The Death of E-Readers Is All Your Fault

So there’s a reading gadget and a reading gadget with Angry Birds Star Wars. Which do you pick? Well, you, cultured person that you are, would select the dedicated e-reader, of course, just like you would rather watch Frontline instead of Honey Boo Boo, or pick up Vanity Fair instead of Us Weekly on the checkout line. Or at least that’s what the ideal version of yourself would do. But as Amazon and Barnes & Noble are quickly discovering this year, the highbrow ideal all too often gives way to the mass-market realities. Sales of the Kindle and especially the Nook fell this holiday season, despite lower prices than more fully functioning tablets, which are distinctly on the rise. And market researchers estimate that these divergent paths will continue — The Wall Street Journal reports that e-readers sales will be cut in half, from 14.9 million per year to just 7.8 million, by 2015. But the death of the e-reader has less to do with the iPad than what’s inside of it: from tablets to TV shows and everything in between, the most high-minded of ideas for cultural consumption always seem to devolve toward mindless entertainment.

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Take Bravo, the once completely enlightened — and completely failing — network that, like Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel before they became A&E and TLC, once devoted itself to being a slightly less boring knockoff of PBS. In 1985, five years after its founding, The New York Times‘s Steve Schneider described Bravo’s success, measured then by its 350,000 subscribers, as follows: 

What has kept things afloat for the past five years has been an evolving mix of cultural programming. Nowadays, a spokesman said, approximately 70 percent of the premium service’s schedule is devoted to films, nearly all of which are either from abroad, from the fringes of American production or from times past. The remainder of the schedule is given over to the performing arts -jazz concerts, ballet, opera, modern dance and the like. From Woody Allen films to documentaries about Latin America to performances by the Pina Bausch dance troupe, the offerings range from the challenging to the downright esoteric.

All that changed when NBC bought Bravo in 2002 and gave it a makeover almost completely motivated by ratings. It started with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which in its first year delivered 3.3 million viewers per episode. Then came the much acclaimed era of Top Chef and Project Runway, which are still considered highbrow in their own way, but only in the context of their fellow reality shows like The Real Housewives. And let’s face it: Bravo is pretty much all Housewives all the time. Well, that and a show about Silicon Valley that features no computer programming at all.

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And remember The Learning Channel? It was founded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, along with NASA. Really! Then in came Discovery as the new boss, and with it American Chopper and, eventually, TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, which birthed Honey Boo Boo — not to mention major ratings. Arts & Entertainment has long been a corporate entity, but it gave way from highbrow post-Nickelodeon fare and devolved into, you know, Dog the Bounty Hunter and whatever Gene Simmons is up to these days.

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It’s all a little reminiscent of the days when Us magazine was actually a glossy movie magazine that Hollywood stars loved to pose for. The New York Times started it! Then came a partnership with Disney, and J.Lo, and on and on to the supermarket tabloid you now know as Us Weekly, one of the most successful print publications on Earth.

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So, in the slowly dwindling technological world of the e-reader and its advanced brethren, Amazon‘s Kindle is like old-school TLC and the B&N Nook is maybe a little younger and cooler, like Bravo, but still failing; the iPad, however, has Here Comes Honey Boo Boo written all over it. Not that there’s anything wrong with what Amazon and Barnes & Noble were trying to do — a small audience might enjoy a device that has novels and long biographies and maybe some newspapers and little more. But the majority of people these days want to spend their downtime with HBO Go and Netflix apps, with games and email and other ways to relax their entire brains… not just the fancy parts of it. With tablet prices falling to more affordable levels — Amazon sells a Kindle Fire for $ 159 and a Kindle Paperwhite for $ 119 — of course today’s readers are going to choose the thing that helps them go beyond boring old reading. It might not have that easy-on-the eyes screen, but the majority of time spent on tablets isn’t spent reading books but answering emails, reading the news (a shorter reading experience than an entire book), and playing games, according to Pew. Plus, the iPad has its own Kindle app, for those times when you do, after all, feel like indulging in something a bit more highbrow. Because people do, still read a lot of books. They just like doing everything else a lot more. If the death of the e-reader is nigh, maybe the age of the straight-and-narrow, undistracted smartypants isn’t far from ending, either.

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Courteney Cox: I'll 'Show My Boobs' on the New Season of Cougar Town

TV Watch

01/04/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

Courteney Cox is taking the term "boob tube" literally.

The Cougar Town star, 48, whose show moves from ABC to TBS on Jan. 8, eagerly anticipates more um, revealing scenes once the program makes its way to the cable network.

"You will not see one scene that I don't show my boobs," Cox joked to reporters Friday at the Television Critics Association winter tour, according to Access Hollywood.

"You know what? I'm getting older, so I've decided at this point I'm taking less focus [on] the face, and focusing here," she added, pointing to her chest. "By the time I'm much older, I will just be absolutely nude. I think it's [going to] work for me, I hope."

The show's executive producer, Bill Lawrence, backed up Cox's comments. "There is one difference [with the show going to cable]," he said Friday. "I think I'm allowed to say … Courteney did declare this the year of her cleavage."

Still, the star isn't exactly baring it all. Although there is an episode themed "naked day" for Cox's character Jules and her on-camera hubby Grayson (Josh Hopkins), there will be no actual nudity on the show.

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CDC: 1 in 24 admit nodding off while driving

NEW YORK (AP) — This could give you nightmares: 1 in 24 U.S. adults say they recently fell asleep while driving.

And health officials behind the study think the number is probably higher. That's because some people don't realize it when they nod off for a second or two behind the wheel.

"If I'm on the road, I'd be a little worried about the other drivers," said the study's lead author, Anne Wheaton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the CDC study released Thursday, about 4 percent of U.S. adults said they nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month. Some earlier studies reached a similar conclusion, but the CDC telephone survey of 147,000 adults was far larger. It was conducted in 19 states and the District of Columbia in 2009 and 2010.

CDC researchers found drowsy driving was more common in men, people ages 25 to 34, those who averaged less than six hours of sleep each night, and — for some unexplained reason — Texans.

Wheaton said it's possible the Texas survey sample included larger numbers of sleep-deprived young adults or apnea-suffering overweight people.

Most of the CDC findings are not surprising to those who study this problem.

"A lot of people are getting insufficient sleep," said Dr. Gregory Belenky, director of Washington State University's Sleep and Performance Research Center in Spokane.

The government estimates that about 3 percent of fatal traffic crashes involve drowsy drivers, but other estimates have put that number as high as 33 percent.

Warning signs of drowsy driving: Feeling very tired, not remembering the last mile or two, or drifting onto rumble strips on the side of the road. That signals a driver should get off the road and rest, Wheaton said.

Even a brief moment nodding off can be extremely dangerous, she noted. At 60 mph, a single second translates to speeding along for 88 feet — the length of two school buses.

To prevent drowsy driving, health officials recommend getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, treating any sleep disorders and not drinking alcohol before getting behind the wheel.

__

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CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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Asian shares drop on Fed minutes, dollar extends gain

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares fell on Friday, tracking overnight weakness in global equities after senior Federal Reserve officials expressed concerns about continuing to expand stimulative bond buying, but the dollar extended gains as U.S. debt yields rose.

Minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting released on Thursday showed some voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee were increasingly concerned about the potential risks of the Fed's asset purchases on financial markets, even if it looked set to continue an open-ended stimulus program for now.

The Fed's asset-buying policy has been pivotal in underpinning investor risk appetite and supporting global equities, so the more hawkish Fed minutes unnerved financial markets on Thursday, driving benchmark U.S. Treasury yields up to a near eight-month high and weighing on equities and oil, while lifting the dollar.

The dollar was also bolstered by data showing U.S. private-sector hiring improved in December, raising hopes for a strong monthly payrolls report due later in the day, a key gauge to the U.S. economy and the Fed's future policy course.

The rise in the dollar hit precious metals and oil on Friday as a firmer dollar makes dollar-based assets more expensive for non-dollar holders.

The Fed's minutes prompted investors to book profits from rallies immediately after U.S. lawmakers earlier this week narrowly avoided falling off the "fiscal cliff" of automatic taxes increases and spending cuts, which risked derailing the economy.

"Market moves largely reflect positioning after the recent rallies and before the nonfarm payrolls, which could tip the markets either way," said Yuji Saito, director of foreign exchange at Credit Agricole in Tokyo.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> slid 0.8 percent, after scaling its highest since August 2011 on Thursday.

Australian shares <.axjo> slipped 0.4 percent, retreating from a two-day rally which took shares to their highest in more than 19 months on Thursday. Hong Kong shares <.hsi> tumbled 0.8 percent but Shanghai shares <.ssec> inched up 0.2 percent.

The dollar hit its highest since July 2010 against the yen at 87.78 while the euro fell to a three-week low of $1.3019 on Friday. The U.S. dollar <.dxy> also touched a near four-week high against a basket of major currencies.

"Dollar-positive momentum is solid as the fiscal cliff was averted, the overnight data was good and yields were rising. I won't be surprised to see the dollar rise to 90 yen soon," said Hiroshi Maeba, head of FX trading Japan for UBS in Tokyo.

"Despite repeated Japanese intervention, the dollar had refused to strengthen in the past, but now, it's advancing without any action, suggesting the direction has completely changed to support continued dollar buying," Maeba said.

The yen's tumble pushed Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock average <.n225> up 2.6 percent to its highest since March 2011, outshining the Asian regional bourses. Japanese markets were closed from December 31 to January 3 for the new year's holidays. <.t/>

Japanese government bonds skidded on their first trading day of 2013, with benchmark yields hitting a 3 1/2-month high in line with surging Japanese equities and a drop in U.S. Treasuries prices.

FISCAL CLIFF VS DATA

U.S. President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans face tough talks on spending cuts and an increase in the nation's debt limit as the hard-fought deal to avert the fiscal cliff covered only taxes and delayed decisions on expenditures until March 1.

But investor sentiment was supported by recent data showing activity in China's services sector and at U.S. factories expanded in December, which brightened the outlook for global growth.

"The minutes have added a fresh degree of uncertainty into the investment climate, which is likely to mean a steeper yield curve. But equity investors should take heart from the fact that the Fed's perception is qualified on an improving economy," Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co in New York, said in a note to clients.

China's services sector saw its slowest rate of expansion in nearly a year and a half in December, a private sector survey showed on Friday, but underlying growth revival remained intact, even if it were modest.

The U.S. economy likely added 150,000 jobs in December, according to a Reuters survey, up from 146,000 in November. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.7 percent.

Resolution of the U.S. fiscal cliff crisis could spell trouble for some Asian assets as investors could start to shift some money out of overpriced Asian investments in favor of the U.S. on brightening prospects for American stocks.

U.S. crude fell 0.8 percent to $92.17 a barrel while Brent shed 0.7 percent to $111.38.

U.S. gold futures for February dropped more than 1 percent to around $1,645 an ounce on Friday while spot gold also fell 1 percent to around $1,645, dragging silver down more than 2 percent to $29.48.

Despite the decline in equities markets, sentiment in Asian credit markets remained upbeat, with the spread on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index narrowing by two basis points.

(Editing by Eric Meijer)

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In Chile, Abortion Hot Line Is in Legal Gray Area

Roberto Candia for The New York Times

Volunteers for the Safe Abortion Hot Line in Chile routinely wear masks when showing support in public for the organization in a country where abortion is illegal under any circumstances.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Every time the phone rings, Angela Erpel feels her nerves swell. Sometimes it is a scared teenager on the other end, or a desperate mother of three. There are the angry ones, too, with callers playing the sounds of crying babies or sending text messages with pictures of aborted fetuses.

Then Ms. Erpel, 38, a sociologist who volunteers at Chile’s Safe Abortion Hot Line, gathers herself and settles into a familiar dialogue on the use of misoprostol, a drug that will induce a medical abortion.

“We don’t give them a moral guide or advice; we only provide information,” she said.

Since the hot line began in 2009, volunteers spread across this long, thin country have taken turns answering tense calls from women seeking information about abortion every evening from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. There have been more than 12,000 calls so far, and they continue rolling in at a steady clip.

In a country where abortion is entirely illegal, even in cases of rape or when a woman’s life is in danger, the hot line is a risky endeavor. Operating in a legal gray area, volunteers face a daunting prison sentence if a conversation veers too far from a lawyer-approved script. The hot line already has had three lawsuits brought against it, though all were eventually dropped.

According to the law, having an abortion carries a penalty of 5 to 10 years in prison, depending on the circumstances, while doctors and others who perform an abortion or assist with one could face up to 15 years, prosecutors say. In practice, however, fewer than 500 cases have been prosecuted over the last several years.

“I think there is a certain sensitivity to the social conditions behind these abortions, such as poverty or rape or teenage pregnancy,” explained Paula Vial, a lawyer and former public defender in Santiago.

Beyond the legal consequences, the 30 hot line volunteers are keenly aware of the social ramifications of taking an active role in such a polarizing issue. They wear masks when promoting the hot line at public gatherings, and are often vague about the details of their volunteer work in their daily lives. Many fear losing their jobs or driving a wedge into personal and family relationships. Indeed, Ms. Erpel was the only volunteer willing to go on the record about her work with the hot line, and even she is usually circumspect about it.

“It’s complicated,” she explained. “I’m open about being in an organization, but not necessarily that I work directly with abortion.”

Abortion was not always a clandestine affair in Chile. The current law that strictly bans it was one of the final acts of the dictatorship. In 1989, shortly before relinquishing power, Gen. Augusto Pinochet ended a tradition of legal abortion dating to 1931, in which a pregnancy that threatened a woman’s life, or a fetus that was not viable outside the womb, could be terminated. Chile’s law now is one of the strictest in the world.

By contrast, Uruguay legalized abortions in the first trimester for any reason last October, joining Guyana and Cuba as Latin American countries with broadly legalized procedures. Abortion is also legal in Mexico City. But Chile has remained a socially conservative country, after 20 years of economic growth and the election in 2006 of a woman as president.

“The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has had a very strong influence in public policy,” said Claudia Dides, a spokeswoman for the Movement for the Legal Interruption of Pregnancy.

In a pivotal case in 2008, Karen Espíndola, then 22, learned in her 12th week of pregnancy that her fetus had holoprosencephaly. Fetuses with the condition have a single-lobed brain, and most die before they are born. It is a common reason for terminating a pregnancy.

Ms. Espíndola sought an abortion, appealing to the president and setting off a national conversation over abortion. In February 2009, Ms. Espíndola gave birth to Osvaldo, who died in 2011.

“In reality he was never conscious he was alive,” she lamented. “He fought to breathe; he was fed through a tube. We all suffered a lot. Nobody here is a winner.”

Chile has witnessed a swell of liberal social movements in recent years, with gay men and lesbians pressing for the country’s first hate-crime legislation, environmentalists stalling dam-building projects in Patagonia, and students pushing for an overhaul of the education system.

Advocates contend that abortion rights sentiment bubbles near the surface as well, but the government has pushed back.

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Google emerges from FTC probe relatively unscathed

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google has settled a U.S. government probe into its business practices without making any major concessions on how the company runs its Internet search engine, the world’s most influential gateway to digital information and commerce.

Thursday’s agreement with the Federal Trade Commission covers only some of the issues raised in a wide-ranging antitrust investigation that could have culminated in a regulatory crackdown that re-shapes Internet search, advertising and mobile computing.

But the FTC didn’t find any reason to impose radical changes, to the relief of Google and technology trade groups worried about overzealous regulation discouraging future innovation. The resolution disappointed consumer rights groups and Google rivals such as Microsoft Corp., which had lodged complaints with regulators in hopes of legal action that would split up or at least hobble the Internet’s most powerful company.

Google is still trying to settle a similar antitrust probe in Europe. A resolution to that case is expected to come within the next few weeks.

After a 19-month investigation, Google Inc. placated the FTC by agreeing to a consent decree that will require the company to charge “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” prices to license hundreds of patents deemed essential to the operations of mobile phones, tablet computers, laptops and video game players.

The requirement is meant to ensure that Google doesn’t use patents acquired in last year’s $ 12.4 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility to thwart competition from mobile devices running on software other than Google‘s Android system. The products vying against Android include Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad, Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and Microsoft‘s Windows software.

Google also promised to exclude, upon request, snippets copied from other websites in capsules of key information shown in response to search requests. The company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Nonetheless, even before the settlement, Google already had scaled back on the amount of cribbing, or “scraping,” of online content after business review site Yelp Inc. lodged one of the complaints that triggered the FTC investigation in 2011.

In another concession, Google pledged to adjust the online advertising system that generates most of its revenue so marketing campaigns can be more easily managed on rival networks.

Google, though, prevailed in the pivotal part of the investigation, which delved into complaints that the Internet search leader has been highlighting its own services on its influential results page while burying links to competing sites. For instance, requests for directions may turn up Google Maps first, queries for video might point to the company’s own site, YouTube, and searches for merchandise might route users to Google Shopping.

Although the FTC said it uncovered some obvious instances of bias in Google‘s results during the investigation, the agency’s five commissioners unanimously concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to take legal action.

“Undoubtedly, Google took aggressive actions to gain advantage over rival search providers,” said Beth Wilkinson, a former federal prosecutor that the FTC hired to help steer the investigation. “However, the FTC’s mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors.”

Two consumer rights groups lashed out at the FTC for letting Google off too easily.

“The FTC had a long list of grievances against Google to choose from when deciding if they unfairly used their dominance to crush their competitors, yet they failed to use their authority for the betterment of the marketplace,” said Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute.

John Simpson of frequent Google critic Consumer Watchdog asserted: “The FTC rolled over for Google.”

David Wales, who was the FTC’s antitrust enforcement chief in 2008 and early 2009, said the agency had to balance its desire to prevent a powerful company from trampling the competition against the difficulty of proving wrongdoing in a rapidly changing Internet search market.

“This is a product of the FTC wanting to push the envelope of antitrust enforcement without risking the danger of losing a case in in court,” said Wales, who wasn’t involved with the case and is now a partner at the law firm Jones Day.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the outcome “is good for consumers, it is good for competition, it is good for innovation and it is the right thing to do.” Before reaching its conclusion, the FTC reviewed more than 9 million pages of documents submitted by Google and its rivals and grilled top Internet industry executives during sworn depositions.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a technology trade group, applauded the FTC for its handling of the high-profile case.

“This was a prudent decision by the FTC that shows that antitrust enforcement, in the hands of responsible regulators, is sufficiently adaptable to the realities of the Internet age,” said Ed Black, the group’s president.

The FTC has previously been criticized for not doing more to curb Google‘s power. Most notably, the FTC signed off on Google‘s $ 3.2 billion purchase of online advertising service DoubleClick in 2008 and its $ 681 million acquisition of mobile ad service AdMob in 2010. Google critics contend those deals gave the company too much control over the pricing of digital ads, which account for the bulk of Google‘s revenue.

If Google breaks any part of the agreement, Leibowitz said the FTC can fine the company up to $ 16,000 per violation. Last year, the FTC determined that Google broke an agreement governing Internet privacy, resulting in a $ 22.5 million fine, though the company didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Google‘s ability to protect its search recipe from government-imposed changes represents a major victory for a company that has always tried to portray itself as force for good. The Mountain View, Calif., company has portrayed its dominant search engine as a free service that is constantly tweaking its formula so that people get the information they desire more quickly and concisely.

“The conclusion is clear: Google‘s services are good for users and good for competition,” David Drummond, Google‘s top lawyer, wrote in a Thursday blog post.

Google‘s tactics also have been extremely lucrative. Although Google has branched into smartphones and many other fields since its founding in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998, Internet search and advertising remains its financial backbone. The intertwined services still generate more than 90 percent of Google‘s revenue, which now exceeds $ 50 billion annually.

Throughout the FTC investigation, Google executives also sought to debunk the notion that the company’s recommendations are the final word on the Internet. They pointed out that consumers easily could go to Microsoft‘s Bing, Yahoo or other services to search for information. “Competition is just a click away,” became as much of a Google mantra as the company’s official motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Microsoft cast the FTC’s investigation as a missed opportunity.

“The FTC’s overall resolution of this matter is weak and — frankly —unusual,” Dave Heiner, Microsoft‘s deputy general counsel, wrote on the company’s blog. “We are concerned that the FTC may not have obtained adequate relief even on the few subjects that Google has agreed to address.”

FairSearch, a group whose membership includes Microsoft, called the FTC’s settlement “disappointing and premature,” given that European regulators might be able to force Google to make more extensive changes.

“The FTC’s inaction on the core question of search bias will only embolden Google to act more aggressively to misuse its monopoly power to harm other innovators,” FairSearch asserted.

Yelp also criticized the FTC’s handling of the case, calling “it a missed opportunity to protect innovation in the Internet economy, and the consumers and businesses that rely upon it.”

Investors had already been anticipating Google would emerge from the inquiry relatively unscathed.

Google‘s stock rose 42 cents Thursday to close at $ 723.67. Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., shed 37 cents, or 1.3 percent, to finish at $ 27.25.

In a research note Thursday, Macquarie Securities analyst Benjamin Schachter described the settlement as “the best possible outcome” for Google. “We believe that the terms of the agreement will have very limited negative financial or strategic implications for the company.” Schachter wrote.

___

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this story.

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George Lucas Engaged to Mellody Hobson

01/03/2013 at 07:35 PM EST

George Lucas and Mellody Hobson

Mike Coppola/Getty

George Lucas is following the Force – right down the aisle.

The Star Wars director, 68, is engaged to DreamWorks animation chairman Mellody Hobson, a rep for Lucasfilm confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday.

Hobson, 43, has been dating Lucas since 2006. This will be her first marriage and Lucas's second; he previously was married to film editor Marcia Lou Griffin. The exes adopted a daughter Amanda before their 1983 divorce. Lucas went on to adopt two more children.

Lucas's fiancée is also a contributor to Good Morning America's financial segments and has received many honors, including a 2002 listing as one of Esquire's "Best and Brightest" in America.

Lucas has made headlines of his own, recently donating to an education foundation much of the $4 billion from his sale of Lucasfilm to Disney.

According to THR, Lucas said at the time, "As I start a new chapter in my life, it is gratifying that I have the opportunity to devote more time and resources to philanthropy."

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

___

Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Asia stocks eke out gains on China hopes, oil eases

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Most Asian stock markets edged higher on Thursday on hopes of a steady economic revival in China although oil gave back some of the previous session's strong gains as investors took some money off the table and braced for more U.S. budget battles.

The MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan index of stocks <.miapj0000pus> was up 0.3 percent following Wednesday's 2 percent jump on relief that U.S. politicians had averted the "fiscal cliff". Japan's Nikkei 225 <.n225> rose 0.7 percent.

Data from China showing the services sectors expanded in December continued to underpin expectations of an economic recovery that has helped spur a strong rally in Hong Kong-listed Chinese shares <.hsce> over the past month.

The China Enterprises index <.hsce> rose 0.4 percent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index <.hsce> was up 0.2 percent and hovered near its highest since June 2011.

"China looks like its improving at the margin and the market has momentum that could last for at least a few months," said Christian Keilland, head of trading at BTIG in Hong Kong.

"Investors seem to have accepted that reforms are underway but they're going to happen at a slower pace," said Keilland.

Onshore Chinese markets will resume trading in the new year on Friday.

Australian stocks <.axjo> rose for a second straight day and were up 0.6 percent at a 19-month high, with mining giants Rio Tinto up 2 percent and BHP Billiton up 0.5 percent, among the top boosts on the benchmark index.

But South Korea's Kospi <.ks11> underperformed the region, falling 0.4 percent as automakers and exporters slumped on a stronger Korean won, which hit a 16-month high against the dollar overnight.

In other currency markets, the Japanese yen bounced after hitting a 29-month low versus the dollar earlier in the day but analysts warned that any strength is likely to be short-lived.

"Technically dollar/yen looks somewhat overbought here. It's gone a long way in a very short time," said Callum Henderson, global head of FX research for Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, adding that the dollar could see some consolidation in the near term before heading higher.

The euro which in overnight trading was close to a 8-1/2 month high against the dollar, slipped 0.1 percent.

The U.S. dollar rose 0.3 percent <.dxy> against a basket of major currencies.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans face even bigger budget battles in the next two months after the hard-fought deal halted a round of automatic fiscal tightening that threatened to push the world's largest economy into recession.

Strength in the dollar and profit-taking pushed oil prices lower with Brent crude slipping below $112 a barrel and U.S. crude futures down 57 cents to $92.55.

"After the initial excitement, reality sets in," said Victor Shum, oil consultant at IHS Purvin & Gertz. "There will be other negotiations and the deal is a compromise."

(Reporting by Vikram Subhedar; Editing by Kim Coghill)

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Spain’s Chinese Immigrants Thrive in Tough Economy

BARCELONA, Spain — When Jiajia Wang’s parents first moved to Barcelona from China in the 1990s, they had no working papers and spoke no Spanish. The family ate eggs to survive. Her mother and father worked 12-hour days at a Chinese restaurant.

After five years, they bought a restaurant of their own with money borrowed from relatives, interest-free. She and her brother washed the dishes. Her parents slept on a mattress in the bathroom of their cramped apartment so that the children could study at night in the other room.

Today, while Spanish youth unemployment hovers around 50 percent, Ms. Wang, 24, who studied economics at Harvard on a one-year fellowship, juggles four jobs: teaching Mandarin, advising Chinese investors in Spain, running a publishing house and writing romantic novels. She sends home €1,000, or about $1,300, a month to support her parents, who retired last year.

Her family’s story is telling of the ways many of Spain’s 170,000 Chinese immigrants have managed not only to weather a tough economy but even to thrive, aided by intense labor and a strong Confucian model of family loyalty, while joblessness and cuts to government services have left other Spaniards struggling.

“The Chinese family is less dependent on the government because the family is the welfare state, the bank and social services, all wrapped in one,” Ms. Wang said.

“For Chinese people who lived through hardship back home,” she added, “working 16-hour days is nothing, and that has made us more resilient during the crisis.”

The Spanish government itself seems to have recognized the importance of this success. So determined is it to attract Chinese immigrants that in November it passed a law offering residency permits to foreigners who buy homes worth more than €160,000, with the specific aim of drawing Chinese and Russian investment, lawmakers said.

As hard-hit Spaniards struggle to keep both their jobs and their homes, Spain’s Chinese immigrants in Barcelona and Madrid are starting businesses and buying distressed properties from the bursting of Spain’s housing bubble.

Of the 8,613 foreigners who started businesses in the past 10 months, 30 percent, or 2,569 were Chinese, according to the National Federation of Self-Employed Workers.

InfoChina Gestión, a real estate company based in Madrid that focuses on Chinese investors, said the number of houses sold for €70,000 to €100,000 to Chinese nearly doubled last year, to 813. Mr. House, a real estate company in Madrid, said it was selling at least 10 houses a month to Chinese, a majority of whom paid at least 80 percent in cash.

The types of work many Chinese immigrants gravitate toward helps explain their success as much as their work ethic. In a time of economic crisis, ubiquitous low-margin Chinese-owned bazaars, hairdressers and supermarkets have become a lure for cost-conscious Spanish consumers.

“If it wasn’t for the Chinese shops, it would be harder to scrape by,” said Ester Maduerga, 30, a saleswoman at a sports shoe store, as she scanned the notepads, leather belts and plastic alligators at One Hundred and More, a Chinese-owned bazaar here.

Xi Li He, 26, the bazaar’s manager and cashier, said the business was flourishing, in part because he had reduced prices by importing inexpensive goods from China. When Mr. Xi, fresh from business school, tried to take a job at a large Spanish retailer, he said his mother doubled his salary.

That kind of success by Chinese immigrants has provided a beachhead of sorts for further investment from China that has pumped some life into an otherwise moribund Spanish economy.

Before Spain’s crisis exploded in 2008, Chinese foreign investment in Spain was negligible. By last year, it had grown to €70 million, according to ICEX, a government investment agency.

Ivana Casaburi, a professor of international marketing at Esade business school in Barcelona, said Chinese companies were being drawn to Spain because it offered a low-cost gateway to the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Isla Ramos Chaves, an executive at the Chinese computer maker Lenovo, said that even with the crisis, Spain — the fourth-largest economy in the euro zone — remained a market that Chinese companies were eager to tap. She added that Chinese multinationals in Spain were proving robust, in part because they were anchored by a huge domestic market back home.

Executives at Haier, the Chinese-owned appliance maker, said the economic crisis, rather than being a deterrent, had provided an opportunity, as Spaniards were willing to consider competitively priced washing machines and air-conditioners, even if their brands were less well known.

“I am not sure we would have been as successful if the market was stable and growing,” said Santiago Belenguer, the general manager of Haier’s Spanish operations.

The success of Chinese newcomers to Spain has not spawned the kind of anti-immigrant backlash seen in some hard-pressed parts of Europe like Greece. Immigration experts said Spain’s relatively welcoming attitude reflected its new openness after the repression of the Franco years, when the country was a nation of emigration. Since the crisis, the return of thousands of Latin American immigrants to their home countries from Spain has also relieved pressure on the work force.

That does not mean everyone has championed the success of the Chinese, and some complain of stereotyping and being targeted by law enforcement.

In October, the police arrested 80 people in a nationwide crackdown on Chinese criminal gangs engaged in money-laundering and tax evasion. The police said the low price of Chinese products was being abetted by some importers not declaring shipments from China, thereby avoiding taxes.

Here in Barcelona, José Rodríguez, the owner of A Porta Galega, a traditional tapas cafe in the hip neighborhood of Eixample, said cut-rate prices for everything from beer to shampoo at Chinese-owned shops made it impossible for Spaniards to compete. At least a dozen Chinese-owned tapas bars are scattered along his block.

Still, he added, he would sell his own restaurant to Chinese buyers, “for the right price.”

Silvia Taulés contributed reporting.

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