DEAR ABBY: My daughters are attractive young women, both doing well in their professional careers. "Melanie," who is 27, is married to "Sam," an extremely attractive and successful man.My 30-year-old daughter, "Alicia," has been divorced for a year. Her marriage failed two years ago because she and her husband had an appetite for sex outside their marriage. While I was disturbed about that, I was horrified to learn that Melanie allows her sister to occasionally have sex with Sam.Melanie's argument is that Sam is less likely to cheat given this situation. ...
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IHT Rendezvous: Horse Meat Scandal: Is the Era of Cheap Food Over?
Label: WorldLONDON — With Europe’s expanding horse meat scandal escalating from a drama to a crisis, consumers are being warned that the era of cheap food may be over.
In less than a month, the scandal has spread from Ireland, where prepared foods sold as beef products were found to contain horse, to Britain and much of the Continent.
The crisis deepened on Thursday when British officials said tests showed that a powerful equine drug, potentially harmful to human health, may have entered the food chain, my colleague Stephen Castle writes.
As European officials called on Europol, the European police agency, to coordinate investigations into what could turn out to be extensive Continent-wide fraud by criminal gangs, supermarkets in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands became the latest to remove suspect products from their shelves.
Some are already blaming a low-cost food culture for a situation that may have allowed criminals to exploit ever longer and more complex food supply chains to dump cheap horse meat into the market.
The potential illicit profits could be huge. France’s Nouvel Observateur, tracing the possible itinerary of a horse meat lasagne, said that the route from a Romanian abattoir to a French or British supermarket shelf passed through numerous intermediaries with an opportunity to switch horse for beef.
With horse meat two or three times cheaper, the magazine wrote, “the profit from the switch is reckoned to be €300,000 [$400,000] for every 25 tonnes.”
In an era of affluence, Europeans became accustomed to spending a diminishing portion of their weekly household budgets on food. But with strapped families facing tighter budgets at a time of austerity and rising international food prices, the trend has reversed.
Supermarkets have responded by attempting to keep prices down at the expense, according to critics, of content and quality.
“In a highly competitive market our food industry has not changed its business model,” according to Laura Sandys, a Conservative legislator, writing in The Times of London on Thursday. “Instead it has tried to adapt to food inflation by fitting a more expensive product into a cheap price structure.”
Ms. Sandys, concluding that “the era of cheap food is, sadly, over,” said consumers were unwittingly absorbing the rising costs of meat and grain through reductions in quality and quantity.
“So the £1 [$1.55] cottage pie in your local freezer shop will be the same price that it has been for years,” she wrote, “but today will contain less meat and more artificial fillers such as high fructose corn syrup.”
Pamela Robinson, a supply chain expert at the University of Birmingham in Britain, told The Daily Telegraph, that pressure to sell food more and more cheaply had led to the horse meat scandal.
She said supermarkets were going to have to acknowledge food prices needed to go up if they were to guarantee quality. Families also needed to be educated on how to eat healthily on a budget, rather than relying on cheap processed foods that could no longer guarantee quality.
In the midst of the horse meat scandal, some consumers are already voting with their feet.
A poll for the Sky News broadcaster indicated one-in-five British shoppers had changed their buying habits since the scandal broke. More than half of those had abandoned processed meat entirely.
Traditional butcher shops supplying well-sourced but more expensive meat have meanwhile reported a spike in sales of up to 30 percent.
In the spirit of the times, the BBC published a handy guide to healthy alternatives to pre-packaged, industrially processed foods.
The broadcaster’s Hannah Briggs quoted gastronomes who sang the praises of brined ox tongue and beef brisket, adding: “You could also try curing pig cheeks or chaps in salt and seasoning with Indonesian long pepper and herbs.”
But is the European public really ready to return to a mythical age in which a family of four could go for a week on a boiled cow heel or a pot of tripe? Or will we have to adjust to spending more for our food and less on luxuries?
Tell us if you think it’s inevitable, or even sensible, to spend more on our food. How much of your weekly budget goes to feeding the family? And how about some useful alternatives to expensive cuts? Cow heel recipes, anyone?
HBO exec: Don’t expect a la carte programming any time soon
Label: TechnologyHBO excited subscribers on Tuesday when it announced during the D: Dive Into Media conference that its HBO GO and MAX GO iOS apps were updated with AirPlay support. The news meant iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users could finally stream content from their devices to Apple TV boxes connected to a television set. Following the announcement, AllThingsD pressed further to determine if the news meant that we might soon see true Apple TV support, or even an a la carte programming option.
[More from BGR: Every 10 years, a cataclysm kills off most phone brands – the next one is almost here]
“Our long-term plan for Go is to be across all devices, and effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay,” HBO President and COO Eric Kessler told AllThingsD, noting that the company indeed plans to support Apple TV “at some point.”
[More from BGR: Apple iWatch: People are getting excited for all the wrong reasons]
Regarding an a la carte option, however, the executive didn’t have good news to share.
“Is there a broadband segment that wants HBO? Yes, of course,” Kessler said. “But when you look at penetration rates, at disconnect rates, at infrastructure and marketing costs, the economics are just not particularly compelling”
Kessler added that the situation may change at some point in the future, but he doesn’t see it happening anytime soon.
This article was originally published on BGR.com
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One Direction, Taylor Swift Among Kids' Choice Awards Nominees
Label: LifestyleOne Direction, (from left) Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Harry Styles
Jon Furniss/AP
Time to get slimed!
Wednesday brought the nominations for Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards, set to air March 23 with Josh Duhamel as host.
For favorite musical group, nominees include Big Time Rush, Bon Jovi, Maroon 5 and One Direction. Favorite Song nominees include: "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, "Gagnan Style" by PSY, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift, and "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction, of which Swift's ex, Harry Styles, is a member.
"We are delighted with our nominations for the Kids' Choice Awards," Styles said in a statement to PEOPLE. "It was amazing to perform 'What Makes You Beautiful' at last year's show. Thank you as always to our incredible fans and supporters!"
Voting opens in 22 categories on nick.com on Thursday, allowing for a little Valentine's Day love for your favorite TV actors, musicians, sports and film stars. New categories added this year include favorite app and favorite villain.
Voters may also mark their ballots on Facebook using embeddable wall posts and on Twitter with custom hashtags.
This year mark's Nickelodeon's 26th annual awards. The show will be broadcast live from the University of Southern California's Galen Center on March 23, starting at 8 p.m. ET, on Nickelodeon, of course.
Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.
The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.
Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.
The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.
"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.
A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.
"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.
Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.
The report also concluded that:
—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.
—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.
__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.
The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.
Wall Street up modestly, extends recent rally
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose modestly on Wednesday, putting the S&P near its highest intraday level in more than five years as the market's recent streak of slight gains on low volume continued.
Equities have been strong performers of late, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, with the S&P 500 gaining 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow is about 1 percent from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.
Those gains could leave the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors take profit amid a dearth of new trading catalysts. While analysts continue to see an upward bias in markets, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes have been light, with the S&P near its highest since November 2007.
"There is a general upward bias, but right now we're at the top of the range we've been in, so we could struggle to advance further," said Paul Nolte, managing director at Dearborn Partners in Chicago.
The S&P 500 was well over its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, a sign the market could be overbought.
Comcast Corp
Deere & Co
According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.
Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 16.44 points, or 0.12 percent, at 14,002.26. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 1.12 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,520.55. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 4.32 points, or 0.14 percent, at 3,190.81.
The S&P was mere points away from 1,523.57, which would represent the index's highest intraday level since November 1, 2007.
Industrial and construction shares will be in focus following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, during which he called for a $50 billion spending plan to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges. He also backed higher taxes on the wealthy.
Yahoo Inc
Retail sales rose 0.1 percent in January, as expected, as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending. Equities were little impacted by the data.
(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski)
Six More British Journalists Are Arrested in Hacking Investigation
Label: World
LONDON – Adding fresh momentum to police investigations that have already cost Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire in Britain hundreds of millions of dollars, Scotland Yard said on Wednesday that six more journalists who previously worked for The News of the World tabloid were arrested at dawn on suspicion of hacking into cellphone messages.
The latest police swoop followed others in the past year that have resulted in the arrests of more than 100 reporters, editors, investigators, executives and public officials by police units investigating suspected criminal activity at British newspapers. Most of those have involved The Sun, Mr. Murdoch’s daily tabloid, and The News of the World, the highly profitable Sunday tabloid he shut down as the scandal broke in July 2011.
In an especially troublesome development for News Corporation, the New York-based parent company of the Murdoch newspapers here, the Scotland Yard statement on the latest arrests said that they involved “a further suspected conspiracy to intercept telephone voice mail messages by a number of employees who worked for the now defunct News of the World newspaper” – in effect, a new break in the police inquiry, involving suspected wrongdoing beyond the wide pattern of phone hacking at the paper that has resulted in 26 previous arrests.
The police statement said that five of the arrests on Wednesday took place in London, and one in Cheshire, a county that lies to the south of the northern city of Manchester. It said those held for questioning included three men and three women, all in their 30s and 40s, none of whom were named. The Sun later confirmed that two of the six were currently working for the newspaper, having taken jobs there after The News of the World closed. The police said the homes of all those arrested were being searched.
Mike Darcey, chief executive of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that publishes The Sun, e-mailed staff at the paper after the arrests. “As always, I share your concerns about these arrests and recognize the huge burden it places on our journalists in the daily challenge of producing Britain’s most popular newspaper,” he said. “I am extremely grateful to all of you who succeed in that mission despite these very challenging circumstances.”
Scotland Yard gave no details of the alleged conspiracy behind Wednesday’s arrests, beyond saying that the “new lines of inquiry” it was pursuing involved suspected offenses committed in 2005 and 2006. That would place the alleged phone hacking in the same period as the only hacking case against the Murdoch papers that has resulted in convictions so far.
In 2007, The News of the World’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were convicted and jailed – Mr. Goodman for four months and Mr. Mulcaire for six months – after they pleaded guilty to hacking into voice mail messages of members of the royal family.
At the time of the Goodman-Mulcaire trial, and later, Murdoch executives in Britain described the hacking of the royal telephones as a “rogue” incident, and not part of a broader pattern of newsroom wrongdoing.
But a different picture emerged after the police reopened the inquiry in 2011. Subsequently, hundreds of individuals, including celebrities, politicians, sportsmen and crime victims, were informed that their phone messages had been intercepted and many of them sued the Murdoch papers for damages and demanded public apologies.
Once the phone hacking scandal broke, the police inquiry widened to include allegations of bribing public officials, computer hacking and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by concealing or destroying evidence.
Sixty arrests — by far the largest number — have involved alleged conspiracies to bribe police officers and public officials to obtain confidential information on which to build the newspapers’ scoops. Last week, a London court was told that 144 of 169 civil suits against The News of the World had been settled out of court and that substantial but undisclosed damages were paid to the litigants. Those named as having settled their claims included Hugh Grant, the actor; Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York; the magician Uri Geller; a priest, Richard Reardon, who has ministered to the singer Charlotte Church; and an array of minor television and film celebrities.
A lawyer for the hacking victims told the court that 26 damage suits remained active, and that up to 100 new cases were likely to reach the court before News International, the Murdoch newspaper subsidiary in Britain, closes a compensation offer in April. The highest known settlement paid by the company, amounting to the equivalent of about $1.2 million, was paid in 2008 to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of Britain’s soccer players’ union, the Professional Footballers’ Association.
In an action separate from the arrests of the six journalists on Wednesday, Scotland Yard said that a 50-year-old police officer had been arrested at his home in south London by detectives investigating alleged bribes to public officials. The officer was the 60th person to be arrested under a police inquiry known as Operation Elveden, set up as part of the wider investigation of newsroom wrongdoing.
Several police officers are facing criminal corruption charges but the most serious case before the courts so far involves a Defense Ministry official, Bettina Jordan-Barber, 39, who has been charged, along with Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of The News of the World and The Sun, and John Kay, chief reporter for The Sun, with conspiracy to pay Ms. Jordan Barber the equivalent of $160,000 for confidential information.
Scotland Yard’s hacking investigation has resulted in 32 arrests, including the six on Wednesday. Twenty other people have been arrested and questioned in connection with computer hacking and other privacy breaches. Taken together, Scotland Yard has described the investigations, involving about 150 officers and support staff, as the most extensive criminal inquiry in its history.
HTC teases flagship M7 Android phone, counts down to next week’s unveiling [video]
Label: TechnologyWhy Are the Jenner Sisters Telling the Kardashians to 'Leave Us Alone!'?
Label: Lifestyle
Stylewatch
Style News Now
02/11/2013 at 04:30 PM ET
Courtesy: PacSun
If you were launching a clothing line and your siblings had multi-million dollars worth of experience in that area, would you reach out to them for pointers? Well, if you’re Kendall and Kylie Jenner, the answer is no: The teen models didn’t consult with Kim, Kourtney or Khloé Kardashian while working on their new clothing line for PacSun.
“We were like, ‘This is our project. Leave us alone,’” Kylie, 15, tells PEOPLE. “We didn’t go to them for advice at all.” (And it looks like they didn’t need their older sisters’ help anyway: The line just launched on Friday and several of its pieces have already sold out online.)
The affordable collection, with prices ranging from $24.50 to $79.50, features pieces inspired by the teens’ casual, California style. “It’s just a chill, relaxed cool line,” Kendall, 17, says, of their designs, noting that she’s partial to the chambray button-down, while Kylie adores the dresses.
Despite their similar taste in clothes, the girls found themselves disagreeing during the design process. “We did butt heads, but I think that’s actually great,” Kylie says. “We finally came to a conclusion, and I think it’s cool that there are two opinions in the entire line.”
And though the Kardashians weren’t directly involved in the collection, Kendall admits that she and Kylie do draw style inspiration from their older siblings, and are constantly “borrowing” from their well-stocked closets — especially Kourtney’s. “She’s always had the best style, even when she was younger,” Kylie says.
The Jenners won’t, however, name a best-dressed dude in their (extended) family, and not because they’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. “You can’t compare Scott and Kanye. You can’t!” Kendall explains. “Kanye doesn’t wear suits like Scott does. There are so many different things [about their style].”
Kendall & Kylie for PacSun is available now at PacSun stores nationwide and at pacsun.com. Tell us: Are you excited to shop the Jenners’ first clothing line?
–Jennifer Cress
PHOTOS: SEE MORE STAR STYLE IN ‘LAST NIGHT’S LOOK’
Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life
Label: HealthThe world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.
There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.
"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.
Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.
When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."
One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.
The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."
In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."
"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.
Experts on aging agreed.
"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."
Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.
But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.
"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.
"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.
Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.
In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.
Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.
The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.
Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.
Other leaders who are still working:
—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.
—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.
—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.
—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.
__
Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.
___
Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
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