Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his 'runaway bride'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner's celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year's Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner's been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

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Well: Good and Bad, the Little Things Add Up in Fitness

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The past year in fitness has been alternately inspiring, vexing and diverting, as my revisiting of all of the Phys Ed columns published in 2012 makes clear. Taken as a whole, the latest exercise-related science tells us that the right types and amounts of exercise will almost certainly lengthen your life, strengthen your brain, affect your waistline and even clear debris from inside your body’s cells. But too much exercise, other 2012 science intimates, might have undesirable effects on your heart, while popping painkillers, donning stilettos and sitting and reading this column likewise have their costs.

With New Year’s exercise resolutions still fresh and hopefully unbroken on this, day two of 2013, it now seems like the perfect time to review these and other lessons of the past year in fitness science.

First, since I am habitually both overscheduled and indolent, I was delighted to report, as I did in June, that the “sweet sport” for health benefits seems to come from jogging or moderately working out for only a brief period a few times a week.

Specifically, an encouraging 2012 study of 52,656 American adults found that those who ran 1 to 20 miles per week at an average pace of about 10 or 11 minutes per mile — my leisurely jogging speed, in fact — lived longer, on average, than sedentary adults. They also lived longer than the group (admittedly small) who ran more than 20 miles per week.

“These data certainly support the idea that more running is not needed to produce extra health and mortality benefits,” Dr. Carl J. Lavie, a cardiologist in New Orleans and co-author of the study told me. “If anything,” he said, “it appears that less running is associated with the best protection from mortality risk.”

Similarly, in a study from Denmark that I wrote about in September, a group of pudgy young men lost more weight after 13 weeks of exercising moderately for about 30 minutes several times a week than a separate group who worked out twice as much.

The men who exercised the most, the study authors discovered, also subsequently ate more than the moderate exercisers.

Even more striking, however, the vigorous exercisers subsequently sat around more each day than did the men who had exercised less, motion sensors worn by all of the volunteers showed.

“They were fatigued,” said Mads Rosenkilde, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Copenhagen and the study’s co-author.

Meanwhile, the men who had worked out for only about 30 minutes seemed to be energized by their new routines. They stood up, walked, stretched and even bounced in place more than they once had. “It looks like they were taking the stairs now, not the elevators, and just moving around more,” Mr. Rosenkilde said. “It was little things, but they add up.”

And that idea was, in fact, perhaps the most dominant exercise-science theme of 2012: that little things add up, with both positive and pernicious effects. Another of my favorite studies of 2012 found that a mere 10 minutes of physical activity increased life spans in adults by almost two years, even if the adults remained significantly overweight.

But the inverse of that finding proved to be equally true: not fitting periods of activity into a person’s daily life also affected life span. Perhaps the most chilling sentence that I wrote all year reported that, according to a large study of Western adults, “Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.”

I am watching much less television these days.

But not all of the new fitness science I covered this year was quite so sobering or, to be honest, consequential. Some of the more practical studies simply validated common sense, including reports that to succeed in ball sports, keep your eye on the ball; during hot-weather exercise, pour cold water over your head; and, finally, on the day before a marathon, eat a lot.

But when I think about the science that has most affected how I plan my life, I return again and again to those studies showing that physical activity alters how long and how well we live. My days of heedless youth are behind me. So I won’t soon forget the study I wrote about in September detailing how moderate, frequent physical activity in midlife can delay the onset of illness and frailty in old age. Exercise won’t prevent you from aging, of course. Only death does that. But this study and others from this year underscore that staying active, even in moderate doses, dramatically improves how your aging body feels and responds.

Aging also inspired my favorite reader comment of 2012, which was posted in response to a research scientist’s name. “‘Dr. Head,’” the reader wrote. “That shall be the name of my all-senior-citizen metal band,” which, if its members gyrate and vigorously bound about like Mick Jagger on his recent tour, should ensure themselves decades in which to robustly perform.

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With a Mall Boom in Russia, Property Investors Go Shopping

MOSCOW — Shoppers who find that 250 stores aren’t enough can go ice skating, watch movies or even ride a carousel, all under a single roof.

While it sounds like the Mall of America, this mall is outside Moscow, not Minneapolis.

“I feel like I’m in Disneyland,” Vartyan E. Sarkisov, a shopper toting an Adidas bag, said recently while making the rounds of the Mega Belaya Dacha mall.

Instead of bread lines, Russia is known these days for malls. They are booming businesses, drawing investments from sovereign wealth funds and Wall Street banks, most recently Morgan Stanley, which paid $1.1 billion a year ago for a single mall in St. Petersburg.

One mall, called Vegas, rose out of a cucumber field on the edge of Moscow and became, its owners say, larger than the Mall of America if the American mall’s seven-acre amusement park is not counted in the calculation of floor space.

A few offramps away on the Moscow beltway, another mall scored a different kind of victory: the Mega Tyoply Stan shopping center drew 57 million visitors at its peak in 2007, well ahead of the 40 million annual visits reported by the Mall of America.

As American malls dodder into old age, gaptoothed with vacancies, Russia’s shopping centers are just now blossoming into their boom years, nourished by oil exports that are lifting wages.

“It’s 1982 all over again in Russia,” said Lee Timmins, the country representative of Hines, a Texas-based real estate group that is opening three outlet malls in Russia, referring to the heyday of the American mall experience. Russians, he said, love malls.

The mall boom illustrates an extraordinarily important theme in Russian economics these days. The growing crowds at malls, and the keen interest in Russian malls on the part of Wall Street banks, are signs that the emerging middle class that made up the street protests against Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow last winter is becoming a force in business as well as politics.

Investors, who with money at stake are a bellwether of the new trends, are not waiting for the next round of protests; they are already placing bets on the rise of a broad affluent class in Russia.

“Over the past 10 years, Russia has turned into a middle-class country,” Charles Slater, a retail analyst at Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate consulting firm, said in an interview. “What better to do than go to an enclosed, warm environment with many things on offer, whether that be bowling, cinema or food courts, things the customers have not been used to in the past?”

Moscow now has 82 malls, including two of the largest in Europe, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York-based trade association. Both are owned by Ikea Shopping Centers Russia, the branch of the Swedish assemble-it-yourself furniture franchise that manages 14 malls here. In Russia, malls are still novel; the first Western-style suburban mall opened in 2000. They are now changing hands as developers sell to institutional investors, like Morgan Stanley, shedding light for the first time on their eye-popping values.

At the core of the attraction for investors is the rising disposable income of Russians, nudged along by policies favoring the middle class, lest their challenge to President Putin’s rule intensify.

Russia has a flat 13 percent income tax rate. Most Russians own their homes, a legacy of post-Soviet privatizations, and so pay no mortgage or rent. Health care is socialized.

Not surprisingly, then, Russians have become fanatical shoppers. Russians spend 60 percent of their pretax income on retail purchases, a category that includes food, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate consulting firm. The country in second place in Europe is Sweden, where retailing accounts for 40 percent of total private spending. Germans, by comparison, spend 28 percent of their salaries shopping, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

Malls, where the secrets of Western capitalism were finally peeled open and laid bare, with fast food, clothes, ice rinks, electronics and appliances wherever the eye falls, have mesmerized shoppers here — much as they did in their early years in the United States, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Olga N. Zaitsova, 55, who was in the Mega Belaya Dacha mall with her granddaughter Anastasia, said she came every weekend, drawn by the warm play area for toddlers. “It’s just not comfortable to be outside when it’s so cold,” she said.

When she shops, she said, “now we buy things we want, not things we need.”

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Senate Passes Tax Increases on Wealthy Americans

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, was surrounded by reporters as he walked to his office late Monday.

WASHINGTON — The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation on 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 to 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 on 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,” Mr. McConnell said just after 1:30 a.m. “But I think we can say we’ve done some good for the country.”

Mr. Biden, after a late New Year’s Eve meeting with leery Senate Democrats to sell the accord, said: “You surely shouldn’t predict how the House is going to vote. 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 of Iowa, 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, Thomas R. 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 C. 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 was possible.

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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Thousands line route of Pasadena's Rose Parade

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Thousands of people in Southern California are lining the route of the 124th Rose Parade in Pasadena.

The die-hards staked out their spots early Monday with folding chairs, hammocks and portable barbeque grills. They brought in the new year by throwing marshmallows, shaving cream and tortillas, and then hunkered down to stay warm in sleeping bags.

The parade features floats covered with flowers and plant material and marching bands from across the country. It will be broadcasts around the world.

College student Brandy Grueter (GROO'-ter) spent the night on the sidewalk with her younger brother and saved spots for about 20 friends and family. She says she slept 20 minutes but would rally enough energy once the parade started.

The pre-dawn line at a Starbuck's stretched around the block.

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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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Senate Passes Tax Increases on Wealthy Americans

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, was surrounded by reporters as he walked to his office late Monday.

WASHINGTON — The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation on 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 to 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 on 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,” Mr. McConnell said just after 1:30 a.m. “But I think we can say we’ve done some good for the country.”

Mr. Biden, after a late New Year’s Eve meeting with leery Senate Democrats to sell the accord, said: “You surely shouldn’t predict how the House is going to vote. 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 of Iowa, 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, Thomas R. 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 C. 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 was possible.

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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What to Do With Your New Android

So you got a shiny new Android for Christmas? Before showing it off to all your Apple-loving friends, the device should be fully optimized at the start. Taking a couple measures ahead of time will make for a better experience later.

If you’re a brand new Android owner, the phone’s operating system is likely Jelly Bean or Ice Cream Sandwich. You shouldn’t have to upgrade anything, but there might be newer versions of built-in apps. (We’ll get to that later.)

You’ll have to set up a Google account, which should be fairly easy if you already use Gmail. If you’re completely new to Google, consider a couple things before even setting up your phone.

SEE ALSO: Top 20 Things Every First-Time Android User Should Know

[More from Mashable: Facebook in 2013: More Growing Pains Ahead]

Switching from an older Android requires a bit more prep, but it’s not impossible. Once you have a Google account, simply log in and sync accounts to receive your email and contacts. Some of your data, like photos and apps, will not transfer as easily, but there are a few ways to get around that.

The easiest way is to purchase the MyBackup Pro app. It’ll cost you $ 4, but the app backs up data and restores it to a new device.

If you’d rather start with a clean slate, without losing old photos, store all of your data in the cloud. Apps like Dropbox will back up data, but you can manually restore specific items to the new device.

Apps will need to be re-downloaded manually on a new device. Any apps purchased on a former Android will not need to be purchased again, but you will have to download those again, too.

Get Connected

The first thing to do before playing around with your new phone is to set up a Wi-Fi connection.

Hit the Menu button, and choose Settings. Then select Wireless & Networks and connect to the proper Wi-Fi as you would anywhere with a computer.

You’ll also have the option to connect to mobile networks — those settings can be found in the same menu. Your phone runs on 3G or 4G mobile networks when there is not a Wi-Fi connection.

It’s important to connect your phone to Wi-Fi when it’s available, because running on mobile networks uses data. Each download will cost data, which can quickly run over when you first get a new phone and want to try new apps. Running over on data can be very expensive.

Apps on Apps on Apps

Now that you’re up and running, it’s time to dive into the Google Play Store and get the apps that will make your life easier and more efficient.

There are so many apps for every aspect of your life. It depends on whether you want something entertaining, educational, fun, informative, creative or navigational. Sifting through apps can feel overwhelming — trial and error is the best way to approach the task. You can always uninstall an app if you don’t want it.

If you plan on purchasing anything, you’ll need a credit card. Your information will be stored securely, so you’ll only need to enter this once. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend money — there are plenty of free apps that will help you just as effectively.

Your phone will already have built-in apps, which differ with every manufacturer. These are likely due for an update before you even log into the new device. You can update them all at once by opening the Play Store, tapping the Menu button and selecting “My Apps.”

The Google Play Store can be accessed and adjusted from your phone or a desktop when logged into your Google account. You can install, update or remove any app from your phone via the store.

Google’s native apps should already be built in the device. If you can’t function without these tools — which is likely why you went with Android — you won’t be disappointed with the mobile versions.

If you juggle more than one email address, Gmail will access multiple accounts in one device.

Google Maps is a seamless GPS system, plus the updated app gives offline maps, indoor navigation and recommendations for nearby places.

Zappos

Free

Click here to view this gallery.

Social

Facebook’s native app favors Android devices. The app closely mirrors what you’d see on a desktop, making it easy to navigate. Like any other app, it has pre-fixed settings, so you might need to adjust, depending on your preferences.

After downloading and logging in to your account, hit the Menu button and select Settings. If you don’t want to use Facebook Chat from your phone, make sure Chat Availability is off. You can also adjust notifications so they only push the updates most important to you.

If you choose to sync your Facebook friends, they will automatically appear in your contact list if they share their phone number. When you agree to use the Facebook app, it shows your phone number on your profile. If you don’t want to share your number with friends, be sure to edit your contact info so that information is only available to you. The easiest way to do so is from a desktop.

Setup for Twitter is pretty straightforward. You can adjust syncing and push notifications, just like you did for Facebook, by going to Settings from the Menu button.

There are a couple options for Twitter aside from the native app. If you’re a list person, TweetDeck or Hootsuite might be better experiences.

If there is one good thing about Google+, it’s the syncing features that come with an Android device. If you don’t use the network as a social place, it can function as an automatic storage space. For example, if you take a photo with your phone, it will save to your Google+ account, even if you delete the photo from your device.

Of course, there are plenty of other social networks, so test them out and judge for yourself. If you don’t like one (or any app, for that matter) you can always uninstall it from the Google Play Store, just as you would update it.

Music

Your new Android replaces the need to carry multiple devices, including an MP3 player. If you’re gung-ho Google, the native Music app stores all of your files in the cloud, so you can easily switch from device to computer.

There is no native iTunes app, but that’s nothing a little hack can’t work around. DoubleTwist is worth the $ 5 pricetag if you cannot live without your iPod. Also, your iTunes library syncs over Wi-Fi — no wires required.

There are other great apps for music lovers on the go. Spotify is the best service for sharing and discovering music. You can send friends songs, albums and playlists. The free service features a nearly limitless music library, or you can upgrade to premium for an unlimited, ad-free experience.

Are you and Android user? Share any advice for first-timers in the comments below.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, by_nicholas, Flickr, JD Hancock

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Kanye West, Kim Kardashian expecting 1st child

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A kid for Kimye: Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are expecting their first child.

The rapper announced at a concert Sunday night that his girlfriend is pregnant. Kardashian was in the crowd at Revel Resort's Ovation Hall with her mother, Kris Jenner, and West's mentor and best friend, Jay-Z. West told the crowd of more than 5,000 in song form: "Now you having my baby."

The crowd roared. And so did people on the Internet.

The news instantly went viral on Twitter and Facebook, with thousands posting and commenting on the expecting couple.

Most of the Kardashian clan also tweeted about the news, including Kim's sisters. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: "Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!"

West, 35, also told concertgoers to congratulate his "baby mom" and that this was the "most amazing thing."

Representatives for West and Kardashian, 32, didn't immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.

The rapper and reality TV star went public in March.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West's Sunday-night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like "Good Life," ''Jesus Walks" and "Clique" in an all-white ensemble with two bandmates.

___

AP Writer Bianca Roach contributed to this report.

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin . Follow Bianca Roach at http://twitter.com/B__Roach

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Chinese Firm Is Cleared to Buy American DNA Sequencing Company

Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

DNA sequencing machines at Complete Genomics in California. The firm dismissed concerns about its acquisition.

The federal government has given national security clearance to the controversial purchase of an American DNA sequencing company by a Chinese firm.

The Chinese firm, BGI-Shenzhen, said in a statement this weekend that its acquisition of Complete Genomics, based in Mountain View, Calif., had been cleared by the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews the national security implications of foreign takeovers of American companies. The deal still requires antitrust clearance by the Federal Trade Commission.

Some scientists, politicians and industry executives had said the takeover represented a threat to American competitiveness in DNA sequencing, a technology that is becoming crucial for the development of drugs, diagnostics and improved crops.

The fact that the $117.6 million deal was controversial at all reflects a change in the genomics community.

A decade ago, the Human Genome Project, in which scientists from many nations helped unravel the genetic blueprint of mankind, was celebrated for its spirit of international cooperation. One of the participants in the project was BGI, which was then known as the Beijing Genomics Institute.

But with DNA sequencing now becoming a big business and linchpin of the biotechnology industry, international rivalries and nationalism are starting to move front and center in any acquisition.

Much of the alarm about the deal has been raised by Illumina, a San Diego company that is the market leader in sequencing machines. It has potentially the most to lose from the deal because BGI might buy fewer Illumina products and even become a competitor. Weeks after the BGI deal was announced, Illumina made its own belated bid for Complete Genomics, offering 15 cents a share more than BGI’s bid of $3.15. But Complete Genomics rebuffed Illumina, saying such a merger would never clear antitrust review.

Illumina also hired a Washington lobbyist, the Glover Park Group, to stir up opposition to the deal in Congress. Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, was the only member of Congress known to have publicly expressed concern.

BGI and Complete Genomics point out that Illumina has long sold its sequencing machines — including a record-setting order of 128 high-end machines — to BGI without raising any security concerns. Sequencing machines have not been subject to export controls like aerospace equipment, lasers, sensors and other gear that can have clear military uses.

“Illumina has never previously considered its business with BGI as ‘sensitive’ in the least,” Ye Yin, the chief operating officer of BGI, said in a November letter to Complete Genomics that was made public in a regulatory filing. In the letter, Illumina was accused of “obvious hypocrisy.”

BGI and Complete said that Illumina was trying to derail the agreement and acquire Complete Genomics itself in order to “eliminate its closest competitor, Complete.”

BGI is already one of the most prolific DNA sequencers in the world, but it buys the sequencing machines it uses from others, mainly Illumina.

Illumina, joined by some American scientists, said it worried that if BGI gained access to Complete’s sequencing technology, the Chinese company might use low prices to undercut the American sequencing companies that now dominate the industry.

Some also said that with Complete Genomics providing an American base, BGI would have access to more DNA samples from Americans, helping it compile a huge database of genetic information that could be used to develop drugs and diagnostic tests. Some also worried about protection of the privacy of genetic information.

“What’s to stop them from mining genomic data of American samples to some unknown nefarious end?” Elaine R. Mardis, co-director of the genome sequencing center at Washington University in St. Louis, said in an e-mail.

Dr. Mardis could not specify what kind of nefarious end she imagined. But opponents of the deal cited a November article in The Atlantic saying that in the future, pathogens could be genetically engineered to attack particular individuals, including the president, based on their DNA sequences.

BGI and Complete Genomics dismissed such concerns as preposterous.

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