unarmed residents on the Danziger Bridge, less than a week after the August 2005 hurricane. The case was expected to go to the jury early next week. Now it's up to prosecutors to decide whether to retry the case.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt ruled that Justice Department prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein may have unfairly influenced the jury hearing Dugue's trial by mentioning the name of a man who was beaten to death by a New Orleans police officer in a case unrelated to Dugue's.
Bernstein argued that merely mentioning Raymond Robair's last name couldn't amount to any prejudice against Dugue. The retired sergeant wasn't charged in the Robair case, but the judge said it's impossible to know if any jurors heard her remark and drew any negative conclusions.
"That's a chance that I'm not willing to take," he said, adding that a mistrial was "the last thing in the world I want to do."
Bernstein said she couldn't comment on the judge's ruling or prosecutors' plans.
The hurricane, which struck Louisiana and Mississippi on Aug. 29, 2005, drove a wall of water into the coast. Levees broke and flooded roughly 80 percent of New Orleans, plunging the city into chaos and subjecting police to harsh, dangerous conditions.
The storm also cast a spotlight on a troubled police department that has been plagued by corruption for decades. In Katrina's aftermath, federal authorities launched a new push to clean up the police force. The criminal probes were only part of the effort. The Justice Department also embarked on a top-to-bottom review of the department that produced a scathing report on its practices.
Before the trial started, Engelhardt barred prosecutors from introducing evidence related to Dugue's involvement in the department's probe of Robair's death. Defense attorney Claude Kelly asked for a mistrial after he heard Bernstein turn to a colleague and say, "Get me Robair," while cross-examining Dugue. Bernstein was asking for a file related to the Robair case.
Bernstein said she wanted to ask Dugue about his report in the Robair case to show he knows how to properly write a report and is capable of assessing whether witnesses are credible or not.
Kelly, however, said Bernstein's "outrageous behavior" could have left jurors with the impression that Dugue was suspected of wrongdoing in the Robair case. Engelhardt angrily scolded Bernstein, saying she should have privately discussed the matter with him at the bench if she thought she could broach the subject.
"My orders are my orders, and I expect them to be followed," he said.
Earlier Friday, on the fifth day of his trial, Dugue denied participating in a cover-up, claiming he didn't learn until years later that police shot innocent, unarmed people on the bridge.
Dugue said he now knows some of his former colleagues lied to him about their actions on the bridge less than a week after the 2005 storm. He said he didn't learn the truth ? that police shot six people, killing two, without justification ? until after other officers started cooperating with a federal probe of the shootings and pleaded guilty in 2010 to participating in a cover-up.
"If anybody says anything about me being involved in a cover-up, they're a liar," he said.
Prosecutors said Dugue rigged his investigation of the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings and submitted a false report to clear several officers who opened fire on the bridge as they responded to another officer's distress call.
During her cross-examination of Dugue, Bernstein pressed him to explain why he didn't do more to verify or challenge the officers' accounts of the shootings.
"Your job is not to just type out what people say and be done," Bernstein said.
Dugue said he didn't have the "supporting cast" to conduct a more thorough investigation because the police department was overwhelmed in Katrina's chaotic aftermath.
"I didn't have the tools, the resources, the people to do that teamwork," Dugue said. "It wasn't there."
He wasn't charged in the shootings and didn't get involved in the case until six weeks later, when he was assigned to take over the department's investigation. Prosecutors said the cover-up, which included a planted gun, phony witnesses and falsified reports, already was in motion when Dugue inherited the investigation from Sgt. Arthur Kaufman in October 2005.
Dugue said his "jaw dropped" when he learned Kaufman hadn't collected any shell casings or other physical evidence from the scene of the shootings. Dugue said he immediately dispatched a crime scene technician to comb over the bridge. Still, Dugue insisted he didn't have any reason to suspect that Kaufman or the shooters were lying.
"I did not know anything about any kind of cover-up," he said.
Kaufman is one of five current or former officers convicted in August of civil rights violations stemming from the shootings. They are scheduled to be sentenced April 3.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46170731/ns/us_news/
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NEW YORK ? Chevron Corp. said Friday that net income slipped 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter as its refineries struggled to pass on the higher cost of crude oil.
The San Ramon, Calif. oil giant on Friday reported net income of $5.12 billion, or $2.58 per share, in the final three months of 2011. That compares with $5.3 billion, or $2.64 per share, in the same part of 2010. Revenue increased 11.9 percent to $60 billion.
The net income fell short of Wall Street forecasts of $2.86 per share, according to FactSet. Shares dropped $2.04, or 1.9 percent, to $104.55 in premarket trading.
Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company behind Exxon Mobil Corp., said that oil and natural gas production declined in the quarter. Profits from its exploration and production business increased anyway, as the company sold oil at higher prices. International natural gas prices also rose in the quarter.
The refining business struggled, however, as falling prices for retail gasoline and other fuels made it harder to pass along higher oil costs to customers. Chevron's U.S. refining operations lost $204 million from October to December, compared with a profit a year-earlier, while international refining profits fell by 46.4 percent.
For the full year, Chevron earned $26.9 billion, or $13.44 per share, compared with $19 billion, or $9.48 per share in 2010. Annual revenue increased 23.3 percent to $253.7 billion.
Exxon will release its fourth-quarter financial results on Tuesday.
Earlier in the week, ConocoPhillips reported a 66 percent increase in quarterly earnings, though much of that came from the sale of a pipeline and other assets. Occidental Petroleum Corp. reported a 35 percent jump in quarterly profits as it increased production and sold crude oil for higher prices.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? In 2011 -- to the consternation of women everywhere -- a systematic review of randomized clinical trials showed that routine mammography was of little value to younger women at average or low risk of breast cancer.
The review showed, for example, that for every 50-year-old woman whose life is prolonged by mammography, dozens are treated unnecessarily -- some with harmful consequences -- or treated without benefit. Hundreds are told they have breast cancer when they do not.
Cindy M. Grimm, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, was not surprised by the review, a? Cochrane review of the scientific evidence for a medical treatment.
"It's not just the mammogram that's the problem," she says, "it's accurately interpreting the mammogram.
"People aren't good at it. Even expert radiologists aren't good at it. Results vary widely from person to person, even when people have gone through the same training."
But Grimm thought a perceptual trick she and colleagues had invented, called subtle gaze direction, might be used to improve training.
An experiment showed that a novice could be subtly guided to follow an expert's scanpath across a mammogram and that this subtle nudging improved the novice's accuracy.
The experimental results will be presented at the Eye Tracking Research & Application Symposium this March.
Grimm and her colleagues say the technique, should it prove durable, is widely applicable to visual search tasks. Not only might it improve the reading of mammograms and other types of medical images, such as MRIs and PET scans, but it might also be used to improve the accuracy of airport screening and learning in virtual environments.
Directing the gaze
Grimm invented subtle gaze direction together with colleagues Reynold Bailey, PhD, then her graduate student, and Ann McNamara, PhD, then of Saint Louis University, a conference acquaintance.
"I had double-majored in art and computer science as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley," Grimm says. "So I was aware that artists have all sorts of tricks for guiding viewers to look at particular areas in a painting, sometimes, in the case of narrative art, in a particular sequence.
"They might make an area brighter than the background, increase the contrast or have strong edges (borders) that attract the eye.
"Movie producers do the same thing in post processing," Grimm says. "For example, when one actor is talking and others are listening, the audience tends to watch the talker. But the producer can direct attention to a listener's reaction instead by changing the color or brightness of that part of the image."
Subtle gaze direction is a high-tech version of this time-honored craft. It works, says Grimm, by exploiting the difference between peripheral and central (foveal) vision.
"We use a small area in the central part of our retina called the fovea to see detail," she says. "But foveal vision doesn't actually cover much of our field of view.
"If you hold out your thumb, your foveal vision -- the part of your surroundings you're actually seeing in detail -- covers about the same area as your thumbnail.
"We use our foveal vision to read or drive or for other detail-oriented tasks. At the same time, we are monitoring the rest of our environment with our peripheral vision, which has lower resolution but responds faster than our foveal vision.
"When our peripheral vision picks up a stimulus, our eyes move to focus our foveal vision on it so that we can see it clearly.
"During those quick eye movements, called saccades, vision is suppressed, or masked, so that the motion of the eye, the motion blur of the image and the gap in visual perception are not noticeable to the viewer. We lose an astonishing 40 minutes of vision a day to saccadic masking."
"Perhaps in that case, as well, gaze direction could be used to train novice pollen identifiers."
To direct the gaze, Grimm and her colleagues changed the brightness or "warmth" of an area in the peripheral field of view to draw the novice's focus to this area.
The stimulus remained subtle, however, because the viewer's gaze is monitored in real-time by an eye-tracking device and the modulations to the peripheral vision are terminated before the eye fixates on them.
"The idea," says Grimm "is to get someone to look in a particular direction while altering their experience of viewing the image as little as possible."
"In the case of mammograms," for example, "you want to get a learner to look at the tumor region but you don't want to do anything that makes the tumor region look different than it does on the mammogram itself."
The mammography study
Reading mammograms is a good target for computer assistance because training is time-consuming and expensive, typically requiring a four-year residency and a two-year fellowship.
Despite advances in technology, novices are still trained by working as an apprentice to an expert.
The mammography study, led by Bailey, now an assistant professor of computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, brought together the same group of scientists as the subtle gaze direction experiment. McNamara is now assistant professor of visualization at Texas A&M University.
For the study, Grimm and her colleagues used a database of images provided by the Mammographic Image Analysis Society that includes both images and text files that contains coordinates of abnormalities and their size.
"Expert diagnostic radiologists have a particular search pattern that is not the same as that of a novice," Grimm says. "We don't know exactly what they're doing, but they tend to do a fairly broad scan and then fixate on parts of the image that have a tumor-like texture. A novice might instead attend to brighter spots in the image or fail to scan all of it."
Bailey hired an expert radiologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology to view and mark 65 images from the database. The expert's scanpath was recorded during this process by an eye-tracking system.
During the experiment, subtle gaze direction was used to guide a group of novices along the expert scanpath. A control group viewed the mammograms without gaze manipulation.
Novices who were guided were significantly more accurate than the control group or a third group guided along a random path. Moreover, even though the training session was brief, the effect lingered even after gaze manipulation was disabled.
Grimm says more work must be done to show that more extensive training will stick long-term. In the meantime, she can think of many ways gaze manipulation could be used to improve performance on visual search tasks.
"One simple use of the technology would be to make sure readers look at every part of the image. If you're using eye tracking," she says, "you know where people are looking, so you can make sure they don't skip part of the image."
Gaze manipulation might also be used to assist tumor-recognition software. "Suppose you had a software program that was reasonably good at spotting possible tumor areas but, erring on the side of caution, flagged too many areas as suspicious.
"Such software might be paired with gaze direction to ensure the radiologist looked at all of the flagged areas," she says. "That wouldn't necessarily be a training application; it could be a routine element of reading mammograms."
The mammogram study is widely applicable, Grimm says, because there are so many visual search tasks. She mentions airport scanners, but they are just at the top of a long list.
"I work with someone who identifies pollen species," she says. "Apparently, it takes a novice a year to learn, and they spend hours and hours looking through a microscope at these pollen grains. Again, some people are good at it and others struggle for competence.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. The original article was written by Diana Lutz.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? New orders for U.S. manufactured goods rose in December and a gauge of future business investment rebounded, showing the economy ended the year with more momentum than previously thought.
Other reports on Thursday showed new claims for jobless benefits rose moderately last week, suggesting the labor market was healing only slowly, while new U.S. single-family home sales unexpectedly fell in December.
The Commerce Department said orders for durable goods climbed 3.0 percent last month, boosted by a surge in aircraft orders. Economists had forecast orders rising 2.0 percent.
"There's some momentum here," said Jacob Oubina, an economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York. "Heading into the first quarter, the momentum is going to be pretty decent."
Durable goods range from toasters to big-ticket items like aircraft which are meant to last three years and more.
The data suggested U.S. companies could be growing more willing to invest the $2 trillion pile of cash they amassed in recent years. The U.S. Federal Reserve warned on Wednesday that business investment had cooled.
Orders for capital goods outside defense and excluding aircraft, which are a proxy for business spending plans, climbed a steeper-than-expected 2.9 percent. They had declined the previous two months.
Also, shipments of orders within that category, which go into the calculation of gross domestic product, rose 2.9 percent after declining 1.0 percent in November.
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Graphic on jobless claims:
http://link.reuters.com/xah36s
Graphic on durable goods:
http://link.reuters.com/heh36s
Graphic on new home sales:
http://link.reuters.com/juh36s
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SLOW HEALING
The overall increase in orders was buoyed by an 18.9 percent jump in orders for civilian aircraft. Boeing received 287 orders for aircraft during the month, according to the plane maker's website, up from 96 in November.
Investors in U.S. stocks appeared to take little notice of the data, with the Standard & Poor's 500 index (.SPX) off slightly in early afternoon. U.S. Treasury debt prices rose as fears grew that the European debt crisis was heating up again.
In a separate report, the Conference Board said its index of future U.S. economic activity rose to a five-month high in December as labor market conditions improved.
The Labor Department data showed new U.S. claims for unemployment benefits rose last week but the underlying trend continued to point to improving labor market conditions.
Initial claims for state unemployment aid increased 21,000 to 377,000. The four-week moving average for initial claims, which provides a better view of trends, fell 2,500 to 377,500.
"We're still very much established below 400,000, continuing to suggest that there is modest improvement in the labor market," said Lindsey Piegza, an economist at FTN Financial in New York.
On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank could do more to help growth if the economy falters, and the Fed indicated interest rates would likely remain near zero until late 2014.
Among the darker clouds looming over the U.S. economy is a sovereign debt crisis in Europe that is widely seen triggering a recession in the euro zone.
Greece was due to resume tortuous negotiations on a debt swap with private creditors in Athens on Thursday, with the European Central Bank thrown into the mix after IMF chief Christine Lagarde said public sector holders of Greek debt may need to take losses too.
Increased consumer spending and efforts by companies to restock their shelves likely led the U.S. economy to accelerate at the end of 2011 although many economists expect some of that strength to wane early this year.
A report due Friday is expected to show the economy grew at a 3.0 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, up from 1.8 percent in the previous period.
The Commerce Department also released a report showing new U.S. single-family home sales unexpectedly fell in December for the first time in four months, while the median home price dropped, dampening some of the hopes the housing sector will boost the economy this year.
The housing market remains constrained by high unemployment, falling prices and an oversupply of unsold homes following a bust that triggered the 2007-09 recession.
Still, there were a record low 157,000 new homes on the market last month. That could fuel additional speculation the housing sector was on the cusp of a recovery.
(Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani in Washington and Emily Flitter and Karen Brettell in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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A boy plays Nintendo's 3DS video game at an electronics retailer in Tokyo Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Nintendo Co. sank into losses for the April-December period last year, battered by a price cut for its 3DS handheld machine and a strong yen that eroded earnings. The Japanese video game machine maker behind Super Mario and Pokemon franchises reported Thursday a loss of 48.35 billion yen ($627.9 million) for the first nine months of the fiscal year ending March 2012. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
A boy plays Nintendo's 3DS video game at an electronics retailer in Tokyo Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Nintendo Co. sank into losses for the April-December period last year, battered by a price cut for its 3DS handheld machine and a strong yen that eroded earnings. The Japanese video game machine maker behind Super Mario and Pokemon franchises reported Thursday a loss of 48.35 billion yen ($627.9 million) for the first nine months of the fiscal year ending March 2012. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
TOKYO (AP) ? Nintendo Co. sank to losses for the April-December period, battered by a price cut for its 3DS handheld, a strong yen that erodes overseas earnings and competition from mobile devices such as the iPhone that offer games-on-the-go.
The Japanese video game machine maker behind the Super Mario and Pokemon franchises said Thursday it now expects to sell far fewer of its 3DS machines, which feature three-dimensional images. It is forecasting sales of 14 million machines for the fiscal year through March 2012, down from an earlier 16 million. That's despite a price cut for the 3DS in August.
Nintendo, which also makes the Wii home console, posted a loss of 48.35 billion yen ($627.9 million) for the first nine months through December. That was a reversal from a 49.56 billion yen profit the same period in 2010. Nintendo did not break down quarterly numbers.
The company said it will have Wii U, the successor to the Wii, ready in time for the year-end holiday season. Earlier, it had said the machine, which has a touch-screen controller, will go on sale in the latter half of this year. But some had been skeptical whether it would be ready. Nintendo hasn't announced prices.
Kyoto-based Nintendo also lowered its annual earnings forecast to a 65 billion yen ($844 million) loss, much larger than the 20 billion yen ($260 million) loss projected earlier. It posted a 77.62 billion yen profit the previous fiscal year.
Nintendo's past success has come from the appeal of its products to so-called casual gamers ? people who now turn to smartphones and tablet devices such as the iPad from Apple Inc. to enjoy games.
The demand for the Wii has also diminished in recent months.
Nintendo is now expecting to sell 10 million Wii machines in the year ending March, down from an initial estimate of 13 million, which was revised lower to 12 million in July.
Nintendo's nine-month sales dropped 31.2 percent to 556.17 billion yen from the same period the previous year.
The numbers are a disappointment as they include the key year-end holiday season.
"Sales of the 3DS were strong in Japan, but Christmas shopping got to a late start overall in the U.S. and Europe," said Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa. "But we are upbeat about hardware and software sales for next fiscal year."
Worldwide sales of the 3DS for the nine months totaled 11.43 million, the company said. Game software for the 3DS like "Super Mario 3D Land" became million sellers, but games from outside companies did not fare as well, it said.
Competition in portable gaming is heating up with the arrival of the PlayStation Vita from Japanese electronics and entertainment company Sony Corp. Vita went on sale in Japan in December and next month in the U.S. and Europe.
Nintendo has continuously outpaced Sony in portable game sales with its hit DS machines.
The strong yen has also hurt Nintendo's bottom line. The dollar has been trading at about 77 yen lately, down from about 83 yen a year earlier.
Nintendo stock slid 0.6 percent to 10,790 yen in Tokyo.
___
Follow Yuri Kageyama at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama
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Even for the most privacy-conscious individual, contacts are a liability and may give away your location
YOU'VE set your Facebook account to "friends only", your Tweets are protected and you wouldn't dream of setting a virtual foot near location-sharing services like Foursquare - in other words, you can feel pretty safe online, right? Wrong. We all unwittingly leak vital information through friends.
"You can actually infer a lot of things about people, even though they are pretty careful about how they manage their online behaviour," says Adam Sadilek of the University of Rochester in New York. He has developed a system for predicting a Twitter user's location by looking at where their friends are. The tool can correctly place a user within a 100-metre radius with up to 85 per cent accuracy.
Sadilek and colleagues turn their target's social network into a predictive model called a dynamic Bayesian network. At each point in time, the nodes in the target person's network consist of their friends' locations, day of the week and the time, and information from these nodes determines the target's most likely location. Sadilek can also feed in any existing information about the person's whereabouts to help improve the model's accuracy.
The team tested their model on over 4 million tweets from users in Los Angeles and New York City, who had location data enabled. They found a couple of weeks of location data on an individual, combined with location data from their two most sharing friends, is enough to place that person within a 100-metre radius with 77 per cent accuracy. That rises to nearly 85 per cent when you combine information from nine friends. Even someone who has never shared their location can be pinpointed with 47 per cent accuracy from information available from two friends, rising to 57 per cent with nine.
Once the model has a good idea of where some people are, it can use this data to predict who their friends are, and then use that social network to pinpoint the whereabouts of even more people.
"You can imagine looping this process over and over," says Sadilek, potentially allowing the model to make predictions about every user on Twitter. Privacy advocates may recoil in horror, but Sadilek claims this knowledge could have benefits. It could help identify people who might spread infectious diseases or contact friends nearby to prevent suicide attempts. He will present the work at the Web Search and Data Mining conference in Seattle next month.
It is not just Twitter contacts who compromise your privacy. Facebook friends who share too much could help someone access your account. Last year Facebook rolled out a new "social authentication" system designed to block suspicious logins, but computer scientist Hyoungshick Kim and colleagues at the University of Cambridge have discovered some flaws.
Suppose you normally access Facebook in London, but one day Facebook sees a login from Australia. You might be on holiday, but it is also possible a hacker has got hold of your password, so Facebook's social authentication system blocks these logins unless you can identify photos of your friends.
It seems secure, but Kim points out it only protects you against strangers - a jealous spouse would easily be able to identify mutual friends, for example. Kim's research shows that using photos from non-overlapping communities could prevent this, but that is no good if your friends share their photos publicly, as many people on Facebook do. A determined person could easily gather such photos to create a database of your friend's faces, then use facial recognition software to identify the social authentication photos.
Kim suggests that indiscrete friends should be removed from the social authentication system, but even that wouldn't help a specific group of social networkers: celebrities, whose friends are likely to be recognisable. Kim will present the work at the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference on the island of Bonaire in the Caribbean next month.
Even with your friends under control, a software bug could still expose your private data - as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself found out recently when a glitch revealed his photos to the world. To solve this, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a new programming language called Jeeves that automatically enforces privacy policies.
Programmers have to explicitly ensure data flowing through their software obeys necessary privacy policies, but it is easy to slip up and let information leak out. Jeeves solves that by substituting the value of variables within the software depending on who the user is. For example, say Alice posts a message but doesn't want anyone but herself to see who wrote it. The programmer can use the variable "author" without worrying what the user sees - when the software runs, Jeeves ensures Alice will see her own name, but everyone else logging in will see "Anonymous".
Jean Yang, who helped develop Jeeves, says the new language lets a programmer delegate privacy responsibilities and concentrate on the actual function of their code, much like a party host might entrust their butler with ensuring the needs of each guest are met so they can spend more time socialising.
Facebook is more than just an online "echo chamber" in which users just repeat views that match their own, according to a new study from the social network's own data team.
Facebook's Eytan Bakshy divided the friends of 253 million Facebook users into "strong" or "weak" ties. Cumulatively, the researchers found that most of the information shared comes predominately through a user's weak ties, simply because we have many more weak ties than strong ones. That's important, argues Bakshy, because friends with weaker ties are more likely to read and share material that you would not otherwise encounter: "The information they are sharing is more novel."
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LOS ANGELES ? Actors in adult movies filmed in Los Angeles will be required to use condoms under an ordinance signed into law by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and porn industry leaders say the regulation could lead them to abandon the nation's porn capital.
The law, signed Monday, will take effect 41 days after it is posted by the city clerk, something that could happen as early as this week.
Officials with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which lobbied for years for such a law, expressed jubilation Tuesday and said they would now turn their attention to getting a similar condom requirement adopted elsewhere.
"The city of Los Angeles has done the right thing. They've done the right thing for the performers," said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which had pushed the measure for six years.
He said its adoption is crucial in protecting adult film actors from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Weinstein said his group's next move will be to get Los Angeles County to adopt a similar measure for its unincorporated areas.
The group is in the midst of a petition drive to put the issue on the ballot, but Weinstein said he hopes the county's Board of Supervisors will react as the Los Angeles City Council did and pass such an ordinance itself. The council gave its final approval last week.
Industry officials estimate as many as 90 percent of the porn films produced in the United States are made in Los Angeles. Most are filmed quietly in the city's suburban San Fernando Valley.
After the council's action, several of the industry's biggest filmmakers said they might consider moving just outside the county. That prompted Simi Valley Mayor Bob Huber to announce last week that he would ask the city attorney for his community, located just across the county line from the San Fernando Valley, to write a similar ordinance.
Weinstein said Tuesday his group would also be vigilant in keeping track of where porn producers might go.
Exactly how the law will be enforced is still to be determined.
It calls for makers of porn films to pay a fee, the amount still to be determined, that would be used to pay for spot checks at filming locations.
The City Council is creating a committee to determine the amount of the fee and who would make the spot checks.
Weinstein said he envisions enforcement would fall on nurses or other public health providers.
"It is not anticipated, based on what we desire or what has been discussed, that it would be uniformed police officers," he said.
Weinstein said he would be open to working with industry leaders to enforce the law.
He noted the ordinance does not require condoms when oral sex is involved because his group, which originally crafted it, agreed with the filmmakers that infection through oral sex was not as great as through other sex acts.
The industry already requires that actors be tested for HIV every 30 days, and filmmakers say they believe that is sufficient.
"It's not that I don't doubt the sincerity of their desire to protect the talent. And believe it or not, we have the same ambition," Christian Mann, general manager of Evil Angel Productions, said last week after the council's vote.
"We just don't believe their way is the best way," added Mann, who is also on the board of directors of the industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition.
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AUCKLAND (Reuters) ? The founder of file-sharing website Megaupload was ordered to be held in custody by a New Zealand court on Monday, as he denied charges of internet piracy and money laundering and said authorities were trying to portray the blackest picture of him.
Prosecutor Anne Toohey argued at a bail hearing that Kim Dotcom, a German national also known as Kim Schmitz, was a flight risk "at the extreme end of the scale" because it was believed he had access to funds, had multiple identities and had a history of fleeing criminal charges.
"The FBI believes the sums located are unlikely to represent all the overseas bank accounts owned by Mr Dotcom," she said.
But Dotcom's lawyer said he posed no threat of absconding or restarting his businesses, arguing that his client had cooperated fully, his passports had been seized and his funds frozen, and also that he had a distinctive appearance.
"He is not the sort of person who will pass unnoticed through our customs and immigration lines and controls," said defense lawyer Paul Davison of the former hacker, reportedly 2 meters (6ft 6ins) tall and weighing more than 130 kg (285 lbs).
Judge David McNaughton said the bail application was too complicated for an immediate ruling, adding he would issue a written decision no later than Wednesday.
"Given the breadth of issues covered in this bail application and the seriousness of the issues, I am going to reserve my decision," the judge said.
U.S. authorities want to extradite Dotcom on charges he masterminded a scheme that made more than $175 million in a few short years by copying and distributing music, movies and other copyrighted content without authorization. Megaupload's lawyer has said the company simply offered online storage.
Prosecutor Toohey said two other men sought on global warrants for involvement in Megaupload had been arrested in Europe.
The shockwaves of the case appeared to be spreading among rival websites offering lucrative file-sharing. FileSonic, a website providing online data storage, said in a statement on its website that it had halted its file-sharing services.
"All sharing functionality of FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally," it said.
BARRICADED IN SAFE ROOM
Dotcom, 38, and three others, were arrested on Friday after New Zealand police raided his country estate at the request of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police cut Dotcom out of a safe room he had barricaded himself in, because, according to his layer, he was frightened and panicked.
Presenting the case for flight risk, the prosecutor said 45 credit cards in three wallets were found in the mansion under Dotcom's various names, while three passports were also found. But his defense lawyer said: "My client collects them (credit cards), most of them are out of date."
Dotcom smiled and waved at around 20 supporters who filled the courtroom and spoke to them after the judge's decision.
"Hey guys thanks for turning up, I appreciate it," he said, wishing a female supporter a "happy birthday."
Defense lawyer Davison said Dotcom was "realistic about what is happening."
"He would obviously prefer to be at large. He doesn't want to be there any longer than he absolutely has to be," he told reporters outside the court.
Media reported that Dotcom ordered around NZ$4 million ($3.2 million) of renovations to the sprawling mansion that he leased near Auckland, with its manicured lawns, fountains, pools, palm-lined paths and extensive security.
The case is being heard as the debate over online piracy reaches fever pitch in Washington, where Congress is trying to craft tougher legislation.
Lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation on Friday, postponing a critical vote in a victory for Internet companies that staged a mass online protest against the fast-moving bills.
The movie and music industries want Congress to crack down on Internet piracy and content theft, but major Internet companies such as Google and Facebook have complained that current drafts of the legislation would lead to censorship.
Critics of the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP Act (PIPA), quickly showed their opposition to the shutdown of Megaupload.com, with hackers attacking the public websites of the Justice Department, the world's largest music company Universal Music, and the two big trade groups that represent the music and film industries.
Dotcom's New Zealand lawyer Davison said in court that Megaupload's business was being misrepresented and authorities were being aggressive to add drama to the case.
"His business did not reproduce or copy material as alleged," he told the court, adding that copyright holders had been given access to Megaupload to identify improper posting of material. He likened the site to the popular YouTube video site, where people "promoted their creativity."
In New Zealand, questions are being asked about how Dotcom, who moved to the country in 2010, could be given permanent residency under a business investor scheme despite criminal convictions for insider trading.
LAVISH LIFESTYLE
A legal expert said extradition arrangements between New Zealand and the United States were reasonably straightforward and standard, but there were some important factors.
"The offence for which extradition is sought must be an offence in the jurisdictions of both states," said Otago University law professor Kevin Dawkins, adding that an accused must be tried on the offence for which they are extradited.
New details emerged about Dotcom's lavish lifestyle and tastes, with reports that he had a heated lap pool built just off the master ensuite, with underwater speakers, imported spring water and a custom ladder worth around NZ$15,000.
"It's insane, and it gets more insane inside. When we were there we called it 'extreme home makeover, millionaire edition'," a source close to the teams that did renovation work the New Zealand Herald.
A film posted on the Internet shows Dotcom, surrounded by topless women and men spraying champagne on board a superyacht during a "crazy weekend" in Monaco reported to have cost $10 million.
"Fast cars, hot girls, superyachts and amazing parties. Decadence rules," said the commentary accompanying the so-called fun documentary, which Dotcom dedicated to "all my fans."
The FBI estimates that Dotcom personally made around $115,000 a day during 2010 from his empire. The list of property to be seized, includes nearly 20 luxury cars, one of them a pink Cadillac, works of art, and NZ$10 million invested in local finance companies.
($1 = 1.2433 New Zealand dollars)
(Additional reporting by Gyles Beckford in Wellington and Ed Davies in Sydney; Editing by Ed Davies and Alex Richardson)
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LONDON ? The U.S. Ambassador to NATO said Monday one of the key goals of an upcoming summit is to ensure the alliance is prepared for new threats ? comments that came as Iran threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz in response to an EU oil blockage.
United States, British and French ships were recently spotted on the strait where a fifth of the world's crude oil is transported, but Ambassador Ivo Daalder said Monday it was not a NATO flotilla. The EU's 27 foreign ministers imposed the oil embargo to pressure Tehran into resuming talks on the its nuclear program.
Iran says its program is peaceful, but the U.S. and other nations suspect it is trying to build nuclear weapons. Iran is now under several rounds of U.N. sanctions for not being more forthcoming about its nuclear program.
Daalder said the steps were among many being taken by the international community to force Tehran back to the negotiating table. "The alternatives are much more difficult," he said.
President Barack Obama is hosting the NATO summit in his hometown of Chicago in May. NATO leaders will look at military strategy throughout 2014, funding issues and how to boost the alliance's capability ? both in intelligence gathering and through its missile defense system.
Daalder stressed Monday that a plan to place missile interceptors in Europe was designed to protect against threats from the Middle East ? not Russia. Russia has threatened to pull out of a treaty designed to reduce nuclear weapons arsenals if NATO moves forward with the plan.
"We would like to do this in cooperation with Russia, but we will do it even if we can't find a way to cooperate," he said.
He also said NATO was seeking ways to boost its intelligence and surveillance power ? weaknesses exposed during the Libya air operation.
A concern for Obama and others during the summit, however, will be if cash-strapped countries continue to stay in Afghanistan until 2014.
The Socialist candidate for France's presidency on Sunday pledged to pull French troops out of the war-wracked country if he is elected in May.
The NATO meeting follows last year's summit in Lisbon, Portugal. At that time, the U.S. and its allies agreed 2014 would be the year Afghan security would be turned over to the Afghan government, but Europe's financial woes have called some commitments into question.
All 28 NATO nations are part of the coalition force in Afghanistan, in addition to contingents from 20 other allied partner nations.
"The U.S. has been fully committed to building the Afghan forces ? this year we are spending $11.6 billion on building an Afghan force," Daalder said. "We can't sustain that kind of funding over the long-term, nor can the U.S. be the only country responsible for sustaining that."
Still, Daalder said NATO was working with Afghan authorities and the international community to find a force level that was sufficient and sustainable.
"We made the judgment collectively a long time ago that it was necessary to deal with the security situation in Afghanistan by deploying our forces there," he said. "We remain fully committed. I think that's true for every country that's part of this operation."
The Chicago NATO meeting will coincide with the annual Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations,
Last year, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned NATO members they risk "a dim, if not dismal, future" if they don't begin to beef up defense operations and contribute more to military operations.
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Hey, Indianapolis. A Manning will be playing in your Super Bowl, after all.
No, not that one.
It'll be Eli Manning leading the New York Giants to a Super Bowl rematch against the New England Patriots ? and this time on older brother Peyton's home field.
"It doesn't matter to me where you're playing it or the fact that it's in Indianapolis," Eli Manning said. "I'm just excited about being in one."
And if the Giants can pull this one off, Eli will have sibling bragging rights with one more Super Bowl ring than Peyton, who missed this season for the Colts after having neck surgery.
It sure won't be easy for the Giants, though. Four years after New York stunned previously undefeated New England in the Arizona desert, they'll play a Super sequel.
Eli vs. Brady. Coughlin vs. Belichick. The Giants vs. the Patriots.
Sound familiar? Here we go again.
"It's awesome and we look forward to the challenge," Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora said. "They are a great football team. They have always been a great football team. We are looking forward to it, and it's going to be a great game."
Well, judging from the last time these teams met in the Super Bowl ? David Tyree's jaw-dropping, helmet-pinning catch and all ? it just might be.
"Being in this situation is a great moment," Patriots nose tackle Vince Wilfork said. "You have to cherish this moment."
New England (15-3) opened as a 3-point favorite for the Feb. 5 game against New York (12-7), but the Patriots know all about being in this position. They were favored by 12 points and pursuing perfection in 2008, but New York's defense battered Brady, and Manning connected with Plaxico Burress on a late touchdown to win the Giants' third Super Bowl.
That TD came, of course, a few moments after one of the biggest plays in playoff history: Manning escaping the grasp of Patriots defenders and finding Tyree, who put New York in scoring position by trapping the football against his helmet.
"Hopefully, we will have the same result," Umenyiora said. "We still have one more game to go, but this is truly unbelievable."
Especially since the Giants appeared on the verge of collapsing with Tom Coughlin's job status in jeopardy just a month ago, when they fell to 7-7 with an embarrassing loss to the Washington Redskins on Dec. 18.
"We've been here before," linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said at the time, "and we'll get back."
Boy, was he right.
The Giants were facing elimination against the rival Jets and Rex Ryan, who boldly declared that his team ruled New York. Well, Coughlin's crew silenced Ryan with a 29-14 victory. The Giants followed that with a 31-14 win over Dallas in the regular-season finale to clinch the NFC East and get to the playoffs for the first time since the 2008 season.
New York dominated Atlanta at home in the opening round. Then came a stunner: a 37-20 victory at Green Bay ? knocking out the defending Super Bowl champions.
On Sunday, Manning extended the best season of his career with one more solid performance, and Lawrence Tynes kicked the Giants past the San Francisco 49ers 20-17 in overtime for the NFC title.
"I'm just proud of the guys, what we've overcome this year, what we've been through," Manning said, "just never having any doubts, keep believing in our team that we could get hot and start playing our best football."
The Patriots are rolling into the Super Bowl having won 10 straight, with their last loss being to ? you guessed it ? the Giants, 24-20 back in early November.
"We know they're a great team," Manning said. "We played them already this year. They've been playing great football recently."
They sure have. And now Brady and the Patriots are in familiar territory, playing in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in 11 years ? and first since the stunning upset in Arizona.
New England hopes to avoid all that sort of drama this time around. Unless it goes in the Patriots' favor, as it did in the AFC title game.
Brady was unusually subpar in the Patriots' 23-20 victory over Baltimore, throwing for 239 yards with two interceptions and, for the first time in 36 games, no TD passes. But he got some help from the Patriots' much-maligned defense, which made some crucial stops down the stretch.
A few mistakes by the Ravens helped greatly, too, as Billy Cundiff shanked a 32-yard field goal attempt with 11 seconds left ? soon after Lee Evans had a potential winning touchdown catch ripped out of his hands in the end zone.
"Childlike joy. It's all about childlike joy," linebacker Jerod Mayo said. "Last night felt like the day before Christmas for me and I haven't had that feeling in a long time."
New England last won the Super Bowl in 2005, a long drought considering that the Patriots took home Lombardi trophies three times in four years. There are only a handful of players left from that team, with guys like Corey Dillon, Tedy Bruschi and Rodney Harrison replaced by young up-and-comers such as Mayo, Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez.
"It doesn't even feel right, especially playing with the veterans here," Gronkowski said. "I watched them go to the Super Bowl as I was growing up, and now I'm part of it? It is an unreal moment."
The constants, though, are Brady and Bill Belichick. And that's been a winning combination for New England, combining to become the first QB-coach combination to win five conference championships in the Super Bowl era.
Belichick did perhaps his finest coaching job this season, piecing together a defense that ranked second-to-last in the league during the regular season. That led to plenty of shootouts, and Brady was more than up to the task, throwing for a career-high 5,235 yards while tossing 39 touchdown passes.
"They're an amazing team," Patriots owner Robert Kraft said. "They're a great brotherhood; they're a family."
And they're all looking to lift another Super Bowl trophy together. Patriots-Giants. One more time.
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Hot on the heels of picking up drama projects from Jason Katims and Dick Wolf, NBC has green-lit eight new comedy pilots.
Downwardly Mobile, written and executive-produced by Roseanne Barr, will bring the Roseanne star back to series television as the proprietor of a mobile home park and surrogate mother to all the characters who live there. John Argent and Eric Gilliland are also attached as executive producers.
NBC late-night host Jimmy Fallon will executive-produce an untitled project following three thirtysomething guys who enjoy the adventures of parenting even though they haven't grown up themselves. Amy Ozols and Charlie Grandy will also executive-produce.
Pilot Season: NBC picks up projects from Jason Katims and Dick Wolf
Based on the UK format, Friday Night Dinner revolves around a quirky family that has dinner every Friday night. The Office's Greg Daniels will write and executive-produce alongside Howard Klein.
From Friends writer/producer Scott Silveri, Go On centers on an irreverent yet charming sportcaster who tries to move on from a loss by finding solace in mandatory group therapy.
Also hailing from the Friends family, Daddy's Girl will be written and executive-produced by Dana Klein. The pilot follows a young woman who returns home from overseas to find out that her father is dating the mean girl from her high school.
Animal Kingdom, executive-produced by Hangover Part II writer Scot Armstrong, is an office-based comedy featuring a House-like veterinarian who loves the animals but hates their owners. Brian Gatewood and Alex Tanaka will write and executive-produce the pilot alongside Ravi Nandan.
Next Caller Please, from Weeds' producer Stephen Falk, is a gender comedy focusing on a brash, alpha male DJ and his new plucky, feminist co-host.
The Untitled Hilary Winston project, executive-produced by Winston and Jamie Tarses, will follow a shy, focused woman who was just dumped by her fianc?. Her co-workers will not only help her come out of her shell, but also to plot her revenge.
NBC previously ordered pilots for the dramas projects Beautiful People, Frontier, Midnight Sun and Do No Harm, along with Katims' County and Wolf's Chicago Fire.
Related Articles on TVGuide.com
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NEW YORK ? Hip young New Yorkers hate waiting for the subway. They wouldn't be caught dead near tourist sites and couldn't care less if a celebrity walked by. They're snobby about what they read, even snobbier about what they eat, stick to their own borough, and call the most minuscule bedrooms "huge."
And there's something else: Some don't take kindly to being reduced to a cultural stereotype.
That's what Eliot and Ilana Glazer, brother-sister bloggers, comics and native New Yorkers, have discovered since their video, "Stuff New Yorkers Say" (no, the word isn't really "Stuff") has gone viral in the last couple days. Turns out, one of the things New Yorkers like to say is: "We don't say THAT!"
But there's been lots of positive feedback, too, and all the attention has stunned the Glazers, who posted the video on Wednesday night, hoping for some buzz but not expecting well over a million YouTube views (about 1.3 million as of late Friday).
"It's really bonkers," Eliot Glazer, 28, said in a telephone interview.
The video, inspired by a current Internet meme on what all sorts of groups of people say, is simple enough. In it, the Glazers and friends converse the way young New Yorkers would (or wouldn't, depending on whom you ask.) There are a few distinct themes.
Impatience: "Where is the train? Where is the TRAIN?" (There have been comments posted that while people in New York think this, they don't actually stand on the platform saying it.)
Exclusivity: "Nobody knows about this place."
Culinary exclusivity: "All I had today was a bagel." Or "Ah, Momofuku!" a reference to the group of restaurants headed by hip young chef David Chang.
Culinary snobbery: "Ah, Magnolia!" a reference to the cupcakes made famous by "Sex and the City" ? followed by a sour face, because the cupcakes aren't very hip.
Celebrity fatigue: "Sarah Jessica Parker! Oh, who cares."
Disdain for tourists: "Who goes to the Statue of Liberty?" "Who goes to the Empire State Building?" "Move! Move!" (walking down the street behind slowpokes.) "I hate tourists!"
That last theme, Glazer explains, is not to be taken literally. "New Yorkers are actually very kind to tourists," he says.
Another thing people are taking too literally, according to Glazer: The derisive comments about boroughs other than Manhattan, as in "I don't go to Queens," and "I don't do Brooklyn."
In fact, Glazer was born in Queens, grew up on Long Island, and now lives in Brooklyn, as does his sister ? a writer and comic whose Web series, "Broad City," is in development for the FX network.
Especially funny, Glazer says, is unwarranted speculation online that the Glazers aren't even from New York. But he says he doesn't read comments on YouTube: "It's just a pool of negativity."
"This is satire," he says. "We intended it to be a satire of what it means to be young and semi-spoiled in New York."
The video was shot and edited in about two weeks. "I was worried we were past the expiration date of the meme," Glazer says. He and his sister posted it to their Facebook accounts, and "within two hours it was insane ? the comments, the sharing," he says. "It was mind-blowing how quickly it took off."
What's clear from the video is that its creators love the city, despite its hardships.
Love-hate relationship with New York:
"I love it here.
"I hate it here.
"I love it here."
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) ? Iraq risks sliding back towards authoritarian rule with Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's security forces cracking down on protests, harassing opponents and torturing detainees, a U.S.-based human rights monitor said on Sunday.
In its annual world report, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Iraqi authorities had suppressed freedom of expression and assembly, beaten and detained anti-government protesters and run a secret prison where suspects are tortured.
The report was issued a month after the last U.S. troops left Iraq nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and allowed the country's Shi'ite majority to rise to power in an elected government.
"Iraq is quickly slipping back into authoritarianism as its security forces abuse protesters, harass journalists, and torture detainees," Sarah Leah Whitson from Human Rights Watch said in a statement released with the annual report.
"Despite U.S. government assurances that it helped create a stable democracy, the reality is that it left behind a budding police state."
A government spokesman did not have any immediate comment on the report.
Early last year, thousands protested across Iraq about a lack of basic services in demonstrations prompted in part by the Arab Spring against authoritarian rulers in the region.
At least 10 people were killed in one day of protests after security forces clamped down on protesters trying to storm government buildings. The most violent clashes were in the northern city of Mosul and Basra in the south.
The report also said journalists were often harassed.
It said authorities had raided a press freedom organization and journalists reporting on the protests had been arrested and beaten. In semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, the regional government had suppressed local journalists by using death threats and beatings, it said.
In February, Human Rights Watch said it had uncovered a secret detention facility controlled by Iraqi security forces, where detainees said they had been tortured, the report said. No officials were prosecuted for the abuses, it added.
Maliki, whose Shi'ite coalition dominates parliament, triggered a political crisis in December when his government ordered the arrest of a Sunni vice president and sought to oust one of his Sunni deputies.
The Shi'ite leader says the moves were not politically motivated. But some minority Sunnis fear they are increasingly sidelined from political power-sharing and that Maliki is trying to consolidate his own authority.
(Reporting by Patrick Markey)
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WASHINGTON ? The Supreme Court on Friday threw out electoral maps drawn by federal judges in Texas that favored minorities. The decision ultimately could affect control of the U.S. House of Representatives and leaves the fate of Texas' April primaries unclear.
The justices ordered the three-judge court in San Antonio to come up with new plans that pay more attention to maps created by Texas' Republican-dominated state Legislature. All four of the state's new congressional seats could swing based on the outcome.
But the Supreme Court did not compel the use of the state's maps in this year's elections, as Texas wanted. Only Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have gone that far.
The court's unsigned opinion thus did not blaze any new trails in election law or signal retreat from a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, as some supporters of the law feared would result from this case.
Still, the outcome appeared to favor Republicans by instructing the judges to stick more closely to what the Legislature did, said election law expert Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, law school.
Controversy over the maps arose from redrawing political boundaries based on results of the 2010 census that found that Texas had added more than 4 million new residents, mostly Latinos and African-Americans, since 2000. The minority groups complained they were denied sufficient voting power by Republican lawmakers who sought to maximize GOP electoral gains in violation of the landmark Voting Rights Act.
Texas will have 36 seats in the next Congress, a gain of four districts. A divided court in San Antonio drew maps that differed from the Legislature's efforts, giving Democrats a chance to prevail in three or four more congressional districts. Republicans now represent 23 of the 32 current districts.
The high court said the judges appeared in some instances not to pay enough attention to the state's choices. The judges made mistakes in their plans, particularly in altering district lines for state legislative and congressional seats in parts of the state where there is no allegation of discrimination on the part of the Legislature, the high court said.
"In the absence of any legal flaw in this respect in the state's plan, the district court had no basis to modify that plan," the justices said, talking about state House districts in north and east Texas.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the ruling was a clear victory for the state.
"The Court made clear in a strongly worded opinion that the district court must give deference to elected leaders of this state, and it's clear by the Supreme Court ruling that the district court abandoned these guiding principles," he said in statement.
But Jose Garza, who argued the high court case on behalf of the minority groups and Texas Democrats, said Abbott is "celebrating too early." He said he expects the new maps to look a lot like the ones the justices threw out. Garza said he believes the biggest problem with the court-drawn maps is that the judges "could have done a better job of explaining themselves."
Texas Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis said she views the decision as essentially endorsing the judges' work in making changes to her Fort Worth area district. Davis filed a lawsuit against the state Senate plan after Republicans split Latino and African-Americans she currently represents into three districts, weakening her re-election prospects.
The Supreme Court acted quickly, just 11 days after hearing arguments and a month and a half after intervening in the case, but set no deadline for new maps to emerge from the court in Texas. State officials have said they need to have something in place by February 1 to hold primary elections, already delayed once, on April 3. The Texas Republican party also has said that Texas may have no voice in the Republican presidential nominating process if the primary is held later than mid-April.
The complicated legal fight over redistricting in Texas is playing out in three federal courts. In addition to the Supreme Court and federal court in San Antonio, a three-judge court in Washington is evaluating the state plans under a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that forces states, mainly in the South, with a history of discrimination in voting to get advance approval before making any changes to the way they conduct elections.
Even without the Washington court's approval, Texas said it should be able to use its own maps just for this year because time is running short before the primaries.
The minority groups, as well as the Obama administration, say such an outcome is strictly forbidden by the Voting Rights Act and would, in essence, eviscerate the law's most potent weapon, the advance approval requirement, also known as preclearance.
The justices chose not to allow the state maps to be used without preclearance. But Thomas, who earlier had said he would strike down the advance approval requirement, said Texas' "duly enacted redistricting plans should govern the upcoming elections."
The cases, all dealt with in one opinion, are Perry v. Perez, 11-713, Perry v. Davis, 11-714, and Perry v. Perez, 11-715.
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Associated Press writer Henry C. Jackson in Washington contributed to this report.
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