Google dominates the mobile app market, has 5 of the top 6 apps in the U.S.

Wondering why Apple (AAPL) is sinking so much effort into building its own Maps application? Because it doesn’t want Google (GOOG) to gobble up all the revenue from big-name mobile applications. ComScore has published its most recent monthly review of the top iOS and Android apps in the United States ranked by unique visitors and has found that Google captured 5 of the top 6 spots with Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Gmail and YouTube. In fact, Facebook (FB) was the only non-Google app to crack the top 6, although it also had the benefit of being the most-visited app in the entire country by a margin of more than 10 million unique visitors. iTunes was the only Apple app to crack the top 10, meanwhile, as it ranked eighth with roughly 46 million unique visitors last month.

[More from BGR: As data gets cheaper for Verizon to transmit, customers are paying more]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Obama inauguration TV viewership down by 17.2 million from 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Some 20.6 million Americans watched President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony and related events on television, according to ratings data on Wednesday. That’s down sharply from his first inauguration in 2009.

TV ratings company Nielsen said 18 U.S. television networks and cable channels carried live coverage over about six hours of Monday’s swearing-in ceremony, speech and parade in Washington.

Monday’s TV audience was a drop of 17.2 million from 2009, when 37.8 million Americans – the highest number since Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration – watched Obama formally take office as the first black president in U.S. history.

The Nielsen figures did not measure viewers who watched Monday’s daylong ceremonies online via live streaming on many TV channels, nor overseas audiences.

Second-term inaugurations of U.S. presidents have traditionally drawn smaller numbers of viewers than those for first terms.

Reagan’s 1981 inauguration drew the biggest television audience of the past 44 years, attracting some 41.8 million U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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Chicago hotel occupancy climbs back

Visitors filled downtown hotel rooms in 2012 at a rate not seen since before the recession.

Hotel occupancy rose to 75.2 percent, up from 72.2 percent in 2011, according to an announcement by Choose Chicago, the city's tourism and convention agency, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The 2012 level matched a previous record set in 2007.

Hotel operators also saw increases in two other key measures, though those remain slightly below their peaks. The average daily room rate rose to $187.27, from $177.33 in 2011. And the revenue per available room, a key indicator of profitability, increased by 10 percent to $140.76.

The data comes from STR Global, with analysis by Choose Chicago.

Among the factors affecting performance, officials said, was a more aggressive marketing strategy. They cited Choose Chicago's regional advertising campaigns. An eight-week winter and 12-week summer campaign, at a combined cost of $2 million, targeted Cincinnati, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

The improved performance, along with a hike in the city's hotel tax rate, brought the city's hotel tax revenue to more than $100 million for the first time. This was an increase of $25 million, or 33 percent, from 2011.
 
The city share of the hotel tax increased by 1 percentage point last year, bringing the total Chicago hotel tax rate to 16.39 percent. The city's share of that is 4.5 percentage points.

 kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter@kathy_bergen

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Evanston condo owner sued over bedbug extermination

A condominium association in Evanston is suing a man, claiming he refused to let the association treat his unit for bedbugs.

In September 2011, the Maisonette Condominium Association discovered a bedbug infestation at its building on the 2000 block of Sherman Avenue in Evanston, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court.

At that point, an exterminator treated each unit, including the unit of James Collins, the defendant in the lawsuit.

Collins, 67, of Evanston, had a particularly bad case of bed bugsin his unit, according to the lawsuit, and the exterminator returned several times after September 2011 to treat his unit.

When the exterminator returned to confirm that the building was free of bed bugs on Nov. 13, 2012, Collins’ apartment tested again positive for bugs, according to the lawsuit. A couch and a wooden chair, in particular, were too infested to treat, according to the lawsuit.

The association says that because Collins did not return messages requesting that they treat his unit, he in effect was refusing treatment. Collins did not return a call for comment Tuesday night.

The association is requesting an injunction to treat the unit.

Chicago was named the worst city in 2012 for bedbugs by the national pest-control company Orkin. Bedbug extermination in Chicago jumped 33 percent for the company from 2011 to 2012, Orkin officials said.

ehirst@tribune.com

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Google’s fourth quarter results shine after ad rate decline slows

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Revenue from Google Inc’s core Internet business outpaced many analysts’ expectations during the crucial holiday quarter and advertising rates fell less than in previous periods, pushing its shares up more than 4 percent.

The world’s largest Internet search company introduced new product listings during the fourth quarter – typically its strongest – and also benefited from business growth in international markets, analysts said.

Excluding traffic-acquisition costs, the business generated net revenue of $ 9.83 billion, up from $ 8.13 billion a year earlier, Google reported on Tuesday. That surpassed a $ 9.6 billion average forecast from six analysts polled by Reuters.

“Business looked really strong, especially from a profitability perspective. They really grew their margins in the core business,” said Sameet Sinha, an analyst with B. Riley Caris. “Most of that strength seems to be coming from international markets which grew revenues quite substantially: up 23 percent year over year, versus the 15 percent growth in the third quarter.”

Average cost-per-click, a critical metric that denotes the price advertisers pay Google, declined 6 percent from a year ago, the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.

Google executives told analysts on a conference call that the company had focused on improving the metric – shoring up margins – while lowering the overall growth rate of paid clicks in the holiday quarter.

“Click prices are still declining, but it’s better than expected,” said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis.

MOTOROLA MOBILITY “STILL LOSING MONEY”

Consolidated net income in the fourth quarter was $ 2.89 billion or $ 8.62 per share, compared with $ 2.71 billion, or $ 8.22 per share, in the year-ago period when Google had not yet acquired Motorola.

Excluding certain items, Google said it earned $ 10.65 per share in the fourth quarter.

“The core business is a great business and the fourth-quarter is always a time for Google to shine. However, Motorola is still losing money and click rates still declined. They only declined 6 percent, but go back four or five quarters and click prices were improving. So mobile is still pressuring click prices,” Gillis said.

The company posted consolidated revenue – which includes its Motorola Mobility mobile phone business but not the television set-top box business it recently agreed to sell – of $ 14.42 billion on Tuesday.

Motorola Mobility had an operating loss of $ 353 million during the quarter.

Shares of Google were up roughly 4.5 percent at $ 734.46 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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“Zero Dark Thirty” heads to Europe: will torture controversy follow?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Best Picture Oscar nominee “Zero Dark Thirty” rolls out in several Western European countries starting Wednesday, absent – at least for now – the firestorm of criticism that has accompanied its U.S. release.

The movie has been a lightning rod for detractors in the U.S. over its perceived endorsement of torture, an allegation that director Kathryn Bigelow and Sony executives have repeatedly denied.

“Overall, I believe Europeans are far less ambiguous than Americans when it comes to the use of torture,” Bruce Nash of box-office tracking service TheNumbers told TheWrap.

“To the extent that the film is perceived as pro-torture — whether it is or not, and I don’t believe it is — if that somehow became how the film is defined, that would hurt it at the box office,” Nash said. “But I don’t think that’s the case.”

Bigelow, screenwriter Marc Boal and several others involved with the picture have been in Europe for the past two weeks to promote the film. Boal told the New York Times that interviewers in France seemed to regard the torture issue as belonging to the Americans, and in fact appreciated the film’s head-on approach.

Indeed, the film begins its foreign run with a lot of momentum. The dark thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden was No. 1 in its first week of wide release on January 11 and has finished a strong second for the past two weeks.

Of course, the publicity surrounding the torture issue hasn’t hurt it at the box office in the U.S. The domestic haul for “Zero Dark Thirty” to this point is nearly $ 57 million, ahead of pre-release projections and likely heading for $ 100 million.

The film’s five Oscar nominations and the critical acclaim it has received have helped, too, but even Sony has acknowledged the flood of news stories raised the film’s profile.

Universal will be handling the film’s release in most countries in Western Europe, after buying rights to those territories from Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, which financed it and cut distribution deals territory by territory.

It will open in France and Switzerland on Wednesday and in the U.K and Finland on Friday. Its debut in Germany will be on January 31, and Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Norway and South Africa will follow in February. Regional distributors will handle the film’s February releases in Russia and Latin America, and the Annapurna is still considering a China run.

“Zero Dark Thirty” is one of three Best Picture Oscar nominees that is currently hitting overseas theaters with a distributor different than the one that handled its U.S.release.

Sony, which along with the Weinstein Company co-financed “Django Unchained,” is overseeing the foreign release of Quentin Tarantino’s slave saga. It opened last weekend and took in $ 48 million from 54 overseas markets.

DreamWorks’ “Lincoln,” distributed by Disney in North America, debuted in Spain and Mexico this past weekend via Fox.

With an explanatory preamble approved by director Steven Spielberg added, “Lincoln” opened to $ 2.3 million on 344 screens in Spain and to $ 729,000 on 259 screens in Mexico. “Lincoln” goes much wider next weekend, when it opens in 19 markets including Brazil, Germany, Italy, Russia and the U.K..

As for the torture controversy that accompanied “Zero Dark Thirty’s” U.S. release, it doesn’t seem to have caused the slightest ripple.

Indeed, the fact that torture has been used in the war against terror has been seen as a reality in Europe for some time.

In December, Europe’s highest court, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, concluded that techniques used routinely by the Bush-era CIA in connection with its extraordinary-renditions program constituted torture.

If torture does not become an issue, The Numbers’ Nash said it should do solid business. He pointed out that other U.S. films about the war on terror have done pretty well overseas. In 2006, “United 93″ made $ 31 million domestically and nearly $ 45 million overseas. Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” did $ 70 million in the U.S. and went to make $ 92 million abroad that same year.

Bigelow’s last movie, “The Hurt Locker,’” was about a U.S. bomb squad in the Iraq war, and it nearly doubled its $ 17 million domestic take, with $ 32 million from abroad in 2009. The bulk of that foreign run came after its surprise victory over “Avatar” for the Best Picture Oscar, however.

This weekend’s U.K. and France debuts will be telling, but Universal quietly opened “Zero Dark Thirty” on just 250 screens in Spain on January 4. With a minimum of criticism, politicians’ ire or public furor, the movie has taken in nearly $ 4 million over three weekends.

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Medicaid Patients Could Face Higher Fees Under a Proposed Federal Policy

WASHINGTON — Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients.

Hoping to persuade states to expand Medicaid, the Obama administration said state Medicaid officials could charge higher co-payments and premiums for doctors’ services, prescription drugs and certain types of hospital care, including the “nonemergency use” of emergency rooms. State officials have long asked for more leeway to impose such charges.

The 2010 health care law extended Medicaid to many childless adults and others who were previously ineligible. The Supreme Court said the expansion of Medicaid was an option for states, not a requirement as Congress had intended. The administration has been trying to persuade states to take the option, emphasizing that they can reconfigure Medicaid to hold down their costs and “promote the most effective use of services.”

In the proposed rule published Tuesday in the Federal Register, the administration said it was simplifying a complex, confusing array of standards that limit states’ ability to charge Medicaid beneficiaries. Under the proposal, a family of three with annual income of $30,000 could be required to pay $1,500 in premiums and co-payments.

As if to emphasize the latitude given to states, the administration used this heading for part of the new rule: “Higher Cost Sharing Permitted for Individuals With Incomes Above 100 Percent of the Federal Poverty Level” (that is, $19,090 for a family of three).

Barbara K. Tomar, director of federal affairs at the American College of Emergency Physicians, said the administration had not adequately defined the “nonemergency services” for which low-income people could be required to pay. In many cases, she said, patients legitimately believe they need emergency care, but the final diagnosis does not bear that out.

“This is just a way to reduce payments to physicians and hospitals” from the government, Ms. Tomar said.

With patients paying more, the federal government and states would pay less than they otherwise would. Medicaid covers 60 million people, and at least 11 million more are expected to qualify under the 2010 law. The federal government pays more than half of Medicaid costs and will pay a much larger share for those who become eligible under the law.

In the proposed rule, the administration said it had discovered several potential problems in its efforts to carry out the law.

First, it said, it has not found a reliable, comprehensive and up-to-date source of information about whether people have employer-sponsored health insurance. The government needs such information to decide whether low- and middle-income people can obtain federal subsidies for private insurance.

The subsidies can be used to buy coverage in competitive marketplaces known as insurance exchanges. Under the law, people can start enrolling in October for coverage that starts in January 2014, when most Americans will be required to have health insurance. People who have access to affordable coverage from employers will generally be ineligible for subsidies.

In applying for subsidies, people must report any employer-sponsored insurance they have. But the administration said it could be difficult to verify this information because the main sources of data reflect only “whether an individual is employed and with which employer, and not whether the employer provides health insurance.”

Since passage of the health care law, the administration has often said that people seeking insurance would use a single streamlined application for Medicaid and the subsidies for private coverage. Moreover, the state Medicaid agency and the exchange are supposed to share data and issue a “combined eligibility notice” for all types of assistance.

But the administration said this requirement would be delayed to Jan. 1, 2015, because more time was needed to establish electronic links between Medicaid and the exchanges.

Leonardo D. Cuello, who represents Medicaid beneficiaries as a lawyer at the National Health Law Program, expressed concern.

“Under the proposed rule,” Mr. Cuello said, “many people will be funneled into health insurance exchanges even though they have special needs that are better met in Medicaid. And if you asked the right questions, you would find out that they are eligible for Medicaid.”

The federal government will have the primary responsibility for running exchanges in more than half the states. About 20 states are expected to expand Medicaid; governors in other states are opposed or uncommitted.

The proposed rule allows hospitals to decide, “on the basis of preliminary information,” whether a person is eligible for Medicaid. States must provide immediate temporary coverage to people who appear eligible.

Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, said this could be a boon to low-income people. “Currently,” he said, “only children and pregnant women are presumed eligible for inpatient admissions under Medicaid in New York.”

The public has until Feb. 13 to comment on the proposed rule. Comments can be submitted at www.regulations.gov.

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Prosecutors: Peregrine Financial fraud loss exceeds $215M

Peregrine Financial Group's former chief executive stole more than $215 million from customers of his now-defunct futures brokerage and should be sentenced to the maximum 50 years in jail, U.S. prosecutors said Tuesday.

Russell Wasendorf Sr., 64, who founded the firm, has pleaded guilty to embezzlement but wants a lighter sentence, saying that the loss was less than $200 million and that he used "very basic, simple means" to carry out his fraud, according to documents filed by U.S. prosecutors.

Wasendorf, whose attempted suicide sent his firm into bankruptcy last July, is in jail in Iowa and will be sentenced Jan. 31.

U.S. prosecutors say the large loss, the sophisticated nature of the crime and the sheer number of victims -- more than 10,000 -- justify his spending the rest of his life behind bars.

"While some of defendant's individual acts might be characterized as simple in isolation, they were part of an exceedingly complex scheme whereby defendant's entire business was used as a mechanism to gather and purloin investor funds," prosecutors said in their sentencing memorandum, promising to fight any attempt by Wasendorf to receive a sentence of less than 50 years.

Prosecutors put the exact loss at $215,530,547, based on Peregrine's bank records, and will call Brenda Cuypers, the firm's chief financial officer, as a witness at the sentencing hearing next week.

They had previously pegged the embezzlement only at "more than $100 million," to which Wasendorf pleaded guilty.

Wasendorf's public defender has a policy of declining to comment on cases, and did not reply to an email from Reuters seeking comment.

The collapse last July of Peregrine Financial, known as PFGBest, dealt a blow to confidence in the U.S futures industry, already reeling from $1.6 billion hole in customer pockets left when giant brokerage MF Global failed nine months earlier.

Futures traders had never before suffered such large losses as a result of a brokerage failure.

"To see (Wasendorf) go to jail could give some people some hope," said James Koutoulas, co-head of the Commodity Customer Coalition, which fought to get customer money back in both bankruptcies. "In MF Global, justice hasn't been done."

No one has been charged with wrongdoing in MF Global's collapse.

Regulators have scrambled to patch perceived gaps in customer protections at brokerages and exchanges that handle contracts valued at some $2.5 trillion a day.

That figure is set to rise as new rules push over-the-counter swaps onto regulated trading venues.

The sentencing memorandum offers new details in the government's account of the fraud, which Wasendorf said in a July statement began in the early 1990s after he was hounded by an overzealous regulator.

The fraud began even earlier, prosecutors said in Tuesday's filing, when he stole at least $250,000 from customers' accounts to pay back the original financier of his brokerage, a person referred to in the document only by the initials "J.C."

"Using a copy machine, defendant fabricated a bank statement to conceal the theft of funds," the document said. For the next nearly 20 years, prosecutors said, he faked bank balances, fabricated deposits, and used a rented post office box in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to intercept letters from his auditors meant to check up on his balances at U.S. Bank.

He even went so far as to fly from Chicago, where his firm did most of its business, to Iowa to prevent the near-discovery of his fraud, ultimately convincing Peregrine and U.S. Bank employees that nothing was wrong, the document said.

All the while he worked to make Peregrine Financial seem much bigger and more successful than it was, they said.

Wasendorf believed that "if he could make himself appear rich, the auditors and regulators wouldn't be concerned with the state of his personal finances and not discover it was all a fraud," prosecutors quoted Wasendorf as saying in a sealed presentencing report.

But Peregrine was never actually profitable, even though by its demise investors had entrusted more than $376 million to him and his firm, they said.

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Woman's text message thwarts Lakeview restaurant robbery

A former Tennessee convict burst into a Lakeview neighborhood restaurant over the weekend, robbed a waitress and forced a suburban mother and her two children into a back bathroom before threatening to shoot them, prosecutors said Monday.

But the quick-thinking mother texted her husband, and police were able to arrest the suspect inside the Cassava bakery and smoothie shop, Chicago police said.

William Castle, 43, was charged with aggravated robbery, unlawful restraint, kidnapping and attempted robbery in the incident Sunday evening. He was ordered held on $1 million bail by Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr.

The Buffalo Grove family was eating at Cassava at 3338 N. Clark St. about 6:10 p.m. when the suspect entered the kitchen area, grabbed a server by the collar and said, "Give me all the cash," according to a police report.

Cook County prosecutors said Castle claimed to have a gun and threatened to shoot the family if they called the police.

Castle ordered the 43-year-old mother, her son, 13, and her daughter, 10, into a rear bathroom, police said. He demanded their cellphones, but the mother was able to text her husband moments before she handed her phone over, police said.

"Don't come robber in here call 911," the police report quoted the woman as texting her husband.

The husband called police.

In the meantime, the robber demanded that the waitress shut all the lights off to make it appear as though the restaurant was closed, according to the report. The suspect then grabbed the teenage waitress by the shoulders, shook her violently and tried to kiss her. As police arrived in front of the shop, the robber took the waitress to the back of the business. As the woman screamed and started to cry, he threatened to choke her if she didn't stop making noise, according to the police report.

The suspect then tried to run out the back of the store, police said. An officer stationed there arrested him at gunpoint, and several other officers handcuffed him, the report said.

Castle was found with $333 in cash in his pocket, prosecutors said.

Castle's record in Tennessee includes a 1993 conviction for attempted rape, robbery and kidnapping, prosecutors said. In 1994 he was convicted of aggravated sexual battery, robbery and kidnapping and sentenced to 16 years in state prison.

Castle completed his parole in September, according to Tennessee state records. He was required to register as a sex offender.

jmeisner@tribune.com

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