"Hey, Denver: You, me, now at 10:35. Let's not be weird about this," the host quipped to the camera in his Hollywood Boulevard studio.

"This will be good for us," Kimmel said earnestly in another local station promo.

The message in each spot whether "Jimmy Kimmel Live" is on at 11:35 p.m. in the East and West or earlier elsewhere is that Kimmel will be playing in the same league as veterans Jay Leno and David Letterman, starting Tuesday with guests Jennifer Aniston and No Doubt.

The message Kimmel delivered to a recent teleconference was equally concise: He won't be changing his style for the move, pushing aside conventional wisdom that edgier late-night humor won't play in Peoria or elsewhere before the clock strikes 12.

It's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," after all, that has given the world such brashly funny videos as the Matt Damon-Sarah Silverman musical romp with bleep-worthy lyrics.

"There's this idea that you need to broaden the show or make it ... more wholesome or something like that. And I think that's a little bit out-of-date, that perception," Kimmel told reporters.

"I guess only time will tell," he added, in his typically low-key delivery.

Just as with Kimmel's promised approach to the most coveted time period in late-night, ABC is taking a bold step by swapping "Nightline" with his show. The news program, offering viewers a non-talk show option, has been the period's ratings leader.

But the network likely won't be sweating the early returns, according to analyst Brad Adgate of Horizon Media. He says putting Kimmel into the pre-midnight pocket, when more viewers are still up and watching, is a strategy aimed at an inevitable future.

"Leno and Letterman aren't going to be doing this forever," Adgate said, and ABC gives him a head start on establishing himself by putting him on now.

"This is something you may scratch your head at now, but in five years from now he's the incumbent and the leader" in the time period, the analyst said.

Long-term schemes, of course, don't always pan out. Despite anointing Conan O'Brien as its new "Tonight" host five years before he made the move in 2009, NBC ended up with a mess on its hands that saw O'Brien bolt to TBS and Leno retake "Tonight" in 2010 after his short-lived prime-time series.

Whether Kimmel gets a jump on his opponents-to-be with Jimmy Fallon the expected pick for "Tonight" being the late-night ruler is a far different proposition than in Johnny Carson's day. The "Tonight" institution, operating virtually unopposed, could average a nightly audience of as much as 15 million.

That's unimaginable in today's fragmented TV world. Leno claims the top talk-show spot with some 3.5 million average viewers, followed by Letterman on CBS with 2.8 million. "Jimmy Kimmel Live" was drawing under 2 million nightly viewers at 12:05 Eastern but, according to Nielsen Co. ratings, finished up 2012 with a 10-year viewership high.

The demographics also have changed, with more advertiser-favored young viewers gravitating to cable options such as Adult Swim or Comedy Central and increasingly likely to catch up online with the best moments of network late-night.

But the 11:35 p.m. East-West sweet spot remains the prize, and Kimmel may have more than the desire to succeed in mind. While he's a long-time admirer of Letterman, he's taken sharp public jabs at Leno, including blaming him for O'Brien's ill-fated tenure at "Tonight."

So Kimmel is humble about competing directly with Letterman (calling him a "legend in broadcasting" who shouldn't bat an eye at the prospect of new competition) but is throwing elbows at Leno, especially over the "Tonight" plan to get out ahead of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" by airing at 11:34 p.m. Eastern.

"Well, I think NBC has had a lot of success moving Jay Leno earlier so it makes perfect sense," he said, dryly, referring to Leno's short-lived prime-time stint. Kimmel dismissed the time-shifting as likely a brief "trick" to protect "Tonight" ratings, one that ultimately won't matter.

"This really isn't about the first month or about the first week or about the first night, it's a long-term thing," Kimmel told reporters. "If we do well the first week, I'm sure there will be a lot of press given to that. But what really matters is how you do in May, and that's when we'll really know ... where we stand."

___

Online:

http://abc.go.com/

The response: With "Where Are We Now?" Bowie may have mounted "the most surprising, perfect, and welcome comeback in rock history," . The new song is "a beautiful, elegiac ballad," . "Bowie's voice sounds gorgeously fragile not the fragility of someone nearing 70 who's lost their vocal power to the ravages of ages, but the fragility of someone who wants to communicate an aching wistfulness." After so much time wondering if we'll ever hear from Bowie again, this "gently affecting work of understated melancholy, framed by resonant piano-and-guitar treatments," is the perfect reminder of why we missed him so much in the first place, .

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Housing has been one of Kenya's fastest growing sectors over the last decade, fuelled by a burgeoning middle class with higher disposable incomes. Returns on investments in the sector have easily outpaced those of equities and government securities.

HassConsult, a real estate firm which publishes the only regular property price index in the country, said a reduction in lending rates by commercial banks was expected to spur further growth of the property market and help support an upward movement of house prices.

"The week that the central bank dropped the rates, activity peaked up (September)," said Sakina Hassanali, marketing manager at HassConsult.

"Confidence in the property market has come back ... If the last six weeks are any clue, then the coming (quarter), so long as mortgages continue going down, we are in a better place than we were six months ago."

The central bank has cut its benchmark rate twice since July by a total of 500 basis points to 13 percent, having raised the rate to 18 percent last year to fight double-digit inflation and stabilise the shilling.

Inflation fell to 5.32 percent in September from 6.09 percent previously, having peaked at 20 percent late last year, while the shilling has largely oscillated at 85 to the dollar this year, from a record low of 107 in October last year.

The lending rates in commercial banks have dropped to about 19 percent, from as high as 30 percent earlier in the year, easing the cost of funding for both house developers and buyers.

"Even the psychological satisfaction of (investors) knowing that the rates are coming down, makes (investors) make that buying decision instantly," said Caroline Kariuki, the managing director of The Mortgage Company.

The east African nation of 40 million people has a massive housing shortage with annual demand at 250,000 units per year against a supply of 60,000 units, a World Bank study showed.

Kariuki said a steady rise of diaspora remittances to a record high of $891.1 million in 2011, had boosted development of the real estate sector, while China was singled out as one of the top foreign investors in east Africa's biggest economy.

"... We have seen (Chinese investors) getting financing at very cheap rates for their projects, so you will find that they have became significant players in Kenya," said Kariuki.

China is one of the main players in the construction of Kenya's infrastructure such as roads.

The daredevil Austrian not only became the first man to shatter the sound barrier without traveling in a jet or spacecraft, he also made the highest jump ever a tumbling, death-defying plunge from a gossamer balloon floating in the stratosphere before landing safely Sunday in the New Mexico desert.

But the pride felt here in the man known as "Fearless Felix" goes beyond reminding the world that Austria is not Australia. It also resonates on a deeper level in a country whose positive achievements have often been overshadowed by its association with Adolf Hitler.

This nation of less than 9 million people gave birth to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler and Sigmund Freud as well as scores of other Austrians who have left huge footprints across the centuries in music, politics, art and science. Its Alpine lakes and mountain peaks are immortalized in "The Sound of Music," and its famed contemporary human exports include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hollywood chef Wolfgang Puck.

But Austria is also frequently invoked as the birthplace of the Nazi dictator and more recently as the home of Josef Fritzl, the man sentenced three years ago to life in prison for locking his daughter in a basement dungeon for 25 years and fathering her seven children.

Foreign media commentaries back then argued that there must be something inherently evil in a nation that can produce both Hitler and Fritzl, prompting the government to declare that Fritzl's crimes were an "isolated case" that the country could not be held hostage to.

With such associations weighing heavily on their minds, many Austrians were happy Monday for a new local hero swelling the ranks of the nation's good guys.

Vienna resident Mahir Dizdarevic described Baumgartner's stratospheric stunt as "good PR for Austria," adding with a laugh: "Let's hope we won't get mistaken for Australia anymore."

Peter Portugal, a fellow Viennese, also expressed his nation's pride. "He's Austrian, and I'm insanely happy that an Austrian did that," he said. "After all, he broke some records - and they will last for his entire life, my life and Austria's life."

Austria's president and chancellor sent their congratulations and Schwarzenegger tweeted his. Facebook users gleefully suggested that the stratosphere be renamed Baumgartner Heights now the name of a Vienna street.

Almost 3 million people more than a third of all Austrians watched the jump live on TV. It was front-page news on all the dailies, and even hard-bitten newspaper columnists broke with days of questioning the sense of the endeavor, especially whether the reported 50 million euros (nearly $65 million) spent on it could have been better used.

"We need people like Felix Baumgartner, who dare to transcend our boundaries so that we all can look over our own tiny horizons," wrote Wolfgang Fellner, publisher of the mass-circulation daily "Oesterreich."

_____

AP video journalist Philipp Jenne contributed.

The Canadian currency notched its biggest one-day gain since October 17 after U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday approved a plan to prevent huge tax increases and delay spending cuts that were due to kick in this month.

The deal also was followed by price jumps in gold, oil and stocks.But attention quickly turned to issues left unresolved by the fiscal deal, such as the need to increase the U.S. debt limit.

"They got past one hurdle but they're basically just halfway there," said Greg Moore, foreign exchange strategist at TD Securities. "While it does relieve a bit of short-term uncertainty ... there is still certainly potential for risk aversion to creep back in the coming months."

The Canadian dollar closed at C$0.9852 to the greenback, or $1.0150. It had ended 2012 near C$0.9925, or $1.0076, at 4 p.m. Eastern (2100 GMT) on Monday, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The currency reached C$0.9836, its strongest level against the greenback since December 18. It hit an almost nine-month high against the slumping Japanese yen, touching 88.62 yen at one point.

While a deal was widely expected by investors, most placed significant weight on a risk that no deal would be done in time.

"It wasn't perceived as a done deal that the issue would be resolved, although that was everyone's median case," said Adam Cole, global head of foreign exchange strategy at Royal Bank of Canada.

"It's the removal of that 20 to 30 percent probability (of no deal) the market was priced for that's resulted in the price move," he said.

Beyond the immediate boost to assets considered more risky, such as the Canadian dollar, Cole said the deal would also shine a more positive light on upcoming economic data, including employment numbers due out on Friday.

"Markets will be prepared to take soft numbers and look through them to the extent that they will be seen as having been distorted by the imminence of the fiscal cliff," he said.

Decent but not dazzling U.S. manufacturing data barely moved the currency on Wednesday, while the euro was hurt versus the Canadian dollar after data showed euro zone factories sank deeper into recession in December.

TD's Moore said the Canadian currency could weaken to C$1.03 versus the greenback in the first quarter due to the ongoing U.S. political uncertainty and signs of weakness in the domestic economy, but expects a slow comeback through the rest of year to end 2013 around C$0.98.

Canadian government debt yields were higher across the curve, with the two-year bond off 5 Canadian cents to yield 1.167 percent, while the benchmark 10-year bond fell 60 Canadian cents to yield 1.870 percent.

(Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

The remarks by Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon suggested cautious optimism at prospects for an international resolution to the decade-old standoff with Tehran, though Israel says it remains ready to attack its arch-foe alone as a last resort.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set out a mid-2013 "red line" for tackling Iran's uranium enrichment project. The West says this program is aimed at developing the means to build atomic bombs. Tehran denies this, saying it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful civilian uses.

Yaalon told Army Radio on Tuesday that Israel knew there would be no movement on the issue before the U.S. election in November, but had expected a renewed effort after the vote.

"And indeed it has been renewed," he said.

He cited contacts among the six world powers - the United States, Russia, France, China, Britain and Germany - and Iran about holding new nuclear negotiations, ongoing sanctions against Iran, "and preparations, mainly American for now, for the possibility that military force will have to be used".

Yaalon did not elaborate. Another Israeli official told Reuters the minister was alluding mainly to recent U.S. military mobilization in the Gulf.

The powers said last week they hoped soon to agree with Iran soon on when and where to meet. There have been suggestions it could happen this month, though January now seems more likely.

But, sounding defiant, Iran's top nuclear official was on Tuesday quoted as saying there would be no halt to uranium enrichment to 20 percent fissile purity - an advanced threshold alarming foreign negotiators.

ZONE OF IMMUNITY

A former armed forces chief who belongs to Netanyahu's rightist Likud party, Yaalon questioned Obama's resolve on Iran during the Democratic president's first term. By contrast, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, the lone centrist in Netanyahu's coalition government, argued in Obama's favor.

Yaalon is a frontrunner to succeed Barak, who has announced he will retire from politics after Israel's January 22 election.

On Monday, Barak reiterated Israel's determination to deny Iran the capability to make a bomb. Israel, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a mortal threat.

The prospect of unilateral Israeli air strikes, and ensuing retaliation by Iran, a big oil exporter, and its Islamist guerrilla allies in Lebanon and Gaza, worries world powers, in part because it could destabilize a fragile global economy.

Speaking to Jewish leaders in New York, Barak acknowledged the limitations of Israeli forces against Iran's distant, dispersed and well-defended nuclear facilities.

"The Iranians are deliberately trying to create a level of redundancy and protection for their program, what we call the zone of immunity'. Once they enter the zone of immunity, fate will be out of our hands," Barak said.

"The state of Israel was founded precisely so that our fate would remain in our own hands."

Barak's term "redundancy" refers to Israel's belief that Iran seeks to stockpile raw uranium and enrichment centrifuges on a scale that would allow it to restore independent nuclear capacity should its known facilities be attacked.

Iran's nuclear infrastructure has been dogged by sabotage, including cyberwarfare. Iran's Ministry of Communications and Technology Information said on Sunday it had identified a "new, targeted data-wiping malware". The ministry's statement did not say what computer systems might have been affected.

While Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility for such incidents, Yaalon said there could be more in store, in parallel to global economic pressure.

"Sometimes malfunctions happen there - worms, viruses, explosions. Therefore this schedule is not necessarily chronological. It is more technological," he told Army Radio.

"We are, without a doubt, closely tracking developments in the program there, lest they attempt to pass the red line."

(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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In its statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) endorsed calls from a World Health Organization (WHO) committee that the preservative, thimerosal, not be considered a hazardous source of mercury that could be banned by the United Nations.

Back in 1999, a concern that kids receiving multiple shots containing thimerosal might get too much mercury - and develop autism or other neurodevelopmental problems as a result - led the AAP to call for its removal, despite the lack of hard evidence at the time.

"It was absolutely a matter of precaution because of the absence of more information," said Dr. Louis Cooper, from Columbia University in New York, who was on the organization's board of directors at the time.

"Subsequently an awful lot of effort has been put into trying to sort out whether thimerosal causes any harm to kids, and the bottom line is basically, it doesn't look as if it does," Cooper, who wrote a commentary published with the AAP's statement, told Reuters Health.

In a 2004 safety review, for example, the independent U.S. Institute of Medicine concluded there was no evidence thimerosal-containing vaccines could cause autism. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came to the same conclusion in 2010.

With the exception of some types of flu shots, the compound is not used in vaccines in the United States, which are distributed in single-dose vials.

And nobody is arguing that should change, according to Dr. Walter Orenstein, a member of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases and a researcher at the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta.

But in countries with fewer resources - where many children still die of vaccine-preventable diseases - it's cheaper and easier to use multi-dose vials of vaccines against diphtheria and tetanus, for example.

Thimerosal prevents the rest of a multi-dose vial from getting contaminated with bacteria or fungi each time a dose is used.

Researchers estimated it could cost anywhere from two to five times as much to manufacture vaccines for developing countries without thimerosal, and both transporting vaccines and keeping them refrigerated would be much harder as well.

"If we had to take the thimerosal out of those multi-dose vials, we're having a hard time completing the task of getting every kid immunized now, that would add a tremendous burden," Cooper said - and more children would probably die as a result.

"Children who can now be protected from these life-threatening diseases could become vulnerable," Orenstein told Reuters Health.

The new statement is published in the AAP's journal Pediatrics.

Thimerosal contains a type of mercury called ethyl mercury. Toxic effects have been tied to its cousin, methyl mercury, which stays in the body for much longer.

Earlier this year, the WHO said replacing thimerosal with an alternative preservative could affect vaccine safety and might cause some vaccines to become unavailable.

Mercury, however, is still on the list of global health hazards to be banned in a draft treaty from the United Nations Environment Program - which would mean a ban on thimerosal.

Reducing mercury exposure "is a wonderful thing," Orenstein said.

However, "We need this exception because thimerosal is so vital for protecting children."

He said keeping thimerosal in vaccines is essential mostly for humanitarian reasons - although preventing childhood diseases in the developing world could also help the U.S. because other countries can serve as reservoirs for illness.

"For American parents, this is more looking at the world and our role and responsibility in protecting the children of the world than it is a direct impact," Orenstein said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online December 17, 2012.

Analysts had expected a 0.1 percent rise in the new housing price index.

Prices for new homes in the Toronto-Oshawa metropolitan region, which accounts for 26.6 percent of the entire Canadian market, rose by 0.3 percent in the month and were up 4.9 percent on the year.

The second highest year-on-year increase was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where prices climbed 3.9 percent in the period.

Overall, new housing prices rose in eight of the metropolitan areas surveyed in October, were unchanged in eleven and down in two areas.

Prices in October increased by 2.4 percent from October 2011.

The Canadian government, which imposed tighter mortgage rules in July, and the Bank of Canada have long expressed concerns the housing market might overheat. Ottawa says it is too soon to judge the full effect of the new rules.

The new housing price index excludes condominiums, which the government says are a particular cause for concern.

(Reporting by Louise Egan and Alex Paterson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)