"Cliff" concerns give way to earnings focus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors' "fiscal cliff" worries are likely to give way to more fundamental concerns, like earnings, as fourth-quarter reports get under way next week.

Financial results, which begin after the market closes on Tuesday with aluminum company Alcoa , are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results. As a warning sign, analyst current estimates are down sharply from what they were in October.

That could set stocks up for more volatility following a week of sharp gains that put the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> on Friday at the highest close since December 31, 2007. The index also registered its biggest weekly percentage gain in more than a year.

Based on a Reuters analysis, Europe ranks among the chief concerns cited by companies that warned on fourth-quarter results. Uncertainty about the region and its weak economic outlook were cited by more than half of the 25 largest S&P 500 companies that issued warnings.

In the most recent earnings conference calls, macroeconomic worries were cited by 10 companies while the U.S. "fiscal cliff" was cited by at least nine as reasons for their earnings warnings.

"The number of things that could go wrong isn't so high, but the magnitude of how wrong they could go is what's worrisome," said Kurt Winters, senior portfolio manager for Whitebox Mutual Funds in Minneapolis.

Negative-to-positive guidance by S&P 500 companies for the fourth quarter was 3.6 to 1, the second worst since the third quarter of 2001, according to Thomson Reuters data.

U.S. lawmakers narrowly averted the "fiscal cliff" by coming to a last-minute agreement on a bill to avoid steep tax hikes this weeks -- driving the rally in stocks -- but the battle over further spending cuts is expected to resume in two months.

Investors also have seen a revival of worries about Europe's sovereign debt problems, with Moody's in November downgrading France's credit rating and debt crises looming for Spain and other countries.

"You have a recession in Europe as a base case. Europe is still the biggest trading partner with a lot of U.S. companies, and it's still a big chunk of global capital spending," said Adam Parker, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley in New York.

Among companies citing worries about Europe was eBay , whose chief financial officer, Bob Swan, spoke of "macro pressures from Europe" in the company's October earnings conference call.

REVENUE WORRIES

One of the biggest worries voiced about earnings has been whether companies will be able to continue to boost profit growth despite relatively weak revenue growth.

S&P 500 revenue fell 0.8 percent in the third quarter for the first decline since the third quarter of 2009, Thomson Reuters data showed. Earnings growth for the quarter was a paltry 0.1 percent after briefly dipping into negative territory.

On top of that, just 40 percent of S&P 500 companies beat revenue expectations in the third quarter, while 64.2 percent beat earnings estimates, the Thomson Reuters data showed.

For the fourth quarter, estimates are slightly better but are well off estimates for the quarter from just a few months earlier. S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 2.8 percent while revenue is expected to have gone up 1.9 percent.

Back in October, earnings growth for the fourth quarter was forecast up 9.9 percent.

In spite of the cautious outlooks, some analysts still see a good chance for earnings beats this reporting period.

"The thinking is you need top line growth for earnings to continue to expand, and we've seen the market defy that," said Mike Jackson, founder of Denver-based investment firm T3 Equity Labs.

Based on his analysis, energy, industrials and consumer discretionary are the S&P sectors most likely to beat earnings expectations in the upcoming season, while consumer staples, materials and utilities are the least likely to beat, Jackson said.

Sounding a positive note on Friday, drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co said it expects profit in 2013 to increase by more than Wall Street had been forecasting, primarily due to cost controls and improved productivity.

(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Letter from Europe: A Struggle With Identity and Racism

PARIS — What do bananas have to do with national identity?

A lot, if you consider the bananas hurled at black soccer players in different parts of Europe, igniting outrage among international players and feeble calls for tolerance by coaches.

When racist behavior is exhibited by individuals, it can be written off — not excused — as random, individual acts of hooliganism. In northern Italy this past week, the Milan soccer team walked off the field after fans of the opposing team yelled abuse at black teammates. But when the verbal equivalent appears in a manifesto published by a powerful fan club, the crude clash between “them” and “us” falls squarely in the middle of a recurring debate about national identity that makes Europe feel like a continent under siege.

In fact, it came as no surprise when Landscrona, the biggest fan club of the Zenit soccer team in St. Petersburg, recently published an open letter saying it would not accept dark-skinned players being “all but forced down Zenit’s throat.” St. Petersburg fans have long been accused of preventing club managers from signing up black players, a fact that the letter confirmed in writing: “For us, the absence of black Zenit players is an important tradition that underlines the team’s identity and nothing more,” it said.

There it is, “identity,” a word that gets flashed like a red card as people struggle to determine what it means to be French, Belgian, British or Russian in an era of large-scale immigration, and economic globalization.

The problem is that this debate typically turns defensive, with identity defined in narrow, exclusive terms. The issue may be a reflection of a popular uneasiness over waves of new arrivals from abroad, but the terms of the discussion are rarely about integration, or tolerance.

In France, then-President Nicolas Sarkozy started a febrile — and largely futile — debate on the state of the nation’s identity in 2009. It was a flop right from the start as critics questioned the usefulness of any discussion set in motion by a presidential decree.

Soon afterward, and not coincidentally, the government started another national debate, this one about the role of Islam in France. The main result was a law banning face coverings — including Muslim veils like the niqab and the burqa — in public places. Whatever the merits of the law, it was hardly a rallying call for the country’s largely Muslim immigrant population, which was ostensibly the target of the double-barreled exercise.

Similar attempts to define and affirm the Russian national identity have slid either toward irrelevance, or toward a dangerous kind of ethnic-center nationalism, with slogans like “Russia for Russians. ”

In 2005, Russia resurrected an old holiday on Nov. 4, called Day of National Unity, which falls on the anniversary of the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1612. The day is marked by a hodgepodge of demonstrations, brandishing a variety of symbols from Orthodox icons to the Soviet hammer and sickle.

It is hard to see how these demonstrations speak to a country made up of more than 100 ethnic groups, including Muslim Tatars and Chechens, as well as Buddhist Buryats.

Both the French debate and the Russian holiday make no attempt to appeal to recent immigrants who need help in identifying with their adopted nation. The instinct to hit history’s “replay” button — revisiting the glories of Alexander Nevsky, or Napoleon — may help educate the new arrivals about the past, but it doesn’t give them the tools they need to become modern citizens.

Immigration has changed the face of many European countries over the past half-century. In France, the new arrivals — mostly from former colonies — have put a strain on the old model of integration that worked so well with immigrants from Italy, Spain and Eastern Europe. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia, too, has seen waves of workers coming from Central Asia, whose presence, legal and illegal, has stirred latent strains of xenophobia.

These tensions give a backdrop to the racist screed of soccer fans in St. Petersburg. It is all the more jarring in a city that was founded as Russia’s “window on Europe,” where leaders of the French Enlightenment were invited to the court of Catherine the Great and that was home to Russia’s most beloved national poet, Alexander Pushkin, whose grandfather was a black man from Africa.

Landscrona fans don’t seem to care about passports, just race. Of the two dark-skinned players whose arrival seems to have incited the manifesto, one, Axel Witsel, is Belgian with a French father who comes from the Caribbean island of Martinique.

Their demands are weirdly specific, directly contradicting the explicit denial of racism. “We only want players from other brotherly Slav nations such as Ukraine and Belarus, as well as from the Baltic states and Scandinavia,” the manifesto read, which blithely ignored the origins of Dick Advocaat, the Dutchman who coached the team to victory in Russian championships in 2007, and Luciano Spalletti, an Italian who is now the Zenit coach.

In his response to the fans, published on the team’s Web site, Spalletti ignored the implicit insult. “Being tolerant means that you fight against any kind of stupidity,” he wrote.

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Poll finds people want an ‘iPhone 5S’ with new color options

The latest rumor surrounding Apple’s (AAPL) next-generation “iPhone 5S” is that it will launch in May or June with two different screen sizes and five different color options. So said Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White in a research note earlier this week. White has made some good early calls before — he was one of the first to report that Apple was working on the iPad mini — but nothing is official until Apple announces it on stage at a press conference. One thing we can say with some amount of certainty, though, is that a sizable portion of Apple fans would be interested in a next-generation iPhone made available with new color choices.

[More from BGR: Samsung confirms plan to begin inching away from Android]

In a poll published by BGR on Wednesday, 35% of respondents reported that they would purchase the next iPhone in either blue, pink or yellow if Apple were to launch the device in those colors, as suggested by White. Another 28.4% said they would be interested in the new color options, but they would want to see how they look before making a purchasing decision.

[More from BGR: Microsoft called a failing giant that only survives by charging prices that ‘bleed customers dry’]

More than 2,000 people voted in the poll and roughly 85% of respondents live in the United States.

The results are not scientific, however they do suggest that there would be significant demand for an iPhone with new color options in key markets like the U.S. And where the iPhone 4S had Siri and the iPhone 5 had a fresh new design with a larger display, Apple will certainly look to launch its next-generation smartphone with some key points of differentiation.

As they were with the iPod touch, new color options may be among the next iPhone’s key new features when it launches later this year — and if that is indeed the case, it looks like the new colors will be met with significant interest from consumers.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Jessica Simpson: Motherhood Is the Best - and the Most Challenging

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Being a working mom has its ups and downs for Jessica Simpson.

The Fashion Star mentor, 32, who announced on Christmas Day that she is expecting her second child, recently told PEOPLE, “Motherhood is the best thing I’ve ever experienced – and the most challenging.”

Balancing her career with her personal life is one of Simpson’s struggles.

“On some of the days of Fashion Star, I’m awake before [my daughter Maxwell] is awake, and I’m not home until she’s already back to sleep,” she explains.

“That’s only happened about four times, but it makes the day awful. I definitely need to see my baby.”

“I get really sad if I don’t get to see her,” she continues. “And then when Maxwell sees me, she just stares at me and touches my face. I can tell she missed me. That breaks my heart.”

But at the end of the day, Simpson and her fiancé Eric Johnson “feel like we’ve done such a good job” parenting thus far.

Calling Johnson “a great father,” the starlet goes on to say, “It is the sexiest thing in the world to watch how he handles [Maxwell]. We’re both learning together, but it’s fun because we both get to grow in our relationship together.”

As a mom to her eight-month-old, Simpson says, “There are little things that you kind of obsess over. I never knew how protective I was until I had my own child. I’m already thinking about intruders coming into the house and what our escape route would be.”

Simpson’s personal style has also changed since becoming a parent.

“I find myself going for more sophisticated looks, butI do think that’s kind of trendy right now – just a classier looking woman,” she says. “I love to show off my curves, but being a mom, I guess I do it in a little bit more classy way, even though for Halloween I was a milkmaid – but there are moments.”

– Dahvi Shira

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Indian court to rule on generic drug industry

NEW DELHI (AP) — From Africa's crowded AIDS clinics to the malarial jungles of Southeast Asia, the lives of millions of ill people in the developing world are hanging in the balance ahead of a legal ruling that will determine whether India's drug companies can continue to provide cheap versions of many life-saving medicines.

The case — involving Swiss drug maker Novartis AG's cancer drug Glivec — pits aid groups that argue India plays a vital role as the pharmacy to the poor against drug companies that insist they need strong patents to make drug development profitable. A ruling by India's Supreme Court is expected in early 2013.

"The implications of this case reach far beyond India, and far beyond this particular cancer drug," said Leena Menghaney, from the aid group Doctors Without Borders. "Across the world, there is a heavy dependence on India to supply affordable versions of expensive patented medicines."

With no costs for developing new drugs or conducting expensive trials, India's $26 billion generics industry is able to sell medicine for as little as one-tenth the price of the companies that developed them, making India the second-largest source of medicines distributed by UNICEF in its global programs.

Indian pharmaceutical companies such as Cipla, Cadila Laboratories and Lupin have emerged over the past decade as major sources of generic cancer, malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS drugs for poor countries that can't afford to pay Western prices.

The 6-year-old case that just wrapped up in the Supreme Court revolves around a legal provision in India's 2005 patent law that is aimed at preventing companies from getting fresh patents for making only minor changes to existing medicines — a practice known as "evergreening."

Novartis' argued that a new version of Glivec — marketed in the U.S. as Gleevec — was a significant change from the earlier version because it was more easily absorbed by the body.

India's Patent Controller turned down the application, saying the change was an obvious development, and the new medicine was not sufficiently distinct from the earlier version to warrant a patent extension.

Patient advocacy groups hailed the decision as a blow to "evergreening."

But Western companies argued that India's generic manufacturers were cutting the incentive for major drug makers to invest in research and innovation if they were not going to be able to reap the exclusive profits that patents bring.

"This case is about safeguarding incentives for better medicines so that patients' needs will be met in the future," says Eric Althoff, a Novartis spokesman.

International drug companies have accused India of disregarding intellectual property rights, and have pushed for stronger patent protection that would weaken India's generics industry.

Earlier this year, an Indian manufacturer was allowed to produce a far cheaper version of the kidney and liver cancer treatment sorefinib, manufactured by Bayer Corp.

Bayer was selling the drug for about $5,600 a month. Natco, the Indian company, said its generic version would cost $175 a month, less than 1/30th as much. Natco was ordered to pay 6 percent in royalties to Bayer.

Novartis says the outcome of the new case will not affect the availability of generic versions of Glivec because it is covered by a grandfather clause in India's patent law. Only the more easily absorbed drug would be affected, Althoff said, adding that its own generic business, Sandoz, produces cheap versions of its drugs for millions across the globe.

Public health activists say the question goes beyond Glivec to whether drug companies should get special protection for minor tweaks to medicines that others could easily have uncovered.

"We're looking to the Supreme Court to tell Novartis it won't open the floodgates and allow abusive patenting practices," said Eldred Tellis, of the Sankalp Rehabilitation Centre, a private group working with HIV patients.

The court's decision is expected to be a landmark that will influence future drug accessibility and price across the developing world.

"We're already paying very high prices for some of the new drugs that are patented in India," said Petros Isaakidis, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders. "If Novartis' wins, even older medicines could be subject to patenting again, and it will become much more difficult for us in future to provide medicines to our patients being treated for HIV, hepatitis and drug resistant TB."

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Global shares, oil slip on Fed stimulus nerves

LONDON (Reuters) - World shares edged lower and the dollar rose before U.S. jobs data on Friday which investors will watch more intensely than usual after the Federal Reserve linked future stimulus to labor market performance.

Minutes from the Federal Reserve's December policy meeting unsettled financial markets on Thursday by revealing some policymakers already want to slow or stop asset purchases before the end of 2013 due to worries about financial stability.

Fed bond-buying has underpinned appetite for riskier assets across the markets so a strong jobs number may boost chances the central bank could halt its purchases sooner than many had expected.

"After the minutes, markets perhaps expect the Fed to reduce its bond purchases or shorten the time it will continue such purchases," said Richard Falkenhall, FX strategist at SEB.

Wall Street was likely to open slightly higher, with S&P 500 futures up 0.1 percent and contracts for the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 up 0.2 percent, but much will depend on the non-farm payrolls report due at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Analysts polled by Reuters expect a 150,000 rise in jobs, with unemployment holding steady at 7.7 percent. However, after a better-than-expected ADP employment report on Thursday, many may now be betting on an above-consensus jobs number.

"The Fed has made it clear that it will keep policy loose until unemployment drops to 6.5 percent or below, so strong jobs data will undoubtedly raise expectations of a more hawkish Fed," analysts at Tradition brokerage said in a note.

European shares echoed their Asian peers to edge lower. But following a sharp jump on Wednesday after the United States edged back from the "fiscal cliff" budget crisis, they were on track for weekly gains of almost 2.7 percent.

Tentative signs that the euro zone economy may have passed the worst of its downturn also helped to restrict the moves.

Markit's Euro zone Composite PMI, which gauges business activity across thousands of the region's companies, rose in December to 47.2 from 46.5 in November - below the 50 line which divides growth from contraction but at its highest level since March last year.

"The surveys at least bring some substance to the belief that the worst is over and that a return to growth is in sight for the region in 2013," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit.

London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were flat to down 0.4 percent, while the MSCI index of world shares was just over 0.2 percent lower at 345.85.

CORE WEAKNESS

The Fed's concerns about the longer-term impact of its policies gave fresh momentum to the recent slide by low-risk bonds including U.S. and German debt.

Bund futures slipped over half a point to 142.72, having already fallen steeply from last week's close of 145.64.

Benchmark U.S. Treasury yields continued their climb, hitting an eight-month high of 1.95 percent, while in Asia, 10-year Japanese government bond yields touched a 3-1/2-month high of 0.83 percent.

In the currency market, the dollar hit its highest level in nearly 2-1/2 years against the Japanese yen at 88.34 yen, up 1.2 percent on the day. The euro fell to a three-week low of $1.3006. The dollar <.dxy> also touched a six-week high against a basket of currencies.

"We have seen quite a broad-based dollar rally after the minutes which has ignited a fresh debate about how much liquidity the Fed is going to pump into the economy," said Daragh Maher, FX strategist at HSBC.

The yen has fallen in recent weeks as investors bet the new government will push the Bank of Japan to weaken the currency by implementing aggressive economic stimulus.

The dollar's recent climb makes dollar-based assets more expensive for non-dollar investors and this hit precious metals and oil.

Brent crude shed $1.43 to $110.71 a barrel while U.S. crude was down $1.12 at $91.80.

The fresh focus on when the Fed may end its so called quantitative easing (QE) program of asset purchases sent gold down 2 percent to a 4-1/2 month of $1,629.59 an ounce.

"The market had been too preoccupied with the sheer size of the quantitative easing program, and had not seen that at some point you would need a phase out of QE policy," Christin Tuxen, an analyst with Danske Bank, said.

Among other precious metals, silver was down 3 percent to $29.24 an ounce, having also slipped to a 4-1/2 month low at $29.21 in earlier trade.

(Additional reporting by Anooja Debnath and David Brough,; editing by David Stamp and Giles Elgood)

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Murder Charges Expected Against 5 Men in New Delhi Gang Rape

NEW DELHI – Rape, murder and other charges were filed on Thursday against five men suspected of carrying out the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a case that has sparked outrage and protests across India.

Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Indian lawyers protested on Thursday outside a court in New Delhi where charges were filed in a gang rape case.

The police submitted the accusations against the five men to a magistrate in the South Delhi neighborhood where the crime took place on Dec. 16. In addition to rape and murder, the charges were expected to include kidnapping, robbery and assault, a list of crimes that could result in the rare imposition of the death penalty. The official submission of the charges was expected to be kept secret because of confidential details, the police said. A sixth person accused in the case is a juvenile, and his case will be handled in a separate proceeding. The magistrate was expected to refer the case to a fast-track court set up in recent days to handle cases involving crimes against women. That court is expected to hold a trial soon in stark contrast to the apathy and years of delay that Indian rape victims often face when seeking justice.

The five are accused of luring the 23-year-old and her boyfriend onto a bus in South Delhi, beating them and abusing her so brutally with a metal rod during the rape that she sustained fatal internal injuries. The woman clung to life for two weeks but died on Saturday in a Singapore hospital, where she had been transferred for special care.

Gang rapes have become almost routine in India, a country that some surveys suggest has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world. Rape complaints increased 25 percent between 2006 and 2011, although it is impossible to know whether this represents a real increase in crime or simply an increased willingness by victims to file charges and by the police to accept them.

But something about the recent crime caught the public’s attention. Among the reasons could be the randomness of the crime (most rape victims know their abusers), its brutality and the sympathetic profile of the victim.

The outpouring of anger at the crime caught the government by surprise and there has been widespread criticism of its aggressive response to protesters which included tear gas, water cannons and beatings by truncheon-wielding riot police officers. The government invoked a terrorism law that prohibits even small gatherings and it closed a huge portion of the capital to vehicular and pedestrian traffic, which represented a punishing loss to businesses in the area.

The government’s reaction fed longtime criticism that India’s police are too often used to guard the powerful from the people rather than to protect the people from predators. India’s police are generally poorly trained, deeply corrupt and often viewed by women as predators rather than protectors – one reason that laws forbid officers from arresting a woman or even bringing her to a police station for questioning during nighttime hours.

The case has also led to an ongoing discussion about the conflict between the aspirations of India’s rising middle class and a deeply conservative and patriarchal culture that views the recent educational and economic successes of Indian women with unease and even alarm. An estimated 25,000 women are murdered each year by families who view their choice of mate as inappropriate, and Indian newspapers and television news programs now feature almost daily stories about new rape cases.

Kishwar Desai, an author, wrote an opinion article in The Indian Express on Thursday that said the gang rape illustrated to some that “a certain class of men is deeply uncomfortable with women displaying their independence, receiving education and joining the work force. The gang rape becomes a form of subduing the women, collectively, and establishing their male superiority.”

Because of the intense interest sparked by the case, a vast scrum of television cameras and reporters jostled outside of the courthouse for much of the day. And with officials refusing to provide routine information about whether the suspects in the case would arrive at the courthouse, rumors about the day’s events ricocheted around the media like a drop of water on a hot frying pan.

Niharika Mandhana contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 3, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article erroneously reported that the charges had been filed earlier on Thursday.

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Microsoft acquires start-up id8: source

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp bought start-up id8 Group R2 Studios Inc as it looks to expand further in technology focused on the home and entertainment, a person familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.

id8 Group R2 Studios was started in 2011 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Blake Krikorian. It recently launched a Google Android application to allow users to control home heating and lighting systems from smartphones.

Krikorian’s Sling Media – which was sold to EchoStar Communications in 2007 – made the “Slingbox” for watching TV on computers.

Krikorian will join Microsoft with a small team, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported the acquisition earlier on Wednesday. Microsoft also purchased some patents owned by the start-up related to controlling electronic devices, the newspaper added.

Krikorian and a Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

Krikorian resigned from Amazon.com Inc’s board in late December after about a year and a half as a director at the company, the Internet’s largest retailer.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Brandy: My Proposal Was a 'Spontaneous Thing'

By Mark Gray

01/03/2013 at 07:30 AM EST

Ryan Press and Brandy

Al Powers/Powers Imagery/Invision/AP

Brandy had no idea that her fiancé Ryan Press had plans to ask for her hand in marriage last week.

Then again, she doesn't think her beau knew he was going to, either.

"It was a spontaneous thing for my fiancé," she said before ringing in the New Year at LAVO Las Vegas "He just felt it."

The R&B singer and former Dancing with the Stars contestant first went public with her romance with music executive Ryan Press on New Year's Eve 2011, cuddling at a Las Vegas party. On Monday, they were back in Vegas, but this time she was sporting a glimmering ring.

Although Brandy, 33, told PEOPLE in March that she let Press know she'd "marry him with a bubble gum ring," the sparkler she did receive has impressed her.

"He worked really hard on the ring. I'm not a big diamond girl, but I really love this diamond he did," she said. "It just represents how he feels about me, and I'm really blessed to have someone like him in my life. He's truly a gift." 

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Flu? Malaria? Disease forecasters look to the sky

NEW YORK (AP) — Only a 10 percent chance of showers today, but a 70 percent chance of flu next month.

That's the kind of forecasting health scientists are trying to move toward, as they increasingly include weather data in their attempts to predict disease outbreaks.

In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict — more than seven weeks in advance — when flu season was going to peak in New York City. Theirs was just the latest in a growing wave of computer models that factor in rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions to forecast disease.

Health officials are excited by this kind of work and the idea that it could be used to fine-tune vaccination campaigns or other disease prevention efforts.

At the same time, experts note that outbreaks are influenced as much, or more, by human behavior and other factors as by the weather. Some argue weather-based outbreak predictions still have a long way to go. And when government health officials warned in early December that flu season seemed to be off to an early start, they said there was no evidence it was driven by the weather.

This disease-forecasting concept is not new: Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases.

Recent improvements in weather-tracking have helped, including satellite technology and more sophisticated computer data processing.

As a result, "in the last five years or so, there's been quite an improvement and acceleration" in weather-focused disease modeling, said Ira Longini, a University of Florida biostatistician who's worked on outbreak prediction projects.

Some models have been labeled successes.

In the United States, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of New Mexico tried to predict outbreaks of hantavirus in the late 1990s. They used rain and snow data and other information to study patterns of plant growth that attract rodents. People catch the disease from the droppings of infected rodents.

"We predicted what would happen later that year," said Gregory Glass, a Johns Hopkins researcher who worked on the project.

More recently, in east Africa, satellites have been used to predict rainfall by measuring sea-surface temperatures and cloud density. That's been used to generate "risk maps" for Rift Valley fever — a virus that spreads from animals to people and in severe cases can cause blindness or death. Researchers have said the system in some cases has given two to six weeks advance warning.

Last year, other researchers using satellite data in east Africa said they found that a small change in average temperature was a warning sign cholera cases would double within four months.

"We are getting very close to developing a viable forecasting system" against cholera that can help health officials in African countries ramp up emergency vaccinations and other efforts, said a statement by one of the authors, Rita Reyburn of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea.

Some diseases are hard to forecast, such as West Nile virus. Last year, the U.S. suffered one of its worst years since the virus arrived in 1999. There were more than 2,600 serious illnesses and nearly 240 deaths.

Officials said the mild winter, early spring and very hot summer helped spur mosquito breeding and the spread of the virus. But the danger wasn't spread uniformly. In Texas, the Dallas area was particularly hard-hit, while other places, including some with similar weather patterns and the same type of mosquitoes, were not as affected.

"Why Dallas, and not areas with similar ecological conditions? We don't really know," said Roger Nasci of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is chief of the CDC branch that tracks insect-borne viruses.

Some think flu lends itself to outbreak forecasting — there's already a predictability to the annual winter flu season. But that's been tricky, too.

Seasonal flu reports come from doctors' offices, but those show the disease when it's already spreading. Some researchers have studied tweets on Twitter and searches on Google, but their work has offered a jump of only a week or two on traditional methods.

In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season.

They designed a model based on weather and flu data from past years, 2003-09. In part, their design was based on earlier studies that found flu virus spreads better when the air is dry and turns colder. They made calculations based on humidity readings and on Google Flu Trends, which tracks how many people are searching each day for information on flu-related topics (often because they're beginning to feel ill).

Using that model, they hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work.

"It's certainly exciting," said Lyn Finelli, the CDC's flu surveillance chief. She said the CDC supports Shaman's work, but agency officials are eager to see follow-up studies showing the model can predict flu trends in places different from New York, like Miami.

Despite the optimism by some, Dr. Edward Ryan, a Harvard University professor of immunology and infectious diseases, is cautious about weather-based prediction models. "I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time," he said.

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