A United States court of appeals gave Argentina until March 29 to submit a plan for the repayment of $1.33 billion in debt that the country defaulted on 11 years ago. N.M.L. Capital, a subsidiary of the New York-based hedge fund Elliott Management, is leading a lawsuit among bondholders who refused Argentina’s 2005 and 2010 debt swaps. Ninety-three percent of creditors agreed to the restructuring in which debt stemming from Argentina’s $100 billion default was exchanged for new issues at 35 cents on the dollar. A judge ruled last fall in favor of creditors, saying that Argentina could not service only some of its debt, and that it had the “financial wherewithal” to pay in full. Speaking to Congress on Friday, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said Argentina would pay “these vulture funds” but only according to the same terms and conditions agreed upon for the other creditors. A spokesman for Elliott Management declined to comment.
World Briefing | The Americas: Argentina: U.S. Court Orders Debt Repayment Plan
Label: WorldDavid Bowie Makes Triumphant Comeback with New Album: PEOPLE's Critic
Label: LifestyleForget the moody musings of "Where Are We Now?" – the reflective comeback single that he dropped, seemingly out of nowhere, on his birthday last month (Jan. 8). The Next Day – which, though not released until March 12, began streaming in its entirety on iTunes on Friday – represents much more of an emphatic, energetic return from the 66-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.
"We'll never be rid of these stars/ But I hope they live forever," sings Bowie, sounding like the immortal rock god he is over the glittering guitar-pop bounce of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)."
It's one of many driving, guitar-charged tracks on The Next Day: You can just imagine Ziggy Stardust getting his groove on to the bouncy beat of "Dancing Out in Space," while "(You Will) Set the World on Fire" is a rocking, fist-pumping anthem for today's young Americans.
Elsewhere, "Dirty Boys" is a sleazy grinder that, with its saxed-up funkiness, harks back to his soulful periods like 1975's Young Americans. In another nod to Bowie's past, The Next Day was produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy albums from 1977 to 1979.
On one of the standouts, the melodic, midtempo "I'd Rather Be High," the album takes a political turn with Bowie's anti-war message: "I'd rather be dead or out of my head/ Then training these guns on those men in the sand."
It's moments like these that make The Next Day a triumphant comeback from a much-missed icon.
WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident
Label: HealthLONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.
In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.
"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."
The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.
In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.
Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.
In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.
The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.
Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.
For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."
David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.
Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.
Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.
"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.
WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.
Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.
"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.
Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.
"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.
In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."
Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.
Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.
Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.
"I'm enraged," he said.
___
Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
__
Online:
WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb
World Briefing | Europe: Ireland: Suspect in Terrorism Case Faces Extradition to U.S.
Label: World
The United States government has petitioned the Irish High Court to extradite an Algerian man living in Ireland on terrorism charges relating to a plot to assassinate a Swedish artist, officials said Thursday. The United States alleges that the man, Ali Charaf Damache, planned to set up terrorist training camps and kill several Europeans, including a Swedish artist, Lars Vilks, whose sketch of the Prophet Muhammad’s head on a dog, published in 2007, had enraged the Islamic world. On Wednesday, Mr. Damache pleaded guilty in the Waterford Circuit Court to making a menacing phone call to an American peace activist, a charge for which he was arrested and detained in 2010. The judge sentenced him to time served and released him, but Mr. Damache was immediately rearrested on the American extradition warrant. Mr. Damache arrived in Ireland in 2000 and married an Irish woman in 2002. The relationship ended in 2008 and he then married an American citizen, Jamie Paulin Ramirez. Ms. Ramirez has pleaded guilty in the United States to charges of conspiring with Colleen LaRose, also known as Jihad Jane, to support and train terrorists.
The 5 Most Infamous Oscar Dress Mishaps
Label: LifestyleFrom Anne Hathaway's controversial Prada swap to Natalie Portman's Dior diss, see how stars have created fashion drama on the red carpet
Credit: Steve Granitz/WireImage
Updated: Wednesday Feb 27, 2013 | 03:25 PM EST
By: Kate Hogan
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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident
Label: HealthLONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.
In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.
"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."
The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.
In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.
Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.
In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.
The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.
Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.
For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."
David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.
Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.
Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.
"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.
WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.
Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.
"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.
Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.
"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.
In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."
Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.
Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.
Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.
"I'm enraged," he said.
___
Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
__
Online:
WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb
Wall Street gains on Bernanke comments, S&P above 1,500
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, with major indexes posting their best daily gains since early January, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke remained steadfast in supporting the Fed's stimulus policy and data pointed to economic improvement.
In a second day before a congressional committee, Bernanke defended the Fed's buying of bonds to keep interest rates low to boost growth. The market's jump of more than 1 percent also came on better-than-expected data on business spending plans and the housing market.
Bernanke's remarks helped the market rebound from its worst decline since November and put the S&P 500 index back above 1,500, a closely watched level that has been technical support until recently. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> closed at a level not seen since 2007 as it again pulled within striking distance of an all-time high.
Speaking before the House Financial Services Committee, Bernanke downplayed signs of internal divisions at the Fed, saying the policy of quantitative easing, or QE, has the support of a "significant majority" of top central bank officials.
Bernanke removed a headwind from markets arising from concerns the Fed's quantitative easing might end earlier than anticipated. Doubts about the Fed's intentions had broken a seven-week streak of gains by stocks.
"The Fed continues to encourage risk-taking in markets, which is a powerful tool that makes the danger not being long stocks, not in being too long," said Tom Mangan, a money manager at James Investment Research Inc in Xenia, Ohio.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 176.32 points, or 1.27 percent, at 14,076.45. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 19.07 points, or 1.27 percent, at 1,516.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 32.61 points, or 1.04 percent, at 3,162.26.
Pending home sales jumped 4.5 percent in January, three times the rate of growth that had been expected. While orders for durable goods fell more than expected in January, non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft - a closely watched proxy for business spending plans - showed the biggest gain since December 2011.
About 74 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed higher while 64 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed up.
The S&P turned very slightly higher on the week, recovering from the index's biggest daily drop since November on Monday. That drop came on concerns over Italy's election, as well as over sequestration - U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect starting on Friday if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on spending and taxes.
The index had climbed 6.3 percent for the year before pulling back on concerns about Fed policy and inconclusive elections in Italy, which rekindled fears of a new euro zone debt crisis.
"While the rally remains intact and there are reasons to be long-term bullish here, there are also reasons to not be surprised if we get a correction," said Mangan, who helps oversee $3.7 billion.
In earnings news, Priceline.com
The S&P retail index <.spxrt> climbed 1.6 percent.
Target Corp
First Solar Inc
Groupon Inc
With 93 percent of the S&P 500 companies having reported results so far, 69.5 percent beat profit expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 6.2 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.
About 6.23 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, slightly below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.
(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)
London Journal: Oxford and Cambridge Battle It Out in Wine-Tasting Contest
Label: World
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
At the Oxford and Cambridge Varsity Blind Wine-Tasting Competition, participants must identify 12 unmarked wines by grape, country of origin, region, subregion, vintage and taste characteristics.
LONDON — Both teams had filled their rosters with only the most devoted competitors, training for months for this contest, doubtless the most prestigious of its kind in England and perhaps the world. They arrived early on the morning of the match, tense and unsmiling and prepared to compete.
The first round was hard-fought, a grueling 40 minutes from which both sides emerged a bit dazed; the second round proved more trying still. In the end, despite a valiant push from the younger, upstart squad, the match perhaps came down to experience, a turning point that came 20 minutes before the final bell for which no amount of training can prepare a competitor.
“Tannin buildup,” said a knowing David Soud, who last week helped Oxford narrowly defeat its archrival, Cambridge, in the 60th edition of what was in all likelihood the world’s first wine-tasting contest.
The Oxford and Cambridge Varsity Blind Wine-Tasting Competition, wherein participants must identify 12 unmarked wines by grape, country of origin, region, subregion, vintage and taste characteristics, seems a testament to man’s will to compete over just about anything. Or perhaps it is a measure of the attraction to the esoteric and bizarre that seems to reside somewhere deep within the English spirit. Or perhaps, some competitors suggested, wine-tasting ability is simply one more realm in which Oxford and Cambridge can play out their long and much mythologized rivalry.
Whatever the case, the gustatory capacities of the competitors are remarkable, to say nothing of their knowledge of winemaking practices and trends.
“It’s very serious, there’s no doubt about that,” said Jancis Robinson, the wine journalist and critic who served as one of two judges at this year’s contest. “You train like an athlete.”
Certainly, the competitors seemed all business when they gathered last Thursday at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, a grand edifice just a few steps from Buckingham Palace.
They were eight men and six women, among them a handful of Britons but also Chinese, Americans, a Pole, a Dutchman and a citizen of Brunei, among others. There was a physicist, a biochemist and an archaeologist, but also a creative writer and an expert on modernist poetry.
They sat around a table in a basement room, unspeaking, beneath a dour portrait of King Edward VII. On the table were 84 fine-stem crystal glasses — six for each competitor in each 40-minute round, with one round for whites and a second for reds — 14 water glasses, nine black spittoons and four plates of water crackers, to neutralize the palate.
The competitors twirled and sniffed and inspected, some holding their noses while sipping, others warming their glasses between their thighs, all of them scratching notes on their tasting sheets.
Tasting cannot fairly be called a spectator sport, but there were plenty of curious sounds, a dissonant chorus of slurping and sluicing and spitting, marked by the occasional chime of crystal on crystal and the creaking of wooden floorboards beneath a plush carpet. One Cambridge competitor, aerating her wines in her mouth, produced a sound akin to the pressurized rush of an airplane vacuum toilet.
“I’ve been mocked a couple of times,” said the woman, Vaiva Imbrasaite, 23, a Lithuanian doctoral student in computer science. (It can, however, be a useful party trick, Ms. Imbrasaite said.)
Most competitors concluded that the reds, which were on average significantly older than the whites, were more difficult. As they age, even very different reds tend to converge in flavor, said Mr. Soud of Oxford, the poetry expert. The senior competitor at 46, he said it was the taste or smell of American — not French — oak that allowed him to identify, with near exactitude, a 1953 Vega Sicilia.
According to the 15-page crib sheet that Oxford competitors are meant to memorize, an accurate description of that wine might have noted aromas of “coconut” — from the oak — and “tobacco leaf,” as well as a “horse manure character.” It also would have indicated that the wine was made largely from tempranillo grapes, in the Ribero del Duero region of Spain, and was a “gran reserva,” the top classification.
Billie Joe Armstrong Comes Clean About Rehab
Label: LifestyleThe meltdown forced Armstrong to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month and in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the frontman, who turned 41 this month, reveals his struggle to get sober.
"I'm a blackout drinker," he reveals. "That's basically what happened [that night]."
Leading up to that infamous performance, Armstrong was struggling with a dependence on pills for anxiety and insomnia, combined with a heavy drinking problem. After the concert, he agreed to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month.
Although he declines to specify what type of medications he was taking, he tells the magazine, "I started combining them to a point where I didn't know what I was taking during the day and what I was taking at night. It was just this routine. My backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle [from all of the bottles inside]."
Armstrong, who has been married to wife Adrienne since 1994 and has two sons, Joseph and Jakob, also reveals how hard it was to go through withdrawal.
"That was gruesome, laying on the bathroom floor and just feeling like ... [pauses] I didn't realize how much of that stuff affected me." He also opens up about the toll it took on his family: "I kept [the withdrawal] away from my sons pretty good ... [And my wife] knew the deal. I'm sure it was rough for her to see me going through this."
Now, the musician insists he's on the mend and no longer drinking. "I want to put on good shows," says Armstrong, who will resume touring with Green Day on March 10 in Pomona, Calif. "I want to be reliable."
Armstrong also admits maintaining his sobriety will be a challenge. "There is still the obsession for alcohol," he says. "There's also sleepless nights. But I have to work on it every day. Because I know what goes on out there … I've got to watch my step."
Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (AP) — The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.
The disorders — autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — are considered distinct problems. But findings published online Wednesday suggest they're related in some way.
"These disorders that we thought of as quite different may not have such sharp boundaries," said Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the lead researchers for the international study appearing in The Lancet.
That has implications for learning how to diagnose mental illnesses with the same precision that physical illnesses are diagnosed, said Dr. Bruce Cuthbert of the National Institute on Mental Health, which funded the research.
Consider: Just because someone has chest pain doesn't mean it's a heart attack; doctors have a variety of tests to find out. But there's no blood test for schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. Instead, doctors rely on symptoms agreed upon by experts. Learning the genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses is part of one day knowing if someone's symptoms really are schizophrenia and not something a bit different.
"If we really want to diagnose and treat people effectively, we have to get to these more fine-grained understandings of what's actually going wrong biologically," Cuthbert explained.
Added Mass General's Smoller: "We are still in the early stages of understanding what are the causes of mental illnesses, so these are clues."
The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, a collaboration of researchers in 19 countries, analyzed the genomes of more than 61,000 people, some with one of the five disorders and some without. They found four regions of the genetic code where variation was linked to all five disorders.
Of particular interest are disruptions in two specific genes that regulate the flow of calcium in brain cells, key to how neurons signal each other. That suggests that this change in a basic brain function could be one early pathway that leaves someone vulnerable to developing these disorders, depending on what else goes wrong.
For patients and their families, the research offers no immediate benefit. These disorders are thought to be caused by a complex mix of numerous genes and other risk factors that range from exposures in the womb to the experiences of daily life.
"There may be many paths to each of these illnesses," Smoller cautioned.
But the study offers a lead in the hunt for psychiatric treatments, said NIMH's Cuthbert. Drugs that affect calcium channels in other parts of the body are used for such conditions as high blood pressure, and scientists could explore whether they'd be useful for psychiatric disorders as well.
The findings make sense, as there is some overlap in the symptoms of the different disorders, he said. People with schizophrenia can have some of the same social withdrawal that's so characteristic of autism, for example. Nor is it uncommon for people to be affected by more than one psychiatric disorder.
___
Online:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60223-8/abstract
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