Existing-home sales and builder confidence rise

WASHINGTON -- The housing market recovery showed signs it is continuing to strengthen as sales of existing homes increased 2.1% in October from the previous month and a measure of home-builder confidence jumped in November to its highest level since 2006.

Sales of existing homes rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.79 million last month, up from a downwardly revised 4.69 million rate in September, that National Assn. of Realtors reported Monday. Sales were up 10.9% in October from a year earlier.

Stronger demand helped push up the median home price nationwide to $178,600 in October, an increase of 11.1% from a year earlier, the group said. It was the eighth-straight month to show a year-over-year increase, the first time that's happened since 2005-2006.

Fewer houses on the market also helped drive price increases. There were 2.14 million existing homes for sale in October, down 1.4% from September. That translates to a 5.4-month supply at the current sales rate, the lowest level since February 2006.

Sales by distressed homeowners still accounted for a large chunk of activity. Foreclosures and short sales made up 24% of October's sales. That was the same level as in September, but down from 28% a year earlier.

Superstorm Sandy had some negative impact on sales, the group said.

The Northeast, which was hit hard by the storm, was the only region to show a decrease in sales in October from the previous month. Sales were down 1.7% there, while they increased 1.8% in the Midwest, 2.1% in the South and 4.4% in the West.

"Home sales continue to trend up and most October transactions were completed by the time the storm hit, but the growing demand with limited inventory is pressuring home prices in much of the country," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the Realtors group. 

He expected more of an impact in the Northeast in coming months.

The improving housing market led to a boost in builder confidence, according to a measure released Monday.

The National Assn. of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index rose five points in November to 46 from the previous month. It was the seventh straight monthly increase, lifting the index to its highest level since May 2006, before the crash of the subprime housing market.

The index remained below 50, indicating that builders who view sales conditions as poor still outnumber those who view them as good. But the index is up sharply from its 19 reading a year ago, the home builders group said.

“Builders are reporting increasing demand for new homes as inventories of foreclosed and distressed properties begin to shrink in markets across the country,” said Barry Rutenberg, a home builder from Gainesville, Fla., and chairman of the builders' group.

“In view of the tightening supply and other improving conditions, many potential buyers who were on the fence are now motivated to move forward with a purchase in order to take advantage of today’s favorable prices and interest rates,” he said. 

ALSO:

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Most aid from mortgage settlement in state going to short sales

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Apple Eyes First Overseas Data Center in Hong Kong

Apple’s data-center empire has yet expand oversees, but it seems this is about to change.

Citing three unnamed sources, the Chinese-language Hong Kong Economic Times reports that Apple is planning to open a data center in Hong Kong, following in the footsteps of Google, its biggest rival.

This would be Apple’s first data center outside the U.S. Currently, the company serves up iCloud and other online services from massive computing facilities in Cupertino, California, at its headquarters; Newark, California, just north of Cupertino; and Maiden, North Carolina. It’s also developing additional facilities in Prineville, Oregon, and Reno, Nevada.

Apple is just one of several big-name web outfits that have erected their own data centers in an effort to save power and cost, rather than just leasing space in third-party facilities. Google was at the forefront of this movement — it now operates nine data centers across the globe — and it was soon joined by the likes of Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook.

According to the Hong Kong Ecocomic Times, Apple is an eyeing a place at the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, located on the Tsueng Kwan O Industrial Estate in the southeast part of the city. Several others companies — including Japanese telecom giant NTT and Hong Kong bank HSBC — already operate data centers there.

Apple news site 9to5Mac has previously reported that Apple plans to begin work on its Hong Kong data center in the first quarter of next year, and that it plans to open the facility in 2015. China represents Apple’s fastest growing market, and having it local data center would allow the company to accelerate the delivery of online services to the region.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Rock band AC/DC releases entire catalog on iTunes

NEW YORK (AP) — AC/DC is finally releasing its music digitally on iTunes.

Columbia Records and Apple announced Monday that the classic rock band’s music will be available at the iTunes Store worldwide. Sixteen studio albums will be released, including “High Voltage” and “Back in Black.”

AC/DC was one of the few acts that would not release music through the digital outlet. The Beatles and Kid Rock were also against selling music on iTunes, but have since jumped onboard. Country star Garth Brooks has yet to release his music on iTunes.

Four of AC/DC’s live albums and three compilation records are also available. The statement said the songs have been mastered for iTunes “with increased audio fidelity.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Teenage Boys, Worried About Body Image, Take Health Risks

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

David Abusheikh at a gym in Brooklyn. He goes six days a week and says he uses protein supplements to help build muscle.

It is not just girls these days who are consumed by an unattainable body image.

Take David Abusheikh. At age 15, he started lifting weights for two hours a day, six days a week. Now that he is a senior at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, he has been adding protein bars and shakes to his diet to put on muscle without gaining fat.

“I didn’t used to be into supplements,” said Mr. Abusheikh, 18, who plans on a career in engineering, “but I wanted something that would help me get bigger a little faster.”

Pediatricians are starting to sound alarm bells about boys who take unhealthy measures to try to achieve Charles Atlas bodies that only genetics can truly confer. Whether it is long hours in the gym, allowances blown on expensive supplements or even risky experiments with illegal steroids, the price American boys are willing to pay for the perfect body appears to be on the rise.

In a study to be published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, more than 40 percent of boys in middle school and high school said they regularly exercised with the goal of increasing muscle mass. Thirty-eight percent said they used protein supplements, and nearly 6 percent said they had experimented with steroids.

Over all, 90 percent of the 1,307 boys in the survey — who lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, but typify what doctors say is a national phenomenon — said they exercised at least occasionally to add muscle.

“There has been a striking change in attitudes toward male body image in the last 30 years,” said Dr. Harrison Pope, a psychiatry professor at Harvard who studies bodybuilding culture and was not involved in the study. The portrayal of men as fat-free and chiseled “is dramatically more prevalent in society than it was a generation ago,” he said.

While college-age men have long been interested in bodybuilding, pediatricians say they have been surprised to find that now even middle school boys are so absorbed with building muscles. And their youth adds an element of risk.

Just as girls who count every calorie in an effort to be thin may do themselves more harm than good, boys who chase an illusory image of manhood may end up stunting their development, doctors say, particularly when they turn to supplements — or, worse, steroids — to supercharge their results.

“The problem with supplements is they’re not regulated like drugs, so it’s very hard to know what’s in them,” said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Some contain anabolic steroids, and even high-quality protein supplements might be dangerous in large amounts, or if taken to replace meals, he said. “These things just haven’t been studied very well,” he said.

Anabolic steroids pose a special danger to developing bodies, Dr. Bhasin said. Steroids “stop testosterone production in men,” he said, leading to terrible withdrawal problems when still-growing boys try to stop taking them. Still, the constant association of steroids with elite athletes like Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds perpetuates the notion that they can be managed successfully.

Online, in bodybuilding forums for teenagers, boys barely out of puberty share weight-lifting regimens and body fat percentages, and judge one another’s progress. On Tumblr and Facebook, teenagers post images of ripped athletes under the heading “fitspo” or “fitspiraton,” which are short for “fitness inspiration.” The tags are spinoffs of “thinspo” and “thinspiration” pictures and videos, which have been banned from many sites for promoting anorexia.

“Lifted b4 school today felt good but was weak as hell,” wrote one boy who said he was 15 and from Tallahassee, Fla., on a message board on Bodybuilding.com in September, saying he bench-pressed 245 pounds. “Barely got it.”

Many of these boys probably see themselves in Mike Sorrentino, “The Situation” from the “Jersey Shore” series on MTV, or the Adam Sackler character, on the HBO series “Girls,” who rarely wears a shirt or takes a break from his crunches.

Mr. Abusheikh, for instance, has a Facebook page full of photos of himself shirtless or showing off his six-pack abs. At his high school, participation in the annual bodybuilding competition hit an all-time high of 30 students this year.

“They ask us about everything,” said Peter Rivera, a physical education teacher at Fort Hamilton High School who helps oversee the competition. “How do I lose weight? How do I gain muscle? How many times a week should I work out?” Some boys want to be stronger for sports, Mr. Rivera said, but others “want to change their body type.”

Compared with a sedentary lifestyle of video games and TV, an obsession with working out may not quite qualify as a health hazard. And instructors like Mr. Rivera say most boys are eager for advice on the healthiest, drug-free ways to get in shape.

With so little known about supplements, it can be difficult, particularly for teenagers, to make wise decisions.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 19, 2012

An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect nationality for the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo. He is Portuguese, not Brazilian. Because of an editing error, it misstated the number of boys included in the survey. The researchers interviewed 2,793 boys and girls, not 2,800 boys. It also described incorrectly the title of Dr. Shalender Bhasin. He is a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, not at the Boston Medical Center.

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Investors Rush to Beat Threat of Higher Taxes

Business owners and investors are rapidly maneuvering to shield themselves from the prospect of higher taxes next year, a strategy that is sending ripples across Wall Street and broad areas of the economy.

Take Steve Wynn, the casino magnate, who has been a vocal critic of higher tax rates. He and his fellow shareholders in Wynn Resorts, the company announced, will collect a special dividend of $750 million on Tuesday, a payout timed to take advantage of current rates. Experts estimated that taking the payout this year instead of next could save Mr. Wynn, who owns a sizable stake in the company, more than $20 million.

For the wealthy like Mr. Wynn, the overriding goal is to record as much of their future income this year as they can. This includes moves as diverse as sales of businesses, one-time dividends and the sale of stocks that have been big winners.

“In my 30 years in practice, I’ve never seen such a flood of desire and action to transfer a business and cash out,” said Kenneth K. Bezozo, a partner in New York with the law firm Haynes and Boone. “We’re seeing a watershed event.”

Whether small business owners or individuals saving for retirement, investors are being urged by their advisers to reconsider their holdings. Along the way, many are shedding the very investments that have been the most popular over the last year, contributing to recent sell-offs in formerly high-flying shares like Apple and Amazon.

Investors typically take profits in their own portfolio at year-end, but the selling appears to be more targeted this year. Stocks with large dividends, for instance, are seen as less attractive because of the perceived likelihood of a sharp increase in the tax rate on dividends.

All this is weighing on the broader financial markets, as worries mount about the economic drag from the combination of higher tax rates and reduced government spending set for January if President Obama and Senate Republicans cannot reach a budget compromise before then.

Fears about the fiscal impasse in Washington, along with anxiety about fading corporate profits and weakening economies abroad, have pushed the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down about 5 percent since the election. On Friday, major stock indexes had their best showing of the week after President Obama and Republican leaders signaled that a compromise was possible.

Even if many of the tax breaks scheduled to expire survive a new budget deal, some business owners and investors are bracing for substantial increases in specific areas of the tax code.

The top rate on dividends, for example, could climb to 39.6 percent from 15 percent if no action is taken. Capital gains taxes, which now top out at 15 percent, could rise above 20 percent, many financial advisers say. Most investment income will also be subject to a 3.8 percent charge to help pay for President Obama’s health care law.

Stocks that pay big dividends have been popular in recent years among investors eager for an alternative to the meager returns on bank savings accounts and Treasury securities. Since October, though, the two sectors that provide the most generous dividend payments — utilities and telecommunication stocks — have been among the worst performers, hurt also in part by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast. Utility companies in the S.& P. 500 have fallen 9.4 percent from their highs in October. Telecommunication stocks in the index have dropped 11.3 percent from theirs, compared with the broader index’s 6.8 percent decline from its recent high.

John Moorin, the founder of a medical equipment company near Indianapolis, said he sold about $650,000 in dividend-paying stocks like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola a few days after the election, worried about the potential increase in taxes.

“I love these companies, but I’m so scared that now all of the sudden I’m going to get taxed at such a rate with them that they won’t be worth anything,” Mr. Moorin said.

Although Mr. Wynn has declared special dividends at the end of the year before — most recently in 2011 — in a call with analysts last month, he hinted that higher taxes would cause him and other chief executives to rethink big payouts in future years.

In the meantime, he added, it was “very difficult to do long-range planning with a government that moves as much as this does on so many issues.”

Leggett & Platt, a diversified manufacturer based in Carthage, Mo., decided to move up payment of its fourth-quarter dividend to December from January so shareholders could take advantage of the lower rate.

“If we can help our shareholders avoid taxes and keep more of their dividends, we’ll do it,” said David M. DeSonier, senior vice president for corporate strategy and investor relations.

David Kocieniewski contributed reporting.

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A young shooting victim wrestles with his fears

After the nightmares started, Davien Graham avoided his bicycle.

In his dreams, he pedaled his silver BMX bike through his neighborhood, heard gunfire and died.

If I stay off my bike, I'll be safe, he thought.

He placed it in a backyard shed, where it sat for months. But Jan. 12, 2008, dawned so spectacular that Davien decided to risk it.

He ate Cap'n Crunch Berries cereal, grabbed the bike and rode a half-mile west to Calvary Grace, a Southern Baptist church that was his haven.

Davien lived with an unemployed aunt and uncle, a former Crip, and five other kids in a cramped four-bedroom house in Monrovia, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles.

Yet as a 16-year-old junior at Monrovia High School, Davien earned A's and B's, played JV football and volunteered with the video club. He cleaned the church on Saturdays for minimum wage.

If I live right, God will protect me.

That afternoon, sweaty from cleaning, Davien reached for his wallet to buy a snack — only to realize he had forgotten it at home.

After returning to his house, he caught his reflection in the front window. He was 6 feet 2 and wiry. His skinny chest was beginning to broaden. He was trying to add weight to his 160-pound frame in time for varsity football tryouts.

He showered, told his aunt he would be right back and again jumped on his bike, size-14 Nike Jordans churning, heading for a convenience store near the church.

At the store, he bought Arizona fruit punch and lime chili Lay's potato chips. He recognized a kindergarten-age Latino boy and bought him Twinkies.

Davien pedaled down the empty sidewalk along Peck Road. He could hear kids playing basketball nearby. As he neared the church, a car passed, going in the opposite direction. He barely noticed.

He heard car tires crunching on asphalt behind him. He glanced back, expecting a friend.

Instead he heard: "Hey, fool."

The gun was gray. It had a slide. Davien recognized that much from watching the Military Channel.

Behind the barrel, he saw forearms braced to fire and the face of a Latino man, a former classmate.

The gunman shouted, "Dirt Rock!," cursing a local black gang, the Duroc Crips.

Davien's mind raced: Don't panic. Watch the barrel. Duck.

Suddenly, he was falling. Then he was on the ground, looking up at the church steeple and the cross.

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Amazing Time-Lapse Video Features Ever-Changing Earth and Sky

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Heaven meets the Earth in this moving time-lapse video showing gorgeous landscapes underneath an ever-changing night sky.

“Within Two Worlds” was created by photographer Brad Goldpaint. The film features shooting comets, a giant tilting Milky Way, and glowing purple and pink auroras peeking over the horizon. Stunning sequences watch day turn to night and night to day, as overhead stars shine their beautiful light above mountains, forests, and waterfalls.

“This time-lapse video is my visual representation of how the night sky and landscapes co-exist within a world of contradictions. I hope this connection between heaven and earth inspires you to discover and create your own opportunities, to reach your rightful place within two worlds,” Goldpaint wrote on his Vimeo page.

Below you can see some of striking images from the movie, including screenshots of the Geminid meteor shower over Castle Lake in California and auroras over Crater Lake National park in Oregon.

Geminid meteor shower over Castle Lake

The Milky Way soars over Crater Lake as a Lyrid meteor flies overhead.

Star trails over Mount Shasta in California

Pink auroras over Crater Lake

Images and Video: Copyright Goldpaint Photography

Music composed by Serge Essiambre entitled, ‘Believe in Yourself’

Adam is a Wired reporter and freelance journalist. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.

Read more by Adam Mann

Follow @adamspacemann on Twitter.

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The Neediest Cases: Emerging From a Bleak Life to Become Fabulous Phil

For years, Phillip Johnson was caught in what seemed like an endless trench of bad luck. He was fired from a job, experienced intensifying psychological problems, lost his apartment and spent time in homeless shelters. At one point, he was hospitalized after overdosing on an antipsychotic drug.

“I had a rough road,” he said.

Since his hospital stay two years ago, and despite setbacks, Mr. Johnson, 27, has been getting his life on track. At Brooklyn Community Services, where he goes for daily counseling and therapy, everybody knows him as Fabulous Phil.

“Phillip is a light, the way he evokes happiness in other people,” his former caseworker, Teresa O’Brien, said. “Phillip’s character led directly to his nickname.”

About six months ago, with Ms. O’Brien’s help, Mr. Johnson started an event: Fabulous Phil Friday Dance Party Fridays.

One recent afternoon at the agency, 30 clients and a few counselors were eating cake, drinking soft drinks and juice, and grooving for 45 minutes to Jay-Z and Drake pulsating from a boom box.

Mr. Johnson’s voice rose with excitement when he talked about the party. Clients and counselors, he said, “enjoy themselves.”

“They connect more; they communicate more,” he continued. “Everybody is celebrating and laughing.”

The leadership Mr. Johnson now displays seems to be a far cry from the excruciatingly introverted person he was.

As an only child living with his single mother in public housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he said, he tended to isolate himself. “A lot of kids my age would say, ‘Come outside,’ but I would always stay in my room,” he said. He occupied himself by writing comic books or reading them, his favorites being Batman and Spiderman because, he said, “they were heroes who saved the day.”

After graduating from high school in 2003, he worked odd jobs until 2006, when he took a full-time position at a food court at La Guardia Airport, where he helped to clean up. The steady paycheck allowed him to leave his mother’s apartment and rent a room in Queens.

But the depression and bleak moods that had shadowed him throughout middle and high school asserted themselves.

“My thinking got confused,” he said. “Racing thoughts through my mind. Disorganized thoughts. I had a hard time focusing on one thing.”

In 2008, after two years on the job, Mr. Johnson was fired for loud and inappropriate behavior, and for being “unpredictable,” he said. The boss said he needed counseling. He moved back in with his mother, and in 2009 entered a program at an outpatient addiction treatment service, Bridge Back to Life. It was there, he said, that he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia and help with his depression and marijuana use.

But one evening in May 2010, he had a bout with insomnia.

He realized the antipsychotic medication he had been prescribed, Risperdal, made him feel tired, he said, so he took 12 of the pills, rather than his usual dosage of two pills twice a day. When 12 did not work, he took 6 more.

“The next morning when I woke up, it was hard for me to breathe,” he said.

He called an ambulance, which took to Woodhull Hospital. He was released after about a month.

Not long after, he returned to his mother’s apartment, but by February 2011, they both decided he should leave, and he relocated to a homeless shelter in East New York, where, he said, eight other people were crammed into his cubicle and there were “bedbugs, people lying in your bed, breaking into your locker to steal your stuff.”

In late spring 2011, he found a room for rent in Manhattan, but by Thanksgiving he was hospitalized again. Another stint in a shelter followed in April, when his building was sold.

Finally, in July, Mr. Johnson moved to supported housing on Staten Island, where he lives with a roommate. His monthly $900 Social Security disability check is sent to the residence, which deducts $600 for rent and gives him $175 in spending money; he has breakfast and lunch at the Brooklyn agency. To assist Mr. Johnson with unexpected expenses, a grant of $550 through The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund went to buy him a bed and pay a Medicare prescription plan fee for three months.

“I was so happy I have a bed to sleep on,” he said about the replacement for an air mattress. “When I have a long day, I have a bed to lay in, and I feel good about that.”

Mr. Johnson’s goals include getting his driver’s license — “I already have a learner’s permit,” he said, proudly — finishing his program at the agency, and then entering an apprenticeship program to become a plumber, carpenter or mechanic.

But seeing how his peers have benefited from Fabulous Phil Fridays has made him vow to remain involved with people dealing with mental illnesses or substance abuse.

He was asked at the party: Might he be like the comic-book heroes he loves? A smile spread across his face. He seemed to think so.

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Two council members assail LAFD over response times

The Los Angeles Fire Department, which has been embroiled in a months-long controversy over response-time data, has failed to move decisively to resolve the problem, two Los Angeles City Council members said Friday.

In a formal motion, council members Eric Garcetti and Mitch Englander demanded that fire officials appear before the full council as soon as possible to explain why the department has not presented specific actions that could be taken to improve response times by rescuers during life-and-death emergencies.

"The department's managers are either unwilling or unable to do their job to reduce response times and make L.A. safer," said Garcetti, who is running for mayor, in a statement.

Battalion Chief Armando Hogan said Fire Chief Brian Cummings would respond to issues regarding the agency's data on Tuesday at LAFD headquarters, after a regularly scheduled meeting of the Fire Commission.

Friday's comments by the council members were some of the most critical to date about Cummings and his department since the data controversy erupted in March. That's when the LAFD acknowledged it was using response time figures that made it appear that rescuers were reaching victims in need faster than they actually were.

The motion comes after a series of Times investigations on delays in processing 911 calls, dispatching rescuers and summoning the nearest firefighters from other jurisdictions in medical emergencies.

On Thursday, The Times reported that waits for medical aid vary dramatically across Los Angeles' diverse neighborhoods. Residents in some of the city's most exclusive hillside communities can wait twice as long for rescuers to arrive as people who live in densely packed areas in and around downtown, according to the analysis that mapped out more than 1 million LAFD dispatches since 2007.

A task force of experts formed by Cummings has found that inaccurate response time data were a result of systemic problems in the LAFD's 30-year-old computer-assisted dispatch system and a lack of training by LAFD personnel who were assigned to complex data analysis projects.

Earlier this year, Garcetti and other council members asked the LAFD to return with a five-year plan laying out what is needed to improve response times. The council members wanted specifics regarding technology, more firefighters and other resources.

"Six months later, we have bupkis, and that's unacceptable," said Garcetti's spokesman, Yusef Robb.

robert.lopez@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

ben.welsh@latimes.com

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10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist

Sure, the gear may look like it came straight out of Avatar or Battlestar Galactica. But all of the laser weapons, robots, sonic blasters and puke rays pictured here are real. Some of these weapons have already found their way onto the battlefield. If the rest of this sci-fi arsenal follows, war may soon be unrecognizable.

Read on for a look at some of these futuristic weapons being tested today.

Above:

The XM-25 grenade launcher is equipped with a laser rangefinder and on-board computer. It packs a magazine of four 25mm projectiles, and programs them to detonate as they pass by their targets. That feature will allow soldiers to strike enemies who are taking cover. By 2012, the Army hopes to arm every infantry squad and Special Forces unit with at least one of the big guns.

In August, a lucky soldier got to pull the trigger, and fire off a HEAB, or High Explosive Air Burst, round at the Aberdeen Testing Ground in Maryland. Those projectiles pack quite a punch. They are purportedly 300 percent more effective than normal ammo, and will be able to strike targets as far as 700 meters (2,300 feet) away.

Photo courtesy U.S. Army

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