The Lede Blog: Tear Gas in Tahrir Two Years After Revolution's Start

Label:

Last Updated, 11:28 p.m. Bloggers in Cairo reported that tear gas was fired into Tahrir Square by the police Thursday night, as Egypt braced for a day of protests to mark the second anniversary of the revolution that began on Jan. 25, 2011.

As the Cairene blogger who writes as The Big Pharaoh explained, officers from the Central Security Forces fired the gas at protesters after the crowd started to pull down a wall blocking an entrance to the square on Qasr al-Aini Street.

The activist Sherief Gaber, who writes as @cairocitylimits, pointed to video of cheers erupting from the crowd as the wall was torn down on Thursday.

Hours after the fighting began, The Big Pharaoh called the clashes “useless,” coming on the eve of planned demonstrations in the same area to note continuing dissatisfaction with Egypt’s postrevolutionary government.

After the wall was destroyed, the Cairo daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that soldiers had been deployed to build a new one on the same street.

At about 6 a.m. on Friday morning, The Big Pharaoh posted an image of clouds of tear gas in Tahrir Square and expressed his amazement that the police had apparently continued firing canisters throughout the night.

Read More..

Samsung puts lid on capex for first time since financial crisis

Label:





SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co turned cautious on spending for the first time since the global financial crisis, keeping its annual investment plan unchanged at 2012 levels, as demand for computer chips wanes and the smartphone market slows.


Samsung, one of the industry’s most aggressive spenders, has ramped up capital expenditure every year since 2004 except 2009 to meet soaring demand for its array of consumer electronics and mobile devices. It sold a record 700,000 smartphones a day in the last quarter.






But with the personal computer market shrinking for the first time in 11 years, the global smartphone market growing more slowly, and Apple Inc moving to buy fewer of Samsung‘s microprocessors used in the iPhone and iPad, the South Korean IT giant is now forced to keep a lid on spending.


“Overall its earnings momentum remains intact, and smartphone shipments will continue to grow even in the traditionally weak first quarter, as Samsung’s got a broader product line-up and Apple appears to be struggling in pushing iPhone volumes aggressively,” said Lee Se-chul, a Seoul-based analyst at Meritz Securities.


Samsung, which reported a record quarterly and annual profit on Friday, said it would keep 2013 capital expenditure unchanged from 2012.


“The key word for us in investment in 2013 is flexibility. We’ll decide as the market demand dictates,” Robert Yi, head of Samsung’s investor relations, told analysts.


Data from the company shows Samsung started to slow down planned investment in the last quarter.


Samsung said it spent 4.4 trillion won in October-December, pushing its 2012 investment to a record 23 trillion won ($ 21.5 billion). But the company said in October that it was on course to spend 25 trillion won in 2012.


Analysts had expected a 4-20 percent cut in Samsung’s 2013 capital spending.


By contrast, Taiwanese rival TSMC is planning to raise its capital expenditure to $ 9 billion this year, aimed in part at winning Apple orders away from Samsung.


Shares in Samsung fell 2.1 percent as of 0250 GMT, lagging a 1.1 percent decline in the wider market.


RECORD EARNINGS


Samsung had poured money into factories to boost production of chips and panels used in Apple products and its Galaxy range devices, pushing its operating profit to 8.84 trillion won in the last quarter. The 89 percent increase from a year earlier was in line with its earlier estimate.


Profit at its mobile devices division, which makes phones, tablets and cameras, more than doubled to 5.44 trillion won in the quarter from a year earlier, lifted by a broader offering of smartphones – from the very cheap to the very expensive.


The division accounted for 62 percent of Samsung’s overall fourth-quarter profit, up from 55 percent a year earlier.


Samsung is also seeing strong sales of its Note phablet, which analysts expect to help Samsung get through any seasonal weakness better than rivals.


Samsung, which doesn’t provide a breakdown of smartphone sales, is estimated to have sold around 63 million smartphones in the last quarter, including 15 million Galaxy S IIIs and 7 million Note IIs.


The company also said 2012 operating profit rose 86 percent to an all-time high of 29 trillion won.


SAMSUNG VS APPLE


Samsung sold 213 million smartphones last year and enlarged its share of the global market to 30.4 percent from around 20 percent in 2011, a report by market research firm Strategy Analytics showed on Friday. The sharp increase reflects Samsung’s aggressive marketing of its wide product range.


Apple’s share of the market shrank slightly to 19.4 percent from 19.0 percent in 2011, according to the report.


Globally, sales of smartphones surged 42.7 percent last year to 700 million, Strategy Analytics said.


Samsung said on Friday it expects the global smartphone segment to shrink in January-March from the seasonally strong fourth quarter, and that growth of the overall handset market will slow to the mid single-digits this year.


The forecast is in line with industry estimates, with signs of a slowdown having already emerged.


Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in the three months ended December, a record that nonetheless disappointed many analysts accustomed to years of outperformance. The Cupertino, California-based company also missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for a third straight quarter as iPhone sales lagged expectations.


Apple shares have dropped by more than a third since mid-September as investors fret that its days of hyper growth are over and its devices are no longer as ‘must-have’ as they were.


By contrast, shares in Samsung have risen 12 percent in the same period as the company once seen as quick to copy the ideas of others now sets the pace in innovation.


At the world’s biggest electronics show in Las Vegas this month, Samsung unveiled a prototype phone with a flexible display that can be folded almost like paper, and a microchip with eight processing cores, creating a buzz that these may be used in the next Galaxy range.


“It’s very probable to us that the Exynos 5 Octa (processor) will find its way into the Galaxy S4,” UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois wrote in a recent note.


“It also looked as if the curved display is close enough to finished product. We came away even more convinced that displays will provide significant differentiation to Samsung devices, and application processors will materially grow over time,” Gaudois said. ($ 1 = 1066.2000 Korean won)


(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ryan Woo)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Samsung puts lid on capex for first time since financial crisis
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/samsung-puts-lid-on-capex-for-first-time-since-financial-crisis/
Link To Post : Samsung puts lid on capex for first time since financial crisis
Rating:
100%

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




Read More..

American Idol Auditions in Baton Rouge Are (Almost) Drama-Free

Label:





American Idol






By Steve Helling





01/24/2013 at 10:00 PM EST







From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban


George Holz/FOX


There were no catfights on Thursday's American Idol. No one stormed off the set. Everyone was on their best behavior as contestants auditioned in Baton Rouge, La.

That's not to say that things didn't get weird. Nicki Minaj nicknamed one contestant "Mushroom" and rubbed her fingers through his hair to bestow her "special powers" on him. (Whenever Minaj speaks, Mariah Carey simply stares off into space, as if she's just trying to find her happy place.) The Idol producers also began a baffling trend of splicing footage of squealing farm animals between the bad auditions.

But there were some bright spots: Burnell Taylor, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, made Carey cry with his capable rendition of "I'm Here" from the musical The Color Purple. "This is what we came for," said Minaj, who was apparently speaking about Taylor's voice, not Carey's tears. "While everyone else auditioned, you entertained us."

Hulking firefighter Dustin Watts wowed the judges with his version of Garth Brooks's "She's Every Woman." And yes, ladies, he's single. We know this because Minaj continued her practice of asking good-looking guys if they have a girlfriend. "You have a great style," Keith Urban told Watts. "You've got a confidence about you."

Tennessean Paul Jolley's family seemed shocked that he made it to Hollywood, which may have been overdone, considering that the 22-year-old singer has opened for country stars Chely Wright, Lorrie Morgan and Aaron Tippin. His pleasant version of "I Won't Let Go" by Rascal Flatts impressed the judges. "It was effortless," said Carey. "I know that people are going to love you."

Perhaps the most unique contestant of the night was Calvin Peters, a 27-year-old physician from Fort Worth, Texas. The third-year resident is known as "the singing doctor," and wowed the judges with his audition of Maxwell's "Whenever, Wherever, Whatever." Carey called him "handsome," which seems to be a trend this season.

Most of the night's successful women were lumped into a montage, except for Miss Baton Rouge Megan Miller, who impressed the judges while auditioning on crutches. Perhaps the lack of female character development is a reason why the show hasn't crowned a woman champ since Jordin Sparks won in 2007. Then again, the judges this season seem confident a female singer is going to win.

Before the episode could end without a drop of drama, Urban accidentally referred to Minaj as "Mariah." Both women shot him withering looks and commanded him to say more than 1000 Hail Marys.

Read More..

Women have caught up to men on lung cancer risk

Label:

Smoke like a man, die like a man.


U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.


Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.


"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.


The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.


The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.


Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.


They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.


One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.


A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods — 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 — using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.


Among the findings:


— The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.


—A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.


—Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.


—Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.


—Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.


—The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.


Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.


Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.


The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.


Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.


"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.


Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years — to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.


"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.


It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."


___


Online:


American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org


National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung


Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org


___


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


Read More..

S&P up for sixth day, Apple slip could halt rally

Label:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 rose for a sixth day on Wednesday after stronger-than-expected profits from IBM and Google but the rally could be halted as Apple's after-hours miss sent its shares lower.


The S&P was just 4.7 percent from its all-time closing high as IBM's and Google's earnings, released after Tuesday's close, followed on the heels of stronger U.S. economic data.


"People were kind of nervous about earnings coming into this quarter but numbers have shown so far strength in earnings," said King Lip, chief investment officer at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco.


But Apple , still the largest U.S. publicly traded company, fell 8 percent in extended trading after sales of its flagship iPhone came in below analyst targets and quarterly revenue slightly missed Wall Street expectations.


"One thing that stands out is the company's ballooning balance sheet, where they now have $137 billion dollars in cash and investments," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut. "You've got to wonder when they're going to put some more of that to work."


Declining issues beat advancers in both the NYSE and Nasdaq during regular market hours, in a sign the market's rally may be overstretched. The broad Russell 2000 index <.rut> closed the day down 0.3 percent after earlier hitting and intraday historic high just below 900 points.


Shares in IBM Corp , the world's largest technology services company, climbed 4.4 percent during regular market hours to $204.72, providing just about all of the Dow's 67-point gain.


Also helping the tech sector was a 5.5 percent jump in Google Inc to $741.50. The Internet search company reported its core business outpaced expectations and revenue was higher than expected.


The S&P technology sector <.splrct> rose 1.2 percent.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 67.12 points or 0.49 percent, to 13,779.33, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 2.25 points or 0.15 percent, to 1,494.81, and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 10.49 points or 0.33 percent, to 3,153.67.


The benchmark S&P 500 is a mere 0.35 percent away from hitting 1,500, a level not seen since December 12, 2007.


S&P 500 futures fell 4.1 points, or 0.3 percent, while Nasdaq 100 futures fell 20 points or 0.7 percent.


Netflix shares soared 32 percent, above $136, after the video subscription service said it added subscribers in the United States and abroad and posted a quarterly profit.


LED maker Cree Inc jumped 22 percent to $40.85 after it forecast a higher-than-expected third-quarter profit, and reported results above analysts' estimates.


Upscale leather goods maker Coach Inc plunged 16.4 percent to $50.75 after reporting sales that missed expectations.


Clearing a market hurdle, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Republican-led plan to extend the country's borrowing authority until mid May. This delays a confrontation in Congress similar to one in 2011, which generated a stalemate that triggered the first-ever U.S. debt rating downgrade.


Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday showed that of the 99 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 67.7 percent have topped expectations, above the 65 percent average beat over the past four quarters.


Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings rose 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season.


Top U.S. manufacturers sounded a confident note about their expectations for 2013 on Wednesday as fears of the year-end "fiscal cliff" faded into memory.


In the regular session, about 6.1 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the 2012 daily average of about 6.45 billion.


On the NYSE, roughly 15 issues fell for every 14 that rose and on Nasdaq seven declined for every five gainers.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Diane Craft)



Read More..

Clinton Cites New Security Steps After Libya Attack

Label:

Christopher Gregory/The New York Times


The secretary of state faced tough questions over the attack on an American mission. Page A11.







WASHINGTON — In one of her final appearances as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday vigorously defended her handling of last September’s attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans and prompted a scathing review of State Department procedures.




“As I have said many times, I take responsibility, and nobody is more committed to getting this right,” she said, reading a statement during a day of testimony before Senate and House committees. “I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger and more secure.”


But Mrs. Clinton, whose appearance before Congress had been postponed since December because of illness, quickly departed from the script. She jousted with Republican lawmakers over who deserved blame for the security problems at the compound, and choked up as she described being at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington when the bodies of the Americans killed in the assault arrived from Libya.


“I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews,” she said. “I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters.”


The continuing controversy over the attack, which resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, has cast a cloud over Mrs. Clinton’s final months at the State Department. It also has enormous political implications for Mrs. Clinton, the former New York senator who is already regarded as the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination if she chooses to run. It was the first time she had faced extensive questioning about her role in the episode.


In essence, Mrs. Clinton’s approach was to accept the responsibility for security lapses in Benghazi but not the blame.


“I feel responsible for the nearly 70,000 people who work for the State Department,” Mrs. Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the morning. “But the specific security requests pertaining to Benghazi, you know, were handled by the security professionals in the department. I didn’t see those requests. They didn’t come to me. I didn’t approve them. I didn’t deny them.”


When the question of her role was taken up again in the afternoon hearing by Representative Ed Royce, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that she had been briefed on a series of events that indicated that security in Benghazi was deteriorating in the months before the attack. They included the placement of a bomb at the outer wall of the compound in June and an ambush that month on the British ambassador.


But she said she had gone along with a recommendation from subordinates that the Benghazi post be kept open and assumed that they would take the necessary steps to protect it.


Mrs. Clinton first publicly took responsibility for the Sept. 11 attack in an Oct. 15 interview with television reporters. Since then, she has committed herself to putting in place all of the recommendations of an independent review that was led by Thomas R. Pickering, a former American ambassador, and Mike Mullen, the retired admiral who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


For all of the hours of testimony, the hearings did little to clarify the role of the White House in overseeing the American presence in Libya before the attack or explain why the Pentagon had few forces available on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to respond quickly to any assault on diplomatic outposts in the region.


One of the sharpest exchanges of the day came when Mrs. Clinton responded to questions from Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, by saying there was too much focus on how the Benghazi attack had been characterized in its early hours and not enough on how to prevent a recurrence. Republicans have repeatedly charged that Obama administration officials deliberately played down the attack, focusing much of their criticism on Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations and once Mr. Obama’s choice to succeed Mrs. Clinton.


Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.



Read More..

Apple’s iPhone disappointment fans doubt on growth

Label:





SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for the third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears that its dominance of the mobile industry was slipping.


Shares of the world’s largest tech company fell 10 percent to $ 463 in after-hours trade, wiping out some $ 50 billion of its market value – nearly equivalent to that of Hewlett-Packard and Dell, combined.






On Wednesday, Apple said it shipped a record 47.8 million iPhones in the December quarter, up 29 percent from the year-ago period. But that lagged the 50 million that analysts on average had projected.


Expectations heading into the results had been subdued by news of possible production cutbacks by some component suppliers in Asia, triggering fears that demand for the iPhone, which accounts for half of Apple‘s revenue, and the iPad could be slowing.


But many investors clung to hopes for a repeat of years of historical outperformance, analysts said.


“It’s going to call into question Apple‘s dominance in the space. It’s still one of the strong players, the others being Samsung and Google. It’s still a two-horse race, but Android continues to grow rapidly,” said Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu.


“If you step back a bit, it’s clear they shipped a lot of phones. But the problem is the high expectations that investors have. Apple‘s conservative guidance highlights the concerns over production cuts coming out of Asia recently.”


Apple projected revenue of $ 41 billion to $ 43 billion in the current, second fiscal quarter, lagging the average Wall Street forecast of more than $ 45 billion.


Fiscal first quarter revenue rose 18 percent to $ 54.5 billion, below the average analyst estimate of $ 54.73 billion, though earnings per share of $ 13.81 beat the Street forecast of $ 13.47, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


Apple also undershot revenue targets in the previous two quarters, and these results will prompt more questions on what Apple has in its product pipeline, and what it can do to attract new sales and maintain its growth trajectory, analysts said.


Net income of $ 13.07 billion was virtually flat with $ 13.06 billion a year earlier on higher manufacturing costs. The year-ago quarter also had an extra week compared to this year.


Gross margins consequently slid to 38.6 percent, from 44.7 percent previously.


“You can’t just keep rolling out iPhones and iPads and think that everybody needs a new one,” said Jeffrey Gundlach, who runs DoubleLine Capital LP, the $ 53 billion bond firm. “The mini? What is that all about? It is a slightly smaller iPad — so what? So that is our new definition of innovation?”


“There are plenty of competitors like Samsung and other legitimate competitors like them,” added Gundlach, one of the highest-profile Apple bears. He maintains a $ 425 price target.


Shares of several of Apple‘s suppliers crumbled. Chip suppliers Skyworks and Cirrus Logic both fell more than 6 percent. Qualcomm Inc slipped 1.8 percent.


CHINA IS NEXT BIG GROWTH DRIVER


Apple shares are down nearly 30 percent from a record high in September, in part on worries that its days of hyper growth are over and its mobile devices are no longer as popular.


Intense competition from Samsung‘s cheaper phones – powered by Google’s Android software – and signs that the premium smartphone market may be close to saturation in developed markets have also caused a lot of investor anxiety.


Meanwhile, sales of the iPad came in at 22.9 million in the fiscal first quarter, roughly in line with forecasts.


On the brighter side, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters that iPhone sales more than doubled in greater China – a region that Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has vowed to focus on as its next big growth driver.


The company will begin detailing results from that country going forward. Revenue from the region totaled $ 7.3 billion, up 60 percent from the year-ago December quarter.


“These results were OK, but they definitely raised a few questions,” said Shannon Cross, analyst with Cross Research. “Gross margin trajectory looks fine so that’s a positive and cash continues to grow. But I think investors are going to want to know what Apple plans to do with growing cash balance.”


“And other questions are going to be around innovation and where the next products are coming from and what does Tim Cook see in the next 12 to 18 months.”


ADDRESSING PRODUCTION RUMORS


In an unusual move for Apple, which typically does not respond to speculation, Cook addressed the production cutback rumors at length on the conference call and questioned the accuracy of rumors about its plans.


Media reports earlier this month said the company is slashing orders for iPhone 5 and iPad screens and other components from its Asian suppliers.


“Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to accurately interpret the data point as to what it meant for our overall business, because the supply chain is very complex,” he said, adding that Apple has multiple sources for components.


“Yields might vary. Supplier performance can vary. The beginning inventory positions can vary. There’s just an inordinately long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on,” he said.


Apple‘s initial iPhone and iPad mini sales were hurt by supply constraints, but Cook expects supply to balance demand for the iPad mini this quarter. He also acknowledged that iPad was cannibalizing its high-margin Macintosh computers, but said it was a huge opportunity for the company.


“On iPad in particular, we have the mother of all opportunities here, because the Windows market is much, much larger than the Mac market is,” he said. And I think it is clear that it’s already cannibalizing some.”


In another departure from tradition, Apple intends to tweak the way it both reports results and publishes forecasts.


Apart from breaking out results from China, the company also will no longer provide a single revenue or gross margin outlook. From Wednesday, it began providing the range it expects to hit, rather than the often-ludicrously conservative estimates that Apple was once notorious for.


The new policy took many by surprise.


“Before people could always ignore the guidance,” said Dan Niles, Chief Investment Officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners, LLC. “Apple is telling investors that they need to pay attention to the guidance and you can’t ignore it, which is basically what we all did in the past.”


(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr and Edwin Chan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Apple’s iPhone disappointment fans doubt on growth
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/apples-iphone-disappointment-fans-doubt-on-growth/
Link To Post : Apple’s iPhone disappointment fans doubt on growth
Rating:
100%

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




Read More..

Nicki Minaj Storms Off American Idol Set in Charlotte, N.C.

Label:





American Idol






By Jamie Bufalino





01/23/2013 at 10:50 PM EST







From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban


Michael Becker/FOX.


As American Idol's talent search headed to Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday, the already-tense relationship between judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj went even further south.

Things got so heated that the production had to shut down for a bit, leaving a speedway full of aspiring singers sitting idle. The cause of the friction? Disagreements over the judges' varying styles of critique – particularly when it came to 20-year-old Summer Cunningham.

"Why are we picking her apart?" Minaj asked after Carey questioned whether the contestant's voice was best-suited for country music.

"Really? Is that what I did?" responded Carey. "We're trying to help her as opposed to just talk about her outfit."

That retort caused Minaj to throw a fit. "Oh, you're right. I'm sorry I can't help her. Maybe I should just get off the [BLEEP] panel," she said before walking off the set.

As Minaj left, Carey got in one more shot: Referring to Minaj storming off, she said, "I was going to do that the next time she ragged on me."

But the judging panel – including Keith Urban and Randy Jackson – also had plenty moments of togetherness in Charlotte. They gave unanimous thumbs up to Brian Rittenberry, 27 – a dad from Jasper, Ga., whose wife bounced back from battling cancer – for belting out "Let It Be" with a big booming voice.

They also swooned over 16-year-old Isabel Gonzalez, who Jackson plucked out of a high school class to audition for Idol as part of this season's new nomination segments. And they were all in agreement that 20-year-old Joel Nemoyer from Carlisle, Pa., should try a different line of work after he tried crooning a Michael Bublé song while lying flat on his back.

Even without the histrionics, Minaj proved to be the most entertaining of the judges. Between her ongoing habit of assigning nicknames to all the contestants – she dubbed singers everything from "collard greens" to "Jumanji" – Minaj also managed to ask hilariously bizarre questions ("Have you ever lived in Tokyo?") and put new and sometimes creepy twists on her positive critiques. "I want to skin you and wear you," she told one girl she was particularly fond of.

Even with the short interruption due to the judges' kerfuffle, the Idol gang managed to find 36 contestants to put through to Hollywood.

And they'll be back for more auditions in Baton Rouge, La., on Thursday.

Read More..

Asian shares inch higher on improving global confidence

Label:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares edged higher on Wednesday as investor appetite for riskier assets improved amid upbeat U.S. earnings and better German investor confidence.


The yen stabilized after firming as realization sank in that monetary easing announced on Tuesday by the Bank of Japan had fallen short of some market expectations, though many analysts acknowledged that the BOJ was showing determination to pull Japan out of years of deflation and economic stagnation.


Copper and gold were underpinned as the BOJ's move was seen supporting a global economic recovery while its 2 percent inflation target boosted bullion's appeal as a hedge against rising prices.


The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> was up 0.1 percent, hovering near Tuesday's 17-1/2-month high, after recent positive data from the United States and China improved investor sentiment.


Australian shares <.axjo> rose 0.3 percent, touching a 20-month high for a second day in a row as top miner BHP Billiton gained after lifting iron ore production.


Japan's benchmark Nikkei average <.n225> fell 0.8 percent as the firmer yen weighed on exporters. The yen has weakened by around 12 percent since mid-November against the dollar, and boosted Nikkei by more than 20 percent as a weaker yen improved exporters' earnings outlook. <.t/>


"Some investors have been waiting for the timing to take profits, as they have chased the market higher," said Hiroichi Nishi, assistant general manager at SMBC Nikko Securities.


The BOJ on Tuesday doubled its inflation target to 2 percent and adopted an open-ended commitment to buy assets starting 2014, sparking an unwinding of yen short positions from speculators looking for more immediate easing step.


The dollar steadied around 88.70 yen while the euro eased 0.1 percent to 118.11 yen. The dollar hit a 2-1/2-year high of 90.25 yen on Monday.


Technically, many believe the yen will resume its recent downtrend, seeing the latest rebound in the Japanese currency as a correction to its rapid and sharp decline.


Tuesday's pullback on dollar/yen has once again held slightly above the 23.6 percent of the rally from 81.69 to 90.25 yen seen on Monday, which comes in at 88.25 yen, some analysts note. They say the dollar's inability to break below minimum retracement levels since the rally from a December 4 low around 81.70 highlights the strength of the dollar/yen's upward move.


With BOJ joining the continued push by global central banks to support growth, Morgan Stanley said in a research note that policy easing by central banks was positive for emerging markets with more bond portfolio inflows increasingly towards local markets.


"Our key themes for 2013 are rebalancing and reflation, with both prevalent so far this year. Even given a migration towards global equities and away from fixed income, emerging market fixed income remains well-placed," it said.


On Tuesday, hopes of an improvement in the global economy led the Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> to a five-year high.


International Business Machines , the world's largest technology services company reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that beat estimates, while revenue from Google Inc's core Internet business outpaced many analysts' expectations for the same quarter. Apple Inc's earnings release was due later on Wednesday.


Investors were also cheered by easing worries over the U.S. budget crisis and the euro zone's debt financing.


Republican leaders in the House of Representatives said they aim to pass on Wednesday a nearly four-month extension of the U.S. debt limit to May 19.


German ZEW investor sentiment rose to its highest level in more than 2-1/2 years in January while Spain has raised around 14 percent of its 2013 funding target.


U.S. crude was down 0.1 percent to $96.62 a barrel and Brent also eased 0.1 percent to $112.34.


Spot gold was at $1,692.66 an ounce, near Tuesday's one-month high of $1,695.76, while London copper traded down 0.3 percent at $8,107 a metric ton but clinging near a one-week high of $$8,144.50 hit on Tuesday.


(Additional reporting by Reuters FX analyst Krishna Kumar in Sydney, Miranda Maxwell in Melbourne and Ayai Tomisawa in Tokyo; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)



Read More..

India Ink: Climate Change and Population Growth Meet Along the Brahmaputra River

Label:

A multichannel mammoth stretching up to 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, the Brahmaputra River in Assam causes havoc every year when it floods. Now climate change is intensifying the hydrological cycle.

Brian Orland, a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow, is starting a nine-month study on climate change adaptation along the Brahmaputra River, where the environment challenges the region faces are likely to be repeated in other parts of developing Asia.

His relationship with the Brahmaputra began at a Mumbai research institution in 2008 within the context of a larger study on Himalayan water security. Now on his ninth extended visit, he calls India his second home. For the last 10 weeks, he has been learning Bangla in Kolkata and is now transitioning into speaking and reading Assamese.

Back in Raj times, in the Assam highlands, British planters once sipped gin and tonics on verandahs overlooking endless rows of glistening green tea bushes. Today, climate refugees set their sights upon these same lands as they scramble up from the swirling waters and crumbling banks of the Brahmaputra River.

Scientists predict that climate change will worsen the flooding, and yet more and more people are surging into the Brahmaputra basin. Land is becoming scarce as waves of migrants pour in from nearby Bangladesh. Whole communities are pushed to live on the edge of embankments and amorphous islands.

Assam may be emblematic of the kind of catastrophe soon to hit much of developing Asia. Accelerating environmental change—sea-level rise in Bangladesh, say, or desertification in China—could exacerbate rising population pressures in a vicious feedback loop.

Land issues have always been at the heart of Assam’s long-simmering ethnic conflicts. But now, with the land near the limit of its carrying capacity, the crisis could become explosive.

This is the setting for my nine-month study on human responses to environmental change. I will stay in rural, often remote, villages to document how families are interacting with a vulnerable and volatile landscape. What I find will likely be a leading indicator for the future of developing Asia as the impacts of climate change take hold.

When I last visited Assam this past September, a particularly bad flooding season was ending with devastating crescendo. The flood waters burst embankments and reached areas that rarely experience flood. Peripatetic tributaries lashed out of control across the landscape.

Floodwaters affected over a million and a half people and destroyed thousands of houses. The important summer paddy crop was completely crushed, leaving subsistence farmers with nothing to show for their efforts.

Climate change models indicate that floods of this magnitude will become increasingly common in the future.

Over the last six decades, India has become warmer. The effect of that temperature change on the Indian monsoon is still poorly understood, but it seems to be pushing the weather system to the extremes.

What is clear is that monsoonal patterns are changing. Some places like the Western Ghats in south India are receiving less rainfall, while other places such as the Brahmaputra Basin here in northeast India are experiencing more destructive bursts of rain.

Assam is one of the places most sensitive to these changes. The hydrological cycle shapes the soft alluvial soil of the Assam plains and nurtures the agrarian economy. The Brahmaputra moves enormous amounts of sediment, while making and breaking river banks and thousands of islands.

Now, with the once-predictable monsoon becoming a wild card, one of the unruliest rivers in the world is growing increasingly tempestuous. As a result, more people will become vulnerable to floods, and those who normally experience floods will face harsher conditions.

After a disastrous flood season, it is a particularly relevant time to investigate how people are responding to this uncertain environmental future.

While villages I observe will have faced devastating impacts from floods, many have already developed ways to adapt. They build their houses on stilts, shift their agricultural calendar and methods, or put in place faster flood alert systems. So, along with scenes of loss and struggle, you will see on-the-ground innovators who have found smarter ways to live with floods.

After all, this is not some conundrum for policy wonks to strategize. Nor has the government done much to slow the damage. The thousands of villages dotting Assam’s flood plain each experience these challenges in their own unique context.

It makes sense, then, that effective solutions will be devised and implemented at the local level. Can some of these local innovations show the way forward for other communities to find a better way to live with floods?

Brian Orland’s dispatches will appear in India Ink every two weeks. What’s next: A conversation with a hydrologist and a historian in Assam’s capital, Guwahati.

Read More..

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)