Stocks gain, boosted by P&G, Starbucks earnings

Stocks opened higher on Wall Street after Procter & Gamble and Starbucks posted strong earnings reports.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 37 points to 13,863 as of 10:15 a.m. EST. The Standard & Poor's 500 advanced five points to 1,499. The Nasdaq gained 16 points to 3,146.

Procter & Gamble, world's largest consumer products maker, gained $2.52 to $72.97 after reporting that its quarterly income more than doubled. P&G also raised its profit forecast for its full fiscal year. Starbucks rose $2.37 to $56.96 after reporting a 13 percent increase in profits.

The S&P 500 broke through 1,500 Thursday for the first time since December 2007, following a drop in claims for unemployment benefits that added to evidence that the labor market is healing. The index fell back but still ended the day fractionally higher and extended its streak of gains to seven days, the longest since October 2006.

The index has advanced 5.3 percent this month. It jumped at the start of the year when lawmakers reached a last-minute deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” Stocks built on those gains on optimism that the housing market is recovering and the labor market is healing. The Dow Jones is up 5.9 percent on the year.

Homebuilder stocks didn't react much to a government report that sales of new homes fell in December but posted the first annual gain since 2005. PulteGroup edged up 12 cents to $21.10 and KB Home rose 4 cents to $18.33.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to its price, climbed 7 basis points to 1.93 percent.

Among other stocks making big moves.

— Green Mountain Coffee Roasters rose 91 cents to $44.69 after an analyst noted that sales of a competing coffee brewer introduced by Starbucks were getting off to a weak start.

— Halliburton gained $1.71 to $39.52 after posting a loss that was smaller than analysts had expected. The oilfield services company said fourth-quarter profits declined 26 percent to $669 million on increasing pricing pressure in the North American market and one-time charges from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Wall Street had expected worse.

—Hasbro fell $1.56 to $36.90 after the toy maker said its fourth-quarter revenue failed to meet expectations because of poor demand over the holidays. The company plans to cut about 10 percent of its workforce and consolidate facilities to cut expenses.

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Kerry pledges as secretary of State to highlight the good America does

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), President Obama's nominee to become secretary of State, arrives on Capitol Hill. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press / January 24, 2013)

By Paul Richter




This post has been corrected. See note below for details.

January 24, 2013, 7:55 a.m.

WASHINGTON – Sen. John F. Kerry pledged at his confirmation hearing Thursday that as  secretary of State he would emphasize “the extraordinary good” America does abroad and not just the less popular U.S. foreign policy of “deployments and drones.”
 
Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which he has sat for 28 years, the Massachusetts Democrat stressed the peaceful side of America’s foreign presence, including its advocacy of human rights, efforts for humanitarian aid and development, and its leadership on international issues like climate change.
 
“America lives up to her values when we give voice to the voiceless,” said Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.
 
[For the record, 8:15 a.m., Jan. 24: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified Kerry as the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. He was the 2004 nominee.]

Kerry, who has been a loyal ally and occasional diplomatic representative of the Obama administration, is expected to easily win the votes for confirmation, allowing him to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton early next month. Indeed, many Senate Republicans actively promoted him as a candidate when they were seeking to halt the candidacy of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, whom they considered too partisan.
 
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told the committee he recommended Kerry “without reservation” and predicted he would easily win the votes needed for confirmation.
 
Kerry touched on, without explaining, the central contradiction of the Obama foreign policy, which is its simultaneous call for an end to a decade of war, even as it threatens Iran with military attack if it does not curb its nuclear program.
 
He declared that U.S. policy on Iran “is not containment … the president has made it definitive—we will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
 
Clinton also appeared before the committee on Kerry’s behalf, and praised him for his work on the administration with leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.

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Samsung’s iPad mini rival, the Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet, revealed in leaked images

While Samsung (005930) has had tremendous success over the past year with its Galaxy brand of smartphones, the company hasn’t been able to generated the same amount of buzz for its Galaxy tablet line just yet. But now SamMobile points us to the first leaked pictures of Samsung’s new Galaxy Note 8.0 that the company hopes will become its flagship tablet in 2013. The pictures, posted on Italian website DDAY, show an 8-inch white tablet that looks like a large Galaxy S III and features thicker side bezels than Apple’s (AAPL) recently released iPad mini. The pictures also show off the new tablet display’s 16:10 aspect ratio with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, which packs more pixels per inch than the iPad mini display and its 1,024 x 768 resolution. We’ll get our first official glimpse of the Galaxy Note 8.0 when Samsung shows it off at Mobile World Congress next month.

[More from BGR: The ultimate humiliation: Dell now getting advice from the ‘Dell Dude’ on how to fix company]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Joe McGinniss has cancer, but feels 'terrific'

NEW YORK (AP) — Author-journalist Joe McGinniss says he was diagnosed in May with advanced prostate cancer but is responding well to treatment and feels "terrific."

The 70-year-old McGinniss is best known for controversial works such as "The Selling of the President" and "Fatal Vision." On Wednesday, he posted on his Facebook page that he had "inoperable, terminal, metastatic prostate cancer." He confirmed the diagnosis in response to an email from The Associated Press and in a subsequent Facebook posting.

McGinniss told the AP that he has no symptoms and is eager to write more books and magazine articles.

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Well: Can You Read the Face of Victory?

Picture a tennis player in the moment he scores a critical point and wins a tournament. Now picture his opponent in the instant he loses the point that narrowly cost him the title. Can you tell one facial expression from the other, the look of defeat from the face of victory?

Try your hand at the images below, of professional tennis players at competitive tournaments. All were included in a new study that suggests that the more intense an emotion, the harder it is to distinguish it in a facial expression.

(Photos: Reuters/ASAP, Provided by Princeton University)

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The researchers found that when overwhelming feelings set in, the subtle cues that convey emotion are lost, and facial expressions tend to blur. The face of joy and celebration often appears no different from the look of grief and devastation. Winning looks like losing. Pain resembles pleasure.

But that is not the case when it comes to body language. In fact, the new study found, people are better able to identify extreme emotions by reading body language than by looking solely at facial expressions. But even though we pick up on cues from the neck down to interpret emotion, we instinctively assume that it is the face that tells us everything, said Hillel Aviezer, a psychologist who carried out the new research with colleagues at Princeton University.

“When emotions run high, the face becomes more malleable: it’s not clear if there’s positivity or negativity going on there,” he said. “People have this illusion that they’re reading all this information in the face. We found that the face is ambiguous in these situations and the body is critical.”

Dr. Aviezer and his colleagues, who published their work in the journal Science, carried out four experiments in which subjects were asked to identify emotions by looking at photographs of people in various situations. In some cases, the subjects were shown facial expressions alone. In others, they looked at body language, either alone or in combination with faces. The researchers chose photographs taken in moments when emotions were running high – as professional tennis players celebrated or agonized, as loved ones grieved at funerals, as needles punctured skin during painful body piercings.

According to classic behavioral theories, facial expressions are universal indicators of mood and emotion. So the more intense a particular emotion, the easier it should be to identify in the face. But the study showed the exact opposite. As emotions peaked in intensity, expressions became distorted, similar to the way cranking up the volume on a stereo makes the music unrecognizable.

“When emotions are extremely high, it’s as if the speakers are blaring and the signal is degraded,” said Dr. Aviezer, who is now at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “When the volume is that high, it’s hard to tell what song is playing.”

In one experiment, three groups of 15 people were shown photographs of professional tennis players winning and losing points in critical matches. When the subjects were shown the players’ expressions alone — separated from their bodies — they correctly identified their emotion only half of the time, which was no better than chance. When they looked at images of just the body with the face removed — or the body with the face intact — they were far more accurate at identifying emotions. Yet when asked, 80 percent said they were relying on the facial expressions alone. Twenty percent said they were going by body and facial cues together, and not a single one said they were looking only for gestures from the neck down.

Then, the researchers scrambled the photos, mixing faces and bodies together. The upset faces of players were randomly spliced onto the bodies of celebrating players, and vice versa.

When asked to judge the emotions, the subjects answered according to the body language. The facial expression did not seem to matter. If a losing face was spliced onto a celebrating body, the subjects tended to guess victory and jubilation. If they were looking at the face of an exuberant player placed on the body of an anguished player, the subjects guessed defeat and disappointment.

Although they were not aware of it, the subjects were clearly looking at body language, Dr. Aviezer said. Clenched fists, for example, suggested victory and celebration, while open or outstretched hands indicated a player’s disappointment.

In another experiment, the researchers looked at four other emotional “peaks.” For pain, they used the faces of men and women undergoing piercings. Grief was captured in images of mourners at a funeral. For joy, they used images of people on the reality television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” capturing their impassioned faces at the very moment they were shown their beautiful, brand new homes. And for pleasure, they went with a rather risqué option: images from an erotic Web site that showed faces at the height of orgasm.

Once again, the subjects could not correctly guess the emotions by looking at facial expressions alone. In fact, they were more likely to interpret “positive” faces as being “negative” more than the actual negative ones. When faces showing pleasure were spliced onto the body of someone in pain, for example, the subjects relied on body language and were often unaware that the facial expression was conveying the opposite emotion.

“There’s this point on ‘Extreme Makeover’ where people see their new house for the first time and the camera is on their face, so we have these wonderful photos of their expressions,” Dr. Aviezer said. “At that moment, they look like the most miserable people in the world. For a few seconds, it’s as if they are seeing their house burn down. They don’t look like you would expect.”

The researchers noted that they were not suggesting that facial expressions never indicate specific feelings – only that when the emotion is intense and at its peak, for those first few seconds, the expression is ambiguous. Dr. Aviezer said the facial musculature simply might not be suited for accurately conveying extremely intense feelings – in part because in the real world, so much of that is conveyed through situational context.

And this may not be limited to facial cues.

“Consider intense vocal expressions of grief versus joy or pleasure versus pain,” the researchers wrote in their paper. For example, imagine sitting in a coffee shop and hearing someone behind you shriek. Is it immediately obvious whether the emotion is a positive or negative one?

“When people are experiencing a very high level of excitation,” Dr. Aviezer said, “then we see this overlap in expressions.”

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Apple shares tumble after relatively unimpressive earnings report

Apple Inc. may still make products customers love, but its latest earnings report appears to have broken investors' hearts.

For the third quarter in a row, Apple reported revenue and profit that were impressive by normal standards, but short of what analysts had expected. Investors reacted harshly, driving Apple's stock price down more than 10% in after-hours trading Wednesday.

If that trend holds when trading opens Thursday, Apple will have lost almost $50 billion in market value in the blink of an eye, and its stock will have given up almost all the extraordinary gains it had made in the last year. Investors' and fund managers' belief in one of the world's most widely held stocks will be severely tested in the coming days.

More fundamentally, despite upbeat talk by Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, the performance is unlikely to quell growing worries that Apple's remarkable run of dominance might be over.

"Overall, compared to other companies, it's impressive. But for Apple's standards, it's not great," said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. "I do think this somewhat fuels the perception that Apple is slowing down a bit.... And it's driven by the fact that some of its competitors are catching up, and in some markets have already caught up."

Apple executives did their best during an hourlong conference call with analysts to project optimism and excitement about both the last quarter and the months ahead. They noted that the company had trouble meeting demand for both iPads and Macs, and could have sold many more had they been able to build enough.

They also pointed to a growing business in China and the expansion of iTunes, which is now available in 119 countries.

"Apple is in one of the most prolific periods of innovation in its history," Cook said. "We continue to believe our fundamentals, our remarkable people, our clear and focused strategy will serve us well in the coming months and years ahead."

Cook praised the record numbers posted by Apple. For the three months that ended in December, Apple said revenue increased 18% to a record $54.5 billion. Profit also set an all-time high but was up only slightly from the year-earlier quarter, rising to $13.08 billion, or $13.81 a share, from $13.06 billion, or $13.87.

Apple said it sold a record 47.8 million iPhones last quarter, up from 37 million iPhones in the same quarter of 2011. Despite that massive figure, some analysts had hoped to see stronger demand with sales exceeding 50 million.

"Meeting expectations is not enough for Apple," said Colin Gillis of BGC Financial. "So that's a little bit of a disappointment…. International sales were a little weaker than people expected. So we'll see how that shakes out."

Last quarter saw the introduction of the iPad mini, a 7.9-inch version of Apple's popular tablet computer. The Cupertino, Calif., company said it sold a total of 22.9 million iPads in the quarter, also a record, up from 15.4 million a year earlier. The company didn't break out iPad mini numbers from its total tablet sales, but Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told analysts that the smaller version has been a hit and that the company experienced significant backlog getting the product to store shelves. The 22% lower average selling price for Apple's tablets suggests the mini has performed well but probably cannibalized some sales of its 9.7-inch version.

Historic comparisons were challenging this year because the most recent quarter had only 13 weeks, compared with 14 weeks for the same quarter of 2011.

Like many retailers and consumer electronics companies, the quarter from October to December is typically Apple's largest because of the holiday shopping season. Last year, Apple managed to stun investors by beating its own revenue estimates by more than 25% and earnings forecast by nearly 50%. That sent the stock soaring.

But even as Apple extended its lead as the world's most valuable company, and set a record in August for most valuable company ever when not adjusted for inflation, doubts began to creep into the minds of analysts and investors.

Shares have plummeted 27% in the last four months. On Wednesday, shares rose $9.24, or 1.8%, to $514.01 during regular trading.

Apple reported strong earnings in both the third and fourth quarters last year, but the numbers missed analysts' consensus estimates. Gradually, analysts began lowering their forecasts for Apple's earnings for the current fiscal year. At the same time,

Apple experienced some uncharacteristic gaffes. The new Apple Maps app that replaced Google Maps on iOS 6 devices had reliability problems, prompting a rare apology by Apple. And the iPhone 5 that went on sale in September faced long shipping delays as Apple suppliers struggled to adapt to the new, longer screen size.

The dismissal of iOS chief Scott Forstall, a favorite of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, raised eyebrows. But so did a new strategy for launching products: Whereas Apple updates to products used to be few and far between, the company has lately begun increasing the number of products as well as the introduction of new versions.

The first quarter saw one of the busiest product launch cycles in the company's history. The quarter was the first full quarter of sales for the iPhone 5, a new iPod Touch and nano, the fourth iPad, a new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, and, of course, the first iPad mini.

Observers have pointed to this accelerated pace as an indication that Apple is facing more competitive pressure from rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co., which is now the world's biggest seller of smartphones, with its Galaxy series of phones. The concern is that the faster upgrade cycle plus the smaller iPad mini will cut into Apple's historically high profit margins.

Such fears over lower profits have also been stoked by the debate over whether Apple plans to release a cheaper iPhone aimed at capturing market share in emerging economies and the concern that Apple has not been able to strike a deal with China's largest carrier.

Now that the first-quarter numbers have been released, analysts will be busy recalibrating their projections over the next couple of days. But the focus is also likely to shift to renewed speculation about new products that investors are hoping will drive another big run for the stock.

chris.obrien@latimes.com

andrea.chang@latimes.com

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Clinton takes responsibility for Benghazi failures

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, facing tough questions from Senate Republicans on the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, insisted Wednesday that she has moved aggressively to address security weaknesses laid bare by the assault.

In long-awaited testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton acknowledged her personal responsibility as head of the State Department, and stressed that she has begun implementing all 29 corrective steps recommended by an in-house investigative board.

“I take responsibility,” said Clinton, whose appearance before the committtee was delayed for a month by a stomach flu, a concussion and a brief hospitalization. “Nobody is more committed to getting this right.”

At the same time, Clinton said she hadn’t seen specific requests for additional security personnel for the lightly protected diplomatic mission in Benghazi, saying those requests went to lower ranking “security professionals” at the State Department.

“I did not see these requests,” she said. “I did not approve them. I did not deny them.”

Clinton’s voice broke as she described seeing the bodies of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans killed in the attack as they arrived on a miltary cargo plane in Maryland.

“I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters,” she said.

She said that 85% of the review committee’s recommendations are “on track” to be implemented by the end on March. She will testify again Wednesday afternoon before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Republicans sought to make the administration’s flawed handling of security at the Benghazi mission a political issue during the presidential campaign. But it’s unclear if they can open important new avenues of inquiry to keep the controversy alive. Clinton’s job approval ratings remain high as she prepares to step down from office — and perhaps consider a 2016 presidential run.

Clinton and the Senate committee also discussed the terrorism risks in North Africa, which have become painfully apparent in recent days with a bloody attack on an international gas field facility in Algeria.

She said many people wondered why the Pentagon created a new military command for Africa a few years ago. Now, she said, the question was whether Africa Command doesn’t need a large increase to its budget to deal with the expanding terror threat. 

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paul.richter@latimes.com

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Google Earnings Reveal Beginnings of a Facebook Problem on Search Revenue

Google beat Wall Street expectations with its fourth-quarter revenues of $ 14.42 billion, but the value of its ads continue to decline, an especially tricky problem with the company’s new search competition from Facebook. Google’s average cost-per-click decreased 6 percent from one year ago, meaning each ad it runs on its biggest business has less value than it did a year ago, continuing a fairly troubling trend for the search giant. It still managed to keep up its paid clicks by getting more and more people to use Google.

RELATED: Google Is Trying to Fix Its Targeted Ad Attitude Problem

Google has managed to offset the decline in click value with that kind of growth for almost a year now, but Facebook’s new Graph Search has the potential to offer users more personalized social-search results — and that could mean higher value for the ads next to them. How much longer can Google can maintain its delicate balance by sheer market power remains to be seen. The company is trying desperately to change its fate with a push for more Google+ integration, which would put advertisers closer to more personal Googling. But so far that hasn’t worked, if the earnings report is any indication. Google’s bet on volume will surely face a test from Facebook’s gamble on the future of social search, no matter what the rival CEOs are saying.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'Mad Men' to return for new season on April 7

NEW YORK (AP) — AMC says "Mad Men" will return for its new season on April 7.

AMC announced Wednesday that the two-hour premiere kicks off the acclaimed drama series' sixth season. The episode was written by "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner.

"Mad Men" is set in the advertising world of circa-1960s New York City and stars Jon Hamm as agency exec Don Draper. Other stars include January Jones, Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery and Christina Hendricks.

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Well: Have a Health Question? Ask Well

The Well section of The New York Times is starting a new online featured called Ask Well. If you have a question about fitness, nutrition, illness or family health, the staff of The New York Times Health section is ready to help you find the answer.

How do you solve the problem of back pain caused by sitting in an office chair all day? Do you still need the flu shot even if you’ve had the flu? What’s the best way to heal tennis elbow? Those are some of the questions we’ve already answered in Ask Well.

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Tara Parker-Pope speaks about Ask Well.

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All questions submitted to Ask Well will be reviewed by the health staff. We’ll post selected questions and let readers vote on those they would most like to see answered. You can ask a question, vote for your favorites and read answered questions on the Ask Well Questions Page.

While Ask Well is not a source for personal medical advice (only your doctor can give you that), we can offer readers health information from the experts and guide you to various resources to help you make informed decisions. So let’s get started. Tell us what’s on your mind, and Ask Well will provide the answers.

Ask Well

Your health questions answered by Times journalists and experts.

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