With an air kiss or empty hug, Te’oing is Twitter craze

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame linebacker entangled in a girlfriend hoax that gives a whole new meaning to the term “air kiss,” is inspiring a new fad racing through social media: Te’oing.

An avalanche of pictures of people hugging empty chairs or puckering up to an otherwise empty room were posted to Twitter with the hashtag #Te’oing days after the college football star’s story about his girlfriend’s cancer death was exposed as a fraud. Not only did she never have leukemia, she never existed.

Notre Dame officials said Te’o told them he had been duped into believing he had an online relationship with the fictitious woman.

“Te’oing – Mile High Club edition” read one tweet with a photo of a man hugging the air in an airplane bathroom, an apparent reference to the whispered practice of having sex in mid-flight.

Clint Eastwood was hailed in several tweets as a “Te’oing” pioneer for the actor’s interlude with an empty chair at the 2012 Republican Convention. Other tweets showed Ronald McDonald Te’oing on his cozy bench and President Barack Obama spending quality time Te’oing with a vacant seat.

“Just some afternoon bubbly with my baby” said one Te’oing tweet with a photo of a man clinking his champagne flute against another that appeared to be suspended in mid-air.

The snarky social media frenzy recalled another similar trend called the “Tebowing,” named for New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow, who frequently kneeled for on-field prayers and inspired copy-cat poses by people whose pictures flooded social media last year.

In its own riff on emptiness and romance, a Kentucky minor league baseball team, the Florence Freedom, has announced it will give away Manti Te’o Girlfriend Bobblehead dolls – actually empty boxes – to the first 1,000 fans at the May 23 game.

One section of the Florence, Kentucky, stadium has been reserved “for fans to sit with their imaginary friends, girlfriends/boyfriends or spouses” who may be caught on the “pretend kiss cam” and are invited to compete in an air guitar contest or an imaginary food fight.

(Writing by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Vicki Allen)

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Channing Tatum & Jenna Dewan-Tatum Share a Fresh, Healthy Lunch Date

Caught in the Act

01/18/2013 at 01:35 PM EST

Jenna Dewan-Tatum and Channing Tatum

FameFlynet

Eating for three?

Parents-to-be Jenna Dewan-Tatum and husband Channing, fresh from a beach holiday in St. Barts, enjoyed a casual lunch date together on Wednesday.

The couple, who wed in 2009 and announced their happy baby news in mid-December, shared their meal at Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop in Beverly Hills.

Jenna, 32, went with healthy eating, dining on the restaurant's seasonal salad (kale, tangerine, dried blueberry, almonds and citrus vinagrette) while PEOPLE's Sexiest Man Alive, also 32 – and an Alabama native – chose more hearty Southern fare, specifically a barbecue chicken sandwich.

"They were a sweet couple and she's got a little bump too," said an onlooker.
– Jennifer Garcia

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Study: NYC better than LA at cutting kids' obesity

NEW YORK (AP) — A new study shows New York City is doing better than Los Angeles in the battle against childhood obesity, at least for low-income children.

From 2003 to 2011, obesity rates for poor children dropped in New York to around 16 percent. But they rose in Los Angeles and ended at about 20 percent.

The researchers focused on children ages 3 and 4 enrolled in a government program that provides food and other services to women and their young children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the study Thursday.

The authors noted that the Los Angeles program has many more Mexican-American kids. Obesity is more common in Mexican-American boys than in white or black kids.

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Data, eBay earnings lift Wall Street to five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street rose on Thursday, with the S&P 500 climbing to a five-year intraday high, on improved housing and jobs data along with better-than-expected results from online marketplace eBay .

The data showed the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell to a five-year low last week, while groundbreaking for homes rose to the fastest pace in four years last month.

Strength in the housing and labor markets is key to sustained growth and higher corporate profits. Job market improvement helps stimulate consumer spending while a recovery in housing means more purchases of appliances, furniture and other household goods as well as a source of employment.

"The real estate numbers all look good, sales looked good, prices looked good, housing starts looked good," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"The only thing that still doesn't look really good in my mind are the employment numbers but even the claims were pretty good and inflation seems to be nonexistent so what's to stop the party from going?"

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 82.97 points, or 0.61 percent, to 13,594.20. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> advanced 8.31 points, or 0.56 percent, to 1,480.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> rose 17.12 points, or 0.55 percent, to 3,134.66.

PulteGroup Inc shares gained 4.9 percent to $20.29 and Toll Brothers Inc advanced 2.2 percent to $35.68. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> climbed 2.1 percent.

EBay's shares rose 3 percent to $54.47 a day after it reported holiday quarter results that just beat Wall Street expectations. It gave a 2013 forecast that was within analysts' estimates.

The S&P is on track for its third consecutive advance, which pushed the index above an intraday peak set in September to its highest since December 2007.

But gains were tempered by weakness in the financial sector, with Bank of America down 4.3 percent to $11.27 and Citigroup off 3 percent to $41.22 after they posted their results.

Bank of America's fourth-quarter profit fell as it took more charges to clean up mortgage-related problems. Citigroup posted $2.32 billion of charges for layoffs and lawsuits, while its new chief executive cautioned the bank needed more time to deal with its problems.

The S&P financial sector index <.spsy> slipped 0.14 percent as the only one of the 10 major S&P sectors to decline.

S&P 500 corporate earnings for the fourth quarter are expected to rise 2.3 percent, Thomson Reuters data showed. Expectations for the quarter have fallen considerably since October when a 9.9 percent gain was estimated.

With investors anticipating the current earnings season to be lackluster, their focus will be on the corporate earnings outlook for the months ahead, analysts said.

Shares of Boeing extended recent declines after the United States and other countries grounded the company's new 787 Dreamliner after a second incident involving battery failure. Boeing shed 0.4 percent to $74.05 and is down 1.5 percent for the week so far.

Market breadth was solid, with advancers outpacing decliners on the New York Stock Exchange 2,234 to 650, while on the Nasdaq the ratio was 1,602 to 762 in favor of advancing stocks.

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

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Algeria Confirms Hostage Deaths in Rescue Raid

BAMAKO, Mali — Kidnappers and at least some of their hostages were killed on Thursday as Algerian forces assaulted a heavily armed group of Islamist extremists holding dozens of captives, including Americans and other foreigners, in a remote gas field facility in the Algerian desert, the Algerian government announced.

Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign hostages on Wednesday.

In a statement on national radio, the communications minister, Mohand Saïd Oublaïd, said that many of the hostages had been freed, but he warned that the military assault was not yet complete and that some captives remained trapped inside the facility.

“The operation resulted in the neutralization of a large number of terrorists and the liberation of a considerable number of hostages,” Mr. Oublaïd said. “Unfortunately, we deplore also the death of some, as well as some who were wounded. We do not have final numbers.”

He also said “the operation is ongoing, given the complexity of the site, to liberate the rest of the hostages and those who are trapped inside.”

The announcement was the most detailed official information given by Algeria on the crisis. It began more than 24 hours earlier when Islamist militants seized the hostages at the internationally managed gas field in the Sahara near the Libyan border, in what they called retaliation for the French military intervention in neighboring Mali. The seizure of the gas field was one of the boldest abductions of foreign workers in recent years.

Unconfirmed news reports earlier on Thursday, quoting a statement reportedly from the hostage takers, said the Algerian military assault had left 35 hostages and 15 kidnappers dead. One Algerian government official called those numbers “exaggerated.”

The communications minister said the military assault force sent to end the gas-field siege had first sought a peaceful end.

“But confronted with the determination of the heavily armed terrorist group, our armed forces were forced to surround the site and fire warning shots,” he said. “In front of the stubborn refusal of these terrorists to heed these warnings and confronted with their evident desire to leave Algeria with the foreign hostages to then use them as a bargaining chip, an assault was launched this Thursday at the end of the morning.”

The minister’s announcement came as foreign governments, including the United States, were seeking clarity on the fate of their citizens trapped inside the gas-field facility. There was no sign that the Algerians had given prior notice to any of the countries whose citizens were among the hostages.

A senior American official said Pentagon aides traveling in London with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta were struggling to obtain basic information about the Algerian raid, and there were unconfirmed reports that an American Predator drone was monitoring the gas-field site.

The senior official said that perhaps seven to eight Americans were among the hostages — the first official confirmation of the number of Americans held captive — and that he did not know if any had been killed in the rescue operation.

David Cameron, the prime minister of Britain, said through a spokesman that his office had not been told ahead of time, an implicit criticism of the Algerian government. “The Algerians are aware that we would have preferred to have been consulted in advance,” the spokesman said.

Japan expressed even stronger concern, saying Algeria had not only failed to advise of the operation ahead of time, but that Japan had also asked Algeria to halt the operation because it was endangering the hostages.

“We asked Algeria to put human lives first and asked Algeria to strictly refrain,” the chief Cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as telling his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmalek Sellal, by telephone late Thursday.

The situation is “very confused,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Paris and was “evolving hour by hour.” Mr. Hollande confirmed for the first time officially that French citizens were among the captives.

The kidnapping in Algeria was a retaliation for the continuing French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali that has escalated into a much broader conflict, now enmeshing the United States and other countries with citizens held hostage. Reuters said the survivors of the Algerian assault included hostages from the United States, Belgium, Japan and Britain. The full extent of the casualties was not immediately clear.

News agencies in Algeria and neighboring Mauritania said the helicopters may have attacked when the kidnappers sought to move their hostages from one part of the installation to another.

Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako, and Alan Cowell and Scott Sayare from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Clifford Krauss from Houston, Rick Gladstone from New York, Elisabeth Bumiller and John F. Burns from London, Steven Erlanger from Paris, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo and Clifford Krauss from Houston.

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Amazon holiday results to show sales tax impact

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Acting as a tax collector may have hurt Amazon.com, Inc’s holiday sales analysts and industry executives said, but they expect to know more when the internet retailer reports its fourth-quarter results on January 29.

Best Buy Co., an archrival of Amazon in consumer electronics, saw holiday online sales increase in three states where Amazon started collecting sales tax ahead of the period.

“There was a little softness in states where Amazon is now collecting sales tax,” said R.J. Hottovy, an equity analyst at Morningstar. “That isn’t surprising to me. It levels the playing field for brick-and-mortar retailers.”

Critics of Amazon argued it had an unfair advantage because most retailers have had to collect state sales tax on online sales for years because they have stores and other physical operations in these locations.

But many states, hungry for extra tax revenue in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, introduced new laws requiring that Internet-only retailers also collect sales tax. Brick-and-mortar retailers hope the requirement will reduce Amazon’s price advantage and help them recoup lost sales.

CHANNELADVISOR DATA

Amazon, the world’s biggest Internet retailer, began collecting sales tax of 7.25 percent to 9.75 percent in California on Sept 15, about two weeks before the start of the fourth-quarter. Third-party sellers on Amazon.com saw a drop in sales during the quarter, compared to other states, according to an analysis by e-commerce firm ChannelAdvisor.

It also started collecting sales tax in Pennsylvania in September and in Texas in July.

Amazon’s fourth-quarter results should provide clues on whether consumers changed their shopping habits when faced with higher taxes on their purchases from the company’s website.

ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more online, analyzed its clients’ sales on Amazon.com in California, and compared them to other states before and after the sales tax kicked in.

Before Amazon began collecting the tax in California, ChannelAdvisor client sales were 5 percent to 10 percent above other states. The week before the September 15 start of the tax, sales spiked as high as 70 percent compared to other states.

“The surge before the tax went into effect was much larger than I thought it would be,” said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor. “Californians definitely bought a lot in the three or four days before the tax went into effect.”

After Amazon began collecting tax, its California sales leveled with other states. Then, in early November, they slipped as much as 10 percent below other states, ChannelAdvisor data showed.

During one of the busiest holiday periods, in late November and early December, sales dipped further in California vs other states. Toward the end of the holiday period, client sales in California recovered, the data showed.

“There was a sales impact of about 10 percent at the worst point of the dip,” Wingo said. EBay, another Amazon rival, is an investor in ChannelAdvisor. Wingo also owned Amazon shares, but sold them in the fourth quarter for personal tax-related reasons.

Amazon’s tax collection in California had the most impact on fourth-quarter sales of more expensive items priced at $ 200 to $ 250, Wingo said.

PRICES, PROFIT

Amazon probably lowered prices by 8 percent to 9 percent on items most affected by this, although it is tricky to separate such reductions from the usual holiday season promotions that were also happening, Wingo said.

The extra price competition may dent Amazon’s profitability in the fourth quarter, Morningstar’s Hottovy said.

Amazon is expected to make 52 cents a share in the fourth quarter, on revenue of $ 22.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. In late October, the company forecast operating results ranging from a profit of $ 310 million to a loss of $ 490 million.

Hottovy expects $ 22.4 billion in revenue and an operating loss of $ 210 million, or a $ 135 million loss after excluding stock-based compensation and other operating expenses.

BEST BUY

In California, Texas and Pennsylvania, Best Buy said it saw a 4 percent to 6 percent increase in online sales during the holiday versus the rest of its chain.

The retailer also saw an increase of 6 percent to 9 percent in online orders that are picked up in its stores in those three states compared with the rest of its chain.

Overall, Best Buy reported better-than-expected holiday sales last week, sending its shares up more than 10 percent.

“This makes Amazon equal to everyone else. They no longer have that sales tax advantage,” said Anne Zybowski, vice president of retail insights at Kantar Retail. “If this had happened to Amazon when they were just a bookseller years ago, they may not be as big as they are now.

Despite the tax changes, Amazon’s consumer electronics prices were still at least 5 percent below Best Buy’s during the holiday season, Zybowski said. But Best Buy may have benefited from even a small change in this area.

“Particularly in consumer electronics, any narrowing of Amazon’s price advantage at the margin is important because Best Buy brings service and other shopper benefits to the category,” she said.

Best Buy will take away people’s old TVs when they buy a new one and the company’s Geek Squad service will install devices in shoppers’ homes, services Amazon does not provide, she noted.

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment when asked if the company saw an impact on fourth-quarter sales from the collection of sales taxes in the three states.

In the past, Amazon executives have said there was little or no impact from such changes in other regions.

Several analysts have argued that shoppers use Amazon for its vast product selection and convenient, fast shipping and returns, and not just its low prices.

“While not great for Amazon, it’s just one of many consumer benefits its service offers,” said Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners. “And while there may be early effects from this change, I still see usage trends remaining in Amazon’s favor.”

(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Holly Madison Is Ready to Get Daughter's Nursery Started

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/17/2013 at 01:00 PM ET

AKM-GSI

As usual, Holly Madison was all smiles on Wednesday. But don’t let her look deceive you — due in seven weeks, the former E! star is feeling a bit petulant.

Though she’s been preparing for the arrival of her daughter, Madison tells PEOPLE at the grand opening of Andrea’s at the Wynn in Las Vegas that she’s “stressing out because I’m supposed to be moving.”

“I need to get the nursery together, so I’m getting really impatient,” she explains.

“It’s going to be Alice In Wonderland-themed and I’m painting all these big murals so you feel like Alice when you walk in — all the tall flowers and all the caterpillar leaves. It’s going to take days to do it.”

Following a dispute about her doghouse with her current homeowners association, Madison, 33, is hoping to be settled in her new home sooner rather than later.

“I’m so antsy to get it done because I feel like the baby is going to come before I get a chance to get in there,” she says. “I’m supposed to be due the first week of March but she’s just going to come whenever she wants to come, so I don’t pay attention to that. I’m ready anytime.”

Luckily, the pregnancy has been smooth sailing overall, and Madison only craves fruit juices.

“I’m eating healthier than I normally would,” she notes. “I’ve been really lucky and feeling good. No problems.”

– Mark Gray

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ER visits tied to energy drinks double since 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A new government survey suggests the number of people seeking emergency treatment after consuming energy drinks has doubled nationwide during the past four years, the same period in which the supercharged drink industry has surged in popularity in convenience stores, bars and on college campuses.

From 2007 to 2011, the government estimates the number of emergency room visits involving the neon-labeled beverages shot up from about 10,000 to more than 20,000. Most of those cases involved teens or young adults, according to a survey of the nation's hospitals released late last week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The report doesn't specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency room but calls energy drink consumption a "rising public health problem" that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care.

Several emergency physicians said they had seen a clear uptick in the number of patients suffering from irregular heartbeats, anxiety and heart attacks who said they had recently downed an energy drink.

More than half of the patients considered in the survey who wound up in the emergency room told doctors they had downed only energy drinks. In 2011, about 42 percent of the cases involved energy drinks in combination with alcohol or drugs, such as the stimulants Adderall or Ritalin.

"A lot of people don't realize the strength of these things. I had someone come in recently who had drunk three energy drinks in an hour, which is the equivalent of 15 cups of coffee," said Howard Mell, an emergency physician in the suburbs of Cleveland, who serves as a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. "Essentially he gave himself a stress test and thankfully he passed. But if he had a weak heart or suffered from coronary disease and didn't know it, this could have precipitated very bad things."

The findings came as concerns over energy drinks have intensified following reports last fall of 18 deaths possibly tied to the drinks — including a 14-year-old Maryland girl who died after drinking two large cans of Monster Energy drinks. Monster does not believe its products were responsible for the death.

Two senators are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to investigate safety concerns about energy drinks and their ingredients.

The energy drink industry says its drinks are safe and there is no proof linking its products to the adverse reactions.

Late last year, the FDA asked the U.S. Health and Human Services to update the figures its substance abuse research arm compiles about emergency room visits tied to energy drinks.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's survey was based on responses it receives from about 230 hospitals each year, a representative sample of about 5 percent of emergency departments nationwide. The agency then uses those responses to estimate the number of energy drink-related emergency department visits nationwide.

The more than 20,000 cases estimated for 2011 represent a small portion of the annual 136 million emergency room visits tracked by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA said it was considering the findings and pressing for more details as it undertakes a broad review of the safety of energy drinks and related ingredients this spring.

"We will examine this additional information ... as a part of our ongoing investigation into potential safety issues surrounding the use of energy-drink products," FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in a statement.

Beverage manufacturers fired back at the survey, saying the statistics were misleading and taken out of context.

"This report does not share information about the overall health of those who may have consumed energy drinks, or what symptoms brought them to the ER in the first place," the American Beverage Association said in a statement. "There is no basis by which to understand the overall caffeine intake of any of these individuals — from all sources."

Energy drinks remain a small part of the carbonated soft drinks market, representing only 3.3 percent of sales volume, according to the industry tracker Beverage Digest. Even as soda consumption has flagged in recent years, energy drinks sales are growing rapidly.

In 2011, sales volume for energy drinks rose by almost 17 percent, with the top three companies — Monster, Red Bull and Rockstar — each logging double-digit gains, Beverage Digest found. The drinks are often marketed at sporting events that are popular among younger people such as surfing and skateboarding.

From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which data was available, people from 18 to 25 were the most common age group seeking emergency treatment for energy drink-related reactions, the report found.

"We were really concerned to find that in four years the number of emergency department visits almost doubled, and these drinks are largely marketed to younger people," said Al Woodward, a senior statistical analyst with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration who worked on the report.

Emergency physician Steve Sun said he had seen an increase in such cases at the Catholic hospital where he works on the edge of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

"I saw one young man who had mixed energy drinks with alcohol and we had to admit him to the hospital because he was so dehydrated he had renal failure," Sun said. "Because he was young he did well in the hospital, but if another patient had had underlying coronary artery disease, it could have led to a heart attack."

___

Follow Garance Burke on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garanceburke

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Wall Street flat as Apple gains; Boeing drags Dow

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks held near the unchanged mark on Wednesday as concerns about global economic growth and a drop in Boeing shares offset strong bank results and gains in technology stocks.

Goldman Sachs shares hit their highest level since May 31, 2011 as earnings nearly tripled on increased revenue from dealmaking and lower compensation expenses, while JPMorgan Chase said fourth-quarter net income jumped 53 percent and earnings for 2012 set a record.

JPMorgan shares edged up 0.2 percent at $46.44 and Goldman was up 3.5 percent to $140.27. The KBW bank index <.bkx> gained 0.3 percent.

But with only 37 companies in the S&P 500 having reported earnings so far this season, investors are exercising caution until signs of growth can emerge.

According to Thomson Reuters data, S&P 500 earnings growth is now seen up 2.2 percent from a year ago, Thomson Reuters data showed.

"We didn't have much in the way of earnings, we had some of the big banks, but you've got the heart of earnings season coming up and people are sort of on the sidelines here," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York.

A slow economic recovery in developed nations is holding back the global economy, the World Bank said on Tuesday, as it sharply scaled back its forecast for world growth in 2013 to 2.4 percent from an earlier forecast of 3.0 percent.

Shares of Dow component Boeing fell 3.3 percent to $74.39, the biggest drag on the Dow, on concerns about its new Dreamliner passenger jets. Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of 787s after an emergency landing, adding to safety concerns triggered by a series of recent incidents.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 35.95 points, or 0.27 percent, to 13,498.94. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> shed 1.60 points, or 0.11 percent, to 1,470.74. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 2.91 points, or 0.09 percent, to 3,113.68.

Losses were curbed on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq moved higher on a bounce in Apple shares, which were up 3.6 percent at $503.31 after losses in three straight sessions. Morgan Stanley stamped the tech giant as a "best idea," citing overblown concerns about iPhone shipments. The S&P technology sector index <.splrct> gained 0.5 percent.

"Apple rebounding certainly helps the market - if Apple wasn't rebounding I don't think we would be at a flat level," said Ghriskey.

Talks to take Dell Inc private were at an advanced stage, with at least four major banks lined up to provide financing, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Shares fell 4.6 percent to $12.57 after jumping more than 21 percent over the past two sessions.

U.S. consumer prices were flat in December, pointing to muted inflation pressures that should give the Federal Reserve room to prop up the economy by staying on its ultra-easy monetary policy path.

Other data showed U.S. homebuilder confidence in the market for single family homes held steady near seven year highs in January, suggesting the outlook for the housing market remained upbeat.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Deepening Crisis for the Dreamliner

Noboru Tomura/Asahi Shimbun, via Associated Press

An All Nippon Airways flight in Takamatsu, Japan, after an emergency landing on Wednesday.

TOKYO — The two largest Japanese airlines said Wednesday that they would ground their fleets of Boeing 787 aircraft after one operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in western Japan.

The latest episode elevates the safety concerns about Boeing’s new flagship airliner.

The emergency landing followed a string of problems in the past month with the Boeing 787, known as the Dreamliner, including a battery fire, fuel leaks and a cracked cockpit window. All Nippon said the problems Wednesday involved the same lithium-ion batteries that caught fire last week in Boston on a Dreamliner operated by Japan Airlines.

Last week, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered a comprehensive review of the Dreamliner’s manufacturing and design, with a focus on the plane’s electrical systems. During a news conference last Thursday, the U.S. transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made no mention of grounding Dreamliners. But if the problems continue, tougher measures could presumably be taken.

Boeing executives declined to comment Wednesday on the Japanese groundings. The company’s shares were down 3.7 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday in New York.

Eight airlines now fly the Dreamliner. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines in Japan own 24 of the 50 delivered by Boeing since November 2011. The other operators are Air India, Ethiopian Airlines, LAN Airlines of Chile, LOT of Poland, Qatar Airways and United Airlines of the United States. Orders for about 800 additional 787s are in the pipeline.

In the episode in Japan early Wednesday, the 137 passengers and crew members aboard Flight NH692 from Yamaguchi Ube Airport, in western Japan, to Tokyo used emergency slides to leave the aircraft early after battery trouble and an “unusual smell” in the cockpit prompted its pilots to land instead at Takamatsu airport, according to All Nippon. The jet’s main battery in the front of the plane was later found to have become discolored and to be seeping electrolyte fluid, All Nippon said.

Ryosei Nomura, a spokesman for All Nippon, said Wednesday that the airline was temporarily grounding all 17 of its Dreamliners for inspections, leading to the cancellation of 38 domestic and international flights. Japan Airlines also said it would ground the five Dreamliners it was operating; two other aircraft were already undergoing safety checks.

Akihiro Ota, the Japanese transportation minister, said that the emergency landing had raised concerns about the Dreamliner’s safety and that he would dispatch officials to investigate. “I see this as a serious incident which could have led to a serious accident,” Mr. Ota said in Tokyo.

All Nippon and Japan Airlines said the planes would return to the air after safety checks, although it was unclear how soon that might be. All Nippon said it would keep its Dreamliner fleet grounded Thursday, canceling 35 domestic flights and using other types of aircraft for its international routes.

The review by the U.S. aviation administration is unusual, just 15 months after the plane entered service following a lengthy certification process by the agency. That review is in addition to a formal investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board of what caused a battery fire on a Japan Airlines plane that flew to Boston from Tokyo last week.

The safety board said Wednesday it was “currently in the process of gathering information about the B-787 emergency landing in Japan earlier today.”

Boeing has sought to ease concerns about the plane’s design and reliability, and has said it is no more trouble-prone than other new commercial airplane programs.

Updesh Kapur, a spokesman for Qatar Airways, affirmed on Wednesday the airline’s view that the Dreamliner was safe but declined to comment on the decisions by the Japanese carriers. Qatar Airways operates three Dreamliners and has orders and purchase options for 57 more.

Last week, Akbar Al Baker, the Qatar Airways chief executive, played down the recent string of Dreamliner incidents as “teething issues with various components” and expressed confidence that Boeing would resolve any problems. He added that his airline was taking “every precaution” to ensure its fleet was safe to fly.

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