Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths

Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.

All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.

Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting from real solutions to the nation's weight problems.

"The evidence is what matters," and many feel-good ideas repeated by well-meaning health experts just don't have it, said the lead author, David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Independent researchers say the authors have some valid points. But many of the report's authors also have deep financial ties to food, beverage and weight-loss product makers — the disclosures take up half a page of fine print in the journal.

"It raises questions about what the purpose of this paper is" and whether it's aimed at promoting drugs, meal replacement products and bariatric surgery as solutions, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and food studies.

"The big issues in weight loss are how you change the food environment in order for people to make healthy choices," such as limits on soda sizes and marketing junk food to children, she said. Some of the myths they cite are "straw men" issues, she said.

But some are pretty interesting.

Sex, for instance. Not that people do it to try to lose weight, but claims that it burns 100 to 300 calories are common, Allison said. Yet the only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average — "disappointing, isn't it?" — and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking, he said.

That's for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn't measure the women's experience.

Among the other myths or assumptions the authors cite, based on their review of the most rigorous studies on each topic:

—Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don't have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the "small changes" concept is based on an "oversimplified" 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.

—School gym classes have a big impact on kids' weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.

—Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.

—Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.

—Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.

—Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.

Some things may not have the strongest evidence for preventing obesity but are good for other reasons, such as breastfeeding and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, the authors write. And exercise helps prevent a host of health problems regardless of whether it helps a person shed weight.

"I agree with most of the points" except the authors' conclusions that meal replacement products and diet drugs work for battling obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, a prominent obesity research with Boston Children's Hospital who has no industry ties. Most weight-loss drugs sold over the last century had to be recalled because of serious side effects, so "there's much more evidence of failure than success," he said.

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Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

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

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German jitters hit European shares, euro

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares fell for a second straight day and the euro halted its recent rally, as weak German retail sales and poor earnings at its biggest bank added to investors' nerves after a shock fourth quarter contraction in the U.S. economy.

Data on Wednesday showed U.S. GDP slipped back 0.1 percent, though the country's central bank, the Federal Reserve, indicated the pullback was likely to be brief as it repeated its pledge to continue providing support.

European shares, which have surged 3.7 percent this month, took their biggest daily hit of the year on Wednesday, and a plunge in German retail sales, stagnant French consumer spending and a huge quarterly loss at Deutsche Bank dashed hopes of a quick rebound.

The mood blackened through the morning, leaving London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> down 0.3 to 0.6 percent by 5:15 a.m. ET. The MSCI world share index <.miwd00000pus> was down 0.1 percent despite shares in Asia posting modest gains. <.l><.eu><.n/>

"Perhaps the German retail sales have contributed a little bit, but we knew that Q4 was weak, so I would it attribute it more to earnings news," said Chris Scicluna, an economist at Daiwa Capital Markets.

"The Deutsche Bank loss does look to be on the sizable side. There has clearly been some mismatch between financial markets and the real economy so that does lend itself to a bit of a pullback."

In the currency market, the German jitters also put the euro under pressure and halted its recent 4 percent rally.

It had started to show signs of stabilization by mid-morning but remained well short of Wednesday's 14-month high of $1.3588 at $1.3560. The Federal Reserve's promise of continued support was widely expected to mitigate the fall, however, by keeping downward pressure on the dollar.

Evidence of that pull was seen as the dollar slipped 0.2 percent against the yen to 90.88 yen, having hit its strongest level since 2010 on Wednesday. Market focus now turns to Friday's monthly U.S. employment report.

PULL-BACK

The nervy market atmosphere also pushed up Spanish and Italian government bond yields as some investors switched from higher-yielding debt into German Bunds.

Spanish 10-year yields rose 10 basis points on the day to 5.31 percent, while equivalent Italian debt rose 10 bps to 4.38 percent.

German Bund futures were half a point higher, spurred on by the Fed's determination to maintain its policy of stimulus for the U.S. economy.

The downbeat European mood also began to creep into commodities markets, though investors seemed broadly happy to stick with the bigger picture view that the global economy is gradually regaining strength.

Risky assets such as equities, commodities, and high-yield debt have risen sharply in the past six months as growth in emerging economies like China has picked up and fears of a collapse of the euro have been calmed by the European Central Bank.

Spot gold drifted down to $1,675 an ounce, having hit a one-week high on Wednesday, while oil prices inched down 23 cents to just under $115 per barrel, still well above their starting price this year of $110 a barrel.

And there was no sign of weakness in growth-attuned copper as it marched to its highest level since October.

"We are still quite confident about a Chinese copper demand recovery in the first half, and we have seen evidence of pent-up demand, so the downside risk is limited," said Henry Liu, head of commodity research at Mirae Asset Securities in Hong Kong.

"But exceeding $8,500 this year might be a challenge, because domestic inventories are quite high," he added.

(Additional reporting by Richard Hubbard and Melanie Burton in Singapore; Editing by Will Waterman)

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French Forces Pressing Mali Campaign Seize Rebel Stronghold

BAMAKO, Mali — French troops took control overnight of the airport at the last major northern Mali town still in rebel hands, officials said on Wednesday, after Islamist militants abandoned two other principal settlements in the vast, desert region where residents’ relief and elation has given way to some measure of reprisal and frustration.

A French military spokesman in Paris, Col. Thierry Burkhard, said French troops reached the airport at Kidal, in the remote northeast of Mali, in an ongoing operation that is ongoing.

Haminy Maiga, a local official, told news agencies that French forces met no resistance when they arrived aboard four airplanes that landed late on Tuesday. France also sent helicopters, he said.

Kidal is the capital of a desert region of the same name. Secular Tuareg rebels claim to be in control of the town after Islamists fled. A newly formed Islamist splinter group that broke with the main Ansar Dine Islamist force also claims to have a power base there.

The new group calls itself the Islamic Movement for the Azawad and is led by Alghabass Ag Intalla, a prominent leader of the Tuareg ethnic group from the Kidal region who has said he wants to negotiate a settlement with the central government in Bamako, 800 miles to the southwest. Azawad is a Tuareg term for northern Mali.

Mali has been in turmoil since early 2012, when junior officers in the south staged a coup to protest the government’s tepid response to an uprising in the north by Tuareg separatists who were subsequently pushed to the side by Islamic extremists bent on imposing an extreme form of Shariah law.

Earlier this month, the Islamists suddenly advanced toward the capital, threatening to engulf the south, topple the weak central government and destabilize a vast area of northern Africa.

After a series of punishing French airstrikes in recent days, French and Malian troops launched a lightning campaign on the ground, entering the northern towns of Gao and Timbuktu as Islamist rebels seemed to melted away to far-flung hide-outs, possibly in the Kidal Province.

In Gao, groups of residents were reported on Tuesday to be hunting down suspected fighters who had not fled ahead of the French-Malian military forces who took control of the town over the weekend. Other residents expressed concern that Gao remained unsafe and was acutely short of food and fuel after a prolonged isolation.

“The city is free, but I think the areas close by are still dangerous,” said Mahamane Touré, a Gao resident reached by telephone from Bamako, the capital. “These guys are out there.”

Mr. Touré, who spent the evening watching soccer on television and listening to music with friends, said that although everyone was enjoying the new freedoms, the legacy of Islamist occupation was evident in the hardship of everyday life.

“The price of gasoline is almost double, and the price of food is very high,” Mr. Touré said. “There are still things in the market, but no one has any money and there is no aid.”

Reporters and photographers in Timbuktu, the storied desert oasis farther north that the French-Malian forces secured on Monday, saw looters pillaging shops and other businesses, with some saying the merchants were mainly Arabs, Mauritanians and Algerians who had supported the Islamist radicals who summarily executed, stoned and mutilated people they suspected of being nonbelievers during their 10-month occupation.

Alex Crawford, a television correspondent for Britain’s Sky News, said, “This is months and months of frustration and repression finally erupting.”

The rapidly shifting developments came less than three weeks into the military effort led by France, the former colonial power whose helicopters and warplanes began arriving here at the Malian government’s invitation on Jan. 11. Since then other West African countries have started to send troops. Britain is preparing to send more than 300 military trainers, and the United States is providing aerial cargo and refueling help.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said that as of Tuesday 17 sorties by United States Air Force C-17 cargo jets had flown 500 French troops and 390 tons of equipment into Bamako. In addition, there has been one aerial refueling operation by an American KC-135 tanker aircraft, which provided 33,000 pounds of fuel to several French warplanes, the officials said.

At the same time, a meeting of international donors was getting under way on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as part of an effort to provide more than $450 million in long-term financing for the military intervention in Mali.

The French-led effort has met surprisingly little resistance from the array of Islamist militias that occupied the northern part of Mali, an area about twice the size of Germany, in the spring of 2012 in the midst of a national political crisis.

It remains unclear how long the foreign military occupation will last. Most of the Islamist fighters have melted into the desert and could be regrouping to fight again.

In a bid to consolidate the gains, troops from Mali and neighboring Niger arrived Tuesday in the small town of Ansongo, about 50 miles south of Gao, one day after President François Hollande of France urged African countries to take a more prominent role in the operations.

Just as in Gao two days before, residents filled the streets there to greet the arrival of the African troops as they toured Ansongo and its environs.

“Everyone is very, very, very happy,” said Ibrahim Haidara, an Ansongo resident reached by phone. “They chanted, ‘Vive la France!’ and ‘Long live African armies!’ ”

But like his counterparts in Gao, he worried that the fighters might not have gone very far.

“They are in the bush. They are hiding,” he said. “One must be careful.”

Peter Tinti reported from Bamako, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Alan Cowell from London. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris, John F. Burns from London, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington.

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Facebook Graph Search Still Doesn’t Speak Human

Despite hiring a couple of linguists to get its new search engine to move “beyond ‘Robospeak” and actually understand how people talk, Facebook hasn’t actually taught Graph Search how to do that very well just yet. And that’s a problem, no matter which way the social network spins it. Unlike Google‘s pattern-matching search engine, Facebook’s new recommendation-based social search platform tries to understand full sentences. And that takes context, something that’s very hard to teach even the smartest computers, as one of the linguists that worked on the project, Amy Campbell, told The New York Times‘s Somini Sengupta. 

RELATED: Why Facebook’s Graph Search Can’t Give Users What They’re Looking for… Yet

In order to think more like a person the Graph Search team taught the engine 25 synonyms for “student” so that when someone types in “Stanford Academics that work at Facebook” the engine knows to look for “students” — 275,000 different ways in fact. But it turns out that an English class isn’t the future of machine learning: a grammar and vocabulary lesson proves a lot easier than complex sentient thoughts, and that’s where Facebook’s new product breaks down in practice.

RELATED: Why Google Isn’t Scared of Facebook’s Graph Search

For example, Graph Search doesn’t get vague pronouns. My query today for “photos Elle Reeve likes that she commented on” confuses Facebook’s beyond-robo engine. Instead, Graph Search results track down photos that my Atlantic Wire colleague “likes” but that I commented on:

RELATED: The Bad News-Good News of Tech Trademark Infringement

But Facebook’s ambiguity problem extends beyond “I” and “she.” Graph Search also has problems with double entendres, or sentences with nuance. The phrase “sports fans that like Lady Gaga play” has multiple meanings, notes the Times, especially because the word “fan” has its own special meaning on Facebook. (People with “Pages” have “fans.”) 

It’s not impossible to fix these specific issues. Facebook can add more relevant “context” to Graph Search as more people use it (beta testing rolled out over the last week). But never once has a machine perfectly understood our natural language. IBM’s Watson has come close, but it still made an embarrassing mistake every so often, and newer robots like Georgia Tech’s Simon are still getting there. Messups are okay (and entertaining) for a computer on a gameshow, or robots that might end up really helping bridge the computer-human divide. But, if I’m really going to use Graph Search as a way to find things in my day-to-day life, right now, those kind of hiccups should happen rarely to never — and Facebook’s slow phase-in excuse isn’t cutting it. If Graph Search can’t understand what humans want, it’s simply not doing its job. 

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Ashley Judd Splits from Husband Dario Franchitti

01/29/2013 at 08:05 PM EST

Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti

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Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are splitting after more than a decade of marriage.

"We have mutually decided to end our marriage. We'll always be family and continue to cherish our relationship based on the special love, integrity, and respect we have always enjoyed," Judd, 44, and Franchitti, 39, tell PEOPLE exclusively in a statement on Tuesday.

After being engaged for about two years, the Missing star and the racecar driver tied the knot in a highly private ceremony in Scotland in 2001.

Judd's sister, Wynonna Judd, served as maid of honor, while the groom's brother Mario was the best man. – Julie Jordan

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Soldier with new arms determined to be independent

BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.

Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after getting a double-arm transplant.

Wounded by a roadside bomb in 2009, the former soldier said he could get by without legs, but he hated living without arms.

"Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," the 26-year-old New Yorker told reporters Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Doctors don't want him using his new arms too much yet, but his gritty determination to regain independence was one of the chief reasons he was chosen to receive the surgery, which has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.

That's the message Marrocco said he has for other wounded soldiers.

"Just not to give up hope. You know, life always gets better, and you're still alive," he said. "And to be stubborn. There's a lot of people who will say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway. Work your ass off and do it."

Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, head of the team that conducted the surgery, said the new arms could eventually provide much of the same function as his original arms and hands. Another double-arm transplant patient can now use chopsticks and tie his shoes.

Lee said Marrocco's recovery has been remarkable, and the transplant is helping to "restore physical and psychological well-being."

Tuesday's news conference was held to mark a milestone in his recovery — the day he was to be discharged from the hospital.

Next comes several years of rehabilitation, including physical therapy that is going to become more difficult as feeling returns to the arms.

Before the surgery, he had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

"We'll get it back together. We've been through a lot worse than that," his father, Alex Marrocco, said.

For the next few months, Marrocco plans to live with his brother in an apartment near the hospital.

The former infantryman said he can already move the elbow on his left arm and rotate it a little bit, but there hasn't been much movement yet for his right arm, which was transplanted higher up.

Marrocco's mother, Michelle Marrocco, said he can't hug her yet, so he brushes his left arm against her face.

The first time he moved his left arm was a complete surprise, an involuntary motion while friends were visiting him in the hospital, he said.

"I had no idea what was going through my mind. I was with my friends, and it happened by accident," he recalled. "One of my friends said 'Did you do that on purpose?' And I didn't know I did it."

Marrocco's operation also involved a technical feat not tried in previous cases, Lee said in an interview after the news conference.

A small part of Marrocco's left forearm remained just below his elbow, and doctors transplanted a whole new forearm around and on top of it, then rewired nerves to serve the old and new muscles in that arm.

"We wanted to save his joint. In the unlucky event we would lose the transplant, we still wanted him to have the elbow joint," Lee said.

He also explained why leg transplants are not done for people missing those limbs — "it's not very practical." That's because nerves regrow at best about an inch a month, so it would be many years before a transplanted leg was useful.

Even if movement returned, a patient might lack sensation on the soles of the feet, which would be unsafe if the person stepped on sharp objects and couldn't feel the pain.

And unlike prosthetic arms and hands, which many patients find frustrating, the ones for legs are good. That makes the risks of a transplant not worth taking.

"It's premature" until there are better ways to help nerves regrow, Lee said.

Now Marrocco, who was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, is looking forward to getting behind the wheel of his black 2006 Dodge Charger and hand-cycling a marathon.

Asked if he could one day throw a football, Dr. Jaimie Shores said sure, but maybe not like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.

"Thanks for having faith in me," Marrocco interjected, drawing laughter from the crowd.

His mother said Marrocco has always been "a tough cookie."

"He's not changed that, and he's just taken it and made it an art form," Michelle Marrocco said. "He's never going to stop. He's going to be that boy I knew was going to be a pain in my butt forever. And he's going to show people how to live their lives."

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Associated Press Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and AP writer David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., contributed to this report.

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Euro surges to 14-month high, Fed decision awaited

LONDON (Reuters) - The euro hit its highest level in over a year on Wednesday and shares, oil and metals were also on the rise, as confidence in the global economic outlook strengthened ahead of European data and the U.S. Federal Reserve's latest policy decision.

The Fed is expected to maintain asset buying at $85 billion a month when it concludes its meeting later and retain its commitment to hold interest rates near zero until unemployment falls to at least 6.5 percent.

European economic confidence data for January at 1000 GMT, ECB crisis loan repayments and Italy's sale of five and 10-year bonds will absorb most of investors' attention before then, as they look for further evidence of a pick-up in the region.

Share markets in London, Paris and Frankfurt opened little changed ahead of the data, leaving all eyes on a rally by the euro as it broke above $1.35 for the first time since December 2011.

Alongside the recent rebound in confidence in the euro zone, one of the drivers behind the recent spike has been the eagerness of banks to repay the crisis loans they took from the European Central Bank just over a year ago.

"It (the euro rise) is just a carry on with the current trend, risk is pretty healthy and equities are doing well," said Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi strategist Derek Halpenny.

"The danger is European policymakers allow a spike (in euro and market rates) as a result of a removal of one of the principle support measures ... With the Fed and the BOJ still easing the euro is clearly the path of least resistance."

An earlier rise in Asian equities meant the MSCI world share index was up 0.2 percent at a new 21-month high as European trading gathered pace. U.S. stock futures suggested a cautious start on Wall Street.

Strong U.S. housing data on Tuesday and China's promising economic growth forecast for 2013 also supported the upbeat mood and raised expectations for robust demand for fuel and industrial commodities, underpinning oil prices and lifting copper.

In the bond market, German Bund futures opened lower as investors made room for a sale of long-dated German paper and braced for solid demand at an Italian debt auction.

Italy will offer up to 6.5 billion euros of bonds maturing in 2017 and 2022. Traders expect the sale to benefit from yield-hungry investors but flagged the risk of indigestion after a bout of buying in recent months that triggered a sharp rally.

"(The auction) probably (goes) alright but I don't think it trades well afterwards," one trader said.

(Additional reporting by Ana Nicolaci da Costa; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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India Ink: Delhi Gang Rape Trial Will Be Held in Delhi, Supreme Court Rules

NEW DELHI —India’s Supreme Court dismissed on procedural grounds a plea on Tuesday to transfer the New Delhi gang rape trial outside the city.

Advocate M.L. Sharma filed the petition on behalf of Mukesh Singh, one of the five men accused of the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus last month. The petition claimed that press coverage of the trial and continued agitations had created bias against the accused.

The petition also said that “personal interest shown by the chief minister as well as various cabinet ministers” in the case would cause the judiciary to be “under pressure to work against the petitioner.” Since the crime occurred, the chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit, and other government figures have pledged to make the city safer for women.

The plea to move the trial out of Delhi was dismissed because of questions raised about Mr. Sharma’s authority to represent the accused, rather than on the substance of the plea.

The Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir, said in dismissing the plea, “Your authority to appear in this matter has been totally denied by the accused.”

Mr. Sharma and a second lawyer, V.K. Anand, have both claimed to be representing Mr. Singh. The Supreme Court rejected the plea following an investigation that determined that Mr. Singh was actually represented by advocate V.K. Anand.

The five men accused in the Dec. 16 fatal gang rape are being tried in a fast track court in the Saket District Court Complex in New Delhi. They could face the death penalty if convicted of murder. On Monday, the Indian Juvenile Justice Board declared that a sixth person accused in the case was officially a juvenile, meaning the maximum sentence he could receive is three years in a detention facility.

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Yahoo sees revenue climb this year, but long road ahead

(Reuters) – Yahoo Inc forecast a modest uptick in revenue for the current year as it revamps its family of websites but Chief Executive Marissa Mayer warned it would be a long journey to revive the Internet company‘s fortunes.

In Yahoo‘s first financial outlook since Mayer became CEO in July, the company outlined a plan to trigger a “chain reaction of growth” by overhauling a dozen of its online services to increase the amount of time users spent on its websites.

It also pointed to strength in its search advertising business and progress made in improving its internal operations.

Yahoo’s shares were 3 percent higher in after hours trade after the revenue projection was disclosed during an analysts conference call, shedding some ground after earlier rising as much as 4.5 percent.

But weakness in Yahoo’s display ad business, which accounts for roughly 40 percent of the company’s total revenue, caught some analysts by surprise.

“While the road to growth is certain, it will not be immediate,” said Mayer, a former Google Inc executive and Yahoo’s third full-time CEO since September 2011.

Yahoo said that revenue, excluding fees it pays to partner websites, will range between $ 4.5 billion and $ 4.6 billion in 2013, implying an annual growth rate of 0.7 percent to 3 percent.

Finance Chief Ken Goldman also warned investors to expect “an investment phase” in the first half of the year, which he said would impact profit margins.

“What was clear from the call is that this is a long-term turnaround story,” said Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter. “We shouldn’t expect anything to just snap back and correct itself.”

During the fourth quarter, Yahoo’s net revenue increased 4 percent year-on-year to $ 1.22 billion, as search advertising sales offset a 10 percent decline in the number of display ads sold on Yahoo’s core properties.

Mayer said the decline was the result of less activity by visitors to its popular websites, such as its Web email service, and to a lesser extent due to users accessing the Web on smartphones, where Yahoo’s ad business is not as strong.

Efforts to revamp its mobile properties, begun last year with a redesign of the photo-sharing service Flickr, remain on track, said Mayer, noting that Yahoo now has 200 million monthly mobile users.

“From a monetization perspective this is still a very nascent source of revenue for us. With any platform shift, revenue always followed users and mobile will be no different,” she said.

Mayer took over after a tumultuous period at Yahoo in which former CEO Scott Thompson resigned after less than 6 months on the job over a controversy about his academic credentials and in which Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and cut his ties with the company.

Yahoo’s stock has risen roughly 30 percent since Mayer took the helm, reaching its highest levels since 2008.

Part of the stock’s rise has been driven by significant stock buybacks, using proceeds from a $ 7.6 billion deal to sell half of its 40 percent stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group, said Sameet Sinha, an analyst with B. Riley Caris.

Yahoo said it repurchased $ 1.5 billion worth of shares during the fourth quarter.

The company’s fourth-quarter net income was $ 272.3 million, or 23 cents per share, versus $ 295.6 million, or 24 cents per share in the year-ago period.

Excluding certain items, Yahoo said it had earnings per share of 32 cents, versus the average analyst expectation of 28 cents according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

For the first quarter, Yahoo said it expects revenue, excluding partner website fees, of $ 1.07 billion to $ 1.1 billion, trailing the $ 1.1 billion that Wall Street analysts expect on average.

Shares of Yahoo were up 59 cents at $ 20.90 in after-hours trading on Monday.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Edwina Gibbs)

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Soldier talks about his new arms after transplant

BALTIMORE (AP) — A soldier who lost all four limbs in an Iraq roadside bombing has two new arms following a double transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Twenty-six-year-old Brendan Marrocco along with the surgeons who treated him will be at the Baltimore hospital on Tuesday to discuss the new limbs.

The transplants are only the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant ever conducted in the United States.

The infantryman was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. The New York City man also received bone marrow from the same dead donor. The approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new arms with minimal medication to prevent rejection.

The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.

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