Angry Birds Star Wars updated with 20 additional levels, Princess Leia cameo












Rovio on Thursday updated its immensely popular Angry Birds Star Wars game to include 20 additional levels. The latest game in the bird-slinging franchise was released earlier this month and was an instant hit, topping the iTunes App Store in less than three hours. In the most recent update, gamers must help the birds escape from the AT-ATs and Pigtroopers on the remote ice world of Hoth. Luckily, the rebel birds have a secret weapon — Princess Leia.


“It is a dark time for the Rebellion,” Rovio wrote on its website. ”Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth. Unfortunately the evil Lord Vader discovers their hideout, and the desperate Rebel birds must escape the AT-ATs and Pigtroopers hot on their trail. But the Rebels have an ace up their sleeve with the debut of PRINCESS LEIA and her attractive new power!”












Angry Birds Star Wars is available for Android, iOS, Macs and PCs. The Hoth trailer follows below.


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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Governors Awards Brings Out the Oscar Hopefuls in Hollywood















12/02/2012 at 05:20 PM EST



Sure, the presidential election season may be long over, but the spirit of democracy is still in full-swing in Hollywood, where some familiar faces are campaigning for the industry version of a spot in the White House: a gold Oscar statuette.

You'll have to wait until February to see which of your favorite scene-stealers will take home honors at the 85th Academy Awards. Until then, the industry's top contenders arrived in head-to-toe red carpet form Saturday at the Academy's Governors Awards, which serves as an unofficial venue for potential nominees to convince Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members to rock the vote (in their favor, of course).

The 4-year-old Hollywood & Highland Center event, which hands out lifetime achievement Oscars, comes just weeks before nomination voting is due to begin Dec. 17. So who will make it onto the ballot? (Readers on desktop computers can flip through the five photos above to see which attendees left us dazzled – and itching to see their movies.)

• Leslie Mann and husband Judd Apatow, who team up for a little adult fun – literally – in This Is 40, a comedic update to Knocked Up that arrives in theaters Dec. 21.

• Kristen Stewart, who ditches her vampire boyfriend to transform into a belle of the Beat Generation for On the Road, which hits theaters Dec. 21.

• Amy Adams, who brings the drama as the headstrong wife of a charming cult leader in September's The Master.

• Tom Hanks and Will Smith, who celebrated Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks Animation.

• Bradley Cooper, who takes a vulnerable turn on the big screen opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook.

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Psychiatrists OK vast changes to diagnosis manual

CHICAGO (AP) — For the first time in almost two decades the nation's psychiatrists are changing the guidebook they use to diagnose mental disorders. Among the most controversial proposed changes: Dropping certain familiar terms like Asperger's disorder and dyslexia and calling frequent, severe temper tantrums a mental illness.

The board of trustees for the American Psychiatric Association voted Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., on scores of revisions that have been in the works for several years. Details will come next May when the group's fifth diagnostic manual is published.

The trustees made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several task force groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses.

Board members were tightlipped about the update, but its impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide.

The manual "defines what constellations of symptoms health care professionals recognize as mental disorders and more importantly ... shapes who will receive what treatment. Even seemingly subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care," said Dr. Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor who was not involved in the revision process.

The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education.

The guidebook's official title is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The new one is the fifth edition, known as the DSM-5. A 2000 edition made minor changes but the last major edition was published in 1994.

The manual "seeks to capture the current state of knowledge of psychiatric disorders. Since 2000 ... there have been important advances in our understanding of the nature of psychiatric disorders," Olfson said.

Expected changes include formally adopting a term for children and adults with autism — "autism spectrum disorder," encompassing those with severe autism, who often don't talk or interact, and those with mild forms including Asperger's. Asperger's patients often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on quirky subjects but lack social skills.

Some Asperger's families opposed the change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services. And some older Asperger's patients who embrace their quirkiness vowed to continue to use the label.

But experts say the change won't affect the special services available to this group.

Catherine Lord, an autism expert at Weill Cornell Medical College who was on the psychiatric group's autism task force, said anyone who met criteria for Asperger's in the old manual would be included in the recommended new diagnosis.

One reason for the recommended change is that in some states and some school systems, children and adults with Asperger's receive no services or fewer services than those given an autism diagnosis, she said.

Other proposed changes include:

—A new diagnosis — disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, which critics argued would medicalize kids' normal temper tantrums. Supporters said it would address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings from feeling sad and depressed to unusually happy or energetic. Affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums. The new diagnosis would be given to children and adults who can't control their emotions and have frequent temper outbursts in inappropriate situations.

—Eliminating the term "dyslexia," a reading disorder that causes difficulty understanding letters and recognizing written words. The term would be encompassed in a broader learning disorder category.

—Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender — they dispute their normal biological anatomy. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

___

Online:

Diagnostic manual: http://www.dsm5.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Cliff fight may knock out December rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In normal times, next week's slew of U.S. economic data could be a springboard for a December rally in the stock market.


December is historically a strong month for markets. The S&P 500 has risen 16 times in the past 20 years during the month.


But the market hasn't been operating under normal circumstances since November 7 when a day after the U.S. election, investors' focus shifted squarely to the looming "fiscal cliff."


Investors are increasingly nervous about the ability of lawmakers to undo the $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that are set to begin in January; those changes, if they go into effect, could send the U.S. economy into a recession.


A string of economic indicators next week, which includes a key reading of the manufacturing sector on Monday, culminates with the November jobs report on Friday.


But the impact of those economic reports could be muted. Distortions in the data caused by Superstorm Sandy are discounted.


The spotlight will be more firmly on signs from Washington that politicians can settle their differences on how to avoid the fiscal cliff.


"We have a week with a lot of economic data, and obviously most of the economic data is going to reflect the effects of Sandy, and that might be a little bit negative for the market next week, but most of that is already expected - the main focus remains the fiscal cliff," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.


Concerns about the cliff sent the S&P 500 <.spx> into a two-week decline after the elections, dropping as much as 5.3 percent, only to rally back nearly 4 percent as the initial tone of talks offered hope that a compromise could be reached and investors snapped up stocks that were viewed as undervalued.


On Wednesday, the S&P 500 gained more than 20 points from its intraday low after House Speaker John Boehner said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avoid big spending cuts and tax hikes could be worked out. The next day, more pessimistic comments from Boehner, an Ohio Republican, briefly wiped out the day's gains in stocks.


On Friday, the sharp divide between the Democrats and the Republicans on taxes and spending was evident in comments from President Barack Obama, who favors raising taxes on the wealthy, and Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, who said Obama's plan was the wrong approach and declared that the talks had reached a stalemate.


"It's unusual to end up with one variable in this industry, it's unusual to have a single bullet that is the causal factor effect, and you are sitting here for the next maybe two weeks or more, on that kind of condition," said Sandy Lincoln, chief market strategist at BMO Asset Management U.S. in Chicago.


"And that is what is grabbing the markets."


BE CONTRARY AND MAKE MERRY


But investor attitudes and seasonality could also help spur a rally for the final month of the year.


The most recent survey by the American Association of Individual Investors reflected investor caution about the cliff. Although bullish sentiment rose above 40 percent for the first time since August 23, bearish sentiment remained above its historical average of 30.5 percent for the 14th straight week.


December is a critical month for retailers such as Target Corp and Macy's Inc . They saw monthly retail sales results dented by Sandy, although the start of the holiday shopping season fared better.


With consumer spending making up roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy, a solid showing for retailers during the holiday season could help fuel any gains.


Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, believes the recent drop after the election could be a market bottom, with sentiment leaving stocks poised for a December rally.


"The concerns on the fiscal cliff - as valid as they might be - could be overblown. When you look at a lot of the overriding sentiment, that has gotten extremely negative," said Detrick.


"From that contrarian point of view with the historically bullish time frame of December, we once again could be setting ourselves up for a pretty nice end-of-year rally, based on lowered expectations."


SOME FEEL THE BIG CHILL


Others view the fiscal cliff as such an unusual event that any historical comparisons should be thrown out the window, with a rally unlikely because of a lack of confidence in Washington to reach an agreement and the economic hit caused by Sandy.


"History doesn't matter. You're dealing with an extraordinary set of circumstances that could very well end up in the U.S. economy going into a recession," said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors in New York.


"And the likelihood of that is exclusively in the hands of our elected officials in Washington. They could absolutely drag us into a completely voluntary recession."


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


(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)


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Alarm as China Issues Rules for Disputed Sea


Kham/Reuters


Fishing boats off Vietnam’s coast in the South China Sea. One Chinese official said the new rules applied to disputed islands, too.







HAIKOU, China — New rules announced by a Chinese province last week to allow interceptions of ships in the South China Sea are raising concerns in the region, and in Washington, that simmering disputes with Southeast Asian countries over the waters will escalate.




The move by Hainan Province, which administers China’s South China Sea claims, is being seen by some analysts outside the country as another step in its bid to solidify its control of much of the sea, which includes crucial international shipping lanes through which more than a third of global trade is carried.


As foreign governments scrambled for clarification of the rules, which appeared vague and open to interpretation, a top Chinese policy maker on matters related to the South China Sea tried to calm worries inspired by the announcement.


Wu Shicun, the director general of the foreign affairs office of Hainan Province, said Saturday that Chinese ships would be allowed to search and repel foreign ships only if they were engaged in illegal activities (though these were not defined) and only if the ships were within the 12-nautical-mile zone surrounding islands that China claims.


While Mr. Wu’s assertions may calm some fears about possible disruptions of shipping lanes, they nonetheless suggest that China is continuing to actively press its claim to wide swaths of the sea, which includes dozens of islands that other countries say are theirs. And top Chinese officials have not yet clarified their intent, leaving room for speculation.


The laws, passed by the provincial legislature, come less than a month after China named its new leader, Xi Jinping, and as China remains embroiled in a serious dispute with Japan in the East China Sea over islands known in China as the Diaoyu and as the Senkaku in Japan.


The laws appear to have little to do with Mr. Xi directly, but they reinforce fears that China, now the owner of an aircraft carrier and a growing navy, is plowing ahead with plans to enforce its claims that it has sovereign rights over much of the sea.


If China were to enforce these new rules fully beyond the 12-mile zones, naval experts say, freedom of navigation would be at stake, a principle that benefits not only the United States and other Western powers but also China, a big importer of Middle Eastern oil.


An incomplete list of the laws passed in Hainan was announced in the state-run news agency, Xinhua, last week.


In an interview here Saturday, Mr. Wu said the new regulations applied to all of the hundreds of islands scattered across the sea, and their surrounding waters, including islands claimed by several other countries, like Vietnam and the Philippines.


“It covers all the land features inside the nine-dash line and adjacent waters,” Mr. Wu said. The nine-dash line refers to a map that China drew up in the late 1940s that demarcates its territorial claims — about 80 percent of the South China Sea.


That map forms the basis for China’s current claims. Some neighboring countries were outraged when China recently placed the nine-dash map on its new passports. Vietnam has refused to place its visa stamps in the passports as they are, insisting a separate piece of paper be added for the stamp.


Mr. Wu, who also heads a government-sponsored institute devoted to the study of the South China Sea, said the immediate intention of the new laws was to deal with what he called illegal Vietnamese fishing vessels that operate in the waters around Yongxing Island, where China recently established an expanded army garrison.


The island, which has a long airstrip, is part of a group known internationally as the Paracels that is also claimed by Vietnam. China is using Yongxing Island, and its tiny city of Sansha, as a kind of forward presence in a bid for more control of the South China Sea, neighboring countries say.


The Chinese Foreign Ministry said last week that China was within its rights to allow the coast guard to board vessels in the South China Sea. “Management of the seas according to the law is a sovereign nation’s legitimate right,” the ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said at a briefing.


The new rules go into effect on Jan. 1. According to a report in an English-language state-run newspaper, China Daily, the police and coast guard will be allowed to board and seize control of foreign ships that “illegally enter” Chinese waters and order them to change course.


Mr. Wu acknowledged that the new rules had aroused alarm in Asia, and the United States, because they could be interpreted as a power grab by China.


Bree Feng contributed reporting.



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The 20 Most-Shared Ads of 2012












1. Kony 2012 (Invisible Children)



Most Americans had never heard of Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, before. This March video from advocacy group Invisible Children changed that.












Click here to view this gallery.


[More from Mashable: The 12 Most Memorable Marketing Campaigns of 2012]


Is Kony 2012 an ad? If so, it was the most-viral ad of the year. If not, it was just an extremely effective advocacy video and a Belgian video for cable network TNT was actually the most-viral ad of 2012.


Unruly, which keeps tabs on viral video activity, thinks Kony is, so it tops this year’s list. Indeed, Kony’s numbers are pretty staggering — 10 million shares and 94 million views on YouTube make it the Gangnam Style of charity videos. Not bad for a 30-minute film that doesn’t have a cat in sight and doesn’t introduce a new dance move.


[More from Mashable: 14 Bizarrely Awesome Rap Cover Videos]


Speaking of which, there are two tributes to Carly Rae Jepsen‘s “Call Me Maybe” on this list. There are also a few examples of borrowed equity, including Hobbit director Peter Jackson (for Air New Zealand), OK Go (Chevrolet), James Bond (Coke Zero) and various European soccer stars for Nike. There are also viral ad stalwarts Ken Block and GoPro. As usual, though, there are a lot of surprises. Who would have guessed, for instance, that a public service announcement for Melbourne Metro (as in Melbourne, Australia), would rack up 30 million views in less than a month?


This story originally published on Mashable here.


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie's Wedding Will Be 'All About Family'



Brad Pitt recently told PEOPLE he has a "good feeling" his wedding with Angelina Jolie will happen "soon."

"One thing for sure, he says it's going to be all about family: a simple affair with Angie and the kids," PEOPLE senior writer Jennifer Garcia says, adding that the official "I do" date is still being kept a secret.

But a "jovial" Pitt, who was "in a great mood throughout the interview" (which is this week's revealing cover story) shared other personal details aside from just his upcoming walk down the aisle.

Garcia says that the Killing Them Softly star "talked to PEOPLE about a range of topics – everything from the kids and the holidays, to politics." Not to mention his thoughts on turning the big 5-0.

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Kenya village pairs AIDS orphans with grandparents

NYUMBANI, Kenya (AP) — There are no middle-aged people in Nyumbani. They all died years ago, before this village of hope in Kenya began. Only the young and old live here.


Nyumbani was born of the AIDS crisis. The 938 children here all saw their parents die. The 97 grandparents — eight grandfathers among them — saw their middle-aged children die. But put together, the bookend generations take care of one another.


Saturday is World AIDS Day, but the executive director of the aid group Nyumbani, which oversees the village of the same name, hates the name which is given to the day because for her the word AIDS is so freighted with doom and death. These days, it doesn't necessarily mean a death sentence. Millions live with the virus with the help of anti-retroviral drugs, or ARVs. And the village she runs is an example of that.


"AIDS is not a word that we should be using. At the beginning when we came up against HIV, it was a terminal disease and people were presenting at the last phase, which we call AIDS," said Sister Mary Owens. "There is no known limit to the lifespan now so that word AIDS should not be used. So I hate World AIDS Day, follow? Because we have moved beyond talking about AIDS, the terminal stage. None of our children are in the terminal stage."


In the village, each grandparent is charged with caring for about a dozen "grandchildren," one or two of whom will be biological family. That responsibility has been a life-changer for Janet Kitheka, who lost one daughter to AIDS in 2003. Another daughter died from cancer in 2004. A son died in a tree-cutting accident in 2006 and the 63-year-old lost two grandchildren in 2007, including one from AIDS.


"When I came here I was released from the grief because I am always busy instead of thinking about the dead," said Kitheka. "Now I am thinking about building a new house with 12 children. They are orphans. I said to myself, 'Think about the living ones now.' I'm very happy because of the children."


As she walks around Nyumbani, which is three hours' drive east of Nairobi, 73-year-old Sister Mary is greeted like a rock star by little girls in matching colorful school uniforms. Children run and play, and sleep in bunk beds inside mud-brick homes. High schoolers study carpentry or tailoring. But before 2006, this village did not exist, not until a Catholic charity petitioned the Kenyan government for land on which to house orphans.


Everyone here has been touched by HIV or AIDS. But only 80 children have HIV and thanks to anti-retroviral drugs, none of them has AIDS.


"They can dream their dreams and live a long life," Owens said.


Nyumbani relies heavily on U.S. funds but it is aiming to be self-sustaining.


The kids' bunk beds are made in the technical school's shop. A small aquaponics project is trying to grow edible fish. The mud bricks are made on site. Each grandparent has a plot of land for farming.


The biggest chunk of aid comes from the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has given the village $2.5 million since 2006. A British couple gives $50,000 a year. A tree-growing project in the village begun by an American, John Noel, now stands six years from its first harvest. Some 120,000 trees have already been planted and thousands more were being planted last week.


"My wife and I got married as teenagers and started out being very poor. Lived in a trailer. And we found out what it was like to be in a situation where you can't support yourself," he said. "As an entrepreneur I looked to my enterprise skills to see what we could do to sustain the village forever, because we are in our 60s and we wanted to make sure that the thousand babies and children, all the little ones, were taken care of."


He hopes that after a decade the timber profits from the trees will make the village totally self-sustaining.


But while the future is looking brighter, the losses the orphans' suffered can resurface, particularly when class lessons are about family or medicine, said Winnie Joseph, the deputy headmaster at the village's elementary school. Kitheka says she tries to teach the kids how to love one another and how to cook and clean. But older kids sometimes will threaten to hit her after accusing her of favoring her biological grandchildren, she said.


For the most part, though, the children in Nyumbani appear to know how lucky they are, having landed in a village where they are cared for. An estimated 23.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV as of 2011, representing 69 percent of the global HIV population, according to UNAIDS. Eastern and southern Africa are the hardest-hit regions. Millions of people — many of them parents — have died.


Kitheka noted that children just outside the village frequently go to bed hungry. And ARVs are harder to come by outside the village. The World Health Organization says about 61 percent of Kenyans with HIV are covered by ARVs across the country.


Paul Lgina, 14, contrasted the difference between life in Nyumbani, which in Swahili means simply "home," and his earlier life.


"In the village I get support. At my mother's home I did not have enough food, and I had to go to the river to fetch water," said Lina, who, like all the children in the village, has neither a mother or a father.


When Sister Mary first began caring for AIDS orphans in the early 1990s, she said her group was often told not to bother.


"At the beginning nobody knew what to do with them. In 1992 we were told these children are going to die anyway," she said. "But that wasn't our spirit. Today, kids we were told would die have graduated from high school."


___


On the Internet:


http://www.trees4children.org/

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Wall Street ends flat as "fiscal cliff" focus lingers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 wrapped up its fifth positive month in the last six on Friday, although it ended the day flat as politicians remain at odds about how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.


Trading has been choppy in the last two weeks as investors react to statements from policymakers on the state of discussions on how to avert a series of tax hikes and spending cuts that could pull the economy back into recession.


The S&P 500 was up 0.29 percent in November even as it suffered a slide of more than 6 percent from the month's high to its low.


"Given the 'on again, off again' fiscal cliff (negotiations), it's rather surprising how resilient this market has been," said David Rolfe, chief investment officer at St. Louis-based Wedgewood Partners.


"Between now and the end of the year, there's going to be an information vacuum outside the fiscal cliff, and I believe that resiliency will be tested."


In contrast to the apparent calm in equities, the CBOE Volatility Index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, jumped 5.4 percent, its largest daily gain in two weeks.


The VIX also rose for the week, but posted a whopping 14.7 percent decline for November.


On Friday, President Barack Obama accused a "handful of Republicans" in the U.S. House of Representatives of holding up legislation to extend tax cuts for middle-class Americans in order to try to preserve them for the wealthy.


Speaking shortly after the president, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said: "There is a stalemate; let's not kid ourselves."


Despite the divisive language, many market participants are betting that a deal will be struck - if only at the eleventh hour.


Corporations continue to react to what is expected to be a harsher tax regime next year. Whole Foods Market was the latest to announce a special cash dividend - of $2.00 per share in this case - ahead of expected higher tax rates in 2013.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 3.76 points, or 0.03 percent, to 13,025.58 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained a mere 0.23 of a point, or 0.02 percent, to finish at 1,416.18. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dipped 1.79 points, or 0.06 percent, to end at 3,010.24.


For the month of November, the S&P 500 rose 0.29 percent, its smallest monthly variation since March 2011. The Dow fell 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq gained 1.1 percent.


For the week, though, all three major U.S. stock indexes advanced, with the Dow up 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 up 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq up 1.5 percent.


VeriSign shares dropped 13.2 percent to $34.15 after the company said the U.S. Department of Commerce approved its agreement with ICANN to run the .com internet registry, but VeriSign won't be able to raise prices as it did before.


Yum Brands slid 9.9 percent to $67.08 a day after the parent of the KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut chains said it expects a drop in fourth-quarter sales at established restaurants in China.


After a close relationship for several years, Facebook and Zynga revised terms of a partnership agreement, according to regulatory filings on Thursday. Under the new pact, Zynga, creator of the "Farmville" game, will have limited ability to promote its site on Facebook.


Zynga's stock fell 6.1 percent to $2.46. Facebook's stock gained 2.5 percent to $28.


Apple Inc's latest iPhone received final clearance from Chinese regulators, paving the way for a December debut in a highly competitive market where the lack of a new model had severely eroded its share of product sales. Apple's stock fell 0.7 percent to $585.28.


The markets' reaction to data on Friday was muted.


U.S. consumer spending fell in October for the first time in five months and income growth stalled, leading some economists to cut already weak estimates of fourth-quarter economic growth.


Slightly more than 7 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, more than the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares and the largest in two weeks.


On the NYSE, roughly six issues rose for every five that fell, while on Nasdaq, the ratio was nearly 1 to 1.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Brazil Registers Anemic Growth in 3rd Quarter, Surprising Economists





SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazil’s economy registered anemic growth in the third quarter as investment levels remained disappointingly low, according to figures released on Friday. The results cast doubt on policies meant to prevent Brazil, recently viewed as the rising star among Latin America’s economies, from turning into a laggard.




Gross domestic product grew just 0.6 percent from the previous quarter, stunning economists who had forecast double that rate. Brazil’s economy is now expected to grow only about 1 percent in 2012, delivering a challenge to President Dilma Rousseff, who has tried to increase growth through an array of huge stimulus projects.


Even economists with favorable views of Ms. Rousseff’s policies of assertively directing large government banks and other state-controlled enterprises to promote growth expressed surprise over the figures, which reflect a sharp departure from 2010, the last year of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency, when Brazil’s economy grew 7.5 percent.


Antônio Delfim Netto, an influential former economy chief, called the G.D.P. figures “a tragedy” in comments to reporters here on Friday. Under Ms. Rousseff, who has been president since 2011, Brazil is on track to deliver its weakest two-year period of growth since the early 1990s, before a stabilization program that radically restructured the economy. Finance Minister Guido Mantega contends that Brazil is on the cusp of a recovery, forecasting 4 percent growth next year.


While growth has declined considerably from the boom years, the slowdown has been blunted by state-supported projects aimed at creating jobs, like a shipbuilding sector conceived to support the oil industry. Brazil’s unemployment rate, 5.3 percent, is still hovering around historic lows.


Authorities are also financing broadly popular antipoverty programs. Federal spending surged 9 percent in October compared with October 2011, partly a result of outlays for an moderate-income housing program called Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House My Life). As millions of poor Brazilians are shielded from the slowdown, Ms. Rousseff’s approval ratings remain high.


Still, critics are growing more vocal about the need for Brazil to become more energetic in addressing complex structural dilemmas weighing the economy down, including its byzantine bureaucracy and woeful public schools. Ms. Rousseff is moving to address these issues; she altered an oil royalties bill on Friday, shifting 100 percent of future proceeds to an education fund.


Yet as economic growth slows to a snail’s pace, smaller Latin American countries are doing better, calling into question Brazil’s ambitions of exerting more influence in the region. Panama is set to grow 8.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, while Peru should grow 6 percent and Mexico 3.8 percent.


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