Wall Street trims gains, volatile after Boehner remarks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed on Thursday, but shed some earlier gains, after John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, poured cold water on hopes that lawmakers were getting closer to cutting a budget deal that would avert a possible recession next year.

Boehner's comment - that no "substantive" progress had been made in fiscal talks with the White House - was the latest in a string of contrary pronouncements by policymakers that have wobbled the markets as investors attempt to speculate over whether Washington will finally cut a deal.

There have been some signs that leaders are moving closer to a fiscal agreement. The S&P 500 has gained nearly 5 percent after dropping almost 8 percent following the U.S. election in November. But investors remain wary that ad hoc statements from politicians can spark quick reversals in the market.

"When the sentiment is that nothing is going to get done, it does create a lot of anxiety and selling pressure. If there's any sense of progress, then the market seems to rally," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago. "I think we're hostage to this for the rest of the year."

Discussions are ongoing in Congress over avoiding big spending cuts and tax hikes, known as the "fiscal cliff," that will begin to take effect from January.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 6.95 points, or 0.05 percent, to 12,992.06. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 3.40 points, or 0.24 percent, to 1,413.33. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 11.82 points, or 0.40 percent, to 3,003.60.

U.S.-listed shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion surged 5.9 percent to $11.75 after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral" on optimistic ahead of the launch of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

Shares of top retailers retreated in the wake of data showing a weak start to November sales after superstorm Sandy. Target fell 1.6 percent to $61.80 percent and Kohl's Corp dropped 8.2 percent to $46.94.

The U.S. economy grew faster than initially thought in the third quarter as businesses restocked, but consumer and business spending were revised lower in a sobering reminder of the economic recovery's underlying weakness.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the quarter, the Commerce Department said, as export growth helped offset the weakest consumer spending and first drop in business investment in more than a year.

Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose more than expected in October, a sign the housing market recovery advanced into the fourth quarter despite a mammoth storm and concerns over looming tax hikes.

Shares of companies that build homes rose. The PHLX housing index <.hgx> rose 0.4 percent, shedding some earlier gains in line with the pullback in the broader market.

Tiffany shares slumped 6.7 percent to $59.48 after the upscale jeweler reported quarterly results and cut its full-year sales and profit forecasts.

Although domestic events largely dominated investors' attention, the euro zone is still on the radar. The yield on Italy's 10-year bonds fell to the lowest in two years at an auction, amid relief that international lenders reached agreement this week to reduce Greece's debt by more than 40 billion euros.

"The fact that the bond sales in Europe went well suggest confidence is beginning to reenter some of the peripheral nations and that is a good sign," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Read More..

Bombings Are Said to Kill Dozens Near Syria’s Capital

Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Rebels celebrated on top of a downed Syrian jet in Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo, on Wednesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Syrian state media said on Wednesday that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus, the capital, as the civil war swirls from north to south claiming ever higher casualties. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.

There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and antigovernment activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.

Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting out of the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.

“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.

Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says, “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”

The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed each other for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”

On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.

In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.

Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy. In Damascus, the official SANA news agency said the explosions in Jaramana outside the city at around 7 a.m. were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs on the SANA Web site showed wreckage and flames in what looked like a narrow alleyway with cars covered in chunks of debris from damaged buildings. The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood was home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.

The photographs on the Web site showed shattered windows at the Abou Samra coffee house and gurneys laden with injured people clogging what seemed to be a hospital corridor.

SANA said two bombings in other neighborhoods caused minor damage. Activists reported that there were four explosions and said they were all “huge.”

Footage broadcast on Syria’s private Addounia channel and state television showed damage scarring gray six-story apartment houses above tangles of wrecked cars as ambulances arrived to transport the wounded and rescuers spraying rubble with fire hoses. The camera panned over bloodstained sidewalks.

The blasts seemed initially at least to shift the focus of the fighting from the north, where insurgents have claimed string of tactical breakthroughs in recent days, to areas ringing Damascus.

In the north in recent days, the insurgents also claimed to have seized air bases and a hydroelectric dam, apparently seeking both to expand their communications lines and to counter the government’s supremacy in the air.

The death toll from Wednesday’s bombings was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.

The explosions reflected the dramatic shift since Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 as a peaceful protest centered on the southern town of Dara’a. It has since spread across the land in a full-blown civil war pitting government forces against a rebel army of Army defectors, disaffected civilians and what the authorities say are foreign jihadists.

Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.

Read More..

German lawmakers condemn Google campaign against copyright law

BERLIN (Reuters) – Senior German politicians have denounced as propaganda a campaign by Google to mobilize public opinion against proposed legislation to let publishers charge search engines for displaying newspaper articles.

Internet lobbyists say they are worried the German law will set a precedent for other countries such as France and Italy that have shown an interest in having Google pay publishers for the right to show their news snippets in its search results.

Lawmakers in Berlin will debate the bill in the Bundestag (lower house) on Thursday. Google says the law would make it harder for users to retrieve information via the Internet.

Google launched its campaign against the bill on Tuesday with advertisements in German newspapers and a web information site called “Defend your web”.

“Such a law would hit every Internet user in Germany,” Stefan Tweraser, country manager for Google Germany, said in a statement. “An ancillary copyright means less information for consumers and higher costs for companies.”

The campaign has caused outrage among some members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition.

“The campaign initiated by Google is cheap propaganda,” said conservative lawmakers Guenter Krings and Ansgar Heveling.

“Under the guise of a supposed project for the freedom of the Internet, an attempt is being made to coopt its users for its own lobbying,” the two said in a statement.

Supporters of the law argue that newspaper publishers should be able to benefit from advertising revenues earned by search engines using their content.

Under the plans, publishers would get a bigger say over how their articles are used on the Internet and could charge search engines for showing articles or extracts.

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power in Merkel’s government, said she was astonished that Google was trying to monopolize opinion-making. She is responsible for the law.

“PANIC MONGERING”

Germany’s newspaper industry, suffering from economic slowdown and keen to get its hands on any revenues it can, backs the plans and railed against Google’s campaign.

“The panic mongering from Google has no justification,” Germany’s BDZV newspaper association said in a statement.

“The argument from search engine companies that Internet searching and retrieval will be made more difficult is not serious. Private use, reading, following links and quoting will be possible, just as before.”

Internet lobbyists in Brussels fear the European Commission is sympathetic to publisher demands for a piece of Google’s profits online. Recent statements, they say, are proof.

“Consumers are not the only ones facing difficulties,” Michel Barnier, the EU’s internal market commissioner, said in a speech on November 7. “Think of newspaper publishers who see the content they produce being used by others to attract consumers on the net and generate advertising revenues.”

French newspapers and magazines want Google to pay them for linking to their articles on Google. The French government has named a mediator to negotiate with the press and Google to try to get a deal by the end of the year.

If no deal emerges, President Francois Hollande’s government will ask parliament to draft a law modifying copyright laws to protect the press from appropriation of its content online, according to a letter signed by two ministers on November 28.

(Additional reporting by Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Claire Davenbport in Brussels and Leila Abboud in Paris; Writing by Madeline Chambers, Editing by Gareth Jones and)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Nanny Yoselyn Ortega Pleads Not Guilty to Killing Children

By Stephen M. Silverman

11/28/2012 at 12:40 PM EST

Scene of children's stabbing

Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny charged with first-degree murder for allegedly killing the two young children she cared for, faced a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Tuesday morning – and entered a plea of not guilty.

Still in the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center bed a month after police said she fatally stabbed Lucia, 6, and Leo Krim, 2, before she turned the knife on herself, Ortega had her plea entered on her behalf by her public-assistance lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg.

"My client is profoundly mentally impaired and in need of medical attention," the attorney said, reports the New York Post. The paper also says that during the 10-minute legal proceeding in the hospital Ortega, 50, appeared alert though remained silent and under a blanket.

Judge Lewis Bart Stone ordered Ortega to undergo a psychiatric exam to determine if she is mentally fit to stand trial. He also set the next court date for Jan. 16.

No motivation for what caused the Oct. 25 incident has been explained. "She snapped," her tearful sister, Celia Ortega, said on Oct. 26. "We don’t understand what happened to her mind."

Police say that the stabbings took place while the children's mother, Marina Krim, was gone from the family's Upper West Side apartment with a third child, a 3-year-old. When they returned, Marina found Lucia and Leo dead in the bathtub and Ortega on the bathroom floor, with stab wounds to the neck. A kitchen knife was nearby, they said.

The children's father, CNBC digital media executive Kevin Krim, was on an out-town business trip when the killings occured. Police met him at the airport to break the news to him.

Read More..

Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing infections from surgery is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million.

The measures included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Practices were standardized at the seven hospitals.

The Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons directed the project. They announced results on Wednesday.

___

Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

Read More..

Wall Street cuts losses on Boehner "fiscal cliff" comment

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks sharply pared losses on Wednesday after U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said he was optimistic that a deal on the "fiscal cliff" to avert large tax hikes and spending cuts could be reached.

After falling nearly 1 percent, the S&P 500 pared losses to trade near flat after Boehner said that Republicans were willing to put revenues on the table if Democrats agreed to spending cuts.

For weeks now, the market has been swinging back and forth on headlines out of Washington regarding the ongoing U.S. budget talks.

Later in the day, President Barack Obama will meet at the White House with chief executives from top corporations including Goldman Sachs , Deloitte LLP, and Caterpillar Inc , to discuss U.S. fiscal problems.

"While there's little that the president and vice president could do at today's meeting to improve moods in America's corner office, we still believe a legislative compromise will be reached before 'fiscal cliff' detonates," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.

"In the meantime, we expect daunting headlines and emotional market volatility."

One possible result of the deficit reduction talks is a rise in the tax rate on dividends, prompting some firms to issue special dividends or move up plans for dividends.

The latest example is retailer Costco Wholesale Corp , which said it will pay a special $3 billion dividend to investors. The company posted monthly same-store sales that beat forecasts. The stock rose 4.7 percent to $101.07.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 3.38 points, or 0.03 percent, at 12,881.51. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 1.73 points, or 0.12 percent, at 1,397.21. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 5.10 points, or 0.17 percent, at 2,962.69.

Earlier, the S&P 500 fell nearly 1 percent on data that showed U.S. single-family home sales fell in October, casting a shadow over what has been one of the brighter spots in the U.S. economy.

Knight Capital Group Inc shares jumped 10 percent to $3.27 on news that Getco LLC has sent a proposal for a merger between Getco and Knight Capital at a price of $3.50 per share, according to a regulatory filing.

On the downside, Apple Inc shares fell 1.3 percent to $576.80, weighing heavily on the overall market.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Read More..

Japan Expands Its Regional Military Role

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Coast guard officials from a dozen Asian and African nations, at right, joined a training cruise around Tokyo Bay aboard a Japanese Coast Guard cutter.

TOKYO — After years of watching its international influence eroded by a slow-motion economic decline, the pacifist nation of Japan is trying to raise its profile in a new way, offering military aid for the first time in decades and displaying its own armed forces in an effort to build regional alliances and shore up other countries’ defenses to counter a rising China.

Already this year, Japan crossed a little-noted threshold by providing its first military aid abroad since the end of World War II, approving a $2 million package for its military engineers to train troops in Cambodia and East Timor in disaster relief and skills like road building. Japanese warships have not only conducted joint exercises with a growing number of military forces in the Pacific and Asia, but they have also begun making regular port visits to countries long fearful of a resurgence of Japan’s military.

And after stepping up civilian aid programs to train and equip the coast guards of other nations, Japanese defense officials and analysts say, Japan could soon reach another milestone: beginning sales in the region of military hardware like seaplanes, and perhaps eventually the stealthy diesel-powered submarines considered well suited to the shallow waters where China is making increasingly assertive territorial claims.

Taken together those steps, while modest, represent a significant shift for Japan, which had resisted repeated calls from the United States to become a true regional power for fear that doing so would move it too far from its postwar pacifism. The country’s quiet resolve to edge past that reluctance and become more of a player comes as the United States and China are staking their own claims to power in Asia, and as jitters over China’s ambitions appear to be softening bitterness toward Japan among some Southeast Asian countries trampled last century in its quest for colonial domination.

The driver for Japan’s shifting national security strategy is its tense dispute with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that is feeding Japanese anxiety that the country’s relative decline — and the financial struggles of its traditional protector, the United States — are leaving Japan increasingly vulnerable.

“During the cold war, all Japan had to do was follow the U.S.,” said Keiro Kitagami, a special adviser on security issues to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. “With China, it’s different. Japan has to take a stand on its own.”

Japan’s moves do not mean it might transform its military, which serves a purely defensive role, into an offensive force anytime soon. The public has resisted past efforts by some politicians to revamp Japan’s pacifist constitution, and the nation’s vast debt will limit how much military aid it can extend.

But it is also clear that attitudes in Japan are evolving as China continues its double-digit annual growth in military spending and asserts that it should be in charge of the islands that Japan claims, as well as vast swaths of the South China Sea that various Southeast Asian nations say are in their control.

Japanese leaders have met the Chinese challenge over the islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China with an uncharacteristic willingness to push back, and polls show the public increasingly agrees. Both major political parties are also talking openly about instituting a more flexible reading of the constitution that would allow Japan to come to the defense of allies — shooting down any North Korean missile headed for the United States, for instance — blurring the line between an offensive and defensive force.

The country’s self-defense forces had already begun nosing over that line in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Japan backed the United States-led campaigns by deploying naval tankers to refuel warships in the Indian Ocean.

Japanese officials say their strategy is not to begin a race for influence with China, but to build up ties with other nations that share worries about their imposing neighbor. They acknowledge that even building the capacity of other nations’ coast guards is a way of strengthening those countries’ ability to stand up to any Chinese threat.

“We want to build our own coalition of the willing in Asia to prevent China from just running over us,” said Yoshihide Soeya, director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at Keio University in Tokyo.

Or, as the vice minister of defense, Akihisa Nagashima, said in an interview, “We cannot just allow Japan to go into quiet decline.”

Read More..

Nintendo says more than 400,000 Wii Us sold in US

NEW YORK (AP) — Nintendo has sold more than 400,000 of its new video game console, the Wii U, in its first week on sale in the U.S., the company said Monday.

The Wii U launched on Nov. 18 in the U.S. at a starting price of $ 300. Nintendo said the sales figure, based on internal estimates, is through Saturday, or seven days later.

The Wii U is the first major game console to launch in six years. It comes with a new touch-screen controller that promises to change how people play games by offering different people in the same room a different experience, depending on the controller used.

Six years ago, Nintendo Co. sold 475,000 of the original Wii in that console’s first seven days in stores, according to data from the NPD Group. The original Wii remains available, and Nintendo said it sold more than 300,000 of them last week, along with roughly 250,000 handheld Nintendo 3DS units and about 275,000 of the Nintendo DS.

At this early stage, demand isn’t the only factor dictating how many consoles are sold. Supply is, too. This means it’s likely that more people wanted to buy the Wii U in the first week than those who were able to. The original Wii was in short supply more than a year after it went on sale.

As of Monday afternoon, the website of Best Buy Co. was sold out of the Wii U. Video game retailer GameStop Corp. said there was at least a three day wait for a deluxe Wii U, which costs $ 350, has more memory and comes with a game called “Nintendo Land.” GameStop still had the basic, $ 300 version available.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Nintendo will ship 1 million to 1.5 million Wii Us in the U.S. through the end of January.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Meet Britney Spears's 'New Little Baby Girl': Hannah the Dog

People Pets

By Alison Schwartz

11/27/2012 at 12:20 PM EST

Courtesy of Britney Spears

New job, new dog?

Freshly minted The X Factor judge Britney Spears is showing off an adorable addition to her fan base: introducing ... Hannah!

"I want you all to meet my new little baby girl @hannahspears," Spears, 30, Tweeted Monday, alongside a sweet snapshot of the duo. "How cute is she?!?!"

And, yes, Britney's b––h already has a budding fan following of her own. The pint-sized pooch is taking to Twitter – perhaps with the help of mom – with some doggone pressing thoughts.

"Should I wear a bow?" reads a Tweet from Hannah's account. "Mom says I'm a princess & that I need a bow."

Read More..

CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

Read More..