Ford recalls 1.39M vehicles in North America

DETROIT - Ford Motor Co said on Thursday it is recalling 1.39 million SUVs and sedans in North America, most for the possible loss of power steering.

About 1.186 million of the vehicles Ford said it is recalling are in the United States. That figure is only 2,200 shy of the total number of vehicles that Ford recalled in the United States during all of last year.

Automakers are giving heightened scrutiny to safety issues in the wake of General Motors Co's ongoing safety crisis that began with an ignition-switch issue in older-model cars.

So far this year, GM has recalled 15.8 million vehicles worldwide.

Analyst Karl Brauer of Kelley Blue Book said Ford's spate of recalls on Thursday may be "driven by the heightened sense of concern all automakers are feeling right now, though we'll likely never know for sure."

Brauer added that there have been so many recalls since February when GM issued its first ignition-switch recall that the actions have become "sort of background white noise for consumers."

Ford said it will recall 195,527 Explorer SUVs in North America from the 2011 to 2013 model years and 915,216 Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner SUVs from model years 2008 to 2011 on power steering issues.

In addition, it will recall nearly 200,000 Taurus sedans in North America from the 2010 to 2014 model years on a corrosion issue.

Finally, Ford is also recalling 82,576 sedans with floor mats that may interfere with the operation of accelerator pedals. The floor mats were put in 2006 to 2011 model year Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan and Lincoln Zephyr and MKZ sedans.

The loss of power steering can increase the risk of a crash when vehicles are traveling at lower rates of speed.

US regulators have received consumer reports of six injuries and five crashes related to the Escape and Mariner models, Ford said.

As of mid-April, Ford said it was aware of 15 accidents including two minor injuries believed to be related to the loss of power steering in Explorer SUVs. The accidents all involved vehicles moving at lower speeds, Ford said.

In cold-weather US states and Canadian provinces where road salt is used, corrosion can affect license plate lamps which in turn may cause a short circuit that could start a fire, Ford said. A Ford spokeswoman said the company is aware of 18 consumer reports of fires believed to be associated with this condition.

Ford did not say how much the recall campaigns are expected to cost. For the Mercury Mariner and Ford Escape recalls, dealers are to be notified on Thursday and letters to all affected US owners will be sent by July 25, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.

There may be additional vehicles included in the recall campaigns outside of North America, Ford said.  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Tanning beds must carry skin cancer warning, US FDA says

The US Food and Drug Administration is strengthening its regulation of tanning beds, which have been shown to increase the risk of skin cancer.

The FDA, which is reclassifying sun lamp products from low risk to moderate risk, said on Thursday that in future sun lamp manufacturers must seek approval before they market a new product.

In addition, tanning beds must carry a visible warning against their use in people under the age of 18. Warnings about the risk of skin cancer must be included in any user instructions, brochures or marketing materials on the internet.

The requirement that beds carry a label warning against use in young people does not carry any legal weight and salon owners would not face fines if they allowed under 18-year-olds to use them.

Some dermatologists and public health advocates had argued for an actual restriction, which would have carried penalties for violators.

"We applaud the FDA for taking this important first step," said Dr. Brett Coldiron, president of the American Academy of Dermatology Association in a statement. "However, we recognize that there is still more work to be done to protect the public from these dangerous devices."

A study by the American Academy of Dermatology found that people exposed to ultraviolet radiation from indoor tanning faced a 59 percent higher risk of melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer.

Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said repeated UV exposure from sun lamp products poses a risk of skin cancer for all users, "but the highest risk for skin cancer is in young persons under the age of 18 and people with a family history of skin cancer." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Google's latest self-driving car is a one-push wonder

 

 Look, Ma! No steering wheel!

 

This could be the future of motoring, with Google having built a prototype of a self-driving car needing only the passenger to push a button to "Go."

 

Tech site The Verge noted the prototype is a new incarnation that veered away from earlier versions, which were basically just retrofits of existing vehicles from Toyota and Lexus.
 

Google posted a YouTube video of its volunteers taking a ride on its prototype, which has no steering wheel or pedal:

 

 

 

"Just imagine: You can take a trip downtown at lunchtime without a 20-minute buffer to find parking. Seniors can keep their freedom even if they can’t keep their car keys. And drunk and distracted driving? History," Chris Urmson, director of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, said in a blog post.

 

Urmson said they are now building some prototypes "designed to operate safely and autonomously without requiring human intervention."

 

"They won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal... because they don’t need them. Our software and sensors do all the work. The vehicles will be very basic—we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible—but they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And that's an important step toward improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people," he said.

 

Starting from scratch

 

Urmson said that in designing the car from scratch, they put a premium on safety - installing sensors that remove blind spots and detect objects out to a distance of more than two football fields in all directions.

 

But the cars won't be speed demons, at least for now - their speeds are limited to 25 mph.

 

Neither will they be luxury cars - they'll just have two seats with seatbelts and a space for passengers' belongings.

 

However, the vehicles will have to start and stop, and a screen that shows the route.

 

"We’ve designed for learning, not luxury, so we’re light on creature comforts," he said.

 

100 prototypes

 

Urmson said they are planning to build 100 prototype vehicles, and safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls, in the summer.

 

"If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. We’re going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the technology develops as we hope, we’ll work with partners to bring this technology into the world safely," he said. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com

 

 

Oil prices up with Ukraine crisis in focus

SINGAPORE – Oil prices rose in Asia Wednesday, underpinned by concerns about the Ukraine crisis as fierce armed confrontation between government forces and pro-Moscow separatists continued unabated leaving dozens dead.

US benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in July, rose seven cents to $104.18 in late-morning trade.

Brent North Sea crude for July gained 29 cents to $110.31 per barrel.

Ukraine's interim pro-Western government said Tuesday it had recaptured an airport in the eastern city of Donetsk from pro-Russian insurgents after a day of air strikes and fierce gun battles.

Donetsk mayor Oleksandr Lukyanchenko said two civilians and 38 combatants had died and another 31 were wounded, including Russians and possibly Chechens.

"Traders are still keeping an eye on Ukraine developments especially the continued fighting in the Eastern part as well as developments in Libya," said Singapore's United Overseas Bank in a note to investors.

The dramatic escalation in tensions comes a day after billion chocolate baron Petro Poroshenko was confirmed as the country's new president following weekend polls triggered after pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in February.

Washington and its European allies supporting Ukraine's interim government have accused Russia of fomenting unrest in the country, allegations Moscow denies.

Investors fear a full-blown conflict in the ex-Soviet state, a conduit for a quarter of European gas imports from Russia, will disrupt supplies and send energy prices soaring.

Kelly Teoh, managing director at I.R. Resources in Bangkok, said oil prices were also supported by hopes of a further drop in US crude stockpiles, indicating robust demand in the world's top crude consumer ahead of the busy summer driving season.

US crude stocks plunged 7.2 million barrels in the week to May 16, the Department of Energy revealed last week.

The weekly US official crude stockpiles report will be released on Thursday instead of Wednesday this week, because of the long Memorial Day holiday weekend. – Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Heat's Allen, Andersen iffy for game five

Miami Heat reserves Ray Allen and Chris "Birdman" Andersen are questionable for game five of the Eastern Conference Finals because of injuries.

Allen suffered a bruised hip and thigh while running through a screen in the second half of the Heat's 102-90 win in Game 4 on Monday night (Tuesday, PHL time) in Miami.

Andersen is dealing with a bruised thigh sustained in a collision with Heat guard Dwyane in game three on Saturday (Sunday, PHL time).

Both received extensive treatment for their injuries. Andersen did not play Monday night (Tuesday, PHL time). Both were expected to travel to Indianapolis for game five.

The Heat, leading 3-1, will attempt to close out the best-of-seven series on Wednesday night (Thursday, PHL time) in Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

"He's the human bruise, so he has a lot of different things going on all over his body, and he's been able to play through all of that," Spoelstra said of Andersen. "He's a tough guy. We all know that. He plays through pain. But you have to understand the difference between pain and injury."

Andersen is averaging 6.7 points and 7.7 rebounds off the bench in the Eastern Conference Finals. Allen is the Heat's best outside shooting threat, hitting 44.4 percent on three-pointers and averaging 10 points and 3.5 rebounds against the Pacers.

If the Heat win game five, they would advance to the NBA Finals for the fourth consecutive season. The Pacers, meanwhile, are facing elimination.

"Naturally, you're going to get incredible urgency coming from their side," Spoelstra said of the Pacers. - Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Pope Francis, Netanyahu spar over Jesus’ native language

JERUSALEM - Pope Francis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded words on Monday over the language spoken by Jesus two millennia ago.

"Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told Francis, at a public meeting in Jerusalem in which the Israeli leader cited a strong connection between Judaism and Christianity.

"Aramaic," the pope interjected.

"He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," Netanyahu shot back.

Like many things in the Middle East, where the pope is on the last leg of a three-day visit, modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political.

A Jew, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the Roman-ruled region of Judea, now the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He grew up in Nazareth and ministered in Galilee, both in northern Israel, and died in Jerusalem, a city revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims, and to which Israelis and Palestinians lay claim.

Palestinians sometimes describe Jesus as a Palestinian. Israelis object to that.

Israeli linguistics professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann told Reuters that both Netanyahu, son of a distinguished Jewish historian, and the pope, the spiritual leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, had a point.

"Jesus was a native Aramaic speaker," he said about the largely defunct Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. "But he would have also known Hebrew because there were extant religious writings in Hebrew."

Zuckermann said that during Jesus' time, Hebrew was spoken by the lower classes—"the kind of people he ministered to." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Fear strikes out on Wall Street

NEW YORK - Whatever investors are worried about right now, those concerns are not showing up in Wall Street's fear gauge. That scares some. On the other hand, it more than likely means that stocks will keep taking things slow and steady.

The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, closed on Friday at 11.36, its lowest level since March 2013. That means investors see less risk ahead, particularly with the S&P 500 ending at a record high again on Friday.

With the typically slow summer months just ahead and little on the horizon to shake the market from its current course, investors could be looking at even lower VIX levels, some analysts said.

"It's not that there's no likelihood of a correction. It's that people don't perceive anything to derail the train at this point," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut. "So I think people are beginning to wonder: Are we heading back to single-digit volatility?"

The S&P 500's record high and the drop in the VIX are not the only signs that fear is not a factor on Wall Street.

Volume is down as well. S&P 500 E-mini futures volume was below the 1.52 million daily average of the past year on every day this week except Tuesday.

The market's gain has come despite concerns about a slowdown in China and weakness in small-cap names. Typically small-cap stocks lead the market's advance when the U.S. economy is improving.

However, the recent selloff in small-cap stocks, which drove the Russell 2000 index briefly into correction territory last week, seems to have slowed. The Russell gained 2.1 percent this week, its biggest weekly bounce in more than a month. The index is less than 7 percent below its record close of 1,208.65 in early March.

At the same time, the Dow Jones Transportation Average hit record territory late Friday, nearly breaking above the 8,000 level.

"One of the reasons the VIX is so low, we haven't really done anything this year. We haven't moved an awful lot," said J.J. Kinahan, chief derivatives officer of TD Ameritrade in Chicago.

For the year, the S&P 500 has gained just 2.8 percent.

To be sure, some analysts say the lack of volatility suggests a complacency that could encourage excessive risk-taking. New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher have both expressed such concerns in recent days.

"The lower the VIX, the more overbought the market gets, leaving it vulnerable to some kind of setback," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York.

But the lack of volatility is also showing up in the foreign-exchange and commodities markets, according to Bespoke Investment Group analysts. They noted lower implied volatility in options in the foreign-exchange market as well as recent stability in the PowerShares Deutsche Bank Agriculture Index exchange-traded fund.


"If the VIX index is pricing in too little volatility, then why is it wrong to do so?" Bespoke analysts wrote. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Kim Kardashian, Kanye West tie the knot in Italy

Television personality Kim Kardashian and rapper Kanye West celebrated their wedding on Saturday (May 24) in a castle overlooking the historic city of Florence.

According to city authorities the couple had hired the Belvedere Fort for the night for €300,000 ($408,900) and the event was overseen by a Protestant pastor. As the castle is not normally authorised to hold weddings, it is unclear whether the event will count as a legal marriage ceremony, however.

Few other details leaked out ahead of the lavish festivities. A private security firm kept curious fans, paparazzi and television cameras from getting too close to the site, a Renaissance stronghold with high sloping walls that have been boosted by specially erected privacy screens.

West, 36, a rapper, entrepreneur and self-declared romantic, proposed to 33-year-old reality TV star Kardashian in an empty baseball stadium with a specially hired orchestra, the event shown during an episode of the TV show "Keeping up with the Kardashians."

According to the local La Nazione newspaper, suppliers have been threatened with a $5 million penalty if they reveal details of the event and guests were asked to hand in their mobile phones to stop anyone taking "selfies" or other pictures.

Residents in the San Nicola area of Florence have received letters warning them that the music will be booming out until midnight.

Vanessa Beecroft, an Italian-born artist and friend of West, whose performance art pieces regularly feature groups of nude female models, has set up a show within the fort and has promised to leave one of her works to the city of Florence.

How much the final bill will come to is a closely guarded secret but if past celebrity practice is any guide, the couple may be able to cover some of the expense by showing the wedding on television or selling exclusive coverage rights. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Athlete anxiety no excuse to skip heart test – study

NEW YORK - After finding that student-athletes felt no more distress about heart screening with electrocardiograms, or ECGs, than they did with physical exams, a new study concludes that anxiety should not be considered a reason to avoid giving the test.

An ECG measures the electrical activity of the heart and can detect disturbances that could predispose people to rare but dangerous cardiac arrests. Sudden cardiac death is the most common cause of death during exercise, researchers note.

Italy and Israel mandate ECG screening as part of sports pre-participation examinations, while the debate over whether to require athletes to get the test has become increasingly contentious in the United States.

One of the downsides of ECGs is that they sometimes suggest a heart problem that turns out to be a false alarm upon further testing. In the interim, athletes may fear for their health or their future in sports.

“This is the first study to look at the psychological impact to athletes when they get screened,” lead author Dr. Irfan Asif told Reuters Health. “There’s nothing to indicate you shouldn’t get an ECG because of stress.”

Asif, from the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine in Knoxville, and his team studied 952 high school athletes who participated in a range of sports. The students all received a medical history and physical examination to screen for underlying heart problems. All but 150, who served as a comparison group, also received an ECG.

Of the 802 participants who were screened with ECG, 220 had an abnormal finding at some point during the screening process. Six of those represented serious heart conditions, and the rest were false positives.

Reviews of a student’s medical history led to 127 of the false positives. An additional 50 false positives were a result of physical exams, 14 were from ECG readings and 29 were due to multiple indications.

The researchers found no difference in students’ distress levels immediately after screening based on whether their testing had included an ECG.

A 2007 American Heart Association statement on cardiovascular screening warns that false-positive results from ECGs could lead to unnecessary anxiety, the authors write in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

But the current investigation showed no differences in distress levels based on the reason for the false-positive evaluation - the vast majority of which resulted from a review of a student’s personal and family medical history.

“The athletes we’ve interviewed are actually very grateful that someone’s tried to save their lives,” Asif said. “We’re not really seeing negative consequences. We’re seeing very positive benefits.”

But pediatric cardiologist Dr. Peter Fischbach from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta told Reuters Health the study protocol limited its generalizability. Fischbach, who is also affiliated with Emory University School of Medicine, was not involved with the new study.

Students whose ECGs showed possible problems in the current investigation had follow-up tests on the same day at the same location. Most student-athletes have to wait for follow-up appointments with cardiologists, Fischbach said.

“If you’re not allowed to practice until you get a note from a cardiologist, and you have to go home and stew on it for three weeks, I worry that kids would become a little more stressed out,” he said. “Maybe they’d get a little more anxious and wonder if they’re ever going to be able to play again.”

The authors acknowledge that on-site, same-day tests to evaluate the abnormal ECG findings could have minimized anxiety among students.

“I imagine people having to wait for additional testing might have anxiety,” Asif said.

He and Fischbach both said there should be ways to address delays in follow-up in the real world.

But even if expected delays between tests could be shortened, Fischbach said the problem of funding to screen all U.S. student-athletes would remain. “In this era of cost-containment, this has the potential to be an explosive cost,” he said.

Some doctors have called for regular testing of U.S. student-athletes to try to prevent sudden cardiac deaths. So far, though, data have failed to show that screening could reliably weed out only the most at-risk youth at an affordable price. Based on Italian data, British researchers have calculated that close to 800 athletes would have to be benched from their sports for every death prevented (see Reuters Health story of October 11, 2012 here: reut.rs/1oF5cHu).

Nevertheless, Asif believes in ECG screening. He noted that reviews of family history and physical examinations are substantially flawed in their ability to detect heart defects, yet schools require them for students to participate in sports.

“People are asking for evidence. Where’s the evidence for a history and physical?” he asked.

“My message is you should do all three,” he said. “With screening with an ECG, we can save lives. Your ability to detect disease is much higher, and it looks like it doesn’t cause additional anxiety in people.” — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Paul McCartney cancels Asia concerts due to illness

Former Beatles Paul McCartney has canceled a run of five concerts in Japan and South Korea due to a viral infection, with doctors ordering him to rest, a spokesman for the British musician said on Thursday.

The U.S. leg of his "Out There" tour was expected to go ahead as scheduled starting in Lubbock, Texas, on June 14.

McCartney, 71, postponed two shows in Tokyo earlier this week due to illness and on Thursday canceled more concerts due to take place in Japan this week and South Korea next week.


"It has been confirmed that Paul will no longer play Seoul on Wednesday 28th which would have been his first-ever concert in South Korea," a statement from his publicist said.

His publicist declined to give any further details on his illness and his manager could not be immediately reached for comment.

McCartney rarely cancels concerts and said in a statement this week that he hated to disappoint his fans. He came to Japan after a South American tour.

McCartney and drummer Ringo Starr are the two surviving members of the Beatles, which broke up in 1970.

A native of Liverpool who largely taught himself how to play, McCartney has been known for a long and versatile musical life that included a stint with the band "Wings" after the Beatles, followed by a flourishing solo career. -- Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Generations collide in 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

Trapped in a dystopian future where marauding, shape-shifting robots have turned New York's Central Park into a concentration camp, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine has no choice in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" but to travel back in time to alter history.


The film, which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, is the seventh based on the Marvel Comics series that has grossed more than $2.3 billion at the global box office.


A sequel to both 2006's "X Men: The Last Stand" and 2011's "X-Men: First Class," the film begins in a future where Sentinel robots are trying to destroy mutants, and follows Wolverine as he travels back to the 1970s, when he does not have the use of his silver-colored claws.


"The X-Men movies always have a theme of disenfranchisement or minorities or discrimination," said Jackman, 45, the best actor Oscar nominee for the musical "Les Miserables" whose action film career took off with X-Men.


"We're actually tackling real human issues in addition to having people fly and have lasers come out of their eyes," Jackman told Reuters, noting that the characters' powers come from emotional traumas they have faced.


The film, expected to be one of the biggest at the box office this year, has had a dose of unwelcome publicity after two men accused director Bryan Singer of sexually abusing them as teenagers, charges he denies.


As a result, Singer has not participated in the film's global rollout, leaving promotion to his cast of acclaimed actors with an increasingly international profile.


Academy Award winner Halle Berry ("Monster Ball") returns as weather-controlling Storm. Jennifer Lawrence, who picked up an Academy Award for "Silver Linings Playbook," is the blue, shape-shifting Mystique and Ellen Page ("Juno") plays Kitty Pryde, who can run through solid objects.


Much of the plot revolves around Mystique's actions and Wolverine's attempts to thwart them.


GLOBAL CULTURE, EXISTENTIAL ROOTS


"The film is about struggle and being able to risk everything," said British actor Patrick Stewart, 73, back as Professor X in the film, whose younger self is played by Scottish actor James McAvoy, who starred in 2008's "Wanted."


Two-time Oscar nominee Ian McKellen ("Gods and Monsters") returns as the metal-controlling mutant Magneto, with Michael Fassbender, who won an Oscar nod as the slave owner in "12 Years a Slave," playing Magneto in the past.


Peter Dinklage is Bolivar Trask, a quietly conniving industrialist bent on destroying the superhero mutants with his Sentinel robots.


"I wanted Trask to be smooth, because I don't trust that in people," said Dinklage, best known for HBO's "Game of Thrones." "I never know where they're coming from."


As Wolverine and the other mutants attempt to stop Trask they disrupt key historical events, including the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and the Watergate scandal, during which a portly President Nixon, played by Canadian-born actor Mark Camacho, considers buying a fleet of Sentinel robots.


Fassbender's young Magneto even picks up the RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. and drops it around the White House as Trask and Nixon negotiate a deal.


While the plot may be complex, it helps reset the storyline after "X-Men: The Last Stand," in which Professor X's body is destroyed and Magneto loses most of his mutant powers. The film also returns the series to its existential roots, exploring how several characters find redemption.


New additions to the cast include Chinese actress Fan Bingbing as the teleporting mutant Blink, and Omar Sy in the role of energy-absorbing Bishop.


"We want our movies to reflect the world," said Lauren Shuler Donner, who has produced all of the "X-Men" films. "Years ago they sort of reflected the American culture, but it's no longer about the American culture. It's about the global culture." -- Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Google+ woos users with scrapbooks for vacation photos, videos

 

Google is wooing vacationers to its Google+ social network with automated scrapbooks for photos and videos that could rival Instagram and Video for Instagram on Facebook.

 

The features, dubbed "Google+ Stories" and "Google+ Movies," can take photos and videos taken from various devices then combine them into what Google called a "travelogue."

 

"No more sifting through photos for your best shots, racking your brain for the sights you saw, or letting your videos collect virtual dust. We’ll just gift you a story after you get home. This way you can relive your favorite moments, share them with others, and remember why you traveled in the first place," Anil Sabharwal, director of product management, said of Google+ Stories in a blog post.

 

Sabharwal said the feature will initially be available for the web and - of course - Google's Android platform. A version for devices running Apple's iOS will be "coming soon."

 

On the other hand, Sabharwal said Google+ Movies can produce a highlight reel of photos and videos, "including effects, transitions and a soundtrack."

 

Google+ Movies will be available for Android, iOS and the web, "so lots more people will receive these video vignettes."

 

A separate report on tech site Mashable said the new tool uses Google's Auto Awesome and landmark detection tools, along with a user's location history and the geotags of individual photos.

 

"It will be able to automatically find the best photos from your library, tag images with city names, and display the names of restaurants, hotels and airports you visited," it said.

 

Also, it said stories are private by default, "but users can edit or share stories publicly after they are created." — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com

Apple rushes iTunes update to plug security hole

 

Apple has rushed an update to its iTunes software to fix a security hole, a security firm said over the weekend.

 

Sophos said iTunes 11.2 contained a "permissions blunder" that could allow anyone to modify local user accounts on a machine running Apple's OS X.

 

Citing Apple's security bulletin, Sophos' Paul Ducklin said in a blog post that a local user who exploits the bug "can compromise other local user accounts."

 

"Upon each reboot, the permissions for the /Users and /Users/Shared directories would be set to world-writable, allowing modification of these directories," it added.

 

Ducklin said this is particularly dangerous for iTunes users on Mac machines, adding iTunes for Windows does not seem to be affected.

 

On the other hand, Ducklin said the patch applies all the way back to Snow Leopard, OS X 10.6. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com

Google celebrates 40 years of Rubik's 'impossible object' with interactive cube

 

Google on Monday threatened to bring down productivity anew as it marked the 40th "birthday" of the iconic Rubik's Cube - regarded as one of the world's most popular toys - with a playable online version.

 

Visitors to Google's homepage on Monday were greeted with an animated Rubik's Cube inviting them to click on it.

 

Those who did will be treated to a playable version of the toy where they can use their mouse to rotate the cube.

 

Clicking on the spyglass will take the user to a Google Search Results page for Rubik's Cube.

 

Rubik's Cube, initially available as the "Hungarian Magic Cube" as early as 1977, was created on May 19, 1974. People around the world have spent countless hours solving the 3D puzzle.

An impossible object

 

According to the official Rubik's Cube page, the famous toy was conceived by Hungarian professor of architecture Erno Rubik as an "impossible object".

 

"His solid cube twisted and turned - and still it did not break or fall apart. With colourful stickers on its sides, the Cube got scrambled and thus emerged the first 'Rubik’s Cube.' It took well over a month for Erno to work out the solution to his puzzle," the page noted. 

 

 Here are some more interesting facts about the timeless puzzle:

 

 

 

 This was not the first time Google made virtual versions of popular toys and games.

It made a playable version of Pac-Man game in 2010, it noted. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Hyundai recalls 140,000 SUVs over airbag issue

WASHINGTON - South Korean automaker Hyundai is recalling 140,000 vehicles in the United States and Puerto Rico because of an air bag problem, according to documents filed with US auto safety regulators.

There were no known accidents or injuries as a result of this problem, the company said in its recall notice to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

The issue relates to the bolts that attach the driver's airbag to the steering column in Hyundai's Tuscon compact sport utility vehicles.

"During assembly, it is possible that the two bolts attaching the driver's airbag module to the steering wheel assembly were not properly tightened," the automaker wrote in its letter to the NHTSA.

"If both bolts become loose and detach, the driver's airbag module could become detached from the steering wheel."

Hyundai said the defect "could result in injury in the event of a crash."

The automaker said it was recalling 137,500 vehicles in the United States and 3,500 in Puerto Rico, from model years 2011 to 2014.

The issue came to Hyundai's attention in December 2013, after reports of dealership service departments tightening the bolts under warranty. The automaker will ask owners to bring their vehicles to have the bolts checked.

On Friday, the NHTSA imposed a record $35 million fine on US auto giant General Motors for its failure to promptly recall cars with ignition faults linked to at least 13 deaths. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Haas rattles Wawrinka with victory in Rome

German veteran Tommy Haas issued a reminder of his claycourt skills with a third-round victory over Australian Open champion Stanislas Wawrinka at the Rome Masters on Thursday.

Haas recovered after trailing by a set and a break of serve to win 5-7 6-2 6-3 and reach the last eight at the Italian event for the first time since 2002 when he lost to Andre Agassi in the final.

In the women's Italian Open also being played at the Foro Italico, second seed Li Na snapped her career-long jinx against Australia's Samantha Stosur, winning 6-3 6-1 having lost their previous six meetings.

The 36-year-old Haas, who reached the French Open quarterfinals last year for the first time in his career, produced some inspirational tennis to frustrate Wawrinka.

"I just tried to focus on what I was doing well and all of a sudden it clicked," 15th seed Haas told Sky Sports. "Once you are in a third set anything can happen."

Third seed Wawrinka, champion in Monte Carlo this year and fancied for a strong run at the French Open later this month, became involved in a dispute with the umpire early in the second set and his form tailed off.

Haas next plays Tomas Berdych or Grigor Dimitrov in the quarterfinals.

Also through is big-serving Canadian Milos Raonic who saw off Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7-6 6-4.

Top men's seed and defending champion Rafa Nadal plays Mikhail Youzhny later while women's number one Serena Williams is up against Varvara Lepchenko.  - Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Namath says Vick should start for Jets

Joe Namath said he expects Michael Vick to be the New York Jets' opening-day quarterback, but he needs to be healthy this season.

The Hall of Famer and former New York Jets great said Vick is a better option than incumbent Geno Smith and will give the Jets a better chance at success in 2014.

"Of course, the coaches are going to decide who's out there, but, boy, I don't know any football fan that's been around for nine or 10 years that doesn't think Michael will be outstanding and probably is the best player at this time," Namath said Tuesday night (Wednesday, PHL time) at the United Way's annual Gridiron Gala in Manhattan, according to ESPN.com

"If Mike's healthy, I think he's the better player at this point," Namath said. "Now, Geno's got some talent, no doubt, but we've obviously seen Michael and what he can do. To have some knowledge of [Marty Mornhinweg’s] offense, I think that's an advantage, too, for Michael to make the transition. It's a matter of how sound he is."

Namath was asked to identify an area in which Smith needs to improve.

"The safest thing for me to say, the one factual thing for me to say that I know is his passing accuracy," he said. "The rest of it, I don't have a handle on -- his mind, what he sees, how he's doing those things. The one thing I know he has to improve on -- and he does, too - is accuracy."

Vick, who signed with the Jets in March to compete for the starting job, has said that Smith is the starter.

Offensive coordinator Mornhinweg said earlier this month that a starter has not been named but announced Smith would get the majority of the first-team reps when the team starts its OTA practices.

In 16 starts as a rookie last year, Smith completed only 55.8 percent of his passes, threw for 3,046 yards with 12 touchdowns and 21 interceptions as the Jets went 8-8.

Smith has expressed confidence that he will continue to start. Coach Rex Ryan, however, said Vick was signed to "push" him.

Vick worked with Mornhinweg for four years with the Eagles when Mornhinweg was offensive coordinator.

Vick, 34, signed a one-year, $4 million deal after the Jets parted with Mark Sanchez. Vick, a four-time Pro Bowler, played just seven games with the Eagles last season and lost the starting job to Nick Foles. - Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Michelin-starred Japanese chef fears loss of simple, traditional food

TOKYO - At his three-star Michelin restaurant in Tokyo, Yoshihiro Murata serves elaborate 12-course meals of delicate Japanese food. But his real passion is to make sure simple, traditional food is passed on to the next generation.

Japanese food is now widely available around the world, and “washoku” – traditional cooking – was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO last year. But Murata fears that even though sushi has become universal, appreciation for Japanese food is declining in its homeland.

“Japanese cuisine is becoming extinct", Murata said, seated in a quiet tatami mat room in his Kikunoi restaurant in Tokyo’s Akasaka business district.

“The fact that it has become a 'cultural heritage' means it is fading so it needs to be protected.”

Murata, 62, is the third generation of his family to run the restaurant established in 1912. He lived in France to learn French cuisine in his younger days and now runs three restaurants in Kyoto and Tokyo, one of which has three stars from Michelin and the others two stars.

His big concern, though, is that many Japanese have drifted away from their own national cuisine.

“Japanese people rely too much on Western food every day,” Murata said. When he asks school children what their favorite dish is, the most popular item is hamburger steak - essentially a hamburger minus the bun, followed by curry & rice and spaghetti. At many schools in Japan, bread is served more often for lunch than rice.

“They have lost their identity when it comes to the food they eat every day,” Murata said.

Household spending on the basic ingredients of Japanese daily food is falling. The purchased amount of miso paste, the main ingredient for miso soup, was down 39 percent last year compared with 1990, while purchases of rice were down 40 percent over the same period, government statistics show.

Sales of bread rose 15 percent over the same period and purchases of cheese rose 67 percent.

Murata believes that the beauty of Japanese cuisine lies not only in "kaiseki", a course of dishes made from seasonal vegetables and fish, but also in more everyday food.

Through a Kyoto-based non-profit organization called the Japanese Culinary Academy, Murata visits local elementary schools and lets students taste dashi, or Japanese soup stock, a base for most Japanese dishes, made from dried kelp and dried bonito flakes.

“I want children to know how good dashi tastes,” Murata said. "If they appreciate it, they ask their mother to make dashi for them, which is why I approach children first, rather than mothers."

Murata also said he wants to promote Japanese food overseas because he thinks people's understanding of it around the world is not very developed.

”Many people still do not know what real sushi is. They think anything rolled in rice with seaweed is sushi, but that is not true,” Murata said.

The Japanese Culinary Academy is now preparing a 200-page book on Japanese cuisine in English, Italian and Japanese, which will be ready for sale by the time of the World Exposition in Milan next year.

In the meantime, though, Murata welcomes even "fake" Japanese food overseas as it does at least make Japanese food familiar to people.

“Japanese cuisine is still a nursery tree and a lot of unnecessary leaves grow out of it,” he said.

“But I will let them grow as it is and just focus on making the trunk bigger. Because if we say too much now, Japanese cuisine will become an artificial tree like bonsai.”

RECIPE

Kikunoi Ichiban Dashi (Kikunoi Virgin Dashi)

Ingredients

Water      1800 cc  (7.608  US cups)

Kelp (Kombu)       30 g (1.0583oz)

Dried Bonito flakes  50 g (1.7637 oz)

Put kelp in water and heat it up to 60 degrees Celsius (140 degree Fahrenheit). Leave it simmering for an hour and keep the temperature at 60 degrees.

Take out the kelp and heat the water up to 85 C (185 F). Put dried bonito flakes in all at once, then within 10 seconds take the pan off the heat and pour the dashi out through a strainer with a cloth or paper towel over it. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

'Luke Skywalker' robotic arm seeks mass production funding

 

After gaining approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a new bionic prosthetic arm now needs financial backing before it goes into production.

 

One prosthetics company is now looking for a commercial partner to start mass production of the "Luke" arm or DEKA Arm System, tech site Engadget reported.

 

"There's no word on how much the device will cost, but Next Step Bionics & Prosthetics president Matt Albuquerque says now it will look for a commercial partner to start mass production," it said.

 

Created by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, the new arm can understand up to 10 specific movements and allow wearers "near-natural" control, the report said.

 

It can help wearers make routine actions such as handling keys and locks, removing papers from an envelope, or picking up an egg without breaking it.

 

The device uses electromyogram (EMG) sensors activated by the wearer, and an embedded computer translates the signals into movement.

 

A separate report on Gizmodo.com said the DEKA Arm took eight years to make the shift from the drawing board to approval.

 

It said the DEKA Arm "can be customized for limb loss at the shoulder, mid-bicep, or mid-forearm, though it can't be fitted for amputations at the elbow or wrist."

 

Gizmodo said 90 percent of test subjects in the FDA test managed to adapt to using the DEKA Arm for tasks that were impossible with traditional arm prosthetics. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com

Chemist Dorothy Hodgkin feted with 'crystal' Google Doodle

Google on Monday honored the memory of British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin with a "crystal" doodle on what would have been her 104th birthday.

 

On its homepage on May 12, the Internet giant marked Hodgkin's birth anniversary with a doodle depicting Hodgkins' work on X-ray crystallography.

 

Clicking on the doodle will take the visitor to a Google Search Results page for Dorothy Hodgkin.

An article on 3DCarShows.com noted that the doodle is live on Google's homepages in Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia,  Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

 

Hodgkin was born on May 12, 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, and was credited with the development of protein crystallography, and received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for it.

 

She was the second woman to receive the “Order of Merit” in 1965 after Florence Nightingale.

 

She was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) from the University of Bath in 1978.

 

By using X-ray crystallography, Hodgkin determined the structures of cholesterol (1937), penicillin (1946) and vitamin B12 (1956), which earned her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com

 

Google pays tribute to moms with Mother's Day doodle

Google on Sunday joined the world in paying tribute to mothers with a doodle celebrating Mother's Day.

The relatively simple and non-interactive doodle, which greeted visitors on Google's homepage, showed a mother biking with her children.

 As with Google's past doodles, this one will take the visitor to a Google Search Results page for Mother's Day when clicked on.

Meanwhile, a report by dzBB's Rodil Vega said many mothers spent the eve of Mother's Day with their children strolling at the Luneta Park in Manila.

An article on 3-D Car Shows noted Mother’s Day is celebrated in many countries on the second Sunday in May.— Joel Locsin /LBG, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Apple close to buying Beats for $3.2 billion: Reuters sources

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc is close to paying a record $3.2 billion for Beats Electronics, two people with knowledge of the matter said, an expensive foray into music streaming and headphone gear that would mark a departure for the usually cash-conservative iPhone maker.

Both companies are hashing out details and the envisioned deal could still fall through, one person told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.

A second source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Apple was in the market for a subscription-based music service to complement its "iRadio" ad-based offering, launched in 2013 as part of an attempt to jump into a music-streaming arena then split between a handful of startups such as Pandora Inc.

Founded by rapper Dr. Dre and legendary music producer Jimmy Iovine, Beats Electronics is best known for its "Beats by Dr Dre" line of trendy headphones that vie with the likes of Skullcandy Inc, Sennheiser Electronic and Bose Corp. This year, it launched a music service that has won plaudits for its slick design and human music curation, versus the computer-algorithms that determine playlists for most of its rivals.

But analysts on Thursday questioned whether Beats, valued at just $1 billion during its last funding round in September, was worth that price. Apple had more than $130 billion in cash as of the end of March, but the vast majority of that is parked abroad and investors have called on the company to return more cash in the form of dividends and buybacks.

Apple-watchers have speculated that the company that upended the music industry - and today is the single largest seller of tunes - was contemplating a Spotify-like on-demand music service to go with iRadio service and iTunes.

"This is really puzzling," said Forrester analyst James McQuivey, who said there was huge overlap between the two companies' customer base. "You buy companies today to get technologies that no one else … or customers that no one has."

"They must have something hidden … under the hood," he said.

In two of the largest deals this year, Facebook paid $19 billion for WhatsApp and its half-billion users, and it paid $2 billion for Oculus VR and its cutting-edge virtual reality headset.

Apple declined to comment on the report. Beats Electronics did not respond to requests for comment on the news, which was reported first by the Financial Times.

UNDER PRESSURE?

Apple has not made a billion-dollar acquisition in at least a decade. The company prefers to develop and design its products in-house, though it has tended to pay several hundred million dollars for small but important bits of technology to propel its core consumer electronics business, such as the acquisition of PA Semi in 2008 that led to the processor now found in all iPhones.

The company has been under pressure to try to revitalize growth as iPhone sales slow in a rapidly maturing market. Critics have also accused the company of slowly "losing its cool" and innovative edge to new and upcoming technology companies, and missing the music-streaming bandwagon.

Technology giants Google and Amazon began jockeying for position in music last year, looking at ways to make streaming profitable and to develop a service seen as crucial to retaining users in an increasingly mobile environment. For Google and Apple especially, the endeavor was critical to ensure users remain loyal to their mobile products.

They realized they had to stake out a place or risk ceding control of one of the largest components of mobile device usage. Analysts estimate roughly half of smartphone users listen to music on their device, making it the fourth most popular media-related activity after social networking, games and news.

Apple launched its own streaming music service last year, hoping to jump into the fast-expanding arena as growth of its iTunes service falters.

Apple's Chief Executive Tim Cook met with Iovine, the Beats CEO, last year on a potential partnership involving Beats's planned music-streaming service, Reuters reported in March, citing sources.

Dre - who guided the careers of a string of rap artists such as Eminem and 50 Cent - compared his company with Apple in 2011.

"We're trying to eventually be second to Apple. And I don't think that's a bad position," Dre told The Fader music website.

Beats Electronics received a $500 million investment from Carlyle Group in September that valued the company at over $1 billion. It also bought back in September a 24.84 percent stake held by Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Corp, which once held as much as 50.1 percent of the company.  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

TV's 'Power Rangers' morphing into film

LOS ANGELES -- More than 20 years after taking children's television by storm, the "Power Rangers" are morphing into the movies.

In a statement, production house Lionsgate said Wednesday it is partnering with Saban Brands, which owns the rights to Power Rangers, to develop "an original live-action feature film based on the iconic Power Rangers property."

No release date was given, but Lionsgate -- whose youth-oriented blockbusters include "The Hunger Games" and the "Twilight" franchise -- said the film version would "re-envision" the Power Rangers saga.

Adapted from Japan's long-running "Super Sentai" television series, the "Power Rangers" are a group of teenagers who "morph" into superheros in bright spandex suits and helmets, ready to combat evil.

The show premiered in the United States in 1993 as the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" and promptly became a global pop culture hit, supported by a vast range of Power Rangers toys, costumes, video games and comic books.

Still in production under the title "Power Rangers: Super Megaforce," the program is seen in more than 150 markets around the world and translated into several languages.

Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media entrepreneur who created the series, said the tie-up with Lionsgate should result in "a unique and memorable motion picture phenomenon with a legacy all its own." -- Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Wall Street opens flat ahead of Yellen testimony

NEW YORK - U.S. stocks opened flat on Thursday after initial jobless claims data pointed to a possible strengthening in the labor market and ahead of testimony by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 3.31 points, or 0.02 percent, at 16,521.85. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX was down 1.75 points, or 0.09 percent, at 1,876.46. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was down 15.52 points, or 0.38 percent, at 4,052.16.

The Nasdaq was pressured again by weakness in Internet stocks. Priceline (PCLN.O) fell 3.2 percent to $1,095 while TripAdvisor Inc (TRIP.O) was off 2.1 percent to $82.19.  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Alibaba files for what may be biggest tech IPO

SAN FRANCISCO - Alibaba gave investors a closer look at the scale and growth of the Chinese e-commerce juggernaut in an initial public offering (IPO) prospectus filed on Tuesday, the first step in what could be the largest technology debut in history.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, which powers 80 percent of all online commerce in the world's second-largest economy, is expected to raise more than $15 billion, and could top the $16 billion pulled in by Facebook Inc when it listed in 2012.

The bulk of the proceeds will go to Yahoo Inc - which bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005 for $1 billion and which must sell more than a third of its current 22.6 percent stake through the IPO. Alibaba also plans to sell new shares, people familiar with the plans have said, to bulk up a cash war chest depleted by a rash of recent acquisitions.

While the Alibaba brand is less well known in the United States than Internet companies such as Amazon.com and Facebook, the Chinese company's listing has stirred the most excitement in Silicon Valley and Wall Street since Facebook's record IPO. Alibaba will become the largest Chinese corporation to list in the U.S. - on either the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq.

Alibaba will debut later this year in a market where high-flying tech stocks like Twitter and Amazon have fallen in recent weeks in a sell-off that has divided analysts and investors, reviving doubts about soaring tech valuations.

Still, estimates of Alibaba's market value have soared in recent months, to even beyond $200 billion, underscoring Wall Street's eagerness to take a crack at a massive Chinese company with robust growth.

Alibaba handled more than 1.5 trillion yuan - about $248 billion - of transactions for 231 million active users across its three main Chinese online marketplaces in 2013, more than Amazon and eBay Inc combined. It did so with 20,884 full-time workers, fewer than eBay.

"If it's able to transport that kind of power to outside China, it has the potential to become a true global e-commerce powerhouse," said Roger Entner, lead analyst and founder of Recon Analytics. "Everybody thought Amazon could do it, but now we have to re-think Amazon in the light of being the most successful company in that field in the U.S. - but not in the world."

Alibaba did not give any hints in its IPO prospectus about potential plans for the U.S. e-commerce market. Analysts said it was unlikely Alibaba would adopt the model favored by Amazon, which sells goods directly to consumers using a sprawling network of warehouses.

AT LEAST 102 YEARS

Alibaba, founded 15 years ago in a one-room apartment in Hangzhou and controlled by a 28-member partnership, boasts of building a company that will last "at least 102 years."

After the IPO, Alibaba said, the partnership will have the exclusive right to nominate a simple majority of the members of its board of directors.

Alibaba operates an online messaging service as well as a cloud computing business, but more than 80 percent of its revenue comes from its Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan online marketplaces. Top items sold on Taobao include prepaid phone and game cards as well as lottery tickets, home furniture and baby products, the company said.

Total revenue increased 62 percent to 18.75 billion yuan ($3.01 billion) in October-December of 2013 from a year earlier, while net income more than doubled to 8.27 billion yuan, according to the prospectus.

Some analysts say Alibaba's rapid pace of revenue growth may be unsustainable.

"They got into the e-commerce space when there weren't any other players in China," said Forrester analyst Kelland Willis, adding Alibaba has been "losing market share year over year."

By 2020, online retail sales in China will reach $420-$650 billion, as much as the United States, Japanese, UK, German and French markets combined, according to a recent analysis by McKinsey Global Institute.

MOBILE FUTURE

Alibaba said China's mobile Internet arena, where it is battling Tencent Holdings for supremacy, is the next growth industry. China will have an estimated 750 million mobile Internet users by 2017, according to data from China-based consultancy iResearch.

Roughly one-fifth of all purchases in the last quarter of 2013 were made on mobile devices, up from 7.4 percent a year earlier. But Alibaba added that for now these sales were less profitable than those made on its website.

Already this year, Ma has been involved in acquisitions worth more than $3.5 billion - buying a stake in department store operator Intime; a majority shareholding in movie producer ChinaVision Media; control of online mapping firm Autonavi; a stake in China's Wasu Media Holding Co Ltd for online content and internet TV; and a stake in Youku Tudou Inc, an online video business akin to Google Inc's YouTube.

Alibaba is also launching a U.S. e-commerce website, 11 Main, and has taken stakes in U.S. retail site ShopRunner Inc, Lyft, a U.S. ridesharing service, and 1stdibs, an online market place for antiques and luxuries.

Also this year, Ma has set up a charitable trust estimated to be worth $3 billion, potentially Asia's biggest, focusing on the environment and health. "It's impossible for me to be a doctor, but I can have my own way to save lives," Xinhua quoted Ma as saying.

OWNERSHIP AND RISKS

Some analysts have pointed to a less-than-transparent decision-making process after Alibaba spun off fast-growing Alipay in 2010 - a move that caused consternation at major shareholders Yahoo and Japanese telecoms firm SoftBank Corp.

Alibaba's prospectus also laid out a raft of regulatory risks it faces at home. The company stressed that Beijing could impose additional restrictions on the use of Alipay, the payment service that powers the majority of its online transactions.

Unlike many prominent U.S. tech IPOs of recent years, Alibaba's list of significant shareholders is short. By contrast, Facebook and Twitter each broke out shareholdings from more than a half dozen individual principal shareholders.

Former English schoolteacher and lead founder Jack Ma owns 8.9 percent of Alibaba. Joseph Tsai, a co-founder and executive vice-chairman, is the only other individual with a disclosed shareholding, of 3.6 percent. Yahoo and SoftBank, respectively, own 22.6 percent and 34.4 percent of Alibaba on a fully diluted basis.

The proposed IPO of $1 billion in the filing is an estimate for calculating exchange registration fees.

FAIR VALUE

Alibaba estimated its fair value as of this month could reach $50 per share, an increase of more than six times from the $8 a share value estimated in June 2011, according to the prospectus. This calculation helps determine employee compensation and does not necessarily represent a likely IPO price.

At the most recent fair value estimate, Yahoo's stake in Alibaba is worth $26.2 billion and SoftBank's almost $40 billion. Ma's stake would be worth $10.3 billion.

The fair value estimate puts Alibaba's size at $116.1 billion, well below the $152 billion average from 25 analysts in a Reuters survey.

While Yahoo and SoftBank may be among the biggest beneficiaries of the IPO, neither will exercise much control of Alibaba. It has already been agreed that Yahoo Chief Development Officer Jacqueline Reses will resign from Alibaba's board upon the listing, while SoftBank will have the right to nominate just a single director to a new, nine-member board.

Alibaba's decision to list in the United States was a blow to the Hong Kong stock exchange, which was initially its preferred IPO venue, but the city's regulators balked at any potential violation of the "one-share-one-vote principle."

Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley will underwrite the Alibaba IPO. ($1 = 6.2257 Chinese Yuan)  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Kids tend to eat more when playing computer games featuring candy

NEW YORK - Kids eat more calories when playing a computer game featuring advertisements for candy than when the game has ads for toys, according to a new study from the Netherlands.

Children with low self-control were especially vulnerable to cues from a candy-themed game and ate more sweets even when offered a reward not to eat, the researchers found.

“Impulsive children have insufficient inhibitory behavioral control, and food advertisers try to influence eating behavior, thereby making it more difficult for especially impulsive children to self-regulate their food intake,” Dr. Frans Folkvord told Reuters Health by email.

Since kids are not fully aware of the persuasive intent of food marketeers, it is very difficult for any child to be critical towards the advertisements, said Folkvord, of Radboud University Nijmegen, who led the study.

Past research has shown that food advertising influences how much children eat, but little is known about what makes an individual child susceptible, Folkvord and his colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers recruited kids between the ages of seven and 10 to play online games that had either a candy theme or a toy theme.

“We used an online memory game that is comparable to the advergames that are used by major food companies,” Folkvord said.

Kids played the simple memory ‘advergames’ on a computer. Sixteen cards marked with a candy or toy brand name and logo appeared face down. Two could be flipped over at once. On the other side, they displayed individual candies or toys. The object was to match pairs as quickly as possible.

For the study, researchers divided the 260 children from primary schools in the Netherlands into four groups. Two groups played the candy advergame while the two other groups played an advergame promoting a toy brand instead.

The kids played the games for five minutes in a room with two bowls of jelly candy and milk chocolate candy.

Researchers told one group playing each game that they could eat as much candy as they liked, and told the other group that they could eat the candy, but if they made it to the end without eating they would be rewarded.

Before the game-playing sessions, the researchers also had all the kids answer questions to gauge their level of impulsivity. Based on scores on that test, 39 percent of the children qualified as impulsive, according to Folkvord.

Overall, kids ate more calories when playing a game with a candy theme. But rewarding the kids for avoiding eating the candy in the room during the game sessions resulted in most eating fewer calories.

Children who played the candy game without the inhibition reward ate an average of 156 calories, for example, compared to 87 calories for kids who played the same game with the inhibition reward.

During the toy-themed game, kids without the inhibition reward ate 101 calories, compared to 33 calories when they had been offered the inhibition reward.

For certain more impulsive kids, however, the food cues in the candy game were stronger than the incentive not to eat. The more impulsive kids playing the candy game tended to eat the same amount of calories whether or not they had been offered the inhibition reward.

“Impulsive behavior is extremely common and it is believed to be genetic,” said Dr. Deborah A. Cohen of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

Cohen studies how the social and physical environments influence health.

Impulsiveness tends to go hand in hand with making poor decisions, said Cohen, who was not involved in the new study.

“Most of the food companies have advergames on their websites,” she told Reuters Health by email. “Exposure depends upon how much time children have free computer access and also based upon their awareness of these games.”

“Children as old as 15 do not recognize that advergames are adverts,” Folkvord said. But parents can help train kids to recognize advertising and reduce their undesired effects, like overeating, he said.

“Parents should explain to their children why food companies advertise their products and brands, helping them to become more critical, and subsequently become less susceptible,” Folkvord said.

Even then, there is only so much that parents can do, Cohen said.

“Everyone is susceptible to advertising, even those who believe they aren’t,” she said. “Parents have a limited ability to protect their children, because they do not control advertising nor is it easy for them to limit exposure to advertising.”

Counter-advertising campaigns, like the ‘truth’ campaign against tobacco use, may be one way to inoculate kids against the persuasive power of food ads, she added. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Bayer wins Merck & Co's $14 billion consumer unit auction

Germany's Bayer AG has trumped rival bidders for Merck & Co Inc's consumer care business in a $14.2 billion deal, adding to a string of major cross-border deals in the healthcare industry.

"This acquisition marks a major milestone on our path towards global leadership in the attractive non-prescription medicines business," Bayer's chief executive Marijn Dekkers said in a statement on Tuesday.

Merck said it expects after-tax proceeds of between $8 billion and $9 billion from the sale, which is expected to close in the second half of 2014.

The transaction, the largest in the German healthcare industry since Bayer bought rival Schering in 2006, will make Bayer the second biggest over-the-counter drugs maker after Johnson & Johnson, as it seeks to make better use of its distribution network and sales force.

"We can take these products and market them more forcefully than Merck has been able to do so far," Dekkers said in a conference call with analysts.

Bayer, the inventor of aspirin and maker of Bepanthen skin care products and Canesten antifungal creams, has repeatedly said it wants to overtake J&J in the rankings.

Drug makers have embarked on a major reshuffling of their business portfolios. Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) last month agreed to trade more than $20 billion worth of assets, while AstraZeneca is fighting off a $106 billion takeover approach from Pfizer.

Meanwhile companies including France's Sanofi, Merck & Co and Abbott are looking at selling off mature drugs that have lost patent protection.

OTC drugs units carry far lower margins than prescription drugs businesses but many drug majors regard them as attractive complements due to the stable stream of cash they can generate.

They akso require less spending on research and development and can be less exposed to the loss of patent protection where consumers remain loyal to a brand even when cheap copies become available.

But Reckitt Benckiser Group, one of the final contenders in Merck's auction, said on April 30 it was no longer in active talks to buy the Merck business, leaving Bayer in pole position.

Bayer also edged out other rival bidders, including Procter & Gamble Co, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis and Sanofi , people familiar with the matter have said.

J&J commands about 4 percent of the consumer health market - worth nearly $200 billion at the retail level.

Merck & Co has around 1 percent with brands including Dr Scholl foot care, Coppertone sunscreen and Claritin allergy medicine.

The fragmented OTC industry is consolidating fast. Novartis and GSK will form a joint venture in consumer healthcare as part of their agreement last month.

That deal would have relegated Bayer from second to third place in the global OTC rankings but the Merck deal will put it back on the second rung.

Reuters first reported last month that Bayer and Reckitt had

emerged as frontrunners in the auction with each initially offering roughly $13.5 billion.

In addition, Bayer agreed to sell to Merck some rights to its Adempas drug against high blood pressure in the lung and other experimental cardiovascular drugs, saying it needed a marketing partner.

As part of that alliance, Merck will pay up to $2.1 billion, including $1.1 billion in milestone payments contingent on development achievements.

Bayer said it plans to finance the OTC acquisition with a bridge loan facility provided by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas and Mizuho, which will be syndicated to a larger group of banks.

It added no asset sales were needed to preserve its credit rating of "A-".  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Apple on medical tech hiring spree, a possible hint of iWatch plans

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc is building a team of senior medical technology executives, raising hackles in the biotechnology community and offering a hint of what the iPhone maker may be planning for its widely expected iWatch and other wearable technology.

Over the past year, Apple has snapped up at least half a dozen prominent experts in biomedicine, according to LinkedIn profile changes. One prominent researcher moved two weeks ago, and Apple is recruiting other medical professionals and hardware experts, although the number of hires is not clear, said two people familiar with the hiring, who declined to be named.

Much of the hiring is in sensor technology, an area Chief Executive Tim Cook singled out last year as primed "to explode." Industry insiders say the moves telegraph a vision of monitoring everything from blood-sugar levels to nutrition, beyond the fitness-oriented devices now on the market.

"This is a very specific play in the bio-sensing space," said Malay Gandhi, chief strategy officer at Rock Health, a San Francisco venture capital firm that has backed prominent wearable-tech startups, such as Augmedix and Spire. He was aware of several of the moves.

Apple is under pressure to deliver on Cook's promise of new product categories this year. The company has not introduced a new type of product since the iPad in 2010, a fact that weighs on investors' minds: its stock remains well off its highs despite a series of buybacks and dividend payouts.

Investor Carl Icahn tweeted his approval of Apple quarterly results and buyback plans on April 23. "Believe we'll also be happy when we see new products," he added.

Apple has registered the trademark "iWatch" in Japan. Several Apple patents point to wrist-worn devices, and in February, Apple filed a patent for a smart earbud patent that could track steps and detect gestures of the head.

One mobile health executive, who asked not to be named, told Reuters he recently sat down with an Apple executive from the iWatch team. He said the company has aspirations beyond wearable devices, and is considering a full health and fitness services platform modeled on its apps store.

Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling declined to comment on the company's health-tech plans or its recent hires.

The med-tech community is betting on Apple to develop the apps-store style platform so startups can develop their own software and hardware mobile medical applications.

"There's no doubt that Apple is sniffing around this area," said Ted Driscoll, a Silicon Valley-based partner at Claremont Creek Ventures, which specializes in digital health and medical devices. He said Apple seemed primarily focused on recruiting engineers with experience in "monitoring the body's perimeters."

Apple has poached biomedical engineers from companies including Vital Connect, Masimo Corp, Sano Intelligence and O2 MedTech.

Masimo is best known for its pulse oximetry device, which non-invasively measures patients' oxygen saturation, an indicator of respiratory function. Vital Connect focuses on tracking vitals like heart rate and body temperature. O2 Med Tech also is experimenting with biosensors and developing new devices.

A LinkedIn search shows Masimo chief medical officer Michael O'Reilly; Cercacor chief technology officer Marcelo Lamego; and Vital Connect's Ravi Narasimhan, vice president of biosensor technology, and Nima Ferdosi, an embedded sensors expert, are among those who have moved over to the Cupertino company.

One source said Alexander Chan, a former biomedical engineer at Vital Connect, has also defected. His LinkedIn profile states he now works at a "technology company."

Apple has also hired hardware experts Nancy Dougherty, formerly of wearable sensor company Sano Intelligence, and Todd Whitehurst, vice president of product at Senseonics Inc, a glucose monitoring product, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

And most recently, Divya Nag, founder of StartX Med, a Stanford-affiliated startup accelerator, joined an Apple research and development team two weeks ago to focus on an unspecified healthcare product, two people familiar with the matter say. Nag did not respond to requests for comment.

Attempts to contact the people on LinkedIn were not successful, except for Ferdosi, who declined to comment. Sano and Vital Connect declined to comment, Masimo and Cercacor confirmed the departures, Senseonics did not return an email requesting comment and O2 MedTech could not be reached.

"JUST BUYING PEOPLE"

Singularity University's Daniel Kraft, who chairs the FutureMed program that explores developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine, said the first version of the iWatch might track blood pressure and heart rate, among other vitals.

Eventually he expects Apple to release a device that could continuously monitor glucose levels without requiring a blood draw.

"Some of the talent (Apple recruited) has access to deep wells of trade secrets and information," said Joe Kiani, chief executive officer of medical device firm Masimo Corp, who lost his chief medical officer to Apple in mid-2013.

Kiani said that Apple was offering sizeable salaries with little indication of what researchers would be doing. "They are just buying people," he said. "I just hope Apple is not doing what we're doing."

FDA QUESTION

Apple may face regulatory hurdles if it aims for devices which do more than monitor fitness. In January, the New York Times reported that Apple executives, including O'Reilly, met with senior officials at the Food and Drug Administration, including Bakul Patel, who drafted the FDA's final guidance for mobile health.

In fall of 2013, the FDA announced that it would focus on regulating applications that attempt to turn a smartphone into a medical device, or that are intended to be used as an accessory to a regulated medical device. That might include apps and attachments to measure lung function or analyze urine, for instance, but not devices such as Nike's FuelBand, which tracks your steps but does not offer medical recommendations.

Apple also has witnessed rivals trying, and failing, to produce devices that reach a mass market. Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch was panned by critics and consumer reviews have been tepid at best.

A report from Endeavour Partners found that one-third of American consumers who have owned a wearable ditched it within six months. Key challenges include battery life, style, usefulness, and medical relevance, it said. And this month, Nike confirmed to Re/code that it had laid off some of its FuelBand team.

Meanwhile, Google is taking a different approach. In March, it pre-empted Apple by unveiling Android Wear, a version of its Android software tailored for wearable devices. Like Apple, it's shown interest in medical technology: it is exploring contact lenses that can monitor glucose levels in tears.  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Wall Street falls on Ukraine unrest, weak China data

NEW YORK - U.S. stocks fell on Monday on concern China's economy is continuing to lose momentum and the confrontation between Ukraine and pro-Russia separatists escalated.

Bank shares led the market lower with JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) down 2.3 percent to $54.33. The bank said late on Friday it expects second-quarter revenue from bond and equity trading to decline by about 20 percent from a year earlier.

Geopolitical events kept the market under pressure as Ukrainian forces were ambushed by separatists on Monday, triggering heavy fighting on the outskirts of the rebel stronghold of Slaviansk, a day after a Ukrainian police station in Odessa was stormed.

On the macro front, growth in the U.S. services sector in April rose at the fastest pace in eight months. The data slightly offset news that China's manufacturing sector contracted for a fourth consecutive month in April, adding to concerns over the health of the world's second-largest economy.

"Ukraine and China were likely contributors to the low open," said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments in Lisle, Illinois.

He said the better-than expected U.S. data "explains why we're off the early lows" and Ukraine's pull on equities could soften as the session advances.

"We could see more gains later on, after European markets close," Jankovskis said.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 77.16 points or 0.47 percent, to 16,435.73, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 5.55 points or 0.3 percent, to 1,875.59 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 7.536 points or 0.18 percent, to 4,116.362.

Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) added to the gloomy sentiment as the biggest U.S. drugmaker reported revenues well below analysts' expectations. Shares fell 2.6 percent to $29.95.

Target Corp (TGT.N) shares fell 3 percent to $60.15 after news that Chief Executive and Chairman Gregg Steinhafel will leave the company in the wake of a data breach late last year that hurt profits, shook customer confidence in the No. 3 U.S. retailer and prompted congressional hearings.

German aircraft seating maker Recaro said it was studying the possibility of buying assets from B/E Aerospace (BEAV.O) after the U.S. company announced a surprise review. B/E Aerospace shares jumped 10.9 percent to $98.69.

Occidental Petroleum (OXY.N), the fourth-largest U.S. oil and gas company, reported a better-than-expected profit for the third straight quarter, helped by higher prices for crude oil and natural gas in the United States. Shares rose 0.6 percent to $95.01.  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Google pays tribute to Audrey Hepburn with doodle

Google on Sunday paid tribute to British actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn, who would have marked her 85th birthday.

Visitors to Google's homepage (www.google.com) were greeted with a doodle of the legend, who died of a rare type of cancer on Jan. 20, 1993 at age 63.



"Soon after losing her we felt that, would she have had more time on this earth, she would have spent it continuing to speak on the behalf of the millions of children who don’t have a ‘fair start’ in life. This was the generation she worked for tirelessly for the last five years of her life as an ambassador for UNICEF," <a data-cke-saved-href=">Hepburn-Ferrer said in a blog post.

He said Hepburn "believed in education as way to change the course of history of those countries that are still developing."

Because of this, the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund and the Audrey Hepburn Society at the US Fund for UNICEF had been created to help the survival and development of children in need all over the world, he said.

Also he said Hepburn remains "a symbol of both inner and outer elegance for many, her last chapter as a humanitarian forever intertwined with her Hollywood and style legacies."

Meanwhile, Google doodler Jennifer Horn said it was a tricky task for her to produce the doodle of a "classically beautiful actress (who) dedicated her life to philanthropy."

"I wanted to show both sides of her life's work," she said.

She said she drew inspiration from Hepburn's her portrait in Yousuf Karsh's photograph from 1956, used with permission from the estate of Yousuf Karsh.


"The black and white image is graceful and understated yet immediately recognizable.  Taking cues from Audrey's movie posters and work with charities, I added a graphic splash of pink and figures of her dancing with and embracing children," she said. — Joel Locsin /LBG, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com