Wall Street pulls back after recent gains

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks drifted lower on Wednesday as investors pulled back after the recent push to five-year highs on the S&P 500 and as worries about political problems in Europe weighed on sentiment.


Transportation stocks were among the worst performers, pressured by a 9.7 percent drop in CH Robinson Worldwide to $60.48 after the freight transport company posted a lower-than-expected adjusted quarterly profit.


The benchmark S&P 500 index has advanced 6 percent this year and reached to its highest since December 2007. The Dow industrials <.dji> have risen above 14,000 recently, making it a challenge for investors to push stocks higher in the absence of strong positive catalysts.


"The market is starting to feel a little tired, though we're holding together. I think a lot of people are wondering whether this (up trend) continues," said Frank Lesh, a futures analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago.


Also, investors have been speculating about leadership changes in Spain and Italy, as well as watching for comments from European leaders. European Central Bank policymakers are due to meet Thursday.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 27.37 points, or 0.20 percent, at 13,951.93. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 3.66 points, or 0.24 percent, at 1,507.63. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 12.27 points, or 0.39 percent, at 3,159.31.


Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose more than 1 percent on Tuesday.


The Dow Jones Transportation average <.djt> was down 0.4 percent after hitting another record high on Tuesday. The average is up 10.4 percent for the year so far and has made a series of new highs since mid-January.


Among shares trading higher, Time Warner Inc jumped 4.4 percent to $52.18 after reporting higher fourth-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates, as growth in its cable networks offset declines in film, TV entertainment and publishing units.


Walt Disney Co was up 0.7 percent at $54.66, after the company beat estimates for quarterly adjusted earnings and gave an optimistic outlook for the next few quarters.


According to Thomson Reuters data, of 301 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 68.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters. In terms of revenue, 65.8 percent of companies have topped forecasts.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 4.7 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


(Editing by Bernadette Baum, Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)



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The Lede: Video of Protests Across Tunisia After an Opposition Leader Is Gunned Down

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Video of a protest outside the interior ministry in Tunis on Wednesday from the blog Nawaat.

As my colleagues Monica Marks and Kareem Fahim report, there were protests across Tunisia on Wednesday following the assassination of Chokri Belaid, a leader of the secular opposition.

Video shot by activist bloggers for the independent Tunisian site Nawaat showed protesters rallying outside the interior ministry on the tree-lined Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis early in the day, and then being chased from the street by police officers who fired tear gas into the crowd and beat demonstrators.

Video from the Tunisian blog Nawaat of police officers attacking protesters in Tunis on Wednesday.

After the avenue was cleared, witnesses reported that a small crowd accompanied the ambulance carrying Mr. Belaid’s body down the same street.

As news of the assassination spread, there were protests in other cities and reports of attacks on the offices of Ennahda, the ruling Islamist party. Mr. Belaid had criticized Ennahda’s leaders for failing to condemn violent attacks on his party’s activists by young Islamists, in a television appearance shortly before his death, the French radio station Europe 1 reported.

Agence France-Presse video showed protesters marching in Sidi Bouzid, the town where the Tunisian revolt began.

More video of the demonstration in Tunis, and a clip of protesters occupying the headquarters of Ennahda in the city of Sfax, was posted online by Jadal, a Tunisian news site set up by the Institute for Peace and War Reporting.

Video from the Tunisian news site Jadal, said to show protesters occupying the offices of the ruling party in Sfax on Wednesday.

A demonstration outside the office of Ennahda in the coastal city of Mahdia was caught on video by a Nawaat blogger.

Before the demonstration at the interior ministry was attacked by the police, activists in the crowd posted updates on the protest on Twitter.

Among the chants, witnesses reported, were calls for the resignation of the interior minister, Ali Larayedh, a leader of Ennahda who is a former dissident.

Mr. Larayedh called the assassination of Mr. Belaid a “terrorist act” and “a blow to the democratic transition experience in Tunisia,” the state news agency reported.

One member of the crowd was Amira Yahyaoui, the president of the rights organization Al Bawsala, who suggested that Tunisians had waited long enough for an overhaul of the country’s notoriously brutal police force. After Mr. Balaid’s death, she wrote, it was “necessary to go inside the interior ministry and clear out the incompetents and, worse, the facilitators” who had allowed such acts of political violence to take place.

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EU wants to tackle money laundering on gaming sites

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union may try to counter money laundering through online betting sites by extending legislation beyond casinos to include Internet gambling.


The executive European Commission formally proposed on Tuesday to include online gaming in EU-wide legislation that seeks to combat fraud. It could become law within two years if approved by the EU’s 27 member countries.






The Commission said by currently only monitoring casinos, “other areas of gambling (are) vulnerable to misuse by criminals”.


The Commission also proposed reducing the permitted maximum for cash payments for goods and services to 7,500 euros ($ 10,200) from 15,000 euros and submitting shops and traders to a series of checks if they make or receive large payments.


About $ 1.6 trillion was laundered worldwide in 2009 – about 4 percent of the world’s economic output, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.


Online gambling is growing in popularity and companies such as Britain’s largest bookmaker, William Hill, and rivals SportingBet and Stanleybet, have benefited from the rise in demand, particularly for betting on sporting events.


But gaming firms have also protested against stricter regulation, with some countries such as Germany having increased controls on advertising, as well as limiting the amounts customers can gamble and increasing taxes on betting.


(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Rex Merrifield)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Sandra Bullock's Son Louis: Was He the Baltimore Ravens's Lucky Charm?

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By Patrick Gomez





02/05/2013 at 03:30 PM EST







Sandra Bullock and son Louis with Leigh Ann Tuohy (inset)


Splash News Online; Inset: Getty


The Baltimore Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII – and they may have gotten an assist from Sandra Bullock's son Louis who was watching in the stands.

"The 3-year-old had the lucky No. 3 jersey on! He wore it all through playoffs,” Leigh Ann Tuohy, Bullock's real-life Blind Side inspiration, tells PEOPLE. (Tuohy was at the game with Bullock, her son and the rest of Baltimore Raven Michael Oher's adoptive family.)

"My comment was, 'It better make it to New Orleans!' And it did," she says.

And it seems the blackout in the stadium following Beyoncé's half-time performance was of no concern to the toddler.

"I think Louis was a little more interested in the little lights that would go on your finger [that were passed out in the stands] verses the game, but that is OK,” Tuohy says.

Not wanting to divert attention from the players on the field, Tuohy and Bullock took special care not to be photographed or televised together during the game.

"It wasn't about us. Sandy and I knew that," Tuohy says. "It was about celebrating a young man who worked tremendously hard for the last 11 years to overcome every kind of adverse situation – and [Sunday] he achieved his dream. We're still giddy. We really are."

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Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

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NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.


With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until there's a ruling on their lawsuit seeking to block it altogether. The measure would bar many eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces.


"It would be a tremendous waste of expense, time, and effort for our members to incur all of the harm and costs associated with the ban if this court decides that the ban is illegal," Chong Sik Le, president of the New York Korean-American Grocers Association, said in court papers filed Friday.


City lawyers are fighting the lawsuit and oppose postponing the restriction, which the city Board of Health approved in September. They said Tuesday they expect to prevail.


"The obesity epidemic kills nearly 6,000 New Yorkers each year. We see no reason to delay the Board of Health's reasonable and legal actions to combat this major, growing problem," Mark Muschenheim, a city attorney, said in a statement.


Another city lawyer, Thomas Merrill, has said officials believe businesses have had enough time to get ready for the new rule. He has noted that the city doesn't plan to seek fines until June.


Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials see the first-of-its-kind limit as a coup for public health. The city's obesity rate is rising, and studies have linked sugary drinks to weight gain, they note.


"This is the biggest step a city has taken to curb obesity," Bloomberg said when the measure passed.


Soda makers and other critics view the rule as an unwarranted intrusion into people's dietary choices and an unfair, uneven burden on business. The restriction won't apply at supermarkets and many convenience stores because the city doesn't regulate them.


While the dispute plays out in court, "the impacted businesses would like some more certainty on when and how they might need to adjust operations," American Beverage Industry spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger said Tuesday.


Those adjustments are expected to cost the association's members about $600,000 in labeling and other expenses for bottles, Vice President Mike Redman said in court papers. Reconfiguring "16-ounce" cups that are actually made slightly bigger, to leave room at the top, is expected to take cup manufacturers three months to a year and cost them anywhere from more than $100,000 to several millions of dollars, Foodservice Packaging Institute President Lynn Dyer said in court documents.


Movie theaters, meanwhile, are concerned because beverages account for more than 20 percent of their overall profits and about 98 percent of soda sales are in containers greater than 16 ounces, according to Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners of New York State.


___


Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz


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Wall Street climbs on results; Dow above 14,000

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed on Tuesday, pushing the Dow above 14,000 a day after the market's biggest sell-off since November, as stronger-than-expected earnings brightened the profit picture.


All 10 S&P sectors were higher, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained more than 1 percent.


Dell Inc's stock rose after the world's No. 3 computer maker agreed to be taken private in a $24.4 billion deal, the largest leveraged buyout since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The stock gained 1.3 percent to $13.44 after a delayed open.


The market's bounce follows a sell-off on Monday that gave the S&P 500 its biggest percentage decline since mid-November. Still, the benchmark is up about 5 percent since the start of the year and is less than 5 percent away from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09 in October 2007.


Analysts said fourth-quarter results have been among the positives for the market. On Tuesday, Archer Daniels Midland reported revenue and adjusted fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, boosted by strong global demand for oilseeds. Shares rose 3.4 percent to $29.40.


"This quarter was one that had relatively low expectations coming into it, but the beats on the earnings and on the revenue side have been pretty good, particularly on the revenue side," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia.


"And in the aggregate so far, the earnings growth is just under 5 percent, and that's relieved those who thought maybe the earnings picture was deteriorating to the point where we would see surprisingly poor earnings."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 121.49 points, or 0.88 percent, at 14,001.57. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 16.95 points, or 1.13 percent, at 1,512.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 40.79 points, or 1.30 percent, at 3,171.96.


Also in earnings, Estée Lauder Cos Inc reported a higher quarterly profit and raised its full-year profit forecast. The stock rose 5.7 percent to $64.52.


With results in for more than half of the S&P 500 companies, 69 percent have beaten profit expectations, compared with the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to rise 4.5 percent, according to the data, above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season.


On the down side, McGraw-Hill shares slumped 7.5 percent to $46.51 after the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against it seeking $5 billion over mortgage bond ratings. Standard & Poor's, a McGraw Hill unit, was accused of inflated ratings and understated risks out of a desire to gain more business from investment banks.


On Monday, the stock suffered its worst one-day decline since the 1987 market crash.


(The story corrects year of S&P 500 all-time intraday high to 2007 from 2011. The error occurred in earlier updates. In final paragraph removes word "market")


(Additional reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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The Lede Blog: North Korean Propaganda Video Uses 'Call of Duty' and 'We Are the World' to Imagine a Brighter World, Without Manhattan

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Last Updated, 3:52 p.m. |UpdateWhen aliens strike, the climate goes berserk, the Russians invade, an asteroid threatens the Earth, New York City is often the first place to be destroyed. Hollywood has long used the city’s skyline to demonstrate what destruction looks like in action movies and video games. It seems as if North Korea, in seeking to show how an assault on America would play out, also has Manhattan squarely in its cross hairs.

A new propaganda video, posted Sunday on a Web site and a YouTube channel that serve as outlets for North Korean state media, shows a computer-animated representation of Lower Manhattan in flames as bombs rain down.

A video posted on a North Korean YouTube channel this week features images of Manhattan in flames.

As a blogger for Kotaku reports, the attack on Manhattan is lifted straight from the video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3,” and unfolds as a sweeping instrumental version of “We Are the World” plays in the background.

The copy of the video on YouTube was removed on Tuesday afternoon, after a copyright complaint from Activision, the video-game maker.

The cartoonish propaganda clip is one of a slew of recent videos that have been released by North Korea to promote the country’s missile program. Although the video might make some observers laugh, the tension over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and missile program is deadly serious.

The United Nations Security Council voted on Jan. 22 to tighten sanctions against North Korea as punishment for a Dec. 12 rocket launch. In response, the North vowed to expand its nuclear program “both quantitatively and qualitatively” and conduct a third nuclear test at a “higher level.”

As our colleagues David Sanger and William Broad reported after December’s successful missile launch by North Korea, there is no evidence that the country currently has technology that can threaten the continental United States – much less New York.

Administration officials said that while the launching was successful — and advanced the North’s missile program — it was hardly a threat to the United States, despite a warning by Robert M. Gates in 2011, when he was secretary of defense, that the North would have a missile capable of reaching the United States by 2016.

The video begins with an image of a man in blue pajamas sleeping. He recounts a dream in words that appear on the screen. “I had a dream last night, a dream of soaring into space on board our Unha-9 rocket,” the man says.

Unha, Korean for galaxy, is the name of the North Korean rocket series. The latest one, launched in December, was the Unha-3. So the dreamer is imagining a future, more advanced version of the rocket. After first showing footage of a real rocket launch, the video shifts to animation.

“Our Kwangmyongsong-21 spacecraft got separated from the rocket and traveled through space,” he says.

Once again, the dream appears to show the advances North Korea hopes to make in the years to come. In December, the satellite launched by the North was rocket number 3. By the time the series reaches 21 in the man’s dream, the rocket looks like the American space shuttle. The animation at that point shows the spacecraft circling the globe in search of its target, the music from “We are the World” building as it moves closer to the United States.

“I see stars and the green Earth. I also see a unified Korea.” These words appear on screen as the video moves from animation back to real footage of people waving flags, in particular, a “Korea-is-one” flag. The video shows a unified, not divided, Korean Peninsula in blue, a symbol of Korean reunification.

Then the video shows an overhead image of New York draped in the American flag. “Meanwhile, I see black smoke rising somewhere in America,” the dreaming man says. “It appears that the headquarters of evil, which has had a habit of using force and unilateralism and committing wars of aggression, is going up in flames it itself has ignited.”

At this point in the video, the computer-animated scene copied from “Call of Duty” show Lower Manhattan in flames.

“Just imagine riding in a Korean spaceship. One day, my dream will come true,” the narrator says. “No matter how hard the imperialists try to isolate and stifle us, they will not stop our people’s path toward our final victory of achieving a unified, strong and prosperous Korea.”

Robert Mackey contributed reporting.

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Kuwait says backs free speech but must protect ruling emir

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KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait supports free speech but must act against illegal comments made about the Gulf state’s ruler, the government said on Monday, after a Twitter user was jailed for five years.


A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to prison on Sunday for insulting the emir on the social networking site, a rights lawyer and news websites said, in the latest prosecution for criticism of authorities via social media.






“Kuwait has a longstanding proud tradition of open debate and free speech,” the Ministry of Information, which regulates the media, said in a statement to Reuters addressing the case.


“We are a country led by the rule of law and our constitution holds our Emir to be inviolable. If our citizens wish to amend the constitution there is a straightforward legal way to do this, but we will not selectively enforce our laws.”


In recent months Kuwait has penalized several Twitter users for criticizing the emir, who is described as “immune and inviolable” in the constitution.


Kuwait allows the most dissent in the Gulf Arab region and boasts a lively press and critical political debate. But the U.S. ally and OPEC member has been clamping down on politically sensitive comments aired on the internet in recent months.


Twitter is extremely popular in the country of 3.7 million inhabitants and well-known figures can have hundreds of thousands of followers.


In January, a court sentenced two men in separate cases to jail time for insulting the emir on Twitter.


In June last year, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.


Two months later, authorities detained a member of the ruling family over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform.


Kuwait has avoided the kind of mass unrest that has spread across the Arab region in the past two years but in 2012 tension escalated between authorities and opposition groups ahead of a parliamentary election.


(Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Sesame Street Spoofs Downton Abbey

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02/04/2013 at 03:30 PM EST



There's been plenty of drama on Downton Abbey this season but nothing compared to the challenges facing the residents of Upside Downton Abbey.

In a Sesame Street spoof of the hit PBS show, a Dowager Countess of Grantham lookalike requests several items from her butler, Carson, including tea, crumpets and a steak and kidney pie.

"I live to serve," he says, bringing her the food and drink. But each time the items fall to the ceiling because, the puppets discuss, everything is upside down on Upside Downton Abbey.

"Perhaps you can change the name from Upside Downton Abbey to Rightside Upton Abbey," Carson suggests.

"Then we could be right-side up and have our steak and kidney pie," the countess says, before officially changing the name and the direction of things in the home.

Then, of course, the steak and kidney pie comes crashing down on her head.

What would Maggie Smith say?

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

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CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.


The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.


The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.


In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.


That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.


In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.


"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."


The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.


Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.


But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.


In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.


The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.


Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.


"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.


Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.


"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.


Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.


"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.


___


Online:


Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org


It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org


___


AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner


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