Wall Street edges lower as Fed keeps stimulus in place

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve left in place its bond-buying stimulus plan, saying economic growth had stalled but indicating the pullback was likely temporary.


Describing the U.S. job market as continuing its modest pace of improvement, the Fed repeated a pledge to keep purchasing securities until employment improves substantially.


The statement from the Fed follows data that showed the economy, as measured by gross domestic product, unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter. Economists stressed that the 0.1 percent contraction, caused partly by a plunge in government spending and lower business inventories, is not an indicator of recession.


"It is interesting that the Fed decided to focus on the GDP report, pointing to how activity slowed because of transitory factors. That sums up the GDP report. I am a bit puzzled why the Fed focused solely on one report. I would argue that this was a slightly dovish report," said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 13.32 points, or 0.10 percent, at 13,941.10. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 1.90 points, or 0.13 percent, at 1,505.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 2.11 points, or 0.07 percent, at 3,151.55.


The S&P 500 held above 1,500, seen by technical analysts as an inflection point that will determine the overall direction in the near term. The index is on track to post its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997.


"This is a very modest pullback after a steep run," said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management in New York.


"It is too soon for the Fed to start talking about the end of (their bond buying program); the economy needs stimulus to sustain this recovery."


Both Boeing Co and Amazon.com shares gained after earnings beat expectations, continuing a trend this quarter of high-profile names advancing after results.


Amazon rose 5.1 percent to $273.51 and Boeing rose 1.1 percent to $74.43.


Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 192 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season 68.8 percent have been above analyst expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


Chesapeake Energy rose 8 percent to $20.48 a day after it said Aubrey McClendon would step down as chief executive. The last year has been marked by civil and criminal probes into the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer.


Research In Motion shares fell 6.3 percent to $14.67 after the company, which is changing its name to BlackBerry, unveiled a long-delayed line of smartphones in hopes of a comeback into a market it once dominated.


Giving the market extra support, private sector employment topped forecasts with the ADP National Employment report showing 192,000 jobs added in January, higher than the 165,000 expectation.


(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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Syrian Opposition Leader Softens Position on Talks with Assad

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Goran Tomasevic/Reuters


Free Syrian Army fighters ran for cover as a tank shell exploded against a wall. More Photos »







BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s top political opposition leader on Wednesday expressed willingness for the first time to talk with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad, softening what had been an absolute refusal to negotiate with the government in an increasingly chaotic civil war.




The opposition leader, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, coupled his offer with two demands: the release of what he described as 160,000 prisoners held by Mr. Assad’s government, and the renewal of all expired passports held by Syrians abroad — a gesture apparently aimed at disaffected expatriates and exiled opposition figures who could not return home even if they wanted to.


Sheik Khatib’s offer, published in Arabic on his Facebook page, quickly provoked sharp criticism from others in the Syrian opposition coalition, with some distancing themselves and complaining that the leader had not consulted with colleagues in advance. The sheik later clarified in a second statement that he was expressing his personal opinion, while he chided critics in among his colleagues who he described as “those sitting down on their couches and then saying ‘Attack — don’t negotiate.’ ”


The mutual criticisms reflected the fractiousness that has plagued the Syrian opposition movement since its struggle to depose Mr. Assad began as a peaceful political movement nearly two years ago. Nonetheless, the offer still represented a potential opening for dialogue in the conflict, which has threatened to destabilize the Middle East.


Sheik Khatib made the offer as the United Nations was scrambling to raise money to manage the humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict, which has sent at least 700,000 Syrians into neighboring countries and left more than one million displaced inside Syria. A donor conference under way in Kuwait has produced commitments for about $1 billion of the $1.5 billion that the United Nations is seeking.


“I announce that I am willing to sit down with representatives of the Syrian regime in Cairo or Tunisia or Istanbul,” Sheik Khatib said in the offer. His motivation to make such an offer, he said, was “to search for a political resolution to the crisis, and to arrange matters for the transitional phase that could prevent more blood.”


There was no immediate Syrian government response to Sheik Khatib, a respected Sunni cleric who once had been the imam of the historic Umayyad mosque in Damascus. His unified Syrian opposition coalition, created at a meeting in Qatar two months ago, has been formally recognized by the Arab League, the European Union and the United States.


Sheik Khatib’s offer was made less than a day after the peace envoy for Syria from the United Nations and Arab League, Lakhdar Brahimi, gave the United Nations Security Council a pessimistic prognosis for negotiations.


It also followed a grisly massacre discovered on Tuesday in the contested northern city of Aleppo, from which anti-Assad activists posted videos online of scores of bound victims who had been shot in the head and dumped in a river. Some insurgents said the death toll exceeded 100, mostly abducted men in their 20s and 30s.


Both sides in the conflict blamed the other for those killings, just as they have traded accusations for other atrocities, including two major explosions a few weeks ago that killed more than 80 people at the University of Aleppo. Outside assessments based on video of the university blasts have suggested that a Syrian military missile was responsible.


Sheik Khatib did not hide his contempt for Mr. Assad’s government in his statement, saying, “One can’t trust a regime that kills children and attacks bakeries and shells universities and destroys Syria’s infrastructure and commits massacres against innocents, the last of which won’t be the Aleppo massacre, which is unprecedented in its savagery.”


But he decided to reach out, he wrote, partly because the Syrian government had publicly invited political opposition leaders this week to return to Damascus for what it called a dialogue.


Three weeks ago, Mr. Assad said in a speech that he was open to reconciliation talks but not with political opponents he described as terrorists, the government’s generic term for armed insurgents. At the time, most members of the political opposition dismissed Mr. Assad’s speech as meaningless.


The opposition’s longstanding position has been that Mr. Assad must resign as a precondition for any talks and that he cannot be part of any transitional government. Mr. Assad and his aides have said he has no intention of resigning and may even run for another term in elections next year.


Hania Mourtada reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.



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Apple announces iPad with double storage capacity

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(Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Tuesday that it will sell a version of its iPad tablet computer with 128 gigabytes of storage, which is twice the capacity of its existing models.


Apple, which has sold more than 120 million iPads so far, said that the new iPad will go on sale February 5, in black or white, for a suggested retail price of $ 799 for the iPad with just Wi-Fi model, and $ 929 for the version that also has a cellular wireless connection.






(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Jenny McCarthy's Super Bowl Plans: 'Have Fun' with Boys

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By Dahvi Shira





01/30/2013 at 03:35 PM EST



Jenny McCarthy is on a mission. Aside from fulfilling her duties as co-host of the 10th annual Leather & Laces pre-Super Bowl soirée in New Orleans on Feb. 1, the sexy starlet also wants to meet some arm candy for the night.

"I'm going solo," she told PEOPLE on Friday. "Hell no, [I'm not bringing] any dates. I'm not looking for a boyfriend, but I am looking to have fun. What that entails, I don't know, but it is fun to talk to boys when you're single. I want just a sweet, nice – someone who isn't a slime ball."

Adds McCarthy, 40, "It's a really fun party. It attracts the adultsters. I love that term for them. People who grew up because they had to, but still want to go out and have a good time. It's a really, really, really lively group and the party always goes until at least three o' clock in the morning."

Something else she's looking forward to during the outing is reconnecting with fellow co-host and former Playboy star, Kendra Wilkinson, 27.

"She is also a mom and a really, really, really, really nice girl," says McCarthy, who will be clad in Herve Leger on the big night. "I'm looking forward to catching up and seeing how she's doing and having a mom's night out on the town."

As for what that "mom's night out" means, McCarthy expects, "We'll probably have dinner before we go and dance as much as possible. We have the night off. If you're going to host a party, you can't really sit there like a bump on a log. I want to look like my section is having the best time of their life because that kind of sets the tone of the party."

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Soldier looks forward to driving with new arms

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BALTIMORE (AP) — A soldier who lost all four limbs in a roadside bombing in Iraq says he's looking forward to driving and swimming with new arms after undergoing a double-arm transplant.


"I just want to get the most out of these arms, and just as goals come up, knock them down and take it absolutely as far as I can," Brendan Marrocco said Tuesday.


The 26-year-old New Yorker spoke at a news conference at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was joined by surgeons who performed the operation.


After he was wounded, Marrocco said, he felt fine using prosthetic legs, but he hated not having arms.


"You talk with your hands, you do everything with your hands, basically, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," he said.


Marrocco said his chief desire is to drive the black Dodge Charger that's been sitting in his garage for three years.


"I used to love to drive," he said. "I'm really looking forward to just getting back to that, and just becoming an athlete again."


Although he doesn't expect to excel at soccer, his favorite sport, Marrocco said he'd like to swim and compete in a marathon using a handcycle.


Marrocco joked that military service members sometimes regard themselves as poorly paid professional athletes. His good humor and optimism are among the qualities doctors cited as signs he will recover much of his arm and hand use in two to three years.


"He's a young man with a tremendous amount of hope, and he's stubborn — stubborn in a good way," said Dr. Jaimie Shores, the hospital's clinical director of hand transplantation. "I think the sky's the limit."


Shores said Marrocco has already been trying to use his hands, although he lacks feeling in the fingers, and he's eager to do more as the slow-growing nerves and muscles mend.


"I suspect that he will be using his hands for just about everything as we let him start trying to do more and more. Right now, we're the ones really kind of holding him back at this point," Shores said.


The procedure was only the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant ever done in the United States.


The infantryman was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He is the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War.


Marrocco also received bone marrow from the same donor to minimize the medicine needed to prevent rejection. He said he didn't know much about the donor but "I'm humbled by their gift."


The 13-hour operation on Dec. 18 was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Hopkins.


Marrocco was being released from the hospital Tuesday but will receive intensive therapy for two years at Hopkins and then at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.


After a major surgery, human nerves regenerate at a rate of an inch per month, Lee said.


"The progress will be slow, but the outcome will be rewarding," he added.


___


Associated Press Writer David Dishneau contributed to this story from Hagerstown, Md.


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Wall Street edges up as defensive stocks extend rally

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks advanced on Tuesday, led by defensive sectors, in a sign the cash piles recently moving into the market are being put to use by cautious investors to pick up more gains.


The S&P 500 is on track to post its best monthly performance since October 2011 and its best January since 1997 as investors poured $55 billion in new cash into stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in January, the biggest monthly inflow on record.


Among rising defensive shares, which are companies relatively immune to economic swings, were drugmaker Pfizer , up 3.2 percent to $27.71 after posting earnings and AT&T , 2 percent higher at $34.82.


"After the kind of rally that we had since the beginning of the year, many investors are becoming more cautious but there is fundamental reasons to be moving in the direction that we are moving in," said Joseph Tanious, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds.


"The 1,500 on the S&P is the psychological barrier but there are still more tailwinds than headwinds in the market."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 64.01 points, or 0.46 percent, at 13,945.94. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 6.45 points, or 0.43 percent, at 1,506.63. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 5.85 points, or 0.19 percent, at 3,148.45.


"Cyclical were moving very nicely, now you see balance with some of the defensive. Many managers use that as an internal hedge in equity portfolios," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.


She said the market is cautious ahead of Wednesday's statement following the Federal Reserve's two-day meeting. In addition, defensive stocks would hold up better if Friday's payrolls report surprises on the downside.


The S&P hovered near 1,500, and market technicians say the benchmark is at an inflection point which will determine the overall direction in the near term.


"The public is pouring in now," said Carter Worth, chief market technician at Oppenheimer & Co in New York. "It reflects complacency and that typically leads to hubris, and hubris leads to trouble. Everyone's buying."


The top performing sectors on the S&P 500 were healthcare <.spxhc> and telecom services <.splrcl>, so-called defensive sectors, both up more than 1 percent.


The energy sector also advanced, on the back of strong earnings from Valero Energy Corp and a hedge fund move to break up Hess Corp to boost investor returns.


Valero shares jumped 10.8 percent to $42.99 and Hess gained 8.1 percent to $67.56.


The equity gains have largely come on a strong start to earnings season, though results were mixed on Tuesday with Pfizer rising but Ford Motor Co down after its report.


Both companies reported profits that topped expectations, but Ford also forecast a wider loss in its European segment. Ford dropped 5.6 percent to $13.01 as one of the biggest percentage losers on the S&P 500.


Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 174 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 68.4 percent have been above analyst expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


Disappointing outlooks from Seagate Technology and BMC Software pressured their shares. Seagate lost 9.6 percent to $33.82 and BMC fell 8.5 percent to $40.70.


Software maker VMware Inc lost 21 percent to $77.71 also after a cautious 2013 outlook.


Amazon was the biggest drag on the Nasdaq with a 3.2 percent drop to $267.17 before its results, expected after the closing bell.


U.S. home prices rose in November to rack up their best yearly gain since the housing crisis began, a further sign that the sector is on the mend, but consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in more than a year in the wake of higher taxes for many Americans.


(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski)



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The Lede Blog: Under Attack, Cairo Hotel Sends S O S via Twitter

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Video of unidentified men streaming into the lobby of Cairo’s Semiramis InterContinental hotel was shown live on Egypt’s ONTV early on Tuesday.

Last Updated, 2:56 p.m. As our colleagues Kareem Fahim, David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh report, the mayhem on Cairo’s streets briefly spilled into the lobby of one of the city’s luxury hotels, the Semiramis InterContinental, during intense clashes between riot police and protesters along the Nile Corniche overnight.

Images of a mob streaming into the hotel, shown live on Egyptian television and then posted online, raised fears of further damage to the country’s already battered tourist industry. Coming at the same time as violence in cities on the Suez Canal, this week’s unrest threatened two of the main pillars of the Egyptian economy.

Judging by a series of urgent pleas for help posted on the hotel’s Twitter feed, the raid came just after 2:30 a.m. local time.

Within an hour of sounding the alarm on the social network, the staff reported on Twitter that the security forces had arrived.

Guards at the hotel told Bel Trew of the Egyptian news site Ahram Online that phone calls to the police and the army initially went unheeded as about 40 men armed with shotguns, knives and a semiautomatic weapon broke into the shuttered lobby and started looting.

An Ahram Online journalist who witnessed the attack, Karim Hafez, said that protesters had stopped fighting with the police to help secure the hotel: “When they realized these groups were trying to loot the hotel, protesters shot fire crackers at them as they attacked the building and tried to push them away from the area but these groups were armed with birdshot bullets.”

This reported cooperation of the protesters with the police officers they have been battling for days on the street outside the hotel prompted bloggers like the British-Egyptian journalist Sarah Carr to comment on the black comedy of the situation.

Another Egyptian blogger, Mohammed Maree, reported on his @mar3e Twitter feed that a police captain on the scene confirmed to him that the protesters who were fighting with the security forces when the raid took place were not responsible for the storming of the hotel.

Mr. Maree also reported that witnesses to the raid said it began after four people drove up in a car with no license plates and fired shots to scare protesters away, before storming the hotel. He later posted a photograph of some of the hotel’s guests leaving under the protection of protesters.

Nabila Samak, a spokeswoman for the hotel who posted the calls for help on Twitter, told The Times that the staff members had called Egyptian television stations for help earlier in the evening, well before the attack, after appeals to the security forces for protection went unanswered.

Ms. Samak told Ahram Online that the staff worked to secure the hotel’s guests but were not equipped to cope with the effective collapse of the police force, since, “no guards of hotels in Egypt are armed.” Later she thanked protesters for coming to the aid of the hotel’s staff and guests.

A Saudi women who identified herself as a guest at the hotel, Hilda Ismail, posted updates and photographs from a shelter the guests were taken to during the incident on her Arabic-language Twitter feed.

In one message, she wrote: “If there is no Egyptian security, and if Morsi is sleeping, where are this country’s men!! Come get these dogs, the Semiramis Hotel is being ransacked and we are there.”

Later, Ms. Ismail uploaded a brief video clip of a man attempting to reassure guests that they were safe after the arrival of special forces officers from the ministry of the interior led by a Captain Moataz.

In the clip, the man tells the guests that the police captain wants “to assure you that the hotel is secured and it is under the control of the ministry of the interior now. Within no time you will go back to your rooms and already are in safe hands.” The police, the man added, “will make sure that such thugs will not enter the hotel again. We are sorry.”

Ms. Ismail also posted an image of the ransacked lobby on Twitter.

Ms. Ismai’s claim to have been a guest at the hotel was supported by the fact that she had uploaded a brief video clip, apparently shot from a high floor of the hotel, showing the fighting on the Nile Corniche below.

The luxury hotel chain, which was created in 1946 by Pan American World Airways, did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but an executive in Cairo told Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper, that “more than 45 clients insisted on leaving despite the hotel’s offer to relocate them to higher floors, away from the clashes.”

Although the hotel then announced that it would be closed for security reasons, the staff posted another urgent plea for help on Twitter late Tuesday.

Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Crucial, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

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TORONTO (AP) — The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company.


Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will reveal the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday. Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices.






Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has nearly tripled to about $ 16.30 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.


Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability.


“The old models are becoming obsolete quickly,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said. “There is still a big user base but it’s going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?”


The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate information-technology managers like the phones because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage.


The BlackBerry has also crossed over to consumers. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with it when he took office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” People got so addicted that the device was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”


But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace — a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.


Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.


Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and Android devices. BlackBerry’s worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million in the most-recent quarter. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.


RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.


Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that.


RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.


“Historically there have been areas that have not been our strongest points,” Rick Costanzo, RIM’s executive vice president of global sales, said in an interview. “Not only have we caught up, but we may even be better than some of the competition now.”


Costanzo said “no one else can touch” what RIM’s new system offers.


The new operating system promises better multitasking than either the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone’s display screen to switch to another program.


All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without opening the email.


“You are not going in and out of applications; you’re flowing through applications with one simple gesture of your finger,” Costanzo said. “You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow between them. So that’s completely unique to us.”


That said, multitasking will be limited and won’t allow for extensive use of apps side by side, as is typically permitted on traditional computers. If you’re watching a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.


The BlackBerry’s touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user’s writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it up to the message area. Costanzo said that “BlackBerry offers the best keyboard, period.”


Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and adjusts to your thumb placements.


The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after that. That’s an area RIM has excelled at, and it’s one reason many BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.


Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance, which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won’t have access to personal data on the device.


With Balance, “you can just switch from work to personal mode,” Papageorgiou said. “I think that is something that will attract a lot of people.”


RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10′s browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers. According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.


Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep up with both the iPhone and Android.


Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM’s stock, but cautions that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a whole new operating system.


He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 percent in 2012. If those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow even if iPhone and Android users don’t switch.


“This doesn’t have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a success for RIM,” he said. “I think the big question though is, if it fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so advanced that no one can catch up? That’s a big risk.”


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Drew Barrymore: Why I Have Embraced Judaism

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Drew Barrymore Will Fight 'Like a Lion
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Drew Barrymore has finally found her Ever After — and she’s not about to let her fairytale ending slip away.


During a Friday appearance on The View, the actress admitted her relationship with husband Will Kopelman is one she will never take for granted.


“You know me, I would never have messed this up. This is the most important thing I’ll ever do with my life,” she said. “I chose well, I’m so lucky he loves me back. It’s fantastic.”


Sharing that the art consultant is “a nice Jewish man from a nice Jewish family,” Barrymore has happily embraced Kopelman’s religion, and plans to raise the couple’s daughter Olive in the faith as well.

“I’m a shiksa. I do the seders and we do Passover. I haven’t converted yet, [but] Olive will be raised traditionally,” she explains. “We had a very traditional wedding ceremony with Rabbi Rubenstein and I did the ketubah. We wore the yamakas and we did the chuppah.”


Her decision to delve into practicing Judaism has brought an inner peace to the new mom. “I’m there, I love it! It’s a beautiful faith and I’m so honored to be around it,” she says. “It’s so family-oriented … The stories are so beautiful and it’s incredibly enlightening. I’m really happy.”


But while Barrymore is continuing tradition in some ways, she’s adamant that history will not be repeating itself in others — especially when it comes to her daughter’s happiness.


“I was such a hippie growing up, but I’m like the least loosey-goosey parent. I’m like bedtime, structure, feeding time because this baby is so happy knowing when everything is happy,” she notes.


“And I as a parent succeed and thrive knowing when everything is happening [under] that type of structure.”


Although she is without “a shred of remorse” over her own upbringing — “I celebrate my journey [because] I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t done everything I did,” she explains — Barrymore, 37, is not willing to take any risks with Olive’s childhood.


“I grew up very differently … which was really fun, but I think kids need structure so I would not just throw caution to the wind and hope everything works out,” she states. ”I will make sure that it does in a very timely manner.”


– Anya Leon



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Dow, S&P 500 near flat after rally; Apple boosts Nasdaq

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and S&P 500 were nearly flat on Monday as a four-week rally stalled, while a rebound in Apple shares helped buoy the Nasdaq.


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 1.5 percent Monday to $96.97.


Boeing , down 1.2 percent at $74.14, shares led decliners on the Dow. The aircraft maker risks losing about $5 billion in revenue by the grounding of its 787 Dreamliner fleet, according to a Bloomberg report.


The S&P 500 is coming off a streak of eight sessions of gains, the longest in eight years, but the index remained above 1,500. It ended above that level on Friday for the first time in more than five years.


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


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.


Bargain hunters lifted Apple after the tech giant's stock dropped 14.4 percent in the previous two sessions. With Apple's stock up 2.4 percent at $450.29, the iPad and iPhone maker regained the title as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization as Exxon Mobil fell 0.9 percent to $90.94 and slipped back to second place.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 10.70 points, or 0.08 percent, at 13,906.68. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.50 points, or 0.03 percent, at 1,502.46. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 9.37 points, or 0.30 percent, at 3,159.08.


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


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.


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 unexpectedly dropped 4.3 percent. Analysts were looking for an increase of 0.3 percent.


Equities 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 6.3 percent to $62.59 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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