Danny Puff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With its low cost of living, balmy climate and cheap property prices, Ecuador has been ranked the top foreign retirement destination for North Americans for the fifth consecutive year.

The South American nation bordered by Colombia and Peru scored the highest marks in InternationalLiving.com's annual ranking of the best places to retire.

With monthly estimated living expenses ranging from $900 to $1,400, Ecuador surpassed Panama, Malaysia, Mexico and Costa Rica, which rounded out the top five countries.

"I think the combination of a welcoming culture, the great weather, the affordability and its proximity to the United States all go together to make it a good package," Dan Prescher, the special projects editor for the website, said on Thursday.

"Panama has a lot of the same things going for it, but it isn't quite as affordable as Ecuador," he added in an interview.

Editors at InternationalLiving.com analyzed data and information from correspondents in the countries most popular with American and Canadian retirees to compile the results, which were based on a host of categories: cost of living, climate, property prices, healthcare, ease of integration, retirement infrastructure, entertainment and amenities and special benefits for retirees.

A large part of Ecuador's appeal is how inexpensive it is for retirees. A beer costs just 85 cents. A doctor's visit is $25, roughly the same price as a one-hour massage.

"Seniors resident in Ecuador qualify for half-price entertainment and local transport, discounted airfares and refunds of sales tax," Prescher added.

Panama, which came in a close second, won praise for its pensioner visa, which speeds up residency, retiree discounts on medicines, entertainment and restaurants, and its friendly people.

Malaysia, the only Asian country to make the top five, drew retirees to its shores with its tropical climate, low cost of living and cheap rents, similar factors that boosted Mexico and Costa Rica's appeal to retirees.

Most of the better countries for retirees were Spanish speaking, including Uruguay, Colombia and Spain. Thailand, which placed ninth, was the only other Asian nation to make the top ten, thanks to its affordability, exotic locales and outdoor lifestyle.

Although the language may differ, Prescher said retirees adapt easily because they usually choose a country with a culture familiar to them.

"Most people know or can learn enough Spanish to get along," he added.

Malta squeezed in at No. 10, winning points for its very low crime rate, Mediterranean climate and abundance of English speakers. English is the second language of Malta, which is a European Union member.

Ireland, France, Portugal and Italy were other EU nations that made the ranking of 22 countries, along with the Philippines and New Zealand, which scored the worst for the cost of living, along with France, but ranked high for integration.

"The places that have been popular with expats for the last five to 10 years tend to stay in the rankings unless something drastic happens, a big political or economic change," Prescher explained.

(Editing by Chris Michaud and Tim Dobbyn)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Nintendo's TV-watching tool for the new Wii U game console beats my regular remote control hands down.

Called TVii, the service transforms how you watch television in three key ways. It turns the touch-screen GamePad controller for the Wii U into a remote control for your TV and set-top box. It groups your favorite shows and sports teams together, whether it's on live TV or an Internet video service such as Hulu Plus. And it offers water-cooler moments you can chat about on social media.

It takes some getting used to, and I had a lot of re-learning to do after years of using my thumb to channel surf. But once I did, I found the service an advance from the mass of buttons on most TV remote controls.

TVii comes free with the Wii U, although it didn't become available in the U.S. until mid-December, about a month after the game machine's debut.

One nice touch is that TVii gives you a way to search for shows over Internet video apps and live TV all in one place. I can then choose whether to watch it on the big TV or on my controller's touch screen, which measures 6.2 inches diagonally.

Handling these different sources of video at once is a tall order, and Nintendo Co. does it pretty well. No one else has combined live and Web TV as seamlessly before. As the lines blur between the two, I would hope some of TVii's advances are copied and improved upon by other gadget makers and TV signal providers.

For starters, TVii asks for your TV maker, your set-top box maker, your location and your TV provider (that could be an antenna). TVii then uses infrared codes to control your TV just like the old remote, and it can offer a traditional channel guide for live TV shows. TVii also asks for your favorite shows, sports teams and movies. This helps it create an easy-to-understand grouping of shows you might want to watch.

I appreciate the way TVii walked me through the setup process. It was refreshing, given the misfortune I recently had of trying to program the remote control that came with my cable set-top box, which is about as fun as doing your tax returns. TVii takes away the need to read folded-up instruction manuals that appear to be written by and for electronics hobbyists.

After the setup, TVii presents you with a series of icons for Favorites, TV, Movies, Sports and Search. A little avatar of your identity is in one corner, and tapping on it lets you adjust your favorites or go through the setup again. Each person in a household can have a different avatar and set of favorites.

In Favorites, your shows are listed with cover art, and you can swipe through the offerings. Tapping one, say, "The Mindy Project," will pull up an episode list with pictures and brief summaries. Choosing an episode will bring up a range of options the channel if it's on live TV, or buttons for Hulu Plus or Amazon, where you can pay for monthly access or just one episode through the service's app. (The free version of Hulu is blocked on gadgets, including the Wii U and tablet computers. Apple's iTunes, unsurprisingly, isn't integrated.) The option of clicking through to Netflix will be added some time in 2013.

One hiccup is that if you want to watch a show on live TV now, it asks if your TV's input source is already set to the set-top box, rather than the Wii U or another gadget such as a DVD player. If it is, you tap "yes" and the channel changes. If not, you have to tap until the source switches to the right one and then tap "yes." Still, there's no need to go back to your TV's remote control.

The other menu items for TV, Movies, Sports and Search operate pretty similarly. Eventually you'll get a range of options to watch. In the case of sports, you'll likely see several game possibilities, with the latest score showing up on each game icon.

As an alternative, you can resort to a physical TV button on the GamePad that brings up touch controls that mimic a simplified, standard remote.

Another option is using an altogether separate interface in which favorite channels and other controls are displayed graphically on a semi-circular wheel. It looks strange, and I wouldn't recommend it.

Anyone who is frustrated by the jumble of cables and boxes that now surround TVs will see TVii's appeal. My wife said she liked the ease of holding and touching the controller, rather than fiddling with the button-laden remote. One downside I can see with TVii is that you have to keep looking down to figure out what to watch. And you have to plug it in frequently, as the GamePad controller will die out after three to five hours of use.

TVii also offers a standard channel guide in which you can scroll up and down for programs on different channels or right and left for different times of day. A touch will change the channel to the program, which is nice.

For certain shows and sporting events, TVii will supply a running list of key events called "TV tags." These descriptions of events, like the precise moment when Mindy's Christmas party descends into chaos, are displayed on the GamePad's screen, along with a screenshot. Tapping on one opens up a comment window, and an onscreen keyboard allows you to make a comment. For sports, you get a description of each play, such as the number of yards thrown in a pass, beside a graphic that gets updated.

Not many people have Wii U consoles yet, nor is everyone tuned to TVii. As a result, I found myself with only one or two commenters to share my thoughts with.

If you've connected TVii to Facebook and Twitter (again, some sign-up is involved), your comments will go out to your friends and followers, but the TV tag that you are commenting on won't show up, so they might not know what you're talking about. TVii adds the hashtag "NintendoTVii" to help readers take a guess.

In the end, TVii isn't perfect.

It isn't yet able to program your digital video recorder, although it will do so for TiVo DVRs by March. Sports are limited to pro and college basketball and football, and there's no integration with fantasy sports leagues. And the battery life of the GamePad is short.

A review unit I was sent failed to take a charge and had to be replaced, although I haven't found others who have had the same problem.

These irritations aside, Nintendo has given us a way to control the clutter of channels, apps and devices crowding around the TV. It's relatively easy and intuitive and some updates are on the way. Considering the garble of the TV universe, that's pretty good.

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About TVii:

TVii turns the GamePad controller for the Wii U into a remote control that integrates your live TV and Internet video experience. The service is free, but you'll need a Wii U game console, which starts at $300. You'll also need to pay extra to use video services such as Hulu Plus, Amazon and Netflix.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Star Wars" creator George Lucas will marry his longtime girlfriend Mellody Hobson, the director's production company Lucasfilm Ltd said on Thursday.

Lucas, 68, and Hobson, the president of Chicago investment firm Ariel Investments LLC, have been together for the past six years. It will be Lucas' second marriage. He was married to Oscar-winning film editor Marcia Lucas from 1969 to 1983.

No date or location for the wedding has been made public.

Hobson, 43, serves on the board of directors for Hollywood studio Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc, cosmetics company Estee Lauder Companies Inc, coffeehouse chain Starbucks Corp and Internet coupon company Groupon Inc.

Lucas, who rose to fame directing the 1971 science-fiction film "THX 1138," launched "Star Wars" in 1977 developed it into one of the highest-grossing film franchises of all time.

Lucas sold Lucasfilm and the "Star Wars" franchise to the Walt Disney Co in November for $4.05 billion.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, the French movie star whose decision to quit his homeland to avoid a tax hike prompted accusations of national betrayal.

The "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Green Card" actor bought a house across the border in Belgium last year to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires planned by France's Socialist President Francois Hollande, but said he could also seek tax exile elsewhere.

Putin said last month that Depardieu would be welcome in Russia, which has a flat income tax rate of 13 percent, compared to the 75 percent on income over 1 million euros (820 thousand pounds) that Hollande wants to levy in France.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Depardieu's decision to seek Belgian residency "pathetic" and unpatriotic at a time when the French are being asked to pay higher taxes to reduce a bloated national debt.

"I am leaving because you believe that success, creation, talent, anything different must be sanctioned," the actor retorted in a letter published by a newspaper, saying he would hand in his passport and social security card.

Depardieu is well known in Russia, where he has appeared in many advertising campaigns. He worked in the country in 2011 on a film about the eccentric Russian monk Grigory Rasputin.

French media teased Depardieu, showing clips of the actor's Russian work that were unknown at home, including the Rasputin film and a commercial for ketchup.

Magazine L'Express put together a slideshow on its website of other countries that he could flee to, suggesting Italy where he has starred in commercials for Barilla pasta, or Japan, given that the actor owns a Japanese food shop in Paris.

Depardieu welcomed the move to grant him Russian citizenship, according to excerpts of a letter published by a Russian state TV website.

"I love your culture, your intelligence," the letter read. "My father was a communist of that era. He listened to Radio Moscow! That is my culture too."

Depardieu's publicist Francois Hassan Guerrar was not immediately available to comment on the letter.

Depardieu was one of several Western celebrities invited to celebrate the birthday of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader, in 2012.

Depardieu, 63, had told friends he was considering three options to escape France's new tax regime: settling in Belgium, relocating to Montenegro, where he has a business, or moving to Russia, French daily Le Monde reported in December.

Putin told a news conference last month: "If Gerard really wants to have either a residency permit in Russia or a Russian passport, we will assume that this matter is settled and settled positively.

"I know that he (Depardieu) considers himself a Frenchman. He loves his country very much, its history its culture - this is his life, and I'm sure he is going through a tough time now," Putin said.

The Kremlin's website said on Thursday that Putin had signed a decree granting Depardieu citizenship. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was not necessary for Depardieu to move to Russia - that would be the actor's decision.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Westerners still knew little of Russia's tax regime.

"When they find out, we can expect a mass migration of rich Europeans to Russia," Rogozin, a nationalist politician and former envoy to NATO, said on Twitter.

WELCOME TO RUSSIA

Muscovites said they would welcome Depardieu. "He is a normal guy. He is fond of drinking too, I suppose, the Russian way, so let him come here," said one resident, Lev Nikolaevich.

Putin has in the past spoken of good relations with France, which he visited last June, but he is a frequent critic of the West. He had a tense summit with the European Union last month and wants the bloc to move faster toward visa-free travel.

Since the Cold War, Moscow has often expressed support for Westerners at odds with their governments - a way to counter what Putin says is hypocritical U.S. and European criticism of the Kremlin's treatment of its own citizens.

In 2010, a Kremlin official suggested Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should be nominated for a Nobel Prize.

News of the decree granting Depardieu citizenship set off a frenzy of wry commentary on Russian social networking sites, some musing on why a Westerner would want a Russian passport.

One cartoon posted on the Internet depicted Putin and Depardieu as characters from the French comic books Asterix.

Another showed what appeared to be a nude photo of Depardieu on vacation, with a caption that referred to him as "our compatriot", playing on foreign criticism of how Russians behave on holiday.

Russia does not require people to hand in their foreign passports once they acquire a Russian one. Many Russians have citizenship of other countries and travel without problems.

Depardieu could also request Belgian nationality but has not yet made such a request, said Georges Dallemagne, head of Belgium's parliamentary committee that oversees naturalisations.

"As a Russian he could certainly remain in Belgium, he would possibly need the necessary visas but for a short period he could stay here," said Dallemagne.

France's Constitutional Council last month blocked the planned 75 percent tax rate due to the way it would be applied - but Hollande plans to propose redrafted legislation which will "still ask more of those who have the most".

(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman, Nikolai Isayev and Alexander Fedorov in Moscow, Catherine Bremer in Paris and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Belgium; Writing by Megan Davies; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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House Speaker John Boehner (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON Despite nine defections from fellow Republicans, Ohio Rep. John Boehner was re-elected as speaker of the House Thursday in a voice vote.

Boehner won the backing of 220 Republicans, who retained a majority in the chamber after November's election. But a handful of GOP members voted no or abstained. Most Democrats voted for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Boehner's grasp on his speakership seemed tenuous going into the vote.

The Ohio congressman has come under fire from conservatives in recent weeks for supporting a "fiscal cliff" deal with President Barack Obama that allowed tax rates to increase. He allowed a vote on a package brokered by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden that most House Republicans opposed. The bill passed Tuesday with the support of Democrats.

Several northeastern Republicans loudly criticized Boehner for stalling a $60 billion relief bill for states hit by Superstorm Sandy. Boehner has pledged to hold a vote on Sandy relief on Friday.

Before the speakership vote, rumors swirled that enough conservative Republicans would vote against Boehner to force a second ballot some reporters took friendly bets on Boehner's future but they were unable to muster enough opposition to bring him down. Inside the House chamber Thursday, the defectors sat together in a clump near the center of the aisle during the vote and shouted several different nominees when their names were called.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, still furious after Boehner revoked his committee assignment last year, voted for Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador instead.

Oklahoma Rep. Jim Bridenstine, New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce and the newly elected Florida Rep. Ted Yoho voted for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. (Cantor supported Boehner.)

Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert nominated former Rep. Allen West of Florida, prompting Democrats to respond with laughter on the other side of the aisle.

North Carolina Rep. Walker Jones voted for former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, Kentucky Rep. Tom Massie voted for Amash, and Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp supported Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Republicans Labrador, Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon and South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney did not vote, and Republican Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas voted present.

Once the votes were cast and Boehner was announced the winner, Republican and Democratic leaders joined the Ohio delegation in escorting Boehner to the speaker's chair, where he will serve for two more years.

In his first speech to the 113th Congress, Boehner urged members to remain true to the Constitution and focused his remarks on the national debt.

"Our government has built up too much debt. Our economy is not producing enough jobs. These are not separate problems," Boehner told the members in the chamber. "At $16 trillion and rising, our national debt is draining free enterprise and weakening the ship of state. "The American Dream is in peril so long as its namesake is weighed down by this anchor of debt. Break its hold, and we begin to set our economy free."

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(Reuters) - News website BuzzFeed, one of the more interesting news business models to emerge in recent years, has raised $19.3 million in new capital, the company said on Thursday.

The round was led by venture capital firm NEA along with previous investors RRE, Hearst, SoftBank and Lerer Ventures. The founders of Buddy Media, Michael and Kass Lazerow, also participated.

The money will be used for mobile and video development, editorial hires and international expansion, the company said in a release.

BuzzFeed has skyrocketed in popularity and has caught the eye of media watchers for its innovative mix of news and advertising, including a mix of high- and low-brow content, photos driven by social media and sponsored stories.

The company said it has 40 million unique visitors a month. Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith runs an editorial team of 70.

BuzzFeed was started by Jonah Peretti, the co-founder of the Huffington Post, in 2006. It has raised $46 million in total.

(Reporting By Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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(Reuters) - New York State's $150-billion public pension fund has sued Qualcomm Inc., seeking to force the chipmaker to reveal its political spending, according to the state comptroller.

The suit was filed late on Wednesday in Delaware Court of Chancery, after Qualcomm refused the request by the New York State Common Retirement Fund -- a Qualcomm shareholder -- to inspect records detailing the use of corporate resources for political activities, said state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees the fund.

"Without disclosure, there is no way to know whether corporate funds are being used in ways that go against shareholder interests," DiNapoli, a Democrat who is up for re-election in 2014, said in a statement.

The suit opens a new front in the fight over corporate political spending, which has risen dramatically since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United.

That decision lifted restrictions on corporate political spending and led in part to an unprecedented $6 billion of spending on the recently held U.S. elections.

While other companies have agreed to increase their disclosure of political spending, Qualcomm has not, the lawsuit said.

A spokeswoman for San Diego, California-based Qualcomm said the company had no immediate comment.

The New York State fund, the third-biggest public pension plan in the United States, owns more than 6.1 million Qualcomm shares, which are valued at about $396 million, based on Thursday's share price. The stake represents 0.36 percent of outstanding Qualcomm shares and makes the fund the company's 52nd largest shareholder, according to Thomson Reuters data.

New York is Qualcomm's largest U.S. public pension fund shareholder. The California Public Employees Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension fund with $241 billion in assets, owns about 4.3 million Qualcomm shares.

Since at least August 2012, the pension fund has repeatedly attempted to get the information from Qualcomm, but the company has refused to divulge it, the suit claimed.

New York's pension fund is "concerned that it cannot determine whether senior executives and directors of Qualcomm are spending corporate resources to support their favored political candidates" or on causes that aren't focused on boosting shareholder value, the complaint said.

Other sources show that in 2012, Qualcomm spent more than $4.7 million on federal lobbying efforts, according to the complaint.

The precise total is not known, DiNapoli told Reuters.

"Qualcomm has been particularly resistant in terms of disclosure," he said.

"The real question is we don't know what kind of spending they're doing," he said. "We have the right to have access to books to see where the spending is going."

In 2010, the fund and a group of other institutional investors asked most of the 500 biggest U.S. companies to disclose contributions.

Over the past two years, the group filed 27 related shareholder resolutions seeking more transparency, reaching deals with 10 companies, the comptroller said.

WITH NOVEL APPROACH, SUCCESS UNCERTAIN

The suit is believed to be the first in Delaware, where Qualcomm and most major U.S. companies are incorporated, to use the state's books-and-records law to compel political spending disclosures, a DiNapoli spokesman said.

As an institutional investor, the fund could attempt to remove directors from Qualcomm's board or sue board members if they were found to have wasted assets, the complaint said.

DiNapoli's office previously asked Qualcomm to provide documents that identified the date, recipient and amount of each political expenditure the company has made since January 21, 2010, as well as documents detailing the company's expenses for trade associations and other tax-exempt groups.

DiNapoli's office also asked for minutes of board meetings during which political causes or candidates were discussed.

The case would be tough to win if New York State claims that shareholders are entitled broadly to all documentation about political spending, according to Larry Hamermesh, a professor at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware.

"I can't see a court saying that is correct any more than what a company spends on business in China are a legitimate subject for shareholder inspections," he said.

Hamermesh said investors might gain access if they take a targeted approach such as seeking contributions to specific races or contributions approved by the CEO.

Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, said that if DiNapoli's legal team cannot point to evidence -- such as news reports that raised suspicions about the company's spending -- the lawsuit might not survive scrutiny by a judge who sees it as a fishing expedition,

But if it passes muster, the suit could become a model for other shareholders, Elson said.

DiNapoli's complaint said that studies indicate that corporate political spending is, in general, negatively correlated with enterprise value and can indicate widespread deficiencies in corporate governance.

Political donations can also backfire on corporations. For instance, Target Corp. in 2010 donated $150,000 to a political group that supported Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who opposed same-sex marriage. The contribution sparked backlash and led Target to later apologize, the suit noted.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ in New York and Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Additional reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Leslie Adler and M.D. Golan)

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(Reuters) - Barnes & Noble Inc's Nook unit reported weak holiday season numbers on Thursday as it sold fewer e-readers and tablets at its own stores, and its e-books sales growth slowed, raising questions about the future of its digital business.

The Nook, launched in 2009 to compete with Amazon.com Inc's market-leading Kindle, has been the cornerstone of Barnes & Noble's strategy to counter the shift by many book readers to digital books. Early growth attracted a big investment last year from Microsoft Corp.

And last week, British education and media publisher Pearson Plc said it would take a 5 percent stake in Barnes & Noble's Nook Media unit, which also includes its college bookstore chain, giving it a $1.8 billion value, about double the company's value as a whole.

But questions swirled about whether it is worth that much, after the retailer said that the Nook segment's revenue fell 12.6 percent from a year earlier during the nine weeks ended December 29, hurt by lower unit sales and prices.

Sales of digital content like e-books and magazines rose 13.1 percent during the holidays, a much slower pace than the 38 percent gain last quarter and 113 percent in the 2011 holiday season, suggesting Barnes & Noble is having trouble holding on to its 25-30 percent share of the U.S. e-books market.

"We are way beyond the point where you should see content sales accelerate," Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom told Reuters. "That hasn't materialized and that's concerning."

The numbers were all the more disappointing given that in late November, Barnes & Noble had told investors Nook device sales doubled over the Black Friday weekend, which follows Thanksgiving and kicks off the holiday season in earnest.

That suggests the rest of season was a debacle, analysts said, and Chief Executive William Lynch said in a statement that Barnes & Noble is "examining the root cause" of the shortfall and will adjust its strategy.

"The investment question for Barnes & Noble in 2013 is the Nook's staying power as a legitimate tablet device," Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter wrote in the note, predicting the retailer will face stiffer competition this year from the likes of Apple Inc and Google Inc, since tablets now have improved functions that make them more appealing to book readers.

The drop in Nook sales came despite the launch of two well-reviewed high-definition Nook tablets in October and promotions at large chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp, both of which stopped selling Kindles last year.

Despite the holiday results, Barnes & Noble still expects Nook Media sales of $3 billion this fiscal year, keeping a forecast it gave in October.

That steady forecast helped lift shares 2.6 percent to $14.88 in morning trading.

The company will report full quarterly results in late February.

The results follow a warning from Barnes & Noble in a filing last week that holiday sales would come in below its expectations. The warning erased most of the gains in its share price that followed the news of Pearson's investment.

FEWER VISITORS IN STORES

Compounding Barnes & Noble's troubles, fewer shoppers came into its bookstores during the Christmas period.

Barnes & Noble, which had enjoyed a sales bump after onetime rival Borders Group liquidated in 2011, reported a 10.9 percent decrease in sales at its bookstores and on its website over the holiday period.

Sales at stores open at least 15 months fell 3.1 percent, excluding Nook products, despite the benefit of some store closings -- Barnes & Noble operates 689 bookstores, 14 fewer than a year ago.

"The Borders tailwind is over," Morningstar's Wahlstrom said.

(Reporting by Phil Wahba in New York; editing by John Wallace and Nick Zieminski)

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AKRON, Ohio (AP) Aiden and Donavyn didn't wait until New Year's Day to come screaming into the world, but the circumstances of their births are still pretty special: The babies were born about two hours apart to Ohio mothers who are identical twins.

The Akron Beacon Journal (http://bit.ly/YQpn3X ) reports that the 19-year-old mothers Aimee and Ashlee Nelson weren't raised to do things alike and did not plan the births to come at the same time. In fact, their due dates were about a week apart.

Aimee's son, Donavyn Scott Bratten, was born just after noon on the last day of 2012. Ashlee's son, Aiden Lee Alan Dilts, made his appearance at about 2 p.m.

They were delivered by the same doctor at Summa Akron City Hospital.

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Information from: Akron Beacon Journal, http://www.ohio.com

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NEW YORK (AP) Tim Gunn has advised divas for years on "Project Runway," so working with a princess is no big deal.

In the new Disney Junior animated series "Sofia the First," Gunn's royal steward character, Baileywick, helps the young Sofia adapt to royal life after her mother marries a king. Baileywick not only helps Sofia (voiced by Ariel Winters) dress like a royal, but he also guides her on developing manners, grace and an independent spirit.

"I feel very comfortable in this role," he says.

Certainly, 2- to 7-year-old children are a new audience, Gunn says, but being a teacher who knows when to give congratulations and critiques and how to look after his charge are skills he's honed for most of his professional life. Before Heidi Klum came calling for him to work on TV with aspiring designers, Gunn was chair of Parsons The New School for Design fashion department.

Gunn, 59, says he enjoys sometimes veering from the expected career path. A few years ago, Marvel Comics turned him into a superhero to save a fashion exhibit.

"When Marvel asked if I would do it, they asked with trepidation. They were nervous that I wouldn't, but who doesn't want to be their own comic book superhero?" Gunn says. "I said I'd do it in a heartbeat, and it was the same way with Disney."

Disney launched the characters in a TV movie just before Thanksgiving. It attracted an audience of 5.2 million viewers. The regular series debuts Jan. 11.

The message of "Sofia the First" is a good one, Gunn says: Looking the part only gets you halfway there and then you have to act like a leader and be nice to people at the same time. "If I had a child, I would want my child watching this for the lesson in moral character."

It might be harder for kids or the parents watching with them to glean any real-life style tips.

"I'm dealing with royalty here," says Gunn. "They can make their own fashion rules."

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Online:

http://disney.go.com/disneyjunior/sofia-the-first

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Samantha Critchell tweets fashion at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Fashion and can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/Sam_Critchell

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