TSX near 18-month high, buoyed by Agrium, RIM

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s main stock index hit a near 18-month high on Thursday, as shares of Agrium Inc rose after the fertilizer maker raised its profit forecast and as U.S. manufacturing and labor data drove optimism on the economic outlook of Canada’s largest trade partner.

Shares of Research In Motion Ltd also boosted the market, rising more than 3 percent after a report that China’s Lenovo Group said a bid for the BlackBerry maker was among the options available to boost its mobile business.

Canadian stocks were also supported by data that showed Chinese manufacturing growth hit a two-year high this month. Gains were kept in check by falling gold stocks, which slipped with the price of the precious metal.

In the United States, a private survey showed that factory activity advanced at the fastest pace in nearly two years this month, while the government reported the number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits hit a five-year low last week.

“There’s a growing feeling that we’re heading in the right direction. The U.S. economy is showing a little bit of life, and that’s spilling over into Canada,” said Fred Ketchen, director of equity trading at ScotiaMcLeod.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> was up 41.36 points, or 0.32 percent, at 12,835.41, after touching 12,863.47, its highest since August 2, 2011.</.gsptse>

Seven of the 10 main sectors on the index were trading higher.

The materials sector, which includes mining stocks, slipped 0.1 percent as declines in gold stocks offset a rise in shares of fertilizer giants Agrium and Potash Corp .

Agrium rose 3.5 percent to C$ 114.55 after it raised its fourth-quarter earnings forecast as strong grain and oilseed prices spurred demand for its fertilizer products over the fall season.

Ketchen, noting the activity in Agrium shares over the past few days, said, “People are taking another look at it, thinking maybe it’s time to get back in.”

Potash was up 2.1 percent at C$ 42.77.

The energy sector gained 0.6 percent and was the biggest contributor to the market’s gains as U.S. crude oil prices rose.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd rose 1.5 percent to C$ 30.62.

Financials, the index’s weightiest sector, added 0.4 percent. Toronto Dominion Bank

was up 0.4 percent at C$ 83.51, and the Royal Bank of Canada rose 0.3 percent to C$ 61.62.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Leslie Adler)

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PHOTO: Uma Thurman's Beau Puckers Up to Baby

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/23/2013 at 11:00 AM ET

What are you doing, Daddy? Luna Thurman-Busson looks on quizzically as papa Arpad Busson blows her kisses while waiting for a flight Tuesday in Paris. The 6-month-old‘s mom, actress Uma Thurman, recently shared that her daughter actually goes by a derivitive of her many middle names — with five monikers in all, it’s just too long to recite the whole thing!

“[My 14-year-old daughter Maya] came up with the best excuse, [which] was that I probably wouldn’t get to have any more children, so I just put every name that I liked into it,” Thurman, 42, told Jimmy Fallon of their choice of Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence. “We couldn’t quite agree.”

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RELATED: Uma Thurman: Why My Daughter Has Five Names

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Sickening fog settles over Salt Lake City area

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A group of Utah doctors is declaring a health emergency over the Salt Lake City area's lingering air pollution problem.

Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment planned to deliver a petition Wednesday demanding immediate action by elected officials.

The group wants Gov. Gary Herbert and mayors of northern Utah cities to cut the pollution.

The doctors suggest lowering highway speed limits, making mass transit free for the winter and curbing industrial activities. They want a permanent ban on wood-burning. And they want large employees to let people work from home.

The doctors are advising people to avoid the outdoors. They say people can help their bodies fight toxic exposure by introducing anti-oxidants in their diet, like fish oil or chocolate.

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Dow, Nasdaq boosted by tech; S&P flat

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and Nasdaq edged higher on Wednesday, lifted by IBM and Google whose stronger-than-expected profits helped to soothe investors' concerns about the tech sector.

IBM's and Google's earnings, released after Tuesday's close, were the latest reassuring fourth-quarter results that pushed the Dow and S&P 500 to five-year highs as worries about the "fiscal cliff" and euro zone debt crisis faded and earnings became the market's main focus.

International Business Machines Corp forecast better-than-anticipated 2013 results and also posted fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that beat expectations.

Shares in the world's largest technology services company, climbed 5.5 percent to $206.87, its biggest advance since July, making it by far the largest boost to the Dow.

Worries about the profit potential in the tech sector had increased amid questions about waning demand for Apple Inc products and a weak outlook from Intel Corp last week.

Also helping to boost the tech sector was a 6.1 percent jump in Internet search company Google Inc to $746.02. The Internet search company reported its core business outpaced expectations and revenue was higher than expected.

Despite a 1.3 percent gain in the S&P technology sector <.splrct>, gains on the broader S&P 500 index were limited a day after the benchmark index closed at a fresh 5-year high.

The recent gains have been largely fueled by a stronger than expected start to the earning season, pushing the benchmark S&P index near the 1,500 level, last reached on December 12, 2007, and may make additional gains harder to come by after a 4.6 increase for the month.

"This certainly is new air up here, you have to give it some time at this level," said Troy Logan, managing director and senior economist at Warren Financial Service in Exton, Pennsylvania.

"More fundamentally, there is less concern about Europe. You need less noise on the political front and the focus back on corporate American growing earnings."

With tech earnings strong, Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday shows that of the 99 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 67.7 percent have topped expectations, above the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 43.27 points, or 0.32 percent, to 13,755.48. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> shed 1.32 points, or 0.09 percent, to 1,491.24. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 8.82 points, or 0.28 percent, to 3,152.00.

McDonald's slipped 0.3 percent to $92.63 after reporting a rise in fourth-quarter earnings, lifted by an increase in same-store sales. Fellow Dow component United Technology Corp's earnings fell from the prior year, hurt by large restructuring charges. Shares edged up 0.4 percent to $87.86.

On the downside, leather-goods maker Coach Inc plunged 14.8 percent to $51.75 as the S&P's worst performer after reporting sales that missed expectations. The S&P consumer discretionary sector <.splrcd> lost 0.5 percent.

After the market closes, investors will scour Apple's results for signs it can continue to grow at an accelerated pace. The stock has been pressured recently by questions raised about demand for Apple's products. The stock has fallen 5 percent since the start of the year, compared with gains of 4.6 percent in the S&P 500. It rose 0.4 percent to $507.04 on Wednesday.

"Pretty much all eyes are on Apple to see what they are going to do this evening. What happened to Apple is they had some misses in the second and third quarters of 2012 and the explanation was anticipation of the new iPhone 5, so this quarter they really have to deliver on that story," Logan said.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings rose 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast from the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings forecast from October 1, the data showed.

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives aim on Wednesday to pass a bill to extend the U.S. debt limit by nearly four months, to May 19. The White House welcomed the move, saying it would remove uncertainty about the issue.

The debt limit issue has hung over the market for weeks, with many investors worried that if no deal is reached to raise the limit, it could have a negative impact on the economy.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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The Lede Blog: Clinton Testifies on Benghazi Attacks

The Lede followed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Mrs. Clinton will appear before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs at 2 p.m. Eastern.

At a House Committee hearing last October investigating the attack, as reported on The Lede, State Department officials and security experts who served on the ground offered conflicting assessments about what resources were requested and made available to deal with growing security concerns in Tripoli and Benghazi.

Mrs. Clinton had been scheduled to testify before Congress last month, but an illness, a concussion and a blood clot near her brain forced her to postpone her appearance.

As our colleagues Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported, four State Department officials were removed from their posts on last month after an independent panel criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

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Three reasons to root for RIM

I have expressed skepticism that RIM (RIMM) will really be able to pull off an epic comeback and reestablish BlackBerry as a legitimate contender with the iPhone and the barrage of Android smartphones that get released every year. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to happen. Quite the contrary, I’m hoping that RIM proves all us nasty skeptics wrong, defies the odds and produces a big hit with the BlackBerry Z10 that’s set to be released over the next couple of months.

[More from BGR: As data gets cheaper for Verizon to transmit, customers are paying more]

So why am I rooting for RIM even if I’m dubious of its prospects for success? Three specific reasons come to mind.

[More from BGR: Success with BlackBerry ‘diehards’ isn’t the key to BlackBerry 10′s future]

First, I think the mobile market will benefit from having a third option besides iOS and Android, and it doesn’t look as though Microsoft (MSFT) is up to the task just yet. Sure, Windows Phone devices have started to make some progress in Europe, but in North America the platform’s market share has remained largely flat despite the large piles of money Microsoft is spending to promote it. This gives RIM an opportunity to elbow itself into the discussion in the United States and Canada as a legitimate contender for consumers who have moved on to iOS or Android but who still miss their BlackBerry phones of old.

Second, I think CEO Thorsten Heins has some interesting and ambitious ideas for where he’d like to take the company in the future. Sure, there are times when I can’t tell whether he really has a plan to boldly remake BlackBerry or is just insane, but when I hear him talk about integrating BlackBerry 10 into cars, I am intrigued. Heins is also easy to root for when you consider how well he’s played the thoroughly lousy hand he was dealt when he took over as RIM CEO last year — the fact that he’s generated significant support from both carriers and app developers at a time when it looked like the company could collapse at any moment has been impressive.

And finally, I’ve come to really love RIM’s crazy fans over the past year, even if they don’t like me all that much. Every time I’ve written a post critical of RIM or BlackBerry, they were there to immediately pounce on me, declare me a hopeless “iSheep” and tell me how stupid I’ll feel when RIM emerges triumphant and stomps all over the iPhone and Android. I’m not sure such dedication to a product is emotionally healthy, but it is something I have to respect and I hope that BlackBerry 10 will, at the very least, make RIM’s loyal and long-suffering fans happy.

So now’s the time, RIM. Next week will be your chance to make me look like a fool for ever doubting the power of BlackBerry 10. And for all the reasons I listed above, I hope you take it.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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New Kids on the Block Hit the Road with 98 Degrees & Boyz II Men

Only on People.com

By Emily Strohm

01/22/2013 at 12:00 PM EST

New Kids on the Block: Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Jordan Knight, Danny Wood and Jonathan Knight

Angela Weiss/WireImage

The New Kids on the Block are back!

The band plans to bring some heat this summer when they hit the road for a brand new headlining tour – and they're bringing along a few famous friends: 98 Degrees and Boyz II Men will open all shows on the jaunt, which kicks off May 31 in Uncasville, Conn.

"It just seems like we are getting better and better," Joey McIntyre, 40, tells PEOPLE. "We're excited to get out there, rock out and have fun."

Along with the announcement of their tour, the multi-platinum selling group will release 10 – their first new album in over four years – on April 2.

"We have been doing this for almost 25 years," says McIntyre. "So it's important that the music and the lyrics speak to who we are as grown men – and the album reflects that."

But that doesn't mean fans won't see some familiar moves.

"There is a lot of nostalgia and we embrace that," says the singer. "But it always feels young and fresh. I guess that's one of the great things about being in the music business is that you never have to quite grow up."

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

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

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Dow, S&P 500 edge higher as earnings eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks mostly edged up on Tuesday after ending last week at five-year highs, but gains were limited with investors showing caution as the earnings season picks up speed.

Both the Dow and the Standard & Poor's 500 closed at five-year highs on Friday, boosted by better-than-expected results in the early part of the earnings season. Although major companies have issued bullish statements, many investors remain wary that economic uncertainty in the fourth quarter dented earnings and revenues.

"The market is playing wait-and-see to see the way the earnings come in this week because you've got some biggies," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co., in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Recent concerns about waning demand for Apple Inc products and a weak outlook from Intel Corp have diminished optimism about the tech sector's prospects. The S&P technology sector index, down 0.4 percent, was the worst performing of the 10 major S&P 500 sectors on Tuesday.

Major tech companies scheduled to report results after the market's close on Tuesday include Google Inc, International Business Machines and Texas Instruments. Tech bellwethers Apple and Microsoft Corp are also set to report earnings this week.

"Any one of those, if there is a big surprise up or down, could shift the balance in the markets. So investors are being far more cautious than normal, especially with the market averages having broken out to five-year highs," Dickson said.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 31.32 points, or 0.23 percent, to 13,681.02. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 1.48 points, or 0.10 percent, to 1,487.46. The Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 4.42 points, or 0.14 percent, to 3,130.29.

Four Dow components reported early on Tuesday, and three rose on the results. Insurer Travelers Cos was the standout, climbing 2.6 percent to $78.33 and giving the biggest boost to the Dow after the company forecast higher premiums across its business.

DuPont, the largest U.S. chemical company by market capitalization, reported revenue that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, while Verizon Communications Inc also posted revenue that beat forecasts.

Shares of DuPont shot up 1.6 percent to $47.75 while Verizon's stock rose 0.9 percent to $42.94.

On the downside, shares of Johnson & Johnson, the diversified health company, slipped 0.6 percent to $72.79 after the Dow component forecast 2013 earnings below expectations.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning, of the 74 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 62.2 percent have topped expectations, roughly even with the 62 percent average since 1994, but below the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 2.6 percent. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast from the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings forecast from October 1, the data showed.

Economic data from the National Association of Realtors showed existing-home sales unexpectedly fell 1 percent in December, which was below expectations, but not a big enough dip to suggest the housing market's recovery may be in jeopardy.

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives said they aim on Wednesday to pass a nearly four-month extension of the U.S. debt limit, allowing the government to borrow enough to meet its obligations during that period.

Markets have recently been pressured by uncertainty stemming from Washington about the federal debt limit and spending cuts that could hamper U.S. growth.

U.S.-listed shares of Research in Motion jumped 9.6 percent to $17.36 a day after its chief executive said the Canadian company may consider strategic alliances with other companies after the launch of devices powered by RIM's new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

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The Lede Blog: Prince Harry Compares War to PlayStation and Taliban Is Not Amused

A Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday that Prince Harry must have “mental problems,” following the broadcast of remarks by the royal in which he said that killing militants from an Apache helicopter was similar to playing video games.

As soon as Britain’s ministry of defense announced on Monday that Prince Harry had left Afghanistan, ending his four-month deployment there, the British news media rushed to broadcast video of the royal officer at war, which was recorded with his cooperation on the condition that it not be released until his tour was over.

Britain’s Channel 4 News broke into its bulletin on Monday night just minutes after the announcement to broadcast its edit of the footage, which was shot last month at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province by the British Press Association.

A video report from Britain’s Channel 4 News shot during Prince Harry’s recent deployment to Afghanistan.

The Channel 4 News report drew attention to how frequently the prince, whose mother was being chased by photographers when she died in a fatal car accident, mentioned his distaste for the British press.

At one stage in the interview, Prince Harry said that he was not troubled by killing militants. “Take a life to save a life,” he said. “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.”

In another edit of the footage, posted online by The Guardian, Prince Harry, who is known as Captain Wales in the army, explained that he was glad to have been “pushed forward to the front seat,” the one reserved for the attack helicopter’s gunner. That was, he said, “a joy for me because I’m one of those people that loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful — if you ask the guys I thrash them at FIFA the whole time,” referring to a popular video game series.

“This is a serious war, a historic war, resistance for us, for our people,” a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, told Agence France-Presse in response, “and now this prince comes and compares this war with his games, PlayStation or whatever he calls it.”

But the spokesman added, “we don’t take his comments very seriously, as we have all seen and heard that many foreign soldiers, occupiers who come to Afghanistan, develop some kind of mental problems on their way out.”

In another part of the interview, posted online by The Telegraph, Prince Harry said that his brother, Prince William, was jealous of him. “He’d love to be out here and, to be honest with you, I don’t see why he couldn’t,” Harry said. “No one knows who’s in the cockpit. Yes you get shot at, but, you know, if the guys who are doing the same job as us are being shot at on the ground, then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us being shot at as well. Yeah, people back home might have issues with that, but we’re not special.”

Video of remarks by Prince Harry about how much his brother would like to serve in Afghanistan.

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