Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.

The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.

Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.

They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.

Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.

Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.

The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.

Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.

"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.

Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.

Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.

One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.

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Stobbe reported from Atlanta.

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Online:

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com

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Stock index futures signal more gains

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures pointed to a slightly firmer open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones 0.1 percent higher at 0936 GMT, while those for the Nasdaq 100 added 0.2 percent.

U.S. producer prices, housing starts and building permits for January are all due at 1330 GMT, with the data expected to show a slight acceleration in factory price pressures alongside a continued recovery in the housing market.

The market focus, though, is likely to be on the minutes from the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee's January meeting, due at 1900 GMT, which will be scanned for clues on how long monetary policy is likely to remain ultra accommodative.

The earnings season continues, with Devon Energy Corp., Fluor Corp. and Newfield Exploration among those due to report.

With the season now three quarters of the way through, 28 percent of S&P 500 companies have missed full-year earnings forecasts, with 41 percent undershooting on revenues, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data.

Dell Inc : The world's No.3 maker of personal computers reported a 31 percent drop in profit, hurt by a shrinking consumer business, as investors weighed founder Michael Dell's offer to buy out the firm.

Demand Media Inc : The company said it is exploring the separation of its media business from its domain name service, a disclosure that sent its shares up nearly 20 percent in after-hours trading.

Boeing : The aircraft maker has found a way to fix battery problems with its grounded 787 Dreamliner jets which involves increasing the space between cells, a source familiar with the U.S. company's plans told Reuters.

Life Technologies : An $11 billion-plus sale of Life Technologies Corp is looking less likely as a gap in price expectations with the company has left potential buyer Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc skeptical about a deal while buyout firms' offers came up short, people familiar with the matter said this week.

Herbalife : The diet supplements company raised its 2013 earnings forecast late on Tuesday.

Heinz : The FBI is looking into possible insider trading in the options of the ketchup maker before its blockbuster deal last week to be acquired by Warren Buffett and Brazil's 3G Capital.

Sina Corp : The operator of China's largest online portal posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue and profit amid concerns about the slowing growth of Chinese online advertising.

Milennial Media : The mobile advertising firm's fourth-quarter sales missed Wall Street expectations, and the company forecast first-quarter revenue below analysts' estimates, sending its shares down as much as 33 percent after the bell.

Marriott International : The hotel operator reported better-than-expected quarterly results, aided by rising international travel and higher rates, and said it expects per-room revenue to rise further in 2013.

Nabors Industries : The owner of the world's largest onshore drilling rig fleet, reported a 44 percent jump in profit, but revenue fell as its major customers curtailed spending amid the worst slowdown in gas-directed drilling in more than a decade.

Total System Services Inc : The Payment processor said it will buy prepaid debit card provider NetSpend Holdings Inc for about $1.4 billion in cash to expand its presence in the prepaid card market and target new customers.

European shares traded flat on Wednesday, consolidating after the previous session's sharp gains, held back by weak earnings newsflow and as traders cited caution ahead of the minutes to the U.S. Federal Reserve's January policy meeting. <.eu/>

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 53.91 points, or 0.39 percent on Tuesday to 14,035.67 points - just 0.9 percent away from its record high. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> closed up 0.73 percent at 1,530.94, while the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added or 0.68 percent to 3,213.59.

(Reporting By Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Susan Fenton)

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Chavez back in Venezuela, on Twitter with four million followers

CARACAS (Reuters) - After Hugo Chavez spent two months out of the public eye for cancer surgery in Cuba, the Venezuelan government hailed his homecoming on Monday and said the president had achieved another milestone - four million followers on Twitter.

The 58-year-old flew back from Havana before dawn and was taken to a military hospital. No new details were given on his health, and there were no images of his arrival. Officials say his condition remains delicate.

The normally loquacious socialist leader, who is struggling to speak as he breathes through a tracheal tube, took to Twitter with a passion back in April 2010, tweeting regularly and encouraging other leftist Latin American leaders to do likewise.

His @chavezcandanga account quickly drew a big mixed following of fans, critics and others just curious to see how his famously long speeches and fiery anti-U.S. invective would work within the social media network's 140-character limit.

But as he fought the cancer and underwent weeks of grueling chemotherapy and radiation therapy, he began to tweet less and less frequently, before stopping altogether on November 1.

Early on Monday morning, he made his reappearance.

"It was 4:30, 5 a.m. He got to his room and surprised everyone: rat-tat-tat, he sent three or four messages, and at that moment fireworks began to go off around the country," Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised cabinet meeting.

During the day, Maduro added, the president's number of followers had shot up to well over four million.

"It's incredible, in just a few hours ... he's the second most-followed president in the world (after Barack Obama), and the first if we make the comparison by per capita," he said.

Obama has more than 27 million Twitter followers and is No. 5 most followed globally. Chavez is Twitter's No. 190 globally.

4TH MILLION FOLLOWER

Maduro said Chavez's four millionth follower was a 20-year-old single Venezuelan woman named Alemar Jimenez from the gritty San Juan neighborhood in downtown Caracas, near the military hospital where the president arrived earlier in the day.

"She's one of the golden generation of youth who support the fatherland and have been waiting with growing love for commander Hugo Chavez," Maduro said, before presenting a dazzled-looking Jimenez to the cameras and giving her a bunch of flowers.

"We were really emotional" she said, recounting how she was with her mother when they heard Chavez had returned. "I sent him a message on Twitter saying he must get better."

There are still big questions over the president's health. He could have come back to govern from behind the scenes, or he may be hoping to ease political tensions and pave the way for a transition to Maduro, his preferred successor.

Chavez has often ordered followers to fight back against opposition critics of his self-styled revolution by using social media, leading from the front himself on Twitter and referring to the Internet as a "battle trench."

As his ranks of followers grew, Chavez said he hired 200 assistants to help him respond to messages - which he said were a great way to receive first-hand the requests, demands, complaints and denunciations of citizens in the thousands.

During his re-election campaign last year, the government launched an SMS text message service that forwards his tweets to cellphones that lack Internet service, broadening their reach to the poorest corners of the South American country.

"He's a communication revolution!" Maduro said, later unbuttoning his shirt on TV to show he was wearing a T-shirt bearing Chavez's eyes emblazoned across his chest.

For the tens of thousands who signed up on Monday to follow Chavez on Twitter, it is unclear how much will be posted there in the weeks and months ahead. Venezuela's 29 million people are mostly wondering something similar.

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Mindy McCready: Under Police Scrutiny at Time of Suicide?

By Steve Helling and Mike Fleeman

02/18/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready and David Wilson

Courtesy Mindy McCready

When Mindy McCready talked to police in recent weeks, her account of how her boyfriend came to be found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head concerned police, a law enforcement source tells PEOPLE.

"At first, she said she hadn't heard the gunshot because the TV was too loud. Then she said she had heard the gunshot," the source says. "So obviously there were a lot of questions, and the Sheriff was asking for clarification."

But before investigators could re-interview her, the long-troubled country singer also would die under eerily similar circumstances, her body discovered at the same Heber Springs, Ark., house just feet away from where David Wilson died.

McCready's death was blamed on what "appears to be a single self-inflicted gunshot wound," the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

This differed from how the sheriff characterized Wilson's case. His cause and manner of death still have not been established by the coroner. It was McCready's publicist, and not a law enforcement official, who announced that Wilson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

After Wilson's death, McCready, 37, spoke to investigators three times, but they didn't feel as if they were through with her.

"At no point did [police] tell her she was a suspect, and she wasn't officially one," says the source. "But she knew that some of her answers didn't stand up to questioning. She was very cooperative, but she just wasn't making a lot of sense."

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Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.

The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.

"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.

Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.

"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."

Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.

That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.

The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.

"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."

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Online:

Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com

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Swiss say U.S. not in touch over Heinz insider trading case

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss authorities said on Monday they have not yet been asked to help a U.S. investigation into alleged insider trading in call options of H.J. Heinz Co the day before the company announced it would be sold, even though a Zurich account is at the heart of the matter.

U.S. securities regulators filed suit on Friday against as-yet-unidentified traders in Heinz options alleging they traded on inside information before the company made public the deal to be bought for $23 billion by an investor group made up of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc and Brazil's 3G Capital Partners.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement on Friday it had obtained "an emergency court order to freeze assets in a Zurich, Switzerland-based trading account that was used to reap more than $1.7 million from trading in advance of yesterday's public announcement about the acquisition of H.J. Heinz Company."

The order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York freezes the traders' assets and prohibits them from destroying any evidence, the SEC statement said.

SEC spokesman John Nester said on Monday that the assets concerned had been frozen in the United States, not Switzerland, though the "beneficial owners" were those allegedly behind the Swiss account. He did not respond immediately when asked if the U.S. authorities were in contact with their Swiss counterparts.

With the assets frozen, the SEC would have had no immediate need for Swiss assistance in the case, although it eventually may need help to identify the account holders.

Rainer Borer, a spokesman for the Swiss financial markets watchdog known as FINMA, said a U.S. court cannot by itself freeze assets in an account of a bank operating in Switzerland.

"For that, it has to ask for legal or administrative assistance," he told Reuters. "Up to now, FINMA has not received a U.S. request for administrative assistance in the mentioned case of potential insider trading."

Justice ministry spokesman Folco Galli said the ministry had not received an official request for legal assistance either.

"Either a request for administrative or legal assistance would be necessary because a U.S. court cannot enforce a coercive measure in Switzerland," he said.

U.S. bank Goldman Sachs has said it is co-operating with the SEC probe. The SEC suit filed Friday refers to the account in Switzerland as the "GS Account.

Heinz had no comment, Michael Mullen, a company spokesman, said by email. Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital likewise declined to comment, said Gemma Hart, a spokeswoman for the investor group.

(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Additional reporting by Martin de Sa'Pinto in Zurich and Jim Wolf in Washington; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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U.N. says has list of Syrian war crimes suspects

GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrians in "leadership positions" who may be responsible for war crimes have been identified, along with units accused of perpetrating them, United Nations investigators said on Monday.

Both government forces and armed rebels are committing war crimes, including killings and torture, spreading terror among civilians in a nearly two-year-old conflict, they said.

The investigators' latest report, covering the six months to mid-January, was based on 445 interviews conducted abroad with victims and witnesses, as they have not been allowed into Syria.

The independent team, led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, called on the U.N. Security Council to "act urgently to ensure accountability" for grave violations, possibly by referring the violators to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.

"The ICC is the appropriate institution for the fight against impunity in Syria. As an established, broadly supported structure, it could immediately initiate investigations against authors of serious crimes in Syria," the 131-page report said.

It added: "Individuals may also bear criminal responsibility for perpetuating the crimes identified in the present report. Where possible, individuals in leadership positions who may be responsible were identified alongside those who physically carried out the acts."

Karen Konig AbuZayd, one of the four commissioners on the team of some two dozen experts, told Reuters: "We have information suggesting people who have given instructions and are responsible for government policy. People who are in the leadership of the military, for example."

"It is the first time we have mentioned the ICC directly. The Security Council needs to come together and decide whether or not to refer the case to the ICC. I am not optimistic."

But its third list of suspects, building on lists drawn up in the past year, remains secret. It will be entrusted to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, upon expiry of its current mandate at the end of March, the report said.

Pillay, a former judge at the ICC, said on Saturday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be probed for war crimes and called for immediate action by the international community, including possible military intervention.

"The evidence collected sits in the safe in the office of the High Commissioner against the day it might be referred to a court and evidence would be examined by a prosecutor," said a European diplomat.

The death toll in Syria is likely approaching 70,000 people, Pillay told the Security Council last week in a fresh appeal for it to refer Syria to the ICC, the Hague-based war crimes court.

Government forces have carried out shelling and aerial bombardment across Syria including Aleppo, Damascus, Deraa, Homs and Idlib, the independent U.N. investigators said, citing corroborating evidence gathered from satellite images.

"In some incidents, such as in the assault on Harak, indiscriminate shelling was followed by ground operations during which government forces perpetrated mass killing," it said, referring to a town in the southern province of Deraa where residents told them that 500 civilians were killed in August.

"SPREADING TERROR"

"Government forces and affiliated militias have committed extra-judicial executions, breaching international human rights law. This conduct also constitutes the war crime of murder. Where murder was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, with knowledge of that attack, it is a crime against humanity," the U.N. report said.

They have targeted queues at bakeries and funeral processions, in violence aimed at "spreading terror among the civilian population", it said.

"Syrian armed forces have implemented a strategy that uses shelling and sniper fire to kill, maim, wound and terrorize the civilian inhabitants of areas that have fallen under anti-government armed group control," the report said.

Government forces had used cluster bombs, it said, but it found no credible evidence of either side using chemical arms.

Rebel forces fighting to topple Assad in the protracted and increasingly sectarian conflict have committed war crimes include murder, torture, hostage-taking and using children under age 15 in hostilities, the U.N. report said.

"They continue to endanger the civilian population by positioning military objectives inside civilian areas," it said. Rebel snipers had caused "considerable civilian casualties".

"The violations and abuses committed by anti-government armed groups did not, however, reach the intensity and scale of those committed by government forces and affiliated militia."

Foreign fighters, many of them from Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, have radicalized the rebels and helped detonate deadly improvised explosive devices, it said.

The two other commissioners are former chief ICC prosecutor Carla del Ponte and Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand.

"It is an investigative mechanism and its evidence can be given to relevant judicial authorities when the time comes. In the interim, it is the one piece of U.N.-approved machinery shining a light on abuses," the European diplomat said.

Referring to del Ponte, who joined in September, the diplomat said: "She brings a harder-edged prosecutorial lens so when they are looking at the evidence she is very well placed to know what sort of evidence would assist a later judicial process."

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Beyoncé & Jay-Z Celebrate All-Star Weekend in Houston

Caught in the Act

02/18/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

It's Beyoncé's world and we're all just living in it.

On Saturday night, Blue Ivy's pop star mom, her husband Jay-Z and LeBron James held court in Houston at the Sprite Two Kings private dinner at RDG + Bar Annie.

While fans were buzzing about the singer's new documentary, Life Is but a Dream, Beyoncé slipped into the late night event dressed in a white pantsuit with her honey-hued hair in curls.

As the event continued, Chef Robert del Grande served mixed surf and turf with starters of Maine lobster salad, seared foie gras poor boys and entrees including wood grilled prime beef and gulf red snapper.

After dinner, things took a lively turn as deejay Mick Boogie played hits late into the night. Other attendees included P. Diddy, Drake, Ne-Yo, and Scottie and Larsa Pippen.

– Heather Staible

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Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior

SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.

The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.

"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.

The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.

The study involved 565 Seattle parents, who periodically filled out TV-watching diaries and questionnaires measuring their child's behavior.

Half were coached for six months on getting their 3-to-5-year-old kids to watch shows like "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer" rather than more violent programs like "Power Rangers." The results were compared with kids whose parents who got advice on healthy eating instead.

At six months, children in both groups showed improved behavior, but there was a little bit more improvement in the group that was coached on their TV watching.

By one year, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups overall. Low-income boys appeared to get the most short-term benefit.

"That's important because they are at the greatest risk, both for being perpetrators of aggression in real life, but also being victims of aggression," Christakis said.

The study has some flaws. The parents weren't told the purpose of the study, but the authors concede they probably figured it out and that might have affected the results.

Before the study, the children averaged about 1½ hours of TV, video and computer game watching a day, with violent content making up about a quarter of that time. By the end of the study, that increased by up to 10 minutes. Those in the TV coaching group increased their time with positive shows; the healthy eating group watched more violent TV.

Nancy Jensen, who took part with her now 6-year-old daughter, said the study was a wake-up call.

"I didn't realize how much Elizabeth was watching and how much she was watching on her own," she said.

Jensen said her daughter's behavior improved after making changes, and she continues to control what Elizabeth and her 2-year-old brother, Joe, watch. She also decided to replace most of Elizabeth's TV time with games, art and outdoor fun.

During a recent visit to their Seattle home, the children seemed more interested in playing with blocks and running around outside than watching TV.

Another researcher who was not involved in this study but also focuses his work on kids and television commended Christakis for taking a look at the influence of positive TV programs, instead of focusing on the impact of violent TV.

"I think it's fabulous that people are looking on the positive side. Because no one's going to stop watching TV, we have to have viable alternatives for kids," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

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Contact AP Writer Donna Blankinship through Twitter (at)dgblankinship

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Euro, dollar up after G20, stocks ease on growth concern

LONDON (Reuters) - The euro and the dollar rose against the yen on Monday after the G20 decided not to criticize Japan for its expansionist policies, but shares eased as Europe's weak growth outlook weighed on sentiment.

Financial leaders from the world's 20 biggest economies promised on Saturday not to devalue their currencies to boost exports, aiming to defuse talk of currency wars that had been roiling the markets.

The euro gained 0.2 percent to 125.32 yen, edging up toward a 34-month high of 127.71 yen hit earlier this month, while the dollar rose 0.6 percent to 94 yen, closer to its highest level since May 2010 of 94.46 hit on February 11.

"Future yen direction will continue to be driven by domestic monetary policy from the Bank of Japan and improving international investor confidence, which are both driving the yen weaker," said Lee Hardman, currency analyst at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is poised to nominate a new BOJ governor. Sources told Reuters that former financial bureaucrat Toshiro Muto, considered likely to be less radical than other candidates, was leading the field.

Abe said on Monday that buying foreign bonds was a future option for the Bank of Japan, which would entail selling of the yen by the central bank.

The euro was also rising against the dollar, gaining 0.1 percent to $1.3375 ahead of address by European Central Bank president Mario Draghi to the region's parliament which may touch on the outlook for the single currency after the G20 meeting.

In European markets, attention was also switching to the release of euro area Purchasing Managers' Indexes for February and German sentiment indices due later in the week, and the upcoming general elections in Italy.

Analysts expect Thursday's euro area flash PMI indices, which point to economic activity around six months out, to show growth stabilizing across the recession-hit region, leaving hopes for a recovery in the second half of the year intact.

Concerns over an inconclusive outcome in Italian elections at the end of the week added to the weaker sentiment as a fragmented parliament could hamper a future government's reform efforts.

The worries about the outlook for Italy were encouraging investors back into safe have German government bonds on Monday, with 10-year Bund yields easing 3.6 basis points to be around 1.63 percent.

"Political uncertainty will keep Bunds well bid this week," ING rate strategist Alessandro Giansanti said, adding that only better than expected economic data could create selling pressure on German debt near term.

EARNINGS HIT

European equity markets were taking their lead from corporate earnings reports which have been reflecting the sluggish economic conditions across the region.

Danish brewer Carlsberg , which generates just over 60 percent of its sales in western Europe, became the latest company to report a weaker-than-expected quarterly profit, sending its shares to lowest level in nearly a month.

The 5 percent drop in price for shares in the world's fourth biggest brewery helped send the FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> of top European shares down 0.4 percent in morning trade. Germany's DAX <.gdaxi>, the UK FTSE <.ftse> and France's CAC-40 <.fchi> were all also slightly weaker. <.l><.eu/>

Earlier, the effect of the G20 statement and the comments from Abe indicating a renewed drive to stimulate the economy lifted the Nikkei stock index <.n225> by 2.1 percent, near to its highest level since September 2008.

U.S. stock futures were barely changed and are expected to stay little changed as Wall Street will be closed on Monday for the Presidents' Day holiday. <.n/>

MSCI's world equity index <.miwd00000pus> was flat as markets extended two-week period of consolidation that has followed the big run up in January when demand was buoyed by the efforts of global central banks to stimulate the world economy.

Data from EPFR Global, a US-based firm that tracks the flows and allocations of funds globally, shows investors pulled $3.62 billion from U.S. stock funds in the latest week, the most in 10 weeks after taking a neutral stance the prior week.

But demand for emerging market equities remained strong, with investors putting $1.81 billion in new cash into stock funds, the fund-tracking firm said.

CHINA RETURN

In the commodity markets traders played catch up after a week-long holiday last week in China, the world's second biggest consumer of many raw materials, had kept activity subdued, with worries about the euro zone economy weighing on sentiment.

Copper, for which China is the world's largest consumer, fell 0.8 percent to $8,135 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) on the London futures market.

Gold rebounded by 0.3 percent from a six-month low to be $1,614 an ounce as jewelers in China returned to the physical market after the Lunar New Year holiday.

Crude oil markets were mostly steady after some weak U.S. industrial production data on Friday [ID:nL1N0BF44A] was seen dampening demand, while tensions in the Middle East lent some support.

U.S. crude fell 20 cents to $95.66 a barrel but Brent inched up two cents $117.86.

(Reporting by Richard Hubbard; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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