“Chasing Mavericks” Review: surfing saga wipes out on dry land

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Regarding legendary MGM bathing beauty Esther Williams, producer Joe Pasternak once famously quipped, “Wet, she’s a star.”

So it goes with “Chasing Mavericks,” a biopic that features not enough stirringly gorgeous surfing footage and way too many clunky biopic clichés in telling the story of surf legend Jay Moriarity. With a storyline as by-the-numbers as a square dance, the movie’s one surprise comes with the closing credits – namely, that this trite “inspirational” movie is the product of two world-class filmmakers, Curtis Hanson and Michael Apted.

After a prologue in which eight-year-old Jay, already obsessed with the big waves, is rescued from drowning by his ten-hanging neighbor Frosty Hesson (Gerard Butler), we meet our lead character at age 15 and played by Jonny Weston. A talented young surfer, Jay sneaks off one morning and watches Frosty tackle Mavericks, a giant super-wave thought by many to be the stuff of legend.

Once he sees Mavericks, Jay has found his Mt. Everest, and he won’t rest until he can conquer it. He begs Frosty to train him, and so begins a 12-week course that will include the physical (paddling from Santa Cruz to Monterey, learning to go four minutes without breathing) and the mental (Jay writes essays for Frosty about observing the tides and conquering personal demons).

Naturally, the surf lessons become life lessons, whether it’s about taking a step back and finding the easy way through a situation or distinguishing the difference between fear (a good thing) and panic (not so much). Kario Salem’s screenplay ticks off the character development in the most predictable way possible; when Jay reveals early on that he has an unopened latter from the father who abandoned him as a child, we know that envelope’s going to be torn open in the final act.

Because of his positive attitude and many achievements at a relatively young age, Jay Moriarity became a legend in the surf world. Unfortunately, that mantle anchors the film – rather than portray Jay as the complex and interesting person he no doubt was, the movie reduces him to a paragon. Constantly upbeat and crowned in a halo of blond curls, Weston has nothing to play that can make Jay anything but a blank, shiny ideal.

Butler may still be grappling with his American accent, but at least Frosty has a flaw or two that give the actor something to do. The women in the film are handed even less to work with, stuck playing The Girlfriend (Leven Rambin) or The Boozy Mom Who Suddenly Isn’t Boozy Anymore (Elisabeth Shue). Abigail Spencer, as Frosty’s wife, gets some relatively complex moments, but even she is saddled with the requisite “Please don’t go surf Mavericks tonight, honey” speech.

None of the film’s many flaws matter when Jay or Frosty hops on a board and swims out to the waves. If the surfing scenes are real, then they’re breathtaking; if they’re faked, then they’ve been faked brilliantly. But for that, better to rent “The Endless Summer” or “Step Into Liquid” so you can cut right to the good stuff without having to wade through all the personal-growth and surrogate-family bushwa that “Chasing Mavericks” handles so badly.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Anglo American chief to step down

26 October 2012 Last updated at 12:11 ET

Cynthia Carroll is to step down as chief executive of mining giant Anglo American after six years in the job.

Earlier this year a group of shareholders, unhappy with a sharp drop in profits, asked the chairman to look for a new chief executive.

Anglo said it was her decision to leave and chairman Sir John Parker paid tribute to her leadership.

No date has been set for her departure, which will leave just two women running the biggest UK-listed companies.

They are Angela Ahrendts at Burberry and Alison Cooper of Imperial Tobacco. Dame Marjorie Scardino, currently the chief executive of Pearson, is stepping down at the end of the year after 16 years in the job.

Anglo American shares closed up 4%, the biggest gainer among the 100 top quoted companies.

Cynthia Carroll, a 55-year-old American, said it had been a difficult decision to leave.

Continue reading the main story

“I am extremely proud of everything we have achieved during my period,” she said.

“Next year I will be entering my seventh year as chief executive and I feel that the time will be right to hand over to a successor who can build further on the strong foundations we have created.”

Legacy

Sir John said she had “developed a clear strategy, based on a highly attractive range of core commodities, and created a strong and unified culture and a streamlined organisation with a focus on operational performance”.

Continue reading the main story

Her departure does nothing to solve the key problems facing the company in the medium term”

End Quote Nik Stanojevic Mining analyst, Brewin Dolphin

“Her legacy will include, among many other things, a step change improvement in safety, sustainability and the quality of our dialogue with governments, communities and other stakeholders. Her values represent the very best of Anglo American.”

A geologist by training, Cynthia Carroll was the the first woman and the first non-South African to be appointed to the role of chief executive at Anglo American when she was given the top job in 2007.

She has come under increasing pressure from investors over the company’s share price, which has fallen by a third this year, and the deteriorating industrial relations at its platinum operations in South Africa.

A continuing wildcat strike means the company is losing output of four and a half thousand ounces of refined platinum every day, which equates to a loss of almost $ 7m (£4.3m).

But there have also been concerns about its Minas Rio iron ore project in Brazil, as well as problems in its Chilean copper operations.

Contenders

Nik Stanojevic, mining analyst at Brewin Dolphin said her performance had been mixed: “She made significant improvements in certain areas, particularly in cost cutting, removing various layers of management and streamlining the business. Importantly she also improved relations with the South African government,” he told BBC News.

“But her time also saw cost overruns and long delays at the Minas Rio iron ore project.

“Her departure does nothing to solve the key problems facing the company in the medium term.”

Mr Stanojevic added that there were some big names in the business who could be in line to take over, including the current boss of mining giant Xstrata, Mick Davis, who will leave his post after it completes its merger with Glencore.

Also potentially available are Chip Goodyear, the former chief executive of BHP Billiton, and Alex Vanselow, another former BHP Billiton executive.

Charlie Gibson, mining analyst at Edison Investment Research, said her successor would not necessarily be more successful: “The ‘new broom’ may not be able to do much better. I have a saying – no mining plan survives past its first contact with a rock – it is such an unpredictable business, there is always a geological fault, or a slippage or any number of unexpected hitches.”

Analysts at Macquarie bank calculated that Anglo American is worth $ 25bn less than it was when Cynthia Carroll became the chief executive, while its major competitors have grown, or at least not lost value.

BBC News – Business

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First Person: During Breast Cancer Treatment, Lucky to Have My Husband by My Side

To mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Yahoo News asked women who have had breast cancer or are going through treatment to write about the people in their lives who stood by them and cared for them. Here’s one story.

FIRST PERSON | It’s been two decades since my breast cancer diagnosis. Through it all, my husband was my companion: during my surgery, treatments and after.

Today, we’re both 86, and living in Los Angeles. Howard and I have known each other for 45 years after we met on a blind date and fell in love the first day we met.

When I discovered I had breast cancer in my 60s, I considered myself lucky. Why? Because I discovered it when it was in the very first stage. I knew it was in the first stage because when I went in for my annual mammogram, there were no signs of cancer.

Two months later, I felt a small lump in my left breast, which I had never felt before. To make certain that my imagination wasn’t getting the best of me, I asked my husband to feel my breast. When he told me that he did feel a lump, I became upset. He re-assured me that it was probably nothing to worry about. It made me feel a little better.

Although I went for my second mammogram only two months after the first one, I was disturbed when the nurse reported to me that I had cancer in the left breast. I made an appointment for surgery. My husband was a great companion. As he drove me to the hospital, he was very re-assuring that everything will be alright. This made me feel so much better.

Since my cancer was in the very early stage, I did not need chemotherapy, but I had to go for radiation therapy three times a week for six weeks.

Being a social person, I found my radiation sessions rather pleasant and relaxing. Why? Because while waiting in the waiting room for my treatments, there were other people waiting for their treatments also. When you sit in a room three times a week for six weeks, with basically the same people, you’re bound to become friendly with some of the people.

One young man had brain cancer. Apparently, his wife left him because she couldn’t take it. When I heard this, I felt so that my husband was definitely not like this man’s wife.

Even though the pain from the operation was not too severe, he insisted on making dinner for the next three days after he brought me home from the hospital. Not only did he make the dinner, but when I told him that I would clean up, he insisted: “No, no. You go watch television. “

After he cleaned up, he held my hand, and whispered in my ear, “You’re my only.”

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Star Silicon Valley analyst felled by Facebook IPO fallout

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The firing of Citigroup stock analyst Mark Mahaney on Friday in the regulatory fallout from Facebook Inc’s initial public offering was greeted with shock and dismay in Silicon Valley, where Mahaney was a well-known and well-liked figure.

“Pretty shocked,” was the reaction of Jacob Funds Chief Executive Ryan Jacob, who described Mahaney as one of the most respected financial analysts covering the Internet industry.

“I’d put him at the top. If not at the top, then near the top,” said Jacob. “He really knew what to look for.”

In addition to firing Mahaney, Citigroup paid a $ 2 million fine to Massachusetts regulators to settle charges that the bank improperly disclosed research on Facebook ahead of its $ 16 billion IPO in May.

The settlement agreement said Mahaney failed to supervise a junior analyst who improperly shared Facebook research with the TechCrunch news website. (Settlement agreement: http://r.reuters.com/pyj63t)

The settlement agreement also outlined an incident in which Mahaney failed to get approval before responding to a journalist’s questions about Google Inc — and told a Citigroup compliance staffer that the conversation had not occurred — even after being warned about unauthorized conversations with the media.

Mahaney declined to comment.

Mahaney got his start in the late 1990s, during the first dot-com boom where he worked at Morgan Stanley for Mary Meeker, one of the star analysts of the time. He went on to work at hedge fund Galleon Group before moving to Citigroup in 2005. Unlike most of his New York-based peers in the analyst world, Mahaney worked in San Francisco’s financial district, close to the companies and personalities at the heart of the tech industry.

Earlier this month, Mahaney was named the top Internet analyst for the fifth straight year by Institutional Investor. The review cited fans of Mahaney who praised a “systematic” investment approach that allows him to avoid the “waffling” often evidenced by other analysts.

Mahaney’s Buy rating on IAC/InteractiveCorp in April 2011, when the stock traded at $ 33.32, allowed investors to lock in a 51 percent gain before he downgraded the stock to a Hold at $ 50.31 a few months later, according to Institutional Investor.

But it wasn’t only his stock picks that put him in good stead. He earned kudos for simply being a nice guy.

“He’s a kind and thoughtful person and that’s evident in the way he deals with people,” said Jason Jones of Internet investment firm HighStep Capital. “He’s very well liked on Wall Street because of that.”

A CAUTIOUS VIEW ON FACEBOOK

Mahaney was only indirectly involved in the incident involving the Facebook research, according to the settlement agreement by Massachusetts regulators released on Friday. But the actions of the junior analyst who worked for him provide an unusual glimpse into the type of behind-the-scenes information trading that regulators are attempting to rein in.

While the Massachusetts regulators did not identify any of the individuals by name, Reuters has learned that the incident involved TechCrunch reporters Josh Constine and Kim-Mai Cutler as well as Citi junior analyst Eric Jacobs.

Jacobs, Constine and Cutler all did not respond to requests for comments.

In early May, shortly before Facebook’s IPO, Jacobs sent an email to Cutler and Constine. Constine attended Stanford University at the same time as Jacobs.

Constine, who studied social networks such as Facebook and Twitter for his 2009 Master’s degree in cybersociology at Stanford, had a close friendship with Jacobs, according to the settlement agreement.

“I am ramping up coverage on FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates),” Jacobs wrote in the email. The email included an “outline” that Jacobs said would eventually become the firm’s 30-40 page initiation report on Facebook.

He also included a “Facebook One Pager” document, which contained confidential, non-public information that Citigroup obtained in order to help begin covering Facebook after the IPO.

Asked by Constine if the information could be published and attributed to an anonymous source, Jacobs responded that “my boss would eat me alive,” the agreement said.

A spokeswoman for AOL Inc, which owns TechCrunch, declined to answer questions on the matter, saying only that “We are looking into the matter and have no comment at this time.”

Ironically, Mahaney was one of a small group of analysts at the many banks underwriting Facebook’s IPO who had cautious views of the richly valued offering. Mahaney initiated coverage of the company with a neutral rating.

Analysts at the top three underwriters on Facebook’s IPO – Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan – started the stock with overweight or buy recommendations.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Facebook had pre-briefed analysts for its underwriters ahead of its IPO, advising them to reduce their profit and revenue forecasts.

Facebook, whose stock was priced at $ 38 a share in the IPO, closed Friday’s regular session at $ 21.94 and has traded as low as $ 17.55.

“There were tens of billions of dollars in losses based on hyping the name, a lack of skeptical information and misunderstanding the company,” said Max Wolff, chief economist and senior analyst at research firm GreenCrest Capital.

“It’s highly unfortunate and darkly ironic that one of the signature regulatory actions from this IPO so far involves punishing analysts for disseminating cautious information about Facebook,” he added.

(Editing by Jonathan Weber, Mary Milliken and Lisa Shumaker)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Amnesty Int: Ivory Coast torturing detainees

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Ivory Coast security officials are torturing dozens of detainees by administering electric shocks and other forms of abuse, Amnesty International alleged Friday.

The victims include people charged with endangering state security in the wake of a recent spate of attacks targeting military installations. Since early August, unknown gunmen have carried out roughly 10 attacks at checkpoints, military bases and other installations throughout the country, including in the commercial capital of Abidjan.

United Nations officials have said that more than 200 people have been detained on suspicion of involvement in the attacks, and that torture has been documented at multiple detention facilities.

Gaetan Mootoo, West Africa researcher for Amnesty, said an investigation team received reports of a range of abuses during a recent month-long visit.

“We were able to meet dozens of detainees who told us how they have been tortured by electricity or had molten plastic poured on their bodies,” Mootoo said. “Two of them have been sexually abused. Some have been held for many months denied contact with their families and access to lawyers.”

Army spokesman Cherif Moussa denied the torture allegations Friday. “Our camps are not concentration camps,” he said.

However, he acknowledged the possibility that individual soldiers may occasionally “go beyond what they are allowed to do” when dealing with inmates.

He added that the government tried to ensure that inmates’ rights were respected. “We want to prove that we are not abusing people’s rights,” he said. “We’re working for the state’s security. We’re working for the people’s security.”

Earlier this month, the Associated Press interviewed former detainees at a military camp in the southwestern port town of San Pedro who described widespread beatings as well as the use of electric shocks. A guard at the camp corroborated most of the claims, though camp commanders denied them.

In its statement Friday, Amnesty described how one detainee, a police officer, had died as a result of the torture he endured at the San Pedro camp.

“Serge Herve Kribie was arrested in San Pedro on August 21 by the national army and interrogated about recent attacks,” Amnesty said. “He was stripped naked, tied to a pole, had water poured on his body, and was then subjected to electric shocks. He died a few hours later.”

Amnesty said that some detainees were only released after ransoms were paid. One detainee told the rights group: “My parents first paid 50,000 CFA (a little under US $ 100) and then after my release, my jailers went at my house and demanded a higher sum. I told them that I couldn’t pay such an amount and they agreed to receive 20,000 CFA more (about US$ 40).”

The government has blamed the attacks on allies of former President Laurent Gbagbo, who was arrested in April 2011. Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office after losing the November 2010 election to now-President Alassane Ouattara sparked six months of violence in which at least 3,000 were killed.

Amnesty researchers also met with some of the more than 100 Gbagbo allies – including his wife, Simone – who are being detained on charges stemming from the post-election violence.

“Some of them told us that despite the fact that they have been held since April 2011, they only saw an investigating judge twice for less than a few hours,” Mootoo said.

Despite widespread evidence that forces loyal to Ouattara also committed atrocities during the violence, none have been arrested or credibly investigated, sparking allegations of victor’s justice.

Also Friday, in Amsterdam, judges at the International Criminal Court rejected a request for release by former president Gbagbo, who is being detained on suspicion of crimes against humanity.

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ken Marino preps ‘Burning Love’ seasons 2 & 3: which comedic heavyweights will cameo?

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Yahoo and Paramount are bringing back Ken Marino‘s satirical web series “Burning Love” for two more seasons, the companies announced on Thursday.

In the first season, Marino spoofed “The Bachelor,” starring as a thick-headed, single man choosing between demented beauties played by the likes of Malin Akerman and Kristen Bell.

Marino and Erica Oyama, his wife and writing partner, have already written scripts for the next two seasons, which Marino will direct in 18 days once they finished casting.

The second season will parody “The Bachelorette,” starring June Diane Raphael as a woman searching for the perfect man. The third will parody “Bachelor Pad,” bringing back rejects from season one and two.

“We had such a good time doing the first season,” Marino told TheWrap. “In the back of our heads we knew what the trilogy was.”

The biggest question for those who watched the first season is which comedic heavyweights will make a cameo.

Produced by Abominable Pictures and Ben Stiller‘s Red Hour Digital, the first season of the show featured Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Akerman, Bell, Michael Ian Black and many others.

Marino was hesitant to reveal much about the casting at this point, though he did say that “Children’s Hospital” co-stars Rob Corddry and Rob Huebel would make an appearance.

“The show’s not; that’s the biggest obstacle — getting so many fun talented people to agree to work for nothing,” Marino said.

Like more and more actors, particularly comedians, Marino must now balance web series with TV and film projects. He recently wrapped “Milo,” a film being produced by Mark and Jay Duplass. After he finishes “Burning Love,” he will move onto the next season of “Children’s Hospital” while also pitching new TV shows with Oyama.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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EDF to raise energy cost by 10.8%

26 October 2012 Last updated at 06:56 ET

EDF Energy customers will see a 10.8% rise in gas and electricity prices from 7 December, the company has announced.

EDF, which has three million domestic customers, is the fifth major energy firm to announce price rises and it is the biggest average increase so far.

The company blamed the cost of wholesale energy and government charges including mandatory energy efficiency and social schemes.

Downing Street called the rise “very disappointing”.

The Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman said that “at this time families need help”, pointing out that the government had frozen council tax bills and capped rail fares.

Meanwhile, energy minister Greg Barker said that the rise was “unwelcome” for families struggling with household bills. He added that more details on how customers could get the best tariff would be outlined in the Energy Bill in the next few weeks.

EDF director Martin Lawrence said the company recognised that people do not want to see prices going up.

“It is worth pointing out that one in five of our customers are already on competitive fixed priced tariffs and will not be affected by these price changes this winter,” he said.

Other price rises

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

This is the final hammer blow for energy bills this side of Christmas”

End Quote Ann Robinson Uswitch

EDF, which claimed that its prices would still be lower than the other major suppliers who have already announced price rises, said that the average dual fuel bill would go up by £2.35 a week, the equivalent of more than £122 a year to bring the total bill to £1,251 a year.

The price rise is higher in percentage terms than any of the other suppliers, and leaves E.On as the only supplier among the big six yet to announce price rises this autumn and winter.

E.On has previously said that it would leave prices unchanged for the rest of the year.

The round of price changes has prompted some political debate, and has come as the energy regulator Ofgem announced plans to simplify bills to make the switching process easier.

However, some uncertainty remains over Prime Minister David Cameron’s comments that energy suppliers would be forced to put their customers on the cheapest tariff.

‘Pack behaviour’

All the latest energy price rises are displayed as an average across the UK. However, price changes might differ depending on where residents live in the country.

EDF cut gas prices by 5% in the spring, and was the last of the big six to announce price rises last winter, when it put up gas prices by 15.4% and electricity prices by 4.5%.

It has pledged that about 100,000 of its most vulnerable elderly customers would only be charged the equivalent of its cheapest tariff from this winter.

Ann Robinson, of price comparison website Uswitch.com, said: “This is the final hammer blow for energy bills this side of Christmas. Consumers now face a winter of rationing their energy usage – many will be forced to turned their heating down or off for fear of the impact of these hikes.

“However, we welcome EDF Energy’s support for its most vulnerable elderly customers who will automatically benefit from its cheapest prices. This could be a lifeline for many.”

Audrey Gallacher, director of energy at Consumer Focus, said: “Another price rise, hot on the heel of those we have already seen, will again feed into consumer concerns on pack behaviour and whether price changes are driven by real supply and demand issues.

“Energy companies obviously need to react to wholesale and other pricing pressures, but customers need to know the scale of changes is justified.”

Energy price changes since Nov 2010
	Scottish Power	SSE	British Gas	Npower	E.On	EDF
G=Gas. E=Electricity.
Nov 2010	G:2% E:8.9%
Dec		G:9.4%	G:7% E:7%
Jan 2011				G: 5.1% E: 5.1%
Feb					G:3% E:9%
Mar						G:6.5% E:7.5%
Aug	G:19% E:10%		G:18% E:16%
Sept		G:18% E:11%			G:18% E:11%
Oct				G:15.7% E:7.2%
Nov						G:15.4% E:4.5%
Jan 2012			E: -5%
Feb	G: -5%			G: -5%	E: -6%	G:-5%
Mar		G:-4.5%
Oct		G: 9% E:9%
Nov			G:6% E:6%	G:8.8% E:9.1%
Dec	G:7% E:7%					G:10.8% E:10.8%

BBC News – Business

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China adopts mental health law to curb forced treatment

BEIJING (Reuters) – China adopted a law on Friday to protect for the first time the rights of the mentally ill after years of accusations that psychiatric hospitals are used to lock up people against their will and silence dissidents.

Human rights advocates called the hard-fought for law, which has been debated for more than two decades, significant, even though they say it still falls short of international standards as it allows for involuntary commitment without judicial review.

The law will “curb abuses regarding compulsory mental health treatment and protect citizens from undergoing unnecessary treatment or illegal hospitalization”, the Xinhua state news agency said.

“We welcome it because having a law is better than not having one,” Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, told Reuters.

“The most important thing that this law does is it will allow civil society to step in to monitor and press for improvement in the management of mental health in China, including … pushing for greater transparency and progressive curtailment of police rights.”

Activists have long argued that authorities force people they consider troublemakers into psychiatric hospitals without providing any evidence of their supposed crimes.

The tactic has been used to silence dissidents, whistle-blowers and petitioners. More recently, it has been used by people against relatives during family disputes.

State media has reported on people being locked up in psychiatric hospitals against their will.

Chen Guoming, a former gold store owner, was forced into an asylum in 2011 by his wife and locked up for 56 days after refusing to lend money to his wife’s family, Xinhua said.

The new law bans mental health examinations of a citizen against his or her own will, Xinhua said.

But Bequelin said he was still concerned about China’s police-run psychiatric hospitals, which confine people the authorities consider troublemakers.

China had long been criticized for its lack of a mental health law, which did not give people the right to an independent review of their mental health status.

The lack of a law contravened the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a U.N. treaty ratified by China in 2008, rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in an August report.

China has about 16 million people suffering from severe mental disorders, Xinhua said, citing the Health Ministry.

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Ben Blanchard)

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Apple iPad sales disappoint, Street eyes the holidays

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc delivered a second straight quarter of disappointing results and iPad sales fell well short of Wall Street’s targets, marring its record of consistently blowing past investors’ expectations.

Shares in the world’s most valuable technology company briefly dipped to levels not seen since the start of August, after it delivered a 27 percent rise in fourth-quarter revenue and a 24 percent increase in earnings.

The numbers, while in line with expectations, lacked the positive surprises that investors have grown used to, and came after Apple undershot revenue targets in the previous quarter. Its shares bounced back after CEO Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that the latest iPhone 5 was heavily backlogged but the company had mostly worked out kinks in its supply chain.

Apple shipped 26.9 million iPhones in the last quarter, just ahead of analysts’ predictions, but iPad sales of 14 million were well below lowered forecasts for the tablet as the economy remained weak and consumers awaited the iPad mini, which will hit store shelves next month. South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co sold 56.3 million smartphones in the quarter, according to research firm IDC, giving it 31.3 percent global market share, more than double that of Apple.

FEVERED COMPETITION

Analysts say the real test for Apple will come during the crucial year-end holiday shopping season, when competition will reach fever-pitch against new gadgets from Amazon.com Inc, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp.

“Going into earnings we were wondering if the slowing economy will catch up with Wall Street, and it has,” said Channing Smith, co-manager of the Capital Advisors Growth Fund.

“Apple is very well positioned with the iPad and now the iPad mini. It has a great smartphone and we expect the iPhone 5 to sell very well. The outlook is conservative, but that’s not surprising. Err on the side of caution is a proven formula.”

Apple heads into the current quarter after refreshing almost all of its product lines, including introducing an upgraded, fourth-generation full-sized iPad. The December quarter will show how well consumers respond to its latest gamble – the iPad mini – which goes on sale on November 2.

Quarterly revenue in China, Apple’s second-largest market, rose 26 percent, and jumped nearly 80 percent to $ 23.8 billion over the full year, contributing 15 percent of Apple’s total, Cook told analysts. Apple plans to launch the iPhone 5 in China in December, hoping to staunch market share loss in what is set to become the world’s largest smartphone market this year.

Apple’s China smartphone market share almost halved to 10 percent in April-June as buyers waited for the iPhone 5.

ONE WEEK LESS

For the December quarter, Apple forecast revenue of $ 52 billion, below the average estimate of $ 55 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It expects margins of 36 percent, far lower than analysts’ expected 43 percent.

Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer mostly attributed the lower margin and conservative guidance to a combination of a stronger dollar, higher costs associated with new products, and the fact that Apple’s next fiscal quarter has one less week than the same period a year ago.

Apple’s stock was holding steady at $ 609.40 in extended trade after flirting with the $ 600 level. The shares had ended regular trade at $ 609.54.

Supply constraints holding up sales of the iPad and iPhone dominated discussions between analysts and Apple executives during the post-results conference call. Apple had struggled to deliver large quantities of the iPhone 5 since its launch in late September, with the waitlist for the device at one point stretching to three weeks in some regions.

“Our supply output is significantly higher than it was earlier in October,” Cook said, referring to the iPhone 5. “And I’m confident we’ll be able to supply quite a few during the quarter.”

CAR THAT FLIES AND FLOATS

Cook also opined on Microsoft’s new Windows 8-based Surface tablet that will hit stores early on Friday.

“I haven’t personally played with the Surface yet, but what we’re reading about it, is that it’s a fairly compromised, confusing product,” he said. “I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I don’t think it would do all of those things very well.”

Despite the lackluster fourth quarter, Apple put up big numbers for the year, ending its fiscal 2012 with a 45 percent increase in revenue to $ 156.5 billion, while net income was up 61 percent at $ 41.7 billion.

For the final fiscal quarter, it posted net income of $ 8.2 billion, or $ 8.67 a diluted share, on revenue of $ 35.96 billion, versus $ 6.6 billion, or $ 7.05 a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected on average that Apple would earn $ 8.75 per share.

Apple ended the quarter with $ 121.3 billion in cash and securities, of which $ 83 billion was offshore.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee in SHANGHAI; Editing by Richard Chang, Edmund Klamann and Ian Geoghegan)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Lull in fighting between Israel, Gaza militants

JERUSALEM (AP) — A flare-up in fighting between Israel and militants from Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement has subsided.

Both sides say the government in Egypt helped to restore calm.

Israeli defense official Amos Gilad told Army Radio on Thursday that Egyptian security forces have “a very impressive ability” to convey to the militants that it is in their “supreme interest not to attack.”

Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha says Egypt conveyed Israel’s desire to contain the violence. He says Hamas told Egyptian that militants would cease fire if Israel would.

The Israeli military says militants haven’t attacked southern Israel since Wednesday night. It says the military hasn’t struck Gaza since Wednesday morning.

Militants fired some 80 rockets and mortars at Israel on Wednesday and Israeli aircraft struck four times.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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