An Appointment With Kim Dotcom

Paul Spain is the host of the weekly NZ Tech Podcast, one of New Zealand’s leading locally produced podcasts and often appears on TV and video as a commentator on consumer and business technology topics.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND — It’s been said that Kim Dotcom is a villain. Many, particularly those in the film industry and law enforcement, believe it. To others, he is a hero standing up for the rights of Internet users everywhere.

[More from Mashable: Kim Dotcom’s Mega Begins Early Rollout]

I wanted to find out for myself where he stood.

I arrived at the Dotcom Mansion early Sunday afternoon New Zealand time. It was just a few hours after the launch of Kim Dotcom’s new website Mega.co.nz and one year since his mansion was raided and he was arrested by New Zealand police in conjunction with a U.S. request to extradite him.

[More from Mashable: Kim Dotcom’s Mega Loses Web Domain Before Debut]

A friendly Kim Dotcom greeted each of us in a small media gathering, before sitting at the head of the table flanked by Ira Rothken, his California-based attorney.

I expected a prepared statement. That wasn’t the case. Dotcom shared his excitement about the 250,000 Mega signups in the first two hours and soon led into Q&A session for the remaining 45-minutes. He proved to be extremely adept in the way he responded to questions, working effortlessly to position Mega as an innovator. He indicated a desire to help the film industry succeed in the world of digital downloads and streaming — rather than being just a company out to line its own pockets.

Dotcom’s opinions and arguments for his cause were strong and generally well thought out, though on occasion seemed less robust. For instance he suggested he’d found a great way films could be funded in the future. His concept involves studios signing up digital streaming distributors around the world to fund a movie ahead of its production.

He felt distributors might pay for streaming rights before production, thereby funding the production. Unfortunately, I feel revenues from streaming (now and for the foreseeable future) are typically so low this would only provide a small fraction of the funds needed to produce a movie. And who wants to risk paying up front for a movie that might be a flop?

When asked about whether he would stay in New Zealand if he succeeds in stopping his extradition to the U.S. later this year, he was non-committal. On one hand he said he loved the country but on another he was worried he’d be persecuted by authorities, and in that case he’d leave. He spoke of journalists, music and movie producers on their way to visit him being harassed by customs officials upon arrival in the country –- including strip searches and even a request to view the content of one visitor’s laptop. I’ve not been able to verify these rather extreme occurrences.

Dotcom has positioned Mega as a service that sits between Dropbox and his previous site Megaupload -– with the added benefits of end-to-end encryption. He and Rothken went to great lengths to highlight that Mega would operate entirely within the law.

Dotcom made little effort to suggest Mega would be less prone to being a haven to copyright materials than Megaupload was. It seems there will continue to be a game of cat and mouse afoot as Dotcom and authorities try to outwit each other.

(A full audio recording of the discussion will be available later today at NZ Tech Podcast.)

In a one-on-one setting with Dotcom, I tried to gain more understanding about the open source elements of the Mega service and his commitment to New Zealand. Interestingly he was reticent to provide solid answers to either question and provided what I felt were just pat answers aimed at fobbing me off.

As we left the compound mid-afternoon, we saw Kim on stage rehearsing for the evening performance he would lead, with the support of musicians, his co-accused and investors in the new Mega. That performance included a dramatization of the raid on his home one year before. It was a gathering filled with media from around the country and a few from abroad. In the public context he continued to sell Mega extremely well –- to the point where someone commented to me that the event at times felt like a religious or marketing conference.

Dotcom currently remains on bail until his extradition hearing due in September. Amongst those in attendance, it appeared widely accepted that the bid to extradite him from New Zealand to the U.S. is likely to fail because of mistakes made by law enforcement and New Zealand spy agency GCSB.

After my visit, I’m left with a number of fairly clear impressions about Kim Dotcom and Mega. How you take these will depend on which side of the fence you stand:

1. Mega’s management team is making every effort to operate in a manner that does not fall afoul of the law (though it could be argued they did the same with Megaupload).


2. Mega will be used to distribute copyrighted materials such as movies, TV shows and music -– though likely to a lesser extent than Megaupload did.


3. Kim Dotcom will continue to draw controversy and be outspoken about the rights of Internet users everywhere. He is not backing down.

Love him or hate him, Kim Dotcom is back in business and, if he’s to be believed, no fair court will be able to stop him.

Dotcom raid being re-enacted at the mansion.

Click here to view this gallery.

Photos by Paul Spain

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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James Franco Is 'Hit of the Party' at Sundance

01/21/2013 at 11:15 AM EST

James Franco and Mario Lopez and Courtney Mazza

Neilson Barnard/Getty; Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage

The stars arrived by the dozens to Park City, Utah, for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and PEOPLE has the details of their busy weekend.

James Franco was one of the last to arrive to the Stella Artois-hosted dinner for his documentary Kink on Saturday evening. Later, the Lovelace star hosted a large 1 a.m. "after, after party" at The Everest Mansion high up in the nearby mountains. The actor still managed to be up in time to surprise the guests at the Outfest Queer Brunch at Grub Steak Restaurant in Prospector Square Sunday morning with his Interior. Leather Bar. co-director Travis Mathews.

"James was the hit of the party," one brunch attendee tells PEOPLE. "Everyone wanted their picture with him."

Daniel Radcliffe may have been seen snuggling with Kill Your Darlings costar Erin Darke Friday night, but he went solo to the Next Generation Filmmaker dinner Saturday, where costar Michael C. Hall and his novelist girlfriend, Morgan Macgregor, were the last to leave while the most of the diners danced the night away at The Westway.

Glee star Jane Lynch turned the Festival into a family affair by taking her wife Lara Embry and daughters Haden and Chase to the New Era Chalet at the Lift in Park City.

Lynch was overheard stating she had "a peanut head" as she and her family picked out New Era Chicago caps – which lead to a lighthearted debate about the White Sox and the Chicago Cubs. While Lynch lobbied hard for the Cubs, her daughters were more interested in checking out the Nintendo Lounge nearby.

Newlyweds Mario Lopez and Courtney Mazza enjoyed a mini-honeymoon in Park City, or possibly a baby-moon?

The couple stopped by the TR Suites and enjoyed Lipton teas while perusing the Sears Lounge, where Mazza was overheard saying she and Lopez are "trying and hoping" for a second child. The couple later hit the Miami Lounge where, once again, they drank Hint Water rather than cocktails.

– Patrick Gomez

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Veteran jihadist claims bloody Algeria siege for al Qaeda

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - A veteran Islamist fighter claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda for the Algerian hostage crisis, a regional website reported on Sunday, tying the bloody desert siege to France's intervention across the Sahara in Mali.

Algeria said it expected to raise its preliminary death tolls of 23 hostages and 32 militants killed in the four-day siege at a gas plant deep in the Sahara.

Western governments whose citizens died nevertheless held back from criticizing tactics used by their ally in the struggle with Islamists across the vast desert.

"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," Mokhtar Belmokhtar said in a video, according to the Sahara Media website, which quoted from the recording but did not immediately show it.

"We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali's Muslims," said Belmokhtar, a one-eyed veteran guerrilla who fought in Afghanistan in 1980s and in Algeria's civil war in the 1990s.

Belmokhtar's fighters launched their attack on the In Amenas gas plant before dawn on Wednesday, just five days after French warplanes began strikes to halt advances by Islamists in neighboring northern Mali.

European and U.S. officials say the raid was almost certainly too elaborate to have been planned in so short a time, although the French campaign could have been one trigger for fighters to launch an assault they had already prepared.

"We had around 40 jihadists, most of them from Muslim countries and some even from the West," Sahara Media quoted Belmokhtar as saying. Algerian officials say Belmokhtar's group was behind the attack but he was not present himself.

Some Western governments have expressed frustration at not being informed in advance of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. However, Britain and France both defended the Algerian action in public.

"It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question. They had to deal with terrorists," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a televised statement: "Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack."

"We should recognize all that the Algerians have done to work with us and to help and coordinate with us. I'd like to thank them for that. We should also recognize that the Algerians too have seen lives lost among their soldiers."

OIL VULNERABILITIES EXPOSED

The Islamists' assault has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara and pushed Islamist radicalism in northern Africa to centre stage.

Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, has insisted there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism.

France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to have a chance of crushing Islamist rebels in northern Mali. Algiers has promised to shut its porous 1,000-km border with Mali to prevent al Qaeda-linked insurgents simply melting away into its empty desert expanses and rugged mountains.

Algeria's permission for France to use its airspace, confirmed by Fabius last week, also makes it much easier to establish direct supply lines for its troops which are trying to stop the Islamist rebels from taking the whole of Mali.

Algeria's Interior Ministry had reported on Saturday that 23 hostages and 32 militants were killed during the assaults launched by Algerian special forces to end the crisis, with 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages freed.

Minister of Communication Mohamed Said said the toll would rise when final numbers were issued in the next few hours: "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up," Said was quoted as saying by the official APS news agency.

Private Algerian television station Ennahar said on Sunday that 25 bodies had been discovered at the Tiguentourine plant, adding that the operation to clear the base would last 48 hours.

The bodies were believed to belong to hostages executed by the militants, said Ennahar TV, which is known to have good sources within Algerian security.

With so much still unknown about the fates of foreigners held at the sites, countries that have faced casualties have yet to issue full counts of the dead. The plant was run jointly by Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil with the Algerian state oil company. A Japanese engineering firm and a French catering company also operated there.

In London, Cameron said three British nationals were confirmed killed and another three plus a British resident were also believed to be dead. One American has been confirmed killed. Statoil says five Norwegians are missing. Japanese and French citizens are also among those missing or presumed dead.

MULTINATIONAL HOSTAGE-TAKERS

Said reported that the militants had six different nationalities and the operation to clear the plant of mines laid by the hostage-takers was still under way.

Believed to be among the 32 dead militants was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a Nigerien close to Belmokhtar.

Mauritanian news agencies identified the field commander of the group that attacked the plant as Nigeri, a fighter from one of the Arab tribes in Niger who had joined the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in early-2005.

That group eventually joined up with al Qaeda to become Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It and allied groups are the targets of the French military operation in Mali.

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the country's outwardly tough security measures.

Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.

Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.

The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.

(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris, Daniel Flynn in Dakar; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Google says Wall Street estimates need adjusting

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc issued a rare advisory to Wall Street on Friday that analyst estimates for its fourth quarter financial results are flawed.

The world’s No.1 search engine, which reports its quarterly results on Tuesday, said most analysts have not adjusted their estimates to reflect the pending $ 2.35 billion sale of the Motorola Home business.

The business must be presented separately from the results of Google’s continuing operations under U.S. accounting rules, Google Treasurer Brent Callinicos wrote in a post on Google’s investor relations Web page on Friday.

“As of this writing, a majority of Wall Street analysts who cover Google have not reflected the Home business as discontinued operations in their estimates,” Callinicos wrote.

The discrepancy means the fourth-quarter net revenue that Google reports on Tuesday could appear to be less than the $ 12.34 billion average that analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S are expecting.

Raymond James analyst Aaron Kessler says his fourth-quarter net revenue estimate includes nearly $ 900 million from the Motorola Home business.

“They’re saying that the headline number is going to be less than what most analysts have for Q4,” said Kessler.

The advisory is a rare move for Google, which does not provide financial forecasts and typically has limited interactions with analysts. The company has in the past provided accounting advisories to analysts about the Motorola Mobility business, which Google acquired for $ 12.5 billion in May.

Google bought Motorola Mobility primarily for its large portfolio of communications patents and its mobile phone business.

In December, Google agreed to sell the Motorola Home television set-top box business to Arris Group Inc for $ 2.35 billion in cash and stock.

Analysts expect Google to report adjusted earnings of $ 10.56 per share for the fourth quarter.

“It’s a little surprising that they’re doing this the Friday before the report,” said Kessler. “They should have put it out a week ago if they wanted analysts to change their numbers.”

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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Allison Williams of Girls: I'm Nothing Like Marnie, But I Root for Her

TV Watch

By Tim Nudd

01/20/2013 at 11:15 AM EST

Allison Williams wouldn't masturbate in a public restroom. But that's not the only difference between her and Marnie Michaels, the character she plays on HBO's hit comedy Girls.

"There were moments reading the script that I thought, 'WOW, okay!' " the actress, 24, tells Company magazine's February issue and digital edition. "It's the most private thing anyone can do, but being an actress can make you feel vulnerable."

She adds: "My grandparents watch the show. I don't know why I was so concerned, though. They have been alive for virtually 90 years, so who am I to presume that sex never existed before me?"

Girls was a huge hit at Sunday's Golden Globe Awards, winning best comedy and best actress in a comedy for Lena Dunham. Williams plays Dunham's sidekick and best friend, a character who seems responsible at first, though her insecurities soon become clear.

"We're really different," Williams says of she and Marnie. "I've known I wanted to be an actress since I was 4, but Marnie still has no idea what she wants. But I'm so in her corner, even when she's wrong."

She adds: "In season two, Marnie goes through some real downs. I was shocked at how emotionally drained I felt from that."

Asked what makes Girls so special, Williams tells the magazine (which offers behind-the-scenes footage of her cover shoot") that the show captures the zeitgest for many young people these days.

"There is nothing alienating or too hipster about it," she says. "We're not dating handsome boys. They're weird. We don't have jobs you dream about. In fact, not all of us have jobs. It feels accessible. And the relationship between the girls is brilliant. It's like a digital time capsule – people will watch it in 20 years time, and it will sum up a certain generation."

Williams says she's dealing with her newfound fame mostly by not Googling herself, and shrugs off criticism that she got a head start in the business because she's the daughter of NBC newsman Brian Williams.

"At the end of the day, even if all these wonderful doors are open for you, you have to stride through them," she says.

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for the 40 percent of American private-sector workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinesky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinesky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Algerian army stages "final assault" on gas plant

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army on Saturday carried out a final assault on al Qaeda-linked gunmen holed up in a desert gas plant, killing 11 of the Islamists after they took the lives of seven more foreign hostages, a local source and the state news agency said.

"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a local source familiar with the operation told Reuters.

The state oil and gas company, Sonatrach, said the militants who attacked the plant on Wednesday and took a large number of hostages had booby-trapped the complex with explosives.

The exact death toll among the gunmen and the foreign and Algerian workers at the plant near the town of In Amenas close to the Libyan border remained unclear.

Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 burned bodies at the plant. Efforts were under way to identify the bodies, the source told Reuters, and it was not clear how they had died.

Sixteen foreign hostages were freed on Saturday, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans, two Germans and one Portuguese. Britain said fewer than 10 of its nationals at the plant were unaccounted for.

The attack on the plant swiftly turned into one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades, pushing Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS

It marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

The captors said their attack was a response to the French offensive. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the week since France launched its strikes.

Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified gas compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to the French intervention in neighboring Mali.

Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.

Before the final assault, different sources had put the number of hostages killed at between 12 and 30, with many foreigners still unaccounted for, among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons and Americans.

The figure of 30 came from an Algerian security source, who said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.

Leaders of Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed frustration that the assault was ordered without consultation and officials have grumbled at the lack of information.

France's defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, declined to criticize the Algerian response to the crisis, however.

"The Algerian authorities are on their own soil and responding in the fashion they can. The overriding mission is to tackle the terrorists," he told France 3 television.

The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.

VETERAN JIHADIST

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.

Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.

France says the incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary.

The field commander of the Islamist group that attacked the plant is a veteran fighter from Niger called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, Mauritanian news agencies reported.

Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.

The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in a civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year.

(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Mark Trevelyan)

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