Military halts clashes as political crisis grips Egypt

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Republican Guard restored order around the presidential palace on Thursday after clashes killed seven people, but passions ran high in a contest over the country's future.

President Mohamed Mursi had been due to address the nation, but a presidential source said the Islamist leader, criticized by his opponents for his silence in the last few days, might speak on Friday instead. He did not explain the possible delay.

Mursi supporters withdrew before a mid-afternoon deadline set by the Republican Guard, an elite unit whose duties include protecting the palace. Opposition protesters remained, kept away by a barbed wire barricade guarded by tanks, and by evening their numbers had swelled to a few thousand.

The military played a big role in removing President Hosni Mubarak during last year's popular revolt, taking over to manage a transitional period, but had stayed out of the latest crisis.

Thousands of Mursi's Islamist partisans fought protesters well into Thursday's early hours during dueling demonstrations over the president's November 22 decree to expand his powers to help him push through a mostly Islamist-drafted constitution.

Officials said seven people were killed and 350 wounded in the violence, for which each side blamed the other. Six of the dead were Mursi supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood said.

The street clashes reflected a deep political divide in the most populous Arab nation, where contrasting visions of Islamists and their liberal rivals have complicated a struggle to embed democracy after Mubarak's 30 years of one-man rule.

The United States, worried about the stability of an Arab partner which has a peace deal with Israel and which receives $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid, has urged dialogue.

Prosecutors investigating the unrest said Brotherhood members had detained 49 wounded protesters and were refusing to release them to the authorities, the state news agency said.

"MILITIA REGIME"

The Brotherhood's spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan denied this, saying all "thugs" detained by members of the Islamist group had been handed over to the police or the Republican Guard.

Opposition factions called for mass protests after Friday prayers aimed at "the downfall of the militia regime", a dig at what they see as the Brotherhood's organized street muscle.

A communique from a leftist group urged protesters to gather at mosques and squares across Egypt, and to stage marches in Cairo and its sister city Giza converging on the presidential palace. "Egyptian blood is a red line," the communique said.

Hardline Islamist Salafis urged their supporters to protest against what they consider biased coverage of the crisis by some private Egyptian satellite television channels.

The commander of the Republican Guard said deployment of tanks and troop carriers around the presidential palace was intended to separate the adversaries, not to repress them.

"The armed forces, and at the forefront of them the Republican Guard, will not be used as a tool to oppress the demonstrators," General Mohamed Zaki told the state news agency.

Outside Cairo, supporters and opponents of Mursi clashed in his home town of Zagazig in the Nile Delta, state TV reported.

Egypt plunged into renewed turmoil after Mursi issued his November 22 decree and an Islamist-dominated assembly hastily approved a new constitution to go to a referendum on December 15.

Since then six of the president's advisers have resigned. Essam al-Amir, the director of state television, quit on Thursday, as did a Christian official working at the presidency.

The Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, to which Mursi belonged before he was narrowly elected president in June, appealed for unity. Divisions among Egyptians "only serve the nation's enemies", Mohamed Badie said in a statement.

Rival factions used rocks, petrol bombs and guns in the clashes around the presidential palace.

"GRIP ON THE COUNTRY"

"We came here to support President Mursi and his decisions. He is the elected president of Egypt," said demonstrator Emad Abou Salem, 40. "He has legitimacy and nobody else does."

Opposition protester Ehab Nasser el-Din, 21, his head bandaged after being hit by a rock the day before, decried the Muslim Brotherhood's "grip on the country", which he said would only tighten if the new constitution is passed.

Mursi's opponents accuse him of seeking to create a new "dictatorship". The president says his actions were necessary to prevent courts still full of judges appointed by Mubarak from derailing a constitution vital for Egypt's political transition.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay urged the Egyptian authorities to protect peaceful protesters and prosecute anyone inciting violence, including politicians.

"The current government came to power on the back of similar protests and so should be particularly sensitive to the need to protect protesters' rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly," Pillay said in Geneva.

The Islamists, who have dominated presidential and parliamentary elections since Mubarak was overthrown, are confident they can win the referendum and the parliamentary election to follow.

Mahmoud Hussein, the Brotherhood's secretary-general, said holding the plebiscite was the only way out of the crisis, dismissing the opposition as "remnants of the (Mubarak) regime, thugs and people working for foreign agendas".

As well as relying on his Brotherhood power base, Mursi may also tap into a popular yearning for stability and economic revival after almost two years of political turmoil.

Egypt's pound hit an eight-year low on Thursday, after previously firming on hopes that a $4.8 billion IMF loan would stabilise the economy. The stock market fell 4.6 percent.

Foreign exchange reserves fell by nearly $450 million to $15 billion in November, indicating that the Central Bank was still spending heavily to bolster the pound. The reserves stood at about $36 billion before the anti-Mubarak uprising.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Edmund Blair and Marwa Awad; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Apple and Samsung return to court to battle over $1 billion verdict

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Teen Arrested in Bank Robbery Had Bragged of Heist on YouTube

By Johnny Dodd

12/05/2012 at 03:35 PM EST

There are criminal masterminds, and then there's Hannah Sabata.

The 19-year-old high school dropout allegedly knocked off a bank in Nebraska, then posted a YouTube video bragging about it.

"Kind of a strange deal isn't it?" York County Sherriff Dale Radcliff tells PEOPLE.

In her eight-minute video, Sabata doesn't utter a word. Instead, she scribbles handwritten signs detailing her alleged armed robbery of the Cornerstone Bank in Waco, Neb., on Nov. 28, using "a gun, a pillow case, and a note."

During the course of her video, she also describes how she stole a "shiny new" Pontiac Grand Am, which she used as a getaway car after making off with $6,256 in cash.

"I told my mom today was the best day of my life," she writes in the video, while waving hundred-dollar bills in front of the camera. "She just thinks I met a new boy . . . I'm going for a shopping spree. Bite me."

According to police, Sabata is wearing the same clothes she wore when she allegedly handed bank tellers a slip of paper that read: "You are being robbed! NO ALARMS OR LOCKS OR PHONES or INK BAGS! I have a loaded gun. You have 2 minutes."

Sherriff Radcliff notes that law enforcement officials didn't even know about Sabata's video until after her arrest on Nov. 29.

Photographs of the robber, captured by the bank's security cameras, were quickly distributed throughout the community.

"We had lots of leads, but when her ex-husband notified us and said 'That's my ex-wife,' we got an arrest warrant for her," he said.

Sabata is currently being held in a York County jail on $300,000 bond. According to Radcliff, she faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted of armed robbery and auto theft.

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Longer tamoxifen use cuts breast cancer deaths

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.

In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.

Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, "this will be a convincer that they should continue," said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.

"The result of this trial will have a major, immediate impact on premenopausal women," Ravdin said.

About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.

Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.

But the newer drugs don't work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.

The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.

Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.

Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.

Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.

"Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially," Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.

The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.

The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.

Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.

"For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor," said that study's leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.

Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.

The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Dow, S&P rebound on banks, but Nasdaq sours with Apple

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks mostly rose on Wednesday, boosted by a rally in bank shares, though a steep drop in Apple limited the advance and kept the Nasdaq in negative territory.

Trading was volatile, with the S&P 500 dropping into negative territory at one point and the Nasdaq falling more than 1 percent before rebounding. The Dow, which doesn't contain Apple Inc as a component, climbed 1 percent by midday.

Apple, the largest U.S. company by market capitalization and a big weight in both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, fell 4.7 percent to $548.88. Apple is down more than 22 percent from an all-time high reached in late September.

The S&P 500 reversed course after briefly falling below the 1,400 level, seen as a key support point over the past two weeks.

"There's still psychological interest in buying the market," said John Brady, managing director at R.J. O'Brien & Associates in Chicago. At the 1,400 level, "we find again ‘dip buyers' there. They strongly believe a deal (on the fiscal cliff) is going to get done."

For several weeks, investors have reacted quickly to whiffs of sentiment from Washington in headlines about negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders over a deal on how to avoid the "fiscal cliff" - a series of mandatory spending cuts and tax increases effective in early January that could push the U.S. economy into recession next year.

President Barack Obama told the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executives, on Wednesday that a fiscal cliff deal was possible "in about a week" if Republicans acknowledged the need to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 115.44 points, or 0.89 percent, at 13,067.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 5.71 points, or 0.41 percent, at 1,412.76. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 13.75 points, or 0.46 percent, at 2,982.94.

Apple's slide weighed heavily on the Nasdaq. Market participants cited a host of reasons for the drop in the iPad maker's stock, including a consultant's report about the company losing share in the tablet market and reports that margin requirements had been raised by at least one clearing firm.

Apple has "to hit another home run to get $700 again," said Brian Battle, director of trading at Performance Trust Capital Partners in Chicago. "They need another new product that hits it out of the park. Without that, they could get a gradual grind-down in confidence ... this is not going to be a short-term trend."

On the upside, The Travelers Cos Inc rose 5.1 percent to $74.111 and ranked as the Dow's top gainer after the property and casualty insurance company said its preliminary estimate of net losses from Superstorm Sandy was about $650 million after tax.

Banks were also strong, with the S&P financial sector index <.gspf> climbing 1.5 percent. The rally was led by a 7.3 percent climb in Citigroup to $36.79 after the company said it would cut 4 percent of its workforce in a cost-cutting move. The KBW Bank Index <.bkx> rose 2 percent.

Bank of America shares shot up 6.1 percent to $10.51, just a touch off a new 52-week high at $10.52.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc fell 15.2 percent to $32.47 as the S&P 500's biggest percentage decliner. The company said it was acquiring Plains Exploration & Production Co and McMoRan Exploration Co in two separate deals for $9 billion in cash and stock in a major expansion into energy.

McMoRan Exploration soared 83.6 percent to $15.53 and Plains Exploration & Production surged 24.4 percent to $44.83.

Economic data from payrolls processor ADP showed U.S. private-sector hiring took a hit in November due to the impact of Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged consumers and businesses in the Northeastern United States, but the huge services sector kept expanding albeit at a modest pace, according to the Institute for Supply Management.

(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Clashes erupt in Egypt despite proposal to end crisis

CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamists fought protesters outside the Egyptian president's palace on Wednesday, while inside the building his deputy proposed a way to end a crisis over a draft constitution that has split the most populous Arab nation.

Stones and petrol bombs flew between opposition protesters and supporters of President Mohamed Mursi, and the Interior Ministry said 32 people had been arrested and three police vehicles destroyed.

Two Islamists were hit in the legs by what their friends said were bullets fired during clashes in streets around the compound in northern Cairo. One of them was bleeding heavily. And a leftist group said Islamists had cut off the ear of one of its members.

Medical sources said 33 people had been wounded, but despite reports of fatalities, the Health Ministry said there had been no deaths.

Riot police were deployed between the two sides in Cairo to try to stop confrontations that flared after dark despite an attempt by Vice President Mahmoud Mekky to ease the crisis.

Mekky said amendments to disputed articles in the draft constitution could be agreed with the opposition. A written agreement could then be submitted to the next parliament, to be elected after a referendum on the constitution on December 15.

"There must be consensus," he told a news conference, saying opposition demands had to be respected to reach a solution.

Prime Minister Hisham Kandil called for calm to "give the opportunity" for efforts underway to start a national dialogue.

Facing the gravest crisis of his six-month-old tenure, Mursi has shown no sign of buckling to the protests, confident that Islamists can win the referendum and a parliamentary election to follow.

Many Egyptians yearn for an end to political upheaval that began with the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and which has hurt the economy as investors and tourists have fled.

Protests spread to other cities, and offices of the Brotherhood's political party in Ismailia and Suez were torched.

Egypt's opposition coalition blamed Mursi for the violence and said it was ready for dialogue if the Islamist leader scrapped a decree he issued on November 22 that gave him wide powers and shielded his decisions from judicial review.

DIALOGUE

"We hold President Mursi and his government completely responsible for the violence happening in Egypt today," opposition coordinator Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference.

"We are ready for dialogue if the constitutional decree is cancelled ... and the referendum on this constitution is postponed," he said of the document written by an Islamist-led assembly that the opposition says ignores its concerns.

But liberals, leftists, Christians, ex-Mubarak followers and others opposed to Mursi have yet to generate a mass movement or a grassroots base to challenge the Brotherhood, which has come out on top in two elections since Mubarak's overthrow.

"Today what is happening in the Egyptian street, polarisation and division, is something that could and is actually drawing us to violence and could draw us to something worse," said ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Opposition leaders have previously urged Mursi to retract the November 22 decree, defer the referendum and agree to revise the constitution, but have not echoed calls from street protesters for his overthrow and the "downfall of the regime".

Mursi has said his decree was needed to prevent courts still full of judges appointed by ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak from derailing a constitution vital for Egypt's political transition.

Earlier on Wednesday Islamist supporters of Mursi tore down tents erected outside the presidential palace by leftist foes who had begun a sit-in there.

"They hit us and destroyed our tents. Are you happy, Mursi? Aren't we Egyptians too?" asked protester Haitham Ahmed.

Mohamed Mohy, a pro-Mursi demonstrator who was filming the scene, said: "We are here to support our president and his decisions and save our country from traitors and agents."

Mekky said street mobilisation by both sides posed a "real danger" to Egypt. "If we do not put a stop to this phenomenon right away ... where are we headed? We must calm down."

CALLS FOR RESTRAINT

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed into Egypt's political debate, saying dialogue was urgently needed on the new constitution, which should "respect the rights of all citizens".

Clinton and Mursi worked together last month to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip.

Washington is worried about rising Islamist power in Egypt, a staunch U.S. security partner under Mubarak, who preserved the U.S.-brokered peace treaty Cairo signed with Israel in 1979.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague called for restraint on all sides. He said Egypt's authorities had to make progress on the transition in an "inclusive manner" and urged dialogue.

The Muslim Brotherhood had summoned supporters to an open-ended demonstration at the presidential palace, a day after about 10,000 opposition protesters had encircled it for what organizers dubbed a "last warning" to Mursi.

State institutions, with the partial exception of the judiciary, have mostly fallen in behind Mursi.

The army, the muscle behind all previous Egyptian presidents in the republic's six-decade history, has gone back to barracks, having apparently lost its appetite to intervene in politics.

In August Mursi sacked Mubarak-era army commander and defense minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and removed the sweeping powers that the military council, which took over after Mubarak fell, had grabbed two months earlier.

Investors have seized on hopes that Egypt's turbulent transition, which has buffeted the economy for two years, may soon head for calmer waters, sending stocks 1.6 percent higher after a 3.5 percent rally on Tuesday.

Egypt has turned to the IMF for a $4.8 billion loan after the depletion of its foreign currency reserves. The government said on Wednesday the process was on track and its request would go to the IMF board as expected.

The board is due to review the facility on December 19.

Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that if Egypt was to find a compromise solution to its crisis, it would not be through slogans and blows.

"It will be through quiet negotiation, not through dueling press conferences, street brawls, or civil strife," he said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Tamim Elyan; Writing by Alistair Lyon and Edmund Blair; Editing by Andrew Roche and Will Waterman)

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Facebook’s Instagram cuts support for key Twitter integration

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service, Instagram, removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram’s Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

Instagram’s move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, due to Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided that its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users. Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with their friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman Jack Dorsey was an investor in Instagram and hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tabled a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he said one of Instagram’s strengths was its inter-connectivity with other social networks and pledged to continue running it as an independent service.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

Systrom noted that Instagram users will be able to “continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.”

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Frankie Muniz Recovering from a 'Mini-Stroke'

By Mike Fleeman

12/04/2012 at 03:50 PM EST

Malcolm's in the middle of a health scare.

Former child star Frankie Muniz is recovering from "mini-stroke" that sent him to the hospital last Friday.

Muniz, who turns 27 on Wednesday, tells his Twitter followers that the experience was "not fun at all."

"Have to start taking care of my body!" he writes. "Getting old!"

Muniz provided no more details. But a "mini-stroke" is commonly used to describe a transient ischemic attack, or TIA, when blood temporarily stops reaching the brain, causing stroke-like symptoms for one to 24 hours.

Doctors believe a TIA can be a warning sign for a possible full stroke in the future without preventative measures.

Muniz grew up in front of TV audiences on Malcolm in the Middle from 2000 to 2006. He's moved on to racecar driving and music – he drums for the band Kingsfoil – though recently made a cameo on Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.

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CDC says US flu season starts early, could be bad

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu season in the U.S. is off to its earliest start in nearly a decade — and it could be a bad one.

Health officials on Monday said suspected flu cases have jumped in five Southern states, and the primary strain circulating tends to make people sicker than other types. It is particularly hard on the elderly.

"It looks like it's shaping up to be a bad flu season, but only time will tell," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The good news is that the nation seems fairly well prepared, Frieden said. More than a third of Americans have been vaccinated, and the vaccine formulated for this year is well-matched to the strains of the virus seen so far, CDC officials said.

Higher-than-normal reports of flu have come in from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. An uptick like this usually doesn't happen until after Christmas. Flu-related hospitalizations are also rising earlier than usual, and there have already been two deaths in children.

Hospitals and urgent care centers in northern Alabama have been bustling. "Fortunately, the cases have been relatively mild," said Dr. Henry Wang, an emergency medicine physician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Parts of Georgia have seen a boom in traffic, too. It's not clear why the flu is showing up so early, or how long it will stay.

"My advice is: Get the vaccine now," said Dr. James Steinberg, an Emory University infectious diseases specialist in Atlanta.

The last time a conventional flu season started this early was the winter of 2003-04, which proved to be one of the most lethal seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths. The dominant type of flu back then was the same one seen this year.

One key difference between then and now: In 2003-04, the vaccine was poorly matched to the predominant flu strain. Also, there's more vaccine now, and vaccination rates have risen for the general public and for key groups such as pregnant women and health care workers.

An estimated 112 million Americans have been vaccinated so far, the CDC said. Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older.

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

A strain of swine flu that hit in 2009 caused a wave of cases in the spring and then again in the early fall. But that was considered a unique type of flu, distinct from the conventional strains that circulate every year.

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Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly

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Wall Street flat on lack of "fiscal cliff" progress

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fluctuated between small gains and losses on Tuesday after remarks by President Barack Obama on budget talks dented optimism a solution could be found to prevent the economy from falling into recession.

Obama rejected a Republican proposal to resolve a looming fiscal crisis as "still out of balance" and said any deal must include a rise in income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.

Obama spoke in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Republicans in Congress proposed steep spending cuts to bring down the budget deficit on Monday but gave no ground on Obama's call to raise tax rates on the rich. The proposal was quickly dismissed by the White House.

"We have more of the same and what that really means is that you see very public negotiations that seem to be going nowhere," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital in Jersey City, New Jersey.

"If there was any conviction that this was going to be a done deal, that we are going to see some really positive resolution on this fiscal cliff, you would see some real activity in the market."

The market has been sensitive to rhetoric from Washington, and many investors still expect the two sides eventually will reach a deal before the year's end, which could trigger a rally in equities.

Obama meets with U.S. governors at the White House on Tuesday to talk about the fiscal cliff, a $600 billion package of tax hikes and federal spending cuts that would begin January 1.

Volume was light, with about 3.34 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq.

Differences within the Republican Party over how to engage with the Democrats came to the fore on Tuesday as one senator opposed to raising taxes lashed out at House Speaker and fellow Republican John Boehner for proposing to increase revenue by closing some tax loopholes.

Despite the sudden moves in the market, a measure of investor anxiety has held surprisingly flat.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, was at 17.36 but has not traded above 20 since July following its 2012 high near 28 hit in June. The VIX's 10-day Average True Range, an internal volatility measure, is at its lowest since early 2007.

Coach became the latest company to advance the date of its next dividend payment. Expectations of higher taxes on dividends kicking in in 2013 have pushed many companies to pay special dividends this year or advance their next pay-back to investors. Shares of the upscale leather-goods maker declined 2 percent to $57.06.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> added 16.60 points, or 0.13 percent, to 12,982.20. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dropped 0.27 point, or 0.02 percent, to 1,409.19. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dipped 3.81 points, or 0.13 percent, to 2,998.39.

Darden Restaurants Inc plunged 10.3 percent to $47.04 as the worst performer on the S&P 500 after warning its latest quarter would miss expectations after unsuccessful promotions led to a decline in sales at its Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse chains.

In contrast, Big Lots Inc surged 13.8 percent to $31.95 after the close-out retailer posted a smaller-than-expected loss and boosted its full-year adjusted earnings forecast.

Toll Brothers shares gained 1.1 percent to $32.80 after the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder reported a higher quarterly profit and said new orders rose sharply.

MetroPCS Communications shares tumbled 7.2 percent to $10.00 after Sprint Nextel appeared unlikely to make a counter-offer for the wireless service provider.

Shares of Pep Boys-Manny Moe and Jack slid 13.5 percent at $9.24 a day after the release of the auto parts retailer's results.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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