Thieves stole more than $1 million worth of Apple products during a New Years Eve heist

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Is Tom Cruise still a go-to action hero? Hollywood, “Jack Reacher” say yes

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Given his age and the tough year he’s had in the tabloids, is Tom Cruise still a go-to guy when Hollywood is looking for an action hero?

The answer is yes, based on the performance of his current movie, Paramount‘s “Jack Reacher.” It’s taken in $ 45 million in the 10 days since opening with $ 15.6 million in a very crowded and competitive holiday market. Its second week was a solid $ 14 million, and it’s added $ 22 million from overseas.

Holiday movies tend to have legs and “Reacher” has yet to roll out in the majority of major foreign territories, so both of those numbers, particularly the international, will be growing. All signs point to it surpassing $ 200 million at the worldwide box office. That’s not a blockbuster figure, and Paramount is staying mum on a sequel, but with a $ 60 million budget, “Jack Reacher” will make money for Paramount.

There were questions coming in. With his divorce from Katie Holmes and subsequent custody battle, Cruise is carrying plenty of public relations baggage. His foray earlier this year into musicals with “Rock of Ages” was critically applauded but proved a box-office dud. That’s on top of his well-known support for Scientology.

He’s 50 now, which might be the new 40 in the real world, but is starting to get on in years in the realm of action heroes. Daniel Craig is 44. Jeremy Renner is 41. We are a long way from “Top Gun” – that was 1986 – so it probably won’t be too, too long until “The Expendables” franchise comes calling for Cruise.

But in the meantime, “Reacher” is going to be profitable for Paramount and Cruise’s portrayal of the tough, ex-military drifter has drawn critical kudos, so there’s a bit of momentum now. And it’s clear from his upcoming schedule that Hollywood is still convinced he can carry an action film.

Next for Cruise will be two sci-fi movies: Universal’s “Oblivion” is due in April and “All You Need is Kill” is set for March 2014 from Warner Bros. After that, there’s a potential “Van Helsing” remake at Universal and “Mission: Impossible 5″ is on Paramount‘s 2015 slate.

His recent track record at the box office, particularly when you look at his performance in the action genre, suggests the studios are making a pretty good bet.

“Rock of Ages” may have crumpled, but “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” was a huge hit for Paramount, taking in nearly $ 700 million worldwide in 2011. “Knight & Day,” from Fox in 2010, and “Valkyrie,” from United Artists in 2008, both made over $ 200 million worldwide.

Supporting roles in “Tropic Thunder” and “Lions for Lambs” preceded those, but those came on the heels of two Paramount movies: “Mission Impossible 3,” which made nearly $ 400 million worldwide in 2006, and “War of the Worlds,” which did $ 592 million in the previous year.

The bottom line: Hollywood is still convinced you can still take Tom Cruise, movie action hero, to the bank.

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Clinton’s blood clot an uncommon complication

The kind of blood clot in the skull that doctors say Hillary Rodham Clinton has is relatively uncommon but can occur after an injury like the fall and concussion the secretary of state was diagnosed with earlier this month.

Doctors said Monday that an MRI scan revealed a clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind Clinton’s right ear.

The clot did not lead to a stroke or neurological damage and is being treated with blood thinners, and she will be released once the proper dose is worked out, her doctors said in a statement.

Clinton has been at New York-Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday, when the clot was diagnosed during what the doctors called a routine follow-up exam. At the time, her spokesman would not say where the clot was located, leading to speculation it was another leg clot like the one she suffered behind her right knee in 1998.

Clinton had been diagnosed with a concussion Dec. 13 after a fall in her home that was blamed on a stomach virus that left her weak and dehydrated.

The type of clot she developed, a sinus venous thrombosis, “certainly isn’t the most common thing to happen after a concussion” and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said neurologist Dr. Larry Goldstein. He is director of Duke University‘s stroke center and has no role in Clinton’s care or personal knowledge of it.

The area where Clinton’s clot developed is “a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull — it’s how the blood gets back to the heart,” Goldstein explained.

It should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, he said.

Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, also called Clinton’s problem “relatively uncommon” after a concussion.

He and Goldstein said the problem often is overdiagnosed. They said scans often show these large “draining pipes” on either side of the head are different sizes, which can mean blood has pooled or can be merely an anatomical difference.

“I’m sure she’s got the best doctors in the world looking at her,” and if they are saying she has no neurological damage, “I would think it would be a pretty optimistic long-term outcome,” Broderick said.

A review article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 describes the condition, which more often occurs in newborns or young people but can occur after a head injury. With modern treatment, more than 80 percent have a good neurologic outcome, the report says.

In the statement, Clinton’s doctors said she “is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff.”

___

Online:

Medical journal: http://dura.stanford.edu/Articles/Stam_NEJM05.pdf

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The Cliff Is Not a Credit-Rating Crisis

(Updates Dow Jones industrial average’s closing figure)

To quote the 1980s Soviet-dissing comedian Yakov Smirnoff: “What a Country!” That punch line seems terribly appropriate when you consider that America is uniquely positioned to explore true fiscal profligacy.

In August 2011, you’ll recall, amid the debt-ceiling debacle, Standard & Poor’s (MHP) did the unthinkable and downgraded the U.S. credit rating. Did the dollar collapse? Treasuries plunge? Bond vigilantes with pitchforks maraud down the corridors of Wall Street? Just the opposite: By dint of the dollar being the global reserve-currency of choice—and Treasuries being the ultimate redoubt of safety and liquidity—U.S. bond prices rose and yields fell while our printing presses went full-tilt. Risk on or risk off, creditors the world over can’t seem to get enough of American debt.

Now there’s a sequel to the debt ceiling drama: the Fiscal Cliff, a budgetary tragedy entirely of lawmakers’ creation.

So how will the credit-raters and debt markets react to this surreal state of affairs?

S&P put out a Dec. 28 bulletin, “Congressional Impasse On Fiscal Cliff Does Not Affect U.S. Sovereign Rating.” The ratings giant cited its 2011 downgrade language—when it called out “the political brinkmanship of recent months [that] highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable”—to reiterate that it “believes that this characterization still holds.”

But this time a political impasse means the deficit would be cut. “If lawmakers reach no agreement,” says S&P, “the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government will receive additional revenue and will forgo additional expenses of upwards of $ 500 billion (3% of 2013 GDP) a year.”

As for Moody’s (MCO), the firm remarked on Dec. 27 that its “Aaa rating of the U.S. government is based on an assessment of very high economic strength, very high institutional strength, very high government financial strength, and low susceptibility to event risk. The rating carries a negative outlook, which was assigned primarily due to the rapid increase in federal government debt during the past five years and the uncertain debt trajectory in the medium term. … The statutory debt limit will be reached soon if Congress does not act to raise it. … Our view is that the probability of a missed interest payment on bonds resulting from a failure to raise the debt limit is extremely low.”

And then there’s Fitch Ratings. We’ll spare you the riveting boilerplate.

Point is, for all the Big Three’s codified importance to investors, not many seem seem to be waiting with bated breath for their reaction to what ultimately emerges from Washington’s cliff impasse. “S&P downgrading the U.S. last year was meaningless, because people don’t rely on S&P to tell them the credit quality of the U.S. government,” says Donald Steinbrugge, managing partner of Agecroft Partners, a broker-dealer that serves hedge funds. He says if Congress does not reach an agreement on the budget and the fiscal cliff is implemented, the markets will be the primary judge of the ripple effect on the broader economy and corporate profits. “This will result in a sell-off,” he says, “where the degree of decline will depend on how long investors believe the cliff will be in place.”

On the last day of the year, with an hour of trading left, no resolution from the Beltway, and the U.S. Treasury Department hitting up against its debt ceiling, the Dow Jones Industrial average rose 166 points.

Meantime, since the U.S. downgrades of 2011, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has returned a total of 23 percent (it has been up for the year every day of 2012); volatility, as measured by the VIX, has plunged; and government bonds have been in clover. In fact, the 10-year Treasury yield averaged 1.79 percent this year, its lowest yield since 1941.

Makes you wonder how badly America will fare—if and when its debt ever gets upgraded.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Pope marks end of difficult year, notes God’s good

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI marked the end of a difficult year Monday by saying that despite all the death and injustice in the world, goodness prevails.

Benedict celebrated New Year’s Eve with a vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica to give thanks for 2012 and look ahead to 2013. He appeared tired during the service and used a cane afterward — an indication that the busy Christmas season may be taking a toll on the 85-year-old Benedict.

In his homily, Benedict said it’s tough to remember that goodness prevails when bad news — death, violence and injustice — “makes more noise than good.” He said taking time to meditate in prolonged reflection and prayer can help “find healing from the inevitable wounds of daily life.”

This past year was full of highs and lows for the pope, including a successful trip to Mexico and Cuba but also the betrayal of his butler, convicted in October of stealing Benedict’s personal papers and leaking them to a journalist.

After the service, Benedict was brought out in a covered car to pray before the Vatican’s main nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. Walking with a cane in the chilly piazza, Benedict chatted animatedly with the artist who crafted the scene, which recreated an entire village from the poor, southern Italian region of Basilicata which donated this year’s crèche.

The Vatican gladly accepted Basilicata’s donation after the €550,000 price tag the Vatican paid for the 2009 nativity scene was revealed in the documentation leaked by Benedict’s ex-butler Paolo Gabriele.

Gabriele was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He received a pre-Christmas papal pardon and is expected to soon leave his Vatican City apartment for a new home and job elsewhere.

On Tuesday morning, Benedict celebrates a New Year’s Day Mass, which the Catholic Church celebrates as its world day of peace.

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Zynga carries out planned games shutdown, including “Petville”

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Social games publisher Zynga Inc confirmed on Monday that it has carried out 11 of the planned shutdowns of 13 game titles, with “Petville” being the latest game on which it pulled the plug.

Zynga in October said it would shut down 13 underperforming titles after warning that its revenues were slowing as gamers fled from its once-popular titles published on the Facebook platform in large numbers and sharply revised its full-year outlook.

The San Francisco-based company announced the “Petville” shutdown two weeks ago on its Facebook page. All the 11 shutdowns occurred in December.

The 11 titles shut down or closed to new players include role-playing game “Mafia Wars 2,” “Vampire Wars,” “ForestVille” and “FishVille.”

“In place of ‘PetVille,’ we encourage you to play other Zynga games like ‘Castleville,’ ‘Chefville,’ ‘Farmville 2,’ ‘Mafia Wars’ and ‘Yoville,’” the company told players on its ‘PetVille’ Facebook page. “PetVille” players were offered a one-time, complimentary bonus package for virtual goods in those games.

“Petville,” which lets users adopt virtual pets, has 7.5 million likes on Facebook but only 60,000 daily active users, according to AppData. About 1,260 users commented on the game’s Facebook page, some lamenting the game’s shutdown.

Zynga has said it is shifting focus to capture growth in mobile games. It also applied this month for a preliminary application to run real-money gambling games in Nevada.

Zynga is hoping that a lucrative real-money market could make up for declining revenue from games like “FarmVille” and other fading titles that still generate the bulk of its sales.

Zynga shares were up 1 percent at $ 2.36 in afternoon trade on Monday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting By Malathi Nayak; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Comedian Katt Williams arrested in LA

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Katt Williams, the comedian who has repeatedly found himself on the wrong side of the law, is out on bail after being arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of child endangerment and possession of a stolen gun.

Police Officer Norma Eisenman says Williams was taken into custody Friday after the LA County Department of Children and Family Services did a welfare check at his home. Authorities found more than one firearm, one of which had been reported stolen.

Eisenman says the DCFS did not specify how many children lived at the home or whether they were removed.

The 41-year-old was arrested this month on a felony warrant related to a police chase. In November, he was accused of hitting a man on the head with a bottle during a fight.

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Stock futures edge higher as “cliff” talks continue

(Reuters) – Equity futures were slightly higher on Sunday night as talks continued in Washington over resolving the “fiscal cliff.”

While the Senate will not vote Sunday night on any bill to avoid a series of $ 600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts, as many had hoped, negotiations continued between lawmakers and the White House.

The Senate will reconvene on Monday after the open of equity trading. In order for a deal to take effect, it would also have to be passed by the House of Representatives.

Despite the gain indicated by futures, stocks still could end up falling on Monday when the cash markets open if lawmakers are unable to come to an agreement to avoid the cliff, which many fear could push the economy into recession.

“There is always a chance for a massive stalemate, and we could see a lot more volatility if we get to a point where there’s no more hope. Right now there’s still hope,” said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York.

Midnight on Monday marks the deadline for a deal, though the government can pass legislation in 2013 that retroactively prevents going over the cliff, an option that is viewed as politically easier.

“At some point, someone will have to blink, or Congress will just come in early in 2013 and vote for a tax cut,” Sarhan said. “Something will be done to resolve this.”

S&P 500 futures were up 5.4 points, or 0.4 percent, at 1,389 in electronic trading. Still, futures were about 7 points below the fair value level of 1,397.19. Fair value is a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Despite the rise, if futures remain below fair value, cash markets will open lower.

Dow and Nasdaq futures were also slightly higher, though below fair value.

Stocks fell sharply on Friday, with significant losses in the last minutes of trading, as prospects for a deal worsened at the beginning of the weekend.

The rise in the futures market does not necessarily augur for a rally on Monday, however. The cash market and futures markets closed with a wide gulf on Friday, by virtue of the extra 15 minutes of trading in futures.

The S&P 500 closed at 1,402.43 at 4 p.m. ET on Friday, down 1.1 percent, but futures continued to fall before closing 15 minutes later with a loss of 1.9 percent. S&P futures and the S&P cash index don’t match point-by-point, but that kind of disparity points to a weak opening in stocks on Monday.

One hour before they had hoped to present a plan on Sunday, Democratic and Republican Senate leaders said they were still unable to reach a compromise.

Earlier in the day, President Barack Obama, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said investors could begin to show greater concerns in the new year.

“If people start seeing that on January 1st this problem still hasn’t been solved … then obviously that’s going to have an adverse reaction in the markets,” he said,

Investors have remained relatively sanguine about the process, believing that it will eventually be solved. In the past two months markets have not shown the kind of volatility that was present during the fight to raise the debt ceiling in 2011.

The Dow industrials and the S&P 500 each lost 1.9 percent last week, after stocks fell for five straight sessions, which marked the S&P 500′s longest losing streak in three months. Equities have largely performed well in the last two months despite constant chatter about the fiscal cliff, but the last few days shows a bit of increased worry.

The CBOE Volatility Index <.vix> rose to its highest level since June on Friday, closing at 22.72.</.vix>

(Additional reporting by David Gaffen; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Pakistan militants kill 41 in mass execution, attack on Shi’ites

PESHWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani militants, who have escalated attacks in recent weeks, killed at least 41 people in two separate incidents, officials said on Sunday, challenging assertions that military offensives have broken the back of hardline Islamist groups.

The United States has long pressured nuclear-armed ally Pakistan to crack down harder on both homegrown militants groups such as the Taliban and others which are based on its soil and attack Western forces in Afghanistan.

In the north, 21 men working for a government-backed paramilitary force were executed overnight after they were kidnapped last week, a provincial official said.

Twenty Shi’ite pilgrims died and 24 were wounded, meanwhile, when a car bomb targeted their bus convoy as it headed toward the Iranian border in the southwest, a doctor said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has noted more than 320 Shias killed this year in Pakistan and said attacks were on the rise. It said the government’s failure to catch or prosecute attackers suggested it was “indifferent” to the killings.

Pakistan, seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize the region before NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, denies allegations that it supports militant groups like the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network.

Afghan officials say Pakistan seems more genuine than ever about promoting peace in Afghanistan.

At home, it faces a variety of highly lethal militant groups that carry out suicide bombings, attack police and military facilities and launch sectarian attacks like the one on the bus in the southwest.

Witnesses said a blast targeted their three buses as they were overtaking a car about 60 km (35 miles) west of Quetta, capital of sparsely populated Baluchistan province.

“The bus next to us caught on fire immediately,” said pilgrim Hussein Ali, 60. “We tried to save our companions, but were driven back by the intensity of the heat.”

Twenty people had been killed and 24 wounded, said an official at Mastung district hospital.

CONCERN OVER EXTREMIST SUNNI GROUPS

International attention has focused on al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

But Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist Sunni groups, lead by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) are emerging as a major destabilizing force in a campaign designed to topple the government.

Their strategy now, the officials say, is to carry out attacks on Shi’ites to create the kind of sectarian tensions that pushed countries like Iraq to the brink of civil war.

As elections scheduled for next year approach, Pakistanis will be asking what sort of progress their leaders have made in the fight against militancy and a host of other issues, such as poverty, official corruption and chronic power cuts.

Pakistan’s Taliban have carried out a series of recent bold attacks, as military officials point to what they say is a power struggle in the group’s leadership revolving around whether it should ease attacks on the Pakistani state and join groups fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban denies a rift exists among its leaders.

In the attack in the northwest, officials said they had found the bodies of 21 men kidnapped from their checkpoints outside the provincial capital of Peshawar on Thursday. The men were executed one by one.

“They were tied up and blindfolded,” Naveed Anwar, a senior administration official, said by telephone.

“They were lined up and shot in the head,” said Habibullah Arif, another local official, also by telephone.

One man was shot and seriously wounded but survived, the officials said. He was in critical condition and being treated at a local hospital. Another had escaped before the shootings.

Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed responsibility for the attacks.

“We killed all the kidnapped men after a council of senior clerics gave a verdict for their execution. We didn’t make any demand for their release because we don’t spare any prisoners who are caught during fighting,” he said.

The powerful military has clawed back territory from the Taliban, but the kidnap and executions underline the insurgents’ ability to mount high-profile, deadly attacks in major cities.

This month, suicide bombers attacked Peshawar’s airport on December 15 and a bomb killed a senior Pashtun nationalist politician and eight other people at a rally on December 22.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN and Gul Yousufzai in QUETTA; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Michael Georgy and Ron Popeski)

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Kobe Bryant Finally Joins Twitter — Kind Of

Long among the sports world’s biggest Twitter holdouts, Kobe Bryant has finally joined the social network. But he hasn’t opened an account, and won’t be around for long.

Social savvy fans are being blessed with his presence thanks to Nike Basketball, which has turned over its account to Bryant since Tuesday.

[More from Mashable: Avery Johnson’s Teenage Son Unloads on Twitter After NBA Firing]

Nike Basketball, which sponsors Bryant and produces his official sneaker, announced the Kobe takeover in a Christmas Day tweet. The account’s name is now “Kobe Bryant” although its handle remains @nikebasketball. Kobe has spent the past few days tweeting about a variety of subjects using a series of hashtags that play off the theme #counton-fill-in-the-blank.

He’s tweeted about the Lakers progress as a team:

[More from Mashable: FanDuel Is Fantasy Sports With a Twist]

He’s tweeted behind-the-scenes snippets of training and treatment:

And he’s tweeted a totally normal, typical, everyday holiday family portrait:

Bryant actually joined Twitter for realsies back in 2011, but then deleted the account after racking up more than 35,000 followers in a just a few hours. He’s one of the NBA’s few stars without a Twitter presence. Nearly 90% of the league’s players are on the social network, according to Twitter.

But Bryant did become much more active on Facebook this summer, especially while traveling with the United States’ Olympic basketball team. He has nearly 15 million fans there, and reportedly writes his status updates and messages himself, with editing and actual posting done by support staff. In November he asked Facebook fans whether to join Instagram or Twitter next, and on Monday hinted in a status update that he may soon open an Instagram account.

What athletes would you most like to see get more active on social media? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS: 30 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts This NBA SEASON

1. @NBA

The NBA is arguably the world’s most engaging sports league on social media. Follow its official Twitter account for news, highlights and promotions.

Click here to view this gallery.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr, Keith Allison

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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