How to Sync All Your Calendars Onto One Smartphone

It’s a simple request: I just want my online calendars to sync with my smartphone… is that too much to ask? It took some initial research and finesse, but I’ve discovered the best ways to get your Yahoo and Google calendars to appear on either an Android or Apple IOS mobile device.

Google Calendar on Android Phone
When you first set up your Android phone, you had to create or enter your Google account info, so the phone already has the login info for your Google Calendar. Now you can go to your phone’s Settings, choose Accounts, click the Google account and then make sure “Sync Calendar” is checked. Then go to the Calendar App on your Android phone and it should be there.

For multiple calendars, hit the Settings button and then Calendars to customize which Google calendars you see.

Yahoo Calendar on Android Phone
Although it seems like it should be easy to add the Yahoo Calendar to your Android, I never got mine to sync. Theoretically, you would open the Android calendar on your phone, hit the Settings option, and Add Account. But depending on the flavor of Android I tried, I either couldn’t add a Yahoo account or when I did, it didn’t sync. It could just be me, but I found a lot of people online with the same issue. So I tried one of the most recommended apps to solve the problem – Smoothsync for Yahoo. It costs just under three dollars, and once you install it, you can sync all your Yahoo calendars into the native Android calendar. Ah, sweet relief.

[Related: New Tricks for New (and Old) Androids]

Yahoo Calendar on iPhone
On your IOS device, hit Settings. If you haven’t added your Yahoo Account yet, do so by going to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Choose “Add Account.” Once you’ve input your Yahoo login info, the next screen gives you the option to Sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Make sure calendars is on. Hit the Home button, open the IOS calendar. Hit the Calendars button on the top corner and you will see all your calendars listed under Yahoo. If you only have one Yahoo calendar, make sure you check to have it show in your IOS Cal. Also, many people have multiple Yahoo calendars: a family calendar, a work calendar, a soccer team calendar for the kids, and a personal calendar. You can customize which of these Yahoo Calendars show up by checking or unchecking them in this screen.

Google Calendar on iPhone
It’s a little more complicated, but you can also put a Google or Gmail calendar on the iPhone. Here’s how:

If you only have your one personal Google calendar to sync, you do things the same way as with Yahoo: Go to Settings on your IOS device, add your Google account (if you haven’t done so yet) by going to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Choose “Add Account.”

Once you’ve input your Google login info, the next screen gives you the option to Sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Make sure Calendars is on. Hit the Home button, then open the IOS calendar. Hit the Calendars button on the top corner and you will see your calendar listed under Google. You can track those Google dates in the IOS calendar and multiple Yahoo calendars at the same time.

But if you want multiple Google calendars, you need an app for that. Google does let you do this through their mobile site, but that’s basically just a website without the power of notifications and all the extras you like from your calendars. So I suggest getting the CalenMob app. It’s free with ads or $ 5 ad-free. It syncs all your Google calendars to the app (not the native IOS calendar) and adds in notification options, SMS functions and email alert options. It also syncs simultaneously to your Yahoo calendars.

[Related: True/False: Never Sell Your Old Phone]

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Ray Lewis to retire after playoffs

OWINGS MILLS, Md. (AP) — Ray Lewis will end his brilliant 17-year NFL career after the Baltimore Ravens complete their 2013 playoff run.

Lewis has been sidelined since Oct. 14 with a torn right triceps. The 13-time Pro Bowl middle linebacker intends to return Sunday to face the Indianapolis Colts in what will almost certainly be his final home game.

"I talked to my team today," Lewis said Wednesday. "I talked to them about life in general. And everything that starts has an end. For me, today, I told my team that this will be my last ride."

Lewis will walk away from the game because he wants to spend more time with his two sons. While working to return from his injury, Lewis watched them play on the same high school football team, and he intends to watch Ray Lewis III perform as a freshman next year for his alma mater, the University of Miami.

"God is calling," the 37-year-old Lewis said. "My children have made the ultimate sacrifice for their father for 17 years. I don't want to see them do that no more. I've done what I wanted to do in this business, and now it's my turn to give them something back."

Which means he'll pull off his No. 52 uniform for the last time after the Ravens are eliminated or win the Super Bowl.

"It's either hold onto the game and keep playing and let my kids miss out on times we can be spending together," Lewis said. "Because I always promised my son if he got a full ride on scholarship Daddy is going to be there. I can't miss that."

Lewis was the AP Defensive Player of the Year in 2000, when Baltimore won the Super Bowl title, and in 2003.

"I never played the game for individual stats. I only played the game to make my team a better team," he said.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Employers Must Offer Family Health Care, Affordable or Not, Administration Says

WASHINGTON — In a long-awaited interpretation of the new health care law, the Obama administration said Monday that employers must offer health insurance to employees and their children, but will not be subject to any penalties if family coverage is unaffordable to workers.

The requirement for employers to provide health benefits to employees is a cornerstone of the new law, but the new rules proposed by the Internal Revenue Service said that employers’ obligation was to provide affordable insurance to cover their full-time employees. The rules offer no guarantee of affordable insurance for a worker’s children or spouse. To avoid a possible tax penalty, the government said, employers with 50 or more full-time employees must offer affordable coverage to those employees. But, it said, the meaning of “affordable” depends entirely on the cost of individual coverage for the employee, what the worker would pay for “self-only coverage.”

The new rules, to be published in the Federal Register, create a strong incentive for employers to put money into insurance for their employees rather than dependents. It is unclear whether the spouse and children of an employee will be able to obtain federal subsidies to help them buy coverage — separate from the employee — through insurance exchanges being established in every state. The administration explicitly reserved judgment on that question, which could affect millions of people in families with low and moderate incomes.

Many employers provide family coverage to full-time employees, but many do not. Family coverage is much more expensive, and the employee’s share of the premium is typically much larger.

In 2012, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance averaged $5,615 a year for single coverage and $15,745 for family coverage. The employee’s share of the premium averaged $951 for individual coverage and more than four times as much, $4,316, for family coverage.

Starting in 2014, most Americans will be required to have health insurance. Low- and middle-income people can get tax credits to help pay their premiums, unless they have access to affordable coverage from an employer.

In its proposal, the Internal Revenue Service said, “Coverage for an employee under an employer-sponsored plan is affordable if the employee’s required contribution for self-only coverage does not exceed 9.5 percent of the employee’s household income.”

The rules, though labeled a proposal, are more significant than most proposed regulations. The Internal Revenue Service said employers could rely on them in making plans for 2014.

In writing the law, members of Congress often conjured up a picture of employees working year-round at full-time jobs. But in drafting the rules, the I.R.S. wrestled with the complex reality of part-time, seasonal and temporary workers.

In addition, the administration expressed concern that some employers might try to evade the new requirements by firing and rehiring employees, manipulating their work hours or using temporary staffing agencies. The rules include several provisions to prevent such abuse.

The law says an employer with 50 or more full-time employees may be subject to a tax penalty if it fails to offer coverage to “its full-time employees (and their dependents).”

Employers asked for guidance, and the Obama administration provided it, saying that a dependent is an employee’s child under the age of 26.

“Dependent does not include the spouse of an employee,” the proposed rules say.

Thus, employers must offer coverage to children of an employee, but do not have to make it affordable. And they do not have to offer coverage at all to the spouse of an employee.

The administration said that the rules — which apply to private businesses, nonprofit organizations and state and local government agencies — would require changes at many work sites.

“A number of employers currently offer coverage only to their employees, and not to dependents,” the I.R.S. said. “For these employers, expanding their health plans to add dependent coverage will require substantial revisions to their plans.”

In view of this challenge, the agency said it would grant a one-time reprieve to employers who fail to offer coverage to dependents of full-time employees, provided they take steps in 2014 to come into compliance. Under the rules, employers must offer coverage to employees in 2014 and must offer coverage to dependents as well, starting in 2015.

The new rules apply to employers that have at least 50 full-time employees or an equivalent combination of full-time and part-time employees. A full-time employee is a person employed on average at least 30 hours a week. And 100 half-time employees are considered equivalent to 50 full-time employees.

Thus, the government said, an employer will be subject to the new requirement if it has 40 full-time employees working 30 hours a week and 20 half-time employees working 15 hours a week.

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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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The North Korean Leader, Kim Jong-un, Makes Overture to South

SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, called for an end to the “confrontation” with rival South Korea on Tuesday in what appeared to be an overture to the incoming South Korean president as she was cobbling together South Korea’s new policy on the North.

North Korea issued a major policy statement on Tuesday, New Year’s Day, following a tradition set by Mr. Kim’s late grandfather, the North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, and his late father, Kim Jong-il, who died in December last year, bequeathing the dynastic rule to Mr. Kim.

Mr. Kim was the first supreme North Korean leader to issue the statement as his personal speech since his grandfather last did so before his death in 1994. During the rule of his reclusive father, Kim Jong-il, the statement — which laid out policy guidelines for the new year and was studied by all branches of the party, state and military — was issued as a joint editorial of the country’s main official media.

Mr. Kim’s speech on Tuesday, which was broadcast through the North’s state-run television and radio stations, was another sign that the young leader was trying to imitate his grandfather Kim Il-sung, who in life was considered a more people-friendly leader and is still widely revered among North Koreans.

Although Mr. Kim inherited the key policies of his father, outside analysts see him as trying to distance himself from the ruling style of his father, Kim Jong-il, who was more feared than respected among his people and whose rule was marked by a famine.

In his speech, Mr. Kim, echoed themes of previous New Year’s messages, emphasizing that improving the living standards of North Koreans and rejuvenating the agricultural and light industries were among the improvised country’s main priorities.

But he revealed no details of any planned economic policy changes. He only mentioned a need to “improve economic leadership and management” and “spread useful experiences created in various work units.”

Since July, various news outlets in South Korea have reported that Mr. Kim’s regime has begun carrying out cautious economic incentives aimed at bolstering productivity at farms and factories. Some reports said the state was considering letting farmers keep at least 30 percent of their yield; currently, it is believed, they are allowed to sell only a surplus beyond a government-set quota that is rarely met.

Mr. Kim also vowed to strengthen his country’s military, calling for the development of more advanced weapons. But he made no mention of relations with the United States or the international efforts to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. He simply reiterated that his government was willing to “expand and improve upon friendly and cooperative relationships with all countries friendly to us.”

Mr. Kim’s speech followed the successful launching of a satellite aboard a long-range rocket in December. North Korea’s propagandists have since been busy billing the launch as a symbol of what they called the North’s soaring technological might and Mr. Kim’s peerless leadership. Washington considered it a test of long-range ballistic missile technology and a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions banning such tests, and is seeking more sanctions to impose on the isolated country.

But it was his allusion to relations with South Korea that signified a departure in tone.

“A key to ending the divide of the nation and achieving reunification is to end the situation of confrontation between the North and the South,” Mr. Kim said. “A basic precondition to improving North-South relations and advancing national reunification is to honor and implement North-South joint declarations.”

He was referring to two inter-Korean summit agreements, signed in 2000 and 2007, when two South Korean presidents, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, were pursuing a “Sunshine Policy” of reconciliation and economic cooperation with North Korea and met Mr. Kim’s father in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

As a result of those agreements, billions of dollars of South Korean investment, aid and trade flowed into the North. Billions more were promised in investments in shipyards and factory parks, as the South Korean leaders believed that economic good will was the best way of encouraging North Korea to shed its isolation and hostility while reducing the economic gap between the two Koreas and the cost of reunification in the future.

But that warming of ties ended when conservatives came to power in South Korea with the inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak in 2008. When Mr. Lee was president-elect, North Korea offered a similar overture as Tuesday’s. But Mr. Lee suspended any large aid or investment barring a significant progress toward dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons programs, and inter-Korean relations spiraled down, further aggravated by the North’s shelling of a South Korean island in 2010.

The incoming leader of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, who is the presidential candidate of Mr. Lee’s governing party, kept the conservatives in power by winning the Dec. 19 election. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the former military strongman under whose rule from 1961 till 1979 a staunchly anti-Communist, pro-American political establishment took root in South Korea.

North Korea had engineered a couple of assassination attempts on Ms. Park’s father, one of which resulted in her mother’s death in 1974. But Ms. Park also traveled to Pyongyang in 2002 and discussed inter-Korean reconciliation with Kim Jong-il.

During her campaign for president, she said that if elected, she would decouple humanitarian aid from politics and try to hold a summit meeting with Kim Jong-un. She was in part reacting to widespread criticism in South Korea that Mr. Lee’s hard-line policy did little to change the North’s behavior.

During the campaign, however, Ms. Park stuck to Mr. Lee’s stance on the most contentious issue of large-scale investment, which the North considers crucial.

Ms. Park, like the current president, insisted that any large-scale economic investments be preceded by the “building of trust” through progress in denuclearizing North Korea.

Peace bought with “shoveling” of unrestrained aid under the Sunshine Policy was “a fake,” she said, citing the North’s long history of using military threats to win economic concessions.

North Korea called her a “confrontational maniac” and “fascist.” But since her election, it has refrained from attacking her.

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No surprise: YouTube, Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook among 2012′s top apps

Title Post: No surprise: YouTube, Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook among 2012′s top apps
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Reid among 7 NFL coaches sacked in firing frenzy

Andy Reid is the winningest coach in the history of the Philadelphia Eagles. Lovie Smith led the Chicago Bears to the 2007 Super Bowl.

Now they're looking for work.

Seven coaches and five general managers were fired Monday in a flurry of pink slips that were delivered the day after the regular-season ended.

Ken Whisenhunt is out after helping Arizona reach the Super Bowl following the 2008 season. Also gone: Norv Turner in San Diego, Pat Shurmur in Cleveland, Romeo Crennel in Kansas City and Chan Gailey in Buffalo.

Three teams made it a clean sweep, saying goodbye to the GM along with the coach — San Diego, Cleveland, Arizona. General managers also were fired in Jacksonville and New York, where Rex Ryan held onto his coaching job with the Jets despite a losing record.

Reid was the longest tenured of the coaches, removed after 14 seasons and a Super Bowl appearance in 2005 — a loss to New England. Smith spent nine seasons with the Bears.

Turner has now been fired as head coach by three teams. San Diego won the AFC West from 2006-09, but didn't make the postseason the last three years under Turner and GM A.J. Smith.

"Both Norv and A.J. are consummate NFL professionals, and they understand that in this league, the bottom line is winning," Chargers President Dean Spanos said in a statement.

Whisenhunt was fired after six seasons. He had more wins than any other coach in Cardinals history, going 45-51, and has one year worth about $5.5 million left on his contract. GM Rod Graves had been with Arizona for 16 years, nine in his current position. A 5-11 record after a 4-0 start cost him and Whisenhunt their jobs.

Gailey was dumped after three seasons with the Bills; Shurmur after two; and Crennel had one full season with the Chiefs.

Reid took over a 3-13 Eagles team in 1999, drafted Donovan McNabb with the No. 2 overall pick and quickly turned the franchise into a title contender.

But the team hasn't won a playoff game since 2008 and after last season's 8-8 finish, owner Jeffrey Lurie said he was looking for improvement this year. Instead, it was even worse. The Eagles finished 4-12.

"When you have a season like that, it's embarrassing. It's personally crushing to me and it's terrible," Lurie said at a news conference. He said he respects Reid and plans to stay friends with him, "but, it is time for the Eagles to move in a new direction."

Shurmur went 9-23 in his two seasons with the Browns, who will embark on yet another offseason of change — the only constant in more than a decade of futility. Cleveland has lost at least 11 games in each of the past five seasons and made the playoffs just once since returning to the NFL as an expansion team in 1999.

"Ultimately our objective is to put together an organization that will be the best at everything we do," Browns CEO Joe Banner said. "On the field, our only goal is trying to win championships."

Crennel took over with three games left in the 2011 season after GM Scott Pioli fired Todd Haley. Kansas City will have the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft as a result of having one of the worst seasons in its 53-year history. The only other time the Chiefs finished 2-14 was 2008, the year before Pioli was hired.

"I am embarrassed by the poor product we gave our fans this season, and I believe we have no choice but to move the franchise in a different direction," Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said in a statement.

Gailey, the former Dallas Cowboys coach, compiled a 16-32 record in his three seasons in Buffalo, never doing better than 6-10.

"This will probably be, and I say probably, but I think it will be the first place that's ever fired me that I'll pull for," Gailey said.

Smith and the Bears went 10-6 this season and just missed a playoff spot. But Chicago started 7-1 and has struggled to put together a productive offense throughout Smith's tenure. His record was 81-63 with the Bears, and he took them to one Super Bowl loss and to one NFC championship game defeat.

Receiver and kick return standout Devin Hester was bitter about Smith's firing.

"The media, the false fans, you all got what you all wanted," Hester said as he cleared out his locker. "The majority of you all wanted him out. As players we wanted him in. I guess the fans — the false fans — outruled us. I thought he was a great coach, probably one of the best coaches I've ever been around."

The fired GMs included Mike Tannenbaum of the Jets; Gene Smith of the Jaguars; Tom Heckert of the Browns; Smith of the Chargers and Graves of Arizona.

"You hope that those guys that obviously were victims of black Monday land on their feet," Rams coach Jeff Fisher said. "You've got guys that have been to Super Bowls and won championship games and all of a sudden they've forgot how to coach, I guess."

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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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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DealBook Column: Hold Your Applause, Please, Until After the Toasts

Gentlemen, ladies, please take your seats.

It is time for DealBook’s annual “Closing Dinner,” where we toast — and more important, roast — the deal makers of 2012 (and some of the still-hammering-out-the-fiscal-cliff-deal makers).

This year’s dinner is in Washington so that some of esteemed attendees can run back for negotiations.

We have a number of Wall Street deal makers at the front table: Jamie Dimon, Lloyd C. Blankfein and Warren E. Buffett. They may have an easier time negotiating than some of our elected officials because, as Mr. Buffett likes to say, “My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.”

Across the way is Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital. We sat him next to Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, so they could get to know each other a little better. Steve, a little advice: don’t let Preet borrow your cellphone.

Greg Smith, the former Goldman Sachs banker who wrote a tell-all called “Why I Left Goldman Sachs,” is here. Mr. Smith managed to wangle a reported $1.5 million payday from his publisher, but his book sold poorly and his publisher was left with a huge loss. Nice to see you learned something from your years in banking, Greg.

Timothy F. Geithner and Ben S. Bernanke are sitting at the dais this year, as is Mario Draghi. Strangely, they are playing Monopoly under the table with real dollar bills. (I heard Mr. Bernanke tell Mr. Draghi, “We can always print more.”)

The board of Hewlett-Packard is at the table at the back. Senator Harry Reid and Senator Mitch McConnell, whatever you do, don’t ask Meg Whitman for pointers on how to make the numbers work.

We’re pleased that Speaker John Boehner also decided to join us this year. We had asked him to invite some other senior members of his caucus, but as you can see from the empty seats at his table, none of them were willing to join him. So we’ve stuck him next to Vikram Pandit.

Mitt Romney just arrived and is sitting at the table sponsored by the Private Equity Growth Capital Council. He is with some of his supporters, among them Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors and the Koch Brothers. And yes, Mitt, there is a hidden video camera in the floral arrangement in front of you.

Finally, a quick thank you to the folks from Barclays and UBS. Their teams who got caught up in the Libor scandal agreed to pay for tonight’s dinner. Apparently, there is some dispute with the caterer, however, because the bankers are trying to set the rate. (Rimshot.)

And now, before the humor runs out (if it hasn’t already), onto the official toasts and roasts of 2012:

TURNAROUND OF THE YEAR Robert H. Benmosche, A.I.G.’s chief executive, take a bow. The bailout of your company at the height of the financial crisis will probably never be popular, but it will be profitable. (And it should be a bit more popular, too.)

The Treasury Department sold its last shares in the company in 2012, racking up a profit of $22.7 billion for taxpayers. Mr. Benmosche, a tough-talking executive who at one point early in his tenure at A.I.G. threatened to quit because of efforts by the government to meddle in the business, revived a company that had been left for dead. Most of the media, the pundits and the speculators got it wrong. You got it right. We do all owe you a thank you.

LEADERSHIP LESSON: JAMIE DIMON Mr. Dimon, the biggest failure of your career happened in 2012 with the loss of more than $5 billion by a group of your traders, including one known as the “London Whale.” Many C.E.O.’s would have lost their jobs and certainly would not be given a toast.

But you did something most executives would not have done: you admitted to the mistake. In an age when it’s almost de rigueur on Wall Street to hide problems, obfuscate and shade the truth, you told it how it was: “We have egg on our face, and we deserve any criticism we get.”

That’s not to say the situation was handled perfectly; the lack of details about the loss and your continued pushback against regulations raised more questions than answers. But your insistence that “We made a terrible, egregious mistake” is a lesson in leadership for your peers.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: MARIO DRAGHI Mr. Draghi, the economist and former Goldman Sachs banker turned president of the European Central Bank, nearly single-handedly saved the euro zone in 2012. In a master stroke, he said: “Within our mandate, the E.C.B. is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.”

That sentence will go down in history for the confidence it inspired in the markets and in countries like Greece, Spain and Italy that were thought to be on the precipice. Through behind-the-scenes shuttle diplomacy with leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany and Mario Monti of Italy, Mr. Draghi was able to convince reluctant politicians that it was in his purview to start buying up bonds if a country needed help — and requested it. So far, his comments alone have served as a remarkable backstop; no country has sought his help.

A BOARD IN NEED OF HELP, AGAIN Bashing the board of Hewlett-Packard is becoming boring. Its members, who have routinely turned over, had another tough year.

The company’s stock fell about 45 percent. H.P. disclosed that its $11.7 billion acquisition of Autonomy, in which it paid an 80 percent premium, had turned out to be a mess (which wasn’t exactly a secret) — or worse, a fraud. But in a strange twist, perhaps trying to remove some of the blame for the disaster of a deal, the board attributed at least $5 billion of the write-down of the deal simply to accounting chicanery.

Some have questioned H.P.’s math. Perhaps some of the write-down is the result of accounting problems, but $5 billion? C’mon. Hewlett’s board, however, still has some friends: It has paid an estimated $81 million to Wall Street to help orchestrate some its failed deals in recent years.

SEEKING FACEBOOK ‘FRIENDS’ Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s C.E.O., has been attending our “Closing Dinner” for years. (He wore Adidas flip-flops to his first.) Back then, he was the “It” boy — the one everyone in the room wanted to “friend.” This year, after Facebook pursued its I.P.O., some investors want to “unfriend” him.

As everyone knows, the market has not been kind to Facebook shares, which were sold at $38 a share and at one point this year dropped by half. The good news is that Facebook’s shares have rebounded and are now at about $26 a share; the bad news is that long-term shareholders are still down about 30 percent.

With questions about Facebook’s privacy policies and mobile strategy still at the fore, Mr. Zuckerberg has some work to do. Hopefully, when we reconvene next year, more investors will want to sit at your table. (My apologies for sticking you next to Andrew Mason of Groupon.)

YAHOO FINALLY GETS IT RIGHT For nearly the last five years, if not decade, Yahoo had clearly lost its luster. It went through a series of C.E.O.’s, its best engineers left to work at Google and Facebook, and its stock had tanked.

Enter Daniel S. Loeb, the activist investor. He saw value where others didn’t. He also used some clever powers of persuasion to get on the company’s board: He ousted Scott Thompson, Yahoo’s new chief (remember him?) for lying on his résumé by saying he had a computer science degree when, in truth, he had an accounting degree. That sleuthing, and the ensuing embarrassment for the board, gave Mr. Loeb an opening to get his slate of directors on the board.

But most important, once he got on the board, he did something nobody expected: He hired Marissa Mayer, a true Silicon Valley star from Google, to run the company. The jury is still out on the company’s future, but for the first time in ages, people are talking about the company as if it actually has a future. Kudos.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/01/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Hold Your Applause Until After The Toasts.

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Envoy to Syria Warns of Descent to Warlord ‘Hell’

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The international envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, drew a grim portrait on Sunday of the country’s future in the absence of a political solution, warning of a state carved up by warlords and a death toll that would rapidly surge, while conceding that there was little sign that the antagonists intended to negotiate.

Muzaffar Salman/Reuters

A rebel soldier firing at pro-government forces on Sunday in Aleppo, Syria. In Homs, civilians fled a district torn by fighting.

At a news conference at Arab League headquarters in Cairo, Mr. Brahimi said the violence, which has already killed tens of thousands of people, could claim 100,000 lives over the next year.

“People are talking about a divided Syria being split into a number of small states like Yugoslavia,” he said.

“This is not what is going to happen. What will happen is Somalization — warlords,” Mr. Brahimi said, according to a transcript of his remarks. Without a peace deal, he added, Syria would be “transformed into hell.”

Mr. Brahimi’s comments reflected a deepening pessimism after his apparently unsuccessful attempt over the past week to mediate the crisis by shuttling between opposition figures and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. The envoy indicated that Mr. Assad had made no response to peace proposals, which included a plan to create a transitional government. In another sign of the impasse, the leader of a large opposition coalition all but rebuffed an invitation by Russia, one of Syria’s closest allies, to discuss solutions to the crisis.

On Saturday, nearly a week after Mr. Brahimi traveled to Damascus, the Syrian capital, Russia’s foreign minister said there was “no possibility” of persuading Mr. Assad to leave the country, which Syrian opposition groups have insisted is a precondition for any peace talks.

The envoy’s warnings came as activists in Syria reported a new exodus of civilians from the central city of Homs, adding untold numbers of internal refugees to the millions Mr. Brahimi said had already been displaced by the war. Over the past three days, hundreds and perhaps thousands of residents have fled fighting in the Deir Ba’alba district of Homs after government troops stormed the restive neighborhood, according to activists in Talbiseh, north of Homs, where many of the refugees were being received.

Some residents have blamed rebel fighters for the incursion, saying the army moved in after the insurgents inexplicably quit the neighborhood. In Syria’s other cities, residents have frequently been angered by the tendency of rebel fighters to occupy a neighborhood and then attack government troops before abruptly withdrawing and leaving civilians to bear the brunt of the army’s brutal retaliation.

It was unclear how many people had been killed in the fighting in the district. One young witness said he believed a neighbor had been killed. Two videos purportedly from Deir Ba’alba showed the bodies of about a dozen men who had apparently been executed with gunshots to the head. But there was no confirmation of claims made on Saturday by an antigovernment group, the Local Coordination Committees, that hundreds had been killed.

One resident of Deir Ba’alba, a 14-year-old boy reached by Skype in Talbiseh, said he had fled with his parents at 1:30 a.m. Sunday. The family had grown accustomed to sporadic fighting and gunfire, and usually fled to a relative’s house elsewhere in Homs. “But this time, it was heavy shelling,” the teenager said. “I could hear the asphalt cracking under the tanks.”

As he and his family left, the boy saw the body of a neighbor, a woman, lying on the ground, he said. His mother tried to convince the boy that the neighbor was alive. “I’m sure I saw her dead,” he said. “Her neck was bleeding. She was unveiled. It was the first time I saw our neighbor unveiled.”

One fighter from Homs said the retreat had come after the rebel military council for Homs failed to provide ammunition for its fighters in Deir Ba’alba. “They asked for supplies 48 hours before the invasion,” the fighter said. “Their call was not answered. I don’t know why.”

Civilians had begged the fighters not to leave, or at least to leave their weapons behind, two fighters said. Another fighter from Homs, calling the withdrawal “suicidal,” said the rebels had left civilians “to face their destiny alone.”

“We don’t know what happened to them,” he said.

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