Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street.


The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets.


Equities have risen in the new year, rallying after the initial resolution of the fiscal cliff in Washington on January 2. The S&P 500 on Friday closed its second straight week of gains, leaving it just fractionally off a five-year closing high hit on Thursday.


An array of financial companies - including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase - will report on Wednesday. Bank of America and Citigroup will join on Thursday.


"The banks have a read on the economy, on the health of consumers, on the health of demand," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.


"What we're looking for is demand. Demand from small business owners, from consumers."


EARNINGS AND ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS


Investors were greeted with a slightly better-than-anticipated first week of earnings, but expectations were low and just a few companies reported results.


Fourth quarter earnings and revenues for S&P 500 companies are both expected to have grown by 1.9 percent in the past quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


Few large corporations have reported, with Wells Fargo the first bank out of the gate on Friday, posting a record profit. The bank, however, made fewer mortgage loans than in the third quarter and its shares were down 0.8 percent for the day.


The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, is up about 30 percent from a low hit in June, rising in six of the last eight months, including January.


Investors will continue to watch earnings on Friday, as General Electric will round out the week after Intel's report on Thursday.


HOUSING, INDUSTRIAL DATA ON TAP


Next week will also feature the release of a wide range of economic data.


Tuesday will see the release of retail sales numbers and the Empire State manufacturing index, followed by CPI data on Wednesday.


Investors and analysts will also focus on the housing starts numbers and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve factory activity index on Thursday. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers are due on Friday.


Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said he expected to see housing numbers continue to climb.


"They won't be that surprising if they're good, they'll be rather eye-catching if they're not good," he said. "The underlying drive of the markets, I think, is economic data. That's been the catalyst."


POLITICAL ANXIETY


Worries about the protracted fiscal cliff negotiations drove the markets in the weeks before the ultimate January 2 resolution, but fear of the debt ceiling fight has yet to command investors' attention to the same extent.


The agreement was likely part of the reason for a rebound in flows to stocks. U.S.-based stock mutual funds gained $7.53 billion after the cliff resolution in the week ending January 9, the most in a week since May 2001, according to Thomson Reuters' Lipper.


Markets are unlikely to move on debt ceiling news unless prominent lawmakers signal that they are taking a surprising position in the debate.


The deal in Washington to avert the cliff set up another debt battle, which will play out in coming months alongside spending debates. But this alarm has been sounded before.


"The market will turn the corner on it when the debate heats up," Prudential Financial's Krosby said.


The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> a gauge of traders' anxiety, is off more than 25 percent so far this month and it recently hit its lowest since June 2007, before the recession began.


"The market doesn't react to the same news twice. It will have to be more brutal than the fiscal cliff," Krosby said. "The market has been conditioned that, at the end, they come up with an agreement."


(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; editing by Rodrigo Campos)



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Broncos, Ravens tied 28 heading into 4th quarter


DENVER (AP) — Trindon Holliday became the first player in NFL playoff history to return both a punt and a kickoff for scores Saturday, but Peyton Manning's fumble led to the tying touchdown as the Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos were tied at 28 heading into the fourth quarter.


If the Broncos come back to win it, this will be the end of the stellar 17-year career of Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, whose fumble recovery in the third quarter was negated by a questionable hands-to-the-face call on cornerback Cary Williams. Lewis has said he'll retire after the Ravens' playoff run.


The Broncos (13-3) were trying to avoid becoming yet another No. 1 seed to lose in the divisional round. Since 2005, eight of the 14 top-seeded teams lost their first game in the playoffs, four in each conference.


They breezed past the Ravens 34-17 in Baltimore on Dec. 16 after racing to a 31-3 lead but this one was going down to the wire, something the Broncos didn't do at all during their 11-game winning streak that they brought into the playoffs.


Holliday, the NFL's shortest — and quite possibly fastest — player, followed an amazing block by Jacob Hester to return the second-half kickoff 104 yards to put Denver ahead 28-21. That was 2 yards longer than the record set in 2010 by Atlanta's Eric Weems.


In the first half, Holliday got the scoring started when he fielded Sam Koch's punt, broke one tackle and raced down the Ravens' sideline for a 90-yard TD return, avoiding the punter as he zipped into the end zone. The previous longest TD on a punt return in a playoff game was Jermaine Lewis' 88-yarder for Baltimore in 2001.


Manning, 0-3 in playoff games below 40 degrees, wore gloves on each hand in the cold. He was sacked and coughed up the ball at his 37 late in the third quarter, Paul Kruger recovering for Baltimore.


Ray Rice carried five times for 37 yards, taking it in from a yard out with 20 seconds left in the quarter to tie it at 28.


The 13-degree temperature at kickoff made this the coldest playoff game ever played in Denver. The wind chill was 2. The only colder game played in Denver was against San Diego on Dec. 10, 1972, when the temperature was 9 degrees.


Holliday also returned a punt and a kickoff for scores in the regular season, and his big day came just an hour after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated his intention to consider this offseason the idea of abolishing kickoffs altogether for safety's sake.


Goodell said he realizes it's an exciting play but worries that players will keep getting head injuries.


The Ravens countered Holliday's speed with Torrey Smith's. The Baltimore receiver breezed past Champ Bailey for two long touchdowns in the first half, including one just before halftime that tied it at 21.


Smith had just two catches in the first half, but they covered 91 yards and both went for scores.


He sped past Bailey for a 59-yard TD in the first quarter and then beat him down the sideline for a 32-yard TD catch 36 seconds left before the break that capped a three-play, 58-yard drive that began after Matt Prater botched a 52-yard field-goal attempt that would have given Denver a double-digit lead.


Running back Knowshon Moreno's first touchdown catch of the season, a 13-yard grab in tight coverage by linebacker Dannell Ellerbe, had given the Broncos a 21-14 lead. Moreno later left with a knee injury.


Manning, the league's only four-time MVP, had lost his three previous playoff games below 40 degrees, all while playing for the Indianapolis Colts, who released him last year after a series of neck operations.


Manning had a stellar bounce-back season in Denver, throwing for 4,659 yards and a team-record 37 TDs.


Wearing gloves on both hands for the first time in his career — the one on the right hand as much a concession to the altered feel of his grip following the four neck surgeries as it was for the wintry weather, Manning threw a 15-yard TD toss to Brandon Stokley to tie it at 14.


Jacoby Jones botched the kickoff return following Holliday's punt return TD, losing the handle on the ball as he brought it out before smothering it at the 6.


After a key pass interference call on Tony Carter allowed the Ravens to get out from the shadow of their end zone, Baltimore tied it at 7 when Smith got behind Bailey and hauled in Joe Flacco's 59-yard touchdown toss.


Forty-two seconds later, cornerback Corey Graham picked off a Manning pass that deflected off receiver Eric Decker and returned it 39 yards for the score — and the Broncos trailed for the first time since Dec. 2 against Tampa Bay.


___


Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL


___


Follow AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton


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Two Star Clusters Shine in Night Sky This Week






With the moon reaching new phase today (Jan. 11), leaving the sky extremely dark, this upcoming week will be an ideal time to get out your binoculars and explore the profusion of star clusters now evident in our evening sky.


Such clusters represent aggregations of young, recently born stars.  They are in our galaxy’s local spiral arm, into whose interior we are looking at this time of year. These stars condensed out of the interstellar gas in this part of the Milky Way.






Two of the very best are high in our evening sky and toward the south at around 9 p.m. local time now.  You can easily locate them by using the famous three-star belt of Orion, the Mighty Hunter. Extending an imaginary line from the belt, upward and to the right will take you to the clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades of the constellation Taurus, the Bull. 


And as a bonus this winter, shining right in between these two star clusters is brilliant Jupiter, shining like a steady, silvery beacon high in the south. You can’t miss it. [Night Sky Stargazing Guide: January 2013 (Sky Maps)]


Interestingly, Australian aborigines believed that the three belt stars of Orion were three young men dancing to the music played by nearby maidens (the Pleiades). And indeed, the most beautiful and famous star cluster in the night sky is the Pleiades. 


Why Seven Sisters?


The traditional Greek legend for the Seven Sisters, as this cluster has long been known, is that they are the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Their father, Atlas, rebelled against Zeus, the king of the gods, who retaliated by sentencing him to forever holding up the heavens on his shoulders. This so grieved the sisters that Zeus placed them in the heavens so that they could be close to their father.


To the average eye, this group looks at first like a shimmering little cloud of light. But further examination, aided by good eyesight, will reveal a tight knot of tiny stars.Interestingly, widely separated and totally different cultures have always described the Pleiades as the “Seven Sisters,” “Seven Maidens,” or “Seven Little Girls.” Yet only six stars are readily visible to most. Some with more acute vision can count many more. 


One person, who has claimed to have seen as many as 19 Pleiades with his unaided eyes while observing under pristinely dark skies from rural Arizona, is Allen Seltzer, who three decades ago served as education director at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. Seltzer is blessed with unusually keen vision, which he once demonstrated to me by reading a page from The New York Times from across a nearly 20-foot room.


But why this cluster has been cited by more than one early culture as having seven members remains a mystery. 


About 250 stars have been identified as members of this cluster. Gaze at them through binoculars: The brightest stars glitter like an array of icy blue diamonds on black velvet. Or as Alfred, Lord Tennyson  wrote, they “Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.”


Several stars in the cluster seem to be enveloped in clouds of dust, perhaps left over from the stuff of which they were formed. About 410 light-years away and some 20 light-years across, the group may be no older than 20 million years.


V-shape face


The Pleiades cluster is in the Bull’s shoulder. The Bull’s face is plainly marked by the fine V-shape cluster of the Hyades.


Notice the bright orange star at the end of the lower arm of the V, which represents the Bull’s fiery eye. That’s Aldebaran, “the follower;” it rises soon after the Pleiades and pursues them across the sky. 


Aldebaran ranks as the 13th brightest star in the sky, but this winter, compared to nearby Jupiter, it shines only 1/27 as bright; maybe think of Jupiter as a general and Aldebaran as his lieutenant.


The Hyades are among the nearest of the star clusters, which explains why so many of the separate stars can be readily seen. At a distance of 130 light-years, the Hyades members travel through space like a flock of geese, their paths ultimately converging toward a point between the stars Betelgeuse in Orion and Procyon in Canis Minor, while receding from us at the rate of 100,000 miles per hour (160,000 kilometers per hour). 


Aldebaran, on the other hand, is just an innocent bystander that does not belong at all to the Hyades and is moving toward the south almost at right angles to the cluster’s motion and twice as fast. At 65 light-years away, Aldebaran is half the distance of the Hyades. Taurus’s V-shape head is, therefore, going to pieces. For 25,000 years or more it will pass for a V, but after 50,000 years it will be quite out of shape. 


Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. Astronomer Geoff Gaherty of Starry Night Education contributed to this report.


Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Space and Astronomy News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Abandoning Afghanistan a bad idea




U.S. Marines from the 3rd Battalion 8th Marines Regiment start their patrol in Helmand Province on June 27.




STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • White House aide suggested all U.S. troops could be withdrawn from Afghanistan

  • Peter Bergen said the idea would be dangerous and send the wrong message

  • He says U.S. has abandoned Afghanistan before and saw the rise of the Taliban

  • Bergen: U.S. is seeking agreement that military will have immunity from prosecution




Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad."


(CNN) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai will meet with President Barack Obama on Friday to discuss the post-2014 American presence in Afghanistan.


The U.S. military has already given Obama options under which as few as 6,000 or as many as 20,000 soldiers would remain in Afghanistan after 2014. Those forces would work as advisers to the Afghan army and mount special operations raids against the Taliban and al Qaeda.


Read more: U.S. may remove all troops from Afghanistan after 2014



Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen



But on Tuesday, Ben Rhodes, the White House's deputy national security adviser, told reporters that the Obama administration is mulling the idea of removing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan after the NATO combat mission finishes at the end of 2014.


This may be a negotiating ploy by the Obama administration as it gets down to some hard bargaining with Karzai, who has long criticized many aspects of the U.S. military presence and who is likely to be reluctant to accede to a key American demand: That any U.S. soldiers who remain in Afghanistan after 2014 retain immunity from prosecution in the dysfunctional Afghan court system. It was this issue that led the U.S. to pull all its troops out of Iraq in December, 2011 after failing to negotiate an agreement with the Nuri al-Maliki government.


Read more: Defense officials to press Karzai on what he needs


Or this may represent the real views of those in the Obama administration who have long called for a much-reduced U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and it is also in keeping with the emerging Obama doctrine of attacking al Qaeda and its allies with drones but no American boots on the ground. And it certainly aligns with the view of most Americans, only around a quarter of whom now support the war in Afghanistan, according to a poll taken in September.


Security Clearance: Afghanistan options emerge



In any case, zeroing out U.S. troop levels in the post-2014 Afghanistan is a bad idea on its face -- and even raising this concept publicly is maladroit strategic messaging to Afghanistan and the region writ large.


Why so? Afghans well remember something that most Americans have forgotten.


After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, something that was accomplished at the cost of more than a million Afghan lives and billions of dollars of U.S. aid, the United States closed its embassy in Afghanistan in 1989 during the George H. W. Bush administration and then zeroed out aid to one of the poorest countries in the world under the Clinton administration. It essentially turned its back on Afghans once they had served their purpose of dealing a deathblow to the Soviets.










As a result, the United States had virtually no understanding of the subsequent vacuum in Afghanistan into which eventually stepped the Taliban, who rose to power in the mid-1990s. The Taliban granted shelter to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization from 1996 onward.


Read more: Court considers demand that U.S. release photos of bin Laden's body


After the overthrow of the Taliban, a form of this mistake was made again by the George W. Bush administration, which had an ideological disdain for nation building and was distracted by the Iraq War, so that in the first years after the fall of the Taliban, only a few thousand U.S. soldiers were stationed in Afghanistan.


The relatively small number of American boots on the ground in Afghanistan helped to create a vacuum of security in the country, which the Taliban would deftly exploit, so that by 2007, they once again posed a significant military threat in Afghanistan.


In 2009, Obama ordered a surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan to blunt the Taliban's gathering momentum, which it has certainly accomplished.


Read more: Inside the Taliban


But when Obama announced the new troops of the Afghan surge, most media accounts of the speech seized on the fact that the president also said that some of those troops would be coming home in July 2011.


This had the unintended effect of signaling to the Taliban that the U.S. was pulling out of Afghanistan reasonably soon and fit into the longstanding narrative that many Afghans have that the U.S. will abandon them again.


Similarly, the current public discussion of zero U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014 will encourage those hardliner elements of the Taliban who have no interest in a negotiated settlement and believe they can simply wait the Americans out.


It also discourages the many millions of Afghans who see a longtime U.S. presence as the best guarantor that the Taliban won't come back in any meaningful way and also an important element in dissuading powerful neighbors such as Pakistan from interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs.


Read related: Afghanistan vet finds a new way to serve


Instead of publicly discussing the zero option on troops in Afghanistan after 2014, a much smarter American messaging strategy for the country and the region would be to emphasize that the Strategic Partnership Agreement that the United States has already negotiated with Afghanistan last year guarantees that the U.S. will have some form of partnership with the Afghans until 2024.


In this messaging strategy, the point should be made that the exact size of the American troop presence after 2014 is less important than the fact that U.S. soldiers will stay in the country for many years, with Afghan consent, as a guarantor of Afghanistan's stability.


The United States continues to station thousands of troops in South Korea more than five decades after the end of the Korean War. Under this American security umbrella, South Korea has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest.


It is this kind of model that most Afghans want and the U.S. needs to provide so Afghanistan doesn't revert to the kind of chaos that beset it in the mid-1990s and from which the Taliban first emerged.


Read more: What's at stake for Afghan women?


Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter


Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion







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Kelly to stay at Notre Dame









SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Brian Kelly will remain Notre Dame's football coach, the school announced Saturday, ending what his boss deemed a "heartfelt" examination of a jump to the NFL.

"This week, I had an incredible opportunity to speak with one of the premier organizations in sports about becoming their head coach," Kelly said in a statement released by the school.

"Like every kid who has ever put on a pair of football cleats, I have had thoughts about being a part of the NFL. However, after much reflection and conversation with those closest to me, I have decided to remain at Notre Dame."

Kelly interviewed with the Eagles on Tuesday, the day after the Irish's 42-14 loss to Alabama in the BCS championship game, but no word had emanated from South Bend on the status of the discussions until Saturday. And now that Kelly will remain aboard, the process will continue toward a restructuring of his deal with Notre Dame.

"This decision was motivated purely by my love for Notre Dame and the entire Fighting Irish community, the young men I have the great fortune to coach, and my desire to continue to build the best football program in the country," Kelly said. "We still have a lot of work to do and my staff and I are excited about the challenges ahead."

In a phone conversation with the Tribune on Saturday, athletics director Jack Swarbrick laid out the timeline of the entire process: The Eagles first contacted Kelly, who had them contact Swarbrick, which they did the day after firing coach Andy Reid in late December.

Swarbrick asked that any conversations wait until after the BCS title game. Meanwhile, back in early December, Swarbrick had assured Kelly that a new deal was forthcoming.

"We talk about a host of things, and back then, we talked about assistant coach compensation and other things," Swarbrick said. "In that conversation, I said I want to restructure your deal, and let's start the process of doing that. We didn't spend any time on that during the preparation for the national championship. We had some preliminary discussions, and when the championship was over, we returned to it, and we'll continue to work on it."

But, in Swarbrick's mind, this was never a leverage play by Kelly -- simply because he viewed the interest of the Irish's head coach as real.

"The funny thing about a deal like this is, if you feel like somebody's using an opportunity for leverage, you're typically pretty comfortable they're not going anywhere, right?" Swarbrick said. "That was never the case here. So you know it's an earnest examination of the option. While I felt good about our conversations and the way he feels about Notre Dame, I also knew he was engaged in a heartfelt consideration about whether this was something he might want to do."

A league source said Kelly never received an offer from the Eagles. Which is logical, because the franchise had asked for a second meeting with Kelly to take place next week, if he desired it. No offer would have arrived before then.

It's a moot point now, though the franchise issued a statement about the pursuit of college coaches such as Kelly and Oregon's Chip Kelly and Penn State's Bill O'Brien before him.

"There is no question we spent a considerable amount of time and effort looking at who we thought were the best collegiate candidates for our head coaching job," the team statement read.

"We did so knowing that there was a remote chance that these coaches would leave their current posts. We understood that going into the process, but we wanted to leave no stone unturned while trying to find the best head coach for the Philadelphia Eagles. We have no regrets about the effort we made in that direction and we will continue to proceed as planned in our search."

Swarbrick, meanwhile, does not begrudge Kelly's exploration.

"My coaches all know this: I think if you want to be anywhere else, Notre Dame is the wrong place for you," Swarbrick said. "You have to be able to explore and consider, because I want you to understand what the options are, I want you to be familiar with them, because I think that makes the bond at Notre Dame stronger. I have never refused anybody permission. I've always said, yeah, go ahead. But after you do that, if you have any reservations, you need to go."

And how does he know Kelly has no reservations?

"It's reaching the final decision, it's exploring the option, it's understanding it, it's comparing it to his situation and deciding what I believed he would all along – that he's a great fit here and he loves the place and he wants to build on what he started," Swarbrick said.

bchamilton@tribune.com

Twitter @ChiTribHamilton



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Russia rejects Assad exit as precondition for Syria deal


MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia voiced support on Saturday for international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi but insisted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's exit cannot be a precondition for a deal to end the country's conflict.


Some 60,000 Syrians have been killed during the 21-month-old revolt and world powers are divided over how to stop the escalating bloodshed. Government aircraft bombed outer districts of Damascus on Saturday after being grounded for a week by stormy weather, opposition activists in the capital said.


A Russian Foreign Ministry statement following talks on Friday in Geneva with the United States and Brahimi reiterated calls for an end to violence in Syria, but there was no sign of a breakthrough.


Brahimi said the issue of Assad, who the United States, European powers and Gulf-led Arab states insist must step down to end the civil war, appeared to be a sticking point.


Russia's Foreign Ministry said: "As before, we firmly uphold the thesis that questions about Syria's future must be decided by the Syrians themselves, without interference from outside or the imposition of prepared recipes for development."


Russia has been Assad's most powerful international backer, joining with China to block three Western- and Arab-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed to pressure him or push him from power. Assad can also rely on regional powerhouse Iran.


Russia called for "a political transition process" based on an agreement by foreign powers last June.


Brahimi, who is trying to build on that agreement, has met three times with senior Russian and U.S. diplomats since early December and met Assad in Damascus.


Russia and the United States disagreed over what the June agreement meant for Assad, with Washington saying it sent a clear signal he must go and Russia contending it did not.


Qatar on Saturday made a fresh call for an Arab force to end bloodshed in Syria if Brahimi's efforts fail, according to the Doha-based al Jazeera television.


"It is not a question of intervention in Syria in favor of one party against the other, but rather a force to preserve security," Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, said in an al Jazeera broadcast.


CONFLICT INTENSIFIES


Moscow has been reluctant to endorse the "Arab Spring" popular revolts of the last two years, saying they have increased instability in the Middle East and created a risk of radical Islamists seizing power.


Although Russia sells arms to Syria and rents one of its naval bases, the economic benefit of its support for Assad is minimal. Analysts say President Vladimir Putin wants to prevent the United States from using military force or support from the U.N. Security Council to bring down governments it opposes.


However, as rebels gain ground in the war, Russia has given indications it is preparing for Assad's possible exit, while continuing to insist he must not be forced out by foreign powers.


Opposition activists say a military escalation and the hardship of winter have accelerated the death toll.


Rebel forces have acquired more powerful anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons during attacks on Assad's military bases.


Assad's forces have employed increasing amounts of military hardware including Scud-type ballistic missiles in the past two months. New York-based Human Rights Watch said they had also used incendiary cluster bombs that are banned by most nations.


STALEMATE IN CITIES


The weeklong respite from aerial strikes has been marred by snow and thunderstorms that affected millions displaced by the conflict, which has now reached every region of Syria.


On Saturday, the skies were clear and jets and helicopters fired missiles and dropped bombs on a line of towns to the east of Damascus, where rebels have pushed out Assad's ground forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.


The British-based group, which is linked to the opposition, said it had no immediate information on casualties from the strikes on districts including Maleiha and farmland areas.


Rebels control large swathes of rural land around Syria but are stuck in a stalemate with Assad's forces in cities, where the army has reinforced positions.


State TV said government forces had repelled an attack by terrorists - a term it uses for the armed opposition - on Aleppo's international airport, now used as a helicopter base.


Reuters cannot independently confirm reports due to severe reporting restrictions imposed by the Syrian authorities and security constraints.


On Friday, rebels seized control of one of Syria's largest helicopter bases, Taftanaz in Idlib province, their first capture of a military airfield.


Eight-six people were killed on Friday, including 30 civilians, the Syrian Observatory said.


(Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Doina Chiacu)



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Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street.


The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets.


Equities have risen in the new year, rallying after the initial resolution of the fiscal cliff in Washington on January 2. The S&P 500 on Friday closed its second straight week of gains, leaving it just fractionally off a five-year closing high hit on Thursday.


An array of financial companies - including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase - will report on Wednesday. Bank of America and Citigroup will join on Thursday.


"The banks have a read on the economy, on the health of consumers, on the health of demand," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.


"What we're looking for is demand. Demand from small business owners, from consumers."


EARNINGS AND ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS


Investors were greeted with a slightly better-than-anticipated first week of earnings, but expectations were low and just a few companies reported results.


Fourth quarter earnings and revenues for S&P 500 companies are both expected to have grown by 1.9 percent in the past quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


Few large corporations have reported, with Wells Fargo the first bank out of the gate on Friday, posting a record profit. The bank, however, made fewer mortgage loans than in the third quarter and its shares were down 0.8 percent for the day.


The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, is up about 30 percent from a low hit in June, rising in six of the last eight months, including January.


Investors will continue to watch earnings on Friday, as General Electric will round out the week after Intel's report on Thursday.


HOUSING, INDUSTRIAL DATA ON TAP


Next week will also feature the release of a wide range of economic data.


Tuesday will see the release of retail sales numbers and the Empire State manufacturing index, followed by CPI data on Wednesday.


Investors and analysts will also focus on the housing starts numbers and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve factory activity index on Thursday. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers are due on Friday.


Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said he expected to see housing numbers continue to climb.


"They won't be that surprising if they're good, they'll be rather eye-catching if they're not good," he said. "The underlying drive of the markets, I think, is economic data. That's been the catalyst."


POLITICAL ANXIETY


Worries about the protracted fiscal cliff negotiations drove the markets in the weeks before the ultimate January 2 resolution, but fear of the debt ceiling fight has yet to command investors' attention to the same extent.


The agreement was likely part of the reason for a rebound in flows to stocks. U.S.-based stock mutual funds gained $7.53 billion after the cliff resolution in the week ending January 9, the most in a week since May 2001, according to Thomson Reuters' Lipper.


Markets are unlikely to move on debt ceiling news unless prominent lawmakers signal that they are taking a surprising position in the debate.


The deal in Washington to avert the cliff set up another debt battle, which will play out in coming months alongside spending debates. But this alarm has been sounded before.


"The market will turn the corner on it when the debate heats up," Prudential Financial's Krosby said.


The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> a gauge of traders' anxiety, is off more than 25 percent so far this month and it recently hit its lowest since June 2007, before the recession began.


"The market doesn't react to the same news twice. It will have to be more brutal than the fiscal cliff," Krosby said. "The market has been conditioned that, at the end, they come up with an agreement."


(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; editing by Rodrigo Campos)



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Rookies rule at the Sony Open


HONOLULU (AP) — Two days into his PGA Tour career, Russell Henley was on his way to breaking a record.


Henley had another 7-under 63 on Friday in the Sony Open and wound up with a two-shot lead over fellow rookie Scott Langley among early starters in the second round. He was at 14-under 126, which breaks by two shots the 36-hole record at this tournament.


In the first full-field event of the season, the two rookies are leading the way.


Langley finished with three straight birdies for a 66, a solid effort after opening with a 62. Depending on afternoon play, they would play together a third straight day, this time as the final group. They first were linked as low amateurs in the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.


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Iran May Not Be Behind Bank Cyberattacks, Experts Say






There’s really not much evidence that the government of Iran is behind the ongoing wave of cyberattacks on U.S. bank websites, say many security experts.


“I don’t consider any attack I can do in my spare time as ‘nation-state-sponsored,’” said Robert David Graham, chief executive officer of Atlanta-based Errata Security.






“[It] could just as well be a loose group of those sympathetic to Iran and the Middle East and angry as hell at U.S. involvement there,” said George Smith, a senior fellow at the Alexandria, Va.-based think tank GlobalSecurity.org.


A front-page story in The New York Times Wednesday (Jan. 9) repeated what politicians and unnamed government officials have been saying for months: Iran has to be behind the attacks.


Yet the officials have failed to offer any proof. (Tehran denies any involvement.) Instead, the Times article cited several experts who said the size and sophistication of the distributed of denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks was unprecedented and hence implied the backing of a nation-state.


The security experts whom TechNewsDaily communicated with weren’t so sure.


“We have no idea who is behind these attacks, and unless these unnamed sources want to explain how they might have derived attribution, I imagine they don’t, either,” said Chester Wisniewski, a senior security adviser with the British anti-virus firm Sophos.


“Is it an amateur, professional or nation state?” asked Steve Santorelli, a former Scotland Yard and Microsoft computer-security expert who now works with Lake Mary, Fla.-based Team Cymru. “The answer to that would only come after a long and technical specialist investigation involving multiple different folks.”


Heavy artillery


The DDoS attacks against the bank sites are several orders of magnitude higher than the attacks led by the hacktivist movement Anonymous against PayPal, MasterCard and dozens of government sites over the past few years.


Anonymous enlisted dozens, maybe hundreds, of supporters worldwide to install free site-load-testing software on their home PCs and use it to overwhelm Web servers on targeted sites by making millions of bogus requests for pages.


The bank attacks, on the other hand, have often used a DDoS tool called “ItsOKNoProblemBro” to hijack and launch attacks from other Web servers, greatly amplifying the bandwidth of the bogus requests. An Israeli security firm found one such hijacked server this week.


In DDoS attacks, neither the targeted servers nor the data on them are actually damaged. But websites can be cut off from the rest of the Internet, which for online banks adds up to a lot of lost business.


Even the well-defended websites of banking titans such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase have suffered connection problems under the weight of the recent onslaughts.


[The Bank Cyberattacks: Is Your Money Safe?]


… that anyone can use


That’s still far from a smoking gun.


“ItsOKNoProblemBro is far from sophisticated malware. It’s really rather simple,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior anti-virus researcher with Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab. “Going strictly by the publicly known technical details, I don’t see enough evidence to categorize this operation as something only a nation-state-sponsored actor could pull off.”


“Lots of non-nation-state actors can amass staggering bandwidth,” noted security researcher Bruce Schneier. “And lots of state actors can’t.”


Sean Sullivan, a security adviser at Helsinki, Finland’s F-Secure, thinks the attacks are too well-organized to be the work of pure amateurs.


“There does appear to be a good level of coordination,” Sullivan said. “Perhaps the attacks are being carried out by useful idiots — a group of hackers funded by Iran (or other party) but not a professional ‘hacker corps.’”


Yet in Graham’s opinion, mounting an attack of this scope really isn’t that difficult.


“Hacking computers in data centers is easy,” he said. “Any data center hosts websites with obvious flaws, so it’s easy to target a data center, then find a vulnerable server.


“Even easier yet is just get a lot of VPS machines,” Graham added. “For $ 10 per virtual private server in 100 data centers around the world, you could easily flood a victim with 100 gbps [gigabits per second]. This takes zero hacking skills and really not too much money.”


When the bank attacks began, there was suspicion that they might be providing cover for cybercriminals, who would slip past distracted security software and personnel to raid online accounts.


That doesn’t seem to have happened, but Santorelli admits criminals still could be behind the attacks.


“A nation state would perhaps have the resources, but so would a lot of criminal syndicates and rogue individuals,” Santorelli said. “These same folks would also have a criminal motive, especially if there was some way to generate a financial reward from the attacks.”


Denial of government backing


Iran has denied involvement in the attacks, which began in mid-September. But someone else claimed responsibility right from start: a previously unknown Islamist hacktivist group, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, or Qassam Cyber Brigades, which calls the campaign “Operation Ababil.”


(Ababil, “small birds” in Arabic, may refer to a story in the Quran about birds who defended Mecca by dropping stones on an invading army — or to a type of Iranian-made aerial drone.)


The group has posted several statements online in both English and Arabic (but not in Farsi, the language of Iran) accurately predicting the timing and target of each attack.


It says that the attacks are protests against YouTube’s hosting of the offensive “Innocence of Muslims” movie trailer, and of the movie itself. It denies any connection to any government.


On Tuesday the group offered a complicated formula to determine how long the attacks would continue, based on the number of YouTube viewings of “Innocence of Muslims” and how much it estimated each DDoS attack cost the targeted banks.


The Qassam Cyber Fighters calculated that the DDoS campaign would last 14 more months unless the video clips were taken down. Google has refused to do so.


Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was an imam who led resistance to French and British occupiers and Jewish settlers in Syria and Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s.


The military wing of the Palestinian Islamist political party Hamas also named itself after Qassam, but the Qassam Cyber Fighters deny any link to Hamas.


The case for Iranian hacktivists — or maybe a false flag


Iranian government involvement certainly can’t be ruled out, and there’s evidence that Iranian amateurs are involved.


In September, independent Bulgarian security researcher Dancho Danchev did an analysis of the attackers and their methods.


He found that just before the attacks began, some of the earliest versions of the malware used were uploaded by someone using the name “Marzi Mahdavi II” — the name used on an Iranian woman’s personal Facebook page.


Danchev also noted that there was a recruitment appeal on Facebook for participants to download the DDoS tool and take part in the attack. There seemed to be little attempt to disguise identities.


“Is the Iranian government really behind this campaign, or was it actually the work of amateurs with outdated and virtually irrelevant technical skills?” Danchev asked. 


Comparing it with a previous Iranian hacktivist campaign, he said, “We once again see a rather limited understanding of cyber operations.”


But there’s another possibility, Danchev noted. The entire operation, including the Qassam Cyber Fighters postings, could be a “false flag” operation designed to pin blame on Iran.


“This is the first public appearance of the group that claims responsibility for these attacks,” he pointed out. “Virtually anyone on the Internet can engineer cyberwarfare tensions between Iran and the U.S. by basically impersonating what’s believed to be an Iranian group.”


This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience.


Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Science News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Saudi execution: Brutal and illegal?






STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • Saudi authorities beheaded Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan woman

  • She was convicted of killing a baby of the family employing her as a housemaid

  • This was despite Nafeek's claims that the baby died in a choking accident

  • Becker says her fate "should spotlight the precarious existence of domestic workers"




Jo Becker is the Children's Rights Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch and author of 'Campaigning for Justice: Human Rights Advocacy in Practice.' Follow Jo Becker on Twitter.


(CNN) -- Rizana Nafeek was a child herself -- 17 years old, according to her birth certificate -- when a four-month-old baby died in her care in Saudi Arabia. She had migrated from Sri Lanka only weeks earlier to be a domestic worker for a Saudi family.


Although Rizana said the baby died in a choking accident, Saudi courts convicted her of murder and sentenced her to death. On Wednesday, the Saudi government carried out the sentence in a gruesome fashion, by beheading Rizana.



Jo Becker

Jo Becker



Read more: Outrage over beheading of Sri Lankan woman by Saudi Arabia


Rizana's case was rife with problems from the beginning. A recruitment agency in Sri Lanka knew she was legally too young to migrate, but she had falsified papers to say she was 23. After the baby died, Rizana gave a confession that she said was made under duress -- she later retracted it. She had no lawyer to defend her until after she was sentenced to death and no competent interpreter during her trial. Her sentence violated international law, which prohibits the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18.


Rizana's fate should arouse international outrage. But it should also spotlight the precarious existence of other domestic workers. At least 1.5 million work in Saudi Arabia alone and more than 50 million -- mainly women and girls -- are employed worldwide according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).


Read more: Indonesian maid escapes execution in Saudi Arabia






Again according to the ILO, the number of domestic workers worldwide has grown by more than 50% since the mid-1990s. Many, like Rizana, seek employment in foreign countries where they may be unfamiliar with the language and legal system and have few rights.


When Rizana traveled to Saudi Arabia, for example, she may not have known that many Saudi employers confiscate domestic workers' passports and confine them inside their home, cutting them off from the outside world and sources of help.


It is unlikely that anyone ever told her about Saudi Arabia's flawed criminal justice system or that while many domestic workers find kind employers who treat them well, others are forced to work for months or even years without pay and subjected to physical or sexual abuse.




Passport photo of Rizana Nafeek



Read more: Saudi woman beheaded for 'witchcraft and sorcery'


Conditions for migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are among some of the worst, but domestic workers in other countries rarely enjoy the same rights as other workers. In a new report this week, the International Labour Organization says that nearly 30% of the world's domestic workers are completely excluded from national labor laws. They typically earn only 40% of the average wage of other workers. Forty-five percent aren't even entitled by law to a weekly day off.


Last year, I interviewed young girls in Morocco who worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a fraction of the minimum wage. One girl began working at age 12 and told me: "I don't mind working, but to be beaten and not to have enough food, this is the hardest part."


Many governments have finally begun to recognize the risks and exploitation domestic workers face. During 2012, dozens of countries took action to strengthen protections for domestic workers. Thailand, and Singapore approved measures to give domestic workers a weekly day off, while Venezuela and the Philippines adopted broad laws for domestic workers ensuring a minimum wage, paid holidays, and limits to their working hours. Brazil is amending its constitution to state that domestic workers have all the same rights as other workers. Bahrain codified access to mediation of labor disputes.


Read more: Convicted killer beheaded, put on display in Saudi Arabia


Perhaps most significantly, eight countries acted in 2012 to ratify -- and therefore be legally bound by -- the Domestic Workers Convention, with more poised to follow suit this year. The convention is a groundbreaking treaty adopted in 2011 to guarantee domestic workers the same protections available to other workers, including weekly days off, effective complaints procedures and protection from violence.


The Convention also has specific protections for domestic workers under the age of 18 and provisions for regulating and monitoring recruitment agencies. All governments should ratify the convention.


Many reforms are needed to prevent another tragic case like that of Rizana Nafeek. The obvious one is for Saudi Arabia to stop its use of the death penalty and end its outlier status as one of only three countries worldwide to execute people for crimes committed while a child.


Labor reforms are also critically important. They may have prevented the recruitment of a 17 year old for migration abroad in the first place. And they can protect millions of other domestic workers who labor with precariously few guarantees for their safety and rights.


Read more: Malala, others on front lines in fight for women


The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jo Becker.






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Ald. Sandi Jackson resigns from Chicago City Council

Chicago Tribune political editor Eric Krol phones in to discuss the resignation of Alderman Sandi Jackson and the future of the Chicago City Council. (Posted: January 11, 2013).









Ald. Sandi Jackson has resigned from the Chicago City Council.

The 7th Ward alderman submitted her resignation letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel today. It is effective Tuesday.

"After much consideration and while dealing with very painful family health matters, I have met with my family and determined that the constituents of the 7th Ward, as well as you Mr. Mayor, and my colleagues in the City Council deserve a partner who can commit all of their energies to the business of the people. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation as Alderman of 7th Ward, effective January 15, 2013," reads the letter released by the mayor's office.

Ald. Jackson's resignation comes after her husband, Jesse Jackson Jr., resigned from Congress before Thanksgiving amid federal ethics probes and a diagnois of bipolar depression.

Talk swirled around City Hall that Ald. Jackson also would step down, but she remained on the council until Friday afternoon.

Emanuel put out a statement about the resignation.

"As Sandi takes this time to focus on her family, we give her our deepest thanks and support for her service to our City and the residents of her ward.  Her leadership has been greatly appreciated in the Chicago City Council," the statement read.

"The process to identify a replacement for Alderman Jackson to serve and represent the residents of Chicago’s 7th ward will be announced early next week."

A month ago, amid rumors that she was considering a run to replace her husband in Congress, Jackson denied she was interested in the job and said she wouldn’t resign from the City Council unless "something catastrophic happens.”
 
At the same time, she also said she was undecided about whether to move back to Chicago from Washington, D.C., where the couple lives with their children.

"I will finish my term. I intend to finish my term," Ald. Jackson said then. "Unless something catastrophic happens -- I could step outside and get hit by a bus today."

Her husband, in his resignation letter to House Speaker John Boehner in November, appeared to try to shield his wife in the federal ethics investigation. "I am doing my best to address the situation responsibly, cooperate with the investigators, and accept responsibility for my mistakes, for they are my mistakes and mine alone," the former congressman wrote. "None of us is immune from our share of shortcomings or human frailties, and I pray that I will be remembered for what I did right."
 
The former congressman paid his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds to act as his political consultant.


Ald. Jackson could not be reached for comment.


Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., the former congressman’s father and the former council member’s father-in-law, was reached Friday afternoon by telephone, but had no comment on her resignation.








“I think that she has made a very personal decision that she feels is in the best interests of her family and her constituents,” said Ald. Patrick O’Connor, 40th, the mayor’s floor leader.


Emanuel will have 60 days to name a replacement, according to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.


"He is looking for someone who has a history of community involvement and engagement," Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said.


Former Mayor Richard M. Daley got to substantially shape the City Council during his two-decade tenure, appointing scores of aldermen who tended to be loyal to him in return. All told, Daley got to make 35 appointments.


Jackson's resignation marks Emanuel's first chance to appoint an alderman since taking office in May 2011.


Sandi Jackson was elected to the City Council in 2007, defeating then-Ald. Darcel Beavers, who had been appointed to succeed her father, William Beavers, who moved to the Cook County Board. Jackson defeated Darcel Beavers in a 2011 rematch.






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Malian army beats back Islamist rebels with French help


PARIS/BAMAKO (Reuters) - Malian government troops drove back Islamist rebels from a strategic central town after France intervened on Friday with air strikes to halt advances by the militants controlling the country's desert north.


Western governments, particularly former colonial power France, had voiced alarm after the al Qaeda-linked rebel alliance captured the town of Konna on Thursday, a gateway towards the capital Bamako 600 km (375 miles) south.


President Francois Hollande said France would not stand by to watch the rebels push southward. Paris has repeatedly warned that the Islamists' seizure of the country's north in April gave them a base to attack neighboring African countries and Europe.


"We are faced with blatant aggression that is threatening Mali's very existence. France cannot accept this," Hollande, who recently pledged Paris would not to meddle in African affairs, said in a New Year speech to diplomats and journalists.


The president said resolutions by the United Nations Security Council, which in December sanctioned an African-led military intervention in Mali, meant France was acting in accordance with international law.


In Washington, a U.S. official told Reuters the Pentagon was weighing options in Mali, including intelligence-sharing with France and logistics support.


French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed France had carried out air strikes against the rebels to prevent them conquering the whole of Mali. He refused to reveal further details, such as whether French troops were on the ground.


France's intervention immediately tipped the military balance of power, with Malian government forces quickly sweeping back into Konna, according to local residents.


"The Malian army has retaken Konna with the help of our military partners. We are there now," Lieutenant Colonel Diaran Kone told Reuters, adding that the army was mopping up Islamist fighters in the surrounding area.


EU SPEEDS UP DEPLOYMENT


A military operation had not been expected until September due to the difficulties of training Malian troops, funding the African force and deploying during the mid-year rainy season. However, Mali's government appealed for urgent military aid from France on Thursday after Islamist fighters took Konna.


EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called on Friday for "accelerated international engagement" and said the bloc would speed up plans to deploy 200 troops to train Malian forces, initially expected in late February.


Blaise Compaore, the president of neighboring Burkina Faso which is acting as a mediator in the Malian crisis, said his country would contribute a contingent of ground troops toward the African Union mission to retake Mali's north.


Burkina Faso had been due to host peace talks between the Malian government and some of the rebel factions on Thursday, but these have been postponed until January 21 due to the outbreak of hostilities.


The capture of Konna by the rebels - who have imposed strict Sharia Islamic law in northern Mali - had caused panic among residents in the towns of Mopti and Sevare, 60 km (40 miles) to the south. Calm returned, however, after residents reported Western soldiers and foreign military aircraft arriving late on Thursday at Sevare's airport - the main one in the region.


Military analysts said the Western soldiers may have been the first deployment of French special forces.


They voiced doubt, however, whether Friday's action heralded the start of the final operation to retake northern Mali - a harsh, sparsely populated terrain the size of France - as neither the equipment nor ground troops were ready.


"We're not yet at the big intervention," said Mark Schroeder, director for Sub-Saharan Africa analysis for the global risk and security consultancy Stratfor. He said France had been forced to act when the Islamists bore down on Sevare, a vital launching point for future military operations.


"The French realized this was a red line that they could not permit to be crossed," he said.


STATE OF EMERGENCY


More than two decades of peaceful elections had earned Mali a reputation as a bulwark of democracy in a part of Africa better known for turmoil - an image that unraveled in a matter of weeks after a military coup last March that paved the way for the Islamist rebellion.


Mali is Africa's third largest gold producer and a major cotton grower, and home to the fabled northern desert city of Timbuktu - an ancient trading hub and UNESCO World Heritage site that hosted annual music festivals before the rebellion.


Interim President Dioncounda Traore, under pressure for bolder action from Mali's military, declared a state of emergency on Friday. Traore will fly to Paris for talks with Hollande on Wednesday.


"Every Malian must henceforth consider themselves a soldier," Traore said on state TV, calling on mining and telecoms companies to contribute to the war effort. He said he requested French air support with the blessing of West African allies.


The chief of operations for Mali's Defence Ministry said Nigeria and Senegal were among the other countries providing military support on the ground. Fabius said these countries had not taken part in the French operation.


A spokesman for the Nigerian air force said planes had been deployed to Mali for a reconnaissance mission, not for combat.


The French foreign ministry stepped up its security alert on Mali and parts of neighboring Mauritania and Niger on Friday, extending its red alert - the highest level - to include Bamako. France has eight nationals in Islamist hands in the Sahara after a string of kidnappings.


A spokesman for al Qaeda's north African arm AQIM urged France, in a video posted on the Internet, to reconsider its intervention. "Stop your assault against us or you are digging your own sons' graves," said Abdallah Al-Chinguetti.


(Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis in Dakar, Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg, Phil Stewart in Washington, Alexandria Sage, John Irish and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris; writing by Daniel Flynn; editing by Giles Elgood)



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Wall Street climbs as China data puts S&P back at five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Thursday and the S&P 500 ended at a fresh five-year high as stronger-than-expected exports from China spurred optimism about global growth prospects.


Buying accelerated late in the day after the S&P 500 broke through technical resistance at 1,466.47, which was the market's closing level last Friday and the highest level since December 2007.


"Historically, January is a positive month for the market and you're seeing that play out," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.


Financial and energy stocks were the day's top gainers. The financial sector index <.gspf> rose 1.4 percent and the energy sector <.gspe> was up 1 percent.


Analysts cited economic data out of China as the day's catalyst, which showed the country's export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown.


"It is being interpreted positively that they've stopped the downturn (in growth)," said Kurt Brunner, portfolio manager at Swarthmore Group in Philadelphia.


"If they continue to produce good growth, that's going to be supportive of our global manufacturers."


Wall Street's fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index <.vix> suggested markets were relatively calm. The VIX was down 2.3 percent at 13.49.


At Thursday's close, the S&P sits about 6 percent below its all-time closing high of 1,565.15, hit in October 2007.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 80.71 points, or 0.60 percent, to 13,471.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 11.10 points, or 0.76 percent, to 1,472.12. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 15.95 points, or 0.51 percent, to 3,121.76.


Thursday's session had earlier included a dip that traders said was triggered by a trade in the options market that prompted a large amount of S&P futures to hit the market at the same time. That sent the S&P 500 index down rapidly but those losses were reversed through the afternoon.


Financials benefited from events this week that added clarity to mortgage rules and banks' potential exposure to the housing market.


The U.S. government's consumer finance watchdog announced mortgage rules on Thursday that will force banks to use new criteria to determine whether a borrower can repay a home loan.


Earlier this week, several big mortgage lenders reached a deal with regulators to end a review of foreclosures mandated by the government.


"It's a resolution. It's not hanging over their heads," said Brunner.


Bank of America gained 3.1 percent to $11.78, while Morgan Stanley was up 3.7 percent at $20.34, one day after sources said the bank plans to cut jobs.


Shares of upscale jeweler Tiffany dropped 4.5 percent to $60.40 after it said sales were flat during the holidays.


Herbalife Ltd stepped up its defense against activist investor Bill Ackman, stressing it was a legitimate company with a mission to improve nutrition and help public health. The stock ended down 1.8 percent at $39.24 after a volatile day.


After the closing bell, American Express said it would cut about 5,400 jobs, and take about $600 million in after-tax charges in the fourth quarter. The stock added 0.7 percent to $61.20 in after-hours trade.


Volume was above the 2012 average of 6.42 billion shares traded a day, with roughly 6.77 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT.


Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,916 to 1,039, while advancers also outpaced decliners on the Nasdaq by 1,439 to 1,036.


(Editing by Nick Zieminski)



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Researchers: NFL's Seau had brain disease


When he ended his life last year by shooting himself in the chest, Junior Seau had a degenerative brain disease often linked with repeated blows to the head.


Researchers from the National Institutes of Health said Thursday the former NFL star's abnormalities are consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.


The hard-hitting linebacker played for 20 NFL seasons with San Diego, Miami and New England before retiring in 2009. He died at age 43 of a self-inflicted gunshot in May, and his family requested the analysis of his brain.


"We saw changes in his behavior and things that didn't add up with him," his ex-wife, Gina, told The Associated Press. "But (CTE) was not something we considered or even were aware of. But pretty immediately (after the suicide) doctors were trying to get their hands on Junior's brain to examine it."


The NIH, based in Bethesda, Md., studied three unidentified brains, one of which was Seau's, and said the findings on Seau were similar to autopsies of people "with exposure to repetitive head injuries."


"It was important to us to get to the bottom of this, the truth," Gina Seau added, "and now that it has been conclusively determined from every expert that he had obviously had CTE, we just hope it is taken more seriously. You can't deny it exists, and it is hard to deny there is a link between head trauma and CTE. There's such strong evidence correlating head trauma and collisions and CTE."


In the final years of his life, Seau had wild behavioral swings, according to Gina and to 23-year-old son, Tyler, along with signs of irrationality, forgetfulness, insomnia and depression.


"He emotionally detached himself and would kind of 'go away' for a little bit," Tyler Seau said. "And then the depression and things like that. It started to progressively get worse."


He hid it well in public, they said, but not when he was with family or close friends.


Seau joins a list of several dozen football players who were found to have CTE. Boston University's center for study of the disease reported last month that 34 former pro players and nine who played only college football suffered from CTE.


The NFL faces lawsuits by thousands of former players who say the league withheld information on the harmful effects of concussions. According to an AP review of 175 lawsuits, 3,818 players have sued. At least 26 Hall of Famer members are among the players who have done so.


The National Football League, in an email to the AP, said: "We appreciate the Seau family's cooperation with the National Institutes of Health. The finding underscores the recognized need for additional research to accelerate a fuller understanding of CTE.


"The NFL, both directly and in partnership with the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and other leading organizations, is committed to supporting a wide range of independent medical and scientific research that will both address CTE and promote the long-term health and safety of athletes at all levels."


NFL teams have given a $30 million research grant to the NIH.


The players' union called the NIH report on Seau "tragic."


"The only way we can improve the safety of players, restore the confidence of our fans and secure the future of our game is to insist on the same quality of medical care, informed consent and ethical standards that we expect for ourselves and for our family members," the NFLPA said in a statement.


"This is why the players have asked for things like independent sideline concussion experts, the certification and credentialing of all professional football medical staff and a fairer workers compensation system in professional football," it said.


Seau is not the first former NFL player who killed himself and later was found to have had CTE. Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling are the others.


Before shooting himself, Duerson, a former Chicago Bears defensive back, left a note asking that his brain be studied for signs of trauma. His family filed a wrongful-death suit against the NFL, claiming the league didn't do enough to prevent or treat the concussions that severely damaged his brain.


Easterling played safety for the Falcons in the 1970s. After his career, he suffered from dementia, depression and insomnia, according to his wife, Mary Ann. He committed suicide last April.


Mary Ann Easterling is among the plaintiffs who have sued the NFL.


Tyler Seau played football through high school and for two years in college. He says he has no symptoms of brain trauma.


"I was not surprised after learning a little about CTE that he had it," Tyler said. "He did play so many years at that level. I was more just kind of angry I didn't do something more and have the awareness to help him more, and now it is too late."


Gina Seau's son Jake, now a high school junior, played football for two seasons but has switched to lacrosse and has been recruited to play at Duke.


"Lacrosse is really his sport and what he is passionate about," she said. "He is a good football player and probably could continue. But especially now watching what his dad went through, he says, 'Why would I risk lacrosse for football?'


"I didn't have to have a discussion with him after we saw what Junior went through."


Her 12-year-old son Hunter has shown no interest in playing football.


"That's fine with me," she said.


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Whew! Big asteroid no longer threat to Earth






WASHINGTON (AP) — Upon further review, a big scary-sounding asteroid is no longer even a remote threat to smash into Earth in about 20 years, NASA says.


Astronomers got a much better look at the asteroid when it whizzed by Earth on Wednesday from a relative safe 9 million miles away. They recalculated the space rock’s trajectory and determined it wasn’t on a path to hit Earth on April 13, 2036 as once feared possible.






At more than 1,060 feet wide, the rock called Apophis could do significant damage to a local area if it hit and perhaps even cause a tsunami. But it was not large enough to trigger worldwide extinctions. One prominent theory that explains the extinctions of dinosaurs and other species 65 million years ago says a six-mile-wide meteorite hit Earth and spewed vast amounts of dust into the air, cooling and darkening the planet.


About nine years ago, when astronomers first saw Apophis (uh-PAH’-fihs), they thought there was a 2.7 percent chance that it would smack into our planet. Later, they lowered the chances to an even more unlikely 1 in 250,000.


Now it’s never mind.


“Certainly 2036 is ruled out,” said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program. “It’s why we track them so we can be assured that they won’t get dangerously close.”


Yeomans said now the asteroid, named after an evil Egyptian mythical serpent, won’t get closer than 19,400 miles. That’s still the closest approach asteroid watchers have seen for a rock this large. And when astronomers got a closer look they noticed it was about 180 feet larger than they thought, but not a threat.


Asteroids circle the sun as leftovers of failed attempts to form planets billions of years ago. When asteroids enter Earth’s atmosphere, they become meteors and when they hit the ground they are meteorites.


This is the second time in as many months the asteroid watchers have had good news for Earth. Last month, astronomers got a closer look at a smaller asteroid that they had previously calculated had a 1 in 500 chance of hitting Earth, this time in 2040. And they decided the 460-foot asteroid was no longer a threat.


If you still want to see a space rock come cosmically close to Earth, there’s always next month.


On Feb. 15, a small asteroid, only 130-feet wide, will come close to Earth, about 17,000 miles above the equator. That’s so close it will come between our planet and some of the more distant satellites that circle the globe. But it will miss Earth.


“This will be the closest passage of an object this size,” Yeomans said.


That asteroid, called 2012 DA14, should be visible with smaller telescopes and binoculars, but mostly in Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia, he said.


___


Online:


NASA’s Near Earth Object Program: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/


___


Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears


Science News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Emanuel to unveil new Chicago gun control ordinance

Senator Dick Durbin met with some of Chicagos top law enforcement officials today to focus on preventing gun violence in Chicago.









Mayor Rahm Emanuel today indicated he will put forward his own city gun control ordinance in the next few days after state lawmakers did not reach agreement on the divisive issue.

Emanuel refused to give details about what specifically his proposal will address. But he said he isn't willing to wait until state lawmakers take up gun control. Last month, a federal appeals court tossed out the state's longstanding ban on carrying concealed guns in public. The court gave the state six months to set up new rules.






During his remarks today, Emanuel hit on several of the firearms regulations he has said he would like to see in place at the state level since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Connecticut.

"Waiting is not a strong suit of mine," Emanuel said when asked today about the General Assembly's failure to pass a proposed state ban on assault weapons. "First of all, I believe there's, I know there's a majority in the state, an overwhelming majority in the city for a ban on assault weapons, clips, and comprehensive background checks on all sales, wherever they take place, wherever the location may be. And there's also a majority in the legislature."

There was not, however, enough votes in the Illinois Senate last week to pass bans on assault weapons and high-capacity clips. A new legislature featuring greater numbers of Democrats was sworn in Wednesday.

Emanuel also has spoken in recent weeks about the need for laws requiring people to report if their guns are lost or stolen.

Emanuel said he will introduce his gun legislation to the City Council at its meeting next week. It would then have to receive a committee hearing before coming back to the full council for a vote at a later date. "I will not wait when it comes to protecting our neighborhoods, our communities, our children, the residents in the city of Chicago," he said.

The mayor has been dogged by rising gun violence during his first term. His predecessor, Richard Daley, saw a city handgun ban overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even when Chicago banned handguns, the city continued to be plagued by shooting violence for decades.

Emanuel acknowledged the possibility of a court fight over his upcoming plan.

"We have run it through the (city) corporation counsel, we believe this stands the muster of the court," he said.

"I can do certain things in the city," Emanuel added. "We're going to take those steps and do that."

The mayor also nodded to the fact stronger gun regulations in Chicago will have limited impact if the state and federal governments don't also take action.

"I hope this will not only be the responsibility I take for what I control. I hope it will be a spur to action for Springfield to take the steps that are necessary for them," he said during remarks at the Budlong Woods library on the Northwest Side.



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String of bombings kill 101, injure 200 in Pakistan


QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - At least 101 people were killed in bombings in two Pakistani cities on Thursday in one of the country's bloodiest days in recent years, officials said, with most casualties caused by sectarian attacks in Quetta.


The bombings underscored the myriad threats Pakistani security forces face from homegrown Sunni extremist groups, the Taliban insurgency in the northwest and the less well-known Baloch insurgency in the southwest.


On Thursday evening, two coordinated explosions killed at least 69 people and injured more than 100 in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, said Deputy Inspector of Police Hamid Shakil.


The first attack, in a crowded snooker hall, was a suicide bombing, local residents said. About ten minutes later, a car bomb exploded, they said. Five policemen and a cameraman were among the dead from that blast.


The attacks happened in a predominately Shia neighborhood and banned sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility. The extremist Sunni group targets Shias, who make up about 20 percent of Pakistani's population.


Targeted killings and bombings of Shia communities are common in Pakistan, and rights groups say hundreds of Shia were killed last year. Militant groups in Balochistan frequently bomb or shoot Shia passengers on buses travelling to neighboring Iran.


The killers are rarely caught and some Shia activists say militants work alongside elements of Pakistan's security forces, who see them as a potential bulwark against neighboring India.


Many Pakistanis fear their nation could become the site of a regional power struggle between Saudi Arabia, source of funding for Sunni extremist groups, and Iran, which is largely Shia.


But sectarian tensions are not the only source of violence.


The United Baloch Army claimed responsibility for a blast in Quetta's market earlier in the day. It killed 11 people and injured more than 40, mostly vegetable sellers and secondhand clothes dealers, police officer Zubair Mehmood said. A child was also killed.


The group is one of several fighting for independence for Balochistan, an arid, impoverished region with substantial gas, copper and gold reserves, which constitutes just under half of Pakistan's territory and is home to about 8 million of the country's population of 180 million.


SWAT BOMBING


In another incident Thursday, 21 were killed and more than 60 injured in a bombing when people gathered to hear a religious leader speak in Mingora, the largest city in the northwestern province of Swat, police and officials at the Saidu Sharif hospital said.


"The death toll may rise as some of the injured are in critical condition and we are receiving more and more injured people," said Dr. Niaz Mohammad.


It has been more than two years since a militant attack has claimed that many lives in Swat.


The mountainous region, formerly a tourist destination, has been administered by the Pakistani army since their 2009 offensive drove out Taliban militants who had taken control.


But Talibans retain the ability to attack in Swat and shot schoolgirl campaigner Malala Yousufzai in Mingora last October.


A Taliban spokesman said they were not responsible for Thursday's bombing.


(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar, Pakistan; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Jason Webb)



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Wall Street rises after Alcoa reports earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, rebounding from two days of losses, as investors turned their focus to the first prominent results of the earnings season.


Stocks had retreated at the start of the week from the S&P 500's highest point in five years, hit last Friday, on worries about possible earnings weakness.


Shares of Alcoa Inc were down 0.5 percent to $9.08 after early gains, following the company's earnings release after the bell on Tuesday. The largest U.S. aluminum producer said it expects global demand for aluminum to grow in 2013.


Herbalife Ltd stock rose 4.2 percent to $39.95 in its most active day of trading in the company's history after hedge fund manager Dan Loeb took a large stake in the nutritional supplements seller. Prominent short-seller Bill Ackman had previously accused the company of being a "pyramid scheme," which Herbalife has denied.


Traders have been cautious as the current quarter shaped up like the previous one, with companies recently lowering expectations, said James Dailey, portfolio manager of Team Asset Strategy Fund in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Lower expectations leave room for companies to surprise investors even if their results are not particularly strong.


"The big question and focus is on revenue, and Alcoa had better-than-expected revenue," which calmed the market a little, Dailey said.


Overall, corporate profits were expected to beat the previous quarter's meager 0.1 percent rise. Both earnings and revenues in the fourth quarter are expected to have grown by 1.9 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 61.66 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,390.51. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 3.87 points, or 0.27 percent, to 1,461.02. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 14.00 points, or 0.45 percent, to 3,105.81.


Facebook Inc shares rose above $30 for the first time since July 2012, trading up 5.3 percent at $30.59. Facebook, which has been tight-lipped about its plans after its botched IPO in May, invited the media to its headquarters next week.


Clearwire Corp shares jumped 7.2 percent to $3.13 after Dish Network bid $2.28 billion for the company, beating out a previous Sprint offer and setting the stage for a takeover battle for the wireless service provider that owns crucial mobile spectrum.


Apollo Group Inc slid after heavier early losses, a day after it reported lower student sign-ups for the third straight quarter and cut its operating profit outlook for 2013. Apollo's shares were last off 7.8 percent at $19.32.


Volume was below the 2012 average of 6.42 billion shares traded per day, as 6.10 billion were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq.


Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 2,014 to 963, while on the Nasdaq advancers beat decliners 1,603 to 859.


(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski)



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Steroids fallout: No BB Hall for Bonds, Clemens


NEW YORK (AP) — No one was elected to the Hall of Fame this year. When voters closed the doors to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa, they also shut out everybody else.


For only the second time in four decades, baseball writers failed to give any player the 75 percent required for induction to Cooperstown, sending a powerful signal that stars of the Steroids Era will be held to a different standard.


All the awards and accomplishments collected over long careers by Bonds, Clemens and Sosa could not offset suspicions those feats were boosted by performance-enhancing drugs.


Voters also denied entry Wednesday to fellow newcomers Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling, along with holdovers Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell and Lee Smith.


Among the most honored players of their generation, these standouts won't find their images among the 300 bronze plaques on the oak walls in Cooperstown, where — at least for now — the doors appear to be bolted shut on anyone tainted by PEDs.


"After what has been written and said over the last few years I'm not overly surprised," Clemens said in a statement he posted on Twitter.


Bonds, Clemens and Sosa retired after the 2007 season. They were eligible for the Hall for the first time and have up to 14 more years on the writers' ballot.


"Curt Schilling made a good point, everyone was guilty. Either you used PEDs, or you did nothing to stop their use," Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt said in an email to The Associated Press after this year's vote was announced. "This generation got rich. Seems there was a price to pay."


Biggio, 20th on the career list with 3,060 hits, appeared on 68.2 percent of the 569 ballots, the highest total but 39 votes shy. The three newcomers with the highest profiles failed to come close to even majority support, with Clemens at 37.6 percent, Bonds at 36.2 and Sosa at 12.5.


Other top vote-getters were Morris (67.7), Jeff Bagwell (59.6), Piazza (57.8), Tim Raines (52.2), Lee Smith (47.8) and Schilling (38.8).


"I'm kind of glad that nobody got in this year," Hall of Famer Al Kaline said. "I feel honored to be in the Hall of Fame. And I would've felt a little uneasy sitting up there on the stage, listening to some of these new guys talk about how great they were. ... I don't know how great some of these players up for election would've been without drugs. But to me, it's cheating."


At ceremonies in Cooperstown on July 28, the only inductees will be three men who died more than 70 years ago: Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, umpire Hank O'Day and barehanded catcher Deacon White. They were chosen last month by the 16-member panel considering individuals from the era before integration in 1947.


"It is a dark day," said Jose Canseco, the former AL MVP who was among the first players to admit using steroids. "I think the players should organize some type of lawsuit against major league baseball or the writers. It's ridiculous. Most of these players really have no evidence against them. They've never tested positive or they've cleared themselves like Roger Clemens."


It was the eighth time the BBWAA failed to elect any players. There were four fewer votes than last year and five members submitted blank ballots.


"With 53 percent you can get to the White House, but you can't get to Cooperstown," BBWAA secretary-treasurer Jack O'Connell said. "It's the 75 percent that makes it difficult."


There have been calls for the voting to be taken away from the writers and be given to a more diverse electorate that would include players and broadcasters. The Hall says it is content with the process, which began in 1936.


"It takes time for history to sort itself out, and I'm not surprised we had a shutout today," Hall President Jeff Idelson said. "I wish we had an electee. I will say that, but I'm not surprised given how volatile this era has been in terms of assessing the qualities and the quantities of the statistics and the impact on the game these players have had."


Bonds, baseball's only seven-time Most Valuable Player, hit 762 home runs, including a record 73 in 2001. He was indicted on charges he lied to a grand jury in 2003 when he denied using PEDs but a jury two years ago failed to reach a verdict on three counts he made false statements and convicted him on one obstruction of justice count, finding he gave an evasive answer.


"It is unimaginable that the best player to ever play the game would not be a unanimous first-ballot selection," said Jeff Borris of the Beverly Hills Sports Council, Bonds' longtime agent.


Clemens, the only seven-time Cy Young Award winner, is third in career strikeouts (4,672) and ninth in wins (354). He was acquitted last year on one count of obstruction of Congress, three counts of making false statements to Congress and two counts of perjury, all stemming from his denials of drug use.


"To those who did take the time to look at the facts," Clemens said, "we very much appreciate it."


Sosa, eighth with 609 home runs, was among those who tested positive in MLB's 2003 anonymous survey, The New York Times reported in 2009. He told a congressional committee in 2005 that he never took illegal performance-enhancing drugs.


Since 1961, the only years the writers didn't elect a candidate had been when Yogi Berra topped the 1971 vote by appearing on 67 percent of the ballots cast and when Phil Niekro headed the 1996 ballot at 68 percent — both got in the following years. The other BBWAA elections without a winner were in 1945, 1946, 1950, 1958 and 1960.


Morris will make his final ballot appearance next year, when fellow pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are eligible for the first time along with slugger Frank Thomas.


"Next year, I think you'll have a rather large class, and this year, for whatever reasons, you had a couple of guys come really close," Commissioner Bud Selig said at the owners' meetings in Paradise Valley, Ariz. "This is not to be voted to make sure that somebody gets in every year. It's to be voted on to make sure that they're deserving. I respect the writers as well as the Hall itself. This idea that this somehow diminishes the Hall of baseball is just ridiculous in my opinion."


Players' union head Michael Weiner called the vote "unfortunate, if not sad."


"To ignore the historic accomplishments of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, for example, is hard to justify. Moreover, to penalize players exonerated in legal proceedings — and others never even implicated — is simply unfair. The Hall of Fame is supposed to be for the best players to have ever played the game. Several such players were denied access to the Hall today. Hopefully this will be rectified by future voting."


The BBWAA election rules say "voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."


An Associated Press survey of 112 eligible voters conducted in late November after the ballot was announced indicated Bonds, Clemens and Sosa would fall well short of 50 percent. The big three drew even less support than that as the debate raged over who was Hall worthy.


Voters are writers who have been members of the BBWAA for 10 consecutive years at any point.


BBWAA president Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle said she didn't vote for Bonds, Clemens or Sosa.


"The evidence for steroid use is too strong," she said.


As for Biggio, "I'm surprised he didn't get in."


Mark McGwire, 10th on the career home run list with 583, received 16.9 percent on his seventh try, down from 19.5 last year. He got 23.7 percent in 2010 — a vote before he admitted using steroids and human growth hormone.


Rafael Palmeiro, among just four players with 500 homers and 3,000 hits along with Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray, received 8.8 percent in his third try, down from 12.6 percent last year. Palmeiro received a 10-day suspension in 2005 for a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs, claiming it was due to a vitamin vial given to him by teammate Miguel Tejada.


MLB.com's Hal Bodley, the former baseball columnist for USA Today, said Biggio and others paid the price for other players using PEDs.


"They got caught in the undertow of the steroids thing," he said.


Bodley said this BBWAA vote was a "loud and clear" message on the steroids issue. He said he couldn't envision himself voting for stars linked to drugs.


"We've a forgiving society, I know that," he said. "But I have too great a passion for the sport."


NOTES: There were four write-in votes for career hits leader Pete Rose, who never appeared on the ballot because of his lifetime ban that followed an investigation of his gambling while manager of the Cincinnati Reds. ... Two-time NL MVP Dale Murphy received 18.6 percent in his 15th and final appearance. ... At the July 28 ceremonies, the Hall also will honor Lou Gehrig and Rogers Hornsby among a dozen players who never received formal inductions because of restrictions during World War II. ... Piazza has a book due out next month that could change the view of voters before the next election.


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AP Sports Writers Dan Gelston, Mike Fitzpatrick, John Marshall and Ben Walker contributed to this report.


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