BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Brussels and Washington are the two great lobbying capitals of the world, where campaigners talk themselves hoarse trying to shift the political dial.

Some of them have had the fortune to recruit British director and screenwriter Richard Curtis, whose powers of persuasion move hearts as well as minds.

Known for his romantic comedies, such as "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting Hill", Curtis has turned his hand to a didactic tragedy - "Mary and Martha" - being screened across the globe to coincide with world malaria day on April 25.

"You could take a simple story and take it straight into the heart of politics," he told a Brussels audience of lobbyists, politicians and representatives of the European Commission.

"Mary and Martha" tells the story of two mothers, one American (played by Hilary Swank), one British (played by Brenda Blethyn), who lose their sons to malaria then lobby Washington politicians to try to prevent other mothers losing their children too.

For the developed world, theirs is an exceptional tragedy. In Africa, death from malaria is a daily occurrence. The continent accounts for the vast majority of the well over half a million annual deaths from a preventable and treatable disease.

Curtis, who wrote the screenplay, is appalled that a quirk of geography can be so unjust.

"If 650,000 children in Europe were going to die this year of one disease - if it were only 6,000 - everything would be stopped to do something," he said. "I can't understand why this tiny bit of geography should make it not matter."

Brussels says it is listening.

European Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs met Curtis and said the European Commission would honor a pledge of 330 million euros ($430 million) for the Global Fund, set up by world leaders to tackle malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis.

But after the current funding period, 2011-2013, there might be "a lower budget than expected", Piebalgs said in a speech.

Over the coming weeks, EU member states and parliament are likely to freeze development spending - meaning a real-term cut - when they sign off on a seven-year financing plan for 2014-20 agreed after lengthy and difficult talks.

Curtis has a long track record in combining worthy causes with making people laugh. He helped to found British charity Comic Relief, set up in response to famine in Ethiopia in 1985.

Comic Relief, uses humor to raise funds to tackle poverty and social injustice and Curtis told his Brussels audience his foray into tragic script-writing did not mean he had given up on comedy.

"I have been getting more reflective as I get older, but I hope I have a couple of jokes in me too," he said.

($1 = 0.7674 euros)

(Additional reporting by Charlie Dunmore, editing by Paul Casciato)

Hare investors try to sprint to the finish line of a comfortable retirement without girding their portfolios against the perils of frequent ups and downs in asset value. So they tend to lag far behind tortoise investors, who take these precautions, which I'll explain in a moment.

Volatility reflects uncertainty, and markets tend to punish uncertainty with lower prices. Yet just because an investment is volatile doesn't mean it has no place in your portfolio. Because they may be less likely to go down with other assets in the portfolio, volatile investments may add highly beneficial variety, known as .

Let's say you own tech stocks like Apple and IBM. Adding more tech stocks to your portfolio doesn't decrease overall risk, so you add a gold-mining stock instead. Though highly volatile in itself, the gold-mining stock is less likely to go up or down with tech stocks, so it increases the portfolio's diversification.

Because there's little correlation between gold-mining stocks' price movements with those of tech stocks, these categories are said to have a low correlation.That sounds complicated, but you can easily look up theto see whether they're correlated, and if so, how closely.

Aware of the downsides of volatility, tortoises avoid it by assembling highly diversified portfolios. That means traditional investments such as U.S. stocks and bonds, mixed with a dash ofThese may include emerging market stocks, Treasury bonds and real estate securities.The price movements of these investments have a history of not being highly correlated with U.S. stocks or bonds.

Tortoises are like a savvy retailer on a tropical resort island who wisely sells umbrellas as well as sunscreen to help cover losses during rainy periods. Every once in while, the rain falls on everything -- which is what happened in late 2008, much to the dismay of investors. In the financial meltdown, stocks, bonds and real estate both in the US and abroad swooned, leaving little quarter for investors.

Tortoise-style investors add a touch of alternative investments, knowing this may cut their overall returns some years, but they'll sleep more peacefully with the knowledge that it can counter-balance heavy losses in traditional investments.

Hares aren't focused on this balanced approach. Instead, they assemble highly aggressive portfolios of assets that tend to rise or fall in lockstep. They're not concerned with cutting their losses because, compelled by greed, they're not planning to have any losses ior they believe they can defy gravity.This was not unlike the employees who loaded up on their company's shares before the recession, only to see their investment go south along with their job.

Like the Aesop's hare, hare investors are overconfident and turn a blind eye to the ravages of volatility, which take a long time to recover from.Tortoises, having sustained less damage, continue their slow but steady progress.

The math of recovering from hits may astonish you. Let's say your portfolio loses 33 percent of its value, leaving you with two thirds of what you had. Many believe they'd be back where they started if they gain 33 percent. But this gain wouldn't restore their losses. They would actually need to make a 50 percent gain to get back to where they started. The reason is that the gain is based on a lower value than what you started with.

Heavy gains followed by just a large losses from volatile investments is comparable to the hare in Aesop's fable sprinting for periods and then, winded, lying down to take a nap. Like the tortoise, investors with adequately diversified portfolios don't tend to need as much recovery time.

Such losses are even more damaging than they appear at first blush. Not only do hare portfolios lose time that could be used to make progress toward the goal, but they also miss out on the . Though tortoises' gains may be far lower than those made by hares during their sprints, they're more likely to enjoy the benefits of compounding.

These awkward reptiles plod steadily toward the finish line while the halting progress of hares leaves them far behind.

Ted Schwartz, a Certified Financial Planner, is president and chief investment officer of Capstone Investment Financial Group http://capstoneinvest.net. He advises individual investors and endowments, and serves as the advisor to CIFG Funds. Because Schwartz has a background in psychology and counseling, he brings insights into personal motivation when advising clients on achieving their wealth management goals. Schwartz holds a B.A. from Duke University and an M.A. from Oregon State University. He can be reached at ted@capstoneinvest.com.

Instead of paintbrushes, she uses $10 million jet engines from a Learjet to hurl blues and purples with a force that creates intense power and heat.

"The timing of the velocity and the heat and the paint and so many other conditions is what creates art," she told The Associated Press on Tuesday from a tarmac in West Palm Beach.

Von Anhalt began creating such one-of-a-kind and pricey artwork in 2006 after studying the work of her mentor and late husband, Prinz Jurgen von Anhalt of Germany, who is credited with creating this type of artwork about three decades ago.

In a tight black Lara Croft-inspired pant suit, Princess von Anhalt grabs plastic bottles and jars of paint as she slowly makes her way across the tarmac to the blank canvas as planes take off nearby. With a small jet parked about two car-lengths away, she stands close enough to the canvas to touch it.

Von Anhalt then raises her empty hand to motion for the pilot to speed up the engine, and the splattering begins.

Hurled into the air at a ferocious velocity, paint collides with canvas and slowly drips in different directions in Florida's humidity.

The power of the engine and the heat of the creative process, Von Anhalt said, are addictive.

"When I'm in the midst of the creation, I don't think of the force," she said. "I don't think of the danger. I don't think of the heat. I'm caught up in the moment. It's addicting and you don't want to stop."

Flexjet, a private jet services company, partnered with the Jet Art Group to create different artworks to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Learjet.

Von Anhalt has created about three dozen pieces so far, but declined to say how much her paintings go for.

"It's a passion like a hurricane, like a tornado," she said. "And the more that the color gets laid down, the more I can see and predict what the painting is going to be." Other times, she admitted, she is surprised to see which direction the paint goes in the wind. "That's the emotion. It's an addiction. And how do you describe that? It's better than anything else."

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Follow Suzette Laboy on Twitter: (at)SuzetteLaboy

NBC and Notre Dame said the extension would begin in 2016 and run through the 2025 season. Terms were not disclosed, though the current five-year contract is reportedly worth an average of $15 million annually.

NBC will have global media rights on all platforms to a minimum of seven Notre Dame home football games each year, with most airing on NBC. The deal also allows for games to be carried on the NBC Sports Network cable channel.

NBC has held Notre Dame football TV rights since 1991.

"Coming off one of Notre Dame's best and most dramatic seasons in decades, we could not be more proud to extend this historic partnership, which continues to be one of the most innovative in sports-media history," NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus said. "We are particularly excited that this extension offers enhanced rights that allow us to bring Notre Dame football to fans on more platforms than ever before."

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the addition of the NBC Sports Network will allow for greater exposure for the football team and other Notre Dame sports programs.

"We look forward to collaborating on additional projects and distribution strategies in seasons to come," Swarbrick said in a statement.

David Bank, a New York-based equity research analyst who specializes in sports rights fees for RBC Capital Markets, said the new contract probably will generate "meaningfully more" revenue for Notre Dame than the previous deal. He said he couldn't estimate how much more.

College sports TV rights fees have been going up and will continue to do so with the start of the Fox Sports 1 cable network in August, Bank said. He said he wasn't surprised at the announcement of the NBC-Notre Dame extension.

"Fox Sports 1 has NBC Sports playing defense," Bank said. "It's imperative to lock down content that is left."

Notre Dame's football team finished the regular season 12-0 last season and lost to Alabama in the BCS championship game.According to NBC Sports Group, the Irish averaged 4.4 million viewers and a 2.8 household rating for its seven games on NBC in 2012. That marked a 69 percent increase in viewers and 67 percent increase in household rating compared with 2011.

Notre Dame plans to continue using revenue from the contract to fund the school's financial-aid endowment for the general student body, not including athletes. The school said that since 1991, about 6,300 undergraduates have received nearly $80 million in aid from revenue generated through the NBC contract.

Notre Dame also uses NBC revenues to endow doctoral fellowships in its graduate school and MBA scholarships in its Mendoza College of Business.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - More parents of teen girls not fully vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) are intending to forgo the shots altogether - a trend driven by vaccine safety concerns, new research suggests.

That's despite multiple studies showing the vaccine isn't tied to any serious side effects but does protect against the virus that causes cervical cancer, researchers said.

"There were a lot of very sensationalized anecdotal reports of (girls) having bad reactions to the vaccine," said pediatrician and vaccine researcher Dr. Amanda Dempsey from the University of Colorado Denver.

"Safety concerns have always risen to the top of the pile, in terms of being one of the main reasons people don't get vaccinated, which is unfortunate because this is one of the most well-studied vaccines in terms of safety and is extremely safe," Dempsey, who wasn't involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all kids - both boys and girls - receive three HPV shots as preteens.

Researchers led by Dr. Paul Darden from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City got their data from a national immunization survey that involved phone calls to almost 100,000 parents.

They found that from 2008 to 2010, the percentage of teens who were up to date on their Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), MCV4 (meningococcal) and HPV vaccines all increased slightly.

Still, about three-quarters of girls ages 13 to 17 were not up to date on their HPV series in 2010. And the proportion of parents of those girls who said they didn't plan to get their daughters the rest - or any - of their HPV shots rose from 40 percent to 44 percent, the research team wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

At the same time, the proportion who cited safety concerns as their reason for abstaining from getting the HPV vaccine increased from less than five percent to 16 percent.

For all three vaccines asked about in the survey, other reasons parents gave for skipping their teenagers' shots included not thinking they were necessary, not having had a specific vaccine recommended by a doctor and, for the HPV vaccine, believing their child was not sexually active.

"These are wonderful vaccines preventing severe diseases," Darden told Reuters Health in an email. "HPV is the first vaccine that will prevent cancer which is a tremendous health benefit."

Dempsey said past research has suggested that although more girls are being vaccinated against HPV, vaccine rates haven't increased as quickly as for other shots, such as Tdap.

Darden reports having been a consultant for Pfizer, and one of his co-authors is on a safety monitoring board for vaccine studies funded by Merck, which makes Gardasil, one of the HPV vaccines.

Parents shouldn't rely on the media or Internet to learn about vaccines, according to Dempsey, since it's hard to tell what information is legitimate.

"If they have questions or concerns, they should trust their provider to give them accurate information about the vaccine," she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online March 18, 2013.

The FA wants Suarez suspended for more than the standard three matches for sinking his teeth into an arm of Chelsea defender Bransilav Ivanovic during a Premier League match on Sunday.

Suarez's punishment will be decided Wednesday, the FA said.

He apologized to Ivanovic after the match, received a fine from Liverpool and was rebuked by the government on Monday.

It's not Suarez's first offense for biting an opponent. In November 2010, he was banned for seven matches for biting a PSV Eindhoven player in the Dutch league, earning the nickname "Cannibal of Ajax."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Thursday and the S&P 500 closed below a key technical level after disappointing forecasts from eBayand other companies, casting doubt on the market's recent strength.

The S&P 500 ended below its 50-day moving average of 1,543.04 for the first time this year, giving more weight to views that the market's recent rally is losing momentum, particularly after two days of sharp declines earlier this week.

The Nasdaq 100and the Russell 2000indexes both have closed below their 50-day averages this week, adding to the overall technical pressure on the market.

Technology led the day's fall. Shares of eBaydropped 5.9 percent to $52.82, a day after the e-commerce company posted results and gave a disappointing earnings forecast for the second quarter. The S&P technology sector indexshed 1.4 percent.

Appleshares extended their slide from Wednesday, when the stock broke below $400 on an intraday basis for the first time since December 2011. The stock tumbled 2.7 percent to $392.05 on Thursday.

The CBOE Volatility Index , Wall Street's fear index, gained 6.4 percent to 17.56. The VIX is up roughly 46 percent for the week so far. It still remains well below its recent highs, but the gains could signal a change in the market trend.

"There's definitely technical damage," said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston. "I think that the period we had that had volatility tamped way down has likely ended."

Stocks have rallied for much of the year on views that the U.S. economy is strengthening and the Federal Reserve will keep its economic stimulus in place.

More recent data on the economy has been less upbeat. On Wednesday, reports showed factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region cooled in April and the index of leading indicators, a gauge of future U.S. economic activity, fell in March for the first time in seven months.

The Dow Jones industrial averageslid 81.45 points, or 0.56 percent, to end at 14,537.14. The Standard & Poor's 500 Indexdropped 10.40 points, or 0.67 percent, to 1,541.61. The Nasdaq Composite Indexfell 38.31 points, or 1.20 percent, to close at 3,166.36.

After the bell, a number of high-profile tech companies reported results, including International Business Machines , whose shares fell 3.5 percent to $200.01 after its earnings missed analysts' expectations.

Googleshares rose 0.7 percent to $770.97 after the bell following the release of its results, while shares of Microsoftshot up 2.2 percent to $29.43 after its results.

During Thursday's regular session, volume was roughly 7.05 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT. In comparison, the average daily closing volume is about 6.36 billion this year.

Decliners beat advancers by about 16 to 13 on the NYSE and by about 5 to 3 on Nasdaq.

Volume has been heavier on negative days this week, as many investors have anticipated a pullback for some time after stocks' strong run to start the year, and moved quickly to book profits.

The S&P 500's moving average was also the floor of the trading range during the last month, making 1,543 a key technical support, according to Richard Ross, global technical strategist at Auerbach Grayson in New York.

Ross and others noted that the S&P 500 has posted negative second quarters in the last three years.

The S&P 500's healthcare sector also experienced big declines, with UnitedHealth Group Incdown 3.8 percent at $59.69, after the insurer lowered its 2013 revenue outlook.

Other decliners included Morgan Stanley , whose shares dropped 5.4 percent to $20.31 after the bank reported revenue from fixed-income and commodities trading fell sharply from a year earlier. Shares of Bank of America , which posted disappointing results on Wednesday, fell 2.2 percent to $11.44 on Thursday.

S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 1.9 percent in the first quarter, up from the 1.5 percent estimate at the start of the month, based on actual results from 82 companies and estimates for the rest, according to Thomson Reuters data as of Thursday morning.

Of companies that have reported, 72 percent have topped analysts' expectations, but only 43.9 percent have beaten revenue forecasts.

(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry, Nick Zieminski and Jan Paschal)