Coroner releases new report on Natalie Wood death

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A newly released report shows coroner's officials amended Natalie Wood's death certificate based on unanswered questions about bruises on her upper body but were lacking several pieces of evidence and could only conclude that she drowned under undetermined circumstances more than 30 years ago.

Los Angeles County coroner's officials state in an 10-page addendum to Wood's autopsy report that some of the bruises may have occurred before she went into the water and drowned, but that could not be definitively determined.

The report reveals new details about a renewed investigative interest in Wood's case, but it does not answer many of lingering questions about the actress' death and a Sheriff's Department spokesman said it has not changed the ongoing status of the case.

Officials reviewed Wood's case after sheriff's investigators in late 2011 renewed their inquiry into her November 1981 drowning. Wood's death certificate was amended last year to change her cause of death from drowning to "drowning and other undetermined factors" and the report released Monday details the reasons for the alteration.

The certificate was also amended to state that the circumstances of how the Oscar-nominated actress ended up in the water were "not clearly established."

Wood was on a yacht off Catalina Island with husband Robert Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken on Thanksgiving weekend in 1981 before somehow ending up in the water. A dinghy that was attached to the boat was found along the island's shoreline, but investigators could not locate it to review it last year.

Several of the original coroner's investigators who worked on the case were re-interviewed, and officials attempted to test some items taken during the investigation into Wood's death and an autopsy, but they could not be located.

Wood's autopsy found bruises on both of her arms, a small scratch on her neck and abrasions described as superficial on her forehead, left brow and cheek.

"The location of the bruises, the multiplicity of the bruises, lack of head trauma, or facial bruising support bruising having occurred prior to entry in the water," the report states. "Since there are unanswered questions and limited additional evidence available for evaluation, it is opined by this Medical Examiner that the manner of death should be left as undetermined," Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran wrote in the report completed in June.

Officials also considered that Wood wasn't wearing a life jacket and had no history of suicide and didn't leave a note in amending its report and Wood's death certificate.

The report was released Monday after sheriff's officials released a security hold.

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the agency has known about the findings in the newly released autopsy report for several months and it does not change the status of the investigation, which remains open. He said Wagner is not considered a suspect in Wood's death.

Wood was nominated for three Academy Awards during her lifetime. Her death stunned the world and has remained one of Hollywood's most enduring mysteries. The original detective on the case, Wagner, Walken have all said they considered her death an accident.

Conflicting versions of what happened on the yacht shared by Wood, her actor-husband Robert Wagner and their friend, actor Christopher Walken, have contributed to the mystery of how the actress died.

The newly released report states there are conflicting statements about when the boat's occupants discovered Wood was missing. The report estimates her time of death was around midnight, and she was reported missing at 1:30 a.m.

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Recipes for Health: Skillet Beet and Farro Salad

“Comforting” isn’t a word I usually associate with salads, but this week I put together five grain salads that fit that bill. Over the years I have developed a number of delicious whole grain salads that combine various grains with vegetables, herbs and often nuts, tossed in a tangy dressing. I have also married many a grain and vegetable in a pilaf. I decided to bring both concepts together in hearty salads that I’m calling “skillet salads;” each one is heated through in a skillet just before serving.

You can get ahead on all of these by cooking the grains or noodles ahead. Whole grains freeze well and keep in the refrigerator for three days. Then it’s just a question of preparing vegetables, herbs and dressing. Even if you don’t cook the grains ahead you can prepare the other ingredients while they’re simmering.

I make a meal of these at lunch, and serve smaller portions as sides or starters for dinner. If you want to serve the warm, tangy grains on a bed of salad greens I recommend spinach or sturdy greens like frisée or dandelion greens that will stand up to the heat of the salad and won’t wilt beyond recognition when topped with something warm.

Skillet Beet and Farro Salad

This hearty winter salad can be a meal or a side dish, and warming it in the skillet makes it particularly comforting. Cook your farro until you see that the grains have begun to splay so they won’t be too chewy and can absorb the dressing properly.

For the Salad:

2 medium or 3 small beets, roasted

1 cup farro, soaked for 1 hour in 1 quart water

Salt to taste

1 ounce lightly toasted pistachios (scant 1/4 cup)

1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, tarragon, marjoram, chives, mint

Freshly ground pepper

For the Dressing:

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

Salt to taste

1 small garlic clove, minced or pureéd

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons walnut oil

Crumbled feta for garnish (optional)

1. Roast the beets and meanwhile cook the farro. Place in a medium saucepan with the soaking water and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 45 minutes to an hour, until the grains have begun to splay. Turn off the heat and allow to sit for 15 minutes or longer in the water. Drain through a strainer set over a bowl.

2. While the farro is cooking, make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the vinegars, salt, garlic, and mustard. Whisk in the oils. Pour into a wide frying pan or saucepan and add to the farro, along with a couple of tablespoons of the farro cooking water. Peel and dice the beets and add, along with the herbs and pistachios. Stir over medium heat until heated through and serve, with a little feta sprinkled over the top if you wish.

Yield: Serves 6

Advance preparation: The cooked farro and the roasted beats will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 304 calories; 19 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 5 grams polyunsaturated fat; 11 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 27 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 61 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 6 grams protein

Note: If you want to reduce the fat and calories in this dish, substitute buttermilk for some of the oil. Be careful not to allow the dressing to come to a boil when you heat it in the pan or the buttermilk will curdle.

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook: With U.P.S. Deal, European Antitrust Regulators Block Another Big Merger

European antitrust regulators proved again on Monday that they were more than willing to flex their considerable muscle.

U.P.S.‘s $6.9 billion bid for TNT Express is the latest merger blocked by the European Union, and certainly the most prominent since the proposed tie-up of NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse last year. In the case of U.P.S., European regulators argued that proposed asset sales, including airline operations, would not be enough to appease their concerns over the state of competitiveness in package delivery.

“We are extremely disappointed with the European Commission’s position,” the chief executive of U.P.S., D. Scott Davis, said in a statement. “We proposed significant and tangible remedies designed to address the European Commission’s concerns with the transaction.”

Other antitrust regulators have blocked mergers on antitrust grounds. For example, the Justice Department opposed AT&T‘s proposed $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA.

But the European Commission, led by Joaquín Almunia, has displayed an aggressive approach that has rankled some deal makers.

Mr. Almunia has acknowledged those concerns, even as he has sought to rebut them. In a speech delivered in November, the commissioner argued that he was not trying to prevent European companies from growing. But he said he was trying to preserve a competitive market place.

“It is simply not true that the commission is putting the brakes on the legitimate efforts of Europe’s firms to scale up,” he said. “What we must avoid are attempts to shield Europe’s companies from competition, in particular during this harsh period for the economy. In this game, only a few of them will benefit, and the majority will lose.”

Among Mr. Almunia’s arguments was that the European Commission was less concerned about high levels of market share than what mergers might do to prices.

In the case of the NYSE Euronext merger, regulators demanded that the two exchange operators sell off significant parts of their businesses. Chief among the European Union’s concerns were the strong position that the two companies would have in the market for derivatives traded on exchanges, leading to a call for the sale of either NYSE Euronext’s Liffe platform or Deutsche Börse’s Eurex unit.

Both companies protested, arguing that the European Union’s view of the market was too limited and did not take into account the broader market for derivatives traded off exchanges. The market operators eventually decided to call off their deal, believing that there was little hope for reversing regulators’ opinion.

Other deals have passed review, but some have required significant changes. In approving Universal Music Group’s takeover of EMI Music last year, for example, European regulators required the sale of a third of EMI’s assets. The decision has led to the auction of music labels like Parlaphone, the home to groups like Coldplay and David Guetta.

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As China's Economy Revives, So Do Fears of Inflation

GUANGZHOU — After a sharp economic slowdown through much of last year, China’s economy is growing again — but not at its previous double-digit pace, and with signs that inflation might become a problem again.

Shops have been crowded this weekend, construction sites show renewed activity and factories are hiring as exports and domestic demand recover — trends all underlined by government data released over the past several days.

Further data to be released Friday and Saturday — including monthly, quarterly and annual figures for industrial production, fixed-asset investment, retail sales and overall economic output — are also expected to show that the Chinese economy, the world’s second-largest, after that of the United States, is expanding once again.

Many shopkeepers are noticing an increase in retail sales. Among them is Liu Licai, a merchant in southern China who sells curtains and other household goods. Although some industries, like auto manufacturing, still suffer from bloated inventories, retailers like Ms. Liu are finding their shelves too empty and are starting to place more orders with suppliers, keeping factories busy.

“Business has gone up by more than 10 percent in the last several months,” Ms. Liu said during a brief lull on an otherwise busy day.

Yet the pace of China’s expansion may not be fast enough to do much for the rest of the world. China’s imports are growing less than half as fast as its exports, making it hard for China to become the locomotive to pull the global economy out of its half-decade funk. And overall growth is not rebounding to previous levels.

Until last year, the Chinese government set as a goal 8 percent annual growth and the economy frequently delivered several percentage points more than that. Then last March, the government pared the goal to 7.5 percent, and actual growth seems likely to be little higher.

“The potential growth rate of the economy has come down,” Stephen Green, a China economist in the Hong Kong offices of Standard Chartered, said Sunday. “You don’t have to be in the double digits to get inflation.”

Prices rose faster in December, according to government data released Friday. Consumer prices rose 2.5 percent from the level of a year earlier, their fastest pace since May.

Economists inside and outside China say the true rate of inflation is as much as double the official rate, because of methodological problems in the way China calculates inflation.

Mr. Green and other Western economists warned Friday and over the weekend that officially measured inflation at the consumer level could reach 5 percent by the fourth quarter and lead to an increase in interest rates by China’s central bank.

Producer prices are still declining, but at a slower pace. They were down 1.9 percent in December from a year earlier, the smallest drop since last May.

Early in an economic recovery, rising prices tend to be a sign that the economy may not have much unused capacity that can be brought into production quickly. Yet Wen Senrong, the sales manager of the Flying Gift Bag store in Guangzhou, said that she was already seeing prices rise, with increases for rent, materials and labor.

“Our lease was renewed recently and our rent went up by a double-digit percentage — I feel like I am working for the landlord,” she said.

Tang Chun, the owner of a factory that makes picture frames in Guangzhou, complained of rising costs for the full range of supplies that she buys, including aluminum, acrylic and glass. But department store buyers lack the confidence to accept higher prices, fearing that they will not be able to pass them on to retail customers, she said.

“Every possible cost is going up, including raw material costs and my rent, but I can’t raise prices; it’s all coming out of my profit margins,” Ms. Tang said.

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Women pry open door to video game industry's boys' club

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When video game developer Brenda Brathwaite Romero started her career in the 1980s, she could count the number of female developers in the industry on one hand.

Today, many "Women in Games" roundtables she attends are filled to capacity with new faces. The 46-year-old, sometimes referred to as the longest-serving woman in the video game arena, jokes that these days one can even encounter long lines for the ladies' room at the Game Developers Conference, one of the industry's largest gatherings.

"Over the years, greatly helped by the social and mobile boom, there have been many, many women coming into game development," Brathwaite Romero said.

With women comprising just over 1 in 10 in the video game workforce, the industry has a reputation for being among the most testosterone-fueled of the traditionally male-dominated technology sector. But thanks to the mobile revolution, industry executives say that's changing.

With smartphones going mainstream and delivering gaming to a new, broader population, publishers and developers are keen to tap an audience beyond young males. And, not surprisingly, as women have explored a growing range of mobile games on Facebook or other platforms, they have discovered the allure of working in the industry.

The number of women hired by game companies has tripled since 2009, according to recruiting firm VonChurch, based on over 350 placements it has made in digital gaming firms like CrowdStar and GREE.

In 1989, when veteran games designer Sheri Graner Ray started out, women made up less than 3 percent of the workforce. That's now up to 11 percent.

"In 20 years, it's not a lot of growth," said Graner Ray, who has worked at leading companies like Electronic Arts and Sony Online Entertainment. But she agrees that number will rise as more women assert themselves in the industry, educational programs take hold, and mobile games continue to flourish.

Some of the first engineers at mobile games maker Pocket Gems were women, and though that wasn't intentional when the company was founded in 2009, it proved instrumental to success, said Chief Executive Ben Liu.

Pocket Gems, best known as a maker of family-friendly mobile games like its popular "Tap" series, recently launched "Campus Life", where players can build and run a college sorority, to target a female audience.

"I've worked at other, different game companies and I've been on floors where it's only guys," Liu said. "Our aspiration is to create games that are mass market and accessible to all people, and having that representative base of employees helps us keep true to that."

DEBAUCHERY 'WAY, WAY DOWN'

Gaming still conjures up images of young men glued to flickering screens for hours on end, fueled by energy drinks and waging online battles unto death in such "shooters" as "Call of Duty" or tactical war games like "Starcraft."

But the advent of affordable smartphones and tablets and the burgeoning world of social media has drawn in a whole new world of gamers. Individuals who had never been tempted to plunk down hundreds of dollars to buy a gaming console found themselves enticed by a whole new genre of games.

These days, gaming might just as easily mean launching attacks on pigs in "Angry Birds" or slicing produce with swiping motions in "Fruit Ninja" -- games that have mass appeal.

"Mobile is still the Wild West and it's founded on this idea of inclusion, because everyone has these mobile devices and everyone wants to play," said game content designer Elizabeth Sampat, who works at social game company Storm8.

That's partly why more than half of America's social and mobile gamers are women, according to research firm EEDAR, while they comprise just 30 percent of those who play hard-core violent games like Microsoft's "Halo 4" on game consoles.

Erin McCarty, 24, grew up playing such fare. She went to engineering school at Carnegie Mellon University, with a goal toward working in the video game industry.

Today she's the only female engineer in a seven-member team crafting multiplayer-shooter game "Realm of the Mad God" at social and mobile game company Kabam that targets male gamers.

But far from feeling different, McCarty considers herself just another coder at Kabam, where women make up just a fifth of the payroll.

"I'm around guys a lot and they are always people that I'm happy to work with," McCarty said.

Brathwaite Romero recalls how her male coworkers on the team that created the mature-rated "Playboy: The Mansion" game with nude characters that was published in 2005, were wholly professional.

"I've fortunately not experienced the level of misogyny that I've heard other people experience," Brathwaite Romero said.

"Some of the debauchery that was evident in the early days of the industry, like meetings at strip clubs, having strippers at your party, that sort of stuff has gone down way, way down from where it used to be."

DANCING GIRLS AND SEXISM

That's not to say the industry doesn't have a ways to go.

First, there's a 27 percent gap in average incomes, with women making $68,062 versus men at $86,418, according to Game Developer Magazine's 2011 annual salary survey.

Women in the game industry are underrepresented in software engineering and top-level management, reflecting a similar trend in the broader technology sector, industry executives say.

VonChurch found engineering positions were skewed more toward men in their placements since 2009. Female engineers made up 21 percent from the pool of women it placed, while over half of the men it placed were hired in engineering positions.

Then there are the occasional throwbacks to the male-dominated 1980s and 1990s. Gameloft created a stir a few weeks ago after a holiday party at its Montreal studio ran amok.

The studio, which makes games for devices like Apple Inc's iPhone, hired a burlesque dance troupe that featured scantily clad women in body paint. By the end of the evening, several dancers began to discard their bathing suits, according to a person with knowledge of the event, who asked not be named.

The dancers were expelled from the event "as soon as their misconduct was brought to light," Gameloft said in a statement.

Over a month ago, a tweet from a male gaming professional -- "Why are there so few women in gaming?" -- ignited a top-trending Twitter conversation under the #1reasonwhy hashtag, that quickly morphed into a now infamous discussion of discrimination and sexism in the workplace.

"I was told I'd be remembered not on my own merits, but by who I was or was assumed to be sleeping with," Seattle-based pen and paper game designer Lillian Cohen-Moore, who goes by @lilyorit, tweeted.

Gaming conventions can bring out the worst in attendees, said several women gaming professionals. While not a pure work environment, they are a forum for professionals from across the industry to convene to talk shop and do business.

Cohen-Moore, 28, said she was appalled to see men at the annual Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle groping women working as costumed characters when she worked there last year.

"I've been leery about transitioning into video games because the culture over there is a lot more blatant and active in how many sex trolls they have," she said.

Brathwaite Romero, who is married to industry legend and "Doom" creator John Romero, also recounts a jarring instance at last summer's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry's biggest gathering.

"I was discussing a potential contract with somebody and the guy right next to me is talking about -- to quote him -- 'the tits and ass' on this particular model. And he's going on and on and on about this," she said. "This is wrong."

Sampat said in some workplaces, though not at her current employer Storm8, women are often expected to tolerate off-color jokes - of which they're often the target.

Before stepping into an interview at an online game company a couple of years ago, Sampat said a female human resources employee told her: "It's my job to make sure that all potential candidates can, you know, take a joke."

"I couldn't help but wonder if she asked the white male programmer who came in before me whether he could take a joke too," Sampat said.

Women outside the United States find similar challenges. Alisa Chumachenko, CEO and founder of Game Insight, a fast-growing mobile and social company in Russia, thinks having more women in senior and more diverse roles will help. Her company of 450 employees has three other women in high-level positions, but she wishes she knew more women in gaming.

"We need to really look at the women who have become movers and shakers in this industry," the veteran games designer Graner Ray said, "and claim them and hold them up and say: 'Here's where we are, here's what we can do. Pay attention to us.'"

(Editing by Edwin Chan and Leslie Adler)

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Oscar snubs leave Globes with also-ran nominees

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Hollywood's junior prom for film honors features quite a different cast than the senior prom at next month's Academy Awards.

Sunday night's Golden Globes are in a rare place this season, coming after the Oscar nominations, which were announced earlier than usual and threw out some shockers that have left the Globes show a little less relevant.

Key Globe contenders lined up largely as expected, with Steven Spielberg's Civil War saga "Lincoln" leading with seven nominations and two CIA thrillers — Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" and Ben Affleck's "Argo" — also doing well.

All three films earned Globe nominations for best drama and director. Yet while "Lincoln," ''Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" grabbed best-picture slots at Thursday's Oscar nominations, Bigelow and Affleck were snubbed for directing honors after a season that had seen them in the running for almost every other major award.

The Globe and Oscar directing fields typically match up closely. This time, though, only Spielberg and "Life of Pi" director Ang Lee have nominations for both. Along with Spielberg, Lee, Bigelow and Affleck, Quentin Tarantino is nominated for directing at the Globes. At the Oscars, it's Spielberg, Lee, "Silver Linings Playbook" director David O. Russell and two surprise picks: veteran Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke for "Amour" and first-time director Benh Zeitlin for "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

That forces some top-name filmmakers to put on brave faces for the Globes. And while a Globe might be a nice consolation prize, it could be a little awkward if Affleck, Bigelow or Tarantino won Sunday and had to make a cheery acceptance speech knowing they don't have seats at the grown-ups table for the Feb. 24 Oscars.

That could happen. While "Lincoln" has the most nominations, it's a purely American story that may not have as much appeal to Globe voters — about 90 reporters belonging to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association who cover entertainment for overseas outlets.

The Bigelow and Affleck films center on Americans, too, but they are international tales — "Zero Dark Thirty" chronicling the manhunt for Osama bin Laden and "Argo" recounting the rescue of six U.S. embassy workers trapped in Iran amid the 1979 hostage crisis.

Globe voters might want to make right on a snub to Bigelow three years ago, when they gave their best-drama and directing prize to ex-husband James Cameron's sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar" over her Iraq war tale "The Hurt Locker."

Bigelow made history a month later, becoming the first woman to win the directing Oscar for "The Hurt Locker," which also won best picture.

Globe voters like to be trend-setters, but they missed the boat on that one. Might they feel enough chagrin to hand Bigelow the directing trophy this time?

Spielberg already has won two best-director Globes, so that might be a further inducement for the foreign-press members to favor someone else this time.

Their votes were locked in before the Oscar nominations came out. Globe balloting closed Wednesday, the day before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its awards lineup.

The Globes feature two best-picture categories — one for drama and one for musical or comedy. Most of the Globe contenders also earned Oscar best-picture nominations, including all of the drama picks: "Argo," ''Lincoln," ''Life of Pi," ''Django Unchained" and "Zero Dark Thirty."

Yet only two of the Globe musical or comedy nominees — "Les Miserables" and "Silver Linings Playbook" — are in the running at the Oscars. That's not unusual, though, since Oscar voters tend to overlook comedy. The other Globe nominees for musical or comedy are "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," ''Moonrise Kingdom" and "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen."

Acting contenders include Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones for "Lincoln"; Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway for "Les Miserables"; Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman for "The Master"; Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence for "Silver Linings Playbook"; Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz for "Django Unchained"; Alan Arkin for "Argo"; and Jessica Chastain for "Zero Dark Thirty."

Globe acting recipients usually are a good sneak peek for who will win at the Oscars. All four of last season's Oscar winners — Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady," Jean Dujardin for "The Artist," Octavia Spencer for "The Help" and Christopher Plummer for "Beginners" — took home a Globe first.

Jodie Foster will receive the Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the 70th Globes ceremony, airing live from 8-11 p.m. EST on NBC.

There will be a friendly rivalry between the hosts of the Globe ceremony, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. The co-stars of the 2008 big-screen comedy "Baby Mama" both are nominated for best actress in a TV comedy or musical series, Fey for "30 Rock" and Poehler for "Parks and Recreation."

The Globes present 14 film awards and 11 television prizes.

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City Room: Cuomo Declares Public Health Emergency Over Flu Outbreak

With the nation in the grip of a severe influenza outbreak that has seen deaths reach epidemic levels, New York State declared a public health emergency on Saturday, making access to vaccines more easily available.

There have been nearly 20,000 cases of flu reported across the state so far this season, officials said. Last season, 4,400 positive laboratory tests were reported.

“We are experiencing the worst flu season since at least 2009, and influenza activity in New York State is widespread, with cases reported in all 57 counties and all five boroughs of New York City,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement.

Under the order, pharmacists will be allowed to administer flu vaccinations to patients between 6 months and 18 years old, temporarily suspending a state law that prohibits pharmacists from administering immunizations to children.

While children and older people tend to be the most likely to become seriously ill from the flu, Mr. Cuomo urged all New Yorkers to get vaccinated.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that deaths from the flu had reached epidemic levels, with at least 20 children having died nationwide. Officials cautioned that deaths from pneumonia and the flu typically reach epidemic levels for a week or two every year. The severity of the outbreak will be determined by how long the death toll remains high or if it climbs higher.

There was some evidence that caseloads may be peaking, federal officials said on Friday.

In New York City, public health officials announced on Thursday that flu-related illnesses had reached epidemic levels, and they joined the chorus of authorities urging people to get vaccinated.

“It’s a bad year,” the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve got lots of flu, it’s mainly type AH3N2, which tends to be a little more severe. So we’re seeing plenty of cases of flu and plenty of people sick with flu. Our message for any people who are listening to this is it’s still not too late to get your flu shot.”

There has been a spike in the number of people going to emergency rooms over the past two weeks with flulike symptoms – including fever, fatigue and coughing – Dr. Farley said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo made a public display of getting shots this past week.

In a briefing with reporters on Friday, officials from the C.D.C. said that this year’s vaccine was effective in 62 percent of cases.

As officials have stepped up their efforts encouraging vaccinations, there have been scattered reports of shortages. But officials said plenty of the vaccine was available.

According to the C.D.C., makers of the flu vaccine produced about 135 million doses for this year. As of early this month, 128 million doses had been distributed. While that would not be enough for every American, only 37 percent of the population get a flu shot each year.

Federal health officials said they would be happy if that number rose to 50 percent, which would mean that there would be more than enough vaccine for anyone who wanted to be immunized.

Two other diseases – norovirus and whooping cough – are also widespread this winter and are contributing to the number of people getting sick.

The flu can resemble a cold, though the symptoms come on more rapidly and are more severe.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/13/2013, on page A21 of the NewYork edition with the headline: New York Declares Health Emergency.

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Treasury Will Not Mint $1 Trillion Coin to Raise Debt Ceiling

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department said Saturday that it will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to head off an imminent battle with Congress over raising the government’s borrowing limit.

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” Anthony Coley, a Treasury spokesman, said in a written statement.

The Obama administration has indicated that the only way for the country to avoid a cash-management crisis as soon as next month is for Congress to raise the “debt ceiling,” which is the statutory limit on government borrowing. The cap is $16.4 trillion.

“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills, or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Congress needs to do its job.”

In recent weeks, some Republicans have indicated that they would not agree to raise the debt limit unless Democrats agreed to make cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security.

The White House has said it would not negotiate spending cuts in exchange for Congressional authority to borrow more, and it has insisted that Congress raise the ceiling as a matter of course, to cover expenses already authorized by Congress. In broader fiscal negotiations, it has said it would not agree to spending cuts without commensurate tax increases.

The idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin drew wide if puzzling attention recently after some bloggers and economic commentators had suggested it as an alternative to involving Congress.

By virtue of an obscure law meant to apply to commemorative coins, the Treasury secretary could order the production of a high-denomination platinum coin and deposit it at the Federal Reserve, where it would count as a government asset and give the country more breathing room under its debt ceiling. Once Congress raised the debt ceiling, the Treasury secretary could then order the coin destroyed.

Mr. Carney, the press secretary, fielded questions about the theoretical tactic at a news conference last week. But the idea is now formally off the table.

The White House has also rejected the idea that it could mount a challenge to the debt ceiling itself, on the strength of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which holds that the “validity of the public debt” of the United States “shall not be questioned.”

The Washington Post earlier published a report that the Obama administration had rejected the platinum-coin idea.

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French Airstrikes Push Back Islamist Rebels in Mali

ECPAD, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In a video still released by the French Army, French air force officers briefed at a military base in Chad before French military operations in Mali overnight.

PARIS — French airstrikes overnight in Mali pushed back Islamist rebels from a key village and destroyed a rebel command center, France said Saturday, as West African nations authorized what they said would be a fast deployment of troops to Mali in support of the weak government there.

France intervened Friday, dropping bombs and firing rockets from helicopter gunships and jet fighters after the Islamist rebels who already control the north of Mali pressed southward, overrunning the village of Konna. The French, who had earlier said they would not intervene militarily but only help African troops, took action in response to an appeal by the Malian president.

France, the United States and other Western nations have been increasingly anxious about the Islamists’ tightening grip on the north of the country, which they said was becoming a haven for militants, including those with links to Al Qaeda, who threaten not only their neighbors, but the West. On Saturday, Adm. Édouard Guillaud, the chief of staff of the French armed forces, said that French forces had no current plans to extend operations to northern areas controlled by the Islamists, but would expect to help African forces do the job when they arrive.

“The quicker the African mission is on the ground, the less we will need to help the Malian army,” Admiral Guillaud said. He said more military planes had been sent to Africa for possible use in Mali. “We are in the build-up phase of operations,” he said.

The United Nations Security Council had earlier agreed that troops from the 15-nation regional bloc known as Ecowas, the Economic Community of West African States, and European Union trainers would help the fragile government in Bamako win back the north of the country, where the Islamists have set up harsh rule under Sharia law in the nine months since the army fled the area. But both groups had been slow to deploy.

With the fall of Konna and the movement of the Islamist fighters south, the Ecowas commission president, Kadré Désiré Ouédraogo, said Saturday that the group had authorized an immediate deployment of troops “in light of the urgency of the situation,” according to news reports. But he did not specify how many troops would be sent to Mali or give a date for their deployment. Also on Saturday, the foreign minister of Mali’s neighbor, Niger, said that the country would send a battalion of 500 soldiers to fight alongside Ecowas troops.

In the fighting Friday, one French helicopter pilot, Lt. Damien Boiteux, died from small-arms fire, the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said at a news conference. Mr. Le Drian said that French forces, led by helicopter gunships, had driven the Islamists back from Konna, but it remained unclear if Malian forces had established control. Konna is about 45 miles north of the major town of Mopti, a port city on the Niger River that the Mali government feels it cannot lose.

A spokesman for the Islamist group Ansar Dine told The Associated Press that he could not confirm if some of the group’s fighters were still in Konna. The spokesman, Sanda Ould Boumama, told Reuters that French intervention in Mali will have “consequences, not only for French hostages, but also for all French citizens wherever they find themselves in the Muslim world.”

Fear of those consequences, at least for several French hostages held in North Africa, may have been a motivation for a failed French rescue mission early on Saturday in Somalia, where French commandos tried to free a French intelligence agent held there since 2009.

Mr. Le Drian said that France needed to act in Mali to forestall the collapse of the government there and the establishment of another area controlled by radical Islamists with ties to terrorist groups. “The threat is the establishment of a terrorist state within range of Europe and of France,” he said. France is also acting because it has some 6,000 citizens in Mali, a former French colony. French troops have been moved into Bamako, the capital, to protect citizens there.

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Apple won't blindly pursue market share, Chinese paper reports

SAN FRANCISCO/BEIJING (Reuters) - In a revised version of an interview published Thursday in a Chinese newspaper, Apple Inc marketing chief Phil Schiller said the company would focus on making "the best products" for customers and "never blindly pursue market share".

On Thursday, the Shanghai Evening News had originally cited Schiller as saying that Apple would not develop a cheaper smartphone for the sake of expanding its market share.

That appeared to undermine other recent media reports indicating that Apple was working on a low-end smartphone, which would represent a significant shift in strategy for a company that has always focused on premium products.

But in a new version of the story published after the original, the Shanghai Evening News removed all references to cheaper smartphones, except for a mention of rumours of a "cheaper, low-end product".

It also amended its original headline from "Apple will not push a cheaper smartphone for the sake of market share", to "Apple wants to provide the best products, will not blindly pursue market share".

Apple confirmed the interview had taken place and that it had contacted the Chinese newspaper about amending its original article, but had no further comment and declined to provide a transcript of the interview.

A reporter at the Shanghai Evening News who identified himself as Huang Yinlong, whose byline appeared on the stories, said the paper had made some changes, as Schiller's remarks may not have been presented as clearly as possible.

As well as deleting references to cheap smartphones, paraphrased statements attributed to Schiller in the original version were replaced with direct quotations.

Asked if the paper had made the changes at Apple's request, Huang said that the paper had made the decision on its own.

"We deliberated about it, and wanted to reflect (Schiller's) meaning in the interview more accurately, so we made some adjustments", said Huang, adding the interview was conducted in Beijing on Tuesday.

The original story had quoted Schiller as saying that developing a cheaper smartphone to try and replace feature phones was not a direction in which the company wanted to head.

That comment was amended in the new version of the story, which now cites Schiller as saying that while some manufacturers are moving toward such cheaper smartphones, "Apple has always focused on providing the best products for its consumers, we've never blindly chased market share."

An operator at the Shanghai Evening News said the paper did not have a spokesperson. Queries for comment were referred to Editor-in-Chief Niu Yefang, whose phone went unanswered.

A spokeswoman for Apple in China could not be reached immediately.

Apple rarely addresses rumors about upcoming products, which often spur intense speculation. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources as saying Apple could release a cheaper iPhone as early as this year.

(Reporting by Edwin Chan and Wan Xu in San Francisco, and Terril Yue Jones in Beijing; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jeremy Laurence)

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