The price of gold fell Thursday on growing worries about global economic growth with pending U.S. budget issues and Europe’s recession.
Gold for December delivery dropped $ 16.30 Thursday to finish at $ 1,713.80 per ounce.
President Barack Obama and congressional leaders are scheduled to meet Friday to discuss the budget. Obama and Republican congressional leaders are at odds over the best way to resolve budget disagreements before tax hikes and spending cuts take effect Jan. 1. Many economists believe that without a compromise, the U.S. could wind up back in a recession.
Meanwhile, European Union statistics showed that the 17 countries that use the euro are in recession for the first time in three years as the region struggles with a three-year-old debt crisis. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.
Gold has a reputation as a relatively safe asset to hold during economic turmoil but investors are “in a quandary and conserving cash,” George Gero, vice president at RBC Global Futures, wrote in an email.
In other metals trading, December silver fell 20.6 cents to end at $ 32.674 per ounce, December copper rose 0.9 cent to $ 3.4625 per pound, January platinum dropped $ 18.30 to $ 1,573.30 per ounce and December palladium fell $ 10.35 to $ 631.20 per ounce.
The economic uncertainty also pressured energy products. Benchmark oil dropped 87 cents to end at $ 85.45 per barrel, heating oil fell 1.47 cents to $ 2.9735 per gallon, gasoline futures rose 1.72 cents to $ 2.6962 per gallon and natural gas fell 5.7 cents to $ 3.703 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In agricultural contracts, orange juice futures rose 3.1 percent as traders bought contracts to get in position for the winter months, said Jack Scoville, vice president Price Futures Group. Florida crops are in good shape and the freeze season won’t begin for several weeks. Frozen orange juice concentrate for January delivery rose 3.45 cents to end at $ 1.1625 per pound.
December wheat fell 3.25 cents to end at $ 8.455 per bushel, December corn fell 4.5 cents to $ 7.2125 per bushel and January soybeans fell 17 cents to end at $ 14.02 per bushel.
PARIS (AP) — France‘s president called Thursday for stepped-up talks between Mali’s government and any leaders from its breakaway north “who reject terrorism,” even as African nations geared up for a possible military operation against Islamic extremists there.
President Francois Hollande‘s comments suggested a growing openness to dialogue with the extremists, but he remained committed to supporting the military planning effort.
Northern Mali fell to Islamic extremists in April, after coup leaders toppled the government in Bamako, Mali‘s capital. Fearing that northern Mali could become the latest hotbed of terrorism, France has been a driving force in international efforts to bolster Mali’s army to drive the Islamists from power.
Hollande spoke with interim Mali President Dioncounda Traore by phone on Thursday, partly to detail European efforts to help strengthen Mali’s army.
In recent days, representatives from the most moderate of three al-Qaida-linked groups that control northern Mali have been meeting with Burkina Faso‘s president, appointed as a mediator.
“France reiterates its wish that political dialogue will intensify between Malian authorities and representatives of northern populations who reject terrorism,” Hollande’s office said in a statement. “The acceleration of this dialogue must accompany the progress in African military-planning efforts.”
Earlier this week, the African Union approved a plan that calls for 3,300 African troops to be deployed in order to win back Mali’s north. European countries including France and Germany have expressed a willingness to provide military trainers and logistics support, but have stopped short of committing combat troops.
France, like many European countries, fears that the arid, northern Sahel region of Mali could become a breeding ground for terrorism, where al-Qaida and its allies could plot hostage-takings and attacks in Europe or beyond.
France has millions of people whose families hail from former French colonies in north and west Africa. Authorities have long been concerned that French-born militants could travel abroad for terrorism training and return home later to possibly carry out attacks.
French authorities are already investigating two French citizens who were arrested in Mali and neighboring Niger and are suspected of seeking to join up with the al-Qaida-linked extremists, a judicial official told The Associated Press.
Ibrahim Ouattara, a 24-year-old native of the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers who has dual French and Malian nationality, was arrested inside Mali this month and remains in custody there, the official said.
Separately, a 27-year-old Frenchman was arrested in August in Niger and has since been handed over to authorities in France, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss terrorism cases publicly.
(Reuters) – Chinese internet company Sina Corp eked out a profit in the third quarter that beat analysts’ estimates as strong advertising sales on its microblogging platform offset weaker website advertising but it forecast current-quarter revenue below expectations.
Shares of the company fell 6 percent to $ 49.72 in extended trading. They closed at $ 53.10 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.
Sina expects adjusted net revenue to range between $ 132 million and $ 136 million in the fourth quarter, with advertising revenues forecast to increase between 6 percent and 8 percent from a year earlier.
Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $ 151.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Sina, which makes most of its revenue from online advertising both on its website and through its microblogging platform, Weibo, is facing stiff headwinds this year as firms slash advertising budgets due to a worsening economic outlook.
Analysts said the spat between Japan and China over a few uninhabited islands in the East China Sea may have affected Sina’s website advertising sales as Japanese automakers cut back on advertising in China.
Net profit was $ 9.9 million for the September quarter, compared to a loss of $ 336.3 million a year earlier. The profit beat analysts’ expectations of $ 7.5 million.
Sina’s advertising revenue rose 19 percent to $ 120.6 million in the third quarter, while non-advertising revenue rose 9 percent to $ 31.8 million. Overall net revenue was $ 152.4 million, up from $ 130.3 million, a year earlier.
The company started monetizing Weibo by offering special services to business accounts and selling VIP memberships to regular users earlier this year.
Weibo contributed about 10 percent to total advertising revenue in the second quarter and had 368 million registered accounts.
(Reporting By Melanie Lee in Shanghai & Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
NEW YORK (AP) — NBC News is staying in-house in its effort to turn around the “Today” show.
The network on Wednesday appointed a 23-year veteran of the morning news show as its new executive producer. Don Nash began working for “Today” as a production assistant in NBC’s Burbank office in 1989 and will now run the four-hour broadcast.
Nash was most recently senior broadcast producer in the show’s control room. He replaces Jim Bell, who shifted to NBC Sports to run its Olympics broadcasts.
After nearly two decades of dominance, “Today” has slipped behind ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the ratings.
NBC also added another layer of management for the show, appointing Alexandra Wallace as the network’s executive in charge of the program.
President Obama said his approach was that ”the wealthiest Americans pay a little bit more”
US President Obama has reiterated his call for high earners in the US to pay more in taxes, in his first news conference since winning re-election.
He called for quick legislation to rule out tax rises on the first $ 250,000 (£158,000) of income, but refused to extend cuts for the wealthiest 2%.
“We should not hold the middle class hostage while we debate tax cuts for the wealthy,” Mr Obama said.
The US faces an end-of-year “fiscal cliff” of spending cuts and tax rises.
The fiscal cliff would see the George W Bush-era tax cuts expire in combination with automatic, across-the-board reductions to military and domestic spending.
Loophole offer
Some $ 607bn (£380bn) of savings and tax rises are planned, including reductions in the defence budget, the end of an employee tax holiday, changes to Medicare allowances and higher personal taxes.
The lower paid are set to lose some child and income credits, but Mr Obama has made fewer references to other portions of the stimulus deal set to expire beyond the tax cuts.
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.
The fiscal cliff is due to take effect because Congress failed to reach a deal on deficit reduction after a stand-off over the US debt ceiling in mid-2011.
Congressional Republicans have said since last week’s US elections that they are open to raising revenue through tax reform and closure of loopholes, but oppose tax rises on the wealthy.
Glenn Hubbard, an economic adviser to Republican Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, writing in the Financial Times, called on fellow Republicans to accept the need for the rich to pay more tax, albeit through closing loopholes such as tax deductions.
Other Republicans favour ending the right of Americans to deduct mortgage interest payments from their taxable income – something analysts say is likely to hurt the middle classes far more than top earners.
During his news conference on Wednesday, Mr Obama was dismissive of a loophole-only reform, telling reporters that “the math tends not to work” in helping to cut the deficit.
“It really is arithmetic, not calculus,” he said.
The president has long opposed extending the Bush-era tax cuts for earnings above $ 250,000 a year, but gave into Republican demands in 2010 when the cuts were last up for renewal.
On Wednesday, Mr Obama said that would not happen this time.
“A modest tax increase on the wealthy is not going to break their backs,” he said. “They’ll still be wealthy.”
But the president said he was confident that the White House and Congress could reach a deal before 1 January to avoid the “fiscal cliff”, as the US economy could not afford it coming to pass.
He suggested the immediate extension of all the expiring tax cuts except the top rate, followed by a more comprehensive reform of the tax code as well as some of the US’ largest benefits programmes, including Social Security in 2013.
In doing so, he distanced himself from some in his own party who want the combined tax rises and cuts to happen, in order to give Mr Obama a better negotiating position.
‘Great distance’
On Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned against extending all of the tax breaks that are due to expire in January as a way of giving Washington more time to broker a deal on the deficit.
Mr Geithner claimed doing this would create more uncertainty in the financial markets.
House Speaker John Boehner has scheduled a response to Mr Obama on Wednesday, as the White House planned to meet with congressional leaders on Friday, when both sides are expected to designate aides in search of a compromise.
Mr Obama met on Tuesday with allies from labour and liberal groups, and also invited a group of chief executives to the White House.
Earlier, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said that “many Republicans believe now is the time to sit down and talk more revenue”, saying up to 20 Republican senators are willing to work towards accommodation.
But Sen Durbin said “there is a great distance” between Republicans in the House and Senate.
“Basically it comes down to the question of whether Speaker Boehner is willing to look for a bipartisan solution.”
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt has recalled its ambassador to Israel after an Israeli airstrike killed the military commander of Gaza‘s ruling Hamas.
In a statement read on state TV late Wednesday, spokesman Yasser Ali said that President Mohammed Morsi recalled the ambassador and asked the Arab League‘s Secretary General to convene an emergency ministerial meeting in the wake of the Gaza violence.
Morsi also called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas, an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Israel says it struck in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.
Hours earlier, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group denounced the Israeli airstrike as a “crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres.”
Relations between Israel and Egypt have deteriorated since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – When it comes to the iPhone, Steve Jobs created it, but Steve Wozniak got game.
The Apple co-founder will appear as a playable character in an upcoming iOS video game “Danny Trejo‘s Vengeance: Woz with a Coz.”
The game, slated to be released around November 22, puts Wozniak alongside “Machete” star Trejo in an 8-bit mobile game, fighting a city full of enemies with an assortment of weapons.
The plot is simple: “Woz” is forced to save his wife, J-Woz, after she is kidnapped by street thugs. Teaming up with Vengence, Woz tears up Fusion City in his quest to rescue her.
“Featuring an over-the-top, old school inspired action combined with a retro 8-bit and exciting gritty art style, players will enjoy Woz’s brain power, translator apps, Danny Trejo’s machetes, guns and other crazy upgrades,” a Facebook fan page devoted to the game says.
Other playable characters will include musician Baby Bash and MMA World Champion “Suga” Rashad Evans.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Thousands of screaming fans lined the black carpet late on Monday for the final “Twilight” film premiere as the cast of “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ bid farewell to the franchise and its loyal followers.
Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and other cast members greeted fans known as “Twi-hards,” many of whom had camped out for days in downtown Los Angeles to catch a glimpse of their favorite actors and see the film before it is released in theaters on Friday.
Breaking Dawn – Part 2 will see the love story of human Bella Swan (Stewart), vampire Edward Cullen (Pattinson) and werewolf Jacob Black (Lautner) come to a tantalizing end, when Bella and Edward are forced to protect their child from an ancient vampire coven.
Stewart, who was finally able to embrace her wild side by playing Bella as a vampire, hoped people would enjoy the ultimate transformation of her character in the film.
“Bella has worked pretty hard to get to the point where they can have it all, and it’s fun to be there. She’s always been human, but now that she’s not, you’re just in full blown vampire land and it feels funny in a great way,” Stewart told Reuters.
More than 2,200 fans from all over the world came to camp out on a concrete plaza in downtown Los Angeles last week, where Twilight movie studio Summit laid out activities and marathon screenings of the previous movies.
All of the film’s main actors spent time signing autographs and posing for photographs with the loyal fans who had camped out in chilly November weather over five days.
Pattinson, who plays vampire Edward Cullen, said he hoped the fans would like the franchise’s swan song.
“I hope they feel it kind of respects them, because I think in a lot of ways that’s what we were thinking when we were making it,” the actor said.
Lautner, who plays werewolf Jacob, said he’d be sad to say goodbye to the films and his character and hoped fans would be happy with the conclusion of the final film.
“I’m feeling fantastic, sad, emotional, there’s a lot of things going on inside of me right now but I’m just trying to soak up every moment because this means the world to me,” Lautner said.
The three lead stars were joined by fellow cast members including Nikki Reed, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning, as well as director Bill Condon and author Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight novels kicked off the franchise and phenomenon.
Meyer said she would miss watching the three lead cast members evolve as actors and characters in the films.
“It’s really been great to watch them grow up, particularly Kristen because her character gets to evolve so much in this film, and to watch her be all powerful and really get to where the character was always meant to go, to be the fiercest of the fierce, was really rewarding for me,” the author said.
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Paul Casciato)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Among thousands of Dutch children included in a new study, those who first ate fish between the ages of six months and one year had a lower risk of developing asthma-like symptoms later on than babies introduced to fish before six months of age or after their first birthdays.
According to lead author Jessica Kiefte-de Jong, of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, and her colleagues, one theory supported by the findings is that that early exposure to certain fatty acids in fish protects against the development of asthma.
The new results, based on more than 7,000 kids in The Netherlands, cannot prove that eating fish during a particular period in infancy prevented wheezing later on, but they add to other research that suggests a connection.
“The bottom line was that there is mixed evidence of whether the introduction of a seafood diet reduced the risk of asthma,” said Dr. T. Bernard Kinane, chief of the pediatric pulmonary unit for MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston, who was not involved in the new study.
Concern over seafood allergies prompts some parents and doctors to delay introducing fish into babies’ diets. However, some research has found that a mother’s fish consumption during pregnancy, or the baby’s consumption of it early on, may lower asthma risk.
To see whether the timing of a baby’s first encounter with fish was linked to differences in asthma rates later in childhood, Kiefte-de Jong’s team built on previous studies.
Using health and diet information from a group of 7,210 children born between 2002 and 2006 in Rotterdam, they found that 1,281 children ate fish in their first six months of life, 5,498 first ate fish in the next six months and 431 did not eat fish until after age one.
The researchers then looked at health records for when the children were about four years old, and how many parents reported that their kids were wheezing or short of breath.
Between 40 percent and 45 percent of parents of children who did not eat fish until after their first birthday said their kids wheezed, compared to 30 percent of kids who first ate fish when they were between six and 12 months old.
That, according to the researchers, works out to be about a 36 percent decreased risk of wheezing for the kids who first had fish between ages six months and one year.
Kids who first had fish before six months of age were at similar risk to those who were introduced to it after their first birthdays.
There was no significant association between the timing of fish introduction and shortness of breath.
“They found it was only protective between six and 12 months. That would make reasonable sense because that’s when the immune system is getting educated,” Kinane said.
He added that he was relieved the researchers also found no association between the amount of fish kids ate and their risk for asthma symptoms, which means that even a small amount of fish seems to be helpful.
“The reason I like that is that it reduces the risk of kids getting too much mercury,” said Kinane.
Although Kinane said introducing children to fish between six and 12 months of age may be worth doing, he noted the possibility that there could be other explanations for the finding.
For instance, families who feed their children fish earlier and more often may be different in a variety of ways from those who do not.
“I thought it was an OK study, but I think it needs to be validated again,” Kinane said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/X4kl8E Pediatrics, online November 12, 2012.
(Reuters) – Cisco Systems Inc reported first quarter results that beat estimates but expects flat earnings and slower revenue growth for the current quarter.
“We are modeling Europe to get worse before it gets better,” Chief Executive John Chambers said on Tuesday, echoing his comments from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in August.
However, he added that “we see signs of improvement in the U.S. in enterprise, service provider and commercial.”
Still, Chamber said, it was too early to speak of a trend “though we are continuing to see what we like.”
Cisco said it expects earnings per share, excluding items, of 47 cents to 48 cents in its fiscal second quarter, which runs until the end of January. A year earlier it reported EPS of 47 cents.
It also said it sees revenue growth in a range of 3.5 percent to 5.5 percent, compared with 11.6 percent growth in the second quarter of 2012.
Chambers said he would give a long-term outlook at the company’s financial analyst day next month.
In its first quarter, which ran until the end of October, Cisco surprised analysts with a solid beat, due to cost cuts and the company’s broad product range.
First-quarter net income, excluding items, rose 10.6 percent to $ 2.6 billion, or 48 cents per share, compared with analysts’ average estimate of 46 cents a share as compiled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Revenue rose 6 percent from the year-ago quarter to $ 11.9 billion, compared with a Street view of $ 11.77 billion.
Cisco’s shares rose 6.7 percent to $ 17.98 in after-hours trading.
Analysts applauded the company’s cost discipline and welcomed solid results in a tough environment.
“Given concern about enterprise spending, the company seems to be bucking the trends,” said Bill Kreher, senior technology analyst at Edward Jones.
“The bar was low but the company did exceed those expectations. The company appears to be using strong cost discipline in meeting their numbers.”
Mizuho Securities analyst Joanna Makris said “at first blush these are good numbers in a bad macro (environment).”
“It’s largely due to a product mix – a larger shift to routing – and cost cutting,” adding that “this is better than expected. We have been thinking they would squeak by on the top line.”
(Reporting by Nicola Leske; additional reporting by Liana Baker and Jennifer Saba; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
