Pope needs help sending out blessing in first tweet

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation bordering on media frenzy, Pope Benedict solemnly put his finger to a computer tablet device on Wednesday and tried to send his first tweet – but something went wrong.

Images on Vatican television appeared to show the first try didn’t work. The pope, who still writes his speeches by hand, seems to have pressed too hard and the tweet was not sent right away. So, he needed a little help from his friends.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli of the Vatican‘s communications department showed the pontiff how to do it, but the pope hesitated. Celli touched the screen lightly himself and off went the papal tweet.

“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart,” he said in his introduction to the brave new world of Twitter.

The tweet was sent at the end of weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.

The pope actually has eight linked Twitter accounts. @Pontifex, the main account, is in English. The other seven have a suffix at the end for the different language versions. For example, the German version is @Pontifex_de, and the Arabic version is @Pontifex_ar.

The tweets will be going out in Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French. Other languages will be added in the future.

The pope already had just over a million followers in all of the languages combined minutes before he sent his first tweet and the number was growing.

PAPAL Q AND A

Later on Wednesday after the audience was over and the television cameras turned off, the pontiff answered the first of three questions sent to him at #askpontifex.

The first question answered by the pope was: “How can we celebrate the Year of Faith better in our daily lives?”

His answer: “By speaking with Jesus in prayer, listening to what he tells you in the Gospel and looking for him in those in need.”

The pope, who, as leader of the Roman Catholic Church already has 1.2 billion followers in the standard sense of the word, won’t be following anyone else, the Vatican has said.

After his first splash into the brave new world of Twitter on Wednesday, the contents of future tweets will come primarily from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays.

They are also expected to include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.

The Vatican says papal tweets will be little “pearls of wisdom”, which is understandable since his thoughts will have to be condensed to 140 characters, while papal documents often top 140 pages.

The Vatican said precautions had been taken to make sure the pope’s certified account is not hacked. Only one computer in the Vatican’s secretariat of state will be used for the tweets.

After Wednesday, Benedict won’t be pushing the button on his tweets himself. They will be sent by aides but he will sign off on them.

The pope’s Twitter page is designed in yellow and white – the colors of the Vatican, with a backdrop of the Vatican and his picture. It may change during different liturgical seasons of the year and when the pope is away from the Vatican on trips.

The pope has given a qualified welcome to social media.

In a document issued last year, he said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

In 2009, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

The Vatican famously got egg on its face in 2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it had surfed the web more, it might have known that a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted had for years been a Holocaust denier.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Roll Up! “Magical Mystery Tour” gets U.S. TV debut

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Give four pop stars turned hippies a movie camera in 1967 and what do you get? The Beatles‘ “Magical Mystery Tour” film, which will receive its long-awaited U.S. broadcast television debut on Friday on PBS.

Long a curiosity in the United States, the film will be accompanied by a new documentary about its making. A restored version was released on DVD and blu-ray in October.

The third film for The Fab Four, after a “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964 and “Help!” a year later, “Magical Mystery Tour” is a shambolic trip through the English countryside on a bus filled with odd characters, but thin on plot. It first aired on BBC television the day after Christmas 1967.

Although it was initially panned by British critics, time has delivered some justice to the project, Jonathan Clyde, the producer of the documentary, told Reuters.

“‘Magical Mystery Tour‘ has always been the black sheep of the Beatles family, but I think it’s been rehabilitated into the Beatles canon,” Clyde said. “It’s no longer the ‘mad uncle in the attic’ that nobody wants to talk about. It’s been let out.”

In the United States, little was known about the film at the time of its release.

Beatles fans only had the album of music, or saw a poor print of the film in a double-feature midnight showing with “Reefer Madness,” a 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film often screened decades later for comedic effect.

“I first saw it in 1974 at a university,” Bill King, the longtime publisher of Beatles fanzine Beatlefan, said of “Magical Mystery Tour.” “By then, though, it had taken on mythic status. I loved it.”

At the time of its making, The Beatles were arguably at their creative peak on the heels of a seminal album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and their summer of love anthem “All You Need Is Love,” which debuted on global TV.

SCRIPT WANTED

But even before “Sgt. Pepper’s” release in June 1967, Paul McCartney had already conceived of the film project. The only thing he was missing: a script.

“Paul had drawn out a pie chart,” said Clyde, also a longtime consultant for The Beatles‘ company, Apple Corps. “It just said things like ‘Get on coach,’ ‘Dreams,’ ‘End Song.’ They really had no idea what it was going to be like.”

The group hired a bus, a film crew, and a handful of extras and set out around England, creating scenes with everything from magicians to Ringo Starr’s oversized Aunt Jessie being stuffed with spaghetti by waiter John Lennon.

McCartney did most of the directing.

“It really had something for everyone, which is something I like about it,” Clyde said. “It was really a nod not only to the younger people watching, but to their parents’ generation, as well.”

The film also was loaded with six new Beatles songs, presented as what now would be considered music videos.

The music itself, including songs “I Am the Walrus” and “The Fool on the Hill,” was as innovative as any of the band’s music that year – and mostly recorded just before filming started.

“The Beatles were driven and inspired by having a deadline,” said Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin. The younger Martin remixed the songs at the legendary Abbey Road studios for the DVD and broadcast.

“And songs like ‘Walrus’ are a brilliant mix of both The Beatles as a rock and roll band and as masters of groundbreaking experimental recording,” Martin added.

(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Nick Zieminski)

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Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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E.C.B. Sees a Healing Euro Zone but Warns of Risks

FRANKFURT — Tensions in the euro zone have eased noticeably since the summer, the European Central Bank said Friday, but it warned that the situation remained fragile in part because commercial banks were still in a weakened state.

“There is a risk in spite of the recent improvements,” Vitor Constâncio, the vice president of the E.C.B., said at a press briefing Friday.

In its twice-a-year report on financial stability, the E.C.B. noted a number of indications that the euro zone is starting to heal. For example, borrowing costs for troubled countries have dropped substantially, and banks in Portugal and Ireland have regained access to money markets.

Countries including Spain and Italy have been able to increase their exports because labor costs have fallen, improving their competitiveness, the E.C.B. said. While that is positive, it came about partly because of high unemployment and falling wages.

“This adjustment has had a heavy cost,” Mr. Constâncio said. “But at least we can say the adjustment occurred.”

Unemployment will start to fall by 2014 as the stressed countries begin to grow again, Mr. Constâncio said.

The E.C.B. attributed the ebbing of fear in the euro zone to a combination of central bank policy, improved competitiveness at some countries and progress by political leaders toward creating a more durable euro zone. Mr. Constâncio said it was impossible to separate out how much each of those factors contributed.

The E.C.B. gave itself credit for some of the improvement, including its promise to buy government bonds as needed to contain countries’ borrowing costs. It also lauded the decision by euro zone leaders this week to give the E.C.B. overall authority for regulating banks.

Mr. Constâncio emphasized that, even though the E.C.B. has direct control only over about 150 of the biggest banks as part of the so-called banking union, it sees itself as overseer for the whole banking system, with the power to assume oversight of any bank it chooses. Mr. Constâncio said that political leaders understood this.

The E.C.B. “has legal competence over all the banks,” he said. “This is a very important idea.”

Banks, and falling bank profits, were the major weaknesses identified by the E.C.B. in the report. European bank shares are currently valued at much less than the value of their assets, the report said.

“It really is a very negative judgment by the stock market,” Mr. Constâncio said.

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Court ruling could cut California spending on Medi-Cal

SAN FRANCISCO — In a potential windfall for the state, a federal appeals court decided unanimously Thursday that California may cut reimbursements to doctors, pharmacies and others who serve the poor under Medi-Cal.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned injunctions blocking the state from implementing a 2011 law that slashed Medi-Cal reimbursements by 10%. Medi-Cal, a version of Medicaid, serves low-income Californians.

The ruling could make it harder to find doctors for as many as 2 million new patients who could become eligible for Medi-Cal under President Obama's healthcare law — a possible 25% expansion of the program. California already provides one of the lowest rates of reimbursement in the nation for medical services to the poor, and there is a shortage of doctors to serve those patients.

Lynn S. Carman, an attorney for a group of pharmacies, said the decision would be costly for providers, worsen the doctor shortage and would be appealed.

"If this decision stands it will not only destroy the Medicaid program in California, but it will destroy the Obamacare program for millions of Americans who are now being shoved into the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act," Carman said.

"They will not be able to obtain quality healthcare or access to services because providers cannot provide services at less than what it costs to furnish them," Carman said.

The ruling could make it considerably easier for the state to close its budget gap.

The state is facing a $1.9-billion deficit next year, although Proposition 30's temporary tax hike and an improving economy are projected to shift the state back into surpluses in the near future.

Medical providers said Thursday that the cutback should be lifted now that the state's fiscal outlook has improved. The ruling can be applied retroactively to June 1, 2011.

"Now that the state has money, it would be like Scrooge for Gov. Brown not to pass a bill to eliminate at least the retroactivity part of it," Carman said.

For the governor, Medi-Cal cuts could serve one policy aim at the expense of another.

Balancing the budget has been Brown's first priority since taking office, and cutting healthcare — the state's second-biggest cost after education — has been key to his fiscal goal.

But at the same time, he has wanted California to be out front in healthcare reform, and lead the country in efforts to put the federal law into place.

A spokesman for Gov. Brown released a statement Thursday that implied that Brown was inclined to put his budget priorities first, and was not likely to rescind the cuts.

"Today's decision allows California to continue providing quality care for people on Medi-Cal while saving the state millions of dollars in unnecessary costs," the spokesman wrote.

In a ruling written by Judge Stephen S. Trott, appointed by President Reagan, the panel said the lower court injunctions were unwarranted because the federal government had approved the cuts.

"Neither the State nor the federal government 'promised, explicitly or implicitly,' that provider reimbursement rates would never change," Trott wrote.

California has estimated that the 10% cut to medical providers and pharmacies would save the state $50 million a month.

Medi-Cal typically covers families and disabled Californians. The federal law will extend its coverage to single, childless adults beginning in 2014.

The California Medical Assn., which joined dentists, pharmacists, medical suppliers and medical response companies in trying to block the cutbacks, urged Brown to repeal them.

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‘Homeland’ leads old favorites in Golden Globes TV race

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Cable shows got more Golden Globe nominations for television than traditional network programs on Thursday as HBO‘s political movie “Game Change” and Showtime‘s psychological thriller series “Homeland,” – one of last year’s big winners – led the race.

“Homeland” led the TV drama category with four nominations including best drama, best actor for Damian Lewis and best actress for Claire Danes in her role as a bi-polar CIA agent tracking down a home-grown Muslim extremist.

The show faces stiff competition from British aristocratic drama “Downton Abbey, which also won an acting nod for Michelle Dockery, along with “Breaking Bad,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and newcomer “The Newsroom.”

“‘Homeland’ fans seemed to be a little more split on whether creatively the second season was as successful as the first season so it’ll be curious if that ends up impacting the show’s chances in terms of taking home the awards,” James Hibberd, senior staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, told Reuters.

“Downtown Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes told Reuters: “We’re up against the big boys now, but the whole thing is very flattering and exciting.”

He added: “The themes of the show are pretty international, they’re about adjusting to change and being caught out by what life does to you…all of that is common to every country.”

HBO movie “Game Change,” about the surprise selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign, landed five nods in the miniseries/movie category, including for actors Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.

“‘Game Change’ is pure awards bait. It’s a well-done, smart political drama based on a book, with a certain amount of left-wing political slant and it’s very much the type of movie you’d expect awards voters to like,” Hibberd said.

New HBO drama “The Newsroom” bumped long-time awards favorite “Mad Men” from the best drama category, surprising many who believed the stylish advertising series was a shoo-in.

“The Globes tend to like the glamorous and sophisticated dramas with big city settings and they tend to shy away from gritty, rural Americana dramas…about sweaty guys with guns instead of charming men in suits, like ‘The Newsroom’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire,’” Hibberd said.

He noted that the only exception was “Breaking Bad,” which finally made the best drama category this year after four seasons on air.

Other notable snubs included HBO‘s epic fantasy drama “Game of Thrones,” which failed to pick up any nominations, and Ryan Murphy’s miniseries “American Horror Story: Asylum” which landed one best actress nod for Jessica Lange, who took home the award for 2012.

‘MODERN FAMILY’ LEADS COMEDY RACE

While last year’s Golden Globes picked newcomers over staple awards favorites for leading nominees, this year’s comedy categories saw the return of many old faces, including “Modern Family,” which led the comedy race with three nods.

Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who will be hosting the awards ceremony on January 13, each landed a best comedy actress nod in the television race for their long-popular NBC comedies – Fey for “30 Rock” and Poehler for “Parks and Recreation.”

“You can be sure that the hosts are going to have fun with this during the telecast, they’re going to find ways to play off this during their presentation,” Hibberd said.

Fey and Poehler will replace Ricky Gervais at the awards gala dinner, after the British comedian helmed the Globes with his risqué dry humor for three years.

HBO‘s raunchy new comedy “Girls” earned two key nominations in the best TV comedy category and best comedy actress for Lena Dunham, while Showtime‘s new satire “House of Lies” landed the show’s lead Don Cheadle a best actor nod.

With the exception of NBC’s musical comedy “Smash” in the best comedy series category, no new network comedies managed to break into key races, which Hibberd attributed to a “disappointing” fall season.

Cable channel HBO picked up 17 nominations and Showtime garnered 7 across all major television categories. Networks ABC had 5, CBS and NBC got 4, and Fox got 2.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, an online petition platform, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 14, 2012

An article on Thursday about new concerns over brominated vegetable oil, a common ingredient in many citrus drinks, described incorrectly Change.org, the Web site where a Mississippi teenager started a petition to persuade PepsiCo to remove the substance from Gatorade. It is a B Corporation, a sort of hybrid nonprofit/for-profit entity; it is not a nonprofit Web site. (The company’s online petition platform is supported by advertising.)

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High & Low Finance: Uncertainty in Washington, Windfall for Others

Let us pause to give credit where credit is due.

The so-called fiscal cliff, and Washington deadlock, dominate the news these days, but the reality is that Congress has accomplished a lot. Thanks to it, as well as to President Obama, action has been taken that will accomplish the following goals:

¶ Provide immediate economic stimulus through the payment of billions of dollars to American individuals.

¶ Significantly increase tax receipts in the current fiscal year, thus reducing the budget deficit, with much of the money coming from higher-income Americans who will voluntarily take steps to increase their 2012 income tax liability.

¶ Bolster charitable giving substantially this year.

¶ Demonstrate which companies rolling in cash have attained that status by keeping profits overseas, rather than bringing them home to reinvest.

Many of those accomplishments could be limited, however, if President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner accomplish what everyone says they want — a quick compromise to avoid the automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to begin Jan. 1 — and so reduce the uncertainty that is having such beneficial effects.

Each day that passes without a deal brings more companies declaring special dividends, and more high-flying stocks being sold off to capture capital gains that will be taxed at today’s low rates. Tax advisers for wealthy people who have some control over the timing of their income are advising them to take the income now, rather than to defer it to next year.

Among the companies that have declared special dividends in the last few weeks are HCA, once known as Hospital Corporation of America; Costco, the retailer; and a clothing company whose name neatly symbolizes the spirit of this holiday season: Guess Inc.

The guessing concerns the shape of tax law next year. I cannot recall a December with more uncertainty about the following year. The fact that the stock market is up this month, albeit only a little, should remind us that the cliché “investors hate uncertainty” is nonsense. There is always uncertainty, but sometimes there are reasons to think things will work out well.

One virtual certainty is that taxes on capital gains and dividends are going up for high-income people — the very people who get most of those types of income. Each is now taxed at 15 percent. At a minimum, the Medicare payroll tax is to be extended to all taxable income over $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals, and raised — for them only — to 3.8 percent on that excess income.

But it could be much worse for people who get a lot of that income. If the Bush tax cuts simply expire — the no-deal case — the top capital gains rate goes to 20 percent, plus the 3.8 percent topper for the high-income people. Dividends lose all tax preferences. They will then be taxed at ordinary income tax rates, which will rise as high as 39.6 percent, plus that 3.8 percent.

You can see the impact of that in the stock market. At the end of the year there is usually “tax loss” selling, as people liquidate their losers to get tax losses to offset other gains. This year there is “tax winner” selling. Most of the stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 100 — basically, the largest companies in the United States — have risen this month. But five of the six stocks that performed best over the last two years have lost ground, including Apple.

As for dividends, there are extras galore — Bloomberg has counted $21 billion worth — not to mention early payments. Many companies decided to accelerate dividends that would normally have been paid in early 2013, and some did more. Oracle decided to push the first three 2013 dividends into this year. Larry Ellison, its founder and chief executive, will have an extra $199 million in dividend income this year.

Not all companies are doing that, of course. Apple, whose balance sheet indicates it is rolling in cash, has not announced any such move. The problem may be that Apple arranges its affairs so that a lot of its profits seem to be overseas. That lets it avoid American corporate taxes until it brings the money home, so paying the money out would force it to pay a lot to Uncle Sam.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

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Oregon mall shooting suspect showed no known sign of trouble

Jacob Roberts planned big life changes before this week's shooting at a suburban mall in Oregon that left two people dead and another seriously injured: He quit his job, got rid of many belongings, and aimed to move to Hawaii.

"He was kind of leaving suddenly. I've seen that happen before, where stuff comes up in someone's life, where they kind of need a fresh, clean break. So we thought nothing of it. It was, 'Good luck on your new life. Enjoy Hawaii,'" said Holli Winchell, who socialized frequently with Roberts in the bars and restaurants of southeast Portland.

Something went wrong, though, and Roberts didn't make it onto the plane for Hawaii. The next thing his friends heard, he was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Tuesday after shouting, "I am the shooter!" and opening fire, authorities say, with a semiautomatic assault rifle at the Clackamas Town Center mall, which was packed with Christmas shoppers.

PHOTOS: Oregon mall shooting

Roberts' Facebook page left what may be one of the only clues to his mind-set: a picture of a graffiti-covered wall with the words, "Follow Your Dreams," marked out with another word in large red letters: "Cancelled." It had been uploaded Oct. 3.

Authorities believe that Roberts, 22, who proudly claimed to work at a "badass" sandwich shop and whom friends described as funny and good-natured most of the time, rushed into the mall carrying a stolen AR-15 rifle along with magazines of ammunition and sprayed shoppers in the food court before his weapon momentarily jammed. He retreated down a service stairwell.

Retailers herded panicked shoppers to safety behind locked doors as more than 100 police officers swarmed toward the mall. Casualties were remarkably few, Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts told reporters Wednesday, because of quick thinking by those present and the many drills police had conducted imagining the unthinkable.

"Ten thousand people in the mall at one time kept a level head. They got themselves out of the mall, they helped others out, and there's just a number of heroes that took the time to help people get out.... It was really a whole lot of people coming together to make a difference," the sheriff said.

Police have not been able to discern any warnings that the young man was headed for violence, nor any signs that he had help in the rampage, Sheriff Roberts said.

"Every indication we have is that he acted solely on his own in carrying out this heinous, horrible, tragic crime," he said.

Young Roberts gave no sign of anything amiss to his friends — at least as far as Winchell was able to tell after talking with co-workers and other friends who were part of their casual group.

"None of my friends, even ones who are very close with him, none of them seem to know what happened. He'd had some small stuff come up in his life, nothing major, but just maybe he wanted to get out of Portland, and it was kind of a convenient time to leave," Winchell said.

"It's the type of community where if somebody had known, if he had talked to somebody, there were resources out there and friends that would have been able to help him," she said. "The only thing I could think of was he had something going on in his head that was a lot deeper than any of us could have imagined."

Brandon Froom said he considered Roberts "a good friend," but saw no signs of anything wrong.

"He never spoke much of his personal life. He was entertaining. He made a lot of jokes, always presented a positive mood," he said. "I don't know what snapped in him, but he was always good to people. And it saddens me that he acted out the way he did, for whatever reason he had."

On his Facebook page, Roberts described himself as "a pretty funny person that takes sarcasm to the max" and "the kind of person that is going to do what I want."

"I'm the conductor of my choo choo train," he wrote. "I may be young, but I have lived one crazy life so far.... I like to think of myself as a bit of an adrenaline junkie.... But I'm just looking to meet new people and see the world."

The two victims killed — Steven Forsyth, 45, a youth sports coach who operated a kiosk at the mall, and Cindy Yuille, a 54-year-old hospice nurse — appear to have died right away. A third victim, Kristina Shevchenko, 15, was in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the chest and significant injuries to her lung and liver.

Authorities said a friend helped her get out of the mall to medics quickly.

"These were very serious, life-threatening injuries," her surgeon, Laszlo Kiraly, told reporters at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital. "There is going to be a significant rehabilitation, but she is very young and healthy and … she is a fighter."

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‘Dishonored’ tops a diverse year in video games

The video game universe in 2012 is a study in extremes.

At one end, you have the old guard striving to produce mass-appeal blockbusters. At the other end, you have a thriving community of independent game developers scrambling to find an audience for their idiosyncratic visions. Can’t we all just get along?

Turns out, we can. For while some industry leaders are worried (and not without cause) about “disruptive” trends — social-media games, free-to-play models, the switch from disc-based media to digital delivery — video games are blossoming creatively. This fall, during the height of the pre-holiday game release calendar, I found myself bouncing among games as diverse as the bombastic “Halo 4,” the artsy “The Unfinished Swan” and the quick-hit trivia game “SongPop.”

Some of my favorite games this year have benefited from both sides working together. The smaller studios get exposure on huge platforms like Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network. The big publishers seem more willing to invite a little quirkiness into their big-budget behemoths. Gamers win.

1. “Dishonored” (Bethesda Softworks, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC): Arkane Studios’ revenge drama combined a witty plot, crisp gameplay and an uncommonly distinctive milieu, setting a supernaturally gifted assassin loose in a gloriously decadent, steampunk-influenced city.

2. “Mass Effect 3″ (Electronic Arts, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, PC): No 2012 game was more ambitious than BioWare’s sweeping space opera. Yes, the ending was a little bumpy, but the fearless Commander Shepard’s last journey across the cosmos provided dozens of thrilling moments.

3. “The Walking Dead” (Telltale Games, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, iOS): This moving adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comics dodged the predictable zombie bloodbath in favor of a finely tuned character study of two survivors: Lee, an escaped convict, and Clementine, the 8-year-old girl he’s committed to protect.

4. “Journey” (Thatgamecompany, for the PlayStation 3): A nameless figure trudges across a desert toward a glowing light. Simple enough, but gorgeous visuals, haunting music and the need to communicate, wordlessly, with companions you meet along the way translate into something that’s almost profound.

5. “Borderlands 2″ (2K Games, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC): Gearbox Software’s gleeful mash-up of first-person shooting, role-playing and loot-collecting conventions gets bigger and badder, but what stuck with me most were the often hilarious encounters with the damaged citizens of the godforsaken planet Pandora.

6. “XCOM: Enemy Unknown” (2K Games, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC): A strategy classic returns, as the forces of Earth fight back against an extraterrestrial invasion. It’s a battle of wits rather than reflexes, a stimulating change of pace from the typical alien gorefest.

7. “Fez” (Polytron, for the Xbox 360): A two-dimensional dude named Gomez finds his world has suddenly burst into a third dimension in this gem from indie developer Phil Fish. As Gomez explores, the world of “Fez” continually deepens, opening up mysteries that only the most dedicated players will be able to solve.

8. “Spec Ops: The Line” (2K Games, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC): This harrowing tale from German studio Yager Development transplants “Apocalypse Now” to a war-torn Dubai. It’s a bracing critique, not just of war but of the rah-rah jingoism of contemporary military shooters.

9. “Assassin’s Creed III” (Ubisoft, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, PC): A centuries-old conspiracy takes root in Colonial America in this beautifully realized, refreshingly irreverent installment of Ubisoft’s alternate history franchise.

10. “ZombiU” (Ubisoft, for the Wii U): The best launch game for Nintendo’s new console turns the Wii U’s GamePad into an effective tool for finding and hunting down the undead.

Runners-up: “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” ”Darksiders II,” ”Dust: An Elysian Tail,” ”Far Cry 3,” ”Halo 4,” ”Mark of the Ninja,” ”Need for Speed: Most Wanted,” ”Paper Mario: Sticker Star,” ”Papo & Yo,” ”The Unfinished Swan.”

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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