Fox News, Palin cutting ties

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News Channel is parting ways with former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, ending her three-year tenure as a contributor on the network.

While Palin’s time at Fox was occasionally rocky, the network’s news executive, Bill Shine, said Friday that “we have thoroughly enjoyed our association” with her.

“We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” said Shine, Fox’s executive vice president for programming.

A person familiar with discussions between Fox and Palin described the parting as amicable, saying that Fox and Palin had discussed renewing her contract but she decided to do other things. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Palin’s lawyer in Alaska, John Tiemessen, had no immediate comment on her exit. Palin’s last appearance on Fox News was Dec. 19 on Greta Van Susteren‘s show.

Palin signed to deliver commentary on Fox in January 2010, reportedly for $ 1 million a year. It was a coup for both sides at the time; the former Alaska governor was a little more than a year removed from her attention-getting run for the vice presidency and was considered one of the leading contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination. At Fox, she had a platform on the most popular network for conservative viewers. Fox installed equipment in Palin’s Wasilla, Alaska, home to make her regular appearances easier.

But there were some indications of tension between her and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, who was quoted in a 2011 story by The Associated Press saying, “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.”

When Palin announced she would not be a candidate in 2012, she said it on a conservative radio show, which didn’t sit well with the company paying her to be a contributor. Palin took to her Facebook page late last summer to complain that Fox had cancelled her appearances one night at the GOP national convention; Fox said it was simply because the GOP had to condense its speaker schedule due to a hurricane.

Four years removed from her vice presidential candidacy, Palin’s influence had waned and she was somewhat overshadowed as a contributor at Fox by Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush‘s top political aide. Rove recently renewed his contract at Fox through the 2016 election.

With four more years of a Barack Obama administration in power, Fox recently hired former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich as a contributor.

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40 Years After Roe v. Wade, Thousands March to Oppose Abortion

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Pro-life activists made their way down Constitution Avenue toward the Supreme Court during the March for Life in Washington on Friday.

WASHINGTON — Three days after the 40th anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, tens of thousands of abortion opponents from around the country came to the National Mall on Friday for the annual March for Life rally, which culminated in a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court building.

On a gray morning when the temperature was well below freezing, the crowd pressed in close against the stage to hear more than a dozen speakers, who included Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, who recently introduced legislation to withhold financing from Planned Parenthood, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky; Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston; and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania and Republican presidential candidate.

Mr. Santorum spoke of his wife’s decision not to have an abortion after they learned that their child — their daughter Bella, now 4 — had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.

“We all know that death is never better, never better,” Mr. Santorum said. “Bella is better for us, and we are better because of Bella.”

Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said that the march was both somber and hopeful.

“We’ve lost 55 million Americans to abortion,” she said. “At the same time, I think we’re starting to win. We’re winning in the court of public opinion, we’re winning in the states with legislation.”

Though the main event officially started at noon, the day began much earlier for the participants, with groups in matching scarves engaged in excited chatter on the subway and gaggles of schoolchildren wearing name tags around their necks. Arriving on the Mall, attendees were greeted with free signs (“Defund Planned Parenthood” and “Personhood for Everyone”) and a man barking into a megaphone, “Ireland is on the brink of legalizing abortion, which is not good.”

The march came two months after the 2012 campaign season, in which social issues like abortion largely took a back seat to the focus on the economy. But the issue did come up in Congressional races in which Republican candidates made controversial statements about rape or abortion. In Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican candidate for the Senate, said in a debate that he believed that pregnancies resulting from rape were something that “God intended,” and in Illinois, Representative Joe Walsh said in a debate that abortion was never necessary to save the life of the mother because of “advances in science and technology.” Both men lost, hurt by a backlash from female voters.

Recent polls show that while a majority of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned entirely, many favor some restrictions. In a Gallup poll released this week, 52 percent of those surveyed said that abortions should be legal only under certain circumstances, while 28 percent said they should be legal under all circumstances, and 18 percent said they should be illegal under all circumstances. In a Pew poll this month, 63 percent of respondents said they did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned completely, and 29 percent said they did — views largely consistent with surveys taken over the past two decades.

“Most Americans want some restrictions on abortion,” Ms. Monahan said. “We see abortion as the human rights abuse of today.”

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who spoke via a recorded video, called on the protest group, particularly the young people, to make abortion “a relic of the past.”

“Human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on earth has the right to treat it that way,” he said.

The crowd was dotted with large banners, many bearing the names of the attendees’ home states and churches and colleges. Gary Storey, 36, stood holding a handmade sign that read “I was adopted. Thanks Mom for my life.” Next to him stood his adoptive mother, Ellen Storey, 66, who held her own handmade sign with a picture of her six children and the words “To the mothers of our four adopted children, ‘Thank You’ for their lives.”

Mr. Storey said he was grateful for the decision by his biological mother to carry through with her pregnancy. “Beats the alternative,” he joked.

Last week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America started a new Web site, and on Tuesday, its president, Cecile Richards, released a statement supporting abortion rights.

“Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” she said. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2013

A summary that appeared on the home page of NYTimes.com with an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the march. It took place on Friday, not Thursday.

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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.

Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush

Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.

“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”

The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.

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Palmdale woman accused of torturing her children

Neighbors of a Palmdale woman charged with assaulting and torturing two of her children said Thursday that they never even realized she had kids.

The siblings — a boy, 8, and girl, 7 — did not play outside and were rarely seen, said Cynthia Otero, who runs a day care center at a home opposite the house in the 39000 block of Clear View Court where Ingrid Brewer is alleged to have mistreated the youngsters.

Otero said that when she recently spotted the children getting out of a car, she thought Brewer, 50, "might be baby-sitting."

So neighbors in the suburban cul-de-sac were the more shocked when word spread that Brewer was arrested on suspicion of crimes against her children, she said. Brewer is being charged with eight felony counts, including torture, assault with a deadly weapon and cruelty to a child.

According to authorities, Brewer reported the children missing Jan. 15, prompting a search by deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Palmdale Station. The youngsters were found hours later hiding under a blanket near a parked car on a street close to their home. They were without winter clothes in 20-degree weather, authorities said.

Sgt. Brian Hudson, a spokesman for the sheriff's Special Victims Bureau, said the children told investigators they ran away because Brewer deprived them of food, locked them in separate bedrooms when she went to work each day, bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties and beat them with electrical cords and a hammer. The youngsters also said that when they were locked in the bedrooms and needed to use the bathroom, they instead had to use wastebaskets, Hudson said.

They fled because "they were tired of being tied up and beaten," Hudson said.

Hudson said both children had injuries consistent with the alleged abuse, including marks on their wrists indicating they had been restrained and "numerous bruising and abrasions over their bodies." They told investigators the mistreatment had been happening since Halloween.

Neighbors interviewed by authorities said they had never noticed anything suspicious but "hardly ever saw the two children," Hudson said. Otero and another neighbor said Brewer did not make friends on the block.

Otero said Brewer was "unfriendly" and typically ignored verbal greetings and waves.

According to sheriff's officials, Brewer, a certified nursing assistant who works in Los Angeles and has adult children, adopted the young siblings about a year ago from foster care. They were home schooled.

Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services, said his agency was legally prohibited from disclosing any case-specific information about past or present clients. But in a written statement, the agency's director, Philip Browning, called the report disturbing.

"While we cannot confirm or deny whether this family is under our supervision, I am personally looking into this situation to determine what role, if any, our department had in these children's lives," Browning said.

Sheriff's officials said Thursday that the children were "doing great" despite their injuries.

Otero lamented that they had been made to suffer.

"It's just so sad," said the neighbor, who has a 5-year-old daughter and 8-year-old twins. "I wish they would have knocked on my door. I would have helped them."

Brewer is in the custody of the Sheriff's Department, with bail set at $2 million. She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday, Hudson said.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

Times staff writer Kate Mather contributed to this report.

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The Truth About Weight-Loss Pills and Energy Drinks, for Knowledge and Profit

Between medications and food, there’s a huge swath of edible products that don’t need approval from the Food and Drug Administration, including energy drinks, vitamins, weight-loss pills, and other supplements. And while the companies that make those goods test their products for safety, they don’t usually offer test results that vouch for efficacy or mention the less savory ingredients that often lurk inside their pills and potions. Which leaves most of us wandering the aisles of GNC wondering if everything on the shelves is safe, or has a fraction of the miraculous powers claimed.

To determine whether that jug of protein power is really worth the cash, Neil Thanedar just launched LabDoor. LabDoor tests a wide variety of energy-granting, and muscle-building concoctions and grades them on safety, clinical efficacy, and the presence of potentially unhealthy ingredients including heavy metals, pesticides, and other unsavory trace elements. Thanedar dreamed up the idea for the startup when, while running a product-testing lab, his friends would regularly ask his professional chemist’s opinion on the latest energy drink, muscle-building concoction or weight loss pill.

LabDoor opened up its service to the public this week, starting with testing the most popular energy drinks and vitamins on the market, including Red Bull, Five Hour Energy , One-A-Day and Centrum vitamins among others. “Next we’ll test creatine powders, sleep aides, and herbal supplements,” Thanedar says. “Eventually we want to add cosmetics and over-the-counter medications, so you can find out if there’s really a (quality) difference between a generic painkiller and Tylenol.” For example, what exactly is that carnuba wax doing in your generic ibuprofen? “If you look at painkillers and muscle gain supplements and powders, most manufacturers tell you what’s in them,” says Thanedar. “But even if you read the label, you still wouldn’t understand what those ingredients do.”

To keep results rooted in the real-world, LabDoor goes out and buys off-the-shelf samples of products and takes them back to their Indianapolis, Indiana lab for testing. Each product gets a grade (from A to F) based on the lab results, and clinical studies on the main ingredients from the National Institute of Health and other medical research groups.

Some of the results are already in. LabDoor gives the energy shot Redline Power Rush 7hr Energy a D+ grade because it has an enormously high level of caffeine per ounce. “A shot is 11 times more potent per ounce than a Red Bull,” Thanedar says. “If you don’t know that, you could end up taking two or three shots per day without realizing how much caffeine you’re consuming.” The popular cold fighter Airborne grabbed a C+ because studies have shown it’s not clinically effective, though the ingredients are safe according to lab tests. Regular Redbull gets an overall B for safety and efficacy.

LabDoor has a website and iOS app, with plans to launch an Android app as the database of products grows. Thanedar is keeping the overall grade, clinical efficacy, and ingredient safety information free for anyone to view, but is working on a paid subscription service that will show an image of the product’s label and provide a more detailed breakdown of the ingredients in it and their effects.

The goal, Thanedar says, is to shine a light on all those questionable ingredients and eventually encourage manufacturers to be more transparent. Maybe the next time you and your biceps are shopping for protein powder, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting.

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Voice of Te’o prankster? Couric plays voicemails

NEW YORK (AP) — The person Manti Te’o says was pretending to be his online girlfriend told the Notre Dame linebacker “I love you” in voicemails that were played during his interview with Katie Couric.

Taped earlier this week and broadcast Thursday, the hour-long talk show featured three voicemails that Te‘o claims were left for him last year. Te’o said they were from the person he believed to be Lennay Kekua, a woman he had fallen for online but never met face-to-face.

After the first message was played, Te’o said: “It sounds like a girl, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Couric responded.

The interview was the All-American’s first on camera since his tale of inspired play after the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend on the same day in September unraveled as a bizarre hoax in an expose by Deadspin.com on Jan. 16.

Te’o's parents appeared with him for part of the interview and backed up his claim that he wasn’t involved in the fabrication, saying they, too, had spoken on the phone with a person they believed to be Kekua.

Couric addressed speculation that the tale was concocted by Te’o as a way to cover up his sexual orientation. Asked if he were gay, Te’o said “no” with a laugh. “Far from it. Faaaar from that.”

He also said he was “scared” and “didn’t know what to do” after receiving a call on Dec. 6 — two days before the Heisman Trophy presentation — from a person who claimed to be his “dead” girlfriend.

The first voicemail, he said, was from what was supposed to be Kekua’s first day of chemotherapy for leukemia.

“Hi, I am just letting you know I got here and I’m getting ready for my first session and, um, just want to call you to keep you posted. I miss you. I love you. Bye,” the person said.

In the second voicemail, the person was apparently upset by someone else answering Te’o's phone.

The third voicemail was left on Sept. 11, according to Te’o, the day he believed Kekua was released from the hospital and the day before she “died.”

“Hey babe, I’m just calling to say goodnight,” the person on the voicemail said. “I love you. I know that you’re probably doing homework or you’re with the boys. … But I just wanted to say I love you and goodnight and I’ll be ok tonight. I’ll do my best. Um, yeah, so get your rest and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I love you so much, hon. Sweet dreams.”

Couric suggested the person who left those messages might have been Ronaiah Tuisasosopo, a 22-year-old man from California, who Te’o said has apologized to him for pulling the hoax.

“Do you think that could have been a man on the other end of the phone?” she asked.

“Well, it didn’t sound like a man,” Te’o said. “It sounded like a woman. If he somehow made that voice, that’s incredible. That’s an incredible talent to do that. Especially every single day.”

Tuiasosopo has not spoken publicly since news of the hoax broke. The Associated Press has learned that a home in California where Te’o sent flowers to the Kekua family was once a residence of Tuiasosopo and has been in his family for decades.

Also on Thursday, the woman whose pictures were used in fake online accounts for Kekua said Tuiasosopo confessed to her in a 45-minute phone conversation as the scheme unraveled.

Diane O’Meara spoke with The Associated Press in a telephone interview. She said Tuiasosopo told her he’d been “stalking” her Facebook profile for five years and stealing photos.

O’Meara’s attorney, Jim Artiano, said they had not decided on whether to take any legal action.

The 23-year-old O’Meara, of Long Beach, Calif., said she knew Tuiasosopo from high school and he contacted her through Facebook on Dec. 16. She said that, over the next three weeks, Tuiasosopo got in touch with her several times, attempting to get photos and video of O’Meara. She said he made up a story about wanting them to help cheer up a cousin who was injured in a car crash.

O’Meara learned her identity had been stolen on Jan. 13 when she was contacted by Deadspin.com.

The next day she got in touch with Tuiasosopo.

“When I contacted Ronaiah I got a very bizarre vibe from him, he became very nervous, he wasn’t asking the questions I expected. He was asking ‘Who contacted you? What did they say?’” O’Meara said.

Later that day, he confessed, O’Meara said. She said she asked Tuiasosopo why he didn’t simply stop the hoax.

“He told me he wanted to end the relationship,” O’Meara said. “He said he wanted to stop the relationship between Lennay and Manti, but Manti didn’t want Lennay to break up with him … He said he tried to stop the game many times.”

When news of the hoax broke a few days later, O’Meara said she received a text from Tuiasosopo asking her to call him as soon as possible. O’Meara said she didn’t respond.

___

Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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The New Old Age Blog: Time to Recognize Mild Cognitive Disorder?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published and periodically updated by the American Psychiatric Association, is one of those documents few laypeople ever read, but many of us are affected by.

It can make it easier or harder to get an insurance company or Medicare to cover treatments, for example. It factors into a variety of legal and governmental decisions.

And on a personal basis, a psychiatric diagnosis may be welcome (having a name and a treatment plan for what’s bothering us can be comforting) or not (are we really suffering from a mental disorder if we seem depressed after a family member dies?).

That last question refers to a change in the new DSM5, to be published in May, that has generated considerable controversy and that I discussed in an earlier post: the removal of the “bereavement exclusion,” once part of the diagnosis of major depressive disorder.

Another element of the revised D.S.M. could also affect readers: It will include something called mild neurocognitive disorder. The task force revising the manual wanted to align psychiatry with the rest of medicine, which has already begun to distinguish between levels of impairment, said its chairman, Dr. David J. Kupfer, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist.

True enough, as we have reported before. Neurologists call it mild cognitive impairment, a stage where cognitive decline becomes noticeable enough to affect daily functioning, yet people can still live independently and have not progressed to dementia.

In fact, a large proportion of people with mild cognitive problems never will develop dementia — but doctors and researchers cannot yet determine who will and who won’t. Biomarkers that could identify the biological brain changes that presage dementia are still years away.

Will it be helpful, then, for health professionals using the DSM5 — most of them not psychiatrists, but primary care doctors — to begin diagnosing mild neurocognitive disorder? Particularly as there is no treatment that can reverse it or reliably slow its progression, if it would progress?

Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and a member of the working group that developed the new DSM5 criteria, said he thought the newly recognized disorder would be useful. “The predementia phase is becoming increasingly important,” he told me in an interview.

Counseling could help people compensate for the memory loss and other deficits they are experiencing, for example. With a D.S.M.-recognized diagnosis, those approaches are more likely to be covered by insurers.

Besides, “one argument against Alzheimer’s therapies is that we wait too late, when there’s too much damage to the central nervous system to repair,” Dr. Petersen said, referring to several recent disappointing drug trials. In the future, with earlier diagnoses, “you may be able to intervene, stop the process and forestall the dementia.”

But as we have seen with screening tests for other diseases, early detection does not always lead to better health or longer lives. It can, however, lead to unnecessary treatments and procedures involving risks of their own. Could that happen with mild neurocognitive disorder?

“It will lead to wild overdiagnosis,” predicted Allen Frances, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke and the chairman of the task force that developed the previous D.S.M. edition. Indeed, about a quarter of people initially diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment are later determined to be normal, a prominent researcher told my colleague Judith Graham last year.

“People will get unnecessary tests and start getting weird treatments that have no proven efficacy,” said Dr. Frances, who has criticized a number of DSM5 changes. “They’re going to worry like crazy about being demented.”

Dr. Petersen agreed that it was a legitimate concern, but “by and large, we’re becoming better at distinguishing between the normal cognitive effects of aging and disease.” (The American Psychiatric Association will publish a specialized D.S.M. for primary care physicians, Dr. Kupfer pointed out, to help guide them through diagnoses.)

It is hard for patients and families to know how to react when experts disagree. But keep in mind that contemporary health care aims for what is called shared decision-making. That means patients and professionals discuss options and weigh the risks and benefits of treatments and procedures, their likely outcomes, patients’ preferences, and come to agreement on how to proceed. This essay in the New England Journal of Medicine calls shared decision-making “the pinnacle of patient-centered care.”

So when Dr. Frances refers to the DSM5 as “a guide, not a bible,” and urges skepticism about some of its diagnoses, he is advocating an approach that patients and families should probably bring to any medical decision.

Seeking further information, asking questions, assessing options — those are reasonable responses if, a few weeks after a loved one’s death, a doctor says you may have major depression. Or if she thinks your memory loss could mean mild neurocognitive disorder.

“The shorter the evaluation, the less the person knows you, the less he or she can explain and justify the diagnosis, the more tests and treatments that will result, the more a person should be cautious and get a second opinion,” Dr. Frances said.

Whatever the DSM5 says, it’s hard to argue with that.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Stocks Push Higher

Stock climbed in New York on Friday, buoyed by rosy earnings from Procter & Gamble amid a backdrop of sturdy corporate results.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index climbed 0.3 percent in early trading. The S.&P. 500 was poised for an eighth day of gains, its longest winning streak in eight years. The Dow Jones industrial average added 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq rose 0.3 percent.

The equity market was also boosted by agreement in Washington to extend the government’s borrowing power through mid-May, encouraging signs of recovery in the global economy, solid corporate earnings, and seasonal inflows into stocks.

Those factors helped the S.&P. 500 rally for a seventh day on Thursday to a five-year peak. Still, the index struggled to climb convincingly above 1,500, a level it surpassed briefly Thursday for the first time since December 2007.

“We are seeing a very broad-based rally, and the ingredients are still in place” for gains to continue, said Steve Goldman, principal at Goldman Management in Short Hills, N.J. “This is the lift-off phase and it’s still significant.”

Procter & Gamble, the world’s top household products maker, said quarterly profit soared past expectations and raised its sales and earnings outlook for the fiscal year. Shares were up 2.1 percent.

Pointing to a rotation out of bonds, 30-year Treasury bonds traded more than a point lower in price on Friday, with yields touching session highs at 3.10 percent.

“You have had more confidence from fund managers to provide more allocations to equity markets,” which looked more attractive than bonds or cash, said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management.

Recent company earnings have been encouraging. Thomson Reuters data through early Thursday showed that of the 133 S.&P. 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 66.9 percent exceeded expectations, more than the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

German business morale improved for a third consecutive month in January to its highest in more than half a year, but Britain’s economy shrank 0.3 percent at the end of 2012, pushing it perilously close to slipping into recession for a third time since 2008.

European stock markets were up moderately. The DAX in Germany gained 1.3 percent and the CAC 40 in France added 0.6 percent.

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Initial jobless claims drop again, hit new five-year low

WASHINGTON -- Initial jobless claims fell again last week, to 330,000, a fresh five-year low, as the labor market continued a strong start to 2013.

There were 5,000 fewer people who filed for first-time unemployment benefits in the week ending Saturday than in the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. The last time there were fewer initial jobless claims was exactly five years ago, when 318,000 filed for benefits.

The drop last week was below analysts' estimates of 355,000 and could reflect the complexities of seasonal adjustments after the holidays and at the start of a new quarter.

The four-week average, a less volatile gauge, also dropped last week, to 351,750, down from the previous week's 360,000.

Still, the recent downturn bodes well for job growth in January, with the government scheduled to announce those figures next week. The economy added 155,000 net new jobs in December, while the unemployment rate remained at 7.8%.

Initial jobless claims averaged 359,000 in December. So far this month, they are averaging 347,000.

Economists say that claims below 350,000 a week are consistent with strong job growth.

ALSO:

IMF sees global growth improving in 2013

California unions grow, bucking U.S. trend

Apple shares tumble after relatively unimpressive earnings report

Follow Jim Puzzanghera on Twitter and Google+.

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Lookin' Hot in the Cold: Technical Outerwear for Winter

Winter outerwear has come a long way from the clammy straight-jackets your mom would wrap around you every time you wanted to go outside.

Every year, we see jackets, shells, bibs and pants that are more breathable, lighter, stretchier, and just plain better-looking than last year's crop.

We sifted through the countless options on the racks and selected a dozen or so favorite items, then took the whole pile of gear with us to Squaw Valley in California's Lake Tahoe region. We worked them over on the slopes for three days, then took the lot deeper into to the Sierras for another week. We also tried to pick something for everyone -- from Gore-Tex jeans (pre-distressed!) to a snow shell that costs as much as a mortgage payment, and even a down jacket hand-stuffed by followers of a 16th-century pacifist. It's going to be a weird, Wired winter.

The Phenomenon jacket from Spyder is pretty much what would happen if you said, "Screw the cost, let's make a jacket with the best materials we can find." The list of what went into the $1,200 garment looks like the textile version of the Robb Report.

The waterproof membrane is made of Schoeller c-change, which opens its pores to vent heat and moisture when the interior warms up. Custom-embossed stretch polyester lines the interior. Primaloft One insulation lines the body and sleeves. And the outer shell is composed of DWR-treated stretch polyester material with wool accents. Premium!

It was warm, waterproof and comfortable on the slopes, with no movement restricted, plenty of waterproof zip pockets and ventilation, and so many features, I actually lost track of everything that was special about it while I was showing it off to people. To top it all off, the jacket looks like money -- the slim cut and wool accents made it fit right in over a suit and tie on the way to office Christmas parties. -- Billy Brown

WIRED Fantastic material choices all around. Tough waterproof outer with great stretch. Removable hood and snow skirt. Gusseted cuffs are adjustable. Plays dress-up better than Eliza Doolittle.

TIRED I've owned cheaper cars.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

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