Asian shares steady, U.S. budget concerns weigh

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares steadied in quiet pre-holiday trade on Monday from a slump late last week, with prices capped by nervousness about the risk of the United States failing to avert a fiscal crisis.

European shares will likely be subdued, with financial spreadbetters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse> and Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> to open steady to 0.1 percent higher. <.l><.eu/>

Activity in other assets was also subdued, with spot gold steadying as investors took to the sidelines, while oil extended losses, with U.S. crude inching down 0.2 percent to remain below $89 a barrel while Brent futures eased 0.3 percent to $108.70.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> was up 0.1 percent after falling to a near two-week low on Friday when House of Representatives Speak John Boehner failed to gain support for a tax plan, raising fears the U.S. may not be able to avert the "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to start January 1.

The White House on Friday tried to rescue stalled talks but there was little headway as lawmakers and President Barack Obama abandoned Washington for Christmas.

Many market players still expect both sides to reach a compromise before the year-end deadline but heightening tensions were likely to stifle trade already slowed by the holidays.

"It's all about the U.S. fiscal cliff issue," said Victor Shum, managing director at IHS Purvin & Gertz. "The chances are that we will get a deal between the White House and the Republicans, but the fact that Boehner failed to get members to support his plan is worrying."

Australian shares <.axjo> advanced 0.25 percent in a shortened session before the Christmas break, lifted by blue chips, but trade was extremely thin with many players already away.

The Hang Seng Index <.hsi> closed up 0.2 percent, with Hong Kong financial markets shut at midday for the Christmas holiday and resuming trading on Thursday. Shanghai shares <.ssec> outperformed their peers with a 0.5 percent rise on expectations for more public funds' allocations.

South Korean shares <.ks11> edged up 0.1 percent in light trading before Christmas Day, with the weakening Japanese yen and U.S. fiscal uncertainty keeping investors uneasy.

Japanese financial markets are closed for a public holiday and will resume trading on Tuesday.

The dollar inched up 0.2 percent to 84.35 yen, having fallen below 84 yen on Friday. The dollar hit a 20-month high of 84.62 yen on December 19.

The yen has been pressured by expectations the Bank of Japan will be compelled to adopt more drastic monetary stimulus measures next year as incoming prime minister Shinzo Abe demands action by the central bank to bring Japan out of decades-long deflation.

Abe stepped up pressure over the weekend, saying on Japanese television that he will try to reform a law guaranteeing the BOJ's independence if his demand for a binding inflation target is not met.

Currency speculators increased their bets against the U.S. dollar in the latest week, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Friday. Bets against the yen fell after reaching a more than five-year peak.

But market players generally see the dollar staying firm for now as the U.S. fiscal impasse will likely continue to sap investor appetite for risky assets and raise the dollar's safe-haven appeal.

"It looks like all momentum for the fiscal cliff negotiations is gone," said Rob Ryan, strategist for RBS in Singapore. While the dollar could be swayed by year-end flows, "on balance I would see a stronger U.S. dollar into the end of the year," Ryan said.

EPFR Global, a fund-tracking firm, said on Friday that investors around the world pulled $4.1 billion from bond funds worldwide during the week ending December 19, the most since August 2011, and favored riskier exchange-traded funds despite the U.S. budget tussle.

ETFs are generally believed to represent the behavior of institutional investors, and can be used opportunistically to bet on various indexes.

EURO ZONE SET TO FOCUS ON ITALY

Focus for the euro zone next year will turn to Italy, where Mario Monti announced on Sunday, two days after his resignation, that he would consider seeking a second term as Italian prime minister if approached by allies committed to backing his austere brand of reforms.

Stakes will be high at a parliamentary election set for February 24-25, as the world's eighth largest economy suffers from recession and public debt exceeding $2.6 billion, have aggravated investor concerns about growth and stability in the euro zone.

Italy faces a huge bond redemption in the first quarter of 2013 and a failure to secure funding could refuel concerns about sovereign financing not only in Italy but also similarly-indebted Spain, battering confidence in the euro.

(Additional reporting by Masayuki Kitano and Manash Goswami in Singapore; Editing by Eric Meijer)

Read More..

India Ink: Police Crackdown in Delhi Sunday After Protests Over Rape

A week of growing anger about a recent rape in Delhi ended in violence Saturday after police and protestors clashed near the India Gate monument.

On Sunday, Delhi police closed nearby Metro stations, evacuated protestors who had camped out overnight and reportedly imposed “Section 144,” a law prohibiting gatherings of more than four people. Like the protestors, the police took to social media to notify people of the crackdown, albeit without explanation:

Parliament street has been closed.

— Delhi Traffic Police (@dtptraffic) 23 Dec 12

Saturday’s protests resulted in dozens of injuries.

“Thousands of protesters streamed into the heart of New Delhi on Saturday to demand justice and better policing in the wake of the brutal rape of a 23-year-old medical student, ” Gardiner Harris and Hari Kumar wrote in The New York Times about the incident.

Protesters scuffled with the police throughout the day. Some police vehicles were damaged, and the police eventually used tear gas, water cannons and sticks to disperse the crowd. Officials said 35 protesters and 37 police officers had been injured, two officers seriously, and that six buses and several police vehicles were damaged.

Read the full article.

The Dec. 16 rape has been a tipping point for India, galvanizing women and men to demand the government do more to protect women and punish those who harass them.

“Political parties even make rapists members of parliaments and state assembly,” said Minal Kumar, 20, a journalism student at Delhi University, who attended Saturday’s protest. The Association for Democratic reforms, a research group, issued a study Thursday that showed that more than Indian political parties had given tickets to 27 men accused of rape in the last five years. “At least they should stop doing that,” Ms. Kumar said.

In “Notes From Raisina Hill,” Nilanjana Roy wrote:

I went to the protests at Raisina Hill expecting very little. Despite the anger over the recent, brutal gang-rape of a 23-year-old by a group of six men, who also beat up her male friend, protests over women’s violence in the Capital have been relatively small.

But the crowds walking up the Hill, towards the government offices of North and South Block, from India Gate are unusual. It’s a young crowd—students, young men and women in their twenties, a smattering of slightly older women there to show their solidarity, and it’s a large crowd, about a thousand strong at the Hill itself. There are two small knots representing student’s politicial organisations, but otherwise, many of the people here today are drawn together only by their anger.

Read More..

Eric Ladin Welcomes a Son

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

12/23/2012 at 12:00 AM ET

Noah Graham/Noah Graham Photography

Eric Ladin is one killer new dad.

The former Killing actor and his wife Katy welcomed their first child, son Maxfield David Ladin, on Friday, Dec. 21 in Los Angeles, his rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

“Wow! The last 24 hrs have been the best of my life. Forever changed, I am now a father,” the actor says.

Announcing the pregnancy in May, the first-time father admitted he and his fashion designer/stylist wife were thrilled to be starting a family — despite entering into the unknown.

“Katy and I couldn’t be happier, we have always wanted to be parents. Now what the hell do we do?” Ladin, 34, joked.

– Anya Leon with reporting by Michelle Tan

Read More..

Wall Street Week Ahead: A lump of coal for "Fiscal Cliff-mas"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street traders are going to have to pack their tablets and work computers in their holiday luggage after all.

A traditionally quiet week could become hellish for traders as politicians in Washington are likely to fall short of an agreement to deal with $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts due to kick in early next year. Many economists forecast that this "fiscal cliff" will push the economy into recession.

Thursday's debacle in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner failed to secure passage of his own bill that was meant to pressure President Obama and Senate Democrats, only added to worry that the protracted budget talks will stretch into 2013.

Still, the market remains resilient. Friday's decline on Wall Street, triggered by Boehner's fiasco, was not enough to prevent the S&P 500 from posting its best week in four.

"The markets have been sort of taking this in stride," said Sandy Lincoln, chief market strategist at BMO Asset Management U.S. in Chicago, which has about $38 billion in assets under management.

"The markets still basically believe that something will be done," he said.

If something happens next week, it will come in a short time frame. Markets will be open for a half-day on Christmas Eve, when Congress will not be in session, and will close on Tuesday for Christmas. Wall Street will resume regular stock trading on Wednesday, but volume is expected to be light throughout the rest of the week with scores of market participants away on a holiday break.

For the week, the three major U.S. stock indexes posted gains, with the Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> up 0.4 percent, the S&P 500 <.spx> up 1.2 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> up 1.7 percent.

Stocks also have booked solid gains for the year so far, with just five trading sessions left in 2012: The Dow has advanced 8 percent, while the S&P 500 has climbed 13.7 percent and the Nasdaq has jumped 16 percent.

IT COULD GET A LITTLE CRAZY

Equity volumes are expected to fall sharply next week. Last year, daily volume on each of the last five trading days dropped on average by about 49 percent, compared with the rest of 2011 - to just over 4 billion shares a day exchanging hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT in the final five sessions of the year from a 2011 daily average of 7.9 billion.

If the trend repeats, low volumes could generate a spike in volatility as traders keep track of any advance in the cliff talks in Washington.

"I'm guessing it's going to be a low volume week. There's not a whole lot other than the fiscal cliff that is going to continue to take the headlines," said Joe Bell, senior equity analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research, in Cincinnati.

"A lot of people already have a foot out the door, and with the possibility of some market-moving news, you get the possibility of increased volatility."

Economic data would have to be way off the mark to move markets next week. But if the recent trend of better-than-expected economic data holds, stocks will have strong fundamental support that could prevent selling from getting overextended even as the fiscal cliff negotiations grind along.

Small and mid-cap stocks have outperformed their larger peers in the last couple of months, indicating a shift in investor sentiment toward the U.S. economy. The S&P MidCap 400 Index <.mid> overcame a technical level by confirming its close above 1,000 for a second week.

"We view the outperformance of the mid-caps and the break of that level as a strong sign for the overall market," Schaeffer's Bell said.

"Whenever you have flight to risk, it shows investors are beginning to have more of a risk appetite."

Evidence of that shift could be a spike in shares in the defense sector, expected to take a hit as defense spending is a key component of the budget talks.

The PHLX defense sector index <.dfx> hit a historic high on Thursday, and far outperformed the market on Friday with a dip of just 0.26 percent, while the three major U.S. stock indexes finished the day down about 1 percent.

Following a half-day on Wall Street on Monday ahead of the Christmas holiday, Wednesday will bring the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. It is expected to show a ninth-straight month of gains.

U.S. jobless claims on Thursday are seen roughly in line with the previous week's level, with the forecast at 360,000 new filings for unemployment insurance, compared with the previous week's 361,000.

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: rodrigo.campos(at)thomsonreuters.com)

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Read More..

In Islamist Bastion, Support Ebbs for Egypt’s Brotherhood

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

A school with old posters of Mohamed Morsi, now the president, in Al Talbeya, a neighborhood in Giza, where disaffection with the government is growing. More Photos »

AL TALBEYA, Egypt — Mohamed Salamah used to vote with the Muslim Brotherhood. But in Saturday’s referendum on the Islamist-backed constitution, Mr. Salamah says he is voting against it, mainly because he no longer trusts the movement.

“They aren’t even doing anything very Islamic,” said Mr. Salamah, a 24-year-old waiter in a cafe in Al Talbeya, a working-class neighborhood in Giza across the Nile from Cairo that was an Islamist stronghold in previous votes. “They are just doing things that aren’t very competent.”

Throughout the neighborhood, both loyal supporters and critics of the Brotherhood described a deep erosion in the group’s street-level support. That was evident, they said, even before the low turnout and narrow margin in last weekend’s first round of voting on what residents here call “the Brotherhood constitution.”

The results so far appear to have surprised leaders of the Brotherhood and their opposition. And even if the draft constitution is approved, as expected, on Saturday in the second half of the vote, the new questions about the charter’s popularity and the Brotherhood’s mandate could prolong Egypt’s political turbulence and, as a result, defer badly needed economic reforms as well.

Residents here and around Cairo say the damage to the Brotherhood’s popularity is unrelated to its religious ideology. It reflects a consistent trio of complaints: confusing economic policies of the Brotherhood-led government, a near-monopoly on power and civilian supporters’ use of force against opponents in a street battle two weeks ago. Even so, many say the Brotherhood remains the most potent political force, in part because of the incoherence of the opposition, which has often focused on accusing the Brotherhood of imposing religious rule.

But for now economists say the battle for power is jeopardizing progress on the bread-and-butter issues that are paramount across the ideological spectrum. “What the economy needs are decisions that are politically courageous and credible, and no government can do that now,” said Ragui Assaad, an economist at the University of Minnesota with an office in Cairo.

A critical loan of more than $4 billion from the International Monetary Fund, expected to be signed this month, has been delayed until the political situation settles. The Egyptian pound is slipping against the dollar. And the most obvious step to improve the growth and fairness of the economy requires a government with credibility and political skill. Attempts at overhauling Egypt’s vast subsidies to energy prices have in the past set off riots.

“What we have now is a government that lacks legitimacy but also economic competence,” Mr. Assaad said. “I don’t see anything better coming out of this government.”

Brotherhood leaders have acknowledged the emergence of hostility against them. Mobs attacked more than three dozen Brotherhood offices, including its headquarters, in the prelude to the first round of voting on the constitution. “I am telling everyone, do not hate the Muslim Brotherhood so much that you forget Egypt’s best interest,” said Mohamed Badie, the group’s spiritual leader. “You can be angry at us and hate us as much as you want; we cannot control affection. But I say to you, be rational. Protect Egypt. Its unity cannot survive what is happening.”

For many in Al Talbeya, the defining moment of the prelude to the referendum was the night of Dec. 5, when the Brotherhood called its supporters to defend President Mohamed Morsi against protesters outside his office. Ten died in the fight. And although the Brotherhood has claimed all those killed were its members, seemingly everyone in Al Talbeya still blamed the group for the violence.

“People don’t like the Muslim Brotherhood as much as they used to, because they saw how they tried to control everything and how they beat people up,” said Emad Mohamed Yosri, 37, a tailor who still counts himself a supporter of the group.

Omar Ateh, 30, a shopkeeper and Islamist, said he was trying to defend the Brotherhood. “We are trying to make people understand, they are not from another planet,” he said, “they just like politics more than we do.”

But Ahmed Ragab, 14, interjected, “If they are such good people, why are they beating people up in the streets?”

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo.

Read More..

Red Hat shares up on acquisition and 3Q results

Red Hat Inc.‘s shares jumped Friday on the software company‘s solid third-quarter results and plans to acquire cloud-based software company ManageIQ.

THE SPARK: Red Hat said late Thursday that it would buy privately held ManageIQ for $ 104 million in cash.

The Raleigh, N.C., company also reported that it earned 29 cents per share for its fiscal third quarter on an adjusted basis, up a penny from the prior year and in line with analyst expectations. Its revenue for the period increased 18 percent to $ 343.6 million, which beats the $ 338 million that analysts polled by FactSet had forecast.

THE BIG PICTURE: ManageIQ’s software helps businesses deploy and manage private clouds. Red Hat said the deal will expand the reach of its public-private cloud setups for its customers. The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s revenue for its fiscal year ending in February.

THE ANALYSIS: Stifel Nicolaus analyst Brad R. Reback said that the company has been able to maintain momentum even in a difficult environment and he thinks the latest deal offers an interesting longer-term angle for its business. He thinks the company is well positioned to generate at least 15 to 20 percent billings growth in the future. He reiterated a “Buy” rating and a $ 65 price target on its shares.

SHARE ACTION: Shares gained $ 2.25, or more than 4 percent, to $ 54.86 in afternoon trading. Shares have traded between $ 39.19 and $ 62.75 in the past 52 weeks.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Red Hat shares up on acquisition and 3Q results
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

See If You Can Spot the One Color That Popped on the Carpet This Week

Stylewatch
Style News Now

12/21/2012 at 12:00 PM ET

Getty; Splash News Online; WireImage

Even though we didn’t see as many stars on the red carpet this week as last — it’s quiet in Hollywood this holiday season! — we still saw some strong trends emerge at various events. What were they? Let’s get to it!

Up: Pops of red. You can thank the holidays for this festive mini-trend, which we spotted on Hailee Steinfeld’s purse, Bella Heathcote’s dress and Rose Byrne’s jacket. Adding just a hint of the bold hue to your outfit is an easy way to look all holiday-y without going overboard.

Up: Head-to-toe black. What, are stars sick of sequined dresses already? This week we saw nearly one dozen leading ladies wear all black: Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, LeAnn Rimes, Alexa Chung, Jessica Chastain, Miley Cyrus, Krysten Ritter and Kerry Washington … to name a few. As New Yorkers, we’re always happy to see all-black ensembles en force, and it is a look that’s usually pretty failsafe — and slimming.

Down: Stick-straight hair. Rita Ora was the only woman we saw with pin-straight locks this week; everyone else went for bouncy curls and elegant updos (and cropped cuts, if you count Miley Cyrus!). With Christmas and New Year’s Even upon us, we predict we’ll be seeing a lot more exciting hairdos and less of the minimalist straight looks.

Tell us: Which color are you more likely to wear at the holidays: red or black?

Want more Trend Report? Click to hear our thoughts on mini dresses, cut-outs and collars.

FIND ALL THE LATEST RED CARPET NEWS AND PHOTOS HERE!

Read More..

Wall Street Week Ahead: A lump of coal for "Fiscal Cliff-mas"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street traders are going to have to pack their tablets and work computers in their holiday luggage after all.

A traditionally quiet week could become hellish for traders as politicians in Washington are likely to fall short of an agreement to deal with $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts due to kick in early next year. Many economists forecast that this "fiscal cliff" will push the economy into recession.

Thursday's debacle in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner failed to secure passage of his own bill that was meant to pressure President Obama and Senate Democrats, only added to worry that the protracted budget talks will stretch into 2013.

Still, the market remains resilient. Friday's decline on Wall Street, triggered by Boehner's fiasco, was not enough to prevent the S&P 500 from posting its best week in four.

"The markets have been sort of taking this in stride," said Sandy Lincoln, chief market strategist at BMO Asset Management U.S. in Chicago, which has about $38 billion in assets under management.

"The markets still basically believe that something will be done," he said.

If something happens next week, it will come in a short time frame. Markets will be open for a half-day on Christmas Eve, when Congress will not be in session, and will close on Tuesday for Christmas. Wall Street will resume regular stock trading on Wednesday, but volume is expected to be light throughout the rest of the week with scores of market participants away on a holiday break.

For the week, the three major U.S. stock indexes posted gains, with the Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> up 0.4 percent, the S&P 500 <.spx> up 1.2 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> up 1.7 percent.

Stocks also have booked solid gains for the year so far, with just five trading sessions left in 2012: The Dow has advanced 8 percent, while the S&P 500 has climbed 13.7 percent and the Nasdaq has jumped 16 percent.

IT COULD GET A LITTLE CRAZY

Equity volumes are expected to fall sharply next week. Last year, daily volume on each of the last five trading days dropped on average by about 49 percent, compared with the rest of 2011 - to just over 4 billion shares a day exchanging hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT in the final five sessions of the year from a 2011 daily average of 7.9 billion.

If the trend repeats, low volumes could generate a spike in volatility as traders keep track of any advance in the cliff talks in Washington.

"I'm guessing it's going to be a low volume week. There's not a whole lot other than the fiscal cliff that is going to continue to take the headlines," said Joe Bell, senior equity analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research, in Cincinnati.

"A lot of people already have a foot out the door, and with the possibility of some market-moving news, you get the possibility of increased volatility."

Economic data would have to be way off the mark to move markets next week. But if the recent trend of better-than-expected economic data holds, stocks will have strong fundamental support that could prevent selling from getting overextended even as the fiscal cliff negotiations grind along.

Small and mid-cap stocks have outperformed their larger peers in the last couple of months, indicating a shift in investor sentiment toward the U.S. economy. The S&P MidCap 400 Index <.mid> overcame a technical level by confirming its close above 1,000 for a second week.

"We view the outperformance of the mid-caps and the break of that level as a strong sign for the overall market," Schaeffer's Bell said.

"Whenever you have flight to risk, it shows investors are beginning to have more of a risk appetite."

Evidence of that shift could be a spike in shares in the defense sector, expected to take a hit as defense spending is a key component of the budget talks.

The PHLX defense sector index <.dfx> hit a historic high on Thursday, and far outperformed the market on Friday with a dip of just 0.26 percent, while the three major U.S. stock indexes finished the day down about 1 percent.

Following a half-day on Wall Street on Monday ahead of the Christmas holiday, Wednesday will bring the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. It is expected to show a ninth-straight month of gains.

U.S. jobless claims on Thursday are seen roughly in line with the previous week's level, with the forecast at 360,000 new filings for unemployment insurance, compared with the previous week's 361,000.

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: rodrigo.campos(at)thomsonreuters.com)

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Read More..

Park Geun-hye, South Korean President-Elect, Calls for Reconciliation

Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

President-elect Park Geun-hye during a news conference at her party's headquarters on Thursday in Seoul.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president-elect, Park Geun-hye, called for national reconciliation on Thursday, a day after she was elected as the country’s first female leader in a close contest that reflected generational divides and growing unease over North Korea’s military threat.

Ms. Park, 60, the daughter of South Korea’s longest-ruling dictator, won 51.6 percent of the votes cast on Wednesday to choose a successor to President Lee Myung-bak, who was barred by law from seeking a second term.

“I will reflect various opinions of the people, whether they have supported or opposed me,” Ms. Park said in a speech Thursday. She pledged “impartiality,” “national harmony” and “reconciliation,” saying she would bring people into her government “regardless of their regional background, gender and generation.”

She also promised “the sharing of fruits of economic growth,” mindful of doubts that her conservative party, the governing Saenuri Party, would address the widening income gap that was one of the biggest issues in the campaign.

Ms. Park on Wednesday became the first presidential candidate to win a majority of the vote since South Korea adopted a democratic constitution in 1987. But the campaign hardly put the country’s divisions to rest. It rekindled a dispute over the legacy of Ms. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, who remains a polarizing figure 33 years after his iron-fisted rule ended with his assassination in 1979.

It also highlighted a generational divide over issues like North Korea and the powerful, family-controlled business conglomerates known as chaebol. Exit polls indicated that Ms. Park won twice as many votes among people 50 and older than did her main rival, Moon Jae-in, but only half as many among voters in their 20s and 30s.

She defeated Mr. Moon in most provinces and big cities. But Seoul and the southwestern provinces of North and South Jeolla, traditionally a progressive stronghold, chose the liberal Mr. Moon, who championed bold economic investment in North Korea as a means of inducing denuclearization and more aggressive measures to tame the conglomerates, which have been widely blamed for growing economic inequality. Mr. Moon won 48 percent of the vote nationwide.

Ms. Park met Thursday with the ambassadors from the United States, China, Japan and Russia, the four other countries involved with the two Koreas in talks over the North’s nuclear weapons programs.

Worries over the North’s weapons programs flared again last week with the launching of a long-range rocket that many saw as a test of its missile capabilities. Such missiles could eventually be used to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Ms. Park on Thursday referred to the launching as “a symbolic demonstration of how serious a challenge we face in national security.”

She has, however, promised to be more open to the North than Mr. Lee, who took a hard-line approach that many South Koreans felt proved to be counterproductive.

“North Korea will wait a few months to see if Park Geun-hye will appease it with money,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea specialist at Kookmin University in Seoul. “If she does not — and it looks unlikely that she will, given her statements so far and the hard-liners surrounding her — then North Korea will launch provocations.”

With Ms. Park’s election, South Korea extended the tenure of its staunchly pro-American governing party and handed power to the first woman to win the post in a deeply patriarchal part of Asia. Voters appeared to prefer stability over Mr. Moon’s calls for radical change.

“This is a victory for the people’s wish to overcome crises and revive the economy,” Ms. Park told her cheering supporters after the results came in, a crowd that had gathered in freezing weather in downtown Seoul to celebrate a woman whose steeliness in the face of adversity is legend. According to her memoir, when told of her father’s assassination in 1979, she responded, “Is everything all right along the border with North Korea?”

In its starkest terms, this election was about South Korea’s continuing confrontation with its authoritarian past, and confusion over whether a conservative or liberal approach would best serve the country as it tries to stop North Korea’s excesses and to handle growing frustration over economic inequality without derailing the country’s economic miracle. Mr. Moon, a former human rights lawyer who was once imprisoned for opposing the authoritarian rule of Ms. Park’s father, campaigned on restoring liberal policies from the early 2000s, including a warm embrace of North Korea as a way of trying to curb its aggression.

Read More..

The X Factor: Who Won the Show?

The X Factor

12/20/2012 at 10:10 PM EST

from left: Fifth Harmony, Tate Stevens and Carly Rose Sonenclar

Ray Mickshaw/FOX

The X Factor ended on a particularly high note for one of the show's finalists Thursday night.

After performing live one last time the night before, Britney Spears's contestant Carly Rose Sonenclar, along with L.A. Reid's Tate Stevens and Simon Cowell's Fifth Harmony all vied for the $5 million recording contract awarded to the season's winner.

Click after the jump to find out who won the coveted prize.

L.A. Reid's "Over 25" contestant Tate Stevens, 37, is the winner of The X Factor season 2. He's a dad of two and a road worker from Missouri.

"First and foremost I got to thank the man upstairs for taking care of me, my family, all the country music fans – God bless you," he said after hearing the results. "Thank you so much for all the votes. This is the best day of my life."

L.A. said, "You deserve this. I'm proud to work with you. I think you represent The X Factor really, really well. So on behalf of Simon and myself and all the judges, congratulations."

Britney's teen contestant, Carly Rose Sonenclar, landed in second place. She and Britney looked emotional but didn't get a chance to say anything at the end.

Third place went to Simon Cowell's girl group, Fifth Harmony.

Member Camila Cabello, said, "I feel like in this competition we've gained more than $5 million could because we've gained friends for life ... I'm so happy to be where I am right now."

Simon said, "I have a feeling that we're going to be hearing and seeing a lot more of these girls in the future."

Read More..