Life, Interrupted: Brotherly Love

Life, Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.

There are a lot of things about having cancer in your 20s that feel absurd. One of those instances was when I found myself calling my brother Adam on Skype while he was studying abroad in Argentina to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with leukemia and that — no pressure — he was my only hope for a cure.

Today, my brother and I share almost identical DNA, the result of a successful bone marrow transplant I had last April using his healthy stem cells. But Adam and I couldn’t be more different. Like a lot of siblings, we got along swimmingly at one moment and were in each other’s hair the next. My younger brother by two years, he said I was a bossy older sister. I, of course, thought I knew best for my little brother and wanted him to see the world how I did. My brother is quieter, more reflective. I’m a chronic social butterfly who is probably a bit too impulsive and self-serious. I dreamed of dancing in the New York City Ballet, and he imagined himself playing in the N.B.A. While the sounds of the rapper Mos Def blared from Adam’s room growing up, I practiced for concerto competitions. Friends joked that one of us had to be adopted. We even look different, some people say. But really, we’re just siblings like any others.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 22, I learned just how much cancer affects families when it affects individuals. My doctors informed me that I had a high-risk form of leukemia and that a bone marrow transplant was my only shot at a cure. ‘Did I have any siblings?’ the doctors asked immediately. That would be my best chance to find a bone marrow match. Suddenly, everyone in our family was leaning on the little brother. He was in his last semester of college, and while his friends were applying to jobs and partying the final weeks of the school year away, he was soon shuttling from upstate New York to New York City for appointments with the transplant doctors.

I’d heard of organ transplants before, but what was a bone marrow transplant? The extent of my knowledge about bone marrow came from French cuisine: the fancy dish occasionally served with a side of toasted baguette.

Jokes aside, I learned that cancer patients become quick studies in the human body and how cancer treatment works. The thought of going through a bone marrow transplant, which in my case called for a life-threatening dose of chemotherapy followed by a total replacement of my body’s bone marrow, was scary enough. But then I learned that finding a donor can be the scariest part of all.

It turns out that not all transplants are created equal. Without a match, the path to a cure becomes much less certain, in many cases even impossible. This is particularly true for minorities and people from mixed ethnic backgrounds, groups that are severely underrepresented in bone marrow registries. As a first generation American, the child of a Swiss mother and Tunisian father, I suddenly found myself in a scary place. My doctors worried that a global, harried search for a bone marrow match would delay critical treatment for my fast-moving leukemia.

That meant that my younger brother was my best hope — but my doctors were careful to measure hope with reality. Siblings are the best chance for a match, but a match only happens about 25 percent of the time.

To our relief, results showed that my brother was a perfect match: a 10-out-of-10 on the donor scale. It was only then that it struck me how lucky I had been. Doctors never said it this way, but without a match, my chances of living through the next year were low. I have met many people since who, after dozens of efforts to encourage potential bone marrow donors to sign up, still have not found a match. Adding your name to the bone marrow registry is quick, easy and painless — you can sign up at marrow.org — and it just takes a swab of a Q-tip to get your DNA. For cancer patients around the world, it could mean a cure.

The bone marrow transplant procedure itself can be dangerous, but it is swift, which makes it feel strangely anti-climactic. On “Day Zero,” my brother’s stem cells dripped into my veins from a hanging I.V. bag, and it was all over in minutes. Doctors tell me that the hardest part of the transplant is recovering from it. I’ve found that to be true, and I’ve also recognized that the same is true for Adam. As I slowly grow stronger, my little brother has assumed a caretaker role in my life. I carry his blood cells — the ones keeping me alive — and he is carrying the responsibility, and often fear and anxiety, of the loving onlooker. He tells me I’m still a bossy older sister. But our relationship is now changed forever. I have to look to him for support and guidance more than I ever have. He’ll always be my little brother, but he’s growing up fast.

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Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 24-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young adult with cancer, appears regularly on Well. Follow @suleikajaouad on Twitter.

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An Insurer, UnitedHealth, Reports a Slight Drop in Income

The UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, reported a slight drop in its fourth-quarter net income on Thursday as medical costs rose, but its revenue increased more than 11 percent, helped by growth in its Medicare, care management, technology and international businesses.

The company also outlined its plans to participate in the new health exchanges that will be established under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which are expected to add millions to the ranks of the insured. It said it expected to start by participating in 10 to 25 exchanges, perhaps more, though it has no firm commitment to that range.

“We will only participate in exchanges that we assess to be fair, commercially sustainable, and provide a reasonable return on the capital they will require,” the company’s chief executive, Stephen J. Hemsley, told analysts on a conference call.

The government-subsidized exchanges will offer insurance plans sold by private insurers like UnitedHealth. So far 17 states and the District of Columbia have received conditional approval to establish their own exchanges.

The company said its fourth-quarter profit rose to $1.20 a share from $1.17 a year earlier, as the number of outstanding shares fell. But its net income slipped 1 percent, to $1.24 billion from $1.25 billion a year earlier. Revenue rose to $28.8 billion from $25.9 billion.

Analysts had expected earnings of $1.19 a share and sales of $28.2 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The company said the unusual number of flu cases this year added $50 million in incremental costs, a figure analysts found reassuring.

“Over all, these results were strong, which should ease market concerns about the impact of the elevated flu season on the group,” said Michael Wiederhorn, an analyst at Oppenheimer, in a research note.

For 2013, UnitedHealth reiterated its forecast for revenue of $123 billion to $124 billion, up from $110.6 billion in 2012. It expects earnings of $5.25 to $5.50 a share, compared with $5.28 in 2012.

Analysts had been expecting earnings of $5.55 a share on revenue of $121.11 billion.

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Kaspersky Lab reports major malware discovery

MOSCOW — In what is being called a new hunt for Red October, a Russian cyber-security company says it has discovered a major international malware system that has attacked and compromised the computers of government agencies, diplomatic consulates, research centers and defense installations, among other sensitive institutions.

The malware has siphoned off terabytes' worth of information, much of it classified, researchers with Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab said in a report this week. The origin of the program and the motives of the attackers remain elusive, but there are hints that the programmers are Russian, the report says.

"Last October we first received from our clients samples of something we soon gathered was not just a malware program but a multi-component attack platform, initially targeting embassies around the world," Vitaly Kamlyuk, a senior anti-virus expert at Kaspersky, said in an interview Wednesday. "We called the virus 'Red October' because we detected it in October and because it required a level of red-alert attention to tackle."

Similar to the Flame virus, a now-defunct spyware program Kaspersky thwarted last year, the new virus usually infiltrates computers through an email attachment camouflaged to mimic ordinary business correspondence, the expert said.

"One embassy was looking to buy a car and received the virus in a car sale proposal they soon found in their inbox," Kamlyuk said.

Kaspersky, a leading developer of commercial anti-virus software, said it found victims of the malware with IP addresses in 39 countries, led by Switzerland, Kazakhstan and Greece. The most common targets included embassies, government agencies and research institutes, as well as aerospace and energy companies.

Kaspersky said the malware was probably being operated by a government or criminal organization large enough to employ at least two dozen highly trained programmers.

Independent experts in the United States offered differing views on who might be responsible.

"The two primary suspects for this operation would have been either Russia or China, just based on some of the data," said John Bumgarner, research director for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nongovernmental think tank.

But researcher Jeffrey Carr, author of "Inside Cyber Warfare," theorized that the malware was the work of the foreign intelligence service of a NATO or European Union country, and that the intent was to spy on Russian embassies.

"It's a pretty good guess" that Russia's spy service, the FSB, approached Kaspersky and asked the firm to investigate, Carr said. "One of the indications was that they were specifically looking for Russian documents."

Kaspersky researchers said the spyware, when first installed, might be only several hundred kilobytes in size, minuscule by modern computer standards. But as it gets established and communicates with its controllers, it may grow to several megabytes.

The virus records the names of the users, their IP addresses, information stored on their processors and local disks, the history of browsers, logins and passwords, and the records of devices plugged into USB ports, including smartphones, according to the report.

Like the Flame program, the new virus can record screen shots, as well as keystrokes.

Evidence of the Red October virus dates to May 2007, Kamlyuk said. The program was embedded in Microsoft Excel and Word documents that had been used by Chinese hackers against Asian companies and Tibetan political activists, Kamlyuk said.

"But soon enough," he said, "we realized that, despite its obvious Chinese roots and the fact that no agencies in China were in fact targets of the new malicious program, the Chinese hackers had nothing to do with Red October."

The language used in the malware was primarily English, but not that of a native English speaker. It included Cyrillic symbols and transliterations of terms from Russian computer jargon, the researchers said.

For instance, Kamlyuk said, the malware sometimes uses the Russian word "zakladka" for "bookmark" or "marker" and "proga" for "programs."

"Many domain names of the malware were registered under fake Russian names and addresses too," he said.

"Now we have come to the realization that we are dealing with something programmed by Russian-speaking experts, based on Chinese hackers' exploit documents and mostly aimed at embassies of and other targets in Russia and its former Soviet satellites," Kamlyuk said.

Sergei Karaganov, honorary chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a Moscow-based think tank, said in an interview that such cyber-espionage is increasingly common and that Russia and other countries have attempted to create international protocols to combat it.

"But every time, their attempts have been thwarted by the stiff resistance on the part of the United States, which probably counts too much on its supremacy in this sphere," he said. "On the other hand, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of this being an ingenious trick on the part of Kaspersky Lab to boost their trade."

sergei.loiko@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ken Dilanian in Washington contributed to this report.

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When Time Is Short, Go Aerobic to Slim Down

It’s the time of year when we promise ourselves that we’re going to eat better (and less), exercise more and drop some weight. Turns out you might want to skip the weight bench and hit the treadmill if you want to keep that last resolution but don’t have a lot of time to work out.

Researchers at Duke University have examined the impact of aerobic and resistance training on body and fat mass in overweight and obese adults and concluded that when it comes to losing weight, aerobic exercise has an edge.

“If you’re overweight, it’s good to lose fat and body weight,” Dr. Leslie Willis, an exercise physiologist at Duke and lead author of the study, said of aerobic exercise. “Spend time doing cardio training if that’s your main goal.”

She noted, however that she isn’t saying that resistance training is by any means a bad thing, and in fact remains vital because it promotes lean body mass — which becomes more important as we age.

The study, published last month in the Journal of Applied Physiology, surveyed 234 adults aged 18 to 70 who were overweight or obese. They participated in one of three eight-month programs consisting of aerobic training, resistance training and a combination of the two. The aerobic training group exercised at 70 to 85 percent maximum heart rate for 45 minutes three times a week. The resistance training group did eight to 12 repetitions on resistance machines, increasing weight as time progressed so they’d remain challenged. The remaining group combined the regimens of both groups. When they were done, each participant was weighed, measured and tested for cardio fitness, body composition and strength.

The study found the aerobic training group and combination groups lost the most weight, around 4 pounds. Those who did resistance training alone actually gained a similar amount of weight in lean body mass. While the cardio group lost weight, they also lost lean body mass. The cardio and combination groups also saw a reduction in waistline, the cardio group losing 1 and combination group losing 1.66 square centimeters. These groups also lost 1 and 2 percent body fat, respectively, whereas the resistance group saw little to no change. However, in the aerobic group, there was no alteration of lean body mass like there was in the groups that had some sort of resistance regimen.

Read this way, the study suggests that if you only have a few hours a week to work out and your goal is losing weight, concentrate your energy on aerobic workouts. It also shows that if you have the time, resistance training plus cardio is best to build lean body mass.

A problem, however, is that sometimes studies like this are taken too literally, said Dr. Abbie Smith-Ryan, an exercise and sports scientist at UNC. Although the science behind the study is “flawless” and adds great data to the body of knowledge on the subject, she said, it’s also important to consider additional practical factors before changing your workout routine.

“When I look at the changes in body fat alone,” she said, “it was just 4 pounds. While statistically significant, we would hope to see a larger change in body fat and weight with such a comprehensive training program.”

Much of Smith-Ryan’s research is in high-intensity interval training, where she noted that over less time performed a week, they are seeing some large changes. She agrees, though, that you shouldn’t tell people to stop resistance training, which can directly and indirectly influence metabolism by breaking down our muscles. The repair process is where the caloric demand arises, and the more intense the workout, the more calories we burn rebuilding those muscles.

“This to me doesn’t say, ‘Don’t do resistance training training, or just do aerobic training,’” she said. “They are both important. This study also highlights the importance of nutrition. Exercise is not only the important part of weight loss; nutrition is a big factor. The subjects were on a 2,000-calorie diet, which is practical, but there was such a small change in body fat and weight over a six-month period.

The main takeaway, then, is to find something that fits your goals (losing pounds, changing your shape, improving your cardio fitness) that you will stick with. Chances are if you only lose a few pounds and a percent or two in body fat in eight weeks, you won’t stick with it. Those looking to change their overall look need to up the ante with intensity and frequency. Oh, and eat less.

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Fox hires Dennis Kucinich as analyst

NEW YORK (AP) — Days before President Barack Obama‘s inauguration for a second term in office, Fox News Channel has signed Dennis Kucinich, one of his former opponents, to be a regular contributor.

Kucinich, a presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008 who ended 16 years in Congress two weeks ago, will make his debut as a Fox contributor on Thursday’s edition of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the network said Wednesday.

“I’ve always been impressed with Rep. Kucinich’s fearlessness and thoughtfulness about important issues,” Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes said. “His willingness to take a stand from his point of view makes him a valuable voice in our country’s debate.”

Fox is the nation’s top-ranked cable news network, particularly popular with Republicans. Its big-name Republican contributors include Karl Rove, Sarah Palin and John Bolton. Democrats in the Fox stable include Evan Bayh, Joe Trippi and Bob Beckel.

Kucinich was elected to the Cleveland city council at age 23 and, at 31, became one of the nation’s youngest mayors. He’s also been an Ohio state senator and run his own communications and marketing firm.

“Fox News has always provided me with an opportunity to share my perspective with its enormous viewership,” he said.

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Study Confirms Benefits of Flu Vaccine for Pregnant Women

While everyone is being urged to get the flu vaccine as soon as possible, some pregnant women avoid it in the belief that it may harm their babies. A large new study confirms that they should be much more afraid of the flu than the vaccine.

Norwegian researchers studied fetal death among 113,331 women pregnant during the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009-2010. Some 54,065 women were unvaccinated, 31,912 were vaccinated during pregnancy, and 27,354 were vaccinated after delivery. The scientists then reviewed hospitalizations and doctor visits for the flu among the women.

The results were published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The flu vaccine was not associated with an increased risk for fetal death, the researchers found, and getting the shot during pregnancy reduced the risk of the mother getting the flu by about 70 percent. That was important, because fetuses whose mothers got the flu were much more likely to die.

Unvaccinated women had a 25 percent higher risk of fetal death during the pandemic than those who had had the shot. Among pregnant women with a clinical diagnosis of influenza, the risk of fetal death was nearly doubled. In all, there were 16 fetal deaths among the 2,278 women who were diagnosed with influenza during pregnancy.

Dr. Marian Knight, a professor at the perinatal epidemiology unit of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, called it “a high-quality national study” that shows “there is no evidence of an increased risk of fetal death in women who have been immunized. Clinicians and women can be reassured about the safety of the vaccine in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.”

The Norwegian health system records vaccinations of individuals and maintains linked registries to track effects and side effects. The lead author, Dr. Camilla Stoltenberg, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said that there are few countries with such complete records.

“This is a great study,” said Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, an obstetrician and a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was not involved in the work. “It’s nicely done, with good data, and it’s additional information about the importance of the flu vaccine for pregnant women. It shows that it’s effective and might reduce the risk for fetal death.”

In Norway, the vaccine is recommended only in the second and third trimesters, so the study includes little data on vaccination in the first trimester. The C.D.C. recommends the vaccine for all pregnant women, regardless of trimester.

“We knew from other studies that the vaccine protects the woman and the newborn,” Dr. Stoltenberg said. “This study clearly indicates that it protects fetuses as well. I seriously suggest that pregnant women get vaccinated during every flu season.”

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F.A.A. Orders Grounding of U.S.-Operated Boeing 787s

Kyodo News, via Reuters

An All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 Dreamliner made an emergency landing at Takamatsu airport in western Japan on Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it was temporarily grounding all Boeing 787s operated by United States carriers after several incidents in recent weeks, including a battery fire, and after an All Nippon Airways flight in Japan was forced to make an emergency landing on Wednesday.

The F.A.A.'s emergency airworthiness directive only applies directly to United Airlines, currently the sole American carrier using the new plane, with six 787s. But the agency said it would alert other aviation regulators to take similar action, and it seems likely that international carriers will comply with the directive.

Eight airlines now fly the Dreamliner. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines in Japan own 24 of the 50 delivered by Boeing since November 2011. The other operators are Air India, Ethiopian Airlines, LAN Airlines of Chile, LOT of Poland and Qatar Airways. Orders for about 800 additional 787s are in the pipeline.

“The F.A.A. will work with the manufacturer and carriers to develop a corrective action plan to allow the U.S. 787 fleet to resume operations as quickly and safely as possible,” the F.A.A. said in a statement.

Thanks to its extensive use of lighter composite materials and more efficient engines, the 787 is expected to usher a new era of more fuel-efficient travel, particularly over long distances.

But so far, the aircraft’s problems have been linked to a feature that had garnered much less attention until now: the 787’s extensive use of electric systems. Unlike modern passenger jets built in the past decades, which use mechanical and pneumatic systems to power hydraulic pumps, the 787 makes extensive use of electrical systems instead.

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Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf ordered arrested

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Tahirul Qadri, the fiery Islamic cleric leading a large antigovernment protest in the heart of the capital, was in the middle of a speech denouncing President Asif Ali Zardari's administration when an aide interrupted him with news.

The Supreme Court, Qadri was told, had just ordered the arrest of Zardari's prime minister on corruption charges. As he relayed the news to the crowd Tuesday, legions of Pakistanis filling a plaza about 500 yards from the parliament exploded in a yelp of joy. Many danced in the streets. Others embraced, tears streaming down their cheeks.

"My happiness is beyond words," said Ghulam Nabi, a 28-year-old laborer from Lahore. "We thank God for giving us this victory."

For demonstrators, the ruling served as validation of Qadri's message that Pakistan's current government is corrupt and incompetent, and cannot be trusted to oversee national elections this spring. But for Zardari's ruling party and many observers, the ruling heightened suspicion that Qadri's protest is being engineered behind the scenes by a powerful entity, perhaps the military, with the possible involvement of the judiciary.

"It looks like the Supreme Court is part of this intrigue," said Asma Jehangir, a human rights activist and former Supreme Court Bar Assn. president. "This isn't coincidence. Look at the timing. I believe the Supreme Court's moral authority has vanished."

Speaking to a Pakistani television channel, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said, "This decision by the Supreme Court doesn't look like a coincidence."

The order to arrest Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in connection with a scandal from his days as water and power minister broadsides Zardari's government at the worst possible time, as he struggles to withstand pressure on his administration created by Qadri's populist movement.

An estimated 40,000 Pakistanis unhappy with Zardari continued to take part in Qadri's sit-in protest Tuesday, and many who were interviewed said they would stay put until the parliament was dissolved and Zardari stepped down, demands Qadri made Monday after leading a long caravan of demonstrators from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad.

Zardari's inability to remedy a host of ills, from crippling power outages to militant attacks, is cited by demonstrators as a prime reason why they joined the sit-in. Voters have the choice of electing a new government in May, but Qadri contends the electoral system is weighted unfairly toward the two most powerful parties.

The system requires the appointment of a caretaker government during the run-up to the election, and leaves the choice of appointees to Zardari's ruling Pakistan People's Party and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party, the PML-N.

Qadri has said Pakistan's powerful military should be involved in the appointment, a remark that has led many observers to speculate that the country's security establishment is behind Qadri's movement. Both Qadri and the military deny that.

Until Tuesday, Zardari's team had tried to appear confident that Qadri's movement wasn't large enough to effect change and would eventually wither. Qadri fell far short of his goal of rallying 1 million Pakistanis for the protest march.

The Supreme Court ruling, however, put Zardari's party on the defensive. Party leaders in the coalition running the parliament said they would meet Tuesday night to discuss strategy.

"We were right that [Qadri's movement] is an effort to derail democracy," said Sharjeel Memon, a PPP stalwart and information minister for Sindh province. "What's happening now is not good for democracy."

For more than a year, the high court has been investigating Ashraf's role in the issuance of licenses to so-called rental power plants, a short-term project that was supposed to help solve the country's power shortage. The government signed three-to-five-year contracts with relatively small private power stations, essentially renting them while it worked on building larger plants.

The effort did little to alleviate the country's power troubles, however, and wasted millions of dollars in government money.

The corruption allegations against Ashraf involve purported kickbacks related to bidding for the rental plants, which took place while Ashraf was water and power minister from March 2008 to February 2011.

Ashraf was appointed prime minister in June to replace Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was forced from office that month by the Supreme Court after he was convicted of contempt for ignoring the court's order to revive an old corruption case against Zardari.

Many analysts at the time warned that Ashraf's appointment was risky, given the power plant scandal hanging over him. The episode earned Ashraf the nickname "Raja Rental" in the Pakistani media.

The Supreme Court order also seeks the arrest of several other officials suspected of being linked to the scandal.

It remains unclear how Zardari's government will respond. Gilani remained in office after he was convicted of contempt in April 2012, and stepped down only when the high court ordered his dismissal weeks later.

Deep animosity has for years tainted the relationship between Zardari's government and the judiciary, led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. The feud dates to the early days of Zardari's presidency, when he balked at reinstating Chaudhry as chief justice. Chaudhry had been ousted by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's leader in 2007.

Zardari reportedly feared that Chaudhry would allow old corruption charges against him to proceed. After intense political and public pressure, Zardari relented and reinstated the judge.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

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Reports of the iPhone 5's Waning Popularity Are Overstated

Recent reports that Apple is cutting orders for the components needed to assemble its flagship handset likely have more to do with seasonal buying patterns and iPhone production ramp up than iPhone fever fading.

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to Apple, reported that Apple cut orders for iPhone 5 parts following weaker-than-projected demand. But a bevy of analysts have chimed in since Sunday’s report, suggesting that inventory stockpiling, an aggressive international iPhone rollout and perhaps even the beginning stages of iPhone 5S production could be behind the drop in component orders.

Even so, the Cupertino company’s stock slid 3 percent on Monday following the somewhat shocking report, which came a little more than a week before Apple’s next earnings announcement.

Apple does appear to be cutting iPhone 5 parts orders, though. Vinita Jakhanwal, director of mobile and emerging displays at IHS, told Wired he’s seeing reduced iPhone display shipment numbers in this quarter compared to last quarter, in the range of 10 to 11 million compared to 19 million. Paul Semenza of NPD echoed those numbers in a report by the The New York Times. NPD DisplaySearch expected Apple to order 19 million iPhone 5 displays, but the order looks to be in the range of 11 to 14 million.

Jakhanwal says the discrepancy could be explained by seasonality — first-quarter numbers usually are smaller than fourth-quarter numbers — and also could be attributed to other components holding up iPhone production.

“The reduction in display orders could be to align to shipment of other components like the battery, which is challenging to manufacture for the new phone and may not have been able to ramp up to the display numbers,” Jakhanwal told Wired via email.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek posits that Apple could be starting production on its next handset, perhaps the iPhone 5S or a budget iPhone. This could be one cause for the drop in parts orders, as could an “assembly bottleneck” that led to component inventories being stockpiled over the holidays. Semenza and Jakhanwal also believe excess inventory could be a reason for the cut. Mark Moskowitz of J.P. Morgan thinks the order cuts could also be due to improved manufacturing yields, and Apple was simply backtracking on “excess orders” of some parts.

Apple’s super aggressive iPhone roll out, which reached 100 countries by the end of 2012, could also be a reason why demand is slowing a little sooner than normal.

Still, there are certainly signs the iPhone 5 may not be selling as briskly as its predecessors. For instance, a selection of major retailers recently cut the price of the iPhone 5 by $50, and analysts like Pacific Crest’s Andy Hargreaves have told investors iPhone demand isn’t as strong as anticipated. Anecdotally, a lot of people I talk to are still holding onto their 4′s and 4S’s — they’re still good phones, run iOS 6, and breaking that carrier contract to fork over a couple hundred more for a new phone just isn’t worth it to some.

On top of that, Samsung, with its Galaxy S III smartphone, has emerged as a major competitor to Apple.

“The competitive landscape is quite different this year than with iPhone launches years before,” Canalys analyst Chris Jones told Wired. Some people are also leaving Apple’s 6 year old mobile operating system in favor of something different, and options like Samsung and even Windows Phone are looking fresh.

In Apple’s last quarterly earnings call, which included the iPhone 5′s first week on sale, CEO Tim Cook announced the company sold a whopping 26.9 million iPhones — 58 percent more than the same period the year prior. While numbers for the holiday quarter aren’t in yet (that will be announced next week), last year Apple sold over 37 million iPhones over that period.

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Singer Jessica Simpson to star in TV comedy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop singer Jessica Simpson is set to star in a television pilot in development for NBC that is loosely based on her life, executive producer Ben Silverman said on Tuesday.

The comedy could be Simpson‘s first step back into a major acting role in more than five years.

The former teen pop star is best known for her reality TV shows, including MTV’s “Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica,” which followed Simpson and her first husband and fellow pop singer Nick Lachey. She also served as a mentor on NBC’s “Fashion Star.”

Simpson, 32, will play a celebrity who must balance life as a mother and a public figure, Silverman told Reuters.

The singer gave birth to her first child in May 2012 and said last month that she was pregnant with her second.

“The show is inspired by her life as she’s going through a new phase in her life becoming a mom,” said Silverman, who is the creator of NBC’s reality show “The Biggest Loser.”

“It’s a combination of ‘I Love Lucy’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’” he added, referring to the classic 1950s Lucille Ball comedy series and the HBO series by “Seinfeld” creator Larry David.

Simpson will also serve as an executive producer.

In 2004, Simpson taped a pilot for the ABC network about a pop star who becomes a TV news anchor, but it never became a series.

Simpson’s film credits include 2005′s “The Dukes of Hazzard” and 2006′s “Employee of the Month.”

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Stacey Joyce)

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