Apple stock wilts on worries about iPhone demand

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple‘s stock slipped below $ 500 for the first time in 11 months on Monday as investors reacted to reports signaling the company’s latest iPhone is falling further behind a slew of sleek alternatives running Google’s Android software.

The latest indication that Apple, the world’s most valuable company, is seeing sluggish demand for its iPhone 5 emerged in separate stories published Monday in the Japanese newspaper Nikkei and The Wall Street Journal. Both publications cited unnamed people familiar with the situation saying Apple has dramatically reduced its orders for the parts needed to build the newest iPhone because the device isn’t selling as well as the company hoped.

The adjustment means Apple will buy about half as many display screens for the iPhone as management originally planned for the opening three months of the year, according to the newspapers.

Apple Inc., which is based in Cupertino, Calif., declined to comment Monday. Spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said Apple executives would share their views on market conditions Jan. 23 when the company is scheduled to release its financial results for the final three months of 2011. The period covers the first full quarter that the iPhone 5 was on sale.

Although Apple hailed the iPhone 5 as the best version yet of a product that has revolutionized the telecommunications and computing industry, the company’s stock has wilted since the device hit the market.

After peaking at $ 705.07 on the day of the iPhone 5′s Sept. 21 release, Apple’s stock has plunged nearly 30 percent. The shares fell $ 18.55, or 3.6 percent, to close Monday’s regular trading at $ 501.75, dragging the company’s market value nearly $ 190 billion below where it stood in late September. The stock traded at $ 498.51 earlier in the day, its lowest price since February.

The stock’s decline hasn’t been entirely caused by concerns about the iPhone 5′s sales performance. Industry analysts are also worried about the recent introduction of a smaller, less expensive iPad cutting into the company’s profits.

But the biggest fears hover around the iPhone because it has become Apple’s most valuable product since the company’s late CEO, Steve Jobs, unveiled the first model in 2007. Apple has sold more than 271 million of the devices since then, and in the company’s last fiscal year ending in September, the iPhone generated $ 80 billion in sales to account for more than half of the company’s total revenue.

But Apple’s upgrades of the iPhone in the past two years have disappointed gadget lovers who have been clamoring for Apple to do more to stay in front of device makers relying on the free Android software made by Google Inc. For instance, there were high hopes for a larger iPhone screen with the release of the 2011 model, but Apple waited until last September to take that leap. And when Apple moved to a larger display screen with the iPhone 5, it didn’t include a special chip to enable users to make mobile payments by tapping the handset on another device at the checkout stand. Such a mobile payment feature is available on some Android phones.

Finally, Apple has insisted that wireless carriers subsidize so much of the iPhone’s cost in exchange for customers’ two-year commitments on data plans that the carriers make little or no money by selling the devices. That has prompted more wireless carriers to tout less expensive Android phones in their stores, undercutting the demand for iPhones, said Darren Hayes, who has been studying the shifting market conditions as chairman of the computing systems program at Pace University in New York.

Through the third quarter of last year, Android devices represented 75 percent of smartphone shipments worldwide according to the research firm International Data Corp. That was up from 58 percent at the same point 2011. Meanwhile, Apple’s share of worldwide smartphone shipments has fallen from a peak of 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 15 percent in the third quarter of last year.

Samsung Electronics, in particular, has been benefiting from the growing popularity of its Android-powered phones, led by its Galaxy S line. The company said Monday that it sold more than 100 million Galaxy S phones in less than three years. It took the iPhone nearly four years to reach that milestone.

“This is a real wake-up call for Apple,” Hayes said. “They need to be more flexible in how they do things.” Among other things, Hayes thinks Apple may have to reduce the financial burden on wireless carriers selling the iPhone and spend more money advertising the devices, especially with the recent wave of phones running on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software. Apple’s efforts to sell more iPhones to companies also could be short-circuited if Research in Motion Ltd.’s upcoming release of a revamped BlackBerry proves to be a hit. The BlackBerry is due out Jan. 30.

In an attempt to regain its competitive edge, Apple already is considering the release of a less expensive version of the iPhone made of cheaper parts to boost sales in less affluent countries, according to a report last week in The Wall Street Journal. The company so far hasn’t commented on that speculation, either. The least expensive iPhone 5 without a wireless contract sells for $ 649. With the subsidy included with a two-year wireless service contract, the iPhone 5 sells for as little as $ 199.

Even as it loses ground to Android products, the iPhone remains a solid seller. Some analysts believe Apple sold more than 50 million iPhones in its last quarter ending in December, which would be far the most units that the company has ever shipped during any previous three-month period.

What’s more, the iPhone 5 got off to a torrid start in China, where Apple expects to eventually sell more devices than it does in the U.S. Apple said it sold more than two million iPhone 5s in the three days after its debut in China last month.

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Natalie Wood may have sustained bruises before drowning death: report

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actress Natalie Wood had bruising on her arms and wrists and scratches on her neck when her body was pulled from the Pacific Ocean in 1981, suggesting she was injured before she hit the water, according to a report released by Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office on Monday.

But the report, written in June 2012, said there was not enough evidence to say that her death was definitively “non accidental.”

The body of the “West Side Story” star, 43, was found floating in a Santa Catalina Island cove off the coast of Southern California in 1981 after she had spent a night of dining and drinking on the island and on a yacht with her husband, television star Robert Wagner, and actor Christopher Walken.

The case has been surrounded by mystery and suspicion for decades and Los Angeles homicide detectives reopened the investigation into Wood’s death in 2011.

In June 2012, authorities changed Wood’s death certificate to “drowning and other undetermined factors” from the original finding of accidental drowning, but did not explain why.

The change was based on a 10-page document, drawn up as an addendum to the original autopsy report, that said Wood died shortly after she entered the water.

“The location of the bruises, the multiplicity of the bruises, lack of head trauma, or facial bruising, support bruising having occurred prior to the entry into the water,” the supplemental coroner’s report states.

“This medical examiner is unable to exclude non-volitional, unplanned entry into the water … Since there are many unanswered questions and limited additional evidence available for evaluation, it is opined by this medical examiner that the manner of death should be left as undetermined,” it adds.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said on Monday the case was still open but declined to discuss any new evidence that may have been discovered.

The Sheriff’s Department has said that neither Wagner, now 82, nor Walken are suspects.

Wood starred opposite James Dean in the classic 1955 film “Rebel Without a Cause,” and later in musical “West Side Story” and “Splendor in the Grass.”

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Personal Best: Training Insights From Star Athletes

Of course elite athletes are naturally gifted. And of course they train hard and may have a phalanx of support staff — coaches, nutritionists, psychologists.

But they often have something else that gives them an edge: an insight, or even an epiphany, that vaults them from the middle of the pack to the podium.

I asked several star athletes about the single realization that made the difference for them. While every athlete’s tale is intensely personal, it turns out there are some common themes.

Stay Focused

Like many distance swimmers who spend endless hours in the pool, Natalie Coughlin, 30, used to daydream as she swam laps. She’d been a competitive swimmer for almost her entire life, and this was the way she — and many others — managed the boredom of practice.

But when she was in college, she realized that daydreaming was only a way to get in the miles; it was not allowing her to reach her potential. So she started to concentrate every moment of practice on what she was doing, staying focused and thinking about her technique.

“That’s when I really started improving,” she said. “The more I did it, the more success I had.”

In addition to her many victories, Ms. Coughlin won five medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, including a gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke.

Manage Your ‘Energy Pie’

In 1988, Steve Spence, then a 25-year-old self-coached distance runner, was admitted into the United States Long Distance Runner Olympic Development Program. It meant visiting David Martin, a physiologist at Georgia State University, several times a year for a battery of tests to measure Mr. Spence’s progress and to assess his diet.

During dinner at Dr. Martin’s favorite Chinese restaurant, he gave Mr. Spence some advice.

“There are always going to be runners who are faster than you,” he said. “There will always be runners more talented than you and runners who seem to be training harder than you. The key to beating them is to train harder and to learn how to most efficiently manage your energy pie.”

Energy pie? All the things that take time and energy — a job, hobbies, family, friends, and of course athletic training. “There is only so much room in the pie,” said Mr. Spence.

Dr. Martin’s advice was “a lecture on limiting distractions,” he added. “If I wanted to get to the next level, to be competitive on the world scene, I had to make running a priority.” So he quit graduate school and made running his profession. “I realized this is what I am doing for my job.”

It paid off. He came in third in the 1991 marathon world championships in Tokyo. He made the 1992 Olympic marathon team, coming in 12th in the race. Now he is head cross-country coach and assistant track coach at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. And he tells his teams to manage their energy pies.

Structure Your Training

Meredith Kessler was a natural athlete. In high school, she played field hockey and lacrosse. She was on the track team and the swimming team. She went to Syracuse University on a field hockey scholarship.

Then she began racing in Ironman triathlons, which require athletes to swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles and then run a marathon (26.2 miles). Ms. Kessler loved it, but she was not winning any races. The former sports star was now in the middle of the pack.

But she also was working 60 hours a week at a San Francisco investment bank and trying to spend time with her husband and friends. Finally, six years ago, she asked Matt Dixon, a coach, if he could make her a better triathlete.

One thing that turned out to be crucial was to understand the principles of training. When she was coaching herself, Ms. Kessler did whatever she felt like, with no particular plan in mind. Mr. Dixon taught her that every workout has a purpose. One might focus on endurance, another on speed. And others, just as important, are for recovery.

“I had not won an Ironman until he put me on that structure,” said Ms. Kessler, 34. “That’s when I started winning.”

Another crucial change was to quit her job so she could devote herself to training. It took several years — she left banking only in April 2011 — but it made a huge difference. Now a professional athlete, with sponsors, she has won four Ironman championships and three 70.3 kilometer championships.

Ms. Kessler’s parents were mystified when she quit her job. She reminded them that they had always told her that it did not matter if she won. What mattered was that she did her best. She left the bank, she said, “to do my best.”

Take Risks

Helen Goodroad began competing as a figure skater when she was in fourth grade. Her dream was to be in the Olympics. She was athletic and graceful, but she did not really look like a figure skater. Ms. Goodroad grew to be 5 feet 11 inches.

“I was probably twice the size of any competitor,” she said. “I had to have custom-made skates starting when I was 10 years old.”

One day, when Helen was 17, a coach asked her to try a workout on an ergometer, a rowing machine. She was a natural — her power was phenomenal.

“He told me, ‘You could get a rowing scholarship to any school. You could go to the Olympics,’ ” said Ms. Goodroad. But that would mean giving up her dream, abandoning the sport she had devoted her life to and plunging into the unknown.

She decided to take the chance.

It was hard and she was terrified, but she got a rowing scholarship to Brown. In 1993, Ms. Goodroad was invited to train with the junior national team. Three years later, she made the under-23 national team, which won a world championship. (She rowed under her maiden name, Betancourt.)

It is so easy to stay in your comfort zone, Ms. Goodroad said. “But then you can get stale. You don’t go anywhere.” Leaving skating, leaving what she knew and loved, “helped me see that, ‘Wow, I could do a whole lot more than I ever thought I could.’ ”

Until this academic year, when she had a baby, Ms. Goodroad, who is 37, was a rowing coach at Princeton. She still runs to stay fit and plans to return to coaching.

The Other Guy Is Hurting Too

In 2006, when Brian Sell was racing in the United States Half Marathon Championships in Houston, he had a realization.

“I was neck-and-neck with two or three other guys with two miles to go,” he said. He started to doubt himself. What was he doing, struggling to keep up with men whose race times were better than his?

Suddenly, it came to him: Those other guys must be hurting as much as he was, or else they would not be staying with him — they would be pulling away.

“I made up my mind then to hang on, no matter what happened or how I was feeling,” said Mr. Sell. “Sure enough, in about half a mile, one guy dropped out and then another. I went on to win by 15 seconds or so, and every race since then, if a withering surge was thrown in, I made every effort to hang on to the guy surging.”

Mr. Sell made the 2008 Olympic marathon team and competed in the Beijing Olympics, where he came in 22nd. Now 33 years old, he is working as a scientist at Lancaster Laboratories in Pennsylvania.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 15, 2013

An earlier version of this post misstated the year in which Steve Spence competed in the Olympic marathon, finishing 12th. It was 1992, not 2004. It also misidentified the institution at which he is a coach. It is Shippensburg University, not Shippensburg College.

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DealBook: The Banker Who Put His Faith in Armstrong

When Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey about his suspected use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs is broadcast on Thursday, an investment banker will most likely be watching it very carefully (and nervously): Thomas Weisel.

Mr. Weisel is a legend in finance and Silicon Valley. He was the banker behind Yahoo’s public offering and some of the biggest deals during the dot-com bubble. He famously sold the firm he ran, Montgomery Securities, for $1.2 billion in 1997. And he sold his next firm, Thomas Weisel Partners, for $300 million to Stifel Financial in 2010.

But it is Mr. Weisel’s extracurricular activity that connects him to the news of the moment: he was Mr. Armstrong’s biggest financial backer and the single individual most responsible for the money machine that propelled Mr. Armstrong’s career.

Depending on what Mr. Armstrong says in the interview about his purported doping, Mr. Weisel, who was a co-owner of the United States Postal Service Pro Cycling Team through a cycling management firm that he helped found called Tailwind Sports, could be subject along with his partners to lawsuits from corporate sponsors seeking millions of dollars. Already, there is a False Claims Act case contending that Mr. Armstrong and the team defrauded the Postal Service.

Perhaps more anxiety-producing is what Mr. Weisel may have known, or should have known, about a team that for years ran “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” according to the United States Anti-Doping Agency.

Its report last year did not name Mr. Weisel, but did say that Mr. Armstrong was assisted by a “small army of enablers, including doping doctors, drug smugglers, and others within and outside the sport and on his team.”

Mr. Armstrong is expected to admit to doping in an effort to persuade officials to lift his lifetime ban from Olympic sports. To do so, however, he would probably need to lay out in explicit detail how the program worked and implicate those who were part of it.

Mr. Weisel is currently not talking. When I called Mr. Weisel seeking a comment, his assistant told me: “He’s not commenting. And he’s not returning any calls.”

For a glimpse of the way Mr. Weisel thinks about performance-enhancing drugs in cycling, here’s what he had to say about the matter four years ago: “Handle the problem below the surface and keep the image of the sport clean,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “In the U.S. sports — baseball, basketball, football — most fans couldn’t care less.” For Mr. Weisel, the team and Mr. Armstrong were an all-consuming passion. He would go every year to the Tour de France and at times travel in the team’s pacer car, occasionally yelling instructions to Mr. Armstrong over the radio system. He rode the team’s bus, ate meals with them and ultimately celebrated each year’s victory.

On the wall of his office in San Francisco, he displayed Mr. Armstrong’s yellow jerseys.

Always the consummate banker, Mr. Weisel even tried to help Mr. Armstrong raise funds to buy the Tour de France itself. (The effort never went anywhere.)

Mr. Weisel’s name has occasionally come up in connection with accusations of doping on the team.

The wife of the famed cyclist Greg LeMond, Kathy, reportedly testified under oath in a deposition in 2006 that she had been told by one of Mr. Armstrong’s mechanics that Mr. Weisel, along with Nike, paid $500,000 though a Swiss bank account to the honorary president of the International Cycling Union to silence a drug test Mr. Armstrong purportedly failed in 1999.

Nike has vehemently denied the contention. So far, Mr. Weisel has not commented publicly. When Floyd Landis, one of Mr. Armstrong’s former teammates, tested positive in 2006, he denied using performance-enhancing drugs under pressure from Mr. Armstrong. Soon after, Mr. Weisel set up the Floyd Fairness Fund with some of Tailwind’s co-owners to help pay his legal bills. Mr. Landis later confessed to doping in 2010.

Mr. Weisel, a longtime athlete who was a champion speed skater as a teenager, became a cycling enthusiast in the 1980s and took up racing himself. Sports dominated his life: he often said that he liked to hire athletes to work for him at the bank because of their competitive instincts. He was also the chairman of the United States Ski Team Foundation. In 1987, while still working as a banker, he started Montgomery Sports, to begin his first cycling team. In the early 1990s the team was called Subaru-Montgomery; it later became Montgomery-Bell (Bell Sports was a client that he took public) and then was renamed for the Postal Service. (Yahoo, another client, was also a sponsor of the team.)

According to a biography of Mr. Weisel, “Capital Instincts: Life as an Entrepreneur, Financier and Athlete,” he invested more than $5 million in the early teams and lost money on the investment. Mr. Armstrong was one of Mr. Weisel’s early riders for the Subaru-Montgomery team. He later left the team to join the Motorola team. After his bout with cancer, Mr. Armstrong joined what was the Postal Service team in 1998.

Tyler Hamilton, another former teammate of Mr. Armstrong, told “60 Minutes” that the team was pushing performance-enhancing drugs on its cyclists long before Mr. Armstrong battled cancer and then in 1998 rejoined the team.

“I remember seeing some of the stronger guys in the team getting handed these white lunch bags,” Mr. Hamilton said on “60 minutes” about when he joined the team in 1995. “So finally I, you know, started puttin’ two and two together and you know, basically there were doping products in those white lunch bags.”

Given how widespread the doping now appears to have been on the Postal Service team based on testimony of 11 teammates, and charges against the team’s director and several of its doctors, you wonder how much due diligence its founding banker did on the most prominent deal of his career.

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Live updates: Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' screenplay is a Golden Globe winner

Maverick filmmaker Quentin Tarantino was a surprise screenplay winner for “Django Unchained,” his controversial spaghetti Western set during the slavery era, beating out such favorites as the writers of “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln,” “Argo,” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting this,” said an effusive Tarantino. “I'm happy to be surprised.”

Tarantino’s win meant one more loss for Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which had gone into the ceremony leading with seven nominations. So far, the historical epic has been shut out.

PHOTOS: Nominees & winners | Red carpet

Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway sang her way to a Golden Globe for supporting actress in a movie as the tragic Fantine in the musical “Les Miserables.”

With her pixie haircut and tasteful white gown, Hathaway was reminiscent of a young Audrey Hepburn, charming viewers as she thanked her co-stars, family and friends — and had a special thanks for Sally Field, nominated in the same category for “Lincoln.” She noted that Field forged a career that resisted typecasting — something Hathaway has struggled with as well. Field had played the Flying Nun on TV but went on to play Norma Rae and, more recently, Mary Todd Lincoln

PHOTOS: Golden Globes 2013 red carpet

"Thank you for this lovely blunt object," Hathaway told the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.  “I'll forever use it as a weapon against self-doubt.”

Earlier in the evening, the movers and shakers of Hollywood leaped to their feet Sunday night to welcome former U.S. President Bill Clinton on stage at the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards as he introduced the clip for the best dramatic picture nominee “Lincoln.”

Clinton, whose appearance was a well-kept secret, noted the challenges the 16th president faced as he toiled to end the Civil War and slavery. “We’re all here tonight because he did it,” Clinton said.

GLOBES 2013: Full coverage | Red Carpet | Ballot | Nominees | Snubs

“Wow,” exclaimed co-host Amy Poehler as Clinton left the stage. “That was Hillary Clinton’s husband! That was exciting!”

On the TV side, Showtime’s “Homeland” and HBO’s “Game Change” continued its winning ways.

“Homeland,” the political thriller that counts President Obama as one of its biggest fans, won its second consecutive award for drama series Sunday night at the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards. Claire Danes won her second consecutive Globe for the series, and co-star Damian Lewis also took home the lead-actor trophy. The series had dominated the Emmy Awards last September.

“Game Change,” the drama about Sarah Palin’s history-making run for the vice presidency of the United States in 2008, had also performed well at the Emmys. And it was more of the same Sunday. It snapped up three awards, including miniseries or TV movie, supporting actor for Ed Harris, and lead actress in a miniseries or TV movie for Julianne Moore for her uncanny channeling of Palin.

Lena Dunham won best actress in a comedy series for HBO's "Girls" while Don Cheadle won lead actor in a TV comedy series for Showtime’s “House of Lies.” Kevin Costner won lead actor in a miniseries or TV movie for “Hatfields & McCoys.” Maggie Smith, who was not present, also won for supporting actress in a TV series, miniseries or movie for playing the acerbic dowager in PBS' "Downton Abbey.”

In other film honors, Jennifer Lawrence won lead actress in a comedy or musical for “Silver Linings Playbook” for her performance as a widow in the quirky romantic comedy.

Golden Globes 2013: Live updates | List | Red Carpet | Winners | Ballot |  Full coverage

“I beat Meryl!” Lawrence joked as she accepted the trophy. (Meryl Streep was nominated in the same category, for “Hope Springs.”) Among Lawrence’s thank-yous: “Thank you, Harvey Weinstein, for killing whoever you had to kill to get me up here.”

Austria’s “Amour” won foreign language film. "Brave" won for best animated film. Mychael Danna won for writing the score for Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi.” Original song went to pop singer Adele and Paul Epworth for “Skyfall,” the title tune for the latest James Bond installment.

Christoph Waltz also won for supporting actor in a film for playing a bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.” Tarantino is the Austrian actor’s good-luck charm. Waltz won in the same category for Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” three years ago. “My indebtedness to you and my gratitude knows no words,” he told the filmmaker as he accepted the award.

Hosts Poehler and Tina Fey were bringing the funny as the ceremony was being telecast live on NBC from the Beverly Hilton Hotel’s International Ballroom. The pair began by poking fun of pill-popping Hollywood and “rat-faced” TV types and joked about the controversy surrounding Kathryn Bigelow's “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Cracked Poehler: “When it comes to torture, I trust the woman who spent three years married to James Cameron.”

Perhaps the evening will help end the longstanding debate about whether women are funny -- an issue tackled by Fey on "30 Rock."

But a bigger question is looming: Will the Golden Globes bring clarity to this topsy-turvy awards season?

The awards season has been wildly unpredictable, with plenty of outstanding movies to choose from -- but few clear-cut front-runners.

The Directors Guild of America, for example, nominated Bigelow and Ben Affleck for “Argo” and the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards named “Argo” as best film and Affleck as best director. Yet neither Affleck nor Bigelow earned a directing nod from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when the nominations were announced last week.

The historical epic “Lincoln” goes into the Globes with a record seven nominations, followed by the spaghetti Western “Django Unchained” and “Argo” with five. Affleck and Bigelow are also in contention for best director.

Other races to watch are the musical “Les Miserables” and romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook,” vying for best film in a comedy or musical.

Don’t look for “Beasts of the Southern Wild” Sunday night. The magical indie drama earned four Oscar nominations, including best film, director and actress, but was snubbed by the Globes.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. also presents Golden Globes in several television categories with HBO’s political drama “Game Change” leading the pack  of nominations with five, followed by PBS’ beloved British drama “Downton Abbey” with four.

After a controversial three-year stint as host, Ricky Gervais turned over the emcee duties to Globe nominees Poehler (“Parks & Recreation”) and Fey (“30 Rock”).  And it seems like the Globe’s show party-like atmosphere will continue with these comic actresses.

During a recent interview, the “Saturday Night Live” alums outlined the rules for a Golden Globes drinking / meatball sub-eating game: Drink any time an actress cries during her speech, and eat a meatball sub any time someone thanks film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

ALSO:

VOTE: Play-at-home Globes ballot

PHOTOS: Red carpet fashion at the Golden Globes

susan.king@latimes.com and rene.lynch@latimes.com

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HTC seeks Myanmar edge with local font phones

YANGON (Reuters) – Peter Chou, CEO of Taiwan smartphone company HTC Corp, will on Monday launch what he hopes will be a major boost to both a backward tech sector in Myanmar, his country of birth, and to his company’s share of one of the few untapped mobile markets: a phone that locals can use out of the box.

Until now, Chou says, Myanmarese users of mobile phones and computers must install fonts in their own language, a process that is cumbersome, often invalidates the device’s warranty and has, he says, slowed innovation and the embrace of technology.

HTC has instead teamed up with a local distributor and a software developer to customize Google’s Android operating system so its devices display local fonts and sport a dedicated and, Chou says, intuitive, Myanmar language onscreen keyboard.

“You don’t have to spend two months to learn how to type it,” Chou said in an interview ahead of the launch. “You just type it. We want to give people here a computing device they don’t have to learn. They just try it, they just use it, they just get it.”

Myanmar IT experts say that while the country’s alphabet is no more complex than some other Asian scripts, a failure to agree how to apply an international standard for language symbols called Unicode to existing versions of the computer font has made it difficult to bake the language into software.

As a result, web pages and apps will often be unreadable.

BIG CHALLENGES, LITTLE PENETRATION

The issue of fonts may seem a basic one, but reflects the challenges Myanmar faces in catching up with its neighbors as it sheds decades of military control over politics and the economy. Myanmar has one of the lowest mobile penetration rates in the world, with only 3 percent of the population owning a phone in 2011, according to the World Bank. In neighboring Bangladesh, 56 percent of people have a mobile phone.

When IT enthusiasts met last year for a conference on the future of technology called Barcamp Yangon, much of the discussion revolved around such basic issues, participants said. With at least two competing types of font software available, disagreements remain.

The problem is worse on smartphones, says Soe Ngwe Ya, general manager of KMD, HTC’s distribution partner for the new phones. In order to install such fonts on mobile devices users must first “root” the phone, effectively bypassing the manufacturer’s controls on customizing the phone’s operating system. That often invalidates any warranty. “It’s a major issue,” he says.

HTC also hopes it can claw back some ground from its biggest competitor in Android phones, Samsung Electronics, which has established a first mover advantage in Myanmar.

Samsung has at least two distributors for its handsets and its advertisements are visible around the capital. Soe says KMD will act as HTC’s distributor, open a flagship store and service HTC users.

Chou, who was born in Myanmar but left to work and study in Taiwan more than 30 years ago, says that at least for now the Myanmar fonts and keyboard will only be available on HTC devices. He denied that this undermined his claims of contributing to his homeland.

“While sometimes you can be idealistic,” he said, “the first thing you have to show the people is something to get excited about.”

(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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Waltz wins supporting-actor Globe for ‘Django’

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Christoph Waltz has won the supporting-actor Golden Globe for his role as a genteel bounty hunter who takes on an ex-slave as apprentice in “Django Unchained.”

Sunday’s win was Waltz’s second supporting-actor prize at the Globes, both of them coming in Quentin Tarantino films. Waltz’s violent but paternal and polite “Django” character is a sharp contrast to the wickedly bloodthirsty Nazi he played in his Globe and Oscar-winning role in Tarantino’s 2009 tale “Inglourious Basterds.”

“Let me gasp,” Waltz said. “Quentin, you know that my indebtedness to you and my gratitude knows no words.”

Show hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who co-starred in the 2008 big-screen comedy “Baby Mama,” had a friendly rivalry at the Globes. Both were nominated for best actress in a TV comedy series, Fey for “30 Rock” and Poehler for “Parks and Recreation.”

“Tina, I just want to say that I very much hope that I win,” Poehler told Fey at the start of the show.

“Thank you. You’re my nemesis. Thank you,” Fey replied.

Poehler also had a quip about television vs. film at the Globes, where the small-screen category typically takes a backseat to the big-screen nominees.

“Only at the Golden Globes do the beautiful people of film rub shoulders with the rat-faced people of television,” Poehler said.

An unusually chilly day in southern California left Globe guests looking glamorous but feeling frigid.

Debra Messing from “Smash” came in a strapless black gown and goosebumps. Asked how she was coping with the cold, she replied, “Not well.” Melissa Rauch of “The Big Bang Theory” also shivered in her strapless red gown. “I’m absolutely freezing!” she said.

Claire Danes of “Homeland” in Versace and Zooey Deschanel of “New Girl” in a strapless Oscar de la Renta gown walked near heat lamps as the mercury stayed in the high 50s. “I’m so cold. My legs aren’t cold but my arms are,” said Deschanel.

Not everyone was grousing. “I’m totally comfortable,” Glenn Close, whose Zac Posen dress was paired with matching jacket, told NBC. “Usually, it’s really hot, so I’m having a nice time so far.”

The Globes are in a rare place this season, coming after the Academy Award nominations, which were announced earlier than usual and threw out some shockers that have left the Globes show a little less relevant.

Key Globe contenders lined up largely as expected, with Steven Spielberg‘s Civil War saga “Lincoln” leading with seven nominations and two CIA thrillers — Kathryn Bigelow‘s “Zero Dark Thirty” and Ben Affleck‘s “Argo” — also doing well.

All three films earned Globe nominations for best drama and director. Yet while “Lincoln,” ”Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” grabbed best-picture slots at Thursday’s Oscar nominations, Bigelow and Affleck were snubbed for directing honors after a season that had seen them in the running for almost every other major award.

The Globe and Oscar directing fields typically match up closely. This time, though, only Spielberg and “Life of Pi” director Ang Lee have nominations for both. Along with Spielberg, Lee, Bigelow and Affleck, Quentin Tarantino is nominated for directing at the Globes. At the Oscars, it’s Spielberg, Lee, “Silver Linings Playbook” director David O. Russell and two surprise picks: veteran Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke for “Amour” and first-time director Benh Zeitlin for “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

That forces some top-name filmmakers to put on brave faces for the Globes. And while a Globe might be a nice consolation prize, it could be a little awkward if Affleck, Bigelow or Tarantino won Sunday and had to make a cheery acceptance speech knowing they don’t have seats at the grown-ups table for the Feb. 24 Oscars.

That could happen. While “Lincoln” has the most nominations, it’s a purely American story that may not have as much appeal to Globe voters — about 90 reporters belonging to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association who cover entertainment for overseas outlets.

The Bigelow and Affleck films center on Americans, too, but they are international tales — “Zero Dark Thirty” chronicling the manhunt for Osama bin Laden and “Argo” recounting the rescue of six U.S. embassy workers trapped in Iran amid the 1979 hostage crisis.

Globe voters might want to make right on a snub to Bigelow three years ago, when they gave their best-drama and directing prize to ex-husband James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar” over her Iraq war tale “The Hurt Locker.”

Bigelow made history a month later, becoming the first woman to win the directing Oscar for “The Hurt Locker,” which also won best picture.

Globe voters like to be trend-setters, but they missed the boat on that one. Might they feel enough chagrin to hand Bigelow the directing trophy this time?

Spielberg already has won two best-director Globes, so that might be a further inducement for the foreign-press members to favor someone else this time.

Their votes were locked in before the Oscar nominations came out. Globe balloting closed Wednesday, the day before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its awards lineup.

The Globe hosts had a wisecrack at Cameron’s expense. Poehler noted that she had not been following the controversy over “Zero Dark Thirty,” which has drawn criticism for indicating torture was pivotal in producing the tip that led to Bin Laden.

But “when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who was married for three years to James Cameron,” Poehler said.

The Globes feature two best-picture categories — one for drama and one for musical or comedy. Most of the Globe contenders also earned Oscar best-picture nominations, including all of the drama picks: “Argo,” ”Lincoln,” ”Life of Pi,” ”Django Unchained” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Yet only two of the Globe musical or comedy nominees — “Les Miserables” and “Silver Linings Playbook” — are in the running at the Oscars. That’s not unusual, though, since Oscar voters tend to overlook comedy. The other Globe nominees for musical or comedy are “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” ”Moonrise Kingdom” and “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.”

Globe acting recipients usually are a good sneak peek for who will win at the Oscars. All four of last season’s Oscar winners — Meryl Streep for “The Iron Lady,” Jean Dujardin for “The Artist,” Octavia Spencer for “The Help” and Christopher Plummer for “Beginners” — took home a Globe first.

Jodie Foster will receive the Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the 70th Globes ceremony.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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City Room: Cuomo Declares Public Health Emergency Over Flu Outbreak

With the nation in the grip of a severe influenza outbreak that has seen deaths reach epidemic levels, New York State declared a public health emergency on Saturday, making access to vaccines more easily available.

There have been nearly 20,000 cases of flu reported across the state so far this season, officials said. Last season, 4,400 positive laboratory tests were reported.

“We are experiencing the worst flu season since at least 2009, and influenza activity in New York State is widespread, with cases reported in all 57 counties and all five boroughs of New York City,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement.

Under the order, pharmacists will be allowed to administer flu vaccinations to patients between 6 months and 18 years old, temporarily suspending a state law that prohibits pharmacists from administering immunizations to children.

While children and older people tend to be the most likely to become seriously ill from the flu, Mr. Cuomo urged all New Yorkers to get vaccinated.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that deaths from the flu had reached epidemic levels, with at least 20 children having died nationwide. Officials cautioned that deaths from pneumonia and the flu typically reach epidemic levels for a week or two every year. The severity of the outbreak will be determined by how long the death toll remains high or if it climbs higher.

There was some evidence that caseloads may be peaking, federal officials said on Friday.

In New York City, public health officials announced on Thursday that flu-related illnesses had reached epidemic levels, and they joined the chorus of authorities urging people to get vaccinated.

“It’s a bad year,” the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve got lots of flu, it’s mainly type AH3N2, which tends to be a little more severe. So we’re seeing plenty of cases of flu and plenty of people sick with flu. Our message for any people who are listening to this is it’s still not too late to get your flu shot.”

There has been a spike in the number of people going to emergency rooms over the past two weeks with flulike symptoms – including fever, fatigue and coughing – Dr. Farley said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo made a public display of getting shots this past week.

In a briefing with reporters on Friday, officials from the C.D.C. said that this year’s vaccine was effective in 62 percent of cases.

As officials have stepped up their efforts encouraging vaccinations, there have been scattered reports of shortages. But officials said plenty of the vaccine was available.

According to the C.D.C., makers of the flu vaccine produced about 135 million doses for this year. As of early this month, 128 million doses had been distributed. While that would not be enough for every American, only 37 percent of the population get a flu shot each year.

Federal health officials said they would be happy if that number rose to 50 percent, which would mean that there would be more than enough vaccine for anyone who wanted to be immunized.

Two other diseases – norovirus and whooping cough – are also widespread this winter and are contributing to the number of people getting sick.

The flu can resemble a cold, though the symptoms come on more rapidly and are more severe.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/13/2013, on page A21 of the NewYork edition with the headline: New York Declares Health Emergency.

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Aaron Swartz, a Data Crusader and Now, a Cause

Michael Francis McElroy/The New York Times

Aaron Swartz in 2009. One person remembered him as a “a complicated prodigy.”

At an afternoon vigil at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Sunday, Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old technology wunderkind who killed himself on Friday, was remembered as a great programmer and a provocative thinker by a handful of students who attended.

And he was remembered as something else, a hero of the free culture movement — a broad coalition that can range from Wikipedia contributors, Flickr photographers and online educators to prominent figures like Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and online vigilantes like Anonymous. They share a belief in using the Internet to provide easy, open access to the world’s knowledge.

“He’s something to aspire toward,” said Benjamin Hitov, a 23-year-old Web programmer from Cambridge, who said he had cried when he first learned the news about Mr. Swartz. “I think all of us would like to be a bit more like him. Most of us aren’t quite as idealist as he was. But we still definitely respect that.”

The United States government has a very different view of Mr. Swartz. In 2011, he was arrested and accused of using M.I.T.’s computers to gain illegal access to millions of scholarly papers kept by Jstor, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals.

At his trial, which was scheduled to begin in April, he faced the possibility of millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison, punishments that friends and family say haunted him for two years and led to his decision to take his own life. They blame both the prosecutors and M.I.T. for not offering enough support to Mr. Swartz.

During his short life, Mr. Swartz became a flash point in the debate over whether information should be made widely available. On the one side were activists like Mr. Swartz and advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Students for Free Culture. On the other side were governments and private corporations who argued that some information must be kept private for security or commercial reasons.

In his death, Mr. Swartz has come to symbolize a different debate over how aggressively governments should pursue criminal cases against people like Mr. Swartz who believe in “freeing” information.

In a statement, his family said in part: “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office and at M.I.T. contributed to his death.”

On Sunday evening, the president of M.I.T., L. Rafael Reif, announced that he had appointed a prominent professor, Hal Abelson, to “lead a thorough analysis of M.I.T.’s involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present.” He promised to share the report with the M.I.T. community, adding, “It pains me to think that M.I.T. played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy.”

While Mr. Swartz viewed his making copies of academic papers as an unadulterated good, spreading knowledge, the prosecutor, who on Sunday declined to comment on Mr. Swartz’s death out of respect for his family’s privacy, compared Mr. Swartz’s actions to using a crowbar to break in and steal someone’s money under the mattress.

The question of how to treat online crimes is still a vexing one, many years into the existence of the Internet.

Prosecutors have great discretion on what to charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law cited in Mr. Swartz’s case, and how to value the loss. “The question in any given case is whether the prosecutor asked for too much, and properly balanced the harm caused in a particular case with the defendant’s true culpability,” said Marc Zwillinger, a former federal cybercrimes prosecutor.

Jess Bidgood and Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.

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America's go-to man in Afghanistan's Oruzgan province

TARIN KOWT, Afghanistan — A shy boy with filthy hands and a shabby tunic approached the great man, bowed and tried to kiss his hand.

Gen. Matiullah Khan was seated like a sultan on a cushion in his hojra, his airy receiving room. He barely looked at the boy. He nodded to an aide, who withdrew a thick wad of Pakistani rupees from his pocket and handed it to Matiullah.

The most powerful man in Oruzgan province, a warlord and tribal leader turned police chief, glanced at the cash. Then Matiullah pressed the entire roll into the boy's hand.

"Nobody helps the people; it's up to me," Matiullah said as the boy withdrew.

Thousands of desperately poor Afghans in this remote province rely on Matiullah for charity and protection. And his presence here is equally important to the U.S. military, which views Oruzgan as a linchpin in southern Afghanistan. It relies on Matiullah to support a U.S. special forces team and to secure the crucial supply road from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt, the provincial capital.

Matiullah is America's go-to man in Oruzgan, a mountainous badlands that was a Taliban stronghold before Matiullah beat the insurgents back.

Not much happens in Oruzgan without Matiullah's blessing. He approves government appointments and directs government services. He says he has paid from his own pocket to build 75 mosques, two schools, a hospital and his own modern police headquarters.

Although he has been accused of corruption and drug-running — allegations he denies — Matiullah has made himself indispensable to U.S. interests. Like other Afghan strongmen supported or tolerated by American forces, he has the gunmen and the iron fist to hold off the Taliban, even at the cost of undermining the very government institutions the U.S. is trying to bolster.

Despite attempts to sideline warlords, men like Matiullah remain in power because the weak and corrupt central government has little authority, especially in remote areas, and U.S. forces need strong military allies where the Afghan army is unreliable. President Hamid Karzai formalized Matiullah's control over Oruzgan by naming him police chief in August 2011.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force says its convoys have suffered only three attacks on the Kandahar-Tarin Kowt supply road in the last two years. For the last decade, Matiullah's gunmen have secured the winding dirt road, earning the chief millions of dollars in fees from trucking companies that contract with ISAF to deliver supplies to Tarin Kowt.

He says he pays 1,200 gunmen to protect the convoys, in addition to his cops stationed at posts along the road — meaning he makes a profit from security provided in part by government-paid police.

ISAF spokesmen deflected questions about Matiullah's relationship with coalition forces, referring a reporter to the Afghan Interior Ministry, which directs the Afghan National Police. Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi denied that Matiullah was involved in the opium trade — a claim made by his political rivals — or that he maintained a private militia.

***

Matiullah is literally at the center of the coalition military presence here. A base for U.S. Special Operations Task Force Southeast is just 200 yards from his sprawling compound, which is powered by an enormous generator in a province with no electricity service. An Australian special operations base lies across a muddy field.

The chief's compound overlooks a busy military airport where Apache attack helicopters soar toward the mountains day and night to support Special Forces operations. His reception room is festooned with photos of him posing with U.S. Special Forces soldiers. There are framed certificates of appreciation from a series of Special Forces teams.

One, from a commander in April 2011, reads: "Your superior work ethic, professionalism, expertise and bravery are the epitome of the Special Forces motto: The Quiet Professionals."

U.S. special operations commanders declined to answer questions about Matiullah's role or allow interviews with the U.S. team here.

Matiullah said special operations teams visited his compound often, and that he supplied them with security and intelligence.

"They are my good friends," he said. "They don't know who are our friends in Oruzgan and who are our enemies. I know very well, so they rely on me."

Enemies from rival tribes have portrayed Matiullah as a warlord with his hands on the levers of graft. Matiullah dismisses the accusations with a wry smile. He considers himself a man of the people and his government rivals as thieves who steal salaries, weapons and equipment meant for his 3,160-man police force.

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