Christopher Bailey’s new collection for Burberry was dubbed “Burberry Weather Boys.” “A coat for all seasons,” the designer explained. And, yes, there was plenty of hardy outerwear, from the blanket check wool toppers that opened, to a variety of felted parkas (reminiscent of the felted suits shown earlier in the day at Jil Sander), and wools subjected to a wide variety of texturizing and weather-proofing treatments: they were laminated, resinated, bonded, backed onto vinyl, doubled, and so on. The implication, lest it should escape you was,Wholesale Gucci, rain happens, and you’d better be prepared. And rain it did: After the troupe had marched out to a Dusty Springfield and Cliff Richard soundtrack, the heavens opened—or at least the rafters above the audience’s heads—and the water came rushing down. Don’t worry too much about the catwalkers or their outfits. For their final exit, each came out with an added protective layer: a transparent rain poncho over his look. There’s no predicting the weather, as the adage goes, except perhaps at Burberry, where it can be marshalled to remind the audience, boy, I could really use a good, rain-proof coat. And lo and behold: Those shown on Burberry’s runway are available for pre-order right now on Burberry.com.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Hundreds of mourners gathered at a Los Angeles-area church on Saturday to remember rhythm-and-blues singer Etta James, saying she overcame great personal and professional hurdles to sing “the times that she lived.”

During a two-hour service that featured performances by pop stars Stevie Wonder and Christina Aguilera, the Rev. Al Sharpton eulogized James as a woman who rose from a tough childhood and poured her pain into her music.

Aguilera performed a version of “At Last,” James’ show-stopping hit and best-known song.

James died at 73 at a Riverside, California, hospital on January 20 from complications of leukemia, prompting numerous tributes from artists and musicians who were influenced by her work, including Mariah Carey and Aretha Franklin.

“People need to understand that when they hear the music Etta James sang, she sang the times that she lived,” Sharpton told friends and family at Greater Bethany Church City of Refuge church in the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena.

“She put our pain and our dreams and our love and our need for one another in her vocal chords, but the difference between her and other artists is somehow you felt she meant what she was saying.”

James, who was born to a teenage single mother, won wide acclaim and three Grammys, but saw numerous ups-and-downs in her career and personal life. She struggled with obesity and heroin addiction, ran a hot-check scheme and had troubled relationships with men.

But, Sharpton said, James should be remembered for blazing a trail for the entertainers who followed her.

“Etta was the one that brought class … generations behind will try but never quite have the strut and swagger and talent of Etta James,” he said.

“At last you (Etta) can get the gratitude of the savior now. Go on home Etta. Get your reward now … you beat them Etta. You won Etta. Get your reward Etta. At last. At last. At last.”

James won her first Grammy in 1995 for her album, “Mystery Lady: The Songs of Billie Holiday.” She also won Grammys in 2003 and 2005, and a lifetime achievement award in 2003 from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences,wholesale Ed hardy underwear, which gives out the Grammys.

James is survived by her husband, Artis Mills, two sons Donto and Sametto who played in James’ backing band, and four grandchildren.

(Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by David Bailey)

These include strong political cohesion, a system that reinforces support for the central government over local officials, a massive police force and fairly tight controls on traditional and social media.

HONG KONG (Reuters) Like battle-hardened boxers, China’s Communist Party leaders are leaning back on the ropes, patiently absorbing the blows from angry village protesters who have grabbed headlines but lack a knockout punch.

Some 80 million Communist Party members and millions more who have benefited from China’s economic boom have little interest in spreading social unrest that would undermine those gains. Among China’s vast bureaucracy, where college graduates are competing for jobs, and the People’s Liberation Army, appetite for change is even lower.

SPARK WON’T START A PRAIRIE FIRE

“There are many incidents of social unrest like these in China, but I don’t think in the near future they will join together,” Ting said.

Still, China has endured headlines that would make many an Arab leader tremble.

China doesn’t stand out in any of those categories. The one-child policy means the country is aging rapidly, and the bigger worry is potential shortages of young workers. GDP per capita is rising steadily. Income inequality, although wide, may narrow as Beijing mandates large minimum wage increases.

But while Arab Spring protesters have scored knockout blows this year, economic conditions appear to have China on course for a comfortable points decision.

“I don’t think this can become a single spark that starts a prairie fire,” said Ting Wai, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University, referring to Mao Zedong’s famous thesis from the Chinese revolution.

The last time the Politburo Standing Committee was seriously split was in 1989, a divide that gave time for the democracy movement centered on Tiananmen Square to snowball. Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping eventually stepped in, Party secretary Zhao Ziyang was sacked, and the movement was crushed on June 4 that year in a bloody military crackdown that killed hundreds, perhaps thousands.

Similar social upsrisings have floored leaders from North Africa and the Middle East but China’s leaders, and the country itself, are made of sterner stuff.

TRICKLE, NOT A FLOOD

While pressures from riots, strikes and other mass incidents could chip at the Party’s grip on the country, analysts say that weakening remains manageable, a trickle rather than a flood.

Even the incident in the rebellious Guangdong province village of Wukan, where concessions to end the standoff appeared particularly favorable, only rippled the surface.

Liu Feiyue, a human rights advocate in central China’s Hubei province who collects reports from protesters, said “the scope of concessions in Wukan was unusually large, especially on freeing detained villagers and a fresh village election.”

“This showed unusual flexibility and reasonableness from the Guangdong government,” said Liu, who runs the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch website.

“But I don’t think the Wukan model will spread nationwide easily. There’s too much conservatism and fear of change, and other places tend to offer only tactical compromises and then officials return to high-pressure methods and to settling scores,” Liu said in a telephone interview.

The Communist Party has years of experience handling incidents of mass unrest that have grown in number as economic reforms gathered pace in the 1990s and 2000s, bringing booming growth and rising incomes but also spawning a widening wealth gap and uneven development.

Each day, authorities grapple with nearly 250 mass incidents, the euphemism for riots and protests, somewhere across the country, based on the annual figure of more than 90,000 incidents that Chinese experts estimate occur annually.

It has also been going on for years — in 2004 there were 78,000 incidents and Hu’s predecessor Jiang Zemin had to defuse huge strikes as he and Premier Zhu Rongji overhauled lumbering state enterprises, shattered the iron rice bowl and laid off thousands of workers from once guaranteed jobs.

While incidents differ, China’s approach to handling violent protest has been fairly formulaic. First, security forces quell the incident with overwhelming force and arrest the ringleaders. The authorities one rung up the ladder at the county or province often then address the source of the outrage — closing down the polluting factory, arresting the corrupt local official, or ordering the backwages paid.

“THROW THE BUMS OUT”

There is little sign of discord in the Politburo when it comes to social stability, particularly with a leadership transition coming.

Zhou Yongkang, the Standing Committee member in charge of public security, was not speaking just for himself in a speech carried in newspapers on Thursday that urged law-and-order cadres to ensure “a harmonious and stable social setting” ahead of the Communist Party’s 18th Congress in late 2012.

Social media are yoked as well. China has banned Facebook and Twitter and while Weibo, the popular microblogging site, has become a source for news to spread, tight controls — posts are deleted or topic searches are banned — hinder the ability to use it to organize, Chan said.

Activists who travel to areas of unrest to support or organize them are arrested. Such incidents are geographically widespread and often in remote areas.

China’s central government also benefits from wide respect at the local level. Unlike the United States, where voters re-elect their local officials but want to “throw the bums out” in Washington, China’s central government enjoys relative popularity in relation to local village or county leaders.

Indeed, the provincial delegation sent by provincial Party Chief and Politburo member Wang Yang to negotiate in Wukan was welcomed warmly. When a deal to end the standoff was reached, the village elders told the rest of the village to take down their banners and go home.

This respect for high leadership is perhaps reinforced by a tradition of seeking redress from on high through petitioning the emperor’s officials.

Thirty years of strong economic growth have added credibility for China’s Communist rulers, who enjoy a higher level of trust than their Arab counterparts, Chinese University’s Chan added.

“Because of this trust, basically the stability of China can still be maintained,” Chan said.

There was some risk people could be disillusioned if the government failed to address their petitions positively. “But now at this moment I don’t think that China has reached what has happened in Egypt,” Chan added.

Wukan was arguably closer to anything resembling an Arab-style movement that China has seen for a while. They tossed out their local leaders, installed their own rebel village leadership and manned barricades against police in open revolt for 10 days.

But even in Wukan, the contradictions were apparent, illustrating the gulf between China and turmoil abroad.

“Democracy is good for citizens, as citizens can make decisions for themselves,” said Yang Semao, a village representative in Wukan, adding that calls for democracy and elections would be “better if they spread nationwide.”

But he added: “China won’t turn out to be as serious as the other countries, as long as the Chinese Communist Party is in control.”

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in BEIJING, Sui-Lee Wee in WUKAN, Sisi Tang in HONG KONG and Emily Kaiser in SINGAPORE; Editing by Paul Tait)

“With civil servants and military, with their support, even when there is extensive discontent among the general public, the regime can still maintain its rule for quite a long period of time,” said Kin-man Chan, associate professor at the department of sociology at Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Villagers in Wukan in south China chase off local officials and barricade themselves in for a 10-day standoff. Thousands march in Haimen city less than 160 km (100 miles )away to protest against a power plant project. Workers stage a sit-in in Dongguan city to the west, demanding backpay after their paper plant closed down.

After the wave of Arab Spring revolutions, analysts began looking for markers that might be useful for predicting the next uprising. The most common characteristics included a disproportionately large segment of the population aged under 25, stagnating GDP per capita, and widening income inequality.

Analysts say it would take an unlikely combination of blows for any semblance of an Arab Spring to take root in China: collapse of the economy, a breakdown of the Party system, a comprehensive loss of trust in the central government, and a cohesive anti-party movement in rural and urban areas.

The Chinese government’s fear is that, in the more distant future, those trends could gather momentum and threaten it.

Other factors favor the Party over the protesters, who lack central organization.

_____

During the quarter, the company converted more than 100 stores to a new wellness format which feature more organic food, natural personal care products and homeopathic medicines. Rite Aid now has 159 of those stores and expects to operate about 300 of them by the end of the fiscal year. It has been spending more money on store improvements and on Wellness Plus.

Analysts expect a loss of 44 cents per share on $25.79 billion in revenue.

The company now expects a fiscal 2012 loss of between $325 million and $440 million, or 37 cents to 50 cents per share, on revenue ranging from $25.85 billion to $26 billion. Three months ago, Rite Aid cut its projected loss for the year to $345 million to $495 million, or 40 cents to 56 cents per share, on revenue of $25.8 billion to $26.1 billion.

The Camp Hill, Pa., company says it now has 47 million Wellness Plus members, who tend to shop at Rite Aid more often and spend more money than non-members. It launched the rewards program in April 2010.

However, during the quarter Rite Aid reported lower expenses related to lease terminations and other items, and it deferred less revenue from Wellness Plus.

Tom Murphy contributed to this story from Indianapolis.

Rite Aid has delivered more than 1.4 million flu shots during the current flu season more than double the 675,000 it gave during the 2010-11 flu season even though this season has been milder than last year.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected, on average, a loss of 12 cents per share on $6.29 billion in revenue.

Its shares rose 4 cents, or 3.5 percent, to close at $1.18 Thursday. The stock is up 34 percent in the year to date.

Rite Aid has posted a string of quarterly losses dating to 2007, but its sales have improved in the past two quarters. The company is closing fewer stores after shuttering hundreds of locations over the last few years, and sales at its remaining locations have been growing for about a year.

Rite Aid had 4,679 stores as of Nov. 26, down 62 from a year ago. The company expects to close about 25 stores during the fiscal fourth quarter. Rivals CVS and Walgreen both have well over 7,000 stores.

The third-largest U.S. drugstore chain reported a smaller third-quarter loss, and for the second straight quarter, it trimmed its projected loss for fiscal 2012

Rite Aid could pick up additional sales from larger competitor Walgreen Co., which is in the middle of a contract dispute with pharmacy benefits management company Express Scripts Inc. Express Scripts pays drugstores like Walgreen to fill prescriptions, but if the companies do not agree to a new contract in the next few weeks, Express Scripts clients won’t be able to fill prescriptions at Walgreen stores.

Revenue climbed nearly 2 percent to $6.31 billion from $6.2 billion.

Rite Aid said Thursday it lost $54.5 million, or 6 cents per share, in the quarter ended Nov. 26. That compares to a loss of $81.5 million, or 9 cents per share, a year ago.

Analysts say that could bring many new shoppers to Rite Aid and CVS Caremark Corp. stores. However, Rite Aid did not say how many new customers or how much revenue it might gain if Walgreen stops filling prescriptions for Express Scripts.

NEW YORK Rite Aid Corp.’s sales continued to grow in the fiscal third quarter as the drugstore operator signed up 3 million new members to its customer rewards program and administered more flu shots.

(Reuters) The Justice Department has stepped up its investigation of Standard & Poor’s mortgage bond ratings during the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

At least five former S&P analysts have been contacted by federal prosecutors in recent weeks, after some had not heard from investigators for more than six months, the newspaper said.

The McGraw-Hill Cos Inc unit disclosed in September it had received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating it could face civil charges for its ratings of a 2007 mortgage bond deal called Delphinus 2007-1.

It has not yet disclosed any investigation by the DOJ, which the WSJ reported is a civil probe.

Prosecutors are examining whether S&P managers pushed to weaken standards the company had set for rating the mortgage deals, and whether the company followed its established criteria in assigning ratings.

The recent interviews lasted two to three hours, and the former employees were told they would likely by contacted again, the Wall Street Journal said.

A spokesman for S&P declined comment.

(Reporting By Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

PHILADELPHIA A Pittsburgh rapper is suing hip hop star Wiz Khalifa for $2.3 million over allegations that he stole the hit song “Black and Yellow.”

Max Warren performs under the stage name Maxamillion. He says Khalifa’s chart-topper “Black and Yellow” was lifted from his own song “Pink N Yellow.”

Warren says he copyrighted “Pink N Yellow” in 2008 and Khalifa copyrighted “Black and Yellow” in 2011.

The copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in federal court in Philadelphia and seeks at least $2.3 million in damages. It names Khalifa,wholesale Burberry, whose real name is Cameron Jibril Thomaz, two other songwriters and several record companies and music publishers.

Warren’s lawyer declined to comment Thursday. A spokesman for Khalifa at Atlantic Records didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) Bomb attacks in mainly Shi’ite Muslim areas of Iraq killed at least 73 people and wounded scores on Thursday, police and hospital sources said, raising fears of an increase in sectarian strife.

The biggest attack was beside a police checkpoint west of Nassiriya in the south, where a suicide bomber targeting Shi’ite pilgrims killed 44 people and wounded 81, Sajjad al-Asadi, head of the provincial security committee in Nassiriya, told Reuters.

Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki created the worst political crisis in a year on December 19 when he sought the removal of two senior Sunni politicians, a day after the last U.S. troops left Iraq. On December 22, bombs in predominately Shi’ite parts of Iraq’s capital killed 72.

Maliki asked parliament to have his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlaq removed and sought the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges he ran death squads.

On Tuesday, members of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc boycotted the parliament and cabinet, accusing Maliki’s bloc of governing alone in a power-sharing coalition that was supposed to ease sectarian tension.

The inclusion of Iraqiya in the governing coalition was widely considered crucial to prevent a return to the level of sectarian violence that erupted after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Thousands were killed in the fighting.

The manager of the main hospital in Nassiriya,wholesale Burberry, Ahmed Abdel-Sahib, put Thursday’s toll at 44 killed and 88 wounded.

Photographs showed relatives hugging the bodies of young men lying face down on ground covered in blood and with the pilgrims’ belongings strewn around them.

Hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite pilgrims are expected to make their way to the holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala in the south before Arbain, a major Shi’ite religious rite next week.

Earlier on Thursday, a bomb planted on a parked motorcycle and another roadside explosive device killed at least 10 people and wounded 37 in Sadr City, a slum district in northeast Baghdad, police and hospital sources said.

MOTORCYCLE AND DAY LABOURERS

Police said they found and defused two other bombs.

“There was a group of day laborers gathered, waiting to be hired for work. Someone brought his small motorcycle and parked it nearby. A few minutes later it blew up, killed some people, wounded others and burned some cars,” said a police officer at the scene, declining to be named.

A Reuters reporter said there was blood around the site of the motorcycle bomb attack and tarmac on the road had been ripped up by the blast. Building tools and shoes were scattered across the site.

Reuters TV video from Sadr City hospital showed a crowded emergency room with many injured people and their relatives. One man sat on the floor, hugging his younger brother, as they cried for their sister who was killed in one of the blasts.

Two car bombs in Baghdad’s northwestern Kadhimiya district killed at least 15 people and wounded 32, police and hospital sources said.

“People started to flee from the explosions and others ran towards them (to look for relatives). The scene was like a play, with people crying and screaming and falling,” Ahmed Maati, a policeman in Kadhimiya, told Reuters.

Iraq – on the brink of civil war as recently as 2006-7 – is still plagued by a Sunni Muslim insurgency and Shi’ite militias nearly 9 years after a U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein.

Sadr City is a stronghold of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia once fought U.S. and Iraqi troops. He is now a key ally of Maliki.

Baghdad’s health statistics department put the final toll from the Kadhimiya blasts at 16 killed and 36 wounded and said 13 were killed and 32 wounded in the Sadr City attacks.

“It is early to point our fingers to a particular side till we clarify some issues related to the investigations,” said Baghdad operations centre spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi.

“We are in a battlefield with the terrorists … and with the enemies of the political process, so we do not consider these (explosions) as a surprise for us or something strange. We are used to such (insurgent) operations.”

Moussawi put the toll from the Sadr City attack at 33 wounded and said 29 were wounded in the Kadhimiya bombings. He said he did not have figures for the number of people killed.

Many Sunnis say they have been sidelined in the political process since Saddam was ousted and the majority Shi’ites dominated the government.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami in Baghdad and Aref Mohammed in Basra; Writing by Serena Chaudhry; Editing by Louise Ireland)

DENVER Investigators are trying to determine why a woman caused $10,000 worth of damage to a large expressionist painting at the Clyfford Still Museum by punching and scratching it, then removing her pants and sliding down the artwork.

Carmen Tisch, 36, faces charges of criminal mischief in the Dec. 29 attack on the painting, said district attorney spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough.

The painting,wholesale Ed hardy underwear, referred to as 1957-J-No. 2, is valued at more than $30 million. The large montage of black, white and burnt orange swaths with a sliver of yellow is from Still’s middle period.

Museum officials said they believe security is adequate for the facility and that they regularly evaluate security to protect the collection and visitors. Museum spokeswoman Regan Petersen said in a statement that its guards “acted swiftly and appropriately; the police were summoned immediately and the offender was taken into custody.”

Denver acquired the collection in stiff competition by promising to build a facility for the paintings and sculptures. Still, who died in 1980, specified in his will that his estate had to go to an American city willing to establish a permanent museum for his work. He was one of the first abstract expressionist artists following World War II.

The museum has raised $32 million in private donations for its building, endowment and operations, Petersen said. The city of Denver also contributed about $99 million from an auction of four Still works.

Visitors touring the gallery Thursday said they were horrified by the attack. Rachel Gelbman and Christine Shaw, of Denver, said they had seen the painting at the Denver Art Museum and noticed it was missing, replaced by a similar painting from the 1956-1958 era.

To them, it wasn’t the same.

“What would possess someone to do that?” Gelbman said as security guards roamed the building.

In 2010, a Montana woman was accused of taking a crowbar to a Loveland art museum display that critics denounced as obscene. Critics said it showed Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act; The artist, Stanford University professor Enrique Chagoya, said the work represented what he saw as corruption in religious institutions. Kathleen Folden was accused of damaging the print.

Tisch remained held on $20,000 bond. Court records did not indicate if she had an attorney, and no phone listing was available.

At the museum, on the wall near where Still’s painting once stood, Still summed up his philosophy of art: “I never wanted color to be color, texture to be texture, images to become images. I wanted them all to fuse into a living spirit.”

SEOUL (Reuters) Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips and smartphones, is set to report a robust quarterly profit rise on Friday, starting 2012 on an upbeat note aided by record-smashing sales of smartphones.

The South Korean firm, which surged past Apple as the world’s top smartphone maker in the third quarter, is quickly building on its supremacy with sleek designs and a rich product line-up, while the latest models from the likes of HTC, Nokia and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion struggle to interest consumers.

Its handset division is now Samsung’s biggest earnings generator, raking in record profits.

Samsung is also weathering a profit squeeze stemming from its bread-and-butter memory chips with new revenue sources such as mobile processing chips and high-end OLED displays, as key rivals increasingly bank on Samsung for components to power their tablets and smartphones.

“Samsung’s got great business portfolios from components to a wide range of consumer electronics that enable it to better tide over the volatile technology cycle than many of its peers,” Lim Do-ri, an analyst at Solomon Investment & Securities.

“Its smartphone business is now a main growth driver, and has also lifted growth of its component business. But the biggest challenge is whether it can hold onto its smartphone market share against rivals. Any retreat in phones could also be detrimental to mobile chips and display operations.”

Samsung, Asia’s most valuable technology firm with a market value of around $150 billion, is due to report October-December guidance on Friday before it announces detailed quarterly results in late January.

The world’s biggest technology firm by revenue is likely to report 4.7 trillion won ($4.1 billion) in October-December operating profit on revenue of 46.2 trillion won, according to a consensus of 30 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

That would be its best profit since the third quarter of 2010, and up 57 percent from a year ago and 11 percent from the preceding quarter.

In 2012, Samsung is likely to report a 28 percent rise in operating profit with a 12 percent gain in revenue, according to analysts.

POTENTIAL UPSIDE SURPRISE

Some analysts expect Samsung, which surprised the market with forecast-beating results in the third quarter, to deliver another blowout record profit on better-than-expected smartphone and TV sales and one-off gains.

The top-end of the fourth-quarter consensus estimate is 5.5 trillion won from Goldman Sachs, and a profit above the 5.0 trillion won earned in the second quarter of 2010 would be a record.

Smartphone shipments are forecast at a record 35 million units in the fourth quarter, up one quarter from the preceding three months, when it first surged past Apple as the world’s top smartphone vendor.

In 2012, its smartphone sales are expected to rise to as high as 170 million units, according to BNP Paribas and Korea Investment & Securities, the most bullish street view, from an estimated 95 million units last year, powered by a diverse product portfolio that spans high-end Galaxy models to cheap phones using Samsung’s own ‘bada’ software.

Its latest Galaxy Note model, which runs on fast 4th-generation (4G) networks, is touted by some followers as a ‘phablet’ as its 5.3-inch display and powerful dual core processor makes it work as both a tablet computer and smartphone. Its successful debut in some European and Asian markets during the year-end holiday season has raised hopes for a solid U.S. launch in coming months.

One-off gains expected in the fourth quarter include around 500 billion won from the sale of its hard disk drive business to Seagate Technology, and reduced mobile provisions involving royalty payments, analysts estimate.

Reflecting the upbeat outlook, shares in Samsung, Asia’s most valuable technology stock, scaled record high to 1.11 million won this week. It is the best performing stock among major global peers, rising 29 percent over the past six months. Apple has gained 21 percent, Sony Corp tumbled 35 percent,wholesale Ed hardy jeans, Nokia fell 16 percent and HTC lost 50 percent during the same period.

Samsung competes with Sony and LG Electronics Inc in TVs, Toshiba Corp in flash memory chips and LG Display in flat screens.

“As we expect Samsung’s fundamentals to remain firm and competitive positioning to improve, we see continued quarterly earnings surprises and new business growth acting as catalysts for the shares,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a recent note.

Major headwinds for Samsung in 2012 include slowing growth in global PC sales, which will dent sales of its core computer memory chips.

Weak computer memory chip prices will continue to squeeze earnings at least until the first half of this year. Prices of PC DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips dropped about 30 percent in the fourth quarter alone, near to production costs.

Samsung remains the sole profitable DRAM chipmaker and is likely to fare better than rivals, helped by heavy investments to cut production costs with finer processing technology.

Its foray into the booming tablet market has been also hit by a global patent battle with Apple, which is seeking to ban sales of Samsung’s tablets in major markets.

Samsung’s flagship Galaxy tablet had been seen as the biggest competitor to Apple’s iPad until Amazon.com launched the Kindle Fire late last year, which emerged as one of the hottest gadgets during the year-end holiday season due to its low prices.

(Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and Alex Richardson)

LONDON She’s a double Oscar winner with a knack for accents, but Meryl Streep says playing Margaret Thatcher was a challenge although her own experience helped her understand the struggles faced by Britain’s first female prime minister.

Streep is transformed into the divisive politician who reshaped Britain in “The Iron Lady,” which had its European premiere in London on Wednesday, just across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament.

“It was extremely daunting, because I’m from New Jersey,” Streep said in an interview ahead of the event. “And yet as an outsider, I felt something of what she might have felt.”

Streep, who won Academy Awards for “Kramer Vs. Kramer” and “Sophie’s Choice,” said her youthful experience as one of a handful of women at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire helped her understand Thatcher’s isolation. In 1970, Streep spent a term as an exchange student at the men-only college, which became coeducational in 1972.

“There were 60 of us and 6,000 men, and I had a little flashback to that moment,” Streep said. “And so a little bit of my emotional work was done for me.”

Streep, 62, has been nominated for a Golden Globe and looks likely to get a 17th Oscar nomination for her spookily accurate performance as Thatcher, who led Britain from 1979 until 1990.

As prime minister, Thatcher fought a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, saw the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of communism and was branded the Iron Lady by Soviet journalists for her steely resolve.

She presided over the decline of Britain’s industrial might and trade union power and the birth of a free-market culture with new winners and many new losers.

That historical drama is only glimpsed in “The Iron Lady,” which depicts the now 86-year-old Thatcher, widowed after the death of husband Denis (Jim Broadbent), looking back on her life as a provincial grocer’s daughter rising to the top of a Conservative Party dominated by wealthy men.

Streep said while the film has been called a political biopic, “I was interested in it precisely because it wasn’t really that.”

“It’s a subjective imagining,” she said. “It’s not the God’s-eye-view chronicling this side, that side, the politics of it. It’s a very deep look at a whole life from the end of it.”

“The Iron Lady” is more a domestic drama than a political one, but Thatcher remains a polarizing figure and the film has been criticized by her enemies and allies alike. Foes feel it is too sympathetic, while supporters and friends dislike its depiction of the former leader as a frail old woman with dementia.

Former Conservative Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said the film “has a rather ghoulish quality about it.”

“All the flashback scenes show a woman suffering from a form of dementia, but that lady is very much alive,” he told the Evening Standard newspaper. “That should have given them pause to wait.”

Director Phyllida Lloyd (“Mamma Mia!”) has defended the film’s approach. The script by Abi Morgan (“Shame”) was partly inspired by a book by the politician’s daughter Carol Thatcher in which she described her mother’s mental decline.

Streep said the criticisms were misguided.

“If Margaret Thatcher suffered from a lung problem and I coughed, or if she had something wrong with her legs and I limped, no one would scream,” she said. “The particular stigma attached to mental frailty in our culture speaks more about the person who’s saying it’s shameful.

“Is it shameful? I don’t think it is. I don’t think things need to be hidden away.”

Streep is also fascinated by the venom Thatcher provoked she’s still either loved or loathed by most Britons and the film gently asks viewers to consider whether the fact that she is a woman played a part in the strong responses.

“She was called the most hated woman in Britain because of policies that lots of people who are still in the political world helped her construct, and they don’t endure the same hatred,” Streep said. “She was hated for her hair and her handbag and her clothes and her manner and the fact that she changed her voice.

“It was really outsized, the bloodlust, and that’s interesting.”

Streep said the film’s most provocative idea is that it asks audiences to regard this iconic political figure as human just like ourselves.

“I do think we have historically looked at our own lives through the bodies of kings and queens and important people,” she said. “Is ‘Hamlet’ really about the prince and his princeliness, or is it about his existence? Is ‘King Lear’ really about a grumpy old man who used to be a despot,Cheap Ed hardy Shoes, or is it about existence?

“That’s certainly how I went into it, to find me in this story. And my friends, and my mother women of that generation who lived through a change in the way women were regarded and their place in society.”

____

Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://twitter.com/JillLawless