Analysis: Amazon’s Christmas faux pas shows risks in the cloud

(Reuters) – A Christmas Eve glitch traced to Amazon.com Inc that shuttered Netflix for users from Canada to South America highlights the risks that companies take when they move their datacenter operations to the cloud.

While the high-profile failure – at least the third this year – may cause some Amazon Web Services customers to consider alternatives, it is unlikely to severely hurt a fast-growing business for the cloud-computing pioneer that got into the sector in 2006 and has historically experienced few outages.

“The benefits still outweigh the risks,” said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

“When it comes to the cloud, Amazon has got it right.”

The latest service failure comes at a critical time for Amazon, which is betting that AWS can become a significant profit generator even if the economy continues to stagnate. Moreover, it is increasingly targeting larger corporate clients that have traditionally shied away from moving critical applications onto AWS.

AWS, which Amazon started more than six years ago, provides data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations that group thousands of servers across areas than can span whole football fields. Their early investment made it a pioneer in what is now known as cloud computing.

Executives said last month at an Amazon conference in Las Vegas they could envision the division, which lists Pinterest, Shazam and Spotify among its fast-growing clients, becoming its biggest business, outpacing even its online retail juggernaut. Evercore analyst Ken Sena expects AWS revenue to jump 45 percent a year, from about $ 2 billion this year to $ 20 billion in 2018.

The service has boomed because it is cheap, relatively easy to use, and can be shut off, scaled back or ramped up quickly depending on companies’ needs. As the longest-running player in the game, Amazon now boasts the widest array of datacenter products and services, plus a broader stable of clients than rivals like Google Inc, Rackspace Inc and Salesforce.com Inc.

Outages such as the one that took down Netflix and other websites on the eve of one of the biggest U.S. holidays are part and parcel of the nascent business, analysts say. Moreover, outages have been a problem long before the age of cloud computing, with glitches within corporate datacenters and telecommunications hubs triggering myriad service disruptions.

COMING SOON: POST-MORTEM

Amazon’s latest service failure comes months after two high-profile outages that hit Netflix and other popular websites such as photo-sharing service Instagram and Pinterest. Industry executives, however, say its downtimes tend to attract more attention because of its outsized market footprint.

Netflix – which CEO Reed Hastings said relies on AWS for 95 percent of its datacenter needs – would not comment on whether they were pondering alternatives. Analysts say the video streaming giant is unlikely to try a large-scale switch, partly because all cloud providers experience outages.

“Despite a steady stream of these service outages, the demand for cloud services offered by AWS, Google, etc. continues to escalate because these services are still reliable enough to satisfy customer expectations,” said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of consultancy ThinkStrategies Inc.

“They offer cost-savings and elasticities that are too attractive for companies to ignore.”

But “Netflix and other organizations which rely on AWS will have to reexamine how they configure their services and allocate their service requirements across multiple providers to mitigate over-dependency and risks.”

AWS spokeswoman Rena Lunak said the outage was traced to a problem affecting customers at its oldest data center, run out of northern Virginia, which was linked also to the June failure.

The latest glitch involved a service known as Elastic Load Balancing, which automatically allocates incoming Web traffic across multiple servers in order to boost the performance of a website. She declined to provide further details about the outage, saying the company would be publishing a full post-mortem within days.

AWS has traditionally been used by start-up tech companies and smaller businesses that anticipate rapid growth in online traffic but are unwilling or unable to shell out on IT equipment and management upfront.

The company has more recently started winning more and more business from larger corporations. It has also set up a unit that caters to government agencies.

Regardless, Amazon’s clientele would do well not to put all their eggs in one basket, analysts say.

“Service outages do occur, but they are not common enough to cause users of these services to abandon today’s Cloud service providers at significant rates. In fact, every major Cloud service provider has experienced outages,” Kaplan said.

“Therefore, organizations that rely on these services are putting backup and recovery systems and protocols in place to mitigate the risks of future outages.”

(Additional reporting; editing by Edwin Chan and Richard Chang)

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NORAD says record number of calls to track Santa

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) — Most of the thousands of children who call the annual Santa-tracking operation at a Colorado Air Force Base on Christmas Eve ask the usual questions: “Where’s Santa, and when will he get here?”

So volunteer Sara Berghoff was caught off-guard Monday when a child called to see if Santa could be especially kind this year to the families affected by the Connecticut school shooting.

“I’m from Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooting was,” she remembers the child asking. “Is it possible that Santa can bring extra presents so I can deliver them to the families that lost kids?”

Sara, just 13 herself, was surprised but gathered her thoughts quickly. “If I can get ahold of him, I’ll try to get the message to him,” she told the child.

Sara was one of hundreds of volunteers at NORAD Tracks Santa who answered thousands of calls, program spokeswoman Marisa Novobilski said. Spokeswoman 1st Lt. Stacey Fenton said that as of midnight Tuesday, trackers answered more than 111,000 calls, breaking last year’s record of 107,000.

First lady Michelle Obama, who is spending the holidays with her family in Hawaii, also joined in answering calls as she has in recent years. She spent about 30 minutes talking with children from across the country, telling some who asked that her favorite toys growing up were Barbie dolls and an Easy Bake oven.

She also received an invitation to visit an 11-year-old boy in Fort Worth, Texas, and a request to put her husband on the phone. “He’s not here right now. But you know what, I will tell him you asked about him. OK?” she replied.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S.-Canada command responsible for protecting the skies over both nations, tracks Santa from its home at Peterson Air Force Base.

NORAD and its predecessor have been fielding Christmas Eve phone calls from children — and a few adults — since 1955. That’s when a newspaper ad listed the wrong phone number for kids to call Santa. Callers ended up getting the Continental Air Defense Command, which later became NORAD. CONAD commanders played along, and the ritual has been repeated every year since.

After 57 years, NORAD can predict what most kids will ask. Its 11-page playbook for volunteers includes a list of nearly 20 questions and answers, including how old is Santa (at least 16 centuries) and has Santa ever crashed into anything (no).

But kids still manage to ask the unexpected, including, “Does Santa leave presents for dogs?”

A sampling of anecdotes from the program this year:

___

THE REAL DEAL: A young boy called to ask if Santa was real.

Air Force Maj. Jamie Humphries, who took the call, said, “I’m 37 years old, and I believe in Santa, and if you believe in him as well, then he must be real.”

The boy turned from the phone and yelled to others in the room, “I told you guys he was real!”

___

DON’T WORRY, HE’LL FIND YOU: Glenn Barr took a call from a 10-year-old who wasn’t sure if he would be sleeping at his mom’s house or his dad’s and was worried about whether Santa would find him.

“I told him Santa would know where he was and not to worry,” Barr said.

Another child asked if he was on the nice list or the naughty list.

“That’s a closely guarded secret, and only Santa knows,” Barr replied.

___

TOYS IN HEAVEN: A boy who called from Missouri asked when Santa would drop off toys in heaven.

His mother got on the line and explained to Jennifer Eckels, who took the call, that the boy’s younger sister died this year.

“He kept saying ‘in heaven,’” Eckels said. She told him, “I think Santa headed there first thing.”

___

BEST OF: Choice questions and comments wound up posted on a flip chart.

“Big sister wanted to add her 3-year-old brother to the naughty list,” one read.

“Are there police elves?” said another.

“How much to adopt one of Santa’s reindeer?”

“What’s the best way to booby-trap the living room to trap Santa?”

“When you see Santa, tell him hello for me, I never see him.”

“How does Santa make iPads?”

____

INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR: NORAD got calls from 220 countries and territories last year, and non-English-speakers called this year as well.

Volunteers who speak other languages get green Santa hats and a placard listing their languages so organizers can find them quickly.

“Need a Spanish speaker!” one organizer called as he rushed out of one of three phone rooms.

___

HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE: At NORAD’s suggestion, volunteers often tell callers that Santa won’t drop off the presents until all the kids in the home are asleep.

“Ohhhhhhh,” said an 8-year-old from Illinois, as if trying to digest a brand-new fact.

“I’m going to be asleep by 4 o’clock,” said a child from Virginia.

“Thank you so much for that information,” said a grateful mom from Michigan.

___

CHRISTMAS EVE IN AFGHANISTAN: Five U.S. service personnel answered calls from Afghanistan for about 90 minutes through a conferencing hookup.

“They had a great time,” said Novobilski, the program spokeswoman.

NORAD wanted to set up a call center in Afghanistan but that proved too complex, she said.

___

HEY, MR. ELF: “Mr. Elf,” said one caller, “This is Adam, and I’ve been really good this year.”

___

FOR GEARHEADS: For people who want to know the specs of Santa’s sleigh, NORAD offers a trove of tidbits, including:

Weight at takeoff: 75,000 GD (gumdrops).

Propulsion: 9 RP (reindeer power).

Fuel: Hay, oats and carrots (for reindeer).

Emissions: Classified.

___

Online:

Track Santa online at http://www.noradsanta.org

___

Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP

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Early Childhood Obesity Rates Might Be Slowing Nation-Wide

About one in three children in the U.S. are now overweight, and since the 1980s the number of children who are obese has more than tripled. But a new study of 26.7 million young children from low-income families shows that in this group of kids, the tidal wave of obesity might finally be receding.Being obese as a child not only increases the risk of early-life health problems, such as joint problems, pre-diabetes and social stigmatization, but it also dramatically increases the likelihood of being obese later in life, which can lead to chronic diseases, including cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Children as young as 2 years of age can be obese–and even extremely obese. Early childhood obesity rates, which bring higher health care costs throughout a kid’s life, have been especially high among lower-income families.”This is the first national study to show that the prevalence of obesity and extreme obesity among young U.S. children may have begun to decline,” the researchers noted in a brief report published online December 25 in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. (Reports earlier this year suggested that childhood obesity rates were dropping in several U.S. cities.)The study examined rates of obesity (body mass index calculated by age and gender to be in the 95th percentile or higher–for example, a BMI above 20 for a 2-year-old male–compared with reference growth charts) and extreme obesity (BMI of more than 120 percent above that of the 95th percentile of the reference populations) in children ages 2 to 4 in 30 states and the District of Columbia. The researchers, led by Liping Pan, of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, combed through 12 years of data (1998 to 2010) from the Pediatric Nutritional Surveillance System, which includes information on roughly half of all children on the U.S. who are eligible for federal health care and nutrition assistance.A subtle but important shift in early childhood obesity rates in this low-income population seems to have begun in 2003. Obesity rates increased from 13.05 percent in 1998 to 15.21 percent in 2003. Soon, however, obesity rates began decreasing, reaching 14.94 percent by 2010. Extreme obesity followed a similar pattern, increasing from 1.75 percent to 2.22 percent from 1998 to 2003, but declining to 2.07 percent by 2010.Although these changes might seem small, the number of children involved makes for huge health implications. For example, each drop of just one tenth of a percentage point represents some 26,700 children in the study population alone who are no longer obese or extremely obese. And if these trends are occurring in the rest of the population, the long-term health and cost implications are massive.Public health agencies and the Obama Administration have made battling childhood obesity a priority, although these findings suggest that early childhood obesity rates, at least, were already beginning to decline nearly a decade ago. Some popular prevention strategies include encouraging healthier eating (by reducing intake of highly processed and high-sugar foods and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption) and increased physical activity (both at school and at home).The newly revealed trends “indicate modest recent progress of obesity prevention among young children,” the authors noted. “These finding may have important health implications because of the lifelong health risks of obesity and extreme obesity in early childhood.”

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs.Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
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Early Childhood Obesity Rates Might Be Slowing Nation-Wide

About one in three children in the U.S. are now overweight, and since the 1980s the number of children who are obese has more than tripled. But a new study of 26.7 million young children from low-income families shows that in this group of kids, the tidal wave of obesity might finally be receding.Being obese as a child not only increases the risk of early-life health problems, such as joint problems, pre-diabetes and social stigmatization, but it also dramatically increases the likelihood of being obese later in life, which can lead to chronic diseases, including cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Children as young as 2 years of age can be obese–and even extremely obese. Early childhood obesity rates, which bring higher health care costs throughout a kid’s life, have been especially high among lower-income families.”This is the first national study to show that the prevalence of obesity and extreme obesity among young U.S. children may have begun to decline,” the researchers noted in a brief report published online December 25 in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. (Reports earlier this year suggested that childhood obesity rates were dropping in several U.S. cities.)The study examined rates of obesity (body mass index calculated by age and gender to be in the 95th percentile or higher–for example, a BMI above 20 for a 2-year-old male–compared with reference growth charts) and extreme obesity (BMI of more than 120 percent above that of the 95th percentile of the reference populations) in children ages 2 to 4 in 30 states and the District of Columbia. The researchers, led by Liping Pan, of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, combed through 12 years of data (1998 to 2010) from the Pediatric Nutritional Surveillance System, which includes information on roughly half of all children on the U.S. who are eligible for federal health care and nutrition assistance.A subtle but important shift in early childhood obesity rates in this low-income population seems to have begun in 2003. Obesity rates increased from 13.05 percent in 1998 to 15.21 percent in 2003. Soon, however, obesity rates began decreasing, reaching 14.94 percent by 2010. Extreme obesity followed a similar pattern, increasing from 1.75 percent to 2.22 percent from 1998 to 2003, but declining to 2.07 percent by 2010.Although these changes might seem small, the number of children involved makes for huge health implications. For example, each drop of just one tenth of a percentage point represents some 26,700 children in the study population alone who are no longer obese or extremely obese. And if these trends are occurring in the rest of the population, the long-term health and cost implications are massive.Public health agencies and the Obama Administration have made battling childhood obesity a priority, although these findings suggest that early childhood obesity rates, at least, were already beginning to decline nearly a decade ago. Some popular prevention strategies include encouraging healthier eating (by reducing intake of highly processed and high-sugar foods and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption) and increased physical activity (both at school and at home).The newly revealed trends “indicate modest recent progress of obesity prevention among young children,” the authors noted. “These finding may have important health implications because of the lifelong health risks of obesity and extreme obesity in early childhood.”

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs.Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
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Visa and MasterCard Face a Fierce Rival in China

Among the myriad designer brands at the Harrods flagship store in London, Chinese housewife Li Yafang spotted a corporate logo she knows from back home: the red, blue, and green of UnionPay cards. “It’s very convenient,” said Li, 39, as a salesperson rang up a £1,190 ($ 1,920) Prada Saffiano Lux handbag.

With 2.9 billion cards in circulation—equal to 45 percent of the world’s total last year—UnionPay has grown into a payments processing colossus just 10 years after the company was founded. Now accepted in 135 countries, its share of global credit- and debit-card transaction volume for the first half of 2012 rose to 23.8 percent, propelling it to No. 2 behind Visa International (V), according to the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter. “UnionPay has absolute dominance in China, and it’s now expanding beyond that to become a top global player,” says James Friedman, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group. “Their numbers show they are already in the league of Visa and MasterCard (MA).”

Yin Lian, UnionPay’s name in Mandarin, means “banks united,” which reflects its ownership structure. Its founding shareholders were 85 Chinese banks, led by the five biggest state-owned lenders. UnionPay’s top managers are former senior officials at the People’s Bank of China, the nation’s central bank. (The company would not make executives available for interviews.)

At home, the Shanghai-based firm enjoys a big competitive edge: The government requires that all automated teller machines and Chinese merchants use UnionPay’s electronic payments network to process payments in the local currency. The rule extends to Visa, MasterCard, and American Express (AXP), which typically give UnionPay a cut of each transaction. “We compete vigorously,” Jeff Liao, head of Visa China, wrote in an e-mail, though he noted that there has been cooperation on issues that affect the entire industry.

Taking up a trade complaint filed by the U.S., the World Trade Organization in July ordered China to stop discriminating against foreign payment companies, yet fell short of spelling out specific remedies. Says Susquehanna’s Friedman: “It’s difficult to say which side won after reading the WTO ruling, as you basically can’t tell what’s actually going to happen.”

China’s receivables from credit cards could rise 40 percent annually to reach 2.5 trillion yuan ($ 397 billion) by 2015, according to a 2011 report from Boston Consulting Group. Citing data presented at a UnionPay shareholders meeting, China Business News reported in April that the company’s revenue has more than tripled over the past four years, reaching 6 billion yuan in 2011, while profit increased almost elevenfold, to $ 1.07 billion yuan. The main driver of revenue growth has been debit cards: UnionPay had $ 2.1 trillion in debit-card transactions and credit-card volume of $ 660 billion last year, according to Nilson Report. UnionPay does not publish financial statements.

Outside China, UnionPay now reaches about the same number of U.S. merchants as Visa and MasterCard, thanks to a 2005 network-sharing agreement with Discover Financial Services. More than 10 million UnionPay cards have been issued by 65 lenders in 17 countries in overseas markets, according to the company’s website.

UnionPay’s growing global reach has been a boon for purveyors of high-end merchandise, whether it’s Italian leather handbags or French perfume. Chinese shoppers this year displaced Americans as the No. 1 consumers of luxury goods, according to a recent Bain & Co. report. Some 60 percent of Chinese purchases happened outside the mainland, the report found.

At Harrods, where UnionPay has been accepted since February 2011, “a large majority of Chinese customers are now taking advantage” of the option, Katharine Witty, group director of corporate affairs at the British department store, wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t have a card issued by foreign banks,” said Li, who was visiting London with her family from the port city of Ningbo. “It’s too much of a hassle to get one.”

The bottom line: China’s UnionPay dominates in a market where credit- and debit-card receivables are forecast to rise to $ 397 billion by 2015.

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Toronto reaches skyward, but how dark the clouds?

TORONTO (Reuters) – Barry Fenton walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in his 30th-floor uptown Toronto penthouse suite and declared, “This is the best view of the city.”

To the south, a mass of steel-and-glass skyscrapers glinted in the bright autumn sun. Several cranes were in motion on unfinished buildings, a common sight in a city in the midst of a residential building boom.

“If you look around the core, every building you look at has a different look to it, a different ambience,” said the energetic co-founder of Lanterra Developments, one of the city’s most active builders. “That’s important.”

Fenton, 56, says he is confident the city’s condominium market will remain strong — despite warnings that it is all moving too far, too fast — and has an ambitious lineup for future development. And he is not alone in his optimism.

Toronto‘s seams are bursting with new condo and hotel towers designed by star architects like Frank Gehry and built by famed developers like Donald Trump.

But Fenton and others who see Toronto emerging from its “pokey” past — as a columnist in the Globe and Mail recently described it — face some formidable obstacles: an infrastructure buckling under soaring density rates, the laws of supply and demand and preservationists who say too many new towers are destroying the city’s character.

Canada’s central bank drew a bead on the city of 2.6 million this month in its weighty “Financial System Review,” warning of “potential future supply imbalances” in the condo market.

The Bank of Canada noted that the number of unsold condominiums in pre-construction has doubled, to 14,000, over the past year.

Greater Toronto home sales have slowed after years of steady increases. Sales fell 16 percent in November from the same month a year ago, according to the Toronto Real East Board. So far, however, prices are flattening, not falling, as some analysts have predicted.

In defiance of warnings by the central bank and economists, two mega-projects were unveiled within days of each other in October — a three-tower condo complex to be designed by Gehry and a multi-tower office project that includes a massive casino.

RACE TO THE TOP

More skyscrapers — 147 of them — are being built in Toronto than anywhere in North America, according to Emporis, the German data provider. That is twice as many as in New York, a city with about three times the population.

Toronto is getting taller fast. Fifteen buildings that will be more than 150 meters (492 feet) high are under construction, more than anywhere in the western hemisphere.

The recently completed Trump International Hotel topped out at 277 meters, just shy of Toronto’s tallest skyscraper, the 72-story First Canadian Place, which is 298 meters. That height could be exceeded by a couple of major projects on the drawing boards, including the Mirvish project.

(The city’s tallest freestanding structure, however, is the CN Tower, which soars over Toronto at 553 meters.)

“Toronto is creating a very sustainable future by building condos downtown,” said Daniel Libeskind, the American architect, who was in Toronto in October for a ceremony for one of his latest projects, the 57-story L Tower, with its sweeping, curvaceous, design that rises above the city’s modernist Sony Center for Performing Arts.

“It fights urban sprawl and brings people into the heart of the city.”

While building in big American cities and in Western Europe cratered following the financial crisis four years ago, Toronto never stopped booming. Demand for residential space has been strong, and while the office market has also been healthy, most of the new developments have been for condo projects.

Lanterra’s Fenton said his company has built some 9,000 condominium units in Toronto over the past 10 years and now has “in the hopper” up to 6 million square feet of property in downtown Toronto that is being rezoned for new projects.

Lanterra gained prominence over the past five years for the development of Maple Leaf Square, which included two condo towers, a hotel and office space, near the city’s hockey shrine, Air Canada Center, on land that had sat vacant for years.

Now it is “one of the hottest places to be,” said Fenton.

“ONE TOWER LEADS TO ANOTHER”

Some worry that Toronto can’t handle much more development.

“We have accumulated a serious infrastructure deficit,” wrote Ken Greenberg, a Toronto architect, in the Globe and Mail in October. “We have failed to make the investments in public transit that are urgently needed. Our narrow sidewalks and poorly designed streets are already jammed.”

He criticized the city officials and developers for a lack of coordinated planning. “One tower leads to another,” he said.

Despite decades of debate about transportation policy, Toronto has just two subway lines, a fleet of charming but lumbering streetcar lines and crumbling roadways.

Commuters in Toronto spend at least 80 minutes in traffic a day, on average — worse than what commuters face in London or Los Angeles — according to the Toronto Board of Trade.

Toronto’s City Planning Department did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

There is also concern about soaring neighborhood density rates. The city’s waterfront area has seen the most growth. Its population has soared 134 percent in a decade and is up 66 percent in the past five years, to 43,295, according to city data.

Toronto’s aging energy grid is strained. In July, downtown Toronto endured an eight-hour blackout after a transformer blew due to high demand. There was a similar outage last January.

THE MEGA-PROJECTS

Now two of the most ambitious projects the city has ever seen are being floated.

First out of the gate was theater impresario David Mirvish, who with his father, the late Ed Mirvish, helped create Toronto’s vibrant arts and theater scene.

In early October, Mirvish unveiled a plan for three condominium towers, with up to 85 floors each, that would be the city’s tallest buildings.

A podium at the buildings’ base would house two museums, including one for the Mirvish family’s contemporary art collection.

The Mirvish buildings would be designed by Gehry, the celebrated Canadian-born architect whose 76-story 8 Spruce Street residential tower was just completed in New York.

“These towers can become a symbol of what Toronto can be,” the 83-year-old Gehry said at project’s unveiling. “I am not building condominiums, I am building three sculptures for people to live in.”

Two weeks later, Oxford Properties Group, a Canadian developer with a $ 20 billion global real estate portfolio, announced a $ 3 billion makeover of the downtown convention center, just south of the Mirvish and Gehry project. It envisions a casino, two hotel towers and two office towers that would be among the tallest in the city.

Adam Vaughan, a city councilor whose district would encompass both projects, said a lot more planning is needed. He had kinder words for the Mirvish proposal — “it’s a transformative and astonishing proposal” — than for Oxford’s project, which he called “all out of proportion.”

“It’s time to have a really smart conversation about how we are building this neighborhood because there is a hell of lot of density arriving not just with this project but with all the projects that have been approved,” he said in an interview.

AT THE KIT KAT

Al Carbone, owner for the past three decades of the Kit Kat restaurant, doesn’t think people like Vaughan are listening to him, as the councilor and other politicians are not heeding the growing concerns about the rapid pace of development.

He said buildings are springing up too close to lot lines, creating jammed sidewalks and alleyways. And the sun does not shine on the streets like it once did.

He supports the Mirvish project, which would preserve his street, known as Restaurant Row. But he is battling a separate 47-story building that would go up steps away from his restaurant.

The plan, which still must be approved, would retain the historic facades of buildings on the street, which Carbone believes will destroy the character of the row.

“It’s a tough battle,” said Carbone, who launched the website SaveRestaurantrow.com to drum up support in opposition to the project. “You can’t have a condo on every corner.”

WHERE IS TORONTO HEADED?

Some believe Toronto is at a crossroads as developers, politicians and citizens debate the rapid changes the city’s urban landscape.

The Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee dismissed the idea that the development was somehow bad for the city in a column in October, saying the condo boom “has transformed our once-pokey downtown into a vibrant, around-the-clock urban community.”

David Lieberman, an architect who also teaches at the University of Toronto’s architectural school, agrees the new developments have been good for the city, but he is not sure the city’s citizens are ready for it.

“We have such an excellent opportunity to get things right, but there is the Canadian conservatism,” Lieberman said, sipping coffee in his studio in an old downtown Toronto house. “Canadians in their city building are not risk takers.”

(Reporting By Russ Blinch. Editing by Janet Guttsman and Douglas Royalty)

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Jessica Simpson’s Christmas tweet seems to confirm pregnancy rumor

(Reuters) – U.S. actress, singer and fashion designer Jessica Simpson sent a Christmas Twitter message that apparently confirms media rumors that she is pregnant – showing a photo of her daughter Maxwell with the words “Big Sis” spelled out in sand.

The picture’s caption reads “Merry Christmas from my family to yours.”

Simpson had her first child, Maxwell Drew Johnson, in May. She has since become a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers.

A representative for Simpson was not immediately available for comment.

Simpson rose to fame as a teen pop star and became a household name after starring in a TV reality show with her then-husband Nick Lachey, a member of the boy band 98 Degrees. The pair divorced after three years of marriage.

She went on to star in the 2005 film version of “The Dukes of Hazzard” and re-invented herself as a country singer in 2008. She currently designs apparel, accessories and other fashion products and is a mentor on the TV contest “Fashion Star.”

Simpson’s fiancé, Eric Johnson, is a former U.S. professional football player whose career spanned seven seasons for both the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints. (Reporting By Mary Wisniewski and Paul Simao)

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Reaction to the death of actor Jack Klugman

Celebrities on Monday reacted to the death of “Odd Couple” star Jack Klugman, who died Monday at age 90. Here are samples of sentiments expressed on Twitter:

___

“R.I.P. Jack Klugman, Oscar, Quincy a man whose career spanned almost 50 years. I first saw him on the Twilight Zone. Cool guy wonderful actor.” — Whoopi Goldberg.

___

“You made my whole family laugh together.” — Actor Jon Favreau, of “Swingers,” ”Iron Man” and other films.

___

“I worked with Jack Klugman several years ago. He was a wonderful man and supremely talented actor. He will be missed” — Actor Max Greenfield, of the “New Girl” on Fox.

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“So sorry to hear that Jack Klugman passed away. I learned a lot, watching him on television” — Dan Schneider, creator of Nickelodeon TV shows “iCarly,” ”Drake and Josh” ”Good Burger,” ”Drake & Josh.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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‘Dystextia’: Gibberish texts sound stroke alarm

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Imagine you were a devoted husband, waiting to hear from your wife about her due date after a visit to the obstetrician, and you saw these on your phone:

“every where thinging days nighing”

“Some is where!”

That’s what happened last December to a Boston-area man, who knew that autocorrect – known for its bizarre replacements – was turned off on his 11-week-pregnant wife’s phone.

You’d probably be tempted to make sure your wife, 25, got to the emergency room. When she did, doctors noted several signs of a stroke, including disorientation, inability to use her right arm and leg properly and some difficulty speaking.

A magnetic resonance imaging scan – MRI – revealed that part of the woman’s brain wasn’t getting enough blood, clinching the diagnosis. Fortunately, her symptoms went away quickly, and the rest of the pregnancy went just fine after she went home from the hospital on low-dose blood thinners.

The case, say three doctors from Boston’s Harvard Medical School who reported it online today in the Archives of Neurology, suggests that “the growing digital record will likely become an increasingly important means of identifying neurologic disease, particularly in patient populations that rely more heavily on written rather than spoken communication.”

The authors describe the phenomenon as “dystextia,” which is the word used by other doctors in an earlier case involving a migraine, and symptoms of a stroke diagnosed for other reasons.

“In her case, the first evidence of language difficulties came from her unintelligible texts,” one of the report’s authors, Dr. Joshua Klein, told Reuters Health by email.

Strokes are rare in women aged 15 to 34, with about 11,000 per year, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published last year.

Dr. Sean Savitz, who directs the stroke program at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, said he has seen a few patients who sent emails suggesting they were having difficulty with language, a condition known as aphasia.

Such clues usually come with other information however. In this case, for example, the patient’s obstetrician’s office later remembered that she had trouble filling out a form. And they might have caught the language difficulty earlier had the woman not had a weak voice, thanks to a recent upper respiratory infection.

“So, this case report per se does not indicate to me if dystextia is going to be more common to pick up strokes,” Savitz told Reuters Health by email, “but I do think it will be a valuable addition to the collection of information that neurologists should obtain when taking a history.”

“The main stroke warning signs with respect to texting would be unintelligible language output, or problems reading or comprehending texts,” said Klein. “Many smartphones have an ‘autocorrect’ function which can introduce erroneous word substitutions, giving the impression of a language disorder.”

Autocorrect, said Savitz, a professor of neurology, can confuse matters – even for doctors.

“I have often joked with my colleagues when using the dictation of the smartphone, that it gives me an aphasia,” he said. “Potential for lots of false positives!”

SOURCE: Archives of Neurology, online December 24, 2012.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Newsweek unveils last print cover

24 December 2012 Last updated at 07:34 ET

The 80-year-old US current affairs magazine Newsweek has revealed the image that will grace the cover of its last-ever print edition.

A black and white photo of the publication’s Manhattan headquarters takes pride of place, with the strapline #lastprintissue.

The nod to Twitter is regarded as a backhanded compliment.

The death of the print edition was caused by falling advertising revenues, as audiences moved online.

From the new year, Newsweek will be a digital-only publication. Editor Tina Brown described it as “a new chapter” for the magazine.

In a defiant editor’s letter, she wrote: “This is not a conventional magazine, or a hidebound place.

“It is in that spirit that we’re making our latest, momentous change, embracing a digital medium that all our competitors will one day need to embrace with the same fervor.

“We are ahead of the curve.”

Ms Brown became editor of the publication two years ago, after it merged with The Daily Beast, a news website she co-founded in 2008.

‘Bitter sweet’

Newsweek’s first edition was published on 17 February, 1933. It made an immediate splash with its front cover, featuring seven photos – one news story for each day of the week.

Although it always took second place to its rival, Time, it gained prominence in the 1960s for its coverage of the civil rights movement.

At its height, it had a circulation of 3 million, but declining readership and advertising revenue saw it fall into losses.

It was sold by the Washington Post Company to businessman and publisher Sidney Harman for $ 1 in 2010, and was merged with the Daily Beast three months later.

Ms Brown is a former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She unveiled Newsweek’s final front cover via Twitter, saying: “Bitter sweet! Wish us luck!”

One reader commented that the hashtag headline was “like using your final breath to ID the killer”.

The move to a digital edition will allow Newsweek to cut costs such as printing, postage and distribution. However it will lose money from print advertisers, who traditionally pay more than their online counterparts.

As the final edition went to the printers, The Daily Beast confirmed it would be making many of its editorial staff redundant.

BBC News – Business

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