New PlayStation 4 details emerge: 8-core AMD ‘Bulldozer’ CPU, redesigned controller and more

2013 is a huge year for gamers. Nintendo (NTDOY) just launched the Wii U ahead of the holidays and both Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) are expected to issue next-generation consoles before the year is through. We’ve seen plenty of rumors about both systems over the past few months, and the latest comes from Kotaku and focuses on Sony’s PlayStation 4.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 said to be overhyped, RIM’s comeback chances remain slim]

The site claims to have gotten its hands on documents describing Sony’s developer system given to premier partners so they can build games ahead of the next-generation console launch. The specs, if accurate, will obviously line up with the release version of the system. Included in the specs Kotaku is reporting are an AMD64 “Bulldozer” CPU with eight cores total, an AMD GPU, 8GB of system RAM, 2.2GB of video memory, a 160GB hard drive, a Blu-ray drive, four USB 3.0 ports and more.

[More from BGR: Apple: ‘Bent, not broken’]

Sony also reportedly has a redesigned controller in the works that will include a capacitive touch pad.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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American Idol Auditions in Baton Rouge Are (Almost) Drama-Free

TV Watch

American Idol

By Steve Helling

01/24/2013 at 10:00 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban

George Holz/FOX

There were no catfights on Thursday's American Idol. No one stormed off the set. Everyone was on their best behavior as contestants auditioned in Baton Rouge, La.

That's not to say that things didn't get weird. Nicki Minaj nicknamed one contestant "Mushroom" and rubbed her fingers through his hair to bestow her "special powers" on him. (Whenever Minaj speaks, Mariah Carey simply stares off into space, as if she's just trying to find her happy place.) The Idol producers also began a baffling trend of splicing footage of squealing farm animals between the bad auditions.

But there were some bright spots: Burnell Taylor, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, made Carey cry with his capable rendition of "I'm Here" from the musical The Color Purple. "This is what we came for," said Minaj, who was apparently speaking about Taylor's voice, not Carey's tears. "While everyone else auditioned, you entertained us."

Hulking firefighter Dustin Watts wowed the judges with his version of Garth Brooks's "She's Every Woman." And yes, ladies, he's single. We know this because Minaj continued her practice of asking good-looking guys if they have a girlfriend. "You have a great style," Keith Urban told Watts. "You've got a confidence about you."

Tennessean Paul Jolley's family seemed shocked that he made it to Hollywood, which may have been overdone, considering that the 22-year-old singer has opened for country stars Chely Wright, Lorrie Morgan and Aaron Tippin. His pleasant version of "I Won't Let Go" by Rascal Flatts impressed the judges. "It was effortless," said Carey. "I know that people are going to love you."

Perhaps the most unique contestant of the night was Calvin Peters, a 27-year-old physician from Fort Worth, Texas. The third-year resident is known as "the singing doctor," and wowed the judges with his audition of Maxwell's "Whenever, Wherever, Whatever." Carey called him "handsome," which seems to be a trend this season.

Most of the night's successful women were lumped into a montage, except for Miss Baton Rouge Megan Miller, who impressed the judges while auditioning on crutches. Perhaps the lack of female character development is a reason why the show hasn't crowned a woman champ since Jordin Sparks won in 2007. Then again, the judges this season seem confident a female singer is going to win.

Before the episode could end without a drop of drama, Urban accidentally referred to Minaj as "Mariah." Both women shot him withering looks and commanded him to say more than 1000 Hail Marys.

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Penalty could keep smokers out of health overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.

The Affordable Care Act — "Obamacare" to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.

For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.

Younger smokers could be charged lower penalties under rules proposed last fall by the Obama administration. But older smokers could face a heavy hit on their household budgets at a time in life when smoking-related illnesses tend to emerge.

Workers covered on the job would be able to avoid tobacco penalties by joining smoking cessation programs, because employer plans operate under different rules. But experts say that option is not guaranteed to smokers trying to purchase coverage individually.

Nearly one of every five U.S. adults smokes. That share is higher among lower-income people, who also are more likely to work in jobs that don't come with health insurance and would therefore depend on the new federal health care law. Smoking increases the risk of developing heart disease, lung problems and cancer, contributing to nearly 450,000 deaths a year.

Insurers won't be allowed to charge more under the overhaul for people who are overweight, or have a health condition like a bad back or a heart that skips beats — but they can charge more if a person smokes.

Starting next Jan. 1, the federal health care law will make it possible for people who can't get coverage now to buy private policies, providing tax credits to keep the premiums affordable. Although the law prohibits insurance companies from turning away the sick, the penalties for smokers could have the same effect in many cases, keeping out potentially costly patients.

"We don't want to create barriers for people to get health care coverage," said California state Assemblyman Richard Pan, who is working on a law in his state that would limit insurers' ability to charge smokers more. The federal law allows states to limit or change the smoking penalty.

"We want people who are smoking to get smoking cessation treatment," added Pan, a pediatrician who represents the Sacramento area.

Obama administration officials declined to be interviewed for this article, but a former consumer protection regulator for the government is raising questions.

"If you are an insurer and there is a group of smokers you don't want in your pool, the ones you really don't want are the ones who have been smoking for 20 or 30 years," said Karen Pollitz, an expert on individual health insurance markets with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "You would have the flexibility to discourage them."

Several provisions in the federal health care law work together to leave older smokers with a bleak set of financial options, said Pollitz, formerly deputy director of the Office of Consumer Support in the federal Health and Human Services Department.

First, the law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times as much as their youngest customers.

Second, the law allows insurers to levy the full 50 percent penalty on older smokers while charging less to younger ones.

And finally, government tax credits that will be available to help pay premiums cannot be used to offset the cost of penalties for smokers.

Here's how the math would work:

Take a hypothetical 60-year-old smoker making $35,000 a year. Estimated premiums for coverage in the new private health insurance markets under Obama's law would total $10,172. That person would be eligible for a tax credit that brings the cost down to $3,325.

But the smoking penalty could add $5,086 to the cost. And since federal tax credits can't be used to offset the penalty, the smoker's total cost for health insurance would be $8,411, or 24 percent of income. That's considered unaffordable under the federal law. The numbers were estimated using the online Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator.

"The effect of the smoking (penalty) allowed under the law would be that lower-income smokers could not afford health insurance," said Richard Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions, a nonpartisan research group that called attention to the issue with a study about the potential impact in California.

In today's world, insurers can simply turn down a smoker. Under Obama's overhaul, would they actually charge the full 50 percent? After all, workplace anti-smoking programs that use penalties usually charge far less, maybe $75 or $100 a month.

Robert Laszewski, a consultant who previously worked in the insurance industry, says there's a good reason to charge the maximum.

"If you don't charge the 50 percent, your competitor is going to do it, and you are going to get a disproportionate share of the less-healthy older smokers," said Laszewski. "They are going to have to play defense."

___

Online:

Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator — http://healthreform.kff.org/subsidycalculator.aspx

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Asian shares fall, choppy after China PMI, North Korea threat

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares fell on Thursday in choppy trade, as positive Chinese manufacturing data was eclipsed by North Korea threatening a nuclear test and on below-view results from Apple Inc .

"Markets see a global economic recovery trend but there is no consensus on the strength of growth, capping many markets. Equities have been clearly benefiting from accommodative monetary conditions," said Koichiro Kamei, managing director at financial research firm Market Strategy Institute.

China's HSBC flash purchasing managers' index (PMI) rose to 51.9 in January to a two-year high, signaling a rebound in manufacturing activity and confirming a recovery in the world's second largest economy was on track.

However, while the data briefly spurred markets higher, geopolitical uncertainty on the Korean peninsula and Apple's disappointing earnings dented overall demand.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> was down 0.4 percent after rising as much as 0.2 percent earlier. The index briefly touched a fresh 17-1/2-month high the day before, exposing many bourses to profit taking pressures ahead of the regional earnings season set to start in earnest later this month.

The pan-Asia index's technology sector <.miapjit00pus> and the region's Apple suppliers fell after the world's largest technology company missed revenue forecast for the third straight quarter after iPhone sales undershot expectations, sending its shares down over 10 percent in after-hours trading.

A sharp drop in Apple's component suppliers such as South Korea's LG Display and Taiwan's Hon Hai dragged South Korean shares <.ks11> down 0.9 percent and Taiwan stocks <.twii> down 0.6 percent.

China shares <.ssec> surrendered strong early gains, weighing on Hong Kong <.hsi>, after North Korea said it would carry out a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its "sworn enemy".

Bucking the trend, Australian shares rose 0.5 percent <.axjo> to a fresh 21-month high after reversing morning losses after the data from China, Australia's top export market.

The data also helped push Japan's Nikkei stock average <.n225> up 1.3 percent, as firms with high exposure to the Chinese economy notching up gains. Most Japanese suppliers to Apple also recouped earlier losses.

"The underlying tone is still bullish, so even bad news about Apple or whatever doesn't hit stocks too hard," said Masato Futoi, head of cash equity trading at Tokai Tokyo Securities, adding that three days of losses spurred dip-buying. <.t/>

European markets are seen easing, with financial spread-betters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open down as much as 0.1 percent. U.S. stock futures were down 0.3 percent, pointing to a softer Wall Street start. <.l><.eu><.n/>

YEN BUYING HALTED

The two-day yen buying spree came to a pause. The currency's recent rebound came after the Bank of Japan's latest policy easing steps on Tuesday failed to provide immediate stimulus as expected by some investors. The BOJ pledged to achieve a 2 percent inflation target and promised to start open-ended asset buying from 2014.

The dollar rose 0.8 percent to 89.33 yen while the euro also advanced 0.8 percent to 118.93 yen. The yen is still down 12 percent from its mid-November levels, when markets began pricing in strong monetary accommodation from the BOJ.

Many market players believe the yen's weakness will persist due to widespread expectations the BOJ will continue pursuing aggressive monetary easing policies to beat the country's stubborn deflation.

"I think we will struggle to break 91, but I will still keep looking for us to trade above 90 in the short-term," said Jesper Bargmann, Asia head of G11 spot FX for RBS in Singapore, referring to the outlook for the dollar versus the yen over the next week or so.

Data on Thursday confirming a deteriorating Japanese trade balance also encouraged yen selling, traders said. Japan logged a record annual trade deficit in 2012.

Investors were aalso reminded of the challenges facing the global economy on Wednesday when the International Monetary Fund predicted that an unexpectedly stubborn euro zone recession and weakness in Japan will hurt world growth. A Reuters poll also showed Asian economies will see weaker growth this year despite expected policy easing by central banks.

U.S. crude rose 0.4 percent at $95.57 a barrel while Brent steadied at $112.78.

London copper was down 0.3 percent at $8.076 a tonne and spot gold fell 0.4 percent to $1,678.81 an ounce, slipping from a recent one-month high.

(Additional reporting by Sophie Knight in Tokyo and Masayuki Kitano in Singapore; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

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IHT Rendezvous: Britons Promised Vote on Europe, Again

LONDON — A British political leader faces dissent within his own party over the country’s membership in Europe. He promises to renegotiate the terms and to hold a referendum on the issue if he wins the next election.

That was Harold Wilson, the Labour Party leader, who as prime minister in 1975 fulfilled an election pledge to hold a nationwide vote on Britain’s continued membership in what was then the European Economic Community.

Plus ça change, as the French would say.

David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister who was 8 at the time of Britain’s first and only referendum, has now promised a rerun, announcing on Wednesday in a long-anticipated speech:

“It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European question in British politics.”

There seemed little doubt that he had been pushed to the decision by Euro-skeptic sentiment in his own party and the emerging electoral challenge from the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party, which is threatening to capture Tory votes.

Divisions over Europe used to be the Labour Party disease. The left of the party viewed the E.C.C. as a club for the rich that had more to do with enhancing the profits of transnational business than enhancing the lot of the common man.

“The development of the Community since its inception has been largely directed to business rather than social goals,” the Trades Union Congress, the umbrella group for British labor unions, argued at the time. “The effect has been to increase the mobility of capital . . . enabling business to avoid more easily its obligations to employees.”

The split continued to dog the Labour Party, in and out of government, long after two-thirds of voters opted in 1975 to remain in Europe.

These days, labor union spokesmen are as likely to argue that Europe has been good for workers in terms of Continent-wide rights and protections.

But Euro-skepticism was never confined to the Labour Party. For the Conservatives, it was and remains a divisive issue between a broadly pro-European mainstream and right wingers who rail at loss of sovereignty and an overweening Brussels bureaucracy.

Harold Wilson’s 1975 referendum was a gamble that paid off. He supported Britain’s continued membership in the face of opponents who included members of his own cabinet.

Will David Cameron’s own “dangerous gamble” silence Conservative dissent? Or will Britain end up sleepwalking out of Europe, as some have warned?

Peter Kellner, a veteran political commentator, says there’s an “uncanny resemblance” between public opinion in 1975 and today.

So, if there is a referendum in which Britons again opt to stay in, will that be the end of the argument?

Tell us what you think. Is David Cameron playing domestic politics over Europe and, if so, what are the risks? And, if you’re British, which way would you vote?

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Google Wants to Own the Airwaves, Now

As if Google‘s launching a free Wi-Fi network in New York City earlier this month wasn’t curious enough, now the search giant is asking the Federal Communications Commission for a license to create an “experimental radio service.” What’s an experimental radio service, you ask? Well, Google won’t say exactly what its doing with the air above its Mountain View, California headquarters, but the details of the FCC application suggest it’s trying to build its own proprietary wireless network.

RELATED: Who’s Winning the Facebook-Google Tech War

Oh, so this must have something to do with Google Fiber and Google‘s becoming an Internet service provider, offering insanely fast Internet, right? Again, not exactly. “Google‘s small-scale wireless network would use frequencies that wouldn’t be compatible with nearly any of the consumer mobile devices that exist today, such as Apple’s iPad or iPhone or most devices powered by Google‘s Android operating system,” explain The Wall Street Journal‘s Amir Efrati and Anton Troianovski. “The network would only provide coverage for devices built to access certain frequencies, from 2524 to 2625 megahertz.” However, networks using those frequencies are under construction in Asia, just waiting for devices that support them. And last year, Google purchased Motorola Mobility, a mobile phone manufacturer that could ostensibly manufacture such devices. This is starting to sound sort of shady.

RELATED: You Were Right to Delete Your Google History

While it’s too soon to understand the extent of the company’s plans, it certainly looks like Google actually wants to own the airwaves now. Could we see a Google phone that works on a custom built Wi-Fi network, one that nobody else can use? It’s very possible. For now, Google‘s official answer to that line of questioning is that the company experiments all the time with all kinds of things. But according to Steven Crowley, a wireless engineer who first spotted the FCC application, ”The only reason to use these frequencies is if you have business designs on some mobile service.” 

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nicki Minaj Storms Off American Idol Set in Charlotte, N.C.

TV Watch

American Idol

By Jamie Bufalino

01/23/2013 at 10:50 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban

Michael Becker/FOX.

As American Idol's talent search headed to Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday, the already-tense relationship between judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj went even further south.

Things got so heated that the production had to shut down for a bit, leaving a speedway full of aspiring singers sitting idle. The cause of the friction? Disagreements over the judges' varying styles of critique – particularly when it came to 20-year-old Summer Cunningham.

"Why are we picking her apart?" Minaj asked after Carey questioned whether the contestant's voice was best-suited for country music.

"Really? Is that what I did?" responded Carey. "We're trying to help her as opposed to just talk about her outfit."

That retort caused Minaj to throw a fit. "Oh, you're right. I'm sorry I can't help her. Maybe I should just get off the [BLEEP] panel," she said before walking off the set.

As Minaj left, Carey got in one more shot: Referring to Minaj storming off, she said, "I was going to do that the next time she ragged on me."

But the judging panel – including Keith Urban and Randy Jackson – also had plenty moments of togetherness in Charlotte. They gave unanimous thumbs up to Brian Rittenberry, 27 – a dad from Jasper, Ga., whose wife bounced back from battling cancer – for belting out "Let It Be" with a big booming voice.

They also swooned over 16-year-old Isabel Gonzalez, who Jackson plucked out of a high school class to audition for Idol as part of this season's new nomination segments. And they were all in agreement that 20-year-old Joel Nemoyer from Carlisle, Pa., should try a different line of work after he tried crooning a Michael Bublé song while lying flat on his back.

Even without the histrionics, Minaj proved to be the most entertaining of the judges. Between her ongoing habit of assigning nicknames to all the contestants – she dubbed singers everything from "collard greens" to "Jumanji" – Minaj also managed to ask hilariously bizarre questions ("Have you ever lived in Tokyo?") and put new and sometimes creepy twists on her positive critiques. "I want to skin you and wear you," she told one girl she was particularly fond of.

Even with the short interruption due to the judges' kerfuffle, the Idol gang managed to find 36 contestants to put through to Hollywood.

And they'll be back for more auditions in Baton Rouge, La., on Thursday.

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Women have caught up to men on lung cancer risk

Smoke like a man, die like a man.

U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.

"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.

The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.

The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.

Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.

They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.

One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.

A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods — 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 — using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.

Among the findings:

— The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.

—A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.

—Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.

—Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.

—Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.

—The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.

Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.

Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.

The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.

Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.

"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.

Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years — to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.

"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.

It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."

___

Online:

American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Asian shares retreat, Nikkei hit hard as yen stays firm

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares retreated from multi-month highs on Wednesday amid caution as the earnings season gathers pace, with Tokyo stocks falling to three-week closing lows in response to a firm yen.

"Asian markets have been climbing steadily and it's natural for investors to want to book profits as the region's earnings season begins in full force later this month," said Hirokazu Yuihama, a senior strategist at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo.

"The uptrend remains intact given improving fundamentals globally, so selling like this is a healthy correction that may lead to putting a solid floor to prices," he said.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> fell 0.3 percent after earlier reaching a 17-1/2-month high. The index has risen nearly 30 percent since a low touched in June, 2012.

The yen held firm against the dollar and the euro as monetary easing announced on Tuesday by the Bank of Japan failed to provide an immediate stimulus as some had hoped, though many analysts acknowledged the BOJ's resolve to tackle Japan's stubborn deflation and economic stagnation.

The stronger yen hurt Japanese exporters, dragging the benchmark Nikkei average <.n225> down 2.1 percent to a three-week closing low. The yen has weakened by around 12 percent since mid-November against the dollar, and boosted the Nikkei by more than 20 percent as a weaker yen improved exporters' earnings outlook. <.t/>

The BOJ on Tuesday doubled its inflation target to 2 percent and adopted an open-ended commitment to buy assets starting 2014, sparking an unwinding of yen short positions from speculators looking for more immediate easing step.

The dollar fell 0.6 percent to 88.20 yen while the euro slid 0.7 percent to 117.45 yen. The dollar hit a 2-1/2-year high of 90.25 yen on Monday.

Many still believe the yen will resume its recent downtrend, seeing the latest rebound in the Japanese currency as a correction to its rapid and sharp decline.

With the BOJ joining the continued push by global central banks to support growth, Morgan Stanley said in a research note that policy easing by central banks was positive for emerging markets, with more bond portfolio inflows increasingly towards local markets.

"Our key themes for 2013 are rebalancing and reflation, with both prevalent so far this year. Even given a migration towards global equities and away from fixed income, emerging market fixed income remains well-placed," it said.

Elsewhere, Hong Kong and Chinese shares were among the hardest hit as investors took profits from recent gains, with indexes faltering at technical resistances. Hong Kong <.hsi> shares slipped from a 19-1/2-month high and were down 0.4 percent while Shanghai shares <.ssec> fell 0.5 percent, moving further away from a 7-1/2 month high.

"We have risen by quite a bit in a very short time, so investors have been taking some profit in the last week or so, looking for new ideas to rotate into," said Larry Jiang, chief strategist at Guotai Junan International Securities.

Australian shares <.axjo> bucked the trend to edge up 0.2 percent to their highest close in almost 21 months after miner BHP Billiton gained after reporting a rise in quarterly iron ore production.

BETTER ENVIRONMENT

European markets are seen rising, with financial spread-betters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open as much as 0.4 percent higher. U.S. stock futures were down 0.2 percent, pointing to a softer Wall Street start. <.l><.eu><.n/>

On Tuesday, hopes of an improvement in the global economy led the Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> to a five-year high.

Investors were also cheered by easing worries over the U.S. budget crisis.

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives said they aim to pass on Wednesday a nearly four-month extension of the U.S. debt limit to May 19.

U.S. crude was down 0.1 percent to $96.59 a barrel and Brent eased 0.2 percent to $112.23.

Spot gold was at $1,692.66 an ounce, near Tuesday's one-month high of $1,695.76, while London copper traded down 0.3 percent at $8,107 a metric ton but clinging near a one-week high of $$8,144.50 hit on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Clement Tan in Hong Kong; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

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India Ink: At This Year's Jaipur Lit Fest, Feminism, the Dalai Lama and Cricket

NEW DELHI —– It is that time of year again when the pink city of Jaipur in Rajasthan State warms up to host a carefully curated panel of literary greats from across the globe for the Jaipur Literature Festival, South Asia’s biggest annual literary event. In its sixth year now, the five-day event will kick off on Thursday at the majestic Diggi Palace, where 283 writers will appear before an audience of several thousand people and engage them through conversations and book readings.

The runup to the festival has not been without controversy. The Hindu right-wing group RSS and the national opposition Bharatiya Janata Party are demanding a ban on the participation of Pakistani writers in the wake of the recent skirmish along the Line of Control between India and Pakistan. And Muslim clerics have threatened to agitate if any of the four authors who last year read out excerpts from Salman Rushdie’s banned book ‘The Satanic Verses’ are seen at this year’s festival. Of the four, only the novelist Jeet Thayil is on the speaker’s list this time.

Organizers said that these threats would not affect the festival’s schedule.

“The media should not give space to this kind of rabble-rousing,” said Sanjoy K. Roy, the festival’s producer.  He said the venue was already secure, with more than 200 security personnel, and added that there was no need for any additional security.

A day ahead of the official opening, on Wednesday, an unlikely marriage of cricket and literature is culminating in a friendly game between authors and cricket players on the home turf of one of India’s premier league teams, the Rajasthan Royals. It will be ‘Royals XI’ versus ‘Authors XI’.

This year the festival is more “multilingual and multivocal” than the previous editions, said Namita Gokhale, one of the directors of the festival.

Writings in 17 Indian languages, including Bangla, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Tamil and Kashmiri, will be showcased at the multilingual sessions that will offer a flavor of regional literary history as well as folk literature. Santhali, a language spoken in India’s east coast, will be represented at the festival for the first time. There will also be readings of literature in several foreign languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, as well as in Sinhala, spoken by the ethnic Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka and in Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan.

The idea of the festival is to show “India to the world and the world to India,” said William Dalrymple, the festival’s co-director.

The overarching theme of this year’s festival, which features 174 sessions, is Buddha in literature.

Spirituality has been central to literature in India, said Mr. Dalrymple, adding, “Buddhist literature has influenced so much of Asian literature.”

Complementing the theme, the big surprise guest this year is his holiness the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan leader, who is living in exile in India, will hold a conversation with the British-born novelist Pico Iyer on Thursday afternoon in a session titled “Kinships of Faiths.”

After the brouhaha last year over Oprah Winfrey’s star-spangled reception, the selection of this year’s chief guest seems to have been tempered on purpose.

“Oprah’s appearance sucked the oxygen from the other sessions,” Mr. Dalrymple said. “She took so much press.” Some of the other big names like Tom Stoppard, “one of the best playwrights” did not get the attention that he should have received last year.

Nonetheless, he said this year’s guest list is still spectacular.

Among those appearing are several award-winning authors, including the Commonwealth Prize Winner Aminatta Forna from Sierra Leone, Howard Jacobson, a Booker Prize winning author, and Andrew Solomon, a Pulitzer winner.

The historical novelist Lawrence Norfolk will be introduced to Indian book lovers for the first time along with other popular British writers including Sebastian Faulks and Deborah Moggach.

Mr. Dalrymple pointed out that several prominent authors from the Arab world are participating in the festival, including the Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif and the Moroccon writer Tahar Ben Jalloun.

An emphasis on feminist writing and featuring women’s voices would seem to be a natural choice for the organizers after the recent spate of protests against sexual harassment of women in India.

“It wasn’t by design, but by instinct,” Ms. Gokhale said, noting planning for the event began in March last year.

Mahasweta Devi, an octogenarian Bengali writer and social activist, who will make her first appearance at the festival, has been on the organizers’ wish list for each of the past few years. A Tamil feminist writer who writes under the pseudonym Ambai will also be making her first appearance.

Diana L. Eck, a religious scholar form Harvard, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a postmodern and postcolonial theorist from Columbia, are among the distinguished women scholars scheduled to speak at the festival.

“The strand of sessions on ‘The Buddha in Literature’ examines the role of women in the Buddhist theology and hierarchy,” Ms. Gokhale explained. Other session including “Imagine: Resistance, Protest, Assertion” emphasize the “inspirational surge of women’s solidarity,” she said.

The phenomenal growth of the festival over the years has led the organizers to add another venue, the Char Bagh to the existing venues at the Diggi Palace to accommodate the crowds. Mr. Roy, the festival producer, said that 22,000 people can be accommodated per hour, up from 14,000 last year. A total of 122,000 people attended last year.

The festival organizers have spent an estimated 56 million rupees (about $1 million) this year. While Teamwork Productions, which is overseeing the event, is struggling to break even, the event will continue to be egalitarian and open to all without an admission fee, said Mr. Roy, who is also the managing director of the company. “Arts create wealth in a different way,” he said.

Chiki Sarkar, the publisher of Penguin Books India, uses the annual festival to launch a featured new book or talent. This year will see the launch of Anjan Sundaram, the author of “Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo.”

“Very often projects that I have been thinking about for a while get crystallized in Jaipur,” she said.

Festival regulars say that much of the magic of the Jaipur Literature Festival takes place outside the sessions themselves. “The best thing is the surprise element, the random encounter that can result in something completely unexpected, new, and sometimes wonderful,” said Urvashi Butalia, a publisher and writer who is the co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house and the director of Zubaan, an imprint of Kali.

At least 20 parties will be hosted during the festival and 145 artists are expected to perform through the course of the five-day event, including Indian folk artists and Spanish performers.

(Neha Thirani contributed reporting.)

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