Market treads water ahead of Friday's employment data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Thursday as investors were cautious after a mixed bag of economic data, while stellar earnings from chipmaker Qualcomm helped the Nasdaq index to edge higher.

The S&P 500 is on track to post its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997.

Investors expect a pullback in equities after the recent gains, though they have bought on dips over the past four weeks. The largest daily decline on the S&P 500 so far in 2013 was Wednesday's 0.39 percent drop after data showed the economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012.

On Friday, the government is due to release figures on January's non-farm payrolls, which are expected to show employers added 160,000 jobs in January after a rise of 155,000 in December.

"It's the calm before the potential storm. The uncertainty about tomorrow's numbers comes from that fact that we had a decent ADP report but the weekly claims were not so great," said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.

"We could see an overly sensitive market to a bad number tomorrow, given that we've been up without a major correction, and that makes the market sensitive to the downside."

Data on Thursday showed a slight rise in weekly jobless claims and incomes growing at the best pace since 2004, underscoring how fragile the economic recovery still was.

Friday will also bring reports on consumer confidence, U.S. manufacturing, construction spending and car sales.

Qualcomm gained 4.4 percent to $66.32 as the top boost to the Nasdaq Composite after the world's leading supplier of chips for cellphones beat analysts' expectations for quarterly profit and revenue and raised its targets for the year.

Facebook shares fell 0.8 percent to $31.01 after falling as low as $28.74 a day after the social network company said it doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter. However, growth trailed some of Wall Street's most aggressive estimates.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 7.50 points, or 0.05 percent, at 13,902.92. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.36 points, or 0.02 percent, at 1,502.32. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 6.99 points, or 0.22 percent, at 3,149.29.

The S&P 500 has advanced more than 5 percent in January after legislators in Washington temporarily sidestepped a "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that could have derailed the recovery. Better-than-expected corporate earnings have added to the gains.

It would be the benchmark's largest monthly advance since a more than 6 percent gain in October 2011 and the best January advance since a 6.1 percent jump in 1997.

UPS shares lost 2.1 percent to $79.50 after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that were below analysts' estimates on Thursday and forecasting weaker-than-expected profit for 2013.

Constellation Brands shares tumbled 16.4 percent to $32.72 after the U.S. Justice Department moved to stop Anheuser-Busch InBev from buying the half of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo that it does not already own. Constellation would have distributed Corona beer in the United States if the transaction had been approved.

Tank barge operator Kirby Corp added 6.3 percent to $70.67 and transportation company Ryder Systems climbed 4.8 percent to $56.84 after posting quarterly results.

Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning shows that of the 231 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 69.3 percent have exceeded expectations, a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 3.7 percent. That's above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season but well below a 9.9 percent profit growth forecast on October 1, the data showed.

Slot machine maker WMS Industries surged 51.7 percent to $24.84 after the company agreed to be acquired by Scientific Games for $26 per share in cash. Scientific Games jumped 5 percent to $9.38.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Syria’s Confirmation of Airstrike May Undercut Israel’s Strategy of Silence

Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency

In East Jerusalem, Israelis distributed gas masks on Wednesday as worries about security spread. More Photos »

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials remained silent on Thursday about their airstrike in Syrian territory the day before, a tactic that experts said was part of a longstanding strategy to give targeted countries face-saving opportunities to avoid conflict escalation. But Syria’s own confirmation of the attack, followed by harsh condemnation not only by Israel’s enemies Iran and Hezbollah but also by Russia, may have undercut that effort, analysts said, increasing the likelihood of a cycle of retaliation.

“From the moment they chose to say Israel did something, it means someone has to do something after that,” said Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council and a longtime military leader. “Contrary to what I could hope and believe yesterday, that this round of events would end soon, now I am much less confident.”

The Iranian deputy foreign minister warned Thursday that Israel’s strike would lead to “grave consequences for Tel Aviv,” while the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the strike “blatantly violates the United Nations Charter and is unacceptable and unjustified, whatever its motives.”

American officials said Israel hit a convoy before dawn on Wednesday that was ferrying sophisticated antiaircraft missiles called SA-17s to Lebanon. The Syrians and their allies said the target was actually a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs. It remained unclear Thursday whether there was one strike or two, and what involvement the research outpost might have had in weapons production or storage for Syria or Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite organization that has long battled with Israel.

Most experts agree that Syria, Hezbollah and Israel each have strong reasons to avoid a new active conflict right now: the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is fighting for his survival in a violent and chaotic civil war; Hezbollah is struggling for political legitimacy at home and battling its label as a terrorist organization internationally; and Israel is trying to keep its head down in an increasingly volatile region.

But it is equally clear that Hezbollah — backed by Syria and Iran — wants desperately to upgrade its arsenal in hopes of changing the parameters for any future engagement with the powerful Israeli military, and that Israel is determined to stop it. And Hezbollah is perhaps even more anxious to gird itself for future challenges to its primacy in Lebanon, especially if a Sunni-led revolution triumphs next door in Syria.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his deputies said loud and clear in the days leading up to the strike that they saw any transfer of Syria’s extensive cache of chemical weapons, or of sophisticated conventional weapons systems, as a “red line” that would prompt action. Now that Israel has followed through on that threat, even without admitting it, analysts expect the country — perhaps backed by its Western allies — to similarly target any future convoys attempting the same feat.

“Once this red line has been crossed, it’s definitely going to be crossed time and again from now on, especially as the situation of the Assad regime will deteriorate,” said Boaz Ganor, head of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. “They will do the utmost to gain control of those weapons. In that case, I don’t see why Israel wouldn’t have the same type of calculation that Israel had two days ago into the future.”

Mr. Ganor said the United States and Europe should be as concerned as Israel, because Syria’s chemical weapons could end up in the hands not just of Hezbollah but of jihadist organizations like Al Qaeda or its proxies. “If one organization will put their hands on this arsenal, then it will change hands in no time and we’ll see it all over the world,” he said. “We, the international community, are marching into a new era of terrorism.”

Eyal Zisser, a historian at Tel Aviv University who specializes in Syria and Lebanon, said that if there was no retaliation to Wednesday’s airstrike, “Why not repeat it? For Israel it’s going to be the practice.” The question, Professor Zisser said, “is what they will try to do next, Syria and Hezbollah, if there is another Israeli attack, whether they will avoid any retaliation the next time as well.”

Israel’s steadfast silence on the airstrike was reminiscent of its posture after it destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 — an attack it has never acknowledged, though many officials discuss it with winks and nods. But in that case, President Assad bought into the de-escalation strategy by saying the attack had hit an unused — and implicitly unimportant — military building, relieving the pressure for a response.

Reporting was contributed by Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem, Ellen Barry from Moscow, Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon.

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The Z10 is a good first step, but BlackBerry still has to fix its app problem

BlackBerry, a.k.a., the Company Formerly Known as RIM, made good with its first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones on Wednesday. While the new devices are far from perfect, they will at the very least make long-suffering BlackBerry fans very happy and should provide a needed boost to a company in desperate need of growth. That said, BlackBerry still has a major problem that it will have to fix if it ever hopes to lure Android and iOS users away from their devices — it needs to improve the quality of apps that are available on its platform.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry Z10 review]

BlackBerry has done its best to spin its app situation as a positive, touting the roughly 70,000 apps that will be available for BlackBerry 10 at its launch. This number sounds impressive until you realize that the vast majority of these apps are ported from Android or from the BlackBerry Playbook. Even worse for the company, earlier reviews have indicated that many of these apps don’t at all function well, especially since a good portion of them were ported over from Android 2.3 Gingerbread or earlier.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry Q10 preview]

This is obviously not a sustainable situation for BlackBerry in the long term, and to the company’s credit it did announce some very important apps that are being developed directly for the BlackBerry 10 platform, including Skype, WhatsApp and the Angry Birds franchise. But there is a glaring absence that should give pause to anyone feeling optimistic about the platform’s ability to attract top developers in the future: Instagram.

Yes, Instagram is just one app, but it’s also one of the most popular in the world and it’s owned by Facebook (FB), the social networking giant that BlackBerry supposedly has a close partnership with. If BlackBerry can’t convince one of its close partners to develop an app that’s ready in time for its big platform launch, then it really calls into question how much clout the company will have with smaller developers that may not have the resources to build for more than two platforms.

And BlackBerry’s ability to attract the smaller developers is crucial to its future success because we’ve all seen mobile apps that come out of nowhere on iOS and Android and suddenly take the world by storm. If BlackBerry is constantly rushing around trying to get upstart app developers to make native BlackBerry 10 apps months after those developers have hit it big on other platforms, it will put the company at a perpetual disadvantage. This is a problem that BlackBerry desperately needs to fix by the time its next smartphones roll out.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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PHOTO: Fat Cat Swims to Lose Weight

People Pets

By Amy Jamieson

01/30/2013 at 03:30 PM EST

Holly the cat swimming at the Olde Towne Pet Resort

Mayra Ruiz

Holly the cat is large – and in charge of the indoor pool at Dulles, Virginia's Olde Towne Pet Resort!

The 13-year-old feline – who weighs a hefty 18 lbs. – takes regular swims in the pool in an effort to shed the 6 or 7 pounds of extra weight she's been carrying for far too long.

"The cat actually sits around all day watching Maury Povich shows at home," the resort's publicist, Mayra Ruiz-Mcpherson, tells PEOPLE. "The goal is just to get her moving. Swimming in the pool is the only activity she does."

Holly's owner, Dani Lawhorne, who works at the facility, began bringing the cat for swim sessions about a month ago after she became concerned about the extra pounds the cat was carrying. The morbidly obese kitty, who, unlike most cats is a natural in the water, is the only feline swimmer at the pool right now. Each time she visits, she dons a life vest and takes supervised swims for up to 30 minutes a time.

"Today she was just gliding and floating," says Ruiz-Mcpherson. "She loves it. She did better than the dogs here today."

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APNewsBreak: EPA moves to ban some rodent poisons

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency is moving to ban the sale of a dozen rat and mouse poisons sold under the popular D-Con brand in an effort to protect children and pets.

The agency said Wednesday it hopes to reduce the thousands of accidental exposures that occur every year from rodent-control products. Children and pets are at risk for exposure because the products typically are placed on floors.

The agency had targeted a handful of companies two years ago, saying they needed to develop new products that are safer for children, pets and wildlife. All but Reckitt Benckiser Inc., manufacturer of D-Con, did so.

The company will have at least 30 days to request a hearing before an administrative law judge. If no hearing is requested, the ban will take effect.

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Wall Street edges lower as Fed keeps stimulus in place

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

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

(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

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

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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