A Minute With: Scottish DJ Calvin Harris hits big time in U.S

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Scottish DJ Calvin Harris may not be the most recognizable face in the U.S. music scene, but after writing Rihanna‘s biggest chart hit and with two other top 20 singles, Harris is fast becoming a chart staple.

Harris, 28, found success in the UK over the last five years before storming the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year with “We Found Love,” a dance-infused dark love song featuring Rihanna’s vocals that became one of 2012′s biggest hits.

The DJ, who released album “18 Months” in November featuring other hits “Feels So Close” and “Let’s Go,” sat down with Reuters to talk about his U.S. breakthrough.

Q: Did you ever think “We Found Love” was going to be one of the biggest hits in the U.S. this year, and what do you think of the growing British presence in the U.S. music charts?

A: “I hoped that it would do really well, but you can’t predict writing Rihanna’s biggest-ever record, else you’re an egomaniac. Couldn’t have predicted that – that was a surprise. It’s nice that British music is getting played over here, it seems like everyone has a more even playing field than before.”

Q: Why do you think dance music is becoming such a big part of the U.S. scene?

A: “The people to thank are probably the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga. They were the first two American mainstream acts to have that house beat in their songs, whereas before, it was all hip hop. I remember Ne-Yo, when ‘Closer’ came out … and it bombed here but in the UK it was number 1, it was massive … Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Got a Feeling’ and (Lady Gaga’s) ‘Poker Face’ that was pushed really hard, and once they were huge, huge hits … radio stations wanted more and there was plenty of it because it’s been going on for years.”

Q: There are a lot of DJs coming into the mainstream scene now. How do you make yourself stand out in a saturated market?

A: “I like making dance records with lyrical depth. I also like the music to sound rich and full and have real instruments, and not be that kind of synthetic sound, combined with lyrics about popping bottles, being in the club … I like them to be the sort of lyrics you can find in another genre because I think dance music historically, the lyrics have been banal and I’m not into that. I like making actual songs but also something that still works on the dance floor.”

Q: Your new album “18 Months” has songs that span different sounds within the dance-pop genre. Were any tracks challenging?

A: “The two most challenging mixes were the tracks with Example and Florence (Welch), because I think the key is to make it sound like there isn’t that much going on when actually there is … it was a more difficult mix because it was more dynamic.”

Q: Some critics say that you use well-known artists like Rihanna or Florence just so you can get hits. What do you say to people who think you’ve sold out?

A: “Critics don’t buy albums, they’re also almost 90 percent either failed musicians or they don’t know better than anyone else. Also, I don’t like them. What’s the point of a critic? … I ‘sold out’ when I signed a major record deal, which was in 2006. People didn’t say I sold out then … so don’t accuse me of selling out now. It’s very very late to do that.

“If Florence Welch wants to do a track with me, I’m going to say no and use someone unknown? … I want to do a track with people I like, not people I haven’t heard of before.”

Q: Some of your music videos have been provocative. “We Found Love” features domestic abuse and drug use, and Florence Welch’s “Sweet Nothing” has violence. Do you think music videos have to provoke to be noticed?

A: “I like videos to be seen by all and the guy who’s done my videos since ‘Bounce,’ Vince Haycock, I forever censor him … But recently, I’ve let him do whatever he wants and it’s more fun, I’ve discovered, to make whatever video he wants to make … I guess you’re more likely to get more views if someone is getting smacked in the face with a chair … ‘Sweet Nothing’ was great, but there was a lot that was cut out, like a brutal fight scene at the end … it got cut out because I couldn’t watch it, and the soundtrack was my music. There’s obviously a boundary. I’ve not had any naked people in my videos yet.”

Q: A lot of DJs are now collaborating with brand names in sponsorship deals. Are you doing anything similar?

A: “I’m genuinely just making music, I’m trying to make it good. I know these guys with their headphones and their logos and their gimmicks – you can take that route but I think it’s just added pressure to uphold something … Other people do it much better than me because they’re more like personalities.”

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Nick Zieminski)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.

In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.

“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs as well might be taken for a longer duration.

“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”

Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.

Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.

About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them would be in premenopausal women with ER-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.

In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing ten years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.

About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.

There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.

Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.

“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.

Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots, compared with 0.4 percent in the control group.

“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.

Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.

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Obama Tells G.O.P. Not to Tie Debt Ceiling to Fiscal Debate

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama spoke to members of the Business Roundtable in Washington on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Republicans on Wednesday not to use the debt ceiling as leverage on spending and tax decisions, saying he refused to engage again in the sort of brinkmanship that brought the country close to default last year and damaged its credit rating.

In a speech to the Business Roundtable, Mr. Obama called that irresponsible. “That is a bad strategy for America, it’s a bad strategy for your businesses and it is not a game that I will play,” he said. “Everybody here is concerned about uncertainty. There’s no uncertainty like the prospect that the United States of America, the largest economy, that holds the world’s reserve currency, potentially defaults on its debts.”

While saying he would not “play that game,” a phrase he repeated, Mr. Obama did not say what he would do in response, but some Democrats have urged him in the past to simply raise the borrowing limit using his own executive authority and let the courts determine if he overstepped his constitutional bounds.

He seemed to embrace a suggestion by John Engler, the Business Roundtable president, to raise the debt ceiling enough to last five years. “John is exactly right when he says that the only thing that the debt ceiling is good for as a weapon is just to destroy your credit rating,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama was reacting to reports that Republican leadership officials were looking for a fallback in the current debate to avert an end-of-the-year fiscal crisis. Some Republicans foresee accepting Mr. Obama’s call to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while allowing them to expire for the wealthiest Americans, and then taking up the fight again when the nation’s debt rises to the point that the statutory borrowing limit needs to be raised again, which could be in late January or February.

Republicans view any vote to raise the debt ceiling as a chance to enforce more fiscal discipline on Mr. Obama. Speaker John A. Boehner has said any increase in borrowing capacity should be offset by spending cuts that exceed the increased debt. Mr. Obama has responded by proposing to take away the Congressional power to approve increases in the debt ceiling, but Mr. Boehner said last weekend that “Congress is never going to give up this power.”

Appearing before reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Boehner and other House Republican leaders implored Mr. Obama to sit down with them and begin negotiating in earnest to head off the looming fiscal crisis, but with flattery and aggravation, they made it clear that they were now playing on his turf.

Mr. Boehner and his leadership team did not give an inch on their opposition to raising tax rates on the wealthy or their insistence that any deficit-reduction plan emphasize spending cuts. But the speaker sounded exasperated as he insisted that he had moved toward the president’s position by agreeing to $800 billion in higher tax revenue over 10 years.

“The revenues we’re putting on the table will come from guess who? The rich,” he said, his voice rising. “There are ways to limit deductions, close loopholes and have the same people pay more of their money to the federal government without raising tax rates.”

Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois, a member of the Republican leadership, appealed to Mr. Obama’s own view of himself as a politician able to rise above partisanship, a characterization Republicans have rarely, if ever, agreed with.

“I’ve seen an attribute in President Obama when we served together in the Illinois State Senate, where he was able to rise above donkeys and elephants and transform some very controversial issues in a way that was powerful,” Mr. Roskam said, imploring the president to eschew the politics of the victor and seize “an unbelievable opportunity to be a transformational president, that is to bring the country together.”

The dueling public appearances underscored how far apart the two sides were, at least as a matter of principle. Mr. Obama’s plan calls for $1.6 trillion in new taxes over 10 years, mainly through allowing rates to rise on income above $200,000 a year for individuals or $250,000 for families. He has also revived a year-old plan to trim health care and other mandatory spending by $600 billion over 10 years, but he also wants to spend $50 billion in the short term to help the economy.

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Time Warner CEO says consumers benefit from cable TV bundling

Consumers may want to pick and choose what channels they pay for but Time Warner Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes says they don't know how good they have it under the current pay-television system.

"I don't think it's desirable for consumers to break the bundle," Bewkes said in remarks at the UBS Media and Communications Conference in New York on Tuesday. "You end up paying more for less."

The bundle, which is industry lingo for how cable networks are packaged and sold to distributors and customers, has become a hot topic of late because of rising pay-TV bills. On Monday, Glenn Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, which is a separate publicly traded company, warned that he was looking to drop underperforming channels.

"This stuff is just starting to cost too much. If we as a broader industry want to keep this going we need to get the prices of packages lower," Britt said.

The majority of cable networks are owned by a handful of media giants including Time Warner Inc., News Corp., Viacom and Walt Disney. Typically, these companies package all their channels together. While a pay-TV distributor may end up getting a discount on a highly rated channel through this method it also usually means carrying less popular channels as well.

"They have to figure out who gets the money and who drives the value -- we think that’s us," Bewkes said.

Time Warner's cable properties include TNT, CNN, TBS and TruTV. Bewkes reiterated that he expects "double-digit" rate increases in future contracts for those channels from distributors. TNT already gets more than $1 per subscriber per month from cable and satellite operators, according to SNL Kagan, an industry consulting firm.

With regards to the issue of people watching less live television, Bewkes noted the number of consumers watching content on platforms other than television is growing and media companies are getting paid for it.

"The monetization of the viewing is taking place even if the measurement hasn’t caught up," Bewkes said.

"This is supposed to be an erratic business of hits and misses -- well not for us."

As for CNN, which last week named former NBCUniversal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker as its new worldwide president, Bewkes said the all-news channel needs to be "much more expansive" in what it covers and not "reduce news coverage to political subjects."

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Follow Joe Flint on Twitter @JBFlint.

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NASA Announces New Twin Rover for Curiosity Launching to Mars in 2020

SAN FRANCISCO — NASA’s Curiosity rover is getting a younger brother. A new robotic probe made mostly out of Curiosity’s spare parts and systems will be launched to Mars in 2020 and begin exploring the planet.

“The new science rover builds off the tremendous success from Curiosity and will have new instruments,” said NASA associate administrator of science John Grunsfeld during a completely packed NASA Town Hall lecture here at the 2012 American Geophysical Union conference on Dec. 4. He added that the agency has budgeted $1.5 billion for the mission over the years leading up to launch, though the figure is pending congressional approval.

In the coming months, NASA will place a call for new instrument ideas from the scientific community. One possibility that Grunsfeld mentioned was to have the new rover collect and store samples that a later mission could retrieve and return to Earth for scientists to inspect here. Such a sample-return mission has long been a dream of the planetary science community since it would allow them to conduct experiments that would be impossible on Mars.

“We are ready to cache samples,” said astronomer Steve Squyres of Cornell University, who leads the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers team and chaired the planetary science decadal, which outlined which missions scientists would like NASA to conduct over the next 10 years.

But there are already concerns within the planetary science community about the cost of such a mission and whether or not NASA could better spend its money elsewhere. Curiosity famously ran over budget and was delayed two years, eventually costing $2.5 billion. Furthermore, there are other planets in the solar system that could be explored. Scientists who study places like Saturn or the icy moons of Jupiter seemed particularly stunned by the news.

“NASA doesn’t apparently value anything besides Mars. I just. I don’t. I have nothing,” tweeted planetary scientist Sarah Horst from the University of Colorado, who studies the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan.

Considering NASA’s current budget woes, which have hit planetary science particularly hard, there are worries that any cost overruns on this new Mars mission might affect Discovery or New Horizons missions, which have often funded spacecraft to asteroids, moons, and other bodies in the solar system. At least at the AGU Town Hall meeting, NASA seemed particularly Mars focused, mentioning several Red Planet missions it would launch or participate in with international partners, such as the InSight drilling probe, but addressing no other new missions.

Image: NASA/JPL/Wired Science

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Disney loses appeal of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” ruling

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Walt Disney Co. was ordered to pay the British creator of the television game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” $ 319 million after a Los Angeles court rejected the company’s request for a new trial.

Britain’s Celador International, which created the quiz show, sued Disney in 2004 alleging that the company hid some of the show’s U.S. profits from Celador.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena ruled on Monday that the lower court’s judgment was neither excessive nor based on speculation of profits owed.

A 2010 jury trial found that Disney and its domestic syndication company, Buena Vista Television, owed Celador $ 269.2 million and a federal judge added $ 50 million in interest.

“We are extremely disappointed with the decision, as ABC and Buena Vista Television continue to believe that they fully adhered to the ‘Millionaire’ agreement,” Walt Disney said in a statement on Tuesday.

Disney did not comment on further possible legal action.

“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” aired on Disney-owned broadcaster ABC from 1999 to 2002 and was credited with ushering in a new era of reality programming on U.S. television.

“I am pleased that justice has been done,” Celador Chairman Paul Smith said in a statement.

The game show, which started in Britain and later became an international hit, quizzes contestants on trivia for the top prize of $ 1 million. The show is now in U.S. syndication.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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European Finance Ministers Deadlock on Plan to Oversee Banks

BRUSSELS — Finance ministers of the European Union were deadlocked Tuesday over how to create a single banking supervisor for the euro zone, delaying a decision on a new system that is supposed to prevent future financial crises.

The ministers agreed to reconvene next week, a day ahead of a summit meeting of European Union leaders who had been hoping to focus discussion on the design of a banking union — something the leaders agreed last summer to establish as a way to safeguard the industry after member countries racked up enormous debts bailing out their banks.

That agreement in June had called for setting up the single regulator under the European Central Bank. And the bloc’s administrative arm, the European Commission, has proposed phasing in the system beginning Jan. 1.

But the deadlock on Tuesday indicated that there was sharp disagreement among member states over how many banks in the euro currency union should be covered by the new system; how to ensure that countries outside the currency union have a way to rebuff regulations they dislike; and how to ensure that the European Central Bank would keep monetary policy separate from its decisions on bank supervision.

After ministers failed to reach agreement Tuesday during their regular monthly meeting, Vassos Shiarly, the finance minister of Cyprus, the country holding the Union’s rotating presidency, set another session for Dec. 12.

If ministers fail to reach agreement at that meeting, the E.U. leaders will arrive at their summit meeting the following day without a cornerstone in place for the banking union. One of the goals for the union could eventually be to issue debt jointly backed by euro zone countries, as a way to buffer the sort of interest rate spikes that have often bedeviled weaker countries, including Spain.

Some ministers warned on Tuesday that further delays in designing the banking union could lead to a return of acute financial pressures in the euro zone. “If we are not able to deliver in the dates we have committed, this will not be neutral in terms of the stability of the markets,” said Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister.

For Spain, stricter supervision was supposed to be the condition for using European funds to bail out its troubled banks directly and a way to avoid accumulating more sovereign debt. Once the supervisor is in place, Spain wants the money it is drawing upon for its bailout to be moved off its government ledgers.

But France and Germany remained divided over the new banking rules on Tuesday. That is a significant obstacle because agreement between the two countries usually is needed to accomplish major reforms in Europe.

Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, told the meeting that the new rules should apply to all lenders rather than lead to a two-tier system.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has suggested that the system could eventually apply to all 6,000 banks in the euro zone. But some German officials and industry groups would rather have the new centralized oversight apply only to the biggest European banks, and leave regulation of the country's smaller savings banks in the hands of national officials.

French officials have stressed the need for a system that covers all euro zone banks. Otherwise, the French have warned, any sudden intervention by the E.C.B. into the affairs of a bank under national regulation could raise alarm among investors and depositors and even lead to bank runs.

But Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said Tuesday that trying to give too much central authority to a new banking regulator would meet stiff political opposition in his country.

“I think it would be very difficult to get an approval by the German Parliament if you would leave the supervision for all the German banks to European banking supervision,” Mr. Schäuble told the meeting. “Nobody believes that any European institution will be capable to supervise 6,000 banks in Europe.”

The government in Berlin has complained that overly rapid implementation of the rules could lead to regulatory loopholes. German state governments also have balked at giving the central bank oversight of their sparkassen, the hundreds of small and midsize savings banks that do much of the lending to consumers and small businesses.

Germany also refused to support one of the main British demands: new voting rules to ensure that lenders based in London continue to be regulated by Britain.

Yet another concern for Mr. Schäuble was whether placing so much supervisory power within the European Central Bank could lead the central bank to compromise its decisions on monetary policy — if, for example, the E.C.B. were setting interest rates while also trying to oversee politically sensitive issues like bank bailouts.

“In the long run, you will damage the independence of the central bank,” Mr. Schäuble told the meeting.

Germany is the biggest financial contributor to the European Union, and establishing the single supervisory system could oblige Ms. Merkel to dip into the treasury to help prop up weaker European banks, like many of those in Spain. Such aid could be an issue for German taxpayers, ahead of national elections in their country next September. German citizens have already grown weary of paying most of the bill for bailouts, and they are wary of using more money to help banks in vulnerable southern European countries.

Another issue to be resolved in coming weeks will be the leadership of the group of ministers who oversee the euro area.

Jean-Claude Juncker, who has been the group's president since 2005, reiterated at a news conference Monday night that he would step down at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year.

But he declined to signal his preference for any particular successor to the post, which gives the holder significant power over the agendas of their meetings.

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Two Mexican nationals charged in killing of U.S. Coast Guardsman

Federal prosecutors charged two Mexican nationals in connection with killing U.S. Coast Guardsmen Terrell Horne III after they allegedly rammed his vessel with a drug-smuggling panga boat.

The two men, boat captain Jose Mejia-Leyva and Manuel Beltra-Higuera, are expected to appear in court Monday afternoon to face charges that they killed a federal officer.

Horne, 34, of Redondo Beach, was killed Sunday after suspected smugglers in a panga rammed his vessel off the Ventura County coast. He died of severe head trauma, officials said.

The Redondo Beach resident was second in command of the Halibut, an 87-foot patrol cutter based in Marina del Rey. Authorities said they could not recall a Coast Guard chief petty officer being killed in such a manner off the coast of California.

Early Sunday morning, the Halibut was dispatched to investigate a boat operating near Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California's eight Channel Islands. The island is roughly 25 miles southwest of Oxnard.

The boat, first detected by a patrol plane, had come under suspicion because it was operating in the middle of the night without lights and was a "panga"-style vessel, an open-hulled boat that has become "the choice of smugglers operating off the coast of California," said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers.

The Coast Guard cutter contains a smaller boat, a rigid-hull inflatable used routinely for search-and-rescue operations and missions that require a nimble approach. When Horne and his team approached in the inflatable, the suspect boat gunned its engine, maneuvered directly toward the Coast Guard inflatable, rammed it and fled.

The impact knocked Horne and another guardsman into the water. Both were quickly plucked from the sea. Horne had suffered a traumatic head injury. While receiving medical care, he was raced to shore aboard the Halibut. Paramedics met the Halibut at the pier in Port Hueneme and declared Horne dead at 2:21 a.m.

The second crew member knocked into the water suffered minor injuries and was treated and released from a hospital later Sunday. He was not identified.

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iPhone Sales Shifting Away From Flagship Model

The iPhone is without doubt among the best-selling smartphones on the market, but the iPhone 5 doesn’t comprise as high a percentage of total iPhone sales as Apple’s past flagship phones.

A report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners says the iPhone 5 comprised only 68 percent of total iPhone sales during its first month on sale. (The study of 500 Apple product buyers in the United States was conducted a month after the iPhone 5 launched.) That’s still a majority of the phones Apple sold, but it’s a far cry from the 90 percent share the iPhone 4S enjoyed during its first month. That doesn’t mean the newest iPhone is tanking, however. It means cheaper iPhones are selling strongly.

“What those numbers represent is inflated total iPhone sales because people who couldn’t buy iPhones before are buying iPhones — they’re just buying 4′s and 4S’s instead of the 5,” Forrester analyst Charles Golvin told Wired.

The launch of the iPhone 4S in 2011 marked the first time Apple offered a trio of models at different price points: the 3GS for free with a contract, the 4 for $100 and the 4S at full price starting at $200. But at that point, the 3GS was available only on AT&T. Now that the iPhone 4, which also is available at Sprint and Verizon, is available for free with a contract, the landscape looks a bit different.

“Now there’s pent-up demand at those two carriers among customers who would really want an iPhone but can’t afford $200 for a 5,” Golvin said. “That pent-up demand is being reflected in a lot of iPhone 4 and 4S sales at those two carriers.”

Many of the people buying iPhone 4′s and 4S’s would in the past have bought Android phones.

On top of that, the iPhone 4S was made available at numerous smaller regional carriers across the U.S. Although the iPhone 5 is Apple’s fastest iPhone rollout ever, it arrived at regional carriers shortly after the phone’s worldwide debut.

Another contributor to the shifting sales proportions: launch timing.

“Last year the launch of the 4S came 18 months after the launch of the iPhone 4,” Canalys analyst Chris Jones told Wired. “People had a long time to wait from one generation to the next. From the 4S to the 5 was about 11 months. Perhaps there was more pent-up demand last year than this year given the length of time people had to wait from one generation to the next.”

Not everyone is able or willing to ditch their two year contract to get the latest handset, and may end up upgrading later on.

Michael Levin, co-founder of CIRP, saw two other possible reasons for the iPhone sales shift. “There seems to be some pressure from competitors, like with the Samsung Galaxy line,” Levin said. Apple is a new entrant to the LTE market. Android competitors, like Samsung, have had a solid footing there for multiple years. “And people are finding the 4S and 4 are just about as good as the 5 in terms of experience.”

Jones said that supply constraints may also be forcing some would-be iPhone buyers to switch to other 4G LTE handsets because they simply aren’t willing to wait for a phone.

AllThingsD noted that the trend CIRP has observed, if it continues, will lower the average selling price of the iPhone, and could have a negative impact on Apple’s traditionally gangbuster iPhone profits. Golvin said that the trend — an uptake in iOS users, but fewer on the flagship model — could represent a tradeoff in Apple’s margins, but it’s unclear because we don’t know what Apple’s margins are on older iOS products.

Jones notes we’ll get a much more accurate picture of what iPhone sales are like in January, when Apple announces its first quarter results.

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UK’s Prince William and wife Kate expecting a baby

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain‘s Prince William and his wife Catherine are expecting a baby, destined to be the country’s future monarch, although the mother-to-be is in hospital with a type of very acute morning sickness that sometimes indicates twins.

“Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby,” the prince’s office said in a statement on Monday, adding that Queen Elizabeth and the royal family were delighted.

The couple, officially known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, married in April last year, amid a global media frenzy and there has been much speculation, particularly in U.S. gossip magazines, about a possible pregnancy.

“It’s only been a matter of time. Everyone has been waiting for Kate to announce that she was pregnant,” Claudia Joseph, who has written a biography of the duchess, told Reuters.

A spokeswoman for the couple said 30-year-old Catherine, widely known as Kate, was in the King Edward VII Hospital in central London suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum, an acute morning sickness which causes severe nausea and vomiting and requires supplementary hydration and nutrients.

Professor Tim Draycott, a consultant obstetrician at the University of Bristol, said the condition was common in the early weeks of pregnancy but did not put the baby at any increased risk, although in extreme cases it can lead to the baby being born with a slightly low birth weight.

Draycott told Reuters it may also indicate more than one royal baby may be in the offing.

“Hyperemesis is slightly more common with twins,” said Draycott, explaining that the condition affected around one in 100 to 200 pregnant women.

William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, was at her side and she is likely to remain in hospital for several days. There was no detail about when the baby was due, although the prince’s spokesman said she was less than 12 weeks pregnant.

“I’m delighted by the news that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting a baby,” Prime Minister David Cameron said on his Twitter website. “They will make wonderful parents.”

BABY WILL BE KING, OR QUEEN

William, Queen Elizabeth’s 30-year-old grandson, is second in line to the British throne, and their first child will become the third in succession when he or she is born.

Last year Britain and other Commonwealth countries which have the queen as their monarch agreed to change the rules of royal succession so that males would no longer have precedence as heir, regardless of age.

The agreement also means an end to a ban on a future monarch marrying a Catholic, a stipulation dating back some 300 years.

Britain’s royal family are currently riding the crest of popularity on the back of William and Kate‘s wedding and the queen’s diamond jubilee this year which has witnessed nationwide celebrations.

“It’s something everyone can look forward to, just like their wedding brought the whole nation together,” said Johanna Castle, 25, a sales assistant in an east London homewear and fashion store.

The young royal couple have become global stars after some two billion people tuned in to watch their glittering marriage ceremony and the sumptuous display of pageantry that accompanied it, and barely a day goes by without a picture of Catherine appearing in the pages of Britain‘s royalty-obsessed newspapers.

The duchess, the first “commoner” to marry a prince in close proximity to the throne in more than 350 years, is now a fashion icon, with her attire scrutinized every time she steps out in public and followed by legions of women around the world.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle were one of the first to send congratulations, an indication of the young royals’ popularity across the Atlantic.

“I know they both feel that having a child is one of the most wonderful parts of their lives. So I’m sure that will be the same for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

With their fame has come unwanted attention, and there was anger in Britain when topless photos of Kate relaxing on holiday were published in a French magazine in September.

The pictures rekindled memories of the media pursuit of William’s mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi.

“I will be very surprised if this isn’t handled with the utmost tact and sensitivity,” said media commentator Steve Hewlett. “Newspapers realize there’s a huge amount of goodwill towards Will and Kate, and they take their cue from their readers.”

“DADDY’S LITTLE CO-PILOT”

Kate made her last public appearance on Friday when she returned to her old school – a minor event that nonetheless generated live television coverage on news channels – when she looked healthy and joined in a game of hockey with pupils.

Earlier in the week William had hinted at a pregnancy during a visit to Cambridge in central England when they were given a home-made baby suit emblazoned with the words “Daddy’s little co-pilot”, a reference to William’s job.

“When I gave it to him he said ‘I’ll keep that’, and handed it to his aide,” said Samantha Hill.

Joseph, author of “Kate: The Making of a Princess”, said she believed the couple, who currently live in north Wales where the prince is based as a search and rescue pilot, had been waiting for the right moment to have a baby.

“My feeling has always been that they were not going to take the spotlight away from the queen in her Jubilee. But now 2013 is going to be William and Kate’s year,” she said, adding the couple would make wonderful parents.

“We have seen her with children and she is lovely with them, she’s got the natural touch, and her parents run a party business and she has spent a lot of time with children,” Joseph said. “(William) he has always talked about wanting children, so I am sure he is delighted.”

(Additional reporting by Tim Castle, Peter Schwartzstein and Natalie Huet in London and Steve Holland in Washington; editing by Paul Casciato)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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