Austrian farmers dip into Internet “milking” craze

VIENNA (Reuters) – Dumping a bottle of milk over your head and filming it for a video post on the Internet has become a popular youth craze, but Austrian farmers say the spillage is a crying shame.

“Milking”, as the trend is known, is among a variety of tongue-in-cheek stunts in which young people shoot pictures or videos of themselves posing as owls, planks of wood, or famous people and then share them on YouTube and other social media.

Austria’s AMA farm lobby on Wednesday launched its own “true milking” campaign to decry the wanton waste of dairy resources and to encourage consumers to drink it instead.

“At a time when too much food already lands in the trash, it is worth questioning dumping milk. This is a valuable product of nature that our farmers provide daily with lots of love and labor,” AMA milk marketing manager Peter Hamedinger said.

Milking has become an Internet hit, with one video from Newcastle in England getting more than half a million clicks on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtJPAv1UiAE

AMA’s marketing arm said the milking craze seemed to reflect a strange youthful protest against authority. It sought to one-up the video trend with its own clip featuring a young man who holds a carton of milk high above his head and drinks the contents without spilling a drop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsJ3OsP1Fks&feature=youtu.be

“In line with the nature of the medium, this message is not communicated in a commercial way and absolutely not with finger pointing, but rather with a wink of the eye for the Internet generation,” the farm products board said in a statement.

(Reporting by Michael Shields, editing by Paul Casciato)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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And the most overpaid actor award goes to: Eddie Murphy

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Eddie Murphy was once among Hollywood’s top box office draws, but he now has the dubious honor of being crowned its most overpaid actor, according to Forbes magazine.

In its annual list, determined by the misalignment between star salaries and their films’ box office take, Murphy, once a one-man gold mine with 1980s hits such as “Trading Places” and “Beverly Hills Cop”, displaced Drew Barrymore for the top spot.

“Murphy‘s career has just collapsed,” Forbes said, citing such recent box office bombs as “Imagine That”, “A Thousand Words” and “Meet Dave”.

Weighing box office receipts against paychecks, Forbes calculated that for every dollar Murphy was paid for his last three films, they returned an average of just $ 2.30 at the box office. Murphy placed second on the list a year ago.

Popular actresses such as Katherine Heigl, and Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock, made the top five, with “returns” ranging from $ 3.40 to $ 5.

Forbes took issue with Witherspoon’s “questionable” choices such as the star-laden, James L. Brooks romantic comedy “How Do You Know”, which was one of 2010′s worst-performing films. It cost $ 120 million, much of which went toward star salaries, but grossed a paltry $ 49 million.

The cast included two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington, as well as actors generally considered solid at the box office such as Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller.

“Washington‘s films do fine at the box office but he can demand an outsized paycheck on those movies,” Forbes noted. His current hit “Flight” was not included for this year’s list.

Washington‘s return was the same $ 6.30 calculated for Sandler, whose comedies Forbes said were consistent performers — except when they’re not, such as the disappointing “Jack and Jill”.

It was the same with Stiller, whom Forbes said “earns so much money per film that one miss can make him seem overpaid. That’s what happened with “Tower Heist”, in which the actor co-starred with — Eddie Murphy.

Will Ferrell, who topped the list for two of the last four years and came in third a year ago, didn’t place.

The full list can be found at www.forbes.com/overpaidactors.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Patricia Reaney and Andrew Hay)

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Well: For Athletes, Risks From Ibuprofen Use

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Many active people use the painkiller ibuprofen on an almost daily basis. In surveys, up to 70 percent of distance runners and other endurance athletes report that they down the pills before every workout or competition, viewing the drug as a preemptive strike against muscle soreness.

But a valuable new study joins growing evidence that ibuprofen and similar anti-inflammatory painkillers taken before a workout don’t offer any benefit and may be causing disagreeable physical damage instead, particularly to the intestines.

Studies have already shown that strenuous exercise alone commonly results in a small amount of intestinal trauma. A representative experiment published last year found that cyclists who rode hard for an hour immediately developed elevated blood levels of a marker that indicates slight gastrointestinal leakage.

Physiologically, it makes sense that exercise would affect the intestines as it does, since, during prolonged exertion, digestion becomes a luxury, said Dr. Kim van Wijck, currently a surgical resident at Orbis Medical Center in the Netherlands, who led the small study. So the blood that normally would flow to the small intestine is instead diverted to laboring muscles. Starved of blood, some of the cells lining the intestines are traumatized and start to leak.

Thankfully, the damage seems to be short-lived, Dr. van Wijck said. Her research has shown that within an hour after a cyclist finished riding, the stressed intestines returned to normal.

But the most common side-effect of ibuprofen is gastrointestinal damage. And since many athletes take the drug for pain before and after a workout, Dr. van Wijck set out to determine the combined effect of exercise and ibuprofen.

For the new study, published in the December issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands recruited nine healthy, active men and had them visit the university’s human performance lab four times.

During two of the visits, the men rested languorously for an hour, although before one of the visits, they swallowed 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night before and also the morning of their trip to the lab. (Four hundred milligrams is the recommended non-prescription dosage for adults using the drug to treat headaches or other minor pain.)

During the remaining visits, the men briskly rode stationary bicycles for that same hour. Before one of those rides, though, they again took 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night before and the morning of their workout.

At the end of each rest or ride, researchers drew blood to check whether the men’s small intestines were leaking. Dr. van Wijck found that blood levels of a protein indicating intestinal leakage were, in fact, much higher when the men combined bike riding with ibuprofen than during the other experimental conditions when they rode or took ibuprofen alone. Notably, the protein levels remained elevated several hours after exercise and ibuprofen.

The health implications of this finding are not yet clear, although they are worrying, Dr. van Wijck said. It may be that if someone uses ibuprofen before every exercise session for a year or more, she said, “intestinal integrity might be compromised.” In that case, small amounts of bacteria and digestive enzymes could leak regularly into the bloodstream.

More immediately, if less graphically, the absorption of nutrients could be compromised, especially after exercise, Dr. van Wijck said, which could affect the ability of tired muscles to resupply themselves with fuel and regenerate.

The research looks specifically at prophylactic use of ibuprofen and does not address the risks and benefits of ibuprofen after an injury occurs. Short-term use of Ibuprofen for injury is generally considered appropriate.

Meanwhile, the Dutch study is not the first to find damage from combining exercise and ibuprofen. Earlier work has shown that frequent use of the drug before and during workouts also can lead to colonic seepage. In a famous study from a few years ago, researchers found that runners at the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run who were regular ibuprofen users had small amounts of colonic bacteria in their bloodstream.

Ironically, this bacterial incursion resulted in “higher levels of systemic inflammation,” said David C. Nieman, a professor of health and exercise science at Appalachian State University who conducted the study and is himself an ultramarathoner. In other words, the ultramarathon racers who frequently used ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory, wound up with higher overall levels of bodily inflammation. They also reported being just as sore after the race as runners who had not taken ibuprofen.

Animal studies have also shown that ibuprofen hampers the ability of muscles to rebuild themselves after exercise. So why do so many athletes continue enthusiastically to swallow large and frequent doses of ibuprofen and related anti-inflammatory painkillers, including aspirin, before and during exercise?

“The idea is just entrenched in the athletic community that ibuprofen will help you to train better and harder,” Dr. Nieman said. “But that belief is simply not true. There is no scientifically valid reason to use ibuprofen before exercise and many reasons to avoid it.”

Dr. van Wijck agrees. “We do not yet know what the long-term consequences are” of regularly mixing exercise and ibuprofen, she said. But it is clear that “ibuprofen consumption by athletes is not harmless and should be strongly discouraged.”

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Storm Hits Hiring in November; Service Sector Expands

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private-sector hiring took a hit in November due to the impact of storm Sandy that ravaged consumers and businesses in the northeastern United States, but the huge services sector continued to expand albeit at a modest pace.

The ADP National Employment Report, which is closely watched as it comes two days ahead of the government's monthly employment report, showed that the private sector added 118,000 jobs during the month, below expectations for a gain of 125,000.

The report largely confirmed economists' forecast for a weak reading in the Labor Department payrolls report on Friday. Economists expect the economy added 93,000 jobs in November, down from 171,000 the month before, according to a Reuters poll.

"It's close to what the market was expecting. If Friday's employment report from the U.S. Labor Department comes in similar to this, that would be a good outcome," said Terry Sheehan, economic analyst at Stone and McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey.

A separate report on the U.S. services sector showed a similar dip in hiring during the month. But forward-looking indicators pointed to faster growth as a rise in new orders and business activity helped offset a slowdown in employment and prices.

The Institute for Supply Management said its services index rose to 54.7 last month from 54.2 the month before, with 50 being the divide between growth and contraction. The reading topped economists' forecasts for growth of 53.5, according to a Reuters survey.

"The much larger service side of the U.S. economy remains relatively healthy," said Joseph Trevisani, chief market strategist at Worldwide Markets, Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

"It has so far avoided the contraction in manufacturing, but worse is probably coming in the first quarter of next year as the economy continues to slow."

A separate report on Monday showed that the manufacturing sector contracted after two months of growth.

U.S. stocks were little changed after the data but drifted lower by midmorning. The S&P 500 index, a broad measure of U.S. stocks, traded down 0.4 percent at 1,401.74 points.

Also on Wednesday, a report showed new orders received by U.S. factories unexpectedly rose in October as demand for motor vehicles and a range of other goods offset a slump in defense and civilian aircraft orders, a hopeful sign for the manufacturing sector.

That chimed with another report showing U.S. nonfarm productivity increased at a much faster clip than initially thought in the third quarter as businesses held the line on hiring even as output surged, with unit labor costs falling at their fastest pace in almost a year.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, who helps compile the ADP report, said underlying jobs growth was closer to 150,000 in November after discounting the impact of the storm as well as seasonal jobs brought forward at the start of the holiday season.

"Abstracting from the storm, the job market turned in a good performance during the month," he said. "Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the job market in November, slicing an estimated 86,000 jobs from payrolls."

Zandi said he was seeing little indication that budget negotiations in Washington aimed at averting the so-called "fiscal cliff," a series of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts due in 2013, were having a significant impact of hiring.

"I don't sense that businesses have pulled back on their hiring or increased their layoffs as a result of the angst surrounding the fiscal issues," said Zandi.

The current impasse over the fiscal cliff, which could impact the economy to the tune of $600 billion next year, has been blamed for fueling uncertainty and causing corporate managers to delay business decisions.

(Reporting By Edward Krudy; Editing by Clive McKeef and Chizu Nomiyama)

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A Utah craftsman races illness to finish a vintage carousel

PETERSBORO, Utah — By any measure, Vean Woodbrey looms large.

Dressed in denim bib overalls, he stands 6 feet 4, weighs 275 pounds and wears size 16 shoes. His children — all 16 of them — jokingly call him Sasquatch because of the cartoonish spread of his footprint. So do many of his 70 grandchildren and great-grandkids.

And then there is the 7-foot-tall wooden giraffe he's carving inside his home workshop in this farming town near the Idaho border. He runs a gnarled hand along the figure's neck, wiping off the sawdust that covers everything like an early season snow.

"It's simple, but there's a certain beauty to it," Woodbrey, 69, said. "The best part is that it came straight out of my imagination."

Woodbrey is an aging craftsman on a mission to finish an amusement-park-sized carousel for his grandchildren and other other youth in this Mormon community before his declining health finally fails him.

As he painstakingly crafts a menagerie of 22 animals — horses, a panda, a zebra, a lion, a tiger, a camel, an elephant and the giraffe — Woodbrey knows time is running out. He has already battled prostate and bone cancer, both of which have slowed his once-loping gait. He also suffers from a neuropathy that numbs the toes in both feet, making him teeter like a child's top in its final throes of movement. To keep his balance in his shop, he holds onto his animals and various saws and sanders.

Every morning, he slowly scales the ramp onto his second-floor workshop to create his imaginary world out of scavenged lumber. Each day is one more sunrise wrung out of a life as a father, community leader, coach and scoutmaster.

"I've got to get this carousel done," he said. "There's this sense of urgency, but I'm inching my way there."

There have been delays: Once he stapled three fingers together with a nail gun. Then he took a fall and broke five toes on one foot. He's already burned through two drills.

He shakes his head. The illness has made him see things so clearly. The doctors say the bone cancer is 85% licked, but that either could return at any time. "When you have cancer, you take an inventory of what you've done, but there's so many things you still want to do," Woodbrey said. "Every day, my wife knows exactly where I am — up in the wood shop with my animals. I'm a man on a time clock."

****

Woodbrey's fondness for carousels dates to his boyhood in San Diego, where his father took the family's four children to a local amusement park. "My dad would buy one ticket he said would go to the eldest — and that was him," he said. "But he'd grab so many brass rings he'd win free tickets so we could all ride."

When the family moved to Salt Lake City, Woodbrey collected soda bottles to redeem for the money to ride the carousel at a local park. If he was lucky, he'd make enough to buy a drink or an ice cream cone.

Years later, after Woodbrey married his wife, Tonya, and they started raising their 16 kids, he took a job at nearby Hill Air Force Base where, for 40 years, he repaired F-4 fighter jets and, later, Minuteman missile systems. At home, he began making wooden dollhouses for his eight daughters and toys for his eight sons.

At age 58, he was struck with prostate cancer. As he lay in the hospital, one of his kids bought him a copy of a magazine dedicated to carousels. Once again, he was hooked — checking each new issue for trends, seeing which old carousels were up for sale.

Eight years later, Woodbrey was treated for a golf-ball-sized tumor in his skull. After weeks of radiation treatments, weary and depressed, he asked his wife, "What am I going to do?"

"She responded: 'Go do whatever you want. Just don't give up.'"

Woodbrey retired from his job at the base and began scouting a carousel to refurbish. He finally found the 7-ton shell of a 1930s Allan Herschell ride — its animals long ago sold off as antiques by the previous owner — for sale in Montana for $5,000

Woodbrey got the contraption home and set to work. One day, he called his eight sons and eight sons-in-law over to the house for a meal. But first the men were instructed to hoist the carousel's 16-foot center pole aloft into the sky and set it into place. They worked together, grunting and sweating, like Amish barn builders. "I told them nobody could eat until we were done," Woodbrey recalled.

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Swiss spy agency warns U.S., Britain about huge data leak

ZURICH (Reuters) – Secret information on counter-terrorism shared by foreign governments may have been compromised by a massive data theft by a senior IT technician for the NDB, Switzerland‘s intelligence service, European national security sources said.

Intelligence agencies in the United States and Britain are among those who were warned by Swiss authorities that their data could have been put in jeopardy, said one of the sources, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.

Swiss authorities arrested the technician suspected in the data theft last summer amid signs he was acting suspiciously. He later was released from prison while a criminal investigation by the office of Switzerland’s Federal Attorney General continues, according to two sources familiar with the case.

The suspect’s name was not made public. Swiss authorities believe he intended to sell the stolen data to foreign officials or commercial buyers.

A European security source said investigators now believe the suspect became disgruntled because he felt he was being ignored and his advice on operating the data systems was not being taken seriously.

Swiss news reports and the sources close to the investigation said that investigators believe the technician downloaded terrabytes, running into hundreds of thousands or even millions of printed pages, of classified material from the Swiss intelligence service’s servers onto portable hard drives. He then carried them out of government buildings in a backpack.

One of the sources familiar with the investigation said that intelligence services like the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, routinely shared data on counter-terrorism and other issues with the NDB. Swiss authorities informed U.S. and British agencies that such data could have been compromised, the source said.

News of the theft of intelligence data surfaced with Switzerland’s reputation for secrecy and discretion in government and financial affairs already under assault.

Swiss authorities have been investigating, and in some cases have charged, whistleblowers and some European government officials for using criminal methods to acquire confidential financial data about suspected tax evaders from Switzerland’s traditionally secretive banks.

The suspect in the spy data theft worked for the NDB, or Federal Intelligence Service, which is part of Switzerland’s Defense Ministry, for about eight years.

He was described by a source close to the investigation as a “very talented” technician and senior enough to have “administrator rights,” giving him unrestricted access to most or all of the NDB’s networks, including those holding vast caches of secret data.

Swiss investigators seized portable storage devices containing the stolen data after they arrested the suspect, according to the sources. At this point, they said, Swiss authorities believe that the suspect was arrested and the stolen data was impounded before he had an opportunity to sell it.

However, one source said that Swiss investigators could not be positive the suspect did not sell or pass on any of the information before his arrest, which is why Swiss authorities felt obliged to notify foreign intelligence partners their information may have been compromised.

Representatives of U.S. and British intelligence agencies had no immediate response to detailed queries about the case submitted by Reuters, although one U.S. official said he was unaware of the case.

SECURITY PROCEDURES QUESTIONED

Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber and a senior prosecutor, Carolo Bulletti, announced in September that they were investigating the data theft and its alleged perpetrator. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said she was prohibited by law from disclosing the suspect’s identity.

A spokesman for the NDB said he could not comment on the investigation.

At their September press conference, Swiss officials indicated that they believed the suspect intended to sell the data he stole to foreign countries. They did not talk about the possible compromise of information shared with the NDB by U.S. and British intelligence.

A European source familiar with the case said it raised serious questions about security procedures and structures at the NDB, a relatively new agency which combined the functions of predecessor agencies that separately conducted foreign and domestic intelligence activities for the Swiss government.

The source said that under the NDB’s present structure, its human resources staff – responsible for, among other things, ensuring the reliability and trustworthiness of the agency’s personnel – is lumped together organizationally with the agency’s information technology division. This potentially made it difficult or confusing for the subdivision’s personnel to investigate themselves, the source said.

According to the source, investigators now believe that in the months before his arrest, the data theft suspect displayed warning signs that should have been spotted by his bosses or by security officials.

The source said that the suspect became so disgruntled earlier this year that he stopped showing up for work.

However, according to Swiss news reports, the NDB did not realize that something was amiss until the largest Swiss bank, UBS, expressed concern to authorities about a potentially suspicious attempt to set up a new numbered bank account, which then was traced to the NDB technician.

A Swiss parliamentary committee is now conducting its own investigation into the data theft and is expected to report next spring. Investigators are known to be concerned that the NDB lacks investigative powers, such as to search premises or conduct wiretaps, which are widely used by counter-intelligence investigators in other countries.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Howard Stern signs on for more “America’s Got Talent”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Shock jock Howard Stern will return as a judge for his second season on NBC‘s summer talent show “America’s Got Talent,” the broadcaster said on Monday, although the high-priced radio host appears to have done little to improve the show’s ratings.

NBC hoped Stern, 58, known for this sexually explicit radio interviews, would attract bigger audiences, but the finale in September was watched by a record low of under 11 million viewers, according to ratings data.

“Howard Stern’s towering presence and opinions on last season’s show as a new judge made a dramatic impact and added a sharper edge to the fascinating developments on stage,” Paul Telegdy, president of alternative programming at NBC, said in a statement.

The show, which also features celebrity judges Sharon Osbourne and Howie Mandel, remained the top-rated summer series among adults aged 18-49, the demographic most coveted by advertisers.

NBC attributed the overall 2012 audience decline partly to an earlier start that pitted “Got Talent” against end-of-season original programming in May.

The network is still searching for a replacement for Osbourne, who has quit in a dispute with NBC over their decision to drop her son Jack from another reality show.

Unlike popular singing competitions “The Voice,” “The X Factor” and “American Idol,” “America’s Got Talent” is open to dancers, comics, dancers and other performers. It is produced by “The X Factor” creator and judge Simon Cowell.

Stern is noted for his say-anything and do-anything radio program but he toned down his act when he started appearing as a judge on the show.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Well: New Meaning and Drive in Life After Cancer

When people hear the words “You have cancer,” life is suddenly divided into distinct parts. There was their life before cancer, and then there is life after cancer.

The number of people in that second category continues to grow. In June, the National Cancer Institute reported that an estimated 13.7 million living Americans are cancer survivors, and the number will increase to almost 18 million over the next decade. More than half are younger than 70.

A new book, “Picture Your Life After Cancer,” (American Cancer Society) focuses on the living that goes on after a cancer diagnosis. It’s based on a multimedia project by The New York Times that asked readers to submit photos and their personal stories. So far, nearly 1,500 people have shared their experiences — the good, the bad, the challenging and the inspirational — creating a dramatic photo essay of the varied lives people live in the years after diagnosis.

For Susan Schwalb, a 68-year-old artist from Manhattan, a diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer at the age of 62 led to a lumpectomy, followed by a mastectomy and then failed reconstruction surgery. She discovered that cancer was not only a physical challenge but a mental one as well, and she turned to friends and support groups to cope with the emotional strain. When she saw the “Picture Your Life” project, she submitted a photo of herself wearing a paint-splattered artist’s apron.

“What cancer made me do in my own professional life is to pedal faster,” Ms. Schwalb said in an interview. “I’ve encountered some people who decide to enjoy life, retire, work in a garden. I decided I had to have more of what I wanted in life, and I better move fast because maybe I don’t have the long life I imagined I would have.”

Indeed, a common theme of the “Picture Your Life” project is that cancer spurs people to take long-delayed trips, seek out adventure and spend time with their families. Photos of mountain climbs, a ride on a camel, scuba diving excursions and bicycle trips are now part of the online collage.

Dr. David Posner, associate program director of pulmonary medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, says a diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer at the age of 47 has helped him relate to his own patients with cancer. The past decade has included nine operations, six recurrences and three rounds of chemotherapy, but Dr. Posner said he never missed more than three weeks of work.

“My salvation has been my family and my work,” he said. “When I was at work I wasn’t thinking about myself, and it was very therapeutic. I see my share of cancer patients, and I motivate them and they motivate me.”

Dr. Posner said he decided to be part of “Picture Your Life” because he wants to get the word out that a cancer diagnosis — even a dire one like his — doesn’t have to define your life.

“I think about someone asking me, ‘So how was your last decade — was it wasted or was it a life filled with a lot of happiness and joy?’ ” he said. “The cancer thing was a pain, but for the most part I’ve had a pretty good time.”

The “Picture Your Life” collage includes photo after photo of survivors with their pets. Sandra Elliott, 59, of Claremont, Calif., submitted a picture of herself with her two golden retrievers, Buddy and Molly. They were just puppies when she received a diagnosis of Stage 2 breast cancer in 2003. During her recovery from surgery and chemotherapy treatments, she took the dogs to romp on the Pomona College campus, near her home, and one day a professional photographer snapped the picture.

“No matter how bad I felt that day, no matter how many chemo treatments or doctors appointments, those two little puppies with these big black eyes would look at me with their tails wagging as if to say, ‘It’s time. It’s time. It’s time to go out!’  ” Ms. Elliott recalled.

“I felt so physically horrible, and I’d look at them and the pure joy on their faces and in their bodies for just being out in nature and being able to smell the air, smell the trees, chase a squirrel — that sheer in-the-moment love of life they showed me really lifted my spirit on a daily basis.”

Ms. Elliott still lives with chronic pain as a result of nerve damage from her cancer treatment, and she can relate to others in the “Picture Your Life” project who worry that their cancer will recur or that they’ll never feel completely normal again. But she says a stronger theme runs through all the pictures and stories.

“We have all been forced to find the joy in the smallest things,” she said. “I’m sitting here looking at a geranium about to bloom. These things are out there — we just have to be reminded to look at them. And cancer is a big reminder.”

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Republicans Balk at Obama’s Short-Term Stimulus

WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats are struggling to find common ground on a long-term debt deal. But as economic growth has weakened this quarter, they are at odds over what the flagging recovery needs in the immediate future, too.

The Obama administration is arguing that the sluggish economy requires a shot in the arm, and it included tens of billions of dollars of little-noticed stimulus measures in its much-noticed proposal to Congressional leaders last week. But Republicans have countered that the country cannot afford to widen the deficit further, and have balked at including the measures in any eventual deal.

The stimulus measures in the White House’s debt proposal stem from President Obama’s long-since-scuttled American Jobs Act proposal, and include a continuation of emergency support for long-term unemployed workers, an extension of the payroll tax cut, billions in infrastructure investment and a mortgage-refinancing proposal.

“We have a very good plan, a very good mix of tax reforms” and savings, said Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, on ABC News last weekend. “We can create some room to invest in things that make America stronger, like rebuilding America’s infrastructure.”

But in his counteroffer, made on Monday, House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio did not mention any such measures. Republican aides said that securing stimulus was not the main priority given concerns about the country’s fiscal state, and they appeared to be holding back on supporting any stimulus measures to bolster their bargaining position.

“The president is asking for $1.6 trillion worth of new revenue over 10 years, twice as much as he has been asking for in public,” Mr. Boehner said on “Fox News Sunday.” “He has stimulus spending in here that exceeded the amount of new cuts that he was willing to consider. It was not a serious offer.”

As the debate rages in Washington, data has shown the recovery once again sputtering, with the underlying rate of growth too slow to bring down the unemployment rate by much and some of the economic momentum gained in the fall dissipating in the winter.

The weakness comes from the manufacturing and exports slowdown, disruptions from Hurricane Sandy and sluggish underlying wage and spending growth. The storm hit the economic juggernauts of New Jersey and New York hard, pushing down work and wages. On top of that, consumers and businesses might be holding back out of concern for the tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take place at the first of the year unless Congress and the administration come to some agreement.

In recent weeks, many forecasters have slashed their estimates of growth in the fourth quarter. Macroeconomic Advisers, for instance, estimates the economy is expanding at only a 0.8 percent annual pace, down from 2.8 percent in the third quarter.

“It’s a pretty dramatic slowdown,” said Joel Prakken, the chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louis-based forecasting firm. “There’s weak demand, which just does not portend well for the coming quarters,” he said.

RBC Capital Markets put the current pace of growth at just a 0.2 percent annual rate. The chance of seeing “a negative sign in front of fourth-quarter gross domestic product is nontrivial, to say the least,” Tom Porcelli, chief United States economist at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients last week.

If Congress and the Obama administration are able to agree on a budget deal, economists expect that economic growth will pick up in 2013. Stock markets might cheer, businesses might feel more confident about hiring workers and signing contracts and investors might feel more comfortable investing if Congress struck a deal.

The turnaround in the housing market, rising auto sales and higher consumer confidence all bode well, they note. Refinancing — supported by the Federal Reserve’s effort to buy mortgage-backed securities — would also flush more money into households.

Much of the current slowdown might be a result of temporary factors that might fade away, like fluctuations in how factories stock their inventories or the lingering effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Still, recent economic data has come in surprisingly weak. On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management reported that the manufacturing sector contracted in November, with an index of purchasing activity falling to the lowest level since mid-2009.

The report said manufacturers expressed “concern over how and when the fiscal cliff issue will be resolved” as well as a slowdown in demand.

Over all, unemployment remains high, and wage growth weak. Global growth has gone through a slowdown as well. It all adds up to a United States recovery that might remain vulnerable to shocks — like the Midwestern drought that slashed agricultural production this year, or the Japanese tsunami that depressed exports in 2011, or the long-simmering European debt crisis that has spooked financial markets — for years to come.

Economists remain nervous about the combination of the already weak recovery and the prospect of the tax increases and spending cuts — with billions of dollars of fiscal contraction likely to take place even if the White House and Congress reach a deal.

“We are worried about going too fast, too quick on the cuts side,” said former Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, on Monday at a meeting with reporters at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He was presenting a plan for a deficit reduction framework along with Alice M. Rivlin, the budget director under President Bill Clinton.

Ms. Rivlin added, “We don’t need an austerity budget.” Indeed, the two budget experts proposed including a one-year income tax rebate to give the recovery some breathing room.

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Supreme Court keeps California in suspense on gay marriage

By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

December 3, 2012, 7:27 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not address the California gay-marriage case on Monday morning. The next time they can consider it is on Friday.

The case against Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in California, had been discussed by justices last Friday, but was not on the list of cases the court said it would review.

Many speculated that the court might have decided not to take the case, which would let an appeals court ruling on the matter stand. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found earlier this year that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California unless the Supreme Court decides to get involved.

But the matter will remain in suspense for a while longer. The court could continue to discuss the case at conferences this year and early next year in advance of possibly hearing the case in June. They could also hold the matter over for the fall. 

Gay-marriage activists expressed disappointment that there was no news Monday.

"We understand that it is a complex case, and if they need another week to reach the right decision, we're fine with that," said Adam Umhoefer, executive director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is fighting to overturn Proposition 8.

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