Yep, the Oscars are over, but it doesn't mean we're done talking about it! You can relive the best of the night! Check out what celebs, readers (and you!) had to say about the musical numbers, speeches – and a certain reigning Sexiest Man Alive! – on Twitter last night.
LONDON (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street on Monday, with futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 up 0.1 and 0.2 percent respectively by 0856 GMT, while those for Dow Jones were steady.
* The U.S. stock market closed higher on Friday, with the S&P 500 adding 13.18 points, or 0.88 percent, to 1,515.60 <.spx>, after comments from Fed officials allayed fears that the central bank would curtail stimulus measures.
* Prospects of continued stimulus also lifted Asian and European equity markets on Monday, with the EuroSTOXX 50 benchmark of euro zone blue chips up 0.7 percent <.stoxx50e>. However, uncertainty over the outcome of Italian elections, which close on Monday, kept a lid on the gains.
* With days left before $85 billion is slashed from U.S. government budgets, the White House on Sunday issued more dire warnings about the harm the cuts will do to Americans. But Republicans, who advocate budget cuts, said the warning was overplayed and called on President Barack Obama to apply what is known as the "sequester" in a more careful way, rather than slashing budgets across the board.
* A relatively light calendar features the Chicago Fed's national activity index for February at 1330 GMT, alongside earnings from Autodesk Inc and Lowe's Companies.
* Barnes & Noble Inc
* Disney's
* BlackRock Inc.
* Knight Capital Group
* Hewlett-Packard
* Office Depot Inc
* Dick's Sporting Goods Inc
(Reporting By Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
ROME (Reuters) - Italians began voting on Sunday in one of the most closely watched elections in years, with markets nervous about whether it can produce a strong government to pull Italy out of recession and help resolve the euro zone debt crisis.
Some of the first people to cast their ballots expressed fears that no clear winner would emerge, leading to political stalemate and a coalition that may not govern for long.
"I think we will have to go to elections again ... I expect instability for the next two years," said Vincenzo D'Ouria, voting in Milan.
Italians started voting at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT). Polling booths will remain open until 10 p.m. on Sunday and open again between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday. Exit polls will come out soon after voting ends and official results are expected by early Tuesday.
The election is being followed closely by financial markets with memories still fresh of the potentially catastrophic debt crisis that brought technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti to power more than a year ago.
Monti and his wife cast their votes at a polling booth in a Milan school on Sunday morning. His centrist bloc would only enter a future government as a junior partner of a bigger party.
Final polls published two weeks ago showed center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani with a 5-point lead, but analysts disagree about whether he will be able to form a stable majority that can make the economic reforms Italy needs.
Bersani is now thought to be just a few points ahead of center-right rival Silvio Berlusconi, the four-times prime minister who has promised tax refunds and staged a media blitz in an attempt to win back voters.
A huge final rally by anti-establishment-comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo on Friday highlighted public anger at traditional parties.
Grillo's 5-Star movement, made up of political novices, is in third place in its first general election, polls suggest, and popular support from voters across the political spectrum has increased uncertainty about the outcome.
"Italians want change, but you cannot achieve that with Grillo. They are far too inexperienced for the Italian parliamentary machine," said Cristina Rossi, 40, a civil engineer who was on her way to vote for Bersani's Democratic Party in Milan.
"I fear the outcome will be a weak government, but maybe this is just a necessary transition to be able, in one or two years, to chose someone who can really govern Italy."
Italy, the euro zone's third-largest economy, is stuck in deep recession, struggling under a public debt burden second only to Greece's in the 17-member currency bloc and with a public weary of more than a year of austerity policies.
BERLUSCONI CRITICISM
Berlusconi hogged the headlines on Sunday after he used news conference at his soccer club AC Milan's training ground to break the campaign silence imposed on politicians in the day before polls open.
He told reporters that Italy's magistrates were "more dangerous than the Sicilian mafia" and had invented allegations he had held sex parties in order to discredit him.
The 76-year-old billionaire, who is appealing a jail sentence for tax fraud and is on trial accused of having sex with an underage prostitute, was criticized by his rivals for making a political statement during a ban on campaigning.
While the center left is still expected to gain control of the lower house, thanks to rules that guarantee a strong majority to whichever party wins the most votes nationally, a much closer battle will be fought for the Senate, which any government also needs to control to be able to pass laws.
Seats in the upper house are awarded on a region-by-region basis, meaning that support in key areas can decisively influence the overall result.
Pollsters still believe the most likely outcome is a center-left government headed by Bersani and possibly backed by Monti.
But strong campaigning by Berlusconi and the fiery Grillo, have thrown the election wide open. Surveys showed up to 5 million voters will make up their minds at the last minute.
The Interior Ministry urged some 47 million eligible voters in Italy not to let bad weather put them off, and said it was prepared to handle snowy conditions in some northern regions to ensure everyone had a chance to vote.
STAGNANT ECONOMY
Whatever government emerges from the vote will have the task of pulling Italy out of its longest recession for 20 years and reviving an economy largely stagnant for two decades.
The main danger for Italy and the euro zone is a weak government incapable of taking firm action, which would rattle investors and could ignite a new debt crisis.
Monti replaced Berlusconi in November 2011 after Italy came close to Greek-style financial meltdown while the center-right government was embroiled in scandals.
The former European Commissioner launched a tough program of spending cuts, tax hikes and pension reforms which won widespread international backing and helped restore Italy's credibility abroad after the scandals of the Berlusconi era.
Italy's borrowing costs have since fallen sharply after the European Central Bank pledged it was prepared to support countries undertaking reforms by buying unlimited quantities of their bonds on the markets.
But economic austerity has fuelled anger among Italians grappling with rising unemployment and shrinking disposable incomes, encouraging many to turn to Grillo, who has tapped into a national mood of disenchantment.
(Additional reporting by Cristiano Corvino and Lisa Jucca in Milan; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
02/22/2013 at 05:00 PM ET
Mom Kourtney Kardashian has one! Aunts Kim and Khloé own one too. And now Penelope Disick is the latest family member to add Balenciaga‘s chic city tote to her closet.
“Penelope is wearing the little Balenciaga bag that I got her for Christmas!” Kim posted on Instagram Friday, along with an adorable photo of the mom-to-be with her 7½-month-old niece and her mini yellow handbag.
Is Kim gearing up for her little one? If she has a little girl, we have no doubt her wardrobe will be the envy of the playground. Although the expectant reality star recently revealed that if it’s up to dad-to-be Kanye West, their baby will be wearing lots of “big chains and leather pants.”
And to be fair, Penelope wasn’t the only Kardashian-Jenner kid to receive luxe fashions for Christmas. Kylie and Kendall also scored during the holidays.
Courtesy Kim Kardashian; Inset: Rex USA
– Shanelle Rein-Olowokere
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.
The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.
Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.
"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."
Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.
The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.
Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.
FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.
Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.
FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer
Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.
Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.
Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors face another Washington-imposed deadline on government spending cuts next week, but it's not generating the same level of fear as two months ago when the "fiscal cliff" loomed large.
Investors in sectors most likely to be affected by the cuts, like defense, seem untroubled that the budget talks could send stocks tumbling.
Talks on the U.S. budget crisis began again this week leading up to the March 1 deadline for the so-called sequestration when $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts are scheduled to take effect.
"It's at this point a political hot button in Washington but a very low level investor concern," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. The fight pits President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats against congressional Republicans.
Stocks rallied in early January after a compromise temporarily avoided the fiscal cliff, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> has risen 6.3 percent since the start of the year.
But the benchmark index lost steam this week, posting its first week of losses since the start of the year. Minutes on Wednesday from the last Federal Reserve meeting, which suggested the central bank may slow or stop its stimulus policy sooner than expected, provided the catalyst.
National elections in Italy on Sunday and Monday could also add to investor concern. Most investors expect a government headed by Pier Luigi Bersani to win and continue with reforms to tackle Italy's debt problems. However, a resurgence by former leader Silvio Berlusconi has raised doubts.
"Europe has been in the last six months less of a topic for the stock market, but the problems haven't gone away. This may bring back investor attention to that," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.
OPTIONS BULLS TARGET GAINS
The spending cuts, if they go ahead, could hit the defense industry particularly hard.
Yet in the options market, bulls were targeting gains in Lockheed Martin Corp
Calls on the stock far outpaced puts, suggesting that many investors anticipate the stock to move higher. Overall options volume on the stock was 2.8 times the daily average with 17,000 calls and 3,360 puts traded, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.
"The upside call buying in Lockheed solidifies the idea that option investors are not pricing in a lot of downside risk in most defense stocks from the likely impact of sequestration," said Jared Woodard, a founder of research and advisory firm condoroptions.com in Forest, Virginia.
The stock ended up 0.6 percent at $88.12 on Friday.
If lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on reducing the U.S. budget deficit in the next few days, a sequester would include significant cuts in defense spending. Companies such as General Dynamics Corp
General Dynamics Corp shares rose 1.2 percent to $67.32 and Smith & Wesson added 4.6 percent to $9.18 on Friday.
EYES ON GDP DATA, APPLE
The latest data on fourth-quarter U.S. gross domestic product is expected on Thursday, and some analysts predict an upward revision following trade data that showed America's deficit shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years.
U.S. GDP unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter, according to an earlier government estimate, but analysts said there was no reason for panic, given that consumer spending and business investment picked up.
Investors will be looking for any hints of changes in the Fed's policy of monetary easing when Fed Chairman Ben Bernake speaks before congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Shares of Apple will be watched closely next week when the company's annual stockholders' meeting is held.
On Friday, a U.S. judge handed outspoken hedge fund manager David Einhorn a victory in his battle with the iPhone maker, blocking the company from moving forward with a shareholder vote on a controversial proposal to limit the company's ability to issue preferred stock.
(Additional reporting by Doris Frankel; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
02/22/2013 at 01:00 PM ET
Denise Truscello/Wireimage
Mario Lopez is a man of his word.
Following a December wedding, the EXTRA host declared he and wife Courtney would get to work expanding their family immediately — and he wasn’t kidding.
In January, the couple discovered they were indeed expecting.
“Mario and I are so excited to add to our family! I found out a month ago and surprised Mario with the good news at breakfast,” Courtney tells PEOPLE.
But the proud parents aren’t the only ones gearing up for a new addition. Big sister Gia Francesca, 2, already has babies on the brain.
“Gia kind of understands that there is a baby in my belly,” Courtney notes. “She also told me our dog Julio has a baby in his belly — so who knows!”
Despite a bumpy start — “I had a rough couple of weeks when I first found out,” she shares — the mom-to-be is feeling better and already sporting quite the blossoming belly. “I am showing so much faster this time around,” she says.
And with warmer weather on the way, Courtney will be swathing her bump in floor-length frocks — but plans on forgoing a few fashion ensembles from her past.
“I love being pregnant in the summer! I live in maxi dresses,” she says. “Looking back at my first pregnancy, there are certain things that I wore and I have no idea why. I looked horrible and I won’t do that again!”
Originally from Pittsburgh, the expectant mama is thrilled to have settled down with her growing family on the West Coast. Her only wish? That her children will one day enjoy a winter wonderland.
“I don’t miss the East Coast at all — especially the humidity,” she explains. “The one thing I do want my children to experience from an early age is snow. There is nothing like being a kid playing in the snow.”
– Anya Leon
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.
The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.
Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.
"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."
Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.
The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.
Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.
FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.
Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.
FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer
Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.
Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.
Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors face another Washington-imposed deadline on government spending cuts next week, but it's not generating the same level of fear as two months ago when the "fiscal cliff" loomed large.
Investors in sectors most likely to be affected by the cuts, like defense, seem untroubled that the budget talks could send stocks tumbling.
Talks on the U.S. budget crisis began again this week leading up to the March 1 deadline for the so-called sequestration when $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts are scheduled to take effect.
"It's at this point a political hot button in Washington but a very low level investor concern," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. The fight pits President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats against congressional Republicans.
Stocks rallied in early January after a compromise temporarily avoided the fiscal cliff, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> has risen 6.3 percent since the start of the year.
But the benchmark index lost steam this week, posting its first week of losses since the start of the year. Minutes on Wednesday from the last Federal Reserve meeting, which suggested the central bank may slow or stop its stimulus policy sooner than expected, provided the catalyst.
National elections in Italy on Sunday and Monday could also add to investor concern. Most investors expect a government headed by Pier Luigi Bersani to win and continue with reforms to tackle Italy's debt problems. However, a resurgence by former leader Silvio Berlusconi has raised doubts.
"Europe has been in the last six months less of a topic for the stock market, but the problems haven't gone away. This may bring back investor attention to that," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.
OPTIONS BULLS TARGET GAINS
The spending cuts, if they go ahead, could hit the defense industry particularly hard.
Yet in the options market, bulls were targeting gains in Lockheed Martin Corp
Calls on the stock far outpaced puts, suggesting that many investors anticipate the stock to move higher. Overall options volume on the stock was 2.8 times the daily average with 17,000 calls and 3,360 puts traded, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.
"The upside call buying in Lockheed solidifies the idea that option investors are not pricing in a lot of downside risk in most defense stocks from the likely impact of sequestration," said Jared Woodard, a founder of research and advisory firm condoroptions.com in Forest, Virginia.
The stock ended up 0.6 percent at $88.12 on Friday.
If lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on reducing the U.S. budget deficit in the next few days, a sequester would include significant cuts in defense spending. Companies such as General Dynamics Corp
General Dynamics Corp shares rose 1.2 percent to $67.32 and Smith & Wesson added 4.6 percent to $9.18 on Friday.
EYES ON GDP DATA, APPLE
The latest data on fourth-quarter U.S. gross domestic product is expected on Thursday, and some analysts predict an upward revision following trade data that showed America's deficit shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years.
U.S. GDP unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter, according to an earlier government estimate, but analysts said there was no reason for panic, given that consumer spending and business investment picked up.
Investors will be looking for any hints of changes in the Fed's policy of monetary easing when Fed Chairman Ben Bernake speaks before congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Shares of Apple will be watched closely next week when the company's annual stockholders' meeting is held.
On Friday, a U.S. judge handed outspoken hedge fund manager David Einhorn a victory in his battle with the iPhone maker, blocking the company from moving forward with a shareholder vote on a controversial proposal to limit the company's ability to issue preferred stock.
(Additional reporting by Doris Frankel; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran appears to be advancing in its construction of a research reactor Western experts say could offer the Islamic state a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb, if it decided to embark on such a course, a U.N. report showed.
Iran has almost completed installation of cooling and moderator circuit piping in the heavy water plant near the town of Arak, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report issued to member states late on Thursday.
Nuclear analysts say this type of reactor could yield plutonium for nuclear arms if the spent fuel is reprocessed, something Iran has said it has no intention of doing. Iran has said it "does not have reprocessing activities", the IAEA said.
In its previous report on Iran, in November, the Vienna-based U.N. agency said installation work at Arak was continuing, without giving any indication of how far advanced it was.
Iran rejects Western allegations it seeks to develop a capability to assemble nuclear weapons, saying its atomic program is entirely peaceful and that the Arak reactor will produce isotopes for medical and agricultural use.
Iran says it plans to begin operating the facility in the first quarter of 2014, the IAEA said. Tehran last year postponed the planned start-up from the third quarter of 2013, a target that Western experts said always had seemed unrealistic.
The Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, said late last year that it was questionable whether Iran would be able to meet the new target date as well, in view of "significant delays and impeded access to necessary materials" because of international sanctions imposed on Iran.
Western worries about Iran are focused largely on uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, as such material refined to a high level can provide the fissile core of an atomic bomb. But experts say Arak may also be a proliferation issue.
The Arak facility is a "growing source of concern", said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation and disarmament program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think-tank.
Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state, sees Iran's nuclear program as a serious danger and has threatened to attack its atomic sites if diplomacy and sanctions fail to resolve the decade-old dispute.
If it does, the nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow and Arak in central Iran are likely to be targets. Fitzpatrick said it could be Arak that triggers a conflict because attacking it after it is launched could cause an environmental disaster.
TESTING FUEL FOR ARAK REACTOR
Thursday's quarterly IAEA report showed Iran expanding its uranium enrichment program in defiance of tightening Western sanctions, installing advanced centrifuge machines at its main enrichment plant near the town of Natanz.
The report, issued just a few days before six world powers and Iran are due to resume negotiations after an eight-month hiatus, underlined the tough task facing the West in seeking to pressure Tehran to curb its nuclear activities.
Cliff Kupchan, Middle East director at the Eurasia consultancy, said Iran had adopted a defiant policy of pressing ahead with its nuclear program, despite harsh sanctions.
"As a result, Israel and the U.S. Congress will press a receptive U.S. administration to move forward with new and even harsher sanctions," he said in a research note.
Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear power plants, Iran's stated aim, but also provide the explosive core of a nuclear weapon if refined much further. Making plutonium from spent fuel is a second way of obtaining potential bomb material.
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a U.S. think-tank, noted that Iran planned to use a medical research reactor in Tehran, known as TRR, to test fuel for Arak.
"The TRR is now more than a medical isotope production reactor, Iran's stated use for the reactor, and is necessary for the operation" of Arak, it said in a report.
If operated optimally, the heavy-water plant could produce about nine kilograms (20 pounds) of plutonium a year, or enough for about two nuclear bombs annually, ISIS has said previously.
"Before it could use any of the plutonium in a nuclear weapon, however, it would first have to separate the plutonium from the irradiated fuel," it added on its website.
Iran has repeatedly declared it has no plans to reprocess the spent fuel. But, "similarly sized reactors ostensibly built for research" have been used by India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan to make plutonium for weapons, Fitzpatrick said.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Copyright © News marmolite. All rights reserved.
Design 
And Business Directories
