Whether it’s George Washington’s teeth or Bill Clinton’s former hamburger habit, Americans have always been fascinated by the health of the president and presidential candidates.
With help from the Web site DoctorZebra, which has compiled an exhaustive list of the medical history of American presidents, we’ve created an Election Day quiz to test your knowledge of presidential fitness and health.
McDonald's Corp. reported its first decline in monthly U.S. same store sales in nine years Thursday, as the chain began to suffer problems plaguing the rest of the fast food industry for several years.
Sales at restaurants open more than a year declined 2.2 percent. Same store sales also declined in Europe, 2.2 percent, and the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa region, 2.4 percent.
The chain cited lower demand and greater competition for the lower sales. While hamburger competitors Burger King and Wendy’s were walloped by the onset of the recession, both have changed hands in recent years and launched new menu items that better compete with McDonald’s including expanded breakfast offerings, improved coffee options and more innovative salads.
"Though October's sales results reflect the pervasive challenges of today's global marketplace, I am confident that our strategies and the adjustments we are making in response to the current business headwinds will build sales momentum and drive sustained, profitable growth," McDonald's CEO Don Thompson said.
Although the decline is historic for the world's largest restaurant chain, which has been on a roll since the beginning of its historic turnaround in 2003, it was not unexpected. Analysts have been tempering expectations and downgrading the stock for months.
To rev up sales, McDonald's has been working to emphasize value in markets around the world.
In the U.S., for example, McDonald's is stepping up advertising for its Dollar Menu after its attempt to market an "Extra Value Menu" for slightly higher prices fell flat. But the company said Thursday that the efforts were offset by "modest consumer demand" and competition.
In particular, McDonald's is facing stiffer competition from longtime rivals Burger King and Wendy's, which are both in the midst of reviving their brands with new ad campaigns and improved menus. Taco Bell, owned by Yum Brands Inc., is also enjoying growth with the help of new offerings such as it Doritos Locos Tacos and higher-end Cantina Bell bowls and burritos.
Stock slipped 0.99 percent in pre-market trades, to $86 in early trading. McDonald's hit an all-time high of $101.74 in February.
Baird analyst David Tarantino maintained an outperform rating on McDonald's, saying in a research note that, "We are cautiously optimistic that better trends can emerge as McDonald's gets past a wall of challenging comparisons in upcoming months."
Tarrantino added that though results "could remain soft" through early 2013, "we see opportunity for better performance to emerge in 2013 as a whole," because of emphasis on value offerings, lower ingredient costs, and reduced currency impact.
eyork@tribune.com | Twitter: @emilyyork
- Reuters contributed to this report
MCD Net Income Quarterly data by YCharts
"You made your voice heard," Obama said in his acceptance speech, signaling that he believes the bulk of the country is behind his policies. It's a sticking point for House Republicans, sure to balk at that.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, spoke of a dual mandate. "If there is a mandate, it is a mandate for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs," he said.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had a more harsh assessment.
"The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president's first term," McConnell said. "They have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together" with a balanced Congress.
Obama's more narrow victory was nothing like the jubilant celebration in 2008, when his hope-and-change election as the nation's first black president captivated the world. This time, Obama ground it out with a stay-the-course pitch that essentially boiled down to a plea for more time to make things right and a hope that Congress will be more accommodating than in the past.
Even his victory party was more subdued. His campaign said Wednesday that 20,000 people came to hear his speech in downtown Chicago, compared with 200,000 four years ago.
The most pressing challenges immediately ahead for the 44th president are all too familiar: an economy still baby-stepping its way toward full health; 23 million people out of work or in search of better jobs; civil war in Syria; a menacing standoff over Iran's nuclear program.
Sharp differences with Republicans in Congress on taxes, spending, deficit reduction, immigration and more await. While Republicans control the House, Democrats have at least 53 votes in the Senate and Republicans 45. One newly elected independent isn't saying which party he'll side with, and North Dakota's race was not yet called.
Obama's list of promises to keep includes many holdovers he was unable to deliver on in his first term, such as rolling back tax cuts for upper-income people, overhauling immigration policy and reducing federal deficits. Six in 10 voters said in exit polls that taxes should be increased, and nearly half of voters said taxes should be increased on incomes over $250,000, as Obama has called for.
"It's very clear from the exit polling that a majority of Americans recognize that we need to share responsibility for reducing the deficit," Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told CNN. "That means asking higher-income earners to contribute more to reducing the deficit."
But Sara Taylor Fagen, who served as political director in President George W. Bush's second term, warned the current White House to pay heed to the closely divided electorate, a lesson her party learned after 2004. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Obama had 50 percent to 48 percent for Romney.
"It'll be interesting if the Obama team misinterprets the size of their victory," Fagen said. "I think if you look back at history, we pushed Social Security and the Congress wasn't ready for that and wasn't going to do it. And had President Bush gone after immigration, we may be sitting in a very different position as a party."
Obama predicted in the waning days of the campaign that his victory would motivate Republicans to make a deal on immigration policy next year to make up for having "so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community."
Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour agreed that a lesson of 2012 is for his Republican Party to change the party's approach on immigration.
"Republicans say, 'We don't want to reward people for breaking the law,'" Barbour told CBS. "The way we need to look at it is, how are we going to grow the American economy and where does our immigration policy fit into that?"
Even before Obama gets to his second inaugural on Jan. 20, he must deal with the threatened "fiscal cliff." A combination of automatic tax increases and steep across-the-board spending cuts are set to take effect in January if Washington doesn't quickly reach a budget deal. Experts have warned that the economy could tip back into recession without an agreement.
Newly elected Democrats signaled they want compromise to avoid the fiscal cliff.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As dusk sets on the “Twilight” saga with the final film, actor Taylor Lautner is looking at a new dawn for the next stage in his career.
Lautner, 20, shot to fame after being cast as werewolf Jacob Black in the “Twilight” films, entangled in a torrid love triangle with Kristen Stewart‘s Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson‘s vampire Edward Cullen. He became a household name and pin-up for his clean-cut good looks and shirtless scenes.
In “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” out in U.S. theaters on November 16, Lautner’s character finds new love, albeit unusual, and indulges his comedic side as the story comes to an end.
Lautner spoke to Reuters about leaving Jacob and his cast mates behind, and why the final film may leave fans in tears.
Q: What’s different about Jacob in “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″?
A: “He’s always been so stressed and emotional and things aren’t going his way and there was a huge weight lifted off his shoulders in this one, huge. It was nice to play that side of Jacob where he could sit back and relax and have a smile on his face and crack a few funny jokes every now and then.”
Q: Jacob finds his soul mate in Bella and Edward’s daughter Renesmee from the moment she is born. Was it challenging to balance his affection for her without coming across creepy?
A: “It was a challenge, and it is so complicated, but really nobody understands it more than Stephenie Meyer who created it. I was picking her brain all day long about it. She basically told me over and over again, ‘Taylor, stop trying to overthink it, stop trying to take it different places … It’s a life-long bond between two people, that’s it.’ In the movie, (Renesmee) is 10 years old, it’s much more of a protector relationship right now, and of course the relationship will grow but we don’t explore that, but it was important for me to keep it simple.”
Q: What are you going to miss most about your character and the franchise?
A: “These characters have never stopped changing throughout the entire franchise, and that’s what I love about Jacob. Jacob himself has grown up so much and gone through so many hurdles and it was a fantastic character to play. For me, it’ll be tough to say goodbye to spending time with people that I love. We’ve grown so close over the past few years. Our relationships will go on past this but to not have that excuse to spend day after day together while filming or promoting will be different.”
Q: “Twilight” fans are not just interested in your characters, they’re also interested in your personal lives. The past summer has seen a lot of attention on Robert and Kristen’s relationship. How do you handle that level of scrutiny?
A: “It’s unlike anything else because when we do talk about the movies, 90 percent of the time people want to know more about ourselves than the characters and what’s going on. I guess that just comes with a fan base like this, it comes with the job and you try and not let it affect you too much, but I have no complaints … The scrutiny, is it unfortunate? Yeah, but you just got to make your way around it and think about things more.”
Q: Do you feel protective of your cast members?
A: “Yes, I definitely do, we’re so close by this point, I think that it’s hard not to.”
Q: What do you hope “Twilight” fans take away from “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″?
A: “I just hope they’re happy and they’re proud because we really do make these movies for them. They’re the reason we are able to make them, their support is unreal and we’re so proud of this last one. This last one specifically wraps it up so nicely, it’s an amazing movie. During the movie, it’ll keep you on the edge of your seat but by the end, I think more than a few of the fans will be in tears.”
Q: Post-Twilight, where do you want to take your career to, what roles would you like to explore? I hear you have a cameo in the comedy “Grown Ups 2″?
A: “It was great to do (comedy), just hop in and show a different side, do something fun and work with somebody like Adam (Sandler). But now I’m looking forward to doing something different from that. There are a few projects that I’m very excited about that are extremely challenging and dramatic and would be tough.”
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Patricia Reaney)
Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Polio will never be eradicated in Pakistan until a way is found to persuade poor Pashtuns to embrace the vaccine, according to a study released by the World Health Organization.
A survey of 1,017 parents of young children found that 41 percent had never heard of polio and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children against it. The survey was done in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and the only big city in the world where polio persists; it was published in the agency’s November bulletin.
Parents from poor families “cited lack of permission from family elders,” said Dr. Anita Zaidi, who teaches pediatrics at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Some rich parents also disdained the vaccine, saying it was “harmful or unnecessary,” she added.
Pashtuns account for 75 percent of Pakistan’s polio cases even though they are only 15 percent of the population. Wealthy children are safer because the virus travels in sewage, and their neighborhoods may have covered sewers and be less flood-prone.
Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in next-door Afghanistan, where polio has also never been wiped out. Most Taliban fighters are Pashtun, and some Taliban threatened to kill vaccinators earlier this year. Two W.H.O. vaccinators were shot in Karachi in July.
Rumors persist that the vaccine is a plot to sterilize Muslims. But the eradication drive is recruiting Pashtuns as vaccinators and asking prominent religious leaders from various sects to make videos endorsing the vaccine.
Major stock indexes were down more than 2 percent midway through the first trading session after election day.
At the top of the agenda is the "fiscal cliff," the automatic spending cuts and tax hikes looming at year's end. If Obama cannot successfully resolve the crisis with a House still controlled by Republicans, economists have warned that the "cliff" could slow growth and push the U.S. back into recession.
"We've gotten certainty on the presidency and now we move into the uncertainty of where we were before -- the fiscal cliff," said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial. "The market's not going to have much patience to wait to see when the negotiations begin in earnest and how they evolve."
The Dow Jones industrial average regained some ground but was still down 303 points, or 2.3 percent, to 12,943 in midday trading.
The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 32 points, or 2.2 percent, to 1,396. The Nasdaq was down 71 points, or 2.4 percent, to 2,941.
Corporations reported sluggish revenues in the third quarter, signaling slowing economic growth regardless of the fiscal cliff, Krosby noted. Declining company fortunes could lead to job cuts and further drags on economic growth as consumer demand falls.
Also weighing on investors' minds: Continuing worries out of Europe. Economic data out of Germany indicate that not even the continent's most powerful economy is immune to the Eurozone slowdown, as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi noted in remarks Wednesday.
Three firefighters were injured while battling a house fire this morning in southwest suburban Oak Lawn.
Two of them remain hospitalized this afternoon at Advocate Christ Medical Center, and a third who suffered a "nickle-sized'' burn on his face was treated on the scene, said Oak Lawn Fire Chief George Sheets.
A mayday was called when one of them, a veteran firefighter, briefly became separated from the hose line and fire group, said Sheets.
“His air was getting low and he became disoriented,’’ Sheets said.
The mayday brought to mind the recent passing of Chicago Fire Capt. Herbie Johnson who was killed during a South Side fire Friday night.
“That is all on your mind but in this situation he was quickly found was able to be removed from the house very quickly,'' Sheets said.
“I’ve been a firefighter for 31 years and a chief for over 18 and when you hear a mayday it certainly adds a little anxiety to the situation,’’ said Sheets.
That firefighter remains at the hospital this afternoon but he is expected to be released.
The third firefighter, who also remains hospitalized this afternoon at Christ, was injured when a something fell on his neck, according to the chief, who added that none of the injuries is life-threatening.
Authorities believe the fire started about 8:50 a.m. in the basement of the home in the 4900 block of West 99th Street, said Oak Lawn Police Division Chief Michael Kaufmann.
One occupant was able to escape and was out of the house by the time police arrived, according to Kaufmann.
Village Manager Larry Deetjen said the building was "well engulfed" in flames when firefighters got there and searched the building. When they found no one inside, they extinguished the fire but the firemen were injured in the process.
The resident, who had been smoking prior to the start of the fire, tried to put it out himself.“This is what we believe,’’ Sheets said. “The fire had a head start on us.’’
The resident was treated on the scene for smoke inhalation, but declined to be taken to a hospital, the chief said.
Careless use of smoking materials is listed in preliminary reports as the cause of the fire, Sheets said.
The home was rendered unlivable and sustained "extensive" damage, said Deetjen.The American Red Cross and the Salvation Army will be assisting, Deetjen said.
The cause of the blaze is under investigation.Police and fire department investigators remained on the scene and 99th Street was closed down in both directions from Cicero to 51st avenues, said Kaufmann.
rsobol@tribune.com
chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union regulators are to end an antitrust probe into e-book prices by accepting an offer by Apple and four publishers to ease price restrictions on Amazon, two sources said on Tuesday.
The decision hands online retailer Amazon victory in its attempt to sell e-books cheaper than its rivals in the fast-growing market that publishers hope will boost revenue and increase customer numbers.
Apple and the publishers offered in September to let retailers set their own prices or discounts for a period of two years, and also to suspend "most-favored nation" contracts for five years.
Such clauses bar Simon & Schuster, News Corp. unit HarperCollins, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Livre and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, the owner of German company Macmillan, from making deals with rival retailers to sell e-books more cheaply than Apple.
The agreements, which critics say prevent Amazon and other retailers from undercutting Apple's charges, sparked an investigation by the European Commission in December last year.
Pearson Plc's Penguin group, which is also under investigation, did not take part in the offer.
The EU antitrust authority, which in September asked for feedback from rivals and consumers about the proposal, has not asked for more concessions, said one of sources.
"The Commission is likely to accept the offer and announce its decision next month," the source said on Tuesday.
Antoine Colombani, spokesman for competition policy at the European Commission, said: "We have launched a market test in September and our investigation is still ongoing."
Amazon declined to comment, while Apple did not respond to an email for comments.
Companies found guilty of breaching EU rules could be fined up to 10 percent of their global sales, which in Apple's case could reach $15.6 billion, based on its 2012 fiscal year.
FROWNING ON ONLINE TRADE CURBS
Antitrust regulators tend to frown on restrictions on online trade and the case is a good example of this policy, said Mark Tricker, a partner at Brussels-based law firm Norton Rose.
"This case shows the online world continues to be a major focus for the Commission. They are looking at lots of different aspects of e-commerce, as this can have such a significant impact on consumers, development and innovation," he said.
"These markets change very quickly and if you don't stamp down on potential infringements of competition rules, you can have significant consequences."
UBS analysts estimate that e-books account for about 30 percent of the U.S. book market and 20 percent of sales in Britain but are minuscule elsewhere. Amazon created demand for e-books when it launched its e-Kindle reader, charging $9.99 for each book.
Apple's agency model let publishers set prices in return for a 30 percent cut to the maker of iPhone and iPad.
The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating e-book prices. HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette recently settled, but Apple, Penguin Group and Macmillan continue to fight the allegations.
(Editing by Rex Merrifield and David Goodman)
LONDON (Reuters) – British celebrity Sharon Osbourne has had a double mastectomy after discovering she was carrying a gene that increased the risk of her developing breast cancer, she told Hello! magazine in an interview published on Monday.
Osbourne, 60, told the publication that the decision was a “no-brainer” in the end.
“As soon as I found out I had the breast cancer gene, I thought: ‘The odds are not in my favor’,” she said in remarks that also ran in the Daily Mirror tabloid.
“I’ve had cancer before and I didn’t want to live under that cloud: I decided to just take everything off, and had a double mastectomy.”
Osbourne, who put the eccentric life of her family on view in the reality TV series “The Osbournes”, said she did not want to spend the rest of her life with “that shadow hanging over me.
“I want to be around for a long time and be a grandmother to Pearl,” she added, referring to her son Jack’s first child.
“I didn’t even think of my breasts in a nostalgic way, I just wanted to be able to live my life without that fear all the time. It’s not ‘pity me’, it’s a decision I made that’s got rid of this weight that I was carrying around.”
Osbourne raised her profile by appearing as a judge on successful talent shows “The X Factor” and “America’s Got Talent”. She is married to heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne.
Her London publicist referred Reuters to the interview which ran in Hello! and the Daily Mirror when asked to confirm the news.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
