EBay cautious in short run as Europe weighs (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? EBay Inc gave a conservative quarterly sales forecast despite unveiling better-than-expected results, warning that a weak European economy may take the gloss off rip-roaring growth in online commerce.

But CEO John Donahoe -- who is overseeing a turnaround in its core "marketplaces" division and pitting a company once synonymous with auctions against Amazon.com Inc -- remained confident about the longer-term outlook, citing robust e-commerce growth and strength in its PayPal online-payments arm.

Shares of the company gained 2.4 percent to $31.07 in after-hours trading following the earnings report.

In early 2012, a weakening euro may also dent eBay's bottom line. The recent decline of the currency against the U.S. dollar reduces the value of sales in euro zone countries when converted to greenbacks. Currency volatility also restrains cross-border transactions, a profitable source of growth for PayPal.

"They're exemplifying the bearish outlook for the currency by telling people how much the weak euro will affect their earnings in the next quarter. They want to under-promise and over-deliver," said Bill Smead of Smead Capital Management, which owns eBay shares.

"But earnings are going to grow 15 to 20 percent a year for years, and all these little wiggles in the short run are just noise."

In the long run, EBay is riding a growth wave as more shoppers buy online and via smartphones and tablet. It benefits from this trend because Marketplaces charge fees on transactions and other activity. PayPal also takes a cut of a rising volume of electronic payments processed on its network.

The company forecast first-quarter profit of 50 cents or 51 cents a share and revenue of $3.05 billion to $3.15 billion. Analysts were expecting first-quarter earnings of 54 cents a share and revenue of $3.16 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

HEADWINDS FORECAST

The company's main marketplaces business, however, is growing roughly in line with e-commerce.

Donahoe said e-commerce has evolved into a fixed-price business and away from the online auctions that eBay pioneered in the 1990s.

EBay's fixed-price business, which accounts for about 65 percent of volume, grew 15 percent in the fourth quarter in the U.S. and bigger, top-rated sellers grew 19 percent, Donahoe noted during an interview with Reuters.

Meanwhile, auctions grew 2 percent in the fourth quarter.

"This part of the business is unique and profitable and adds to our selection," Donahoe said. "We'll do our best to have this market grow."

Gross Merchandise Volume, or GMV, on eBay's online marketplaces in the United States rose 10 percent in the quarter from a year earlier, excluding auto-related sales.

Its international GMV grew 9 percent.

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at RW Baird, said that growth was slightly weaker than expected. That was partly driven by a decline in the price of gold, which is frequently bought and sold on eBay's online marketplaces, he said.

Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said growth in Germany, a big market for eBay, continued to be "sluggish," during a conference call with analysts.

EBay generates about 30 to 40 percent of its revenue in Europe, where many economies have been dented by the debt crisis.

"We remain anxious about the European economy and the impact of weaker European currency on our cross-border transactions, Swan told analysts.

Still, eBay raised the midpoint of its 2013 revenue forecast by about $550 million and lifted its estimate for PayPal's profit growth, CFO Swan noted.

EBay shares should trade at a higher multiple to earnings but are unlikely to match richer valuations of faster-growing rivals, Smead said.

EBay reported fourth-quarter net income of $2 billion, or $1.51 a share, compared with $559 million, or 42 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 35 percent to $3.38 billion.

It recognized a big gain from the sale of its remaining stake in Skype during the fourth quarter. Excluding that and other items such as stock-based compensation expenses, profit was $788.6 million, or 60 cents a share, the company said.

Analysts, on average, expected eBay to earn 57 cents a share on revenue of $3.32 billion.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Andre Grenon, Bernard Orr, Steve Orlofsky, Gary Hill)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120119/wr_nm/us_ebay

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ABC's Weir finds health problem on routine story

NEW YORK (AP) ? A routine news story took a strange turn when an ABC "Nightline" anchor had a full body scan that turned up a possible warning sign.

Bill Weir was interviewing Dr. David Agus, who gave him a full series of tests. That included a costly body scan that's not recommended for screening people with no symptoms of disease.

The scan found a calcium deposit in an artery, which the doctor told the Wisconsin native could put him at risk for a future heart attack. But since the program aired Tuesday night, other doctors have challenged that assessment.

The 44-year-old "Nightline" anchor put himself through a battery of tests to illustrate a story about how to prevent disease only to find out on camera in a story that aired Tuesday that one screening spotted heart disease he never knew he had.

Lesions found in Weir's arteries were so serious that the doctor who screened him worried that he is a candidate for a serious heart attack if he doesn't make changes in his life.

Weir considers himself lucky.

"It was the scariest and most fortunate moment of my life, and it happened completely by accident," he said Wednesday. "If I hadn't been assigned this story, who knows when I would have seen a doctor again?"

Weir spoke over lunch, after ordering salmon at a place where he's always had pizza with sausage.

Agus, who put Weir through the tests, said he has received thousands of emails from people who saw Weir's story and he hopes it spurs many to talk with their own doctors.

"He's a hero," said Agus, the author of "The End of Illness," a new book about how the human body works and how it can fail.

Weir's story has also caused a controversy within the medical community. Leading cardiologists challenged whether Weir should have been given a whole body scan and show how serious a condition it revealed. Scans for healthy people with no heart symptoms are strongly discouraged by major groups such as the American Heart Association.

Yale University cardiologist Dr. Harlan Krumholz said that the finding of a single hardened artery is "more likely to alarm him and create anxiety and fear than it is to help save his life."

The Cleveland Clinic's cardiology chief, Dr. Steven Nissen, said Weir may have a calcium deposit "but so do an awful lot of people," and that doesn't necessarily mean high risk of a heart attack.

ABC sent Weir's scan to Nissen on Wednesday. Although he said he couldn't comment on what it showed, Nissen said heart doctors would treat conditions known to raise heart risk such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and "we're not going to alter treatment based on the fact that he has a speck of calcium"

Weir figured that doing the tests would be an interesting way to illustrate his story. He had no worries about his health. At 6-foot-2 and 203 pounds, he still fits into pants he wore in college. He rarely got sick and said it had been more than three years since he had even seen a doctor.

When the results came in, Agus initially didn't want to discuss them on camera for privacy reasons. But Weir and his producers said to keep the camera rolling as what he found was discussed. Weir said he blanked out when he was told by the doctor about the heart disease.

"His lips kept moving, but I stopped listening," he recalled.

After less than 24 hours, Weir said he's gotten a bigger response from viewers for this than for any other story he's done.

He's got an appointment with a cardiologist and is already taking a cholesterol-lowering statin and a baby aspirin each day. He's changing his diet, and he grilled salmon instead of bratwurst for the Packers playoff game last weekend.

____

AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-18-TV-Weir's%20Heart/id-d144cd669d6f47edbc7a9a6dcb119b0b

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Video: 'Star Trek Online' is now free

Klingon and Nerf filled massively multiplayer online game how now gone free-to-play. In-Game's Todd Kenreck reports.

Related Links:

Contact Todd Kenreck on Facebook

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/in-game/46031920/

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Impact take Canadian forward in supplemental draft

updated 4:00 p.m. ET Jan. 17, 2012

MONTREAL - The expansion Montreal Impact have selected Canadian forward Evan James with the No. 1 overall pick Tuesday in the MLS supplemental draft.

James starred in college at Charlotte, scoring five goals in 25 games this season. He also impressed scouts at the MLS combine Jan. 6-10 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The four-round supplemental draft followed last week's SuperDraft, in which Hermann Trophy winner Andrew Wenger of Duke went first overall to Montreal.

The Impact become the 19th team in MLS team this season.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Cup relief

??Queens Park Rangers and Bolton both avoid upsets in their FA Cup replay games on Tuesday.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/46029833/ns/sports-soccer/

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AP Exclusive: Border Patrol to toughen policy

SAN DIEGO (AP) ? The U.S. Border Patrol is moving to halt a revolving-door policy of sending migrants back to Mexico without any punishment.

The agency this month is overhauling its approach on migrants caught illegally crossing the 1,954-mile border that the United States shares with Mexico. Years of enormous growth at the federal agency in terms of staff and technology have helped drive down apprehensions of migrants to 40-year lows.

The number of agents since 2004 has more than doubled to 21,000. The Border Patrol has blanketed one-third of the border with fences and other physical barriers, and spent heavily on cameras, sensors and other gizmos. Major advances in fingerprinting technology have vastly improved intelligence on border-crossers. In the 2011 fiscal year, border agents made 327,577 apprehensions on the Mexican border, down 80 percent from more than 1.6 million in 2000. It was the Border Patrol's slowest year since 1971.

It's a far cry from just a few years ago. Older agents remember being so overmatched that they powerlessly watched migrants cross illegally, minutes after catching them and dropping them off at the nearest border crossing. Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher, who joined the Border Patrol in 1987, recalls apprehending the same migrant 10 times in his eight-hour shift as a young agent.

The Border Patrol now feels it has enough of a handle to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches, from areas including Texas' Rio Grande Valley to San Diego. The "Consequence Delivery System" ? a key part of the Border Patrol's new national strategy to be announced within weeks ? relies largely on tools that have been rolled out over the last decade on parts of the border and expanded. It divides border crossers into seven categories, ranging from first-time offenders to people with criminal records.

Punishments vary by region but there is a common thread: Simply turning people around after taking their fingerprints is the choice of last resort. Some, including children and the medically ill, will still get a free pass by being turned around at the nearest border crossing, but they will be few and far between.

"What we want to be able to do is make that the exception and not necessarily the norm," Fisher told The Associated Press.

Consequences can be severe for detained migrants and expensive to American taxpayers, including felony prosecution or being taken to an unfamiliar border city hundreds of miles away to be sent back to Mexico. One tool used during summers in Arizona involves flying migrants to Mexico City, where they get one-way bus tickets to their hometowns. Another releases them to Mexican authorities for prosecution south of the border. One puts them on buses to return to Mexico in another border city that may be hundreds of miles away.

In the past, migrants caught in Douglas, Ariz., were given a bologna sandwich and orange juice before being taken back to Mexico at the same location on the same afternoon, Fisher said. Now, they may spend the night at an immigration detention facility near Phoenix and eventually return to Mexico through Del Rio, Texas, more than 800 miles away.

Those migrants are effectively cut off from the smugglers who helped them cross the border, whose typical fees have skyrocketed to between $3,200 and $3,500 and are increasingly demanding payment upfront instead of after crossing, Fisher said. At minimum, they will have to wait longer to try again as they raise money to pay another smuggler.

"What used to be hours and days is now being translated into days and weeks," said Fisher.

The new strategy was first introduced a year ago in the office at Tucson, Ariz., the patrol's busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Field supervisors ranked consequences on a scale from 1 to 5 using 15 different yardsticks, including the length of time since the person was last caught and per-hour cost for processing.

The longstanding practice of turning migrants straight around without any punishment, known as "voluntary returns," ranked least expensive ? and least effective.

Agents got color-coded, wallet-sized cards ? also made into posters at Border Patrol stations ? that tells them what to do with each category of offender. For first-time violators, prosecution is a good choice, with one-way flights to Mexico City also scoring high. For known smugglers, prosecution in Mexico is the top pick.

The Border Patrol has introduced many new tools in recent years without much consideration to whether a first-time violator merited different treatment than a repeat crosser.

"There really wasn't much thought other than, 'Hey, the bus is outside, let's put the people we just finished processing on the bus and therefore wherever that bus is going, that's where they go,'" Fisher said.

Now, a first-time offender faces different treatment than one caught two or three times. A fourth-time violator faces other consequences.

The number of those who have been apprehended in the Tucson sector has plunged 80 percent since 2000, allowing the Border Patrol to spend more time and money on each of the roughly 260 migrants caught daily. George Allen, an assistant sector chief, said there are 188 seats on four daily buses to border cities in California and Texas. During summers, a daily flight to Mexico City has 146 seats.

Only about 10 percent of those apprehended now get "voluntary returns" in the Tucson sector, down from about 85 percent three years ago, said Rick Barlow, the sector chief. Most of those who are simply turned around are children, justified by the Border Patrol on humanitarian grounds.

Fisher acknowledged that the new strategy depends heavily on other agencies. Federal prosecutors must agree to take his cases. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must have enough beds in its detention facilities.

In Southern California, the U.S. attorney's office doesn't participate in a widely used Border Patrol program that prosecutes even first-time offenders with misdemeanors punishable by up to six months in custody, opting instead to pursue only felonies for the most egregious cases, including serial border-crossers and criminals.

Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, said limited resources, including lack of jail space, force her to make choices.

"It has not been the practice (in California) to target and prosecute economic migrants who have no criminal histories, who are coming in to the United States to work or to be with their families," Duffy said. "We do target the individuals who are smuggling those individuals."

Fisher would like to refer more cases for prosecution south of the border, but the Mexican government can only prosecute smugglers: smuggling migrants is a crime in Mexico but there is nothing wrong about crossing illegally to the United States. It also said its resources were stretched on some parts of the border.

Criticism of the Border Patrol's new tactics is guaranteed to persist as the new strategy goes into effect at other locations. Some say immigration cases are overwhelming federal courts on the border at the expense of investigations into white-collar crime, public corruption and other serious threats. Others consider prison time for first-time offenders to be excessively harsh.

The Border Patrol also may be challenged when the U.S. economy recovers, creating jobs that may encourage more illegal crossings. Still, many believe heightened U.S. enforcement and an aging population in Mexico that is benefiting from a relatively stable economy will keep migrants away.

"We'll never see the numbers that we saw in the late 1990s and early 2000s," said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Doris Meissner, who oversaw the Border Patrol as head of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1990s, said the new approach makes sense "on the face of it" but that it will be expensive. She also said it is unclear so far if it will be more effective at discouraging migrants from trying again.

"I do think the Border Patrol is finally at a point where it has sufficient resources that it can actually try some of these things," said Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

Tucson, the only sector to have tried the new approach for a full year, has already tweaked its color-coded chart of punishments two or three times. Fisher said initial signs are promising, with the number of repeat crossers falling at a faster rate than before and faster than on other parts of the border.

"I'm not going to claim it was a direct effect, but it was enough to say it has merit," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-17-Border%20Patrol-Zero%20Tolerance/id-48cf57734802463fa06e3dedf305adec

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Internet blackout against U.S. law fails to enlist big sites (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? A blackout scheduled for Wednesday to protest against proposed legislation on online piracy has failed to get the support of the biggest Internet players.

Despite calls for the participation of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other big names, the biggest participants are the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the social-news website Reddit.

The situation shows that, while technology companies are concerned about the legislation, the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), the companies are not prepared to sacrifice a day's worth of revenue and risk the ire of users for a protest whose impact on lawmakers is hard to gauge.

Wikipedia and Reddit will black out their pages so visitors will see only information about Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

Of the biggest tech sites that have voiced opposition to the legislation, only Google is planning any type of change to its site tomorrow. It too will have information about the bills, although users will still be able to conduct Google searches.

"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and Web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," said a Google spokeswoman. "So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page."

That solution allows Google to keep revenue attached to its searches, while still highlighting the issue.

Microblogging service Twitter also declined to participate, with chief executive Dick Costolo taking on critics of the decision on Twitter over the weekend.

"Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish," he wrote.

Costolo followed up with a Tweet stating the company will continue to take an active role in opposing the bills.

"Watch this space," he tweeted.

That position of criticizing the bills, but sitting out the blackout is echoed by many big tech companies, including several who wrote to Congress in November to complain about the legislation, such as AOL Inc, eBay Inc, Mozilla and Zynga Inc.

"We are not adjusting the consumer experience on our properties tomorrow, but we will be helping to drive awareness of key issues around these bills to our users," said Tekedra Mawakana, senior vice president for public policy at AOL.

In November, a number of technology companies wrote to key lawmakers expressing opposition to the bill, including eBay, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla.

Still, the blackout had signed up thousands of participating sites by late Tuesday and succeeded on at least one level: attracting the attention of lawmakers and industry leaders backing the bills. They were quick to attack it.

"This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts," said Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a sponsor of SOPA. "Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy."

Former senator Chris Dodd, who now chairs the Motion Picture Association of America, labeled the blackout a "gimmick" and called for its supporters to "stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy."

The legislation, designed to curb access and payments to overseas websites that traffic in stolen content or counterfeit groups, has been a major priority for entertainment companies, publishers, pharmaceutical firms and many industry groups. They maintain the proposed law is critical to curbing online piracy they say costs them billions of dollars a year.

Internet companies have furiously opposed the legislation and have ramped up their lobbying efforts in recent months, arguing it would undermine innovation and free speech rights and compromise the functioning of the Internet.

It was seemingly on the fast track for approval by Congress until the White House criticized aspects of it over the weekend.

(Reporting By Sarah McBride and Jasmin Melvin; editing by Andre Grenon)

Corrects second paragraph to show that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, not dictionary.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/wr_nm/us_internet_protest

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Romney: Scrap campaign finance laws (AP)

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. ? Mitt Romney says he'd like to scrap campaign finance laws that have given rise to a war of independent attack ads from political action committees. Romney said he'd instead like to allow candidates to accept unlimited donations and take responsibility for their own words.

The comment came as Romney sparred with Newt Gingrich over inaccuracies in ads being bankrolled by super PACs.

Romney called the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law "a disaster." The law regulates campaign donations.

The former Massachusetts governor said the solution was to "let people make contributions they want to make to campaigns; let campaigns then take responsibility for their own words."

Gingrich has suggested he would also support unlimited donations to candidates so long as they had to report them the same day.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_debate_romney_campaign_finance

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