Planned News Corp spin-off lost $2B in fiscal 2012

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said Friday that the news and publishing unit it plans to spin off next year posted a $2 billion net loss in the fiscal year through June, mainly due to one-time charges and restructuring costs in its newspaper division.
The details of the split were revealed Friday in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It confirmed investors' suspicions that the spun-off company — to be known as News Corp. — will be smaller and less profitable than the TV and movie business that will form Fox Group Inc.
The "new" News Corp. posted $8.7 billion in revenue last fiscal year, about a quarter of the company's total. Charges amounted to $2.8 billion, mainly due to declines in the value of newspapers and a drop in advertising at its in-store flyer business. The charges included restructuring costs of $156 million, most of which came from shutting down The News of the World, the tabloid at the heart of a hacking scandal in Britain.
News Corp. CEO Murdoch, 81, will be executive chairman of the spun-off company and remain CEO of Fox Group. He'll end up controlling both entities through the nearly 40 percent of Class B voting shares he controls through a family trust.
Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, will be the CEO of News Corp. with an annual salary and target bonus totaling about $4 million, not including stock awards.
The filing of the plan "is another important step forward in the evolution of our company and in the establishment of two independent global leaders," Murdoch said in a statement.
Shareholder approval is not needed for the split, but is required for the way it happens. The company plans to issue shares in the new News Corp. to existing shareholders in proportion to their current holdings of nonvoting Class A shares and voting Class B shares. If shareholders don't approve the split plan, the company may have to come up with a different way to enact it. A special shareholder meeting will be held sometime next year.
According to the filing, the smaller entity will be made up of Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal; newspapers such as The Herald Sun in Australia and The Times in Britain; digital real estate services; book publisher HarperCollins; pay TV channel Fox Sports Australia and a 50 percent stake in Australian pay TV provider Foxtel; and Amplify, its fledgling for-profit education business.
The remaining Fox Group will house pay TV channels that include Fox News Channel and FX; 20th Century Fox movie studio; Fox broadcast TV stations and network; satellite TV provider Sky Italia; and its 39 percent stake in British Sky Broadcasting.
Shares of News Corp fell 57 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $24.86 in afternoon trading amid a broad market decline.

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Oil drops as US 'fiscal cliff' approaches

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices fell as much as $2 a barrel Friday as doubts grew about whether political leaders in Washington could reach a deal on the budget before a package of tax hikes and spending cuts automatically kicks in with the new year.
If Republicans and Democrats don't work out a compromise in the next 10 days, the U.S. could go over the so-called "fiscal cliff," a reference to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases and government spending cuts that take effect if a budget deal is not reached. Many economists fear that would eventually push the U.S. back into recession, a situation that would likely mean less energy demand.
Benchmark crude for February delivery fell $1.47 to finish at $88.66 per barrel in New York, the contract's lowest point in three weeks. It dropped to $87.96 per barrel at one point Friday.
Late Thursday House Republicans abruptly put off a vote on an alternative plan offered by House Speaker John Boehner that would prevent scheduled tax increases from taking effect on Jan. 1 on all income under $1 million. President Barack Obama wants the cutoff point to be $400,000.
On Friday both signaled that talks are still open.
Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, fell $1.23 to end at $108.97 per barrel in London.
In other energy futures trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange:
— Natural gas lost a penny to finish at $3.45 per 1,000 cubic feet.
— Heating oil fell 4 cents to end at $3.02 a gallon.
— Wholesale gasoline fell 2 cents to finish at $2.73 a gallon.

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Erdrich, Boo win U.S. national book awards

(Reuters) - Author Louise Erdrich won the National Book Award for fiction for "The Round House," a moving novel about a woman raped in a Native American community, at the annual awards ceremony in New York on Wednesday.

Competition for the prize included such well-known authors as Junot Diaz and Dave Eggers, as well as Ben Fountain and debut novelist Kevin Powers.

The gala ceremony at which the awards were announced was designed to bring buzz to an industry that has been shaken up in its efforts to transition to the digital marketplace.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo won the nonfiction award for her first book, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," which sheds light on the lives of India's poor as well as government corruption.

Boo, a former Washington Post editor and New Yorker writer who between November 2007 and March 2011 spent time in a Mumbai slum to experience life in contemporary India. She was praised widely for the book, which some critics said read more like a novel.

Boo told Reuters in March that her biggest barrier in the slums had been the "many, many languages spoken," and she gave credit to a group of translators. "I also needed someone to work with me the way I worked - slowly and patiently," she said.

David Ferry's "Bewilderment" won the award for poetry and William Alexander's "Goblin Secrets" won the young people's literature award.

Novelist Elmore Leonard and New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. received lifetime achievement honors.

The National Book Foundation, which administers the awards, nominated five writers in each of four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.

The four winning writers each received a $10,000 prize.

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"The Last Man" shoots to top spot on U.S. bestseller list

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "The Last Man" soared straight to the top of Publishers Weekly's bestseller list on Wednesday in its debut week.

The list is compiled using data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

Hardcover Fiction Last Week

1. "The Last Man" by Vince Flynn (Atria, $27.99) -

2. "Merry Christmas, Alex Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $28.99) -

3. "The Racketeer" by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95) 1

4. "Poseidon's Arrow" by Clive Cussler (Putnam, $28.95) 2

5. "Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, $28.99) 3

6. 5. "The Casual Vacancy" by J. K. Rowling (Little, Brown, $35.00) 5

7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn (Crown, $25.00) 7

8. "Sweet Tooth" by Ian McEwan (Doubleday/Talese, $26.95) -

9. "The Panther" by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $27.99) 6

10. "The Sins of the Mother" by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $28.00) 4

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. "Killing Kennedy" by Bill O'Reilly (Henry Holt, $28.00) 2

2. "Barefoot Contessa Foolproof" by Ina Garten (Clarkson Potter, $35.00) 1

3. "Thomas Jefferson" by Jon Meacham (Random House, $35.00) -

4. "Guinness World Records 2013" (Guinness World Records) 5

5. "No Easy Day" by Mark Owen (Dutton, $26.95) 3

6. "How to Create a Mind" by Ray Kurzweil (Viking, $27.95) -

7. "My Year in Meals" in Rachael Ray (Atria, $29.99) -

8. "Help, Thanks, Wow" by Anne Lamott (Riverhead, $17.95) -

9. "I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak" by Joel Osteen (FaithWords, $21.99) 4

10. "The Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver ( Penguin, $27.95) 7

Week ended November 18, 2012, powered by Nielsen BookScan (c) 2012 The Nielsen Company.

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"Breaking Dawn - Part 2" reviews: is this the best "Twilight" ever?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" hits theaters Friday, and reviewers are weighing in about whether the vampire finale is bloody good or a lifeless mess.

Regardless of the critical consensus, Twi-hards are almost certain to show up, but based on the early notices "Part 2" is more likely to be shortlisted for Razzies than Oscars come awards time. The film scored a lackluster 52 percent "rotten" rating on critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviewers breaking out the garlic and stakes to condemn the film's sluggish pacing and wooden performances.

"Part 2" focuses on Bella (Kristen Stewart) as she adjusts to life as a mother and a vampire. Robert Pattinson returns as the brooding bloodsucker Edward Cullen and Taylor Lautner is back as the oft-shirtless, part werewolf Jacob.

On TheWrap, critic Alonso Duralde was largely positive, praising director Bill Condon for bringing some bite to the franchise. Where the film falls short, he argued, is in its source material - the series of novels by Stephenie Meyer that started a phenomenon but were derided for their tortured prose.

"Credit Condon with putting these cardboard characters and their loony dilemmas into a rich atmosphere; whether we're running through the woods with those ridiculous wolves or following Bella through a lit-for-Christmas Seattle, the director and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro ('Pan's Labyrinth') give the wintry settings a palpable sense of chilly foreboding," Duralde wrote.

The best thing that Peter Travers could say about "Breaking Dawn" deux was that it signaled the series was finally over. TheRolling Stone critic acknowledged that it was better than other films in the franchise but struggled to find much else to praise.

"You're going to hear a lot about 'Breaking Dawn Part 2' being the best of the Twilight movies. That's like saying a simple head cold is preferable to swine flu," he wrote. "They'll all make you sick."

Also left filled with bile was Dana Stevens. The Slate critic said the film ends on a suitably shocking climax, but getting there takes way too long.

"Splitting the last book in Stephenie Meyer's teen-vampire series into two separate movies may have been a wise business decision - with guaranteed throngs of adoring Twi-hards willing to go back for multiple viewings, why not eke out an extra sequel? - but it leaves the last film in the series with no place to go," Stevens wrote.

The movie is so dull, complained San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle, that audiences might contemplate doing bodily harm to themselves an hour into the latest visit to Forks, Wash.

"One final question: If they've been alive for 800 years, why does every female vampire sound like a Valley Girl? Are they endlessly adaptive, or did they all really stand out in Victorian England?," LaSalle wrote. It wasn't all pans. A few critics, such as the New York Times' Manohla Dargis found herself on Team Breaking Dawn. Though she griped about its languid pace, Dargis said Condon and his supple stars evoke the glamor of classic Hollywood screen couples. In the process she becomes probably the first critic to compare "Twilight" to the films of George Stevens.

"From the first extreme close-up of Bella fluttering open her dark, feathery eyelashes, Mr. Condon makes this 'Twilight' an intensely tactile and intimate experience," Dargis wrote. "Taking his cues from the Golden Age of Hollywood -- the close-ups of Bella and Edward bring to mind those of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in "A Place in the Sun." He bathes his stars in a gleaming light that gives their pale faces a luxurious alabaster sheen. This is one movie that should have been shot in 3D if only to allow the fans to caress the air."

Owen Gleiberman was similarly enraptured by Bella, Edward and their toothsome friends. The Entertainment Weekly critic said that the series benefits from a showstopper of a twist ending.

"It made me realize that, as narratively lumpy as they can be, I like the Twilight films because they're really about the eternal movie romance of vampires at play," Gleiberman wrote.

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Book Talk: The Swinging 60s, as told by a Cher-lookalike

SYDNEY (Reuters) - It is the 1960s and rock journalist Lola Bensky finds herself deep in the heart of the music scene in London and New York, interviewing emerging stars like Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix.

But the 19-year-old Melbourne-born Lola of the eponymous "Lola Bensky," by Lily Bent, is no ordinary rock journalist. The Jewish child of two Holocaust survivors, she prefers to ask interviewees how they got on with their mother and wins praise from Cher, who tells her they look alike.

Bent, who like her heroine originally hails from Australia and in fact still bears a strong resemblance to Cher, spoke with Reuters on a recent visit from New York, her home of 23 years, about her semi-autobiographical novel.

Q: For a young reporter, you were very comfortable around these rock stars. Why?

A: "If you've had two parents who have been imprisoned in ghettos and Nazi death camps, idolizing rock stars almost seemed absurd. My life was not centered around being alone with Mick Jagger in his apartment, it was to make sure my reel to reel tape recorder wasn't screwing up."

Q: Born to survivors of the Auschwitz death camp, Lola was fixated with losing weight, and as a teenager your ambition in life was to lose weight? Why is weight such an issue?

A: "This is a very complicated issue (and) there are many aspects of it. However, in the ghettos and the camps anyone who had any excess weight was doing something at someone else's expense, aiding the destruction of other people. My mother admired slimness above all, you could have won the Nobel prize for nuclear physics and if you were fat, she would have said ‘what a fatty'!

"I think my act of rebellion which I thought would upset my Mother was in the end destructive to me. Rebellion is the need to dement your parents and it worked."

Q: There is a strong Jewish theme throughout your book and it's as if you almost make fun of it. Is that risky?"

A: "I think it's very important not to hold any culture or religious belief as sacrosanct, as something that can't be talked about, something that you can't find something funny about. If you ask a Jew how they are they would never say ‘excellent' because who knows what could happen two seconds later. When people ask you, I want to say, ‘well I don't know because there are so many things that have to function in your body simultaneously, how do you know they're all working.' It's such a very complicated question."

Q: At the 1967 Monterey Festival you were surrounded by people taking drugs of some sort, in fact throughout your career, yet you always declined. Why?

A: "I had to explain - my parents are really really upset that I didn't become a lawyer so I can't become a junkie. I was always saying no thank you to drugs at the Monterey Pop Festival. I was so relieved when someone passed carrots along the row (instead of drugs)".

Q: Death surrounds Lola, when the ghosts of the past merge with names like Jim Morrison, Mama Cass, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Keith Moon, who all die during her time as a reporter. Does Lola Bensky/Lily Brett finally find out what it means to be human?

A: "That's one of life's really really complex questions. I think that maybe it means to care about other people and not just the people around you. To have compassion."

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"Twilight Saga" ends with movie love letter to fans

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Twilight" fans bid an emotional farewell this week to Bella, Edward and Jacob in "Breaking Dawn-Part 2," the romantic book and movie franchise that ignited a pop culture infatuation with blood-sucking vampires and werewolves.

The tumultuous love triangle between human girl Bella Swan, vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black, that has gripped avid fans known as "Twi-hards" for seven years, comes to a tantalizing end as "Breaking Dawn-Part 2" hits movie theaters around the world.

The "Twilight" film franchise, based on a series of novels by Stephenie Meyer, rocketed the three main stars, Kristen Stewart (Bella), Robert Pattinson (Edward) and Taylor Lautner (Jacob), into the spotlight and the first four films have grossed more than $2.5 billion at the worldwide box office.

For director Bill Condon, who shot both parts of "Breaking Dawn" together and split into two movies post-production, the fifth and final film was all about the fans - who get a surprise twist to the ending.

"The real challenge was to make sure it was a satisfying climax," Condon told reporters. "The film opens with an overture of all the main scenes from all five movies, and at the end, I...brought (it) back to the spirit of the old movies."

The movie pays homage to the angst-ridden teenage romance between Bella and Edward that was underscored by the off-screen real-life romance between Stewart, 22, and Pattinson, 26.

"Breaking Dawn-Part 2" shifts the action from a love story to a family story, as the Cullen clan recruit their extended vampire family to protect Bella and Edward's daughter Renesmee from an ancient vampire coven.

"I think it's very sweet, especially the ending of it, I think it's very close to the book as well. It seems to be that it's really made for the fans," Pattinson told Reuters.

GOING OFF BOOK

While the past four films have stayed true to the books, author Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg came up with a plot twist that adds a major scene that may surprise movie-goers.

"(The action) is off screen in the novel because we only see what Bella sees, and this was just a way of making visual what some of the other characters might have seen," Meyer told reporters.

"It does feel very surprising. There's something new to see but to me it doesn't seem like it's going hugely off the page," she added.

While the fourth film saw Bella's human life draw to a conclusion when she died giving birth to a human-vampire hybrid baby with new husband Edward, "Breaking Dawn-Part 2," sees Bella as a mother and a newly-transformed vampire.

"The coolest thing about vampire Bella is that I got to play her as a human for so long, and the special parts of each vampire are always informed by the great things that they were as a human and so I got to walk in those shoes," Stewart told Reuters.

"Everything made total sense to me. I waited for so long (to play a vampire), once I finally got it, it was so comfortable, I couldn't wait," the actress added.

"The Twilight Saga," first published in 2005, kicked off a wave of vampire or supernatural-themes books, films and TV shows including HBO's "True Blood," the CW TV network's "The Vampire Diaries" and Richelle Mead's "Vampire Academy" series of young adult novels.

As the sun sets on the franchise Meyer brought to life, the author said that while she didn't rule out the possibility of finding more stories in the vampire-werewolf universe, she had closed the chapter on the Cullens.

"I don't know if I'll ever get back to these (stories). Someday I'll write down what was going to happen next. It's sad knowing I don't have another party with the kids again, I really hope I have a chance to at least see my friends again," she told Reuters.

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How Aggressive Hyena Moms Give Their Kids a Boost

Early one morning I caught sight of Morpheus, silhouetted against a pink African dawn. Her long, sloping neck was stretched out as she loped away from me, disappearing over a hill. I followed her to a nearby plain and was met with the unmistakable sound of a group of hyenas squabbling over a carcass. Morpheus entered the fray, first lunging at a smaller male on her right. A moment later, she looked up briefly, her nose and mouth covered in blood, then turned and snapped at a hyena feeding nearby.

I'm intimately acquainted with Morpheus and these other hyenas because they have been studied for more than twenty years by various members of the lab where I did my Ph.D. research; I've staked these hyenas out at dens for hours on end and followed them as they raced across open plains. From watching these animals, we've learned about hyenas' social system, their physiology, and the conservation challenges they face.

But to me, it's the aggression that is the most fascinating thing about hyenas. It's rule-based and constrained by specific social norms, but at the same time, it's incredibly primal and ruthless. Studying aggression has helped us understand what makes hyenas tick, offering us a glimpse into the evolutionary pressures that have made them one of the most unusual and misunderstood species in the animal kingdom.

Formidable females

For more than 1000 years, people believed that hyenas were hermaphrodites, since female hyenas have long, fully-erectile pseudopenises that mimic male genitalia. Seeing a hyena play the role of mom while sporting what looks like a penis would bewilder even an astute naturalist. Not only do female hyenas look like males, they are also the more aggressive and socially dominant sex, exhibiting aggression more than three times more often than male hyenas do.

For many animals, too much aggression is detrimental, at least in terms of reproductive success; in baboons, aggressive females have reduced fertility and increased rates of miscarriage , and in western bluebirds, overly-aggressive males tend to fledge fewer offspring than other males. But in these species, males are generally more aggressive than females; how is aggressiveness related to fitness in a species where females are the more aggressive sex?

Life in the clan

Hyenas live in huge social groups called clans that are structured by a "linear dominance hierarchy." That's the scientific way of saying that in these societies, a high-ranking individual is dominant to every lower-ranking animal in the clan: Morpheus is dominant to Scrabble, who is dominant to Hendrix, and so on. For hyenas, social rank isn't just a title or a badge of honor. Rank determines access to food, so a high-ranking hyena like Morpheus can drive a lower-ranking hyena off a kill at any time, no matter who hunted or scavenged the meat.

Social rank also plays an important role in aggressive behavior among hyenas, since dominance determines who can exhibit aggression toward whom. Aggression is nearly always directed down the hierarchy, toward lower-ranking hyenas (and if a hyena disregards this rule, it's not taken lightly by other clan members). This means that the highest-ranking hyenas have a lot of opportunities for aggression - they can attack nearly any other hyena in the clan - whereas lower-ranking hyenas have far fewer possible targets. Aggression can occur over food, in defense of cubs, or to reprimand a pesky suitor.

But unlike many species, aggression doesn't dictate social rank among hyenas; instead, social rank is inherited. Hyenas are stuck with their lot in life, unable to move up the hierarchy. So does all this aggression actually benefit hyenas, and if so, how?

The implications of aggression

Aggressiveness, it turns out, varies drastically among hyenas; some hyenas tend to threaten - or outright attack - group members more frequently than others do. There is more than a five-fold difference in the aggression rates of the least aggressive and the most aggressive females, even after controlling for social rank and the number of opportunities for aggression.

This type of consistent variation in behavior, called "animal personality," is being found in several traits, such as sociability, boldness, and docility, across many species. And aggressiveness, like other personality traits, can have major implications for fitness. However, for hyenas, aggression doesn't affect fitness by improving a hyena's own survival; aggressive females don't live longer or survive at higher rates than others that attack less often.

Instead, the benefits of aggressiveness are seen later down the line, in the survival of offspring. Female hyenas that are particularly aggressive over food successfully rear a larger proportion of their cubs to adulthood than do females that aggress less often over food. But interestingly, the benefits of aggressiveness depend on social rank. For high-ranking hyenas, aggressiveness doesn't matter much in terms of reproductive success; the offspring of dominant females do well no matter how aggressive their mom is. However, for hyenas low on the totem pole, aggression plays an important role in reproductive success, greatly improving their offspring's odds of surviving until adulthood. But how?

Competition and reputations

It all comes down to acquiring resources for your offspring. High-ranking hyenas already have prime access to food, so being super-aggressive at a kill or carcass isn't a huge advantage. However, for hyenas low on the totem pole, being able to secure a little extra food for a cub could mean the difference between its survival and starvation.

When cubs begin eating meat at around 4 months of age, they start visiting kills with their moms. But as these cubs attempt to eat, they are often harassed by older hyenas and chased off the carcass. Additionally, these young hyenas have another disadvantage when it comes to feeding: their skulls haven't finished developing yet. Although being able to crush bone is a big benefit for hyenas evolutionarily, it's a huge morphological handicap for cubs. It takes up to 35 months for a hyena's skull to develop the integrity and strength to crack bone, so until about three years of age, young hyenas feed more slowly and less efficiently than adults. Combine this physical disadvantage with the incredible feeding competition seen at kills, and cubs - especially low-ranking ones - often don't get much to eat during these communal feeding situations.

Here's where a mom's aggressiveness comes in: we found that the cubs of aggressive females are tolerated better, and are able to feed longer, at these kills than the cubs of less aggressive females are. By being super-aggressive, moms secure extra feeding time and valuable calories for their cubs during this particularly handicapped period in their lives. Although we don't completely understand the process yet, aggressive females appear to develop a type of "mean girl" reputation within the clan that gives their offspring a boost early in life. This effect is incredibly strong and persists even when the mom isn't present at the kill, allowing cubs to benefit from their mom's aggressiveness even in her absence. This increased access to resources benefits low-ranking hyenas disproportionately, since they generally have very limited access to food.

A combination of behavioral, morphological, and ecological research has helped us begin to understand why these highly aggressive and masculinized females have been favored evolutionarily. But even after 20 years of intensive research, there's so much more to learn; we still aren't sure what the functions and implications of male aggression are, and it's possible that there are consequences of aggression in females that we haven't yet discovered.

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After parent's cancer death, one in five kids self-injure

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - One in five teens who lost one of their parents to cancer cut or burn themselves, compared to one in ten teens with two living parents, according to a new Swedish study.

"We were very surprised to find that so many did it," said lead researcher Tove Grenklo, a behavioral scientist at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

Cutting and burning is thought to be how some troubled teens express their emotions, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Those teens may hurt themselves if they can't talk about their feelings, are upset or have low self esteem.

Earlier this year, a study found that children start harming themselves as early as third grade. (see Reuters Health article of June 11, 2012. http://reut.rs/Kveo8v)

The study's researchers write in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that past research showed children with one dead parent are already more likely to have - among other things - psychiatric problems, depression, drug and alcohol abuse and anxiety.

Grenklo and her colleagues wanted to see if they were also more likely to hurt themselves.

For the study, they used Sweden's national death databases to find and survey teens who lost one of their parents to cancer between 2000 and 2003, when they were between 13 and 16.

They then found teens who still had two living parents for a comparison group.

Of the 851 teens who lost a parent, 622 returned their survey, as did 330 of the 451 teens in the comparison group.

Overall, about 20 percent of the teens with only one surviving parent said they hurt themselves, compared to about 10 percent of teens with both parents living.

'WE SHOULD TALK WITH EACH OTHER'

"This study is one of the first to establish that (losing a parent to cancer) might be a unique risk factor for this behavior," said Stephen Lewis, who was not involved with the new study but has studied self-injury at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Lewis added that the study's findings seem to be in line with other estimates of how many teens injure themselves.

The researchers say teens may be driven to self-injure after their parents' deaths by an increased sense of emotional distress and numbness.

Another possible explanation for the increase is that the teens lost a caretaker who would notice their emotional suffering and prevent self-injury, they add.

As for prevention, both Grenklo and Lewis emphasized communication.

"I'm a strong believer that we should talk with each other," said Grenklo. "Children need to know the facts of what happened and why. And that it's OK to be sad and talk about the diseased parent."

"We know one of the reasons people self injure is that they use injuring as a way to release their emotions," said Lewis, who added that it's important for parents, family members and teachers to know how to talk about self-injury and how to prevent it.

Lewis said information on preventing and handling self injury can be found at SIOutreach.org - a Web site where he is co-director.

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Disability expected to rise as more premature babies survive

LONDON (Reuters) - Little progress has been made in improving the long-term health of extremely premature babies, and with pre-term births on the rise across Europe, rates of serious disability are likely to increase, doctors said on Wednesday.

A decade of advances in medicine mean more babies born at between 22 and 26 weeks gestation manage to survive, but rates of severe health complications remain as high as they were in 1995, according to research by neonatal specialists in Britain.

The findings of two separate studies published in the British Medical Journal suggest the number of children and adults with disabilities caused by premature birth will rise in coming years.

Babies born before 27 weeks of gestation - 13 weeks before they would be considered full term - face a battle for survival. Many of those who do survive face problems such as lung conditions, learning difficulties and cerebral palsy.

Rates of premature birth are rising in many European countries and are particularly high in Britain and the United States.

"As the number of children that survive pre-term birth continues to rise, so will the number who experience disability throughout their lives," said Neil Marlow, of University College London's Institute for Women's Health, who worked on both studies and presented the results at a briefing in London.

He said this was "likely to have an impact on the demand for health, education and social care services."

The two studies, led by Marlow and Kate Costeloe of Queen Mary, University of London, compared a group of babies born in the UK between 22 and 26 weeks' gestation in 2006 with those born between 22 and 25 weeks over a 10-month period in 1995.

The first one looked at the immediate survival rates and the health - until they went home from hospital - of extremely premature babies born in 2006 and compared them with 1995 rates.

Researchers found the number of babies born at 22 to 25 weeks and admitted to intensive care increased by 44 percent during this period. The number of babies who survived long enough to go home from hospital increased by 13 percent.

There was no significant increase in survival of babies born before 24 weeks - the current legal limit for abortion in Britain - and the number of babies who had major health complications was unchanged over the decade.

Costeloe said what while survival rates for babies born at less than 27 weeks gestation were moving in the "right direction", there was still room for improvement.

"We can't be complacent, because the fact of the matter is, that in 2006 if at this gestation you were alive at the end of the first week, you had no greater chance of going home (from hospital) than you would have done had you managed to survive the first week of life in 1995."

The second study looked at the health of the 2006 babies when at three years old and compared this with 1995. It found that while 11 percent more babies survived to three without disabilities the proportion of survivors born between 22 and 25 weeks with severe disability was about the same - at 18 percent in 1995 and 19 percent in 2006.

The researchers also found a link between gestational age and the risk of disability, with babies born earlier more likely to have serious health complications at three years of age.

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