NEW YORK: US stocks closed fairly flat on Wednesday after a choppy day of trading, with some positive earnings reports providing support.
At the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7.22 points (0.05 percent) at 13,986.52.
The S&P 500 rose 0.83 (0.05 percent) to 1,512.12, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 3.10 (0.10 percent) to 3,168.48.
- AFP/de
The three-day interaction with central office-bearers has left little doubt about Rahul's plans - he would rather focus on states and lower levels of AICC.
It has put paid to hopes that as Congress vice-president, Rahul would make a clean break from the party as run till now. "He is a marathon man, not a sprinter. Why this belief of abrupt change?" asked a key party manager.
The possibility of revamp being largely confined to rather insignificant secretary-level personnel in AICC is in contrast to the vociferous demand for change made by senior leaders at the recent interaction.
Congressmen believe that revamp apart, party fortunes in the critical political calendar depend on how the organization is led in poll-bound states and how the workers are rejuvenated in the course of Lok Sabha polls.
While the party is confident in top priority Karnataka, it has its task cut out in end-of-the-year polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi.
The four states will have a bearing on the political sentiment -- Congress's magnetism among anti-BJP minorities and "secular" regional parties who are its potential allies.
A section of insiders believes Rahul has to act fast to maintain the momentum from Jaipur after his emotional appeal found strong resonance with workers and even helped remove doubts about his long-term political engagement.
Leaders want Rahul to move quickly to sustain the interest of workers, who are likely to be disappointed by the absence of massive changes in the party management and impression of business as usual. "His basic appeal in Jaipur lay in his promise to change affairs radically and quickly. He may not have meant it but that was the message that went down the line," a leader said.
Another section of leaders, who advocate slow change, argue that workers would react more to how their local leaders in states are picked and not how managers are moved in Delhi.
Leaders warn that delay in initiating changes may dent the Jaipur momentum. "It has to be clinched before the budget session starting from February 21. After that, the focus will shift to budget and government," a senior leader said.
Though Rahul has lost no time in starting the engagement with party managers, leaders argue he has a small margin of error in the year that will mould the shape of the Lok Sabha battle.
Congress mouthpiece 'Sandesh' echoed the burden of expectations from Rahul. "The unification of the Congress which led to the return of the party to power under Congress president Sonia Gandhi will now be further enhanced with a new generation, Rahul having accepted this responsibility," an editorial in the latest edition said.
Men, here's another reason to work up a sweat: It boosts your sperm count.
According to new research, couch potatoes who watch lots of TV have fewer sperm than men who exercise moderately or vigorously each week.
Sperm count is a measure of semen quality, which has mysteriously declined in U.S. men in recent decades. Low sperm count is linked to infertility as well as testicular cancer, prostate cancer, and cardiovascular problems later in life.
(Related: "Deep-Voiced Men Have Lower Sperm Counts, Study Says.")
That's why scientists have been searching for ways that men can improve their sperm—including changing daily behaviors.
"We know little about how lifestyle may impact semen quality," said study leader Audrey Jane Gaskins, a doctoral student in nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Her discovery that two changeable behaviors—exercise and TV watching—"could have a big impact on sperm count is pretty exciting," she said.
"Impressive" Sperm Finds
For the study, Gaskins and colleagues asked 189 young men, mostly college students from the University of Rochester in New York, to fill out questionnaires on their physical activity, diet, stress, and other lifestyle factors.
Each man then provided a semen sample in a medical clinic. (See "Sperm Recognize 'Brothers,' Team Up for Speed.")
The results showed that the men who reported exercising more than 15 hours a week had 73 percent higher sperm counts than men who exercised fewer than 5 hours a week. And men who watched more than 20 hours of TV had 44 percent lower sperm counts than men who watched little to no TV.
These are "pretty impressive differences," said Gaskins, whose study appeared February 4 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The team also ruled out smoking and being overweight—two clinical causes of low sperm counts—as contributing factors among participants in its study.
Why couch potatoes produce less sperm is unknown, although there are two theories, Gaskins said. One is that exercise produces more antioxidant enzymes that can prevent a natural process called oxidative stress from damaging cell membranes in the body. This damage can disrupt the creation of new sperm cells. (Find out how a man produces 1,500 sperm a second.)
The other reason is somewhat controversial: That when men watch TV, their scrotums get squished against their bodies, making that region hotter and possibly preventing new sperm from being made.
Some research has shown that sperm production slows if the scrotum temperature rises 1.8 to 3.6ºF (1 to 2ºC) above normal body temperature, Gaskins said. But other studies have also shown that warmer scrotums have no bearing on sperm creation.
Get Moving, Men
But the study also raises some more questions about sperm count, experts noted.
Oddly, the sedentary subjects' sperm didn't show any changes in their physical structures or in how well they swam—two soft indicators of sperm health, noted Phillip Mucksavage, a urologist at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia who was not involved in the study. (See "Sperm Tracked in 3-D-A First.")
Though there are fewer of them, "the sperm that are there still look good."
Mucksavage added that the study's results would have been stronger if the scientists had found other sedentary activities—such as sitting at a computer or reading a book—had the same affect on sperm count as did watching TV.
What's more, said T. Mike Hsieh, a urologist at the University of California, San Diego, the study doesn't have any implications for fertility, one of the main reasons men are concerned about sperm count.
That's because one semen sample is not enough to determine fertility. That requires a more thorough analysis, including multiple semen samples and blood work, said Hsieh, who wasn't involved in the study.
It's not like if you "stop watching TV you'd go from infertile to fertile," he said.
But all the experts agreed on one thing: you should get active if you aren't already.
Said Hsieh: "I would use this as a piece of evidence to motivate my patients to get off the couch and start working out."
Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.
In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.
As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.
“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”
Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.
Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”
Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.
Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”
When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”
Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”
In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.
If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.
“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”
This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.
WASHINGTON: US prosecutors said Tuesday they have no plans to press criminal charges against cycling cheat Lance Armstrong, despite his confession that he owes his Tour de France victories to illegal doping.
US Attorney Andre Birotte, who led a federal investigation into the disgraced rider, did not definitively rule out action, but said Armstrong's public admission had not yet changed the decision not to prosecute.
"We made a decision on that case, I believe, a little over a year ago," he said, when asked about the status of the federal inquiry into long-standing claims that Armstrong had run a doping program and had lied to federal agents.
"Obviously we've been well aware of the statements that have been made by Mr Armstrong and other media reports," he said, referring to Armstrong's bombshell confession to chat show legend Oprah Winfrey last month.
"That has not changed my view at this time. Obviously we'll consider -- we'll continue to look at the situation, but that hasn't changed our view as I stand here today," Birotte told a news conference in Washington.
The 41-year-old Texan was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles last year after the US Anti-Doping Agency gathered compelling testimony that he had been the ring-leader of a large-scale doping conspiracy.
He had long angrily professed his innocence, including in questioning by US federal agents investigating the same allegations, but the mask fell away last month when he confessed his guilt to Winfrey in detail.
The admission threw up a number of legal questions, including whether the federal probe might be re-opened, whether he might be prosecuted for perjury and whether he might be sued to recover former payments and prize money.
Dallas insurance company SCA Promotions has already demanded the return of $12 million in bonuses it paid to Armstrong for multiple Tour titles.
SCA withheld a $5 million bonus due after Armstrong's sixth Tour de France win in 2004 because of doping allegations circulating in Europe, and Armstrong took them to court.
He won the case because SCA's original contract had no stipulations about doping, and Armstrong attorney Tim Herman told USA Today that the shamed cyclist doesn't intend to pay back any of the money.
"My only point is no athlete ever, to my understanding, has gone back and paid back his compensation," Herman told the newspaper in an article published Tuesday.
Herman cited New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton, who was suspended for a season by the NFL for the team's alleged pay-for-hits "bounty" scheme.
"They were suspended, but nobody said you've got to give your paycheck back," Herman said.
While Armstrong told Winfrey he would like to get his lifetime ban reduced, so that he could eventually compete in marathons, for example, by the time he's 50, Herman said the shamed cyclist was now prepared to cooperate with anti-doping authorities in a bid to clean up cycling even if is eligibility isn't restored.
"Whether it's a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or some comprehensive attempt to clean things up, it doesn't make any difference as long as something like that is convened," Herman said. "Lance will definitely cooperate."
Herman told the newspaper that Armstrong doesn't believe that USADA is best-placed to lead the battle against doping in cycling, since the sport is largely based in Europe.
Nor has USADA chief Travis Tygart's claim that Armstrong lied in some of his comments to Winfrey eased relations between the two parties.
"To hear Tygart tell it, Lance Armstrong is responsible for the culture he was dropped into on a team (that) was engaged in misconduct long before he got to the team," Herman said.
"He was a 19-year-old kid dropped in this culture, just like everybody else. He didn't create it."
-AFP/ac
In Hyderabad, businessman Mohammed Arashad of Baba Nagar lodged a complaint against Togadia at the Kanchanbagh police station Monday night, alleging that he had made a "hate speech" against Muslims in Indore.
"The complainant alleged that Togadia, in his speech in Indore a few weeks ago, used foul language while referring to the Muslims and made several derogatory comments. He requested us to take appropriate action," Kanchanbagh inspector Syed Jahangir said.
Accused murderer Jodi Arias testified over the last two days about a flurry of boyfriends and how she followed them into exploring a string of religions including witchcraft, Buddhism, Hinduism and eventually Mormonism.
Arias, 32, has yet to tell the jury about meeting Travis Alexander, the ex-boyfriend who baptized her into the Mormon religion and who she is charged with killling in a jealous rage in 2008. She is now on trial in Arizona for his murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Her odyssey through boyfriends and the spiritual world included a five year period from age 18 through age 22 when Arias said she became very interested in fundamentalist Christianity, Wicca, Buddhism, and Hinduism, all of which she explored as she dated men who practiced those beliefs.
Eventually Arias became interested in Mormonism through Alexander, and converted to Mormonism when she began a tumultuous sexual relationship with him in 2006.
Arias took the stand for the second time today to explain to the jury how she came to kill Alexander in what she claims was self defense. Her story started with other boyfriends.
"When I first met (Matt McCartney) I was a little bit leery about things he was into. I saw some books on witchcraft and went, 'oh', but he explained to me that he was just seeking," Arias said today. "He was looking at other religions, he was studying Wicca, and I didn't practice it myself, but he had practiced it and had moved onto studying eastern mysticism and Buddhism."
"Our relationship took a lot of spiritual turns," she said.
Arias said that religion played a major role in her and McCartney's relationship, which lasted nearly two years and involved living together in Oregon.
"We sort of explored together, taking meditation seminars, new age type seminars, which sort of had roots in Hinduism or Buddhism, and were kind of like a modern version of transcendentalism," she said. "We would drive to Portland or the Bay Area often for them."
See Jodi Arias Trial Videos
Arias said she grew up as a non-denominational Christian. During her testimony on Monday Arias said that in high school, an acquaintance had told her that the second coming of Jesus Christ would be in 1997, and she took to warning close friends about it.
"It's kind of silly, but there was this older man who used to come into my parents' restaurant, and he had a small pocket version of the New Testament that he always carried. He was always quoting Bible stories to me, and this one time he told me he had done the math in the Bible and determined that he knew that the second coming was going to occur in September of 1997," Arias said.
Arias took the man's advice to heart and called her on-again, off-again boyfriend of the time to tell him the news.
"I was really naive and kind of believed him. It seemed important, so I thought Bobby (Juarez) should know about it. He wasn't religious, but I thought it was important that he at least hear that for himself," she said.
Through a string of boyfriends in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Arias continued to identify as a Christian who was into spirituality. When she met Alexander in 2006, she immediately became interested in Mormonism. She quickly converted and Alexander, a Mormon elder, baptized her into her new religion.
The two also maintained a torrid sexual affair, which is prohibited for unmarried people in the Mormon religion.
Other witnesses who have been called to the stand have noted her commitment to Mormonism, including Ryan Burns, a Mormon she began seeing after breaking up with Alexander. She also visited Burns the day after killing Alexander.
"Part of our conversations with each other were about her religious views, and my religious views," Burns testified. "She would often tell me about how she felt about her religious beliefs, the Book of Mormon. She was a convert, by Travis... She mentioned reading the scriptures."
"Good for them, go cats!"
"Sorry cats but you've gotta go."
"Do you get paid to write this?"
Well, nobody ever said cat lovers were mellow. But I was taken by surprise to see the number (and intensity) of comments on National Geographic's Facebook page and Daily News website after I wrote a story about a new study on the hunting habits of the domestic cat.
To recap: Cats stand accused of killing between 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion birds and 6.9 billion to 20.7 billion mammals in the continental United States each year.
There were hundreds of comments. One reader is "sick to death of watching my neighbors cats killing migratory songbirds."
"I don't think there should be an all encompassing feline genocide," said another, "but i feel something definitely needs to be done about feral populations."
Others found the study results far from newsworthy: "Yes, all of my cats are killers. That is why I brought them home in the first place" and "I love you National Geographic, but seriously... of course my cat is gonna kill some birds."
The study has sparked strong dialogue among bird and cat groups as well.
In a press release the American Bird Conservancy called the study a "wake-up call" and said "the carnage that outdoor cats inflict is staggering and can no longer be ignored or dismissed."
Alley Cat Allies and Best Friends Animal Society both questioned the study's estimates and suggested the researchers had ulterior motives. Alley Cat Allies, which calls itself "the only national advocacy organization dedicated to the protection and humane treatment of cats," said the study was a "veiled promotion by bird advocates to ramp up the mass killing of outdoor cats." The vice-chairman of Best Friends Animal Society, a group with projects throughout the U.S., claimed "the authors and the anti-free-roaming cat contingent want stray and feral cats to be rounded up and killed." He added that "scapegoating cats is a huge and, sadly, lucrative business."
The Humane Society of the United States also weighed in, reiterating their support for the "thousands of organizations and individuals who manage cat colonies through trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs," while adding that there would be no support in those quarters for a campaign to euthanize cats.
But maybe this was never about cat people and bird people after all. "Me thinks the dog lovers came up with those figures," suggested one National Geographic reader.
HAVANA: Stooped and using a cane, Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has taken the country by surprise by turning out to vote in legislative elections, after a three-month absence from public view.
The 86-year-old Castro cast his ballot at a school in Havana's El Vedado neighborhood on Sunday, engaging in an animated give-and-take with reporters at the polling station and voters for more than an hour.
The elections were to choose 612 members of the National Assembly as well as deputies of local legislatures, with the number of candidates equal to the number of available seats, so Castro easily stole the show.
His rare public appearances often have served to tamp down rumours about his own health, but Castro used this occasion to talk about improvements in the health of his good friend and ally Hugo Chavez, who is convalescing in Cuba.
The Venezuelan president is "much better, recovering," Castro said of the 58-year-old Chavez, who himself has not been seen or heard from since December 10, when he travelled to Havana for his fourth round of cancer surgery.
"It has been a tough struggle but he has been improving," Castro said in comments carried by the official Granma newspaper, adding: "We have to cure him. Chavez is very important for his country and for Latin America."
Castro said he gets daily reports on the health of Chavez, whose survival is also crucial to Cuba, which depends on Venezuela for cut-rate oil and trade as well as international political support.
Castro, who turned over the country's leadership to his brother Raul in 2006 after he fell ill, also took the opportunity to throw darts at the United States, his adversary of more than half a century.
"I am convinced that Cubans are really a revolutionary people," said Castro, who came to power in a 1959 revolution.
"I don't have to prove it. History has already proven it. And 50 years of the US blockade have not been -- nor will it be -- able to defeat us."
The United States slapped a commercial, economic, and financial embargo against Cuba in October 1960 after Castro's revolutionary government nationalised the properties of United States citizens and corporations.
It was broadened to become a near-total embargo in 1962 as Cuba's alliance with the Soviet bloc became apparent.
Images shown on Cuban TV as well as pictures in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde showed a slightly stooped Castro with a cane. He wore a dark shirt and a bomber jacket.
In his comments, the revolutionary leader also praised the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), whose presidency Cuba formally assumed last week at a summit in Santiago, Chile.
Set up in Caracas in December 2011 at the behest of Chavez, CELAC groups all nations from across the Americas except the United States and Canada.
The Cuban chairmanship of the group marked Havana's full regional reintegration and was seen as a major diplomatic coup for Communist-ruled Cuba.
"This was a step forward which we owe to the efforts of many people, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez," Castro said.
Castro had not been seen in public since October 21, when he accompanied Elias Jaua, who is now Venezuela's foreign minister, to the Hotel Nacional.
The Cuban leader's long absences from public view have fuelled rumours that his health has worsened, that he was dead or on his death bed.
He turned over the Cuban presidency to his brother Raul in 2008 two years after falling seriously ill and undergoing intestinal surgery.
Since then, he has kept his hand in by writing frequent editorials, publishing books about the revolution, and welcoming a few international leaders in private events.
On Thursday, according to state media reports, he hosted former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva.
About 8.5 million Cubans took part in the polls that featured no opposition candidates. Authorities billed the event as a celebration of Cuban democracy, "which is different" from those in other countries.
But Cuban dissidents blasted the vote.
"What strange elections, in which there is no choice and all the candidates think the same," wrote dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez. "It's an electoral farce."
- AFP/jc
On Monday morning, advocate general A Navaneethakrishnan and Kamal's senior counsel P S Raman informed Justice S Rajeswaran that the issue had been settled amicably. "Pursuant to the amicable settlement of the issues between the film producers and Muslim organisations, all district collectors in the state have withdrawn the orders earlier passed under Section 144 of CrPC, suspending the exhibition of the film, thereby paving the way for the peaceful release of the film in Tamil Nadu," a common memorandum filed before the court said.
They wanted the court's permission to withdraw the petitions filed by Kamal's film production firm, Rajkamal Films International. Justice Rajeswaran allowed the plea and closed all the pending cases. The memo said the settlement talks conducted in the presence of government representatives on February 2 helped reach a compromise under which the producers had agreed to make certain changes in the film.
'Vishwaroopam', originally scheduled to be released here on January 25, could not be screened as district collectors and commissioners of police issued prohibitory orders restraining theatres from screening it in Chennai and other districts. The mega-budget thriller ran into trouble after a few Muslim organisations staged protests saying the community has been shown in poor light in the film.
The actor approached the high court against the prohibitory orders and though he got a favourable order from a single judge, the film could not be screened as the order was stayed by a division bench of the high court. A distraught Kamal Haasan told the media that he will be forced to leave the state and even the country for a secular place if he continued to face harassment. After his emotional statement, fellow actors started unofficial talks with the protesters. Soon, chief minister J Jayalalithaa gave a statement, defending the government's move and facilitating talks between the two groups.
After marathon discussions on February 2, it was announced that film will be modified at seven instances by muting Quranic prayers and references to Tamil jihadis. The film was supposed to be screened in more than 500 theatres originally. Now, negotiations are on with many theatres that had started screening other movies.
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