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US rabbi says jailed American in good health

Label: World

HAVANA (AP) — A prominent New York rabbi and physician visited an American subcontractor serving a long jail term in Cuba and said the man is in good health, despite his family’s concerns about a growth on his right shoulder.

Rabbi Elie Abadie, who is also a gastroenterologist, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview following Tuesday’s 2 1/2-hour visit at a military hospital in Havana that he personally examined Alan Gross and received a lengthy briefing from a team of Cuban physicians who have attended him.

He said the 1 1/2-inch growth on Gross’s shoulder appeared to be a non-cancerous hematoma that should clear up by itself.

“Alan Gross does not have any cancerous growth at this time, at least based on the studies I was shown and based on the examination, and I think he understands that also,” Abadie said.

Abadie said the hematoma, basically internal bleeding linked to the rupture of muscle fiber, was likely caused by exercise Gross does in jail. He said the growth ought to eventually disappear on its own.

Gross’s plight has put already chilly relations between Cuba and the United States in a deep freeze. The Maryland native was arrested in December 2009 while on a USAID-funded democracy building program and later sentenced to 15 years in jail for crimes against the state.

He claims he was only trying to help the island’s small Jewish community gain Internet access.

Gross’s health has been an ongoing issue during his incarceration. The 63-year-old, who was obese when arrested, has lost more than 100 pounds while in jail.

Abadie, a rabbi at New York’s Edmund J. Safra Synagogue, said Gross’s weight is appropriate for a man his age and height.

Photos that Abadie and a colleague provided to AP of Tuesday’s meeting with Gross showed him looking thin, but generally appearing to be in good spirits.

In one photo, Gross holds up a handwritten note that says “Hi Mom.”

“He definitely feels strong. He is in good spirits. He feels fit, to quote him, physically. But of course, like any other person who is incarcerated or in prison, he wants to be free. He wants to be able to go back home,” Abadie said.

Gross’s family has repeatedly appealed for his release on humanitarian grounds, noting his health problems and the fact that his adult daughter and elderly mother have both been battling cancer.

Jared Genser, counsel to Alan Gross, said late Tuesday that Rabbi Abadie is not Gross’s physician and he would like an oncologist of his choosing to evaluate him.

“While we are grateful Rabbi Abadie was able to see Alan, we have asked an oncologist to review the test results to determine if they are sufficient to rule out cancer. More importantly, if Alan is so healthy, we cannot understand why the Cuban government has repeatedly denied him an independent medical examination by a doctor of his choosing as is required by international law,” said Genser.

Gross and his wife recently filed a $ 60 million lawsuit against his former Maryland employer and the U.S. government, saying they didn’t adequately train him or disclose risks he was undertaking by doing development work on the Communist-run island.

They filed another lawsuit against an insurance company they say has reneged on commitments to pay compensation in case of his wrongful detention.

Separately, a lawyer for Gross has written the United Nations’ anti-torture expert, saying Cuban officials’ treatment of his client “will surely amount to torture” if he continues to be denied medical care.

Rumors have been swirling in U.S. media that Cuba might soon release Gross as a gesture of good will or in the hopes of winning concessions from the administration of President Barack Obama, but Abadie said that those reports appeared to be false.

“As far as I know there is no truth to it,” he said.

Abadie said he met with senior Cuban officials who expressed their desire to resolve the case “as quickly as possible,” but would not say specifically who he spoke with or what they offered.

“They claim that they are more than willing to sit at the table,” he said.

Cuban officials have strongly implied they hope to trade Gross for five Cuban agents sentenced to long jail terms in the United States, one of whom is already free on bail.

Abadie said Gross made clear that he does not want his case linked to that of the agents, known in Cuba as “The Five Heroes,” because he does not believe he is guilty of espionage.

But Abadie said Gross is hoping for a “constructive and productive” dialogue between U.S. and Cuban officials to resolve his case.

___

Follow Paul Haven on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/paulhaven.

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Rihanna’s “Unapologetic” tops Billboard album chart

Label: Lifestyle

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – R&B singer Rihanna shot straight to the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on Tuesday with her seventh record “Unapologetic,” scoring her first No. 1 album despite mixed reviews.

“Unapologetic,” which topped iTunes charts in 43 countries just hours after its release on November19, sold 238,000 copies according to Billboard, scoring the 24-year-old singer from Barbados her best opening sales week to date.

The album’s lead single “Diamonds” landed at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart last week, giving Rihanna her 12th No. 1 single and tying her with Madonna and The Supremes for the fourth-most chart-topping singles in Billboard history.

“Unapologetic” left some critics unsettled by the singer’s harder sound and close-to-home lyrics. One track in particular that had everyone talking is “Nobody’s Business,” Rihanna’s collaboration with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, who was charged with assaulting her three years ago.

The album has been promoted extensively by Rihanna, who embarked on a seven day tour across seven cities around the world, accompanied by a plane full of fans and journalists.

The full Billboard charts will be released on Wednesday.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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In Israel, some rebel against circumcision

Label: Health

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Circumcision is one of Judaism’s most important laws and for generations of faithful it has symbolized a Biblical covenant with God.

But in Israel, more and more Jewish parents are saying no to the blade.

“It’s such a taboo in Israel and in Judaism,” said Gali, nursing her six-week-old son, about the decision not to have him circumcised.

“It’s like coming out of the closet,” she said, asking to be identified by her first name only because she had not told her relatives yet.

Nearly all baby boys in Israel are circumcised. Be their parents ultra-Orthodox or totally secular Jews, it is by far the most common choice. Most Israeli-Arabs also keep with a practice that is widespread in the Muslim world.

Jewish circumcisions are done when the baby is eight days old. The majority are performed by a mohel, a religious man trained in the procedure carried out in a festive religious ceremony called a “brit”, Hebrew for covenant.

But an increasing minority fear it is a form of physical abuse.

“It’s the same as if someone would tell me ‘it’s our culture to cut off a finger when he is born’,” said Rakefet Kaufman, who also did not have her son circumcised.

“People should see it as abuse because it is done to a baby without asking him,” she said.

When Gali learnt she was carrying a baby boy it was obvious to her that he would be circumcised. But she started to think again after a conversation with a friend whose son was uncircumcised.

“She asked me what my reason was for doing it, was it religious? I said no. Was it for health reasons? No. Social? No. Then it began to sink in. I began to read more about it, enter Internet forums, I began to realize that I cannot do it.”

PHENOMENON GROWING

“The phenomenon is growing, I have no doubt,” said Ronit Tamir, who founded a support group for families who have chosen not to circumcise their sons.

“When we started the group 12 years ago we had to work hard to find 40 families … They were keeping it secret and we had to promise them we’d keep it secret,” she said. “Then, we’d get one or two phone calls a month. Nowadays I get dozens of emails and phone calls a month, hundreds a year.”

Tamir believes Jews in today’s Israel find it easier to break religious taboos.

“People are asking themselves what it means to be Jewish these days,” she said, and that leads some to question rules of all kinds, including circumcision.

In societies around the world who circumcise boys for non-religious reasons, out of habit or tradition or because of the perceived health benefits, the practice can be controversial.

Rates of circumcision in Europe are well under 20 percent, while in the United States, according to 2010 statistics cited by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), more than half of newborn boys continue to be circumcised.

The American Academy of Paediatrics said in August that the health benefits of infant circumcision – potentially avoiding infection, cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases – outweighed the risks, but said parents should make the final call.

But where the decision is ultimately a matter of personal choice for many families around the world, for Jews who question the tradition, it is more complicated.

“It is the covenant between us and God – a sign that one cannot deny and that Jews have kept even in times of persecution,” said one well-known mohel who has been performing circumcisions in Israel for more than 30 years. He asked not to be named to avoid being connected to any controversy.

He pointed to the Book of Genesis, where God said to Abraham: “And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins; and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.”

It is this covenant that, the mohel said, that “keeps the people of Israel together”.

The Bible goes on: “And the uncircumcised male child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

Scholars have differed over the years what this means in practice.

BEING DIFFERENT

Tamir is unswayed by the ancient verses.

“This edict is painful, irreversible and maims,” she said. The Internet was helping to spread the word, she said, allowing parents to find information about circumcision and seek advice anonymously.

Some Jewish groups in the United States which oppose circumcision offer alternative religious brit ceremonies that do not include an actual circumcision.

“There is definitely a growing number of Jewish families in the U.S. who are choosing not to circumcise,” said Florida-based Rebecca Wald. In 2010 she started a website to connect parents who are unsure about what to do.

“Since then, in phone calls, emails, and on social networking sites I have connected with hundreds of Jewish people in the U.S. who question circumcision.” she said in an email interview. “Many of them have intact (uncircumcised) sons or plan to leave future sons intact.”

Wald’s son was not circumcised.

“I have a very strong sense of Jewish identity and, believe it or not, having an intact son has only deepened it,” she said.

In Israel, where the vast majority are circumcised, the dilemma may be particularly difficult.

Although she is confident of the choice she and her husband made, Gali still has one concern.

“The main issue which still troubles me a little is the social one, that one day he may come to me and say ‘Mom, why did you do that to me? They made fun of me today’,” Gali said.

The Health Ministry does not keep records on circumcisions but estimates about 60,000 to 70,000 are held in Israel every year, which roughly corresponds to the number of boys born in 2010, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The ministry said it treats about 70 cases a year of circumcisions gone wrong, mainly minor complications such as excessive bleeding.

Kaufman said “people were shocked” to learn that her son is not circumcised.

“In Israel everybody does it, like a herd,” she said. “They don’t stop and ask themselves about this specific procedure which has to do with damaging a baby.”

Watching her son rummage through a stack of toys, Kaufman said: “The way he was born is the way his body should be.”

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Sonya Hepinstall)

Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Obama meets with CEOs, middle-income earners on ‘fiscal cliff’

Label: Business

President Barack Obama sits in front of a screen displaying a question he tweeted during a "Twitter Town Hall" …Looking for leverage in "fiscal cliff" talks with Republicans, President Barack Obama on Wednesday was to host middle-class Americans whose taxes risk going up Jan. 1 and then retreat behind closed doors for talks with top corporate executives. The White House also worked to enlist support on Twitter, highlighting a hashtag, #My2K, for tweets about the standoff.

Obama planned to deliver a speech at 11:35 a.m. to press Congress to extend Bush-era tax cuts only for individuals with income up to $200,000 and families up to $250,000. He'll be surrounded by Americans who stand to be affected if those tax cuts are allowed to expire on Jan. 1.

Obama wants to end the tax cuts for higher earners while preserving them for for the middle class. The White House says that "a typical middle-class family of four" would pay Uncle Sam an additional $2,200 unless tax cuts are extended for them.

Obama campaigned for re-election arguing that tax cuts that chiefly benefit the richest Americans must expire in order to save popular government programs that face the ax. Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for higher earners, insisting that a tax hike on that group will reduce investments that generate jobs at a time when the economy is still sputtering and unemployment remains high. The GOP has signaled it would be willing to consider boosting tax revenue as long as Democrats agree to overhaul popular entitlement programs like Medicare or Medicaid.

That $2,200 figure is the inspiration for #My2K, part of what the White House describes as an "online push" behind the president's approach. Obama has highlighted Twitter hashtags in past disputes with Republicans: #40dollars in the fight over the payroll tax holiday and #dontdoublemyrate in a feud over student loans.

The president, who spoke to top Republican and Democratic leaders over the weekend, was to make brief public remarks at the top of a meeting with his Cabinet at 3 p.m. before huddling with senior executives from major American corporations.

Here is the list of attendees, as provided by the White House:

Frank Blake, Chairman and CEO, the Home Depot

Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs Group

Joe Echeverria, CEO, Deloitte LLP

Ken Frazier, President and CEO, Merck and Co.

Muhtar Kent, Chairman and CEO, Coca Cola

Terry Lundgren, Chairman, President and CEO, Macy's Inc.

Marissa Mayer, CEO and President, Yahoo!

Douglas Oberhelman, Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar

Ian Read, Chairman and CEO, Pfizer

Brian Roberts, Chairman and CEO, Comcast

Ed Rust, Chairman and CEO, State Farm Insurance Co.

Arne Sorenson, President and CEO, Marriott

Randall Stephenson, Chairman and CEO, AT&T

Patricia Woertz, President and CEO, Archer Daniels Midland

The fiscal cliff refers to an economically painful set of tax hikes and deep spending cuts that come into effect Jan. 1 unless Congress and the president reach a deal.

Van Gogh, John Lennon letters coming to NY auction

Label: Lifestyle

NEW YORK (AP) — An upcoming auction of over 300 historical documents includes rare letters written by Vincent van Gogh, George Washington, John Lennon and other iconic figures.

The property of an anonymous American collector is being offered by Profiles in History in an online and phone auction on Dec. 18.

Among the highlights is a two-page letter from Washington to an Anglican clergyman.

Another top item is a signed van Gogh letter, written in 1890, to Joseph and Marie Ginoux, who were proprietors of the Cafe de la Gare in Arles, France, where the Dutch post-impressionist artist lived for a time.

Each of those letters is estimated to bring $ 200,000 to $ 300,000.

A handwritten letter from John Lennon to Eric Clapton has a pre-sale estimate of $ 20,000 to $ 30,000.

The collection will be exhibited Dec. 3-9 at Douglas Elliman’s Madison Avenue art gallery.

Washington‘s letter was written on Aug. 15, 1798, to the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, amid an undeclared naval war with France. Washington thanks Boucher for sending him his “View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution,” a book of 13 discourses Boucher preached.

“Peace, with all the world is my sincere wish, I am sure it is our true policy — and am persuaded it is the ardent desire of the Government,” the former president and Founding Father wrote.

In a Jan. 20, 1890, four-page letter, handwritten in French to his friends Monsieur and Madame Ginoux, van Gogh wishes the ailing proprietress a speedy recovery.

“Illnesses are there to make us remember again that we are not made of wood,” the artist wrote. “That’s what seems the good side of all this to me. Then afterwards one goes back to one’s everyday work less fearful of the annoyances, with a new store of serenity.” Van Gogh died less than seven months later.

He suffered from acute anxiety and bouts of depression throughout his life. Madame Ginoux and the cafe were frequent subjects of his work.

The eight-page letter from Lennon is a draft he wrote to Clapton on Sept. 29, 1971, and signed “John and Yoko.” The whereabouts of the final version is unknown.

Lennon writes candidly about his admiration for the great British guitarist and suggests forming a “‘nucleus’ group (Plastic Ono Band) . — and of course had YOU!!! In mind as soon as we decided.” He writes that drummer Jim Kelnter, artist Klaus Voormann, pianist Nicky Hopkins and producer Phil Spector “all agreed so far” to join.

“Anyway, the point is, after missing the Bangla-Desh concert, we began to feel more and more like going on the road, but not the way I used with the Beatles — night after night of torture. We mean to enjoy ourselves, take it easy, and maybe even see some of the places we go to! We have many ‘revolutionary’ ideas for presenting shows that completely involve the audience .”

Other luminaries whose papers will be sold include Lou Gehrig, Louis Pasteur, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Giuseppe Verdi, Peter Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, King Henry II and Napoleon I.

The December auction is the first of several sales that will be held over two years. The entire collection contains 3,000 items.

Online:

Information on how to bid is available on www.profilesinhistory.com.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Grover Norquist: The tax pledge is forever

Label: Business

.@ABC News/ @WashingtonPost Poll: Among Cliff-Avoidance Options, Most Favor Targeting the Wealthy http://t.co/672IMfYo

Flu Can Kill Quickly, Taking Lives of Healthy Children

Label: Health

In just eight months at his new school in Rifle, Colo., Austin Booth made a name for himself as a star athlete, honor student and a popular classmate with a promising future.

But within six days after he contracted the flu last January, Austin was dead. He was 17. His parents had never even considered giving a flu shot to their otherwise healthy teen.

“It was flu season and we knew other kids who were sick and we didn’t think that much about it,” said his mother, Regina Booth, 42. “He was a healthy teenager.”

“He was just one of those kids that excelled at everything,” she said. “And he was the type of kid who made friends instantly.”

“It was pretty tough — and it seems like just yesterday,” said Booth, who is 38 weeks pregnant and now annually immunizes her four other children, aged 3 to 16.

“Now that we are expecting a new baby, it protects us and the baby,” she said.

Debunking Four of the Most Common Flu Shot Myths

Between 3,000 and 49,000 Americans die of influenza each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.More than 200,000 are hospitalized annually with flu-related complications like pneumonia.

In the past four years, the CDC has changed its recommendations and now urges all Americans six months and older get a flu shot. Children under the age of 9, who are getting immunized for the first time, should get two doses, one month apart.

Booth said she still cannot believe how sudden her son’s death was. On Tuesday night, he had started and played a full basketball game. By Wednesday night, he was coughing up blood and was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia.

“They intubated him as he struggled to breathe,” said his mother. “It was the last time I talked to him.”

His father Carl, who worked on an oil rig and couldn’t be reached, was never able to see his son conscious again. Austin was airlifted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction and at first, doctors thought he would survive.

But soon, his condition got worse — even on “every antibiotic in the world” — and Austin had to be taken off the ventilator and manually “bagged.” Tests showed the teen positive for the virulent infection MRSA.

“Doctor’s said it was a perfect storm of pneumonia and MRSA,” said Booth. “He fought Thursday until Monday, but it was more than his body could handle.”

Hundreds of Austin’s new friends showed up for his funeral. The basketball team retired his #2 jersey and Austin was recognized with a school bench and a memory stone.

“We had never gotten the flu shot — not any of us,” she said. “We thought, we don’t need it, we are healthy. If we get the shot it will make us sick.”

Dr. William Schaffner, professor and chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said that people are fooled into thinking that influenza, a serious respiratory infection, is just like a cold.

“People use the word ‘flu‘ very casually to refer to a whole variety of winter illnesses, including a stuffy nose, and that tends to trivialize it,” said Schaffner. “It is a serious viral infection — it wreaks havoc on all the body’s systems.”

“Although it can be mild and often is, it is often very, very serious and can strike an otherwise normal child and put them in intensive care, usually within 48 hours.”

The most serious complications occur among older people, but each year children die of the disease — and “it’s potentially preventable,” according to Schaffner.

“While it is an imperfect vaccine, it is the best influenza vaccine at the present time,” he said. Though it does not always prevent infection, because viruses change each year, it can “turn a more serious flu into a milder one, so you won’t die.”

With 120 million doses given each year in the U.S. alone, it is a “wonderfully safe” vaccine, whose only side effects can be a sore arm or, rarely, a day of fever. It cannot give a person the flu. “That’s an urban myth,” said Schaffner.

The vaccine is covered by insurance carriers and only costs about $ 30 out of pocket. But only about half of all children are immunized.

Advocacy efforts by the nonprofit organization Families Fighting the Flu were part the gradual change of the CDC recommendation toward universal immunization.

About 100 American children die each year from the flu, according to its executive director, Laura Scott. “It’s devastating.”

“The more people who get vaccinated, the less disease there is that spreads,” said Scott. “You can build a cocoon around your family. Even if you don’t have the infant vaccinated, you still have to vaccinate everyone around that baby.”

Julie Moise of Kansas City, Mo., lost her 7-month-old son Ian to the flu in 2003. He got sick just 10 days after he had received his first of two flu shots. Her other children had full doses of the vaccine and never got sick.

Moise, a 41-year-old flight attendant, said she was initially “unconcerned” when Ian was diagnosed with the flu by his pediatrician. But by the end of the first day, he was “panting.” The doctor reassured her that was normal in a child with a fever.

“His panting turned into more of a sigh and I thought that was a good thing,” said Moise. “But later the doctor told me that happens when people’s organs are shutting down.”

Moise, too, was bedridden with the flu and called her husband to come home from work and help. She called the doctor’s office again.

“Glen walks in the door and the phone rings — it’s the nurse,” she said. “He told her, ‘I don’t like his coloring, let’s take him to the emergency room.’ Then Ian stopped breathing.”

Moise, who is trained in CPR, attempted to save Ian while they rushed to the ER. They stopped at a nearby fire station and rescue workers also tried unsuccessfully to revive the baby. He died that afternoon at the hospital.

“The message is: First of all, take the flu seriously,” she said. “We didn’t think healthy children die of the flu. It’s a preventable disease … And it doesn’t discriminate. It can hit anyone.”

After their son’s death, the Moises founded Ian’s Rainbow Flu Foundation to raise awareness.

Those who have survived influenza say its effects can be devastating.

Luke Duvall, now 20, came down with the flu in October 2009, and it took him a whole year to recover fully.

One-third of his Atkins, Ark., high school was hit hard with that strain of the flu.

Duvall was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. He nearly collapsed in the shower because he couldn’t breathe.

“My blood pressure was so low that they couldn’t draw blood and I almost crashed in the ambulance on the road,” he said. “They had to pull over and stabilize me.”

The next morning he was flown to Little Rock, where he stayed for 34 days, much of the time in a coma and on a respirator. “At one time, they had 20 IVs pumping all kinds of things into me,” he said.

Duvall spent 17 days in rehab because he had lost 36 of his 157 pounds. “I had to relearn how to walk and how to drink and eat,” he said. “I had to relearn daily functions like dressing myself.”

All this, according to Duvall, because one student who boarded a football bus for a game had the flu and infected the entire team.

“He was a star athlete,” he said. “If he had just had the vaccine, all of this would have stopped. It would have ended there. You don’t just get it for yourself, but for those around you. It’s a cycle that keeps going.”

ABC News information specialist Nicholas Tucker contributed to this report.

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U.S. for-profit colleges spend big on marketing while slashing other costs

Label: Technology

(Reuters) – Google‘s biggest advertiser is neither a bank nor a retailer.

It’s the for-profit University of Phoenix, which has recently been spending nearly $ 400,000 a day on ads, more than any financial firm or retailer, the traditional big spenders on online advertising, according to search analytics firm SpyFu.

That kind of spending may seem surprising coming from a college, but marketing has become vital for the university and its for-profit rivals as enrollments plummet and they fight back against a host of criticisms, including low job-placement rates.

Colleges such as University of Phoenix, the industry leader owned by Apollo Group Inc, will not only have to boost enrollments to reverse their fortunes, analysts say. They will also need to consider cutting tuition fees as well as continue to slash costs and take market share from rivals.

“I have witnessed several versions of this cycle but none as extreme as this,” said Trace Urdan, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, who has been covering the U.S. for-profit education industry for about 15 years.

“We are going to see more pointed efforts at marketing and more price competition in an effort to try to capture more market share both from each other as well as from traditional schools,” Urdan said.

Operators of other for-profit colleges, whose ranks include the Washington Post Co’s Kaplan business, DeVry Inc and ITT Educational Services Inc, are also boosting their spending on marketing and are among the 25 biggest advertisers on Google.

But no one is spending like the University of Phoenix, which doubled its spending on Google ads to about $ 380,000 per day on average between October 12 and November 12, compared with $ 170,000 a day in the previous month, according to SpyFu.

Increased marketing alone will not be enough to fatten fast-shrinking profit margins and increase enrollments, however. Lower tuition fees and increased specialization of the type of programs offered, along with further streamlining of operations, will also be necessary, analysts say.

Industry bellwether University of Phoenix, which offers courses at about 230 campuses as well as online, announced plans last month to shut about half its locations and cut 800 jobs in order to save about $ 300 million a year by 2014.

New enrollments in the Apollo system are down nearly 50 percent in the past two years. As of August 31, enrollment totaled about 328,000.

Career Education Corp, which owns American InterContinental University and the Le Cordon Bleu colleges, and Lincoln Educational Services Corp have also announced closures.

LOW-COST MODEL

The $ 25 billion industry, which typically serves adults looking for a career change or a program to enhance job skills, is reeling after government investigations revealed fraud related to financial aid, worryingly high student debt loads and low rates of graduation and job placement.

“Many for-profit colleges make decisions that prioritize their bottom line, even when those decisions limit their students’ opportunities for academic success,” a U.S. Senate report said earlier this year.

Tuition fees, and therefore profits, is one area under pressure as potential students need to be convinced to take out loans in an uncertain job market.

Apollo, whose stock has lost about 65 percent of its value this year, implemented a tuition freeze earlier this year and promised students it will not increase prices through the course of their programs.

Apollo is also looking at different cost models, with a view to serving segments of the population that it cannot serve with current University of Phoenix tuition prices.

“We have certainly seen a lot more competition at the lower end of the price scale, and that’s something we are focusing on,” Apollo spokesman Mark Brennar said, while declining to offer specifics.

Wells Fargo’s Urdan said it is likely that Apollo wants to compete in the low-cost end of the market by building a second brand, which it would likely do by acquiring another college rather than starting from scratch.

As colleges lower their revenue base by cutting tuition fees even as they spend more on marketing, lower margins could become the norm, analysts say. That has spooked investors already worried about sliding enrollments.

The S&P 1500 Education Services index has lost three-quarters of its value since April 2010, including a 50 percent decline in 2012.

Some for-profit colleges already differentiate themselves in the crowded higher-education market by offering programs in a particular field or by targeting students of a particular background, and that trend could accelerate.

American Public Education, for example, is known for enrolling those who work in the military and public services, while Universal Technical Institute offers programs related to the automotive industry.

For-profit colleges play up their links to employers to attract students who may otherwise opt for traditional or community colleges, said Rob Lytle, head of the education practice at advisory firm Parthenon Group.

“They are about getting people workforce employability skills, and I think they are going to be focusing tighter on that,” said Lytle.

(Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi in Bangalore; Editing by Ted Kerr)

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