Optimism about “cliff” boost market; financials lead

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 ended at its highest level in almost two months on Monday on rising hopes that negotiations over the “fiscal cliff” were making progress and that a deal could be reached in days.

After weeks of stalemate, President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner met at the White House on Monday, raising hopes that Washington will be able to head off steep tax hikes and spending cuts that threaten the economy.

All of the S&P 500‘s 10 sectors were higher, led by financials and other growth-oriented sectors. The S&P Financial Index <.gspf> gained 2.1 percent, and shares of Bank of America jumped 4 percent to $ 11. In a research note Monday, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group shifted to a positive stance on financials and upgraded Bank of America, Citigroup and Discover Financial shares.</.gspf>

The S&P consumer distretionary index <.gspd>, up 1.8 percent, was the second-best performing sector. Investors worry the U.S. economy could slide into recession if the tax and spending changes are implemented.</.gspd>

Boehner has edged closer to Obama’s position by proposing to extend lower tax rates for everyone who earns less than $ 1 million. Still, his position remains far from that of President Obama.

“Trumping everything right now are the fiscal cliff talks. It seems like progress is being made. I think it’s getting to the nitty gritty,” said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates Inc. in Toledo, Ohio. “The bet right now is that something will come by the end of this week.”

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 100.38 points, or 0.76 percent, at 13,235.39. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> was up 16.78 points, or 1.19 percent, at 1,430.36, its highest close since October 22. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 39.27 points, or 1.32 percent, at 3,010.60.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

The gains, which came on lighter-than-usual volume, ended a two-day losing streak on the S&P 500. The index also had its best daily percentage gain since November 23. Volume was roughly 6.2 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.4 billion.

In the financial sector, American International Group Inc. shares rose 3 percent to $ 34.95 on plans to sell as much as $ 6.5 billion of AIA Group Ltd. Advancing stocks also included those in the home construction sector <.djushb>, which rose 4.5 percent.</.djushb>

“People are looking for sectors to play, and I think Bank of America broke out of some long-standing price levels, and it got everything going in that sector,” said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Shares of Citigroup were up 4.1 percent at $ 39.15 while shares of Discover Financial were up 1.6 percent at $ 40.18.

Clearwire Corp agreed to sell the rest of the company to Sprint Nextel Corp for a slightly sweetened $ 2.2 billion offer just days after minority shareholders criticized the previous bid as too low. Clearwire tumbled 13.6 percent to $ 2.91, while Sprint was up 0.2 percent to $ 5.56.

Apple Inc shares edged up after recent losses, rising 1.8 percent to $ 518.83 even though two firms cut their price targets on the stock Monday.

The tech giant said it sold more than 2 million of its new iPhone 5 smartphones in China during the three days after its launch there on Friday, but the figures did not ease worries about stiffer competition. Apple shares have tumbled more than 25 percent in about three months.

Compuware Corp rose 12.9 percent to $ 10.76 after hedge fund Elliott Management offered to buy the business software maker for $ 2.3 billion and S&P Capital IQ raised the target price and moved it to “hold” from “strong sell.

Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by about 2 to 1, and on the Nasdaq by nearly 9 to 4.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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N. Korea displays Kim Jong Il a year after death

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea unveiled the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, on the anniversary of his death Monday as mourning mixed with pride over a recent satellite launch that was a long-held goal of the late authoritarian leader.

Kim lies in state a few floors below his father, national founder Kim Il Sung, in the Kumsusan mausoleum, the cavernous former presidential palace. Kim Jong Il is presented lying beneath a red blanket, a spotlight shining on his face in a room suffused in red.

Wails echoed through the chilly hall as a group of North Korean women sobbed into the sashes of their traditional Korean dresses as they bowed before his body. The hall bearing the glass coffin was opened to select visitors — including The Associated Press — for the first time since his death.

North Korea also unveiled Kim’s yacht and his armored train carriage, where he is said to have died. Among the personal belongings featured in the mausoleum are the parka, sunglasses and pointy platform shoes he famously wore in the last decades of his life. A MacBook Pro lay open on his desk.

North Koreans paid homage to Kim and basked in the success of last week’s launch of a long-range rocket that sent a satellite named after him to space.

The launch, condemned in many other capitals as a violation of bans against developing its missile technology, was portrayed not only as a gift to Kim Jong Il but also as proof that his young son, Kim Jong Un, has the strength and vision to lead the country.

The elder Kim died last Dec. 17 from a heart attack while traveling on his train. His death was followed by scenes of North Koreans dramatically wailing in the streets of Pyongyang, and of the 20-something son leading ranks of uniformed and gray-haired officials through funeral and mourning rites.

The mood in the capital was decidedly more upbeat a year later, with some of the euphoria carrying over from last Wednesday’s launch. The satellite bears one of Kim Jong Il’s nicknames, Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star,” a moniker given to him at birth according to the official lore.

Cameras were not allowed inside the mausoleum, and state media did not release any images of Kim Jong Il’s body.

With the death anniversary came a hint that Kim Jong Un himself might soon be a father.

His wife, Ri Sol Ju, was seen on state TV with what appeared to be a baby bump as she walked slowly next to her husband at the mausoleum, where they bowed to statues of Kim’s father and grandfather.

There is no official word from Pyongyang about a pregnancy. In addition, Ri is shown wearing a billowing traditional Korean dress in black that makes it difficult to know for sure.

North Koreans are reluctant to discuss details of the Kim family that have not been released by the state. Still there are rumors even in Pyongyang about whether the country’s first couple is expecting.

To honor Kim’s father, North Koreans stopped in their tracks at midday and bowed their heads as the national flag fluttered at half-staff along streets and from buildings.

Pyongyang construction workers took off their yellow hard hats and bowed at the waist as sirens wailed across the city for three minutes.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans gathered in the frigid plaza outside, newly transformed into a public park with lawns and pergolas. Geese flew past snow-tinged firs and swans dallied in the partly frozen moat that rings the vast complex in Pyongyang’s outskirts.

“Just when we were thinking how best to uphold our general, he passed away,” Kim Jong Ran said at the plaza. “But we upheld leader Kim Jong Un. … We regained our strength and we are filled with determination to work harder for our country.”

Speaking outside the mausoleum, renamed the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the military’s top political officer, Choe Ryong Hae, said North Korea should be proud of the satellite, calling it “a political event with great significance in the history of Korea and humanity.”

Much of the rest of the world, however, was swift in condemning the launch, which was seen by the United States and other nations as a thinly disguised cover for testing missile technology that could someday be used for a nuclear warhead.

The test, which the U.N. Security Council said violated a ban on launches using ballistic missile technology, underlined Kim Jong Un’s determination to continue carrying out his father’s hardline policies even if they draw international condemnation.

Washington said Monday it has no option but to seek to isolate Pyongyang further.

“What’s left to us is to continue to increase pressure on the North Korean regime and we are looking at how to best to do that, both bilaterally and with our partners going forward until they (North Korea) get the message. We are going to further isolate this regime,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Some outside experts worry that Pyongyang’s next move will be to press ahead with a nuclear test in the coming weeks, a step toward building a warhead small enough to be carried by a long-range missile.

Despite inviting further isolation for his impoverished nation and the threat of stiffer sanctions, Kim Jong Un won national prestige and clout by going ahead with the rocket launch.

At a memorial service on Sunday, North Korea’s top leadership not only eulogized Kim Jong Il, but also praised his son. Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of North Korea’s parliament, called the launch a “shining victory” and an emblem of the promise that lies ahead with Kim Jong Un in power.

The rocket’s success also fits neatly into the narrative of Kim Jong Il’s death. Even before he died, the father had laid the groundwork for his son to inherit a government focused on science, technology and improving the economy. And his pursuit of nuclear weapons and the policy of putting the military ahead of all other national concerns have also carried into Kim Jong Un’s reign.

In a sign of the rocket launch’s importance, Kim Jong Un invited the scientists in charge of it to attend the mourning rites in Pyongyang, according to state media.

The reopening of the mausoleum on the anniversary of the leader’s death follows tradition. Kumsusan, the palace where his father, Kim Il Sung, served as president, was reopened as a mausoleum on the anniversary of his death in 1994.

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Jean Lee, AP’s bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul, at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

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Charlie Brown’s Christmas Reunion Will Ruin Your Childhood

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:

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Sometimes we don’t get art. Sometimes we really, really, don’t get it: 

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We love A Charlie Brown Christmas. We love Louie. We’re not quite if we love the two mixed together, but we’ll let you know right after we tell kids that Santa doesn’t exist: 

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Meet Basse Andersen of Arendal, Norway. He’s the biggest chicken/scaredy cat in the entire world. And on the bright side, he probably never has any bouts with the hiccups. 

Shifting gears from scaredy cats to actual cats, here’s the latest chapter in the eternal battle between printers and cats:

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‘Hobbit’ bests ‘Rings’ with $84.8 million opening

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Jackson‘s “The Hobbit” led the box office with a haul of $ 84.8 million, a record-setting opening better than the three previous “Lord of the Rings” films.

The Warner Bros. Middle Earth epic was the biggest December opening ever, surpassing Will Smith’s “I Am Legend,” which opened with $ 77.2 million in 2007, according to studio estimates Sunday. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” also passed the December opening of “Avatar,” which opened with $ 77 million. Internationally, “The Hobbit” also added $ 138.2 million, for an impressive global debut of $ 223 million.

Despite weak reviews, the 3-D adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien‘s first novel in the fantasy series was an even bigger draw than the last “Lord of the Rings” movie, “The Return of the King.” That film opened with $ 72.6 million. “The Hobbit” is the first of another planned trilogy, with two more films to be squeezed out of Tolkien’s book.

While Jackson’s “Rings” movies drew many accolades — “The Return of the King” won best picture from the Academy Awards — the path for “The Hobbit” has been rockier. It received no Golden Globes nominations on Thursday, though all three “Rings” films were nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for best picture.

Particularly criticized has been the film’s 48-frames-per-second (double the usual rate), a hyper-detailed look that some have found jarring. Most moviegoers didn’t see “The Hobbit” in that version, though, as the new technology was rolled out in only 461 of the 4,045 theaters playing the film.

Regardless of any misgivings over “The Hobbit,” the film was a hit with audiences. They graded the film with an “A” CinemaScore.

“What’s really important, what makes this special is the CinemaScore,” said Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. “All these things point to a great word of mouth. We haven’t even made it to the Christmas holidays yet. Kids are still in school this week.”

The strong opening culminated a long journey for “The Hobbit,” which was initially delayed when a lawsuit dragged on between Jackson and “Rings” producer New Line Cinema over merchandizing revenue. At one point, Guillermo del Toro was to direct the film with Jackson producing. But eventually the filmmaker opted to direct the movie himself, originally envisioning two “Hobbit” films. The production also went through the bankruptcy of distribution partner MGM and a labor dispute in New Zealand, where the film was shot.

The long delay for “The Hobbit,” nearly a decade after the last “Lord of the Rings” film, made it “one of those movies that had everyone scratching their heads as to how it would open,” said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com.

“It’s been a decade since the ‘Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy concluded,” said Dergarabedian. “There’s been so much anticipation for this film and having Peter Jackson back at the helm just made it irresistible both to fans and the non-initiated alike.”

“The Hobbit” was far and away the biggest draw in theaters, with no other new wide release. Paramount’s “Rise of the Guardians” continued to draw the family crowd, with $ 7.4 million, bringing its cumulative total to $ 71.4 million. The Oscar contender “Lincoln” from Walt Disney crossed the $ 100 million mark, adding another $ 7.2 million to bring its six-week total to $ 107.9 million. And Sony‘s James Bond film “Skyfall,” with another $ 7 million domestically, drew closer to a global take of $ 1 billion.

The box office continued to be on the upswing and with anticipated releases like “Les Miserables,” ”Django Unchained” and “The Guilt Trip” approaching in the holiday moviegoing season. Dergarabedian expects the year to break the 2009 record of $ 10.6 billion. With some $ 10.2 billion in revenue thus far, he said, “We’re on track to be in that realm.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” $ 84.8 million ($ 138.2 million international).

2. “Rise of the Guardians,” $ 7.4 million ($ 20.1 million international).

3. “Lincoln,” $ 7.2 million.

4. “Skyfall,” $ 7 million ($ 12.2 million international).

5. “Life of Pi,” $ 5.4 million ($ 11.5 million international).

6. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2,” $ 5.2 million ($ 13 million international).

7. “Wreck-It Ralph,” $ 3.3million ($ 4.7 million international).

8. “Playing for Keeps,” $ 3.2 million ($ 1.4 million international).

9. “Red Dawn,” $ 2.4 million.

10. “Silver Linings Playbook,” $ 2 million ($ 370,000 international).

___

Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:

1. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” $ 138.2 million.

2. “Rise of the Guardians,” $ 20. 1 million.

3. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2,” $ 13 million.

4. “Skyfall,” $ 12.2 million.

5. “Life of Pi,” $ 11.5 million.

6. “Wreck-It Ralph,” $ 4.7 million.

7. “26 Years,” $ 3.5 million.

8. “Whatcha Wearin’? (My P.S. Partner),” $ 3 million.

9. “Tutto Tutto Niente Niente,” $ 2.4 million.

10. “Pitch Perfect,” $ 2.3 million.

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Daylight savings tied to bump in heart attack rates

(Reuters) – Setting the clock ahead for daylight savings time may set the scene for a small increase in heart attacks the next day, according to a U.S. study – which suggests that sleep deprivation may be to blame.

Researchers at two hospitals in the U.S. state of Michigan, whose findings appeared in the American Journal of Cardiology, reviewed six years of records and found that they treated an average of 23 heart attacks on the Sunday when the United States switched to daylight savings time. That compared to 13 on a typical Sunday.

“Nowadays, people are looking for how they can reduce their risk of heart disease and other ailments,” said Monica Jiddou, the study’s lead author and a cardiologist at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.

“Sleep is something we can potentially control. There are plenty of studies that show sleep can affect a person’s health.”

A 2008 Swedish report, for instance, found that the chance of a heart attack increased in the first three weekdays after the switch to daylight savings time, and decreased the Monday after the clocks returned to standard time in the autumn.

Jiddou told Reuters Health that her team wanted to see if their respective hospitals experienced the same increase and decrease in heart attacks seen in the Swedish study.

For the new study, she and her colleagues reviewed records for the 328 patients who were diagnosed with a heart attack during the week after a time change between 2006 and 2012, and for the 607 heart attack patients who were treated two weeks before and after the time shifts.

They found that except for the small increase on the Sunday that daylight savings time kicked in, there were no significant differences in heart attack rates in the first week after the spring clock change or in the fall, when people set clocks back.

The authors note, however, that the small trends they observed suggest shifts to and from daylight savings time may be linked with small increases in heart attacks in the spring, and small decreases in the fall.

They speculate that sleep deprivation resulting from the time changes could raise levels of stress hormones and inflammatory chemicals just enough to trigger a heart attack, especially in those already at high risk.

Though the slight increase in heart attacks in the days following time shifts were so small they could have been due to chance, Jiddou told Reuters Health that she believes the problem was the size of the study population.

“The numbers weren’t necessarily striking, but the trends make you stop and think,” she said.

But Steven Nissen, a cardiologist who is chair of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said that people should be carefully interpreting the findings.

“We haven’t generally thought that missing an hour of sleep causes heart attacks. This may or may not hold up,” Nissen said.

He added that while the study looks at a good question and he applauds the researchers’ efforts, but stressed the limitations of the results and noted that the size of the effect is not huge. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/W391bW

(Reporting from New York by Andrew Seaman; editing by Elaine Lies)

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Abe’s challenge: Can he give Japan what money can’t buy

TOKYO (Reuters) – Even before Japanese voters returned Shinzo Abe‘s party to power, he had already won over financial markets with an economic revival plan as seductively simple as economists say it is risky: print money and spend it. Lots of it.

The Liberal Democratic Party’s landslide on Sunday is likely to sustain a market rally fuelled by economic stimulus hopes, but Abe’s economic legacy will probably be defined by how he tackles chronic ills that easy money alone cannot fix and that were largely ignored during the campaign.

The conservative leader set to return to the prime minister’s post he abruptly left in 2007 campaigned on a promise to double spending on public works and to push the Bank of Japan for radical action to end deflation and help exporters such as Toyota and Sony by taming the yen.

“The fact that Abe points to changes in the BOJ law or forex levels, or aggressive easing as solutions to Japan‘s problems is, if anything, worrying,” said Yuuki Sakurai, chief executive of Fukoku Capital Management which manages $ 19 billion in assets.

“They should be treated as tools to buy time to implement structural reforms, but we’re not hearing anything about deep reforms that the LDP wants to carry out.”

The so-called Abe trade – a 4 percent slide in the yen and more than a 10 percent rise in stock prices over the past month – shows that for now, most investors just want to see the new leader fulfill his pledges.

Analysts said they expected Sunday’s vote, which according to TV projections based on counted votes gave LDP and its ally a two-thirds lower house majority, to sustain that trend in the near-term.

“Abe’s economic policies will be implemented so the economy will improve next year. The problem is what happens after that,” said Koichi Haji, chief economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. “The key is whether Abe can implement long-term structural reforms and growth strategies.”

The BOJ is poised to heed Abe’s calls for more aggressive easing and a more ambitious 2 percent inflation target, with markets expecting the central bank to ease policy for the fifth time this year on Thursday.

Investors also expect an extra budget of up to 10 trillion yen ($ 120 billion) as a down payment on Abe’s plan to spend such amounts per year over the next decade – double the current level – on public works long synonymous with the LDP.

Economists say pumping cash into the economy will only give it a temporary jolt if not followed by efforts to lift its growth potential and contain runaway debt.

In just three decades Japan has become the world’s oldest society, with those 65 or above making up nearly a quarter of a population that is greying and is estimated to have shrunk by over 260,000 in the last fiscal year alone.

Recipes to cope with it are well known: social security overhaul, including cuts in healthcare and pensions; boosting access to overseas markets and opening Japan to foreign goods, workers and investment; power sector revamp and bringing more women into the workforce.

All, however, carry political and social risks that Japan’s recent revolving-door leaders were unable or unwilling to take.

Left to sink or swim with swings in overseas demand for its exports and its currency, the world’s third-largest economy has been in and out of recession and dogged by low-grade deflation for the past two decades.

Now, in firm control of the lower house, Abe has a chance to prove his mettle and erase the memories of his first troubled year in office.

So far he has played it safe.

His “Abenomics” — a mix of potent monetary stimulus and big public spending — carries little political cost and he has been coy on touchy issues such the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade pact, or implementing sales tax increases.

With some luck, the new government may be even be able to call an end to a brief recession it entered last quarter.

Economists polled by Reuters last week predict the economy will start growing again in the first quarter of next year, largely due to expected recovery in China, Japan’s top export market.

TAX TEST

Abe’s first stern economic test will come after August, when the government, armed with second-quarter data, will decide whether the economy is strong enough to go ahead with a first round of planned sales tax increases.

With 10-year bond yields near a decade low below 0.7 percent, bond investors are now confident that he can steer the central bank to buy more bonds from the world’s most indebted government without setting off a market meltdown.

To keep that trust, Abe must convince investors that in his push for big scale-stimulus, he has not abandoned budget discipline. Economists say with Japan’s public debt at more than twice its economic output and climbing, the new government can ill-afford delaying a tax hike that has become a symbol of Tokyo’s fiscal rectitude. Their message is clear: “Just do it!”

“I hope they will go through with it,” said Takatoshi Ito, a Tokyo University professor, former adviser to the first Abe administration who is now mooted as a possible successor to BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa when his term ends in April.

“Tax revenue is less than half of expenditures. Bond issuance is bigger than tax revenues. It’s like using a credit card for more than half of your monthly expenditure. It’s crazy, abnormal, you can’t go on like that.”

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Antoni Slodkowski and Leika Kihara; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Egyptians hand Islamists narrow win in constitution vote

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptians voted in favor of a constitution shaped by Islamists but opposed by other groups who fear it will divide the Arab world’s biggest nation, officials in rival camps said on Sunday after the first round of a two-stage referendum.

Next week’s second round is likely to give another “yes” vote as it includes districts seen as more sympathetic towards Islamists, analysts say, meaning the constitution would be approved.

But the narrow win so far gives Islamist President Mohamed Mursi only limited grounds for celebration by showing the wide rifts in a country where he needs to build a consensus for tough economic reforms.

The Muslim Brotherhood‘s party, which propelled Mursi to office in a June election, said 56.5 percent backed the text. Official results are not expected until after the next round.

While an opposition official conceded the “yes” camp appeared to have won the first round, the opposition National Salvation Front said in a statement that voting abuses meant a rerun was needed – although it did not explicitly challenge the Brotherhood‘s vote tally.

Rights groups reported abuses such as polling stations opening late, officials telling people how to vote and bribery. They also criticized widespread religious campaigning which portrayed “no” voters as heretics.

A joint statement by seven human rights groups urged the referendum’s organizers “to avoid these mistakes in the second stage of the referendum and to restage the first phase again”.

Mursi and his backers say the constitution is vital to move Egypt’s democratic transition forward. Opponents say the basic law is too Islamist and tramples on minority rights, including those of Christians who make up 10 percent of the population.

The build-up to Saturday’s vote was marred by deadly protests. Demonstrations erupted when Mursi awarded himself extra powers on November 22 and then fast-tracked the constitution through an assembly dominated by his Islamist allies.

However, the vote passed off calmly with long queues in Cairo and several other places, though unofficial tallies indicated turnout was around a third of the 26 million people eligible to vote this time. The vote was staggered because many judges needed to oversee polling staged a boycott in protest.

The opposition had said the vote should not have been held given the violent protests. Foreign governments are watching closely how the Islamists, long viewed warily in the West, handle themselves in power.

“It’s wrong to have a vote or referendum with the country in the state it is – blood and killings, and no security,” said Emad Sobhy, a voter who lives in Cairo. “Holding a referendum with the country as it is cannot give you a proper result.”

INCREASINGLY DIVIDED

As polls closed, Islamists attacked the offices of the newspaper of the liberal Wafd party, part of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition that pushed for a “no” vote.

“The referendum was 56.5 percent for the ‘yes’ vote,” a senior official in the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party operations room set up to monitor voting told Reuters.

The Brotherhood and its party had representatives at polling stations across the 10 areas, including Cairo, in this round. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the tally was based on counts from more than 99 percent of polling stations.

“The nation is increasingly divided and the pillars of state are swaying,” opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on Twitter. “Poverty and illiteracy are fertile grounds for trading with religion. The level of awareness is rising fast.”

One opposition official also told Reuters the vote appeared to have gone in favor of Islamists who backed the constitution.

The opposition initially said its exit polls indicated the “no” camp would win comfortably, but officials changed tack during the night. One opposition official said in the early hours of Sunday that it would be “very close”.

A narrow loss could still hearten leftists, socialists, Christians and more liberal-minded Muslims who make up the disparate opposition, which has been beaten in two elections since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year.

They were drawn together to oppose what they saw as a power grab by Mursi as he pushed through the constitution. The National Salvation Front includes prominent figures such as ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and firebrand leftist Hamdeen Sabahy.

If the constitution is approved, a parliamentary election will follow early next year.

DEADLY VIOLENCE

Analysts question whether the opposition group will keep together until the parliamentary election. The Islamist-dominated lower house of parliament elected earlier this year was dissolved based on a court order in June.

Violence in Cairo and other cities has plagued the run-up to the referendum. At least eight people were killed when rival camps clashed during demonstrations outside the presidential palace earlier this month.

In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of those casting ballots. There are 51 million eligible voters in the nation of 83 million.

Islamists have been counting on their disciplined ranks of supporters and on Egyptians desperate for an end to turmoil that has hammered the economy and sent Egypt’s pound to eight-year lows against the dollar.

The army deployed about 120,000 troops and 6,000 tanks and armored vehicles to protect polling stations and other government buildings. While the military backed Mubarak and his predecessors, it has not intervened in the present crisis.

(Additional reporting Yasmin Saleh and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Be Careful When Downloading Your Twitter Archive

Twitter is rolling out the long-awaited feature of downloading your entire tweet history, it seems, but be careful. You might not like what you find in there. Sometimes we remember our tweets with rose-colored lenses.

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The Next Web was the first to notice a few users posting about being able to download their tweet history this weekend. Not everyone can do it, though. Twitter is slow-rolling the new feature, so only a limited number of people have access to the option. To check if you’re one of the lucky few, go to your settings page. At the very bottom there should be a new section with a big button offering you the chance to download your archive. Twitter will send you an email with three different compression files of your tweet history after a few minutes. You’ll decompress a .html file and be able to sort through all the dumb stuff you’ve said on Twitter by month and by year. 

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The Verge has the best screen shots of what the process looks like. One of their readers even posted a link to his history in the comments of their post. You can check it out here if you’re interested to see what the feature is like. Just don’t judge the poor guy too harshly. 

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We don’t have the option to download our archive yet. We checked. And, in case you think you’re clever, we checked to see if you could game the url to get your history by subbing in your username into the Verge commenter’s URL. You can’t, unfortunately. 

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Twitter CEO Dick Costello promised the feature would be here by the end of the year, so it seems like he’s just delivering what he promised. You should get it soon, too. 

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Chicano rock pioneers Los Lobos marking 40 years

LOS ANGELES (AP) — They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock ‘n’ roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naiveté, to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.

It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about twice the volume you’d normally expect to hear.

“They were Latinos who weren’t afraid to break the mold of what’s expected and what’s traditionally played. That made them legendary, even to people who at first weren’t that familiar with their catalog,” said Greg Gonzalez of the young, Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.

To the guys in Los Lobos, however, the band that began to take shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high school is still “just another band from East LA,” the words the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more than two dozen albums.

As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos‘ 40th anniversary gets under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of rock stardom.

That’s, well, sort of true.

For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos‘ life, there was power-chord rock ‘n’ roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix.

“I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15,” says drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Perez, recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop on a ticket to a Hendrix show.

“I sat right down front,” he recalls, his voice rising in excitement. “That experience just sort of rearranged my brain cells.”

About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the school made famous in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver” that profiled Jaime Escalante’s success in teaching college-level calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow students Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas, both experienced musicians.

“Cesar had played in a power trio,” Perez recalls, while Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.

It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have been born.

And the group might have stayed just another garage band from East LA, had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las Mananitas.

“It’s a serenade to someone on their birthday,” Perez explains, and the group members’ mothers had birthdays coming up.

“So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to our parents’ homes and did a little serenade,” Hidalgo recalled separately.

They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.

Because they were at heart a rock ‘n’ roll band, however, they always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast. That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars they had so coveted as kids.

“They said, ‘Well, that’s not what we hired you for,’” Perez says, chuckling.

So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where initially the reaction wasn’t much better.

Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for Berlin’s group the Blasters, the reaction was different.

“It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing,” the saxophonist recalls. “By the next morning, everybody I knew in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los Lobos.”

A few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them. They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with Norteno, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a saxophone, and they needed a sax player.

For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteno music.

Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the group’s first true rock album, 1984′s “How Will the Wolf Survive?” At the end of the sessions he was in the band.

The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.

The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their version of the Mexican folk tune “La Bamba” for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen idol Ritchie Valens’ rock interpretation with the original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.

A two-year tour and a couple albums that nobody bought followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.

So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics and power chords of “Kiko,” the 1992 album now hailed as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released earlier this year.

The influence of Los Lobos‘ cross-cultural work can be heard to this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert on cross-border music.

“All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a Mexican-American group,” said Kun, who curated the Grammy Museum’s recent “Trouble in Paradise” exhibition that chronicled the modern history of LA music.

For Los Lobos, winner of three Grammys, that was just the natural way of doing things for guys, Perez says, who learned early on that they didn’t fit in completely on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we’re not completely accepted on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the border it’s like, ‘Well, what are you?’” he mused.

“So if that’s the case,” he added brightly, “then, hey, we belong everywhere.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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California home for developmentally disabled faces abuse inquiry

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California health officials have threatened to shut down part of the state’s oldest home for developmentally disabled adults due to evidence of physical abuse and neglect, in a move that could displace nearly 300 of its residents.

The state-run Sonoma Developmental Center could lose its license to run one unit if it does not fix the problems, according to a letter the state health department sent this week to the director of the sprawling facility in Eldridge.

Monitors this month and last “documented incidents of abuse constituting immediate jeopardy, as well as actual serious threats to the physical safety of female clients in certain units,” the California Department of Public Health letter said.

Among the incidents were physical abuse, a staff member exposing himself to a female client and inadequate monitoring of a patient who had propensity to swallow inedible items, leading to surgery, said Pam Dickfoss, assistant deputy director of the California Center for Health Care Quality.

The threat of sanctions against the board-and-care center in the heart of wine country represents a significant blow to a historic facility that opened at its current site in 1891 next to the bucolic town of Sonoma.

The center is northern California‘s only state-run residential facility for developmentally disabled adults and sits on 1,000 acres of land, including a petting zoo and sports fields.

Closure of the unit under scrutiny, the Intermediate Care Facility, could require moving 290 of the center’s more than 500 residents, officials said. It is unclear where they would be sent and officials say they hope that will not be necessary.

Administrators have vowed to correct deficiencies and said they plan to appeal the move to potentially strip them of federal funding and a state license for the unit under scrutiny.

“We are moving quickly to fix this center and protect our residents,” said Terri Delgadillo, director of the state Department of Developmental Services, which oversees the center.

She said the problems forced the removal of the center’s executive and clinical directors as well as other staff changes.

State monitors identified 57 deficiencies during a July visit, including four that posed an immediate danger to residents, and dozens of other threats to residents in more recent visits, the letter said.

The facility gets $ 117,000 a day in federal funding, said Nancy Lungren, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Developmental Services.

Most of the center’s residents suffer from cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism, or a combination of those conditions. Many have lived their entire adult lives at the center.

Leslie Morrison, director of the investigations unit of Disability Rights California, a watchdog group, said she was troubled by reports from the facility over the past year.

“This has been developing for a long period,” Morrison said. “They have been trying to correct things, but it’s going to take a long time.”

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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