Major & Small Home Appliances

We have furthered our commitment to intelligent and eco-friendly home appliances with the introduction of the NH-P80S1 dryer and two new washers, the NA-140VZ4 and NA-140VS4, which all feature the very latest Steam Action technology. Alongside these laundry products, and building on half a century of experience in microwave oven engineering, a new compact combination microwave, the NN-DF383B is being announced.

Our customers can also look forward to two new additions to the Milano Design Series, the ES-ST25 Men’s shaver and ER-GS60 Cordless Hair Trimmer and for the ladies two new epilator ranges, the entry level ES-EU and the more advanced ES-ED range.

LUMIX

Our full line-up of LUMIX cameras, featuring a brand new set of compact digital cameras as well as the popular LUMIX G system cameras, will also be displayed. The compact camera highlights include the recently announced LUMIX TZ40, LUMIX FT5 and the ultra slim and stylish, LUMIX XS1.

The 2013 line-up of LUMIX compact cameras, showcases the optimum combination of picture quality, intelligent functionality, and stunning design to allow photographers of all levels to capture the perfect moment. The line-up also features new connectivity options, including in-built Wi-Fi and NFC technologies, to provide the widest range of remote shooting options, remote viewing and instant sharing on social networks.

The 19-Year-old Singer Justin Bieber is Not A Bad Boy

Justin Bieber's grandparents want him to make amends to his fans with a free concert.

The 19-year-old singer's recent time in the UK has been marred by a public meltdown which included turning up two hours late for a show at London's O2 Arena and trying to attack a photographer.

While his grandmother Kathy, 56, doesn't believe he is a “bad boy” she does feel he has fallen in with the wrong crowd and needs to make it up to his fans in a big way.

She told the Daily Star Sunday newspaper: “I don't think for one moment this is all about him being a bad boy. He's only just turned 19 and he's still learning to cope with the pressures of fame.

“But it's worrying. You read all sorts of things about him partying and he needs to understand some of those so-called friends probably don't have his best interests at heart.

“I know he will be feeling depressed about the way things have gone in London, so maybe it would be a good idea if he were to go back there later and perform free for the fans who feel let down by him.”

Meanwhile, the Sunday People newspaper has reported his meltdown is because of his split from Selena Gomez in January after around two years together.

A source told the publication: “He simply hasn't been the same since he split from Selena. It really broke him.

“They were together for such a long time for two people so young. He hasn't quite known what to do without her.

“He is lonely. They kept each other very grounded and understood the level of fame that they both had. Now his friends know he needs their support more than ever.”

Cantor Zé Ramalho passa por cirurgia no coração

O músico está internado desde a segunda-feira no Hospital Samaritano, no Rio, mas a família só autorizou a divulgação de informações no fim desta quinta-feira

O cantor Zé Ramalho, de 63 anos, passou por uma cirurgia no coração na terça-feira, no Hospital Samaritano, no Rio de Janeiro. Ele está internado desde segunda-feira, quando chegou ao local com quadro de angina, uma dor ou desconforto no peito que acontece quando os músculos cardíacos não recebem sangue suficiente, mas a família só autorizou o hospital a divulgar as informações no final desta quinta-feira.

De acordo com o boletim médico, o cantor foi submetido a um cateterismo e passou por exames que apontaram a necessidade de cirurgia -- ele, então, sofreu uma revascularização do miocárdio.

O estado do cantor é estável, mas inspira cuidados. Ele respira sem a ajuda de aparelhos e não há previsão de alta.

Robert Downey Jr. Talks Playing 'Iron Man'

With two solo movies and a worldwide smash team-up flick under his belt as the armored Avenger, you’d think Robert Downey Jr. would have the whole being a superhero thing down pat. But even while shooting this summer’s “Iron Man 3,” there was still one part of the process that tested his endurance and his patience.

That would be the claustrophobia.

See, when Tony Stark is inside his armored suit, you don’t see his face behind his mask. So filmmakers invented the HUD (Heads-Up Display) view. That’s when the camera goes inside the suit, so you can see Downey’s face with all of Tony's high-tech graphics floating around him.

It’s a great solution to a sticky problem, and when you’re watching an action scene in the movies you take it as a given that the close-ups you see of Downey are happening at the same time Iron Man zooms through the skies. But that’s not the case. And Downey said creating the illusion is one of the toughest parts of the job. (You read that right: perhaps for the first time ever, an A-list, world-renown movie star feels he has too many close-ups.)

I asked Downey how many days he spent filming the HUD shots during his four films as Iron Man. His sarcastic reply? “Not enough for my tastes.”

When asked if the process--which involves him alone in front of a blank background with a camera in his face--got easier, he said, “No, it didn’t,” and went on to explain why it was so tough for him.

Downey compared it to the process of recording voice-overs for commercials, a job he said he loves, “but you wouldn't know from my disposition every time I have to go in and work, because it's like irritation therapy.” As an actor, Downey thrives on interacting with his costars and being physical, and filming the HUD shots requires him being isolated and immobile.

“When you do the HUD work, usually it's kind of the last thing in the schedule,” Downey said. “And you're going back and essentially living the movie again in close-up, tired.”

Basically, Downey has to relive all of the action scenes in the movie they already shot and deliver the same level of intensity even though he’s standing still and there’s nothing for him to actually react to. That includes performing some of his most emotional scenes, like in “The Avengers” when he is unable to contact Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) while he is flying to what he believes will be his death.

Still, Downey did admit that going back to shoot the HUD segments at the end of production gives the team the ability to refine and improve scenes. “We had the luxury of being efficient enough to sometimes say, ‘Stop, stop. Wait a second. Let's not just shoot these next 20 lines. Let's look at the scene and how can we make it a little better or different.’”

Downey did say that it has gotten easier over time to actually wear the physical Iron Man suit. He said the version he wears in the new movie is “lighter; it's more flexible.” Still, he made sure to clarify that “easier” was not the same thing as “easy.” He joked, “There is no comfortable version of it, so it's kind of like, ‘Hey, don’t you think these bamboo shoots are actually a little less rough on the cuticle until they get down to the nerve?’”

You’ll get to see how all of Downey’s hard work and irritation paid off when the final trailer for “Iron Man 3” lands tomorrow, March 5, at noon ET/9 a.m. PT exclusively here on Yahoo! Movies.

4 Myths About The Spending Cuts

The political bickering over the automatic spending cuts has done little but cloud the public's understanding of what's going on and why.

So we'll try to set the record straight on at least a few oft-repeated misconceptions.

Myth 1 - Obama is to blame for the spending cuts: No. In fact, both sides got behind the idea and time has been wasted playing the blame game.

The so-called sequester was part of the deal to resolve the ugly debt ceiling fight that had dominated Washington for months in 2011.

The idea to include the measure first came from the administration, according to Bob Woodward's book The Price of Politics. But both chambers of Congress agreed to it by passing the Budget Control Act in August 2011, and President Obama signed it into law.

Since then neither party has made a serious effort to meaningfully negotiate a sequester replacement with their colleagues across the aisle.

Myth 2 - The world will be noticeably different right away: It really won't.

The sequestration order started the ball rolling on the across-the-board cuts federal agencies must make.

But it will take a little while for those cuts to be executed. And once they are -- assuming Congress does nothing to override them -- the ramifications will be felt over months, not a few weeks.

For instance, hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be furloughed -- but the duration and timing of those furloughs will vary. Some will start in April. Others over the summer.

And general public awareness of the cuts is likely to be delayed and uneven, since not everyone will be directly or even indirectly affected by every cut.

Myth 3 - It's not hard to cut $85 billion: That would be a fair point to make if the $85 billion were really being pulled from funding across all parts of the $3.5 trillion federal budget.

And it would be an even fairer point if the cuts were made strategically so as not to undercut what's working efficiently, and gratuitously dinging economic growth in the process.

But that's not how the sequester works.

The $85 billion in funding is being cut mostly from the smallest part of the budget pie -- discretionary spending, which has already been subject to lower spending caps in the past two years.

And it must be cut from funding over seven months -- March 1 to Sept. 30 -- as opposed to a full 12 months' of funding for the fiscal year. That means the percentage cuts to programs will need to be steeper.

To make matters worse, agencies will have little discretion about what gets cut since the sequester mandates that the cuts be made by the same percentage to every non-exempt area. Efficient programs will be axed right along with bloated or duplicative ones.

"The sequester mechanism was drafted in order to prevent flexibility by imposing the cuts all the way down to the program, project and activity level. The point was to make sequester so unpalatable that it would force Congress to address difficult choices," budget expert Charles Konigsberg said.

Well, clearly that hasn't worked so far.

Myth 4 - The cuts will hurt the economy badly, or they won't be a big deal: The economy will be affected. Just how badly no one can say with certainty.

The baseline assumption: The spending cuts, if kept in place all year, will reduce economic growth for 2013 by 0.6 percentage points and reduce the number of full-time jobs created by 750,000, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Even counting the cuts in combination with the tax increases approved in the fiscal cliff deal and expiration of the payroll tax cut, the CBO estimates the economy would still grow at an inflation-adjusted 1.4% this year.

That's hardly recession territory. But it's tepid growth for what is supposed to be an economic recovery.

And some worry the consequences of the cuts may be worse than expected because of the knock-on effects that aren't always taken into account.

J.C. Penney’s Last Shot at Survival

One year ago J.C. Penney (JCP) CEO Ron Johnson laid out a plan to change the way the world thinks not just about Penney's but the entire department store model. New pricing, fully refreshed stores designed to be a destination "mall within a mall" and partnerships with fashion forward brands never before associated with the dowdy J.C. Penney.

"All it takes is courage" Johnson told a packed audience, "We can change a brand overnight."

Suffice it to say Johnson and J.C. Penney fell short of those lofty ambitions. Last night it concluded one of the worst years in corporate history with the announcement of their 4th Quarter results. How bad was it? Consider:

    JCP lost just short of a billion dollars for the year with $551 million of that coming in the all important holiday period.
    Total revenue fell 25%
    The company sacked more than 30% of the employees at its Dallas HQ; more than 1,600 people
    Internet sales dropped a stunning 34%. For perspective rival Macy's (M) grow its online business 48%

"We made some big mistakes and I take personal responsibility for this" Johnson said last night with atypical humility. "Experience is making mistakes and learning from them and I've learned a lot".

What Johnson's customers have learned over the last 12 months is that the 111-year old department store chain can no longer be trusted. J.C. Penney first abandoned then restored promotional pricing. It hyped refurnished stores before even 1/3 of the chain had been redone. Legacy customers were jettisoned before new shoppers were secured.

Good retailers set customer expectations then seek to do just a little better. Wal-Mart (WMT) is self-serve. Target (TGT) is fashion at a great price. Tiffany (TIF) is all about fawning all over shoppers. Having been through no fewer than four different marketing campaigns in 2012 alone, the J.C. Penney shopping experience varies from month to month and store to store.

Customer don't like surprises which is why 17% fewer of them even bothered to step into a J.C. Penney store last year.

They say that airplane crashes happen after pilots run out of altitude and ideas. Retailers go bankrupt when they run out of money and time. J.C. Penney is burning through cash at a stunning rate, resorting to measures like slow-paying vendors and selling goods at a loss just to create liquidity. Sales continue to get worse and are shrinking at a pace that suggests it could be in serious financial trouble by this summer if things don't improve.

Main Street would rather get a root canal than shop at J.C. Penney. Wall Street has left the company for dead. The stock is down more than 55% in the last 12 months and fell 15% in response to the results announced last night.

The clock is ticking. J.C. Penney only has enough money to take one more Hail Mary shot at survival. The latest, best, marketing campaign premiered during last Sunday's telecast of the Oscars. Based on what we've seen so far, J.C. Penney just might have a better chance than most people think.

Too Little Too Late?

Retail expert Hitha Prabhakar thinks JCP's new "Dear America" campaign is far and away the best thing she's seen since Ron Johnson took over last year. The seven spots were moving, flirty, fun and different from anything the audience would have expected. They featured name-brand designers and lingerie, and were fashion-forward with a value. It's a message Johnson helped invent when he was with Target (TGT), and he clearly intends to take it even further now.

"The Oscar went to the J.C. Penney ad campaign," Prabhakar exclaims in the attached video. "They hit the nail on the head in terms of who they're trying to target and who they want in their store."

Consumers might actually be the winners in Penney's drive to survive. Forget promotions, the very best deals for shoppers come from desperate companies needing to clear merchandise at any price. Based on January when JCP cleared a massive amount of inventory at a loss JCP is on the verge of becoming an 1,100 store discount bin.

The bottom line is Penney's either executes on its latest promise and creates a cool place to shop or goes into a death spiral and is forced to hold the largest Going Out of Business sale in American retail history.

That leaves shareholders, Ron Johnson and thousands of remaining J.C. Penney employees as the only group at risk of losing it all.