Fed Official Sees Tension in Some Credit Markets

WASHINGTON – Some credit markets are showing signs of overheating as investors take larger risks in response to the persistence of low interest rates, a senior Federal Reserve official said Thursday.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Jeremy Stein, a Federal Reserve governor, said some credit markets were showing signs of overheating.

The official, Fed Governor Jeremy Stein, highlighted a surge in junk bond issues, the popularity of certain kinds of real estate investment trusts and shifts in bank balance sheets as areas the central bank is watching closely, although he downplayed any immediate threat to the financial system or the economy.

“We are seeing a fairly significant pattern of reaching-for-yield behavior emerging in corporate credit,” Mr. Stein said in a St. Louis speech. He added, however, “it need not follow that this risk-taking has ominous systemic implications.”

Mr. Stein gave no indication that the Fed is contemplating any change in its aggressive efforts to hold down interest rates. Rather, he described the overheating as a trend that might require a response if it intensified over the next 18 months. But the speech nonetheless underscored that the Fed increasingly regards bubbles, rather than inflation, as the most likely negative consequence of its efforts to reduce unemployment by stimulating growth.

It also showed that theoretical concerns are becoming more tangible.

Critics of the Fed’s policies have pointed to the high-profile junk bond market as evidence that low interest rates are encouraging excessive speculation. Investors are eagerly providing money to companies and countries with low credit ratings – and they are demanding relatively low interest rates in return. Junk bond issuance in the United States set a new annual record last year – by the end of October.

Mr. Stein noted dryly that this may not “bode well” for investors in those bonds, but the Fed is not charged with preventing them from losing money. It is charged with maintaining the function of the financial system and preventing the consequences from dragging on the broader economy.

In the wake of the financial crisis, regulators have focused increasingly on where investors get their money, reasoning that short-term funding is particularly vulnerable to panic. And Mr. Stein said that here, too, there was evidence that short-term funding was growing in importance.

He described similar evidence of growing risks in other corners of the financial market, and emphasized that the Fed was also concerned about other kinds of financial speculation that it did not see.

“Overheating in the junk bond market might not be a major systemic concern in and of itself, but it might indicate that similar overheating forces were at play in other parts of credit markets, out of our range of vision,” he said.

Central bankers historically have been skeptical that asset bubbles can be identified or prevented from popping. Moreover, they tend to regard financial regulation as the appropriate means to prevent excessive speculation and not changes in monetary policy, which affect the entire economy. In other words, when mortgage-lending standards loosen, regulators should tighten those standards rather than raising interest rates on all kinds of loans.

But the crisis has forced central bankers to reconsider both the importance of financial stability and the role of monetary policy.

Mr. Stein said Thursday that central bankers should keep an “open mind.”

Regulators, he noted, can address only problems that they can see. Monetary policy, by contrast, can reduce risk-taking across the economy.

“It gets in all of the cracks,” Mr. Stein said. “Changes in rates may reach into corners of the market that supervision and regulation cannot.”

He said that the Fed also could use its vast investment portfolio to address some kinds of risk-taking because the Fed can reduce the profitability of a given investment by shifting the composition of its holdings.

And he closed on a cautionary note.

“Decisions will inevitably have to be made in an environment of significant uncertainty,” he said. “Waiting for decisive proof of market overheating may amount to an implicit policy of inaction on this dimension.”

Read More..

Postal Service seeks to end Saturday mail delivery

Postal Service to Cut Saturday Mail

By Michael Muskal

February 6, 2013, 8:34 a.m.

The U.S. Postal Service, struggling under a financial load and facing tough competition, will stop delivering mail on Saturdays beginning this summer, officials announced.

The announcement, which had been expected, is seen as an attempt to force Congress to deal with the Postal Service's increasing financial woes. Congress has tried to reorganize the agency, but efforts have been derailed because of politics.

Material prepared for a Wednesday news conference by Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe says that Postal Service market research and other research has indicated that nearly 7 in 10 Americans support the switch to five-day delivery as a way for the agency to reduce costs.

';



jQuery(document).ready(function(){
jQuery('#story-body-text').append(muskalsig);
});

Obama urges short-term solution to prevent steep budget cuts

UPS earnings fall shy of analysts' expectations; weak '13 forecast

FedEx expects record shipping day with boost from online sales

UPS guy steals homeowner's FedEx package -- on video

QUIZ: Test your knowledge about the debt limit

"The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America's changing mailing habits," Donahoe said. "We developed this approach by working with our customers to understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate significant cost savings."

The Postal Service contends that it has the authority to cut back service, though some in Congress insist that lawmakers have the final word. In any case, the announcement is expected to move the issue to a front burner.

According to postal officials, the end of Saturday delivery would begin on Aug. 1. The service said it will continue to deliver packages on Saturdays.

Ending Saturday service is estimated to save the agency about $2 billion a year. Officials said it lost about $16 billion in fiscal 2012, which ended Sept. 30 -- about three times the loss it had a year ago.

The proposal comes as the agency has closed post offices and changed procedures to try to stem its hemorrhaging of billions of dollars in recent years. More people have been turning to alternatives to traditional mail service, including electronic tools such as email and outside competitors such as Fed Ex, both of which have seriously cut into the Postal Service's erstwhile monopoly.

Congress in recent years has prohibited the Postal Service from dropping Saturday mail delivery, but the initial response to Wednesday's announcement was more accepting of what might be inevitable.

"This common-sense reform would save the Postal Service more than $2 billion annually," two top Republicans, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, said in a statement.

"In his recent inaugural address, President Obama spoke about the need to find real solutions to our nation’s problems. Supporting the U.S. Postal Service's plan to move forward with 5-day mail delivery is one such solution worthy of bipartisan support," they said.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Issa, agreed that action was needed, but questioned whether the Postal Service could act alone.

"The Postal Service's declining mail volume poses a significant challenge, and the enactment of comprehensive postal reform legislation must be an urgent priority for the current Congress," Cummings said in a statement. “However, the issue of service delivery frequency should be addressed in that legislation rather than through arbitrary action by the Postal Service.”

Recent national polls show that a majority of respondents support ending Saturday mail delivery, and Obama has proposed halting such service as part of his budget-cutting proposals. Though the Postal Service is a quasi-governmental, self-funding entity, its worker compensation and retirement plans are tied to the federal budget.

Lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully for years to overhaul the Postal Service, but efforts have fallen victim to different needs in different areas. Representatives of rural areas tend to argue that traditional mail delivery is needed, a position backed by magazine publishers and other heavy users of the Postal Service.

The president of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers, Fredric Rolando, said in a statement that the end of Saturday mail delivery is "a disastrous idea that would have a profoundly negative effect on the Postal Service and on millions of customers,” particularly businesses, rural communities, the elderly, the disabled and others who depend on Saturday delivery for commerce and communication.

ALSO:

Alabama kidnapper, who had bombs, reportedly died in shootout

Florida judge denies request to postpone George Zimmerman trial

Gov. Christie eats doughnut with Letterman; talks Sandy storm aid

Times staff writers Richard Simon and Jim Puzzanghera contributed to this report.

Read More..

<cite>Portal</cite>, the Movie: Valve, J.J. Abrams Team Up for Future Games, Films

LAS VEGAS — Valve, the game developer behind Half-Life and Portal, and J.J. Abrams’ production studio Bad Robot will work together to produce games and movies, the heads of the two studios said at the DICE Summit on Wednesday.

“There’s an idea we have for a game that we’d like to work with Valve on,” said Abrams while sharing the stage with Valve head Gabe Newell.

“We’re going to figure out if we can make a Portal movie or Half-Life movie together,” Newell said.

The surprise announcement came at the close of a brief joint keynote by Abrams and Newell, titled “Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?” The opening presentation at the game industry’s annual high-level business summit featured two creative minds at the top of their respective mediums of choice: Lost creator Abrams was recently tapped to direct Star Wars: Episode VII, and Newell’s company Valve is redefining how games are made and sold with its Steam service, which it intends to push into the living room this year with an entry into the hardware market.

Abrams and Newell made the surprise, succinct announcement at the end of their keynote speech, which took the form of a carefully rehearsed discussion between the two creatives about the strengths and weaknesses of games and movies as storytelling mediums.

“Players are often asked to imprint themselves or relate to insanely mute empty vessels,” Abrams said, playing a clip from Valve’s Half-Life that showed its mute protagonist Gordon Freeman.

Newell pointed out that it can be frustrating for a viewer to not have agency while watching a movie, pointing to Abrams’ film Cloverfield as an example — why, he said, doesn’t the character just drop the camera and run away from the danger? The “self-paced” nature of games, he said, can create a more optimal experience.

“Movies let you experience moments that you might not think are the point, but really are everything,” Abrams said, pointing to the early introduction of compressed air canisters in the opening scenes of the movie Jaws, which initially seem unimportant but prove consequential to the film’s ending. Newell pointed out that the “take your child to work” scene in Portal 2 accomplished the same thing, setting up important plot points in a way that made them initially seem like humorous throwaways.

This seems to have been exactly what Abrams and Newell were doing with their DICE Summit keynote: Setting up the audience with what seemed to be a lighthearted, friendly discussion about games and movies, then surprising them with the revelation that they weren’t just going to chat about it at a conference but actively working together to create movies and games that learn from one another.

Read More..

Boy band The Wanted sign on for E! reality series

NEW YORK (AP) — The Wanted is trying to keep it real: The boy band has signed on to do a reality series on E!

The British fivesome announced Wednesday that their show will debut in June. A press release said the behind-the-scene series will be “unvarnished” and “nonglossy.”

The Wanted broke onto the U.S. music scene with the Top 5 hit “Glad You Came.” They dropped their self-titled U.S. debut EP last year, and have released two successful albums and multiple singles in the United Kingdom.

The group is planning a full-length album and international tour for the fall.

Their U.S. manager is Scooter Braun, who also manages Justin Bieber. The band members include Max George, Nathan Sykes, Jay McGuiness, Tom Parker and Siva Kaneswaran.

___

Online:

http://www.thewantedmusic.com/

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Boy band The Wanted sign on for E! reality series
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/boy-band-the-wanted-sign-on-for-e-reality-series/
Link To Post : Boy band The Wanted sign on for E! reality series
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: For Women, Reduced Access to Long-Term Care Insurance

“This was a very, very good business for a short time, with people buying long-term care insurance like it was candy in a candy store,’’ said Michael Perry, a vice president at the Opus Advisory Group, a strategic financial planning firm in Purchase, N.Y.

No more. Mr. Perry has sold only one long-term care policy in the last six months and is “backing off from marketing’’ them as he watches this corner of the insurance business contract, raise premiums, tighten eligibility requirements and reduce key benefits. Long-term care insurance is a comparatively new product, launched in the late ’80s, and only now, as claims begin to pour in, have the actual costs to insurers become apparent.

Companies like MetLife, Prudential Financial, Allianz and Berkshire Financial (a subsidiary of Guardian) have stopped selling new policies and are hiking premiums for the ones already in place — up 37 percent, by one estimate, in 2011. Insurers are increasing elimination periods — the period during which a beneficiary must cover his or her own costs — and reducing inflation protection to 3 percent from 5 percent, once customary. They are requiring home visits instead of phone interviews from new applicants, as well as blood tests and a thorough examination of their medical records.

But the change that has generated the most public attention is so-called gender-distinct pricing, a new strategy that will raise rates for single women by as much as 40 percent beginning in April. Genworth Financial, the nation’s largest long-term care insurance provider with more than a million policy holders, is the first to win approval by state insurance commissions to raise rates for single women purchasing new policies. Women, most of them single by the time they reach advanced age, cost the company $2 of every $3 in benefits paid so far, according to Steve Zabel, Genworth’s senior vice president for long-term care insurance.

The company also will introduce what Mr. Zabel called “enhanced underwriting,” or more stringent qualifying standards, including blood testing to check for nicotine, drugs and markers of cardiovascular disease for all new applicants, regardless of gender or marital status.

Now permitted in all states except Montana and Colorado, gender-distinct pricing will not affect Genworth’s current policyholders, only new applicants. But all other carriers are likely to follow, according to Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Insurance, a trade group in Westlake Village, Calif. With the entire industry headed toward higher rates, Mr. Slome recently warned women that “the window is closing” and that now is the time to grab a policy while the price is still manageable.

Women have always paid less than men for life insurance. But because they live longer, women are the disproportionate beneficiaries of long-term care insurance, which paid out $6.6 billion in benefits in 2011. Mr. Slome expects that number to top $7 billion in 2012.

The reasons are well known:

* On average, women outlive men by five years. Among those born in 1960, the average man will live to age 67 and the average woman to age 73. And women who reach age 65 can expect to live an average of 20 more years.

* By age 75, 7 in 10 women are widowed, divorced or have never been married. Some 40 percent of them live alone, compared to 22 percent of men. Two-thirds of those past the age of 85 are women, as are 80 percent of centenarians.

* Women who live to age 65 experience on average two years of disability requiring assistance before death. Those who reach age 80 will require three years of assistance.

* In nursing homes, the most expensive form of long-term care, 7 in 10 residents are women. They represent 76 percent of the residents in assisted living facilities and two-thirds of the recipients of home care. Virtually none of this is paid for by Medicare, the government’s health plan for those 65-and-over. In nursing homes, Medicaid, a poverty program, kicks in for residents who run out of money.

“Woman live longer than men,” said Suzanna de Baca, a vice president of wealth strategies at Ameriprise Financial. “This may mean we experience a longer period of decline. Unfortunately, we are often less likely to have a partner around to help take care of us than our male counterparts.’’

Long-term care, Mr. Slome said, “is truly a women’s issue.”

While acknowledging the extra expense of caring for women, Mr. Slome said that in his view insurance carriers are being disingenuous in blaming the new policies on long-apparent gender differences. Rather he said, the culprit in the changing requirements is interest rates. “Blame the Federal Reserve,’’ he said.

Insurance carriers invest premiums and need to earn enough on that investment to pay benefits. When interest rates were higher, it was not all that difficult. Now the numbers don’t pencil out, and stockholders are fuming. But it is illegal to file for premium increases with the state insurance commissions based on changes in the financial market, Mr. Slome said.

This position does not endear Mr. Slome to his membership, at least one of whom disputes the claim. Asked if the new rate policies were related to interest rates, Mr. Zabel of Genworth, in an e-mail, replied with a succinct “no.”

Insurers say they were not able to judge the costs of care until the payouts began in earnest.

So what is a woman trying to prepare for old age supposed to do, especially after the elimination of the Class Act, a modest attempt to include long-term care in the Affordable Care Act?

Ms. da Baca suggests “careful and thorough budgeting,” “focusing on wellness,” and “proactive steps” to research suitable places to live when home is no longer an option. Ms. da Baca also advises women to make home modifications — incrementally, as one’s budget permits — to increase the chances that you’ll be able to stay there longer.

Mr. Perry, of the Opus Advisory Group, suggests an intriguing option: life insurance with a chronic care rider, which permits the policy-holder to spend money for such needs while alive, although doing so will reduce the tax-free death benefit. Still, not all buyers — or their survivors — are willing to sacrifice those benefits.

“The need is still there, no question about it,’’ Mr. Perry said. But long-term care insurance is likely to become much harder for everyone to find and afford, especially women.

---

Read More..

Tool Kit: Protecting Your Privacy on the New Facebook

Facebook is a personal vault that can contain photos of your firstborn, plans to bring down your government and, occasionally, a record of your indiscretions.

It can be scoured by police officers, partners and would-be employers. It can be mined by marketers to show tailored advertisements.

And now, with Facebook’s newfangled search tool, it can allow strangers, along with “friends” on Facebook, to discover who you are, what you like and where you go.

Facebook insists it is up to you to decide how much you want others to see. And that is true, to some extent. But you cannot entirely opt out of Facebook searches. Facebook, however, does let you fine-tune who can see your “likes” and pictures, and, to a lesser extent, how much of yourself to expose to marketers.

The latest of its frequent changes to the site’s privacy settings was made in December. Facebook is nudging each of its billion subscribers to review them. The nudge could not have been more timely, said Sarah Downey, a lawyer with the Boston company Abine, which markets tools to help users control their visibility online. “It is more important than ever to lock down your Facebook privacy settings now that everything you post will be even easier to find,” she said.

That is to say, your settings will determine, to a large extent, who can find you when they search for women who buy dresses for toddlers or, more unsettling, women who jog a particular secluded trail.

What can you do? Ask yourself four simple questions.

QUESTION 1 How would you like to be found?

Go to “who can see my stuff” on the upper right side of your Facebook page. Click on “see more settings.” By default, search engines can link to your timeline. You can turn that off if you wish.

Go to “activity log.” Here you can review all your posts, pictures, “likes” and status updates. If you are concerned about who can see what, look at the original privacy setting of the original post.

In my case, I had been tagged eating a bowl of ricotta with my fingers at midnight near Arezzo. My friend who posted the picture enabled it to be seen by anyone, which means that it would show up in a stranger’s search for, I don’t know, people who eat ricotta with their fingers at midnight. I am tagged in other photos that are visible only to friends of the person who posted them. The point is, you want to look carefully at what the original settings are for those photos and “likes,” and decide whether you would like to be associated with them “I don’t get this Facebook thing either,” said one woman whose friend request I had accepted in January 2008. “But everyone in our generation seems to be on it.”

If you are concerned about things that might embarrass or endanger you on Facebook — Syrians who endorse the opposition may not want to be discovered by government apparatchiks — comb through your timeline and get rid of them. The only way to ensure that a post or photo is not discovered is to “unlike” or “delete” it.

Make yourself a pot of tea. This may take a while. The nostalgia may just be amusing.

QUESTION 2 What do you want the world to know about you?

Go to your profile page and click “About me.” Decide if you would like your gender, or the name of your spouse, to be visible on your timeline. Think about whether you want your birthday to be seen on your timeline. Your date of birth is an important piece of personal information for hackers to exploit.

A tool created a couple of weeks ago by a team of college students offers to look for certain words and phrases that could embarrass other college students as they apply for internships and jobs. It is called Simplewash, formerly Facewash, and it looks for profanity, references to drugs and other faux pas that you do not necessarily want, say, a law school admissions officer to see. Socioclean is another application that scours your Facebook posts. It is selling its service to college campuses to offer to students.

QUESTION 3 Do you mind being tracked by advertisers?

Facebook has eyes across the Web; one study found that its so-called widget — the innocuous blue letter “f” — is integrated into 20 percent of the 10,000 most popular Web sites.

This is how it works. I browsed an e-commerce site for girls’ dresses. When I logged back on to Facebook several days later, I was urged to buy dresses for “my darling daughter.” Facebook says that this kind of “retargeting” is a lucrative source of revenue. If that is annoying, several tools can help you block trackers. Abine, DisconnectMe and Ghostery offer browser extensions. Once installed on your Web browser, these extensions will tell you how many trackers they have blocked.

If you see an ad on the right rail of your Facebook page based on your Web browsing history, you can also opt out directly on Facebook. Hover over the “X” next to the ad and choose from the drop-down menu: “Hide this ad,” you could say. Or hide all ads from this brand. Facebook does not serve the ads itself, so to opt out of certain kinds of targeted ads, you must go to the third party that Facebook works with to show ads based on the Web sites you have browsed.

QUESTION 4 Whom do you want to befriend?

Now is the time to review whom you count among your Facebook friends. Your boss? Do you really want her to see pictures of you in Las Vegas? And the woman you met in Lamaze class: do you want the apps she has installed to know who you are? Privacyfix.com, a browser extension, shows you how to keep your friends’ Facebook applications from sucking you into their orbit. It is preparing to introduce a tool to control what it calls your “exposure” to the Facebook search engine.

Secure.me offers a similar feature. Depending on your privacy settings, that photo-sharing app that your Lamaze compatriot just installed could, in one click, know who you are and have access to all the photos that you thought you were sharing with “friends.”

One of Facebook’s cleverest heists is the word “friend.” It makes you think all your Facebook contacts are really your “friends.” They may not be.

Read More..

Friends, investigators seek answers in killing of O.C. couple

They met in college, two highly regarded basketball players who seemed to have the same winning touch on the court and off.

After blazing through high school and college with her outside shot, Monica Quan became the assistant women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton. Keith Lawrence, whose highlight shots are still there on his college website, became a campus officer at USC.

Now police in Irvine are scrambling for an explanation — and friends are looking for a way to express their shock — after Quan and Lawrence were found shot to death in their parked car on the top floor of a parking structure in an upscale, high-security condominium complex near UC Irvine.

The two had just announced their engagement and had recently moved into a condominium complex near Concordia University, where they played basketball and had gone on to earn their degrees.

Late Sunday, after a passerby noticed two people in the parked car, police said they found Lawrence slumped in the driver's side of his white Kia. Quan was next to him, also dead. The couple were shot multiple times, and authorities said they have tentatively ruled out the possibility of it being a murder-suicide or motivated by robbery. Nothing in the car, police said, seemed to be disturbed.

The couple's friends and family said they were shaken by the violent deaths of two people who seemed to have so much to offer.

Quan was a 2002 graduate of Walnut High School in the San Gabriel Valley, where she set school records for the most three-pointers in a season and a game. She played at Long Beach State and at Concordia, where she graduated in 2007. She went on to earn a master's degree before becoming the assistant coach at Fullerton.

Quan's father was the first Chinese American captain in the LAPD, and went on to become police chief at Cal Poly Pomona.

Quan was known for pulling students aside to offer encouragement, said Megan Richardson, a former player. Marcia Foster, the head basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton, described her assistant as a special person — "bright, passionate and empowering," she said.

Quan shared a love of basketball with her fiancee, Lawrence, whom she met at Concordia.

He too had been a standout basketball player, starting at Moorpark High, where he played point guard and shooting guard, said Tim Bednar, who coached Lawrence.

Bednar said that Lawrence, who came from a family of athletes, was talented, yet quiet and humble. After Lawrence graduated in 2003, he continued to participate in summer youth camps

When he returned for the camps, Bednar said, he was known as the "best basketball player that ever came through" the school.

"He was awesome with the kids," Bednar said. "They all wanted to be around Keith Lawrence."

Bednar heard from Lawrence when he needed a recommendation to become a police officer after graduating from the Ventura County Sheriff's Academy. In August, he was hired by USC's public safety department.

John Thomas, the executive director and chief of the department, said that Lawrence was an "honorable, compassionate and professional" member of the community.

"We are a better department and the USC campus community is a safer place as a result of his service," Thomas said in a statement.

On Monday night, Quan's friends gathered outside Walnut High School. One clutched a heart-shaped balloon, another carried a collage of her basketball playing days. Still another held a basketball.

Lawrence's friends and family put up a Facebook page. "RIP Keith Lawrence, you will be missed," it said simply. Within hours, 840 had left comments or indicated they "liked" it. Concordia put up a link to Lawrence's game-winning shot that carried the school into a post-season tournament.

Michelle Thibeault, 27, said in a Facebook message that she had known Quan for more than a decade. The two were on the same athletic teams and went to junior high and high school together. "Monica was loved by everyone," she said.

During a somber gathering at the Cal State Fullerton gymnasium Monday, Foster read a brief statement from Quan's brother Ryan.

"We just shared a moment of incredible joy on her recent engagement," he wrote, and then added: "A bright light was just put out."

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

lauren.williams@latimes.com

Times staff writer John Canalis contributed to this report.

Read More..

$99 Ouya Game Console Will Hit Amazon, Target and More in June

Ouya, the $99, Android-powered game console, set Kickstarter records last August when it raised nearly $8.6 million in crowdfunding. It will soon be sold at major retailers including GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon.com and Target, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman announced to project backers on Tuesday.

The tiny game machine, about the size of a Rubik’s Cube, will begin showing up in big-box stores in June. Those who supported the project on Kickstarter will begin receiving their Ouyas in March.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Uhrman said that extra controller accessories will also be sold in stores for $49.99.

Ouya sold 68,000 units through its Kickstarter campaign alone, and the company has continued to offer pre-orders of the unit on its website.

2013 is expected to be the year of new game consoles from Microsoft and Sony, and Nintendo has just recently released the Wii U, but that doesn’t worry Uhrman: “We don’t need to beat Xbox or Sony or any console that enters the marketplace,” she told the Journal. “We need to carve out our own niche.”

There may be competition in that niche, too. Ouya isn’t the only Kickstarted Android-powered TV games console, and competitors like the GameStick have hinted that they too will be showing up on the shelves of major retailers.

Brace yourselves: The console wars are coming, maybe not in the way you expected.

Read More..

Personal Health: Effective Addiction Treatment

Countless people addicted to drugs, alcohol or both have managed to get clean and stay clean with the help of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or the thousands of residential and outpatient clinics devoted to treating addiction.

But if you have failed one or more times to achieve lasting sobriety after rehab, perhaps after spending tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not alone. And chances are, it’s not your fault.

Of the 23.5 million teenagers and adults addicted to alcohol or drugs, only about 1 in 10 gets treatment, which too often fails to keep them drug-free. Many of these programs fail to use proven methods to deal with the factors that underlie addiction and set off relapse.

According to recent examinations of treatment programs, most are rooted in outdated methods rather than newer approaches shown in scientific studies to be more effective in helping people achieve and maintain addiction-free lives. People typically do more research when shopping for a new car than when seeking treatment for addiction.

A groundbreaking report published last year by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University concluded that “the vast majority of people in need of addiction treatment do not receive anything that approximates evidence-based care.” The report added, “Only a small fraction of individuals receive interventions or treatment consistent with scientific knowledge about what works.”

The Columbia report found that most addiction treatment providers are not medical professionals and are not equipped with the knowledge, skills or credentials needed to provide the full range of evidence-based services, including medication and psychosocial therapy. The authors suggested that such insufficient care could be considered “a form of medical malpractice.”

The failings of many treatment programs — and the comprehensive therapies that have been scientifically validated but remain vastly underused — are described in an eye-opening new book, “Inside Rehab,” by Anne M. Fletcher, a science writer whose previous books include the highly acclaimed “Sober for Good.”

“There are exceptions, but of the many thousands of treatment programs out there, most use exactly the same kind of treatment you would have received in 1950, not modern scientific approaches,” A. Thomas McLellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, told Ms. Fletcher.

Ms. Fletcher’s book, replete with the experiences of treated addicts, offers myriad suggestions to help patients find addiction treatments with the highest probability of success.

Often, Ms. Fletcher found, low-cost, publicly funded clinics have better-qualified therapists and better outcomes than the high-end residential centers typically used by celebrities like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Indeed, their revolving-door experiences with treatment helped prompt Ms. Fletcher’s exhaustive exploration in the first place.

In an interview, Ms. Fletcher said she wanted to inform consumers “about science-based practices that should form the basis of addiction treatment” and explode some of the myths surrounding it.

One such myth is the belief that most addicts need to go to a rehab center.

“The truth is that most people recover (1) completely on their own, (2) by attending self-help groups, and/or (3) by seeing a counselor or therapist individually,” she wrote.

Contrary to the 30-day stint typical of inpatient rehab, “people with serious substance abuse disorders commonly require care for months or even years,” she wrote. “The short-term fix mentality partially explains why so many people go back to their old habits.”

Dr. Mark Willenbring, a former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said in an interview, “You don’t treat a chronic illness for four weeks and then send the patient to a support group. People with a chronic form of addiction need multimodal treatment that is individualized and offered continuously or intermittently for as long as they need it.”

Dr. Willenbring now practices in St. Paul, where he is creating a clinic called Alltyr “to serve as a model to demonstrate what comprehensive 21st century treatment should look like.”

“While some people are helped by one intensive round of treatment, the majority of addicts continue to need services,” Dr. Willenbring said. He cited the case of a 43-year-old woman “who has been in and out of rehab 42 times” because she never got the full range of medical and support services she needed.

Dr. Willenbring is especially distressed about patients who are treated for opioid addiction, then relapse in part because they are not given maintenance therapy with the drug Suboxone.

“We have some pretty good drugs to help people with addiction problems, but doctors don’t know how to use them,” he said. “The 12-step community doesn’t want to use relapse-prevention medication because they view it as a crutch.”

Before committing to a treatment program, Ms. Fletcher urges prospective clients or their families to do their homework. The first step, she said, is to get an independent assessment of the need for treatment, as well as the kind of treatment needed, by an expert who is not affiliated with the program you are considering.

Check on the credentials of the program’s personnel, who should have “at least a master’s degree,” Ms. Fletcher said. If the therapist is a physician, he or she should be certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine.

Does the facility’s approach to treatment fit with your beliefs and values? If a 12-step program like A.A. is not right for you, don’t choose it just because it’s the best known approach.

Meet with the therapist who will treat you and ask what your treatment plan will be. “It should be more than movies, lectures or three-hour classes three times a week,” Ms. Fletcher said. “You should be treated by a licensed addiction counselor who will see you one-on-one. Treatment should be individualized. One size does not fit all.”

Find out if you will receive therapy for any underlying condition, like depression, or a social problem that could sabotage recovery. The National Institute on Drug Abuse states in its Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment, “To be effective, treatment must address the individual’s drug abuse and any associated medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems.”

Look for programs using research-validated techniques, like cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps addicts recognize what prompts them to use drugs or alcohol, and learn to redirect their thoughts and reactions away from the abused substance.

Other validated treatment methods include Community Reinforcement and Family Training, or Craft, an approach developed by Robert J. Meyers and described in his book, “Get Your Loved One Sober,” with co-author Brenda L. Wolfe. It helps addicts adopt a lifestyle more rewarding than one filled with drugs and alcohol.

This is the first of two articles on addiction treatment.

Read More..

Bits Blog: Most Facebook Users Have Taken a Break From the Site, Study Finds

Facebook is the most popular social network in America — roughly two-thirds of adults in the country use it on a regular basis.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t get sick of it.

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center‘s Internet and American Life Project found that 61 percent of current Facebook users admitted that they had voluntarily taken breaks from the site, for as many as several weeks at a time.

The main reason for their social media sabbaticals?

Not having enough time to dedicate to pruning their profiles, an overall decrease in their interest in the site as well as the general sentiment that Facebook was a major waste of time. About 4 percent cited privacy and security concerns as contributing to their departure. Although those users eventually resumed their regular activity, another 20 percent of Facebook users admitted to deleting their accounts.

Of course, even as some Facebook users pull back on their daily consumption of the service, the vast majority — 92 percent — of all social network users still maintain a profile on the site. But while more than than half said that the site was just as important to them as it was a year ago, only 12 percent said the site’s significance increased over the last year — indicating the makings of a much larger social media burnout across the site.

The study teases out other interesting insights, including the finding that young users are spending less time overall on the site. The report found that 42 percent of Facebook users from the ages of 18 to 29 said that the average time they spent on the site in a typical day had decreased in the last year. A much smaller portion, 23 percent, of older Facebook users, those over 50, reported a drop in Facebook usage over the same period.

Facebook’s biggest challenge revolves around figuring out how to continue to profit from its rich reservoir of one billion users — and a large part of that involves keeping them entertained and returning to the site on a regular basis. Most recently, the company introduced a tool called Graph Search, a research tool that promises to help its users find answers on everything from travel recommendations to potential jobs and even love connections.

Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which conducted the survey, described the results as a kind of “social reckoning.”

“These data show that people are trying to make new calibrations in their life to accommodate new social tools,” said Mr. Rainie, in an e-mail. Facebook users are beginning to ask themselves, ” ‘What are my friends doing and thinking and how much does that matter to me?,’ ” he said. “They are adding up the pluses and minuses on a kind of networking balance sheet and they are trying to figure out how much they get out of connectivity vs. how much they put into it.”

Read More..