Abe’s challenge: Can he give Japan what money can’t buy

TOKYO (Reuters) – Even before Japanese voters returned Shinzo Abe‘s party to power, he had already won over financial markets with an economic revival plan as seductively simple as economists say it is risky: print money and spend it. Lots of it.

The Liberal Democratic Party’s landslide on Sunday is likely to sustain a market rally fuelled by economic stimulus hopes, but Abe’s economic legacy will probably be defined by how he tackles chronic ills that easy money alone cannot fix and that were largely ignored during the campaign.

The conservative leader set to return to the prime minister’s post he abruptly left in 2007 campaigned on a promise to double spending on public works and to push the Bank of Japan for radical action to end deflation and help exporters such as Toyota and Sony by taming the yen.

“The fact that Abe points to changes in the BOJ law or forex levels, or aggressive easing as solutions to Japan‘s problems is, if anything, worrying,” said Yuuki Sakurai, chief executive of Fukoku Capital Management which manages $ 19 billion in assets.

“They should be treated as tools to buy time to implement structural reforms, but we’re not hearing anything about deep reforms that the LDP wants to carry out.”

The so-called Abe trade – a 4 percent slide in the yen and more than a 10 percent rise in stock prices over the past month – shows that for now, most investors just want to see the new leader fulfill his pledges.

Analysts said they expected Sunday’s vote, which according to TV projections based on counted votes gave LDP and its ally a two-thirds lower house majority, to sustain that trend in the near-term.

“Abe’s economic policies will be implemented so the economy will improve next year. The problem is what happens after that,” said Koichi Haji, chief economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. “The key is whether Abe can implement long-term structural reforms and growth strategies.”

The BOJ is poised to heed Abe’s calls for more aggressive easing and a more ambitious 2 percent inflation target, with markets expecting the central bank to ease policy for the fifth time this year on Thursday.

Investors also expect an extra budget of up to 10 trillion yen ($ 120 billion) as a down payment on Abe’s plan to spend such amounts per year over the next decade – double the current level – on public works long synonymous with the LDP.

Economists say pumping cash into the economy will only give it a temporary jolt if not followed by efforts to lift its growth potential and contain runaway debt.

In just three decades Japan has become the world’s oldest society, with those 65 or above making up nearly a quarter of a population that is greying and is estimated to have shrunk by over 260,000 in the last fiscal year alone.

Recipes to cope with it are well known: social security overhaul, including cuts in healthcare and pensions; boosting access to overseas markets and opening Japan to foreign goods, workers and investment; power sector revamp and bringing more women into the workforce.

All, however, carry political and social risks that Japan’s recent revolving-door leaders were unable or unwilling to take.

Left to sink or swim with swings in overseas demand for its exports and its currency, the world’s third-largest economy has been in and out of recession and dogged by low-grade deflation for the past two decades.

Now, in firm control of the lower house, Abe has a chance to prove his mettle and erase the memories of his first troubled year in office.

So far he has played it safe.

His “Abenomics” — a mix of potent monetary stimulus and big public spending — carries little political cost and he has been coy on touchy issues such the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade pact, or implementing sales tax increases.

With some luck, the new government may be even be able to call an end to a brief recession it entered last quarter.

Economists polled by Reuters last week predict the economy will start growing again in the first quarter of next year, largely due to expected recovery in China, Japan’s top export market.

TAX TEST

Abe’s first stern economic test will come after August, when the government, armed with second-quarter data, will decide whether the economy is strong enough to go ahead with a first round of planned sales tax increases.

With 10-year bond yields near a decade low below 0.7 percent, bond investors are now confident that he can steer the central bank to buy more bonds from the world’s most indebted government without setting off a market meltdown.

To keep that trust, Abe must convince investors that in his push for big scale-stimulus, he has not abandoned budget discipline. Economists say with Japan’s public debt at more than twice its economic output and climbing, the new government can ill-afford delaying a tax hike that has become a symbol of Tokyo’s fiscal rectitude. Their message is clear: “Just do it!”

“I hope they will go through with it,” said Takatoshi Ito, a Tokyo University professor, former adviser to the first Abe administration who is now mooted as a possible successor to BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa when his term ends in April.

“Tax revenue is less than half of expenditures. Bond issuance is bigger than tax revenues. It’s like using a credit card for more than half of your monthly expenditure. It’s crazy, abnormal, you can’t go on like that.”

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Antoni Slodkowski and Leika Kihara; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Egyptians hand Islamists narrow win in constitution vote

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptians voted in favor of a constitution shaped by Islamists but opposed by other groups who fear it will divide the Arab world’s biggest nation, officials in rival camps said on Sunday after the first round of a two-stage referendum.

Next week’s second round is likely to give another “yes” vote as it includes districts seen as more sympathetic towards Islamists, analysts say, meaning the constitution would be approved.

But the narrow win so far gives Islamist President Mohamed Mursi only limited grounds for celebration by showing the wide rifts in a country where he needs to build a consensus for tough economic reforms.

The Muslim Brotherhood‘s party, which propelled Mursi to office in a June election, said 56.5 percent backed the text. Official results are not expected until after the next round.

While an opposition official conceded the “yes” camp appeared to have won the first round, the opposition National Salvation Front said in a statement that voting abuses meant a rerun was needed – although it did not explicitly challenge the Brotherhood‘s vote tally.

Rights groups reported abuses such as polling stations opening late, officials telling people how to vote and bribery. They also criticized widespread religious campaigning which portrayed “no” voters as heretics.

A joint statement by seven human rights groups urged the referendum’s organizers “to avoid these mistakes in the second stage of the referendum and to restage the first phase again”.

Mursi and his backers say the constitution is vital to move Egypt’s democratic transition forward. Opponents say the basic law is too Islamist and tramples on minority rights, including those of Christians who make up 10 percent of the population.

The build-up to Saturday’s vote was marred by deadly protests. Demonstrations erupted when Mursi awarded himself extra powers on November 22 and then fast-tracked the constitution through an assembly dominated by his Islamist allies.

However, the vote passed off calmly with long queues in Cairo and several other places, though unofficial tallies indicated turnout was around a third of the 26 million people eligible to vote this time. The vote was staggered because many judges needed to oversee polling staged a boycott in protest.

The opposition had said the vote should not have been held given the violent protests. Foreign governments are watching closely how the Islamists, long viewed warily in the West, handle themselves in power.

“It’s wrong to have a vote or referendum with the country in the state it is – blood and killings, and no security,” said Emad Sobhy, a voter who lives in Cairo. “Holding a referendum with the country as it is cannot give you a proper result.”

INCREASINGLY DIVIDED

As polls closed, Islamists attacked the offices of the newspaper of the liberal Wafd party, part of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition that pushed for a “no” vote.

“The referendum was 56.5 percent for the ‘yes’ vote,” a senior official in the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party operations room set up to monitor voting told Reuters.

The Brotherhood and its party had representatives at polling stations across the 10 areas, including Cairo, in this round. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the tally was based on counts from more than 99 percent of polling stations.

“The nation is increasingly divided and the pillars of state are swaying,” opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on Twitter. “Poverty and illiteracy are fertile grounds for trading with religion. The level of awareness is rising fast.”

One opposition official also told Reuters the vote appeared to have gone in favor of Islamists who backed the constitution.

The opposition initially said its exit polls indicated the “no” camp would win comfortably, but officials changed tack during the night. One opposition official said in the early hours of Sunday that it would be “very close”.

A narrow loss could still hearten leftists, socialists, Christians and more liberal-minded Muslims who make up the disparate opposition, which has been beaten in two elections since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year.

They were drawn together to oppose what they saw as a power grab by Mursi as he pushed through the constitution. The National Salvation Front includes prominent figures such as ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and firebrand leftist Hamdeen Sabahy.

If the constitution is approved, a parliamentary election will follow early next year.

DEADLY VIOLENCE

Analysts question whether the opposition group will keep together until the parliamentary election. The Islamist-dominated lower house of parliament elected earlier this year was dissolved based on a court order in June.

Violence in Cairo and other cities has plagued the run-up to the referendum. At least eight people were killed when rival camps clashed during demonstrations outside the presidential palace earlier this month.

In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of those casting ballots. There are 51 million eligible voters in the nation of 83 million.

Islamists have been counting on their disciplined ranks of supporters and on Egyptians desperate for an end to turmoil that has hammered the economy and sent Egypt’s pound to eight-year lows against the dollar.

The army deployed about 120,000 troops and 6,000 tanks and armored vehicles to protect polling stations and other government buildings. While the military backed Mubarak and his predecessors, it has not intervened in the present crisis.

(Additional reporting Yasmin Saleh and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Art for Wealth’s Sake: Art Basel Paints a Picture of Miami’s Separate and Unequal Worlds

It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday night. A naked girl is splashing about in the swimming pool at the Standard Hotel Miami. She is from New York and runs a nonprofit for homeless teens. We’ll call her Liz: “You’re so boring!” she yells from the middle of the pool.

It was a common refrain here during Art Basel Miami Beach—now the world’s largest contemporary art fair—where many of earth’s most privileged humans gather for a week of champagne and gawking at art (and at each other) in the sun.

The poolside celebration was for Terry Richardson, a fashion photographer known for his sexually charged (or sexually abusive, depending on your source) shoots. A cell phone company, HTC, spent $ 100,000 to sponsor the party, a book release for Richardson. This is a typical event, one of hundreds that occur during what is commonly referred to as “Basel.”

MORE: Scenes From a Class War (VIDEOS)

Basel is now 11 years old. It’s gone from a decent sized art fair to an international marketing and branding orgy with few parallels. Because all the big collectors fly down private, and scores of cool young New Yorkers file in on JetBlue, luxury brands rush in to hit both their “target demos” and “tastemakers” in one shot.

In terms of tourism dollars, Basel is Miami’s highest grossing week. Hotels on South Beach were demanding thousands per night for rooms. The fair’s main sponsor was the honorable UBS, the very same Swiss bank that just settled a billion dollar fraud case with international authorities. UBS not only robs the world and stashes terrorist/dictator cash, it sponsors art fairs too—cool guys.

Most Miamians don’t care about Art Basel. The city is only 11 percent white (far and away the primary Basel target demographic), and most of the 40 percent Hispanic and 20 percent black populations live far from the South Beach glam, many in poverty. Miami has the second widest gap between rich and poor in America, after New York. Blacks make an average of $ 15,000 a year. Whites double that, at $ 37,000. But at $ 19,000, the city’s majority Hispanics aren’t doing so well either.

Disparity defines the art world too, with its hungry artists and rich collectors and patrons. So it’s fitting that the largest contemporary art fair in the world happens in Miami.

Few people are more detached from the short-end reality of income disparity than the global art tribe. These arbiters of the cultural elite fly around the world to various openings and fairs then retreat to galleries, museums and studios in their home cities before heading out again. Of course, there are exceptions. Some artists at Basel retain a socio-politico aesthetic. A good example is Barbara Krueger, whose text-orientated pieces mocking consumerism and political power were selling for $ 200,000 to $ 500,000 and became the talk of the fair.

Bearing many hallmarks of a third world city, Miami breaks down into two distinct populations. The rich live across Biscayne Bay on beautiful beaches and gated islands. The poor are stretched across downtown’s grid, where every block headed west from the bay is worse than the one before it. The city has few economically diverse neighborhoods.

The two Miamis can easily be visited on the same day. Last week. Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez, the New York Yankee third baseman with the largest sports contract in history, was having a party in his $ 30 million modernist manse.

I skipped A Rod’s soiree, mainly because I hate the Yankees, to hang out with Dee, a 22-year-old drug dealer who lives on west 20th Street downtown. All he wanted was customers: “Man, who down here needs anything? I’m fucking broke. I live in the projects with my aunt. Gotta get out.”

Dee said he’d take any job—as in, “I’ll work at Chick-fil-A, man!” Saddled with a criminal record, he’s never been hired anywhere.

We cruised over to 75th Street, the main drag in Little Haiti, where public housing is painted lime green and similarly awesome pastel paint jobs cover buildings advertising W.I.C and Western Union.

“There are no banks here,” Dee tells me. “We don’t have enough money.”

UBS—where are you?

The South Beach Basel crowd hosted quite a few Hurricane Sandy benefits. But I didn’t find one art world benefit for Miami’s poor. There is a definite willful ignorance in plopping your billionaires down at dinners and six-figure parties in the name of “culture” while ignoring masses of people who are in dire need of said culture and are readily at hand: The impoverished residents of Miami.

Back in New York, I catch up with Liz, the naked pool gal. She’s in Tompkins Square Park, the epicenter of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Stella is smiling. Her art world disdain has clearly dried off.

“I have no idea why I was in Miami,” she says. “Who were those people? Why are they so boring, and why did that one guy in the black suit keep saying Le Baron over and over again?”

Around the same time I get a text from Dee. “You know anyone still down here? Tryna get that $ .”

I inform Lee that Le Baron is a Parisian disco that does a chic party every night of Basel.

Lee receives this information as she’s handing out clean needles and Narcan to the local crust punk populace, all of whom she knows by name.

“Do these people really care?” she asks.

Sadly, Basel people do seem to express more concern about French discos and wearing aggressive outfits than they do about the inequality in America—maybe best seen in Miami’s two worlds.

I have an idea for Art Basel next year. In the process of exchanging all those millions for bought and sold visions, try and help some of the people from Miami.

Are wealthy visitors obligated to alleviate some of the local misery when they party in the midst of poverty? Take a position in COMMENTS.

These are solely the author’s opinions and do not represent those of TakePart, LLC or its affiliates.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Dispatch From Morocco: ‘Excuse Me, Aren’t We About to Start a War Here?’

• America, Syria and the State of Child Soldiering 2012

• Census Shows Sharp Increase in U.S. Poor

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Ray LeMoine was born in Boston and lives in New York. He’s done humanitarian work in Iraq and Pakistan and has written for various media outlets, including the New York Times, New York Magazine and the Awl.

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Actor Depardieu puts Paris house up for sale

PARIS (Reuters) – French actor Gerard Depardieu, accused of trying to escape the taxman by buying a house just over the border in Belgium, has put his sumptuous Parisian home up for sale.

Depardieu, the latest wealthy Frenchman to seek shelter from government tax hikes, is selling a vast early 19th-century manor house in the Saint Germain district of the capital, playground of writers, jazz musicians and art dealers over the decades.

His real estate agent declined to say how much he was asking for a property that is on a list of protected national monuments and, as well as the main house, has a swimming pool, landscaped gardens and an ultramodern annex that once served as a theatre.

News of the Parisian sale plan came a day after French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault described Depardieu’s behavior as “pathetic” and unpatriotic at a time when the French are being asked to pay higher taxes to reduce a bloated national debt.

An angry member of parliament has proposed that France adopt a U.S.-inspired law that would force Depardieu or anyone trying to escape full tax dues to forego their nationality.

The 63-year-old “Cyrano de Bergerac” star recently bought a house in Nechin, a Belgian village a short walk from the border with France, where 27 percent of residents are French nationals, local mayor Daniel Senesael told French media on Sunday.

Depardieu also enquired about procedures for acquiring Belgian residency, he said.

The move comes three months after Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury giant LVMH and France’s richest man, caused an uproar by seeking to establish residency in Belgium – a move he said was not for tax reasons.

Belgian residents do not pay wealth tax, which in France is now levied on those with assets over 1.3 million euros ($ 1.7 million). Nor do they pay capital gains tax on share sales.

Socialist President Francois Hollande is pressing ahead too with plans to impose a 75-percent supertax on income over 1 million euros.

While Depardieu’s real estate agents did not comment on the price being sought for the Paris property, a local newspaper suggested it could be in the region of 50 million euros.

At average prices quoted on the Internet, a property of that size would command upwards of 20 million, without the additional status of a national monument, celebrity appeal or the artwork renovation commissioned by Depardieu when he bought it in 2003.

Depardieu’s agents declined to comment.

(Reporting by Brian Love and Gerard Bon; editing by Andrew Roche)

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School murders silence “cliff” rhetoric as deadline nears

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Mass murder in Connecticut silenced “fiscal cliff” talk on Saturday as the White House and Congress quietly got ready for a final scramble to avert the tax hikes and spending cuts set for the New Year, with sessions of the U.S. House of Representatives now scheduled just days before Christmas.

President Barack Obama canceled a trip he had planned to make next Wednesday to Portland, Maine to press his case for tax hikes for the wealthy. His weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday focused on Newtown, the site of Friday’s school shootings, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio canceled the standard Republican radio response to Obama “so that President Obama can speak for the entire nation at this time of mourning,” he said in a statement issued late Friday.

The moratorium on cliff pronouncements masked a growing recognition that the two sides could remain deadlocked at the end of the year on the key sticking point – whether to leave low tax rates in place except for high earners, as Obama wants, or extend them for all taxpayers, as Boehner wants.

With multiple polls showing that the public supports Obama’s position, Republicans in the U.S. Senate prodded their counterparts in the House to make a face-saving retreat, in a fashion that would allow Obama’s proposal to pass the Republican-controlled House while simultaneously letting Republicans cast a vote against it.

Republicans could then shift the debate onto territory they consider more favorable to them, cutting government spending to reduce the deficit.

“Just about everyone is throwing stuff on the wall to see if anything sticks,” one Republican aide said with reference to various proposals being discussed on how to proceed. Alluding to public opinion polls, the aide added: “We know if there is no deal, we will get blamed.”

“We could win the argument on spending cuts,” said a Republican senator who asked not to be identified. “We aren’t winning the argument on taxes.”

However, Republican leaders in both chambers are leery about seeming to cave on taxes. “There’s concern that if we did that, Obama would simply declare victory and walk away and not address spending,” said one aide. “We don’t trust these guys.”

Some of the prodding was coming from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, said the minority leader in the Democratic-controlled Senate hasn’t embraced any single plan, but has discussed and circulated measures offered by fellow Senate Republicans.

“Senator McConnell does not advocate raising taxes on anybody or anything,” Stewart said.

“We’re focused on getting a balanced plan from the White House that will begin to solve the problem of our debt and deficit to improve the economy and create American jobs,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

“Right now, all the president is offering is massive tax hikes with little or no spending cuts and reforms,” Steel said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor scheduled “possible legislation related to expiring provisions of law,” a reference to the expiring tax cuts, for the end of the week, portending a weekend session.

Cantor has said the House would meet through the Christmas holidays and beyond.

Hopes expressed after the November6 general election of some “grand bargain” on deficit reduction have all but disappeared, at least for this year. This is partly because time is running out and partly result of growing warnings from Democrats in Congress that they would not support big changes in the Medicare program, the government-run health insurance program for seniors that is a major contributor to the government’s debt.

House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California ruled out one frequently mentioned proposal – raising the age of eligibility for Medicare, in a December 12 CBS television interview.

Asked if she was drawing a “red line,” around that idea, Pelosi said her comments were “something that says, ‘don’t go there,’ because it doesn’t produce money.

(Reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Kim Dixon; Editing by Fred Barbash and David Brunnstrom)

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Nigeria governor, 5 others die in helicopter crash

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A navy helicopter crashed Saturday in the country’s oil-rich southern delta, killing a state governor and five other people, in the latest air disaster to hit Africa’s most populous nation, officials said.

Nigeria‘s ruling party said in a statement that the governor of the central Nigerian state of Kaduna, Patrick Yakowa, died in the helicopter crash in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta. The People’s Democratic Party’s statement described Yakowa’s death as a “colossal loss.”

The statement said the former national security adviser, General Andrew Azazi, also died in the crash. Azazi was fired in June amid growing sectarian violence in Nigeria, but maintained close ties with the government.

Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, said four other bodies had been found, but he could not immediately give their identities.

The crash occurred at about 3:30 p.m. after the navy helicopter took off from the village of Okoroba in Bayelsa state where officials had gathered to attend the burial of the father of a presidential aide, said Commodore Kabir Aliyu. He said that the helicopter was headed for Nigeria’s oil capital of Port Harcourt when it crashed in the Nembe area of Bayelsa state.

Aviation disasters remain common in Nigeria, despite efforts in recent years to improve air safety.

In October, a plane made a crash landing in central Nigeria. A state governor and five others sustained injuries but survived.

In June, a Dana Air MD-83 passenger plane crashed into a neighborhood in the commercial capital of Lagos, killing 153 people onboard and at least 10 people on the ground. It was Nigeria’s worst air crash in nearly two decades.

In March, a police helicopter carrying a high-ranking police official crashed in the central Nigerian city of Jos, killing four people.

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Chicano rock pioneers Los Lobos marking 40 years

LOS ANGELES (AP) — They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock ‘n’ roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naiveté, to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.

It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about twice the volume you’d normally expect to hear.

“They were Latinos who weren’t afraid to break the mold of what’s expected and what’s traditionally played. That made them legendary, even to people who at first weren’t that familiar with their catalog,” said Greg Gonzalez of the young, Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.

To the guys in Los Lobos, however, the band that began to take shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high school is still “just another band from East LA,” the words the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more than two dozen albums.

As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos‘ 40th anniversary gets under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of rock stardom.

That’s, well, sort of true.

For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos‘ life, there was power-chord rock ‘n’ roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix.

“I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15,” says drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Perez, recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop on a ticket to a Hendrix show.

“I sat right down front,” he recalls, his voice rising in excitement. “That experience just sort of rearranged my brain cells.”

About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the school made famous in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver” that profiled Jaime Escalante’s success in teaching college-level calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow students Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas, both experienced musicians.

“Cesar had played in a power trio,” Perez recalls, while Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.

It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have been born.

And the group might have stayed just another garage band from East LA, had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las Mananitas.

“It’s a serenade to someone on their birthday,” Perez explains, and the group members’ mothers had birthdays coming up.

“So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to our parents’ homes and did a little serenade,” Hidalgo recalled separately.

They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.

Because they were at heart a rock ‘n’ roll band, however, they always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast. That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars they had so coveted as kids.

“They said, ‘Well, that’s not what we hired you for,’” Perez says, chuckling.

So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where initially the reaction wasn’t much better.

Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for Berlin’s group the Blasters, the reaction was different.

“It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing,” the saxophonist recalls. “By the next morning, everybody I knew in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los Lobos.”

A few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them. They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with Norteno, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a saxophone, and they needed a sax player.

For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteno music.

Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the group’s first true rock album, 1984′s “How Will the Wolf Survive?” At the end of the sessions he was in the band.

The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.

The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their version of the Mexican folk tune “La Bamba” for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen idol Ritchie Valens’ rock interpretation with the original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.

A two-year tour and a couple albums that nobody bought followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.

So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics and power chords of “Kiko,” the 1992 album now hailed as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released earlier this year.

The influence of Los Lobos‘ cross-cultural work can be heard to this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert on cross-border music.

“All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a Mexican-American group,” said Kun, who curated the Grammy Museum’s recent “Trouble in Paradise” exhibition that chronicled the modern history of LA music.

For Los Lobos, winner of three Grammys, that was just the natural way of doing things for guys, Perez says, who learned early on that they didn’t fit in completely on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we’re not completely accepted on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the border it’s like, ‘Well, what are you?’” he mused.

“So if that’s the case,” he added brightly, “then, hey, we belong everywhere.”

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Menopause quality of life unchanged by soy supplements

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Menopausal women who took soy supplements during a two-year trial reported no differences in quality of life compared to their counterparts taking placebo pills, U.S. researchers report.

It’s possible that soy could still offer women some benefits through menopause, said the study’s lead author Dr. Paula Amato, from Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, “but I think if you are similar to the subjects in the study, then probably taking supplements isn’t going to make a huge impact on your quality of life.”

In light of health concerns attached to taking hormones, soy has been seen as an attractive alternative for relieving menopausal symptoms. But research on the effectiveness of soy extracts for hot flashes and other bothersome symptoms has yielded conflicting results so far.

In the new report, published in the medical journal Menopause, Amato and her colleagues looked not just at specific symptoms but overall quality of life measures among healthy women, mostly in their 50s and six years or more into menopause on average.

Several hundred women were asked to take supplement pills three times a day for two years. Among them, 126 took a fake supplement that contained no soy extract, while 135 women took tablets containing a total of 80 milligrams a day of soy protein and another 123 women took 120 mg each day.

At the start of the study and again one and two years into it, the women filled out a quality of life survey that asked about mental, physical and sexual health as well as about hot flashes.

In each of the surveys, the women in all three groups scored similarly on the main measures in the questionnaire.

“From our study and the good amount of the literature to date it appears that taking soy supplements after menopause does not improve quality of life,” said Amato. “We can’t really recommend it to our patients.”

Mark Messina, president Nutrition Matters and an adjunct professor at Loma Linda University in California, cautioned against concluding that the key ingredients in soy supplements, known as isoflavones, don’t have any effect on hot flashes, however.

“Unfortunately, because of the severe limitations of this study, very little if anything can be learned about isoflavones and hot flashes,” Messina wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

For one, he said, the levels of a particular type of isoflavone – called genistein – were lower than in other studies that have found benefits from soy extracts.

Additionally, the researchers originally set out to look at the effects of soy extracts on bone health, and did not recruit women specifically with hot flash or quality of life concerns in mind.

“So in my opinion, no useful information about isoflavones and hot flashes is provided by this study,” said Messina, who regularly consults for companies that make or sell soy foods and supplements.

Isoflavone companies market the supplements, sold for about $ 17 for 90 50-mg pills, as “potentially” easing the changes associated with menopause.

Amato agreed that the study has some limitations, and that the findings can’t be generalized to all forms of soy in all types of women.

For instance, “taking supplements just might not be the same as eating a high soy content diet your entire life,” she told Reuters Health.

But “if you look at this specific supplement for this particular group of women for this reason, quality of life, I’m convinced by this study it’s not terribly helpful,” she added.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/UsyPIY Menopause, online December 3, 2012.

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Best Buy extends deadline for founder bid

(Reuters) – Best Buy Co Inc agreed to extend the deadline to February 28 for founder Richard Schulze to make a bid for the company, continuing the uncertainty for shareholders over whether he can put a bid together.

Best Buy shares fell 14.2 percent to $ 12.12 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company said on Friday the extension would allow Schulze to include the consumer electronics retailer’s full-year results as part of his due diligence review.

The new deadline will also give him more time to line up partners and financing for a bid. A source told Reuters on Thursday that Schulze didn’t have financing lined up in time for a December bid.

Schulze, who founded Best Buy in 1966, has said he would fund any deal through a combination of private equity and debt financing, as well as the reinvestment of some of his own equity in the company.

“Obviously with the extension, there is still some hesitation on the part of his private equity suitors about how much financing they would want to put up for this deal,” Morningstar analyst R J Hottovy said.

Under the extension, Schulze will be able to submit an offer any time during February, and the company will have 30 days to review and make a decision on the bid.

In August, Schulze made an informal proposal to acquire Best Buy for $ 24 to $ 26 per share, or a total of $ 8.16 billion to $ 8.84 billion. Including debt, it would be as much as $ 10.9 billion.

But Best Buy’s performance has continued to lag and its stock has slid since. Last month, the company reported a decline in same-store sales for the ninth time in the last 10 quarters.

Best Buy’s fortunes have faltered as consumers increasingly use its big box stores as showrooms for products they end up buying online at Amazon.com Inc and other websites.

To add to its troubles, the company forced out Schulze’s protégé, Brian Dunn, as chief executive earlier this year amid allegations he was having an inappropriate relationship with a female employee.

That scandal led to the ouster of Schulze from the board, and Best Buy hired turnaround expert Hubert Joly as CEO to come up with its own restructuring plan.

Schulze remains Best Buy’s largest shareholder with about one-fifth of the company’s outstanding shares.

If he can come in with a bid at about $ 16 or $ 17 a share when the market thinks the stock is only worth $ 12, it is in the interests of shareholders to extend the deadline, Hottovy said.

Others agreed.

“That’s really the best hope for investors, that Schulze takes it out because there’s been no other good news for the company,” said Rakesh Agrawal, principal analyst at San Francisco-based consulting firm reDesign Mobile.

Agrawal, who also advises hedge funds and money managers on the technology sector, said at this point the stock was trading entirely on whether a deal can get done or not.

A Best Buy spokesman said the extension will not affect the company’s day-to-day operations, especially during the all-important holiday season.

“We are determined to have a strong holiday season,” both in stores and online, spokesman Matt Furman said, adding that the company was moving “full speed ahead” with its turnaround plan.

(Writing by Brad Dorfman; Additional reporting by Olivia Oran in New York, and Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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