Matt Damon Takes Over Jimmy Kimmel Live

TV Watch

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/25/2013 at 08:00 AM EST

Matt Damon (foreground) and Jimmy Kimmel

Matt Damon more than made up for his decade of being bumped from Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Declaring "I am in command of this ship," Damon not only hijacked the show Thursday night, but he brought along a little big-name help.

Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, Amy Adams, Sally Field, Robert De Niro, Don Cheadle, John Krasinski and Oprah Winfrey all played a part.

Andy Garcia sat in as sidekick. Sheryl Crow led the band.

And where was Kimmel? Oh, he was there, all right: gagged and tied on the back of the set, as Damon took over.

"Just for starters," Damon told the ecstatic in-studio crowd, "let me ask you guys this: As an audience, is it weird to see a person with actual talent host this show?"

Admitting he'd been waiting a long time to do this, Damon – before turning his monologue over to Robin Williams – struck a personal note and said, "This is like the time I lost my virginity, except this is going to last way longer than one second."

Damon, tongue planted firmly in cheek for this all-star publicity stunt – earlier this month, Kimmel's show was moved into direct competition with CBS's David Letterman and NBC's Jay Leno – explained the basis for the Kimmel-Damon feud. The comic always wanted to be an actor, claimed Damon.

"I beat him out for every role he ever truly wanted," said the Bourne series star, now starring with Krasinski in Promised Land. "Jimmy has auditioned for every movie I've ever been in, every single one of them. How many did he get? None. So, he hates me."

Then there was the matter of Kimmel's ex, comedian Sarah Silverman, who in 2008 memorably sang a song about cheating with Matt Damon. (Kimmel retaliated at the time by saying he was "dating" Ben Affleck.) Silverman just happened to be Thursday night's guest.

"Is there anything you'd like to say to Jimmy?" Damon asked her, with Kimmel still held firmly in place, squirming. "He's a captive audience."

Replied Silverman: "No, I'm good."

Check out another hilarious moment with Affleck, who trick Damon into saying something nice about his captive:

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Stock futures up, S&P 500 poised to rally for an eighth day

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures gained on Friday and the S&P 500 looked set to extend its best winning streak in more than six years, as rosy earnings from Procter & Gamble came amid a broader backdrop of healthy corporate results.

The strong start to the year for the equities market has also been attributed to agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power through mid-May, encouraging signs of recovery in the global economy and seasonal inflows to equity markets.

Those factors helped the S&P 500 rally for a seventh day on Thursday to a five-year peak. Still, the index is struggling to climb convincingly above 1,500, a level it surpassed briefly Thursday for the first time since December 2007.

"You have had more confidence from fund managers to provide more allocations to equity markets," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management, who added equities were looking more attractive than bonds or cash.

S&P 500 futures rose 4.7 point and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 44 points and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 12.50 points.

If the S&P 500 rises for an eighth day, it will be its longest winning in eight years. The index had climbed for nine straight days in a run that ended in November 2004.

Procter & Gamble , the world's top household products maker, said Friday quarterly profit soared past expectations and raised its sales and earnings outlook for the fiscal year. Shares were up 1.7 pct at $71.58 in premarket trading.

Pointing to a rotation out of bonds, U.S. 30-year Treasury bonds traded more than a point lower in price on Friday, with yields touching session highs at 3.10 percent.

Recent company earnings have been encouraging. Thomson Reuters data through early Thursday showed that of the 133 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 66.9 percent exceeded expectations, more than the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

Microsoft Corp's reported lower quarterly profit on Thursday as Office software sales slowed ahead of a new launch, offsetting a solid but unspectacular start for its Windows 8 operating system and sending the company's shares down 0.8 percent in premarket trading.

Apple stepped up audits of working conditions at major suppliers last year, discovering multiple cases of underage workers, discrimination and wage problems. The shares, which fell 12 percent Thursday after disappointing earnings, edged up 0.6 percent to $453.40.

German business morale improved for a third consecutive month in January to its highest in more than half a year, providing further evidence that growth in Europe's largest economy was gathering speed after contracting late last year.

Echoing a more positive tone in Europe, ECB President Mario Draghi said he expects the euro zone economy to recover later this year, adding that financial market improvements have not yet trickled into the general economy. Draghi was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday.

The U.S. Commerce Department releases new home sales data for December at 10:00 a.m. Economists forecast a total of 385,000 annualized units, compared with 377,000 in November.

Economic Cycle Research Institute releases its weekly index of economic activity for January 18 at 10:30 a.m. In the prior week the index read 130.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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India Ink: India Rape Trial Starts With Renewed Ban on Media Coverage

The trial of five men accused in the gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in New Delhi is being watched closely as a symbol of India’s commitment to justice for women, but information about the ongoing court proceedings may be scarce.

As court proceedings began Thursday, the presiding judge said  there would be a blanket ban on reporting on the trial. The judge, Yogesh Khanna,  also warned defense lawyers, who have been openly speaking about the case, not to provide information about the proceedings to the press.

The five men accused in the Dec. 16 rape and murder of a physiotherapy student were ushered into the special fast-track court in South Delhi on Thursday at noon, flanked by policemen, with their faces were covered with gray woolen caps. During the two-hour court proceedings, the prosecution used the opening arguments to lay out charges against the men, which include gang rape, murder, robbery and destruction of evidence.

The police allege that the five accused men and a sixth teenager, who is being tried as a juvenile, committed a premeditated, vicious crime that included plans to kill their victim. The woman died nearly two weeks after the rape from injuries suffered during the attack, which included an assault with an iron rod. Her companion, a 29-year-old man, was also beaten, and is expected to testify  at the trial.

The court proceedings took place in room 305 of the Saket District Court complex, a small wood-paneled chamber. The next hearing will be on Monday, when the defendants’ lawyers will respond to the charges the prosecution has laid out.

The new fast-track court will try only cases related to crimes against women, and once trials have started, they will not adjourn for weeks or months, as is common in other courts. Several fast-track courts have already  been set up in Delhi to hear crimes against women in the wake of the Delhi gang rape, which brought thousands of protesters to the streets demanding justice for the victim and other victims of sexual assault.

Judge Khanna ordered  Monday that all court proceedings in ths current case would take place “in camera,” allowing only those directly connected with the case to be present in the courtroom, reiterating an earlier magistrate’s order on the case. He also renewed a blanket ban Monday on the printing or publishing of any information relating to the case’s proceedings.

Defense lawyers were instructed by the court during the proceedings to “honor the spirit” of the gag order, they said, after the special public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said he would file a petition of contempt of court if lawyers for the defendants continued to brief the media on developments.

V. K. Anand, the lawyer for Ram Singh, one of the accused, confirmed Thursday that he would now also represent Mr. Singh’s brother Mukesh. Mr. Anand and Vivek Sharma, a second lawyer for accused, told the media after Thursday’s court proceedings that they could not answer any further questions.

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Go forth and Tweet! Pope sees web networks as “portals of truth”

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict urged Catholics on Thursday to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to win converts, as he launched his own smartphone app streaming live footage of his speeches.

The websites – often associated with endless postings of idle gossip and baby photos – could be used as “portals of truth and faith” in an increasingly secular age, the pontiff said in his 2013 World Communications Day message.

“Unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people,” the 85-year old Pope said in the a letter published on the Vatican‘s website.

The Holy See has become an increasingly prolific user of social media since it launched its ‘new evangelization’ of the developed world, where some congregations have fallen in the wake of growing secularization and damage to the Church’s reputation from a series of sex abuse scandals.

The Pope himself reaches around 2.5 million followers through eight Twitter accounts, including one in Latin.

Belying his traditionalist reputation, the Pope praised connections made online which he said could blossom into true friendships. Online life was not a purely virtual world but “increasingly becoming part of the very fabric of society,” he said.

Social networks were also a practical tool that Catholics could use to organize prayer events, the pope suggested. But he called for reasoned debate and respectful dialogue with those with different beliefs, and cautioned against a tendency towards “heated and divisive voices” and “sensationalism”.

The websites were creating a new “agora”, he added, referring to the gathering spaces that were the centers of public life in ancient Greek cities.

The speech coincided with the launch of ‘The Pope App’, a downloadable program that streams live footage of the pontiff’s speaking events and Vatican news onto smartphones.

Pope Benedict‘s embrace of new media responds to the Church’s concern that it is invisible on the internet.

The Vatican commissioned a study of internet use and religion prior to the pope’s Twitter debut, which found the majority of U.S. Catholics surveyed were unaware of any significant Church presence online.

(Reporting by Naomi O’Leary; editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Adrienne Maloof: Why I'm 'Casually Dating' Rod Stewart's Son

TV Watch

By Raha Lewis

01/24/2013 at 08:00 AM EST

Adrienne Maloof and Sean Stewart

Splash News Online

Adrienne Maloof wants to make one thing clear about Sean Stewart: "We are not living together. He has his own place. He has a nice place."

Otherwise, she tells PEOPLE, what you've read is true: The 51-year-old, recently single star of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is, in fact, enjoying a budding relationship with the 32-year-old son of Rod Stewart.

"This started as a business relationship and now were casually dating," she says, emphasizing, "It's casual, real casual."

Stewart, she says, is "a lot more mature than a lot of 60-year-olds at this time in his life," and he's long since left behind his partying ways.

"That was when he was a young kid," says Maloof. "He's been clean and sober for years."

Maloof, looking great and sounding carefree, with no sign of her recent, notes that her family "has always been in youth-oriented businesses" – they run a Las Vegas casino among other enterprises – so she can relate.

"I'm a modern business woman," she says. "I don't think of age."

And the fact that Stewart comes from a famous family is a plus. "He understands my world, the entertainment industry and being a public figure," she says.

So what does she think about Sean's father, the legendary Rod, who is still going strong at 68?

"His dad is lovely," she says, "A very nice person."

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AP Interview: UN wants better family planning

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — The U.N.'s top population official wants governments to do more to ensure that women have access to family planning.

The U.N. says the world will add a billion people to its current population of some 7 billion within a decade, further straining the planet's resources.

Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, says more than 220 million women in the developing world want family planning but aren't getting it.

Speaking to The Associated Press at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said many women want to have fewer children and that "30 percent of those who die giving birth we can prevent with family planning."

He also called for providing girls with "comprehensive sexuality education."

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Stock futures drop as Apple revenue miss to halt stocks rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell Thursday as Apple slid nearly 10 percent following a revenue miss, and analysts said equities may be due for a pullback after a six-day rally for the S&P 500.

Apple Inc missed Wall Street's revenue forecast for a third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears its dominance of consumer electronics is slipping. The shares dropped 8.8 percent to $468.64 in premarket trading, wiping out about $50 billion of its market value.

However, some positive economic news looked set to put a floor under stock prices. Growth in Chinese manufacturing accelerated to a two-year high this month and a buoyant Germany took the euro zone economy a step closer to recovery, business surveys showed on Thursday.

"The march to 1,500 on the S&P is looking quite strong, the question is will Apple be the spoiler?" said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

"My guess is that while Nasdaq might suffer losses today, both the Dow and the S&P may do otherwise based on economic news out of China and Europe."

The S&P 500 rose for a sixth day on Wednesday after stronger-than-expected profits from IBM and Google . But Apple could now halt that rally, which had lifted stocks to five-year highs.

S&P 500 futures fell 3.7 point and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 15 points and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 34.75 points.

Apple's disappointing results drew a round of price-target cuts from brokerages. At least seven brokerages, including Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, cut their price target on the stock by $142 on average to $617.80. Morgan Stanley removed the stock from its 'best ideas' list.

Helping the Dow industrials, diversified U.S. manufacturer 3M Co reported a 3.9 percent rise in profit on solid growth in sales of its wide array of products, which range from Post-It notes to films used in television screens. The shares rose 0.7 percent in premarket trading.

Corporate earnings have helped drive the recent stock market rally. Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday showed that of the 99 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings, 67.7 percent have exceeded expectations, above the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

Investors in U.S.-based mutual funds pumped $9.32 billion into stock funds in the week ended January 16, the second consecutive week of inflows for such funds, data from the Investment Company Institute showed Wednesday.

Netflix Inc surprised Wall Street Wednesday with a quarterly profit after the video subscription service added nearly 4 million customers in the U.S. and abroad. Shares jumped nearly 40 percent in premarket trading.

Removing another element of political uncertainty from markets, the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a Republican plan to allow the federal government to keep borrowing money through mid-May, clearing it for fast enactment after the top Senate Democrat and White House endorsed it.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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IHT Rendezvous: Taiwan's Diverse Literature and History on Show in Two New Museums

TAINAN — Two new museums in Tainan, a city in Taiwan’s south, say much about how the island’s people have worked in recent years to build an unusually inclusive cultural identity, a model for Chinese-speaking societies, as I write in my Letter from Taiwan this week.

At the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, founded in 2003, exhibits explore the writing, film and music of indigenous cultures such as the Siraya, and of speakers of Taiyu, Holo and Hakka. (The name “Taiwan” is widely believed to come from the Sirayan word for a port in the south of the island, Tayovan.)

Another exhibit, “The Inner World of Taiwan Literature,” shows diverse voices from both before and after the Chinese Nationalists moved their seat of government to Taiwan in 1949.

Page Two

Posts written by the IHT’s Page Two columnists.

The National Museum of Taiwan History opened at the end of 2011. Its vision is “To protect Taiwan, our homeland, and to creating a single diverse and harmonious society,” as it says on its Web site, and offers exhibits such as “Taiwan Memories: A Century of Life,” and “On the Tracks of Anthroplogists,” an exhibit of Taiwan anthropology.

At the museum’s opening, its director, Lu Li-cheng, noted its tens of thousands of objects of local cultural life, and the museum’s emphasis on the interactions among ethnic groups in Taiwan through history.

“Of particular note is the collection of historic maps, charts and documents that the museum has obtained from foreign collectors,” Taiwan Today reported, quoting Mr. Li: “They will provide us with different viewpoints from which to look at Taiwan’s history.”

As Mark Harrison, a Taiwan specialist at the University of Tasmania, said in a telephone interview, it’s all part of Taiwanese people’s attempts to build an inclusive society.

“Taiwan’s history is very complex, and it’s a very strange history,’’ said Mr. Harrison. “In that history, there have been whole periods erased by various regimes,” as they asserted power over the island, including the Qing dynasty from China, the Japanese colonialists and, finally, the Nationalists.

“What’s been really interesting about Taiwan,’’ he said, “is how it has gone about recovering its history and understanding itself, and many nations could learn from that.’’

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First “Firefox OS” Phones Previewed, to Launch in February

Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind the popular Firefox web browser, has been promoting its Firefox OS project (once known as “Boot to Gecko”) for some time now. A hardware partnership with Telefonica, the international telecom giant, had been announced, but no phones had yet been unveiled.

But in an announcement today on its blog, Mozilla announced the impending launch of its first “developer preview” phones, the Keon and the Peak. Made in partnership with Geeksphone, a Spanish smartphone producer which used to make Android phones, these devices are meant to help app developers preview their work on the small screen. But they may also serve as a sneak preview of Mozilla’s plan to enter the smartphone market.

Introducing Firefox OS

Designed as an alternative to Google’s Android for low-powered smartphones, Firefox OS’ claim to fame is that it’s “built entirely using open web standards,” or open-source code written in the programming languages which make up the web, like JavaScript. Likewise, Firefox OS apps are websites specially formatted to look and feel like apps, and to respond to touchscreen controls and access phone features like vibration and the GPS.

A selection of Firefox apps is already available in the Mozilla Marketplace, but developers will eventually be able to take the open-source code behind it and create their own app markets like it if they so choose. These apps also run on the preview “Aurora” version of Firefox for Android, which is available for download from Mozilla’s website.

“Say ‘hola’” to the Keon and Peak

The Keon is Mozilla’s entry-level developer smartphone, while the Peak has somewhat more modern hardware specs.

The Keon has a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 3.5-inch touchscreen, and 4 GB of flash memory, plus a microSD card slot to expand storage space. Its built-in camera is a basic 3-megapixel shooter, and lacks an LED flash. It’s roughly comparable to 2010′s iPhone 4 in terms of raw hardware specs, although it probably won’t be able to play the same kinds of 3D games since they’ll be written as web applications.

The Peak has a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, a 4.3-inch IPS display, and an 8-megapixel camera with a flash, plus a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. It has the same amount of RAM and flash storage as the Keon does, though.

Both the Keon and the Peak are unlocked GSM smartphones, which may mean they will work on AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks in the States.

Pricing and availability

According to Peters, the “First phones will be available in February.” Prices have yet to be announced.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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Melissa Rycroft Tricks Her Daughter at the Dinner Table

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/22/2013 at 09:00 AM ET

FameFlynet

She triumphed with her fancy footwork on the dance floor, but Melissa Rycroft may have finally met her match.

Although completely head over heels in love with daughter Ava Grace, 2 next month, the first-time mom admits her little girl has her beat.

“She pushes my buttons like nobody else on this earth can do,” Rycroft, 29, tells PEOPLE.

“She’s going through that phase right now, the ‘I’m sorry, Mommy, you didn’t want me to touch this? This right here I wasn’t supposed to touch?’ And she just gives you this look and I want to be so angry with her, but I can’t!”

Rycroft isn’t the only one being tested by the toddler; Dad Tye Strickland has been known to be on the receiving end of a few of Ava’s tricks, too.

“It’s Daddy’s day with her while Mommy goes and works and as I was leaving [Ava] pooped in the bathtub,” she says with a laugh. “It’s little things like that where I go, ‘That’s my girl! There you go, Tye!’”

At the end of the day, however, it’s Rycroft versus the father-daughter duo — at least when it comes to the dinner table.

“We don’t want to make her a vegetarian or just a meatatarian or just a hot dogatarian like most toddlers are,” she quips. “It doesn’t help in my house that my husband also eats like a 5-year-old, so it’s almost like I’m raising two kids [and] trying to get vegetables in both of them.”

Noting that “if it’s green [Ava's] not going to eat it,” a crafty Rycroft reveals she may have finally found the secret to her struggles.

“I’m finding new recipes online of how you can kind of hide vegetables in meals and so far they can’t tell that it’s there,” she shares. “There’s a nice stuffed chicken you can do [where] you can put some spinach and cheese right in there. They’ll never know it’s there!”

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