S&P 500 eases, ends longest winning run in eight years

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eased slightly on Monday after an eight-day run of gains, while the Nasdaq edged higher as Apple shares rebounded.


The index remained above 1,500, however, after closing above that level on Friday for the first time in more than five years. The S&P 500's eight sessions of gains was its longest winning streak in eight years.


Caterpillar shares helped cap losses in the Dow industrials even as the company posted a 55 percent drop in quarterly profit due to a charge connected with accounting fraud at a Chinese subsidiary and weak demand among its dealers. Caterpillar's shares, down 2.2 percent in the past three sessions, rose 2 percent Monday to $97.45.


"I think this multi-year high is really something that's in play both for shorter-term traders and with folks with money on the sidelines," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.


Bargain hunters lifted Apple after the tech giant's stock dropped 14.4 percent in the previous two sessions. With Apple's stock up 2.3 percent at $449.83, the iPad and iPhone maker regained the title as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization as Exxon Mobil fell 0.7 percent to $91.11 and slipped back to second place.


On the down side, Boeing fell 1.4 percent to $74 on worries about the potential hit from delays in its 787 Dreamliner program.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 14.05 points, or 0.10 percent, at 13,881.93. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.78 points, or 0.18 percent, at 1,500.18. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 4.59 points, or 0.15 percent, at 3,154.30.


Investors poured $55 billion in new cash into stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in January, the biggest monthly inflow on record, research provider TrimTabs Investment Research said.


"What we have seen this year is, it appears the individual investor is allocating some 401(k) money to equities. Hopefully that's a decision that will be with us for a while," Hellwig said.


Data on Monday pointed to growing economic momentum as companies sensed improved consumer demand.


U.S. durable goods orders jumped 4.6 percent in December, a pace that far outstripped expectations for a rise of 1.8 percent. Pending home sales, however, unexpectedly dropped 4.3 percent. Analysts were looking for an increase of 0.3 percent.


Corporate earnings so far have mostly been stronger than expected. Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 150 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 67.3 percent have beaten analysts' expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


Stocks have also gained support from a recent agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power. On Monday, Fitch Ratings said that agreement removed the near-term risk to the country's 'AAA' rating.


Hess Corp shares shot up 6.1 percent to $62.48 after the company said it would exit its refining business, freeing up to $1 billion of capital. Separately, hedge fund Elliott Associates is looking for approval to buy about $800 million more in Hess stock.


(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal and Nick Zieminski)



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Egypt protesters defy curfew after emergency rule imposed


ISMAILIA/CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - Thousands of Egyptian protesters ignored a curfew on Monday to take to the streets in cities along the Suez canal, defying a state of emergency imposed by Islamist President Mohamed Mursi to end days of violence that has killed at least 51 people.


One man was killed in violence late on Monday in Port Said and another was shot dead earlier in Cairo as a wave of violence raged on, unleashed last week on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the popular revolt that brought down autocrat Hosni Mubarak.


Political opponents spurned a call by Mursi for talks to try to end the violence, with main opposition groups refusing to attend a meeting.


Instead, huge crowds of protesters took to the streets in the capital Cairo, Alexandria and in the three Suez Canal cities - Port Said, Ismailia and Suez - where Mursi imposed emergency rule and a curfew on Sunday.


"Down, down with Mohamed Mursi! Down, down with the state of emergency!" crowds shouted in Ismailia in defiance of the curfew. In Cairo, flames lit up the night sky where protesters set police vehicles ablaze.


In Port Said, men attacked police stations after dark. A security source said some police and troops were injured. A medical source said one man was killed in clashes.


"The people want to bring down the regime," crowds chanted in Alexandria. "Leave means go, and don't say no!" they shouted.


The demonstrators accuse Mubarak's successor Mursi of betraying the revolution that brought down Mubarak. Mursi and his supporters accuse the protesters of seeking to overthrow the country's first ever democratically elected leader through undemocratic means.


Monday was the second anniversary of one of the bloodiest days in the revolution, which erupted on January 25, 2011 and ended Mubarak's iron rule 18 days later.


The past two years have seen the Islamists win two referendums, two parliamentary elections and a presidential vote. But that legitimacy has been challenged by an opposition that accuses Mursi of imposing a new form of authoritarianism, and punctuated by repeated waves of unrest that have prevented a return to stability in the most populous Arab state.


The army has already been deployed in Port Said and Suez and the government agreed a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians as part of the state of emergency.


A cabinet source told Reuters any trials would be in civilian courts, but the step is likely to anger protesters who accuse Mursi of using tactics like those used by Mubarak.


VOLLEYS OF TEARGAS


Propelled to the presidency in a June election by the Muslim Brotherhood, Mursi has lurched through a series of political crises and violent demonstrations while trying to shore up the economy and of prepare for a parliamentary election to cement the new democracy in a few months.


The instability unnerves Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of a key regional player that has a peace deal with Israel. The United States condemned the deadly violence and called on Egyptian leaders to make clear violence is not acceptable. ID:nW1E8MD01C].


In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of teargas at stone-throwing protesters near Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising. Protesters stormed into the down town Semiramis Intercontinental hotel and burned two police vehicles.


A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot early on Monday, a security source said. It was not clear who fired.


"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from teargas wafting towards him.


The political unrest has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting in Port Said a year ago.


As part of emergency measures, a daily curfew will be imposed on the three canal cities from 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) to 6 a.m. (0400 GMT).


The president announced the measures on television on Sunday: "The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Mursi said.


His demeanor in the address infuriated his opponents, not least when he wagged a finger at the camera.


He offered condolences to families of victims. But his invitation to Islamist allies and their opponents to hold a national dialogue was spurned by the main opposition National Salvation Front coalition. Those who attended were mostly Mursi's supporters or sympathizers.


SENDING A MESSAGE


The Front rejected the offer of talks as "cosmetic and not substantive" and set conditions for any future meeting that have not been met in the past, such as forming a government of national unity. The group also demanded that Mursi declare himself responsible for the bloodshed.


"We will send a message to the Egyptian people and the president of the republic about what we think are the essentials for dialogue. If he agrees to them, we are ready for dialogue," opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference.


The opposition Front has distanced itself from the latest flare-ups but said Mursi should have acted far sooner to impose security measures that would have ended the violence.


"Of course we feel the president is missing the real problem on the ground, which is his own policies," Front spokesman Khaled Dawoud said after Mursi made his declaration.


Other activists said Mursi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.


"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," said Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanize the 2011 uprising. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."


Rights activists said Mursi's declaration was a backward step for Egypt, which was under emergency law for Mubarak's entire 30-year rule. His police used sweeping arrest provisions to muzzle dissent and round up opponents, including members of the Brotherhood and even Mursi himself.


Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch in Cairo said the police, still hated by many Egyptians for their heavy-handed tactics under Mubarak, would once again have the right to arrest people "purely because they look suspicious", undermining efforts to create a more efficient and respected police force.


"It is a classic knee-jerk reaction to think the emergency law will help bring security," she said. "It gives so much discretion to the Ministry of Interior that it ends up causing more abuse, which in turn causes more anger."


(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia and Abdelrahman Youssef in Alexandria; Editing by Peter Graff)



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TSX little changed, RIM positioning offsets banks






TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index finished little changed on Monday, as gains in the financial group were partially offset by Research In Motion Ltd shares, which sagged ahead of its critical BlackBerry 10 launch this week.


The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> was down 0.72 of a point at 12,815.91. Half of the index’s 10 key sectors climbed higher.</.gsptse>






(Reporting by Solarina Ho)


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Taye Diggs Chases Down Home Invader After SAG Awards















01/28/2013 at 04:30 PM EST



A quick note to any salesmen hoping to unload a home security system on Private Practice star Taye Diggs: He doesn't need one.
 

Last night, after returning to his Los Angeles home from the Screen Actors Guild Awards with his wife Idina Menzel at 11:20 p.m., Diggs discovered a burglar in his garage. The intruder – first reported on by TMZ and later identified as Hassan Juma, 20 – attempted to flee, but didn't get very far.

"The suspect tried to run away, but [Diggs] chased him down the street was able to detain him until police arrived," LAPD spokesman Richard French tells PEOPLE. "At this time, I don't know exactly what he did to the suspect to detain him."
 

Juma was arrested, charged with burglary and is currently in custody. Bail has been set at $50,000.
 

Diggs's crime-fighting exploits capped off a busy evening for the actor. Earlier in the night, he and Cougar Town actress Busy Philipps handed out the SAG Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a drama series to Claire Danes for her role in Homeland.

At the after-party following the awards ceremony, Diggs and wife Menzel ripped it up on the dance floor to the beats of DJ Paesche.

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant


The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.


Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.


He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.


The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.


"He was the first quad amputee to survive" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco's father, Alex Marrocco. "He was really excited to get new arms."


The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.


Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient on Tuesday.


The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.


Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.


"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.


While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.


Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants. Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it.


Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.


Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new minimal immune suppression approach.


Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities.


The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.


Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from a tube in his throat during the long surgery, decided that he sounded like Al Pacino, and started doing movie lines.


"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.


___


AP writer Alex Dominguez contributed to this report.


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Fed waits for job market to perk up


LONDON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve's ultra-loose monetary policy is a root cause of the "currency wars" that some see as a looming threat to the world economy, but don't expect the U.S. central bank to signal a shift back to normal any time soon.


The Fed, whose policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday, said just last month that it expects to keep short-term interest rates exceptionally low until the U.S. unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent, inflation permitting.


That goal is still distant. Figures on Friday are likely to show that the jobless rate was unchanged in January at 7.8 percent, while the economy created 155,000 jobs, the same as in December, according to economists polled by Reuters.


So it would be a huge surprise if the Fed were to do anything other than reaffirm last month's decision to anchor short-term interest rates in a range of zero to 0.25 percent and to keep buying $85 billion of bonds each month to hold down long-term rates.


The only question mark is whether the FOMC vote will be unanimous now that Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, who opposes the current round of bond-buying, has rotated off the panel, said Harm Bandholz, an economist with UniCredit Bank in New York.


Most economists polled by Reuters expect the Fed to keep its open-ended bond-buying program in place well into next year, even though the economic news flow and market confidence are improving markedly.


True, Wednesday's preliminary report on fourth-quarter GDP is likely to show that growth slowed to an annualized rate of 1.2 percent from 3.1 percent in the July-September period.


And the current quarter will also be soft as the expiry of a 2 percent payroll tax cut is dampening consumer spending.


But then Bandholz expects an average growth rate of 2.8 percent over the rest of the year. That would be the strongest three-quarter period of the recovery so far, he said.


"The outlook has improved a lot in the U.S. I've been on the cautious side for the last three years, but this time I'm a bit more bullish," he said.


THE FED BIDES ITS TIME


The recovery in housing would add at least half a percentage point to GDP growth in 2013, while capital spending was likely to revive now that uncertainty over budget talks in Washington had been largely allayed, Bandholz said.


"There's a lot of pent-up demand in the system. I don't think all these investments have been abandoned; they've just been postponed," he said.


At some point, investors' exuberance over the super-easy stance of the world's major central banks will give way to worries that they are about to take away the punch bowl.


Gustavo Reis, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York, said concerns about the costs of money-printing were likely to spread but would be offset by uncertainty over the impact on growth of fiscal tightening in the United States and Europe.


"All told, although global activity seems more robust now than at any point in 2012, we expect policymakers to continue to worry predominantly about downside risks," he said in a note.


The bank does not expect the Fed to consider halting asset purchases before 2014, while the latest episode of monetary easing announced by the Bank of Japan is likely to be ‘long-lived and significant'.


Many economists argue that bold monetary action is long overdue in Japan, whose nominal output has not grown in 20 years, saddling the government with a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 220 percent.


But Douglas McWilliams, who heads the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London consultancy, fears Japan's decision will lead the global economy into unpredictable currency wars.


"It's a bit like if someone's rude to you, you're rude to them back. You get tit-for-tat behavior," McWilliams said.


CURRENCY FRICTION, BUT NO WAR


Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, last week called talk of currency wars overblown and said countries had to pull the right policy levers to get their economies back on track, with corresponding consequences for exchange rates.


However, McWilliams said the problem was that it was difficult to get countries to agree NOT to wage currency wars.


Tellingly, Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced German concerns last week that Japan might be deliberately seeking to cheapen the yen to give its exporters a competitive edge.


"So we may well find that there is a period of very heavy volatility before the authorities involved try and get some kind of agreement," McWilliams said.


In a relatively quiet week for economic data in the euro zone - money supply figures and confidence surveys from the European Commission are the highlights - the focus is likely to remain squarely on the euro, which has been rising briskly as traders price in the policy shifts that Blanchard had in mind.


While the Fed and the Bank of Japan are expanding their balance sheets, the European Central Bank is starting to soak up some of the emergency cash it lent to banks a year ago.


The central bank said on Friday that banks would repay early 137 billion euros of cheap borrowed money.


"I'm not sure if we have too strong a euro for the moment but certainly we would not want to see a currency war of competitive devaluations which would have a negative effect on the euro," the European Union's top monetary official, Olli Rehn, told Reuters.


(Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Davos; editing by Jason Neely)



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Nightclub fire kills at least 232 in Brazil


SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A nightclub fire killed at least 232 people in southern Brazil early on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked and overcrowded exits in the ensuing panic, officials said.


The blaze in the university town of Santa Maria was started by a band member or someone from its production team igniting a flare, which then set fire to the ceiling, said Luiza Sousa, a civil police official. The fire spread "in seconds," she said.


Local fire officials said at least one exit was locked and that bouncers, who at first thought those fleeing were trying to skip out on bar tabs, initially blocked patrons from leaving. The security staff relented only when they saw flames engulfing the ceiling.


The tragedy, in a packed venue in one of Brazil's most prosperous states, comes as the country scrambles to improve safety, security and logistical shortfalls ahead of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics, both intended to showcase the economic advances and first-world ambitions of Latin America's largest nation.


In Santa Maria, a city of more than 275,000 people, rescue workers and weary officials wept alongside family and friends of the victims at a local gymnasium being used as a makeshift morgue.


"It's the saddest, saddest day of my life," said Neusa Soares, the mother of one of those killed, 22-year-old Viviane Tolio Soares. "I never thought I would have to live to see my girl go away."


President Dilma Rousseff cut short an official visit to Chile and flew to Santa Maria, where she wept as she spoke to relatives of the victims at the gym.


"All I can say at the moment is that my feelings are of deep sorrow," said Rousseff, who began her political career in Rio Grande do Sul, the state where the fire occurred.


News of the fire broke on Sunday morning, when local news broadcast images of shocked people outside the Boate Kiss, as the nightclub was known. Gradually, grisly details emerged.


The vast majority of the victims, most of them university students, died of smoke inhalation, officials said. Others were crushed in the stampede.


"We ran into a barrier of the dead at the exit," Colonel Guido Pedroso de Melo, commander of the fire brigade in Rio Grande do Sul, said of the scene that firefighters found on arrival. "We had to clear a path to get to the rest of those that were inside."


Officials said more than 1,000 people may have been in the club, possibly exceeding its legal capacity. Though Internet postings about the venue suggested as many as 2,000 people at times have crammed into the club, Pedroso de Melo said no more than half that should have been inside.


He said the club was authorized to be open but its permit was in the process of being renewed.


However, Pedroso de Melo did point to several egregious safety violations - from the flare that went off during the show to the locked door that kept people from leaving.


'HAPPENED SO FAST'


When the fire began at about 2:30 a.m., many revelers were unable to find their way out amid the chaos, confusing restroom doors for exits and finding resistance from bouncers when they did find an exit.


"It all happened so fast," survivor Taynne Vendrusculo told GloboNews TV. "Both the panic and the fire spread rapidly, in seconds."


Once security guards realized the building was on fire, they tried in vain to control the blaze with a fire extinguisher, according to a televised interview with one of the guards, Rodrigo Moura. He said patrons were getting trampled as they rushed for the doors, describing it as "a horror film."


One of the club's owners has surrendered to police for questioning, GloboNews reported.


TV footage showed people sobbing outside the club before dawn, while shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit.


Rescue officials moved the bodies to the local gym and separated them by gender. Male victims were easier to identify because most had identification on them, unlike the women, whose purses were left scattered in the devastated nightclub.


The disaster recalls other incidents including a 2003 fire at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people, and a Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 that killed nearly 200. In both incidents, a band or members of the audience ignited fires that set the establishment ablaze.


The Rhode Island fire shocked local and federal officials because of the rarity of such incidents in the United States, where enforcement of safety codes is considered to be relatively strict. After the Buenos Aires blaze, Argentine officials closed many nightclubs and other venues and ultimately forced the city's mayor from office because of poor oversight of municipal codes.


The fire early on Sunday occurred in one of the wealthiest, most industrious and culturally distinct regions of Brazil. Santa Maria is about 186 miles west of Porto Alegre, the capital of a state settled by Germans and other immigrants from northern Europe.


Local clichés paint the region as stricter and more squared away than the rest of Brazil, where most residents are a mix descended from native tribes, Portuguese colonists, African slaves, and later influxes of immigrants from southern Europe.


Rio Grande do Sul state's health secretary, Ciro Simoni, said emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene. States from all over Brazil offered support, and sympathy messages poured in from foreign leaders.


(Additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Gustavo Bonato, Jeferson Ribeiro, Eduardo Simões, Brian Winter and Guido Nejamkis.; Writing by Paulo Prada; Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Eric Beech)



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Twitter launches advertising services in Middle East






DUBAI (Reuters) – Twitter Inc launched advertising services in the Middle East and North Africa on Sunday as the social media firm seeks to exploit a tripling of its regional subscriber base following its widespread use during the Arab Spring protests.


Digital advertising is relatively undeveloped in the region, accounting for an estimated 4 percent of its total advertising spending, but a young, tech-savvy population and rising Internet penetration points to significant potential for growth.






“The two are interconnected – the rapid growth of our user base with the timing of why we want to help brands connect with that audience,” said Shailesh Rao, Twitter vice-president for international operations.


Twitter does not provide a regional breakdown of its more than 200 million users worldwide, but Rao said its MENA subscriber base had tripled in the past 12 months.


The company has recruited Egypt’s Connect Ads, which is ultimately owned by Cairo-listed Orascom Telecom Media and Technology, to launch advertising initially in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.


Pepsi and Saudi telecom operator Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) are among its confirmed clients, the company said.


Twitter says the products it promotes typically have an audience response rate of 1 to 3 percent, significantly higher than traditional advertising rate of 0.1 to 0.5 percent.


“Social media advertising is totally different because it relies on what people say. It’s about two-way, not one-way, communication,” said Mohamed El Mehairy, Connect Ads managing director.


(editing by Jane Baird)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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SAG Nominees' Best Style Moments





See the best dressed baby bump on TV, the most badass aviators on the big screen and the sexiest movie wardrobe of 2013








Credit: ABC/Peter "Hopper" Stone



Updated: Wednesday Jan 16, 2013 | 12:00 PM EST
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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West


New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.


Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.


There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.


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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/


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