In China, press censorship protests continue

GUANGZHOU, China — Like wedding guests separated across the aisle, the protesters assembled on either side of a gated driveway at the headquarters of the embattled Southern Weekly newspaper. To the right, several dozen supporters of the newspaper staff waved banners calling for an end to censorship of the Chinese press.

"Freedom!" they chanted.

"Democracy!"

"Constitutional rights!"

To the left, beneath fluttering red Chinese flags and hoisted portraits of Mao Tse-tung, a battalion of mostly older men shouted into a microphone, trying to drown out their ideological rivals.

"Long live Chairman Mao!" they chanted.

"We love China!"

"Patriotism!"

Across the divide, the dueling protesters have been engaging in a spirited debate over the Communist Party's grip on the media. The spat erupted over the weekend in the southern city of Guangzhou when journalists threatened to strike over a front-page New Year's editorial that was rewritten by propaganda officials. Although a strike was averted by a last-minute deal Wednesday, the raucous public protests continued outside the newspaper headquarters.

The protests were inspired by rising expectations after the 18th Communist Party congress in November, when the new leadership was installed. Xi Jinping, the new party secretary who will become president in March, has hinted at plans to uphold constitutionally guaranteed rights and fight corruption within the party. What role the media will play in that fight is at the heart of the debate.

One lesson of the Guangzhou protests is that the overarching conflict about the role of the press in a communist society is not likely to be resolved any time soon.

"You can't fight corruption without freedom of the press," said a 46-year-old activist, Xiao Qingshan, who demonstrated from a wheelchair (necessitated by a work injury) that was festooned with pro-democracy slogans. "We're tired of being lied to. We want the same kind of freedoms as in the West."

Protesters poked fingers in each other's chests. They pushed. They shoved. Police who had planted themselves in the middle of the driveway broke up a few incipient fights but otherwise did not intervene.

A 73-year-old retired engineer wearing a Mao pin on his leather jacket hectored a university student who had dared to walk across the divide to debate.

"You young people don't understand what's going on. Who does this newspaper belong to? It belongs to the Communist Party," lectured the older man, who would not give his name. "These journalists are civil servants who are supposed to obey orders, not behave like traitors following the United States."

Indeed, despite a shift toward commercialization, newspaper ownership in China remains deeply lodged with the state. In order to operate, all of China's more than 2,000 newspapers require a Communist Party or government organ to sponsor a publishing license. Inside each newsroom is a Communist Party secretary who makes sure the stories are politically correct.

The restrictive environment makes the journalism at the muckraking Southern Weekly and its sister paper, the Southern Metropolis Daily, all the more remarkable.

The publications belong to the Nanfang Media Group, which is owned by the government of Guangdong, China's richest and most liberal province.

For several years, the Southern Weekly and the Southern Metropolis Daily were able to deliver stories that challenged authority and exposed unchecked power.

That was possible because the newspapers' stewards had long belonged to liberal factions of the party, shielding it from interference, said Cheng Yizhong, who helped launch the Southern Metropolis Daily in 1997.

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Go Ahead, Keep Being Mean to Celebrities on Twitter

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:  

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We usually don’t condone being an impolite jerk to anyone, especially on social media. But we kind of make an exception because, well, if everyone was nice to everyone all of a sudden, we’d run out of fun Jimmy Kimmel segments where celebrities read their tweets:

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Oh man, this giant squid is like the most famous sea creature celebrity of the moment. And yes, it’s way freakier in motion:

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So fine, this is sort of bending the rules per se because this isn’t really a video-video. It’s the Game of Thrones introduction with beatboxing by the Stark children. 

And finally, here is one minute of a man singing all the songs involving the word “baby.” And in case you were wondering, yes, Justin Bieber is officially in the Baby Pantheon of Music. 

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Adele to make post-baby debut at Golden Globes

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Adele is coming to the Golden Globes.

The executive producer of the show says the 24-year-old Grammy-winning pop star is set to make her first post-baby appearance at Sunday's ceremony, where she is nominated for original song for the James Bond theme "Skyfall."

Adele welcomed her first child, with boyfriend Simon Konecki, in October. The singer has kept a low profile since announcing her pregnancy in June after sweeping the Grammy Awards last February with six wins.

Her single, "Skyfall," will compete at the Golden Globes with Taylor Swift's song from "The Hunger Games," Jon Bon Jovi's number from "Stand Up Guys," Keith Urban's track from "Act of Valor," and "Suddenly" from "Les Miserables."

The Globes will be presented Sunday at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

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Americans Under 50 Fare Poorly on Health Measures, New Report Says

Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States.

Researchers have known for some time that the United States fares poorly in comparison with other rich countries, a trend established in the 1980s. But most studies have focused on older ages, when the majority of people die.

The findings were stark. Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in 16 other developed countries, and about one-third of the difference for females. The countries in the analysis included Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Spain.

The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics.

The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.

“Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”

Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50.

The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.

Sixty-nine percent of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26 percent in other countries, the study said. “The bottom line is that we are not preventing damaging health behaviors,” said Samuel Preston, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on the panel. “You can blame that on public health officials, or on the health care system. No one understands where responsibility lies.”

Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.

Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries.

Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages. Chronic diseases, including heart disease, also played a role for people under 50.

“We expected to see some bad news and some good news,” Dr. Woolf said. “But the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.”

There were bright spots. Death rates from cancers that can be detected with tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States. Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure. And the very oldest Americans — above 75 — tended to outlive their counterparts.

The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied.

Education also played a role. Americans who have not graduated from high school die from diabetes at three times the rate of those with some college, Dr. Woolf said. In the other countries, more generous social safety nets buffer families from the health consequences of poverty, the report said.

Still, even the people most likely to be healthy, like college-educated Americans and those with high incomes, fare worse on many health indicators.

The report also explored less conventional explanations. Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets.    

The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. But the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.

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Wall Street gains as earnings flow in

Stocks rose on Wall Street Wednesday after U.S. corporate earnings reports got off to a good start.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 61.66 points to 13,390.51, its first gain of the week. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 3.87 points to 1,461.02, and the Nasdaq composite rose 14 to 3,105.81.

Having rallied after a last-minute resolution stopped the U.S. from going over the “fiscal cliff,” stocks are facing their first big challenge of the year as companies start to report earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012. Throughout last year, analysts cut their outlook for earnings growth in the period and now expect them to rise by 3.21 percent, according to data from S&P Capital IQ.

“Maybe earnings expectations were a little too low,” said Ryan Detrick, a strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research. “You don't need to have great earnings, you just need to beat those expectations” for stocks to rally, Detrick said.

Early indications were decent. Aluminum maker Alcoa reported late Tuesday that it swung to a profit for the fourth quarter, with earnings that met Wall Street's expectations. The company brought in more revenue than analysts had expected, and the company also predicted rising demand for aluminum this year as the aerospace industry gains strength. Alcoa is usually the first Dow component to report earnings every quarter.

Despite the better revenue number, Alcoa's stock performance Wednesday was lackluster. It traded higher for part of the day then ended down 2 cents at $9.08.

Other companies fared better after reporting earnings. Helen of Troy, which sells personal care products under brands including Dr. Scholl's and Vidal Sassoon, rose 2.7 percent, up 90 cents to $34.43 after reporting a 15 percent increase in quarterly net income.

Boeing was the biggest gainer of the 30 stocks in the Dow. It jumped 3.5 percent, up $2.63 to $76.76, following two days of sharp declines triggered by new problems for its 787 Dreamliner. Boeing said it has “extreme confidence” in the plane even as federal investigators try to determine the cause of a fire Monday aboard an empty Japan Airlines plane in Boston and a fuel leak at another JAL 787 on Tuesday.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note edged down to 1.86 percent from 1.87 percent.

Among other stocks making big moves:

— Wireless network operator Clearwire jumped 7.2 percent, or 21 cents, to $3.13, after Dish network made an unsolicited offer to buy the company, which has already agreed to sell itself to Sprint. Dish rose 88 cents to $36.85, and Sprint fell 9 cents to $5.88.

— Online education company Apollo Group plunged 7.8 percent after reporting a sharp decline in fall-term student sign-ups at the University of Phoenix. The stock fell $1.63 to $19.32.

— Seagate Technology, a maker of hard-disk drives, jumped 6.6 percent, up $2.09 to $33.48, after predicting revenue for its fiscal second quarter that topped Wall Street expectations late Tuesday.

— Bank of America fell 4.6 percent, down 55 cents to $11.43, after Credit Suisse analysts lowered their outlook on the bank to “neutral” for “outperform,” saying the current stock price overestimates the improvement in cost reduction that the bank can achieve this year.

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Ada Louise Huxtable dies at 91; renowned architecture critic

Ada Louise Huxtable, the architecture critic who in two decades of writing for the New York Times became a powerful force in shaping New York City and was better known than many of the architects she was covering and certainly more feared, has died. She was 91.

Huxtable, who in 1970 won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded for criticism, died Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said her lawyer, Robert N. Shapiro.

The Getty Center announced Monday that it had acquired her papers, along with those of her husband, industrial designer L. Garth Huxtable, who died in 1989. The deal – something of a surprise given the critic's close association with New York and the East Coast -- was finalized in December; the archive will be held at the Getty Research Institute. Huxtable also donated the entirety of her estate to the Getty.

Wim de Wit, head of the department of architecture and contemporary art at the Getty Research Institute, said Huxtable's papers were historically significant in part because "she spoke powerfully as a woman in this world of men, the architecture world of the 1960s and '70s."

Huxtable was writing with her familiar fire and verve into her final years. As the architecture critic for the Wall Street Journal, a post she took up in 1997, she frequently blasted the political compromises shaping rebuilding at the World Trade Center site.

Early last month the Journal published her review of plans to restructure the main branch of the New York Public Library.

The library, in working with the British architect Norman Foster, "is about to undertake its own destruction," Huxtable wrote. "This is a plan devised out of a profound ignorance of a willful disregard for not only the library's original concept and design, but also the folly of altering its meaning and mission and compromising its historical and architectural integrity."

Ada Louise Landman was born March 14, 1921, in New York City. Her father, Michael, was a doctor. After earning a degree in art and architectural history from Hunter College and marrying in 1942, she pursued graduate work at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts before taking a job in the Museum of Modern Art's architecture and design department.

A Fulbright fellowship took her to Italy in the early 1950s, and when she returned to New York she turned her research on the Italian architect and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi into her first book, published in 1960.

She was by then writing for a number of magazines and had begun work on what she imagined would be a six-part history of New York City architecture. While wrapping up the first volume she was recruited by the New York Times. Aline Louchheim had been writing about both architecture and art for the paper, but after she married architect Eero Saarinen, her editors decided it would be a conflict of interest to allow her to continue covering architecture.

"I went in all dressed up, with my clippings," Huxtable told WNYC radio host Leonard Lopate in 2008. "And I remember saying, 'All you've been doing is printing the developers' P.R. releases in your real estate section. You have nobody covering this very important field.'"

Huxtable was not the first architecture critic at an American daily – Allan Temko joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1961, and long before that Montgomery Schuyler was writing for the New York Tribune – but she quickly established herself as an authoritative voice and a champion for historic preservation. More than a few real-estate developers, she told the Christian Science Monitor, "would be glad to have my head on a platter."

She reserved her most energetic scorn for those architects she saw as declawing or prettying up modern architecture. Edward Durell Stone came in for two of Huxtable's most infamous zingers. After she called his museum on Columbus Circle "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops," it became forever known as "the lollipop building."

She was even more dismissive of Stone's gilded Kennedy Center complex in Washington, D.C., describing it in 1971 as "a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried."

But Huxtable will be remembered for more than barbed prose. From her earliest days at the New York Times, she displayed a talent for writing about both the aesthetics and politics of architecture, a subject she described as "this uneasy, difficult combination of structure and art."

Today there is a seeming divide among architecture critics, with some sticking to the traditional duties of reviewing new buildings by prominent architects while others make a point of writing about everything but buildings: parks, urban planning or the fate of the planet. Huxtable showed that this gulf was easily crossed, writing at length at about a single architect's body of work one week and about preservation, politics or zoning the next.

Before the 1960s were out she had earned a reputation, with Pauline Kael and a few others, as one of the most powerful critics in the country. In 1970 she won a Pulitzer Prize in the newly created category of criticism, and the first collection of her essays, "Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?" was published the same year.

By that time the world of architecture was in wild flux. The modernist architects she had championed were losing influence, their work replaced by an emerging style – what would become post-modernism – that she found by turns refreshing and facile.

"I don't know if critics are allowed to be ambivalent," she wrote in the opening line to a 1971 piece on Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, the husband-and-wife team who in their architecture and writing were helping topple modernist orthodoxy.

In 1973, she joined the New York Times' editorial board and Paul Goldberger, just 23, was named the paper's architecture critic. She continued to contribute Sunday essays on architecture, but after having enjoyed years of autonomy she often found it exhausting to bring fellow members of the editorial board around to her way of thinking.

After Huxtable was awarded a sizable MacArthur Fellowship prize in 1981, she jumped at the chance to leave the paper and write books and longer essays on architecture. She didn't return to newspaper criticism until 1997, when she was hired by the Wall Street Journal.

She also joined the jury for the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. Her final books were a short biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, published in 2004, and "On Architecture," a collection of essays spanning her career that appeared in 2008.

In 2009, she figured in the TV drama "Mad Men." In an episode set in 1963, an ad agency executive reads aloud from a piece of hers condemning plans to demolish Pennsylvania Station.

But it was a much earlier appearance in the media that best summed up her influence. In 1968, the New Yorker published a cartoon featuring two construction workers at a building site, with steel rising behind them. One, reading a newspaper, turns to the other and says, "Ada Louise Huxtable already doesn't like it!"

She had no immediate survivors.

christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com

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James Franco Does His Best Justin Bieber

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:  

RELATED: All We Want for Christmas Is Jimmy Fallon and Mariah Carey Singing to Us

Remember when Justin Bieber was struggling for relevance and James Franco was the super serious, super educated actor destined for greatness? Well, Franco clearly doesn’t want you to:

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So what do you do when someone gets their dream wedding ruined by a doomed hot-air balloon ride? Well, if you’re the Today show, you make a macabre Wedding Crashers joke: 

RELATED: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Gangnam Style’ Isn’t Bad

RELATED: ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ Gets Beautiful

Here’s perhaps one of the better arguments against that trillion-dollar coin, courtesy of Homer Simpson and company:

And this guy seems pretty down on the squandered opulence of cruise ships:

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A chemistry class for actor Kevin Bacon

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Things are getting a little steamy among the stars of Fox's new thriller, "The Following."

The series, which debuts Jan. 21, features Kevin Bacon as an investigator pursuing a serial killer portrayed by James Purefoy. At a news conference Tuesday, a reporter noted that the actors had good chemistry together. She said her reaction to watching them perform was, quote, "I just want them to kiss."

The two actors barely paused. Bacon reached over and planted a kiss on Purefoy's cheek.

Purefoy said, "Rule nothing in, rule nothing out."

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Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already gotten at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled teenagers, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems that include attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and about a third of them had made a suicide attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.

Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.

The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.

“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”

The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art, or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author; and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard, and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said that her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006, at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication; we found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”

In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).

Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts – which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.

(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)

Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.

Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias, or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem – attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger – were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.

Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.

One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and attempts in people with so-called borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm, among others.

But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments – talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use – was more effective that regular therapies.

“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” Dr. Brent said. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”

Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.

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US stocks fall ahead of earnings season kickoff

U.S. stocks closed lower Tuesday as traders awaited the start of the corporate earnings season.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 55.44 points, or 0.4 percent, to 13,328.85. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 4.74, or 0.3 percent, to 1,457.15. The Nasdaq composite index shed 7.01, or 0.2 percent, to 3,091.81.

Alcoa reported its fourth-quarter financial results after the market closed, marking the unofficial kickoff to weeks of earnings announcements from U.S. companies. The aluminum maker said its revenue results exceeded the expectations of Wall Street analysts, while per-share earnings were roughly in line with expectations. Alcoa rose 20 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $9.30 in late trading.

Alcoa is traditionally the first of the 30 companies in the Dow average to report earnings.

Market-watchers expect the quarter's results could include many surprises because of events like Superstorm Sandy, the presidential election, and the narrowly avoided tax increases and spending cuts known collectively as the “fiscal cliff.”

“Earnings is going to be the big driver for the next couple of weeks, and we're just sitting around waiting for it to begin,” said Kim Caughey Forrest, vice president and senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, an investment management firm.

The European debt crisis continued to cast a pall over the market. Unemployment in the 17 countries that use the euro hit a new high, leading the European Union to warn about the risk of fraying social welfare systems in southern Europe.

Trading has been cautious in the week since Congress and the White House struck a deal to maintain lower tax rates and postpone sweeping cuts in government spending. Enthusiasm about the compromise pushed the Dow up 300 points last Wednesday, its biggest gain since December 2011.

In corporate news:

— Agriculture products giant Monsanto rose $2.56, or 2.7 percent, to $98.50 after saying its profit nearly tripled in the first fiscal quarter, helped by strong seed sales in Latin America. Monsanto raised its earnings guidance for the year.

— Video game seller GameStop lost $1.56, or 6.3 percent, to $23.19 after reporting weak holiday-season sales and cutting its revenue guidance.

— Yum Brands, operator of the KFC and Taco Bell fast food chains, plunged after saying a key sales metric in China fell more than expected in the fourth quarter. The decline was related to problems at two of its small chicken suppliers; nearly half of the company's revenue came from China in 2011. Yum lost $2.85, or 4.2 percent, to $65.04.

— In Korea, electronics giant Samsung said it expects record earnings for the fourth quarter as shoppers continue to embrace its smartphones and tablets. But there were signs its momentum is slowing, and the company's stock closed down 1.3 percent in Seoul.

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