Japan's central bank pledges new stimulus to combat deflation

WASHINGTON — In unveiling a new stimulus plan, Japan's central bank for the first time set an ambitious inflation target aimed at breaking the nation out of its long deflationary trap and economic stagnation.

But many analysts and investors were disappointed with Tuesday's action.

They said the moves by the Bank of Japan, in response to relentless nagging by Japan's new prime minister to be more aggressive, fell far short of what was needed to put the world's third-largest economy on a path of sustained growth — offering little hope that Japan would provide a boost to the fragile global economy any time soon.

Japan's economy shrank in the third quarter amid weakening exports and consumer spending, and economists said it was likely to report a contraction for the fourth quarter, technically putting it in recession.

Deflation has long been a big part of Japan's economic woes. The trend of falling prices undermines growth by sapping consumers' spending and business profits, hurting jobs, wages and investment.

The country has been in a mild deflation in the last year. To combat that, the Bank of Japan adopted a 2% inflation target — double its previously stated goal of 1% and in line with other central banks in advanced economies, including the Federal Reserve in the U.S.

And much like the Fed, Japan's central bank pledged to pump more money into the financial system by buying government bonds indefinitely every month in a bid to meet its target.

Although the Fed's focus has been on bringing down America's stubbornly high unemployment rate, Japan's central bank is aiming to spur more consumer spending, in part by trying to create expectations that prices will rise, a strategy that not everyone agrees will work.

Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, praised the central bank's action, calling it "bold" and "epoch-making." The Bank of Japan's statement was issued jointly with Abe's government, which for its part pledged "all possible decisive policy actions" to grow the economy.

But the announcement was met with widespread skepticism from financial markets and experts. For one thing, the central bank's stepped-up buying of government bonds would amount to about 13 trillion yen a month, or about $147 billion, not nearly as much as analysts were expecting.

Furthermore, the Bank of Japan said it would not begin such purchases until early 2014, a delay that puzzled experts.

Takeo Hoshi, a finance professor at Stanford University, said it wasn't clear exactly why the central bank was delaying the expanded stimulus until next year. But he noted that the Bank of Japan is concerned about providing artificial support to unhealthy businesses and fostering undisciplined fiscal spending by buying government bonds and keeping interest rates low.

Hoshi said his bigger concern with Tuesday's joint statement was the lack of concrete steps that Abe's government said it would take to address long-running needs in the Japanese economy, such as deregulation and policies to strengthen competitiveness.

"The fundamental problem is that Japan's potential growth rate has declined over the last 20 years, and Japan hasn't done enough structural reforms to change that," said Hoshi, who directs the Japanese program at Stanford's Asia-Pacific Research Center.

The new 2% inflation-targeting strategy by itself won't drive more consumer spending, said Japanese economics expert Richard Katz, because "people keep expecting inflation and it never happens."

"When they expect more inflation, it actually causes them to spend less because prices go up, but people don't think wages will go up," said Katz, chief editor of the Oriental Economist Report, a monthly newsletter that specializes in Japan and U.S.-Japan relations.

The answer to Japan's economic problems, Katz said, was to provide stronger monetary stimulus and more efficient fiscal spending, along with a series of structural reforms that would enable Japan to become more productive in the face of a shrinking workforce and a population that is aging and saving less.

The Bank of Japan's action also drew criticism from Jens Weidmann, president of Germany's Bundesbank. He warned of government infringement in central bank authority and a resulting "politicized exchange rate" that could lead to currency wars as countries look to bolster economic growth through exports.

Japan, for decades an export powerhouse with perennial surpluses, has been running a trade deficit for the last two years. As prime minister, Abe has sought to devalue Japanese currency to help the country's export industries. The central bank's pledge to buy more bonds could help put further downward pressure on the yen.

Still, experts don't think that the yen will fall much further. Even if it dropped 10%, they said, it would probably have only a minor effect on the overall economy.

"I don't think trade surpluses will come back for Japan," Stanford's Hoshi said. "They need to come up with a new growth model."

don.lee@latimes.com

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Obama's inaugural speech gives hope to gay marriage supporters

WASHINGTON — By equating the gay rights struggle with those of African Americans and women, President Obama in his inaugural address set a standard that boosted gay activists' hopes that he soon would make a bold legal move to support a constitutional right to gay marriage.

Obama's words themselves were a landmark — the first time gay rights had ever been advocated in the high-profile speech. But the president, speaking just feet from Supreme Court justices who will take up the issue of gay marriage this spring, went far beyond a simple mention. He equated gay rights with the country's iconic civil rights movements.

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall," he said, linking the beginning of the women's suffrage movement, the battle for black rights in the South and the gay protest against police harassment in New York as equal steps in the nation's march toward equality.

"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law," he continued, "for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."

The passage "was definitely one of those moments that took your breath away," said Adam DeRosa, president of the Lesbian and Gay Band Assn., whose 215 members later marched past the president in the inaugural parade. "We understand the historical significance of it. What political significance it has remains to be seen."

Obama, who only last spring hesitated to declare his public support for gay marriage, soon will have to decide whether his administration will take the potentially huge step of arguing before the Supreme Court that gay marriage is an equal right under the Constitution.

The court will soon review two cases, one of them involving California's Proposition 8, the ballot measure that limited marriage to unions between a man and a woman. Gay rights lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to declare the ballot measure unconstitutional, potentially striking down the laws of 41 states.

To several legal scholars, Obama's equating of Selma and Stonewall strongly implied he is prepared to side with gay rights activists. But doing so would mark a sudden departure from the caution with which he has typically approached most issues.

Asked whether the speech was intended to send a signal about the Supreme Court case, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said, "It's a legitimate question, but for today, we're letting the president's speech stand on its own."

Theodore Olson, the former George W. Bush administration solicitor general and lawyer for the gay couples challenging Proposition 8, said the president sounded ready to back a constitutional right to gay marriage.

"I was very gratified to hear the president state in clear and unambiguous language that our gay and lesbian citizens must be treated equally under the law," Olson said, "and that their loving relationships must be treated equally as well. That can only mean one thing: equality under the Constitution."

Evan Wolfson, president and founder of New York-based Freedom to Marry, noted in an interview that Obama's speech "was an inaugural address, not a legal brief, and we will see over the next several weeks exactly what positions the Justice Department takes."

"I am confident the president knows that the Constitution requires equality in the freedom to marry," he added.

The excitement that Obama's remarks spurred among advocates of gay marriage was matched by dismay among its opponents. Byron Babione, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, which is co-counsel in the Proposition 8 case now before the Supreme Court, said it was "deeply dishonest to equate the civil rights movement to today's homosexual activism."

"Civil rights marchers were met with batons, fire hoses, tear gas and nooses. So-called pride parades are met with Fortune 500 corporate sponsorship," he said. "African Americans were systematically dehumanized, while homosexual activists are lionized by every powerful cultural institution and center of wealth in America."

For most of his political career, Obama has supported gay rights but said he opposed same-sex marriage. In May, the president announced that he had "evolved" on the issue and that he now personally supported gay marriage. But he also said the matter should be decided on a state-by-state basis.

Public opinion on the matter has shifted starkly in recent years. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll conducted Dec. 6-9 found that 51% favored or strongly favored gay marriage, with 40% opposed. In 2004, the same poll found 30% in favor and 61% against.

"The country has shifted," said Dawn Moretz, 45, an elementary school teacher in Marshville, N.C., who was walking with a friend on the edge of the inaugural parade route Monday. Gay rights is "still a hot-button issue, but it's not as hush-hush as it used to be," she said.

The inaugural ceremonies reflected that shift. In addition to the lesbian and gay band that marched in the parade, officials chose a gay poet, Richard Blanco, to read at the celebration.

Such symbolism, however, would pale in comparison with a Supreme Court declaration. The justices have agreed to hear the two gay marriage cases in late March. Both pose questions about equal rights for same-sex couples.

In one case from New York, the justices will decide whether legally married gay couples are entitled to equal benefits under federal law. Obama's lawyers have joined with gay rights advocates in the case.

The other case stems from Proposition 8. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Proposition 8 in 2010, ruling that it violated both the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution. An appeals court affirmed the decision, and the Supreme Court decided in December to take the case.

So far, the Obama administration has not weighed in on the question. And because it is a state case, the Justice Department could stand aside and not take part. The administration has until late February to decide whether to file a brief in the case. Lawyers close to the administration say the final decision will be made at the White House, not the Justice Department.

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

david.savage@latimes.com

Jessica Garrison in Los Angeles and Brian Bennett in Washington contributed to this report.

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At Obama’s church service, hymns, prayers – and a tweet?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – There was preaching, praying and singing at President Barack Obama’s church service on Inauguration Day on Monday. But was there tweeting, too?

As Atlanta pastor Andy Stanley wrapped up his sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House by urging Obama to leverage his power for the greater good, a tweet went out from the president’s own Twitter feed.

“I’m honored and grateful that we have a chance to finish what we started. Our work begins today. Let’s go. -bo,” said the tweet, which went to more than 26 million Obama followers.

Obama typically designates tweets that he writes himself by signing his initials in lowercase: “-bo.” That led to questions over whether the president had tweeted from church – and perhaps provided a new chapter in the debate over the appropriate use of social media.

But a White House spokesman said Obama did not send the tweet in the middle of the church service.

That means it could have been done by Obama in advance and timed for release while he was in church, or that it was posted by Organizing for Action, the non-profit group that now operates the president’s Twitter account.

The new group, which is led by Obama’s former campaign team, plans to try to build public support for the president’s policies.

The group did not immediately comment on the authorship or timing of the tweet.

Even if Obama had sent out the tweet from church, such messages from the pew are no longer taboo, said Scott Williams, a pastor and consultant from Edmond, Oklahoma, who works with ministries to use social media to spread the word and engage members.

“It’s definitely OK – it’s relevant,” he said. He cited a verse from the prophet Isaiah: “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I twitter.”

“‘Thou shalt twitter in church’ is a way that I present it,” Williams said in an interview, noting that many people now used Bible apps on their mobile devices in the pews.

Stanley’s North Point Community Church in Atlanta produced a Christmas music video for iPhones and iPads that has been viewed 3.7 million times on YouTube, said Williams, who is familiar with the 33,000-member ministry.

Stanley delivered his sermon in a very “old-school” setting. St. John’s, a yellow church with white trim, was built in 1816 and often is called the “Church of the Presidents” because every president since James Madison has attended it at least occasionally.

The service included a mix of traditional hymns such as “Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past,” a gospel solo by singer Ledisi, and an African-American spiritual, “Great Day.” It also included readings and prayers from Jewish, Christian and Catholic clergy.

Stanley talked about a passage in the Bible where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, setting an example of equality.

“What do you do when it dawns on you that you’re the most powerful person in the room? You leverage that power for the benefit of other people in the room,” Stanley said.

“Mister President, you have an awfully big room,” the pastor said. “It’s as big as our nation. At times, as you know, it’s as big as this world.”

(Editing by David Lindsey and Peter Cooney)

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Beyonce, Hudson do star turns at inauguration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Beyonce drew a loud cheer at the inauguration Monday even before her impressive rendition of the national anthem. But in the role she played four years ago singing for the president and first lady at the inaugural ball was her "Dreamgirls" co-star Jennifer Hudson.

If President Barack Obama's first inaugural theme seemed to be summed up by Beyonce's "At Last," this time it was Hudson's version of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together."

Hudson was among the entertainment at Monday night's inaugural balls, joined by Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys, who modified her hit "Girl on Fire" to sing "He's the president and he's on fire ... Obama's on fire. Obama's on fire."

The crowd at the official Inaugural Ball joined in with the Grammy-nominated fun. anthem "We Are Young."

Earlier in the day, the applause for Beyonce started when she took her place with Jay-Z at the Capitol to watch President Barack Obama take the oath for his second term in office. The two stopped to chat with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

James Taylor kicked off the musical performances, strumming his guitar and singing "America the Beautiful." Kelly Clarkson followed with a different arrangement of "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Then Beyonce was introduced and the crowd again roared its approval.

Beyonce had a definite fan in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who applauded eagerly after she finished singing the national anthem. She offered R&B-esque vocal riffs as she sang on and the crowd seemed to love it, cheering loudly as she finished. Clarkson, too, hit high notes.

Beyonce may have been the star musical attraction, but she had plenty of company from Hollywood at the Capitol on Monday. Katy Perry and John Mayer sat side-by-side, with Perry in an orange-striped coat and wide hat, and Mayer in dark sunglasses. Singer-songwriter Ke$ha was there, too.

People flocked to the colorful pop star, snapping photos. And Perry did the same, taking shots of "Girls" actress and daughter of news anchor Brian Williams, Allison Williams.

Actress Eva Longoria was seated on the platform outside the Capitol after making an appearance at a Kennedy Center performance Sunday night. Perry sang at the children's concert the night before.

Former Boston Celtics great Bill Russell was in the crowd, too, along with actor Marlon Wayans.

___

AP writers Donna Cassata, Darlene Superville, Josh Lederman and Jocelyn Noveck contributed to this report.

__

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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The Week: A Roundup of This Week’s Science News

“Science,” a colleague once said at a meeting, “is a mighty enterprise, which is really rather quite topical.” He was so right: as we continue to enhance our coverage of the scientific world, we always aim to keep the latest news front and center.

His observation seemed like a nice way to introduce this column, which will highlight the week’s developments in health and science news and glance at what’s ahead. This past week, for instance, the mighty enterprise of science addressed itself to such newsy topics as the flu (there’s still time to get vaccinated!), and mental illness and gun control.

In addition to the big-headline stories that invite wisdom from scientists, each week there is a drumbeat of purely scientific and medical news that emerges from academic journals, fieldwork and elsewhere. These developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)

Many discoveries are hard to unravel. “In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper,” the same colleague observed. “You couldn’t imagine anything less consumer-friendly.”

Let’s aim to fix that. Below, a selection of the week’s stories.

DEVELOPMENTS

Health

Strange, but Effective

People with a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile — which kills 14,000 Americans a year — have a startling cure: a transplant of someone else’s feces into their digestive system, which introduces good bacteria that the gut needs to fight off the bad. For some people, antibiotics don’t fix this problem, but an infusion of diluted stool from a healthy person seems to do the trick.

Genetics

Dig We Must

Hillery Metz and Hopi Hoekstra/Harvard University

Evolutionary biologists at Harvard took a tiny species of deer mice, known for building elaborate burrows with long tunnels, and bred it with another species of deer mice, which builds short-tunneled burrows. Comparing the DNA of the original mice with their offspring, the biologists pinpointed four regions of genetic code that help tell the mice what kind of burrow to construct.

Aerospace

Launch, Then Inflate

Uncredited/Bigelow Aerospace, via Associated Press

NASA signed a contract for an inflatable space habitat — roughly pineapple-shaped, with walls of floppy cloth — that will ideally be appended to the International Space Station in 2015. NASA aims to use the pod to test inflatable technology in space, but the company that builds these things, Bigelow Aerospace, has bigger ambitions: think of a 12-person apartment and laboratory in the sky, with two months’ rent at north of $26 million.

Biology

What’s Green and Flies?

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum

National Geographic reported on an Australian researcher working in Vietnam who discovered a great-looking new species of flying frog. Described as having flappy forearms (the better for gliding), the three-and-a-half-inch-long frog likes to “parachute” from tree to tree, Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, told the magazine. She named it Helen’s Flying Frog, for her mother.

Privacy

That’s Joe’s DNA!

People who volunteer their genetic information for the betterment of science — and are assured anonymity — may find that their privacy is not a slam dunk. A researcher who set out to crack the identities of a few men whose genomes appeared in a public database was able to do so using genealogical Web sites (where people upload parts of their genomes to try to find relatives) as well as some simple search tools. He was trying to test the database’s security, but even he did not expect it to be so easy.

Genetics

An On/Off Switch for Disease

Geneticists have long puzzled over what it is that activates a disease in one person but not in another — even in identical twins. Now researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who studied people with rheumatoid arthritis have identified a pattern of chemical tags that tell genes whether to turn on or not. In rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks the body, and it is thought the tags enable the attack.

Planetary Science

That Red Planet

Everybody loves Mars, and we’re all secretly hoping that NASA’s plucky little rover finds evidence of life there. Meanwhile, a separate NASA craft — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been looping the planet since 2006 — took some pictures of a huge crater that looks as if it once held a lake fed by groundwater. It is too soon to say if the lake held living things, but NASA’s news release did include the happy phrase “clues to subsurface habitability.”

COMING UP

Animal Testing

Retiring Chimps

Emily Wabitsch/European Pressphoto Agency

A lot of people have strong feelings about the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral experiments, and the National Institutes of Health has been listening. On Tuesday, the agency is to release its recommendations for curtailing chimp research in a big way. This will be but a single step in a long process and it will apply only to the chimps the agency owns, but it may well stir big reactions from many constituencies.

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Blockbuster to close about 300 stores in U.S.

By Frank Shyong, Los Angeles Times

January 22, 2013

Blockbuster said it will close about 300 of its U.S. stores in the coming weeks, thinning the once ubiquitous video rental chain's bricks-and-mortar presence.

The closures will result in the loss of about 3,000 jobs and leave the company with about 500 stores in the nation, said John Hall, a spokesman for parent company Dish Network Corp. in Englewood, Colo.

Last week, Blockbuster's British unit entered into administration, a version of bankruptcy, and said it would close 160 stores there, according to the administrator, accounting and consulting firm Deloitte.

Dish, a nationwide satellite pay-TV provider, acquired Blockbuster and about 1,700 stores in a 2011 bankruptcy sale. It hoped to use the company's brand name and online streaming service to compete against the likes of Netflix and Redbox.

Although it streams movies to customers, Dish had hoped to use the Blockbuster stores to market its satellite service.

Hall said some of the stores are being closed because they're reaching the end of their leases and others because of their poor performance. The company would not say which stores would be closed.

Dish itself has been hurting. The company lost 19,000 subscribers and reported $158 million in red ink for the third quarter. Fourth-quarter figures have not been released.

"We continue to see value in the Blockbuster brand and we will continue to analyze store level profitability and — as we have in the past — close unprofitable stores," Hall said in an email.

frank.shyong@latimes.com

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Clara Jane Nixon dies at 93; sister-in-law of President Nixon

Her famous brother-in-law had not yet been elected president. But he already had been vice president, as well as a U.S. senator and a congressman from California, and Clara Jane Nixon wanted to preserve some of his family history.

So, beginning in 1967, the Newport Beach housewife set out to track down and collect the furniture, books and other belongings that had filled the modest boyhood home of Richard M. Nixon. She hoped that one day the artifacts might be displayed in a museum.

With the help of other family members, the wife of F. Donald Nixon, a brother of the future president, found and preserved hundreds of items from his childhood home in Yorba Linda, including the piano on which he took lessons, the table where his family ate its meals and the china and crystal his parents received as wedding gifts.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

She found the high chair he used as a toddler, the bed on which he was born and the quilt, dating from 1875, that had been used to cover it. The furnishings and other belongings of the Nixon family are displayed in the 900-square-foot farmhouse, a museum near the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda.

"Clara Jane was just essential to all those artifacts being saved," her brother-in-law Ed Nixon said in a phone interview Sunday. "We're very thankful she was there all these years and for everything she did to preserve the family history."

Clara Jane Nixon died Thursday at a convalescent facility in Irvine where she was receiving care after a recent fall at the home where she had moved after her husband's death in 1987, family members said. She was 93.

She was born Clara Jane Lemke on Nov. 16, 1919, in Westmoreland, a community in Imperial County where her parents were homesteading. She weighed in at less than five pounds, according to the scale — normally used for weighing chickens — that her father employed for the task, her daughter LawreneAnfinson said in a phone interview.

She grew up in Placentia, where her parents, Lawrence and Mae Lemke, were citrus farmers. After graduating from Fullerton High School, she attended Sawyer Business College in Westwood and later worked as a secretary at a law firm.

In 1940, when she was 20, she was introduced to F. Donald Nixon, who was her third cousin on her mother's side. They dated for just three weeks before he asked for her hand, and they were married on Aug. 9, 1942. They had three children: daughter Lawrene, who was named for her grandfather Lawrence, and sons Donald and Richard.

Their son Richard Calvert Nixon died in 2002. In addition to her daughter and her son Donald, Clara Nixon's survivors include six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

In later years, after President Nixon resigned in disgrace on Aug. 9, 1974, his youngest brother was often asked about the significance of the date.

"Whenever anyone asked me, I would say, 'Well, it was Don's and Clara Jane's 32nd anniversary,'" Ed Nixon said.

rebecca.trounson@latimes.com

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Mobile revolution in Myanmar is on the cards, but too slow for many

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar is on the cusp of a mobile revolution. Only it’s happening way too slowly for many locals.

Last week the government invited expressions of interest for two mobile phone licenses – a first step towards increasing mobile penetration from its current 5-10 percent to 80 percent in three years. That would lift it off the bottom of the world’s ladder of mobile use and put it on a par with neighbors like Bangladesh.

In the meantime, users are chafing at the pace and price of adding connections.

A year ago the informal technology conference Barcamp Yangon was buzzing with rumours of a SIM card that would cost about $ 6 – or 1 percent of its actual price at the time.

A year on, Barcamp is back but the talk is much less dramatic: whether the state-owned operator might this week release SIM cards costing between around $ 100. That would still be half of what the last tranche sold for, but it still leaves many unhappy.

“The clock is ticking,” says Ravi Chhabra, a local technology entrepreneur. “People are frustrated. There is lots of speculation and this creates anxiety.”

Nobody questions the need for more connections, and foreign operators have salivated at what amounts to one of the last major untapped markets.

President Thein Sein has made it clear that mobile telephony is a cornerstone of his policy, and has also vowed that mobile communications would be cheap – a promise he reiterated to a conference of donors on Saturday.

Still, getting it done is not proving easy.

The notice inviting expressions of interest in two licenses was a welcome sign that things were moving, but IT experts and sources close to the communications ministry said the timing was surprising, given that the revised telecommunications law which would define the nature of any investment had yet to be passed by the parliament.

The government said in an appendix to the notice that a new draft of the law – which had been quietly withdrawn last year after criticism about its contents – had been submitted to parliament and was expected to be passed by June.

“After the law is finished then there should be a clear policy before any expression of interest is sought,” said Zaw Min Oo, secretary general of the Myanmar Computer Federation.

On top of that, the next day Telecommunications Minister Thein Tun, who had overall responsibility for mobile licensing, resigned. No reason has been given, and officials declined to comment.

“BIT OF AN EARTHQUAKE”

Sources close to the ministry say his departure had been rumored for several months, but the timing was unexpected, and raises questions about what might happen next.

“It’s been a bit of an earthquake; now we need to sit back and watch, see which buildings fall down,” said one source close to the ministry who, like others interviewed, declined to be named for fear of jeopardizing business relationships with the ministry and its companies.

Not everyone is concerned. Romain Caillaud, a Yangon-based consultant with Vriens and Partners, says both the notice and the resignation “should accelerate the liberalization and growth of the telecom sector.”

Major foreign telecommunications companies are likely to submit expressions of interest ahead of the deadline of January 25, say experts.

Alessio Polastri, a lawyer who represents several such firms in Myanmar, says whatever delay in the process there has been will benefit the government.

“It’s almost an asset in that initial concerns about political stability have disappeared, so, most likely, not only more telecommunications companies will take part in the tender process but also the winners shall be more confident in committing higher investment,” he said.

More thorny for the government, however, may be assuaging local interests. By inviting expressions of interest for two licenses, the government appeared to be committing itself to offering four licenses – two for foreign companies, and two for local ones: state-owned Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications, or MPT, and Yatanarpon Teleport, an internet service provider which is 51 percent owned by MPT.

Some local businesspeople are questioning the wisdom of this, saying that MPT should not effectively own more than one license.

CHEAP SIM CARDS

Dozens of local IT entrepreneurs last November formed the Myanmar Technologies and Investment Corporation to bid for a license, and are currently lobbying parliament to merge the two local licenses, giving them a better chance of either winning one or setting up with a partner.

“So far the ministries have come back with positive responses and encouraged us,” said Thaung Su Nyein, who is also managing director of local media and IT company Information Matrix. “Even if we don’t get this license we’ve been led to understand we’ll get other business licenses.”

But more pressing is growing public frustration at the lack of progress on the ground.

Last year’s talk of cheaper SIM cards was fuelled partly by MPT’s decision to press ahead with expanding its own network, promising to add 30 million GSM connections by 2016 – financed by allowing contractors building the towers to sell a certain number of SIM cards.

Since then, the rumor mill has been alive with chatter about when new tranches of SIM cards might be available, and how much they might cost. A few weeks before the tech meet up, a previously obscure businessman held a press conference at which he promised SIM cards costing only 5,000 kyat (around $ 6).

While the promise went unfulfilled and the businessman disappeared from view, it started a movement of sorts: stickers appeared demanding 5,000 kyat SIM cards and several people were arrested in small demonstrations, according to exile media.

Those hopes have been dashed, but the shortfall of SIM cards ensures interest in a steady stream of sometimes conflicting reports about another imminent sale. One local media report quoted officials as saying more than 1.5 million SIM cards would be sold on Monday for 100,000 kyat each, or about $ 112.

That would still be out of the reach of most people in Myanmar.

“People want to see faster progress,” said a source close to the ministry. “At least half the country want a phone, and they want it soon.”

(Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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ABC News' Barbara Walters hospitalized after fall

NEW YORK (AP) — Veteran ABC newswoman Barbara Walters has fallen at an inauguration party at an ambassador's home in Washington and has been hospitalized.

Walters, 83, fell Saturday night on a step at the residence of Britain's ambassador to the United States, Peter Westmacott, ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said. The fall left Walters with a cut on her forehead, he said.

Walters, out of an abundance of caution, went to a hospital for treatment of the cut and for a full examination, Schneider said on Sunday. She was alert and was "telling everyone what to do, which we all take as a very positive sign," he said.

It was unclear when Walters might be released from the hospital, which ABC didn't identify.

Walters was TV news' first female superstar, making headlines in 1976 as a network anchor with an unprecedented $1 million annual salary. During more than three decades at ABC, and before that at NBC, her exclusive interviews with rulers, royalty and entertainers have brought her celebrity status. In 1997, she created "The View," a live weekday talk show that became an unexpected hit.

Walters had heart surgery in May 2010 but returned to active duty on "The View" that September, declaring, "I'm fine!"

Even in her ninth decade, Walters continues to keep a busy schedule, including appearances on "The View," prime-time interviews and her annual special, "10 Most Fascinating People," on which, in December, she asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie if he considered himself fit enough to be president someday. (Christie, although acknowledging he is "more than a little" overweight, replied he would be up to the job.)

Last June, Walters apologized for trying to help a former aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job or get into college in the United States. She acknowledged the conflict in trying to help Sheherazad Jaafari, daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United States and a one-time press aide to Assad. Jaafari helped Walters land an interview with the Syrian president that aired in December 2011.

Walters said she realized the help she offered Jaafari was a conflict and said, "I regret that."

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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