TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index hit a one-week high on Thursday as higher commodity prices boosted mining stocks and as Research In Motion Ltd shares jumped 11 percent on growing hopes for its new devices.
The market was also supported by data that showed China’s manufacturing sector was picking up steam, a signal of increased demand for Canadian resources.
Research In Motion was up 11.1 percent at C$ 11.36 after National Bank Financial raised its price target on the stock to $ 15, citing “positive sentiment building in the industry” ahead of the launch of its BlackBerry 10 devices.
The stock played the second-biggest role of any single company in leading the market higher.
“The dominant news today is the performance of RIM,” said John Ing, president of Maison Placements Canada.
“The company has had nothing but bad news over the past year, and the stock has been oversold,” he said.
At midmorning, the Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.GSPTSE> was up 63.94 points, or 0.53 percent, at 12,164. Earlier in the session, the index hit 12,171.20, its highest level since November 13.
The index’s materials sector, which includes mining stocks, rose 0.7 percent, extending gains made in the previous session on higher prices for gold and other commodities.
Miner Barrick Gold Corp was up 1.2 percent at C$ 35.04. Fertilizer producer Potash Corp gained 1.4 percent to C$ 38.77, while Silver Wheaton Corp was up 1.18 percent at C$ 36.74.
The financial sector rallied for the fifth day, with investors optimistic about quarterly results from Canadian banks, which start reporting next week. The group was up 0.4 percent. Royal Bank of Canada , the country’s biggest bank, was up 0.5 percent at C$ 59.90.
In China, data showed expansion in the manufacturing sector accelerated in November for the first time in 13 months, a sign that the pace of economic growth has revived after seven consecutive quarters of slowdown.
(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Peter Galloway)
LONDON (Reuters) – Roche has offered an olive branch to scientific critics in a bid to end a bitter row over blockbuster flu drug Tamiflu that has led to calls for a boycott of the Swiss drugmaker’s products.
Tamiflu has been approved by regulators worldwide and stockpiled by many governments in case of a global outbreak – but some researchers claim there is little evidence it works and have lobbied since 2009 for Roche to hand over all its data from clinical trials.
Sales of the drug hit close to $ 3 billion in 2009, due to the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, although they have since declined.
Roche’s pharmaceuticals head said on Thursday he had written to the Cochrane Collaboration, a non-profit group that reviews trial data to assess the value of drugs, offering to set up a multi-party advisory board to review all the Tamiflu data.
The board of experts from academia and private institutions, including Cochrane critics, would then agree on what analyses were useful in assessing Tamiflu’s public health role.
“We think that would be an appropriate, fair and transparent way of handling this debate,” Daniel O’Day said in an interview.
O’Day said complete transparency had to be balanced against the need to protect patient privacy, respect commercial sensitivity and ensure the scientific merit of any statistical analysis.
He stopped short of matching a promise from rival GlaxoSmithKline to make patient-level data from all company-sponsored clinical trials available on a routine basis.
Roche said it had not handed over the full collection of data requested by Cochrane because the group refused to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Cochrane, meanwhile, has accused Roche of stonewalling and urged a boycott of the company’s products until it publishes the missing data. Its campaign to force Roche’s hand has been backed by the respected British Medical Journal.
EU AGENCY PROMISES OPENNESS
The new attempt by Roche to break the deadlock comes as regulators and healthcare experts meet in London to discuss ways to increase transparency over clinical trials.
As Reuters reported in July, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) aims to open its data vaults to systematic scrutiny, after a ruling by the European Ombudsman that keeping data secret is not compatible with the public interest.
Guido Rasi, executive director of the EMA, told the London meeting on Thursday that the question now was “how” to publish clinical trials data not “if” it should be released.
The move puts the EMA ahead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in terms of data transparency.
The EMA stance is also forcing drug companies to review how far they can keep information they hold on medicines under wraps.
Most companies have committed in recent years to publishing results of clinical trials, either in journals or online, but that openness has not so far extended to the raw data that lies behind those trials.
Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline, however, broke ranks last month when it announced that patient-level data from its clinical trials of approved and failed drugs would be made available to other researchers.
Roche’s O’Day said his company responded to requests for such data on a case-by-case basis, provided scientists were prepared to sign confidentiality agreements if needed, but this did not mean all data should be released as a matter of course.
“To what level data will be shared proactively and constantly is something we need to discuss,” he said.
A Roche spokesman said Cochrane had acknowledged receipt of its proposal for a Tamiflu advisory board but had not given any immediate response.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Erica Billingham)
David Cameron, UK PM: “These are very important negotiations”
European Union leaders have begun talks on the bloc’s seven-year budget, with many urging cuts in line with the savings they are making nationally.
The UK said the latest EU proposals were “a step in the right direction” but “did not go far enough” and more must be done to cut spending.
Poland and its ex-communist neighbours want current spending maintained or raised. They rely heavily on EU cash.
The bargaining in Brussels will continue on Friday, or even longer.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron spent about half an hour talking to the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso.
A Downing Street statement after the meeting said Mr Cameron had stressed the importance of the UK keeping its budget rebate, worth 3.56bn euros (£2.8bn; $ 1.3bn) in 2011. The statement called the rebate “fully justified”. The Commission and some EU governments want the rebate scrapped.
The UK statement said “it was clear that there was a long way to go before we had a deal that reflected the difficult decisions being taken by member states”.
Contrasting visions
The EU Commission, which drafts EU laws, has called for an increase of 4.8% compared with the 2007-2013 budget.
Continue reading the main story
The French have threatened to use their veto if farming subsidies are reduced. Some other countries like Denmark are fighting for a rebate of their own. So every step towards the British position creates problems elsewhere.
The Germans are not far from the Van Rompuy proposal and are prepared to compromise. They are protective of their neighbour Poland and do not want to see an important ally losing out.
But, like the British, they want to see a cut in administrative costs and want to see the budget re-balanced towards projects that enhance growth and innovation with less money for farm subsidies.
If a deal is done by Friday, when the summit is due to end, it will be a major achievement. The expectation is for the meeting to run into Saturday or to collapse.
But the UK and some other net contributors to the budget say cuts have to be made.
Negotiations are focusing on a draft budget – officially called the 2014-2020 Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) – presented by Mr Van Rompuy.
He has made cuts to the Commission’s original plan, and proposed a budget worth 973bn euros (£782.5bn; $ 1,245bn).
France objects to the proposed cuts in agriculture, while countries in Central and Eastern Europe oppose cuts to cohesion spending – that is, EU money that helps to improve infrastructure in poorer regions.
They are the biggest budget items. The Van Rompuy plan envisages 309.5bn euros for cohesion (32% of total spending) and 364.5bn euros for agriculture (37.5%).
The EU budget is a small fraction of what the 27 member states’ governments spend in total.
‘Quite wrong’
German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who wants to restrain spending – says another summit may be necessary early next year if no deal can be reached in Brussels now.
In a speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday, EU Commission President Barroso complained, “No one is discussing the quality of investments, it’s all cut, cut, cut.”
Thursday’s business was beginning with short, individual meetings between national leaders and Mr Van Rompuy and Mr Barroso.
Only in the evening will they assemble for talks as a group.
Arriving in Brussels, Mr Cameron said: “These are very important negotiations.
Continue reading the main story
A deal after intense negotiations which may continue into the weekend
Failure to agree and a follow-up budget summit
If no agreement is reached by the end of 2013, the 2013 budget ceilings will be rolled over into 2014 with a 2% inflation adjustment, amid uncertainty over long-term EU projects
“Clearly at a time when we are making difficult decisions at home over public spending it would be quite wrong, it is quite wrong, for there to be proposals for this increased extra spending in the EU.”
However, Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo argued the EU needed greater spending, not less.
“We can’t have a European Union which demands, which imposes, and a European Union which doesn’t have the means to implement its policies,” he said on Thursday.
“For me, for Belgium, Europe is more solidarity and prosperity for all Europeans… I hope that other countries such as Italy and France will support us for the ambitious budget.”
Hurdles
Mr Cameron has warned he may use his veto if other EU countries call for any rise in EU spending. The Netherlands and Sweden back his call for a freeze in spending, allowing for inflation.
Any of the 27 countries can veto a deal, and the European Parliament will also have to vote on the MFF even if a deal is reached.
Failure to agree on the budget would mean rolling over the 2013 budget into 2014 on a month-by-month basis, putting some long-term projects at risk.
If that were to happen it could leave Mr Cameron in a worse position, because the 2013 budget is bigger than the preceding years of the 2007-2013 MFF.
So the UK government could end up with an EU budget higher than what it will accept now.
The Commission says the EU budget accounts for less than 2% of public spending EU-wide and that for every euro spent by the EU the national governments collectively spend 50 euros.
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Tim Lane repeated on Wednesday the central bank‘s message that interest rate increases will likely be needed, but only over time.
The “over time” phrase was introduced in the bank’s key guidance in its rate statement on October 23 as a way of signaling that while the next rate move is likely to be up, such a move was less imminent than it had been.
“Over time, some gradual withdrawal of monetary policy stimulus will likely be required, consistent with achieving the inflation-control target,” Lane said, according to a prepared presentation he was giving on Wednesday in Moncton, New Brunswick.
Another part of the presentation, which was posted on the central bank’s website, noted: “The Canadian economy continues to operate with a small amount of excess supply.”
The Bank of Canada is alone in the Group of Seven leading industrialized countries in signaling an intention to raise rates despite expectations of modest and unbalanced global growth.
Lane forecast “very robust growth” in emerging markets, stagnation in Europe and significant dampening of U.S. growth due to fiscal consolidation. He said Canada‘s real gross domestic product was still expected to grow at a moderate pace.
(Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; and Peter Galloway)
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook is proposing to end its practice of letting users vote on changes to its privacy policies. The company says it will continue to let users comment on proposed updates.
The world’s biggest social media company plans to announce Wednesday that its voting mechanism, which is triggered only if enough people comment on proposed changes, has become a system that emphasizes the quantity of responses over the quality of discussion.
Facebook began letting users vote on privacy changes in 2009. Since then, it has gone public and its user base has ballooned from around 200 million to more than 1 billion. As part of the 2009 policy, users’ votes only count if more than 30 percent of all Facebook’s active users partake.
Older patients with positive attitudes on aging may be more likely to fully recover from severe disability compared with those who can’t see the bright side of life, a new study found.
A positive stereotype about aging was associated with a 44 percent greater likelihood of recovery from severe disability versus negative stereotypes, according to study author Becca Levy from the Yale School of Public Health and colleagues.
Holding positive stereotypes in older age was also significantly associated with a slower rate of decline in activities of daily living, the researchers wrote in a letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association online.
“Further research is needed to determine whether interventions to promote positive age stereotypes could extend independent living in later life,” the authors noted.
Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.
The researchers sampled patients through the Precipitating Events Project study and included 598 mostly female patients with an average age of 79, who belonged to a Connecticut health plan. All participants lived in a community, were nondisabled, and experienced at least 1 month of disability from active daily life during the follow-up period.
Can A Positive Outlook Keep Your Heart Healthy? Watch Video
The participants were interviewed monthly for up to 129 months and filled out home-based assessments every 18 months over 10 years.
The researchers established age stereotypes by asking participants for five terms or phrases they associated with older individuals and coding those descriptors on a five-point scale, with 1 being most negative (such as decrepit) and 5 being most positive (such as spry). The participants scored a mean 2.12 on this scale.
Participants’ severity of disability was based on the number of activities of daily living compromised by disability, including bathing, dressing, transferring, and walking. Three or four compromised activities were considered severely disabled; mild to severe disability required assistance with one to two activities, and mild to no disability required no assistance with activities of daily life.
The researchers grouped patients on whether they held positive or negative age stereotypes and compared rates of recovery from severe or mild injury to no or mild disability. Patients between groups were well-matched for age, sex, nonwhite ethnicity, frailty, education, chronic conditions, mental status, depression, and whether or not they lived alone. The nature of the disabling events was not described.
Patients were significantly more likely to recover from any state of injury to either no or mild disability if they fit positive age stereotypes, including from severe disability to no disability, severe disability to mild disabilit and mild disability to no disability.
The researchers also noted that the positive age-stereotyped patients “showed an advantage in the absolute risk increase percentages” in likelihood of recovery, in addition to “a significantly slower rate of [activities of daily life] decline.”
Study limitations included recruitment from a single community and an undersampling of black patients.
The government borrowed much more than expected in October, reducing the chances that the UK will hit its deficit reduction target in 2012-13.
UK public sector net borrowing, excluding financial interventions, hit £8.6bn in October, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
That marked a sharp rise from the £5.9bn borrowed in October 2011.
This is the last set of borrowing figures before the chancellor’s Autumn Statement on 5 December.
The headline figure was worse than expected – analysts had forecast borrowing of £6bn.
Corporation tax receipts fell nearly 10% in October, a month when there is usually a heavy inflow to boost the public coffers.
A rise in day-to-day departmental spending also contributed to the higher borrowing.
For the seven months of the financial year so far, borrowing has reached £73.3bn, excluding the one-off effects from the transfer of Royal Mail pension assets.
That is £5bn higher than the same time last year.
A spokesperson for the Treasury said: “The economy is healing, but it still faces many challenges.
“These numbers illustrate that, but also show the government’s plans to bring spending under control are on track for the year.”
But Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, said the chancellor was borrowing billions more to pay for the cost of his economic failure.
“Having failed on jobs and growth, the government is now failing on the deficit too,” she said.
‘Wrong direction’ Continue reading the main story
AAA-rating
The best credit rating that can be given to a borrower’s debts, indicating that the risk of borrowing defaulting is minuscule.
Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said the low tax receipts reflected the disappointing performance of the economy, which is experiencing weak growth and weak consumer spending.
He told the BBC that he could see no chance of the government now hitting its deficit target of £120bn for 2012-13. Current projections suggest this year’s deficit would come in closer to £130bn.
“So it’s moving totally in the wrong direction,” he said.
“The longer-term prospects are looking much more disappointing than the Office for Budget Responsibility and the government were hoping when they first set these targets out back in March.”
He added that Chancellor George Osborne was likely to announce increases in taxes, further cuts in spending, or a combination of the two, when he delivers his Autumn Statement.
Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at Markit
However, analysts at Credit Suisse said the figures were disappointing but not disastrous.
“To some extent, this poor reading was mitigated by improvements in last month’s figure, which was around £0.8bn lower (less borrowing) than previously thought.
“In addition, the good news is that the poor figure appears to have been driven by expenditure rather than receipts data. This suggests that the weakness in the numbers may not be due to weaker GDP performance feeding into weaker tax receipts.”
They also pointed out that, overall, central government receipts were up 1.8% on the year to October, while expenditure was up 7.4%.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece has reacted with dismay to the European Union‘s failure to agree to release vital rescue loan funds for the debt-ridden country, with the prime minister warning it was not just Greece’s future that hangs in the balance.
The delay prolongs uncertainty over the future of Greece, which faces a messy default that would threaten the entire euro currency used by 17 EU nations.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras stressed that Greece has done what its creditors from the EU and International Monetary Fund required. “Our partners, along with the IMF, also must do what they have committed to doing,” he said.
He said that “it is not just the future of our country, but the stability of the entire eurozone” that depend on the success of negotiations in coming days.
(Reuters) – Interpublic Group of Cos said it sold its remaining investment in Facebook Inc for $ 95 million in cash.
Interpublic said it expects to record a pre-tax gain of $ 94 million. It had recorded a pre-tax gain of $ 132.2 million for the third quarter of last year from the sale of half of its 0.4 percent stake in Facebook.
Interpublic paid less than $ 5 million for the stake in 2006.
Shares of Facebook, which debuted with a market value of more than $ 100 billion in May, have lost nearly half their value since then on concerns about money-making prospects.
“We decided to sell our remaining shares in Facebook as our investment was no longer strategic in nature,” Chief Executive Michael Roth said in a statement.
Interpublic also authorized an increase in its existing share repurchase program to $ 400 million from $ 300 million. The company repurchased shares worth $ 151 million, as of September 30.
Shares of the company were up 1 percent at $ 10 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
Facebook shares were marginally up at $ 23.00 on the Nasdaq.
(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)
FIRST PERSON | New research shows that Medicare patients with breast cancer wait as long as 32 days before surgery. This wait is typical in the United States. It is not only older women that have a long wait. I first found a lump in my breast in September 2011. My first surgery was not until November 2011. The wait was not on my end — in northwest Arkansas, it takes at least three weeks to get an appointment with anyone.
The study
MedicalXpress reports that the Fox Chase Cancer Center published its findings in the Nov. 19, 2012 edition of The Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study evaluated data from over 72,000 Medicare patients with non-metastatic breast cancer and found that in 2005, at least half of the breast cancer patients waited a minimum of 32 days before having surgery. This data shows a marked increase from 21 days back in 1992.
Breast cancer diagnosis
It is interesting that they looked only at non-metastatic breast cancer. When you first go to see your doctor about a breast problem, like a lump, you have no idea if it is even cancer, much less if it has spread to other parts of the body. Diagnostic mammography, breast MRIs, and ultrasound cannot tell you if the area of concern is cancer. Only surgery can determine breast cancer — that means either a needle biopsy or other invasive procedures.
The waiting can kill you
Medicare had nothing to do with my time delays, as I have private insurance. I have non-metastatic breast cancer. It took 3 weeks to see my OBGYN, then it was another week before I had the imaging done. From there, it took three weeks to schedule a wire-guided surgical biopsy. I had the biopsy in mid-November 2011. It was then I received a cancer diagnosis and was told that it was a high-grade tumor — meaning it was very aggressive. At the same time of my diagnosis, my surgeon ordered more tests. We waited until late December 2011 to discuss a mastectomy. The wait was due to him wanting to see the results of genetic testing. Personally, I was uncomfortable with the long wait time.
Long waits are not just for Medicare recipients and for people in large metropolitan areas. Here in rural Arkansas, wait times are long because there is a shortage of physicians. The area is growing but the medical community is not keeping up with the growth. Patients like me who have serious medical conditions are traveling to other areas in order to get better care.
Lynda Altman was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2011. She writes a series for Yahoo! Shine called “My Battle With Breast Cancer.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks inched higher on Tuesday, reversing earlier declines after bargain hunters stepped in to buy beaten-down shares and offset the impact of Hewlett-Packard‘s accounting charge and France losing its triple-A credit rating.
The S&P 500 briefly dipped below its 200-day moving average at 1,382, but recovered to trade slightly above the key technical level, which is seen as a support mark.
Stocks rallied for the last two days on optimism that Washington politicians could agree on a deal to avoid the U.S. “fiscal cliff.” But the gains followed two weeks of sharp losses.
“We got into a very oversold condition on just about any indicator and then you had intraday reversals in just about all the indexes,” said Jeffrey Saut, Raymond James Financial‘s chief investment strategist in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Shares of McDonald’s shot up 1.3 percent to $ 86.11, leading the Dow industrials’ slim advance.
Moody’s Investors Service cut France’s sovereign rating by one notch to Aa1 after the market’s close on Monday, citing an uncertain fiscal outlook as a result of the weakening economy.
While the move was expected after Standard & Poor’s made a similar downgrade in January, it was a reminder of the headwinds buffeting the global economy and the danger of contagion by the euro zone’s debt crisis.
Hewlett-Packard Co shares tumbled 10.5 percent to a 10-year low at $ 11.91 as the computer and printer maker swung to a fourth-quarter loss. The company said it took an $ 8.8 billion charge related to its acquisition of software firm Autonomy, citing “serious accounting improprieties.
A bright spot for the economy came in data showing U.S. housing starts rose to their highest rate in more than four years in October, suggesting the housing market’s recovery was gathering momentum. The PHLX housing sector index <.HGX> jumped 2.4 percent, led by PulteGroup Inc , up 4.8 percent at $ 16.67.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 10.34 points, or 0.08 percent, at 12,806.30. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.SPX> was up 2.17 points, or 0.16 percent, at 1,389.06. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> was up 3.41 points, or 0.12 percent, at 2,913.48.
The S&P 500 index had fallen 5.3 percent between election day two weeks ago and the start of the rebound as angst over a possible U.S. budget deal drove investors to sell stocks and limit the impact of expected tax increases on capital gains and dividends.
President Barack Obama and congressional leaders hope to start serious negotiations after the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” a series of mandatory tax hikes and spending cuts that would go into effect early next year – if a deal is not reached – and could push the U.S. economy back into recession.
(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak Editing by W Simon, Kenneth Barry and Jan Paschal)
TORONTO (Reuters) – Any fiscal problems that would significantly slow the U.S. economy would be of great concern to Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.
The United States needed a credible medium-term fiscal plan, Harper said at a business forum in Ottawa, adding that he was following the U.S. fiscal debate with “great interest.”
Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban has confirmed reports from last week, in a post on his personal blog today, that he has a serious beef with Facebook. But before getting into all the reasons he no longer loves the social network, he clarifies one small point: “First, I’m not recommending to any of my companies that we leave facebook,” he writes. Last week ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Lyons kind of made it seem like Cuban planned to pull out altogether because of the way Facebook’s algorithm has affected the way people see his brands’s posts. The algorithm, Edgerank, controls brand posts so that not all fans are forced to see each one in their news feeds. Because of this, he quoted Cuban saying “We are moving far more aggressively into Twitter and reducing any and all emphasis on Facebook.” And later he had him talking about all the reasons he finds it horrible for businesses. Like, mainly, that it’s too expensive, a point that GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram called naive. “Really? That surprises you? What else did you think Facebook was going to do when it gave you a giant social platform for nothing?” Cuban now explains that he isn’t bailing on Facebook, just de-emphasizing it in favor of other Internet places, like Tumblr and Twitter. But, that does not mean that he does not hate Facebook as much as everyone has been saying he hates Facebook. He does.
RELATED: Shafted Facebook Founder Is Living Like a Kardashian in Singapore
You can read the laundry list of reasons over at his personal blog, but some highlights include:
RELATED: Eduardo Saverin May Be Barred from Returning to the U.S. After Renouncing Citizenship
Its a time waster … FB doesn’t seem to want to accept that it’s best purpose in life is as a huge time suck.
IMHO, FB really risks screwing up something that is special in our lives as a time waster by thinking they have to make it more engaging and efficient.
So by default you are not going to use your newsfeed as a primary source of information. It’s more like the township newspaper
I also think that FB is making a big mistake by trying to play games with their original mission of connecting the world. FB is a fascinating destination that is an amazing alternative to boredom which excels in its SIMPLICITY. One of the threats in any business is that you outsmart yourself. FB has to be careful of just that.
Basically Mark Cuban thinks Facebook should stop trying to make money and stop trying to get too smart, which might work in the favor of Cuban who doesn’t want to spend too much money on something silly like social media. But,this doesn’t sound too appealing to Facebook, which as a public company needs to make money. Unless more join his cause, which could maybe happen. At least the Miami blog the 305 agrees with him. Anyone else?
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Skiing is a such a skill-based activity that if you don’t start learning until you are 20, it will take 20 years to learn.
But fitness experts say proper conditioning can make the difference between a fun weekend on the slopes and one waylaid by injury.
“Skiing first is technique,” said Robert Forster, a Los Angeles-based physical therapist and founder of Phase IV Scientific Health and Performance Center. “If your quads (muscles) are just burning up on the runs, then you’re not skiing right. That’s a good sign that you might need a lesson.”
To minimize fatigue and risk of injury, Forster, physical therapist to 42 Olympic medalists, suggests getting in ski-shape before hitting the slopes.
“All fitness begins with an aerobic base,” he said. “So six weeks before, start training with an elliptical trainer or stationary bike, or running or walking. Build up to 20 to 30 minutes three times a week.”
Aerobic training also strengthens muscles, Forster said, so any subsequent agility drills, such as running sideways or skipping, will be even more effective if you’ve established an aerobic base.
Stretch before skiing to protect against injury and enhance freedom of motion; stretch afterward to return the muscles to their normal length, said Forster.
He calls stretching the single most important thing people can do for body health maintenance.
“Connective tissue shortens with time,” he explained. “We stretch to maintain good alignment of the bones.”
If your skiing holiday lasts a week, limit your time on the slopes the first day, Forster suggests. And reconsider that dehydrating après-ski cocktail.
“We know that a glass of wine and a hot tub is not a good idea. Heat adds to inflammation. It will only increase swelling the next day,” he said.
Save that soak for the morning, and then not more than five minutes.
Ice down any sore spots or tight areas. “Ice is a great treatment for tightness,” he said.
Jessica Matthews, an exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise, suggests that even those already in good condition would benefit by integrating sports-specific pre-ski training into their workout.
“Prepare the body to move in short bursts,” said Matthews, who notes that skiing demands carving back and forth, rapid turns and sudden changes of direction.
She said it’s easy to set up fitness drills using plastic cones, which can be had at any sporting goods store.
“There’s great stuff you can do with cones,” she said. “Those newer to fitness can begin with stepovers, laterally, side to side. Those more seasoned can make them hops, or invent more intricate drills.”
For those who prefer to train in groups, the fitness company Equinox recently launched a class at its clubs called Core Values, which uses low parallel bars, called parallettes, and medicine balls to enhance mobility and stability skills.
“It’s geared to help sports people get in condition for their sport,” said Lisa Wheeler, who created the class to train across all ranges of motion.
“Even downhill, skiing is about rotation,” said Wheeler, an experienced skier. “Most people scoop right and left as they are going downhill.”
Falls account for 75 to 85 percent of all skiing injuries, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Most common is damage to the knee.
Forster said even though more runners than skiers are injured every year, ski injuries tend to be more serious.
“Skiing has much more traumatic injuries that can have long-lasting effects,” he explained.
The National Areas Association, the trade association for ski area owners and operators, said U.S. ski areas tallied an estimated 51 million skier and snowboarder visits during the 2011-2012 season.
Forster advises skiers to assess themselves and the slopes before diving down the mountain.
“Is there fresh snow? Heavy, wet snow?” he said. “Be aware of conditions. Fatigue is a big factor. If I had a dollar for every client who got hurt on the last run …”
The scenario is known as “California’s Katrina.” An earthquake or superstorm causes Gold Rush-era earthen levees to collapse. Saltwater from San Francisco Bay floods the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, displacing half a million lowland Californians, poisoning the water supply for as many as 28 million more who live in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Silicon Valley, and ruining farmland that produces 11 percent of the nation’s agricultural value. The eighth-largest economy in the world could be sunk for months, even years.
There are two competing proposals to avert all this. The first is to bypass the delta with tunnels carrying fresh water to Southern California. The second is to upgrade the existing levees. A bill that would have required an official cost-benefit analysis of these approaches got shot down in the state legislature. Civil engineers at University of California at Davis don’t think the levees can be earthquake-proofed. Delta landowners, fearful the levees will no longer be maintained if the tunnels were built, have refused surveyors access to their land.
In this fight, if someone doesn’t win, everyone will lose.
OTTAWA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Canadian government on Friday reiterated its intention to balance its budget by 2015, three days after projecting there would be deficits until 2016-17.
In separate appearances in Quebec City and New York, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.
“It remains the government’s plan, intention, to balance the budget prior to the next federal election. The recent economic and fiscal update by the minister indicates we are actually very close to that objective,” Harper told reporters in Quebec City. The next election is in October 2015.
Flaherty’s fall fiscal update on Tuesday had pushed back the target date for eliminating the deficit by a year, to 2016-17, citing a weak global economy.
But the minister said in a speech in New York that the government was on track to balance the budget in the next two to three years, barring major external events, and he later clarified that he intended a balanced budget by 2015.
“The prime minister’s always correct,” he chuckled.
He sought to explain the discrepancy by saying the fiscal update had built in a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion, meaning there was an underlying surplus of C$ 1.2 billion for 2015-16. He said the projection of a C$ 1.8 billion deficit amounted to about half a percent of the C$ 275 billion federal budget.
“There’s lots of water to go under the bridge between now and then,” he said.
The opposition New Democratic Party noted the discrepancy in a release headlined: “Stephen Harper makes stuff up about balancing the budget.”
It pointed out that balancing the budget by the next election was not the same as balancing it by 2016-17.
As it is, even the 2015-16 timetable is a year later than offered in the Conservative campaign for reelection in May 2011. They had promised a balanced budget by 2014-15, followed by major personal income tax relief before the 2015 election.
Flaherty’s timetable drew criticism this week from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which said the minister had become expert at kicking the can down the road.
The projections could be thrown out of whack if the United States goes off the fiscal cliff, a set of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that are to be triggered on January 2 if legislators and the White House cannot agree on a more nuanced budget deal.
Flaherty said U.S. failure to avert the fiscal cliff would cause a significant and immediate decline in Canada’s gross domestic product, and he would counter it.
Referring to a possible economic shock from Europe or the United States, he said: “If that were to happen and if the Canadian economy were to be pushed back into recession with the resulting danger for higher unemployment and the danger always of a prolonged recession, then we would act.”
He added: “We would not stand by and let that happen. The kinds of measure we can take: there are various tax measures we can take, there are measures with respect to stimulus we can take, these are things that we have done before and we can do again.”
On Tuesday, Flaherty spoke of having prepared various contingency plans.
(Additional reporting by Louse Egan; Editing by David Gregorio)
Amazon.com Inc. started shipping a large-screen version of its Kindle Fire tablet computer on Thursday, ahead of schedule. Here is a look at the new Fires announced in September:
— Kindle Fire, with 7-inch screen, 1024 by 600 pixels. $ 159, with 8 gigabytes of storage. Weighs 14.1 ounces. Battery life of 8.5 hours. Started shipping Sept. 14.
— Kindle Fire HD, with 7-inch screen, 1280 by 800 pixels. $ 199 with 16 GB of storage or $ 249 with 32 GB of storage. Weighs 13.9 ounces. Battery life of 11 hours. Started shipping Sept. 14.
— Kindle Fire HD 8.9″, with 8.9-inch screen, 1920 by 1200 pixels. $ 299 with 16 GB of storage or $ 369 with 32 GB of storage. Weighs 20 ounces. Battery life of 10 hours. Started shipping Thursday.
— Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless, with 8.9-inch screen, 1920 by 1200 pixels. $ 499 with 32 GB of storage or $ 599 with 64 GB of storage. Can connect to AT&T Inc.‘s 4G LTE wireless network. Weighs 20 ounces. Battery life of 10 hours. Will start shipping Tuesday.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The sun has set on the “Twilight” franchise with one last blockbuster opening for the supernatural romance.
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2″ sucked up $ 141.3 million domestically over opening weekend and $ 199.6 million more overseas for a worldwide debut of $ 340.9 million.
The finale ranks eighth on the list of all-time domestic debuts, and leaves “Twilight” with three of the top-10 openings, joining 2009′s “New Moon” (No. 7 with $ 142.8 million) and last year’s “Breaking Dawn — Part 1″ (No. 9 with $ 138.1 million).
Last May’s “The Avengers” is No. 1 with $ 207.4 million. “Batman” is the only other franchise with more than one top-10 opening: last July’s “The Dark Knight Rises” (No. 3 with $ 160.9 million) and 2008′s “The Dark Knight” (No. 4 with $ 158.4 million).
Jaguar Land Rover is to make vehicles in China for the first time after Beijing approved a £1bn joint venture.
The West Midlands-based luxury carmaker agreed a “milestone” deal with Chery Automobile and will build a plant near Shanghai, which is due to open in 2015.
JLR said any cars produced would be in addition to its existing output, and it had no intention of moving its manufacturing base out of Britain.
Sales of JLR models in China have risen by 80% so far this year.
The company, owned by India’s Tata Motors, began talks with Chery months ago, but had been awaiting approval.
A joint statement released by the Chinese and British companies said: “We are delighted to have reached this milestone, achieved thanks to the understanding and foresight of the Chinese authorities and we want to thank them for recognising the potential of our joint venture in the fast-growing Chinese market.
“Together, we will now begin working in close collaboration on our partnership plans to harness the capabilities of our respective companies, to produce relevant, advanced models for Chinese consumers.”
JLR has not said officially which model would be built at the factory, although the company has said in the past that is likely to be either the Land Rover Freelander or Evoque.
A research and development facility and engine production plant will also built as part of the venture, with the main manufacturing plant expected to be completed during 2014, with production starting the following year.
With China now a crucial market for JLR, building vehicles in the country means it can avoid import duties.
However, JLR says that being in China will enable it to build vehicles designed specifically for the Chinese market.
We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:
So, we’re not quite sure what kind of spirit moved artist Jason Mecier to create a Honey Boo Boo portrait from 25 pounds of trash. But it did. And we’re thankful (sort of?):
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And thank god for YouTube. Besides going to America’s shopping malls, how else would we find terrible parents and gullible children? And how else would we know that we were entertained by these fascinating creatures?
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Now that the Dark Knight trilogy is over, aren’t you in the mood for something lighter? Another prequel? How about a fan-made video (which we’re guessing took hours and hours and footage from the 90s and beyond) which imagines all Dark Knight‘s characters in high school?
OMGosh Melbourne Metro this is like the cutest video on earth! You guys are adorable, like we’re talking totes adorable squeeeee—Oh wait. We take that back. We take all of it back.
Weil spoke as part of the Tulsa Town Hall series of speakers.
The United States has an expensive health-care system that doesn’t produce good results, he said.
“Something is very wrong with this picture,” he said. “We’re spending more and more and we have less and less to show for it.”
Changes in diet can be an effective treatment for many conditions, but American physicians are functionally illiterate in nutrition, he said.
“The whole subject of nutrition is omitted in medical education,” he said.
There are many ways of managing diseases other than drugs, he said. Integrative medicine, which can include dietary supplements and practices like meditation, is the future of health care, he said.
The health system is resistant to change because of entrenched vested interests. That includes pharmaceutical companies that do direct-to-consumer advertising, which should be stopped, he said.
“As dysfunctional as our health-care system is at the moment – and it is very dysfunctional – it is generating rivers of money,” he said. “That money is going into very few pockets.”
Weil has developed an anti-inflammatory diet based on the Mediterranean diet but with Asian influences.
Inflammation is associated with some heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and some cancers, he said. And as a result, people should be eating real, unprocessed foods and whole grains. They should stay away from sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit juice, he said.
“The new research that’s being done on sugar is not very comforting,” he said.
The aging process can’t be avoided, but age-related diseases can be avoided by proper care, he said.
“The goal should be to live long and well with a big drop off at the end,” he said.
Weil is the director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine.
Tickets to the Tulsa Town Hall series are sold as a $ 75 subscription and cover five lectures. Tickets for individual lectures are not available.
To subscribe, visit tulsaworld.com/tulsatownhall, call 918-749-5965 or write to: Tulsa Town Hall, Box 52266, Tulsa, OK 74152.
Future speakers include journalist Ann Compton on Feb. 8; author James B. Stewart on April 5; historian and cinematographer Rex Ziak on May 10.
Original Print Headline: Speaker highlights nutrition
The UK government has repeated its threat to legislate if businesses do not voluntarily release data gathered on customers who ask to see it.
An initiative called Midata calls on firms to provide details to the public in a “machine-readable” format.
Ministers had warned in August they would introduce a new law if utilities, web firms and shops did not voluntarily comply with their request.
Consumer Affairs Minister Jo Swinson will provide more details on Monday.
Under the existing Data Protection Act consumers already have the power to make a “subject access request” to see the personal information companies and other organisations hold on them.
But doing this can incur a fee of up to £10 and not all data has to be handed over.
The government is hoping that the Midata scheme will make the process easier and help consumers make more informed decisions about issues such as which energy deal or mobile subscription would best match their habits.
“Many businesses reap huge commercial benefits from the information they gather from consumers’ daily spending patterns”, said Ms Swinson ahead of next week’s announcement.
“Why shouldn’t consumers also benefit from this by having access to their own data to enable them to make better choices?”
Security concerns
Consumer advocacy group Which? believes the information transparency encouraged by the Midata scheme could boost competition to the benefit of consumers.
Executive director Richard Lloyd said: “Giving consumers more power with their personal data will help them make better use of their money, and that’s not only good for customer-friendly businesses, but good for growth in the economy.”
But several details of the scheme still need to be fleshed out.
The government talks of third-party developers making apps that could access the data on consumers’ behalf, but has not specified which formats companies need to provide the information in to ensure the software could make like-for-like comparisons.
Consumer Focus has also cautioned that collating data in this way could pose a security risk, telling the Financial Times it could open a new avenue for personal information to be leaked or become the subject of a hack attack.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills says 20 businesses in the energy, finance and telecoms sectors have already signed up to the voluntary scheme.
But it is holding out the threat of legislation should insufficient numbers of companies comply.
If secondary legislation is needed, the department suggested new powers could come into force by early 2014.
TORONTO (Reuters) – Sales of existing homes in Canada fell in October from September and year-over-year sales were down as well, the Canadian Real Estate Association said on Thursday in the latest signal that the housing market is slowing.
The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said sales were down 0.1 percent in October from September. Actual sales for October, not seasonally adjusted, were down 0.8 percent from a year earlier.
The housing market, which roared higher in 2011 and the first half of 2012, started to slow after the government tightened rules on mortgage lending in July in a bid to cool the market and prevent home buyers from taking on too much debt.
“Housing market trends in Canada for 2012 can be characterized as before and after regulatory changes,” TD Economics senior economist Sonya Gulati said in a research note.
“In the first half of the year, sales and price gains were modest, but positive. More stringent mortgage rules and tighter mortgage underwriting rules have ‘purposely’ knocked the wind out of the housing market sails,” she said.
The home sales data showed diverging paths in Canadian housing depending on location. In Toronto and Vancouver, where sales and price gains were red hot in 2011 and early in 2012, the market has been cooling. But markets in the resource-rich western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been gaining strength.
“Opinions differ about how sharply sales have slowed depending on the local housing market,” Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist, said in a statement.
Led by Calgary, sales in October were up from a year earlier in almost two-thirds of local markets. Sales remained blow year-earlier levels in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, CREA said.
“These results suggest that the Canadian housing market overall has returned to a more sustainable pace,” Klump said.
CREA’s Home Price Index rose 3.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month in which gains in prices slowed, and the slowest rate of increase since May 2011.
While tighter mortgage rules have worked to slow the market, TD’s Gulati said the big question is what will happen when that temporary cooling effect wears off in early 2013.
“What happens thereafter is less certain. The low interest rate environment could pull homeowners back onto the market, causing home prices to once again trek upwards. Alternatively, an absence of pent-up demand may leave the market in a bit of a lull until interest rate hikes resume in late 2013,” she wrote.
“Under either scenario, it is safe to say that there is a low probability of out-sized home price gains over the near-term.”
A total of 402,322 homes traded hands via Canadian MLS systems over the first 10 months of 2012, up 0.8 percent from the same period last year and 0.4 percent below the 10-year average for the period, the data showed.
The number of newly listed homes fell 3.8 percent in October following a jump in September. Monthly declines were reported in almost two-thirds of local markets, with Toronto and Vancouver exerting a large influence on the national trend.
Nationally, there were 6.5 months of inventory at the end of October, little changed from the reading of 6.4 months at the end of September.
