02/12/2013 at 11:00 AM ET
Timothy Hyatt/Getty
Reading is fundamental for Julianna Margulies, especially when it comes to her 5-year-old son Kieran Lindsay.
“Since I’ve had a child [there hasn't been a day] that we haven’t read to him at night,” The Good Wife star, 46, tells PEOPLE Thursday at an event she hosted for LEGO/Duplo’s Read! Build! Play!
“And if I can’t be there my husband is or the babysitter is. Somebody is always there reading to him before he goes to sleep.”
To that end, weekly library trips have become routine in Margulies’ household.
“We have a great little neighborhood library, so once a week we take seven books out and then we bring them back and switch them,” she explains. “If we don’t go on a Monday, Kieran’s like, ‘Wait — it’s library day.’”
Margulies is continually surprised by what she refers to as her son’s “undying curiosity.”
“Everything is new and exciting, so it makes you look through their eyes and see the world that way. He wakes up 6 a.m. and just starts talking. Everything is interesting. And it can be anything — it can be a shadow on the wall or a prism light that you suddenly see a rainbow coming out of. Every day is a new adventure with him.”
–Shakthi Jothianandan
The 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.
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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.
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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks slipped at the open on Monday, with the S&P and Nasdaq dipping from multiyear highs, as Google
Trading volume was relatively low, which could make the market volatile and exaggerate moves.
Google fell 0.9 percent at $777.94 after the company said in a filing former chief executive Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his Google stake, a move that could potentially net him $2.51 billion.
The decline was partly offset by gains in Apple , up 1.2 percent at $480.78 after a New York Times report that the iPhone maker is experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch.
No economic data or major earnings reports are scheduled for Monday, but Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen is due to speak about the economic recovery at 1 p.m.
Upbeat U.S. and Chinese data last week helped the S&P 500 extend its weekly winning streak to six. The benchmark is up more than 6 percent so far this year after a steep rally in January that has stalled as the S&P and Dow industrials near record highs.
The large market rally so far this year has created space for hesitation in the absence of clear catalysts, according to Steve Goldman, principal at Goldman Management in Short Hills, New Jersey.
"Some positives behind the market rally are still there, and the path of least resistance is likely to be higher," he said.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 35.39 points or 0.25 percent, to 13,957.58, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 1.94 points or 0.13 percent, to 1,515.99 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 5.75 points or 0.18 percent, to 3,188.12.
US Airways
Opposition grew to the $24.4 billion buyout of Dell Inc
Dell shares hovered near $13.65, the buyout offer price.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Kenneth Barry)
CANBERRA (Reuters) – Apple Inc has been ordered to appear before Australia‘s parliament with fellow technology giants Microsoft Inc and Adobe Systems Inc to explain why local consumers pay so much for their products, despite the strong Aussie dollar.
Broadening a row between the world’s most valuable company and Australian lawmakers over corporate taxes paid on Apple‘s operations, Apple executives were formally summonsed on Monday to front a parliamentary committee in Canberra on March 22.
“In what’s probably the first time anywhere in the world, these IT firms are now being summoned by the Australian parliament to explain why they price their products so much higher in Australia compared to the United States,” said ruling Labor government MP Ed Husic, who helped set up the committee.
High local prices and soaring cost-of-living bills for basic services are hurting the popularity of the minority Labor government ahead of a September 14 election it is widely tipped to lose, giving political momentum to the inquiry.
All three companies have so far declined to appear before the special committee set up in May last year to investigate possible price gouging on Australian hardware and software buyers, despite the Australian dollar hovering near record highs above the U.S. currency around A$ 1.03.
A 16GB WiFi iPad produced by Apple with Retina display sells in Australia for A$ 539, $ 40 above the price in the U.S., despite the stronger local currency. Microsoft’s latest versions of office 365 home premium cost A$ 119 in Australia versus $ 99.99 in the United States.
IT firms and other multinationals have blamed high operating costs in Australia including high local wages and conditions, as well as import costs and the relatively small size of the retail market in the $ 1.5 trillion economy.
Failure to appear before the committee as ordered could leave all three firms open to contempt of parliament charges, fines or even jail terms.
“For some time consumers and businesses have been trying to work out why they are paying so much more, particularly for software, where if it’s downloaded there is no shipping or handling, or much of a labor cost,” Husic told Reuters.
Adobe and Microsoft have previously provided separate written statements and submissions to the inquiry. But executives have been reluctant to explain their pricing before a public inquiry.
Apple executives in Australia declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
“The companies have blamed each other for not appearing. One will say ‘we’re not going to appear if the other is not going to appear’. So we’ve cut straight to the chase and said we’ll just summons you,” Husic said.
Price gouging in IT for hardware and software, Husic said, could be costing Australia’s more than 2 million small and medium businesses as much as $ 10 billion extra.
Husic took aim at Apple last week over local taxes paid by the company, telling parliament that Apple generated A$ 6 billion in revenue in Australia in 2011, but paid only A$ 40 million in tax – less than one percent of turnover.
“While they generated A$ 6 billion in revenue, they apparently racked up from what I understand A$ 5.5 billion in costs. How?” Husic said. “They do not manufacture here. They have no factories here.”
He accused Apple executives of maintaining a “cloak of invisibility”, while dodging scrutiny of operations. Apple has been criticized elsewhere for its zealous secrecy.
“Ask anyone who has sought answers from them about their Australian operations and you will hear a common theme. They will not talk,” he said.
(Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
The Brazilian beauty introduced 9-week-old daughter Vivian Lake Brady in a Facebook posting last Friday, when she was also displaying her washboard stomach while vacationing poolside at her hotel in Hawaii.
With the photo of Vivian, Bündchen, who is on the holiday with husband Tom Brady and their two kids (Vivian's brother is Benjamin, 3), wrote, "Love is everything!!! Happy friday, much love to all."
As for her figure, the supermodel said to Vogue U.K. in 2011, "Like I tell my five sisters, who don't work at it very hard at all, whatever you put in, you get out. I'm not afraid of working hard at anything, whatever it is. I just always want to be the best that I can."
CHICAGO (AP) — Shootings and other traumatic events involving children are not rare events, but there's a startling lack of scientific evidence on the best ways to help young survivors and witnesses heal, a government-funded analysis found.
School-based counseling treatments showed the most promise, but there's no hard proof that anxiety drugs or other medication work and far more research is needed to provide solid answers, say the authors who reviewed 25 studies. Their report was sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
According to research cited in the report, about two-thirds of U.S. children and teens younger than 18 will experience at least one traumatic event, including shootings and other violence, car crashes and weather disasters. That includes survivors and witnesses of trauma. Most will not suffer any long-term psychological problems, but about 13 percent will develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress, including anxiety, behavior difficulties and other problems related to the event.
The report's conclusions don't mean that no treatment works. It's just that no one knows which treatments are best, or if certain ones work better for some children but not others.
"Our findings serve as a call to action," the researchers wrote in their analysis, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.
"This is a very important topic, just in light of recent events," said lead author Valerie Forman-Hoffman, a researcher at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
She has two young children and said the results suggest that it's likely one of them will experience some kind of trauma before reaching adulthood. "As a parent I want to know what works best," the researcher said.
Besides the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, other recent tragedies involving young survivors or witnesses include the fatal shooting last month of a 15-year-old Chicago girl gunned down in front of a group of friends; Superstorm Sandy in October; and the 2011 Joplin, Mo., tornado, whose survivors include students whose high school was destroyed.
Some may do fine with no treatment; others will need some sort of counseling to help them cope.
Studying which treatments are most effective is difficult because so many things affect how a child or teen will fare emotionally after a traumatic event, said Dr. Denise Dowd, an emergency physician and research director at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Mo., who wrote a Pediatrics editorial.
One of the most important factors is how the child's parents handle the aftermath, Dowd said.
"If the parent is freaking out" and has difficulty controlling emotions, kids will have a tougher time dealing with trauma. Traumatized kids need to feel like they're in a safe and stable environment, and if their parents have trouble coping, "it's going to be very difficult for the kid," she said.
The researchers analyzed 25 studies of treatments that included anti-anxiety and depression drugs, school-based counseling, and various types of psychotherapy. The strongest evidence favored school-based treatments involving cognitive behavior therapy, which helps patients find ways to cope with disturbing thoughts and emotions, sometimes including talking repeatedly about their trauma.
This treatment worked better than nothing, but more research is needed comparing it with alternatives, the report says.
"We really don't have a gold standard treatment right now," said William Copeland, a psychologist and researcher at Duke University Medical Center who was not involved in the report. A lot of doctors and therapists may be "patching together a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and that might not add up to the most effective treatment for any given child," he said.
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Online:
Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Nasdaq composite stock index closed at a 12-year high and the S&P 500 index at a five-year high, boosted by gains in technology shares and stronger overseas trade figures.
The S&P 500 also posted a sixth straight week of gains for the first time since August.
The technology sector led the day's gains, with the S&P 500 technology index <.splrct> up 1.0 percent. Gains in professional network platform LinkedIn Corp
Shares of LinkedIn jumped 21.3 percent to $150.48 after the social networking site announced strong quarterly profits and gave a bullish forecast for the year.
AOL Inc shares rose 7.4 percent to $33.72 after the online company reported higher quarterly profit, boosted by a 13 percent rise in advertising sales.
Data showed Chinese exports grew more than expected, a positive sign for the global economy. The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in December, suggesting the U.S. economy likely grew in the fourth quarter instead of contracting slightly as originally reported by the U.S. government.
"That may have sent a ray of optimism," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Trading volume on Friday was below average for the week as a blizzard swept into the northeastern United States.
The U.S. stock market has posted strong gains since the start of the year, with the S&P 500 up 6.4 percent since December 31. The advance has slowed in recent days, with fourth-quarter earnings winding down and few incentives to continue the rally on the horizon.
"I think we're in the middle of a trading range and I'd put plus or minus 5.0 percent around it. Fundamental factors are best described as neutral," Dickson said.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> ended up 48.92 points, or 0.35 percent, at 13,992.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 8.54 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,517.93. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 28.74 points, or 0.91 percent, at 3,193.87, its highest closing level since November 2000.
For the week, the Dow was down 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 was up 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq up 0.5 percent.
Shares of Dell
Dell's largest independent shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, said it plans to oppose the buyout of the personal computer maker, setting up a battle for founder Michael Dell.
Signs of economic strength overseas buoyed sentiment on Wall Street. Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand. German data showed a 2012 surplus that was the nation's second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe's biggest economy.
Separately, U.S. economic data showed the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.
Earnings have mostly come in stronger than expected since the start of the reporting period. Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies now are estimated up 5.2 percent versus a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. That contrasts with a 1.9 percent growth forecast at the start of the earnings season.
Molina Healthcare Inc
The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, was down 3.6 percent at 13.02. The gauge, a key measure of market expectations of short-term volatility, generally moves inversely to the S&P 500.
"I'm watching the 14 level closely" on the CBOE Volatility index, said Bryan Sapp, senior trading analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "The break below it at the beginning of the year signaled the sharp rally in January, and a rally back above it could be a sign to exercise some caution."
Volume was roughly 5.6 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.
Advancers outpaced decliners on the NYSE by nearly 2 to 1 and on the Nasdaq by almost 5 to 3.
(Additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Nick Zieminski, Kenneth Barry and Andrew Hay)
BANGKOK — Several journalists who cover Myanmar said Sunday that they had received warnings from Google that their e-mail accounts might have been hacked by “state-sponsored attackers.”
The warnings began appearing last week, said Aye Aye Win, a senior journalist in Myanmar and longtime correspondent for The Associated Press who was among those who received them.
Other journalists included employees of Eleven Media, one of Myanmar’s leading news organizations, and Bertil Lintner, an author and expert on Myanmar’s ethnic groups who is based in Thailand. The journalists received the warning when they logged into their Gmail accounts.
Taj Meadows, a Google spokesman in Tokyo, said he could not immediately provide specifics about the warnings, but said Google had begun the policy of notifying users of suspicious activity in June.
“I can certainly confirm that we send these types of notices to accounts that we suspect are the targets of state-sponsored attacks,” Mr. Meadows said.
Google has not said how it determines whether an attack is “state-sponsored” and does not identify which government may be leading the attacks. Mr. Meadows referred a reporter to an announcement in June by Eric Grosse, the vice president for security engineering at Google, that said the company could not provide details of its warnings “without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors.”
Ye Htut, a Myanmar government spokesman, and Zaw Htay, a director in the president’s office, could not be reached for comment Sunday.
The news media in Myanmar were highly censored and restricted during five decades of military rule, but the government has lifted many of those restrictions since President Thein Sein came to power nearly two years ago.
The country, formerly known as Burma, now has thriving weekly publications that are beginning to report on subjects once considered taboo, like government corruption and the military’s battles with ethnic rebels.
But at least two leading private publications, Eleven Media and The Voice Weekly, a news journal, have suffered cyberattacks. Eleven Media’s Web site and Facebook page were shut down by hackers several times in the past month, said U Than Htut Aung, the chairman and chief executive of the group.
“This is a direct attack on the media and a step backward for democracy,” he said.
Eleven Media Group posted an article over the weekend saying that the editor of The Voice Weekly and the correspondent for the Japanese news agency Kyodo had also received warnings from Google.
Some journalists speculated that attempts to hack into e-mail accounts might be linked to the conflict in northern Myanmar, where ethnic Kachin rebels have engaged in fierce fighting with government troops in recent weeks for control over territory near the border with China.
Eleven Media was among the first publications to report that the Myanmar military was deploying aircraft to attack the Kachin rebels, a policy that the government denied until reports and photographs appeared in Eleven Media.
“It’s their most sensitive state security issue,” Mr. Lintner, the expert on ethnic groups, said.
Mr. Than Htut Aung of Eleven Media said he had heard reports from his staff that members of the Myanmar military were “very angry” with their reporting on the Kachin conflict, but he said it was too early to say whether the military had a role in the cyberattacks.
The Myanmar military has received training on cyberwarfare from Russia, according to Mr. Lintner.
Cyberattacks are not new to the Burmese news media. During military rule, news Web sites run by exiled Burmese activists in Thailand and elsewhere were attacked by hackers numerous times.
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