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By Herbert Lash

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Global equity markets resumed this year’s rally on Monday, driven higher by a flurry of merger and acquisition activity, while a recent tumble in the yen against the dollar halted after Japan’s economy minister suggested the currency might have weakened enough.

Despite major American and European stock indices being up double digits – the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 index is almost 17 percent higher so far this year – investors still see better returns ahead in equities than elsewhere.

Deals such as Yahoo‘s $1.1 billion bid for Tumblr indicate that companies continue to search for growth through acquisitions despite record high share prices, a bullish sign for stocks. Yahoo was up 1.21 percent at $26.84.

In another deal, generic drugmaker Actavis Inc. , itself the subject of takeover speculation, said it would buy specialty pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott Plc for $5 billion in stock.

Actavis rose 2.7 percent to $128.89, while Warner Chilcott gained 3.33 percent to $19.85.

“We got a lot of merger announcements this morning. It means there’s a lot of appetite for equities and that’s good for the market,” said Giri Cherukuri, head trader at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois.

“Stocks are not too over-valued and the economy is getting better,” he said. “As long as the economy continues to improve, the market should be able to maintain these levels.”

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 16.48 points, or 0.11 percent, at 15,370.88. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> was up 2.64 points, or 0.16 percent, at 1,670.11. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 2.01 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,500.97.

MSCI’s all-country world equity index <.miwo00000pus> rose 0.51 percent to its highest since June 2008.

Britain’s benchmark FTSE 100 <.ftse> index rose to its best closing level since late 2000, while the FTSEurofirst-300 index of leading European shares <.fteu3> rose 0.31 percent to close at 1,252.09.

European shares hit five-year highs, boosted by strength in German stocks and a travel sector lifted by a surge in Ryanair after it reported better-than-expected earnings for the past year. Ryanair rose 6.87 percent to a record 6.765.

The Japanese economy minister, Akira Amari, said the yen’s excessive strength had largely corrected and further weakness could damage Japan’s economy.

Analysts, however, said any sharp dip in the dollar against the yen was a buying opportunity as Tokyo was committed to easier monetary policy. While the dollar fell sharply on Amari’s comments and remained down on the day, it was off the session low.

The dollar was last 0.44 percent lower at 102.47 yen, having hit a low of 102.19. Last Friday, the dollar reached a high of 103.30 yen.

The euro gained 0.5 percent against the dollar to 128.72.

Gold had been on track for its longest run of losses since March 2009, weighed by speculation that the Federal Reserve might rein in its economic stimulus program.

Investors have been dumping gold, which is down about 20 percent this year, while stocks and the dollar have risen on an improving global economic outlook. Gold-backed exchange-traded funds have had massive outflows in recent months.

Spot gold hit a low of $1,338.95 an ounce on Monday, its weakest since April 16, but later rebounded, rising $25.20 to $1,383.34 an ounce.

The beginning of the end of the Fed’s massive bond-buying program might come sooner than many investors think if recent gains in the U.S. labor market do not prove fleeting.

U.S. government debt prices slipped after an early rebound from last week’s sell-off as the dollar weakened against the yen. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was unchanged in price to yield 1.9524 percent.

Brent crude traded near break-even, weighed by ample supplies, weaker demand for fuel and a strong dollar.

Brent crude for July was up 40 cents at $105.04 a barrel. U.S. crude rose 79 cents to $96.81.

Latest economic indicators http://link.reuters.com/vaf35t

G4 currencies since 2007 http://link.reuters.com/mem28t

Equity sector returns in 2013 http://link.reuters.com/jyb29s

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(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/yen-edges-lows-asian-shares-firmer-013643236.html

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ISLAMABAD (AP) ? A lawyer for Pakistan’s former military ruler says a judge has granted Pervez Musharraf bail in a case related to the murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Despite the bail, the former military strongman is to remain under house arrest on the outskirts of Islamabad in connection with two other cases against him.

Lawyer Salman Safdar said Monday that the bail was about $20,000.

Government prosecutors have accused Musharraf of being involved in the gun and suicide attack that killed Bhutto in 2007 when he was in power. They have also blamed him for not providing the former premier with enough security.

Musharraf has denied the allegations and claimed they were politically motivated.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pakistans-musharraf-granted-bail-bhutto-case-103856906.html

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BOSTON — Gallup, the company that has faced intense criticism after its polling consistently understated President Barack Obama’s support during the 2012 campaign, shared details of its ongoing review of its election polling methods on Saturday.

Over a four-week period before the November 2012 election, Gallup’s daily tracking poll showed Republican opponent Mitt Romney leading by margins ranging from 1 to 7 percentage points, including a 4-point Romney lead just 10 days before the election. Obama defeated Romney by a 51 to 47 percent margin.

Shortly after the election Gallup’s editor-in-chief Frank Newport pledged to conduct an internal review of Gallup’s telephone survey methodology. As promised, Newport reviewed on Saturday the kinds of studies conducted on issues including drawing samples, interviewing voters, and how to weight data and select the likely electorate. The company pledges to make the findings of its ongoing review publicly available.

Although much analysis is now complete and set to be unveiled June 4, the investigation awaits “a major experiment” in conjunction with the gubernatorial campaigns in the fall.

“We take it seriously” when polls misfire, Newport explained on Saturday. “We’ve been doing presidential polling since 1936 which is what put George Gallup on the map …The results [in 2012] certainly were not what we wanted them to be from Gallup’s perspective.”

Newport’s remarks came during a private, on-the-record briefing in Boston attended by The Huffington Post, and a handful of other pollsters and academic researchers at the annual American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) conference.

Michael Traugott, a University of Michigan political scientist and survey methodologist retained by the company for the review, said he recommended broadening the scope and timing of the inquiry.

“Early on,” Traugott said, “Frank and I had a conversation, about trying to learn what we could from an investigation of the data” collected during the 2012 campaign, “but then using that information to design a series of experiments going forward.”

Traugott also said he recommended reviewing all of Gallup’s methods and assessing the data collected before the 2012 campaign. “We have been assembling data on presidential approval back to 2002 as a benchmark to look at the Gallup data in relations to other data and also party identification data going back.”

His analysis confirms, for example, that by “a small but consistent amount,” ratings of President George W. Bush “were a little bit higher than the average” of other pollsters “and the Obama ratings were a little bit lower than the average.” Those findings are consistent with a Huffington Post investigation of Gallup’s results published in June 2012.

Traugott also clarified that Gallup “has agreed to make all of this information publicly available.” He stressed that both he and Newport, as former presidents of AAPOR “are firmly committed to transparency. And this is an ongoing part of our relationship as well.”

When pressed on whether that included releasing raw respondent-level data, Newport said that although they are “still making the final decisions, we think we’ll try to make the data available as well.” Such data will allow other scholars and researchers to attempt to replicate Traugott’s findings and test other theories. On Saturday, Newport also asked assembled AAPOR researchers for further input on a list of 20 specific parts — virtually every aspect — of Gallup’s methodology included in the review.

While Newport declined to reveal specific findings from the review ahead of the June 4 announcement, he shared some new information.

One of the experiments, for example, checked on potential bias associated with the Gallup brand name by running a full “shadow” sample to a recent Gallup poll in which respondents were told the polster was “Selection Research Incorporated,” rather than Gallup. “The Gallup name significantly increased the response rate,” Newport said, but without producing differences in the demographics of the resulting sample.

Newport also explained that earlier this year, the company changed how it asks respondents to describe their race, replacing yes/no questions critiqued in last year’s Huffington Post investigation with a question in which respondents could select more than one in a list of potential answers. That change allowed for a related modification to Gallup’s weighting procedure. “We think that’s already had some impact on our data,” Newport said.

It is difficult, Traugott explained, to reconstruct Gallup’s problems “retrospectively” using the data collected last fall. Instead, he convinced Gallup to conduct experiments to determine if alternative methods would have produced different and more accurate results.

Because such experiments only make sense “in the context of a campaign,” Traugott explained, they decided to undertake them during the upcoming gubernatorial campaigns in Virginia and possibly New Jersey. He stressed that the experiments would only be used for further analysis, and would not be released publicly before the election.

Three academic survey methodologists are joining Traugott in the investigation: Chris Wlezien from Temple University, an expert in likely voter models; James Wagner from the University of Michigan, an authority in telephone survey operations; and Frauke Kreuter from the University of Maryland, an expert on sampling and weighting.

Shortly after the election, Newport speculated that “it is likely that we could see significantly fewer polls conducted in the 2016 election.” Asked Saturday if he was signaling Gallup’s intention to withdraw from polling in the next presidential race, Newport replied, “Well, check back with us in 2016. I don’t know what any polling organization is doing in 2016,” given the increasing challenges to traditional pollster methods.

However, despite the months of criticism, Newport was upbeat about the potential for improvements with advances in technology. He spoke favorably about a future in which “polling is augmented by non-probability data, administrative data, social media data.”

“I think it is an exciting time,” he said later. “Rather than doing things the same way in any business, it’s always exciting when technology in particular opens up all these other opportunities.”

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/gallup-review-polls_n_3299895.html

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While having a long, happy marriage is one of the predictors of longevity and a source of great meaning and fulfillment in our lives, getting married often registers as one of the most stressful major events we can experience. Sustaining happiness over the bumpy road of decades together is no easy task, either. The potential stressors in a long-term romantic relationship are myriad: wondering if this is the right person, financial insecurity, wedding planning, jealousy, differing styles of managing money, sex and intimacy issues, infidelity, parenting, in-laws, overloaded schedules, health crises?

All too often, it?s easy to react to marital stress in counterproductive ways like denial, avoidance, suppression, compromising, venting, living like roommates instead of partners.

According to several recent studies, a stressful marriage can create more health problems for someone than if they had never married at all. Another suggests that a stressful marriage can be as bad for the heart as a regular smoking habit!

To keep your marriage or long-term relationship low-stress, strong and happy, it?s critical to learn to manage your attitudes and emotions and lead with your heart ? from that intelligent, self-secure place inside, where wisdom, intuition and understanding reside.

Stress indicates something?s out of balance. Your number one responsibility is to take care of yourself. To address the relationship issues you face with clarity, you need to get back in balance to adequately access your mental and intuitive faculties. In the moment of stress, learning to reset and go to ease can make all the difference between a happy marriage and misery, or even divorce. It?s about getting your heart and brain aligned so your intuition can speak, something we?ve taught thousands to do, including many certified marriage and family therapists. Here are some tips for a stress-reduced marriage or relationship from HeartMath:

• Developing a healthy, mature relationship with yourself and learning to self-manage your reactions is the number one way we?ve found to manage the stress of a relationship. When we can handle ourselves well, then we are more able to have an effective relationship with another person.
• Spend more alone time together. Many couples get so busy that they lead separate lives and understandably feel disconnected. Schedule regular dates and show your spouse they?re a priority.
• Learn HeartMath?s Quick Coherence technique to get you into heart-brain coherence quickly when you feel conflict rising.
• Read HeartMath?s article on Improving Relationships and download HeartMath?s Improving Relationships ebooklet for more helpful guidance.
• Put away the electronic devices that keep your attention off of your spouse. One that will actually bring you closer together is HeartMath?s emWave? 2, our award-winning stress-busting tool. Using this feedback device to get into heart coherence, you and your spouse can transform volatile fights into meaningful discussions that bring insight and resolution to your issues.

The most beneficial thing therapists who prescribe the emWave2 to their marriage counseling clients have discovered is for each of the parties to use the emWave2 device to get into heart coherence before they start talking with each other. The John Gottman Institute, which specializes in teaching MFTs and others to use best practices in relationship therapy, often recommend using the emWave2 as it helps make it easier to speak to and understand one?s partner when one is calm and centered.

When I was an advisor to The Dr. Phil Show, they would send people to us for training. They asked HeartMath to work with a couple they had on their show who were on the brink of divorce. I taught them Quick Coherence and other HeartMath techniques and provided each one with an emWave2 to first get in sync within themselves, and then with each other during communications. With some coaching, they totally transformed themselves and their marriage with these tools.

Knowing that you have tools available and skills you and your spouse can learn to handle whatever comes along in your relationship and lives should give you confidence that you can have a long-term, happy marriage. Other than that, all you need is love!

Emotions give meaning to our lives.? The power of emotion can enrich our lives beyond measure ? meaning, color, texture.? Understanding the power of your emotions is vital for having a fulfilling, healthy life.? Click to receive this Free e-booklet, The Power of Emotion.

Source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/managing-marriage-stress-starts-with-self.html

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