IHT Rendezvous: Should Common Plastics Be Labeled Toxic?

THE HAGUE — Hoping to reduce one of the most ubiquitous forms of waste, a global group of scientists is proposing that certain types of plastic be labeled hazardous.

The group, lead by two California scientists, wrote in this week’s issue of the scientific journal Nature:

We believe that if countries classified the most harmful plastics as hazardous, their environmental agencies would have the power to restore affected habitats and prevent more dangerous debris from accumulating.

While 280 million tons of plastic were produced globally last year, less than half of that plastic has ended up in landfills or was recycled, according to the scientists’ data. Some of the unaccounted for 150 million tons of plastic is still in use, but much of it litters roadsides, cities, forests, deserts, beaches and oceans. (Just think of the great floating garbage patches at sea).

Unlike other forms of solid waste, such as uneaten food, scrap metal or last year’s clothes, plastics take an especially long time to break down. And when they finally do, they create hazardous, even toxic particles that can harm wildlife, ecosystems and humans.

For now, the group — led by Chelsea M. Rochman of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and Mark Anthony Browne at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California — is calling for the reclassification of plastics that are particularly difficult to recycle and that are most toxic when degrading: PVC, polystyrene, polyurethane and polycarbonate.

The scientists say these types of plastics — used in construction, food containers, electronics and furniture — make up an estimated 30 percent of all plastics produced.

Join our sustainability conversation. Does it make sense to re-classify common plastics as hazardous, or are there better ways to reduce the amount of plastics we throw out?

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Hugh Grant Is a Dad - Again!

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/16/2013 at 04:30 PM ET

Gareth Gay/Landov

A little over a year after welcoming daughter Tabitha in 2011, Hugh Grant, 52, is taking another stab at fatherhood.

The actor recently took to Twitter to announce that he and Tinglan Hong, 33, have added another baby — a son! — to their brood.

“In answer to some journos. Am thrilled my daughter now has a brother,” Grant Tweeted Saturday. “Adore them both to an uncool degree. They have a fab mum.”

Never shy of being a tad cheeky, the Love Actually star added: “And to be crystal clear. I am the Daddy.”

Becoming a father may have come as a bit of a surprise for the actor, but he’s quickly adjusted to daddy duty.

“Now that I have [a child], it is life changing,” he shared during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “I recommend it. Get some.”

– Shanelle Rein-Olowokere

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

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G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.

Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.

Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.

"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."

After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.

A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.

"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.

As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.

As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.

"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.

"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."

Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.

NO FISCAL TARGETS

The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.

The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.

"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.

A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.

The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.

"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."

The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.

Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.

QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.

A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.

"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.

Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.

On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".

It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.

(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)

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The Lede: Spectacular Videos of Meteor Over Siberia

Video posted on YouTube on Friday appeared to catch an explosion caused by a meteor streaking over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

Last Updated, 5:40 p.m. As our colleagues Ellen Barry and Andrew Kramer report, Russians recorded video of bright objects, apparently debris from a meteor, “streaking through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across a vast area of territory.” Hundreds of injuries were reported, mainly from breaking glass.

The video clips, many recorded from cars on the dashboard cameras that are popular in Russia, quickly spread from social networks to Russian news sites. While it was not possible to confirm the authenticity of all of the clips posted online, several tracked closely with witness accounts and each other. (Russian speakers should be aware that many of the videos contain strong language.)

Video recorded from the dashboard camera of a car in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday.

Video said to have been recorded on Friday in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk as a meteor passed low overhead. An explosion can be heard clearly at the seven-minute mark of the video.

Dashboard-camera footage appeared to record a meteor plunging to Earth on Friday in Russia.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Friday was said to have been recorded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (although the camera’s time stamp displays an earlier date).

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported, “The Russian fireball is the largest reported since 1908, when a fireball hit Tunguska, Siberia.”

The fireball entered the atmosphere at about 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second). The impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15), and the energy released by the impact was in the hundreds of kilotons.

Based on the duration of the event, it was a very shallow entry. It was larger than the fireball over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009. Measurements are still coming in, and a more precise measure of the energy may be available later. The size of the object before hitting the atmosphere was about 49 feet (15 meters) and had a mass of about 7,000 tons.

Later in the day, NASA released more information about the meteor.

#RussianMeteor grazed across the atmosphere, where the meteor trail was visible for ~30 secs. The meteor was also brighter than the Sun

— NASA (@NASA) 15 Feb 13

Our colleague Henry Fountain reminds us of the vastly greater impact of what’s known as The Tunguska Event on 1908.

Several clips showed a flaming object streaking through the sky and a burst of blinding light followed by a smoke trail. One, shot by a driver named Alexander Mezentsev, showed a bright light over a city street in Chelyabinsk, a city of 1 million about 900 miles east of Moscow.

One clip, recorded on a street in Chelyabinsk, appeared to capture the chaotic aftermath of the event, as glass shattered after the shock wave and people shouted and tried to make sense of what was happening.

Video said to have been recorded in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday after a meteor passed overhead.

A very loud explosion could be heard about 25 seconds into another video, apparently recorded on a phone in the same city by a blogger named Sergey Hametov.

Video said to have been recorded on Friday in Chelyabinsk appeared to capture a loud explosion.

“There was panic. People had no idea what was happening,” Mr. Hametov told The Associated Press. “We saw a big burst of light, then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud, thundering sound.”

The blast, and breaking glass, was also captured about 70 seconds into another clip, which showed very clear images of the smoke trail after the meteor passed by.

Video posted on YouTube on Friday showed a smoke trail and a loud explosion after a meteor passed over Siberia.

Another video, shot from the window of a building, seemed to capture the long trail of smoke after the object passed through the sky.

Video posted on YouTube Friday appeared to show the trail of a meteor fragment in the sky.

Several clips also showed what bloggers said was the damage caused by the sonic boom.

Damage to a school in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, said to have been caused by the sonic boom from a meteor.

Video of what was described as damage caused by the sonic boom after a meteor passed over Russia on Friday.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports, a blinding flash of light was captured by traffic cameras on top of buildings in Nizhny Tagil, around 220 miles north of Chelyabinsk.

A blinding flash of light was captured by Web cameras in Nizhny Tagil, north of Chelyabinsk

Another view of the meteor streaking across the sky in Nizhniy Tagil was captured on a driver’s dashboard camera.

Video of a meteor from a dashboard camera in the Russian town of Nizhniy Tagil.

Our colleague William Broad from The Times Science desk will be explaining what likely caused today’s spectacular event and answering questions on The Lede later today.

Send us your questions on the meteor strike. We’re hosting a Q&A with science writer @WilliamJBroad. Include #NYTScience

— NYT Science (@nytimesscience) 15 Feb 13

Almost immediately after the spectacular images appeared online, Russian bloggers started making comic alterations, adding aliens and President Vladimir V. Putin to the pictures.

Some of the numerous videos that quickly emerged of the incident highlighted a distinctly Russian phenomenon: the viral dashboard-cam clip. As the blogger Marina Galperina explained last year, they are commonplace in Russia partly because of the dangerous driving conditions that lead to so many accidents, and with an unreliable police force such cameras can provide valuable evidence after a crash.

The conditions of Russian roads are perilous, with insane gridlock in cities and gigantic ditches, endless swamps and severe wintry emptiness on the back roads and highways. Then there are large, lawless areas you don’t just ride into, the police with a penchant for extortion and deeply frustrated drivers who want to smash your face.

Psychopaths are abundant on Russian roads. You best not cut anyone off or undertake some other type of maneuver that might inconvenience the 200-pound, six-foot-five brawling children you see on YouTube hopping out of their SUVs with their dukes up. They will go ballistic in a snap, drive in front of you, brake suddenly, block you off, jump out and run towards your vehicle. Next thing you start getting punches in your face because your didn’t roll up your windows, or getting pulled out of the car and beaten because you didn’t lock the doors.

These fights happen all the time and you can’t really press charges. Point to your broken nose or smashed windows all you want. The Russian courts don’t like verbal claims. They do, however, like to send people to jail for battery and property destruction if there’s definite video proof.

One popular video posted on YouTube last year appeared to show just such a fight being prevented by a man facing down another driver clutching a baseball bat by pointing out that any attack on him would be recorded on his dashboard-cam.

Video of a confrontation between two Russian drivers recorded last year on a dashboard-cam.

Just last month, video recorded by a Russian driver on a dashboard-cam showed a tank suddenly cutting across a highway.

Last month, a Russian driver recorded video of a tank cutting across a highway.

The meteor that streaked across the Russian skies came from almost the opposite direction as 2012 DA14, the larger asteroid that missed Earth on Friday. That both showed up on the same day was just cosmic coincidence.

“There is no relation there,” said Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office.

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Beyoncé: I Would Not Be the Woman I Am Without Jay-Z

Beyoncé is one smitten starlet.

The notoriously private performer, 31, recently got candid with Oprah, and gushed about the love of her life, husband Jay-Z, 43.

"I would not be the woman I am if I did not go home to that man," the new mom said firmly, almost as if she she was about to get teary-eyed. "It just gives me such a foundation. [He's helped me] on so many levels."

But it wasn't love at first sight for the power pair.

"We were friends first for a year and a half before we went on any dates," Beyoncé explains. "We were on the phone for a year and a half, and that foundation is so important for a relationship. Just to have someone who you just like is so important, and someone [who] is honest."

For the longest time, the couple refused to address their marriage to media, and that is something the talk show host finds particularly amusing.

"I remember the first time you were on the Oprah show, I told you, 'Don't go around telling people who you're dating,' " Oprah recalls. "I think you took that all the way. Don't tell people who you're dating, but you can tell people who you're married to, OK?"

The singer is set to get even more personal in her Life Is But a Dream documentary, airing Saturday night on HBO. In an already-featured clip from the highly anticipated documentary, Beyoncé revealed she miscarried before giving birth to Blue Ivy.

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States' choices set up national health experiment

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is unfolding as a national experiment with American consumers as the guinea pigs: Who will do a better job getting uninsured people covered, the states or the feds?

The nation is about evenly split between states that decided by Friday's deadline they want a say in running new insurance markets and states that are defaulting to federal control because they don't want to participate in "Obamacare." That choice was left to state governments under the law: Establish the market or Washington will.

With some exceptions, states led by Democrats opted to set up their own markets, called exchanges, and Republican-led states declined.

Only months from the official launch, exchanges are supposed to make the mind-boggling task of buying health insurance more like shopping on Amazon.com or Travelocity. Millions of people who don't have employer coverage will flock to the new markets. Middle-class consumers will be able to buy private insurance, with government help to pay the premiums in most cases. Low-income people will be steered to safety net programs like Medicaid.

"It's an experiment between the feds and the states, and among the states themselves," said Robert Krughoff, president of Consumers' Checkbook, a nonprofit ratings group that has devised an online tool used by many federal workers to pick their health plans. Krughoff is skeptical that either the feds or the states have solved the technological challenge of making the purchase of health insurance as easy as selecting a travel-and-hotel package.

Whether or not the bugs get worked out, consumers will be able to start signing up Oct. 1 for coverage that takes effect Jan. 1. That's also when two other major provisions of the law kick in: the mandate that almost all Americans carry health insurance, and the rule that says insurers can no longer turn away people in poor health.

Barring last-minute switches that may not be revealed until next week, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., have opted to run their own markets or partner with the Obama administration to do so.

Twenty-six states are defaulting to the feds. But in several of those, Republican governors are trying to carve out some kind of role by negotiating with federal Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Utah's status is unclear. It received initial federal approval to run its own market, but appears to be reconsidering.

"It's healthy for the states to have various choices," said Ben Nelson, CEO of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. "And there's no barrier to taking somebody else's ideas and making them work in your situation." A former U.S. senator from Nebraska, Nelson was one of several conservative Democrats who provided crucial votes to pass the overhaul.

States setting up their own exchanges are already taking different paths. Some will operate their markets much like major employers run their health plans, as "active purchasers" offering a limited choice of insurance carriers to drive better bargains. Others will open their markets to all insurers that meet basic standards, and let consumers decide.

Obama's Affordable Care Act remains politically divisive, but state insurance exchanges enjoy broad public support. Setting up a new market was central to former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's health care overhaul as governor of Massachusetts. There, it's known as the Health Connector.

A recent AP poll found that Americans prefer to have states run the new markets by 63 percent to 32 percent. Among conservatives the margin was nearly 4-1 in favor of state control. But with some exceptions, including Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico, Republican-led states are maintaining a hands-off posture, meaning the federal government will step in.

"There is a sense of irony that it's the more conservative states" yielding to federal control, said Sandy Praeger, the Republican insurance commissioner in Kansas, a state declining to run its own exchange. First, she said, the law's opponents "put their money on the Supreme Court, then on the election. Now that it's a reality, we may see some movement."

They're not budging in Austin. "Texas is not interested in being a subcontractor to Obamacare," said Lucy Nashed, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, who remains opposed to mandates in the law.

In Kansas, Praeger supported a state-run exchange, but lost the political struggle to Gov. Sam Brownback. She says Kansans will be closely watching what happens in neighboring Colorado, where the state will run the market. She doubts that consumers in her state would relish dealing with a call center on the other side of the country. The federal exchange may have some local window-dressing but it's expected to function as a national program.

Christine Ferguson, director of the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange, says she expects to see a big shift to state control in the next few years. "Many of the states have just run out of time for a variety of reasons," said Ferguson. "I'd be surprised if in the longer run every state didn't want to have its own approach."

In some ways, the federal government has a head start on the states. It already operates the Medicare Plan Finder for health insurance and prescription plans that serve seniors, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Both have many of the features of the new insurance markets.

Administration officials are keeping mum about what the new federal exchange will look like, except that it will open on time and people in all 50 states will have the coverage they're entitled to by law.

Joel Ario, who oversaw planning for the health exchanges in the Obama administration, says "there's a rich dialogue going on" as to what the online shopping experience should look like. "To create a website like Amazon is a very complicated exercise," said Ario, now a consultant with Manatt Health Solutions.

He thinks consumers should be able to get one dollar figure for each plan that totals up all their expected costs for the year, including premiums, deductibles and copayments. Otherwise, scrolling through pages of insurance jargon online will be a sure turn-off.

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Wall Street ends slightly down, S&P positive for seventh week

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 dipped in a late decline on Friday as Wal-Mart dropped following a report of a weak start to February sales, though the index just barely extended its streak of weekly gains to seven.

Equities were little changed for much of the session, with investors finding few reasons to make big bets following an extended rally on Wall Street, but stocks turned lower in afternoon action.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc dropped 2.1 percent to $69.30 after Bloomberg News reported a weak start to February sales, citing internal company e-mails. The stock was the biggest decliner on the Dow, while the S&P retail index <.spxrt> fell 0.5 percent.

"When a retailer of this size comes out with this kind of lousy news, the whole market can fall off, especially on a Friday afternoon," said Mike Shea, trader at Direct Access Partners in New York. "However, I'm not worried that this is indicative of any larger macro issue with retail."

Equities have struggled for direction recently, with major indexes moving only slightly in the past several sessions. The S&P didn't end a session with a move greater than 0.2 percent at all this week.

The benchmark index, up 6.6 percent so far this year, is facing strong technical resistance near the 1,525 level. But investors, expecting the index to advance further in the quarter, have held back from locking in profits.

"There's no news that suggests the strong underpinning for stocks isn't appropriate. We may have gotten ahead of ourselves, but there's also an absence of bad news," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia.

Many investors are starting to look ahead to a debate in Washington over sequestration, automatic across-the-board spending cuts put in place as part of a larger congressional budget fight. The cuts are due to kick in March 1 unless lawmakers agree to an alternative.

"This had been far enough out to not yet become an impediment for stocks, but it will start to move into the forefront and cause people to take a bit of a jaundiced eye towards the market," said Luschini, who helps oversee about $54 billion in assets.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 11.27 points, or 0.08 percent, at 13,984.66. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.32 points, or 0.02 percent, at 1,521.70. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 1.51 points, or 0.05 percent, at 3,200.17.

For the week, both the Dow and Nasdaq fell 0.1 percent while the S&P rose 0.1 percent in its seventh straight week of gains, a period during which the index rose 8.4 percent. The last such seven-week run was between December 2010 and January 2011.

The New York Federal Reserve said manufacturing in New York state expanded for the first time in seven months, while Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading of consumer sentiment rose from the prior month and beat expectations.

But U.S. manufacturing fell in January after a rise in the prior month.

Wall Street's gain thus far in 2013 has largely been driven by strong corporate earnings, while data indicated some weakening in economic conditions.

A surge in merger and acquisition activity, with more than $158 billion in deals announced so far in 2013, has given further support to the equity market as it points to healthy valuations and bets on the economic outlook.

Herbalife shares cut earlier gains to rise 1.2 percent to $38.74. Late Thursday, billionaire investor Carl Icahn said in a regulatory filing that he now owns 13 percent of Herbalife and was ready to put it in play.

MeadWestvaco Corp climbed 12.5 percent to $35.65 as the biggest percentage gainer on the S&P index after activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management LP said it had bought about 1.6 million shares of the packaging company.

Burger King Worldwide shares gained 4.7 percent to $17.36 after it beat estimates with a 94 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit, thanks to new menu additions.

Oil service stocks declined, weighed by a 5.1 percent drop in shares of Transocean to $56.26, after the rig contractor reported its fleet update and Deutsche Bank cut its rating on the stock to "sell." The PHLX oil service sector <.osx> lost 1.5 percent.

Slightly more stocks fell than rose on the New York Stock Exchange while about 50 percent of Nasdaq shares ended lower. About 6.69 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, above the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Vowing Reform, China’s Leader, Xi Jinping, Airs Other Message in Private

HONG KONG — When China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, visited the country’s south to promote himself before the public as an audacious reformer following in the footsteps of Deng Xiaoping, he had another message to deliver to Communist Party officials behind closed doors.

Feng Li/Getty Images

Xi Jinping has came to power at a time when the pressure of public expectations for greater official accountability is growing. 

Despite decades of heady economic growth, Mr. Xi told party insiders during a visit to Guangdong Province in December, China must still heed the “deeply profound” lessons of the former Soviet Union, where political rot, ideological heresy and military disloyalty brought down the governing party. In a province famed for its frenetic capitalism, he demanded a return to traditional Leninist discipline.

“Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered,” Mr. Xi said, according to a summary of his comments that has circulated among officials but has not been published by the state-run news media.

“Finally, all it took was one quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party, and a great party was gone,” the summary quoted Mr. Xi as saying. “In the end nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist.”

In Mr. Xi’s first three months as China’s top leader, he has gyrated between defending the party’s absolute hold on power and vowing a fundamental assault on entrenched interests of the party elite that fuel corruption. How to balance those goals presents a quandary to Mr. Xi, whose agenda could easily be undermined by rival leaders determined to protect their own bailiwicks and on guard against anything that weakens the party’s authority, insiders and analysts say.

“Everyone is talking about reform, but in fact everyone has a fear of reform,” said Ma Yong, a historian at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. For party leaders, he added: “The question is: Can society be kept under control while you go forward? That’s the test.”

Gao Yu, a former journalist and independent commentator, was the first to reveal Mr. Xi’s comments, doing so on a blog. Three insiders, who were shown copies by officials or editors at state newspapers, confirmed their authenticity, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the risk of punishment for discussing party affairs.

The tension between embracing change and defending top-down party power has been an abiding theme in China since Deng set the country on its economic transformation in the late 1970s. But Mr. Xi has come to power at a time when such strains are especially acute, and the pressure of public expectations for greater official accountability is growing, amplified by millions of participants in online forums.

Mr. Xi has promised determined efforts to deal with China’s persistent problems, including official corruption and the chasm between rich and poor. He has also sought a sunnier image, doing away with some of the intimidating security that swaddled his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and demanding that official banquets be replaced by plainer fare called “four dishes and a soup.”

Yet Mr. Xi’s remarks on the lessons of the Soviet Union, as well as warnings in the state news media, betray a fear that China’s strains could overwhelm the party, especially if vows of change founder because of political sclerosis and opposition from privileged interest groups like state-owned conglomerates. Already this year, public outcries over censorship at a popular newspaper and choking pollution in Beijing have given the new party leadership a taste of those pressures.

Some progressive voices are urging China’s leaders to pay more than lip service to respecting rights and limits on party power promised by the Constitution. Meanwhile, some old-school leftists hail Mr. Xi as a muscular nationalist who will go further than his predecessors in asserting China’s territorial claims.

The choices facing China’s new leadership include how much to relax the state’s continuing grip on the commanding heights of the economy and how far to take promises to fight corruption — a step that could alienate powerful officials and their families.

“How can the ruling party ensure its standing during a period of flux?” asked Ding Dong, a current affairs commentator in Beijing. “That’s truly a real challenge, and it’s creating a sense of tension and latent crisis inside the party.”

Mr. Xi and his inner circle have about 18 months to consolidate power and begin any big initiatives before preparations for the next Communist Party Congress and leadership reshuffle in 2017 start to consume elite attention, said Christopher Johnson, an analyst on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Beijing.

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Why Melissa Joan Hart Is Resisting Valentine's Day This Year

Age is more than just a number for mom-of-three Melissa Joan Hart.

The actress, who welcomed her second child, Brady, now 4½, two years after the birth of her first son, Mason, now 7, says waiting until both boys were older to expand her family further was ideal.

“It’s definitely easier to have an infant when the other two boys are potty trained and can dress themselves,” Hart, 36, told PEOPLE at Wednesday’s Operation Shower in Pacific Palisades, Calif.

“I’m able to enjoy every single minute, and that has been great.”

Basking in baby bliss with her now 5-month-old son Tucker, Hart is embracing the opportunity to relive all of the major milestones for a third time.

“[Tucker] is just such a happy baby, lots of smiles and laughing. Like the other boys, he has great motor skills and right now it’s fun to see him grab at things,” she says.

Eddie Spantman

Unlike his older brothers, however, Tucker is already sporting some long locks. “One of the biggest differences is that he has tons of hair,” she says.

Having welcomed three children, Hart is adamant about celebrating every birth, which is why she has teamed up with Operation Shower and Birdies for the Brave, a mission to host baby showers for military families whose partners are serving overseas.

“I can’t even imagine how difficult it is for these military moms going through pregnancy alone while their spouses are in harm’s way. It’s an emotional time, especially with all of the hormones,” she says of the event, hosted by Carousel Designs.

“Operation Shower and Birdies for the Brave do a great job of making these moms feel special and recognizing all of their sacrifices at home. It’s a sincere pleasure to support these two outstanding organizations.”

With Valentine’s Day on Thursday, Hart and her husband Mark Wilkerson are looking forward to toasting to some couple time — only she’ll be phoning it in from the set of her show, Melissa & Joey.

“Valentine’s Day is my first day back at work, so I will be enjoying the day with the great cast and crew,” she says.

Continues Hart: “We usually celebrate the day before or the day after anyhow since it’s difficult getting a babysitter that night and it’s so crowded everywhere.”

– Anya Leon

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Study: Fish in drug-tainted water suffer reaction

BOSTON (AP) — What happens to fish that swim in waters tainted by traces of drugs that people take? When it's an anti-anxiety drug, they become hyper, anti-social and aggressive, a study found. They even get the munchies.

It may sound funny, but it could threaten the fish population and upset the delicate dynamics of the marine environment, scientists say.

The findings, published online Thursday in the journal Science, add to the mounting evidence that minuscule amounts of medicines in rivers and streams can alter the biology and behavior of fish and other marine animals.

"I think people are starting to understand that pharmaceuticals are environmental contaminants," said Dana Kolpin, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey who is familiar with the study.

Calling their results alarming, the Swedish researchers who did the study suspect the little drugged fish could become easier targets for bigger fish because they are more likely to venture alone into unfamiliar places.

"We know that in a predator-prey relation, increased boldness and activity combined with decreased sociality ... means you're going to be somebody's lunch quite soon," said Gregory Moller, a toxicologist at the University of Idaho and Washington State University. "It removes the natural balance."

Researchers around the world have been taking a close look at the effects of pharmaceuticals in extremely low concentrations, measured in parts per billion. Such drugs have turned up in waterways in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere over the past decade.

They come mostly from humans and farm animals; the drugs pass through their bodies in unmetabolized form. These drug traces are then piped to water treatment plants, which are not designed to remove them from the cleaned water that flows back into streams and rivers.

The Associated Press first reported in 2008 that the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans carries low concentrations of many common drugs. The findings were based on questionnaires sent to water utilities, which reported the presence of antibiotics, sedatives, sex hormones and other drugs.

The news reports led to congressional hearings and legislation, more water testing and more public disclosure. To this day, though, there are no mandatory U.S. limits on pharmaceuticals in waterways.

The research team at Sweden's Umea University used minute concentrations of 2 parts per billion of the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam, similar to concentrations found in real waters. The drug belongs to a widely used class of medicines known as benzodiazepines that includes Valium and Librium.

The team put young wild European perch into an aquarium, exposed them to these highly diluted drugs and then carefully measured feeding, schooling, movement and hiding behavior. They found that drug-exposed fish moved more, fed more aggressively, hid less and tended to school less than unexposed fish. On average, the drugged fish were more than twice as active as the others, researcher Micael Jonsson said. The effects were more pronounced at higher drug concentrations.

"Our first thought is, this is like a person diagnosed with ADHD," said Jonsson, referring to attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. "They become asocial and more active than they should be."

Tomas Brodin, another member of the research team, called the drug's environmental impact a global problem. "We find these concentrations or close to them all over the world, and it's quite possible or even probable that these behavioral effects are taking place as we speak," he said Thursday in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Most previous research on trace drugs and marine life has focused on biological changes, such as male fish that take on female characteristics. However, a 2009 study found that tiny concentrations of antidepressants made fathead minnows more vulnerable to predators.

It is not clear exactly how long-term drug exposure, beyond the seven days in this study, would affect real fish in real rivers and streams. The Swedish researchers argue that the drug-induced changes could jeopardize populations of this sport and commercial fish, which lives in both fresh and brackish water.

Water toxins specialist Anne McElroy of Stony Brook University in New York agreed: "These lower chronic exposures that may alter things like animals' mating behavior or its ability to catch food or its ability to avoid being eaten — over time, that could really affect a population."

Another possibility, the researchers said, is that more aggressive feeding by the perch on zooplankton could reduce the numbers of these tiny creatures. Since zooplankton feed on algae, a drop in their numbers could allow algae to grow unchecked. That, in turn, could choke other marine life.

The Swedish team said it is highly unlikely people would be harmed by eating such drug-exposed fish. Jonsson said a person would have to eat 4 tons of perch to consume the equivalent of a single pill.

Researchers said more work is needed to develop better ways of removing drugs from water at treatment plants. They also said unused drugs should be brought to take-back programs where they exist, instead of being flushed down the toilet. And they called on pharmaceutical companies to work on "greener" drugs that degrade more easily.

Sandoz, one of three companies approved to sell oxazepam in the U.S., "shares society's desire to protect the environment and takes steps to minimize the environmental impact of its products over their life cycle," spokeswoman Julie Masow said in an emailed statement. She provided no details.

___

Online:

Overview of the drug: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682050.html

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Wall Street ends slightly higher, helped by acquisitions

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eked out a small gain for a third straight session on Thursday, helped by a flurry of merger activity, though investors see no catalysts to lift the market further with major averages near multi-year highs.

The market's slowed advance took the S&P 500 to its highest intraday level since November 2007 on Wednesday. While the index notched its third straight day of gains, none was more than 0.2 percent.

Shares of H.J. Heinz Co jumped 20 percent to $72.50 after it said Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital will buy the food company for $72.50 a share, or $28 billion including debt. Berkshire's class B shares rose 1.3 percent to $99.21.

Also supporting the market was data showing the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected in the latest week. The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> fell 2.4 percent, dropping to 12.67.

"While I'm not bearish, I don't see many upside motivations at these levels," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, who cited the low level of the VIX as a sign the market was overbought.

Equities have struggled to break above current levels where they have been hovering for almost two weeks. The S&P 500 is up more than 6 percent so far this year.

"We need to digest some of our gains to go higher, but people are so eager to buy on the dips that we're not even seeing dips anymore. People are just chasing the market higher," said Selkin, who helps oversee about $3 billion in assets.

Stocks fell earlier after a report the euro zone's gross domestic product contracted by the steepest amount since the first quarter of 2009. In addition, Japan's GDP shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, crushing expectations of a modest return to growth.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 9.52 points, or 0.07 percent, at 13,973.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 1.05 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,521.38. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 1.78 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,198.66.

Constellation Brands soared 37 percent to $43.75 after AB InBev's deal to take over Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo was revised to grant Constellation perpetual rights to distribute Corona and other Modelo brands in the United States. U.S. shares of AB InBev gained 5.1 percent to $92.77.

American Airlines and US Airways Group said they plan to merge in a deal that will form the world's biggest air carrier, with an equity valuation of about $11 billion. US Airways shares fell 4.6 percent to $13.99.

Weakness in Europe contributed to a 5 percent drop in revenue from the region for Cisco Systems , which nonetheless beat estimates as it reported its results late Wednesday. The company's shares dipped 0.7 percent to $20.99.

General Motors Co reported a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, also citing bigger losses in Europe alongside lower prices in its core North American market. The stock was off 3.3 percent to $27.73.

Only five more stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange, while 51 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed higher.

Volume was light, with about 6.36 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)

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Kerry Says He Is Preparing Proposals on Syria Crisis

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that he had ideas about how to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to agree to a political transition in Syria and planned to raise them on his first foreign trip this month.

“We need to address the question of President Assad’s calculation currently,” Mr. Kerry said after a meeting with Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh. “I believe there are additional things that can be done to change his current perception. I’ve got a good sense of what I think we might propose.”

Mr. Kerry did not say what proposals he had in mind. He is expected to travel to the Middle East and Europe, but the trip has not been formally announced.

“I can assure you my goal is to see us change his calculation, my goal is to see us have a negotiated outcome and minimize the violence,” Mr. Kerry said. “It may not be possible. I am not going to stand here and tell you that’s automatic or easily achievable. There are a lot of forces that have been unleashed here over the course of the last months.”

Mr. Kerry made a similar statement during his Senate confirmation hearing last month. Despite his caution that progress might not be possible, the effect of Mr. Kerry’s comments was to heighten expectations for his trip. Mr. Kerry is also expected to try to make headway on the issues dividing the Palestinians and the Israelis and set the stage for President Obama’s trip to Israel next month.

Mr. Kerry’s comment on Syria came a day after Mr. Obama said little about the Syria crisis in his State of the Union address. In that speech, Mr. Obama said he would keep pressure on the Syrian regime, but he did not voice confidence, as he had in his 2012 address, that Mr. Assad would soon be forced to relinquish power.

Mr. Kerry said that Mr. Obama would begin by listening to Israeli and Arab leaders and would not be bringing a major new proposal.

“The president is not prepared at this point in time to do more than listen to the parties, which is why he has announced he is going to go to Israel,” he said.

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Clues to why most survived China melamine scandal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists wondering why some children and not others survived one of China's worst food safety scandals have uncovered a suspect: germs that live in the gut.

In 2008, at least six babies died and 300,000 became sick after being fed infant formula that had been deliberately and illegally tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. There were some lingering puzzles: How did it cause kidney failure, and why wasn't everyone equally at risk?

A team of researchers from the U.S. and China re-examined those questions in a series of studies in rats. In findings released Wednesday, they reported that certain intestinal bacteria play a crucial role in how the body handles melamine.

The intestines of all mammals teem with different species of bacteria that perform different jobs. To see if one of those activities involves processing melamine, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Shanghai Jiao Tong University gave lab rats antibiotics to kill off some of the germs — and then fed them melamine.

The antibiotic-treated rats excreted twice as much of the melamine as rats that didn't get antibiotics, and they experienced fewer kidney stones and other damage.

A closer look identified why: A particular intestinal germ — named Klebsiella terrigena — was metabolizing melamine to create a more toxic byproduct, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Previous studies have estimated that fewer than 1 percent of healthy people harbor that bacteria species. A similar fraction of melamine-exposed children in China got sick, the researchers wrote. But proving that link would require studying stool samples preserved from affected children, they cautioned.

Still, the research is pretty strong, said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, who wasn't involved in the new study.

More importantly, "this paper adds to a growing body of evidence which suggests that microbes in the body play a significant role in our response to toxicity and in our health in general," Gilbert said.

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Wall Street pauses after rally to five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks drifted in light volume on Wednesday, ending little changed, as investors remained cautious after the S&P 500 index briefly hit its highest intraday level since November 2007.

The S&P 500 was buoyed by General Electric after cable company Comcast Corp said it will buy from GE the the part of NBCUniversal it didn't already own for $16.7 billion.

Comcast's stock hit the highest since 1999 before closing up 3 percent at $40.13 and GE gained 3.6 percent to $23.39.

The S&P 500 is up 6.6 percent so far this year, partly due to stronger-than-expected corporate earnings and a better economic outlook. The Dow industrials is about 1 percent away from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.

Volume has been weak in recent days with the S&P moving sideways around 1,520. The index is about 3 percent away from closing at a record high.

A scarcity of sellers after a consistent string of gains is a positive sign and shows the uptrend is intact, King Lip, chief investment officer at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco, said.

"Last year we had double-digit returns in the first quarter. It's fairly possible we can move higher from here," he said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 35.79 points or 0.26 percent, to 13,982.91, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 0.9 point or 0.06 percent, to 1,520.33 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 10.38 points or 0.33 percent, to 3,196.88.

The S&P gained 12 percent in the first three months of 2012.

Deere & Co , the world's largest farm equipment maker, forecast a modest increase in sales this year despite the prospect of the biggest corn crop in U.S. history. The forecast fell short of analysts' expectations, sending shares of Deere down 3.5 percent to $90.68.

In extended trading, shares of technology bellwether Cisco Systems fell 2 percent after it posted results.

Dr Pepper Snapple fell 5.8 percent to $42.69 after it forecast profit for the current year below analysts' estimates.

Cliffs Natural Resources lost a fifth of its market value a day after the miner reported a quarterly loss and slashed its dividend by 76 percent. Its shares fell 20 percent to 429.29.

According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 364 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

About 5.9 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average in February last year of 6.94 billion.

On the NYSE, roughly seven issues rose for every five that fell and on Nasdaq more than six rose for every five decliners.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Bernadette Baum)

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News Analysis: As North Korea’s Nuclear Ability Grows, China Faces Dilemma

BEIJING — In the aftermath of Tuesday’s nuclear test by North Korea, China will almost certainly join the United States in supporting tougher sanctions at the United Nations, accompanied by sterner reprimands from Beijing against its recalcitrant ally in Pyongyang.

But as impatient as China might be with North Korea, there is little chance that the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, will move quickly to change the nation’s long-held policy of propping up the walled-off government that has long served as a buffer against closer intrusion by the United States on the Korean Peninsula.

The Chinese military, and to a lesser extent the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party, assert strong influence on China’s Korean policy, and both these powerful entities prefer to keep North Korea close at hand, Chinese and American analysts say.

While the People’s Liberation Army does not even conduct military exercises with the North Koreans — the government in the North forbids such contact with outsiders — Chinese military strategists adhere to the doctrine that they cannot afford to abandon their ally, no matter how bad its behavior, analysts here say.

At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party looks upon the North Korean Communist Party — led by Kim Jong-un, the grandson of the nation’s founder — as a fraternal brotherhood. Indeed, relations between the two countries are conducted largely between the two parties rather than through the more normal diplomatic channels between the two foreign ministries.

But within this basic contour there could be some adjustments by Mr. Xi, according to Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University, an advocate of a tougher policy by China against North Korea.

“One nuclear test will not make China’s new administration decide to ‘abandon North Korea’ but it will definitely worsen China-North Korea relations,” Professor Zhu wrote in a recent article in the Straits Times of Singapore. “North Korea’s nuclear test will make the new Xi Jinping administration angry, and give China a headache.”

Mr. Xi, who became head of the Communist Party and military council in November, will ascend to the presidency of the country next month. Already he has shown himself to be more nationalistic than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, displaying China’s determination to prevail in the East China Sea crisis in which China is seeking to wrest control of islands administered by Japan. He has also displayed considerably more interest in China’s military, visiting bases and troops in the last two months with blandishments to soldiers to be combat ready.

To improve China’s strained relationship with the United States, Mr. Xi could start with getting tougher on North Korea, harnessing China’s clout with the outlier government to help slow down its nuclear program. If Mr. Xi does not help in curbing the North Koreans, perhaps by privately threatening to pull the plug on infusions of Chinese oil and investments that keep North Korea afloat, he will almost certainly face an accelerated American ballistic missile defense program in Northeast Asia on behalf of Japan and other allies in the region. That would be an unpalatable situation for China.

The Obama administration excoriated Mr. Hu after North Korea’s second nuclear test in 2009, accusing him of “willful blindness” to that country’s actions.

“With Hu out of the picture, the administration is intent on determining whether Xi Jinping will prove more attentive to U.S. security concerns,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.

“How Xi chooses to respond will be an important early signal of his foreign policy priorities and whether he is ready to cooperate much more openly and fully with Washington and Seoul than his predecessor,” he said, referring to South Korea.

A more heightened debate about North Korea is now swirling around China’s foreign policy circles. On one side are those like Professor Zhu who favor some kind of co-operation with the United States in curbing North Korea’s nuclear program. On the other side are the traditionalists in powerful positions in the army and the party who adhere to the buffer zone theory.

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Biggest Loser's Alison Sweeney Blogs About Valentine's Day Temptation

TV Watch

The Biggest Loser

By Alison Sweeney

02/12/2013 at 05:30 PM EST

Alison Sweeney hosts NBC's The Biggest Loser and is the award-winning star of Days of Our Lives, in addition to being an author, director, producer, wife and mom. Like she has for the past two seasons, Alison will blog each week about the latest episode of The Biggest Loser. Follow her on Twitter @Ali_Sweeney.

It's time for singles on The Biggest Loser – and that changes everything! Once I'd given each remaining contestant their new color, I loved the celebration in the house, particularly for Danni who had been competing as a single for the last couple of weeks.

However, the celebration was short-lived when they were introduced to their Valentine's Day temptation. It's incredible that a holiday celebrating love comes with so many calories that hurt those you love the most. So as the challenge began, I put on my night vision goggles and it killed me to watch Francelina and Alex stuffing calories into their mouths. Meanwhile, I was so proud of Danni for using the time for a workout.

In the gym, it was fun to watch the trainers working with different contestants. Jillian – never one to shy away from a challenge – took Francelina and Alex as punishment for their eating during the temptation. She also took Jeff because they'd butted heads in the past. Despite his tough exterior, I think Jeff finally figured out that Jillian can break through any wall and get to the heart of what caused contestants to become overweight. And she's then able to work with them on transforming their entire lives.

After this week's challenge, Danni really impressed me (again!) by giving her reward to Gina and Michael so they could spend 24 hours with their loved ones. We were all so moved by Gina and Michael's reaction to the prize – to knowing they would see loved ones. Not a dry eye. For Gina to see her husband and put her wedding ring back on because it finally fit again was heartwarming. Then to watch Michael with his wife and his baby was just awesome. How cute is Little Mike?

During this week's weigh-in, it was great to see Alex reach "One-derland" (being in the 100s) despite the calories she consumed during the temptation. It was also great to see Jackson's elation at having such a great weight loss for the week.

In the end, for the first yellow line, the choice came down to whether to eliminate Francelina or Michael. When the decisions were made, it was Michael who was sent home. But, just like others before him this season, Michael showed that what he learned on the Ranch could be applied at home and I know he's going to make sure his entire family gets healthy and stays healthy.

With the kids this week, it was great to watch them step further outside of their comfort zones and to have fun while working out. For them, it's not about clocking hours in the gym but more about finding ways to have fun being active and to gain self-confidence through successes.

My favorite moment of the week: Michael's reaction when his wife and baby walked in the room and surprised him.

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, especially to Dave, my incredible husband of almost 13 years, and to my kids, Ben and Megan. (Check out Ben's awesome jump over the sofa and Megan's adorable reaction in my Good Housekeeping cover story, which is on stands now!)

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

__

Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

___

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

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Wall Street ends slightly higher, Dow near a record

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed modestly higher on Tuesday, putting the Dow within striking distance of an all-time high, as investors looked ahead to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

Investors will be listening to Obama's speech for any clues on a deal with Republicans to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1. The tone of the speech will also be scrutinized, with any sign of compromise likely to be warmly received.

The S&P 500 has risen for the past six weeks, putting it up 6.5 percent so far this year, while the Dow is about 1 percent away from its all-time closing record of 14,164.53, reached in October 2007.

But gains have been harder to come by since the S&P hit a five-year high on February 1. Daily moves have been small and trading volume light as investors search for new reasons to drive stocks higher.

About 5.73 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT on Tuesday, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

"We're likely to settle in for a period and digest the gains we've had, though there's still a bias towards positive momentum," said Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens Bancshares in Raleigh, North Carolina.

"Questions over government spending are the big overhang, and we're looking for Obama to inspire some confidence over that tonight."

The White House has signaled Obama will urge investment in infrastructure and clean energy, suggesting companies in those sectors may be volatile in Wednesday's session.

"Gun makers could also see a reaction if Obama talks about anything with respect to gun control," said Teal, who helps oversee $5 billion. Shares of Smith & Wesson fell 2 cents to $9.11 while Sturm Ruger was up 0.4 percent at $53.91.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 47.46 points, or 0.34 percent, at 14,018.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 2.42 points, or 0.16 percent, at 1,519.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 5.51 points, or 0.17 percent, at 3,186.49.

Housing shares were among the strongest of the day, led by a 12.5 percent jump in Masco Corp to $20.02 after the home improvement product maker said it expects new home construction to show strong growth in 2013. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> rose 3.7 percent.

Avon Products Inc surged 20 percent to $20.79 as the S&P 500's top percentage gainer after the cosmetics company reversed sales declines and cut costs.

On the downside, Coca-Cola Co fell 2.7 percent to $37.56 and was the biggest drag on the Dow after reporting revenue below estimates, hurt by a weaker-than-expected performance in Europe.

Michael Kors Holdings shares jumped 8.8 percent to $62.04 after the fashion company handily beat Wall Street's estimates and raised its full-year outlook.

With earnings season starting to wind down, Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning shows of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

About 62 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed higher while 59 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed in positive territory.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Ruling Adds Another Chapter to Unsolved Italian Jet Crash

ROME — Itavia Flight 870 was entering the final leg of a routine domestic trip from Bologna to Palermo, Sicily, one clear summer evening when it suddenly plunged into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the small island of Ustica, killing all 81 people aboard.

Mechanical failure was ruled out early on, and almost 33 years later, the causes that led to the crash on June 27, 1980, are still a topic of passionate debate in Italy, fueled by three decades of inquiry boards, parliamentary commissions, countless expert reports and one of the longest judicial inquiries in recent Italian history. But despite all that, no formal charges have ever been filed in connection with the crash.

The crash, known as the Ustica affair, has produced legions of conspiracy theories here, the way the Kennedy assassination — or, on a lesser scale, the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996 — have in the United States. But in the Ustica affair, the case for a cover-up is far stronger.

Last week, when Italy’s highest court ruled that the country’s Defense and Transportation Ministries had to compensate the families of some of the victims, the court implicitly acknowledged the most widely accepted theory behind the crash: That a missile fired by a warplane had hit the twin-engine McDonnell Douglas DC-9 of Itavia, a now-defunct domestic Italian airline. But the court did not say where that missile came from.

To conspiracy buffs, it was vindication — to a point.

“It’s like the O.J. Simpson affair, where he got off in criminal court but was found guilty in a civil procedure and had to pay damages,” said Andrea Purgatori, an investigative reporter whose exhaustive book on the disaster and the presumed cover-up was made into a 1992 film.

Over the years, several Italian Air Force officials have been investigated for withholding evidence — wiping clean flight tracks and radar scans — and four generals were tried on charges of treason and obstructing investigations. But no one has been convicted.

In this atmosphere, it is not surprising that conspiracy theories have proliferated over the years. The crash has been blamed on U.F.O.’s (several Web sites subscribe to this reconstruction) or domestic terrorism (the Bologna train station was bombed not five weeks later, killing 85 and wounding dozens more). In this scenario, the plane went down after a bomb exploded onboard, most likely in the toilet.

The missile theory gained a new impetus in 2008 when Francesco Cossiga, the prime minister at the time of the Ustica affair, said in an interview that the flight had been shot down by French military planes. Mr. Cossiga did not provide further details, nor can he. He died in 2010, at age 82.

At the time, proponents say, Italy was covertly allowing Libyan aircraft to fly through its airspace undisturbed. They did so by gliding in the slipstream of Italian domestic aircraft, where they could not be detected by radar. On the night of June 27, 1980, there were unsubstantiated reports that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was on one of those planes, the theory goes, and French forces tried to shoot it down to kill the Libyan leader, but hit the DC-9 by mistake. Don’t ask why. It has to do with rebels in North Africa and jockeying for oil concessions between Italy and France.

But Colonel Qaddafi had been warned of the plan and never boarded his plane, according to this reconstruction, which also says the pilot made a successful emergency landing at sea. There, a British submarine reached it and deployed scuba divers to plant explosives to sink the plane and to silence potential witnesses to the assassination attempt.

One hypothesis, detailed by an investigative journalist, Claudio Gatti, holds that the plane was shot down by Israeli forces that mistook it for a plane carrying enriched uranium earmarked for Iraq. “No country would attack in the Mediterranean for anything but extraordinary reasons,” and Israel “had that reason,” Mr. Gatti said. “It’s the only scenario that makes sense.”

The Western warplane scenario has gathered weight through the years, as Italian prosecutors disclosed that several NATO planes were flying in the same airspace that night.

Prosecutors in Rome are still pursuing the Ustica affair. Several international rogatorie — legal requests for information — have since been sent to Belgium, France, Germany and the United States, but responses have been slow in coming, leading the victims’ families to accuse those countries of dragging their feet.

Prosecutors say there are no time limits to such requests, which “depend solely on the collaboration that countries see fit to give,” said Erminio Amelio, one of the prosecutors currently leading the criminal investigation, which has passed through various hands over three decades.

Even though much has changed since that night in the Mediterranean almost 33 years ago, official sensitivities are still high, and no one expects any of the governments thought to be involved to come clean anytime soon.

“This is an incredible story, where a series of colossal lies have been told,” Mr. Purgatori said.

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Are You Loving LeAnn Rimes's New Bangs?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/11/2013 at 04:48 PM ET

Courtesy of Leann Rimes

First, Duchess Catherine cut hers. Then, Michelle Obama made the cut. And now we think we can officially declare bangs to be the hairstyle to have, because LeAnn Rimes has debuted her blunt new fringe on Twitter.

“Love my Andy LeCompte! I got banged,” she joked on Twitter of the new cut, along with a photo of her smiling next to the renowned celeb stylist. “Love em! Was time for a fun change.”

The star stepped out the night before her Saturday cut in a glam mini and her signature loose, blonde waves. But she decided not to take her new do for a spin on the Grammys red carpet, tweeting “I like my PJs better!”

We can’t say we blame her, but we hope she doesn’t keep the finished cut under wraps for long. We need more bangs inspiration for our Pinterest board.

Tell us: What do you think of Rimes’s new bangs?

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Need surgery? Good luck getting hospital cost info

CHICAGO (AP) — Want to know how much a hip replacement will cost? Many hospitals won't be able to tell you, at least not right away — if at all. And if you shop around and find centers that can quote a price, the amounts could vary astronomically, a study found.

Routine hip replacement surgery on a healthy patient without insurance may cost as little as $11,000 — or up to nearly $126,000.

That's what researchers found after calling hospitals in every state, 122 in all, asking what a healthy 62-year-old woman would have to pay to get an artificial hip. Hospitals were told the made-up patient was the caller's grandmother, had no insurance but could afford to pay out of pocket — that's why knowing the cost information ahead of time was so important.

About 15 percent of hospitals did not provide any price estimate, even after a researcher called back as many as five times.

The researchers were able to obtain a complete price estimate including physician fees from close to half the hospitals. But in most cases, that took contacting the hospital and doctor separately.

"Our calls to hospitals were often greeted by uncertainty and confusion," the researchers wrote. "We were frequently transferred between departments, asked to leave messages that were rarely returned, and told that prices could not be estimated without an office visit."

Many hospitals "are just completely unprepared" for cost questions, said Jaime Rosenthal, a Washington University student who co-authored the report.

Most hospitals aren't intentionally hiding costs, they're just not used to patients asking. That's particularly true for patients with health insurance who "don't bother to ask because they know insurance will cover it," said co-author Dr. Peter Cram, a researcher at the University of Iowa's medical school.

But he said that's likely to change as employers increasingly force workers to share more health care costs by paying higher co-payments and deductibles, making patients more motivated to ask about costs.

The study was published online Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. A California study published last year about surgery to remove an appendix found similar cost disparities.

Commenting on the study, American Hospital Association spokeswoman Marie Watteau said hospitals "have a uniform set of charges. Sharing meaningful information, however, is challenging because hospital care is unique and based on each individual patient's needs."

She said states and local hospital associations are the best source for pricing data, and that many states already require or encourage hospitals to report pricing information and make that data available to the public.

U.S. insurance companies typically negotiate to pay less than the billing price. Insured patients' health plans determine what they pay, while uninsured patients may end up paying the full amount.

The study authors noted that Medicare and other large insurers frequently pay between $10,000 and $25,000 for hip replacement surgery.

Sean Toohey, a grains broker at the Chicago Board of Trade, had hip replacement surgery last summer at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. An old sports injury had worn out his left hip, causing "horrendous" pain on the job, where he's on his feet all day filling orders.

Toohey, 54, said his health insurance covered most of the costs, and it didn't occur to him to ask about price beforehand. He was back at work two weeks later and is pain free. That's what matters most to him.

"I never really looked or paid attention" to the cost, he said.

He paid about $7,900, but wasn't sure what the total bill amounted to.

The average charge for hip replacement surgery at Loyola is about $42,000, before the negotiated insurance rates. The most expensive items on a typical hip replacement bill include about $11,000 for the hip implant, said Richard Kudia, Loyola's vice president of patient financial services

Kudia said some patients do ask in advance about costs of surgery and other medical procedures, and those questions require "a little bit of research" to come up with an average estimate. Costs vary from center to center because "there is no standard pricing among hospitals across the country. Each hospital develops its own pricing depending on its market," he said.

An editorial accompanying the hip replacement study said "there is no justification" for the huge cost variation the researchers found.

A few online sites provide price comparisons for common medical procedures, but the editorial said that kind of information "is of almost no value" without information on hospital quality.

A proposed federal measure that would have required states to force hospitals to make their charges public failed to advance in Congress last year but could be revived this year, the editorial says.

"It is time we stopped forcing people to buy health care services blindfolded," the editorial said.

___

Online:

Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com

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Wall Street ends flat as investors seek new catalysts

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended a quiet session with slight moves on Monday as investors found few reasons to keep pushing shares higher following a six-week advance, though the longer-term trend was still viewed as positive.

The benchmark index is up more 6.4 percent in 2013, putting both the S&P 500 and Dow industrials near multi-year highs. The S&P is less than 4 percent from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, hit in October 2007.

"This is still a market that looks terrific, but when you're up for six weeks in a row, everyone is going to want to take a pause going into the seventh week even if there is no bad news out there," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago.

Volume was light, with about 4.812 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

Wall Street was modestly lower throughout the session but regained some ground in the final hour of trading as Google Inc rebounded off earlier losses. Shares of the Internet search giant dipped 0.4 percent to $782.42, recovering from earlier declines of 1 percent after the company said in a filing former chief executive Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his stake in the company.

Also in the tech space, Apple Inc rose up 1 percent to $479.93 after the New York Times reported the iPhone maker was experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch.

The Federal Reserve's Vice Chair Janet Yellen, seen as a potential successor to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke next year, said the Fed is still aggressively stimulating an anemic U.S. economic recovery that has failed to bring rapid progress on employment.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 21.81 points, or 0.16 percent, at 13,971.16. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.92 points, or 0.06 percent, at 1,517.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.87 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,192.00.

Upbeat U.S. and Chinese data last week helped the S&P 500 extend its weekly winning streak to six. The index gained about 8 percent over that period.

Equities have been strong performers lately and many investors have used any declines in the market as opportunities to buy.

"Everyone wants to buy on a dip in this market, but if you're on the sidelines right now, the decline we're seeing today just isn't the kind you would jump in on," Kuby said.

President Barack Obama will describe his plan for spurring the economy in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He is expected to offer proposals for investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education.

Opposition has grown to the $24.4 billion buyout of Dell Inc , the No. 3 personal computer maker, as three of the largest investors joined Southeastern Asset Management on Friday in raising objections. Dell said in a regulatory filing it had considered many strategic options before opting to go private in a buyout led by Chief Executive Michael Dell.

Dell shares hovered near $13.65, the buyout offer price.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc shares rose 2.7 percent at $170.35 after it said longtime drug development partner Sanofi plans to boost its stake.

Moody's Corp was one of the strongest percentage gainers on the S&P 500, rising 4.9 percent to $45.49. Last week the stock plunged 22 percent after the U.S. government launched a civil lawsuit against the company. The sell-off marked the stock's worst week since October 2008.

About 53 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed lower while slightly more Nasdaq-listed stocks closed in negative territory.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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