Wall Street flat, Apple helps techs to rise

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks drifted near the unchanged mark on Thursday as investors postponed big bets before the November employment report on Friday, but technology stocks rose on gains in Apple and Broadcom.

Monthly payroll numbers, to be released by the Labor Department, are expected to show a sharp slowdown in jobs growth because of superstorm Sandy.

Broadcom boosted other semiconductor companies a day after it forecast fourth-quarter revenue at the high end of its target range due to slightly better-than-expected sales in its mobile business. Shares rose 1.9 percent to $32.97.

The S&P technology index <.gspt> was the best performing of the 10 major S&P sectors, gaining 0.36 percent. The PHLX semiconductor index <.sox> rose 0.5 percent.

Apple was up 1.4 percent after losing as much as 3.7 percent at the open. The stock suffered its biggest one-day drop in four years on Wednesday due to concerns about higher capital gains taxes in 2013 and the company's market share in the tablet market.

Apple Inc's rank in China's smartphone market fell to No. 6 in the third quarter as it faces tougher competition from Chinese brands, research firm IDC said.

Broader moves were limited, however, as traders focused on the "fiscal cliff" debate. About three weeks remain before a series of tax increases and spending cuts would begin that could slow growth. Legislators are trying to come up with a deal to avoid some of the negative effects on the economy while still reducing the U.S. budget deficit.

While Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives insist that raising tax rates on the rich is not negotiable, some GOP lawmakers now see it as inevitable to avoid the fiscal cliff.

"As we get close to the last two weeks, things will pick up," said Gordon Charlop, managing director at Rosenblatt Securities in New York. Congress and the White House will have final discussions near the end of the year about how to handle the "fiscal cliff," he said.

Without action from Congress, tax cuts on capital gains and dividends will expire at the end of 2012, which has contributed to selling certain stocks that have done extremely well in recent years, such as Apple.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 7.93 points, or 0.06 percent, at 13,026.56. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 0.14 point, or 0.01 percent, at 1,409.14. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 8.31 points, or 0.28 percent, at 2,982.00.

Sirius XM Radio shares rose 1.4 percent to $2.81 after its board approved a $2 billion stock repurchase and declared a special dividend, giving a big payout to its largest shareholder, Liberty Media , which rose 2.3 percent to $108.87.

Garmin shares rose 4.5 percent to $41.49 after Standard & Poor's said it would add the navigation device maker to the S&P 500 index. Garmin will replace R.R. Donnelley & Sons after the close of trading on December 11.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Serbian Ambassador to NATO Is Said to Commit Suicide

PARIS — The Serbian ambassador to NATO, Branislav Milinkovic, jumped to his death from a multistory parking garage on Tuesday afternoon at the Brussels airport, diplomats said Wednesday.

Reuters

Branislav Milinkovic, Serbia's ambassador to NATO, sits at the alliance headquarters in Brussels Dec. 14, 2006.

Mr. Milinkovic, 52, a respected diplomat, lawyer and intellectual appointed to the ambassadorship in 2009, was at the airport to meet a visiting Serbian delegation, officials said. B92, an independent broadcaster in Belgrade, Serbia, reported that the country’s assistant foreign minister, Zoran Vujic, was with Mr. Milinkovic at the time and witnessed his death.

Serbian officials said that the motive was not known, and that Mr. Milinkovic gave no sign of what he intended in the moments before he leapt to his death.

Diplomats attending a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels said they were shocked by the news. Serbia is not a member of the military alliance, but it belongs to a group of countries that cooperates with NATO on military and security issues.

Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for the alliance, said by telephone from Brussels that Mr. Milinkovic was a jovial and engaging man known for his gentle manner, and that he was widely liked and admired at NATO headquarters, where he had been recently seen playing tennis. He had a wife, who was in Dublin at the time of his death, and a son, B92 said.

When Serbia, the largest state to emerge from the disintegration of Yugoslavia, was ruled by the strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s, NATO conducted a bombing campaign to force Mr. Milosevic to withdraw Serbian forces from the breakaway region of Kosovo. Mr. Milinkovic was an opposition activist during Mr. Milosevic’s rule, and he became a diplomat after his overthrow in 2000, helping to rebuild friendly ties with Western Europe.

“Everyone is totally shocked to hear what happened,” Ms. Lungescu said. “He was a totally open and lovely man and made an important contribution toward rapprochement between Serbia and NATO, making great efforts to bridge over a difficult history and to move forward rather than backward.”

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Facebook’s Instagram cuts support for key Twitter integration

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service, Instagram, removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram’s Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

Instagram’s move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, due to Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided that its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users. Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with their friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman Jack Dorsey was an investor in Instagram and hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tabled a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he said one of Instagram’s strengths was its inter-connectivity with other social networks and pledged to continue running it as an independent service.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

Systrom noted that Instagram users will be able to “continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.”

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Teen Arrested in Bank Robbery Had Bragged of Heist on YouTube

By Johnny Dodd

12/05/2012 at 03:35 PM EST

There are criminal masterminds, and then there's Hannah Sabata.

The 19-year-old high school dropout allegedly knocked off a bank in Nebraska, then posted a YouTube video bragging about it.

"Kind of a strange deal isn't it?" York County Sherriff Dale Radcliff tells PEOPLE.

In her eight-minute video, Sabata doesn't utter a word. Instead, she scribbles handwritten signs detailing her alleged armed robbery of the Cornerstone Bank in Waco, Neb., on Nov. 28, using "a gun, a pillow case, and a note."

During the course of her video, she also describes how she stole a "shiny new" Pontiac Grand Am, which she used as a getaway car after making off with $6,256 in cash.

"I told my mom today was the best day of my life," she writes in the video, while waving hundred-dollar bills in front of the camera. "She just thinks I met a new boy . . . I'm going for a shopping spree. Bite me."

According to police, Sabata is wearing the same clothes she wore when she allegedly handed bank tellers a slip of paper that read: "You are being robbed! NO ALARMS OR LOCKS OR PHONES or INK BAGS! I have a loaded gun. You have 2 minutes."

Sherriff Radcliff notes that law enforcement officials didn't even know about Sabata's video until after her arrest on Nov. 29.

Photographs of the robber, captured by the bank's security cameras, were quickly distributed throughout the community.

"We had lots of leads, but when her ex-husband notified us and said 'That's my ex-wife,' we got an arrest warrant for her," he said.

Sabata is currently being held in a York County jail on $300,000 bond. According to Radcliff, she faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted of armed robbery and auto theft.

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Longer tamoxifen use cuts breast cancer deaths

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.

In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.

Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, "this will be a convincer that they should continue," said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.

"The result of this trial will have a major, immediate impact on premenopausal women," Ravdin said.

About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.

Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.

But the newer drugs don't work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.

The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.

Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.

Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.

Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.

"Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially," Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.

The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.

The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.

Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.

"For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor," said that study's leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.

Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.

The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Dow, S&P rebound on banks, but Nasdaq sours with Apple

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks mostly rose on Wednesday, boosted by a rally in bank shares, though a steep drop in Apple limited the advance and kept the Nasdaq in negative territory.

Trading was volatile, with the S&P 500 dropping into negative territory at one point and the Nasdaq falling more than 1 percent before rebounding. The Dow, which doesn't contain Apple Inc as a component, climbed 1 percent by midday.

Apple, the largest U.S. company by market capitalization and a big weight in both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, fell 4.7 percent to $548.88. Apple is down more than 22 percent from an all-time high reached in late September.

The S&P 500 reversed course after briefly falling below the 1,400 level, seen as a key support point over the past two weeks.

"There's still psychological interest in buying the market," said John Brady, managing director at R.J. O'Brien & Associates in Chicago. At the 1,400 level, "we find again ‘dip buyers' there. They strongly believe a deal (on the fiscal cliff) is going to get done."

For several weeks, investors have reacted quickly to whiffs of sentiment from Washington in headlines about negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders over a deal on how to avoid the "fiscal cliff" - a series of mandatory spending cuts and tax increases effective in early January that could push the U.S. economy into recession next year.

President Barack Obama told the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executives, on Wednesday that a fiscal cliff deal was possible "in about a week" if Republicans acknowledged the need to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 115.44 points, or 0.89 percent, at 13,067.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 5.71 points, or 0.41 percent, at 1,412.76. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 13.75 points, or 0.46 percent, at 2,982.94.

Apple's slide weighed heavily on the Nasdaq. Market participants cited a host of reasons for the drop in the iPad maker's stock, including a consultant's report about the company losing share in the tablet market and reports that margin requirements had been raised by at least one clearing firm.

Apple has "to hit another home run to get $700 again," said Brian Battle, director of trading at Performance Trust Capital Partners in Chicago. "They need another new product that hits it out of the park. Without that, they could get a gradual grind-down in confidence ... this is not going to be a short-term trend."

On the upside, The Travelers Cos Inc rose 5.1 percent to $74.111 and ranked as the Dow's top gainer after the property and casualty insurance company said its preliminary estimate of net losses from Superstorm Sandy was about $650 million after tax.

Banks were also strong, with the S&P financial sector index <.gspf> climbing 1.5 percent. The rally was led by a 7.3 percent climb in Citigroup to $36.79 after the company said it would cut 4 percent of its workforce in a cost-cutting move. The KBW Bank Index <.bkx> rose 2 percent.

Bank of America shares shot up 6.1 percent to $10.51, just a touch off a new 52-week high at $10.52.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc fell 15.2 percent to $32.47 as the S&P 500's biggest percentage decliner. The company said it was acquiring Plains Exploration & Production Co and McMoRan Exploration Co in two separate deals for $9 billion in cash and stock in a major expansion into energy.

McMoRan Exploration soared 83.6 percent to $15.53 and Plains Exploration & Production surged 24.4 percent to $44.83.

Economic data from payrolls processor ADP showed U.S. private-sector hiring took a hit in November due to the impact of Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged consumers and businesses in the Northeastern United States, but the huge services sector kept expanding albeit at a modest pace, according to the Institute for Supply Management.

(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany Opens Campaign for a Third Term

BERLIN — Angela Merkel began her campaign for re-election on Tuesday with a display of the down-to-earth pragmatism that has helped make her immensely popular among Germans and well positioned to win a third term as chancellor next year.

Wielding two bouquets of bright orange flowers after delegates in her center-right Christian Democratic Union elected her to a seventh term as their party leader with a record 97.9 percent of the votes, Ms. Merkel took the podium and thanked the cheering crowd.

“Those who know me know that I’m overwhelmed and touched,” she said. “And now, let’s get to work. We have a lot to do.”

With overall approval ratings close to 70 percent, Ms. Merkel, a 58-year-old daughter of a Lutheran pastor who grew up in East Germany, is viewed as being at the height of her powers. Surveys show her comfortably ahead of her closest rival, Peer Steinbrück of the center-left Social Democrats, before parliamentary elections next September.

Analysts point to her combination of pragmatism and readiness to compromise the driving force behind her popularity. Nils Diederich, a professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin, said Ms. Merkel had succeeded in shifting her party away from its traditionalist ideology, making it more attractive to mainstream Germans. In addition, she has shepherded her country through Europe’s worst economic crisis in recent history and into a leadership role.

“During Ms. Merkel’s tenure, she has led Germany into a position of greater strength than it has ever known,” Mr. Diederich said. “Ms. Merkel has shown people that we have nothing to hide.”

That confidence was on display in the chancellor’s speech to delegates, who gathered on Tuesday for a two-day congress in the central city of Hanover. She praised her government as the country’s most successful since its postwar reunification in 1990, despite the challenges it faces.

“These are turbulent times, and sometimes we find ourselves in stormy waters,” Ms. Merkel said. She went on to highlight her government’s successes, including low unemployment and economic stability in the face of the economic crisis crippling much of the rest of Europe.

“In such times, no other government could lead the country as successfully as our conservative-liberal coalition,” Ms. Merkel told members.

In spite of the fact that the chancellor is personally popular, her government — an alliance of her own conservative Christian Democratic Union with the sister party for the state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, and the pro-business Free Democrats — is not.

Recent months have seen the Free Democrats bleeding support, opening the discussion for other possible alliances, with a so-called grand coalition of Ms. Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats — a combination that Ms. Merkel governed during her first term as chancellor, from 2005 to 2009.

Increasingly the talk has been about whether the country’s traditional conservative party would form an alliance with the more left-leaning and environmentalist Green party, which earned about 15 percent support in a survey released Tuesday by the polling group Insa.

Ms. Merkel’s conservatives earned 35 percent, placing them in the strongest position, but requiring they find a coalition partner, according to the poll published in the Bild newspaper.

For the first time in weeks, the poll showed the Free Democrats earning 5 percent support, enough to secure representation in Parliament, making them available to form a coalition.

Nevertheless, the chancellor is keeping her options open. In a playful dig at her coalition partner, Ms. Merkel drew laughs from the crowd by citing a recent satire as saying, “Perhaps God created the F.D.P. only to test us.”

Compared with all other possible constellations from Germany’s political scene, Ms. Merkel said nevertheless that the current government of conservatives and economic liberals had the most in common.

“We share common values and principles,” she said. “And these are the values and principles that we need to successfully overcome today’s challenges.”

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China goes crazy for iPhone 5: Preorders hit 100,000 units in under 24 hours

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Frankie Muniz Recovering from a 'Mini-Stroke'

By Mike Fleeman

12/04/2012 at 03:50 PM EST

Malcolm's in the middle of a health scare.

Former child star Frankie Muniz is recovering from "mini-stroke" that sent him to the hospital last Friday.

Muniz, who turns 27 on Wednesday, tells his Twitter followers that the experience was "not fun at all."

"Have to start taking care of my body!" he writes. "Getting old!"

Muniz provided no more details. But a "mini-stroke" is commonly used to describe a transient ischemic attack, or TIA, when blood temporarily stops reaching the brain, causing stroke-like symptoms for one to 24 hours.

Doctors believe a TIA can be a warning sign for a possible full stroke in the future without preventative measures.

Muniz grew up in front of TV audiences on Malcolm in the Middle from 2000 to 2006. He's moved on to racecar driving and music – he drums for the band Kingsfoil – though recently made a cameo on Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.

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CDC says US flu season starts early, could be bad

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu season in the U.S. is off to its earliest start in nearly a decade — and it could be a bad one.

Health officials on Monday said suspected flu cases have jumped in five Southern states, and the primary strain circulating tends to make people sicker than other types. It is particularly hard on the elderly.

"It looks like it's shaping up to be a bad flu season, but only time will tell," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The good news is that the nation seems fairly well prepared, Frieden said. More than a third of Americans have been vaccinated, and the vaccine formulated for this year is well-matched to the strains of the virus seen so far, CDC officials said.

Higher-than-normal reports of flu have come in from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. An uptick like this usually doesn't happen until after Christmas. Flu-related hospitalizations are also rising earlier than usual, and there have already been two deaths in children.

Hospitals and urgent care centers in northern Alabama have been bustling. "Fortunately, the cases have been relatively mild," said Dr. Henry Wang, an emergency medicine physician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Parts of Georgia have seen a boom in traffic, too. It's not clear why the flu is showing up so early, or how long it will stay.

"My advice is: Get the vaccine now," said Dr. James Steinberg, an Emory University infectious diseases specialist in Atlanta.

The last time a conventional flu season started this early was the winter of 2003-04, which proved to be one of the most lethal seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths. The dominant type of flu back then was the same one seen this year.

One key difference between then and now: In 2003-04, the vaccine was poorly matched to the predominant flu strain. Also, there's more vaccine now, and vaccination rates have risen for the general public and for key groups such as pregnant women and health care workers.

An estimated 112 million Americans have been vaccinated so far, the CDC said. Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older.

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

A strain of swine flu that hit in 2009 caused a wave of cases in the spring and then again in the early fall. But that was considered a unique type of flu, distinct from the conventional strains that circulate every year.

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Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly

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