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Label: WorldFactbox: Video game industry meets with Biden gun task force
Label: TechnologyWASHINGTON (Reuters) – Representatives from the companies that make “first-person shooter” games such as “Call of Duty,” “Medal of Honor” and “Grand Theft Auto” met with Vice President Joe Biden on Friday as the Obama administration looks for ways to curb U.S. gun violence.
Biden is heading a task force formed after a gunman shot dead 20 children and six adults last month at a Connecticut elementary school. Biden plans to make recommendations on reducing gun violence to President Barack Obama by next Tuesday.
The vice president has held discussions with a wide range of groups including gun retailers, gun owners, the National Rifle Association gun rights lobbying organization, the film industry, victims of gun violence, and law enforcement authorities.
Following is a list of groups present at Friday’s meeting with Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Activision Blizzard Inc
Electronic Arts Inc
E-Line Media
Entertainment Software Association
Entertainment Software Ratings Board
Epic Games
GameStop Corp
Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc
Texas A&M University
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Zenimax Media Inc
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Will Dunham)
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Man Arrested for Murder in Teen's Facebook-Revealed Death
Label: LifestylePolice have arrested a sometime boyfriend in the murder of Jasmine Benjamin, a 17-year-old Georgia college student whose parents first learned about her death last November on Facebook.
Benjamin, a freshman at Valdosta State University, was found Nov. 18 on a dormitory study room couch. On Thursday, fellow Valdosta State student Darien Meheux, 18, turned himself in after learning there was a warrant for his arrest, says Steven Turner, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
"Right now he's the sole suspect," Turner tells PEOPLE. "They had dated at one time. The status of their relationship back in November is not necessarily clear whether they were dating or not."
Frustrated by the lack of answers and the way they'd learned about Benjamin's death, her family hired a private investigator, Robin Martinelli, but believed all along that Meheux might be involved, says Martinelli.
Benjamin and Meheux both were from Lawrenceville, about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Authorities earlier had said the cause of death was asphyxiation, and that Benjamin may have been dead for several hours before her body was discovered in the shared common area of Georgia Hall on the 10,000-student campus in Valdosta, Ga.
Benjamin's mother Judith Brogdon and stepfather James Jackson were notified of her death when a friend forwarded a Facebook post about the discovery.
Officials then told them their daughter died from natural causes, until the medical examiner changed the investigation within 24 hours to homicide.
"To find out it was a homicide and that somebody actually murdered our daughter changed everything," Jackson tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It was like hearing the news all over again."
Flu season puts businesses and employees in a bind
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly half the 70 employees at a Ford dealership in Clarksville, Ind., have been out sick at some point in the past month. It didn't have to be that way, the boss says.
"If people had stayed home in the first place, a lot of times that spread wouldn't have happened," says Marty Book, a vice president at Carriage Ford. "But people really want to get out and do their jobs, and sometimes that's a detriment."
The flu season that has struck early and hard across the U.S. is putting businesses and employees alike in a bind. In this shaky economy, many Americans are reluctant to call in sick, something that can backfire for their employers.
Flu was widespread in 47 states last week, up from 41 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The only states without widespread flu were California, Mississippi and Hawaii. And the main strain of the virus circulating tends to make people sicker than usual.
Blake Fleetwood, president of Cook Travel in New York, says his agency is operating with less than 40 percent of its full-time staff because of the flu and other ailments.
"The people here are working longer hours and it puts a lot of strain on everyone," Fleetwood says. "You don't know whether to ask people with the flu to come in or not." He says the flu is also taking its toll on business as customers cancel their travel plans: "People are getting the flu and they're reduced to a shriveling little mess and don't feel like going anywhere."
Many workers go to the office even when they're sick because they are worried about losing their jobs, says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an employer consulting firm. Other employees report for work out of financial necessity, since roughly 40 percent of U.S. workers don't get paid if they are out sick. Some simply have a strong work ethic and feel obligated to show up.
Flu season typically costs employers $10.4 billion for hospitalization and doctor's office visits, according to the CDC. That does not include the costs of lost productivity from absences.
At Carriage Ford, Book says the company plans to make flu shots mandatory for all employees.
Linda Doyle, CEO of the Northcrest Community retirement home in Ames, Iowa, says the company took that step this year for its 120 employees, providing the shots at no cost. It is also supplying face masks for all staff.
And no one is expected to come into work if sick, she says.
So far, the company hasn't seen an outbreak of flu cases.
"You keep your fingers crossed and hope it continues this way," Doyle says. "You see the news and it's frightening. We just want to make sure that we're doing everything possible to keep everyone healthy. Cleanliness is really the key to it. Washing your hands. Wash, wash, wash."
Among other steps employers can take to reduce the spread of the flu on the job: holding meetings via conference calls, staggering shifts so that fewer people are on the job at the same time, and avoiding handshaking.
Newspaper editor Rob Blackwell says he had taken only two sick days in the last two years before coming down with the flu and then pneumonia in the past two weeks. He missed several days the first week of January and has been working from home the past week.
"I kept trying to push myself to get back to work because, generally speaking, when I'm sick I just push through it," says Blackwell, the Washington bureau chief for the daily trade paper American Banker.
Connecticut is the only state that requires some businesses to pay employees when they are out sick. Cities such as San Francisco and Washington have similar laws.
Challenger and others say attitudes are changing, and many companies are rethinking their sick policies to avoid officewide outbreaks of the flu and other infectious diseases.
"I think companies are waking up to the fact right now that you might get a little bit of gain from a person coming into work sick, but especially when you have an epidemic, if 10 or 20 people then get sick, in fact you've lost productivity," Challenger says.
___
Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe in Atlanta, Eileen A.J. Connelly in New York, Paul Wiseman in Washington, Barbara Rodriguez in Des Moines, Iowa, and Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.
Wall Street ends flat as rally slows, earnings eyed
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended little changed on Friday as investors took a step back from buying ahead of next week's busy corporate earnings calendar.
Overall earnings are expected to grow by just 1.9 percent in this season, according to Thomson Reuters data. Analysts say that, with the bar low, there's room for companies to beat expectations, and that may have contributed to the rise in stocks so far in 2013.
That rally has slowed in the last few days.
"It's a market that is waiting for more of a catalyst from earnings," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.
The S&P 500 index has gained 5 percent over the last two weeks to take the benchmark to five-year highs.
Wells Fargo & Co
The bank, which was the first major financial institution to report results this earnings season, also made fewer mortgage loans than in the third quarter.
Wells Fargo ended down 0.8 percent at $35.10, off its lows for the day, while bank shares weighed on the broader market. The S&P 500 financial sector index <.gspf> fell 0.3 percent after rallying more than 1 percent on Thursday.
Bank of America Corp
An agreement reached in Washington at the start of the year over the "fiscal cliff" saw investors in U.S.-based funds add $7.53 billion to stock mutual funds in the week ended Jan 9, the most since 2001, data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper service showed.
"The money poured into the market at the beginning of the year and you're going to need new money to bring this market higher," said Krosby. She said that in the short-term the market has a bias toward moving higher, even though it is overbought.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 17.21 points, or 0.13 percent, to 13,488.43. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dipped 0.07 points to 1,472.05. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 3.88 points, or 0.12 percent, to 3,125.64.
For the week, the S&P and Dow both gained 0.4 percent and the Nasdaq rose 0.8 percent.
Boeing
The U.S. Department of Transportation said the jet would be subject to a review of its critical systems by regulators. Boeing was the biggest loser on the Dow, falling 2.5 percent to $75.16.
Best Buy
Dendreon Corp
Volume was below the 2012 average of 6.42 billion shares traded a day, with roughly 5.93 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT.
Advancers outpaced decliners on the New York Stock Exchange by 1,578 to 1,393, while advancers narrowly outnumbered decliners on the Nasdaq by 1,228 to 1,223.
(Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Zorbing Accident Kills 1 Man and Injures Another in Russia
Label: World
MOSCOW — It is called a zorb, an outsize inflatable ball in which people strap themselves, then bounce down a ski slope and, presumably, have a good time doing so. But when a zorb veered off a ski run high in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains earlier this month, there was little anyone could do but watch as the two men inside careened along a jagged ridge and then plunged over a precipice.
The ball tumbled down the mountain at the Dombai ski resort for almost a mile, slamming into rocks as it picked up speed, rescue workers said on Wednesday in a televised statement. One of the men, Denis Burakov, 27, injured his spinal cord and died on the way to a hospital. The other, Vladimir Shcherbakov, 33, suffered a concussion and deep cuts to his arms and face.
The accident on Jan. 3, which a friend of the men filmed on a cellphone and then uploaded to the Internet on Tuesday, has generated concern over unlicensed attractions on Russia’s loosely regulated ski slopes.
The man who harnessed Mr. Burakov and Mr. Shcherbakov into the zorb told the police that they were his first customers, and that he was not licensed to offer rides, having bought the ball two years ago for his own use. On Thursday the police arrested the man, Ravil Chekunov, 25, who said he had charged Mr. Burakov and Mr. Shcherbakov about $10 for the ride.
Russia’s minister of emergency situations called Wednesday for tighter safety precautions at skiing facilities, after a rash of winter sports injuries. Russian television reported this week that 10 people had been seriously injured on a single ski slope in Kolomna, a city 50 miles southeast of Moscow. A woman who descended on a sled broke her spine after she ran into rocks at the bottom.
Russian leaders, notably President Vladimir V. Putin, have tried for years to build interest in downhill skiing in Russia. The country has invested billions of dollars in ski resorts in the Caucasus, and in particular in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, which will host the Winter Olympics in 2014.
Mr. Putin mingled with stunned vacationers at a resort near Sochi during the winter break, and the culture minister, Vladimir R. Medinsky, lavishly praised the local ski conditions on Twitter.
But an investigation into the accident at the Dombai ski resort, less than 100 miles east of Sochi, found 50 unlicensed attractions and guides operating on the mountain, the newspaper Izvestia reported.
A Moscow-based businessman, Montay Imanov, told Izvestia that the zorb that carried the two men was stolen from him at gunpoint in 2009, when he traveled to the region intending to open a zorbing business.
“They didn’t cordon the track off from the gorge,” he said. “It’s just a nightmare. They needed to put six rows of nets there.”
Jimmy Dushku: The 25-year-old who is North Korea’s one true Twitter friend
Label: TechnologyMother Jones takes a look at a globetrotting young investor who’s the only American — and the only human being — Pyongyang follows
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt capped a controversial four-day visit to North Korea on Thursday with a call for the country’s censorship-happy communist government to give its people access to the internet, or face further economic decline due to the country’s global isolation. It was a strong message from one of the web’s most powerful figures, although North Korea watchers seem pretty confident the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, will ignore it. There’s one American, however, Pyongyang does appear to listen to. That would be Jimmy Dushku, a young investor who is one of exactly three Twitter users Kim’s government follows on Twitter. What’s the story behind this unlikely online bromance? Here, a guide:
Who is Jimmy Dushku?
He’s a 25-year-old financial whiz kid from Austin, Texas. Dushku, who also goes by the nicknames “Jimmer” and “Jammy,” started a website development business when he was 14, according to Mother Jones, and he parlayed his early earnings into investments that now include everything from construction projects in Europe to real estate in Texas to mines in South America. He’s also a rabid Coldplay fan, and when he isn’t jetting around the world, he says he likes to play Rachmaninoff on his piano and zoom around on his Ducati Monster motorcycle.
SEE MORE: North Korea’s rocket launch: 3 consequences
So how did he become buddies with North Korea?
Dushku tells Asawin Suebsaeng at Mother Jones he’s not really sure. “People always ask me how it happened, and I honestly can’t remember,” he says. “It started sometime back in 2010. I was initially surprised.” North Korea followed him, he followed North Korea “out of courtesy.” He tweeted back, “Hello my friend,” and a relationship was born. Then, the North Korean government, which has piled up some 11,000 followers in two-and-a-half years on Twitter, abruptly whittled down the number of accounts it follows, leaving just three. Dushku made the cut (along with a Vietnam account and another official North Korean handle).
What has Dushku gotten from the relationship?
Death threats, for one thing. Not long after he linked up with North Korea’s account, which goes by @uriminzok (or “our nation”), Dushku says he started getting angry messages from exiles and South Koreans. Since then, he has mostly kept a low profile, just to be safe, although he does occasionally grant interviews to foreign publications. For its part, North Korea gets a rare glimpse at the outside world through Dushku, as his is the only account North Korea follows that is regularly updated — the other two haven’t tweeted in months. He’s also the only human being in the bunch.
Will @JimmyDushku and @uriminzok ever meet in real life?
That’s always the question for acquaintances who meet online, isn’t it? Dushku says his friendly relationship has won him a standing offer to visit North Korea. Casual observers, however, advise him to proceed with caution. “Am I the only one thinking they picked some random guy so they can lure him into North Korea and use him as a political prisoner/bargaining chip?” one commenter at Gizmodo said. Another suggests that Dushku play it cool, without making Pyongyang angry, saying, “Never unfollow anybody with nuclear weapons.”
Sources: Austinist, CNN, Gizmodo, Mother Jones
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Dumb Criminal: Juan Ramirez Tijerina Packed for Jail Break
Label: LifestyleGive him an "A" for ingenuity.
Four years into a 20-year sentence for illegal weapons possession, Juan Ramirez Tijerina had had enough of life in the pokey. After a conjugal visit in July 2011 with his partner, Maria del Carmen Arjona Rivero, he was packed and ready to go – literally.
Ramirez was apprehended after officers, noticing that Arjona seemed nervous as she headed for the prison exit in Chetumal, Mexico, with a bulging suitcase, unzipped the bag and found the convict inside.
He's back behind bars, and Arjona was detained.
"This is rare," says a prison spokesman. "Most of the inmates here dig tunnels, try to jump fences or take advantage of a riot to escape."
Flu season strikes early and, in some places, hard
Label: HealthNEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients.
Flu season in the U.S. has struck early and, in many places, hard.
While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until late January or February, it is already widespread in more than 40 states, with about 30 of them reporting some major hotspots. On Thursday, health officials blamed the flu for the deaths of 20 children so far.
Whether this will be considered a bad season by the time it has run its course in the spring remains to be seen.
"Those of us with gray hair have seen worse," said Dr. William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
The evidence so far points to a moderate season, Schaffner and others say. It looks bad in part because last year was unusually mild and because the main strain of influenza circulating this year tends to make people sicker and really lay them low.
David Smythe of New York City saw it happen to his 50-year-old girlfriend, who has been knocked out for about two weeks. "She's been in bed. She can't even get up," he said.
Also, the flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in a variety of other viruses, including a childhood malady that mimics flu and a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." So what people are calling the flu may, in fact, be something else.
"There may be more of an overlap than we normally see," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who tracks the flu for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most people don't undergo lab tests to confirm flu, and the symptoms are so similar that it can be hard to distinguish flu from other viruses, or even a cold. Over the holidays, 250 people were sickened at a Mormon missionary training center in Utah, but the culprit turned out to be a norovirus, not the flu.
Flu is a major contributor, though, to what's going on.
"I'd say 75 percent," said Dr. Dan Surdam, head of the emergency department at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, Wyoming's largest hospital. The 17-bed emergency room saw its busiest day ever last week, with 166 visitors.
The early onslaught has resulted in a spike in hospitalizations. To deal with the influx and protect other patients from getting sick, hospitals are restricting visits from children, requiring family members to wear masks and banning anyone with flu symptoms from maternity wards.
One hospital in Allentown, Pa., set up a tent this week for a steady stream of patients with flu symptoms. But so far "what we're seeing is a typical flu season," said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.
On Wednesday, Boston declared a public health emergency, with the city's hospitals counting about 1,500 emergency room visits since December by people with flu-like symptoms.
All the flu activity has led some to question whether this year's flu shot is working. While health officials are still analyzing the vaccine, early indications are that it's about 60 percent effective, which is in line with what's been seen in other years.
The vaccine is reformulated each year, based on experts' best guess of which strains of the virus will predominate. This year's vaccine is well-matched to what's going around. The government estimates that between a third and half of Americans have gotten the vaccine.
In New York City, 57-year-old Judith Quinones suffered her worst case of flu-like illness in years and was laid up for nearly a month with fever and body aches. "I just couldn't function," she said.
She decided to skip getting a flu shot last fall. But her daughter got the shot. "And she got sick twice," Quinones said.
Europe is also suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. Flu reports are up, too, in China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo. Britain has seen a surge in cases of norovirus.
On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.
Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.
Most people with flu have a mild illness and can help themselves and protect others by staying home and resting. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.
Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Of the 20 children killed by the flu this season, only two were fully vaccinated.
___
AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.
___
Online:
CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm
Wall Street climbs as China data puts S&P back at five-year high
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Thursday and the S&P 500 ended at a fresh five-year high as stronger-than-expected exports from China spurred optimism about global growth prospects.
Buying accelerated late in the day after the S&P 500 broke through technical resistance at 1,466.47, which was the market's closing level last Friday and the highest level since December 2007.
"Historically, January is a positive month for the market and you're seeing that play out," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.
Financial and energy stocks were the day's top gainers. The financial sector index <.gspf> rose 1.4 percent and the energy sector <.gspe> was up 1 percent.
Analysts cited economic data out of China as the day's catalyst, which showed the country's export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown.
"It is being interpreted positively that they've stopped the downturn (in growth)," said Kurt Brunner, portfolio manager at Swarthmore Group in Philadelphia.
"If they continue to produce good growth, that's going to be supportive of our global manufacturers."
Wall Street's fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index <.vix> suggested markets were relatively calm. The VIX was down 2.3 percent at 13.49.
At Thursday's close, the S&P sits about 6 percent below its all-time closing high of 1,565.15, hit in October 2007.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 80.71 points, or 0.60 percent, to 13,471.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 11.10 points, or 0.76 percent, to 1,472.12. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 15.95 points, or 0.51 percent, to 3,121.76.
Thursday's session had earlier included a dip that traders said was triggered by a trade in the options market that prompted a large amount of S&P futures to hit the market at the same time. That sent the S&P 500 index down rapidly but those losses were reversed through the afternoon.
Financials benefited from events this week that added clarity to mortgage rules and banks' potential exposure to the housing market.
The U.S. government's consumer finance watchdog announced mortgage rules on Thursday that will force banks to use new criteria to determine whether a borrower can repay a home loan.
Earlier this week, several big mortgage lenders reached a deal with regulators to end a review of foreclosures mandated by the government.
"It's a resolution. It's not hanging over their heads," said Brunner.
Bank of America
Shares of upscale jeweler Tiffany
Herbalife Ltd
After the closing bell, American Express said it would cut about 5,400 jobs, and take about $600 million in after-tax charges in the fourth quarter. The stock added 0.7 percent to $61.20 in after-hours trade.
Volume was above the 2012 average of 6.42 billion shares traded a day, with roughly 6.77 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT.
Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,916 to 1,039, while advancers also outpaced decliners on the Nasdaq by 1,439 to 1,036.
(Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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