Global Markets Rise on Fiscal Deal

Stock markets around the world began the year with gains Wednesday, as investors took some relief from the last-minute fiscal deal reached in Washington but wrestled with the lingering uncertainties about many other aspects of the U.S. budget.

In Asia, markets gained after a crucial vote in Washington passed a compromise deal that staved off income tax increases for most Americans, although two important markets, Japan and China, remained closed for holidays.

European stock markets rose more than 2 percent, and futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, which indicate the direction of New York’s market opening, soared.

The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong had the biggest increase, closing up 2.9 percent at its highest level since June 2011. In South Korea, the Kospi rose 1.7 percent, while the benchmark indexes in Singapore, Australia and Taiwan climbed more than 1 percent.

Analysts have long cautioned that the economic and budget travails of the United States and Europe were likely to overshadow global market sentiment and could cast a pall over Asia this year, especially in highly trade-dependent countries like Taiwan and South Korea and small, open economies like Singapore and Hong Kong.

The deal reached in Washington on Tuesday averted looming income tax increases for most Americans. Combined with significant spending cuts, these would have dealt a major blow to an economy that has been growing anemically since the global financial crisis.

Market relief, however, was likely to be short-lived, analysts said, as other important issues have not been tackled. In particular, decisions on spending cuts of $110 billion were delayed for two months, and politicians have not come up with a long-term solution that would allow the U.S. government to get past the borrowing limit known as the debt ceiling, which was reached at the end of the year.

The scaled-down deal “addressed the fiscal cliff but did nothing to address longer-term fiscal health of the nation,” Aneta Markowska, an analyst at Société Générale in New York, wrote in a research note sent before the final vote in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night in Washington. “This puts the U.S. rating at risk for a downgrade.”

Broader tax overhauls also remain on the table for 2013, while the negotiations about the debt ceiling are likely to involve more potentially unsettling brinkmanship in Washington.

The U.S. fiscal problems, noted Tom Kenny, an analyst at Australia & New Zealand Banking in Australia, “are far from over.” U.S. politicians, he added, will face intense negotiations over the next two months about raising the debt ceiling. These “are likely to prove more harrowing than those just completed.”

For financial markets, the last-minute, partial deal reached Tuesday is thus likely to have brought only a temporary reprieve, analysts said.

“Call it breathing room, call it kicking the can down the road, call it whatever you like — come mid-February, when the decision on the legal U.S. debt limit will be needed, the fight starts afresh,” analysts at DBS in Singapore wrote in a research note. “Two more months of shenanigans and waffling/seasick markets? It certainly looks that way.”

David Jolly contributed reporting from Paris.

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.

Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.

The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.

“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.

Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.

Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.

As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.

Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.

“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.

In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.

Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.

Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.

On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.

But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.

Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.

Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.

The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.

“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.

Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.

Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.

As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.

Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.

“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.

In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.

Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.

Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.

On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.

But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.

Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Paper For The Paperless Revolution

It may appear that apps like Evernote are intended to cut down on your use of paper. After all, they let you jot notes, store webpages and contact information, while making all of that data electronically searchable on computers, phones and tablets.

But you wouldn’t recognize them as part of the paperless revolution from the posh notebooks that are being manufactured specifically with such apps in mind.

For one, there is the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine. Ranging in price from $25 to $30, depending on size, these 192- or 240-page books are ruled with subtle dotted lines. The lines are supposed to help Evernote’s “page camera” straighten your notes or drawings. My test notes, when photographed, didn’t seem any straighter than those made on regular paper.

The Moleskines also come with sets of stickers that Evernote recognizes and uses to categorize your notes. For instance, put an airplane sticker on notes about travel, and you can find them under the app’s travel tags. You can also change the headings that go with each sticker to anything you’d like.

The Smart Notebooks entitle users to three months of Evernote’s premium service, which is normally $5 a month.

Evernote isn’t the only digital organizer that recommends a paper product as an accessory. Springpad, a service similar to Evernote, had a promotion in October with Whitelines notepads. Whitelines pads are especially camera friendly because they have a slightly gray background ruled with white lines that are supposed to disappear when scanned. Whitelines has its own app, Whitelines Link, for capturing notes and drawings, but users have not rated the app very highly. You may be better just using the notepaper with Springpad.

To make it all a bit more confusing, Whitelines is also allied with Evernote. When you save your notes in Whitelines Link, a button gives you the option of saving them to Evernote or Dropbox.

The Whitelines notebooks come in a variety of sizes and layouts ranging from a 48-page pocket-size notebook for $4 to an 80-page 8-by-12-inch hardbound book for $35. There is also a $12 shipping charge, because the books are coming from Sweden.

There are also the unallied Dot Grid notebooks from Creative’s Outfitter. Their pages are a field of light gray dots that can be used as a guide like graph paper. A two-pack of 64-page 4-by-6-inch notebooks costs $7 and a 200-page 6-by-8-inch hard cover notebook sells for $17.50.

Of course, no special notebook is required to use any of these apps. A $1.50 spiral-bound from an office supply store will do just fine. You can always preserve your hipster cachet by writing with a fountain pen.

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IHT Rendezvous: Indian Women Need a Political Party

NEW DELHI — In my latest column, I use urban India’s extraordinary reaction to the rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi to argue that the nation’s most ferocious battle is that between modernity and the powerful hold of the Indian village over society.

The aftermath of the rape has, naturally, included much talk about how to make the country a better place for women. I do not believe that much progress can be made in this area without women coming in full conflict with Indian society. Such a conflict, if it has to be meaningful or effective, is possible only through electoral politics. What I am suggesting, more specifically, is that women should be directly represented in Indian politics — in the form of a political party that is entirely concerned with what matters to women.

In my previous Letter From India, I had argued that what saves India is its politics, because many sections of society find representation in Indian politics. More than 300 political parties contested the last general elections, representing various concerns, biases and cries for justice. But women are not directly represented, which is baffling.

Page Two

Posts written by the IHT’s Page Two columnists.

The presence of a few powerful female politicians does give a sense that women are not insignificant to Indian politics, but this is deceptive. Beyond a point, female politicians in mainstream parties cannot afford to antagonize the men and the elders among their voters — the chief adversaries of Indian women. There has been much talk in India about reserving electoral seats for women, but such a reservation, if it ever were to be enacted, would still be controlled by male politicians through their wives, daughters and even mothers. Also, such a reservation is a condescension by the system that would not be required if women were to organize as a political force.

Only a political party whose fate is tied to how women perceive it can begin to influence the system in a deep way. Women make up more than half the country’s population, and they have a slate of grievances about how the nation treats them. These are issues that unite both highly educated urban women and rural women, who historically have not had enough opportunities to do what they please.

Over the years several groups in India have been empowered through political representation. For instance, the Dalit community, formerly considered the untouchable caste, has been transformed through aggressive political representation — not by the willful reformation of the upper castes. Also, the reality of Indian politics today is that even political parties with just a few seats in Parliament influence the government to get their way. Women must begin to twist some arms to make India a better place. They must understand that the fundamental instinct of men, even of decent men, is not to concede too much power.

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Senate Passes Tax Increases on Wealthy Americans

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, departed early Tuesday after the vote.

WASHINGTON – The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts.

The deal, worked out in furious negotiations between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, passed 89-8, with just three Democrats and five Republicans voting no. Although it lost the support of some of the Senate’s most conservative members, the broad coalition that pushed the accord across the finish line could portend swift House passage as early as New Year’s Day.

Quick passage before the markets reopen Wednesday would likely negate any economic damage from Tuesday’s breach of the so-called “fiscal cliff” and largely spare the nation’s economy from the one-two punch of large tax increases and across-the-board military and domestic spending cuts in the New Year.

“This shouldn’t be the model for how to do things around here,” Senator McConnell said just after 1:30 a.m. “But I think we can say we’ve done some good for the country.”

“You surely shouldn’t predict how the House is going to vote,” Mr. Biden said late New Year’s Eve after meeting with leery Senate Democrats to sell the accord. “But I feel very, very good.”

The eight senators who voted no included Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a potential presidential candidate in 2016, two of the Senate’s most ardent small-government Republicans, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, who as a former Finance Committee chairman helped secure passage of the Bush-era tax cuts, then opposed making almost all of them permanent on Tuesday. Two moderate Democrats, Tom Carper of Delaware and Michael Bennet of Colorado, also voted no, as did the liberal Democrat Tom Harkin, who said the White House had given away too much in the compromise. Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, also voted no.

The House Speaker, John A. Boehner, and the Republican House leadership said the House would “honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement.” But, they added, “decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members – and the American people – have been able to review the legislation.”

Even with that cautious assessment, Republican House aides said a vote Tuesday is possible. The House is expected to reconvene at noon.

Under the agreement, tax rates would jump to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individual incomes over $400,000 and couples over $450,000, while tax deductions and credits would start phasing out on incomes as low as $250,000, a clear victory for President Obama, who ran for re-election vowing to impose taxes on the wealthy.

Just after the vote, Mr. Obama called for quick House passage of the legislation.

“While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” he said.

 Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of unemployment insurance without strings attached and without offsetting spending cuts, a $30 billion cost. But the two-percentage point cut to the payroll tax that the president secured in late 2010 lapsed at midnight and will not be renewed.

In one final piece of the puzzle, negotiators agreed to put off $110 billion in across-the-board cuts to military and domestic programs for two months while broader deficit reduction talks continue. Those cuts begin to go into force on Wednesday, and that deadline, too, might be missed before Congress approves the legislation.

To secure votes, Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, also told Democrats the legislation would cancel a pending congressional pay raise — putting opponents in the politically difficult position of supporting a raise  — - and extend an expiring dairy policy that would have seen the price of milk double in some parts of the country.

The nature of the deal ensured that the running war between the White House and Congressional Republicans on spending and taxes would continue at least until the spring. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner formally notified Congress that the government reached its statutory borrowing limit on New Year’s Eve. Through some creative accounting tricks, the Treasury Department can put off action for perhaps two months, but Congress must act to keep the government from defaulting just when the “pause” on pending cuts is up. Then in late March, a law financing the government expires.

Jennifer Steinhauer and Robert Pear contributed reporting.

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Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.

As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.

The sudden drop-off, which coincided with the onset of the recession, suggests that attitudes have changed since the days when older generations of Latinos prized large families and more closely followed Roman Catholic teachings, which forbid artificial contraception.

Interviews with young Latinas, as well as reproductive health experts, show that the reasons for deciding to have fewer children are many, involving greater access to information about contraceptives and women’s health, as well as higher education.

When Marucci Guzman decided to marry Tom Beard here seven years ago, the idea of having a large family — a Guzman tradition back in Puerto Rico — was out of the question.

“We thought one, maybe two,” said Ms. Guzman Beard, who gave birth to a daughter, Attalai, four years ago.

Asked whether Attalai might ever get her wish for a little brother or sister, Ms. Guzman Beard, 29, a vice president at a public service organization, said: “I want to go to law school. I’m married. I work. When do I have time?”

The decisions were not made in a vacuum but amid a sputtering economy, which, interviewees said, weighed heavily on their minds.

Latinos suffered larger percentage declines in household wealth than white, black or Asian households from 2005 to 2009, and, according to the Pew report, their rates of poverty and unemployment also grew more sharply after the recession began.

Prolonged recessions do produce dips in the birthrate, but a drop as large as Latinos have experienced is atypical, said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It is surprising,” Mr. Frey said. “When you hear about a decrease in the birthrate, you don’t expect Latinos to be at the forefront of the trend.”

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center and an author of the report, said that in past recessions, when overall fertility dipped, “it bounced back over time when the economy got better.”

“If history repeats itself, that will happen again,” she said.

But to Mr. Frey, the decrease has signaled much about the aspirations of young Latinos to become full and permanent members of the upwardly mobile middle class, despite the challenges posed by the struggling economy.

Jersey Garcia, a 37-year-old public health worker in Miami, is in the first generation of her family to live permanently outside of the Dominican Republic, where her maternal and paternal grandmothers had a total of 27 children.

“I have two right now,” Ms. Garcia said. “It’s just a good number that I can handle.”

“Before, I probably would have been pressured to have more,” she added. “I think living in the United States, I don’t have family members close by to help me, and it takes a village to raise a child. So the feeling is, keep what you have right now.”

But that has not been easy. Even with health insurance, Ms. Garcia’s preferred method of long-term birth control, an IUD, has been unaffordable. Birth control pills, too, with a $50 co-payment a month, were too costly for her budget. “I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “So what I’ve been doing is condoms.”

According to research by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the overwhelming majority of Latinas have used contraception at some point in their lives, but they face economic barriers to consistent use. As a consequence, Latinas still experience unintended pregnancy at a rate higher than non-Hispanic whites, according to the institute.

And while the share of births to teenage mothers has dropped over the past two decades for all women, the highest share of births to teenage mothers is among native-born Hispanics.

“There are still a lot of barriers to information and access to contraception that exist,” said Jessica Gonzáles-Rojas, 36, the executive director of the institute, who has one son. “We still need to do a lot of work.”

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Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.

As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.

The sudden drop-off, which coincided with the onset of the recession, suggests that attitudes have changed since the days when older generations of Latinos prized large families and more closely followed Roman Catholic teachings, which forbid artificial contraception.

Interviews with young Latinas, as well as reproductive health experts, show that the reasons for deciding to have fewer children are many, involving greater access to information about contraceptives and women’s health, as well as higher education.

When Marucci Guzman decided to marry Tom Beard here seven years ago, the idea of having a large family — a Guzman tradition back in Puerto Rico — was out of the question.

“We thought one, maybe two,” said Ms. Guzman Beard, who gave birth to a daughter, Attalai, four years ago.

Asked whether Attalai might ever get her wish for a little brother or sister, Ms. Guzman Beard, 29, a vice president at a public service organization, said: “I want to go to law school. I’m married. I work. When do I have time?”

The decisions were not made in a vacuum but amid a sputtering economy, which, interviewees said, weighed heavily on their minds.

Latinos suffered larger percentage declines in household wealth than white, black or Asian households from 2005 to 2009, and, according to the Pew report, their rates of poverty and unemployment also grew more sharply after the recession began.

Prolonged recessions do produce dips in the birthrate, but a drop as large as Latinos have experienced is atypical, said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It is surprising,” Mr. Frey said. “When you hear about a decrease in the birthrate, you don’t expect Latinos to be at the forefront of the trend.”

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center and an author of the report, said that in past recessions, when overall fertility dipped, “it bounced back over time when the economy got better.”

“If history repeats itself, that will happen again,” she said.

But to Mr. Frey, the decrease has signaled much about the aspirations of young Latinos to become full and permanent members of the upwardly mobile middle class, despite the challenges posed by the struggling economy.

Jersey Garcia, a 37-year-old public health worker in Miami, is in the first generation of her family to live permanently outside of the Dominican Republic, where her maternal and paternal grandmothers had a total of 27 children.

“I have two right now,” Ms. Garcia said. “It’s just a good number that I can handle.”

“Before, I probably would have been pressured to have more,” she added. “I think living in the United States, I don’t have family members close by to help me, and it takes a village to raise a child. So the feeling is, keep what you have right now.”

But that has not been easy. Even with health insurance, Ms. Garcia’s preferred method of long-term birth control, an IUD, has been unaffordable. Birth control pills, too, with a $50 co-payment a month, were too costly for her budget. “I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “So what I’ve been doing is condoms.”

According to research by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the overwhelming majority of Latinas have used contraception at some point in their lives, but they face economic barriers to consistent use. As a consequence, Latinas still experience unintended pregnancy at a rate higher than non-Hispanic whites, according to the institute.

And while the share of births to teenage mothers has dropped over the past two decades for all women, the highest share of births to teenage mothers is among native-born Hispanics.

“There are still a lot of barriers to information and access to contraception that exist,” said Jessica Gonzáles-Rojas, 36, the executive director of the institute, who has one son. “We still need to do a lot of work.”

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: How to Cut a LinkedIn Connection

I accepted a LinkedIn invitation from someone who looked like a good professional contact, but has just been spamming me with messages. How do I get rid of this person?

Although the LinkedIn social-networking site skews more toward people looking to make business connections, it can still suffer from the same annoyances that plague Facebook, Twitter, and other services. If you need to dump someone you have connected with on the site, start by logging into your LinkedIn account on the Web.

At the top of your profile page, click the Contacts link. On the right side of the Contacts page, click Remove Connections. When your list of LinkedIn contacts appears, turn on the checkbox next to the name or names of the people you wish to remove. Click the Remove Connection button. Your newly severed connection is not notified that you have parted ways.

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Residents Flee Bangui, Capital of Central African Republic

Sia Kambou/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Soldiers from Republic of Congo arrived at Central African Republic's capital Bangui Monday. A regional force is bolstering the country's troops.

JOHANNESBURG — As efforts to broker a deal to stop a rebel advance failed, residents of the capital of the Central African Republic were packing up their belongings and fleeing into the country’s vast hinterlands, fearing a major battle between government troops and guerrilla fighters.

Rebels rejected an offer from the country’s president, François Bozizé. It was brokered by the African Union and proposed forming a government of national unity. But the rebels balked, saying that previous agreements with the president had been made and quickly broken.

“Bozizé speaks, but does not keep his word,” said a rebel spokesman, Juma Narkoyo. “That is why we have taken up arms to make our voices heard.”

The rebel coalition, known as Seleka, is made up of several groups of fighters opposed to the government of Mr. Bozizé, who came to power after a brief civil war in 2003 and has had a tenuous grip on the presidency ever since, winning two elections but facing a constant threat of rebellions aimed at toppling him.

The Seleka rebels say that Mr. Bozizé has not lived up to the terms of a peace agreement signed in 2007. Mr. Narkoyo said the rebels had no plans to seize the capital, Bangui, but in the past they have advanced despite claims that they would stay put.

Government officials, meanwhile, said that the rebels were not actually from the Central African Republic, but were instead foreign provocateurs bent on destabilizing one of the most fragile nations in Africa in order to exploit its mineral wealth.

“They are Chadians, Sudanese and Nigerians,” said Louis Oguéré Ngaïkouma, secretary general of Mr. Bozizé’s political party. “It is a conspiracy against the people of the Central African Republic and its president to steal our riches.”

Suspicion of one’s neighbors is no idle thing in this part of Africa, where local wars often become wider conflagrations. The Democratic Republic of Congo, which lies to the south of the Central African Republic, has been caught up in one of the deadliest conflicts of the last half-century as Rwandan, Ugandan and Congolese troops fought over the country’s bounty of diamonds, coltan and tin.

War in Sudan, which lies north of the Central African Republic, has also spilled over into its neighbors, especially Chad, which also borders the Central African Republic.

Hugues Kossi, a college student in Bangui, said he feared all-out war in his city.

“I am afraid of combat and stray bullets,” he said. But he said he was also tired of the poverty and misrule of Mr. Bozizé’s government.

“It is bad governance that has led us to this situation,” Mr. Kossi said.

The United States has closed its embassy in Bangui and evacuated its staff members. The French government has said it will not help Mr. Bozizé fight the rebels, but that it has deployed an extra contingent of soldiers from a neighboring country to help protect French citizens.

Christian Panika contributed reporting from Bangui, Central African Republic.

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