The Death of E-Readers Is All Your Fault

So there’s a reading gadget and a reading gadget with Angry Birds Star Wars. Which do you pick? Well, you, cultured person that you are, would select the dedicated e-reader, of course, just like you would rather watch Frontline instead of Honey Boo Boo, or pick up Vanity Fair instead of Us Weekly on the checkout line. Or at least that’s what the ideal version of yourself would do. But as Amazon and Barnes & Noble are quickly discovering this year, the highbrow ideal all too often gives way to the mass-market realities. Sales of the Kindle and especially the Nook fell this holiday season, despite lower prices than more fully functioning tablets, which are distinctly on the rise. And market researchers estimate that these divergent paths will continue — The Wall Street Journal reports that e-readers sales will be cut in half, from 14.9 million per year to just 7.8 million, by 2015. But the death of the e-reader has less to do with the iPad than what’s inside of it: from tablets to TV shows and everything in between, the most high-minded of ideas for cultural consumption always seem to devolve toward mindless entertainment.

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Take Bravo, the once completely enlightened — and completely failing — network that, like Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel before they became A&E and TLC, once devoted itself to being a slightly less boring knockoff of PBS. In 1985, five years after its founding, The New York Times‘s Steve Schneider described Bravo’s success, measured then by its 350,000 subscribers, as follows: 

What has kept things afloat for the past five years has been an evolving mix of cultural programming. Nowadays, a spokesman said, approximately 70 percent of the premium service’s schedule is devoted to films, nearly all of which are either from abroad, from the fringes of American production or from times past. The remainder of the schedule is given over to the performing arts -jazz concerts, ballet, opera, modern dance and the like. From Woody Allen films to documentaries about Latin America to performances by the Pina Bausch dance troupe, the offerings range from the challenging to the downright esoteric.

All that changed when NBC bought Bravo in 2002 and gave it a makeover almost completely motivated by ratings. It started with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which in its first year delivered 3.3 million viewers per episode. Then came the much acclaimed era of Top Chef and Project Runway, which are still considered highbrow in their own way, but only in the context of their fellow reality shows like The Real Housewives. And let’s face it: Bravo is pretty much all Housewives all the time. Well, that and a show about Silicon Valley that features no computer programming at all.

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And remember The Learning Channel? It was founded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, along with NASA. Really! Then in came Discovery as the new boss, and with it American Chopper and, eventually, TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, which birthed Honey Boo Boo — not to mention major ratings. Arts & Entertainment has long been a corporate entity, but it gave way from highbrow post-Nickelodeon fare and devolved into, you know, Dog the Bounty Hunter and whatever Gene Simmons is up to these days.

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It’s all a little reminiscent of the days when Us magazine was actually a glossy movie magazine that Hollywood stars loved to pose for. The New York Times started it! Then came a partnership with Disney, and J.Lo, and on and on to the supermarket tabloid you now know as Us Weekly, one of the most successful print publications on Earth.

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So, in the slowly dwindling technological world of the e-reader and its advanced brethren, Amazon‘s Kindle is like old-school TLC and the B&N Nook is maybe a little younger and cooler, like Bravo, but still failing; the iPad, however, has Here Comes Honey Boo Boo written all over it. Not that there’s anything wrong with what Amazon and Barnes & Noble were trying to do — a small audience might enjoy a device that has novels and long biographies and maybe some newspapers and little more. But the majority of people these days want to spend their downtime with HBO Go and Netflix apps, with games and email and other ways to relax their entire brains… not just the fancy parts of it. With tablet prices falling to more affordable levels — Amazon sells a Kindle Fire for $ 159 and a Kindle Paperwhite for $ 119 — of course today’s readers are going to choose the thing that helps them go beyond boring old reading. It might not have that easy-on-the eyes screen, but the majority of time spent on tablets isn’t spent reading books but answering emails, reading the news (a shorter reading experience than an entire book), and playing games, according to Pew. Plus, the iPad has its own Kindle app, for those times when you do, after all, feel like indulging in something a bit more highbrow. Because people do, still read a lot of books. They just like doing everything else a lot more. If the death of the e-reader is nigh, maybe the age of the straight-and-narrow, undistracted smartypants isn’t far from ending, either.

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S&P 500 finishes at 5-year high on economic data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index ended at a five-year high on Friday, lifted by reports showing employers kept up a steady pace of hiring workers and the vast services sector expanded at a brisk rate.

The gains on the S&P 500 pushed the index to its highest close since December 2007 and its biggest weekly gain since December 2011.

Most of the gains came early in the holiday-shortened week, including the largest one-day rise for the index in more than a year on Wednesday after politicians struck a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 43.85 points, or 0.33 percent, to 13,435.21. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 7.10 points, or 0.49 percent, to 1,466.47. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> edged up 1.09 points, or 0.04 percent, to 3,101.66.

For the week, the S&P gained 4.6 percent, the Dow rose 3.8 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 4.8 percent to post their largest weekly percentage gains in more than a year.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, a measure of investor anxiety, dropped for a fourth straight session, giving the index a weekly decline of nearly 40 percent, its biggest weekly fall ever. The close of 13.83 on the VIX marks its lowest level since August.

In Friday's economic reports, the Labor Department said non-farm payrolls grew by 155,000 jobs last month, slightly below November's level. Gains were distributed broadly throughout the economy, from manufacturing and construction to healthcare.

Also serving to boost equities was data from the Institute for Supply Management showing U.S. service sector activity expanding the most in 10 months.

With the S&P 500 index at a five-year closing high, analysts said any gains above the index's intraday high near 1,475 in September may be harder to come by.

"We are getting to a point where we need a strong catalyst, which could be earnings, it could be three months of good economic data, it could be a variety of things," said Adam Thurgood, managing director at HighTower Advisors in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"What is going on right now is this conflicting view of fundamentals look pretty good and improving, and then you've got these negative tail risks that could blow everything up," Thurgood said.

He referred to "a fiscal superstorm brewing" of issues still left unresolved in Washington, including tough federal budget cuts and the need to raise the government's debt ceiling all within a couple of months.

The rise in payrolls shown by the jobs data did not make a dent in the U.S. unemployment rate still at 7.8 percent.

A Reuters poll on Friday of economists at Wall Street's top financial institutions showed that most expect the Fed in 2013 to end the program with which it bought Treasury debt in an effort to stimulate the economy.

A drop in Apple Inc shares of 2.6 percent to $528.36 kept pressure on the Nasdaq.

Adding to concerns about Apple's ability to produce more innovative products, rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is expected to widen its lead over Apple in global smartphone sales this year with growth of 35 percent. Market researcher Strategy Analytics said Samsung had a broad product lineup.

Eli Lilly and Co was among the biggest boost's to the S&P, up 3.7 percent to $51.56 after the pharmaceuticals maker said it expects its 2013 earnings to increase to $3.75 to $3.90 per share, excluding items, from $3.30 to $3.40 per share in 2012.

Fellow drugmaker Johnson & Johnson rose 1.2 percent to $71.55 after Deutsche Bank upgraded the Dow component to a "Buy" from a "Hold" rating. The NYSEArca pharmaceutical index <.drg> climbed 0.6 percent.

Shares of Mosaic Co gained 3.3 percent to $58.62. Excluding items, the fertilizer producer's quarterly earnings beat analysts' expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Volume was modest with about 6.07 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq, slightly below the 2012 daily average of 6.42 billion.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 2,287 to 701, while on the Nasdaq, advancers beat decliners 1,599 to 866.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)

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In Chile, Abortion Hot Line Is in Legal Gray Area

Roberto Candia for The New York Times

Volunteers for the Safe Abortion Hot Line in Chile routinely wear masks when showing support in public for the organization in a country where abortion is illegal under any circumstances.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Every time the phone rings, Angela Erpel feels her nerves swell. Sometimes it is a scared teenager on the other end, or a desperate mother of three. There are the angry ones, too, with callers playing the sounds of crying babies or sending text messages with pictures of aborted fetuses.

Then Ms. Erpel, 38, a sociologist who volunteers at Chile’s Safe Abortion Hot Line, gathers herself and settles into a familiar dialogue on the use of misoprostol, a drug that will induce a medical abortion.

“We don’t give them a moral guide or advice; we only provide information,” she said.

Since the hot line began in 2009, volunteers spread across this long, thin country have taken turns answering tense calls from women seeking information about abortion every evening from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. There have been more than 12,000 calls so far, and they continue rolling in at a steady clip.

In a country where abortion is entirely illegal, even in cases of rape or when a woman’s life is in danger, the hot line is a risky endeavor. Operating in a legal gray area, volunteers face a daunting prison sentence if a conversation veers too far from a lawyer-approved script. The hot line already has had three lawsuits brought against it, though all were eventually dropped.

According to the law, having an abortion carries a penalty of 5 to 10 years in prison, depending on the circumstances, while doctors and others who perform an abortion or assist with one could face up to 15 years, prosecutors say. In practice, however, fewer than 500 cases have been prosecuted over the last several years.

“I think there is a certain sensitivity to the social conditions behind these abortions, such as poverty or rape or teenage pregnancy,” explained Paula Vial, a lawyer and former public defender in Santiago.

Beyond the legal consequences, the 30 hot line volunteers are keenly aware of the social ramifications of taking an active role in such a polarizing issue. They wear masks when promoting the hot line at public gatherings, and are often vague about the details of their volunteer work in their daily lives. Many fear losing their jobs or driving a wedge into personal and family relationships. Indeed, Ms. Erpel was the only volunteer willing to go on the record about her work with the hot line, and even she is usually circumspect about it.

“It’s complicated,” she explained. “I’m open about being in an organization, but not necessarily that I work directly with abortion.”

Abortion was not always a clandestine affair in Chile. The current law that strictly bans it was one of the final acts of the dictatorship. In 1989, shortly before relinquishing power, Gen. Augusto Pinochet ended a tradition of legal abortion dating to 1931, in which a pregnancy that threatened a woman’s life, or a fetus that was not viable outside the womb, could be terminated. Chile’s law now is one of the strictest in the world.

By contrast, Uruguay legalized abortions in the first trimester for any reason last October, joining Guyana and Cuba as Latin American countries with broadly legalized procedures. Abortion is also legal in Mexico City. But Chile has remained a socially conservative country, after 20 years of economic growth and the election in 2006 of a woman as president.

“The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has had a very strong influence in public policy,” said Claudia Dides, a spokeswoman for the Movement for the Legal Interruption of Pregnancy.

In a pivotal case in 2008, Karen Espíndola, then 22, learned in her 12th week of pregnancy that her fetus had holoprosencephaly. Fetuses with the condition have a single-lobed brain, and most die before they are born. It is a common reason for terminating a pregnancy.

Ms. Espíndola sought an abortion, appealing to the president and setting off a national conversation over abortion. In February 2009, Ms. Espíndola gave birth to Osvaldo, who died in 2011.

“In reality he was never conscious he was alive,” she lamented. “He fought to breathe; he was fed through a tube. We all suffered a lot. Nobody here is a winner.”

Chile has witnessed a swell of liberal social movements in recent years, with gay men and lesbians pressing for the country’s first hate-crime legislation, environmentalists stalling dam-building projects in Patagonia, and students pushing for an overhaul of the education system.

Advocates contend that abortion rights sentiment bubbles near the surface as well, but the government has pushed back.

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George Lucas Engaged to Mellody Hobson

01/03/2013 at 07:35 PM EST

George Lucas and Mellody Hobson

Mike Coppola/Getty

George Lucas is following the Force – right down the aisle.

The Star Wars director, 68, is engaged to DreamWorks animation chairman Mellody Hobson, a rep for Lucasfilm confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday.

Hobson, 43, has been dating Lucas since 2006. This will be her first marriage and Lucas's second; he previously was married to film editor Marcia Lou Griffin. The exes adopted a daughter Amanda before their 1983 divorce. Lucas went on to adopt two more children.

Lucas's fiancée is also a contributor to Good Morning America's financial segments and has received many honors, including a 2002 listing as one of Esquire's "Best and Brightest" in America.

Lucas has made headlines of his own, recently donating to an education foundation much of the $4 billion from his sale of Lucasfilm to Disney.

According to THR, Lucas said at the time, "As I start a new chapter in my life, it is gratifying that I have the opportunity to devote more time and resources to philanthropy."

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CDC: 1 in 24 admit nodding off while driving

NEW YORK (AP) — This could give you nightmares: 1 in 24 U.S. adults say they recently fell asleep while driving.

And health officials behind the study think the number is probably higher. That's because some people don't realize it when they nod off for a second or two behind the wheel.

"If I'm on the road, I'd be a little worried about the other drivers," said the study's lead author, Anne Wheaton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the CDC study released Thursday, about 4 percent of U.S. adults said they nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month. Some earlier studies reached a similar conclusion, but the CDC telephone survey of 147,000 adults was far larger. It was conducted in 19 states and the District of Columbia in 2009 and 2010.

CDC researchers found drowsy driving was more common in men, people ages 25 to 34, those who averaged less than six hours of sleep each night, and — for some unexplained reason — Texans.

Wheaton said it's possible the Texas survey sample included larger numbers of sleep-deprived young adults or apnea-suffering overweight people.

Most of the CDC findings are not surprising to those who study this problem.

"A lot of people are getting insufficient sleep," said Dr. Gregory Belenky, director of Washington State University's Sleep and Performance Research Center in Spokane.

The government estimates that about 3 percent of fatal traffic crashes involve drowsy drivers, but other estimates have put that number as high as 33 percent.

Warning signs of drowsy driving: Feeling very tired, not remembering the last mile or two, or drifting onto rumble strips on the side of the road. That signals a driver should get off the road and rest, Wheaton said.

Even a brief moment nodding off can be extremely dangerous, she noted. At 60 mph, a single second translates to speeding along for 88 feet — the length of two school buses.

To prevent drowsy driving, health officials recommend getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, treating any sleep disorders and not drinking alcohol before getting behind the wheel.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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Asian shares drop on Fed minutes, dollar extends gain

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares fell on Friday, tracking overnight weakness in global equities after senior Federal Reserve officials expressed concerns about continuing to expand stimulative bond buying, but the dollar extended gains as U.S. debt yields rose.

Minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting released on Thursday showed some voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee were increasingly concerned about the potential risks of the Fed's asset purchases on financial markets, even if it looked set to continue an open-ended stimulus program for now.

The Fed's asset-buying policy has been pivotal in underpinning investor risk appetite and supporting global equities, so the more hawkish Fed minutes unnerved financial markets on Thursday, driving benchmark U.S. Treasury yields up to a near eight-month high and weighing on equities and oil, while lifting the dollar.

The dollar was also bolstered by data showing U.S. private-sector hiring improved in December, raising hopes for a strong monthly payrolls report due later in the day, a key gauge to the U.S. economy and the Fed's future policy course.

The rise in the dollar hit precious metals and oil on Friday as a firmer dollar makes dollar-based assets more expensive for non-dollar holders.

The Fed's minutes prompted investors to book profits from rallies immediately after U.S. lawmakers earlier this week narrowly avoided falling off the "fiscal cliff" of automatic taxes increases and spending cuts, which risked derailing the economy.

"Market moves largely reflect positioning after the recent rallies and before the nonfarm payrolls, which could tip the markets either way," said Yuji Saito, director of foreign exchange at Credit Agricole in Tokyo.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> slid 0.8 percent, after scaling its highest since August 2011 on Thursday.

Australian shares <.axjo> slipped 0.4 percent, retreating from a two-day rally which took shares to their highest in more than 19 months on Thursday. Hong Kong shares <.hsi> tumbled 0.8 percent but Shanghai shares <.ssec> inched up 0.2 percent.

The dollar hit its highest since July 2010 against the yen at 87.78 while the euro fell to a three-week low of $1.3019 on Friday. The U.S. dollar <.dxy> also touched a near four-week high against a basket of major currencies.

"Dollar-positive momentum is solid as the fiscal cliff was averted, the overnight data was good and yields were rising. I won't be surprised to see the dollar rise to 90 yen soon," said Hiroshi Maeba, head of FX trading Japan for UBS in Tokyo.

"Despite repeated Japanese intervention, the dollar had refused to strengthen in the past, but now, it's advancing without any action, suggesting the direction has completely changed to support continued dollar buying," Maeba said.

The yen's tumble pushed Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock average <.n225> up 2.6 percent to its highest since March 2011, outshining the Asian regional bourses. Japanese markets were closed from December 31 to January 3 for the new year's holidays. <.t/>

Japanese government bonds skidded on their first trading day of 2013, with benchmark yields hitting a 3 1/2-month high in line with surging Japanese equities and a drop in U.S. Treasuries prices.

FISCAL CLIFF VS DATA

U.S. President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans face tough talks on spending cuts and an increase in the nation's debt limit as the hard-fought deal to avert the fiscal cliff covered only taxes and delayed decisions on expenditures until March 1.

But investor sentiment was supported by recent data showing activity in China's services sector and at U.S. factories expanded in December, which brightened the outlook for global growth.

"The minutes have added a fresh degree of uncertainty into the investment climate, which is likely to mean a steeper yield curve. But equity investors should take heart from the fact that the Fed's perception is qualified on an improving economy," Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co in New York, said in a note to clients.

China's services sector saw its slowest rate of expansion in nearly a year and a half in December, a private sector survey showed on Friday, but underlying growth revival remained intact, even if it were modest.

The U.S. economy likely added 150,000 jobs in December, according to a Reuters survey, up from 146,000 in November. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.7 percent.

Resolution of the U.S. fiscal cliff crisis could spell trouble for some Asian assets as investors could start to shift some money out of overpriced Asian investments in favor of the U.S. on brightening prospects for American stocks.

U.S. crude fell 0.8 percent to $92.17 a barrel while Brent shed 0.7 percent to $111.38.

U.S. gold futures for February dropped more than 1 percent to around $1,645 an ounce on Friday while spot gold also fell 1 percent to around $1,645, dragging silver down more than 2 percent to $29.48.

Despite the decline in equities markets, sentiment in Asian credit markets remained upbeat, with the spread on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index narrowing by two basis points.

(Editing by Eric Meijer)

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Spain’s Chinese Immigrants Thrive in Tough Economy

BARCELONA, Spain — When Jiajia Wang’s parents first moved to Barcelona from China in the 1990s, they had no working papers and spoke no Spanish. The family ate eggs to survive. Her mother and father worked 12-hour days at a Chinese restaurant.

After five years, they bought a restaurant of their own with money borrowed from relatives, interest-free. She and her brother washed the dishes. Her parents slept on a mattress in the bathroom of their cramped apartment so that the children could study at night in the other room.

Today, while Spanish youth unemployment hovers around 50 percent, Ms. Wang, 24, who studied economics at Harvard on a one-year fellowship, juggles four jobs: teaching Mandarin, advising Chinese investors in Spain, running a publishing house and writing romantic novels. She sends home €1,000, or about $1,300, a month to support her parents, who retired last year.

Her family’s story is telling of the ways many of Spain’s 170,000 Chinese immigrants have managed not only to weather a tough economy but even to thrive, aided by intense labor and a strong Confucian model of family loyalty, while joblessness and cuts to government services have left other Spaniards struggling.

“The Chinese family is less dependent on the government because the family is the welfare state, the bank and social services, all wrapped in one,” Ms. Wang said.

“For Chinese people who lived through hardship back home,” she added, “working 16-hour days is nothing, and that has made us more resilient during the crisis.”

The Spanish government itself seems to have recognized the importance of this success. So determined is it to attract Chinese immigrants that in November it passed a law offering residency permits to foreigners who buy homes worth more than €160,000, with the specific aim of drawing Chinese and Russian investment, lawmakers said.

As hard-hit Spaniards struggle to keep both their jobs and their homes, Spain’s Chinese immigrants in Barcelona and Madrid are starting businesses and buying distressed properties from the bursting of Spain’s housing bubble.

Of the 8,613 foreigners who started businesses in the past 10 months, 30 percent, or 2,569 were Chinese, according to the National Federation of Self-Employed Workers.

InfoChina Gestión, a real estate company based in Madrid that focuses on Chinese investors, said the number of houses sold for €70,000 to €100,000 to Chinese nearly doubled last year, to 813. Mr. House, a real estate company in Madrid, said it was selling at least 10 houses a month to Chinese, a majority of whom paid at least 80 percent in cash.

The types of work many Chinese immigrants gravitate toward helps explain their success as much as their work ethic. In a time of economic crisis, ubiquitous low-margin Chinese-owned bazaars, hairdressers and supermarkets have become a lure for cost-conscious Spanish consumers.

“If it wasn’t for the Chinese shops, it would be harder to scrape by,” said Ester Maduerga, 30, a saleswoman at a sports shoe store, as she scanned the notepads, leather belts and plastic alligators at One Hundred and More, a Chinese-owned bazaar here.

Xi Li He, 26, the bazaar’s manager and cashier, said the business was flourishing, in part because he had reduced prices by importing inexpensive goods from China. When Mr. Xi, fresh from business school, tried to take a job at a large Spanish retailer, he said his mother doubled his salary.

That kind of success by Chinese immigrants has provided a beachhead of sorts for further investment from China that has pumped some life into an otherwise moribund Spanish economy.

Before Spain’s crisis exploded in 2008, Chinese foreign investment in Spain was negligible. By last year, it had grown to €70 million, according to ICEX, a government investment agency.

Ivana Casaburi, a professor of international marketing at Esade business school in Barcelona, said Chinese companies were being drawn to Spain because it offered a low-cost gateway to the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Isla Ramos Chaves, an executive at the Chinese computer maker Lenovo, said that even with the crisis, Spain — the fourth-largest economy in the euro zone — remained a market that Chinese companies were eager to tap. She added that Chinese multinationals in Spain were proving robust, in part because they were anchored by a huge domestic market back home.

Executives at Haier, the Chinese-owned appliance maker, said the economic crisis, rather than being a deterrent, had provided an opportunity, as Spaniards were willing to consider competitively priced washing machines and air-conditioners, even if their brands were less well known.

“I am not sure we would have been as successful if the market was stable and growing,” said Santiago Belenguer, the general manager of Haier’s Spanish operations.

The success of Chinese newcomers to Spain has not spawned the kind of anti-immigrant backlash seen in some hard-pressed parts of Europe like Greece. Immigration experts said Spain’s relatively welcoming attitude reflected its new openness after the repression of the Franco years, when the country was a nation of emigration. Since the crisis, the return of thousands of Latin American immigrants to their home countries from Spain has also relieved pressure on the work force.

That does not mean everyone has championed the success of the Chinese, and some complain of stereotyping and being targeted by law enforcement.

In October, the police arrested 80 people in a nationwide crackdown on Chinese criminal gangs engaged in money-laundering and tax evasion. The police said the low price of Chinese products was being abetted by some importers not declaring shipments from China, thereby avoiding taxes.

Here in Barcelona, José Rodríguez, the owner of A Porta Galega, a traditional tapas cafe in the hip neighborhood of Eixample, said cut-rate prices for everything from beer to shampoo at Chinese-owned shops made it impossible for Spaniards to compete. At least a dozen Chinese-owned tapas bars are scattered along his block.

Still, he added, he would sell his own restaurant to Chinese buyers, “for the right price.”

Silvia Taulés contributed reporting.

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Jennie Garth Wants to Date a Man with 'Positive Energy'

01/02/2013 at 07:10 PM EST

When it comes to her current love life, Jennie Garth has a new mantra.

"I'm learning to date again," the actress, who split from husband Peter Facinelli in March 2012, tells Health in its January issue, "[and] looks aren't important to me anymore. ... I like positive energy."

The actress, who dropped 30 lbs. last year, plans to keep her health a priority in 2013.

"Every day, I just renew my healthy choices," she says. "I feel really good about myself now, and I don't want to do anything to change that."

That means avoiding trendy diets or weight-loss gimmicks.

"My biggest regret is putting my body through fad diets: Atkins, cleanses, the hCG diet," Garth, 40, says. "I lost like 18 lbs., but it came right back. The worst was fasting with colonics for three or four days. It was the most horrifying experience ever."

In addition to her body, Garth says she's trying to maintain a positive outlook, even when times are tough.

"When I'm in excruciating pain, like with what I've been through with my breakup and that grief and loss that's just immobilizing, it helps to remember that it only lasts for 13 to 15 minutes, max," she tells Health. "And then it's over."

"Your mind is ready to go to something else," Garth continues. "You might come back to it, but it helps to just know that that pain is not going to last forever."

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Online:

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

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

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Used to Hardship, Latvia Accepts Austerity, and Its Pain Eases

RIGA, Latvia — When a credit-fueled economic boom turned to bust in this tiny Baltic nation in 2008, Didzis Krumins, who ran a small architectural company, fired his staff one by one and then shut down the business. He watched in dismay as Latvia’s misery deepened under a harsh austerity drive that scythed wages, jobs and state financing for schools and hospitals.

But instead of taking to the streets to protest the cuts, Mr. Krumins, whose newborn child, in the meantime, needed major surgery, bought a tractor and began hauling wood to heating plants that needed fuel. Then, as Latvia’s economy began to pull out of its nose-dive, he returned to architecture and today employs 15 people — five more than he had before. “We have a different mentality here,” he said.

Latvia, feted by fans of austerity as the country-that-can and an example for countries like Greece that can’t, has provided a rare boost to champions of the proposition that pain pays.

Hardship has long been common here — and still is. But in just four years, the country has gone from the European Union’s worst economic disaster zone to a model of what the International Monetary Fund hails as the healing properties of deep budget cuts. Latvia’s economy, after shriveling by more than 20 percent from its peak, grew by about 5 percent last year, making it the best performer in the 27-nation European Union. Its budget deficit is down sharply and exports are soaring.

“We are here to celebrate your achievements,” Christine Lagarde, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, told a conference in Riga, the capital, this past summer. The fund, which along with the European Union financed a $7.5 billion bailout for the country at the end of 2008, is “proud to have been part of Latvia’s success story,” she said.

When Latvia’s economy first crumbled, it wrestled with many of the same problems faced since by other troubled European nations: a growing hole in government finances, a banking crisis, falling competitiveness and big debts — though most of these were private rather than public as in Greece.

Now its abrupt turn for the better has put a spotlight on a ticklish question for those who look to orthodox economics for a solution to Europe’s wider economic woes: Instead of obeying any universal laws of economic gravity, do different people respond differently to the same forces?

Latvian businessmen applaud the government’s approach but doubt it would work elsewhere.

“Economics is not a science. Most of it is in people’s heads,” said Normunds Bergs, chief executive of SAF Tehnika, a manufacturer that cut management salaries by 30 percent. “Science says that water starts to boil at 100 degrees Celsius; there is no such predictability in economics.”

In Greece and Spain, cuts in salaries, jobs and state services have pushed tempers beyond the boiling point, with angry citizens staging frequent protests and strikes. Britain, Portugal, Italy and also Latvia’s neighbor Lithuania, meanwhile, have bubbled with discontent over austerity.

But in Latvia, where the government laid off a third of its civil servants, slashed wages for the rest and sharply reduced support for hospitals, people mostly accepted the bitter medicine. Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, who presided over the austerity, was re-elected, not thrown out of office, as many of his counterparts elsewhere have been.

The cuts calmed fears on financial markets that the country was about to go bankrupt, and this meant that the government and private companies could again get the loans they needed to stay afloat. At the same time, private businesses followed the government in slashing wages, which made the country’s labor force more competitive by reducing the prices of its goods. As exports grew, companies began to rehire workers.

Economic gains have still left 30.9 percent of Latvia’s population “severely materially deprived,” according to 2011 data released in December by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, second only to Bulgaria. Unemployment has fallen from more than 20 percent in early 2010, but was still 14.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012, according to Eurostat, and closer to 17 percent if “discouraged workers” are included. This is far below the more than 25 percent jobless rate in Greece and Spain but a serious problem nonetheless.

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