Pudding Monsters tops iPhone Games of the Week

Now that the holiday season is behind us, we get to sit in that awkward bit of time at the end of the year. That time that is so utterly devoted to reminiscence and top games of the year lists. As such, it’s hard to find out about notable new releases, and most developers avoid this time like the plague. Thankfully, last week was so utterly packed with releases that there’s enough for a second list. I mean, there was a new game from ZeptoLabs, creators of Cut the Rope, and that wasn’t even on last week’s list. So here we go with the last, but certainly not least, new iOS games of 2012.

Pudding Monsters ($0.99)

After the massive success that was Cut the Rope, developer ZeptoLabs has gone against all conventions and branched out in a brand new direction with a new IP. Everyone was probably expecting a Cut the Rope 2, but instead, we get a brilliant puzzle that has you sliding pudding blobs together into bigger pudding blobs. It’s not as quite casual as Cut the Rope, with a slightly higher difficulty that should appeal to a slightly more mature gamer, but it is still charming and adorable with puzzles worth every penny. Definitely don’t miss out on this one.

Karateka ($2.99)

Only in the open and accessible world of iOS development have we seen projects like this. An ancient eighties fighting game revitalized and re-released as a gesture and timing-based adventure from the creator of the original (who also created Prince of Persia). There are plenty of old references mixed in with the new look and feel of the game, appealing to both modern and old school gamers. There is an elegant simplicity in the violence at play here, and while I don’t foresee it being crazy popular, there is a modern classic to be found in this one.

Middle Manager of Justice (Free)

DoubleFine Productions, with their buckets and buckets of Kickstarter money, are still doing what they do best. They make smaller titles that offer a lot of creativity and charm. The creators of Brutal Legend have no branched into the iOS realm with this wonderfully funny freemium simulation. Only DoubleFine would think of such a hilarious concept as superhero middle management. Yes, it is a freemium game with freemium elements, but DoubleFine has done their best to lessen the brutality of them, and in the end this is a very familiar game with a sense of humor.

Shadow Warrior (Free)

3D Realms, creators of Duke Nukem, have been having a pretty good time releasing their old games on mobile devices. Their latest release is that of the controversial 1997 shooter, Shadow Warrior, based on the same engine as Duke Nukem 3D. The controls for Duke Nukem 3D’s port weren’t very cooperative, but it seems like they’ve been vastly improved for the bloodbath that awaits you here. It’s retro ultra-violence at its best. The game is only decent overall, but it’s still worth playing if you miss the simpler shooters of old.

Pixel Defenders Puzzle ($0.99)

It is a rare day that I promote a match-three game on this weekly list. I’ve never seen a genre get so popular so quickly before dying off just as quickly as I saw with match-threes. Luckily, the developers of Pixel Defenders Puzzle know just how to scratch my gaming itch. Essentially, this is more like a Triple Town, but it isn’t a blatant clone, and simply builds on those solid mechanics. For another thing, it involves a retro RPG pixilated world, with magic, wizards, undead, and the rest. I’m pretty much guaranteed to pay attention when I see such an aesthetic. As it so happens, the game itself is really well done, and worth playing!

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Number of e-book readers increasing in United States: survey

The popularity of electronic books is increasing in the United States, with nearly one-quarter of American bibliophiles reading e-books, according to a survey released on Thursday.
The number of e-readers aged 16 years and older jumped from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year, while print readers fell from 72 to 67 percent in 2012, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
"The move toward e-book reading coincides with an increase in ownership of electronic book reading devices," the organization said. Its report analyzed reading trends among the 75 percent of Americans who read at least one book in the last year.
"In all, the number of owners of either a tablet computer or e-book reading device ... grew from 18 percent in late 2011 to 33 percent in 2012."
E-book owners increased from 4 percent in May 2010 to 19 percent in November 2012, while people with tablets jumped from 3 percent to 25 percent during the same period, according to the report.
People most likely to read e-books are well-educated, 30- to 49-year-olds who live in households earning $75,000 or more.
More women, 81 percent, read books, compared to 70 percent of men, and the number of readers declines as people age. The trend toward e-books impacted libraries, which stocked and loaned more e-books.
"The share of recent library users who have borrowed an e-book from a library has increased from 3 percent last year to 5 percent this year," according to Pew.
Even awareness that library stock e-books has grown, from 24 percent late last year to 31 percent now.
The findings were based on a telephone survey of 2,252 people, aged 16 years and older, across the United States and a similar poll the year before. It had a 2.7 percent margin of error.

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Marvell has options as it faces $1 billion patent verdict

 As Marvell Technology Group Ltd embarks on a legal process to void a $1.17 billion damages verdict in a patent dispute with Carnegie Mellon University, it has some reasons to be optimistic.
The verdict was delivered on Wednesday by a jury in Pittsburgh, which found that Marvell had infringed two patents owned by Carnegie Mellon related to how accurately hard-drive circuits read data from high-speed magnetic disks.
On Thursday, Marvell said that it would seek to overturn the verdict through post-trial motions at the district court.
Marvell also said that, if necessary, it would appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That court, which oversees appeals in patent infringement cases, has proven willing to throw out large verdicts in the recent past.
Brian Love, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who specializes in patent law, said damages awards are reversed about 20 percent of the time on appeal. Further, he said, "the larger a damages award is, the more susceptible it is to attack." The award is one of the largest by a U.S. jury in a patent infringement case.
Other large verdicts have not held up on appeal. In February 2011, Abbott Laboratories, for example, succeeded in overturning a $1.67 billion verdict against it in a patent infringement verdict won by a Johnson & Johnson unit.
That verdict, the largest ever by a jury in U.S. patent infringement litigation, was delivered in 2009 by a jury in Texas which found that Abbott's arthritis drug Humira had infringed the Johnson & Johnson unit's patent. But the Federal Circuit ruled that the patents at issue were invalid and thus could not be infringed.
Microsoft Corp has also successfully cut down big patent infringement verdicts delivered against it. In 2007, it was hit with a $1.52 billion verdict in a case brought by Alcatel-Lucent SA over patents related to digital music technology.
But, after post-trial motions, the judge who oversaw the case set aside the verdict, finding that Microsoft's Windows Media Player did not infringe the patents held by Alcatel-Lucent. The Federal Circuit affirmed his decision.
It's unclear which issues Marvell will raise in its post-trial motions and appeals. In a statement on Thursday the company said it did not infringe Carnegie Mellon's patents and that those patents could not have practically been used in its products.
Legal experts said Marvell's lawyers could attack the jury's damages calculation. Love of Santa Clara Law noted that the award exceeds Marvell's annual profits and is more than one quarter of the company's market capitalization.
"The law of patent damages is fuzzy, and leaves parties leeway to argue for damages amounts that differ drastically, often by 100-fold and sometimes much more," he said.
Because it received precisely what it requested, an amount calculated by an outside expert based on assumptions that could later be questioned, this award may be in "greater jeopardy than usual," Love said.
Marvell may contest the jury's finding that it willfully infringed the patents, which allows Judge Nora Barry Fischer to treble the damages owed to Carnegie Mellon.
In a decision issued in June, the Federal Circuit gave judges discretion in determining whether infringement was willful. Before that decision, willfulness was often left entirely up to juries.
"Typically that is a focal point of post-trial motions," said Donald Dunner, a patent attorney who is not involved in the case.

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Working conditions begin to improve at Apple partner’s factories

It has been nearly a year since Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook addressed the unsafe working conditions in the company’s supply chain factories. Following an investigation from the Fair Labor Association that found a number of Chinese labor law violations, Apple and Foxconn (2038) agreed to improve conditions. The companies planned a series of reforms, including reduced hours and significantly higher wages. Foxconn said that the majority of changes would go into effect by July 2013, however according to a report from The New York Times, some workers have already noticed some smaller changes taking place such as cushioned chairs replacing old wooden stools.
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
Apple has continued to work with advocacy groups over the past year as it carries on with its efforts to improve conditions and factory worker morale. The company has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, in addition to re-evaluating how it works with its supply chain partners, and has even reached out to competitors such as HP (HPQ) and Intel (INTC) to help curb excessive overtime in China.
[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]
Despite the improvements, many laborers continue to work illegal overtime and employee safety remains at risk. These are problems Apple must address in 2013, advocacy groups say.

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Lumia smartphones see deep discounts from Verizon, T-Mobile and Amazon

Lumia line of smartphones is now seeing post-holiday discounts at a variety of retailers shortly after launching in the United States. The phones, which run Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone 8 operating system, are the company’s latest gamble after a string of launches that were not well received. Verizon’s (VZ) Lumia 822 can now be had for free with a new two-year agreement, as can T-Mobile’s Lumia 810, while Amazon (AMZN) is offering the flagship Lumia 920 for $39 on AT&T (T).
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
It is unclear if the carriers are footing the entire financial burden, or if Nokia has provided some support. A Nokia spokesperson said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that “pricing is always a carrier decision, but holiday season promotions are fairly standard at this time of year,” adding that even some Samsung (005930) phones are being offered for free.

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BMW's vehicle sales reach 1.8 million in 2012: CFO

BMW , the world's largest premium carmaker, has sold about 1.8 million vehicles in 2012, its chief financial officer told a German newspaper.
"One of our goals was to increase vehicle sales in 2012 and to reach a new record in deliveries. With about 1.8 million vehicles, we have achieved this," the executive, Friedrich Eichiner, told Die Welt in an interview.
In December, BMW said vehicle sales in the January-November period had increased by 10.1 percent to 1.66 million. For the whole of 2011, BMW had vehicles sales of 1.67 million.

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Settlement reached in Toyota acceleration cases

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it has reached a settlement worth more than $1 billion in a case involving unintended acceleration problems in its vehicles.
The company said the deal will resolve hundreds of lawsuits from Toyota owners who said the value of their cars and trucks plummeted after a series of recalls stemming from claims that Toyota vehicles accelerated unintentionally.
Steve Berman, a lawyer representing Toyota owners, said the settlement is the largest in U.S. history involving automobile defects.
"We kept fighting and fighting and we secured what we think was a good settlement given the risks of this litigation," Berman told The Associated Press.
The proposed deal was filed Wednesday and must receive the approval of U.S. District Judge James Selna, who was expected to review the settlement Friday.
Toyota said it will take a one-time, $1.1 billion pre-tax charge against earnings to cover the estimated costs of the settlement. Berman said the total value of the deal is between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion.
Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against Toyota since 2009, when the Japanese automaker started receiving numerous complaints that its cars accelerated on their own, causing crashes, injuries and even deaths.
The cases were consolidated in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana and divided into two categories: economic loss and wrongful death. Claims by people who seek compensation for injury and death due to sudden acceleration are not part of the settlement; the first trial involving those suits is scheduled for February.
As part of the economic loss settlement, Toyota will offer cash payments from a pool of about $250 million to eligible customers who sold vehicles or turned in leased vehicles between September 2009 and December 2010.
The company also will launch a $250 million program for 16 million current owners to provide supplemental warranty coverage for certain vehicle components, and it will retrofit about 3.2 million vehicles with a brake override system. An override system is designed to ensure a car will stop when the brakes are applied, even if the accelerator pedal is depressed.
The settlement would also establish additional driver education programs and fund new research into advanced safety technologies.
"In keeping with our core principles, we have structured this agreement in ways that work to put our customers first and demonstrate that they can count on Toyota to stand behind our vehicles," said Christopher Reynolds, Toyota vice president and general counsel.
Current and former Toyota owners are expected to receive more information about the settlement in the coming months. Some information is also available at http://www.ToyotaELsettlement.com , a website created for Toyota owners affected by the settlement.
"We are extraordinarily proud of how we were able to represent the interests of Toyota owners, and believe this settlement is both comprehensive in its scope and fair in compensation," Berman said.
Toyota has recalled more than 14 million vehicles worldwide due to acceleration problems in several models and brake defects with the Prius hybrid. The automaker has blamed driver error, faulty floor mats and stuck accelerator pedals for the problems.
Plaintiffs' attorneys have spent the past two years deposing Toyota employees, poring over thousands of documents and reviewing software code, but the company maintains those lawyers have been unable to prove that a design defect — namely Toyota's electronic throttle control system — was responsible for vehicles surging unexpectedly.
Both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA were unable to find any defects in Toyota's source code that could cause problems.
The company has been dogged by fines for not reporting problems in a timely manner.
Earlier this month, NHTSA doled out a record $17.4 million fine to Toyota for failing to quickly report floor mat problems with some of its Lexus models. Toyota paid a total of $48.8 million in fines for three violations in 2010.
Toyota President Akio Toyoda appeared before Congress last year and pledged to strengthen quality control. Recent sales figures show the company appears to have rebounded following its safety issues.

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Large, powerful storm heads east; at least 6 dead

A powerful winter storm system pounded the nation's midsection Wednesday and headed toward the Northeast, where people braced for the high winds and heavy snow that disrupted holiday travel, knocked out power to thousands of homes and were blamed in at least six deaths.
Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, scores of motorists got stuck on icy roads or slid into drifts, and blizzard warnings were issued amid snowy gusts of 30 mph that blanketed roads and windshields, at times causing whiteout conditions.
"The way I've been describing it is as a low-end blizzard, but that's sort of like saying a small Tyrannosaurus rex," said John Kwiatkowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis.
The system, which spawned Gulf Coast region tornadoes on Christmas Day and a historic amount of snow in Arkansas, pushed through the Upper Ohio Valley and headed toward the Northeast. Forecasts called for 12 to 18 inches of snow inland from western New York to Maine starting late Wednesday and into Thursday and tapering off into a mix of rain and snow closer to the coast, where little accumulation was expected in such cities as New York and Boston.
The storm left freezing temperatures in its aftermath, and forecasters also said parts of the Southeast from Virginia to Florida would see severe thunderstorms.
Schools on break and workers taking holiday vacations meant that many people could avoid messy commutes, but those who had to travel were implored to avoid it. Snow was blamed for scores of vehicle accidents as far east as Maryland, and about two dozen counties in Indiana and Ohio issued snow emergency travel alerts, urging people to go out on the roads only if necessary.
Some 40 vehicles got bogged down trying to make it up a slick hill in central Indiana, and four state snowplows slid off roads as snow fell at the rate of 3 inches an hour in some places.
Two passengers in a car on a sleet-slickened Arkansas highway were killed Wednesday in a head-on collision, and two people, including a 76-year-old Milwaukee woman, were killed Tuesday on Oklahoma highways. Deaths from wind-toppled trees were reported in Texas and Louisiana.
The day after a holiday wasn't expected to be particularly busy for AAA, but its Cincinnati-area branch had its busiest Wednesday of the year. By mid-afternoon, nearly 400 members had been helped with tows, jump starts and other aid, with calls still coming in, spokesman Mike Mills said.
Jennifer Miller, 58, was taking a bus Wednesday from Cincinnati to visit family in Columbus.
"I wish this had come yesterday and was gone today," she said, struggling with a rolling suitcase and three smaller bags on a slushy sidewalk near the station. "I'm glad I don't have to drive in this."
Traffic crawled at 25 mph on Interstate 81 in Maryland, where authorities reported scores of accidents.
"We're going to try to go down south and get below" the storm, said Richard Power, traveling from home in Levittown, N.Y., to Kentucky with his wife, two children and their beagle, Lucky. He said they were well on their way until they hit snow in Pennsylvania, then 15-mph traffic on I-81 at Hagerstown, Md. "We're going to go as far as we can go. ... If it doesn't get better, we're going to just get a hotel."
More than 1,400 flights were canceled by evening, according to FlightAware.com, and some airlines said they would waive change fees. Delays of more than an hour were reported Wednesday at the three New York City-area airports, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
In Arkansas, some of the nearly 200,000 people who lost power could be without it for as long as a week because of snapped poles and wires after ice and 10 inches of snow coated power lines, said the state's largest utility, Entergy Arkansas. Gov. Mike Beebe sent out National Guard teams, and Humvees transported medical workers and patients. Snow hadn't fallen in Little Rock on Christmas since 1926, but the capital ended Tuesday with 10.3 inches of it.
Other states also had scattered outages. Duke Energy said it had nearly 300 outages in Indiana, with few left in Ohio by early afternoon after scores were reported in the morning.
As the storm moved east, New England state highway departments were treating roads and getting ready to mobilize with snowfall forecasts of a foot or more that was expected to start falling late Wednesday and through Thursday.
"People are picking up salt and a lot of shovels today," said Andy Greenwood, an assistant manager at Aubuchon Hardware in Keene, N.H.
As usual, winter-sports enthusiasts welcomed the snow. At Smiling Hill Farm in Maine, Warren Knight was hoping for enough snow to allow the opening of trails.
"We watch the weather more carefully for cross-country skiing than we do for farming. And we're pretty diligent about farming. We're glued to the weather radio," said Knight, who described the weather at the 500-acre farm in Westbrook as being akin to the prizes in "Cracker Jacks — we don't know what we're going to get."
Behind the storm, Mississippi's governor declared states of emergency in eight counties with more than 25 people reported injured and 70 homes left damaged.
Cindy Williams, 56, stood near a home in McNeill, Miss., where its front had collapsed into a pile of wood and brick, a balcony and the porch ripped apart. Large oak trees were uprooted and winds sheared off treetops in a nearby grove. But she focused instead on the fact that all her family members had escaped harm.
"We are so thankful," she said. "God took care of us."
___
Associated Press writers Rick Callahan and Charles Wilson in Indianapolis, Kelly P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark.; Jim Van Anglen in Mobile, Ala.; Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss.; Julie Carr Smyth and Mitch Stacy in Columbus, Ohio; Amanda Lee Myers in Cincinnati; David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md.; Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H.; and David Sharp in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.

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Wells Fargo doesn't have to pay clients $203 million: court

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court vacated an injunction and a $203 million restitution order against Wells Fargo & Co in consumer litigation over the bank's overdraft policies, according to a ruling issued on Wednesday.
But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco also found Wells had violated part of California's unfair competition law, and sent the case back to trial court in San Francisco to determine what relief is appropriate.
A spokesman for the bank, Ancel Martinez, said Wells was pleased with the decision. Plaintiff attorney Michael Sobol said he was confident the damages could be reinstated by the lower court judge.
"The misrepresentations found by the district court have been affirmed," Sobol said.
Wells Fargo, prior to April 2001, posted customer debit card purchases to their bank accounts in order of lowest charge to highest, which minimized the number of overdrafts, according to the ruling.
But beginning in April 2001, the bank began posting debit card purchase from highest to lowest, which maximized the number of overdrafts, the 9th Circuit wrote.
A San Francisco federal judge certified a class action on behalf of Wells Fargo customers, who incurred overdraft fees because of high-to-low sequencing. The judge then issued an injunction ordering the bank to cease the practice, as well as a $203 million restitution award.
In its ruling, the 9th Circuit found that federal law preempted part of the California statute on which the injunction was based.
"Federal law does not, however, preempt California consumer law with respect to fraudulent or misleading representations concerning posting," the court wrote.
The case in the 9th Circuit is Gutierrez vs. Wells Fargo, 10-16959.

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Toyota seeks to settle acceleration cases for $1.1 billion

DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp plans to spend $1.1 billion to resolve sweeping U.S. class-action litigation over claims that millions of its vehicles accelerate unintentionally, as the Japanese automaker looks to turn the page on the biggest safety crisis in its history.
About 16 million Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles sold in the United States spanning the model years 1998 to 2010 are covered by the action, according to court filings made public on Wednesday. Thirty nameplates are affected, including the top-selling Toyota Camry midsize sedan and Corolla compact car.
Toyota, the No. 3 automaker in the U.S. market, admitted no fault in proposing the settlement, one of the largest of U.S. mass class-action litigation in the automotive sector. Investors snapped up shares of Toyota and its stock rose 2 percent in early trading.
"This was a difficult decision, especially since reliable scientific evidence and multiple independent evaluations have confirmed the safety of Toyota's electronic throttle control systems," Christopher Reynolds, general counsel for Toyota Motor Sales, USA, said in a statement.
"However, we concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers."
The figure eclipses other settlements in the auto industry including Bridgestone Corp's $240 million payout to Ford Motor Co in 2005 over Ford's massive Firestone tire safety recall in 2001. Ford replaced 13 million Firestone tires, installed mostly as original equipment on the company's popular Explorer SUV, in one of the biggest recalls in U.S. history.
Toyota said it would take a one-time pretax charge of $1.1 billion to cover the costs. The company said it plans to book the charge as operating expenses in its October-December third quarter.
Hagens Berman, the law firm representing Toyota owners who brought the lawsuit in 2010, issued a statement saying that the settlement was valued between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion. In a memo filed in court, the lawyers said the settlement was "a landmark, if not a record, settlement in automobile defect class action litigation in the United States."
Toyota's recall of more than 10 million vehicles between 2009 and 2011 hurt the company's reputation for reliability and safety. Toyota faces an estimated $10 billion in potential civil liability in U.S. courts, for consumer fraud, personal injury and wrongful death claims stemming from acceleration complaints.
Wednesday's $1.1. billion settlement does not cover the wrongful death or injury claims.
LINGERING EFFECTS
The effect of the recalls on sales and loyalty remains "difficult to isolate," IHS Automotive analyst Rebecca Lindland said.
"A lot of their growth through the early 2000s were first-time Toyota buyers," she said. "Those are the people that were most vulnerable to saying, 'I'll never own a Toyota again.' The long term effects won't fully be realized until all of the cars that have been impacted by the recall have been retired."
The biggest safety crisis in Toyota's history began to get public notice in August 2009 when an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor and three members of his family were killed in a Lexus ES 350 that crashed at a high speed.
A separate lawsuit over the death of the Saylor family was settled out of court. A handful of wrongful death and personal injury cases are still pending, but the vast majority of the litigation over this issue will be finished if the proposed settlement is approved, said a person with knowledge of the remaining lawsuits who wished to remain anonymous.
Within a half year of the Saylor family crash, Toyota President Akio Toyoda and other company executives were questioned in a high-profile U.S. Congressional hearing, and Toyoda made a public apology.
Toyota maintained all along that its electronic throttle control system was not at fault. It reiterated that on Wednesday.
A study by U.S. safety regulator the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA found no link between the reports of unintended acceleration and Toyota's electronic throttle control system.
INCREASINGLY COMMON
The settlement, which must be approved by a California federal judge, includes direct payments to customers as well as the installation of a brake override system in more than 2.7 million vehicles, according to the settlement agreement filed in court.
The terms include a $250 million fund for former Toyota owners who sold vehicles at reduced prices and a separate $250 million fund for owners not eligible for the brake override system.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs are slated to receive up to $200 million in fees and $27 million in costs, according to court documents.
Richard Cupp, a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law, said the settlement was large for the automotive sector but was dwarfed by other litigation involving economic loss claims. State cases against the tobacco industry, for instance, amounted to more than $200 billion.
"That could mean that lawsuits like these could become increasingly common, even where there is not provable physical injury on large scale," Cupp said.
The case is In re: Toyota Motor Corp. Unintended Acceleration Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 10-ml-02151.

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Woman’s ‘Dystextia’ Stroke Sign: ‘Some is where!’

Smartphone autocorrect is famous for scrambling messages into unintelligible gibberish but when one man received this garbled text from his 11-week-pregnant wife, it alarmed him: “every where thinging days nighing,” her text read. “Some is where!” Though that may sound like every text you’ve ever received, the woman’s husband knew her autocorrect was turned off. Fearing some medical issue, he made sure his 25-year-old wife went immediately to the emergency room. When she got there, doctors noted that she was disoriented, couldn’t use her right arm and leg properly and had some difficulty speaking. A magnetic resonance imaging scan — MRI — revealed that part of the woman’s brain wasn’t getting enough blood. The diagnosis was stroke. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. A short hospital stay and some low-dose blood thinners took care of the symptoms and the rest of her pregnancy was uneventful. Click here to read about how texting pedestrians risk injuries The three doctors from Boston’s Harvard Medical School, who reported the case study online in this week’s Archives of Neurology, claim this is the first instance they know of where an aberrant text message was used to help diagnose a stroke. In their report, they refer to the woman’s inability to text properly as “dystextia,” a word coined by medical experts in an earlier case. Dystextia appears to be a new form of aphasia, a term that refers to any trouble processing language, be it spoken or written. The authors of the Archives paper said that at least theoretically, incoherent text messages will be used more often to flag strokes and other neurological abnormalities that lead to the condition. “As the accessibility of electronic communication continues to advance, the growing digital record will likely become an increasingly important means of identifying neurologic disease, particularly in patient populations that rely more heavily on written rather than spoken communication,” they wrote. Even though jumbled texts are so common, Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is the director of the stroke center at Duke University, said he also believes it’s possible they can be used to sound the alarm on a person’s neurological state, especially in a case like this where the text consisted of complete words that amounted to nonsense rather than the usual autocorrected muddle. “It would have been very easy to dismiss because of the normal problems with texting but this was a whole conversation that wasn’t making sense,” Goldstein said. “I might be concerned about a patient based on a text like this if they were telling me they hadn’t intended to send a disjointed jumble but they weren’t able to correct themselves.” In diagnosing stroke, Goldstein said both patients and medical professionals tend to discount aphasic symptoms, even in speech, but they can often be the first clue something is up. In this woman’s case, other signs were there. Her obstetrician realized in retrospect that she’d had trouble filling out a form earlier in the day. She had difficulties speaking too which might also have been picked up sooner if a recent upper respiratory infection hadn’t reduced her voice to a whisper. But unlike this woman, most people leave their autocorrect turned on. If we relied solely on maddeningly unintelligible text messages to determine neurological state, neurologists might have lines out the door.

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Link between pot, psychosis goes both ways in kids

Marijuana (cannabis) use may be linked to the development of psychotic symptoms in teens - but the reverse could also be true: psychosis in adolescents may be linked to later pot use, according to a new Dutch study. "We have focused mainly on temporal order; is it the chicken or the egg? As the study shows, it is a bidirectional relationship," wrote the study's lead author Merel Griffith-Lendering, a doctoral candidate at Leiden University in The Netherlands, in an email to Reuters Health. Previous research established links between marijuana and psychosis, but scientists questioned whether pot use increased the risk of mental illness, or whether people were using pot to ease their psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions. "What is interesting in this study is that both processes are going on at the same time," said Dr. Gregory Seeger, medical director for addiction services at Rochester General Hospital in upstate New York. He told Reuters Health that researchers have been especially concerned about what tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active property in pot, could do to a teenager's growing brain. "That's a very vulnerable period of time for brain development," and individuals with a family history of schizophrenia and psychosis seem to be more sensitive to the toxic effects of THC, he said. A 2010 study of 3,800 Australian teenagers found that those who used marijuana were twice as likely to develop psychosis compared to teens who never smoked pot (see Reuters Health article of March 1, 2010 here:). But that study also found that those who suffered from hallucinations and delusions when they were younger were also more likely to use pot early on. CHICKEN v. EGG For the new study, published in the journal Addiction, the researchers wanted to see which came first: pot or psychosis. Griffith-Lendering and her colleagues used information on 2,120 Dutch teenagers, who were surveyed about their pot use when they were about 14, 16 and 19 years old. The teens also took psychosis vulnerability tests that asked - among other things - about their ability to concentrate, their feelings of loneliness and whether they see things other people don't. Overall, the researchers found 940 teens, or about 44 percent, reported smoking pot, and there was a bidirectional link between pot use and psychosis. For example, using pot at 16 years old was linked to psychotic symptoms three years later, and psychotic symptoms at age 16 were linked to pot use at age 19. This was true even when the researchers accounted for mental illness in the kids' families, alcohol use and tobacco use. Griffith-Lendering said she could not say how much more likely young pot users were to exhibit psychotic symptoms later on. Also, the new study cannot prove one causes the other. Genetics may also explain the link between pot use and psychosis, said Griffith-Lendering. "We can say for some people that cannabis comes first and psychosis comes second, but for some people they have some (undiagnosed) psychosis (and) perhaps cannabis makes them feel better," said Dr. Marta Di Forti, of King's College, London, who was not involved with the new research. Di Forti, who has studied the link between pot and psychosis, told Reuters Health she considers pot a risk factor for psychosis - not a cause. Seeger, who was also not involved with the new study, said that there needs to be more public awareness of the connection. "I think the marijuana is not a harmless substance. Especially for teenagers, there should be more of a public health message out there that marijuana has a public health risk," he said. Griffith-Lendering agrees. "Given the severity and impact of psychotic disorders, prevention programs should take this information into consideration," she said.

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Early Childhood Obesity Rates Might Be Slowing Nation-Wide

About one in three children in the U.S. are now overweight, and since the 1980s the number of children who are obese has more than tripled. But a new study of 26.7 million young children from low-income families shows that in this group of kids, the tidal wave of obesity might finally be receding. Being obese as a child not only increases the risk of early-life health problems, such as joint problems, pre-diabetes and social stigmatization, but it also dramatically increases the likelihood of being obese later in life, which can lead to chronic diseases, including cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Children as young as 2 years of age can be obese--and even extremely obese. Early childhood obesity rates, which bring higher health care costs throughout a kid's life, have been especially high among lower-income families. "This is the first national study to show that the prevalence of obesity and extreme obesity among young U.S. children may have begun to decline," the researchers noted in a brief report published online December 25 in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. (Reports earlier this year suggested that childhood obesity rates were dropping in several U.S. cities.) The study examined rates of obesity (body mass index calculated by age and gender to be in the 95th percentile or higher--for example, a BMI above 20 for a 2-year-old male--compared with reference growth charts) and extreme obesity (BMI of more than 120 percent above that of the 95th percentile of the reference populations) in children ages 2 to 4 in 30 states and the District of Columbia. The researchers, led by Liping Pan, of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, combed through 12 years of data (1998 to 2010) from the Pediatric Nutritional Surveillance System, which includes information on roughly half of all children on the U.S. who are eligible for federal health care and nutrition assistance. A subtle but important shift in early childhood obesity rates in this low-income population seems to have begun in 2003. Obesity rates increased from 13.05 percent in 1998 to 15.21 percent in 2003. Soon, however, obesity rates began decreasing, reaching 14.94 percent by 2010. Extreme obesity followed a similar pattern, increasing from 1.75 percent to 2.22 percent from 1998 to 2003, but declining to 2.07 percent by 2010. Although these changes might seem small, the number of children involved makes for huge health implications. For example, each drop of just one tenth of a percentage point represents some 26,700 children in the study population alone who are no longer obese or extremely obese. And if these trends are occurring in the rest of the population, the long-term health and cost implications are massive. Public health agencies and the Obama Administration have made battling childhood obesity a priority, although these findings suggest that early childhood obesity rates, at least, were already beginning to decline nearly a decade ago. Some popular prevention strategies include encouraging healthier eating (by reducing intake of highly processed and high-sugar foods and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption) and increased physical activity (both at school and at home). The newly revealed trends "indicate modest recent progress of obesity prevention among young children," the authors noted. "These finding may have important health implications because of the lifelong health risks of obesity and extreme obesity in early childhood.

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One in 12 in military has clogged heart arteries

Just over one in 12 U.S. service members who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had plaque buildup in the arteries around their hearts - an early sign of heart disease, according to a new study. None of them had been diagnosed with heart disease before deployment, researchers said. "This is a young, healthy, fit group," said the study's lead author, Dr. Bryant Webber, from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. "These are people who are asymptomatic, they feel fine, they're deployed into combat," he told Reuters Health. "It just proves again the point that we know that this is a clinically silent disease, meaning people can go years without being diagnosed, having no signs or symptoms of the disease." Webber said the findings also show that although the U.S. has made progress in lowering the nationwide prevalence of heart disease, there's more work that can be done to encourage people to adopt a healthy lifestyle and reduce their risks. Heart disease accounts for about one in four deaths - or about 600,000 Americans each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new data come from autopsies done on U.S. service members who died in October 2001 through August 2011 during combat or from unintentional injuries. Those autopsies were originally performed to provide a full account to service members' families of how they died. The study mirrors autopsy research on Korean and Vietnam war veterans, which found signs of heart disease in as many as three-quarters of deceased service members at the time. "Earlier autopsy studies... were critical pieces of information that alerted the medical community to the lurking burden of coronary disease in our young people," said Dr. Daniel Levy, director of the Framingham Heart Study and a senior investigator with the National Institutes of Health. The findings are not directly comparable, in part because there was a draft in place during the earlier wars but not for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom/New Dawn. When service is optional, healthier people might be more likely to sign up, researchers explained. Still, Levy said the new study likely reflects declines in heart disease in the U.S. in general over that span. Altogether the researchers had information on 3,832 service members who'd been killed at an average age of 26. Close to 9 percent had any buildup in their coronary arteries, according to the autopsies. And about a quarter of the soldiers with buildup in their arteries had severe blockage. Service members who had been obese or had high cholesterol or high blood pressure when they entered the military were especially likely to have plaque buildup, Webber and his colleagues reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. More than 98 percent of the service members included were men. "This study bodes well for a lower burden of disease lurking in young people," Levy, who wrote an editorial published with the report, told Reuters Health. "Young, healthy people are likely to have a lower burden of disease today than their parents or grandparents had decades ago." That's likely due, in part, to better control of blood pressure and cholesterol and lower rates of smoking in today's service members - as well as the country in general, researchers said. However, two risks for heart disease that haven't declined are obesity and diabetes, which are closely linked. "Obesity is the one that has not trended in the right direction," Levy said. "Those changes in obesity and diabetes threaten to reverse some of the dramatic improvements that we are seeing in heart disease death rates," he added.

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Obesity declining in young, poorer kids: study

The number of low-income preschoolers who qualify as obese or "extremely obese" has dropped over the last decade, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. Although the decline was only "modest" and may not apply to all children, researchers said it was still encouraging. "It's extremely important to make sure we're monitoring obesity in this low-income group," said the CDC's Heidi Blanck, who worked on the study. Those kids are known to be at higher risk of obesity than their well-off peers, in part because access to healthy food is often limited in poorer neighborhoods. The new results can't prove what's behind the progress, Blanck told Reuters Health - but two possible contributors are higher rates of breastfeeding and rising awareness of the importance of physical activity even for very young kids. Blanck and her colleagues used data on routine clinic visits for about half of all U.S. kids eligible for federal nutrition programs - including 27.5 million children between age two and four. They found 13 percent of those preschoolers were obese in 1998. That grew to just above 15 percent in 2003, but dropped slightly below 15 percent in 2010, the most recent study year included. Similarly, the prevalence of extreme obesity increased from nearly 1.8 percent in 1998 to 2.2 percent in 2003, then dropped back to just below 2.1 percent in 2010, the research team reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Whether kids are obese is determined by their body mass index (BMI) - a measure of weight in relation to height - and by their age and sex. For example, a four-year-old girl who is 40 inches tall would be obese if she was 42 pounds or heavier. A two-year-old boy who is 35 inches tall qualifies as obese at 34 pounds or above, according to the CDC's child BMI calculator. (The CDC's BMI calculator for children and teens is available here:.) The new findings are the first national data to show obesity and extreme obesity may be declining in young children, Blanck said. "This is very encouraging considering the recent effort made in the field including by several U.S. federal agencies to combat the childhood obesity epidemic," said Dr. Youfa Wang, head of the Johns Hopkins Global Center on Childhood Obesity in Baltimore. Blanck said between 2003 and 2010 researchers also saw an increase in breastfeeding of low-income infants. Breastfeeding has been tied to a healthier weight in early childhood. Additionally, states and communities have started working with child care centers to make sure kids have time to run around and that healthy foods are on the lunch menu, she added. Parents can encourage better eating by having fruits and vegetables available at snack time and allowing their young kids to help with meal preparation, Blanck said. Her other recommendations include making sure preschoolers get at least one hour of activity every day and keeping television sets out of the bedroom. "The prevalence of overweight and obesity in many countries including in the U.S. is still very high," Wang, who wasn't involved in the new study, told Reuters Health in an email. "The recent level off should not be taken as a reason to reduce the effort to fight the obesity epidemic.

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Oil prices lower in quiet holiday trading

The price of oil fell slightly Monday during a shortened pre-Christmas trading day. Concerns over the political stalemate in Washington continue to be the focus of traders, with the price of U.S. benchmark oil closing down 5 cents to $88.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy traders have been watching Democrats and Republicans clash over tax hikes and social service cuts. Normally, recent good economic data would signal more energy consumption and higher prices. But fears about the "fiscal cliff" have so far tempered prices, according to Phil Flynn of The Price Future Group. "Because of the holiday, a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines," Flynn said. "We've priced in those scenarios and now we're just waiting for something definitive." The average U.S. price for gasoline rose 1.5 cents over the weekend to $3.247 a gallon. Regular unleaded costs nearly two cents more than a year ago. In other energy futures trading: — Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, fell 17 cents to $108.80 a barrel. — Natural gas fell 10.5 cents to $3.346 per 1,000 cubic feet. — Heating oil eased 2 cents to $3.00 a gallon. — Wholesale gasoline rose 1.6 cents to $2.75 a gallon.

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Instagram furor triggers first class action lawsuit

Facebook's Instagram photo sharing service has been hit with what appears to be the first civil lawsuit to result from changed service terms that prompted howls of protest last week. In a proposed class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday, a California Instagram user leveled breach of contract and other claims against the company. "We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail. Instagram, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet, was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $715 million. In announcing revised terms of service last week, Instagram spurred suspicions that it would sell user photos without compensation. It also announced a mandatory arbitration clause, forcing users to waive their rights to participate in a class action lawsuit except under very limited circumstances. The current terms of service, in effect through mid-January, contain no such liability shield. The backlash prompted Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to retreat partially a few days later, deleting language about displaying photos without compensation. However, Instagram kept language that gave it the ability to place ads in conjunction with user content, and saying "that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such." It also kept the mandatory arbitration clause. The lawsuit, filed by San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, says customers who do not agree with Instagram's terms can cancel their profile but then forfeit rights to photos they had previously shared on the service. "In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us,'" the lawsuit says. Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who had criticized Instagram, said he was pleased that the company rolled back some of the advertising terms and agreed to better explain their plans in the future. However, he said the new terms no longer contain language which had explicitly promised that private photos would remain private. Facebook had engendered criticism in the past, Opsahl said, for changing settings so that the ability to keep some information private was no longer available. "Hopefully, Instagram will learn from that experience and refrain from removing privacy settings," Opsahl said. The civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Lucy Funes, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated vs. Instagram Inc., 12-cv-6482.

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Retailers hope late Christmas shoppers bring good cheer

CHICAGO/WHITE PLAINS, New York (Reuters) - Retailers limped into Christmas with last-minute blowout deals on everything from TVs to celebrity-branded clothing, after a disappointing few weeks of sales led many analysts to lower their expectations for the holiday season. Some industry watchers said shoppers were making smaller purchases, even though they are still visiting stores and browsing online. Since the holiday quarter can account for about 30 percent of annual sales and half of profit for many chains, such small distinctions can be crucial. "The attitude of the shopper went from Christmas euphoria on Thanksgiving weekend to more subdued, to less frenetic," said Thom Blischok, chief retail strategist and a senior executive adviser with consulting firm Booz & Company's retail practice. Before the season began, Blischok was looking for sales to rise more than 5 percent in November and December over the same period in 2011. Now, he said a gain of 2 percent to 2.5 percent appears more likely. Research firm ShopperTrak last week said it now expects an increase of 2.5 percent, rather than 3.3 percent. "The season will be an OK season. It won't be as strong as last year, but it won't be maybe as bad as feared heading into it," said Joseph Feldman, managing director and senior research analyst at Telsey Advisory Group. "Christmas comes every year." Some of the winning chains this holiday season appeared to be Macy's, TJX, Michael Kors, Costco, Limited, Gap Inc, Anthropologie and Walmart, Feldman said, citing the number of shoppers in their stores, their products and online presence. Even so, some of those who are buying said they were holding back. Terene Collymore, a student of criminology at Monroe College in New Rochelle, New York, was at a Walmart on Monday, buying last-minute gifts, such as knitting supplies for her mother. Collymore said she was being more careful this year and not spending more on herself. "I don't throw money away," she said. CHEAP TELEVISIONS ABOUND Retailers have done a good job controlling inventory levels, even in the face of diminished forecasts, analysts said. The season has been "decent" but "not exceptional," said Noam Paransky, vice president in AlixPartners retail practice. He said he has not seen unplanned discounting or too much excess inventory despite slightly slower-than-expected growth. "Retailers have been disciplined. They haven't hit the panic button yet," Paransky said. Still, Target Corp slashed the price of its collaborative holiday collection with Neiman Marcus by 50 percent a few days ago. The collection was still marked at full price at Neiman Marcus. Meanwhile Sears was offering 60 percent off clothing from the reality TV family's "Kardashian Kollection," and Target, Walmart and Best Buy all had last-minute discounts hundreds of dollars deep on big-screen TVs. Apple's iPad mini has been tough to find in some places but is still available, while the new iPhone 5 is still in stock, suggesting that people may have stuck with their prior models or bought the less expensive iPhone 4S instead, said Feldman. A mix of electronics are selling "exceptionally well," from low-cost tablets to very large-screen TVs, and items such as audio sound bars and headphones, said NPD Group's Stephen Baker. One area of concern is in computers, as sales of PCs and tablets running Windows 8, from its launch in late October to mid-December, were down 13 percent from a year ago, Baker said. That will likely be a disappointment to Microsoft and many third-party retailers, as past releases of Windows have spurred PC sales. However, that has been disrupted by the popularity of tablets eating away at PC sales, Baker said. AFTER-CHRISTMAS SALES Superstorm Sandy hit sales in the densely populated Northeast in late October and early November but retailers were able to bounce back weeks later with a strong turnout on Thanksgiving weekend. Now, fresh concerns about whether Washington will reach an agreement to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts before January 1 is leading some shoppers to curb spending. Overall, analysts said inventory levels appeared about right, though consumers' minds have changed since retailers placed orders for items such as apparel back in the spring. "I don't think it's an issue of ordering too much, I think it's the fact that the consumer has recognized 'I can learn to live with less, I don't have to have that fourteenth sweater, I just don't have to have it,'" said Blischok. Even if the stores are quiet, the Internet is not. There were 12 days this holiday when spending topped $1 billion, up from 10 such days in 2011, according to comScore. Online sales rose 16 percent in the first 51 days of the holiday season, it said. Those retailers that are seeing weakness before the holiday could use after-Christmas sales to sell discounted goods, analysts said. Typically, retailers like to clear out their holiday merchandise quickly, so that shoppers coming in with the gift cards they received are more likely to buy full-price spring merchandise at fatter profit margins. The S&P 500 retail index rose 0.15 percent on Monday, outpacing a 0.24 percent dip in the S&P 500.

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Ga. counties sue HSBC claiming loss of tax base

Three Atlanta-area counties have filed a lawsuit claiming that British bank HSBC cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in extra expenses and damage to their tax bases by aggressively signing minorities to housing loans that were likely to fail. The Georgia counties' failure or success with the relatively novel strategy could help determine whether other local governments try to hold big banks accountable for losses in tax revenue based on what they claim are discriminatory or predatory lending practices. Similar lawsuits resulted in settlements this year worth millions of dollars for communities in Maryland and Tennessee. Fulton, DeKalb and Cobb counties say in their lawsuit, which was filed in October, that the housing foreclosure crisis was the "foreseeable and inevitable result" of big banks, such as HSBC and its American subsidiaries, aggressively pushing irresponsible loans or loans that were destined to fail. The counties say that crisis has caused them tremendous damage. "It's not only the personal damage that was done to people in our communities," said DeKalb County Commissioner Jeff Rader. "That has a ripple effect on our tax digest and the demand for public services in these areas." The city of Atlanta straddles Fulton and DeKalb counties, while Cobb County is northwest of the city. The lawsuit says the banks violated the Fair Housing Act, which provides protections against housing or renting policies or practices, including lending, that discriminate on the basis race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status or handicap. The counties say their tax digests — which represent the value of all property subject to tax — have declined from a high point in 2009. Fulton's tax digest has dropped about 12 percent, from $32.7 billion to $28.7 billion; DeKalb's has dropped about 20 percent, from $22 billion to $17.5 billion; and Cobb's has dropped about 15 percent, from $25.5 billion to $21.3 billion, the lawsuit says. That reduces their ability to provide critical services in their communities, the lawsuit says. In addition to reducing tax income, vacant or abandoned homes that are in or near foreclosure create additional costs for the counties, the lawsuit says. Their housing code and legal departments have to investigate and respond to code violations, including having to board up, tear down or repair unsafe homes. They have to deal with public health concerns, such as pest infestations, ruptured water pipes, accumulated garbage and unkempt yards. And fire and police departments have to respond to health and safety threats. The lawsuit says predatory lending practices include: targeting vulnerable borrowers for mortgage loans with unfavorable terms; directing credit-worthy borrowers to more costly loans; putting unreasonable terms, excessive fees or pre-payment penalties into mortgage loans; basing loan values on inflated or fraudulent appraisals; and refinancing a loan without benefit to the borrower. The counties are asking the court to order the bank to stop its behavior and to take steps to prevent similar predatory lending in the future. They are also seeking financial compensation for the damages they've suffered and punitive damages to punish the bank for its "willful, wanton and reckless conduct." The counties say the financial injury they've suffered is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Andrew Sandler, a lawyer for HSBC and its subsidiaries, said he couldn't comment on the case. A federal judge has given the bank until Jan. 25 to respond to the counties' complaint. Lawyers for the counties declined interviews on the case, but one of them, Jeffrey Harris, said in an emailed statement that they are continuing to investigate other banks and could file additional complaints. Similar suits were filed against Wells Fargo by the city of Memphis and surrounding Shelby County in Tennessee in 2009 and by the city of Baltimore in 2008. Those suits were settled earlier this year. Both settlements included $3 million to the local governments for economic development or housing programs and $4.5 million in down payment assistance to homeowners, as well as a lending goal of $425 million for residents over the subsequent five years, according to media accounts. As in those cases, the lawsuit filed by the Georgia counties says the bank, in this case HSBC, targeted communities with high percentages of Fair Housing Act-protected minority residents, particularly blacks and Hispanics. "Communities with high concentrations of such potential borrowers, and the potential borrowers themselves, were targeted because of the traditional lack of access to competitive credit choices in these communities and the resulting willingness of FHA protected minority borrowers to accept credit on uncompetitive rates," the lawsuit says. The lawsuit says minority borrowers were disproportionately targeted with high-cost loans between 2004 and 2007. Before the beginning of the subprime lending boom in 2003, annual foreclosure rates in metro Atlanta averaged below 1 percent, but U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data show that the estimated foreclosure rates for each of the three counties now average more than 9 percent and are as high as 18 percent in the communities with the highest percentages of minority borrowers, the lawsuit says. It is the alleged targeting of minority communities that entitles the counties to seek action against HSBC for loss of tax income and other expenses, the lawsuit says. "If you can show that you yourself have suffered harm by an illegal act under the Fair Housing Act, even if you are not the target, even if you are not the intended victim, you can still sue to stop the behavior and to recover any damages that you can prove you suffered because of the violation of the Fair Housing Act," said Steve Dane, a lawyer whose firm was involved in the Memphis and Baltimore lawsuits. The costs incurred by counties because of high rates of foreclosure are reflected in court records and related fees for each home, and police and fire departments can calculate the costs of responding to a given address, Dane said. He said it takes a lot of time and effort to gather the necessary records to prove the harm. Another discouraging factor could be a lack of political will, said Lisa Rice, vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance. "Politicians may not want to go up against the banks," she said, adding that there will likely be other local governments that give this a try but she doubts the number will be high. But Jaime Dodge, an assistant law professor at the University of Georgia, says she thinks more cases are likely, at least in the short term as municipal governments continue to feel the squeeze of a tight economy and seek ways to refill their coffers. They may try to test federal courts in different parts of the country, she said. Successes in multiple jurisdictions could lead to more attempts, but if courts start knocking the suits down that would likely discourage them, she said.

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New Jersey pension fund sues NYSE Euronext on ICE deal

A pension fund that holds shares of NYSE Euronext has sued the exchange operator over its proposed $8.2 billion sale to IntercontinentalExchange Inc , saying the deal undervalues the company's stock. The New Jersey Carpenters Pension Fund late on Friday filed a complaint in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan contending that NYSE Euronext breached its duty to maximize returns for shareholders. The lawsuit seeks class action status on behalf of other NYSE Euronext shareholders and aims to block the sale. It is the second such lawsuit filed against the exchange operator since the deal was announced on Thursday. An individual shareholder, Samuel Cohen, filed a proposed class action in Delaware Chancery Court on Friday that also seeks to prevent the buyout from going forward. Under the deal, NYSE Euronext, which operates the New York Stock Exchange, will sell itself to Atlanta-based ICE. The stock-and-cash deal is expected to close in the second half of 2013. At $33.12 per share, ICE's offer represents a 28 percent premium to NYSE Euronext's closing price last Wednesday. In court papers, the New Jersey pension fund said the deal was based on a "hopelessly flawed process" that would favor NYSE Euronext Chief Executive Duncan Niederauer and several members of its board of directors. The sale was "designed to ensure the sale of NYSE Euronext to ICE on terms preferential to ICE and designed to benefit NYSE Euronext's insiders," the pension fund said. A spokesman for NYSE Euronext declined to comment. A spokeswoman for ICE, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, did not return a call seeking comment. The lawsuit also names as defendants Niederauer, NYSE Euronext Chairman Jan-Michiel Hessels, and other executives and board members. The buyout is expected to help ICE compete in derivatives trading against U.S.-based CME Group, owner of the Chicago Board of Trade. Derivatives trading is highly profitable for the exchanges, and new rules next year will dramatically expand the demand for clearing over-the-counter contracts. NYSE Euronext's stock market businesses are less valuable to ICE, and the company said it will try to spin off the Euronext European stock market businesses in a public offering, generating speculation it may also have little interest in the NYSE trading floor. Profits from stock trading have been significantly eroded by new technology and the rise of other places for investors to trade, including venues known as "dark pools." The cases are New Jersey Carpenters Pension Fund et al. v. NYSE Euronext et al., Supreme Court of the State of New York, No. 654496/2012, and Cohen v. NYSE Euronext et al, Delaware Court of Chancery, No. 8136.

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'Hobbit' extends No. 1 journey with $36.7 million

Tiny hobbit Bilbo Baggins is running circles around some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" took in $36.7 million to remain No. 1 at the box office for the second-straight weekend, easily beating a rush of top-name holiday newcomers. Part one of Jackson's prelude to his "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the Warner Bros. release raised its domestic total to $149.9 million after 10 days. The film added $91 million overseas to bring its international total to $284 million and its worldwide haul to $434 million. "The Hobbit" took a steep 57 percent drop from its domestic $84.6 million opening weekend, but business was soft in general as many people skipped movies in favor of last-minute Christmas preparations. "The real winner this weekend might be holiday shopping," said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. Tom Cruise's action thriller "Jack Reacher" debuted in second-place with a modest $15.6 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday. Based on the Lee Child best-seller "One Shot," the Paramount Pictures release stars Cruise as a lone-wolf ex-military investigator tracking a sniper conspiracy. Opening at No. 3 with $12 million was Judd Apatow's marital comedy "This Is 40," a Universal Pictures film featuring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann reprising their roles from the director's 2007 hit "Knocked Up." Paramount's road-trip romp "The Guilt Trip," featuring "Knocked Up" star Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, debuted weakly at No. 6 with $5.4 million over the weekend and $7.4 million since it opened Wednesday. Playing in narrower release, Paramount's acrobatic fantasy "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away" debuted at No. 11 with $2.1 million. A 3-D version of Disney's 2001 animated blockbuster "Monsters, Inc." also had a modest start at No. 7 with $5 million over the weekend and $6.5 million since opening Wednesday. Domestic business was off for the first time in nearly two months. Overall revenues totaled $112 million, down 12.6 percent from the same weekend last year, when Cruise's "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" debuted with $29.6 million, according to Hollywood.com. Cruise's "Jack Reacher" opened at barely half the level as "Ghost Protocol," but with a $60 million budget, the new flick cost about $100 million less to make. Starting on Christmas, Hollywood expects a big week of movie-going with schools out through New Year's Day and many adults taking time off. So Paramount and other studios are counting on strong business for films that started slowly this weekend. "'Jack Reacher' will end up in a very good place. The movie will be profitable for Paramount," said Don Harris, the studio's head of distribution. "The first time I saw the movie I saw dollar signs. It certainly wasn't intended to be compared to a 'Mission: Impossible,' though." Likewise, Warner Bros. is looking for steady crowds for "The Hobbit" over the next week, despite the debut of two huge newcomers — the musical "Les Miserables" and the action movie "Django Unchained" — on Christmas Day. "We haven't reached the key holiday play time yet," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner. "It explodes on Tuesday and goes right through the end of the year." In limited release, Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden manhunt saga "Zero Dark Thirty" played to packed houses with $410,000 in just five theaters, averaging a huge $82,000 a cinema. That compares to a $4,654 average in 3,352 theaters for "Jack Reacher" and a $4,130 average in 2,913 cinemas for "This Is 40." ''The Guilt Trip" averaged $2,217 in 2,431 locations, and "Monsters, Inc." averaged $1,925 in 2,618 cinemas. Playing just one matinee and one evening show a day at 840 theaters, "Cirque du Soleil" averaged $2,542. Since opening Wednesday, "Zero Dark Thirty" has taken in $639,000. Distributor Sony plans to expand the acclaimed film to nationwide release Jan. 11, amid film honors and nominations leading up to the Feb. 24 Academy Awards. Opening in 15 theaters from Lionsgate banner Summit Entertainment, Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor's tsunami-survival drama "The Impossible" took in $138,750 for an average of $9,250. A fourth new release from Paramount, "The Sopranos" creator David Chase's 1960s rock 'n' roll tale "Not Fade Away," debuted with $19,000 in three theaters, averaging $6,333. Universal's "Les Miserables" got a head-start on its domestic release with a $4.2 million debut in Japan. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 1. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," $36.7 million ($91 million international). 2. "Jack Reacher," $15.6 million ($2.5 million international). 3. "This Is 40," $12 million. 4. "Rise of the Guardians," $5.9 million ($13.7 million international). 5. "Lincoln," $5.6 million. 6. "The Guilt Trip," $5.4 million. 7. "Monsters, Inc." in 3-D, $5 million. 8. "Skyfall," $4.7 million ($9 million international), 9. "Life of Pi," $3.8 million ($23.2 million international). 10. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," $2.6 million ($6.6 million international). ___ Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak: 1. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," $91 million. 2. "Life of Pi," $23.2 million. 3. "Rise of the Guardians," $13.7 million. 4. "Skyfall," $9 million. 5. "Wreck-It Ralph," $7.3 million. 6. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," $6.6 million. 7. "Pitch Perfect," $6 million. 8. "Les Miserables," $4.2 million. 9. "Love 911," $3.2 million. 10. "De L'autre Cote du Periph," $3.1 million.

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Hillsborough charity single tops British chart

A charity single devoted to the victims of Britain's worst-ever sporting disaster has topped the U.K. singles chart to become a Christmas No. 1. The Official Charts Company said Sunday that The Justice Collective's version of "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," sold nearly 270,000 copies, beating out a debut single by music talent show winner James Arthur. Members of the collective, who include ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and former Spice Girl Mel C, are raising money for the families of those who died in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, which saw 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death at Sheffield Wednesday's ground. Many authorities blamed the fans for the crush, but years of campaigning from the families eventually led to an inquiry which held police and emergency services responsible.

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Serpico: Pacino played me better than I did

New York City police whistle-blower Frank Serpico says Al Pacino played him better than he did himself. Pacino played the detective who exposed widespread police corruption in the 1973 movie "Serpico." The Daily News (http://nydn.us/RMNYcB ) interviewed the real-life Serpico in Ghent, in New York's Hudson Valley, for a story published Sunday. The 76-year-old retiree spoke weeks after the death of fellow whistle-blowing ex-detective David Durk. Serpico smiled as an interviewer noted he is ranked No. 41, just behind Lassie, on the American Film Institute's list of movie heroes. He says that's "good company." The newspaper says Serpico keeps busy trying to finish a book and taking solitary walks. Serpico and Durk's efforts resulted in front-page newspaper stories and a city panel that recommended reforms to prevent police corruption.

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Witch burns, audience on fire at Vienna opera show

VIENNA (AP) — At the end of the evening, the witch was toast Sunday — or more precisely a gingerbread cookie — and the audience at Vienna's Volksoper loved it. Of course, with many at the performance of "Haensel und Gretel" at Vienna's second opera house under the age of 6, one could argue that it was an easy sell. And yes, the fairy tale set to music by Engelbert Humperdinck is bound to please kids, even if the singers and the orchestra are sub-par — which they weren't this evening. For the youngsters it's mostly about the action on stage. Like past generations, the children at Saturday's performance watched wide-eyed, captivated by the story of the brother and sister who get lost in the woods, are captured by the witch and finally escape her by tossing her in the oven, where, in this version of the tale, she turns into a huge gingerbread cookie. But more than half of the audience Saturday was adults without children, which tells us that there is much more to this opera than just a fairy tale that Vienna's "Omas" and "Opas" take their grandkids to, come Christmas. Humperdinck worked with Richard Wagner, the master of German operatic folklore, and his music, is Wagnerian — rich, lyrical and vaguely reminiscent of some of the German master's early works. The vocal line is melodic and ranges from pretty to the sublime, evoking occasional frissons even from gray-haired opera goers who have long outgrown fairy tales. This is music worth performing well. And it was, this Saturday. As Gretel, Rebecca Nelsen started off well and grew stronger. Her light-lyric soprano was a good fit for the role and she mugged her way admirably through the part of the young waif who saves her and her brother before they turn kids the witch has turned into gingerbread back to life. Mezzo Adrineh Simonian was Nelsen's perfect dramatic foil as the bumptious older brother who narrowly escapes turning into the witch's Sunday roast. Her voice — and acting — harmonized well with Nelsen's performance. Robert Woerle was a witch with a difference. The Volksoper version of a production from Karl Doench that premiered more than two decades ago has a man in that role, and what Woerle doesn't deliver terms of voice, he more than compensates for in terms of the creepy factor. His solo "Hur, hopp" as the witch rants about his evil plans for the kids, was a highlight Saturday. Sebastian Holecek was strong as Peter, the children's poverty-stricken father, tossing off his signature "Ach, wir armen, armen Leute (Oh, we poor, poor, people)" in a powerful and carefree manner that belied the difficulties of this aria. But Gertrud Ottenthal, as his wife, occasionally had to slide into some of her higher notes. Also good: Sera Goesch as the Sandman and Claudia Goebl as the Dew Man. In the orchestra pit, conductor Alfred Eschwe did justice to the full Germanic tapestry of the score, weaving a polyphonic musical manuscript to the onstage goings on. A work for kids? Not only. Richard Strauss, the great German composer of the early and mid-20th century, described Haensel und Gretel as "a masterwork of the highest quality," and its creator as "a great master."

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Bethenny Frankel and husband of 2 years separating

Bethenny Frankel and husband Jason Hoppy are separating. The 42-year-old TV personality, chef, author and entrepreneur told The Associated Press Sunday that the split brings her "great sadness." "This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family," Frankel said. "We have love and respect for one another and will continue to amicably co-parent our daughter who is and will always remain our first priority. This is an immensely painful and heartbreaking time for us." Frankel and Hoppy were married in 2010 and have a daughter, Bryn, who was born that same year. The couple's courtship and marriage were documented in two reality series, "Bethenny Getting Married?" and "Bethenny Ever After..." Frankel gained fame as a star of "The Real Housewives of New York City." Since her stint on the Bravo show, she has written four books, released a fitness video and founded her Skinnygirl line of cocktails, shapewear and nutritional supplements. She launched a talk show, "Bethenny," over the summer that is set to air nationally on Fox stations in 2013.

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