Euro growth forecast hits markets

7 November 2012 Last updated at 17:31 ET

Continue reading the main story

The European Commission has cut sharply its growth forecast for the eurozone, warning that the “difficult process of rebalancing will last for some time”.

It now projects the bloc will narrowly avoid recession next year, growing by 0.1%, compared with its previous estimate of 1% growth, and thinks the EU economy will shrink this year.

Unemployment would also continue to rise next year, the Commission said.

The revision helped push global stock markets lower.

The Paris and Frankfurt exchanges closed down 2%, while London’s FTSE 100 ended the day 1.6% lower. New York’s Dow Jones lost 313 points, or 2.4%, at 12,933, its lowest level since early August.

The euro also weakened against the dollar following the revision, falling by half a cent to $ 1.278. Against the pound, it fell by a fifth of a pence to 79.93p.

Figures released earlier on Wednesday showing the biggest monthly fall in German manufacturing output since April, also weighed on markets.

As did concerns about the upcoming so-called fiscal cliff in the US, now that the US election has been won by Barack Obama.

“Having been fixated on the US election and the preferred market outcome of an Obama victory, the initial morning feel good bounce [has fizzled out], as markets quickly moved on to the next potential banana skin,” said Michael Hewson at CMC Markets.

“In this case there are several, starting with today’s Greek parliamentary vote on austerity, not to mention concerns about how the newly elected president will deal with the US fiscal cliff concerns.”

Under current plans, $ 600bn (£375bn) of tax rises and spending cuts will kick in in January, with many analysts saying this will push the US economy back into recession.

Weak demand

In the spring, the Commission forecast that the 27 members of the EU would collectively produce no economic growth in 2012. It now forecasts the EU economy will shrink by 0.3%. It also downgraded its forecast for the eurozone economy this year, from a contraction of 0.3% to 0.4%.

The revisions to next year’s forecasts were more stark. While the eurozone is barely expected to grow at all, the EU is now forecast to grow by 0.4% compared with the previous estimate of 1.3%.

The Commission made a number of drastic cuts in its forecasts for growth for 2013, and none more so than Greece, which it now expects to contract by 4.2%, having forecast flat growth in the spring. It expects Greece and Spain to return to growth in 2014.

The UK is now expected to grow by 0.9% next year, and Germany 0.8%, having both been forecast to grow 1.7% previously.

The Commission also said it expects the UK government’s budget deficit – the amount by which its annual spending exceeds its income – to grow to 7.2% in 2013 from 6.2% this year, making it the highest in the EU apart from the Republic of Ireland.

Unemployment in the eurozone currently stands at 11.6%, and the Commission said it would peak at 12% next year. Domestic demand, it said, would remain weak next year before picking up in 2014.

“Major policy decisions have laid the foundation for strengthening confidence,” said the Commission’s vice-president for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Olli Rehn.

“Market stress has been reduced, but there is no room for complacency.”

	Q3 2011	Q4 2011	Q1 2012	Q2 2012
Source: Eurostat figures showing % change compared with previous quarter
Eurozone	0.1	-0.3	0	-0.2
Germany	0.4	-0.1	0.5	0.3
France	0.2	0.0	0.0	0.0
Italy	-0.2	-0.7	-0.8	-0.8
Spain	0	-0.5	-0.3	-0.4
Netherlands	-0.3	-0.6	0.2	0.2
Portugal	-0.6	-1.4	-0.1	-1.2
Cyprus	-1.0	-0.3	-0.4	-0.7

BBC News – Business

Read More..

Merkel says Germany, Britain must work together on EU

LONDON (Reuters) – Germany and Britain must cooperate to work round their differences on the European Union‘s long-term spending plans, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.

“Despite differences that we have it is very important for me that the UK and Germany work together,” Merkel said through a translator before a meeting in London with Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss the EU‘s 2014-2020 budget.

“We always have to do something that will stand up to public opinion back home. Not all of the expenditure that has been earmarked has been used with great efficiency … We need to address that,” she said.

EU leaders meet in Brussels on November 22-23 to try to secure a seven-year budget for the 27-nation bloc amid signs of differences of opinion over what action should be taken.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Election night TV audience down from 2008: Nielsen data

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Tuesday’s presidential election may have been too close to call for weeks, but it didn’t pull in as many TV viewers as four years ago.

More than 66.8 million Americans watched coverage of the 2012 elections during prime time on Tuesday, according to final Nielsen data on Wednesday. That’s down from the 71.5 million who tuned in to see the United States elect Barack Obama as its first African-American president in November 2008.

Nielsen said 13 cable and broadcast television networks aired live coverage of the election results, which saw Obama defeat Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Americans aged 55 and older made up the biggest audience, according to the ratings data.

The viewers for election night were also slightly down on the 67.2 million people who watched October’s first presidential debate between Romney and Obama.

But activity on social media soared to a record level. More than 31 million, election-related tweets were sent on Tuesday night – including a couple from Obama proclaiming his victory – making the night “the most Tweeted about event in U.S. political history,” according to Twitter.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Paul Simao)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Renowned special effects firm is “Star Wars” bonus for Disney

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Star Wars” was the force behind Walt Disney’s $ 4 billion purchase of producer George Lucas’s Lucasfilm entertainment holdings. Not so far, far away is Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, his award-winning special effects shop that will likely save Disney millions of dollars in costs for its big-budget movies.

ILM, started by Lucas in 1975 when he couldn’t find a special effects house he liked for “Star Wars,” has provided computer-generated dinosaurs, space ships and action characters for a roster of films that includes “Avatar,” “Mission Impossible” and the “Harry Potter” series.

As much as one-third of the cost of films with budgets of $ 200 million and more are for special effects, according to Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who estimates ILM last year generated at least $ 100 million in revenue. Disney uses ILM‘s computer animators for its “Pirates of the Caribbean” series of films and Marvel-inspired characters for films like “The Avengers.”

ILM is among the companies producing special effects for the Disney film “The Lone Ranger,” a 2013 release estimated to cost more than $ 200 million to produce.

By bringing ILM in-house, Disney can shave as much as $ 20 million a year from its films’ special effects budgets, a welcome savings at a time when all major studios are trying to rein in production spending, Wible said.

“It’s one of the underappreciated aspects of this deal,” he said, along with Skywalker Sound, a Lucas sound production company that will also become part of the Disney empire.

Disney executives, in a conference call with Wall Street analysts, scarcely mentioned ILM in explaining the company’s valuation of Lucasfilm, instead describing its estimate of the company’s rights to its consumer products and the declining value of DVD sales.

Chief Executive Bob Iger praised ILM’s work for Disney and other studios. “Our current thinking is that we would let it remain as-is. They do great work,” Iger said.

A Disney spokesman said the company could not comment further about ILM or the rest of the acquisition until it is cleared by regulators.

The effects house is headquartered in San Francisco at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, a Lucasfilm campus where a statue of Yoda perches atop an outdoor fountain. The effects company employs about 1,000 people between that location and sites in Singapore and Vancouver.

The studio provides effects for as many as 18 projects per year, working with all the major Hollywood studios that compete with Disney. That outside work beyond “Star Wars” will give Disney another revenue source from ILM.

“We can handle quite a slate of films,” Lucasfilm spokesman Miles Perkins said of ILM. “We look forward to continuing that.”

ILM also generates money by supplying effects for commercials by big-name brands Coca-Cola, Budweiser and others.

For Disney’s Iger, who prides his company as being among Hollywood’s most forward thinking on new technology, the Lucasfilm buy might also provide another front for the media giant. Its computer-wielding artists could work with Disney’s Imagineering unit, which creates many of the technologies the company uses at its theme parks.

Lucasfilm engineers created THX, which was designed to help theaters create the best sound for movies through a system that the Lucas company certifies meets its technical standards. THX, which was spun off from Lucasfilms in 2001, also certifies home entertainment systems, consumer electronic products and automobile sound systems.

Hollywood studios have a generally poor record owning effects companies, said Scott Ross, a former general manager of ILM and one of the founders of effects company Digital Domain.

Disney bought Dream Quest Images in 1996 and shuttered it five years later. Warner Bros. also has shut or sold off effects companies it acquired. Only Sony Corp has found success with its Imageworks effects unit.

Studios usually discover that running an effects business is costly and foreign competitors can do the job cheaper, Ross said. “They come to the conclusion that running a visual effects company is not a profitable business,” Ross said.

Iger, in announcing the deal to Wall Street analysts, praised ILM’s work and said he had no immediate plans to change it. “It’s been a decent business for Lucasfilm and one we have every intention of staying in,” he said.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine and Ronald Grover; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Experts say psychological effects of Sandy likely to grow

Fairfield, Connecticut (Reuters) – The devastating winds and catastrophic flooding of Superstorm Sandy may have subsided, but psychological distress from the disaster and its patchy recovery is likely to be growing, trauma experts say.

Those most vulnerable to long-term emotional fallout from the storm are people who lost loved ones or whose homes were destroyed. But the disruption to normal life could well affect millions of others, experts say.

From New York City to commuter towns to Atlantic Ocean seaside resorts, daily routines have been turned upside down by power outages, fuel shortages, blocked roads, closed schools and canceled trains and buses.

Thousands of people are scrambling to find housing, and children missed as much as a week of school. Homeowners are relying on candles, flashlights and canned food as temperatures dip to wintry levels.

Elderly people have been trapped in high-rise apartments with no lights or working elevators, and sick people living alone have been unable to refill prescriptions.

In Fairfield, Connecticut, a waitress at a downtown cafe brought her elderly mother to work. “She has nowhere to go and can’t function alone in the dark,” said the frazzled waitress.

Such challenges are “the grinding, daily wear and stress of a natural disaster,” said George Bonanno, a clinical psychology professor who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York.

Some people will develop anxiety, despair and relationship problems, he said, while others could over time see their immune systems compromised and get sick more easily.

Psychological research shows the leading impact of natural disasters is post-traumatic stress syndrome, characterized by nightmares, flashbacks or a sense of detachment, along with depression and other anxiety disorders.

Among those particularly at risk are people who feel they have little control over their lives or have a fatalistic world view, according to research.

“You definitely worry about folks getting depressed, hopeless, feeling they don’t have control,” said David Yusko, assistant clinical director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania.

Many people may experience sleep problems, panic attacks, rapid heartbeats and gastro-intestinal distress, he said.

That sense of control is key, said Scott Feldman, a social worker who recounted helping a young displaced mother on New York‘s Staten Island, which was devastated by the storm.

The woman, with one baby 18 months old and a second just seven weeks old, called the delivery at a shelter of some special baby formula a miracle, he said.

Feldman reminded her that, rather than it being a miracle, she had advocated for her children, let neighbors know what she needed and was part of a community.

“It gave her more of a sense of control over her life, and that’s really important,” Feldman said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Todd Eastham)

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Gender pay gap ‘could worsen’

6 November 2012 Last updated at 19:04 ET

The pay gap between men and women is at risk of widening for the first time on record, a leading pay equality campaign group warns.

The Fawcett Society says that women still earn 14.9% less on average than men for the same job.

But it says this gap could widen as public sector cuts push women into the private sector, where the gap is wider.

The warning coincides with a survey which suggests that a woman can earn £423,000 less than a man in her career.

That average lifetime earnings figure comes from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) 2012 Gender Salary Survey, which also finds that the average pay gap stands at £10,060. This is a drop from 2011, when the difference was £10,546.

Women also lose out when it comes to bonuses, receiving less than half the average £7,496 that men receive, says the CMI.

Ceri Goddard, the Fawcett Society’s chief executive, said the CMI survey should serve as “a wake-up call to government – business as usual isn’t working”.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Far from slowly moving forward, we now face going into reverse”

End Quote Ceri Goddard The Fawcett Society

Minister for Women and Equalities Jo Swinson said: “Pay inequality remains a stubborn obstacle to real fairness in the workplace.

“We have implemented measures in the Equality Act to make pay secrecy clauses unlawful and we are taking through legislation which would give tribunals power to order that employers conduct a pay audit where they have been found to discriminate over pay.”

More still needed to be done, she added.

‘Into reverse’

The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality, is calling for a dedicated women’s employment strategy and for the government to bring more pressure to bear on the private sector to pay women equally for the same job as men.

It is concerned that the employment trend from public to private sector work is likely to push more women into insecure, low-paid, part-time jobs. The private sector pay gap, at 20.4%, is higher than in the public sector.

Who earns what (average salaries)
	2009	2010	2011	2012
Source: Chartered Management Institute
Male	£42,474	£41,337	£42,441	£40,325
Female	£31,268	£31,306	£31,895	£30,265
Difference	£11,206	£10,031	£10,546	£10,060

“Far from slowly moving forward, we now face going into reverse”, warned Ms Goddard.

Annual figures on pay from the Office for National Statistics to be published next week are expected to indicate that the gap is widening.

“In recent years, progress on closing the gap has slowed, but as the age of austerity bites, we now face the very real prospect of the gap actually widening for the first time since records began,” Ms Goddard said.

The warning comes on Equal Pay Day, marking the point in the year when women effectively start working for nothing compared to men.

As well as earning less for doing the same jobs, women still have to climb a much steeper slope than men to reach the top, the CMI figures show.

For while career women account for 57% of the professional workforce, just 40% are department heads and 25% are chief executives, says the CMI.

Ann Francke, CMI chief executive, said: “This lack of a strong talent pipeline has to change, and fast. Allowing these types of gender inequalities to continue is precisely the kind of bad management that we need to stamp out.”

She wants the government to “name and shame” companies “perpetuating inequality”.

Baroness Prosser, deputy chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, argues that if women are offered more career opportunities, it would help reduce the gender gap.

“The onus is squarely on employers to redress the balance, but female executives should also look to make the most of the practical support available to them,” she said.

The CMI’s National Management Salary Survey, conducted by XpertHR, collected data on 38,843 employees, from junior manager to board level, between August 2011 and August 2012.

BBC News – Business

Read More..

Officials: New mass graves found in Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Up to 10 new mass graves have been discovered near the site of a July attack on a camp for displaced people, officials said Tuesday, amid allegations that initial casualty totals were downplayed to mask killings carried out by the national army.

Rights groups claim summary executions were carried out by the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast, known by its French acronym of FRCI. Last month, officials found six bodies in a well close to the former campsite in the western town of Duekoue.

Government, army and U.N. officials toured 10 more graves in the same area on Saturday, said Paul Mondouho, vice-mayor of Duekoue. He said the graves had first been identified by civilians, and that officials did not know the number of bodies they contained because they had not yet been properly exhumed.

“People were suspecting the presence of bodies in these graves because of the smell coming out of them and because of the shoes we saw nearby,” Mondouho said.

Prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau, who is based in the commercial capital of Abidjan, confirmed that multiple new graves had been discovered but could not provide details. U.N. officials and the local prosecutor in charge of investigating the suspected killings could not be reached Tuesday.

U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg confirmed that U.N. forces helped Ivorian authorities secure a perimeter around 10 wells “similar to the one in which six bodies were found,” and that “some of those wells are suspected mass graves.”

She stressed that Ivorian authorities were leading the investigation but that the U.N. was able to provide assistance.

Army spokesmen could not be reached Tuesday. The Justice Ministry has previously vowed to investigate the discovery of the initial grave.

On the morning of July 20, a mob descended on the U.N.-guarded Nahibly camp, which housed 4,500 people displaced by violence in Ivory Coast, burning most of the camp to the ground. Officials said at the time that six people were killed.

The attack was prompted by the shooting deaths of four men and one woman on the night of July 19, according to local officials and residents. In response a mob of some 300 people overran the camp on the morning of July 20 after the perpetrators of the shootings reportedly fled there.

The victims in the July 19 attack lived in a district dominated by the Malinke ethnic group, which largely supported President Alassane Ouattara in the disputed November 2010 election. The camp primarily housed members of the Guere ethnic group, which largely supported former President Laurent Gbagbo.

Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office despite losing the election to Ouattara sparked months of violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives.

Albert Koenders, the top U.N. envoy to Ivory Coast, said one week after the attack that U.N. security forces had been inside and outside the camp at the time but that no Ivorian security forces were present. He said the U.N. forces decided not to fire at a large group of people that were attacking the camp in order to avoid “a massacre.”

Several witnesses have said soldiers and traditional hunters, known as dozos, participated in the attack on the camp. Both military and dozo leaders have denied the claims, saying they had tried to protect the camp.

In a statement released Friday, the International Federation for Human Rights, known by its French acronym of FIDH, said it had information — including the preliminary results of autopsies — confirming that the six bodies found in October were men who had been summarily executed by the army.

“The disappearance of dozens of displaced persons after the attack, as well as confirmation of cases of summary and extra-judicial executions, suggest a much higher victim rate than the official figures report,” said the organization, which counts Ivorian civil society groups among its members.

Duekoue was one of the hardest-hit towns during the post-election violence. The U.N. has established that at least 505 people were killed in and around the town, including during a notorious March 2011 massacre that claimed hundreds of lives and was allegedly carried out by fighters loyal to Ouattara.

Duekoue residents belonging to ethnic groups that supported Gbagbo have long complained about abuses carried out by the FRCI, with some pointing to the direct involvement of the local commander, Kone Daouda. FIDH said in its statement that Daouda had been transferred following the discovery of the grave in October, and called for him to be interrogated over the matter.

The group also said two FRCI members were being “actively sought” after failing to return to their barracks on Oct. 16, noting that they are believed to have fled to neighboring Burkina Faso.

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

HANNITY ON TWEET

“I learned a big civics lesson today.” — Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, who tweeted a picture of his filled-out ballot (for Mitt Romney, natch), only to learn that appeared to break the law in New York state.

— David Bauder — http://twitter.com/dbauder

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — Election Watch shows you Election Day 2012 through the eyes of Associated Press journalists. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Springsteen Sandy telethon raises $23 million, ABC more than $10 million

(Reuters) – Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Mary Blige and dozens of other musicians and celebrities helped raise some $ 23 million for victims of Hurricane Sandy on NBC television, while a Day of Giving on ABC TV networks raised more than $ 10 million.

The American Red Cross said the one-hour NBC telethon on Friday, featuring performances by celebrities with strong New York and New Jersey connections, generated a record number of individual donations by phone, text and online for victims of Sandy.

The preliminary amount raised was nearly $ 23 million, the Red Cross said in a statement.

On ABC on Monday, viewers and celebrities had raised more than $ 10 million, also for the American Red Cross, midway through a day-long fundraiser for victims of last week’s storm, which devastated the U.S. Northeast and killed more that 100 people.

Journalist Barbara Walters made a personal donation of $ 250,000 and manned phone lines during breakfast show “Good Morning America” along with Katie Couric, actor Ben Stiller and “Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, ABC said. Donations are expected to rise further during the day-long event.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; Editing by Richard Chang)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Newer Docs Might Be Driving Up Health Care Costs

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/prosot-photography

Health care spending increases have slowed over the past couple years. Still, we are spending some $ 2.6 trillion–that’s trillion with a “T”–a year on health costs, which is a higher percentage of our GDP than any other developed country. And we don’t seem to be getting that much healthier. So economists and policy researchers are looking for ways to staunch the bleeding while ensuring that care remains good. One group who can have a great influence on the overall cost of health care are the doctors–your primary care physician and your specialists. They are often the ones deciding how many tests and procedures to order and whether to follow evidence-based recommendations on the most effective options. Until now, little research had been done examining how much doctors differ in the costliness of their practice styles–just how much their work was costing insurers. A recent report conducted by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy institution, shows that the biggest predictor of a doctor’s overall costs to the health care system is how long he or she has been practicing. “It is possible that one driver of health care costs is that newly trained physicians practice a more costly style of medicine,” Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a researcher at RAND, said in a prepared statement. Doctors, including primary care physicians and specialists, who had less than a decade of experience had annual costs more than 13 percent above doctors who had more than four decades of experience, according to the new analysis. The findings were published online November 5 in Health Affairs. Other characteristics, among them physician gender, size of practice, credentials (such as being board-certified) and previous malpractice suits, did not seem to affect overall costs or mean cost per patient. Moreover, the higher-cost practicing styles of the less experienced physicians did not necessarily translate into better care. The researchers analyzed insurance claims filed in Massachusetts between 2004 and 2005 (before Governor Mitt Romney instituted the state’s individual health care mandate), covering 1.13 million patients (ages 18 to 65) and 12,116 physicians. They were then able to generate more than 600 types of “episodes of care” (based on categories such as similar illness, severity and procedure and controlled by age, gender and comorbidities) to see how billed costs for similar “episodes” compared across doctors of the same specialty. Health plans often use this same type of reckoning to evaluate costs. On a population scale, doctors with fewer than 10 years of experience had mean per-patient costs of about $ 14,906, whereas those with more than 40 years had mean per-patient costs of $ 10,104. Both government-run and private health insurance plans are looking for smarter ways of reducing costs while providing for quality health care. Facing a budget shortfall in 2016, for instance, Medicare is looking to adjust how it pays for services based not just on what is proscribed (tests, treatments, and so on) but also on how well that service works–whether it is the most effective and affordable option available for the given situation. Why is there such a large difference between these groups of doctors? It is possible, for example, that those fresh out of medical school are more familiar with–and more inclined to use–newer, more expensive treatments and tests (regardless of how effective they are). The authors also suggested that perhaps “lack of experience and uncertainty translates into more aggressive care,” they wrote. Additionally, this newer generation of doctors might simply continue to use higher-cost medicine even as they gain more experience. These data also suggest that unless they work to reduce costs, physicians with less experience might have a more difficult time being included to receive as much business from insurance companies and government programs that are looking for best-value providers. The findings “underscore the need to better understand physician practice patterns and what influences that behavior,” Mehrotra said. He and his colleagues recommend considering additional training programs for new doctors “to educate physicians on their responsibility to be good stewards of health care resources.”

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..