Why Jim Rogers Should Be Energy Secretary

In the middle of Superstorm Sandy, we provoked a little storm of our own with a cover story entitled, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.”

We suggested, perhaps not quite as politely as we might have, that it is past time to take climate change seriously and get the debate restarted on a national level. Toward that end, here is a constructive suggestion for President Barack Obama: Nominate soon-to-be-available power guru Jim Rogers to be your second-term Secretary of Energy. It is widely assumed that Obama’s current energy chief, Steven Chu, will step down, along with many other members of the cabinet.

The most dynamic executive in his industry, Rogers, the chief executive of Charlotte-based Duke Energy (DUK), has spent a career building ever-bigger utilities. He knows coal, gas, nuclear, solar, wind. He’s done all of them. And he recognizes the need to forge a national energy policy that sharply reduces carbon emissions that contribute to global warming and the extreme weather it is increasingly visiting upon our little planet. In the past, Rogers has backed cap-and-trade legislation, facing down industry rivals who tried to isolate him as a pariah. He would be the perfect architect of and spokesman for a new, outside-the-box approach to reducing carbon. And would Republicans really oppose the appointment of an energy industry CEO?

Rogers is available for a turn at public service because of a baroque corporate boardroom power struggle last summer, which we chronicled here. The upshot of that fight—during which Rogers gave up his CEO job as part of Duke’s acquisition of rival Progress Energy, only to be reinstalled by legacy Duke directors—is that Rogers has just agreed (again) to step down, by the end of 2013, to mollify state regulators who were irritated by the earlier C-suite switcheroo.

So Rogers is available. Obama needs a strong voice on global warming and, more broadly, national energy policy. The Duke CEO could speed up his departure from the corporate realm and move from Charlotte to Washington in time to get a fresh start just after Obama gets sworn in for a second go-round. We’ve got word in to Rogers to see if he’s interested and will report back as soon as we hear.

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Oliver Stone, Benicio del Toro visit Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Benicio Del Toro didn’t wait long to collect on a favor that Oliver Stone owed him for working extra hours on the set of his most recent movie, “Savages”, released this year.

The favor? A trip to Del Toro‘s native Puerto Rico, which Stone hadn’t visited since the early 1960s.

“I told him, you owe me one,” Del Toro said with a smile as he recalled the conversation during a press conference Friday in the U.S. territory, where he and Stone are helping raise money for one of the island’s largest art museums.

Del Toro, wearing jeans, a black jacket and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the name of local reggaeton singer Tego Calderon, waved to the press as he was introduced.

“Hello, greetings. Is this a press conference?” he quipped as he and Stone awaited questions.

Both men praised each other’s work, saying they would like to work with each other again.

“I deeply admire him as an actor, the way he thinks, the way he expresses himself,” Stone said. “Of all the actors I’ve worked with, he’s the most interesting.”

Stone said Del Toro always delivers surprises while acting, even when it’s as something as subtle as certain gestures between dialogue.

“I think Benicio is the master of keeping you watching,” he said.

Stone said he enjoys meeting up with Del Toro off-set because he’s one of the few actors in Hollywood who can talk about something other than movies.

“He is very interested in the world around him,” Stone said, adding that the conversations sometimes center around politics and other topics.

Del Toro declined to answer when asked what he thought about Puerto Rico’s referendum earlier this month, which aimed to determine the future of the island’s political status. He said the results did not seem to point to a clear-cut outcome.

Del Toro then said he would like the island’s movie business to grow, especially in a way that would encourage learning.

“I’m talking about movies in an educational sense, as a way to discover other parts of the world,” he said. “Create a film class. You’ll see, kids won’t skip it.”

Del Toro also shared his thoughts on being a father after having a daughter with Kimberly Stewart in August 2011.

He said the girl is learning how to swim and is discovering the world around her.

“She has her own personality,” Del Toro said. “She’s not her mother. She’s not me.”

Both Del Toro and Stone are expected to remain in Puerto Rico through the weekend to raise money for the Art Museum of Puerto Rico, which is hosting its annual movie festival and will honor Stone’s movies.

Museum curator Juan Carlos Lopez Quintero said the money raised will be used to enhance the museum’s permanent collection, especially with Puerto Rican paintings from the 19th century and early 20th century.

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Dear President Obama: My White House petition requires your magical powers

By Chris Wilson

Since President Barack Obama won reelection, the White House website for citizen petitions has received secession requests from all 50 states. In the case of Texas, more than 100,000 people have endured the inconvenience of entering their name and email address in order to support the state’s bid for autonomy. Apparently, in a sign of Americans’ growing distaste for physical activity, 2012 is the year when people stopped threatening to move to a foreign country if their candidate lost the presidency. Instead, they want foreign countries to move to them.

The forum-happy Internet activism crowd has never had a realistic sense of what happens when you to plug government directly into the Ethernet port. This is what happens: In addition to petitions for secession, you get ones calling for Bigfoot to be recognized as an endangered species, naturopathic medicine to be covered by Obamacare, and funding for a Death Star beginning in 2016.

The petition website, called We the People, is not very useful as a guide to what Americans really care about. But it is useful as a guide to how people think of what the government can do, down to the specific words the authors use in the petitions.

Of the 300 most recent petitions, only three request that the government “protect” something—states rights, email privacy, the planet—while seven request that it “recognize” something—same-sex marriage, hate groups, and so forth. Dozens ask that Obama “grant” or “allow” a certain privilege, while only a few suggest he “ban” an action or “prevent” an outcome.

The interactive below arranges the petitions into a tree structure by the principal verb in the title. When you click a blue dot, the tree expands to show all the petitions that begin with that verb. You can mouse over those branches to see the original wording of the petition and search for any word you like by typing a phrase into the box at the top.

 

Bigfoot aside, most of the petitions on the site are earnest. This does not mean they are all sane. About 37,000 people have signed a petition suggesting that it be illegal to offend the prophets of major religions. Another petition demands recognition that Israel is responsible for 9/11—that one with only some 600 signatories.

But many present very good ideas. There’s one for reforming the Electoral College and another that suggests all scientific papers based on taxpayer-funded research should be freely accessible online.

If there is one binding force behind the petitions, it is that most of them request that Obama intercede in matters that he has no authority over or rightful business meddling with, regardless of where one comes down on the subject of big government. While the site is technically designed to lobby the government, most petitions appear personally directed at Obama.

Even the petitions to secede are written in a tone of distinct obeisance: “Peacefully grant the state of Connecticut to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government.” Oregon’s petition is particularly careful to specify that there are no hard feelings: “Allow Oregon to vote on and leave the union peacefully and remain an ally to the nation.”

Secession always seemed to me to be something that, by definition, you did without asking permission. (Mutual breakups are as rare in history as they are in love.) But for all the rampant anti-government sentiment in America, many people still believe the president is an omnipotent force who can pass laws on a dime, ban unsavory behavior, manipulate foreign countries with precision, expel citizens at will and otherwise bend the world to his fancy.

This does not mean people love the government. We know they do not. But they still want it to fix their problems with as little trouble as possible.

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There are some great open-source tools, like Python’s Natural Language Toolkit, that can automatically identify verbs and objects in sentences with fairly high accuracy. But a lot of human intervention is still required to clean up the results. I posted the code for retrieving the petitions from the White House website on my Github page, and the White House offers the full code for the petitions website on its Github page. Questions or comments? Email me at [email protected]
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Voters Come Clean on Health Care

Nov 29, 2012 1:56pm

Reported by Dr. Nisha Nathan:

 Voters who backed President Obama and those who supported Mitt Romney just can’t seem to agree on key health care issues, a new study suggests. But they’ll have to compromise if they want change in Washington.

The study, which drew on the combined data of three pre-election and exit polls, found that Obama supporters were three times more likely to say that health care was the most important problem facing the country.

These polls are a “very good prediction of what positions administrators will take on, and what directions they will move, especially in health and social policy,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy at Harvard University and lead author of the study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. But, Blendon added, “People’s views could change and shift and might not be as polarized as reflected in the polls.”

The majority of voters, according to the study, saw President Obama as better than Mitt Romney at handling key issues in health care and Medicare, but not as good as his Democratic predecessors in the three previous elections.  And while most Americans — 85 percent of Obama voters and 53 percent of Romney voters — agreed that the government should try to fix the health care system, how this fix should happen remained a point of contention.

Obama voters wanted the Affordable Care Act instituted and supported a more activist government that would intervene more directly in the U.S. health care system. They also opposed changing the structure of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Obama supporters also wanted the federal government to have more responsibility in health care reform, but they disagreed on how the the government should use this responsibility.  The party remains split between the market approach in which the government provides incentives for healthy competition between hospitals, doctors and health insurance companies, and increased regulation of what insurance companies, doctors and hospitals can charge.

Abortion is another controversial health issue in which the country remains strongly divided. Forty-five percent of Obama voters thought that abortion should be legal no matter what, while 57 percent of Romney followers wanted abortion to be illegal in most or all cases, according to the study. Blendon said the president would likely have to balance both parties’ views, a move that might pan out through Planned Parenthood funding and Supreme Court appointments.

While Obama’s narrow win would force a delicate balance in health policy decisions, Blendon predicted that Romney followers would still be slightly disappointed. “The Affordable Care Act is not going to be repealed, and it will go ahead,” he said. But with the Senate maintaining a Democratic majority and the House of Representatives staying Republican, there will have to be a lot of compromise when it comes to health care.

Expect push back, Blendon said. “In many parts of the country, this will not go ahead rapidly, even though the president won the election.”

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UK banks ‘may need more capital’

29 November 2012 Last updated at 10:27 ET

Sir Mervyn King: “This problem is manageable, but it requires some action now”

Major UK banks may need to raise more capital as protection against possible future losses, the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee has said.

Bank governor Sir Mervyn King said there were “good reasons” to think current capital ratios did not give an accurate picture of financial health.

His comments came as he presented the Bank’s Financial Stability Report.

The report suggested that the ‘Big Four’ UK banks need £5bn-£35bn of new capital.

However, BBC business editor Robert Peston said, “the precision of this calculation is somewhat to be questioned because it is based on 2011 data and also because it excludes the banks’ huge financial trading activities”.

The main UK banks include HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds.

‘Immediate attention’ needed

Sir Mervyn said: “UK banks currently report substantial buffers over the minimum level allowed”.

Continue reading the main story

Sir Mervyn and his colleagues on the FPC may today have engineered yet another significant delay to the moment when taxpayers can celebrate severing the ties that bind us to Lloyds and RBS”

End Quote

“But, in judging whether banks are adequately capitalised, we need to ensure that reported capital ratios do in fact provide an accurate picture of banks’ health. At present there are good reasons to think that they do not.”

He said there were three reasons why the Bank of England thought that the banks were not strong enough.

“First, expected future credit losses may be understated. Second, costs arising from past failures of conduct may not be fully recognised. And third, the risk weights used by banks in calculating their capital ratios may be too optimistic”.

Sir Mervyn added: “The problem is manageable, and is already understood at least in part by markets. But it does warrant immediate attention.”

Mis-selling costs

Inadequately capitalised banks hold back economic recovery and undermine investor confidence, he added.

The Bank is being granted greater regulatory oversight over banks from next year when it takes over the Financial Services Authority. One of its primary roles will be to make sure UK banks have sufficient capital to support the economy, said Sir Mervyn.

Adequate capital levels are also needed in the face of rising costs related to banking scandals.

This year, HSBC and Barclays were respectively hit by penalties over money-laundering and the alleged rigging of the Libor rate.

Meanwhile the banks have set aside billions of pounds to cover claims for payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling.

“In recent years, UK banks have also underestimated and underprovisioned for costs for conduct redress, notably for payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling,” the stability report said.

“In 2012, the number of identified conduct issues has grown and it seems likely that banks could face additional sizable costs.”

BBC News – Business

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Noisy city: Cacophony in Caracas sparks complaints

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — This metropolis of 6 million people may be one of the world’s most intense, overwhelming cities, with tremendous levels of crime, traffic and social strife. The sounds of Caracas‘ streets live up to its reputation.

Stand on any downtown corner, and the cacophony can be overpowering: Deafening horns blast from oncoming buses, traffic police shrilly blow their whistles and sirens shriek atop ambulances stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Air horns routinely used by bus drivers are so powerful they make pedestrians on crosswalks recoil, and can even leave their ears ringing. Loud salsa music blares from the windows of buses, trucks with old mufflers rumble past belching exhaust, and “moto-taxis” weave through traffic beeping high-pitched horns.

Growing numbers of Venezuelans are saying they’re fed up with the noise that they say is getting worse, and the numbers of complaints to the authorities have risen in recent years.

One affluent district, Chacao, put up signs along a main avenue reading: “A honk won’t make the traffic light change.”

“The noise is terrible. Sometimes it seems like it’s never going to end,” said Jose Santander, a street vendor who stands in the middle of a highway selling fried pork rinds and potato chips to commuters in traffic.

Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega recently told a news conference that officials have started “putting an increased emphasis on promoting peaceful coexistence” by punishing misdemeanors such as violations of anti-noise regulations and other minor crimes. That effort has translated into hundreds of noise-related cases in recent years.

Some violators are ordered to perform community service. For instance, two young musicians who were recently caught playing loud music near a subway station were sentenced to 120 hours of community service giving music lessons to students in public schools.

Others caught playing loud music on the street have been charged with disturbing the peace after complaints from neighbors. Fines can run as high as 9,000 bolivars, or $ 2,093.

On the streets of their capital, however, Venezuelans have grown used to living loudly. The noisescape adds to a general sense of anarchy, with many drivers ignoring red lights and blocking intersections along potholed streets strewn with trash.

“This is something that everybody does. Nobody should be complaining,” said Gregorio Hernandez, a 23-year-old college student, as he listened to Latin rock songs booming from his car stereo on a Saturday night in downtown Caracas. “We’re just having fun. We’re not hurting anybody.”

Adding to the mess is the country’s notoriously divisive politics, which regularly fill the streets with marches and demonstrations.

On many days, the shouts of protesters streaming through downtown can be heard from blocks away, demanding pay hikes or unpaid benefits.

And the sporadic crackling of gunfire in the slums can be confused for firecrackers tossed by boisterous partygoers.

It’s difficult to rank the world’s noisiest cities because many, including Venezuela’s capital, don’t take measurements of sound pollution, said Victor Rastelli, a mechanical engineering professor and sound pollution expert at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. But Rastelli said he suspects Caracas is right up there among the noisiest, along with Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Mumbai.

Excessive noise can be more than simply an annoyance, Rastelli said. “This is a public health problem.”

Dr. Carmen Mijares, an audiologist at a private Caracas hospital, said she treats at least a dozen patients every month for hearing damage caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises.

“Many of them work in bars or night clubs, and their maladies usually include temporary hearing loss and headaches,” Mijares said. For others, she said, the day-to-day noise of traffic, car horns and loud music can exacerbate stress and sleeping disorders.

Several cities have successfully reduced noise pollution, said Stephen Stansfeld, a London psychiatry professor and coordinator of the European Network on Noise and Health.

One of the most noteworthy initiatives, Stansfeld said, was in Copenhagen, Denmark, where officials used sound walls, noise-reducing asphalt and other infrastructure as well as public awareness campaigns to fight noise pollution.

But such high-tech solutions seem like a remote possibility in Caracas, where streets are literally falling apart and aging overpasses regularly lack portions of their guard rails. Prosecutors, angry neighbors and others hoping to fight the noise will have to persuade Venezuelans to do nothing less than change their loud behavior.

For Carlos Pinto, however, making noise is practically a political right.

The 26-year-old law student and his friends danced at a recent street party to house music booming from woofers in his car’s open trunk, with neon lights on the speakers that pulsed to the beat.

When asked about the noise, he answered: “We will be heard.”

___

AP freelance video journalist Ricardo Nunes contributed to this report.

___

Christopher Toothaker on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ctoothaker

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Italian tax police probe Google Italy again

ROME (Reuters) – Italian police launched a new tax probe into Google Italy this week after earlier investigations found the group had failed to declare income and still owed sales tax, an economy ministry document showed on Wednesday.

The earlier probe, which was launched by Italian financial police in 2007, found that Google had developed a system to transfer profits from its Italian operations to Ireland so it could benefit from a more favorable tax regime.

The investigation is the Internet search giant’s latest entanglement with European tax authorities, following problems in France and Britain over its Irish strategy.

In Italy, investigations of the years 2002-2006 found that Google had failed to declare at least 240 million euros ($ 310 million) of income to authorities and owed more than 96 million euros in sales tax, according to the ministry’s response to questions in parliament.

It said police had launched a new probe on Monday to check the company was meeting its fiscal obligations in Italy.

Google said in a statement that it complies with tax law in every country in which it operates.

“We are confident we comply with Italian law,” a spokeswoman said, adding the firm would cooperate with authorities and answer any questions for the investigation.

Italian officials have stepped up tax surveillance and collection efforts in recent months as part of government efforts to bring Italy’s huge public debt under control.

Police have also been assessing the practices of other multinational online businesses who are managing to shift profits made in Italy into countries where they can pay less tax, the ministry said.

($ 1=0.7746 euros)

(Reporting By Danilo Masoni, Giuseppe Fonte and Catherine Hornby; Editing by Mike Nesbit)

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Sculptor Gormley wants us to get inside his head

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s foremost living sculptor Antony Gormley wants us to get inside his head with his latest work “Model”, a 100-tonne steel maze of cubes and squares, dark corners and splashes of light on show at the White Cube gallery in London.

The giant grey-black work, based on a human form lying down, is entered via the right “foot”, and combines the fun of an adventure playground with the unnerving quality of a labyrinth often plunged into darkness.

For the first time, the Turner Prize-winning artist who has always been preoccupied with the human form allows us to get inside, and draws parallels between the body and the architectural spaces we inhabit.

“I think we dwell first in this borrowed bit of the material world that we call the body,” Gormley told Reuters, standing beside the imposing structure made up of interlocking blocks.

“It has its own life that is unknowable. But the second place we dwell is the body of architecture, the built environment,” he added.

“We’re the most extraordinary species that decided to structure our habitat according to very, very abstract principles of horizontal and vertical planes.”

Model has plenty of surprises. The more nimble visitor can crawl through its left “arm”, which is a passage around three feet high, or clamber on to a roof bathed in light.

“There are places that you wouldn’t necessarily know are there,” Gormley said. As if to prove his point, he disappeared into a large raised “aperture” invisible in the darkness.

Sound also plays a part, with the resonance of voices and rumble of footsteps giving clues to the size of each space.

PLAYGROUND

The artist said he encouraged people to explore the work rather than just look, unlike most sculptures which are strictly off-limits.

“Psychological architecture suddenly starts to reverberate with human life,” he explained, adding that the sense of unease when entering the dark spaces was part of its appeal.

“I think creepiness is good,” he said in the pitch-black “head”. “I think it’s necessary to get under people’s skin. You don’t want them to easily ingest or accept something.”

Several times he referred to the Seagram murals of American painter Mark Rothko, works that inspired him as an artist and which he had in mind while making Model.

“Their surfaces give you this idea of space, or an invitation, they seat you at a threshold and allow you to dream of what exists beyond that threshold,” he said.

“You could say this is the literal version of that.”

Gormley, born in 1950, won the Turner Prize in 1994 and is probably best known for his 20-metre high public “Angel of the North” sculpture located near Newcastle in northern England.

He would not say what price the White Cube gallery had put on Model, and the gallery itself could not immediately provide a figure when asked, but Gormley has become one of the most sought-after British artists at auction.

A life-size iron maquette for Angel of the North fetched 3.4 million pounds ($ 5.4 million) at an auction at Christie’s in October last year.

Early critical reaction to Model was mixed.

“We think of the pyramids, of tombs in lightless spaces,” wrote Michael Glover in the Independent. “We have entered this space hoping for a visceral response of some kind, but it never quite happens.”

Model is on display at White Cube, Bermondsey, until February 10, 2013.

(This story has fixed typos in paragraph six)

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Flu Has Little to Do With Cold Weather

Although most children grow up hearing that they’ll catch the flu if they play in the snow without a scarf, weather has very little to do with which regions get more flu, doctors say.

“It’s actually not that predicable,” said Dr. Jon Abramson, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Wake Forest Baptist Health in North Carolina.

Mississippi has had the most reported cases of influenza-like illness in the United States so far this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even though Mississippi had an average temperature of 53.3 degrees this month, it is the only state in the country with a flu-like activity level of “high.” Louisiana and Alabama are right behind it with moderate activity levels. Most other states — with colder climates — have had lower levels.

Click here to read about flu facts and fiction.

Abramson said the flu season tends to start in October and last through April, mostly coinciding with the school year rather than the temperature. He said studies have shown that the flu spreads mostly from school-age children, who often have poorer hygiene and catch the virus because they are in close contact with one another. Then, they pass it along to adults.

Weather becomes a contributing factor mostly because it forces children indoors, where they mix together and spread germs, said Allison Aiello, a professor and epidemiologist at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.

Scarves, hats and gloves are useless if you come in contact with someone with the flu and either breath in their virus or touch a surface with the virus and touch your mouth, Aiello said.

“You can tell you mom it’s OK for you to go outside with no hat on,” she laughed, adding that even her own relatives remind her to put on a hat to avoid getting the flu. She said weather can perhaps make people more susceptible, but it can’t give them the virus.

Since Sept. 30, about 2,400 influenza cases have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including 28 cases of H1N1. Despite its tropical temperatures, even Hawaii has reported flu cases this season.

Abramson said his North Carolina hospital has already had 25 influenza cases this season. In contrast, by the same time last year, the same hospital didn’t have a single case.

“This is the South. It’s fairly warm, so you wouldn’t expect it this early,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to behave exactly by the coldness.”

The flu can spread any time of year, Abramson said, citing this summer’s swine flu outbreak. The H3N2V strain jumped from 29 to 145 cases in less than a week in August of this year, with most of them in Indiana and Ohio.

The best way for families to protect themselves is to encourage hand-washing and get vaccinated.

Click here to read about other flu-fighters.

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New home sales stagnant, cast shadow on housing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New U.S. single-family home sales fell slightly in October and the prior month’s pace of sales was revised sharply lower, casting a faint shadow over one of the brighter spots in the U.S. economy.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday sales dropped 0.3 percent last month to a 368,000-unit annual rate, while September’s sales pace was revised to 369,000 from 389,000.

The housing sector has been a point of relative strength this year in an economy beset by flagging business confidence and cooling demand from abroad.

A report last week showed a surprisingly sharp gain in home resales in October, while data this week showed prices for single-family homes have risen continuously since February.

Economists expect home construction to add to economic growth this year for the time since 2005.

Wednesday’s data did not change the view that housing is still in recovery mode, although the pace of new home sales in October was below the level of May, suggesting little upward momentum.

“It’s just that progress will be slow,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, an economist at BNP Paribas in New York.

U.S. homebuilder stocks fell, even as broad market indexes rose slightly.

While weakness in business spending has been restraining growth, most recent data has suggested housing is gaining momentum. Consumer confidence has also been more bullish.

Wednesday’s report showed the median sales price for a new home in October was 5.7 percent higher than a year earlier, but the pace of year-over-year price gains slowed for a second straight month.

Some analysts suggested the decline in sales in October might be partially due to a mammoth storm that slammed into the U.S. East Coast at the end of October. New sales plunged 32.3 percent in the Northeast, which bore the brunt of the storm.

“Some of this could potentially be Hurricane Sandy,” said Megan McGrath, an analyst at MKM Partners in Stamford, Connecticut.

However, the Commerce Department said the storm did not affect data collection at all and its impact on the pace of sales was likely “minimal.”

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast sales rising to a 390,000-unit rate last month from September’s previously reported 389,000-unit rate.

To provide support for the housing market, the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates at rock-bottom levels since 2008. In September, it launched an open-ended program to buy mortgage-backed securities, driving mortgage rates to record lows.

In a separate report, data from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed an index for home purchase loans, a leading indicator of home sales, rose 2.6 percent last week to its highest level of the year.

(Additional reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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