It's the Economy: What Will the Economy’s New ‘Normal’ Look Like in 2013?

Illustration by Jasper Rietman

Back in the mid-2000s, the U.S. consumer economy was undergoing a serious change. After decades of favoring low prices (even when they promised low quality), consumers began paying more for all sorts of premium features like single-serve packaging and pretty much anything “green” or “organic.” Then came the financial crisis and the drop in consumer demand.

Deep thoughts this week:

1. Consumption is back.

2. But many buying habits are changing.

3. Regardless, the habits of the U.S. middle class are becoming less important.

It’s the Economy

Adam Davidson translates often confusing and sometimes terrifying economic and financial news.

Despite a worse-than-expected holiday season, the Federal Reserve forecast that G.D.P. growth would approach the historic average of about 3 percent in 2013. The economy may be coming back, but the question for many businesses is what the new “normal” looks like. Will shoppers spend as they did in the credit-bubble years? Or has the Great Recession scared them into prolonged stinginess? Early evidence suggests a mix. What is clear is that the big changes are just beginning.

Waste More, Want More

From the 1970s through the 1990s, the dominant retail trend was toward cheap and big: shoppers drove long distances to buy large boxes of everything they needed in bulk. Starting in the last decade, though, this began to change. And the success of products like Tide Pods (premeasured balls of detergent that made Procter & Gamble an estimated $500 million last year) suggest that the era of premium conveniences isn’t going anywhere.

Somewhat counterintuitively, this trend is directly related to the downturn, says John N. Frank, an analyst at Mintel, a market-research firm. Fearful of losing their jobs, millions of workers coped with the crisis by putting in more time at the office — “doing at least two people’s jobs,” Frank says — even if it meant less time to shop for deals. Dollar General saw tremendous growth as a more convenient alternative to Sam’s Club. Duane Reade, now owned by Walgreen, is proving that no block in Manhattan should be without a drugstore that also carries basic grocery items at an upcharge. Frank says he expects that anxious, overtired workers will drive this trend well into this decade, too.

Housing Is Back

Now that at least one million households are looking to move somewhere better, investors are looking to buy houses on the cheap — not to flip, but to rent. (The Blackstone Group, the private-equity colossus, has spent more than $1 billion this year buying up thousands of single-family homes around the country.) New residential construction starts also came back strong last year, and much of the growth was from multiunit apartment buildings designed, yes, for renting.

Despite the fact that homeownership has been promoted as a universal economic good since the Depression, the trend toward rentals might be a good one. Renters are more able to follow the job market. Renting, as the housing bubble revealed, benefits the overall recovery, because fewer people have their money tied up in one asset.

Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile

In 2012, the average life of a car in the United States reached a historic high of 11.2 years. This was tied to the collapse of new-car sales during the recession, but it was also driven by several long-term shifts. After steady increases for decades, Americans are driving less. Total miles driven in the United States hit 3 trillion for the first time in 2006. It went up even further in 2007 but has generally fallen since.

For the first time in nine decades, according to census data, walkable cities are growing faster than suburbs. And wherever people happen to move, they are buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Large- and some luxury-car segments are falling, says Tom Libby, an automotive research analyst at Polk, and the cheaper subcompact and emerging sub-subcompact classes are growing. All this means that autos — one of the biggest industries in the United States — will not soon regain the explosive growth of the early 2000s.

Debt and Taxes

In 2008, Americans owed a collective $12.7 trillion. Today, thanks in part to mortgage defaults, we are down to $11.3 trillion, which is about 95 percent of our disposable income. That’s progress, but it’s still higher than the 88 percent we owed 10 years ago.

Additional reporting by Jacob Goldstein

Adam Davidson is co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money,” a podcast and blog.

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Stampede at New Year’s Celebration Kills Dozens in Ivory Coast

Herve Sevi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

People injured in a stampede in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, were treated at the Cocody hospital on Tuesday.

At least 60 people were killed in Ivory Coast’s economic capital, Abidjan, as a New Year’s fireworks celebration turned into a deadly stampede early on Tuesday.

The crowd of thousands was leaving the sprawling stadium in the downtown Plateau neighborhood after the last fireworks had signaled the new year when panic struck. In the crush, dozens were trampled underfoot, officials in Abidjan said Tuesday.

Many were pushed into a small gully adjoining the Houphouët-Boigny stadium on the Boulevard de la République, in the heart of the city’s compact central business district, then crushed as the panicked crowd surged over them.

Children appeared to be among the injured and dead: the state television station, RTI, showed images of wounded children in one of the city’s hospitals, as well as pregnant women stretched on cots.

Ivorian officials Tuesday said that they were baffled as to what set off the stampede but that an investigation had been launched.

“The precise circumstances of this tragic occurrence are being looked into by the security services,” Ivory Coast’s interior minister, Hamed Bakayoko, said on RTI Tuesday. RTI showed rescue workers carrying bodies through the streets and ambulances lined up in the darkness.

Mr. Bakayoko told RTI that “the New Year’s Eve celebrations brought many onto the streets of Plateau. There were 50,000 people on the streets. They were going home, and there was a stampede.”

At the scene, witnesses said there were piles of abandoned shoes.

The head of the rescue services, Lt. Col. Issa Sakho, told an RTI reporter that the “flow of people created a great crush, and in the stampede there were people who were trampled, people who were suffocated.” More than 200 were wounded, officials said.

Careless police action could have incited the stampede, witnesses said. At the hospital in the city’s adjoining Cocody neighborhood, one of the wounded — a young man who declined to give his name — said that the police had tried to disperse the crowd as it was leaving the stadium. That action provoked a mass panic, the young man said, and the crowd surged forward.

The Ivorian police and security services, with a long record of brutality, are feared by the people of Abidjan, a sprawling city of some four million people. Arbitrary arrests, unpunished beatings, and impromptu traffic stops, often to extort money, are not uncommon in the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

The police and security forces were the principal instruments in a campaign of repression that lasted months in 2010-2011 by the deposed former president, Laurent Gbagbo, who was ousted by rebel fighters and French forces after he failed to give up office after his electoral defeat. Some 3,000 people were killed in the civil war precipitated by Mr. Gbagbo’s refusal.

The fireworks celebration, sponsored by the government of the country’s president, Alassane Ouattara, was the second since Mr. Gbagbo’s ouster. It was intended as another sign that Ivory Coast, with its surging economic growth rate and renewed foreign investment, has emerged from years of political crisis, repression and civil war.

Social, ethnic and political tensions remain acute, however, with some observers warning that Mr. Ouattara has done too little to resolve problems left over from the Gbagbo years.

Loucoumane Coulibaly contributed reporting.

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Four Android productivity apps you should use in 2013

Happy New Year! Like most folks, I am working on some resolutions for 2013. One resolution I have is to be more productive. One way I am going to do this is by using my Android phone better. Now there are apps that I have, but really have not used to their fullest. As I work on this resolution, I might discover even better apps. For now I will focus on these impressive apps that can make anyone more productive.

I use Hootsuite on the computer, but rarely find myself engaging with it on my smartphone. With Hootsuite, you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts. The free version allows for up to five accounts and one member of your team to access the account. There is a pro version with a monthly fee, in which you can have more accounts and team members and helpful analytics tools.

The design of the app is very good. If you sync the web version to mobile, you will have everything automatically downloaded to the phone. When viewing content, you swipe left or right to change columns or streams. If you are in the middle of a stream, simply tap the top menu bar to automatically return to the top. The app allows for multiple profiles and scheduled tweets. My goal is to keep up with my feeds and tweets in real-time rather than waiting until I get to a computer.

Another web service that I started to use, but find myself not using it to the fullest. Producteev is a web-based task management service. With Producteev you can work as an individual or in a team by setting up workspaces and then organize tasks by labels. For each task you can assign a priority, due date, and share with team members, if you have any. Overall, this is a great service, since I like making lists, even though I rarely remember having made them.

The Producteev app is available for all platforms. The app has a very clean interface and is easy to find tasks. Probably the best way to keep up with tasks is to use the different widget for the home screen. Seeing the widgets will help keep those key tasks in the forefront of your mind. The app will work offline and syncs in the background.

I read blogs every single day, especially those related to new apps, Android, or mobile news. The only way I can do that is via my Google Reader. I find myself trying to catch up each day on the computer (just like with Twitter activity) when I would be better off reading a little bit over time during the day. NewsRob is a Google Reader that I have had for years. The interface is very clean and easy to use. The developer created a bunch of customizations options, which really make this reader stand out.

With NewsRob you can set up a notification of new articles, how you synchronize with Google and when, how many articles to keep in your cache, and more. If you set up folders within Google Reader, NewsRob will download the folders, too. This enables you to read the posts by blog or folder. The app provides a very clean blogpost display optimized for smaller screens. With each post you can zoom in or out, mark a post read or unread, view in the browser, and share the link to email or services such as Evernote. There is a free version of the app.

The last task I need to work on to be more productive is to keep up with the calendar. I find myself checking on the computer, after the fact, finding out that I am either late or forgot about a meeting or appointment. Using Google calendar is a good place to start, but I have not found the standard calendar app on my Droid was all that helpful.

Business Calendar is a very capable calendar app that has a ton of features. The app lets you view your calendar in a number of different views, and has search and favorite-calendar features, to name a few. The option of viewing different calendars, color coding and being able to easily add, delete, and edit events is helpful. The ability to use widgets for reminders is important. The pro version has over 10 different sizes and allows for the import or export of calendar files in the iCalendar format. Business Calendar also has a free version.

So my top goal or resolution for 2013 is to be more productive. I think using these apps more will help me accomplish that goal. Are there any apps you have but not using to their fullest? What resolutions do you have for 2013?

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NHL, union dig in for a long day of talks

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL and the union are back at the bargaining table and seem determined to work toward a deal to save the hockey season.

A full day of talks was planned for Tuesday, one day after negotiations resumed following nearly three weeks apart. On Monday, the players' association presented a counterproposal to an offer made by the league late last week. The NHL spent Monday night reviewing the document, then got together again with the union Tuesday.

Small groups from each side were to meet or confer by conference call during the afternoon about provisions of a potential collective bargaining agreement. A full meeting of negotiating teams wasn't expected at the league office before 5 p.m. EST.

What is clear is that time has become a real factor.

"We've said we need to drop the puck by Jan. 19 if we're going to play a 48-game season," Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "We don't think it makes sense to play a season any shorter than that."

That leaves a little less than two weeks to reach an agreement and hold one week of training camp before starting the season. All games through Jan. 14 have been canceled, claiming more than 50 percent of the original schedule.

The NHL is the only North American professional sports league to cancel a season because of a labor dispute, losing the 2004-05 campaign to a lockout. A 48-game season was played in 1995 after a lockout stretched into January.

The NHL was supposed to be celebrating its annual outdoor Winter Classic between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday — the 108th day of the lockout — at Michigan Stadium. But that game was canceled long ago along with the All-Star game.

Monday's talks marked the first time the NHL and union met in person since Dec. 13. Bettman says a deal must be reached by Jan. 11 so the season can begin eight days later.

When the sides met Monday, the union brought a condensed counterproposal in response to the NHL's 288-page contract offer. There were some discussions between the negotiators and some time spent apart in internal meetings.

Neither side would elaborate on what was offered in either proposal or characterize any of Monday's discussions that union executive director Donald Fehr said "weren't terribly long."

"There was an opportunity for the players to highlight the areas they thought we should focus on based on their response, and that's something we've got to look at very closely in addition to the myriad of other issues," Bettman said. "The process continues and we're anticipating getting back together."

That neither offer was quickly dismissed could be taken as a positive sign that perhaps the gap has narrowed.

"I'm out of the prediction business," Fehr said. "You get up every day and you try to figure out how to make an agreement that day, and if it fails you try and do it the next day. That's exactly where we are."

Bettman also reserved judgment when asked if progress was made.

"I think it would be premature for me to characterize it and not particularly helpful to the process," he said.

It is still possible this dispute eventually could be settled in the courts if the sides can't reach a deal on their own.

The NHL filed a class-action suit this month in U.S. District Court in New York in an effort to show its lockout is legal. In a separate move, the league filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, contending bad-faith bargaining by the union.

Those moves were made because the players' association took steps toward potentially declaring a "disclaimer of interest," which would dissolve the union and make it a trade association. That would allow players to file antitrust lawsuits against the NHL.

Union members voted overwhelmingly to give their board the power to file the disclaimer by Wednesday. If that deadline passes, another authorization vote could be held to approve a later filing.

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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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House Takes On Fiscal Cliff

Molly Riley/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Representative Eric Cantor arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans reacted with anger Tuesday afternoon to a Senate-passed plan to head off automatic tax increases and spending cuts, putting the fate of the legislation in doubt just hours after it appeared Congress was nearing a resolution of the fiscal crisis.

Lawmakers said that Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 Republican, indicated to his colleagues in a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol that he could not support the legislation in its current form. Many other Republicans were voicing stiff objections to a plan that they saw as raising taxes while doing little to rein in spending. Several conservatives assailed it on the House floor as the chamber convened at noon for an unusual New Year’s Day session.

The aides said that Speaker John A. Boehner, who had pledged to put any measure the Senate passed on the House floor for a vote, was mainly listening to the complaints of his rank and file and had not taken a firm position on the legislation, though he had clear reservations.

The situation loomed as a significant test for Mr. Boehner, who had been unable to pass his own proposal to increase taxes only on $1 million in income and above. He has said repeatedly that he would allow a vote on the Senate bill, but he has also said he did not want to pass a bill with predominantly Democratic votes. Public opposition from Mr. Cantor, who has up to this point sided with Mr. Boehner in the fiscal fight, would also complicate his position.

After taking the pulse of its membership, the Republican leadership was expected to try to determine how to proceed on the legislation with the 112th Congress about to come to a close Thursday.

Democrats emerged from their own closed-door meeting with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. generally sanguine about the deal, if not ecstatic. Few Democrats, if any, suggested a Democratic rebellion was in the works after a forceful — and lengthy — presentation by Mr. Biden, which walked them step by step through the negotiations, the legislation and the path forward on future deficit confrontations.

“It is clear that the vice president and the president are convinced that they have done the right thing. They don’t see it as a perfect deal though, and nobody else does,” said Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland.

It appeared that members were favoring trying to amend the measure and send it back to the Senate.

“I would be shocked if this bill doesn’t go back to the Senate,” said Representative Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama.

With just two days to go before a new Congress convenes, the House has essentially three choices: reject the bill, pass it as written by the Senate after what is certain to be a robust, even rancorous debate, or amend the bill and quickly return it across the rotunda to the Senate. Should the House choose to amend the measure, it would almost certainly imperil its chances of becoming law before the new Congress convenes. The Senate compromise, which enjoyed wide bipartisan support, was so hard fought and senators do not anticipate taking another vote on it.

Any failure to pass the measure before the 112th Congress ends as of noon Thursday would require the process to start over in the new 113th Congress, meaning the Senate would have to vote again with a changed membership due the departure of several veteran lawmakers and the arrival of newcomers from both parties as a result of victories in the November elections.

But the strong, bipartisan 89-to-8 vote in the Senate about 2 a.m. on Tuesday will put strong pressure on the House to approve the legislation since a defeat would essentially leave the House responsible for a steep series of tax increases and spending cuts that some economists warn could send the nation back into a recession.

Yet it was clear Tuesday morning that many House Republicans were disenchanted with the plan, which, while containing many concessions that angered Democrats, still favors the latter party’s priorities and imposes a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans.

“I am halfway through reading it and haven’t found the cuts yet,” said Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who generally votes against budget bills. “It’s part medicinal, part panacea, and part treating the symptoms but not the underlying pathology.”

Democrats have their own issues with the measure because of what they see as too many concessions on taxes, making it apparent some combination of Democrats and Republicans will have to come together behind the measure if it is to clear the House and be sent to President Obama for his signature.

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Cold-Weather Aid Trickles Into Afghan Camps

But camp leaders and Afghan government officials criticized the aid delivery as inadequate to protect residents from the weather and to prevent more deaths.

Last winter, more than 100 children died of the cold in refugee camps around Kabul, with 26 dying in the Charahi Qambar camp alone. That is the same camp where the 3-year-old died Friday; it was the first confirmed death because of the cold this winter.

The distribution of supplies at the camp, which is home to about 900 families in western Kabul, had been scheduled before news reports about the child’s death, said Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the United Nations refugees agency in Kabul.

On less than an hour’s notice, the agency convened a news conference with Afghan government officials at the camp to announce the distribution.

Each family was given warm children’s clothing, blankets, tarps, cooking utensils and soap. Separately, other aid groups, financed by the United Nations and other donors, will be distributing charcoal once every month through February, officials said.

United Nations officials acknowledged, however, that the fuel distributions in themselves were not enough to heat the mud and tarp huts throughout the season, and there were no plans to distribute food to the families. In most cases the men, who are largely war-displaced refugees, are unable to find day work as laborers in the cold weather, so they are usually unable to buy food.

“We are happy to receive this,” said Tawoos Khan, one of the camp representatives. “But we want food, and we need more fuel; we have all run out of firewood and charcoal.” He and other camp officials said large sacks of charcoal were distributed to every family more than two weeks ago, but supplies had run out.

“It’s supplementary,” said Douglas DiSalvo, a protection officer with the United Nations agency who was at the Charahi Qambar camp. “People have some level of support they can achieve for themselves.”

Mr. Farhad said, “The assistance we are providing, at least it is mitigating the harsh winter these families are experiencing right now.”

The estimated 35,000 people in 50 camps in and around Kabul are not classified as refugees from an international legal point of view, but as “internally displaced persons.” Since the United Nations agency’s mandate is to primarily help refugees — defined as those who flee across international borders — it has not provided support to the Kabul camps in the past. That changed late last winter when the Afghan government asked it to do so in response to the conditions that were taking so many lives.

This year, the agency is spearheading the effort to supply the camps, along with the Afghan government’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, other United Nations agencies, and several aid groups, in order to prevent a recurrence of the crisis last winter.

Ministry officials, however, criticized the effort on Sunday — even though they were among the sponsors. “We have never claimed that we provided the internally displaced Afghans with sufficient food items, clothing or means of heat. We admit this. What the internally displaced people have received so far is not adequate at all,” said Islamuddin Jurat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.

“Before the arrival of harsh winter,” he added, “we asked the international community and donor countries to help the internally displaced people, and luckily today U.N.H.C.R. provided them with some humanitarian assistance. But again we believe it’s not sufficient at all.”

Both aid officials and the Afghan government have said they are wary about providing too much aid for fear that it would encourage more people to leave their homes. That fear has also been why the Afghan government has refused to allow permanent buildings to be erected in the camps, many of which are five or more years old.

“The illegal nature of these squatter settlements poses an obstacle to more lasting interventions and improvements,” said Mr. Farhad of the United Nations refugees agency. “Coordination this year has been very strong, and we expect that the multiagency effort will help us to detect and respond to particular problem areas as the winter progresses.”

Little is provided in the way of food aid. The only food aid in the Charahi Qambar camp is a hot lunch program for 750 students at a tented school run by Aschiana, an Afghan aid group.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is providing the cold-weather packages to 40,000 families, 5,000 of them in the Kabul camps, at a cost of $6 million. Other Kabul camps will receive distributions in the next two days, Mr. Farhad said.

The packages, which cost about $150 each, include two tarps, three blankets, six bars of soap, a cooking utensils set, and 26 items of clothing ranging from jackets and sweaters to socks and hats, mostly for children.

Taj Mohammad, the father of the child who died, Janan, said Sunday that he believed that his son might have survived if the cold-weather kit had arrived earlier. But like many of the refugees, he was critical of its contents, which he said were hard to sell in exchange for food.

“I didn’t know a package costs $150,” he said. “It’s a lot of money. It would have been much better if they had given us the money, and we would have spent it on what we need the most.”

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iPad App Video Review: Anomaly Korea

The tower offense pioneers over at 11 Bit Studios finally released the sequel to their smash hit, Anomaly Warzone Earth. They branched out a bit, releasing the amusing Funky Smugglers and the dreamlike puzzler, Sleepwalker’s Journey, but now they’re back, and as this game will remind you a few times, Baghdad was just the beginning. The battle against a mysterious alien tower menace continues with new visuals, units, modes, and an awesome but sometimes hilarious Korean undertone.

The core game here is still the same, with you planning convoy routes through enemy infested streets, able to change your route on the fly. You technically continue to play as the invisible but ever-present commando unit, with your various power-ups, such as smoke screen, repair field, and others, activating and placing them with a simple tap or two. New units like the Horangi tank join your ranks, with unique unit abilities, like the aforementioned tank’s area of effect blast. As you make your way through the world, you’ll collect resources and upgrade units as well.

It’s not just new unit and enemy types mixing things up. For example, there are now artillery zones that will automatically be targeted and be fired upon as you pass through them, but only after a short countdown. Subtle additions like this are quite elegant, adding more dimensions of strategy without changing anything from previous games. Another great new addition is the Art of War trials. As you play and do well, you’ll unlock these brief but brutal challenges, and they are very satisfying to complete.

The visuals have received an upgrade, as has the voice acting. Still, there’s something kind of funny about all the Korean accented English speaking, along with the still excellent Asian-styled soundtrack. It’s not bad at all, but can feel out of place at first. All in all, Anomaly Korea offers more of the same, but improved, building upon the last game in all the right ways. You don’t even need to have played the first game to enjoy this one, so go ahead and download it for the current price of three dollars. I can’t wait to see where in the world this anomaly pops up next.

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Reid among 6 NFL coaches sacked in firing frenzy

SAN DIEGO (AP) — By lunchtime Monday, six NFL coaches were looking for work.

With the regular season ending the day before, the firings came at a furious clip and within a two-hour span the following were sacked: Andy Reid in Philadelphia, Lovie Smith in Chicago, Norv Turner in San Diego, Pat Shurmur in Cleveland, Romeo Crennel in Kansas City and Chan Gailey in Buffalo,

Though he also had a losing record, New York Jets coach Rex Ryan held onto his job while general manager Mike Tannenbaum was let go. Jacksonville fired its GM, Gene Smith, and coach Mike Mularkey could go soon, too.

The Chargers and Browns made it a clean sweep. San Diego dismissed GM A.J. Smith along with Turner. Cleveland fired GM Tom Heckert along with Shurmur.

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, leading them to the Super Bowl in 2006 — a loss to the Indianapolis Colts.

Turner went 56-40 with the Chargers, the third team to fire him as head coach. San Diego won the AFC West from 2006-09 — he was 3-3 in the playoffs — but didn't make the postseason the last three years.

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 team in 1999, drafted Donovan McNabb with the No. 2 overall pick and quickly turned the franchise into a title contender.

He led them to a run of four straight NFC championship games, a streak that ended with a trip to the NFL title game. 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.

"Andy Reid won the most games of any head coach in Eagles history and he is someone I respect greatly and will remain friends with for many years to come," Lurie said. "But, it is time for the Eagles to move in a new direction. Andy leaves us with a winning tradition that we can build upon."

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 this year and has struggled to put together a productive offense throughout Smith's tenure. His record was 81-63 with the Bears.

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

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Personal Health: Food Myths

Let’s start the new year on scientifically sound footing by addressing some nutritional falsehoods that circulate widely in cyberspace, locker rooms, supermarkets and health food stores. As a result, millions of people are squandering hard-earned dollars on questionable, even hazardous foods and supplements.

For starters, when did “chemical” become a dirty word? That’s a question raised by one of Canada’s brightest scientific minds: Joe Schwarcz, director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Montreal. Dr. Schwarcz, who has received high honors from Canadian and American scientific societies, is the author of several best-selling books that attempt to set the record straight on a host of issues that commonly concern health-conscious people.

I’ve read two of his books, “Science, Sense and Nonsense” (published in 2009) and “The Right Chemistry” (2012), and recently attended a symposium on the science of food that Dr. Schwarcz organized at McGill.

What follows are tips from his books and the symposium that can help you make wiser choices about what does, and does not, pass your lips in 2013.

CURED MEATS Many health-conscious people avoid cured meats like hot dogs and bacon because the nitrites with which they are preserved can react with naturally occurring amines to form nitrosamines. Nitrosamines have produced mutations in cells cultured in the laboratory and cancer in animals treated with very high doses.

As an alternative, sandwich lovers often buy organic versions of processed meats or products without added nitrites. Without preservatives, these foods may not be protected from bacterial contamination. And despite their labels, they may contain nitrites. According to Dr. Schwarcz, organic processed meats labeled “uncured” may be preserved with highly concentrated, nitrate-rich celery juice treated with a bacterial culture that produces nitrites.

If you’re really concerned about your health, you’d be wise to steer clear of processed meats — organic, nitrite-free or otherwise. High saturated fat and salt content place them low on the nutritional totem pole.

MEAT GLUE Never heard of it? You may have eaten it, especially if you dine out often. At WD-50 in New York, the chef, Wylie Dufresne, makes his famous shrimp noodles with the enzyme transglutaminase, a k a meat glue. It binds protein molecules, gluing together small pieces of fish, meat or poultry.

The Japanese use meat glue to create artificial crab meat from pollock. Others use it to combine lamb and scallops, or to make sausages that hold together without casings.

Sound frightening? It shouldn’t. The enzyme is classified by the Food and Drug Administration as “generally recognized as safe,” and there is no reason to think otherwise. Our bodies produce it to help blood clot, Dr. Schwarcz points out. When consumed, it breaks down like any protein into its component amino acids in our digestive tracts.

There is, however, one possible indirect hazard: If glued-together animal protein is not thoroughly cooked, dangerous bacteria that originally contaminated the meat could remain viable within the fused product.

TRANS FATS The removal of heart-damaging trans fats from processed foods is a much-ballyhooed boon to health. But “not all trans fats are fiends,” Dr. Schwarcz notes. Certain ones can legally, and healthfully, be added to dairy products, meal-replacement bars, soy milk and fruit juice.

The word “trans” refers to the arrangement of hydrogen and carbon atoms in a fatty acid. The trans formation linked to heart disease is formed when vegetable oils are hardened to prolong shelf life in a manufacturing process called hydrogenation. Natural trans fats, like those in meat and dairy products, take a slightly different form, resulting in an entirely different effect on health.

The most widely consumed “good” trans fat is conjugated linoleic acid, which research has shown can help weight-conscious people lose fat and gain muscle. Various studies have suggested that C.L.A., now widely sold as a supplement, also can enhance immune function and reduce atherosclerosis, high blood pressure and inflammation.

ORGANIC OR NOT? Wherever I shop for food these days, I find an ever-widening array of food products labeled “organic” and “natural.” But are consumers getting the health benefits they pay a premium for?

Until the 20th century, Dr. Schwarcz wrote, all farming was “organic,” with manure and compost used as fertilizer and “natural” compounds of arsenic, mercury and lead used as pesticides.

Might manure used today on organic farms contain disease-causing micro-organisms? Might organic produce unprotected by insecticides harbor cancer-causing molds? It’s a possibility, Dr. Schwarcz said. But consumers aren’t looking beyond the organic sales pitch.

Also questionable is whether organic foods, which are certainly kinder to the environment, are more nutritious. Though some may contain slightly higher levels of essential micronutrients, like vitamin C, the difference between them and conventionally grown crops may depend more on where they are produced than how.

A further concern: Organic producers disavow genetic modification, which can be used to improve a crop’s nutritional content, enhance resistance to pests and diminish its need for water. A genetically modified tomato developed at the University of Exeter, for example, contains nearly 80 times the antioxidants of conventional tomatoes. Healthier, yes — but it can’t be called organic.

FARMED SALMON Most of the salmon consumed nowadays is farmed. Even if we all could afford the wild variety, there’s simply not enough of it to satisfy the current demand for this heart-healthy fish.

There may be legitimate concerns about possible pollutants in farmed salmon, but one concern that is a nonissue involves that “salmon” color, produced by adding astaxanthin to fish feed. This commercially made pigment is an antioxidant found naturally in algae, and it is carried up the food chain to give wild salmon its color, too.

NUTS Growing up, I was often warned to avoid nuts because they’re “fattening.” Now I know better. Research has shown that people who regularly eat nuts and nut butters in normal amounts weigh less, on average, than nut avoiders.

The fat in nuts is unsaturated and heart-healthy. Nuts are also good sources of protein, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and fiber, and can help keep between-meal hunger at bay. The same is true of avocados — just don’t go overboard.

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