TOKYO: Japan's factory output for January rose a smaller-than-expected 1.0 per cent from the previous month, official data showed on Thursday.
The rise was weaker than a 1.5 per cent expansion expected by the market and a revised 2.4 per cent increase in December.
But the ministry maintained a positive view, saying in a monthly report: "Industrial production has bottomed out and shows some signs of picking up."
- AFP/ck
"Today, we're really competing with print, radio, and television," Geoff Donaker, Yelp's chief operating officer, said Tuesday when speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom conference.
But what about Internet businesses like Google and Facebook? Donaker is sure the pair will compete with Yelp in the local advertising arena eventually -- emphasis on eventually. Yelp will let that battle "play out in a decade or so," he said.
Donaker's stance hinges around this point: A tiny fraction of the 50 million local businesses in the Western world are spending on online advertising. They pay to advertise, he said, but primarily through more traditional mediums such as the Yellow Pages and ValPak.
Yelp counts close to 1 million business accounts, and 40,000 of them purchase ads to get their venues featured in front of consumers searching for dentists, doctors, plumbers, and so forth. Chief Financial Officer Rob Krolik said, however, that Yelp is uniquely positioned to attract tens of millions of local merchant customers. Currently, the conversations the company has with would-be advertising business owners are not about Google at all, he said, but instead about how much they're spending on ValPak coupons.
The we-don't-fear-Google assertions are a bit odd considering Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppleman's well-documented dislike for the search giant, a company he has described as evil. Nor do they match up with Wall Street's beliefs. Investors punished Yelp as soon as Facebook announced Graph Search, a social-network search engine that, in helping people find nearby businesses on Facebook, could eat into Yelp's chunk of the local advertising pie.But ask Yelp about Graph Search and you'll likely hear a giant yawn, and a small dig.
It's no big surprise that Facebook has gone this route, Donaker said, indicating that Yelp is taking a wait-and-see approach to Facebook's search product. He couldn't help but add that, as it stands, Yelp doesn't receive any "material level of traffic" from the social network.
(CBS News) -- On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both sides agree the south have changed in the past half-century. At issue is, has it changed enough?
In Shelby County, Alabama, the question is whether the state's racist past must forever define it.
(Watch: Voting Rights Act challengers take aim at "Section 5", below)
One provision of the Act, Section 5, still requires all or part of 16 states, mostly in the south, to get approval from the Justice Department before changing voting procedures or electoral maps.
"Section five, which is what we are attacking, was never intended by congress to be permanent," said Frank Ellis, a Shelby County lawyer who is at the center of the battle to eliminate Section 5, and force the federal government to treat Alabama and other covered states like the rest of the country.
"They are still using the same criteria to determine whether these 16 states that are covered, they are still using the same test that they used in 1965," Ellis said.
"Things have changed in the South," he said. "This is a dynamic society."
But Ernest Montgomery says things have not changed enough. He was on the city council in Calera, Alabama when city officials, facing a population boom, redrew his district map. He lost the election to a white candidate. Under Section 5, the Justice Department ordered a new election and Montgomery won.
The minority representation in his district under the old map was about 67% African American, according to Montgomery. With the new map, that number dropped to about 28%.
Voting Rights Act faces Supreme Court challenge
Voting Rights Act Section 5 "not the only tool" to protect voting rights, Obama says
VIDEO: SCOTUS to hear challenge to Voting Rights Act
Shelby County Pastor Harry Jones calls it discrimination.
"I think it was designed to dilute the power of the minority community," Jones said. "It did just that."
Opponents like Ellis say they are not attacking the entire Voting Rights Act. If there's intentional discrimination, people can sue, just like they do in Michigan, Ohio and other states that aren't by Section Five.
Though accused murderer Jodi Arias said she sometimes felt "like a prostitute" at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, she admitted today that she often enjoyed their sex life and even suggested sex acts they could try.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez, after a day of aggressive questioning and bickering with Arias, asked her about her own suggestions for her sex life with Alexander, including a phone conversation in which she suggested using sexual lubricant.
Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander, but claims it was in self-defense.
Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial
"You introduced KY Jelly into the relationship to make it more sexually enjoyable, right? When we're talking about the level of experimentation, it looks like both of you were experimenting together sexually. So when we hear things like, 'I felt like a prostitute,' that's not exactly true, is it?" Martinez said.
"It was often mutual," Arias said. "I didn't feel like a prostitute during, just after."
Martinez showed the jury a text message Arias sent offering to perform oral sex on Alexander, comparing it to a statement she made on direct testimony saying that she once felt like a prostitute when Alexander tossed a piece of chocolate at her and walked away without a word after she performed oral sex.
"How is it you can say you 'felt like a prostitute' when you're moving the relationship ahead like this?" Martinez asked. "The act itself is the same thing, and here you're requesting it. The geography is different, but that aside, isn't it the same act? And you're requesting it?"
"When he (ejaculated) and left afterward I felt like a prostitute. When we mutually went through things together I didn't," she said.
Arias also admitted that she sent Alexander a topless photo of herself after he sent her photos of his penis, and that she only did it after she had her breasts enhanced surgically.
Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage
The testimony came as Martinez continued his efforts to discredit Arias' testimony on the stand, including her statements that she often succumbed to Alexander's sexual fantasies so she wouldn't hurt his feelings. Martinez has focused on portraying Arias as a liar for much of his direct examination.
Arias is charged with murder for killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander at his home in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008. She claims she killed him in self defense and that he had been increasingly violent and sexually demanding in the months before the confrontation. She also claimed he was interested in young boys.
The prosecution claims she killed him in a jealous rage. She could face the death penalty if convicted of first degree murder.
Earlier in the day,tempers flared between Arias and prosecutor Martinez as the prosecutor tried to detail Arias' history of spying on her boyfriends, but Arias complained that his aggressive style of questioning made her "brain scramble."
Arias and Martinez, who have sparred throughout two prior days of cross-examination, spent more than 10 minutes bickering over Martinez's word choices and his apparent "anger."
The morning's testimony, and Martinez's points about Arias' alleged spying, were largely interrupted by the spats.
"Are you having trouble understanding me?" Martinez yelled.
"Yes because sometimes cause you go in circles," Arias answered.
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's stunned political parties searched for a way forward on Tuesday after an inconclusive election gave none of them a parliamentary majority and threatened prolonged instability and a renewal of the European financial crisis.
The results, notably the dramatic surge of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo, left the center-left bloc with a majority in the lower house but without the numbers to control the upper chamber, the Senate.
Financial markets fell sharply at the prospect of a stalemate that reawakened memories of the crisis that pushed Italy's borrowing costs toward unsustainably high levels and brought the euro zone to the brink of collapse in 2011.
"The winner is: Ingovernability," ran the headline in Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, reflecting the deadlock the country will have to confront in the next few weeks as sworn enemies are forced to work together to form a government.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday that policy choices of the next Italian government would be crucial for the country's creditworthiness, underlining the need for a coalition that can agree on new reforms.
Pier Luigi Bersani, head of the center-left Democratic Party (PD), has the difficult task of trying to agree a "grand coalition" with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the man he blames for ruining Italy, or striking a deal with Grillo, a completely unknown quantity in conventional politics.
The alternative is new elections either immediately or within a few months, although both Berlusconi and Bersani have indicated that they want to avoid a return to the polls if possible: "Italy cannot be ungoverned and we have to reflect," Berlusconi said in an interview on his own television station.
For his part, Grillo, whose movement won the most votes of any single party, has indicated that he believes the next government will last no more than six months.
"They won't be able to govern," he told reporters on Tuesday. "Whether I'm there or not, they won't be able govern."
He said he would work with anyone who supported his policy proposals, which range from anti-corruption measures to green-tinted energy measures but rejected suggestions of entering a formal coalition: "It's not time to talk of alliances... the system has already fallen," he said.
The election, a massive rejection of the austerity policies applied by Prime Minister Mario Monti with the backing of international leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, caused consternation across Europe.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble put a brave face on it, saying "that's democracy".
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo was more pessimistic.
"This is a jump to nowhere that does not bode well either for Italy or Europe," he said.
A long recession and growing disillusionment with mainstream parties and tax-raising austerity fed a bitter public mood and contributed to the massive rejection of Monti, whose centrist coalition was relegated to the sidelines.
Projections by the Italian center for Electoral Studies showed that the center-left will have 121 seats in the Senate, against 117 for the center-right alliance of Berlusconi's PDL and the regionalist Northern League. Grillo would take 54.
That leaves no party with the majority in a chamber which a government must control to pass legislation.
"THE BELL IS RINGING"
On a visit to Germany, President Giorgio Napolitano said he would not comment until the parties had consulted with each other and Bersani called on Berlusconi and Grillo to "assume their responsibilities" to ensure Italy could have a government.
He warned that the election showed austerity policies alone were no answer to the economic crisis and said the result carried implications beyond Italy.
"The bell is ringing for Europe as well," he said in his first public comments since the election.
He said he would present a limited number of reform proposals to parliament, focusing on jobs, institutional reform and European policy.
However forming an alliance may be long and difficult and could test the sometimes fragile internal unity of the mainstream parties.
"The idea of a majority without Grillo is unthinkable. I don't know if anyone in the PD is considering it but I'm against it," said Matteo Orfini, a member of Bersani's PD secretariat.
"The idea of a PD-PDL government, even if it's backed by Monti, doesn't make any sense," he said.
For his part, Berlusconi won a boost when his Northern League ally Roberto Maroni won the election to become regional president of Lombardy, Italy's economic heartland and one of the richest and most productive areas of Europe.
For Italian business, with an illustrious history of export success, the election result brought dismay that there would be no quick change to what they see as a regulatory sclerosis that has kept the economy virtually stagnant for a decade.
"This is probably the worst possible scenario," said Francesco Divella, whose family began selling pasta under its eponymous brand in 1890 in the southern region of Puglia.
Berlusconi's campaign, mixing sweeping tax cut pledges with relentless attacks on Monti and Merkel, echoed many of the themes pushed by Grillo and underlined the increasingly angry mood of the Italian electorate.
But even if the next government turns away from the tax hikes and spending cuts brought in by Monti, it will struggle to revive an economy that has scarcely grown in two decades.
Monti was widely credited with tightening Italy's public finances and restoring its international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi, who is currently on trial for having sex with an under-age prostitute.
However, Monti struggled to pass the kind of structural reforms needed to improve competitiveness and lay the foundations for a return to economic growth. A weak center-left government may not find it any easier.
The view from some voters, weary of the mainstream parties, was unrepentant: "It's good," said Roger Manica, 28, a security guard in Rome, who voted for the center-left PD.
"Next time I'll vote 5-Star. I like that they are changing things, even if it means uncertainty. Uncertainty doesn't matter to me, for me what's important is a good person who gets things done," he said. "Look how well they've done."
(Additional reporting by Barry Moody, Gavin Jones, Lisa Jucca, Steven Jewkes, Steve Scherer, Catherine Hornby and Massimiliano Di Giorgio, Annika Breidthardt in Berlin. Writing by Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Peter Graff)
NEW YORK: Batman may be able to save the world, but he'll lose his sidekick Robin -- who in his current incarnation as his son -- in the upcoming Batman Incorporated comic book series.
DC Comics said the caped crusader's acrobatic young assistant, Batman alter ego Bruce Wayne's son Damian, will die in Wednesday's issue number eight.
"This master theme of damaged and ruined families was nowhere more in evidence than in the creation of Damian, the first 'Son of Batman' to be acknowledged in the canon," series writer Grant Morrison said in a statement.
"In many ways this has been Damian's story as much as it has been the story of Bruce Wayne and it's a story that had its end planned a long time ago -- for what son could ever hope to replace a father like Batman, who never dies?"
The good news for those who might miss Robin is that this is the comics universe and characters who are killed can easily return. Even a previous incarnation of Robin was killed and resurrected before.
"You can never say never in a comic book," Morrison told the New York Post. "Batman will ultimately always have a partner."
-AFP/gn
When you save items to a folder in the Finder, OS X will save this location in a "Recent Places" listing that is available the next time you save another document. This allows you to quickly access the folders you are currently using for your workflow, so you can better manage your projects without needing to manually set up temporary favorite folders or collect all of your documents in a generic location like the Desktop.
The recent items list will show the past five most recently accessed folders. While it has its conveniences there may be times when you might like to clear these, especially if you would like to keep a special folder from being available in all Save dialogues or if you would simply like to clear up the list. Unfortunately, the only way to do so via the OS X interface is to save items in at least five new locations, thus forcing the one you want to remove from the list.
The Recent Places list is available in the location drop-down menu in Save dialogue boxes.
If this is not the approach you would prefer to take, then way is to use the following Terminal command to remove the saved recent place entries from your account:
defaults delete -g NSNavRecentPlaces
With this command run, the drop-down menu in the save dialogues will be emptied and will then begin to populate with new folders as you save files to them.
In addition to clearing the Recent Places list, you can adjust the number of recent items that the system stores in this list. By default the number of items is five, but you can adjust this to a value of your liking with the following command:
defaults write -g NSNavRecentPlacesLimit -int NUM
Setting the value of NUM in this command to zero will disable the recent places list. To disable this limitation you can run it and use a value of 5, or you can run the following command to remove this custom setting altogether:
defaults delete -g NSNavRecentPlacesLimit
Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.
(CBS News) NEW CANAAN, Conn. - "Zero Dark Thirty" took just one minor award at the Oscars last night. There was a lot of debate about the way the film depicted torture during the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Turns out that wasn't the only controversy.
The film starts with actual voices of victims of September 11, recorded as they made their last phone calls. For Mary and Frank Fetchet, it brings back painful memories. One of those voices was their son Brad, who worked on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower.
Mary Fetchet
"When I arrived home I found Brad's message on our phone, and, of course, these were his last words in my view, because we never heard from him again," Mary said.
"Losing a loved one so horribly -- the ongoing anguish we've been going through -- it's a treasured remembrance, it's a treasured message. It's ours," Frank said.
They say that treasured remembrance was used in the film without their permission.
"My first thought was, 'isn't anything sacred anymore?'" Mary said.
The Fetchets used the recording in testimony for the September 11 Commission, and it has appeared in broadcast TV news reports. But the couple says this is different.
"I used it in situations where I wanted to convey Brad's story," Mary said. "None of those situations were used for promotional or professional or commercial endeavors."
Kathryn Bigelow defends "Zero Dark Thirty" torture scenes
Sony exec: "Zero Dark Thirty" does not advocate torture
Watch: "Zero Dark Thirty" director Kathryn Bigelow talks torture, art
The film has grossed more than $90 million worldwide. In a statement, the film distributor, Sony, and studio, Annapurna Pictures, say "Zero Dark Thirty" is a "tribute" to the victims of September 11 and "before the film's release, (they) initiated contact with a number of family members of the victims of the 9/11 attacks."
Frank said the statement wasn't enough. "To say they've reached out to families -- yeah, reached to say, 'come to the preview' after the film is already completed," he said.
Harry Ong
Harry Ong's sister Betty was a flight attendant who was killed on American Airline Flight 11.
"We were never given any notification or asked for permission to use Betty's voice, unlike many documentary companies," Ong said.
"We're asking that they apologize and that they recognize that they used Betty's voice and Brad's and others at liberty."
After the film was released, the Fetchets and Ongs asked Sony and Annapurna for donations to their September 11 charities in exchange for the use of their loved ones' voices. But the filmmakers had already decided to donate to the national 9/11 Memorial Museum.
"The real driver in all of this is getting this record set straight. I'm incensed by it," Frank Fetchet said. "Others run the risk of going through the same thing, so I think this should put a line in the sand that says, 'it's not right.'"
The Fetchets hope that by speaking out, they'll prevent other victims of tragedies from experiencing similar surprises.
Accused murderer Jodi Arias was confronted today with a barrage of lies she told after she killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, but she twice defiantly declared that she was innocent of first degree murder.
"It's the truth. I'm innocent of that charge," Arias said to prosecutor Juan Martinez, referring to the criminal charge that could carry the threat of the death sentence if she is found guilty.
Arias admitted on the stand that she lied for months and years after killing her ex-boyfriend, telling investigators and friends that she had nothing to do with Alexander's grisly death, in which he was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed, and he was shot in the head.
Eventually, Arias confessed to the killing, but claims it was in self-defense.
Today, prosecutors hammered Arias about her lying, getting her to admit to lies she told and playing video of her police interrogation and a TV interview in which she told stories that she has since conceded were not true.
See the Evidence in the Jodi Arias Murder Trial
In an interview with NBC's "48 Hours," Arias said she smiled for her mug shot partly because she knew she was innocent.
"You truly believe that you didn't do anything wrong here?" the prosecutor asked incredulously.
"I believed that I knew that I was not guilty of first-degree murder and I did plan to be dead," she replied, a reference to her claim that she planned to commit suicide.
Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage
During a day of contentious questions and answers between Martinez and Arias, the prosecutor used Arias' own diary entries and text messages to show contradictions of her claims that Alexander was abusive toward her, that he hit her and tried to choke her.
Arias said that in early 2008, Alexander hit her in the neck while they were riding in his car. Martinez showed a diary entry describing the day they rode in the car, and there was no mention of physical violence.
"This entry does not corroborate what you told us happened in the car," he said. "With regard to the (choking incident) you didn't call police. You didn't tell anyone about it. There is no corroboration anywhere in your journal. All we have is your word. Are there photos? Any other writings? Is there a police report? Is there a medical report?"
Arias said there was no evidence that the alleged abuse happened, except for her testimony in court.
"There's no evidence because it didn't happen, did it ma'am?" Martinez yelled.
Arias said that she had told one person about the abuse she claims she suffered at the hands of Alexander, and that it was another ex-boyfriend, Matthew McCartney. But when pressed for details about the conversation in which she told him, Arias became confused and changed her answers.
"I saw (Matt) a few days later, and he called me out on the bruises," Arias testified.
"Where?"
"Over the phone, just days after I think," she said.
"Isn't it true he wouldn't have been able to see your injuries because you were talking over the telephone?"
"No, I was in Yreka (California) by then. I stopped to see Matt after I left Arizona. Let's see, I believe it was two or three days after. I'm not saying there was no telephone call, (but) it was at his house. I went and saw Matt, and some make-up wore off, and he confronted me on (the bruises)."
Martinez said that McCartney has denied the conversation ever took place.
ROME (Reuters) - A huge protest vote by Italians enraged by economic hardship and political corruption pushed the country towards deadlock after an election on Monday, with voting projections showing no coalition strong enough to form a government.
With more than two thirds of the vote counted, the projections suggested the center left could have a slim lead in the race for the lower house of parliament.
But no party or likely coalition appeared likely to be able to form a majority in the upper house or Senate, creating a deadlocked parliament - the opposite of the stable result that Italy desperately needs to tackle a deep recession, rising unemployment and a massive public debt.
Such an outcome has the potential to revive fears over the euro zone debt crisis, with prospects of a long period of uncertainty in the zone's third largest economy.
Italian financial markets took fright after rising earlier on hopes for a stable and strong center-left led government, probably backed by outgoing technocrat premier Mario Monti.
The projected result was a stunning success for Genoese comic Beppe Grillo, leader of the populist 5-Star Movement, who toured the country in his first national election campaign hurling obscenity-laced insults against a discredited political class.
With vague election promises and a team of almost totally unknown candidates, the shaggy haired comedian channeled pure public anger against what many see as a sclerotic and useless political system.
The likely result was also a humiliating slap in the face for colorless center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who appeared to have thrown away a 10-point opinion poll lead less than two months ago against Silvio Berlusconi's center right.
Berlusconi, 76, who staged an extraordinary comeback from sex and corruption scandals since diving into the campaign in December, appeared to be leading in the Senate race, but Grillo's projected bloc of Senators would leave him well short of a majority.
Projections gave Bersani's center-left alliance a lead of less than one percentage point in the lower house. If confirmed, that would be enough to control the chamber because of election laws that guarantee a 54 percent majority to the party with the largest share of the vote.
In the Senate the picture was different. The latest projection from RAI state television showed Berlusconi's bloc winning 112 Senate seats, the center-left 105 and Grillo 64, with Monti languishing on only 20 after a failed campaign which never took off. The Senate majority is 158.
Berlusconi, a master politician and communicator, wooed voters with a blitz of television appearances and promises to refund a hated housing tax despite accusations from opponents that this was an impossible vote buying trick.
Grillo has attacked all sides in the campaign and ruled out a formal alliance with any group although it was not immediately known how he would react to his stunning success or how his supporters would behave in parliament.
DANGER OF NEW ELECTION
A bitter campaign, fought largely over economic issues, made some investors fear a return of the kind of debt crisis that took the euro zone close to disaster and brought the technocrat Monti to office, replacing Berlusconi, in 2011.
The projected results showed more than half of Italians had voted for the anti-euro platforms of Berlusconi and Grillo.
Officials from both center and left warned that the looming deadlock could make Italy ungovernable and force new elections.
A center-left government either alone or ruling with Monti had been seen by investors as the best guarantee of measures to combat a deep recession and stagnant growth in Italy, which is pivotal to stability in the currency union.
The benchmark spread between Italian 10-year bonds and their German equivalent widened from below 260 basis points to above 300 and the Italian share index lost all its previous gains after projections of the Senate result.
"These projections suggest that we are heading for an ungovernable situation", said Mario Secchi, a candidate for Monti's centrist movement.
Stefano Fassina, chief economic official for Bersani's center-left, said: "The scenario from the projections we have seen so far suggests there will be no stable government and we would need to return to the polls."
If the results are confirmed the only possibility looks like a "grand coalition" combining right and left, like the one Monti led for a year. But politicians said before the vote this could not work for long and would struggle to work decisively.
Monti helped save Italy from a debt crisis when Rome's borrowing costs were spiraling out of control, but few Italians now see him as the savior of the country, in its longest recession for 20 years.
Grillo's movement rode a huge wave of voter anger about both the pain of Monti's austerity program and a string of political and corporate scandals. It had particular appeal for a frustrated younger generation shut out of full-time jobs.
"I'm sick of the scandals and the stealing," said Paolo Gentile, a 49-year-old Rome lawyer who voted for 5-Star.
"We need some young, new people in parliament, not the old parties that are totally discredited."
Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon, exploited anger against Monti's austerity program, accusing him of being a puppet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but in many areas Grillo was a bigger beneficiary of public discontent.
Italy desperately needs a strong, reform-minded government to revive growth after two decades of stagnation and address problems ranging from record youth unemployment to a dysfunctional justice system and a bloated public sector.
Italians wrung their hands at prospects of an inconclusive result that will mean more delays to these reforms.
"It's a classic result. Typically Italian. It means the country is not united. It is an expression of a country that does not work. I knew this would happen," said 36-year-old Rome office worker Roberta Federica.
Another office worker, Elisabetta Carlotta, 46, shook her head in disbelief. "We can't go on like this," she said.
(Additional reporting by Stefano Bernabei, Steve Scherer, Gavin Jones, Naomi O'Leary and Giuseppe Fonte in Rome and Lisa Jucca in Milan; Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Peter Graff)
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