The Biggest Loser's Alison Sweeney Blogs: The Entire Family Needs Fight Childhood Obesity Together















01/22/2013 at 08:30 AM EST



Alison Sweeney hosts NBC's The Biggest Loser and is the award-winning star of Days of Our Lives, in addition to being an author, director, producer, wife and mom. Like she has for the past two seasons, Alison will blog each week about the latest episode of The Biggest Loser. Follow her on Twitter @Ali_Sweeney

Can you imagine if Bob Harper surprised you at dinner or if Dolvett Quince walked into your classroom? How would you react?

Watching the kids's reactions to Bob, Jillian and Dolvett surprising them was priceless.

Seeing how Biingo and his family have struggled financially breaks my heart but, like Bob, I was impressed by how they've managed and that they've been able to make healthier choices without spending more money. One thing that was reinforced this week was that the entire family needs to work together to combat childhood obesity. All the pressure can't be placed on the kids.

While the trainers were gone, I had a blast running with the contestants in the 5K. I always try to get a workout in each day and by doing the run at work, I was set for the day!

Plus, it was a gorgeous setting at the beach and anyone who follows my blogs on my website knows how much I love to work out outdoors.

While the competitor in me wanting to be at the front of the pack, there was something really special about staying with some of the contestants who were struggling and helping to keep them motivated.

At the end, I did have to pick up my pace to welcome the contestants across the finish line, and it was so fun to cheer them to the end.

Francelina jammed at the end and Jackson made sixth place despite his physical restrictions. As some of the contestants ran back to help Michael and Alex at the end, it was a reminder of what The Biggest Loser is all about – helping one another to get in shape and accomplish their goals.

By the time we got to the weigh-in, tensions were high.

Favorite moment of the week: Any moment with Jackson – when he was leading his team and especially at the weigh-in. He's just so funny and in that way, he reminds me of Dan Evans. Remember him?

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws


NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.


A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.


"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.


An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.


Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.


Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.


The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.


Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.


But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.


Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."


"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.


Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.


To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.


"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.


Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.


Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.


In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.


The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.


Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.


While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.


"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."


___


Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.


___


Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz


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Stock futures flat at five-year highs, investors await earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were flat on Tuesday as investors held back from making large bets ahead of an onslaught of corporate earnings and after recently notching five-year highs.

Both the Dow and S&P 500 closed at their highest levels the earnings season. U.S. markets were closed on Monday for a public holiday.

Despite stronger-than-expected earnings results from major companies, including big banks, at the start of the quarterly reporting season, many investors are worried that other reports will reflect economic uncertainty in the fourth quarter.

"The market has been pleased with earnings thus far, and it is encouraging to see a cyclical company like DuPont show revenue strength, but I'm waiting on more tech and energy earnings until I come down one way or the other on this season," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York.

posted a steep drop in earnings on reduced demand for paint pigment, though revenue was ahead of expectations.

Verizon Communications Inc fell 1.1 percent to $42.06 in premarket trading after reporting a steep loss due to pension liabilities and charges related to superstorm Sandy that offset strength in its wireless business. Travelers Cos Inc also posted earnings that were hurt by losses related to Sandy.


DuPont, Verizon and Travelers are all Dow components, as is Johnson & Johnson , slated to report later Tuesday along with Google Inc and Texas Instruments . Tech earnings will be in particular focus after Intel Corp last week gave a revenue outlook that was below expectations.


Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 2.5 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast from a week ago but well below the 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings forecast from October 1, the data showed.


S&P 500 futures rose 0.3 point but remained below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 8 points and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 5 points.


Monday was a market holiday for Martin Luther King Day in the United States, and also marked the start of a second term for President Barack Obama, who called for aggressive action on climate change, economic equality and the federal budget.


"It remains a question whether Obama will be able to deliver on his agenda, but a sector like solar power companies could continue to be strong as he pushes for action," Sarhan said.


Markets have recently been pressured by uncertainty stemming from Washington about the federal debt limit and spending cuts that could hamper U.S. growth.


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, allowing the government to borrow enough to meet its obligations during that period.


U.S. shares of Research in Motion jumped 8.9 percent to $17.25 in premarket trading after its chief executive said the company may consider strategic alliances with other companies after the launch of devices powered by RIM's new BlackBerry 10 operating system.


The Dow and S&P 500 closed at five-year highs on Friday as the market registered a third straight week of gains on a solid start to the quarterly earnings season, including from Morgan Stanley and General Electric Co .


(Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Algeria finds dead Canadian militants as siege toll rises


ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian forces have found the bodies of two Canadian Islamist fighters after a bloody siege at a desert gas plant, a security source said on Monday, as the death toll reached at least 80 after troops stormed the complex to end the hostage crisis.


Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal is expected to give details on Monday about the siege near the town of In Amenas, which left American, British, French, Japanese, Norwegian, Filipino and Romanian workers dead or missing.


Much remains unclear about events after the jihadists staged the attack last Wednesday. However, an Algerian newspaper said they had arrived in cars painted in the colors of state energy company Sonatrach but registered in neighboring Libya, a country awash with arms since Muammar Gaddafi's fall in 2011.


The Algerian security source told Reuters that documents found on the bodies of the two militants had identified them as Canadians, as special forces scoured the plant following Saturday's bloody end to the crisis.


Veteran Islamist fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of al Qaeda, and an official Algerian source has said the militants included people from outside the African continent, as well as Arabs and Africans.


A security source said on Sunday that Algerian troops had found the bodies of 25 hostages, raising the number of hostages killed to 48 and the total number of deaths to at least 80. He said six militants were captured alive and troops were still searching for others.


A Japanese government source said the Algerian government had informed Tokyo that nine Japanese had been killed, the biggest toll so far among foreigners at the plant. Six Filipinos died and four were wounded, a government spokesman in Manila said.


The raid has exposed the vulnerability of multinational-run oil and gas installations in an important producing region and pushed the growing threat from Islamist militant groups in the Sahara to a prominent position in the West's security agenda.


Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has ordered an investigation into how security forces failed to prevent the attack, the daily El Khabar said. The militants had used nine cars in Sonatrach colors and all with Libyan registration plates, it quoted unnamed security sources as saying.


Algerian Tahar Ben Cheneb - leader of a group called the Movement of Islamic Youth in the South who was killed on the first day of the assault - had been based in Libya where he married a local woman two months ago, it said.


ONE-EYED JIHADIST


Belmokhtar - a one-eyed jihadist who fought in Afghanistan and Algeria's civil war of the 1990s when the secular government fought Islamists - tied the desert attack to France's intervention across the Sahara against Islamist rebels in Mali.


"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," he said in a video, according to Sahara Media, a regional website. About 40 attackers participated in the raid, he said, roughly matching the government's figures for fighters killed and captured.


Belmokhtar demanded an end to French air strikes against Islamist fighters in neighboring Mali. These began five days before the fighters swooped before dawn and seized a plant that produces 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas exports.


U.S. and European officials doubt such a complex raid could have been organized quickly enough to have been conceived as a direct response to the French military intervention. However, the French action could have triggered an operation that had already been planned.


The group behind the raid, the Mulathameen Brigade, also threatened to carry out more such attacks if Western powers did not end what it called an assault on Muslims in Mali, according to the SITE service, which monitors militant statements.


In a statement published by the Mauritania-based Nouakchott News Agency, the hostage takers said they had offered talks about freeing the captives, but the Algerian authorities had been determined to use military force.


"We opened the door for negotiations with the Westerners and the Algerians, and granted them safety from the beginning of the operation, but one of the senior (Algerian) intelligence officials confirmed to us in a phone call that they will destroy the place with everyone in it," SITE quoted the statement as saying.


BLOODY SIEGE


The siege turned bloody on Thursday when the Algerian army opened fire, saying fighters were trying to escape with their prisoners. Survivors said Algerian forces blasted several trucks in a convoy carrying both hostages and their captors.


Nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners escaped, mainly on Thursday when the fighters were driven from the residential barracks. Some captors remained holed up in the industrial complex until Saturday when they were overrun.


The bloodshed has strained Algeria's relations with its Western allies, some of which have complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken.


Nevertheless, Britain and France both defended the military action by Algeria, the strongest military power in the Sahara and an ally the West needs in combating the militants.


Among other foreigners confirmed dead by their home countries were three Britons, one American and two Romanians. The missing include five Norwegians, three Britons and a British resident. An Algerian security source said at least one Frenchman was also among the dead.


The raid on the plant, which was home to expatriate workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm BGC Corp and others, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.


However, Algeria is determined to press on with its energy industry. Oil Minister Youcef Yousfi visited the site and said physical damage was minor, state news service APSE reported. The plant would start up again in two days, he said.


Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, insisted from the start of the crisis there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism. France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to crush Islamist rebels in northern Mali.


(Additional reporting by Anton Slodkowski in Tokyo, Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, William Maclean in Dubai, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris and Daniel Flynn in Dakar; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Giles Elgood)



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Why Google Isn’t Scared of Facebook’s Graph Search






Facebook may have just released a major search product that many are saying “declares war” on Google or may at least put the social network “on a collision course” with the search giant, but Google CEO Larry Page doesn’t sound all that worried about the new competition. Because who said Facebook and Google couldn’t get along someday? In an interview for the new issue of Wired published just two days after Facebook’s Graph Search came out to so-so reviews, Page tells Steve Levy that Facebook is “doing a really bad job on their products.” But before you laugh off that swipe — Google Buzz flopped, Google killed Reader, and Google+ has a loyal but relatively small user base — Page wants to remind everyone that Facebook isn’t direct competition, that these two Silicon Valley giants are too big for either to fail. “We’re actually doing something different,” Page tells Levy. “I think it’s outrageous to say that there’s only space for one company in these areas.”


RELATED: Three Things Google+ Can Learn from Myspace






That’s not to say Page isn’t making Google go social, or that Facebook isn’t in his rearview mirror. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long talked about the rise of social search, and Page has taken a vested interest of late in getting people to use Google+ — even if they don’t want to. In an attempt to conquer the space, direct orders from Page forcefully integrated Google’s social network into its main search results… and pretty much everywhere else its products touch. If it were up to Larry Page, Google would require a Google+ account just to read reviews. His evaluation of Google+ as it stands? “I’m very happy with how it has gone. We’re working on a lot of really cool stuff. A lot of it has been copied by our competitors, so I think we’re doing a good job.”


RELATED: FTC Is Officially Looking into Google’s Self-Promoting Search Features


Critics might beg to differ — Google+ is often referred to as a lesser “Facebook copycat” from the search king — but critics are now comparing Facebook’s search product (which was announced before the Wired interview with Page was conducted) to Google’s main offering. And from a product standpoint, Facebook may have yet to train its users to give Graph Search what it needs to be great. Furthermore, business analysts seem to agree that Facebook’s social recommendation engine won’t hurt Google’s core business … in the near future. But Zuckerberg said at Tuesday’s announcement that Facebook wasn’t focused on the business side of Graph Search just now — even if it does offer huge advertising potential. At the same time, Graph Search could take away eyeballs (and ad dollars) from Google. If Facebook, with its friend-powered engine, ends up giving “better” results than Google for recommendations on restaurants, travel, books, music, and movies — a domination Google is still fighting anti-trust charges over — then why end up Googling at all?


RELATED: The New Google+ Aims to Perfect Procrastination


Well, even Page might think Facebook and Google can complement each other — sort of. To wit, he asked Levy: “For us to succeed, is it necessary for some other company to fail? No.” As Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, “our mission is to make the world more open” by giving people tools to connect. And Google’s stated mission ”is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Are those so similar that they can’t get along? After all, that could be the future of search: You go to Facebook to see what your friends and the people you trust have to say, and then you head to Google for the facts. Of course, neither Facebook or Google wants the future that way, exactly: Facebook has actually teamed up with Microsoft to complement Graph Search, sending people to Bing for those fact-finding, Google-style queries; Google, meanwhile, as Google+ as its social-search equivalent of Graph Searching. And users don’t really want to go to so many different places for basic information that’s built to make their lives easier. Part of the reason people have stuck with Google, despite all of its privacy and anti-trust issues, is that the company’s ultimately done a really good job on their products — GMail, Google Drive, Reader, and their fellow “apps” have become an integral part of our Internet lives. Facebook wants that role, and if social search ends up working — well, then why not chat on Facebook, email (and make phone calls) with Messenger, sext with Poke, and read your news via the News Feed? 


RELATED: Why Google Really Wants You to Use Google+ This Year


Of course, Page said all this stuff weeks ago. And who knows how Graph Search is going over at Google headquarters. Maybe he just he meant a different product that was so… bad. Or maybe he really just doesn’t get Poke? Either way, Larry Page knew this fight was coming. The whole world did.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Mandy Moore & Minka Kelly Have a Makeup-Free Brunch in West Hollywood















01/21/2013 at 08:00 AM EST







Minka Kelly and Mandy Moore


Splash News Online


Mandy Moore and Minka Kelly are ladies who brunch.

Joined by another female friend, the pair stepped out for brunch at BLD in West Hollywood on Saturday.

"They were very low-key and sat in the center of the restaurant, pretty much unnoticed by fellow diners," an onlooker tells PEOPLE.

Both of the famous friends were dressed down – Moore wore her hair in a bun and a gray V-neck T-shirt, while Minka sported a cozy gray sweater with her hair down in waves – and "didn't have a stitch of makeup on," the source adds.

While deep in conversation, Moore sipped on iced tea while the table shared granola, fruit, sandwiches and salads.

– Melody Chiu


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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws


NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.


A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.


"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.


An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.


Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.


Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.


The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.


Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.


But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.


Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."


"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.


Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.


To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.


"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.


Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.


Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.


In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.


The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.


Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.


While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.


"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."


___


Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.


___


Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz


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European shares test two-year highs, yen volatile before BOJ

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares inched towards two-year highs and German Bund futures dipped on Monday, as a political attempt to break a budget impasse in the United States revived appetite for shares and dented demand for safe-haven assets.


U.S. House Republican leaders said on Friday they would seek to pass a three-month extension of federal borrowing authority in the coming days to buy time for the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass a plan to shrink budget deficits.


European shares <.fteu3> were supported by the news <.eu>, but with no clear response from the Democrats and a thin session expected due to a market holiday in the United States, the impact on other assets such as Bunds is likely to be limited.


An early morning push by London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> was beginning to fade by mid-morning, leaving the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 up 0.1 percent and MSCI's world index <.miwd00000pus> steady at a 20-month high. <.l><.eu/>


"There's a bit of encouragement coming out of the U.S.," said Toby Campbell-Gray, head of trading at Tavira Securities in Monaco.


He added that equity markets had remained resilient in the face of an uncertain economic outlook as many investors had stepped in to buy "on the dip" on days when shares had fallen.


Ahead of the region's first finance ministers' meeting of the year, the euro was down slightly at just over $1.33 against the dollar, while the yen firmed after touching a new low, ahead of a Bank of Japan decision expected to deliver bold monetary easing.


According to sources familiar with the Bank of Japan's thinking, the government of new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the central bank have agreed to set 2 percent inflation as a new target, supplanting a softer 1 percent 'goal'.


The dollar rose to as high as 90.25 yen earlier on Monday, its highest since June 2010. It later slipped 0.7 percent on the day to 89.39 yen, as traders cut short positions given the BOJ has often fallen short of market expectations.


"Investors are being mindful that the moves we have seen over the course of the last month or two are just worth locking in at least until we understand how the BOJ are really going to play in the future," said Jeremy Stretch, head of currency strategy at CIBC World Markets.


CURRENCY WAR


Japanese equities have surged in recent weeks in anticipation of a more aggressive monetary policy stance, but not everyone is happy.


The slump in the yen has prompted Russia's deputy central bank governor to warn of a new round of 'currency wars' and the medium-term risk of running ultra-loose monetary policies is likely to be a theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which opens on Wednesday.


With little in the way of economic data or debt issuance and U.S. markets shut for the Martin Luther King public holiday, the rest of the day was expected to be a fairly quite day for investors.


In bond markets, German Bund yields rose close to the top of this year's 30 basis points range, after Republican lawmakers' efforts to give the U.S. government leeway to pay its bills for another three months. Most other euro zone bonds were trading virtually flat.


The U.S. Treasury needs congressional authorisation to raise the current $16.4 trillion limit on U.S. debt sometime between mid-February and early March. A failure to achieve that could lead to a debt default.


"This is part of the political game, it remains to be seen whether the Democrats will accept it," KBC strategist Piet Lammens said, adding that investors' working scenario was that a solution to raise the ceiling would be eventually found anyway.


OIL OVERSUPPLY


German markets showed no reaction after the country's centre-left opposition party edged Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives from power in a regional election on Sunday, reviving its flagging hopes for September's national election.


Oil prices took their cues from a report in the United States at the end of last week that showed consumer sentiment at its weakest in a year as a result of the uncertainty surrounding the country's debt crisis.


Concerns about demand overshadowed supply disruption fears reinforced by the Islamist militant attack and hostage-taking at a gas plant in Algeria, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.


Brent futures were down by 17 cents to $111.72 per barrel by 1030 GMT. U.S. crude shed 40 cents to $95.16 per barrel after touching a four-month high last week.


"The over-riding fundamental feeling in the market is that crude oil is over-supplied in 2013," said Tony Nunan, an oil risk manager at Mitsubishi.


Last week's data showing a pick-up in the Chinese economy helped keep growth-sensitive copper prices steady at roughly $8,058 an ounce. Gold, meanwhile, reversed Friday's losses to stand at $1,688 an ounce.


(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Marious Zaharia and Anooja Debnath; Editing by Will Waterman and Giles Elgood)



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Algeria expects heavy hostage toll as West defends ally


ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - Algeria said on Sunday it expected heavy hostage casualties after its troops ended a desert siege, but Western governments warned against criticizing tactics used by their vital ally in the struggle with Islamists across the Sahara.


An Algerian minister acknowledged the death toll would rise, and a private television station reported that 25 bodies had been found at the gas plant near the town of In Amenas after forces staged a final assault against the Islamist hostage-takers on Saturday.


Some Western governments had expressed frustration at not being informed of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. But France, which is fighting Islamist rebels across the desert in Mali, joined Britain in playing down any suggestion the response from Algeria - the main military power in the Sahara region - had been over-hasty or heavy-handed.


"What everyone needs to know is that these terrorists who attacked this gas plant are killers who pillage, rape, plunder and kill. The situation was unbearable," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.


"It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question. They had to deal with terrorists," he told Europe 1 radio in an interview.


The Islamists' pre-dawn attack on Wednesday has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara and pushed Islamist radicalism in northern Africa to centre stage.


Algeria, scarred by a civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, had insisted there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism.


Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out on Sunday its record in fighting Islamists. "Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack," he said in a television statement.


"We should recognize all that the Algerians have done to work with us and to help and coordinate with us. I'd like to thank them for that. We should also recognize that the Algerians too have seen lives lost among their soldiers."


France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to have a chance of crushing Islamist rebels in northern Mali. Algiers has promised to shut its porous 1,000-km border with Mali to prevent al Qaeda-linked insurgents simply melting away into its empty desert expanses and rugged mountains.


Algeria's permission for France to use its airspace, confirmed by Fabius last week, also makes it much easier to establish direct supply lines for its troops which are trying to stop the Islamist rebels from taking the whole of Mali.


HIGHER DEATH TOLL


Algeria's Interior Ministry had reported on Saturday that 23 hostages and 32 militants were killed during the assaults launched by Algerian special forces to end the crisis, with 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages freed.


However, Minister of Communication Mohamed Said said this would rise when final numbers were issued in the next few hours. "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up," Said was quoted as saying by the official APS news agency.


Details are only slowly emerging on what happened during the siege, which marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa.


Private Algerian television station Ennahar said on Sunday that 25 bodies had been discovered at the Tiguentourine plant, adding that the operation to clear the base would last 48 hours.


The bodies were believed to belong to hostages executed by the militants, said Ennahar TV, which is known to have good sources within Algerian security.


In London, Cameron said three British nationals had been confirmed killed, while a further three Britons plus a British resident were also believed to be dead.


One Briton had already was confirmed killed when the gunmen seized the hostages at the plant near the Libyan border, run by Norway's Statoil along with Britain's BP and Algeria's state oil company.


MULTINATIONAL HOSTAGE-TAKERS


Said reported that the militants had six different nationalities and the operation to clear the plant of mines laid by the hostage-takers was still under way.


Believed to be among the 32 dead militants was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a Nigerien close to al Qaeda-linked commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, presumed mastermind of the raid.


One American has also been confirmed dead. Statoil said five of its workers, all Norwegian nationals, were still missing. Japanese and American workers are also unaccounted for.


On Saturday President Barack Obama said the United States was seeking a "fuller understanding" from Algerian authorities of what had happened, but added that "the blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out".


BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Saturday four of its 18 workers at the site were missing. The remaining 14 were safe.


The militant attack was one of the most audacious in recent years and almost certainly planned before French troops launched the operation in Mali this month to stem an advance by Islamist fighters.


Hundreds of hostages escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.


Before the Interior Ministry released its provisional death toll, an Algerian security source said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national.


The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.


Mauritanian news agencies identified the field commander of the group that attacked the plant as Nigeri, a fighter from one of the Arab tribes in Niger who had joined the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in early-2005.


That group eventually joined up with al Qaeda to become Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It and allied groups are the targets of the French military operation in Mali.


The news agencies described him as "one of the closest people" to Belmokhtar, who fought in Afghanistan and then in Algeria's civil war of the 1990s. Nigeri was known as a man for "difficult missions", having carried out attacks in Mauritania, Mali and Niger.


The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the country's outwardly tough security measures.


Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.


Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.


The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.


(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris, Daniel Flynn in Dakar; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Alison Williams)



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Why does Michelle Obama need two Twitter accounts?






Michelle Obama is on Twitter! That was big news on Thursday, the first lady’s birthday. The White House announced that Mrs. Obama had launched a new Twitter account, @FLOTUS, and lots of folks chimed in with messages welcoming her to the world of micro-blogging social media.


But hold it – wasn’t she already on Twitter? We’ve been following @MichelleObama since the beginning of the 2012 presidential campaign. Is this a reboot, a dual account, or what? Is it the equivalent of the grand opening of a store that’s been in business for months?






Sort of, yes. Except it’s a retail establishment that has two branches kept separate for legal reasons.


RECOMMENDED: Michelle Obama: 10 quotes on her birthday


The invaluable Mashable has the full story here. The @MichelleObama feed is paid for and run by the Obama/Biden political campaign machinery. That’s why it was so active during the summer and fall, as it exhorted everybody to get out and vote, and in general pushed the fortunes of the incumbent presidential ticket. It’s an overtly political use of social media.


The first lady’s Pinterest site is run the same way. Most of those photos of her and her family, and favorite recipes (grilled peaches with yogurt and pistachios?), and exhortations about “why we vote” were put up by campaign staff.


Mrs. Obama’s new @FLOTUS handle reflects her official White House duties, however. It’s run by people from her office who are executive branch (and hence official US government) employees.


Legally speaking, @FLOTUS tweets will have to be stuff that deals with her official duties and the nation as a whole, as opposed to President Obama’s political fortunes. Thus on Thursday she tweeted “Join me and Barack for #MLK Day of Service” after thanking everyone for sending birthday wishes.


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Hmm. @FLOTUS has sent three tweets, and it’s got more than 78,000 followers. That’s a pretty good tweet-to-listener ratio.


Most of this social media stuff is done by staff, of course. The few that she sends herself are supposed to be signed “-mo.”


Is the White House actually good at social media? We think that question can be answered definitively only by someone more versed in the dark electronic arts than we are. But from our point of view, it’s a pretty shrewd operator. Take the White House petition site. You can put up a petition on anything, and if it reaches a certain signature level in a certain period of time, the White House will respond with its point of view.


Most of the coverage of this “We the People” effort has focused on the weird stuff: petitions for Texas to secede, to deport CNN’s Piers Morgan, and so forth. And responding to them has to be a pain for staff. Mother Jones has a piece on Friday in which anonymous staffers gripe about having to spend time actually writing about why the US won’t build a Death Star, and things like that.


But to us, “We the People” really is a clever technique for harvesting e-mail addresses. When creating an account to sign stuff, you can check whether you want to receive missives from the White House. Most of the petitions are in fact about real policy – the need for more or less gun control, for instance. What the White House may get out of this is a continually growing list of voter contact information segmented by policy interest. To push the president’s new gun policies, for instance, they may send targeted e-mails to pro-control addresses, urging them to contact Congress.


We think this because media organizations do the same thing with interactive questionnaires and quizzes. We figure out who’s interested in what kind of stories and we direct those subjects their way.


Surprised? Don’t be. Building brand loyalty – everybody’s got whole new ways of approaching this old problem in today’s Internet age.


RECOMMENDED: Betty Ford to Michelle Obama: How seven first ladies have changed the office


Related stories


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