Current Events in February 2015

ESS Food of Denmark is recalling approximately 50,904 pounds of pork belly product produced in Poland.

The product was not presented at the U.S. point of entry for inspection. Without the benefit of full inspection, a possibility of adverse health consequences exists.

There are no reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products.

The following product, produced on various dates from March 3, 2014, to April 11, 2014, is being recalled:

• Approximately 40-lb. boxes containing 4-5 pieces of “PINI POLONA PORK BELLY BONELESS”

The recalled products bear the establishment number “10023802” inside the Polish mark of inspection, were shipped to a distributor in Texas and a processing facility in Iowa.

The problem was discovered during routine surveillance of storage facilities when an FSIS investigator

Consumers with questions about the recall may contact Michael Stentebjerg, area manager, at (404) 254-8510.

Kenosha Beef International of Columbus, Ohio, is recalling approximately 21,427 pounds of ready-to-eat beefsteak patty product.

The product may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

There are no reports of illness due to consumption of these products.

The following fully cooked beefsteak patties were produced on Jan. 24, 2015, are being recalled:

• 35.3-lb. boxes of “Fully Cooked Black Angus Ground Beefsteak (chopped and formed)” with product number 87657 and “use thru” date of 01/24/16.

The recalled product bears the establishment number “EST. 10130” inside the USDA mark of inspection, and was shipped to distributors in Illinois and North Carolina for further distribution to restaurants.

Consumers with questions may contact Dennis Vignieri, president and CEO, at (262) 859-2272.

If you have auto insurance you probably understand that staying out of an accident is the best way to keep your rates from going up. Filing a claim almost always results in a rate hike.

Insurance companies, which measure risk when they decide who to cover and how much to charge, also look at your driving record. Getting tagged with a moving violation, such as speeding, will result in higher rates.

But the increase can vary widely, depending on where you live. A report by insuranceQuotes.com found drivers ticketed on a DUI charge will pay a national average of 92% more for car insurance. North Carolina residents will be hit much harder, with an increase of 337%, while drivers in Maryland will only see their rates go up 15%.

Hawaii is another tough state. Drivers there who are charged with reckless driving will see insurance rates rise 287%, significantly higher than the national average of 83%. At the other end of the scale, a reckless driving charge in Arkansas results in only a 24% increase in insurance costs.

Small infractions

The report shows more minor infractions also vary in the penalty dished out at policy renewal time. Driving without a license in Maryland raises rates by 95% but the same infraction has no consequence in Rhode Island.

North Carolina was not only the most punitive on drivers with a DUI, it also topped the list for highest rate increase for over half of the violations the study researched. Meanwhile, New York tends to have the lowest percentage increase in rates after a moving violation.

Most expensive violations

Averaged nationally, insurance rates jumped highest for DUI, reckless driving and speeding. The least consequential violations are not wearing a seatbelt, driving without a license and violating railroad rules.

"Most consumers are unaware of how much insurance rates go up even for a minor traffic violation, such as speeding a few miles per hour over the posted limit," said Laura Adams, senior analyst at insuranceQuotes.com. "In many states, drivers can keep small speeding tickets and other minor infractions off their records by going to traffic school or taking a defensive driving course, up to a limited number of times."

Why the disparity?

But why the sharp disparity among states in how a violation is treated? Consumer advocates say it has a lot to do with how individual states regulate the insurance industry.

For example, in some states insurers can use a wide variety of rating factors that aren't connected to how someone drives. Other states are much stricter about the reasons an insurance company can cite to raise auto insurance rates.

In California, a driver's safety record must be the primary factor in determining what he or she will pay for insurance. Unlike some other states, insurers can't use credit scores to set rates for California residents.

As a result, any violations that show up on your driving record -- like a DUI or reckless driving violation – will result in a sharper premium hike than in less tightly regulated states.

Airbag manufacturer Takata will pay a heavy price for allegedly failing to cooperate with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) continuing investigation into the company’s defective airbags.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx says the company is being fined $14,000 per day. Late last year, NHTSA issued two special orders to Takata requiring the company to provide documentation and other material relating to the agency’s probe. Takata has, NHTSA maintains, has not cooperated fully with the investigation.

The company said it "surprised and disappointed" by NHTSA's action. "We strongly disagree with their characterization that we have not been fully cooperating with them," the company said in a prepared statement.

Takata said it has provided NHTSA with almost 2.5 million pages of documents and has been "meeting regularly with NHTSA engineers on efforts to identify the root cause of the inflator issue."

"We continue to keep NHTSA closely informed on the extensive testing efforts we have undertaken.  That work has, so far, supported our initial view that age and sustained exposure to heat and humidity is a common factor in the small number of inflators that have malfunctioned," Takata said.

Foxx said that "Takata’s failure to fully cooperate with our investigation is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

“For each day that Takata fails to fully cooperate with our demands, we will hit them with another fine. But, it’s not enough. I am asking Congress to pass the Grow America Act which would provide the tools and resources needed to change the culture of safety for bad actors like Takata.”

Bitcoin is still not welcome but the U.S. Treasury says it will now accept some payments via PayPal and Dwolla.

The Pay.gov site accepts payments for all kinds of things, including fines, penalties and loan repayments. It even accepts contributions, should you feel the need to give more money to the government.

The government's goal is to move further away from paper-based transactions and more toward electronic ones, which it considers more efficient and secure.

In 2014, the Treasury Department's Fiscal Service office handled $3.73 trillion in revenue by processing 400 million transactions through such programs as Pay.gov. Almost 98 percent, or $3.69 trillion, were settled electronically.

A new health threat has emerged in Kansas, where a man died last spring from a disease possibly linked to a new virus. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it's the first time the Bourbon virus -- named for the county where the patient lived -- has been linked to human illness in the United States and only the eighth known case of human illness attributed to the group of viruses known as thogotoviruses.

The Kansas man had received multiple tick bites in the days before becoming ill. After test results for many infectious diseases came back negative, a sample of the patient’s blood was sent to CDC for additional testing.

Initial CDC testing showed evidence of an unidentified virus in the sample. CDC researchers then used Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD) and determined that it was a new virus. 

Symptoms 

Because there has been only one case identified thus far, scientists are still learning about possible symptoms caused by this new virus.

In the one person who was diagnosed with Bourbon virus disease, symptoms included fever, tiredness, rash, headache, other body aches, nausea, and vomiting. The person also had low blood counts for cells that fight infection and help prevent bleeding.

The CDC said that, since there is no vaccine or drug to prevent or treat Bourbon virus disease, preventing bites from ticks and other insects may be the best way to prevent infection.

Information on preventing tick bites is available on the CDC Ticks website.

Any cat owner knows one of the most fatal things for a cat is cancer and it's not that cats get cancer more often than other animals, it's that it appears to be much more aggressive  in cats.There are some things that the average cat owner can do to help prevent cancer.

 For female cats, being spayed at a young age will significantly decrease the cat’s chances of developing mammary cancer, or breast tumors. Ideally, female cats should be spayed prior to the first heat cycle. Doing so will nearly eradicate the potential for breast cancer.

What you feed your cat can make a world of difference, just as in humans. There is evidence that fatty acids in the diet, such as EPA and DHA, may be helpful in both preventing cancer and in feeding cats that have cancer. Watch their weight -- obesity can make your cat more prone to cancer.

Stop smoking around your cat. Secondhand smoke can affect your cat’s lungs and has been implicated as a potential contributing factor in cancer, just as it is in people. Imagine what it does to humans and your cat's lungs are that much smaller.

Controlling your pet's exposure to sunlight and ultraviolet radiation can significantly reduce the risk of skin cancer. The areas on an animal's body that are most likely to develop skin cancer are those with little or no hair or those that do not have color.

If you have an outdoor cat be really careful about chemicals in your lawn. Avoid using pesticides and other known cancer-causing agents both on your lawn and in your home.

Test your cat for the feline leukemia virus and the feline immunodeficiency virus -- both are cancer causing. Feline leukemia virus attacks the body’s lymphoid tissue and may cause tumors in various internal organs or leukemia. The virus also leads to anemia and general weakness of the immune system, which alters the cat’s ability to fight any sort of infection.The stronger the cat’s immune system, the more likely that it will overcome the infection. To test them it is just a simple blood test.

Regular check-ups with your vet can catch early signs and there is a vaccine for feline leukemia but there is no vaccine that guarantees complete protection. Early detection can lead to a better outcome if cancer is detected.

Flying pigs, snakes and other creatures have had their moments this past year on airplanes. Many pet owners have tried to get their loved ones on flights across the country with them to no avail. Nobody ever thought about taking a train except for maybe one very determined Congressman.

Rep. Jeff Denham, a California Republican, has a BFF named Lily. She's a French Bulldog  and he has taken her coast to coast via the airlines without a problem. But when he tried to take her on Amtrak a couple years back, he discovered that only service dogs were allowed aboard.

It so happens that Denham chairs a House subcommittee overseeing the agencies that regulate the nation's railroads. He thinks if more people were allowed to bring their dogs and cats in carriers they might be more willing to use the rail system more frequently.

He is making headway as Amtrak has agreed to try his idea on two different routes in Illinois. So far about 145 people opted in and took their pets on the train and it appears those numbers are increasing.

Denham now feels it's time for a national roll-out. He has filed a bill that would require Amtrak to come up with a pet policy for passengers traveling less than 750 miles.

Denham must be dog’s best friend because he has gotten 24 lawmakers to sign onto the legislation and it’s a combo of Democrats and Republicans.

There are some issues with the idea, including pets traveling long distance and having nowhere to relieve themselves. No one seems to have found a solution to that yet.

Currently, animals traveling in Illinois have to have an advanced reservation and there is a $25 surcharge. Your animal has to be 20 pounds or less and there's no getting out of the carrier. The pets and their owners also are relegated to a particular train car and customers have to arrive at least 30 minutes before departure so they can sign a release agreement.

Amtrak reserves the right to remove from the train any pet that smells bad or is disruptive. (If only the same rules applied to humans)

This could help the railroad industry as it might bring revenue to a business that has seen its share of problems and has relied on taxpayer support to survive.

Unilever United States is recalling a limited number of tubs of Breyers No Sugar Added Salted Caramel Swirl ice cream.

The product contains almonds, an allergen not listed on the label.

No allergic reactions have been reported to date.

The recalled product was distributed in 1.5-quart (1.41L) paperboard tubs marked with a unit UPC of 7756738393, with a best before date of NOV2915GB, located on the bottom of the tub. It was distributed nationwide to limited retailers and reached consumers through retail stores. No product was shipped outside the U.S.

Consumers who purchased the recalled product should immediately discontinue use of it, retain the outer box and call 877-270-7402, which is operational 24/7, to request a replacement coupon.

Americans approaching retirement age are worried about lots of things, including having enough money to live on after they stop working. With so many people struggling to save for retirement, that might not be an unreasonable fear.

In particular, retirees and the soon-to-be retired worry about the cost of health care. A new survey by Bankrate.com found upper income households in the U.S. are more concerned about covering medical expenses in retirement than the overall population.

But it is important to understand the real numbers behind those projected retirement health care costs. Depending on individual circumstances – like whether you have Medicare supplemental insurance, they may not be as high as you think.

Fidelity Investments estimates a couple retiring in 2014 is expected to need $220,000 in today’s dollars to cover health care costs in retirement, admittedly a hefty amount for most retirees. However, it's important to understand how that number is calculated.

Cost calculator

AARP has a retirement health care cost calculator that can help show how this formula works. We decided to check it out.

After assuming a male in good health is retiring this year at age 65 and will live another 20 years, we entered the data and ran the numbers. The calculator estimates he would need $134,134 worth of health care. Admittedly, that sounds like a lot.

But our fictitious retiree really isn't going to have to come up with that amount. When we examined AARP's explanation of the numbers, we see that $77,012 would be covered by Medicare. The remaining $57,122 would be paid out of pocket. Still sounds kinda scary.

Medicare covers 80% but most people purchase Medicare supplemental policies, to cover what Medicare doesn't. So the $134,134 total includes both what Medicare pays for and what a consumer would likely pay out for pocket for health services without having supplemental coverage.

Breaking it down monthly

But assuming our retiree would pay around $100 a month for Medicare coverage, deducted from his monthly Social Security payment, and $100 or more a month for a supplemental policy, he would cover his medical expenses for $200 to $300 a month.

What about the $57,122 he still needs to come up with? Well, that's what the $200 to $300 a month goes toward.

If you divide $57,122 by 20 years, you get $2,856 a year. Break that down into 12 monthly payments and it's $238 a month – a lot less scary than $134,134.

Still a significant bite

None of this is to minimize health care costs in retirement, which will continue to go higher. And retirees will need to be able to to afford the $238 monthly payments while still paying for everything else so there is every reason to put away as much money as you can.

It just means you don't necessarily have to have $134,134 set aside for medical expenses the day you stop working.

There will be plenty of other demands on your resources in retirement and unfortunately, the Bankrate survey found a third of Americans said they can't save more for their retirement because they are barely making ends meet now. Only 29% of those questioned in the survey said they were satisfied with what they are able to save.

Reality check

One bright spot in the survey is the fact that only 13% of Americans expect Social Security to account for all or most of their retirement income.

"The average Social Security payout is only around $15,000 per year, so people are realistic to think they'll need to supplement that income," said Sheyna Steiner, senior investing analyst at Bankrate.com. "But despite all the gloom and doom about the future of Social Security, most Americans are optimistic that they'll get at least something from the program. That even includes Millennials – 63% of them think Social Security will fund at least some of their retirement several decades from now."

A couple of weeks ago, Samsung's voice-operated Smart TVs inspired a media uproar thanks to some potentially disturbing language in Samsung's Privacy Policy:

To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted ... to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. … Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.

In other words: If you use Voice Recognition for Samsung Smart TVs, there are people who will listen to recordings of what you say, to convert it into text. Those people will be able to hear whatever you say, so don't say anything around your television that you wouldn't want strangers to hear.

This all sounds bad enough, but earlier this week, British security experts discovered something even more disturbing: when Samsung sends your conversations and other personal information to third parties, that information isn't even encrypted.

David Lodge at Pen Test Partners didn't know if he should believe the privacy-destroying claims he'd heard about the TVs, so he decided to run a test:

…. can Samsung listen in on you whilst you're sat on the sofa watching TV? The easiest way is to intercept some traffic from a TV and see what it's trying to do.

Lodge discovered that yes, Samsung was sending some of his voice commands in text form to unknown third parties – and Samsung did not bother to encrypt any of it:

What we see here is not SSL encrypted data. … Based on the limited information leaked above in plaintext, there’s plenty to suggest that interesting data is making its way on to the interwebs from your TV. Come on Samsung, how about at least protecting it with SSL?

Yesterday, when the BBC reported Lodge's discovery, Samsung admitted that at least “some” of its smart TVs were sending their owners' voice data over the Internet without encrypting it, but told the BBC that it intends to release new code which would encrypt users' voice commands before sending them over the Internet.

Here's another thing the Internet has brought us: widely promoted, but untested and unapproved, drugs that can supposedly ease women's journey through menopause.

An analysis of two large surveys find that as many as 68% of women are using compounded -- so-called "bioidentical" -- hormones without understanding their risks. The analysis was published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society.

"These results indicate a general lack of understanding about key differences between compounded and FDA-approved hormone therapy. This publication establishes the need for better education on this topic," commented Dr. Margery Gass, the society's executive director.

The analysis found that nearly 40 million prescriptions are being written for compounded hormones. But it seems that women who take them don't know what they're getting into.

One survey asked women "Do you believe that bioidentical hormone therapies compounded at a specialty pharmacy are FDA-approved?" Only 14% correctly answered "no." Most -- 76% -- weren't sure, and 10% incorrectly answered "yes."

The risks of taking unapproved compounded hormones are not well documented because the formulations are not tested in clinical trials before they are dispensed and there is no formal mechanism for reporting adverse events after women take them.

"Hormone hoax"

But investigative reporting in MORE magazine -- "The Hormone Hoax Thousands Fall For (October 2013) -- demonstrated that filled compounded hormone prescriptions often don't have the amounts of hormone prescribed. That can be especially risky when a woman takes estrogen without enough progesterone, an imbalance that puts women at increased risk of endometrial cancer.

The FDA also makes distances itself from compounded hormones.

"The term 'bio-identical' has no defined meaning in any medical or conventional dictionary, and FDA does not recognize the term," the agency cautions in an advisory on its website. "Many compounding pharmacies use 'Bio-identical' as a marketing term to imply that drugs are natural, or have effects identical to those from hormones made by the body. FDA is not aware of credible scientific evidence to support these claims."

We're accustomed to hearing that too much couch time can make us fat. But it's not just sitting around that's making us fat, it may be the couch itself.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire say that synthetic flame retardants used in couches and other furnishing and home electronics have been found to cause metabolic and liver problems that can lead to insulin resistance, which is a major cause of obesity.

"Being obese or overweight increases one's risk of many diseases including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and certain cancers," said Gale Carey, professor of nutrition and the lead researcher.

Carey and her team of researchers found that laboratory rats exposed to polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, experienced a disruption in their metabolism that resulted in the development of metabolic obesity and enlarged livers.

"Despite the plethora of resources devoted to understanding the roles of diet and exercise in the obesity epidemic, this epidemic continues to escalate, suggesting that other environmental factors may be involved. At the biochemical level there is a growing body of experimental evidence suggesting certain environmental chemicals, or 'obesogens', could disrupt the body's metabolism and contribute to the obesity epidemic," she said.

Sluggish cells

In Carey's research, fat cells isolated from rats dosed with high levels of flame retardants daily for one month developed a sensitivity to hormones that was similar to the sensitivity experienced by people who are overweight: the fat cells became more sensitive to epinephrine and less sensitive to insulin.

"One of the hallmarks of somebody who is becoming diabetic - and often this accompanies weight gain - is that their fat cells become sluggish in their response to insulin. With epinephrine, the fat cells more easily release the fatty acids into the blood stream and if those fatty acids are not used, they promote insulin resistance," Carey said.

"Those two features - insulin resistance and epinephrine sensitivity - are two features of fat cells from people who are above normal weight. And that's what we were seeing in our rats. Even though our rats had not gained weight, they were experiencing 'metabolic obesity'," she said.

The cause of the flame retardant-induced insulin resistance is unknown but one possibility is the suppression of a key metabolic enzyme  in the liver. Carey and her students found that the activity of the enzyme, which is responsible for sugar and fat metabolism, dropped by nearly 50 percent in livers of rats exposed to flame retardants for just one month, compared to controls.

For more than 10 years, Carey and more than a dozen graduate and undergraduate students have collaborated with researchers from several universities and industries across the nation to examine the persistent organic environmental chemicals that could impact human health.

"The average person probably has about 300 chemicals in her body that are manmade," she said.

In a previous study, Carey and a graduate student examined the amount of flame retardant chemicals in breast milk. They found that the levels of these chemicals in breast milk are about two orders of magnitude greater than in European countries that do not allow the use of flame retardant chemicals.

A closely watched forecaster of U.S. economic performance came in positive again in January.

According to the Conference Board, its Leading Economic Index (LEI) inched up 0.2% last month following increases of 0.4% and 0,3% in December and November, respectively.

“The U.S. Leading Economic Index increased again in January, but its pace of growth has moderated in recent months,” said Ataman Ozyildirim, economist at The Conference Board. “While the LEI suggests a positive short-term outlook in 2015, the lack of strong momentum in residential construction, along with a weak outlook for new orders in manufacturing, poses a downside risk for the U.S. economy.”

The composite economic indexes are the key elements in an analytic system designed to signal peaks and troughs in the business cycle. The leading, coincident, and lagging economic indexes are essentially composite averages of several individual leading, coincident, or lagging indicators.

They are constructed to summarize and reveal common turning point patterns in economic data in a clearer and more convincing manner than any individual component -- primarily because they smooth out some of the volatility of individual components.

The 10 components of The Conference Board Leading Economic Index include:

• Average weekly hours, manufacturing
• Average weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance
• Manufacturers’ new orders, consumer goods and materials
• ISM Index of New Orders
• Manufacturers' new orders, nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft orders
• Building permits, new private housing units
• Stock prices, 500 common stocks
• Leading Credit Index
• Interest rate spread, 10-year Treasury bonds less federal funds
• Average consumer expectations for business conditions

Jobless claims

Good news from the government on the employment front.

The Labor Department reports first-time applications for state unemployment benefits were down 21,000 in the week ending February 14 to 283,000.

Analysts at Briefing.com say reports of mass layoffs in the energy sector have not yet shown up in the unemployment claims data, suggesting that -- for the time being -- businesses have not reduced their staff to meet the new lower-priced reality of the energy market.

The 4-week moving average, which is less volatile than the weekly tally and considered a more accurate gauge of the labor market, was down 6,500 from the previous week to 283,250, the lowest point since the end of last October.

The full report is available on the Labor Department website.

Ruiz Foods of Denison, Texas, is recalling approximately 59 pounds of sausage product.

The product contains soy, an allergen not listed on the label.

There are no reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of the product.

The following product is being recalled.

• 4.5-lb. cases containing 3 trays with 8 pieces of “Egg Sausage and Cheese Wrapped in a Flour Tortilla.”

The recalled product bears the establishment number “EST. 17523A” inside the USDA mark of inspection, was produced February 4, 2015 and shipped to a warehouse in Indiana for distribution to institutional customers.

Consumers with questions about the recall may contact the company’s consumer line at (800) 772-6474.  

Toyo Tire Holdings of Americas is recalling 138 Open Country M/T tires, size 40X15.5R22 127Q, manufactured October 26, 2014, to November 1, 2014 (week code 4314).

During production, the affected tires were made with their belts off center which may result in tread separation and/or loss of inflation pressure. Tread separation or loss of inflation pressure may increase the risk of a crash.

Toyo will notify owners, and dealers will replace the tires, free of charge. The recall is expected to begin in February 2015.

Owners may contact Toyo customer service at 1-800-442-8696.

Michigan Brand of Bay City, Mich., is recalling approximately 4,287 pounds of pork sausage products.

The products contain hydrolyzed soy protein, an allergen not listed on the labels.

There are no reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products.

The following products are being recalled:

• 6 oz. packages of “MICHIGAN BRAND Teriyaki Hunter Sausage” bearing production dates of 6/6/14 to 2/17/15 on the label
• 6 oz. packages of “The Jerky OUTLET Teriyaki Hunter Sausage” bearing production dates of 6/6/14 to 2/17/15 on the label
• 14 oz. packages of “MICHIGAN BRAND Teriyaki flavor Hunter Sausage” bearing production dates of 6/6/14 to 2/17/15 on the label
• 14 oz. packages of “The Jerky OUTLET Teriyaki Hunter Sausage” bearing production dates of 6/6/14 to 2/17/15 on the label
• 40 count boxes of “The Jerky OUTLET Teriyaki Hunter Sausage” bearing production dates of 6/6/14 to 2/17/15 on the label

The products bear the establishment number “Est. 10306” inside the USDA mark of inspection, and have a shelf life of one year from the date of production. They were shipped to retail outlets and distributors in Michigan.

Consumers with questions about the recall should contact Michigan Brand plant manager Joe Grillo at Joegrillo@michiganbrand.net or at (989) 859-0081.

One consequence of the housing crash has been the spectacular rise in residential rent. With fewer people able or willing to buy a home, demand for rental property surged.

Even with investors buying up distressed homes and converting them to rentals the supply still couldn't quite keep up with the demand. According to real estate website Zillow, that trend isn't likely to change anytime soon.

In its latest Home Price Expectations Survey 52% of the industry analysts with an opinion said the rental market will eventually correct, but that won't happen for a while. Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries says, when it does happen, it will happen naturally.

"Solving the rental affordability crisis in this country will require a lot of innovative thinking and hard work, and that has to start at the local level, not the federal level," he said. "Housing markets in general and rental dynamics in particular are uniquely local and demand local, market-driven policies.”

Home prices rise

While rents continue to rise, so do home sale prices. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports most U.S. metro areas saw slightly stronger growth in home prices during the fourth quarter of last year. NAR says prices were boosted by fewer homes for sale, a slight increase in demand and a stronger job market.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says the long housing recovery is showing legs.

“Home prices in metro areas throughout the country continue to show solid price growth, up 25 percent over the past three years on average,” he said. “This is good news for current homeowners but remains a challenge for buyers who are seeing home prices continue to out-pace their wages. Low interest rates helped preserve affordability last quarter, but it’ll take stronger income gains and more housing supply to help meet the pent-up demand for buying.”

The national median existing single-family home price in the fourth quarter was $208,700. That's up 6.0% from the fourth quarter of 2013.

For all of 2014, the median price increased 4.8% in the third quarter from a year earlier; 4.2% in the second quarter from a year earlier; and 8.3% in the first quarter from a year earlier.

International buyers remain active

Rising prices and a strong dollar are doing nothing to discourage foreign investors from buying U.S. homes, particularly homes in California. The California Association of Realtors (CAR) ssays that 14% of its members closed a 2014 transaction with a buyer from another country.

More than a third of foreign buyers were from China and two thirds of all foreign buyers came to closing with all cash.

Foreclosures, which triggered the housing crash, haven't completely disappeared as a factor in the housing market. In its most recent report on foreclosures, RealtyTrac found foreclosure filings rose in January from December, including a 55% jump in bank repossessions.

Still, the 58,000 foreclosure filings were down considerably from the peak of the crisis, when there were 158,000 foreclosure filings in March 2010.