Japan stocks rally, yen resumes fall after G20

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese shares jumped closer to a 33-month high as the yen slumped on Monday after Tokyo dodged direct criticism from G20 peers on the aggressive reflation plans that have weakened the currency.

The G20 opted not to single out Tokyo, but committed members to refrain from competitive devaluations and said monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth. Japan said this decision is a green light to pursue its expansionary policies.

The dollar soared 0.7 percent to 94.17 yen inching closer to its highest since May 2010 of 94.465 hit on February 11. The euro added 0.3 percent to 125.51 yen, still below its peak since April 2010 of 127.71 yen touched on February 6.

The Nikkei average <.n225> jumped 2.3 percent as exporters and banks led the pack on the softening yen. <.t/>

The market's focus is now on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's nominee for the next Bank of Japan governor. Abe is expected to announce his choice in coming days.

Sources told Reuters that former top financial bureaucrat Toshiro Muto is leading the field of candidates to govern the bank. He is expected to intensify stimulus efforts to energise the economy.

"The G20's message is that monetary easing is OK, but not to imply anything about leading a currency weaker. The G20 effect is already seen in Abe's general comments on forex today which steered away from giving specifics on a preferred level or direction for the yen," said Yunosuke Ikeda, a senior FX strategist at Nomura Securities.

Abe said on Monday that the BOJ's monetary easing is aimed at beating deflation, not at manipulating the forex market and weakening the yen, and said correcting excessive yen rises would be an appropriate policy direction. Previously, Japanese officials have noted that the current yen selling was a correction to the past excessive yen strength.

The yen's weakness weighed on emerging Asian currencies while South Korean shares <.ks11> eased 0.3 percent on concerns about the eroding competitive edge for the country's exporters.

"Japan will keep seeking the current policy. The rest of Asia will not just wait and see. That will put more pressure on Asian currencies," said Yuna Park, a currency and bond analyst at Dongbu Securities in Seoul.

A weaker yen would make other currencies relatively stronger against the dollar and fuel speculation that other Asian countries could step in to curb the strength of their currencies, Ikeda said.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> eased 0.2 percent. The pan-Asian index briefly hit a 18-1/2-month high on Friday and had its best performance since the week of January 6 with a 1.2 percent weekly gain.

On Friday, MSCI's all-country world index <.miwd00000pus>, a measure of global equity activity, traded down 0.26 percent, while European shares closed lower and U.S. stocks ended flat.

Australian shares rose 0.5 percent as miners gained on hopes that top customer China might start buying after the Lunar New Year holidays, while blue chips Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Telstra Corp Ltd dropped after trading ex-dividend.

Markets in China and Taiwan resumed trading after a week-long holiday.

STOCKS CONSOLIDATE

Data from EPFR Global on Friday underscored that a consolidation was underway in global equities after their recent rally. It showed investors worldwide pulled $3.62 billion from U.S. stock funds in the latest week, the most in ten weeks after taking a neutral stance the prior week. But demand for emerging market equities remained strong, with investors putting $1.81 billion in new cash into stock funds, the fund-tracking firm said.

Demand for commodities will likely be in focus as China returns to the market.

Investors are also expected to focus on fiscal talks in Washington, where policymakers are discussing a package of budget cuts set to kick in on March 1. Analysts say the austerity measures could hurt the U.S. economy.

U.S. crude fell 0.2 percent to $95.63 a barrel but Brent inched up 0.1 percent to $117.81.

Gold rebounded from a six-month low on Monday as bargain hunters resurfaced and jewellers in China returned to the physical market after the Lunar New Year holiday, but a firm U.S. dollar was likely to limit the upside.

(Additional reporting by Jongwoo Cheon; in Singapore; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Eric Meijer)

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Dismissed as Doomsayers, Advocates for Meteor Detection Feel Vindicated

For decades, scientists have been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet. But warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles.

Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dr. Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive, has warned about space threats.

No more. The meteor that rattled Siberia on Friday, injuring hundreds of people and traumatizing thousands, has suddenly brought new life to efforts to deploy adequate detection tools, in particular a space telescope that would scan the solar system for dangers.

A group of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who helped build thriving companies like eBay, Google and Facebook has already put millions of dollars into the effort and saw Friday’s shock wave as a turning point in raising hundreds of millions more.

“Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren’t looking?” said Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive who leads the detection effort. “This is a wake-up call from space. We’ve got to pay attention to what’s out there.”

Astronomers know of no asteroids or comets that pose a major threat to the planet. But NASA estimates that fewer than 10 percent of the big dangers have been discovered.

Dr. Lu’s group, called the B612 Foundation after the imaginary asteroid on which the Little Prince lived, is one team of several pursuing ways to ward off extraterrestrial threats. NASA is another, and other private groups are emerging, like Planetary Resources, which wants not only to identify asteroids near Earth but also to mine them.

“Our job is to be the first line of defense, and we take that very seriously,” James Green, the director of planetary science at NASA headquarters, said in an interview Friday after the Russian strike. “No one living on this planet has ever before been hurt. That’s historic.”

Dr. Green added that the Russian episode was sure to energize the field and that an even analysis of the meteor’s remains could help reveal clues about future threats.

“Our scientists are excited,” he said. “Russian planetary scientists are already collecting meteorites from this event.”

The slow awakening to the danger began long ago, as scientists found hundreds of rocky scars indicating that cosmic intruders had periodically reshaped the planet.

The discoveries included not just obvious features like Meteor Crater in Arizona, but wide zones of upheaval. A crater more than a hundred miles wide beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico suggested that, 65 million years ago, a speeding rock from outer space had raised enough planetary mayhem to end the reign of the dinosaurs.

Some people remain skeptical of the cosmic threat and are glad for taxpayer money to go toward urgent problems on Earth rather than outer space. But many scientists who have examined the issues have become convinced that better precautions are warranted in much the same way that homeowners buy insurance for unlikely events that can result in severe damage to life and property.

Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, astronomers turned their telescopes on the sky with increasing vigor to look for killer rocks. The rationale was statistical. They knew about a number of near misses and calculated that many other rocky threats whirling about the solar system had gone undetected.

In 1996, with little fanfare, the Air Force also began scanning the skies for speeding rocks, giving credibility to an activity once seen as reserved for doomsday enthusiasts. It was the world’s first known government search.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration took a lead role with what it called the Spaceguard Survey. In 2007, it issued a report estimating that 20,000 asteroids and comets orbited close enough to the planet to deliver blows that could destroy cities or even end all life. Today, with limited financing, NASA supports modest telescopes in the southwestern United States and in Hawaii that make more than 95 percent of the discoveries of the objects coming near the Earth.

Scientists lobbied hard for a space telescope that would get high above the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. It would orbit the Sun, peering across the solar system, and would have a much better chance of finding large space rocks.

But with the nation immersed in two wars and other earthly priorities, the government financing never materialized. Last year, Dr. Lu, who left the NASA astronaut corps in 2007 to work for Google, joined with veterans of the space program and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to accelerate the asteroid hunt.

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Beyoncé's Life Is But a Dream: The Best Moments

TV Watch

By Aaron Parsley

02/16/2013 at 11:05 PM EST

I am ... still singing!

Beyoncé's HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream, aired Saturday night and it was a 90-minute whirlwind of music, dance and emotion. And though the singer, 31, has been everywhere recently (the Inauguration, the Super Bowl halftime show, Oprah's Next Chapter), the film was full of new and exciting moments. Here are my favorites:

Baby Bey: A home movie of Beyoncé as a little girl playing with bees made my jaw drop. The scene seems to prove what her fans believe: that she was born to be a superstar known as Queen B. I also loved seeing her singing – and being a typical, giggling teenager – with her sister Solange and Kelly Rowland.

The Heartbreak: From her frank discussion of firing her father as a manager to hearing "the saddest song" she's ever written after having miscarriage, the film – which Beyoncé produced and directed herself – had raw, emotional moments.

Mrs. Carter: Life is like a dream for Beyoncé and husband Jay-Z, who surprisingly shared intimate moments together – giddy over her pregnancy, singing Coldplay's "Yellow" to each other, enjoying solitude on a boat in an undisclosed, exotic location. You could feel the love when she toasted him on his birthday.

Blue Ivy: How cute is she?! When Beyoncé and Jay's baby girl, who turned 1 in January, appeared on the screen at the premiere of Life Is But a Dream at New York's Ziegfeld Theater, the crowd gasped and then let out a collective "aww." And I jammed my fingers on the TV screen the first time I watched, trying to pinch those cheeks. Seeing Beyoncé at home with a baby on her hip was a powerful reminder that the fierce superstar is human afterall.

The Music: Of course! Seeing her sing "Listen" with a gorgeously altered ending in a car convinced me of one thing: Beyoncé is definitely not human! I also loved seeing everything that went into her epic Billboard Music Awards performance of "Run the World (Girls)." I just wish I could do that dance. And is it me or does "Resentment" get grittier and angrier every time she performs it?

Praise Beysus and long live the Queen B!

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

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After decent rally, perhaps time for a pause

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks could struggle to extend their seven-week winning streak as the quarterly earnings period draws to a close and the market bumps into strong technical resistance.

Many analysts say the market could spend the next few weeks consolidating gains that have lifted the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 <.spx> by 6.6 percent since the start of the year.

The S&P 500 ended up 0.1 percent for the week, recovering from a late sell-off on Friday after a Bloomberg report about slow February sales at Wal-Mart triggered a slide in the retailer's shares. It was the index's seventh week of gains.

Odds of a pullback are increasing, with the market in slightly overbought territory, said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.

"I do suspect the closing of the earnings season will lead to at least a pause and possibly a pullback," Zaro said. The S&P 500 could shave 3 to 5 percent between now and early April, he said.

Fourth-quarter earnings have mostly beaten expectations. Year-over-year profit growth for S&P 500 companies is now estimated at 5.6 percent, up from a January 1 forecast for 2.9 percent growth, and 70 percent of companies are exceeding analyst profit expectations, above the 62 percent long-term average, according to Thomson Reuters data.

On Thursday, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is due to report results, unofficially closing out the earnings period. Investors will be keen to see its quarterly numbers, especially after the Friday's news report that rattled investors.

The S&P 500 has gained 4.3 percent since Alcoa kicked off the earnings season on January 8.

The approaching March 1 deadline for across-the-board federal budget cuts unless Congress reaches a compromise adds another reason for caution, especially with recent economic data indicating the recovery remains bumpy.

Manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent last month, the Federal Reserve said on Friday, but production in November and December was much stronger than previously thought.

TESTING RESISTANCE

The S&P 500 has been trading near five-year highs, and it notched its highest level since November 2007 this week. But the gains have pushed the benchmark index almost as far as it is likely to go in the near term, with strong resistance hovering around 1,525 and 1,540, one analyst said.

As a result, the index is set to move sideways, said Dave Chojnacki, market technician at Street One Financial in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. "We just don't have the volume or the catalyst right now" to go above those levels, he said.

At the same time, other analysts say, the market has not shown significant signs of slowing, including a break below 15- and 30-day moving averages.

Such moves would be needed to show that momentum is slowing or that the market is at risk of a correction, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio. The S&P 500's 14-day moving average is at 1,511 while the 30-day is at 1,494. The index closed Friday at 1,519.

Recent M&A activity, including news this week of a merger between American Airlines and US Airways Group , helped provide some strength for the market this week and optimism that more deals may be on the way.

In the coming days, the market will focus on minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting, due to be released on Wednesday, which could provide support if they suggest the Fed will remain on its current course of aggressive monetary easing.

The Fed minutes released in January spooked markets a bit when they revealed that some Fed officials thought it would be appropriate to consider ending asset purchases later in 2013. U.S. Treasury yields rose on that news, though market worries about a near-term end to quantitative easing have since faded.

Among other companies expected to report earnings next week are Nordstrom , Hewlett-Packard and Marriott International

(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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The Saturday Profile: Mary Beard, Classics Professor, Battles Internet Attacks

JANUARY was a busy month for Mary Beard, a Cambridge academic who is the closest thing, if it exists, to a celebrity classics professor.

In just a few weeks, Ms. Beard, who has helped popularize the study of antiquity through television and a lively blog, “A Don’s Life,” turned 58; finished a draft of her book on Roman laughter; became an officer of the Order of the British Empire; and attended the funeral of a lifelong friend and editor, Peter Carson.

But little could have prepared her for the furor she faced after she appeared on a weekly BBC debate show last month and, while discussing immigration, expressed the unpopular view that Britain’s social services would not be overburdened when restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian movement around Europe are lifted next year.

Her remarks, made on Jan. 17, unleashed a torrent of vicious, crude and personal online attacks, many targeting her unadorned style and her long, unkempt gray hair. Anonymous attackers also superimposed a picture of her face on a pornographic image. But rather than retire to her fainting couch (it is in her Newnham office, should she need it), or accept what happened as the cost of being a public figure in the Internet age, Ms. Beard decided to fight back.

Adopting what she said was a “high-risk strategy,” Ms. Beard reproduced on her blog some of the most unsavory remarks and the mocked-up image, which she has since removed.

“I wanted people to see how bad it is,” she said in an interview at Cambridge’s Newnham College, which she attended and where she has taught for nearly 30 years. “You never know what it’s like, because no mainstream paper will print it, nobody on the radio will let you say it, and so it came to look as if I was worried that they said I hadn’t done my hair.

“What was said was pornographic, violent, sexist, misogynist and also frightfully silly,” she said.

The comments would prove fatal for “Don’t Start Me Off,” an off-color online forum that became a bulletin board for her worst abusers. The site was eventually shuttered by its moderator, Richard White, who, in an about-face unexpected from an online provocateur, sent Ms. Beard a lengthy apology.

“I am genuinely sorry for any upset I may have caused you,” he wrote her privately. “I say this not because I’ve been ‘rumbled’ or because I think it’ll help my cause, but because it’s the right thing to do.”

Peter Stothard, the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, which publishes Ms. Beard’s blog, said her response was a quintessential case of “Mary being Mary.”

“She dealt with it in an extraordinary way,” Mr. Stothard said. “I don’t think it was necessarily bound to work, but it seems that it did. It’s a rare victory.”

The blog, which usually gets between 20,000 and 25,000 hits a week, drew about 85,000 visitors the week she addressed the controversy.

AT first glance, the professor is an unlikely candidate for such impassioned attention. Her gray hair, which she described as “mad,” hangs around her shoulders, which might be draped in a loose-fitting sweater or dress. She often uses tights to display a hint of her personality: on a recent Friday, they were black and adorned with shining plastic stars.

“I’ve chosen to be this way because that’s how I feel comfortable with myself,” Ms. Beard said. “That’s how I am. It’s about joining up the dots between how you look and how you feel inside, and I think that’s what I’ve done, and I think people do it differently.”

Ms. Beard first grew interested in classics as a precocious teenager with a talent for Latin and Greek and a taste for archaeological digs, where days spent excavating usually ended at the local pub, she said. But she would become a classics star at Cambridge, which was mostly male when she first showed up as a student in 1973. Now one of the university’s most high-profile professors, she extended her reach to a nation when “Meet the Romans with Mary Beard,” a short series, was first shown on BBC 2 last spring.

In three episodes, Ms. Beard appears as the viewer’s excitable and well-read guide to ancient Rome. She bikes around the city, perches atop ruins, pulls Roman artifacts out of storerooms and explains that a strange-looking tomb monument was built to recall a Roman bakery, a description that makes both bakeries and monuments seem fascinating.

“Classics isn’t about the ancient world. It’s partly about the ancient world, but it’s about our conversation. It’s how we try to talk to antiquity,” she said, elaborating on her mission to bring the subject to the masses. “A lot of people will always say, ‘I really know nothing about the ancient world.’ But there’s lots and lots of things people know. Partly they’ve been encouraged to think they’re ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they’d like to admit.”

“Meet the Romans” showcased Rome, but it also put Ms. Beard’s appearance on display. When the show first aired, the Sunday Times critic A. A. Gill suggested she “really should be kept away from cameras altogether.” Since then, British columnists have debated whether her style is the result of laziness and inattention or unwillingness to conform to traditional standards of beauty.

NOT easily dissuaded, Ms. Beard is in talks for another Rome-based show. That is in addition to her typical agenda, filled with books to write, classes to teach and lectures to prepare.

Ms. Beard joined The Times Literary Supplement as its classics editor in 1992, eight years after writing her first book. She has since published more than a dozen; the most successful, “The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found,” was published in the United States in 2010. But Ms. Beard admits that the first time anyone ever heard of her was after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when she wrote in The London Review of Books that some felt America “had it coming.”

The remarks drew global criticism. Though she does not regret them, Ms. Beard said she would choose different words now.

“Thinking back to then, what I wanted to say I would still want to say, which is that ghastly acts of terrorism are not unconnected to Western foreign policy,” in Britain as well as the United States, she said. “If I was making that point now, I wouldn’t write in those words; I would say something much more like what I just said.

“What politicians do is they never get the rhetoric wrong, and the price they pay is they don’t speak the truth as they see it,” she said. “Now, I will speak truth as I see it, and sometimes I don’t get the rhetoric right. I think that’s a fair trade-off.”

Ms. Beard is called “wickedly subversive” on her blog. It is a phrase routinely cited when she comes up in British newspapers, but, looking slightly embarrassed, she insists it was an editor’s choice, not hers.

“I’m always keen on understatement, you know?” she said with a laugh. “I’d just put ‘classicist.’”

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Molly Sims: I Nursed a Little Vampire!

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/15/2013 at 01:00 PM ET

Following the birth of her baby boy, Molly Sims was ready to sink her teeth into breastfeeding.

The only problem? Her son Brooks Alan had beaten her to it.

“Early on in the hospital, they really want you to breastfeed, so I’m trying everything,” the model mama, 39, shared during a Wednesday appearance on Anderson Live.

“And I’m like, ‘Gosh, this really, really hurts.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, we know.’”

Determined to find the root of the pain, Sims went searching in her newborn’s mouth — and was shocked at her discovery.

“I’m like, ‘Is there any way a baby could be born with a tooth?’” she recalls. “And they went, ‘Oh sweetie, I know you’re a model, but … babies aren’t born with teeth!’”

She continues: “Come to find out, my baby was born with a tooth!”

Courtesy ANDERSON LIVE

Despite countless attempts to successfully nurse — “I did nipple shields, nipple guards, supplemental nursing system, it was horrible,” the new mom says — Sims eventually decided to call it quits.

“He was literally like a vampire on me for three months — it was unbelievable,” she says with a laugh. “Cut to I’m not breastfeeding and I’m proud of it.”

Now Brooks, 7 months, has moved on to other milestones — including crawling — and is already taking after his dad, Scott Stuber.

“He has the hairline of my husband. It’s like an Eddie Munster kind of hairline. It’s not so attractive, but [he'll] end up growing into it,” Sims says.

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After decent rally, perhaps time for a pause

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks could struggle to extend their seven-week winning streak as the quarterly earnings period draws to a close and the market bumps into strong technical resistance.

Many analysts say the market could spend the next few weeks consolidating gains that have lifted the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 <.spx> by 6.6 percent since the start of the year.

The S&P 500 ended up 0.1 percent for the week, recovering from a late sell-off on Friday after a Bloomberg report about slow February sales at Wal-Mart triggered a slide in the retailer's shares. It was the index's seventh week of gains.

Odds of a pullback are increasing, with the market in slightly overbought territory, said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.

"I do suspect the closing of the earnings season will lead to at least a pause and possibly a pullback," Zaro said. The S&P 500 could shave 3 to 5 percent between now and early April, he said.

Fourth-quarter earnings have mostly beaten expectations. Year-over-year profit growth for S&P 500 companies is now estimated at 5.6 percent, up from a January 1 forecast for 2.9 percent growth, and 70 percent of companies are exceeding analyst profit expectations, above the 62 percent long-term average, according to Thomson Reuters data.

On Thursday, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is due to report results, unofficially closing out the earnings period. Investors will be keen to see its quarterly numbers, especially after the Friday's news report that rattled investors.

The S&P 500 has gained 4.3 percent since Alcoa kicked off the earnings season on January 8.

The approaching March 1 deadline for across-the-board federal budget cuts unless Congress reaches a compromise adds another reason for caution, especially with recent economic data indicating the recovery remains bumpy.

Manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent last month, the Federal Reserve said on Friday, but production in November and December was much stronger than previously thought.

TESTING RESISTANCE

The S&P 500 has been trading near five-year highs, and it notched its highest level since November 2007 this week. But the gains have pushed the benchmark index almost as far as it is likely to go in the near term, with strong resistance hovering around 1,525 and 1,540, one analyst said.

As a result, the index is set to move sideways, said Dave Chojnacki, market technician at Street One Financial in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. "We just don't have the volume or the catalyst right now" to go above those levels, he said.

At the same time, other analysts say, the market has not shown significant signs of slowing, including a break below 15- and 30-day moving averages.

Such moves would be needed to show that momentum is slowing or that the market is at risk of a correction, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio. The S&P 500's 14-day moving average is at 1,511 while the 30-day is at 1,494. The index closed Friday at 1,519.

Recent M&A activity, including news this week of a merger between American Airlines and US Airways Group , helped provide some strength for the market this week and optimism that more deals may be on the way.

In the coming days, the market will focus on minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting, due to be released on Wednesday, which could provide support if they suggest the Fed will remain on its current course of aggressive monetary easing.

The Fed minutes released in January spooked markets a bit when they revealed that some Fed officials thought it would be appropriate to consider ending asset purchases later in 2013. U.S. Treasury yields rose on that news, though market worries about a near-term end to quantitative easing have since faded.

Among other companies expected to report earnings next week are Nordstrom , Hewlett-Packard and Marriott International

(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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American Idol's Top 40 Revealed

TV Watch

American Idol

By Steve Helling

02/14/2013 at 10:00 PM EST

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

Michael Becker/FOX.

American Idol really, really wants a woman to win this season. At the beginning of Thursday's episode, they reminded us that a female singer hasn't won the show since 2007, when Jordin Sparks bested Blake Lewis for the top prize. Let's put this into perspective: The last time a woman won, George W. Bush was still president, J.K. Rowling was still writing the Harry Potter series, and no one had any idea who Snooki was. Well, maybe a few people knew her.

After Ryan Seacrest all but begged us to vote for a female, we finally got to see the level of the women's talent. Angela Miller sat at the piano and sang her own song, "You Set Me Free." It was a show-stopping performance, prompting judge Keith Urban to rave.

"If that was recorded right there, I would play it in my car," he said. "That was just a beautiful song."

Miller was followed by Candice Glover, who gave an strong version of Alicia Keys's "Girl on Fire." Janelle Arthur also impressed with a pleasant version of Carrie Underwood's "I told You So."

Shubha Vedula had the nerve to sing a Mariah Carey song in front of Mariah Carey and did a great job.

And then there was Zoanette Johnson. (At some point, she needs to drop her last name and just be known as Zoanette.) She played the drums as she sang a song she had improvised onstage the previous night. It was a rambling tune about her Idol experience. It was manic and baffling. And then she came to an abrupt stop and yelled at the background singers.

"Slow it down! C'mon guys," she pleaded. "I need this to be right." At some point, she lost a drumstick.

It's fun to imagine what Simon Cowell's reaction would be to her performances.

Kez Ban, the season's other memorable contestant, was quickly cut from the competition after singing her original song. There is clearly only room for one unpredictable contestant this season – and her name is Zoanette.

As the show wound down, the judges cut the field down to 20 women, and then brought in the remaining 28 male singers to cut them down to 20. That's when the judges had Josh Holiday sing "Georgia on My Mind." He split his pants from crotch to knee.

But Holiday and 39 others are season 12's top 40. One of them will be the next American Idol. Will it be a girl?

Top 20 Women

Adriana Latonio
Amber Holcomb
Angela Miller
Aubrey Cleland
Brandy Hotard
Breanna Steer
Candice Glover
Cristabel Clack
Isabelle Pasqualone
Janelle Arthur
Jenny Beth Willis
Jett Hermano
Juliana Chahayed
Kamaria Ousley
Kree Harrison
Melinlda Ademi
Rachel Hale
Shubha Vedula
Tenna Torres
Zoanette Johnson

Top 20 Men

Bryant Tadeo
Burnell Taylor
Charlie Askew
Chris Watson
Cortez Shaw
Curtis Finch, Jr.
David Willis
Devin Velez
Elijah Liu
Gurpreet Singh Sarin
Jimmy Smith
Johnny Keyser
Josh Holiday
Kevin Harris
Lazaro Arbos
Mathenee Treco
Nick Boddington
Paul Jolley
Vincent Powell

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Study: Fish in drug-tainted water suffer reaction

BOSTON (AP) — What happens to fish that swim in waters tainted by traces of drugs that people take? When it's an anti-anxiety drug, they become hyper, anti-social and aggressive, a study found. They even get the munchies.

It may sound funny, but it could threaten the fish population and upset the delicate dynamics of the marine environment, scientists say.

The findings, published online Thursday in the journal Science, add to the mounting evidence that minuscule amounts of medicines in rivers and streams can alter the biology and behavior of fish and other marine animals.

"I think people are starting to understand that pharmaceuticals are environmental contaminants," said Dana Kolpin, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey who is familiar with the study.

Calling their results alarming, the Swedish researchers who did the study suspect the little drugged fish could become easier targets for bigger fish because they are more likely to venture alone into unfamiliar places.

"We know that in a predator-prey relation, increased boldness and activity combined with decreased sociality ... means you're going to be somebody's lunch quite soon," said Gregory Moller, a toxicologist at the University of Idaho and Washington State University. "It removes the natural balance."

Researchers around the world have been taking a close look at the effects of pharmaceuticals in extremely low concentrations, measured in parts per billion. Such drugs have turned up in waterways in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere over the past decade.

They come mostly from humans and farm animals; the drugs pass through their bodies in unmetabolized form. These drug traces are then piped to water treatment plants, which are not designed to remove them from the cleaned water that flows back into streams and rivers.

The Associated Press first reported in 2008 that the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans carries low concentrations of many common drugs. The findings were based on questionnaires sent to water utilities, which reported the presence of antibiotics, sedatives, sex hormones and other drugs.

The news reports led to congressional hearings and legislation, more water testing and more public disclosure. To this day, though, there are no mandatory U.S. limits on pharmaceuticals in waterways.

The research team at Sweden's Umea University used minute concentrations of 2 parts per billion of the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam, similar to concentrations found in real waters. The drug belongs to a widely used class of medicines known as benzodiazepines that includes Valium and Librium.

The team put young wild European perch into an aquarium, exposed them to these highly diluted drugs and then carefully measured feeding, schooling, movement and hiding behavior. They found that drug-exposed fish moved more, fed more aggressively, hid less and tended to school less than unexposed fish. On average, the drugged fish were more than twice as active as the others, researcher Micael Jonsson said. The effects were more pronounced at higher drug concentrations.

"Our first thought is, this is like a person diagnosed with ADHD," said Jonsson, referring to attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. "They become asocial and more active than they should be."

Tomas Brodin, another member of the research team, called the drug's environmental impact a global problem. "We find these concentrations or close to them all over the world, and it's quite possible or even probable that these behavioral effects are taking place as we speak," he said Thursday in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Most previous research on trace drugs and marine life has focused on biological changes, such as male fish that take on female characteristics. However, a 2009 study found that tiny concentrations of antidepressants made fathead minnows more vulnerable to predators.

It is not clear exactly how long-term drug exposure, beyond the seven days in this study, would affect real fish in real rivers and streams. The Swedish researchers argue that the drug-induced changes could jeopardize populations of this sport and commercial fish, which lives in both fresh and brackish water.

Water toxins specialist Anne McElroy of Stony Brook University in New York agreed: "These lower chronic exposures that may alter things like animals' mating behavior or its ability to catch food or its ability to avoid being eaten — over time, that could really affect a population."

Another possibility, the researchers said, is that more aggressive feeding by the perch on zooplankton could reduce the numbers of these tiny creatures. Since zooplankton feed on algae, a drop in their numbers could allow algae to grow unchecked. That, in turn, could choke other marine life.

The Swedish team said it is highly unlikely people would be harmed by eating such drug-exposed fish. Jonsson said a person would have to eat 4 tons of perch to consume the equivalent of a single pill.

Researchers said more work is needed to develop better ways of removing drugs from water at treatment plants. They also said unused drugs should be brought to take-back programs where they exist, instead of being flushed down the toilet. And they called on pharmaceutical companies to work on "greener" drugs that degrade more easily.

Sandoz, one of three companies approved to sell oxazepam in the U.S., "shares society's desire to protect the environment and takes steps to minimize the environmental impact of its products over their life cycle," spokeswoman Julie Masow said in an emailed statement. She provided no details.

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Online:

Overview of the drug: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682050.html

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