Cuts to Achieve Goal for Deficit, but Toll Is High

WASHINGTON — The latest budget impasse ushered in a new round of austerity on Saturday, with the nation facing reduced federal services, canceled contracts, job furloughs and layoffs.

But lost in the talk of Washington’s dysfunction is this fact: on paper at least, President Obama and Congress have reduced projected deficits by nearly $4 trillion over a decade — the widely embraced goal for stabilizing the national debt.

The spending cuts that began to take effect Friday, known as sequestration and totaling about $1 trillion through 2023, come on top of $1.5 trillion in reductions that Mr. Obama and Congress committed to in 2011, mainly from the accord that averted the nation’s first debt default.

Nearly $700 billion more will come from tax increases on wealthy Americans, the product of the brawl in December over Bush-era tax cuts, and another $700 billion is expected to be saved in projected interest on the reduced debt.

If the latest cuts stick, the two parties will have achieved nearly the full amount of deficit reduction over the next decade that economists and market analysts have promoted. Yet the mix comes with substantial downsides.

It does not add up to the “grand bargain” that the two parties had been seeking, because it leaves virtually untouched the entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that are responsible for projections of an unsustainably rising federal debt in coming decades.

“This is not a result that deals with our long-term debt problem,” said Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman. “The fact we’ve gotten to a $4 trillion deficit-reduction deal without tackling entitlements is almost a bad thing,” he added, if it lulls the public and the politicians into thinking the problem is solved.

The progress on deficit reduction over the past two years will also probably hamper job creation and the economic recovery. Private and government forecasters project that sequestration alone will cost about 700,000 jobs this year and will shave at least a half percentage point from economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office now forecasts a falling deficit but stubbornly high unemployment in coming years.

For Democrats, at least, the mix of spending cuts and tax increases in the package is another reason for disappointment. The deficit deals to date would yield $4 in spending cuts for every dollar of new revenue. Mr. Obama, as well as several bipartisan groups, including the commission led by Erskine B. Bowles and Alan K. Simpson, call for one dollar of tax increases for every $2 to $3 in spending cuts.

It remains unclear how long sequestration will last: it was designed to be onerous to force a compromise on an alternative. But Mr. Obama and Republicans indicated on Friday that the cuts would probably remain in place at least until the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.

Democrats, led by the president, express confidence that in coming months public pressure will force Republicans to relent on revenue, especially as cuts to the military begin to be felt. But Republican leaders have said they will stand firm against tax increases, suggesting that they have won at least a temporary victory on reducing the size of the government.

In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama said the Republicans had “decided that protecting special-interest tax breaks for the well off and well connected is more important than protecting our military and middle-class families from these cuts.”

“I still believe we can and must replace these cuts with a balanced approach — one that combines smart spending cuts with entitlement reform and changes to our tax code that make it more fair for families and businesses without raising anyone’s tax rates,” Mr. Obama said.

In the Republican response, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, said: “The problem here isn’t a lack of taxes. This year alone, the federal government will take in more revenue than ever before. Spending is the problem, which means cutting spending is the solution. It’s that simple.”

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, total government spending is falling compared with the size of the economy but will rise again in the next decade. That growth will be driven by the entitlement programs as more baby boomers retire, not by discretionary spending.

And revenues, while reaching a high in dollar terms, remain below the average of the past 40 years as measured against gross domestic product.

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Comings and goings at 'Downton Abbey' next season

NEW YORK (AP) — Shirley MacLaine will be returning to "Downton Abbey" next season, and opera star Kiri Te Kanawa is joining the cast.

MacLaine will reprise her role as Martha Levinson, Lord Robert Crawley's freewheeling American mother-in-law, Carnival Films and "Masterpiece" on PBS said Saturday. MacLaine appeared in episodes early last season.

New Zealand-born soprano Te Kanawa will play a house guest. She will sing during her visit.

Other new cast members and characters include:

— Tom Cullen as Lord Gillingham, described as an old family friend of the Crawleys who visits the family as a guest for a house party (and who might be the one to mend Lady Mary Crawley's broken heart).

— Nigel Harman will play a valet named Green.

— Harriet Walter plays Lady Shackleton, an old friend of the Dowager Countess.

— Joanna David will play a guest role as the Duchess of Yeovil.

— Julian Ovenden is cast as aristocrat Charles Blake.

"The addition of these characters can only mean more delicious drama, which is what 'Downton Abbey' is all about," said "Masterpiece" executive producer Rebecca Eaton.

Meanwhile, the producers have confirmed that villainous housemaid Sarah O'Brien won't be back. Siobhan Finneran, who played her, is leaving the show.

These announcements come shortly after the third season's airing in the United States. It concluded with the heartbreaking death of popular Matthew Crawley in a car crash, leaving behind his newborn child and loving wife, Lady Mary Crawley.

Matthew's untimely demise was the result of the departure from the series by actor Dan Stevens, who had starred in that role.

The third season also saw the shocking death of Lady Sybil Branson, who died during childbirth. She was played by the departing Jessica Brown Findlay.

Last season the wildly popular melodrama, set in early 20th century Britain, was the most-watched series on PBS since Ken Burns' epic "The Civil War," which first aired in 1990. The Nielsen Co. said 8.2 million viewers saw the "Downton" season conclusion.

"Downton Abbey," which airs on the "Masterpiece" anthology, won three Emmy awards last fall, including a best supporting actress trophy for Maggie Smith (the Dowager Countess), who also won a Golden Globe in January.

In all, the series has won nine Emmys, two Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the ensemble cast, which is the first time the cast of a British television show has won this award.

Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Jim Carter and Brendan Coyle are among its other returning stars.

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Online:

http://www.pbs.org/downton

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England Develops a Voracious Appetite for a New Diet

LONDON — Visitors to England right now, be warned. The big topic on people’s minds — from cabdrivers to corporate executives — is not Kate Middleton’s increasingly visible baby bump (though the craze does involve the size of one’s waistline), but rather a best-selling diet book that has sent the British into a fasting frenzy.

“The Fast Diet,” published in mid-January in Britain, could do the same in the United States if Americans eat it up. The United States edition arrived last week.

The book has held the No. 1 slot on Amazon’s British site nearly every day since its publication in January, according to Rebecca Nicolson, a founder of Short Books, the independent publishing company behind the sensation. “It is selling,” she said, “like hot cakes,” which coincidentally are something one can actually eat on this revolutionary diet.

With an alluring cover line that reads, “Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer,” the premise of this latest weight-loss regimen — or “slimming” as the British call “dieting” — is intermittent fasting, or what has become known here as the 5:2 diet: five days of eating and drinking whatever you want, dispersed with two days of fasting.

A typical fasting day consists of two meals of roughly 250 to 300 calories each, depending on the person’s sex (500 calories for women, 600 for men). Think two eggs and a slice of ham for breakfast, and a plate of steamed fish and vegetables for dinner.

It is not much sustenance, but the secret to weight loss, according to the book, is that even after just a few hours of fasting, the body begins to turn off the fat-storing mechanisms and turn on the fat-burning systems.

“I’ve always been into self-experimentation,” said Dr. Michael Mosley, one of the book’s two authors and a well-known medical journalist on the BBC who is often called the Sanjay Gupta of Britain.

He researched the science of the diet and its health benefits by putting himself through intermittent fasting and filming it for a BBC documentary last August called “Eat, Fast and Live Longer.” (The broadcast gained high ratings, three million viewers, despite running during the London Olympics. PBS plans to air it in April.)

“This started because I was not feeling well last year,” Dr. Mosley said recently over a cup of tea and half a cookie (it was not one of his fasting days). “It turns out I was suffering from high blood sugar, high cholesterol and had a kind of visceral fat inside my gut.”

Though hardly obese at the time, at 5 feet 11 inches and 187 pounds, Dr. Mosley, 55, had a body mass index and body fat percentage that were a few points higher than the recommended amount for men. “Given that my father had died at age 73 of complications from diabetes, and I was now looking prediabetic, I knew something had to change,” he added.

The result was a documentary, almost the opposite of “Super Size Me,” in which Dr. Mosley not only fasted, but also interviewed scientific researchers, mostly in the United States, about the positive results of various forms of intermittent fasting, tested primarily on rats but in some cases human volunteers. The prominent benefits, he discovered, were weight loss, a lower risk of cancer and heart disease, and increased energy.

“The body goes into a repair-and-recover mode when it no longer has the work of storing the food being consumed,” he said.

Though Dr. Mosley quickly gave up on the most extreme forms of fasting (he ate little more than one cup of low-calorie soup every 24 hours for four consecutive days in his first trial), he finally settled on the 5:2 ratio as a more sustainable, less painful option that could realistically be followed without annihilating his social life or work.

“Our earliest antecedents,” Dr. Mosley argued, “lived a feast-or-famine existence, gorging themselves after a big hunt and then not eating until they scored the next one.” Similarly, he explained, temporary fasting is a ritual of religions like Islam and Judaism — as demonstrated by Ramadan and Yom Kippur. “We shouldn’t have a fear of hunger if it is just temporary,” he said.

What Dr. Mosley found most astounding, however, were his personal results. Not only did he lose 20 pounds (he currently weighs 168 pounds) in nine weeks, but his glucose and cholesterol levels went down, as did his body fat. “What’s more, I have a whole new level of energy,” he said.

The documentary became an instant hit, which in turn led Mimi Spencer, a food and fashion writer, to propose that they collaborate on a book. “I could see this was not a faddish diet but one that was sustainable with long-term health results, beyond the obvious weight-loss benefit,” said Ms. Spencer, 45, who has lost 20 pounds on the diet within four months and lowered her B.M.I. by 2 points.

The result is a 200-page paperback: the first half written by Dr. Mosley outlining the scientific findings of intermittent fasting; the second by Ms. Spencer, with encouraging text on how to get through the first days of fasting, from keeping busy so you don’t hear your rumbling belly, to waiting 15 minutes for your meal or snack.

She also provides fasting recipes with tantalizing photos like feta niçoise salad and Mexican pizza, and a calorie counter at the back. (Who knew a quarter of a cup of balsamic vinegar dressing added up to a whopping 209 calories?)

In London, the diet has taken off with the help of well-known British celebrity chefs and food writers like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who raved about it in The Guardian after his sixth day of fasting, having already lost eight pounds. (“I feel lean and sharper,” he wrote, “and find the whole thing rather exhilarating.”)

The diet is also particularly popular among men, according to Dr. Mosley, who has heard from many of his converts via e-mail and Twitter, where he has around 24,000 followers. “They find it easy to work into their schedules because dieting for a day here and there doesn’t feel torturous,” he said, adding that couples also particularly like doing it together.

But not everyone is singing the diet’s praises. The National Health System, Britain’s publicly funded medical establishment, put out a statement on its Web site shortly after the book came out: “Despite its increasing popularity, there is a great deal of uncertainty about I.F. (intermittent fasting) with significant gaps in the evidence.”

The health agency also listed some side effects, including bad breath, anxiety, dehydration and irritability. Yet people in London do not seem too concerned. A slew of fasting diet books have come out in recent weeks, notably the “The 5:2 Diet Book” and “The Feast and Fast Diet.”

There is also a crop of new cookbooks featuring fasting-friendly recipes. Let’s just say, the British are hungry for them.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the name of the national healthcare organization in Britain. It is the National Health Service, not the National Health System. The article also misidentified the Balsamic product that has 209 calories per cup. It is Balsamic vinegar dressing, not Balsamic vinegar.

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DealBook: Buffett’s Annual Letter Plays Up Newspapers’ Value

Over the last half-century, Warren E. Buffett has built a reputation as a contrarian investor, betting against the crowd to amass a fortune estimated at $54 billion.

Mr. Buffett underscored that contrarian instinct in his annual letter to shareholders published on Friday. In a year when Mr. Buffett did not make any large acquisitions, he bought dozens of newspapers, a business others have shunned. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has bought 28 dailies in the last 15 months.

“There is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job,” he wrote.

Those purchases, which cost Mr. Buffett a total of $344 million, are relatively minor deals for Berkshire, and just a small part of the giant conglomerate. Mr. Buffett bemoaned his inability to do a major deal in 2012. “I pursued a couple of elephants, but came up empty-handed,” he said. “Our luck, however, changed earlier this year.”

Mr. Buffett was making a reference to one of his largest-ever deals. Last month, Berkshire, along with a Brazilian investment group, announced a $23.6 billion takeover,of the ketchup maker H. J. Heinz.

Written in accessible prose largely free of financial jargon, Berkshire’s annual letter holds appeal far beyond Wall Street. This year’s dispatch contained plenty of Mr. Buffett’s folksy observations about investing and business that his devotees relish.

“More than 50 years ago, Charlie told me that it was far better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price than to buy a fair business at a wonderful price,” Mr. Buffett wrote, referring to his longtime partner at Berkshire, Charlie Munger.

Mr. Buffett also struck a patriotic tone, directly appealing to his fellow chief executives “that opportunities abound in America.” He noted that the United States gross domestic product, on an inflation-adjusted basis, had more than quadrupled over the last six decades.

“Throughout that period, every tomorrow has been uncertain,” he wrote. “America’s destiny, however, has always been clear: ever-increasing abundance.”

The letter provides more than entertainment value and patriotic stirrings, delivering to Berkshire shareholders an update on the company’s vast collection of businesses. With a market capitalization of $250 billion, Berkshire ranks among the largest companies in the United States.

Its holdings vary, with big companies like the railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the electric utility MidAmerican Energy, and smaller ones like the running-shoe outfit Brooks Sports and the chocolatier See’s Candies. All told, Berkshire employs about 288,000 people.

The letter, once again, did not answer a question that has vexed Berkshire shareholders and Buffett-ologists: Who will succeed Mr. Buffett, who is 82, as chief executive?

Last year, he acknowledged that he had chosen a successor, but he did not name the candidate.

He has said that upon his death, Berkshire will split his job in three, naming a chief executive, a nonexecutive chairman and several investment managers of its publicly traded holdings.

In 2010, he said that his son, Howard Buffett, would succeed him as nonexecutive chairman.

Berkshire’s share price recently traded at a record high, surpassing its prefinancial crisis peak reached in 2007 and rising about 22 percent over the last year.

The company reported net income last year of about $14.8 billion, up about 45 percent from 2011. Yet the company’s book value, or net worth — Mr. Buffett’s preferred performance measure — lagged the broader stock market, increasing 14.4 percent, compared with the market’s 16 percent return.

Mr. Buffett lamented that 2012 was only the ninth time in 48 years that Berkshire’s book value increase was less than the gain of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. But he pointed out that in eight of those nine years, the S.& P. had a gain of 15 percent or more, suggesting that Berkshire proved to be a most valuable investment during bad market periods.

“We do better when the wind is in our face,” he wrote.

For Berkshire’s largest collection of assets, its insurance operations, the wind has been at its back. We “shot the lights out last year” in insurance, Mr. Buffett said.

He lavished praise on the auto insurer Geico, giving a special shout-out to the company’s mascot, the Gecko lizard.

Investors also keep a keen eye on changes in Berkshire’s roughly $87 billion stock portfolio. Its holdings include large positions in iconic companies like International Business Machines, Coca-Cola, American Express and Wells Fargo. He said Berkshire’s investment in each of those was likely to increase in the future.

“Mae West had it right: ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,’ ” Mr. Buffett wrote.

He also complimented two relatively new hires, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, who now each manage about $5 billion in stock portfolios for Berkshire. Both men ran unheralded, modest-size money management firms before Mr. Buffett plucked them out of obscurity and moved them to Omaha to work for him.

He called the men “a perfect cultural fit” and indicated that the two would manage Berkshire’s entire stock portfolio once he steps aside. “We hit the jackpot with these two,” Mr. Buffett said, noting that last year, each outperformed the S.& P. by double-digit margins.

Then, sheepishly, employing supertiny type, he wrote: “They left me in the dust as well.”

A former paperboy and member of the Newspaper Association of America’s carrier hall of fame, Mr. Buffett devoted nearly three out of 24 pages of his annual report to newspapers.

While Mr. Buffett has been a longtime owner of The Buffalo News and a stakeholder in The Washington Post Company, he told shareholders four years ago that he wouldn’t buy a newspaper at any price.

But his latest note reflects how much his opinion has turned. His buying spree started in November 2011, when he struck a deal to buy The Omaha World-Herald Company, this hometown paper, for a reported $200 million. By May 2012, he bought out the chain of newspapers owned by Media General, except for The Tampa Tribune. In recent months, he continued to express his interest in buying more papers “at appropriate prices — and that means a very low multiple of current earnings.”

“Papers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to tightly bound communities and having a sensible Internet strategy will remain viable for a long time,” wrote Mr. Buffett.

Mr. Buffett said in a telephone interview last month that he would consider buying The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., a paper that the Tribune Company is considering selling. But Mr. Buffett said he had not contacted Tribune executives.

“It’s solely a question of the specifics of it and the price,” he said about the Allentown paper. “But it’s similar to the kinds of communities that we bought papers in.”

Mr. Buffett has plenty of cash to make more newspaper acquisitions. To cover his portion of the Heinz purchase, Mr. Buffett will deploy about $12 billion of Berkshire’s $42 billion cash hoard. That leaves a lot of money for Mr. Buffett to continue his shopping spree for newspapers — and more major deals like Heinz.

“Charlie and I have again donned our safari outfits,” Mr. Buffett wrote, “and resumed our search for elephants.”

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Bits Blog: Judge Slashes Jury Award in Apple-Samsung Case

7:30 p.m. | Updated

A federal judge on Friday weakened the blow from Apple’s legal victory in a patent case against Samsung, lopping more than 40 percent off the damages a jury awarded last year.

It was a mostly symbolic setback for Apple, one that did not shift the case — one of the most closely watched in the technology industry — in Samsung’s favor. While Apple has lost other skirmishes against Samsung in courts around the world, the jury award in the United States case has been the biggest victory for either side so far. Even at a reduced level, it would be among the highest damage awards in a patent dispute.

The judge ordered a new trial to recalculate a portion of those damages, leaving open the possibility that some of them could be restored. She also indicated that Apple is entitled to additional damages for sales of Samsung products that have occurred since the jury’s decision last summer, which could further swell the amount Apple is owed by Samsung.

In her review of the jury’s decisions, which originally awarded Apple more than $1 billion for patent violations by Samsung in its mobile products, Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court in San Jose, Calif., knocked those damages down by $450 million, to $599 million. The new trial will determine how much of the $450 million, if any, should be restored.

“It will be years before the parties exhaust all of their litigation avenues and options,” said Alan Fisch, an intellectual property lawyer with Fisch Hoffman Sigler in Washington, DC. “Still, some form of patent cross-license between the two would not be an unsurprising final result.”

None of Judge Koh’s opinion changed the jury’s finding that Samsung violated a series of Apple patents in its smartphone and tablet products. But the judge took issue with the way the jury calculated the damages from the Samsung devices named in the case, more than two dozen in all. In her 27-page opinion, Judge Koh said the jury failed to follow her instructions in calculating damages for a certain class of patents, known as utility patents.

She also decided in Samsung’s favor in a dispute between the two parties over when Apple notified Samsung that it was infringing Apple’s intellectual property. Evidence of such notice dates are important because they help determine how hefty the damages are in a court case, once the party being notified is found guilty of infringement. Judge Koh chided Apple for using an expert in the case who used an “aggressive notice date” — meaning, an early one — to calculate damages.

“The need for a new trial could have been avoided had Apple chosen a more circumspect strategy or provided more evidence to allow the jury or the court to determine the appropriate award for a shorter notice period,” she said in her ruling.

Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment. Representatives of Samsung didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Apple and Samsung, meanwhile, continue to fight ferociously in the smartphone market, where Samsung has steadily worked its way to the No. 1 position over the last few years. In the fourth quarter, Samsung accounted for 29 percent of global smartphone shipments, while Apple accounted for 21.8 percent, according to IDC.

Mark A. Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, called the judge’s decision “an extremely careful and thorough opinion on a very difficult and interrelated set of issues.” (Mr. Lemley has done past legal work for Google, which makes the Android operating system used by Samsung in most of its mobile products.)

Mr. Lemley predicted that Samsung would wind up with some reduction in the original $1 billion award, but “almost certainly” less than the $450 million that Judge Koh reduced it by on Friday.

“We’ll need a new trial to figure that out,” he said. “Judge Koh has encouraged both sides to appeal first. That may clarify some questions, but it is unlikely to prevent a new trial, just delay it some.”

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Well: A Rainbow of Root Vegetables

This week’s Recipes for Health is as much a treat for the eyes as the palate. Colorful root vegetables from bright orange carrots and red scallions to purple and yellow potatoes and pale green leeks will add color and flavor to your table.

Since root vegetables and tubers keep well and can be cooked up into something delicious even after they have begun to go limp in the refrigerator, this week’s Recipes for Health should be useful. Root vegetables, tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are called yams by most vendors – I mean the ones with dark orange flesh), winter squash and cabbages are the only local vegetables available during the winter months in colder regions, so these recipes will be timely for many readers.

Roasting is a good place to begin with most root vegetables. They sweeten as they caramelize in a hot oven. I roasted baby carrots and thick red scallions (they may have been baby onions; I didn’t get the information from the farmer, I just bought them because they were lush and pretty) together and seasoned them with fresh thyme leaves, then sprinkled them with chopped toasted hazelnuts. I also roasted a medley of potatoes, including sweet potatoes, after tossing them with olive oil and sage, and got a wonderful range of colors, textures and tastes ranging from sweet to savory.

Sweet winter vegetables also pair well with spicy seasonings. I like to combine sweet potatoes and chipotle peppers, and this time in a hearty lentil stew that we enjoyed all week.

Here are five colorful and delicious dishes made with root vegetables.

Spicy Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew With Chipotles: The combination of sweet potatoes and spicy chipotles with savory lentils is a winner.

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Roasted Carrots and Scallions With Thyme and Hazelnuts: Toasted hazelnuts add a crunchy texture and nutty finish to this dish.

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Carrot Wraps: A vegetarian sandwich that satisfies like a full meal.

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Rainbow Potato Roast: A multicolored mix that can be vegan, or not.

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Leek Quiche: A lighter version of a Flemish classic.

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A Volatile Week Ends With Modest Gains

Stocks advanced modestly on Friday, leaving the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index with slight gains after a volatile week, as strong economic data overshadowed growth concerns in China and Europe and let investors discount the impact of federal spending cuts.

Data reported early in the day showed that Asian factories were slowing and European output was falling, setting off a sharp drop at the beginning of trading in New York. But most of the losses evaporated after a report showed that United States manufacturing activity had expanded in February at the fastest pace in 20 months. Consumer sentiment also rose in February as Americans turned more optimistic about the job market.

As $85 billion in government budget cuts took effect on Friday, President Obama blamed Republicans for the lack of a compromise to avert the so-called sequester. But the stock market appeared to have already priced in legislators’ failure to reach an agreement.

“We were able to dig out of that hole, but not make any great strides on it either,” said Peter M. Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments in Lisle, Ill. “We will probably be in a holding pattern pending some big development on a broader budget deal.”

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 35.17 points, or 0.25 percent, to 14,089.66. The S.& P. 500 rose 3.52 points, or 0.23 percent, to 1,518.20. The Nasdaq composite index advanced 9.55 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,169.74.

For the week, the Dow rose 0.64 percent, the S.& P. 500 edged up 0.17 percent and the Nasdaq gained 0.25 percent.

It was a bumpy road to the week’s slight gains. The markets slid on Monday after inconclusive elections in Italy revived concerns about the euro zone, only to rebound in the next two sessions after the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, defended the central bank’s stimulus measures.

The low interest rates from the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy have helped equities continue to attract investors. The Dow is less than 1 percent away from its nominal intraday record of 14,198.10. Declines have been shallow and short-lived, with investors jumping in to buy when the market dips.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a ratio of about 17 to 13, while on the Nasdaq, about seven stocks rose for every five that fell.

Shares of Intuitive Surgical jumped 8.5 percent on Friday, to $553.40, after a Cantor Fitzgerald analyst, Jeremy Feffer, upgraded the stock, saying a slide of more than 11 percent on Thursday had been a gross overreaction to a news report.

Groupon shares surged 12.6 percent, to $5.10, a day after the company fired its chief executive in response to weak quarterly results.

Gap stock rose 2.9 percent, to $33.87, after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations and raised its dividend by 20 percent. Salesforce.com posted sales that beat forecasts, driving its stock up 7.6 percent, to $182.

Chesapeake Energy shares fell 2.4 percent, to $19.67, after the Securities and Exchange Commission escalated its investigation of the company and its chief executive, Aubrey McClendon, over a perk that granted him a share in each of the natural gas producer’s wells.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 10/32, to 101 13/32, and its yield fell to 1.85 percent from 1.88 percent late on Thursday.

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Army Private Admits Giving Military Files to WikiLeaks

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the leak to WikiLeaks.

FORT MEADE, Md. — Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he wanted the information to become public because more openness could “spark a debate about foreign policy” that he hoped would “make the world a better place.”

Appearing before a military judge for more than an hour, Private Manning read a statement recounting how he joined the military, became an intelligence analyst in Iraq, decided that certain files should become known to the American public to prompt a wider debate about foreign policy, downloaded them from a secure computer network and then ultimately uploaded them to WikiLeaks.

“No one associated with WLO” — an abbreviation he used to refer to the WikiLeaks organization — “pressured me into sending any more information,” Private Manning said. “I take full responsibility.”

Before reading the statement, Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the huge amount of material he leaked, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a quarter-million cables from American diplomats stationed around the world.

The guilty pleas exposed him to up to 20 years in prison. But the case against the slightly built 25-year-old, who has become a folk hero among antiwar and whistle-blower advocacy groups, is not over. The military has charged him with a far more serious set of offenses, including aiding the enemy and multiple counts of violating federal statutes, including the Espionage Act. Prosecutors now have the option of pressing forward with proving the remaining elements of the more serious charges.

That would involve focusing only on questions like whether the information he provided counted as the sort covered by the Espionage Act — that is, whether it was not just confidential but also could be used to injure the United States or aid a foreign nation.

Private Manning described himself as thinking carefully about the kind of information he was releasing, and taking care to make sure that none of it could cause harm if disclosed.

The only material that initially gave him pause, he said, were the diplomatic cables, which he portrayed as documenting “back-room deals and seemingly criminal activity.”

But he decided to go forward after discovering that the most sensitive cables were not in the database. He was also motivated, he said, by a book about “open diplomacy” after World War I and “how the world would be a better place if states would not make secret deals with each other.”

“I believed the public release of these cables would not damage the United States,” he said. “However, I did believe the release of the cables might be embarrassing.”

Private Manning said that the first set of documents he decided to release consisted of hundreds of thousands of military incident reports from Afghanistan and Iraq. He had downloaded them onto a disk because the network connection at his base in Iraq kept failing, and he and his colleagues needed regular access to them.

Those reports added up to a history of the “day-to-day reality” in both war zones that he believed showed the flaws in the counterinsurgency policy the United States was then pursuing. The military, he said, was “obsessed with capturing or killing” people on a list, while ignoring the impact of its operations on ordinary people.

Private Manning said he put the files on a digital storage card for his camera and took it home with him on a leave in early 2010. He then decided to give the files to a newspaper.

“I believed if the public — in particular the American public — had access to the information” in the reports, “this could spark a debate about foreign policy in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Scott Shane contributed reporting.

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'Girls Gone Wild' files for bankruptcy over debts

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The company behind the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire has filed for bankruptcy in a move it says is an effort to restructure its legal affairs after several disputed court judgments.

GGW Brands LLC and several subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday in Los Angeles, listing more than $16 million in disputed claims.

The largest claim is $10.3 million that Wynn Resorts Limited is seeking from the company for judgments entered against "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis over a gambling debt and statements he has made about the casino and its founder, Steve Wynn.

Francis no longer owns the company, which has made a fortune selling videos and magazines of young women flashing their breasts.

"Girls Gone Wild" issued a statement that it is financially strong but needed to "re-structure its frivolous and burdensome legal affairs."

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Doctor and Patient: Why Failing Med Students Don’t Get Failing Grades

Tall and dark-haired, the third-year medical student always seemed to be the first to arrive at the hospital and the last to leave, her white coat perpetually weighed down by the books and notes she jammed into the pockets. She appeared totally absorbed by her work, even exhausted at times, and said little to anyone around her.

Except when she got frustrated.

I first noticed her when I overheard her quarreling with a nurse. A few months later I heard her accuse another student of sabotaging her work. And then one morning, I saw her storm off the wards after a senior doctor corrected a presentation she had just given. “The patient never told me that!” she cried. The nurses and I stood agape as we watched her stamp her foot and walk away.

“Why don’t you just fail her?” one of the nurses asked the doctor.

“I can’t,” she sighed, explaining that the student did extremely well on all her tests and worked harder than almost anyone in her class. “The problem,” she said, “is that we have no multiple choice exams when it comes to things like clinical intuition, communication skills and bedside manner.”

Medical educators have long understood that good doctoring, like ducks, elephants and obscenity, is easy to recognize but difficult to quantify. And nowhere is the need to catalog those qualities more explicit, and charged, than in the third year of medical school, when students leave the lecture halls and begin to work with patients and other clinicians in specialty-based courses referred to as “clerkships.” In these clerkships, students are evaluated by senior doctors and ranked on their nascent doctoring skills, with the highest-ranking students going on to the most competitive training programs and jobs.

A student’s performance at this early stage, the traditional thinking went, would be predictive of how good a doctor she or he would eventually become.

But in the mid-1990s, a group of researchers decided to examine grading criteria and asked directors of internal medicine clerkship courses across the country how accurate and consistent they believed their grading to be. Nearly half of the course directors believed that some form of grade inflation existed, even within their own courses. Many said they had increasing difficulty distinguishing students who could not achieve a “minimum standard,” whatever that might be. And over 40 percent admitted they had passed students who should have failed their course.

The study inspired a series of reforms aimed at improving how medical educators evaluated students at this critical juncture in their education. Some schools began instituting nifty mnemonics like RIME, or Reporter-Interpreter-Manager-Educator, for assessing progressive levels of student performance; others began to call regular meetings to discuss grades; still others compiled detailed evaluation forms that left little to the subjective imagination.

Now a new study published last month in the journal Teaching and Learning in Medicine looks at the effects of these many efforts on the grading process. And while the good news is that the rate of grade inflation in medical schools is slower than in colleges and universities, the not-so-good news is that little has changed. A majority of clerkship directors still believe that grade inflation is an issue even within their own courses; and over a third believe that students have passed their course who probably should have failed.

“Grades don’t have a lot of meaning,” said Dr. Sara B. Fazio, lead author of the paper and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who leads the internal medicine clerkship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “‘Satisfactory’ is like the kiss of death.”

About a quarter of the course directors surveyed believed that grade inflation occurred because senior doctors were loath to deal with students who could become angry, upset or even turn litigious over grades. Some confessed to feeling pressure to help students get into more selective internships and training programs.

But for many of these educators, the real issue was not flunking the flagrantly unprofessional student, but rather evaluating and helping the student who only needed a little extra help in transitioning from classroom problem sets to real world patients. Most faculty received little or no training or support in evaluating students, few came from institutions that had remediation programs to which they could direct students, and all worked under grading systems that were subjective and not standardized.

Despite the disheartening findings, Dr. Fazio and her co-investigators believe that several continuing initiatives may address the evaluation issues. For example, residency training programs across the country will soon be assessing all doctors-in-training with a national standards list, a series of defined skills, or “competencies,” in areas like interpersonal communication, professional behavior and specialty-specific procedures. Over the next few years, medical schools will likely be adopting a similar system for medical students, creating a national standard for all institutions.

“There have to be unified, transparent and objective criteria,” Dr. Fazio said. “Everyone should know what it means when we talk about educating and training ‘good doctors.’”

“We will all be patients one day,” she added. “We have to think about what kind of doctors we want to have now and in the future.”

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Advertising: A Shared History in Detroit Is an Ad Inspiration

THE Chrysler Group is bringing to life the advertising theme for its Chrysler brand, “Imported from Detroit,” through an innovative partnership with a coming Broadway show that bears the Detroit-inspired name of one of the most famous brands in music.

The partnership unites Chrysler and “Motown: the Musical,” about the musical legacy of Berry Gordy and Motown, the record label he founded that is now owned by the Universal Music Group. The musical, scheduled to open on April 14 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, is the beneficiary of an elaborate promotional initiative by the Chrysler brand that supplements the show’s own efforts to encourage ticket sales.

The centerpiece of the Chrysler brand’s support is a television commercial that has been running nationally since December, featuring Mr. Gordy riding in a Motown Edition of a Chrysler 300C sedan as the seminal Motown song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” plays on the soundtrack.

The commercial, created by a Chrysler Group agency, GlobalHue in Southfield, Mich., begins with Mr. Gordy at the original “Hitsville U.S.A.” Motown headquarters building in Detroit and ends with him arriving at the Lunt-Fontanne and declaring: “We are Motown. And this is what we do.” As Mr. Gordy enters the theater, the Chrysler slogan appears, altered to read “Imported from Motown.”

The words “ ‘Motown: the Musical’ on Broadway March 2013” appear, referring to the start of previews on March 11, and the address of the show’s Web site, motownthemusical.com, along with the Chrysler brand Web address, chrysler.com.

The commercial is believed to be the first time that a Broadway show has had such paid national television exposure as it prepares to open in New York. The commercial is in addition to a commercial that the producers of “Motown: the Musical” are running on stations in the New York market; the local commercial was created by SpotCo in New York, part of Reach4entertainment Enterprises.

The Chrysler brand will also buttress the show’s marketing with colorful signs to go up in coming days in Penn Station and Times Square. The signs display a Chrysler 300 Motown Edition, the Chrysler logo, the logo of “Motown: the Musical” and photographs of cast members of the show like Brandon Victor Dixon, who portrays Mr. Gordy.

The Chrysler Group is spending an estimated $6 million to $8 million to promote “Motown: the Musical.” The budget for the ads from the show’s producers, Mr. Gordy, Kevin McCollum and Doug Morris, is estimated at $2 million.

The automaker’s efforts extend beyond the product placement and sponsorship agreements that have become increasingly prevalent on Broadway as theater enters the realm of so-called entertainment marketing with television, movies and video games. Unlike the provisions of many of those deals, the Chrysler name is not being added to a lyric of a Motown song, nor are there plans to park a car in the lobby of the Lunt-Fontanne.

Rather, the partnership is about “merging both journeys, the journey of the Chrysler brand and the journey of Mr. Gordy and his music,” said Olivier François, chief marketing officer at the Chrysler Group.

“Motown is the most exported from Detroit of any music and, in this case, imported to New York,” Mr. François said. “It’s putting together the sound and the drive of Detroit. We were meant to meet.”

That thought is expressed in the national commercial, in which a narrator proclaims, “Because if cars are our city’s heart, music is its soul.”

That the partnership is centered on music is no coincidence. Mr. François, a producer of pop music in his native France in the 1980s, described the Motown catalog as “part of the American patrimony” that “will live forever.”

“And so is Chrysler,” he said hopefully. “Regardless of my passion for the Motown music and my respect for Mr. Gordy, I would not have pushed to tie a brand to Motown if there wasn’t this new Chrysler story,” Mr. François said, referring to “Imported from Detroit,” which was introduced in 2011 with a Super Bowl commercial featuring another famous Detroit music figure, Eminem.

“The Motown name has a huge value,” he added. “Does it have a huge value for any car? Maybe not.”

Mr. McCollum, whose Broadway credits include “Avenue Q” and “Rent,” invoked another musical to explain how the show and the Chrysler Group came together: “Kismet.”

“About a year ago, we flew to Detroit and sat down with Olivier and his team, and they pitched the idea,” Mr. McCollum said. “It’s about a collaboration between these two great American industries that came out of one place.”

Besides, he added, Mr. Gordy was “highly influenced by his early days working in an auto plant, learning that you have to put something out there people want.”

Mr. McCollum said he was glad to join Mr. François and Mr. Gordy in “celebrating Detroit when you’d think it’s contrarian thinking” to do so because Motown, Chrysler and “Motown: the Musical” are all about “the power of the American dream.”

The SpotCo campaign for the show — and a public relations effort by Boneau/Bryan-Brown in New York — play that up. The local commercial, for instance, extols Motown’s songs as “the soundtrack that changed America, the beat of a generation, the soul of a nation.”

The goal is “less transactional,” said Ilene Rosen, associate chief operating officer at SpotCo, and “more about synergizing the Motown and Chrysler brands to elevate both.”

As much as other Broadway producers would probably welcome a deep-pocketed partner like the Chrysler Group, the unique circumstances that produced the partnership may make it difficult to emulate, she added.

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Senate, in a More Affable Mode, Backs Treasury Nominee

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Wednesday easily and, for the most part, affably confirmed President Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, just one day after the president’s nominee for defense secretary narrowly survived a highly politicized confirmation vote.

Little of the acrimony that held up the nomination of Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska senator who began his first day as defense secretary on Wednesday, was present in the debate over Mr. Lew.

The final vote was 71 to 26, with 20 Republicans joining the Democratic majority in support of the nomination.

Mr. Obama expressed gratitude for the decision to confirm his former chief of staff and top budget adviser.

“Jack was by my side as we confronted our nation’s toughest challenges,” the president said in a statement. “His reputation as a master of fiscal issues who can work with leaders on both sides of the aisle has already helped him succeed in some of the toughest jobs in Washington.” 

The vote meant that for the moment at least, the Senate returned to its traditional role of affording the president deference in selecting his cabinet. Historically, the Treasury secretary position has been an easy one for presidents to fill, with nominees typically receiving unanimous support from the Senate.

Mr. Obama’s previous Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, was a notable exception. After disclosures that Mr. Geithner was delinquent in paying some taxes, many Republicans objected. He was confirmed by a 60-to-34 vote.

Some Republicans who voted for Mr. Lew spoke of the need to give the president flexibility to name his own cabinet even if they ultimately disagreed with a nominee’s politics.

“My vote in favor of Mr. Lew comes with no small amount of reservation, and I don’t fault any of my colleagues for choosing to vote against him,” said Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee. “I hope he and the president take note that I am bending over backwards to display deference.”

Though Mr. Hagel’s nomination was stymied as he faced criticism over past statements on Israel and Iran and stumbled over questions in his confirmation hearing, Mr. Lew faced few objections. Other than questions that arose from an unusual $685,000 severance payment he received after he left New York University for a job at Citigroup, the confirmation process was relatively smooth.

One particularly vocal objection on Wednesday came from one of the Senate’s most liberal members, Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.

“We need a secretary of the Treasury who does not come from Wall Street but is prepared to stand up to the enormous power of Wall Street,” Mr. Sanders said from the Senate floor. “Do I believe that Jack Lew is that person? No, I do not.”

Still, even though the Senate approved Mr. Lew, he received far fewer votes than other Treasury secretary nominees. With the exception of Mr. Geithner, Senate records show that the last nominee to receive fewer than 92 “yes” votes was George P. Schultz, Richard Nixon’s pick in 1972.

Mr. Obama faces another possible battle over a high-level nominee in the coming days as the Senate is set to start considering John Brennan, the White House’s choice as director of central intelligence.

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Lawyer says Lohan committed to turning life around

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lindsay Lohan is committed to turning her life around and wants to record public service announcements on the dangers of domestic violence, alcohol abuse and drunken driving, her attorney said Wednesday.

Mark Heller told The Associated Press that the actress' plans are independent of a criminal case that could return her to jail on charges that she lied to police about being a passenger in her car when it slammed into a dump truck in June.

The "Liz & Dick" star has been repeatedly sentenced to jail, rehab, and community service since her first pair of arrests for driving under the influence in 2007. She spent several months in court-ordered psychotherapy until a judge released her from supervised probation in March 2012.

As part of the intense psychotherapy sessions, Lohan is in the beginning stages of trying to become an inspirational speaker to young people, he said.

"I think she suddenly woke up one morning and had an epiphany and she suddenly realized and appreciated the seriousness of the events that led to her being in court," Heller said.

"She's going to try to inspire hope in people," he said. "I think it will be good for her. It certainly won't hurt others."

Heller mentioned Lohan's intent to become an inspirational speaker in a letter to prosecutors and a judge that was obtained Tuesday. He said he will meet with prosecutors on Friday to try to reach a resolution in Lohan's newest case, which includes misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and obstructing officers from performing their duties.

She has pleaded not guilty. Lohan, 26, was on probation at the time of the crash and faces up to 245 days in jail if a judge determines her conduct violated her probation in a 2011 necklace theft case.

Officers suspected alcohol might have been involved in the June accident on Pacific Coast Highway, but the actress passed sobriety tests at a hospital and she was never charged with driving under the influence.

Santa Monica police Sgt. Richard Lewis said officers did not give Lohan a field sobriety test at the accident scene because she and her assistant were injured in the crash and were taken to a nearby hospital. While officers could not rule out that Lohan might have been drinking, he noted that she did not show signs of impairment.

Celebrity web site TMZ, citing anonymous sources, reported Wednesday that a bottle of alcohol was found next to Lohan's sports car after the crash. Lewis said he could not discuss evidence in the case, but noted that the actress was not charged with drunken driving.

Heller wrote in a motion filed last week that officers found a bottle that they initially thought was urine, but might have contained wine. His filing, which seeks a delay or dismissal of charges against the actress, states that "upon information and belief" the bottle's contents were never tested.

Lohan's case returns to court on Friday, although the actress is not required to attend.

Heller is asking a judge to dismiss the case against Lohan because officers ignored the actress' request to talk to her attorney before being interviewed, court records show. He said he is prepared to defend Lohan at trial if necessary, but is hoping a deal can be worked out. He is seeking a delay in the case to have time to prepare and allow Lohan to demonstrate she is improving her life.

Threats from judges and jail sentences that are invariably cut short because of overcrowding haven't helped Lohan, Heller said. "None of it really brought closure to this predicament that led to this most recent event."

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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Global Health: After Measles Success, Rwanda to Get Rubella Vaccine

Rwanda has been so successful at fighting measles that next month it will be the first country to get donor support to move to the next stage — fighting rubella too.

On March 11, it will hold a nationwide three-day vaccination campaign with a combined measles-rubella vaccine, hoping to reach nearly five million children up to age 14. It will then integrate the dual vaccine into its national health service.

Rwanda can do so “because they’ve done such a good job on measles,” said Christine McNab, a spokeswoman for the Measles and Rubella Initiative. M.R.I. helped pay for previous vaccination campaigns in the country and the GAVI Alliance is helping to finance the upcoming one.

Rubella, also called German measles, causes a rash that is very similar to the measles rash, making it hard for health workers to tell the difference.

Rubella is generally mild, even in children, but in pregnant women, it can kill the fetus or cause serious birth defects, including blindness, deafness, mental retardation and chronic heart damage.

Ms. McNab said that Rwanda had proved that it can suppress measles and identify rubella, and it would benefit from the newer, more expensive vaccine.

The dual vaccine costs twice as much — 52 cents a dose at Unicef prices, compared with 24 cents for measles alone. (The MMR vaccine that American children get, which also contains a vaccine against mumps, costs Unicef $1.)

More than 90 percent of Rwandan children now are vaccinated twice against measles, and cases have been near zero since 2007.

The tiny country, which was convulsed by Hutu-Tutsi genocide in 1994, is now leading the way in Africa in delivering medical care to its citizens, Ms. McNab said. Three years ago, it was the first African country to introduce shots against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer.

In wealthy countries, measles kills a small number of children — usually those whose parents decline vaccination. But in poor countries, measles is a major killer of malnourished infants. Around the world, the initiative estimates, about 158,000 children die of it each year, or about 430 a day.

Every year, an estimated 112,000 children, mostly in Africa, South Asia and the Pacific islands, are born with handicaps caused by their mothers’ rubella infection.

Thanks in part to the initiative — which until last year was known just as the Measles Initiative — measles deaths among children have declined 71 percent since 2000. The initiative is a partnership of many health agencies, vaccine companies, donors and others, but is led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unicef and the World Health Organization.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the source of the vaccine and some financing for the campaign. The vaccine and financing is being provided by the GAVI Alliance, not the Measles and Rubella Initiative.

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Groupon Shares Crumple After Dismal Outlook, Take-Rate Cut

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Groupon Inc lost a quarter of its market value on Wednesday after the company revealed it began to take a smaller cut of revenue on daily deals during the holidays, sacrificing revenue and profits to attract and keep merchants.

The cut in its "take rate", which some analysts had said was needed to revive flagging interest among merchants in its Internet offers, was a blow to fourth-quarter results. And a sharper-than-expected post-holiday slowdown in its new e-commerce business contributed to a disappointing first-quarter sales forecast.

The stream of bad numbers, which included a surprise loss in the fourth quarter, drove Groupon's stock down 26 percent to $4.43 in after hours trade. Overall, the company has shed more than three-quarters of its value since debuting at $20 in November of 2011.

"This raises questions about how these guys are going to be able to scale the business," said Tom White, an analyst at Macquarie. "The forecast is underwhelming."

Groupon is among a group of consumer-focused Internet startups that went public to much fanfare in 2011 - before losing massive chunks of market value as investors realized they had over-rated their prospects.

Within a year, Groupon had run into problems dealing with European merchants and sustaining interest among users as deals fever receded. In 2012, analysts speculated that Chief Executive Andrew Mason, known for a quirky sense of humor, may have fallen out of favor with the board.

A company spokesman said Mason remained in charge and the CEO addressed analysts on Wednesday's post-results call.

Groupon reported fourth-quarter revenue rose 30 percent to $638.3 million from $492.2 million in the year-ago period. But it slid into the red with a 1 cent per share loss excluding items, versus expectations for a slim profit of 3 cents a share.

It forecast first-quarter revenue of $560 million to $610 million, sharply below the $650 million average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Chief Financial Officer Jason Child told Reuters that Groupon began sharing more money from its deals with merchants early in the fourth quarter, to persuade them to come onboard and run an offer for the first time, or work on another.

This was done selectively in the United States and in Europe, he added.

Historically, Groupon has kept about 40 percent of the money generated by daily deals. That declined to about 35 percent in the fourth quarter. Groupon then "fine tuned" take rates later in the quarter and Child said the company expects profitability to improve as a result.

"We are focused on driving growth," he said in an interview. "We will make the investments we feel we need to optimize for growth and merchant profitability."

THE GOODS ON EUROPE

Merchants have complained that Groupon takes too large a cut of online offers.

Groupon executives forecast long-term take rates of 30 percent to 40 percent for the daily deals business, during a conference call with analysts. One of the reasons Groupon reduced take rates was to create more daily deals for a new business called Local Marketplace, which launched in November.

Groupon has mostly focused on sending daily emails to customers offering vouchers for activities in their area. Local Marketplace relies instead on people searching for something to do or buy nearby, such as an oil change or a massage. By the end of the third quarter, before the launch, Groupon had amassed an online store of more than 27,000 deals for the new marketplace.

Analysts have said the move has potential because Groupon's deals may be more likely to show up in Google searches. By the end of 2012, Groupon claimed almost 37,000 active deals running in North America, and many were longer-term offers for Local Marketplace.

For now, Groupon Goods, the company's discounted product sales business, generated a lot of the fourth-quarter revenue growth, though it's seasonally volatile and generates lower margins than daily deals.

Groupon's limp outlook revived fears its business model may be in jeopardy. Chief among their concerns have been intensifying competition in e-commerce, and a struggling European division walloped by the recession there.

Executives warned a turnaround effort there would take time, and signaled that cost cuts are coming for the company's International business.

Groupon is trying to fix it by reducing the size of discounts on deals there and testing faster payments to higher-quality merchants. Technology used to automate its U.S. operations and sales efforts is being rolled out in Europe now.

Kal Raman, chief operating officer, said more than the twice the number of people are needed to handle and process an International division deal, than in the United States.

A Groupon spokesman said there are no "definite" plans for International job cuts, but there were staff reductions in the United States when the company automated.

"That is an enormous opportunity to organize Groupon's operations to be both more efficient," Raman told analysts during the conference call.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr; Editing by David Gregorio, Richard Chang and Tim Dobbyn)

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DealBook: Wall Street Pay Rises, for Those Who Still Have a Job

7:39 p.m. | Updated

Wall Street may be shrinking — cutting thousands of jobs over the last year — but for those who remain, the pay is still very lucrative.

The average cash bonus for those employed in the financial industry in New York last year rose roughly 9 percent, to $121,900, Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York State’s comptroller, said on Tuesday.

Cash bonuses in total are forecast to increase by roughly 8 percent, to $20 billion this year.

The total, however, is down from 2010, when it was $22.8 billion. Wall Street’s peak came in 2006, before the financial crisis, with a total $34.3 billion in bonuses. The year-end bonus can account for the bulk of a finance professional’s annual compensation.

The report from the state comptroller’s office gives estimates on the bonuses, based on tax withholding data, data from banks and conversations with industry experts. It came the same day that JPMorgan Chase, one of the country’s biggest banks, announced it was eliminating 17,000 jobs over the next two years through layoffs and attrition, adding its name to a string of large banks that continue to cut jobs to reduce expenses.

Wall Street has regained 30 percent of the 28,300 jobs lost during the financial crisis, Mr. DiNapoli said. And firms are continuing to streamline as they cope with a sluggish economic recovery, difficult markets and a heavier regulatory burden. While financial industry employment in New York City was steady in the first half of 2012, it was down slightly in the second half of the year, the comptroller’s office said.

“Wall Street is still in transition, but it is very slowly adjusting to changes in its economic and regulatory environment,” he said.

In an effort to hold down — albeit temporarily — compensation costs, a number of financial firms have deferred cash payments to employees in recent years. Mr. DiNapoli said on Tuesday that part of the increase in 2012 was cash promised in recent years but actually paid out last year. He said that it was difficult to break out what percentage of the total was deferrals, but he believed that it was still a small part of the total.

The ebbs and flows of Wall Street pay have a major impact on the economy of New York City, where 169,700 are employed in finance. Local businesses like restaurants, luxury goods retailers and the upper end of the real estate market pin their fortunes to the flood of cash from year-end bonuses.

Before the start of the financial crisis, business and personal income tax collections from finance-related activities accounted for up to 20 percent of New York State tax revenue. In 2012, that contribution fell to 14 percent.

Yet finance remains the best paying sector in New York City, Mr. DiNapoli told reporters during a conference call.

All told, the average pay package for securities industry employees in New York was $362,900 in 2011, the last year for which data is available, almost unchanged from 2010.

“Profits and bonuses rebounded in 2012, but the industry is still restructuring,” Mr. DiNapoli said. Despite its smaller size, the securities industry is still a very important part of the New York City and New York State economies.”

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Bobby Brown sentenced to 55 days in jail for DUI

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bobby Brown has been sentenced to 55 days in a Los Angeles jail and four years of probation for a drunken driving case.

City attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan (mah-tell-JIN') says Brown was sentenced Tuesday after pleading no contest to charges he was under the influence and driving on a suspended license when he was arrested in October.

Brown was on probation for another DUI case at the time.

The 44-year-old "New Edition" singer was ordered to report to jail March 20. He also was placed on four years of informal probation and will be required to complete an 18-month alcohol treatment program.

Brown's attorney Tiffany Feder had no immediate comment on the sentence.

The sentence was first reported by celebrity website TMZ.

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Advanced Breast Cancer May Be Rising Among Young Women, Study Finds

The incidence of advanced breast cancer among younger women, ages 25 to 39, may have increased slightly over the last three decades, according to a study released Tuesday.

But more research is needed to verify the finding, which was based on an analysis of statistics, the study’s authors said. They do not know what may have caused the apparent increase.

Some outside experts questioned whether the increase was real, and expressed concerns that the report would frighten women needlessly.

The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, found that advanced cases climbed to 2.9 per 100,000 younger women in 2009, from 1.53 per 100,000 women in 1976 — an increase of 1.37 cases per 100,000 women in 34 years. The totals were about 250 such cases per year in the mid-1970s, and more than 800 per year in 2009.

Though small, the increase was statistically significant, and the researchers said it was worrisome because it involved cancer that had already spread to organs like the liver or lungs by the time it was diagnosed, which greatly diminishes the odds of survival.

For now, the only advice the researchers can offer to young women is to see a doctor quickly if they notice lumps, pain or other changes in the breast, and not to assume that they cannot have breast cancer because they are young and healthy, or have no family history of the disease.

“Breast cancer can and does occur in younger women,” said Dr. Rebecca H. Johnson, the first author of the study and medical director of the adolescent and young adult oncology program at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

But Dr. Johnson noted that there is no evidence that screening helps younger women who have an average risk for the disease and no symptoms. “We’re certainly not advocating that young women get mammography at an earlier age than is generally specified,” she said.

Expert groups differ about when screening should begin; some say at age 40, others 50.

Breast cancer is not common in younger women; only 1.8 percent of all cases are diagnosed in women from 20 to 34, and 10 percent in women from 35 to 44. However, when it does occur, the disease tends to be more deadly in younger women than in older ones. Researchers are not sure why.

The researchers analyzed data from SEER, a program run by the National Cancer Institute to collect cancer statistics on 28 percent of the population of the United States. The study also used data from the past when SEER was smaller.

The study is based on information from 936,497 women who had breast cancer from 1976 to 2009. Of those, 53,502 were 25 to 39 years old, including 3,438 who had advanced breast cancer, also called metastatic or distant disease.

Younger women were the only ones in whom metastatic disease seemed to have increased, the researchers found.

Dr. Archie Bleyer, a clinical research professor in radiation medicine at the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland who helped write the study, said scientists needed to verify the increase in advanced breast cancer in young women in the United States and find out whether it is occurring in other developed Western countries. “This is the first report of this kind,” he said, adding that researchers had already asked colleagues in Canada to analyze data there.

“We need this to be sure ourselves about this potentially concerning, almost alarming trend,” Dr. Bleyer said. “Then and only then are we really worried about what is the cause, because we’ve got to be sure it’s real.”

Dr. Johnson said her own experience led her to look into the statistics on the disease in young women. She had breast cancer when she was 27; she is now 44. Over the years, friends and colleagues often referred young women with the disease to her for advice.

“It just struck me how many of those people there were,” she said.

Dr. Donald A. Berry, an expert on breast cancer data and a professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas’ M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said he was dubious about the finding, even though it was statistically significant, because the size of the apparent increase was so small — 1.37 cases per 100,000 women, over the course of 30 years.

More screening and more precise tests to identify the stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis might account for the increase, he said.

“Not many women aged 25 to 39 get screened, but some do, but it only takes a few to account for a notable increase from one in 100,000,” Dr. Berry said.

Dr. Silvia C. Formenti, a breast cancer expert and the chairwoman of radiation oncology at New York University Langone Medical Center, questioned the study in part because although it found an increased incidence of advanced disease, it did not find the accompanying increase in deaths that would be expected.

A spokeswoman for an advocacy group for young women with breast cancer, Young Survival Coalition, said the organization also wondered whether improved diagnostic and staging tests might explain all or part of the increase.

“We’re looking at this data with caution,” said the spokeswoman, Michelle Esser. “We don’t want to invite panic or alarm.”

She said it was important to note that the findings applied only to women who had metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis, and did not imply that women who already had early-stage cancer faced an increased risk of advanced disease.

Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld
, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said he and an epidemiologist for the society thought the increase was real.

“We want to make sure this is not oversold or that people suddenly get very frightened that we have a huge problem,” Dr. Lichtenfeld said. “We don’t. But we are concerned that over time, we might have a more serious problem than we have today.”

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DealBook: Wall Street Pay Rises, for Those Who Still Have a Job

7:39 p.m. | Updated

Wall Street may be shrinking — cutting thousands of jobs over the last year — but for those who remain, the pay is still very lucrative.

The average cash bonus for those employed in the financial industry in New York last year rose roughly 9 percent, to $121,900, Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York State’s comptroller, said on Tuesday.

Cash bonuses in total are forecast to increase by roughly 8 percent, to $20 billion this year.

The total, however, is down from 2010, when it was $22.8 billion. Wall Street’s peak came in 2006, before the financial crisis, with a total $34.3 billion in bonuses. The year-end bonus can account for the bulk of a finance professional’s annual compensation.

The report from the state comptroller’s office gives estimates on the bonuses, based on tax withholding data, data from banks and conversations with industry experts. It came the same day that JPMorgan Chase, one of the country’s biggest banks, announced it was eliminating 17,000 jobs over the next two years through layoffs and attrition, adding its name to a string of large banks that continue to cut jobs to reduce expenses.

Wall Street has regained 30 percent of the 28,300 jobs lost during the financial crisis, Mr. DiNapoli said. And firms are continuing to streamline as they cope with a sluggish economic recovery, difficult markets and a heavier regulatory burden. While financial industry employment in New York City was steady in the first half of 2012, it was down slightly in the second half of the year, the comptroller’s office said.

“Wall Street is still in transition, but it is very slowly adjusting to changes in its economic and regulatory environment,” he said.

In an effort to hold down — albeit temporarily — compensation costs, a number of financial firms have deferred cash payments to employees in recent years. Mr. DiNapoli said on Tuesday that part of the increase in 2012 was cash promised in recent years but actually paid out last year. He said that it was difficult to break out what percentage of the total was deferrals, but he believed that it was still a small part of the total.

The ebbs and flows of Wall Street pay have a major impact on the economy of New York City, where 169,700 are employed in finance. Local businesses like restaurants, luxury goods retailers and the upper end of the real estate market pin their fortunes to the flood of cash from year-end bonuses.

Before the start of the financial crisis, business and personal income tax collections from finance-related activities accounted for up to 20 percent of New York State tax revenue. In 2012, that contribution fell to 14 percent.

Yet finance remains the best paying sector in New York City, Mr. DiNapoli told reporters during a conference call.

All told, the average pay package for securities industry employees in New York was $362,900 in 2011, the last year for which data is available, almost unchanged from 2010.

“Profits and bonuses rebounded in 2012, but the industry is still restructuring,” Mr. DiNapoli said. Despite its smaller size, the securities industry is still a very important part of the New York City and New York State economies.”

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The Caucus: Michelle Obama Makes a Star Turn at the Oscars (via Satellite)

6:21 p.m. | Updated
She may not have walked the red carpet, but Michelle Obama — all bangs and biceps and bling — had her own star turn during Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony, when she announced the winner for best picture via satellite from the White House.

Barely moments after Mrs. Obama’s late night revelation  of the fate of the nominated best films, the question of whether it was proper or dignified or awesome for the first lady of the United States to dirty her hands with a motion picture envelope disintegrated into a predictably-partisan rhubarb.

But this seemed to matter little to the White House, where both President Obama and the first lady seem untethered from the safety net of a political campaign, and free to pursue their respective agendas.

“The Academy Awards approached the first lady about being a part of the ceremony,” said Kristina Schake, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama. “As a movie lover, she was honored to present the award and celebrate the artists who inspire us all, especially our young people, with their passion, skill and imagination.”

The idea to have Mrs. Obama participate in the ceremony was hatched by the producers of the show, with a big hand from the film executive Harvey Weinstein. Mrs. Obama agreed right away, but secret negotiations, including a final one involving a stealth flight from Los Angeles to Washington a few weeks ago to finalize details, ensued.

“Literally from the first day we were hired we thought, ‘How can we make this special?’” said Neil Meron, who was hired last fall to produce the Oscar event with Craig Zadan. “We were hoping Obama would win so we could have our plan executed.”

After the election, they decided the plan would need a fast track, lest it get stuck in the bureaucratic maw maw of the East Wing, so the two approached Mr. Weinstein. “We were very aware that Harvey was close to the Obama family,” Mr. Zadan said, “and if we went through normal channels the odds were small it would happen.”

Mr. Weinstein reached out to the White House, originally with the idea of having Mrs. Obama be a guest at the awards show. The plan was for her to sneak backstage to morph into a secret Oscar presenter. But because the first lady had a conflict that night – the governors would be in town for a White House gala – the idea of a remote play was born.

(Others involved with the process insist that the idea was actually that of Mr. Weinstein’s daughter, Lily, but like most Hollywood stories, one picks their own ending.)

Only two top executives at ABC knew of the plan, along with the actor Jack Nicholson, who was charged with presenting Mrs. Obama from the stage in Hollywood. Mr. Meron and Mr. Zadan were given a private jet for the flight to Washington, although they told people they were going to New York to avoid suspicion.

Mrs. Obama, wearing a shimmering gown designed by Naeem Khan, was hand-delivered the shiny classified envelope opening containing the winner, “Argo,” the Ben Affleck-directed film about a C.I.A. plan to rescue Americans from Iran during the hostage crisis, by Bob Moritz, the chief executive for PricewaterhouseCoopers from New York, which certifies the awards. White-gloved White House military social aides stood in the background.

But Washington was as absorbed  about the propriety of a first lady having such a central role in the  Oscars, suggesting it was less proper than, say, a president throwing out a baseball pitch or flipping pancakes in Iowa in the courting of voters. “Now the first lady feels entitled,” said Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger for the Washington Post, “with military personnel as props, to intrude on other forms of entertaining, this time for the benefit of the Hollywood glitterati who so lavishly paid for her husband’s election.”

Others were more charitable. The Web site Slate pointed out that Laura Bush taped a “What Do the Movies Mean to You?” segment for the Academy Awards while she was first lady in 2002 and that President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the 13th Academy Awards ceremony by  addressing the nation and the crowd at the Biltmore Hotel.

The first lady’s Oscar turn followed her appearance last week on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” where, to kick off the third year of her “Let’s Move” exercise campaign, she presented a comedy sketch, the “Evolution of Mom Dancing.”

The sketch was an instant hit. Though only posted last Friday, it had racked up almost five million views on YouTube as of Monday.

Bill Carter contributed reporting.

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'Identity Thief' tops box office with $14 million

NEW YORK (AP) — A week after losing the box office title to Bruce Willis, Melissa McCarthy took it back again.

McCarthy's road trip comedy "Identity Thief" topped the box office in its third week of release on Oscar weekend with $14 million for Universal. 20th Century Fox's "A Good Day to Die Hard," starring Willis, slid to fifth with $10.1 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Identity Thief," Universal, $14,017,085, 3,222 locations, $4,350 average, $93,619,615, three weeks.

2. "Snitch," Lionsgate, $13,167,607, 2,511 locations, $5,244 average, $13,167,607, one week.

3. "Escape From Planet Earth," Weinstein Co., $10,682,037, 3,353 locations, $3,186 average, $34,812,699, two weeks.

4. "Safe Haven," Relativity Media, $10,454,713, 3,223 locations, $3,244 average, $47,916,356, two weeks.

5. "A Good Day to Die Hard," Fox, $10,165,633, 3,555 locations, $2,860 average, $51,967,897, two weeks.

6. "Dark Skies," Weinstein Co., $8,189,166, 2,313 locations, $3,540 average, $8,189,166, one week.

7. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $5,750,866, 2,012 locations, $2,858 average, $107,176,012, 15 weeks.

8. "Warm Bodies," Lionsgate, $4,825,388, 2,644 locations, $1,825 average, $58,243,441, four weeks.

9. "Beautiful Creatures," Warner Bros., $3,608,333, 2,950 locations, $1,223 average, $16,570,598, two weeks.

10. "Side Effects," Open Road Films, $3,357,039, 2,070 locations, $1,622 average, $25,099,555, three weeks.

11. "Zero Dark Thirty," Sony, $2,230,084, 1,197 locations, $1,863 average, $91,539,075, 10 weeks.

12. "Argo," Warner Bros., $1,827,165, 802 locations, $2,278 average, $129,653,502, 20 weeks.

13. "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," Paramount, $1,684,532, 1,425 locations, $1,182 average, $52,945,086, five weeks.

14. "Life of Pi," Fox, $1,605,366, 572 locations, $2,807 average, $113,525,126, 14 weeks.

15. "Lincoln," Disney, $1,481,081, 875 locations, $1,693 average, $178,603,571, 16 weeks.

16. "Mama," Universal, $1,173,900, 1,163 locations, $1,009 average, $70,230,570, six weeks.

17. "Quartet," Weinstein Co., $1,125,886, 356 locations, $3,163 average, $8,844,950, seven weeks.

18. "Django Unchained," Weinstein Co., $971,655, 659 locations, $1,474 average, $158,783,430, nine weeks.

19. "Amour," Sony Pictures Classics, $716,186, 328 locations, $2,183 average, $5,147,242, 10 weeks.

20. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $645,870, 402 locations, $1,607 average, $186,676,411, 17 weeks.

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Global Health: After Measles Success, Rwanda to Get Rubella Vaccine

Rwanda has been so successful at fighting measles that next month it will be the first country to get donor support to move to the next stage — fighting rubella too.

On March 11, it will hold a nationwide three-day vaccination campaign with a combined measles-rubella vaccine, hoping to reach nearly five million children up to age 14. It will then integrate the dual vaccine into its national health service.

Rwanda can do so “because they’ve done such a good job on measles,” said Christine McNab, a spokeswoman for the Measles and Rubella Initiative, which will provide the vaccine and help pay for the campaign.

Rubella, also called German measles, causes a rash that is very similar to the measles rash, making it hard for health workers to tell the difference.

Rubella is generally mild, even in children, but in pregnant women, it can kill the fetus or cause serious birth defects, including blindness, deafness, mental retardation and chronic heart damage.

Ms. McNab said that Rwanda had proved that it can suppress measles and identify rubella, and it would benefit from the newer, more expensive vaccine.

The dual vaccine costs twice as much — 52 cents a dose at Unicef prices, compared with 24 cents for measles alone. (The MMR vaccine that American children get, which also contains a vaccine against mumps, costs Unicef $1.)

More than 90 percent of Rwandan children now are vaccinated twice against measles, and cases have been near zero since 2007.

The tiny country, which was convulsed by Hutu-Tutsi genocide in 1994, is now leading the way in Africa in delivering medical care to its citizens, Ms. McNab said. Three years ago, it was the first African country to introduce shots against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer.

In wealthy countries, measles kills a small number of children — usually those whose parents decline vaccination. But in poor countries, measles is a major killer of malnourished infants. Around the world, the initiative estimates, about 158,000 children die of it each year, or about 430 a day.

Every year, an estimated 112,000 children, mostly in Africa, South Asia and the Pacific islands, are born with handicaps caused by their mothers’ rubella infection.

Thanks in part to the initiative — which until last year was known just as the Measles Initiative — measles deaths among children have declined 71 percent since 2000. The initiative is a partnership of many health agencies, vaccine companies, donors and others, but is led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unicef and the World Health Organization.

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