“X Factor” judge L.A. Reid quitting TV talent show

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – L.A. Reid, “The X Factor” judge, says he is leaving the TV talent show next season after two years on the panel.

Reid, 56, chairman and chief executive of Epic Records, told “Access Hollywood,” the television program and website, he has decided to leave the Fox reality singing show to return to the record label full time.

“I have decided that I will not return to ‘The X Factor’ next year,” Reid told “Access Hollywood” late Thursday. “I have to go back and I have a company to run that I’ve kind of neglected, and it saddens me a little bit, but only a little bit.”

He added that the show was “a nice break, it was a nice departure from what I’ve done for the past 20 years, but now I gotta go back to work.”

Fox declined to comment on Reid’s departure on Friday.

Reid joined “The X Factor” when Cowell introduced the show in the United States in September 2011. Reid sat alongside Paula Abdul, former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger and Cowell.

Cowell fired Abdul and Scherzinger after a disappointing first season and brought in pop stars Britney Spears and Demi Lovato.

But “The X Factor” audiences have dropped this year to an average 9.7 million from about 12.5 million an episode in 2011.

The show broadcasts a two-part finale next week with the winner earning a $ 5 million prize and record contract.

Epic Records, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, which commands a roster of artists including Avril Lavigne, will sign the winners of “The X Factor.”

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Jeffrey Benkoe)

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Connecticut School Shooting: What to Tell Your Kids

Dec 14, 2012 2:11pm

(Image credit: Jessica Hill/AP Photo)

Your child doesn’t need to have been at the scene of today’s Connecticut school shooting to be traumatized.  Hearing about it and seeing images from it can be quite traumatic.

LIVE UPDATES: Newtown, Conn., School Shooting

It’s important to remember that children of different ages and levels of development will react differently to the tragedy. Here are some tips to help tailor your conversation to your child’s needs.

Children younger than 7

Shield them from this. They don’t need to know about it.

Children 7-12

They need to know that they are safe, and they’ll look to you for cues.

If you’re sobbing uncontrollably, overly angry or unable to express your feelings, it might affect how they process the tragedy. But if you’re expressing appropriate emotion — like sadness, concern and empathy — they’re going to see that it’s OK to be worried about this.

You want them to talk about it.  You want to ask, “How do you feel about this?” And then it’s important to support their feelings.  If your child says, “I’m really scared,” the worst thing you can do is say, “There’s no need to be scared.” Instead, tell them, “We’re going to keep you safe, and they got the bad guy.”

Children Older Than 12

With teenagers, you really want to engage them. Ask them why they think this happened?  And do they think anything could have prevented this?  You can have a real conversation out of that. You might also be able to channel them to a community project, some act of charity so that they believe they are taking positive action.

SHOWS: Good Morning America World News

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Fiat CEO: plan to buy Chrysler shares

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Italian carmaker Fiat SpA fully intends to acquire the 41.5 percent of Chrysler Group shares that it does not now own, but wrangling over the price could continue for a while, Fiat-Chrysler chief Sergio Marchionne said on Friday.

Fiat is in arbitration proceedings with the owner of the shares, a United Auto Workers trust fund that pays medical benefits to retired workers. The trust fund acquired the shares during the U.S. government-sponsored bankruptcy and bailout of Chrysler in 2009, when Fiat gained an ownership stake and management control of the U.S. automaker.

“We’ve always taken the position that we would have to pay them, but the question is price,” said Marchionne, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of the Council for the United States and Italy, an international-relations group. The current arbitration proceedings, he added, are “part of the dance”.

If, as industry experts predict, the two sides cannot agree on a price by year-end, the trust fund can begin the process that would lead to an initial public offering of its shares, potentially depriving Fiat of its goal of gaining full ownership of Chrysler.

However, the IPO process would take months to meet regulatory and other requirements, and a settlement could be reached during that time.

UBS estimates the fair value of Chrysler at between $ 9 billion and $ 13.4 billion, meaning the trust fund’s 41.5 percent stake is worth between $ 4.1 billion and $ 5.5 billion.

Fiat and the health care trust are battling in a Delaware court over a 3.32 percent piece of Chrysler. Fiat is able to purchase up to 16.4 percent of Chrysler in this piecemeal fashion over the next three-and-a-half years. Chrysler has offered about half of what the health care trust believes the 3.32 percent stake is worth.

When Chrysler exited its 2009 bankruptcy, Fiat took a 20-percent ownership and has increased that since to the current 58.5 percent of the No. 3 U.S. automaker.

The system for Fiat to buy tranches of Chrysler for a total of 16.4 percent of the U.S. automaker was also part of that bankruptcy agreement. Fiat says it has used a formula for setting its price for the first tranche of those shares, and the trust wants more than double that figure. The full 16.4 percent of Chrysler to be purchased in this manner would total, Fiat says, $ 754 million, while the trust wants $ 1.7 billion.

Fiat earlier rebutted a report that it was set to raise money to finance its purchase of a further stake in Chrysler, saying it had no need for extra funds.

Its comment came after an unsourced report in Il Messaggero said Fiat was sounding out UniCredit , Morgan Stanley , Bank of America and Goldman Sachs about the possibility of raising between 1 and 2 billion euros ($ 1.3-$ 2.6 billion).

(Reporting by Paul Ingrassia; Editing by Dale Hudson)

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NKorea rocket launch shows young leader as gambler

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A triumphant North Korea staged a mass rally of soldiers and civilians Friday to glorify the country’s young ruler, who took a big gamble this week in sending a satellite into orbit in defiance of international warnings.

Wednesday’s rocket launch came just eight months after a similar attempt ended in an embarrassing public failure, and just under a year after Kim Jong Un inherited power following his father’s death.

The surprising success of the launch may have earned Kim global condemnation, but at home the gamble paid off, at least in the short term. To his people, it made the 20-something Kim appear powerful, capable and determined in the face of foreign adversaries.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans, packed into snowy Kim Il Sung Square, clenched their fists in a unified show of resolve as a military band tooted horns and pounded on drums.

Huge red banners positioned in the square called on North Koreans to defend Kim Jong Un with their lives. They also paid homage to Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.

Pyongyang says the rocket put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. Much of the rest of the world sees it as a thinly disguised test of banned long-range missile technology. It could bring a fresh round of U.N. sanctions that would increase his country’s international isolation. At the same time, the success of the launch could strengthen North Korea’s military, the only entity that poses a potential threat to Kim’s rule.

The launch’s success, 14 years after North Korea’s first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.

“North Korean officials will long be touting Kim Jong Un as a gutsy leader” who commanded the rocket launch despite being new to the job and young, said Kim Byung-ro, a North Korea specialist at Seoul National University in South Korea.

The propaganda machinery churned into action early Friday, with state media detailing how Kim Jong Un issued the order to fire off the rocket just days after scientists fretted over technical issues, ignoring the chorus of warnings from Washington to Moscow against a move likely to invite more sanctions.

Top officials followed Kim in shrugging off international condemnation.

Workers’ Party Secretary Kim Ki Nam told the crowd, bundled up against a winter chill in the heart of the capital, that “hostile forces” had dubbed the launch a missile test. He rejected the claim and called on North Koreans to stand their ground against the “cunning” critics.

North Korea called the satellite a gift to Kim Jong Il, who is said to have set the lofty goal of getting a satellite into space and then tapped his son to see it into fruition. The satellite, which North Korean scientists say is designed to send back data about crops and weather, was named Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star” — the nickname legendarily given to the elder Kim at birth.

Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17, 2011, so to North Koreans, the successful launch is a tribute. State TV have been replaying video of the launch to “Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il.”

But it is the son who will bask in the glory, and face the international censure that may follow.

Even while he was being groomed to succeed his father, Kim Jong Un had been portrayed as championing science and technology as a way to lift North Korea out of decades of economic hardship.

“It makes me happy that our satellite is flying in space,” Pyongyang citizen Jong Sun Hui said as Friday’s ceremony came to a close and tens of thousands rushed into the streets, many linking arms as they went.

“The satellite launch demonstrated our strong power and the might of our science and technology once again,” she told The Associated Press. “And it also clearly testifies that a thriving nation is in our near future.”

Aside from winning him support from the people, the success of the launch helps his image as he works to consolidate power over a government crammed with elderly, old-school lieutenants of his father and grandfather, foreign analysts said.

Experts say that what is unclear, however, is whether Kim will continue to smoothly solidify power, steering clear of friction with the powerful military while dealing with the strong possibility of more crushing sanctions. The United Nations says North Korea already has a serious hunger problem.

“Certainly in the short run, this is an enormous boost to his prestige,” according to Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Noland, however, also mentioned the “Machiavellian argument” that this could cause future problems for Kim by significantly boosting the power of the military — “the only real threat to his rule.”

Successfully firing a rocket was so politically crucial for Kim at the onset of his rule that he allowed an April launch to go through even though it resulted in the collapse of a nascent food-aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal with the United States, said North Korea analyst Kim Yeon-su of Korea National Defense University in Seoul.

The launch success consolidates his image as heir to his father’s legacy. But it could end up deepening North Korea’s political and economic isolation, he said.

On Friday, the section at the rally reserved for foreign diplomats was noticeably sparse. U.N. officials and some European envoys stayed away from the celebration, as they did in April after the last launch.

Despite the success, experts say North Korea is years from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland and other distant targets.

North Korea will need larger and more dependable missiles, and more advanced nuclear weapons, to threaten U.S. shores, though it already poses a shorter-range missile threat to its neighbors.

The next big question is how the outside world will punish Pyongyang — and try to steer North Korea from what could come next: a nuclear test. In 2009, the North conducted an atomic explosion just weeks after a rocket launch.

Scott Snyder, a Korea specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that North Korea‘s nuclear ambitions should inspire the U.S., China, South Korea and Japan to put aside their issues and focus on dealing with Pyongyang.

If there is a common threat that should galvanize regional cooperation, “it most certainly should be the prospect of a 30-year-old leader of a terrorized population with his finger on a nuclear trigger,” Snyder said.

____

Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, and Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Jean H. Lee on Twitter: (at)newsjean.

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Selling flak jackets in the cyberwars

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When the Israeli army and Hamas trade virtual blows in cyberspace, or when hacker groups like Anonymous rise from the digital ether, or when WikiLeaks dumps a trove of classified documents, some see a lawless Internet.

But Matthew Prince, chief executive at CloudFlare, a little-known Internet start-up that serves some of the Web’s most controversial characters, sees a business opportunity.

Founded in 2010, CloudFlare markets itself as an Internet intermediary that shields websites from distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks, the crude but effective weapon that hackers use to bludgeon websites until they go dark. The 40-person company claims to route up to 5 percent of all Internet traffic through its global network.

Prince calls his company the “Switzerland” of cyberspace – assiduously neutral and open to all comers. But just as companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have faced profound questions about the balance between free speech and openness on the Internet and national security and law enforcement concerns, CloudFlare‘s business has posed another thorny question: what kinds of services, if any, should an American company be allowed to offer designated terrorists and cyber criminals?

CloudFlare’s unusual position at the heart of this debate came to the fore last month, when the Israel Defense Forces sought help from CloudFlare after its website was struck by attackers based in Gaza. The IDF was turning to the same company that provides those services to Hamas and the al-Quds Brigades, according to publicly searchable domain information. Both Hamas and al-Quds, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are designated by the United States as terrorist groups.

Under the USA Patriot Act, U.S. firms are forbidden from providing “material support” to groups deemed foreign terrorist organizations. But what constitutes material support – like many other facets of the law itself – has been subject to intense debate.

CloudFlare’s dealings have attracted heated criticism in the blogosphere from both Israelis and Palestinians, but Prince defended his company as a champion of free speech.

“Both sides have an absolute right to tell their story,” said Prince, a 38-year old former lawyer. “We’re not providing material support for anybody. We’re not sending money, or helping people arm themselves.”

Prince noted that his company only provides defensive capabilities that enable websites to stay online.

“We can’t be sitting in a role where we decide what is good or what is bad based on our own personal biases,” he said. “That’s a huge slippery slope.”

Many U.S. agencies are customers, but so is WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization. CloudFlare has consulted for many Wall Street institutions, yet also protects Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group associated with the Occupy movement.

Prince‘s stance could be tested at a time when some lawmakers in the United States and Europe, armed with evidence that militant groups rely on the Web for critical operations and recruitment purposes, have pressured Internet companies to censor content or cut off customers.

Last month, conservative political lobbies, as well as seven lawmakers led by Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, urged the FBI to shut down the Hamas Twitter account. The account remains active; Twitter declined to comment.

MATERIAL SUPPORT

Although it has never prosecuted an Internet company under the Patriot Act, the government’s use of the material support argument has steadily risen since 2006. Since September 11, 2001, more than 260 cases have been charged under the provision, according to Fordham Law School’s Terrorism Trends database.

Catherine Lotrionte, the director of Georgetown University’s Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and a former Central Intelligence Agency lawyer, argued that Internet companies should be more closely regulated.

“Material support includes web services,” Lotrionte said. “Denying them services makes it more costly for the terrorists. You’re cornering them.”

But others have warned that an aggressive government approach would have a chilling effect on free speech.

“We’re resurrecting the kind of broad-brush approaches we used in the McCarthy era,” said David Cole, who represented the Humanitarian Law Project, a non-profit organization that was charged by the Justice Department for teaching law to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. The group took its case to the Supreme Court but lost in 2010.

The material support law is vague and ill-crafted, to the point where basic telecom providers, for instance, could be found guilty by association if a terrorist logs onto the Web to plot an attack, Cole said.

In that case, he asked, “Do we really think that AT&T or Google should be held accountable?”

CloudFlare said it has not been contacted about its services by the U.S. government. Spokespeople for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, told Reuters they contracted a cyber-security company in Gaza that out-sources work to foreign companies, but declined to comment further. The IDF confirmed it had hired CloudFlare, but declined to discuss “internal security” matters.

CloudFlare offers many of its services for free, but the company says websites seeking advanced protection and features can see their bill rise to more than $ 3,000 a month. Prince declined to discuss the business arrangements with specific customers.

While not yet profitable, CloudFlare has more than doubled its revenue in the past four months, according to Prince, and is picking up 3,000 new customers a month. The company has raked in more than $ 22 million from venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates, Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners.

Prince, a Midwestern native with mussed brown hair who holds a law degree from the University of Chicago, said he has a track record of working on the right side of the law.

A decade ago, Prince provided free legal aid to Spamhaus, an international group that tracked email spammers and identity thieves. He went on to create Project Honey Pot, an open source spam-tracking endeavor that turned over findings to police.

Prince’s latest company, CloudFlare, has been hailed by groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists for protecting speech. Another client, the World Economic Forum, named CloudFlare among its 2012 “technology pioneers” for its work. But it also owes its profile to its most controversial customers.

CloudFlare has hosted 4Chan, the online messaging community that spawned Anonymous. LulzSec, the hacker group best known for targeting Sony Corp, is another customer. And since last May, the company has propped up WikiLeaks after a vigilante hacker group crashed the document repository.

Last year, members of the hacker collective UgNazi, whose exploits include pilfering user account information from eBay and crashing the CIA.gov website, broke into Prince’s cell phone and email accounts.

“It was a personal affront,” Prince said. “But we never kicked them off either.”

Prince said CloudFlare would comply with a valid court order to remove a customer, but that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has never requested a takedown. The company has agreed to turn over information to authorities on “exceedingly rare” occasions, he acknowledged, declining to elaborate.

“Any company that doesn’t do that won’t be in business long,” Prince said. But in an email, he added: “We have a deep and abiding respect for our users’ privacy, disclose to our users whenever possible if we are ordered to turn over information and would fight an order that we believed was not proper.”

Juliannne Sohn, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted computer crimes, said U.S. law enforcement agencies may in fact prefer that the Web’s most wanted are parked behind CloudFlare rather than a foreign service over which they have no jurisdiction.

Federal investigators “want to gather information from as many sources as they can, and they’re happy to get it,” Sussmann said.

In an era of rampant cyber warfare, Prince acknowledged he is something of a war profiteer, but with a wrinkle.

“We’re not selling bullets,” he said. “We’re selling flak jackets.”

(Reporting By Gerry Shih in San Francisco and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Jonathan Weber and Claudia Parsons)

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“Lincoln” leads Golden Globe movie nominations

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Lincoln,” the tale of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s battle to end slavery, ruled at the Golden Globe nominations on Thursday, while a very different movie take on slavery – “Django Unchained” – got a big boost in Hollywood’s crowded awards season.

Steven Spielberg’s portrayal of one of America’s most revered presidents won a leading seven nominations, including best drama, best director, best screenplay and best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.

But “Lincoln” faces stiff competition at the Golden Globes from Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage drama “Argo” and Quentin Tarantino‘s dark and quirky slavery-era Western, “Django Unchained.”

The best drama nominees were rounded out by thriller “Zero Dark Thirty” about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, with four mentions, and the shipwreck tale, “Life of Pi,” with three.

The Golden Globe Awards, which will be given out by about 80 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) on January 13, are among the most widely watched honors programs leading up to the Oscars in February, although their ultimate choices for best movie rarely coincide.

‘LINCOLN’ SEEN AS OSCAR FRONTRUNNER

“Lincoln” is already regarded as an Oscar frontrunner after picking up multiple accolades from U.S. critics’ groups and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

Producer Kathleen Kennedy said the film’s portrayal of Lincoln’s battles in Congress to get slavery abolished had struck a chord with Americans at a time of political gridlock in Washington.

“People have become frustrated with the political process, and the movie takes you on a journey that shows the democratic process is difficult but the end result is a very satisfying process…I think that’s what people are excited about after watching ‘Lincoln,’” Kennedy told Reuters on Thursday.

Tarantino’s violent and sometimes comic “Django Unchained,” starring Jamie Foxx, has fared less well – until now.

“This was a huge boost. ‘Django Unchained‘ was very much SAG snubbed. But now they are really back in the game,” Thelma Adams, contributing editor at Yahoo! Movies, told Reuters.

“It’s very gratifying to get this many nominations from the HFPA for a film I worked so hard on and am so passionate about,” Tarantino said in a statement.

Unlike the Academy Awards, the HFPA has separate categories for film dramas and comedies.

“Les Miserables,” the movie version of the worldwide hit stage musical, earned four Golden Globe nominations in the comedy/musical category, as did “Silver Linings Playbook,” about an unlikely romance between a man suffering from bipolar disorder and a young widow.

The stars of both films – Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway for “Les Miserables,” and Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper for “Silver Linings Playbook,” – will be among those competing for acting awards.

FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

“Les Mis” director, Tom Hooper, who failed to get a nomination for his work on the movie, acknowledged the challenge of translating the beloved musical to the big screen.

“Millions of people hold this musical so close to their heart. I had to make a film that honors that experience…and I needed to find a way to work, which is why I chose to do all live singing,” Hooper told Reuters.

The HFPA also opened the door to smaller, sometimes overlooked movies and performances, while largely snubbing high profile contenders such as the James Bond film “Skyfall,” which got just one mention, for Adele’s best original song.

Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” and admired British senior ensemble film, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” were both nominated in the best musical or comedy category.

“They are precious little films that now have to be taken seriously,” said Tom O’Neil of awards website Goldderby.com.

In the acting race, Jessica Chastain’s CIA agent in “Zero Dark Thirty” will square off against Helen Mirren in “Hitchcock,” British actress Rachel Weisz in period drama, “The Deep Blue Sea,” France’s Marion Cotillard for “Rust and Bone,” and Naomi Watts in tsunami survival tale “The Impossible.”

Chastain said that aside from being a true-life thriller, “Zero Dark Thirty” also aimed at asking questions about society.

“To be involved in a movie that does that – the 9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden pretty much defined this decade for us – and to be playing the woman who sacrificed so much to find him is such an honor,” the actress told Reuters.

Day-Lewis’s performance as Lincoln will compete against Denzel Washington’s alcoholic airline pilot in “Flight,” Richard Gere’s role as a corrupt financial executive in “Arbitrage,” John Hawkes as a severely disabled man in “The Sessions,” and Joaquin Phoenix’s drifter in the cult tale, “The Master.”

The Golden Globes also honor the year’s best TV shows. “Game Change,” the HBO film about Sarah Palin’s 2008 bid to become U.S. vice-president, led the nominations with five, followed by post-9/11 psychological thriller, “Homeland,” with four.

(Additional reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Kelsey; Editing by Paul Simao and David Brunnstrom)

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Therapy without drugs may suffice to ward off psychosis

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Young adults at very high risk of psychotic illness should receive talk therapy rather than antipsychotic drugs as an initial treatment, a new study suggests.

The results might ease fears about overtreating people who have warning signs of psychosis but not a full-blown disease, but the study findings were not conclusive because the number of participants was too small.

“This shows it’s quite safe and reasonably effective … to offer supportive psychosocial care to these patients,” Dr. Patrick McGorry, an author of the study, told Reuters Health. There is “no evidence to suggest that antipsychotic medications are needed in first-line” treatment, he said.

The clinical trial included 115 clients of a Melbourne, Australia, clinic for young people deemed to be at “ultra-high risk” for a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.

The study was open to individuals between the ages of 14 and 30 who met at least one of three criteria: having low-level psychotic symptoms, having had previous brief episodes of psychotic symptoms that went away on their own or having a close relative with a psychotic disorder along with low mental functioning during the past year.

The study compared three regimens: talk therapy focused on reducing depression symptoms and stress while building coping skills plus a low dose of the antipsychotic risperidone, or talk therapy plus a placebo pill or therapy emphasizing social and emotional support plus a placebo.

The goal was to see how many participants in each group progressed to full-blown psychosis.

After a year, there was no notable difference between the groups, however about 37 percent of the participants dropped out during the study. McGorry said if the trial had included more people, significant differences between the groups might have emerged.

The study appears online in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Researchers have been working to identify people at risk of developing psychotic disorders. “The importance of detecting early signs and symptoms of a serious mental illness is not controversial,” said Dr. Matcheri Keshavan, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “But the best way of treating or preventing it remains controversial.”

McGorry, a professor at the Centre for Youth Mental Health at The University of Melbourne, said that only about 36 percent of high-risk individuals will likely progress to psychosis within three years. So many health professionals worry about the prospect of treating everyone at risk with drugs, which come with side effects.

Another concern is that individuals will carry the label of mental illness unnecessarily.

McGorry said that the “vast majority” of the at-risk young adults in the study, most of them university-age, met the requirement for some kind of mental illness. That’s why all the participants received some level of care, even if it was just basic emotional and social support and coping skills.

The rates of progression to full-blown psychosis – which ranged from about 10 percent to about 22 percent – were lower in all three groups than in previous studies.

It’s not clear why, but McGorry said it’s possible that more participants will develop psychosis after the end of the 12-month study period. Many of the study participants were also taking antidepressants, which may have eased psychotic symptoms.

As with many trials, most participants showed poor adherence to the medications used, which may have influenced the results, the authors note.

McGorry was also an author of a 2010 study that found fish oil supplements might prevent psychosis in the same type of at-risk individuals. That research continues, he said.

Going forward, “what is needed is some way of finding predictive biomarkers that can tell who might be at the highest risk,” said Keshavan. “We need to understand their brains.”

McGorry and some of his co-authors have served as consultants or received research funding from pharmaceutical companies. One of them, Janssen-Cilag, which developed risperidone, partially funded the study.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online November 27, 2012.

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Labor market brightens, consumers step up spending

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week to a near four-year low and retail sales rebounded in November, hopeful signs for the struggling economic recovery.

Initial claims for state unemployment aid fell for a fourth straight week, dropping 29,000 to a seasonally adjusted 343,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. They are now at their lowest level since early October, and within a hair of territory last seen in early 2008.

Another report suggested consumer spending picked up last month despite fears Washington will fail to avoid harsh austerity measures that could trigger a recession. Worries over this “fiscal cliff” hit sentiment hard in early December.

“It is hard to detect material evidence that fiscal cliff uncertainties are weighing on consumer behavior,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

A slow but steady improvement in the labor market has helped support consumer spending, which propped up economic growth in the third quarter when business investment sagged.

Economic growth is expected to slow in the fourth quarter, hurt by slower inventory building and a pull back in investment by companies worried about the fiscal cliff.

However, the economy does appear to be moving quickly past the headwinds presented by superstorm Sandy, which hit the East Coast in late October and led to a spike in jobless claims.

The four-week moving average for new claims, which irons out weekly volatility, dropped 27,000 to 381,500.

“The labor market might be improving a bit quicker than expected,” said David Sloan, an economist at 4Cast in New York.

U.S. stocks dipped despite the data. Investors appeared cautious about making aggressive bets in the midst of negotiations in Washington to slow or avoid the $ 600 billion in spending cuts and tax hike set to take hold early next year.

CORE SALES MEASURE MARCHES HIGHER

The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.3 percent last month, rebounding from October’s 0.3 percent decline.

The increase fell short of the consensus forecast in a Reuters poll of economists, but a measure of core sales exceeded expectations.

Core retail sales, which strip out automobiles, gasoline and building materials rose 0.5 percent in November. The government uses this measure, which was flat in October, to calculate consumer spending.

Despite the improvement, growth in spending is still seen slowing in the fourth quarter.

“Consumers have recovered somewhat … but the trend has been declining since last June,” said Joseph Trevisani, a market strategist at Worldwide Markets in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

GDP growth is expected to slow to a 1.2 percent annual rate in the last three months of the year, a Reuters poll showed on Wednesday, down from a 2.7 percent rate in the third quarter.

The rise in overall retail sales was tempered by a 4 percent decline in receipts at gasoline stations, the biggest drop since December 2008. That likely reflects a fall in gasoline prices during the month, which left consumers with more money to spend on other things.

The Labor Department said separately that prices received by the nation’s farms, factories and refineries dropped 0.8 percent in November as gasoline prices fell by the most since March 2009.

So-called core producer prices, which strip out volatile energy and food costs, rose a modest 0.1 percent.

The report underscored a general lack of inflation pressure in the economy, giving the Federal Reserve room to continue with efforts to bring down the nation’s 7.7 percent unemployment rate.

The Fed announced a new round of monetary stimulus on Wednesday, taking the unprecedented step of indicating interest rates would remain near zero until unemployment falls to at least 6.5 percent.

In a packed day for government data on the economy, the Commerce Department also said business inventories, which are a key component of economic growth, rose 0.4 percent in October, in line with expectations.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Additional reporting by Chris Reese and Nick Olivari in New York; Editing by Neil Stempleman and Tim Ahmann)

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Cuban lawmakers meet to consider economy, budget

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban lawmakers are holding the second of their twice-annual sessions with a year-end report expected on the state of the country’s economy.

Legislators are also to approve next year’s budget.

Cuban leaders have sometimes used the parliamentary gatherings to make important announcements or policy statements.

Observers will be watching for word on the progress of President Raul Castro‘s economic reform plan and efforts to promote younger leaders.

The unicameral parliament will reconvene in February with a new membership following elections. It is then expected to name Castro to another five-year term.

State-run media said Castro presided over Thursday’s session.

It was not open to international journalists.

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Most Googled in 2012: Whitney, PSY, Sandy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The world’s attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, millions of people searched the Web to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking skydiver.

Whitney Houston was the “top trending” search of the year, according to Google Inc.’s year-end “zeitgeist” report. Google‘s 12th annual roundup is “an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

People around the globe searched en masse for news about Houston‘s accidental drowning in a bathtub just before she was to perform at a pre-Grammy Awards party in February.

Google defines topics as “trending” when they garner a high amount of traffic over a sustained period of time.

Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video trotted into second spot, a testament to his self-deprecating giddy-up dance move. The video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

Superstorm Sandy, the damaging storm that knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, was third.

The next biggest trending searches globally were a pair of threes: the iPad 3 tablet from Apple Inc. and Diablo 3, a popular video game.

Rounding out the Top 10 were Kate Middleton, who made news with scandalous photos and a royal pregnancy; the 2012 Olympics in London; Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who was found dead of an apparent suicide in October after being bullied online; Michael Clarke Duncan, the “Green Mile” actor who died of a heart attack in September at age 54; and “BBB12,” the 12th edition of “Big Brother Brasil,” a reality show featuring scantily clad men and women living together.

Some trending people, according to Google, were:

— Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver who became the first to break the sound barrier without a vehicle with a 24-mile plummet from Earth’s stratosphere;

— Jeremy Lin, the undrafted NBA star who exploded off the New York Knicks bench and sparked a wave of “Linsanity”;

— Morgan Freeman, the actor whose untimely death turned out not to be true.

The Internet also continued its rise as a popular tool for spreading addictive ideas and phrases known as “memes.” Remember LOL? If you don’t know what it means by now, someone may “Laugh Out Loud” at you.

This year, Facebook said its top memes included “TBH (To Be Honest),” ”YOLO (You Only Live Once),” ”SMH (Shake My Head).” Thanks to an endlessly fascinating U.S. presidential campaign, “Big Bird” made the list after Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he might consider cutting some funds for public broadcasting.

Yahoo said its own top-searched memes for the year included “Kony 2012,” a reference to the short film and campaign against Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony; “stingray photobomb” for an unusual vacation snapshot that went viral; and “binders full of women,” another nod to Romney for his awkward description of his search for women cabinet members as Massachusetts’ governor.

And people were happy to pass on popular Twitter posts by retweeting them. According to Twitter, the year’s most popular retweets were President Barack Obama‘s “Four more years,” and Justin Bieber’s farewell to six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh, who died of a rare form of brain cancer: “RIP Avalanna. i love you”.

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