WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. trade deficit widened in April, as demand for foreign cars, cell phones and other imported goods outpaced growth in U.S. exports.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that the trade gap rose 8.5 percent in April from March to $40.3 billion.

Exports increased 1.2 percent to $187.4 billion, the second-highest level on record. Companies sold more telecommunications equipment, industrial machinery and airplane parts, while U.S.-made autos and auto parts also rose to an all-time high of $12.8 billion.

But imports grew an even faster 2.4 percent to $227.7 billion. Sales of foreign cars increased to $25.5 billion. Americans also bought more consumer goods, led by big gain in foreign-made cell phones.

A wider trade gap can restrain growth because it means U.S. consumers and businesses are spending more on foreign goods than U.S. companies are taking in from overseas sales.

But Joel Naroff, chief economists at Naroff Economic Advisors, said the wider deficit does show growth in the U.S. remains stronger than most others nations. And that growth has helped fuel more spending by consumers on imported goods.

"The U.S. economy may not be robust but with growth continuing, the demand for foreign goods is picking up," Naroff.

Most economists said trade will likely be neutral in the April-June quarter after subtracting slightly from growth in the January-March quarter. They expect economic growth has slowed to an annual rate of around 2 percent, down from a 2.4 percent rate in the first quarter.

Still, a weaker global economy is reducing demand for U.S. exports and that could weigh on growth this year.

Europe's recession continues to be a problem for U.S. companies. The deficit with the 27-nation European Union grew 25.6 percent to $12.4 billion. U.S. exports to the region declined 7.9 percent, while imports from the region rose slightly.

The politically sensitive deficit with China surged to $24.1 billion, the highest level since January and the largest with any single nation. Imports jumped 21 percent, while exports fell 4.7 percent. The March deficit had been artificially lowered by shipping disruptions caused by the Chinese New Year holiday.

The April deficit with South Korea climbed to a record $2.4 billion. Imports from that country rose to an all-time high of $5.6 billion.

Fewer exports have slowed activity at American factories, according to a measure of U.S. manufacturing released Monday.

The Institute for Supply Management said Monday that its index of manufacturing activity fell to 49 last month from 50.7 in April. It was the lowest reading since June 2009 and the first time the index had slipped below 50 since November. A reading under 50 indicates contraction in manufacturing.

A measure of export orders in the ISM report fell to its lowest level since January.

The weakness abroad has coincided with less investment by U.S. businesses, possibly out of concern that government spending cuts could hobble economic growth.

The deficit so far this year is running at an annual rate of $491.9 billion, down 8 percent from the revised annual deficit of $534.7 billion for 2012.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A new novel about a neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Germany's first Jewish candidate for Chancellor has shed a timely light on the right-wing extremist violence that has plagued the country since 1990 and was swept under the carpet for years.

Political thriller "The Jewish Candidate" by British journalist David Crossland has been published just as Germany's September election campaign is heating up and at the start of a trial of a neo-Nazi cell blamed for a spate of racist murders that went undetected for more than a decade.

Built upon the intriguing notion of a Jewish politician named Rudolf Gutman running for Chancellor as the candidate for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the fast-paced thriller is told through the eyes of a reporter for a fictional London newspaper who stumbles upon a neo-Nazi plot to kill Gutman.

Set in modern Germany, "The Jewish Candidate" focuses on the surge in far-right violence since reunification in 1990 and on the country's failure to contain it.

Some estimates say almost 200 people have been killed in acts of far-right violence since 1990 that have often been directed at dark-skinned foreigners. Those killings were often downplayed by authorities and German society as isolated acts of random violence mainly in formerly communist eastern Germany.

That complacency was shattered in late 2011 when police accidentally stumbled upon a neo-Nazi cell, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), whose members killed eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman execution-style between 2000-2007 and carried out two bombings in immigrant quarters in Cologne.

"I started writing it back in 2007 before anyone had heard about the NSU," said Crossland, a freelance writer and former Reuters correspondent.

"I was reporting about neo-Nazi violence and was surprised at how lightly the authorities and the general public were taking it despite warnings that parts of the east were 'no-go' areas for anyone who doesn't look German."

The trial of a surviving member of the NSU, Beate Zschaepe, began in Munich on May 6 after two men who founded the NSU in the late 1990s committed suicide following a botched bank robbery in November 2011.

Germans have been closely following the trial and parliament is conducting its own investigation into the failure of police and security services, who neglected the far-right threat and suspected other immigrants were responsible for the killings.

The parallels between the real-life NSU and the fictional neo-Nazi assassins in "The Jewish Candidate" are striking but coincidental. The novel, set in the run-up to an election, includes descriptions of clandestine torchlit neo-Nazi meetings and of their links with the security services.

The novel also raises the interesting question of whether Germany might one day have a Jewish chancellor. It had a Jewish population of 670,000 before the Nazi regime and Holocaust. There was a vestigial community of 29,000 in 1990. Germany prides itself on its growing Jewish population of over 200,000.

Crossland, 46, who has lived in Germany since 1992, said Germany may be ready to elect a Jewish leader.

"But it's an unlikely prospect for now due to a lack of Jewish politicians," he said. "It's clear, though, that neo-Nazis are better armed and better organised than the authorities believed until the NSU came to light."

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum, editing by Paul Casciato)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study based on pairs of Canadian twins suggests that genetics play a strong role in how long kids sleep at night, but their environment may be more important for afternoon naps.

Researchers compared sleep patterns for close to 500 sets of identical or fraternal twins. They found that especially as kids got older, environmental influences - which include when parents put kids in bed, for example - explained more and more of their napping differences.

"Even though the results do not explicitly state which are the environmental factors," said Sonia Brescianini, "researchers in the field think that familial habits at bed time, sleeping routines, and in general sleep hygiene measures are for sure a means of improving sleep in children."

Brescianini, a researcher with the Italian Twin Register at Rome's Istituto Superiore di Sanit who was not involved in the new study, told Reuters Health in an email that past research has also suggested a child's environment may be more important than genetics for daytime sleep habits.

The new study involved 983 individual children born in greater Montreal, Canada, from 1995 to 1998. Mothers were asked about each twin's daytime and nighttime sleep patterns at age 6, 18, 30 and 48 months.

By comparing sets of identical and fraternal twins, Dr. Jacques Montplaisir from the University of Montreal and his colleagues were able to determine how much of kids' sleep variation was due to genes - which are the same in identical twins - and how much to environmental factors.

For example, Brescianini explained, the more identical twins are similar and fraternal twins are not for a given trait such as sleep schedules, the more that trait is likely to be genetic. But if both types of twins resemble each other in similar ways, the trait is likely affected by a child's environment.

At three of the four time points, genetics accounted for between 47 and 58 percent of nighttime sleep duration. The majority of children slept 10 or 11 continuous hours at night.

The one age when environment seemed to play a strong role in overnight sleep was at 18 months. That suggests that age "might be an appropriate time of intervention in children with not satisfying sleep duration and quality," Brescianini said.

But genes never explained more than about one-third of daytime nap length, the researchers reported Monday in Pediatrics.

Family routines and other shared environmental influences, on the other hand, accounted for between 33 and 79 percent of whether or not twins were napping during the day, and for how long. That association became stronger as children got older and average nap length shortened.

The researchers said a similar study needs to be done using more exact tools to measure sleep, such as movement sensors or laboratory monitors.

In addition, it will be helpful to look at what family-related factors may affect daytime sleep, Montplaisir and his colleagues wrote.

"Good sleep duration and quality is very important for children's physical and mental health because sleeping behavior has been associated with obesity, poor school performance and other behavioral disorders," Brescianini said.

"In order to promptly intervene, more knowledge is needed on how sleeping behavior changes through childhood."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online May 27, 2013.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., May 23, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Thousands of Illinois citizens do not have access to basic health and dental care even when employed. But today's State Senate passage of a key legislative measure means critical help is on the way through the establishment of the state's first Health Insurance Marketplace. House Bill 3227 today passed the Senate by a vote of 39-19 and is on its way to the State House. AARP is urging State Representatives to vote Yes on this urgently-needed legislation.

"Too many Illinoisans simply do not have access to the health insurance they need for themselves and their families, even though they are working," said AARP Illinois State Director Bob Gallo. "HB3227 will help over one million Illinoisans become eligible to purchase health and dental plans in an individual market. This bill will also help create plans for small business owners, so they can enroll their employees. We commend the Senate for approving this bill and we urge the House to do the same."

HB3227 if enacted will be a critical step in the effort to extend health coverage to those currently without it, and to improve access for those already in the individual and small group markets.

The legislation will ensure that Illinois consumers' voices are represented in the Marketplace Governing Board that will be created to review and approve the plans recommended by the Department of Insurance. The Board will reflect the geographic, gender, cultural, racial and ethnic diversity of the state.

AARP, along with over 100 non-profit and health advocacy organizations supports HB3227. AARP strongly believes that a Health Insurance Marketplace will address the needs of the consumer as well as the rights of all Illinoisans to access comprehensive health care coverage.

SOURCE AARP Illinois

This is the second time in less than 15 years that the town of Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, has been hit squarely by a major tornado. Thats mostly down to bad luckalthough Oklahoma City area might as well be the buckle of the tornado belt, as Alexis Madrigal , the chances of actually being hit by a major tornado even in this danger zone remain low. Though I doubt that will provide much comfort to the grieving residents of Moore as they dig out from yet another destructive twister.

But as unlikely as a major tornado remains, the hundreds of twisters that touch down in the U.S. still cause major damagesecond only to hurricanes, according to the reinsurer Munich Re. Few ordinary structures can withstand a direct hit from a tornado as strong as the one that passed through Moore yesterday, which now ranks as an EF5, with winds above 200 mph. Not much could have saved the homes and businesses destroyed by the Moore twister, but is there a way to ensure that the lives of people in tornado country can be protected from extreme weather?

The answer is yeswith the right policy and the right incentives. But first we have to understand how the risks from extreme weather are changingand for the most part, increasing. (Hat tip to Andrew Revkin of Dot Earth, whosetouched on much of this material.) As I wrote , theres no clear trend on the frequency or strength of tornadoes hitting the U.S. It had actually been a historically quiet 12 months for tornadoes until recently. And its not clear what, if any, impact warming temperatures are having on tornadoes.

(PHOTOS:)

But according to Peter Hoeppe, the head of the Geo Risks department at the Munich Reinsurance company, damages from tornadoes have been growing over the long terma trend thats been driven chiefly by the increase of people and property in vulnerable areas, like the tornado belt. More people in harms way mean more people to be harmed when a twister touches down. This is the major loss driver for both tornadoes and hurricanes, says Hoeppe.

The population of Oklahoma City increased from around 400,000 in 1980 to nearly 600,000 today, driven in part by the citys booming, fossil fuel-driven economy. In Moore, a major suburb of Oklahoma City, population hassince 1980, to 55,000 now. Thats a fairly dense for tornado country, which meant a lot of people and property were in the path of the twister on May 20. Just as the rapid growth of population along the coasts has made usto hurricanes and coastal flooding, more people in the tornado belt can multiply the damage done by those twisters

The best way to survive an EF4 or EF5 tornado is in an underground shelter, or in a. Cellars would be ideal, but as Megan Garber explains , the environment in Oklahoma is not:

The relative dearth of storm cellars in Oklahoma comes down, , to environmental factors. The soil in the state is composed largely of clay and thats particularly true in central Oklahoma, where Moore is located. (Soils in the Central Rolling Red Prairies, geologists at Oklahoma State , are dark and loamy with clayey to loamy subsoils developed on Permian shales, mudstones, sandstones and/or alluvial deposits under tall grasses.)

Building a private structure and full underground shelter that could withstand a major tornado is certainly possible, but as theof Austin College told me, it would be out of the reach of anyone who is not wealthy. Private safe rooms can be builtSimmons, who lives in tornado country north of Dallas, just put one in his own house for $4,000but its still likely to be out of the reach of a lot of people in Oklahoma.

The state of Oklahoma and the federal government have begun to use financial incentives to encourage more resilient construction in tornado zones. Oklahoma is instituting a lottery to provide people with a maximum rebate of $2,000 to go towards , using funds provided by the federal government. More than 10,000 above and below-groundhave been built so far using that money.

But that funding comes with trade offs. In a 2006 study Simmons co-authored with Daniel Sutter of the University of Texas-Pan American, Simmons found that a program for building safe rooms in permanent dwellings would cost $52 million for every life saved. That exceeds estimate of the value of a statistical life based on market tradeoffs, as the authors wrote. (This is where economists sound horrible, Simmons notes.) Those figures reflect just how rare tornado fatalities remain today, especially ones that occur to people living in permanent dwellings, which can usually weather the weaker but more common twisters. The chance of death from tornado if you live in a mobile home is 10 times greater, however, since they provide virtually no place to shelter in the event of a twister. Simmons estimates that the cost of saving a life by building a safe rooms for mobile homeswhich would most likely take the form of a collective shelter for an entire trailer parkis a comparatively economical $4.8 million. There may be some good arguments made for some form of public assistance to build community shelters in trailer parks, says Simmons.

Another place where shelters and safe rooms are important is in . Many of the children killed by the Moore tornado were huddling in the Plaza Towers Elementary School, which . On Tuesday Albert Ashwood, the top emergency management official for Oklahoma, told reporters that neither Plaza Towers nor another elementary school in the storms path, Briarwood, had safe rooms or basements for students and teachers to take refuge in.Although the state of Oklahoma mandated after the 1999 tornado that all new schools would need to have a safe room, Plaza Towers was built in 1966. We cant say for sure whether shelters and safe rooms would have saved the students who died at Plaza Towersinitial reports suggested that the children but it should be clear now that public spaces like schools or churches or even highway rest stops can andwhere crowds could ride out even the strongest twisters.

The truth is that theres only so much that can be done to protect vulnerable populations from tornadoes as powerful and as wide as one that tore through Moore. If the death toll remains at 24, the town and Oklahoma may well count itself lucky, as physically devastating as this twister was. Still, we can do more to protect ourselves from nature if we take the initiative. We will rebuild and we will regain our strength, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallinafter surveying the carnage in Moore today. The question is whether we can and will rebuild even better.

"This needs to end," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Sunday. "When a victim comes forward, they should have an advocate to walk them through the military justice system, and commanders who allow this to continue to allow this to flourish quite frankly should be fired."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the military's future includes both men and women in leadership, and cultural changes are needed "when it comes to the command structure" to make sexual assault and harassment "unacceptable, intolerable; and those who engage in it should pay a price."

But the U.S. military's top officer, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, is urging Congress to exercise caution as it crafts legislation to combat the growing epidemic of sexual assaults in the armed forces.

The extent of the assaults came to light when the Pentagon released a report earlier this month estimating that as many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year and that thousands of victims are unwilling to come forward despite new oversight and assistance programs. That figure is an increase over the 19,000 estimated assaults in 2011.

Retired Gen. John Allen, who left the Marines in February after 19 months commanding allied forces in Afghanistan, encouraged commanders to address the issue and tell subordinates exactly what was expected.

"Commanders can't be ambiguous about this. We can't not talk about that," Allen said Sunday. "Commanders (have) got to stand in front of their units and tell the people what they expect. Because silence isn't good enough. This is an opportunity to lead, and we should be seizing it."

Several recent arrests have added to the military's embarrassment. A soldier at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was charged with secretly photographing women, including in a bathroom. The Air Force officer who led the service's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit was arrested on charges of groping a woman. And the manager of the Army's sexual assault response program at Fort Campbell, Ky., was relieved of his post after his arrest in a domestic dispute with his ex-wife.

The comments from Durbin, Graham and Allen capped a week of attempts to address the Pentagon's findings. President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel raised the issue separately in graduation speeches at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

"Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime; they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong," Obama said Friday. "That's why we have to be determined to stop these crimes, because they've got no place in the greatest military on Earth."

Hagel called on the graduating West Point cadets Saturday to use their leadership to address the epidemic.

"This scourge must be stamped out," Hagel said. "We are all accountable and responsible for ensuring that this happens. We cannot fail the Army or America. We cannot fail each other, and we cannot fail the men and women that we lead."

Members of a House panel on Wednesday approved legislation that would strip commanding officers of their longstanding authority to unilaterally change or dismiss court-martial convictions in rape and assault cases. The bill would also require that service members found guilty of sexual offenses be dismissed or dishonorably discharged. The legislation will be folded into a broader defense policy bill that the full House will consider in the coming weeks.

Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has acknowledged the severity of the problem. He said recently that military leaders are losing the confidence of the women who serve that they can come up with solutions.

But Dempsey said in a May 20 letter to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee that any legislative remedies must maintain the commander's role in the military justice process. Cutting them out or limiting them too severely would undercut their authority to enforce discipline and execute their duties, he wrote.

"Good order and discipline is essential to military efficiency and effectiveness," Dempsey said in the letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. "Removing commanders from the military justice process sends the message to everyone in the military that there is a lack of faith in the officer corps and the serving commanders. Conveyance of a message that commanders cannot be trusted will only serve to undermine good order and discipline."

Dempsey and the chiefs of the military services are scheduled to testify June 4 before the Senate Armed Services Committee on legislation to prevent sexual assaults.

Sharon Disher graduated from the Naval Academy in 1980 in the first class that included women. She said Friday she's disappointed the military is still grappling with sexual assault issues but applauded the president for raising the subject.

"The more we talk about it, the more we're going to do something about it, and that's the thing we never did," she said. "I guess we've just got to keep the conversation going until we fix the problem."

Durbin and Graham spoke on "Fox News Sunday." Allen appeared on ABC's "This Week."

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Associated Press writer Richard Lardner contributed to this report.

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Follow Michele Salcedo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/michelesalcedo

That's why the fall-winter 2013-14 show saw the Belgian designer explore his usual menswear-womenswear tailoring via the frivolity of ballroom dancing, feathers and the dancing two-some Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Wednesday's show was proof again of Van Noten's mastery when it comes to the art of clashing styles.

"I started from the menswear pants, and then the opposite is ballroom dancing ... big feathers," he said backstage at Paris' grand Hotel de Ville. "Fashion is so serious, so the hints of the Fred and Ginger story were fun."

Who better to represent the Van Noten universe, where men's and women's styles merge together, than one of the most iconic and inseparable male-female couple in Hollywood history?

Ostrich feathers in midnight blue, faded gray and tea rose billowed like 1930s boas with large vivid embroideries, vintage fur alongside men's baggy pants, club stripes and Prince of Wales check.

Some of the feathered fringing floated past wistfully, only to be reined in by the humorous juxtaposition of a menswear cut.

One fantastic look said it all: a sumptuous navy feathered skirt (Ginger), and a large tuxedo shirt (Fred.)

In Van Noten's world, like in Hollywood, there's no man without the woman, no Ginger without Fred.

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Thomas Adamson can be followed at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

Crews will spend days rebuilding 2,000 feet of track, overhead wires and signals following the collision between two trains Friday evening that injured 72 people, Metro-North President Howard Permut said Sunday. Nine remained hospitalized.

"This amounts to the wholesale reconstruction of a two-track electrified railroad," he said.

Several days of around-the-clock work will be required, including inspections and testing of the newly rebuilt system, Permut said. The damaged rail cars were removed from the tracks on Sunday, the first step toward making the repairs.

Service disruptions on the New Haven line between South Norwalk and New Haven are expected to continue "well into the coming week," Permut said.

Amtrak service between New York and New Haven also was suspended, and there was no estimate on service restoration. Limited service was available between New Haven and Boston.

Jim Cameron, chairman of a commuter group, the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council, said he's asked officials in numerous towns to suspend parking rules to accommodate what could be tens of thousands of motorists driving to unaffected train stations. Twelve stations are on the route that's been shut down.

The state Department of Transportation was expected to provide details Sunday on bus service between stations on Monday. Cameron said he doubts many commuters will use three modes of transportation to get to work: driving their cars to catch a bus to get to a train station for the final leg.

Commuters will more likely rely on their cars, leading to massive traffic problems on highways that are already clogged on normal days, Cameron said. He suggested that local and regional officials post highway signs directing motorists to available parking so motorists "don't get off the highway and drive in circles looking for where to dump their cars."

About 700 people were on board the trains Friday evening when one heading east from New York City's Grand Central Terminal to New Haven derailed just outside Bridgeport. It was hit by a train heading west from New Haven.

Dan Solomon, a trauma surgeon who lives in Westport and was headed to work at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, was on the train that derailed. He said he treated several injured passengers, including a woman with severely broken ankles.

He said he was in a front car that was not as badly affected as cars in the rear of the train.

"I hardly lost my iced tea," Solomon said in an interview.

He said walls were torn off both trains and he quickly checked injured passengers to separate the most badly injured from others.

"When the EMS arrived, I was covered in everyone's blood," he said.

Investigators are looking at a broken section of rail to see if it is connected to the derailment and collision.

NTSB investigators arrived Saturday and are expected to be on site for seven to 10 days. They will look at the brakes and performance of the trains, the condition of the tracks, crew performance and train signal information, among other things.

The MTA operates the Metro-North Railroad, the second-largest commuter railroad in the nation. The Metro-North main lines the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven run northward from New York City's Grand Central Terminal into suburban New York and Connecticut.

The last significant train collision involving Metro-North occurred in 1988 when a train engineer was killed in Mount Vernon, N.Y., when one train empty of passengers rear-ended another, railroad officials said.

Approval was expected after Prime Minister Mario Monti's government won three confidence votes on Wednesday that it had called to speed up passage of the budget.

The measures will now move to the Senate for approval, which is expected before Christmas.

The Chamber of Deputies approved the plans by 372 votes against 73.

The budget, enshrined in a so-called Stability Law, is central to Monti's efforts to lower Italy's public deficit to 1.8 percent of output next year from a targeted 2.6 percent in 2012.

Monti agreed at the end of October to overhaul the first draft of the budget legislation by replacing a planned income tax cut with a reduction in payroll taxes paid by employers.

The package still includes a one percentage point rise in the highest value-added tax (VAT) rate, which will go into effect next July, bringing it to 22 percent. The lower 10 percent rate will not be increased as previously planned.

The Stability Law is expected to be one of the final pieces of major legislation approved under Monti before Italy gears up for a national election.

(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte,; Writing by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

A separate report on Friday suggested the manufacturing strength continued into December with activity hitting an eight-month high.

The data offered hope that a factory slowdown that had weighed on the economy was abating, while the drop in consumer prices provided ample scope for the Federal Reserve to continue to support the recovery.

"The inflationary backdrop remains very benign, providing the Fed with considerable breathing room to keep monetary policy accommodative," said Millan Mulraine, senior economist at TD Securities in New York.

The Fed said manufacturing output rose 1.1 percent in November, the biggest gain since December 2011 and a rebound from a 1.0 percent drop in the prior month. It said production was lifted by a sharp rise in motor vehicle output.

Separately, financial information firm Markit said its preliminary gauge of factory activity in December rose to 54.2, its highest level since April, from 52.8 in November.

Superstorm Sandy, which lashed the East Coast in late October, had weighed on overall industrial output during that month, but the snapback in November was stronger than economists had expected.

The Fed said output at the nation's factories, mines and utilities taken together jumped 1.1 percent last month after slumping 0.7 percent in October. It was the biggest gain in almost two years.

At third report from the Labor Department showed that consumer prices dropped 0.3 percent in November, the first decline in six months, as gasoline prices fell sharply.

The so-called core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, edged up 0.1 percent after rising 0.2 percent in October. Although food prices rose 0.2 percent in a lagged response to the summer drought, price pressures remain tame.

The Fed said on Wednesday it expected to hold interest rates near zero until unemployment falls to at least 6.5 percent and as long as inflation does not threaten to break above 2.5 percent and inflation expectations are contained.

"We believe that inflation is unlikely to become a valid constraint on Fed policy at least for the next year," Mulraine said.

U.S. stocks opened lower as the data failed to dispel worry on Wall Street that policymakers in Washington might fail to avoid a $600 billion "fiscal cliff" of spending cuts and tax hikes. Prices for U.S. government debt rose as traders saw the inflation data supporting an easy Fed policy.

GASOLINE COSTS DROP

In the 12 months through November, consumer prices increased 1.8 percent, the smallest gain since August and a slowdown from the 2.2 percent rise in the period through October.

Last month, gasoline prices tumbled 7.4 percent, the largest drop since December 2008, after falling 0.6 percent In October. That offset a 0.2 percent gain in food prices.

The drop in gasoline prices eased some of the strain on household budgets. The Labor Department said inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings rose 0.5 percent last month, reversing October's 0.5 percent fall.

Away from gasoline and food, the cost of apparel fell 0.6 percent after increasing 0.7 percent in October. New motor vehicle prices rose 0.2 percent after slipping 0.1 percent the prior month.

Auto prices could have been lifted by a spike in demand as people replace vehicles destroyed by Sandy in late October. Prices for used cars and trucks fell 0.5 percent, declining for a fifth straight month.

Housing costs edged up, with owners' equivalent rent rising 0.2 percent after climbing by a similar margin in October. Rents have been advancing in recent months, largely driven by a decline in homeownership.

Steady job market gains are also helping to boost demand for accommodation as some people who had moved in with family and friends during the recession seek places of their own.

In the 12 months to November, core CPI increased 1.9 percent after rising 2.0 percent in October.

(Additional reporting by Anna Yukhananov in Washington and Steven C. Johnson in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)