Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths


Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.


All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.


Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting from real solutions to the nation's weight problems.


"The evidence is what matters," and many feel-good ideas repeated by well-meaning health experts just don't have it, said the lead author, David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.


Independent researchers say the authors have some valid points. But many of the report's authors also have deep financial ties to food, beverage and weight-loss product makers — the disclosures take up half a page of fine print in the journal.


"It raises questions about what the purpose of this paper is" and whether it's aimed at promoting drugs, meal replacement products and bariatric surgery as solutions, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and food studies.


"The big issues in weight loss are how you change the food environment in order for people to make healthy choices," such as limits on soda sizes and marketing junk food to children, she said. Some of the myths they cite are "straw men" issues, she said.


But some are pretty interesting.


Sex, for instance. Not that people do it to try to lose weight, but claims that it burns 100 to 300 calories are common, Allison said. Yet the only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average — "disappointing, isn't it?" — and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking, he said.


That's for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn't measure the women's experience.


Among the other myths or assumptions the authors cite, based on their review of the most rigorous studies on each topic:


—Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don't have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the "small changes" concept is based on an "oversimplified" 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.


—School gym classes have a big impact on kids' weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.


—Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.


—Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.


—Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.


—Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.


Some things may not have the strongest evidence for preventing obesity but are good for other reasons, such as breastfeeding and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, the authors write. And exercise helps prevent a host of health problems regardless of whether it helps a person shed weight.


"I agree with most of the points" except the authors' conclusions that meal replacement products and diet drugs work for battling obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, a prominent obesity research with Boston Children's Hospital who has no industry ties. Most weight-loss drugs sold over the last century had to be recalled because of serious side effects, so "there's much more evidence of failure than success," he said.


___


Online:


Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html


New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Trial begins for Moreno Valley school board member Mike Rios









The young woman on the witness stand said Mike Rios approached her on the street with a school district business card and a job opportunity: He wanted her "to gather girls and sell them," she said.


Identified in court only as Valery, she testified Wednesday that she and others worked as prostitutes for Rios, a member of the Moreno Valley Unified School District Board of Education.


Valery's testimony came on the opening day of Rios' trial in Riverside County Superior Court. He faces 35 felony charges, including rape, pandering and pimping involving six females, two of them underage.





Valery, 21, with long black hair and bangs covering her forehead, bit her lip between questions. In addition to working as a prostitute for Rios, she said, she helped recruit other young women for him.


"He told me we had to get the best-looking girls so we could get more money for them," Valery said.


Prosecutors allege that Rios ran a prostitution ring out of his Moreno Valley home in 2011 and 2012. In opening statements, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Brusselback told the jury: "This is a case about greed. This is a case about money. This is a case about power."


Rios was "constantly trying to recruit new, young talent," Brusselback said.


Rios' attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael J. Micallef, told jurors that Rios ran a business involving women stripping, dancing and performing for money but that it "had nothing to do with sex."


The women were free to do whatever they wanted and what they did besides stripping and dancing "wasn't necessarily known to Mr. Rios," Micallef said. Networking with women and growing his business was "the capitalist way," Micallef said.


Rios, 42, was arrested in February on attempted murder charges after he allegedly shot at two people near his home. He was released on bail but was arrested again in April on suspicion of rape, pimping and using his position on the school board to recruit would-be prostitutes.


He was released on bail again and has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in both cases.


While searching Rios' home after the alleged shooting, investigators found numerous cellphones and several condoms in the glove box of the Mercedes-Benz in his garage, testified Paul Grotefend, a Riverside County sheriff's deputy.


Prosecutors say Rios recruited women, took provocative photos of them in his home and posted the photos in online advertisements. He allegedly established a cellphone number solely for the prostitution work, drove the women to various locations to have sex and split the money they earned.


It is alleged that three adult women worked for him as prostitutes and that he attempted to recruit another adult woman and two minors.


On Wednesday, prosecutors showed jurors online advertisements with erotic photos of Valery in lingerie that she said were taken in Rios' bedroom.


Some of the ads read: "Sexy hot beautiful Latina babe Here 4 U."


Valery testified that Rios, on numerous occasions, picked her up from her home in downtown Los Angeles and brought her to his house. He bought her condoms before she met clients, she testified.


When Valery stopped communicating with Rios, he sent her text messages telling her how many missed calls there were on the cellphone he set up for prostitution, she said.


"He assumed every call that came in was a guaranteed customer," she said.


Rios is accused of raping two women, one of whom was intoxicated.


After both arrests last year, Rios returned to the five-member school board.


Though the other school board members passed a resolution calling for Rios to resign, he refused, said board Vice President Tracey B. Vackar. The board cannot remove Rios unless he is convicted, Vackar said.


Rios continues to come to board meetings, Vackar said, and even attended a board study session Tuesday night after a court appearance. Though there was disappointment after he did not resign, Rios has been treated with respect at meetings and "has not been disruptive," Vackar said.


The trial is expected to continue Thursday. The case involving the attempted murder charges — which is separate from the current case — is pending trial, with the next court date scheduled for February.


Rios, wearing a blue suit, was quiet in court Wednesday, sitting next to his attorney with his hands folded.


hailey.branson@latimes.com





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French Forces Pressing Mali Campaign Seize Rebel Stronghold





BAMAKO, Mali — French troops took control overnight of the airport at the last major northern Mali town still in rebel hands, officials said on Wednesday, after Islamist militants abandoned two other principal settlements in the vast, desert region where residents’ relief and elation has given way to some measure of reprisal and frustration.




A French military spokesman in Paris, Col. Thierry Burkhard, said French troops reached the airport at Kidal, in the remote northeast of Mali, in an ongoing operation that is ongoing.


Haminy Maiga, a local official, told news agencies that French forces met no resistance when they arrived aboard four airplanes that landed late on Tuesday. France also sent helicopters, he said.


Kidal is the capital of a desert region of the same name. Secular Tuareg rebels claim to be in control of the town after Islamists fled. A newly formed Islamist splinter group that broke with the main Ansar Dine Islamist force also claims to have a power base there.


The new group calls itself the Islamic Movement for the Azawad and is led by Alghabass Ag Intalla, a prominent leader of the Tuareg ethnic group from the Kidal region who has said he wants to negotiate a settlement with the central government in Bamako, 800 miles to the southwest. Azawad is a Tuareg term for northern Mali.


Mali has been in turmoil since early 2012, when junior officers in the south staged a coup to protest the government’s tepid response to an uprising in the north by Tuareg separatists who were subsequently pushed to the side by Islamic extremists bent on imposing an extreme form of Shariah law.


Earlier this month, the Islamists suddenly advanced toward the capital, threatening to engulf the south, topple the weak central government and destabilize a vast area of northern Africa.


After a series of punishing French airstrikes in recent days, French and Malian troops launched a lightning campaign on the ground, entering the northern towns of Gao and Timbuktu as Islamist rebels seemed to melted away to far-flung hide-outs, possibly in the Kidal Province.


In Gao, groups of residents were reported on Tuesday to be hunting down suspected fighters who had not fled ahead of the French-Malian military forces who took control of the town over the weekend. Other residents expressed concern that Gao remained unsafe and was acutely short of food and fuel after a prolonged isolation.


“The city is free, but I think the areas close by are still dangerous,” said Mahamane Touré, a Gao resident reached by telephone from Bamako, the capital. “These guys are out there.”


Mr. Touré, who spent the evening watching soccer on television and listening to music with friends, said that although everyone was enjoying the new freedoms, the legacy of Islamist occupation was evident in the hardship of everyday life.


“The price of gasoline is almost double, and the price of food is very high,” Mr. Touré said. “There are still things in the market, but no one has any money and there is no aid.”


Reporters and photographers in Timbuktu, the storied desert oasis farther north that the French-Malian forces secured on Monday, saw looters pillaging shops and other businesses, with some saying the merchants were mainly Arabs, Mauritanians and Algerians who had supported the Islamist radicals who summarily executed, stoned and mutilated people they suspected of being nonbelievers during their 10-month occupation.


Alex Crawford, a television correspondent for Britain’s Sky News, said, “This is months and months of frustration and repression finally erupting.”


The rapidly shifting developments came less than three weeks into the military effort led by France, the former colonial power whose helicopters and warplanes began arriving here at the Malian government’s invitation on Jan. 11. Since then other West African countries have started to send troops. Britain is preparing to send more than 300 military trainers, and the United States is providing aerial cargo and refueling help.


In Washington, Pentagon officials said that as of Tuesday 17 sorties by United States Air Force C-17 cargo jets had flown 500 French troops and 390 tons of equipment into Bamako. In addition, there has been one aerial refueling operation by an American KC-135 tanker aircraft, which provided 33,000 pounds of fuel to several French warplanes, the officials said.


At the same time, a meeting of international donors was getting under way on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as part of an effort to provide more than $450 million in long-term financing for the military intervention in Mali.


The French-led effort has met surprisingly little resistance from the array of Islamist militias that occupied the northern part of Mali, an area about twice the size of Germany, in the spring of 2012 in the midst of a national political crisis.


It remains unclear how long the foreign military occupation will last. Most of the Islamist fighters have melted into the desert and could be regrouping to fight again.


In a bid to consolidate the gains, troops from Mali and neighboring Niger arrived Tuesday in the small town of Ansongo, about 50 miles south of Gao, one day after President François Hollande of France urged African countries to take a more prominent role in the operations.


Just as in Gao two days before, residents filled the streets there to greet the arrival of the African troops as they toured Ansongo and its environs.


“Everyone is very, very, very happy,” said Ibrahim Haidara, an Ansongo resident reached by phone. “They chanted, ‘Vive la France!’ and ‘Long live African armies!’ ”


But like his counterparts in Gao, he worried that the fighters might not have gone very far.


“They are in the bush. They are hiding,” he said. “One must be careful.”


Peter Tinti reported from Bamako, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Alan Cowell from London. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris, John F. Burns from London, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington.



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Ashley Judd Splits from Husband Dario Franchitti















01/29/2013 at 08:05 PM EST







Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti


Robin Marchant/Wireimage


Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are splitting after more than a decade of marriage.

"We have mutually decided to end our marriage. We'll always be family and continue to cherish our relationship based on the special love, integrity, and respect we have always enjoyed," Judd, 44, and Franchitti, 39, tell PEOPLE exclusively in a statement on Tuesday.

After being engaged for about two years, the Missing star and the racecar driver tied the knot in a highly private ceremony in Scotland in 2001.

Judd's sister, Wynonna Judd, served as maid of honor, while the groom's brother Mario was the best man. – Julie Jordan

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Soldier with new arms determined to be independent


BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.


Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after getting a double-arm transplant.


Wounded by a roadside bomb in 2009, the former soldier said he could get by without legs, but he hated living without arms.


"Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," the 26-year-old New Yorker told reporters Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.


Doctors don't want him using his new arms too much yet, but his gritty determination to regain independence was one of the chief reasons he was chosen to receive the surgery, which has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.


That's the message Marrocco said he has for other wounded soldiers.


"Just not to give up hope. You know, life always gets better, and you're still alive," he said. "And to be stubborn. There's a lot of people who will say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway. Work your ass off and do it."


Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, head of the team that conducted the surgery, said the new arms could eventually provide much of the same function as his original arms and hands. Another double-arm transplant patient can now use chopsticks and tie his shoes.


Lee said Marrocco's recovery has been remarkable, and the transplant is helping to "restore physical and psychological well-being."


Tuesday's news conference was held to mark a milestone in his recovery — the day he was to be discharged from the hospital.


Next comes several years of rehabilitation, including physical therapy that is going to become more difficult as feeling returns to the arms.


Before the surgery, he had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."


The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.


"We'll get it back together. We've been through a lot worse than that," his father, Alex Marrocco, said.


For the next few months, Marrocco plans to live with his brother in an apartment near the hospital.


The former infantryman said he can already move the elbow on his left arm and rotate it a little bit, but there hasn't been much movement yet for his right arm, which was transplanted higher up.


Marrocco's mother, Michelle Marrocco, said he can't hug her yet, so he brushes his left arm against her face.


The first time he moved his left arm was a complete surprise, an involuntary motion while friends were visiting him in the hospital, he said.


"I had no idea what was going through my mind. I was with my friends, and it happened by accident," he recalled. "One of my friends said 'Did you do that on purpose?' And I didn't know I did it."


Marrocco's operation also involved a technical feat not tried in previous cases, Lee said in an interview after the news conference.


A small part of Marrocco's left forearm remained just below his elbow, and doctors transplanted a whole new forearm around and on top of it, then rewired nerves to serve the old and new muscles in that arm.


"We wanted to save his joint. In the unlucky event we would lose the transplant, we still wanted him to have the elbow joint," Lee said.


He also explained why leg transplants are not done for people missing those limbs — "it's not very practical." That's because nerves regrow at best about an inch a month, so it would be many years before a transplanted leg was useful.


Even if movement returned, a patient might lack sensation on the soles of the feet, which would be unsafe if the person stepped on sharp objects and couldn't feel the pain.


And unlike prosthetic arms and hands, which many patients find frustrating, the ones for legs are good. That makes the risks of a transplant not worth taking.


"It's premature" until there are better ways to help nerves regrow, Lee said.


Now Marrocco, who was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, is looking forward to getting behind the wheel of his black 2006 Dodge Charger and hand-cycling a marathon.


Asked if he could one day throw a football, Dr. Jaimie Shores said sure, but maybe not like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.


"Thanks for having faith in me," Marrocco interjected, drawing laughter from the crowd.


His mother said Marrocco has always been "a tough cookie."


"He's not changed that, and he's just taken it and made it an art form," Michelle Marrocco said. "He's never going to stop. He's going to be that boy I knew was going to be a pain in my butt forever. And he's going to show people how to live their lives."


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Associated Press Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and AP writer David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., contributed to this report.


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Slain doctor remembered for faith and zest for life









He was remembered by patients and colleagues as a caring and talented physician, one who followed his father's footsteps into medicine. And his friends spoke of how devout he was in his Jewish faith as well as of his kindness and his zest for life.


"He was just a good soul," one colleague and friend said.


Now police are trying to determine why someone would walk into the urologist's Newport Beach offices and shoot him to death.





Dr. Ronald Gilbert was killed Monday in an exam room of his practice in the heart of a bustling medical community, allegedly gunned down by a 75-year-old retired barber who recently told a neighbor that he had cancer and didn't expect to live much longer.


Stanwood Fred Elkus of Lake Elsinore was arrested within seven minutes of the first call from the medical offices next to Hoag Memorial Hospital, authorities said. Elkus, who is being held on $1-million bail and is expected to be in court Wednesday, was described by neighbors as having problems with his prostate and undergoing surgeries. He recently told a neighbor that he believed he would soon be dead.


One neighbor, Sherry Martin, said that Elkus would always ride through his Riverside County neighborhood on his bike, wearing a baseball cap. Sometimes, he offered to give haircuts to neighbors.


But Elkus had run-ins with other neighbors in the past, including a dispute over bushes in a woman's backyard that was exacerbated into more than a year of Elkus allegedly taunting her family. Melissa Evans, 36, said that he would pass by on his bike or in his car, staring them down, or would harass their dog late at night.


"He just couldn't let it go," she said. "He couldn't let go of something so small."


Evans said the erratic behavior was so unsettling that she, her husband and three sons moved to a community 10 miles away. But even after they moved to Wildomar, she said, he was spotted driving by their new home about three months ago.


Gilbert's death, however, has prompted a different sort of reaction: an outpouring of warm memories and shock at his violent death.


Colleagues said Gilbert, 52, had an "impeccable" reputation, having worked as the chief of urology at Hoag Hospital from 1998 to 2002 and as a volunteer faculty member at UC Irvine's Medical School, from which he graduated in 1987. His research interests included sexual dysfunction and bladder and prostate cancer.


He had also developed a spray designed to treat premature ejaculation. Dr. Eugene Rhee, president of the California Urological Assn., said Gilbert was especially proud of that work. "It was a much-needed medication," Rhee said.


Bruce Sechler, 61, had been Gilbert's patient for about seven years. "Right off the bat," the Huntington Beach resident said, "he could put you at ease and make you feel like he was genuinely concerned about you as a person and your needs."


Gerry Crews, a close friend who had known Gilbert since their high school days in Whittier, said that he knew how to have fun too, and loved classic rock. He sang in a garage band with Crews' older brother in high school. But he also had a laser focus during his undergraduate years at UC Santa Barbara so that he could achieve his ambition of becoming a doctor like his father.


"I was not a hard worker in college; he was," Crews, 51, said. "From the start, he planned to go to medical school and he worked very hard to get into medical school."


Even with his focus on medicine, friends recalled that he had a unique ability to keep an open and balanced life. He held on to a deep appreciation for music, and would have jam sessions with his sons, who played guitar and drums. He also traveled and snow-skied.


Faith had also been a pillar in his life, friends say, influencing his choices and how he approached the world.


Crews said he moved from Tustin — where his old friends lived nearby — to Huntington Harbour so that he could be closer to his synagogue and walk there on the Sabbath. He had also retrofitted his kitchen to prepare kosher meals. And his oldest son had recently been living in Israel.


"On Saturdays," Gilbert's neighbor Betty Combs recalled, "they dressed to the nines and walked to synagogue."


Those who knew him also said he had built up a stable of friends over the years because he was willing to share his time and knowledge. Crews remembered him being a source of support on the two times his wife had breast cancer.


"He was generous of himself," said Tom Mayer, a longtime friend and a registered nurse who once worked at Hoag Hospital. "He gave you everything."


When he heard of a shooting at the Newport Beach medical campus, Mayer, 49, drove straight there from work in Mission Viejo, still dressed in his scrubs. He had called and texted Gilbert, but there was no reply. The next day, he recalled the impact Gilbert's unconditional friendship had on his life.


"He was a light," Mayer said. "He was someone who could be turned to, just to talk.... My life wouldn't be the same if I never met Ron."


nicole.santacruz@latimes.com


rick.rojas@latimes.com


Times Community News staff writers Jill Cowan and Lauren Williams contributed to this report.





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India Ink: Five Questions (Plus a Few More) for Selma Dabbagh

Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian fiction writer based in London. Her first novel, “Out of It,” which is set in Palestine, was published in 2011. A lawyer and mother of two, she is also working on her second novel, about expatriates, which is coming out next year. She spoke to India Ink at the Jaipur Literature Festival, which she was attending for the first time.

What are the occupational hazards of being a writer?

Compared to a lot of Palestinian writers, I have a big advantage of living in Europe and having a European passport, so I don’t face threats on a daily basis. I think I am more likely to get criticized because of my subject matter, or have people take objection to my politics, rather than my writing.

What is your everyday writing ritual?

I like to work in the morning. I try to have big chunks of time where I’m doing nothing else, and I try to keep administrative work to the evening. I still work part-time as a lawyer and I have two children so my time is very splintered.

Also, writers now have to do quite a lot of work for the publicity of a book that is out, so the administrative side and the publicity side impinge on your time. When I’m actually writing, I have a sofa that I go to in a room that has no Wi-Fi. I close the door, I have my notes on the side on a small easel, and that’s where I write and that’s when I’m happiest.

How do you deal with your critics?

I had one review which was quite strange. He made it sound like I was trivializing the Holocaust by something one character had said in the novel. He misinterpreted it and said it was offensive rubbish. I was so upset and angry with my first review because I felt that he got it wrong. Your sense is to respond to correct the record. To trivialize the Holocaust is actually a statutory offense in some countries. I did try and draft a response against the advice of everybody.

It [the review] came out in The Independent, and it was also odd because they put a strapline which said, “Aren’t you a bit too young for this conflict?” I was eight years older than the reviewer. And then I realized there is actually no dignified way of responding to a review. You have to just leave it.

You do get these knee-jerk reactions from people who are very supportive of Israel. Just the minute you say you are from Palestine, that in itself is offensive enough. So it doesn’t really matter how you are dressing it up.
That means you get quite cautious in the way you speak. You qualify everything, you talk with your footnotes, you have to make sure that you are really not going to say something in a panel or a session which is going to be filmed or played on YouTube and then get distorted.

Do you self-censor?

I don’t think it is self-censorship. It is extreme caution in how you say things and making sure that you know absolutely where something is coming from.

One of the tests as a writer is that you should follow what interests you. Often that is the behavior of your own people. Rather than thinking “this is what I should write about; this is the way we should be positively portrayed,” find your interest, find your passion as honestly and truthfully as possible.

What advice would you give to people who are interested in conflict writing?

History is very important. So is putting things into perspective so you are not just dealing with the immediate conflict. The back story is always relevant; it always needs to be clear. Even if it is not going to fit into your word count, it has to be very clear in your head why something has happened, whether it was a fictional event or a real event.

If you are portraying negative aspects within your own movement or your own people, one thing I often find is useful is to make sure that I have a good understanding as to why that person is behaving in a way they are, what is their history.

People are inherently the same. They are responding to circumstances. They have the same capacity of good or evil in them; it is just how they get driven into that position. It’s critical to have some sort of sympathy being built up, even if the end result is not one that you would condone.

Could you tell us a little bit about your book “Out of It?”

It’s a very specifically a Palestinian book in some ways. It is about a very specific set of circumstances, but the issues in it are very universal. The particular thing that was interesting to me was the idea of political consciousness, and how people in conflict situations deal with what space they should allow their personal lives when the political may be dominating.

The characters in my book are very middle class. They are exiled and are returnees to Palestine. They are very educated, and they want to change their country, and they want to somehow engage. But they find it very difficult to find a place between the sort of extremist opposition and the defunct leadership that is in place.
I wrote the book before the Arab Spring, but I was writing it to show a class of Arabs who are multilingual, urban, politicized urbane that were not being depicted in the media. I felt like this is a whole view of the Arab world which was just not coming across. And then when the Arab Spring started, and suddenly, there were my characters.

How is your upcoming book different from your previous one?

It’s different because it’s not about Palestine. It is a novel about living in a compound in a situation where there is a political conflict outside. It’s about how we can turn a blind eye on a crisis that is surrounding us. It’s different in terms of setting, but I think in terms of theme it is similar. It should be hopefully coming out next year, and the title is “Here We Are Now.”

Why does the Jaipur Literature Festival matter to you?

I think among writers there’s no festival you’d rather go to than Jaipur because it’s very international. It attracts the top writers of fiction and nonfiction as well as new writers, so it’s a great sort of hub to meet people. It’s a combination of being high-powered and yet very relaxed and friendly at the same time.

You’ve mentioned before the need to talk to the world outside as a sort of impetus that drives your work. How important do you think it is to talk to writers from different parts of the world?

I’m a great admirer of Ariel Dorfman’s work, and I think there are very few writers who have written in this specific zone of having to engage in politics and writing literature because a lot of people see it as a big tension. The presumption of Western literature is that it’s not political; the presumption of Palestinian literature is that it is political so you have this great tension between the two things. So to meet people who have somehow resolved in their minds the little tests they use is critical in terms of being able to write.

In terms of their take on the Palestinian issue and whether they are going to be sympathetic, you always hope that this is going to be a consequence meeting people or them reading your book, but you can never know what other influences they are exposed to and where they ideas come from. It’s a slow process to get somebody engaged with an issue that does not directly affect their lives. Writers are curious about the world, but most people are fairly incurious about things that don’t directly affect them.

Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes, always wanted to be writer but my dad wouldn’t let me. He said, “You have to have a vocation; you can’t just go and study literature.” I’m one of three girls. My older sister is an architect, my younger sister is a doctor and I’m a lawyer. My dad just sort of decided — “you’re like this kind of character and you’re like this” — and we never really challenged it.

I enjoyed doing law, and I still practice as a lawyer. It gave me a way to work in places to get the material for the book, and that’s what I wanted with it. I felt I didn’t want to just study literature and then come out and work as a writer without ever having done much else. I always wanted to write, but it took me until my 30s to actually start doing it.

(The interview and been lightly edited and condensed.)

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Yahoo sees revenue climb this year, but long road ahead






(Reuters) – Yahoo Inc forecast a modest uptick in revenue for the current year as it revamps its family of websites but Chief Executive Marissa Mayer warned it would be a long journey to revive the Internet company‘s fortunes.


In Yahoo‘s first financial outlook since Mayer became CEO in July, the company outlined a plan to trigger a “chain reaction of growth” by overhauling a dozen of its online services to increase the amount of time users spent on its websites.






It also pointed to strength in its search advertising business and progress made in improving its internal operations.


Yahoo’s shares were 3 percent higher in after hours trade after the revenue projection was disclosed during an analysts conference call, shedding some ground after earlier rising as much as 4.5 percent.


But weakness in Yahoo’s display ad business, which accounts for roughly 40 percent of the company’s total revenue, caught some analysts by surprise.


“While the road to growth is certain, it will not be immediate,” said Mayer, a former Google Inc executive and Yahoo’s third full-time CEO since September 2011.


Yahoo said that revenue, excluding fees it pays to partner websites, will range between $ 4.5 billion and $ 4.6 billion in 2013, implying an annual growth rate of 0.7 percent to 3 percent.


Finance Chief Ken Goldman also warned investors to expect “an investment phase” in the first half of the year, which he said would impact profit margins.


“What was clear from the call is that this is a long-term turnaround story,” said Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter. “We shouldn’t expect anything to just snap back and correct itself.”


During the fourth quarter, Yahoo’s net revenue increased 4 percent year-on-year to $ 1.22 billion, as search advertising sales offset a 10 percent decline in the number of display ads sold on Yahoo’s core properties.


Mayer said the decline was the result of less activity by visitors to its popular websites, such as its Web email service, and to a lesser extent due to users accessing the Web on smartphones, where Yahoo’s ad business is not as strong.


Efforts to revamp its mobile properties, begun last year with a redesign of the photo-sharing service Flickr, remain on track, said Mayer, noting that Yahoo now has 200 million monthly mobile users.


“From a monetization perspective this is still a very nascent source of revenue for us. With any platform shift, revenue always followed users and mobile will be no different,” she said.


Mayer took over after a tumultuous period at Yahoo in which former CEO Scott Thompson resigned after less than 6 months on the job over a controversy about his academic credentials and in which Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and cut his ties with the company.


Yahoo’s stock has risen roughly 30 percent since Mayer took the helm, reaching its highest levels since 2008.


Part of the stock’s rise has been driven by significant stock buybacks, using proceeds from a $ 7.6 billion deal to sell half of its 40 percent stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group, said Sameet Sinha, an analyst with B. Riley Caris.


Yahoo said it repurchased $ 1.5 billion worth of shares during the fourth quarter.


The company’s fourth-quarter net income was $ 272.3 million, or 23 cents per share, versus $ 295.6 million, or 24 cents per share in the year-ago period.


Excluding certain items, Yahoo said it had earnings per share of 32 cents, versus the average analyst expectation of 28 cents according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


For the first quarter, Yahoo said it expects revenue, excluding partner website fees, of $ 1.07 billion to $ 1.1 billion, trailing the $ 1.1 billion that Wall Street analysts expect on average.


Shares of Yahoo were up 59 cents at $ 20.90 in after-hours trading on Monday.


(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Edwina Gibbs)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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