The New Old Age: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

Read More..

Nikkei’s Best Weekly Run in 54 Years

TOKYO — The year 1959 was in many ways remarkable. America granted Alaska and Hawaii statehood, Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and Singapore gained its independence from Britain. The Barbie doll and pantyhose went on sale for the first time; Miles Davis recorded “Kind of Blue” at a New York studio.

Until Friday, 1959 was also the last time the Nikkei 225 stock index rallied for 12 straight weeks, driven by the quickening pace of Japan’s postwar economic boom. Now the index has repeated that feat. The Japanese business media have been quick to jump on the historical tidbit, trumpeting the Nikkei’s best weekly run in 54 years. The rally in 1959 actually lasted 17 weeks.

This time around, the Nikkei’s rally was motivated by the new Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Mr. Abe has galvanized markets by encouraging bold monetary measures to beat deflation, and hefty government spending to jump-start the economy. The result has been a weakening of the yen by 15 percent over the past three months, a boon for Japanese exporters, and a 25 percent surge in the stock market over the same period.

“The expectations pinned on Prime Minister Abe’s drive to tackle deflation and the strong yen are the driving force pushing stocks toward this postwar record,” the Nikkei newspaper said.

The market’s climb comes despite lackluster earnings by Japanese companies. Of the 54 companies on the Nikkei index that had posted results for the October-to-December quarter by Thursday, nearly two-thirds missed market expectations, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine, the investment research service. And for now, households have remained cool to the market buzz. Japanese household spending fell 0.7 percent in December from a year earlier in price-adjusted real terms, government data released Friday showed.

Nevertheless, Mr. Abe’s policies, dubbed “Abenomics,” are having “a positive psychological effect” on investors and corporate executives, Yasushi Hoshi, director of capital markets at the Daiwa Institute of Research, wrote in a note published Friday. “And the exchange rate and stock prices, if sustained, could themselves push up corporate earnings, leading to better corporate and consumer sentiment in a positive cycle.”

There are already signs that the weaker yen is bolstering some earnings. The video game maker Nintendo raised its profit forecast for its current financial year on Thursday even as the company reported disappointing sales of its game consoles.

Overall investor optimism is giving companies the benefit of the doubt. Honda Motor surprised investors Thursday by trimming its profit outlook, citing sluggish demand in China and Europe, but they still snapped up Honda shares early on Friday, and the stock finished the day 0.3 percent higher.

Still, there are budding concerns that Mr. Abe’s drive will bring about a dangerous bubble. “The results in the near term are an investment boom and bubble, but the longer-run consequences could be soaring inflation and fiscal crisis, followed by lengthy economic stagnation,” Ryutaro Kono, chief economist for Japan at BNP Paribas Securities, wrote in a recent report.

From a historical perspective, the Nikkei index and other asset prices remain far below the heights seen during Japan’s last economic bubble, in the late 1980s. For many global investors, the recent rally has only begun to reverse a slump in Japanese equities that has taken them to levels seen as ridiculously low. Shares on Tokyo’s broader Topix index have long traded below their book value, meaning that prices were less than what the companies would fetch if they were dissolved and their parts sold off.

Now, foreign investors are leading the charge, having poured a net ¥248.6 billion, or $2.7 billion, into Japanese stocks in the fourth week of January alone.

“We think there is latent demand because supply in this space has dwindled over the years and investors are thinking about coming back,” Patric de Gentile-Williams of Financial Risk Management, told the Hedge Funds Review on Wednesday, after making a $25 million investment in a Japanese equity fund run by Arena Capital Management. “If the new prime minister’s actions have a big effect, they might come back in a big way.”

Is Japan, then, on course for a wider recovery?

Not so fast, Yusuke Shimoda, an economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo, wrote in a note to clients this past week. Japan’s recovery could sputter, he said, if the government cannot match its asset-inflating moves with growth strategies for the real economy. “It will be critical to put a growth strategy in action that will start a self-sustained recovery,” Mr. Shimoda said.

Nevertheless, Japan forecast Monday that its economy would grow by 2.5 percent in the fiscal year that starts in April, raising an earlier projection of 1.7 percent — an impressive rate for the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and China. Impressive, that is, unless investors look back to Japan’s rate of gross domestic product growth in 1959, which was 12.1 percent.

Read More..

Hagel counters critics as confirmation hearing begins

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel sparred with Sen. John McCain over whether the surge during the Iraq war was worthwhile.

WASHINGTON -- Making his first public comments after his nomination to lead the Pentagon, former Sen. Chuck Hagel said Thursday he stood by his record but also urged senators to look beyond controversial votes and statements he has made, which critics have seized on.

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing as defense secretary, Hagel sought to rebut critics who contend he may not push hard enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, declaring himself "fully committed to the president's goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

"My policy is one of prevention and not one of containment, and the president has made clear that is the policy of our government," Hagel said.

The hearing is Hagel’s first chance to explain his views since his selection last month ignited fierce opposition from several former Republican colleagues and pro-Israel groups. They contend Hagel was not tough enough on Iran during his two terms as a GOP senator from Nebraska, and warn that he might not push for a U.S. attack on Iran if one is needed.

PHOTOS: President Obama's second inauguration

[Updated, 8:32 a.m. Jan. 31: In a sharp exchange, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized Hagel's opposition to the George W. Bush administration's decision to send more troops to Iraq in 2007.

"The question is, were you right or were you wrong?" McCain said.

"I'm not going to give you a yes or no answer," Hagel said. "I think it's far more complicated than that."

The nominee said his opposition to the so-called surge was rooted in his opposition to the decision to invade Iraq in the first place.

He said he would leave the question of whether he was correct about the surge to the "judgment of history."

McCain responded: "I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, and you are on the wrong side of it."

Hagel acknowledged that he also disagreed with President Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2009.]

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

Hagel has already met privately with dozens of senators and won over key Democratic support, most notably Charles E. Schumer of New York. Hagel used his opening statement before the committee to publicly defend himself, saying he was "proud" of his record.

He noted that in two terms in the Senate, he'd cast thousands of votes and given hundreds of interviews and speeches.

"As you all know, I am on the record on many issues. But no one individual vote, no one individual quote, no one individual statement defines me, my beliefs or my record," he said. "My overall worldview has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world; that we must lead the international community to confront threats and challenges together -- and take advantage of opportunities together --  and that we must use all tools of American power to protect our citizens and our interests."

Hagel offered a broad overview of his views on the issues that would be most pressing at the Pentagon, all in line with Obama administration policy.

On Afghanistan, he said U.S. forces' role should be limited to counter-terrorism and the training of Afghan forces.

He also said he would "keep up the pressure" on militant groups in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa. But his opening statement did not refer to the controversial campaign of drone strikes that is the core of the administration's counter-terrorism effort.

Though Hagel appears likely to win confirmation, he faces tough questioning, even from lawmakers who have announced they intend to vote for him. Sen Carl Levin (D-Mich.) referred to what he called Hagel's "troubling" statements about Israel, his calls for direct talks with the militant group Hamas, and his calls for not isolating Iran.

"While there is value in communicating with our adversaries, the formulation used by Sen. Hagel seemed to imply a willingness to talk to Iran on some issues that I believe most of us would view as non-negotiable," Levin said.

Even more critical was Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the committee's new ranking Republican, who said that "too often, it seems he is willing to subscribe to a worldview that is predicated on appeasing our adversaries while shunning our friends."

Asked about his votes against some bills imposing sanctions against Iran, Hagel acknowledged that he has long opposed unilateral sanctions but had supported other legislation targeting Iran.

"We were in a different place with Iran at the time," Hagel said. "It was never a question of did I disagree with the objective" of denying Iran a nuclear weapon.

Hagel was introduced by two other former senators, both former chairmen of the Armed Services Committee: Democrat Sam Nunn of Georgia and Republican John Warner of Virginia.

The confirmation of Hagel may be the most difficult of the slate of new Obama appointments for his second-term Cabinet, though John Brennan, the president's choice to lead the CIA, may also face resistance. John Kerry is set to be sworn in as secretary of State after a 94-3 confirmation vote Tuesday.

Just one Republican, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, has publicly stated his support for Hagel. Democrats have, though, begun to coalesce around his nomination, with Levin saying earlier this week that his colleagues were "leaning strongly" in his favor.

Outside groups have been mobilizing against Hagel, however. The group Americans for a Strong Defense, led by former Mitt Romney campaign aides, launched television advertisements in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana and North Carolina, all states represented by Democratic senators facing reelection in 2014.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday declined to rule out the possibility that Republicans would require a 60-vote threshold for confirming Hagel.

"Sen. Hagel hasn't had his hearing yet, and I think it's too early to predict the conditions under which his nomination will be considered," McConnell said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said he would block Hagel’s nomination from coming to a vote unless the current Pentagon chief, Leon E. Panetta, agrees to testify about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate compound in Benghazi, Libya. A White House official downplayed the possibility that Hagel’s nomination could be blocked, saying negotiations were underway to let Panetta testify.

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

michael.memoli@latimes.com

david.cloud@latimes.com

Read More..

Amazon's Future Is Not in Selling Stuff — And That's a Good Thing

During Amazon’s wonkish earnings call this week, Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak revealed a number that offered a surprising glimpse into the company’s ambitious future — a future where Amazon doesn’t sell stuff. At least not directly.

In the Q&A with analysts, Szkutak said that a full 39 percent of the “product units” sold on Amazon during the most recent quarter were from third-party sellers, up from 36 percent a year earlier. In other words, more than a third of everything sold on Amazon during the last three months wasn’t sold by Amazon itself, but by someone else selling through Amazon.

Szkutak went on to say that unit sales on Amazon overall grew 32 percent during the quarter. Third-party sales rose at an even faster clip — more than 40 percent.

When I shop on Amazon, I tend to check price first, then reviews, then whether the thing I want to buy is eligible for Prime. Only then do I tend to check the actual seller, which Amazon lists below whether the item is in stock. From the success of third-party sales on Amazon, I’m clearly not the only person indifferent to who has title to the merchandise I’m buying. If it’s on Amazon, I tend to think of it as from Amazon.

That might not always be wise, since third-party sellers might, for instance, have a different return policy than Amazon’s standard guidelines. But that kind of variation seems less and less likely as Amazon makes standardization the most appealing option.

The company’s not-so-secret secret to smoothing the path for third-party sellers is Fulfillment by Amazon, the Amazon Web Services of non-digital stuff. In the same way that Amazon leveraged its own existing digital infrastructure to become the backend of many of the web’s most popular sites, Fulfillment by Amazon offers up the company’s existing physical infrastructure to third-party sellers who want to outsource such joyless tasks as warehousing their inventory, shipping orders and handling returns.

While Fulfillment by Amazon gives even small mom-and-pop sellers access to Amazon’s global visibility and reach, the arrangement also works to Amazon’s advantage. Last year, Amazon opened up 20 new fulfillment centers and has plans for several more, including one near San Francisco and three planned for Texas, each more than 1 million square feet in size. By investing so much in shelf space, Amazon has every incentive to keep those shelves filled. And the more third-party stuff Amazon can move through its distribution hubs, the better, since that’s all inventory Amazon doesn’t have to pay for itself. As analysts at Baird Equity Research point out, third-party sales are 100 percent gross margin for Amazon. In other words, the only cost to Amazon of providing third-party fulfillment is money they would have spent anyway on the infrastructure, labor, transportation and whatever else they need to support their direct sales operation.

Considering these advantages, third-party sales loom as an important part of Amazon’s business future. Last year, sales of services — including commissions on third-party sales — accounted for about 15 percent of Amazon’s total sales. If current trends continue, that percentage will rise, giving all the more reason to stop thinking of Amazon as a seller of stuff and to start thinking of the world’s biggest online retailer as a platform for stuff — an API for the material world.

Read More..

ABC orders pilots for “Big Thunder” drama, Gothic soap opera

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – ABC has ordered pilots for the dramas “Big Thunder” and “Gothica,” the network said Tuesday.

“Big Thunder,” which is written by “Ice Age” writer Jason Fuchs (pictured) and executive produced by Chris Morgan (“Wanted,” “The Troop”) follows a brilliant doctor in late 19th century New York whose family is given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to relocate to a frontier mining town run by a powerful, but mysterious tycoon. However, they quickly realize that not everything in Big Thunder is as it seems.

ABC Studios is producing the pilot, which is based on the Big Mountain Thunder Railroad ride at several Disney-owned theme parks.

“Gothica,” meanwhile, is described as a “sexy gothic soap opera set in present day” that “weaves together a mythology that incorporates the legends of Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein and Dorian Gray among others.”

The project, written by Matt Lopez, comes from ABC Studios and the Mark Gordon Company.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: ABC orders pilots for “Big Thunder” drama, Gothic soap opera
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/abc-orders-pilots-for-big-thunder-drama-gothic-soap-opera/
Link To Post : ABC orders pilots for “Big Thunder” drama, Gothic soap opera
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Well: Myths of Weight Loss Are Plentiful, Researcher Says

If schools reinstated physical education classes, a lot of fat children would lose weight. And they might never have gotten fat in the first place if their mothers had just breast fed them when they were babies. But be warned: obese people should definitely steer clear of crash diets. And they can lose more than 50 pounds in five years simply by walking a mile a day.

Those are among the myths and unproven assumptions about obesity and weight loss that have been repeated so often and with such conviction that even scientists like David B. Allison, who directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, have fallen for some of them.

Now, he is trying to set the record straight. In an article published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues lay out seven myths and six unsubstantiated presumptions about obesity. They also list nine facts that, unfortunately, promise little in the way of quick fixes for the weight-obsessed. Example: “Trying to go on a diet or recommending that someone go on a diet does not generally work well in the long term.”

Obesity experts applauded this plain-spoken effort to dispel widespread confusion about obesity. The field, they say, has become something of a quagmire.

“In my view,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, a Rockefeller University obesity researcher, “there is more misinformation pretending to be fact in this field than in any other I can think of.”

Others agreed, saying it was about time someone tried to set the record straight.

“I feel like cheering,” said Madelyn Fernstrom, founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Weight Management Center. When it comes to obesity beliefs, she said, “We are spinning out of control.”

Steven N. Blair, an exercise and obesity researcher at the University of South Carolina, said his own students believe many of the myths. “I like to challenge my students. Can you show me the data? Too often that doesn’t come into it.”

Dr. Allison sought to establish what is known to be unequivocally true about obesity and weight loss.

His first thought was that, of course, weighing oneself daily helped control weight. He checked for the conclusive studies he knew must exist. They did not.

“My goodness, after 50-plus years of studying obesity in earnest and all the public wringing of hands, why don’t we know this answer?” Dr. Allison asked. “What’s striking is how easy it would be to check. Take a couple of thousand people and randomly assign them to weigh themselves every day or not.”

Yet it has not been done.

Instead, people often rely on weak studies that get repeated ad infinitum. It is commonly thought, for example, that people who eat breakfast are thinner. But that notion is based on studies of people who happened to eat breakfast. Researchers then asked if they were fatter or thinner than people who happened not to eat breakfast — and found an association between eating breakfast and being thinner. But such studies can be misleading because the two groups might be different in other ways that cause the breakfast eaters to be thinner. But no one has randomly assigned people to eat breakfast or not, which could cinch the argument.

So, Dr. Allison asks, why do yet another study of the association between thinness and breakfast? “Yet, I can tell you that in the last two weeks I saw an association study of breakfast eating in Islamabad and another in Inner Mongolia and another in a country I never heard of.”

“Why are we doing these?” Dr. Allison asked. “All that time and effort is essentially wasted. The question is: ‘Is it a causal association?’” To get the answer, he added, “Do the clinical trial.”

He decided to do it himself, with university research funds. A few hundred people will be recruited and will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. Some will be told to eat breakfast every day, others to skip breakfast, and the third group will be given vague advice about whether to eat it or not.

As he delved into the obesity literature, Dr. Allison began to ask himself why some myths and misconceptions are so commonplace. Often, he decided, the beliefs reflected a “reasonableness bias.” The advice sounds so reasonable it must be true. For example, the idea that people do the best on weight-loss programs if they set reasonable goals sounds so sensible.

“We all want to be reasonable,” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, when he examined weight-loss studies he found no consistent association between the ambitiousness of the goal and how much weight was lost and how long it had stayed off. This myth, though, illustrates the tricky ground weight-loss programs have to navigate when advising dieters. The problem is that on average people do not lose much – 10 percent of their weight is typical – but setting 10 percent as a goal is not necessarily the best strategy. A very few lose a lot more and some people may be inspired by the thought of a really life-changing weight loss.

“If a patient says, ‘Do you think it is reasonable for me to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ the honest answer is, ‘No. Not without surgery,’” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, “If a patient says, ‘My goal is to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ I would say, ‘Go for it.’”

Yet all this negativism bothers people, Dr. Allison conceded. When he talks about his findings to scientists, they often say: “O.K., you’ve convinced us. But what can we do? We’ve got to do something.” He replies that scientists have an ethical duty to make clear what is established and what is speculation. And while it is fine to recommend things like bike paths or weighing yourself daily, scientists must make sure they preface their advice with the caveat that these things seem sensible but have not been proven.

Among the best established methods is weight-loss surgery, which, of course, is not right for most people. But surgeons have done careful studies to show that on average people lose substanial amounts of weight and their health improves, Dr. Allison said. For dieters, the best results occur with structured programs, like ones that supply complete meals or meal replacements.

In the meantime, Dr. Allison said, it is incumbent upon scientists to change their ways. “We need to do rigorous studies,” he said. “We need to stop doing association studies after an association has clearly been demonstrated.”

“I never said we have to wait for perfect knowledge,” Dr. Allison said. But, as John Lennon said, “Just give me some truth.”

---

Here is an overview of the obesity myths looked at by the researchers and what is known to be true:

MYTHS

Small things make a big difference. Walking a mile a day can lead to a loss of more than 50 pounds in five years.

Set a realistic goal to lose a modest amount.

People who are too ambitious will get frustrated and give up.

You have to be mentally ready to diet or you will never succeed.

Slow and steady is the way to lose. If you lose weight too fast you will lose less in the long run.

Ideas not yet proven TRUE OR FALSE

Diet and exercise habits in childhood set the stage for the rest of life.

Add lots of fruits and vegetables to your diet to lose weight or not gain as much.

Yo-yo diets lead to increased death rates.

People who snack gain weight and get fat.

If you add bike paths, jogging trails, sidewalks and parks, people will not be as fat.

FACTS — GOOD EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT

Heredity is important but is not destiny.

Exercise helps with weight maintenance.

Weight loss is greater with programs that provide meals.

Some prescription drugs help with weight loss and maintenance.

Weight-loss surgery in appropriate patients can lead to long-term weight loss, less diabetes and a lower death rate.

Read More..

DealBook: Justice Dept. Seeks to Block Anheuser's Deal for Modelo

The Justice Department sued on Thursday to block the Anheuser-Busch InBev proposed $20.1 billion deal to buy control of Grupo Modelo of Mexico, arguing that the merger would significantly reduce competition in the American beer market.

The deal, announced last summer, would add Corona Extra to the company’s formidable stable of brands, including Budweiser and Stella Artois.

But the Justice Department said in its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, that allowing the merger to proceed would reduce competition in the beer industry across the country as a whole and in 26 metropolitan areas in particular. The combined company would control about 46 percent of annual sales in the country, the government said, far outpacing Anheuser-Busch InBev’s closest competitor, MillerCoors.

“If ABI fully owned and controlled Modelo, ABI would be able to increase beer prices to American consumers,” William J. Baer, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to prevent ABI from eliminating Modelo as an important competitive force in the beer industry.”

The deal is the biggest to be opposed by the Justice Department since 2011, when it sued to block the proposed $39 billion takeover by AT&T of T-Mobile USA.

The government’s move is the first significant effort to halt widespread consolidation in the beer industry in some time. Anheuser-Busch InBev itself was the product of a blockbuster merger between two of the world’s biggest brewers, and one of MillerCoors’s parents is the acquisitive SABMiller.

In its complaint, the Justice Department said Modelo had served as a low-price counterbalance to its larger competitors, resisting the price increases Anheuser-Busch InBev has promoted regularly.

In a statement, Anheuser-Busch said, “We remain confident in our position, and we intend to vigorously contest the D.O.J.’s action in federal court.”

Read More..

Toyota recalls 1 million of its Corollas and Lexus IS sport sedans

Toyota Motor Corp. announced recalls of 1 million vehicles, including some models of its popular Toyota Corolla and its Lexus IS sports sedan.

About 752,000 Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles are being recalled to fix an air-bag control module that is susceptible to short circuiting that could eventually cause the front air bags and seat belt pretensioners to deploy when they shouldn't.

The recall affects Corollas from the 2003 and 2004 model years. There have been two reported accidents and 18 injuries linked to the problem, said Brian Lyons, a Toyota spokesman.

For years, the Corolla has played a key role in Toyota's sales success in the U.S.  It was the second-best-selling compact car nationally last year with sales of 291,000 vehicles, second only to the Honda Civic, which sold about 318,000.

The Corolla was last redesigned in 2009. Toyota introduced a concept version of what is expected to become the new Corolla at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this month.

Toyota also said it will recall 270,000 IS sport sedans sold by its luxury Lexus division because a nut on the front windshield wiper arms could be insufficiently tight. If movement of the wipers is restricted by an external load, such as a buildup of heavy snow on the windshield, one or both of the wipers could stop working.

The recall includes vehicles from the 2006 model year through the beginning of the 2013 model year. There have been 25 reports of wipers not functioning correctly, but no reports of accidents as a result.

Toyota plans to roll out a new generation of the IS line this year.
 
Owners of vehicles covered by these safety recalls will be notified by mail. Dealers will fix the problems at no cost to the vehicle owner.

Toyota has had a series a large recalls in recent years and has paid record federal fines for not recalling its vehicles fast enough.  But that doesn’t seem to bother buyers.

Toyota’s share of U.S. auto sales rose to 14.4% last year from 12.9% the year before. Globally, it recaptured the position as the world’s biggest auto seller last year, knocking General Motors from the No. 1 spot.

“Despite the flood of recalls, buyers continue to be extremely loyal to Toyota,” said George Cook, professor at the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester. “Toyota is keenly aware of post-recall challenges and continues to be extremely proactive about announcing even the smallest of problems to ensure a positive consumer response.”

ALSO:

Fisker seeks cash

Prius tops California car sales

GM makes big plant investment

Follow me on Twitter (@LATimesJerry), Facebook and Google+.

Read More..

Affordable Injection Molding Transforms Tinkerers Into Tycoons

While everyone is talking about the 3-D printing industrial revolution, Protomold is helping tinkerers become tycoons by making mass-production injection molding technology accessible for easily customized short-run batches — and their recent expansion of materials lets designers produce almost anything they need.

3-D printing something like a cellphone case can take hours — unacceptable when makers need mass quantities. In order to cost-effectively produce products in big batches, traditional manufacturing processes like injection molding are still the best option. Unfortunately, companies that specialize in these processes want to work on huge-volume projects, leaving the little guy, or even a moderately successful Kickstarter project, with few options.

Protomold has stepped in to provide servicing to those makers who need small orders by being able to produce 50-5,000 injection-molded parts in one business day with prices starting at $1,495 for a production tool, and each produced part costing a couple dollars or less. The experience isn't much different than ordering business cards online. A designer uploads their CAD file, chooses from a few preset options, and shelf-worthy injection-molded parts arrive on their doorstep.

The company has been successful, operating since May 1999, while continuing to grow their service. They've just added new materials to their list, including injection molded steel, stainless steel, magnesium, copper. Their newest is the option to mold parts in high temperature, medical grade resins, giving garage entrepreneurs the ability to produce parts for medical devices and high performance applications. Protomold is focused on helping turn big ideas into big companies.

Protomold is able to move so quickly because they optimize their offering for small businesses. While some companies treat moldmaking as an artform, with each production tool cherished like a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, Protomold is more like a Thomas Kincaid canvas used to cover a hole in the wall. This means mold cycle times are a few seconds slower, tools are made out of aluminum instead of steel, and need to be simple enough to be produced on a CNC milling machine. "We can't make everything," says CEO Brad Cleveland. "But the things we can make, we make faster than anyone."

What started as a single engineer looking to solve his own problem has turned into a publicly traded company with a billion dollar market cap and 511 workers filling 160,000 square feet of office space producing parts 24 hours a day.

Read More..

Spielberg seen winning director Oscar for “Lincoln”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – American filmmaker Steven Spielberg is clear favorite among the public to win the best director award for his film about President Abraham Lincoln at the Academy Awards this year, a Reuters poll showed on Wednesday.

While the race to win best film at the February 24 ceremony was shaken up by “Argo” stealing the thunder of “Lincoln” at two award ceremonies last weekend, the best director statuette was deemed destined for one man.

Spielberg, 66, who has been nominated seven times for best director at the Oscars and won twice – for the World War Two dramas “Schindler’s List” in 1993 and “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998 – was seen as far ahead in the all-male field of five.

A Reuters Ipsos poll of 1,641 Americans found 41 percent thought Spielberg should win and 38 percent said he was most likely to win for his U.S. Civil War-era drama in which British actor Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln.

Almost half of the respondents to the survey conducted Friday through Tuesday were unsure who should or was most likely to be voted best director. The accuracy of the poll uses a statistical measure called a “credibility interval” and is precise to within 2.8 percentage points.

The online poll comes before the Directors Guild of America awards on Saturday in Los Angeles. Since 1948, there have been only six occasions where the winner of the DGA Award for Feature Film has not gone on to win the Oscar for best director.

But this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose members choose Oscar winners, overlooked the directors of four of the year’s biggest movies – Ben Affleck (“Argo”), Kathryn Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty”), Quentin Tarantino (“Django Unchained”) and Tom Hopper (“Les Miserables”) – opening the possibility of a rare split in February in the best film and best director categories.

Betting agencies also have earmarked Spielberg as clear favorite, with William Hill offering odds of 1-5 on Spielberg.

“Our theory is that Spielberg will win best director but not best film,” said Rupert Adams, a spokesman for bookmaker William Hill. “If you listen to what people are saying it is that ‘Lincoln’ is a brilliant film in terms of direction but it is not that exciting to watch unlike ‘Argo.’”

Ang Lee, with his 3-D film adaptation of the best-selling novel “Life of Pi” about an Indian boy adrift at sea with a tiger, was ranked second in the Reuters poll with about one in 10 respondents saying he should or was most likely to win.

The Taiwanese director won the Academy Award for best director in 2005 for the gay-themed Western romance “Brokeback Mountain.”

David O. Russell with the quirky comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” was rated third in the poll with about 5 percent.

The two surprise contenders in the race ranked fourth and fifth: Benh Zeitlin, 30, with his first feature, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and Austrian director Michael Haneke with the French-language drama “Armour” about illness and old age.

The exclusion of Bigelow for her film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been controversial in the run-up to the 85th Academy Awards. Bigelow, 61, is the only woman to win a best director Oscar, for “The Hurt Locker” in 2009.

Affleck, 40, whose Iran hostage thriller “Argo” swept the board at last weekend’s Hollywood awards shows, was also notable by his absence, as were Hooper and Tarantino. However, all four of their movies are in the running for best film at the Oscars.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Belinda Goldsmith)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Spielberg seen winning director Oscar for “Lincoln”
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/spielberg-seen-winning-director-oscar-for-lincoln/
Link To Post : Spielberg seen winning director Oscar for “Lincoln”
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..