Facebook Beats Forecasts on Earnings and Revenue

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook made a lot of money in the last quarter. It also spent a lot. And that made investors once again cautious about the company.

After an eight-month roller coaster ride on the public markets, Facebook did well in the fourth quarter of 2012 by aggressively ramping up advertisements aimed at its users, including on mobile phones. In its financial report on Wednesday, it beat expectations, increasing revenue by a handsome 40 percent from the same period a year ago.

But its expenses also climbed rapidly as the company hired engineers and built data centers, causing profit to dip from the last quarter in 2011. With that, Wall Street lost some enthusiasm.

Facebook shares, which had closed at $31.24 on Wednesday, fell more than 3 percent in after-hours trading after the results were released.

In recent weeks, the stock had recovered much of the ground it lost in the eight months since its introduction last year.

“The quarter was a little like a cold shower after you’ve been out all night — it’s something that makes you sober up very quickly,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, adding that the numbers made it clear that Facebook intended to spend more “to go after the opportunities before them.”

In the conference call with analysts after the earnings report, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, cautioned Wall Street that profit might not grow as fast as investors would like. That, he said, was because Facebook would continue to spend money hiring people and building products for the future, like the new search tool it introduced earlier this month. “It’s important to start planting seeds,” he said.

The most closely watched part of the earnings report was how much money the company brought in from its mobile users; most people log in to the site using their cellphones. Facebook said advertising on the mobile newsfeed accounted for 23 percent of its advertising revenue, up from 14 percent in the third quarter but slightly lower than some analysts had forecast.

Mr. Zuckerberg predicted that the company would eventually make more money on every minute spent on the Facebook mobile app than on the desktop computer.

Facebook reported fourth-quarter revenue of $1.59 billion, compared with $1.52 billion predicted by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The company earned $64 million in net income, or 3 cents a share. Excluding certain items, Facebook said it had a net income of $426 million in the fourth quarter, or 17 cents a share, beating analysts’ expectations by 2 cents.

Facebook’s biggest, long-term challenge remains how to profit from the enormous piles of personal data of its one billion users without alienating them or inviting the wrath of government regulators in the United States and abroad. The company reported on Wednesday that it had 1.06 billion active users — those who log in at least once a month.

Secondarily, it must figure out a way to profit abroad. Most of its revenue still comes from North America and to a lesser extent Europe.

Despite the stock’s decline after the earnings report, it is still much recovered since last year’s slump. It opened at $38 a share last May, but shortly after that, the stock plummeted as Wall Street soured on its ability to increase profit as fast as investors wanted. Shares sank to half the public offering price last September.

But the company focused on its advertising business and released a series of new products aimed at taking on some of its biggest rivals, including Google and Apple. Mr. Zuckerberg took the initiative to reassure investors it had their interests at heart. The improvement in the share price in recent weeks suggests that the company’s charm offensive is paying off.

In the last few months, Facebook has floated several trial balloons aimed at pleasing Wall Street and, in particular, convincing investors that it can thrive in the mobile era.

It offered marketers more refined targeting options, including Facebook Exchange, which allows companies to track users as they are browsing and shopping for products around the Web and lets companies show advertisements for those products when the users log back on to Facebook.

Before Christmas last year, in a bid to step into territory dominated by Amazon, it introduced the Gifts application, which lets users buy goods and services for their Facebook friends, and in turn, share with the company an extremely valuable piece of data: their credit card numbers. The company made clear in the conference call on Wednesday that this would not be an immediate moneymaker.

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Egyptian Army Chief Warns of Collapse Amid Chaos

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

An Egyptian protester throws a tear gas canister during clashes with riot police in Cairo on Tuesday.

CAIRO — As three Egyptian cities defied President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to quell the anarchy spreading through their streets, the nation’s top general warned Tuesday that the state itself was in danger of collapse if the feuding civilian leaders could not agree on a solution to restore order.

Thousands of residents poured into the streets of the three cities, protesting a 9 p.m. curfew with another night of chants against Mr. Morsi and assaults on the police.

The president appeared powerless to stop them: he had already granted the police extralegal powers to enforce the curfew and then called out the army as well. His allies in the Muslim Brotherhood and their opposition also proved ineffectual in the face of the crisis, each retreating to their corners, pointing fingers of blame.

The general’s warning punctuated a rash of violent protests across the country that has dramatized the near-collapse of the government’s authority. With the city of Port Said proclaiming its nominal independence, protesters demanded the resignation of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, while people across the country appeared convinced that taking to the streets in protests was the only means to get redress for their grievances.

Just five months after Egypt’s president assumed power from the military, the cascading crisis revealed the depth of the distrust for the central government left by decades of autocracy, two years of convoluted transition and his own acknowledged missteps in facing the opposition. With cities in open rebellion and the police unable to tame crowds, the very fabric of society appears to be coming undone.

The chaos has also for the first time touched pillars of the long-term health of Egypt’s economy, already teetering after two years of turbulence since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. While a heavy deployment of military troops along the Suez Canal — a vital source of revenue — appeared to insulate it from the strife in Port Said, Suez and Ismailia, the clashes near Tahrir Square in Cairo spilled over for the first time into an armed assault on the historic Semiramis InterContinental Hotel, sending tremors of fear through the vital tourism sector.

With the stakes rising and no solution in sight, Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister, warned Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and their opponents that “their disagreement on running the affairs of the country may lead to the collapse of the state and threatens the future of the coming generations.”

“Political, economic, social and security challenges” require united action “by all parties” to avoid “dire consequences that affect the steadiness and stability of the homeland,” General Sisi said in an address to military cadets that was later relayed as public statement from his spokesman. And the acute polarization of the civilian politics, he suggested, had now becoming a concern of the military because “to affect the stability of the state institutions is a dangerous matter that harms Egyptian national security.”

Coming just months after the military relinquished the power it seized at the ouster of Mr. Mubarak, General Sisi’s rebuke to the civilian leaders inevitably raised the possibility that the generals might once again step into civilian politics. There was no indication of an imminent coup.

Analysts familiar with General Sisi’s thinking say that unlike his predecessors, he wants to avoid any political entanglements. But the Egyptian military has prided itself on its dual military and political role since Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup more six decades ago. And General Sisi insisted Tuesday it would remain “the solid mass and the backbone upon which rest the Egyptian state’s pillars.”

With the army now caught between the president’s instructions to restore order and the citizens’ refusal to comply, he said, the “armed forces are facing a serious dilemma” as they seek to end the violence without “confronting citizens and their right to protest.”

The attack on the Semiramis Hotel, between the American Embassy and the Nile in one of the most heavily guarded neighborhoods of the city, showed how much security had deteriorated. And it testified to the difficult task that the civilian government faces in trying to rebuild public security and trust.

Kareem Fahim and Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo.

Kareem Fahim and Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo.

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BlackBerry 10 said to be inadequate for helping RIM overcome its ‘demons’

After hitting a seven-year low of $ 6.22 this past summer, shares of Research in Motion (RIMM) have rebounded and climbed more than 100% in the past six months. The company that was previously written off by Wall Street investors has seen a significant boost in recent months as anticipation grows for its BlackBerry 10 operating system. But while a number of analysts have voiced their support for RIM, not everyone is convinced.

[More from BGR: Apple’s 128GB iPad shows the world exactly what Apple does best]

Jan Dawson of Ovum explained, per Benzinga, that RIM continues to “face the twin demons of consumer-driven buying power and a chronic inability to appeal to mature market consumers,” and he believes BlackBerry 10 won’t change this. The analyst said that due to a strong user base of 79 million subscribers and profitability still in the black, the company will remain for years to come. He was quick to note, however, that its glory days are in the past and “it is only a matter of time before it reaches a natural end.”

[More from BGR: Apple unveils new 128GB iPad]

Dawson previously wrote that RIM’s strategy seems to be focused on building the best devices for current BlackBerry users “rather than something that will necessarily win converts from other platforms.”

“The points of differentiation RIM has focused on in teasers for the new platform confirm this – better multitasking, productivity, email, contacts and calendar applications and so on, rather than a better gaming, content consumption or social networking experience,” he said.

Shares of RIM are down more than 6% on Monday, a day before the company is set to unveil its BlackBerry 10 operating system.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Is flag football ahead for NFL?

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Players on both Super Bowl teams say they are confused about when a hit is legal by NFL standards.

Rules designed to make the game safer are also making players uncertain about which hits are considered clean and which ones could lead to a fine.

San Francisco tight end Vernon Davis wondered if two-hand touch is in the future for the NFL.

"I think the rules will change a lot," he said Tuesday. "There's already no helmet to helmet. Might be flag football, maybe."

Baltimore Ravens safety Bernard Pollard, one of the league's hardest hitters, warned against trying to take collisions out of the game, as long as they are clean.

His 49ers counterpart, All-Pro Dashon Goldson, says defenders keep this in mind when they take the field:

"Do your best and then hope you don't get a letter (with a fine) in your locker on Wednesday," he said.

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To Open Eyes, W-2s List Cost of Health Plans

WASHINGTON — As workers open their W-2 forms this month, many will see a new box with information on the total cost of employer-sponsored health insurance coverage. To some, it will be a surprise, perhaps even a shock.

Workers often have little idea how much they and their employers are paying for coverage. In many cases, economists say, workers give up cash compensation to get and keep health benefits.

The disclosures, required by the 2010 health care law, are meant to make workers more cost-conscious. Health benefits are still tax-free. But labor unions and employer groups say it could be easier to tax them in the future, now that employers must report their value to the government.

The new information appears in Box 12 of the standard W-2 form, with a two-letter code, DD. The box shows the “cost of employer-sponsored health coverage.” And that amount is not taxable, the Internal Revenue Service says on the back of the form.

Jay J. Makled, a union steward for the United Automobile Workers at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Mich., described his reaction after seeing that his health coverage cost nearly $16,000 last year: “It’s quite expensive. I was surprised to see how much the company was paying for that benefit.”

Hourly employees represented by the union there said they generally did not pay any of the premium.

The number on the W-2 form is supposed to reflect the part of the cost paid by the employer and the part paid by the employee.

Prof. Nicole Huberfeld, an expert on health law at the University of Kentucky, who received her W-2 form on Monday, said, “Most people who get health insurance from their employers have no idea how much it costs.”

“People are often shocked when they see the cost, $12,000 to $16,000 a year,” Ms. Huberfeld said. “Many Americans believe this is something they get free. But employers pay lower wages because they provide insurance.”

In 2012, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance averaged $5,615 a year for single coverage and $15,745 for family coverage. Over five years, the costs have increased 25 percent for individual coverage and 30 percent for family coverage.

“Health coverage is a big piece of people’s income and a large part of the social welfare budget,” said C. Eugene Steuerle, a tax economist at the Urban Institute. “But the benefits are not taxable, and most of the spending is hidden, so we don’t consider the trade-offs. If we want to get control of health care costs, people have to be aware of them.”

That is the goal of the disclosure requirement, which was proposed by a bipartisan group of senators: two Republicans, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, and two Democrats, Max Baucus of Montana and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Congress acted after Peter R. Orszag, then the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers: “The economic evidence is overwhelming, the theory is overwhelming, that when your firm pays for your health insurance, you actually pay through reduced take-home pay. The firm is not giving that to you for free.”

The tax-free treatment of employer-provided health benefits is the largest tax break in the tax code, costing the government roughly $180 billion a year in lost revenue, or 80 percent more than the home mortgage interest deduction, according to the administration.

Katie W. Mahoney, the executive director of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said, “It’s useful for employees to know the value of coverage their employers provide.” But she said some employers worried that reporting the benefit on the W-2 form could lead to taxing the benefit.

“That’s not the intent of the current requirement,” Ms. Mahoney said. “But once the information is collected by the government, it’s very easy for another administration to have a different intent.”

An employee of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. whose health coverage was listed as costing more than $20,000 said: “That knocks my socks off. When I saw the number, my eyes popped out. I appreciate my employer all the more.”

The employee said he had been told not to discuss the cost publicly because the union did not want to suggest that some employees had “Cadillac coverage.”

An employer that fails to comply with the reporting requirement could be subject to penalties of $200 per W-2 form, up to a maximum of $3 million, tax lawyers said.

Employers are exempt from the reporting obligation if they are required to file fewer than 250 W-2 forms, the I.R.S. said. That could change, but the agency said employers would be given at least six months’ notice.

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European Cloud Over Ford

DETROIT — Last year, Ford Motor broke ranks with other auto companies when it announced major cuts in its troubled European operations, including the closing of three factories, to address a sharp downturn in sales on the continent and an oversupply of vehicles.

On Tuesday, Ford, the second-biggest American automaker, behind General Motors, startled the industry again by predicting that Europe, a critical market, would get worse before it begins improving later this year.

Ford said European auto sales, including commercial vehicles, could fall as low as 13 million this year, and its own annual losses in the region could reach $2 billion. Europe is Ford’s second-largest market, after North America.

“The industry did 14 million last year, and that was the worst in 20 years,” Bob Shanks, Ford’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “But the industry is continuing to decline, and we think 13 million is the trough.”

The dire predictions for Europe overshadowed what were otherwise positive fourth-quarter results, which Ford reported on Tuesday.

The company reported a 54 percent gain in adjusted fourth-quarter profit as strong earnings in North America compensated for heavy losses in Europe. Ford said it earned $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to $1.03 billion a year earlier, excluding the impact of tax-valuation allowances in 2011. Those allowances inflated last year’s fourth-quarter net income to $13.6 billion.

For the full year, Ford said it earned $5.67 billion, a 5 percent drop from $5.97 billion in 2011, not including the tax-valuation changes, which increased the 2011 earnings to $20.2 billion.

The auto market in Western Europe remains abysmal, but some analysts agree with Ford’s assessment that sales may be close to their low point and could start to recover late this year as the euro zone crisis subsides.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs forecast that European auto sales would fall an additional 2.2 percent in 2013, to 12.9 million vehicles. But they will rise 3.9 percent in 2014, Goldman predicted, as car buyers start to feel more secure about their economic prospects.

In the meantime, though, companies like General Motors’ Opel unit and PSA Peugeot Citröen are trying to make broad reductions in jobs and production capacity.

The recovery, if it comes, could be too late for many workers and even some of the manufacturers.

The companies that have suffered the most are those that depend on the mass market and on southern Europe, including Fiat, Peugeot and Renault. Steady declines in sales since 2007 have left two-thirds of European auto plants operating at a loss, Goldman Sachs analysts estimated.

North American sales have been a bright spot for the world’s automakers, and Ford is no exception. Ford’s overall revenue in the fourth quarter was $36.5 billion, a 5 percent increase from $34.6 billion in the same period a year earlier. For all of 2012, revenue was $134.3 billion, 1 percent less than $136.3 billion in 2011.

Healthy sales of new vehicles in North America resulted in good profit margins, particularly in the United States, where the overall industry grew 13 percent last year.

Ford said it had $1.87 billion in pretax earnings in North America during the quarter, a 110 percent increase from $889 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. For all of 2012, Ford had pretax profit of $8.34 billion in North America, compared to $6.19 billion in 2011.

But the company’s European operations continued to struggle as overall demand plunged, particularly in southern Europe.Ford reported a $732 million pretax loss in Europe for the fourth quarter, compared with a $190 million loss in the same period in 2011.

For all of 2012, Ford said it had a pretax loss of $1.75 billion in the region. By comparison, the company reported a loss of $27 million in Europe for all of 2011.

Investors, apparently shaken by the scale of the losses and Ford’s dismal forecast for 2013, sent the automaker’s shares down nearly 5 percent to $13.14 in Tuesday’s trading.

Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.

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Protests Grow on Fifth Day of Unrest in Egypt

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians in Port Said mourned on Monday for people killed in clashes with the police a day earlier.

PORT SAID, Egypt — The police fired indiscriminately into the streets outside their besieged station, a group of protesters arrived with a crate of gasoline bombs, and others cheered a masked man on a motorcycle who arrived with a Kalashnikov.

The growing chaos along the vital canal zone showed little sign of abating on Monday as President Mohamed Morsi called out the army to try to regain control of three cities along the Suez Canal whose growing lawlessness is testing the integrity of the Egyptian state.

In Port Said, street battles reached a bloody new peak with a death toll over three days of at least 45, with at least five more protesters killed by bullet wounds, hospital officials said.

Such violence has flared across Egypt with increasing frequency since President Hosni Mubarak was forced out by the revolution two years ago.

President Morsi had already declared a monthlong state of emergency here and in the other canal towns of Suez and Ismailia, applying a Mubarak-era law that virtually eliminates due process protections against abuse by the police. Angry crowds burned tires and hurled rocks at the police. And the police, with little training and less credibility, hunkered down behind barrages of tear gas, birdshot and occasional bullets.

The sense that the state was unraveling may have been strongest here in Port Said, where demonstrators have proclaimed their city an independent nation. But in recent days the unrest has risen in towns across the country and in Cairo as well. In the capital on Monday, a mob of protesters managed to steal an armored police vehicle, drive it to Tahrir Square and make it a bonfire.

After two years of torturous transition, Egyptians have watched with growing anxiety as the erosion of the public trust in the government and a persistent security vacuum have fostered a new temptation to resort to violence to resolve disputes, said Michael Hanna, a researcher at the New York-based Century Foundation who is now in Cairo. “There is a clear political crisis that has eroded the moral authority of the state,” he said.

And the spectacular evaporation of the government’s authority here in Port Said has put that crisis on vivid display, most conspicuously in the rejection of Mr. Morsi’s declarations of the curfew and state of emergency.

As in Suez and Ismailia, tens of thousands residents of Port Said poured into the streets in defiance just as a 9 p.m. curfew was set to begin. Bursts of gunfire echoed through the city for the next hours, and between 9 and 11 p.m. hospital officials raised the death count to seven from two.

When two armored personnel carriers approached a funeral Monday morning for some of the seven protesters killed the day before, a stone-throwing mob of thousands quickly chased them away. And within a few hours the demonstrators had resumed their siege of a nearby police station, burning tires to create a smoke screen to hide behind amid tear gas and gunfire.

Many in the city said they saw no alternative but to continue to stay in the streets. They complained that the hated security police remained unchanged and unaccountable even after Mr. Mubarak had been ousted. They saw no recourse in the justice system, which is also unchanged; they dismissed the courts as politicized, especially after the acquittals of all those accused of killing protesters during the revolution. Then came the death sentences handed down Saturday to 21 Port Said soccer fans for their role in a deadly brawl. The death sentences set off the current unrest here.

Nor, they said, did they trust the political process that brought to power Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. He had vowed to usher in the rule of law as “a president for all Egyptians.” But in November he used a presidential decree to temporarily stifle potential legal objections so that his Islamist allies could rushed out a new Constitution. His authoritarian move kicked off a sharp uptick in street violence leading to this weekend’s Port Said clashes.

“Injustice beyond imagination,” one man outside the morning funeral said of Mr. Morsi’s emergency decree, before he was drowned out a crowd of others echoing the sentiment.

“He declared a curfew, and we declare civil disobedience,” another man said.

“This doesn’t apply to Port Said because we don’t recognize him as our president,” said a third. “He is the president of the Muslim Brotherhood only.”

Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Yahoo revenue rises on search advertising

(Reuters) – Yahoo Inc posted a 4 percent gain in net revenue to $ 1.22 billion in the fourth quarter, when an increase in search advertising sales offset weakness in the Web portal’s display ad business.

The company forecast net revenue — which excludes fees shared with partner websites — of $ 1.07 billion to $ 1.1 billion in the current quarter, trailing the $ 1.1 billion that Wall Street analysts expect on average.

Shares in Yahoo, which is trying to stave off declines across much of its business and revive growth, were up 1.5 percent in after hours trade. They had risen 4.5 percent before the revenue projections were disclosed on an analysts’ conference call.

“We got the revenue acceleration we were hoping for. Display was down, but search is doing better” said Sameet Sinha, an analyst at B. Riley Caris.

“As long as in the near-term things are not bad, I think the stock will generally act positively while we wait for Marissa Mayer to deliver,” said Sinha.

The company said on Monday its fourth-quarter net income was $ 272.3 million, or 23 cents per share, versus $ 295.6 million, or 24 cents per share in the year-ago period.

Excluding certain items, Yahoo said it had earnings per share of 32 cents, versus the average analyst expectation of 28 cents according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Chief Executive Marissa Mayer is moving to revive the company’s fortunes after several years of declining revenue. Yahoo’s stock has risen roughly 30 percent since she became CEO, reaching its highest levels since 2008.

Yahoo said it repurchased $ 1.5 billion worth of shares during the fourth quarter. Shares in the company were up 1.5 percent at $ 20.61 in extended trading from a close of $ 20.31 on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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Woods wins at Torrey Pines for 8th time

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Tiger Woods was so good for so long at Torrey Pines that it didn't matter how bad it looked at the end.

In a finish that was fitting for such a long and exasperating week, Woods built an eight-shot lead with five holes to play on Monday until he lost patience with the slow play and started losing shots that only determined the margin of victory.

Despite two bogeys and a double bogey in the final hour, he closed with an even-par 72 for a four-shot victory in the Farmers Insurance Open.

"I'm excited the way I played all week," Woods said. "I hit the ball well — pretty much did everything well and built myself a nice little cushion. I had some mistakes at the end, but all my good play before that allowed me to afford those mistakes."

He won for the 75th time in his PGA Tour career, seven behind the record held by Sam Snead.

Woods won this tournament for the seventh time, and he set a PGA Tour record by winning at Torrey Pines for the eighth time, including his 2008 U.S. Open. Woods also has won seven times at Bay Hill and at Firestone.

Torrey Pines is a public course that he has turned into his private domain.

"I don't know if anybody would have beaten him this week," said Nick Watney, who got within five shots of Woods when the tournament was still undecided until making three bogeys on his next five holes. "He's definitely on his game."

It was the 23rd time Woods has won by at least four shots on the PGA Tour. Defending champion Brandt Snedeker (69) and Josh Teater (69) tied for the second. Watney had a 71 and tied for fourth with Jimmy Walker.

It was a strong statement for Woods, who was coming off a missed cut last week in Abu Dhabi. This was the second time in his career that Woods won in his next tournament after missing the cut, but this was the first time it happened the following week.

Abu Dhabi is now a distant memory. The question how is what kind of season is shaping up for Woods.

"I think he wanted to send a message," said Hunter Mahan, who shares a swing coach with Woods. "I think deep down he did. You play some games to try to motivate yourself. There's been so much talk about Rory (McIlroy). Rory is now with Nike. That would be my guess."

The last time Woods won at Torrey Pines also was on a Monday, when he beat Rocco Mediate in a playoff to capture the U.S. Open for his 14th major.

Of all his wins on this course along the Pacific, this might have been the most peculiar.

Thick fog cost the tournament an entire day of golf on Saturday, forcing the first Monday finish in tournament history. Woods effectively won the tournament during his 25 holes on Sunday, when he turned a two-shot lead into a six-shot margin with only 11 holes to play. CBS Sports wanted to televise the final day in late afternoon on the East Coast, but it still went long because of the pace of play.

It took Woods about 3 hours, 45 minutes to finish his 11 holes on Monday. His 19-hole win over Mediate lasted 4½ hours.

As much as Woods got off to a good start, equal attention was given to slow play, an increasing problem on the PGA Tour.

"It got a little ugly toward the end," Woods said. "I started losing patience a little bit with the slow play. I lost my concentration a little bit."

He made bogey from the bunker on No. 14. He hooked a tee shot off the eucalyptus trees and into a patch of ice plant on the 15th, leading to double bogey. After another long wait on the 17th tee, he popped up his tee shot and made another bogey. With a four-shot lead on the 18th — Kyle Stanley blew a three-shot lead a year ago — he hit wedge safely behind the hole for a two-putt par.

Woods finished on 14-under 274 for his 14th win in California, and 11th in San Diego County.

"I think a win always makes it special, especially the way I played," Woods said. "To have not won would have been something else because I really played well. Playing the way I did for most of this tournament, until the very end, the last five holes, I felt like I should have won this tournament. I put myself in a position where I had a big enough lead, and that's basically how I felt like I played this week.

"I know I can do that, and it was nice to be able to do it."

Like so many of his big wins, the only drama was for second place.

Brad Fritsch, the rookie from Canada, birdied his last two holes for a 75. That put him into a tie for ninth, however, making him eligible for the Phoenix Open next week. Fritsch had been entered in the Monday qualifier that he had to abandon when the Farmers Insurance Open lost Saturday to a fog delay.

Woods was so far ahead that he would have had to collapse for anyone to have a chance, and that never looked possible.

Even so, the red shirt seemed to put him on edge. It didn't help that as he settled over his tee shot on the par-5 ninth, he backed off when he heard a man behind the ropes take his picture.

Woods rarely hits the fairway after an encounter with a camera shutter, and this was no different — it went so far right that it landed on the other side of a fence enclosing a corporate hospitality area.

Woods took his free drop, punched out below the trees into the fairway and then showed more irritation when his wedge nicked the flag after one hop and spun down the slope 30 feet away instead of stopping next to the hole.

He didn't show much reaction on perhaps his most memorable shot of the day — with his legs near the edge of a bunker some 75 feet to the left of the 11th green, he blasted out to the top shelf and watched the ball take dead aim until it stopped a foot short. A two-putt birdie on the 13th gave him an eight-shot lead, and then it was only a matter of time — a lot of time — until the trophy presentation.

Before anyone projects a monster year for Woods based on one week, especially when that week is at Torrey Pines, remember that no one else in golf — not even McIlroy — is the subject of more snap judgments.

Woods, however, likes the direction he is headed, especially with his short game.

"I'm excited about this year. I'm excited about what I'm doing with Sean (Foley) and some of the things that I've built," he said. "This is a nice way to start the year."

Woods is not likely to return to golf until the Match Play Championship next month.

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Personal Health: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

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Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.

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¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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How to Measure Your Blood Pressure

Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:

¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.

¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.

¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.

¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.

¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.

¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.

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