Market rises on data but caution settles on Wall Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged higher on Friday, with the benchmark S&P index hitting a five-year high after a batch of positive economic reports, but gains were capped as investors grew cautious about a further advance.

Data showing stronger international trade from China and Germany and a report showing a smaller U.S. trade deficit in December were seen as encouraging signs of global demand.

Among stocks on the rise, the technology sector was boosted by gains in LinkedIn Corp and AOL Inc following their quarterly results.

The S&P 500 <.spx>, up 6.3 percent for the year, is on track for six straight weeks of gains. But the index has found it tougher to climb in recent days as investors await strong trading incentives to drive it further upward.

"We are going to have this churn and this consolidation, which actually isn't a bad thing," said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O'Neil Securities in New York.

The market is building a base by consolidating and showing less volatility, he said.

"If it builds a base, from there it is easier to make the argument that you move ahead," Polcari said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 34.83 points, or 0.25 percent, at 13,978.88. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 6.06 points, or 0.40 percent, at 1,515.45. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 25.90 points, or 0.82 percent, at 3,191.04.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, was down 4.2 percent at 12.94. The gauge generally moves inversely to the S&P 500.

Still, there were concerns whether the market would stride higher.

"I'm watching the 14 level closely. The break below it at the beginning of the year signaled the sharp rally in January, and a rally back above it could be a sign to exercise some caution," said Bryan Sapp, senior trading analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Healthcare stocks also performed well. The Morgan Stanley healthcare payor index <.hmo> was up 2.3 percent. Molina Healthcare Inc surged 9.7 percent to $31.67 as the biggest boost to the index after posting fourth-quarter earnings.

McDonald's Corp said January sales at established hamburger restaurants around the world fell 1.9 percent, a steeper decline than analysts had expected. Still, shares edged up 0.7 percent to $95.31.

Data showed Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand, while German data showed a 2012 surplus that was the nation's second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe's biggest economy.

Another positive sign was U.S. economic data which showed the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Shares of LinkedIn jumped 18.8 percent to $147.40 after announcing quarterly profits and giving a bullish forecast for the year.

AOL Inc shares also jumped 7 percent to $33.60 after the online company said its quarterly profit had jumped, boosted by a 13 percent rise in advertising sales.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Friday morning, of 339 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 69.9 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies grew 5.2 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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India Ink: Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests

SRINAGAR —Online abuse and a fatwa aimed at a rock band of Muslim teenage girls in Kashmir have led to arrests and a threat of a lawsuit.

Three men were arrested this week for posting threatening messages on the Facebook page of Praagaash, an amateur rock band in Indian-occupied Kashmir made of up Muslim girls. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Manoj Pandita, spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir police, indicating that more arrests may follow.

The three men were charged under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which applies to “offensive” messages being sent through communication services, and Section 506 of the Ranbir Penal Code, which applies to criminal intimidation. Mr. Pandita said that it had been easy to track the I.P. addresses of the Facebook users.

A prominent human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, is planning to sue the top religious leader in Kashmir, who called for the fatwa, for “demonizing Kashmir before the international community” and for “running a parallel judicial system in the valley.”

Mr. Imroz told India Ink that human rights organizations like his needed support from the international community to highlight their concerns, and such fatwas reflected badly on the Kashmiri society. “He is diverting attention away from real issues of human rights to nonissues like music and purdah,” Mr. Imroz said.

The fatwa against the band was issued by the Grand Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad.

In his fatwa, Mr. Ahmad advised women to only sing inside the house to other female members of the family, and wear a veil whenever they left the house. “They must stay within limits,” he said.

Following the band’s first live performance in December, Aneeqa Khalid, Noma Nazir and Farah Deeba, 10th-grade students who are 15 and 16 years old, became the target of abuse and threats on Facebook by people who accused them of being un-Islamic because they had performed in public, especially before men. Some commenters called them “sluts” and “prostitutes;” others suggested that they should be raped.

The band Praagaash, which means “darkness into light,” disbanded following a national controversy surrounding these threatening messages. The threats were condemned by many, including the state’s chief minister.

To many Kashmiris, both the fatwa and the arrests by the government are unnecessary. Some say that the controversy erupted after the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, got involved by expressing his support for the band on Twitter and then calling for investigation against those writing the threatening messages.

“Nobody here had a problem with the rock band,” said Aala Fazili, a doctorate student at Kashmir University, pointing out that the band’s performance in December had not led to any protests or physical threats against them.

Mr. Fazili, 32, added that people shouldn’t be arrested for writing abusive posts on Facebook. “You cannot call an abuse a threat,” he said.

Mr. Pandita, the Kashmir police spokesman, said the investigators were making a distinction between a threat and abuse on the basis of “gravity.”

Pranesh Prakash, from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, asked whether people who hold protests calling for the death of the author Salman Rushdie should also be arrested for making threats.

“I would hold that no expression of violent thoughts, online or offline, should be made criminal, even if it is repugnantly misogynistic, unless it takes the form of a credible threat that causes harm, or is harassment that constitutes harm,” he said.

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What If the Wii U Were Just Its Tablet Controller? Meet the 7-Inch Wikipad

The Wii U made a splash with its personal tablet controllers. Sandwiching a 6.2-inch touchscreen in between a regular analog stick and buttons, the Wii U’s GamePad is like a Nintendo DS’ lower touchscreen for a home console, and even lets you play games right on its screen. It streams those games from the Wii U itself, though, meaning it’s basically useless when it’s out of range of the console.

Imagine a Wii U GamePad that was a self-contained console, and used an iPad-style capacitive touchscreen instead of a Nintendo DS-style resistive one. That’s the new 7-inch Wikipad in a nutshell, at least hardware-wise. It’s not made by Nintendo, however, and in terms of what games it plays — and how much it costs — it’s still very different.

Hardware differences

Besides being slightly taller and wider and a lot thicker than a GamePad, the Wikipad has one more major difference: The tablet part is detachable. Unlatch it from the surrounding game controller part, and it becomes a 7-inch Android tablet with an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor and 16 GB of flash memory, sort of like Google‘s popular Nexus 7.

It’s still a 7-inch Android tablet when the controller part is attached, though, and that’s the biggest difference.

Android software

Despite its resemblance to a certain popular game console accessory, the Wikipad is still a tablet running Google’s open-source Android operating system, when it comes down to it. It just happens to be one (of several) which includes its own game controller. And while some well-known games — like a few of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog titles and Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy games — have made it to the Google Play app store, for the most part you’d be playing mobile games, like the included Dead Trigger and ShadowGun: Dead Zone. Which is unfortunate, because most Android games don’t support game controllers, seeing as how they were designed for touchscreen-only gadgets like the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7.

On the plus side

Many of top-tier mobile publisher Gameloft’s titles support game controllers, which is unsurprising since they tend to be knockoffs of popular console games like Halo and Modern Warfare. And unlike most Android gadgets, the Wikipad is PlayStation Certified, which means it can run PlayStation Mobile games (small minigames designed for the PS Vita) plus a handful of old PSone titles.

Wikipad’s website has a list of more than 60 games which currently support its controller. You may have to consult it before playing each one, however, in order to find out which button does what.

Still worth getting?

The Wikipad will be available “from leading retailers in spring 2013 at a launch price of $ 249,” according to the company’s press release. That’s about $ 50 more than you’d pay for a similarly-specced Nexus 7, which doesn’t have PlayStation Mobile, expandable memory via microSD card slot, or a game controller. The Nexus 7 has 32 GB and 3G options available, however, and you can always buy a separate game controller for it.

A 10-inch Wikipad was announced late last year, but never made it to market. According to Droid Gamers, “some flaws were found during production.”

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rihanna & Chris Brown Go from the Courthouse to the Studio Together

By Maggie Coughlan

02/07/2013 at 12:15 PM EST

Chris Brown (far left) and Rihanna (right) at Brown's court hearing

Splash News Online

That's one way to stand by your man.

Rihanna attended boyfriend Chris Brown's court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday – and later stepped out with him after a late night in the studio.

Brown, 23, was charged with failing to complete his community service after domestically abusing Rihanna, 24, in 2009. Joined by Brown's mother, Joyce Hawkins, and two other women, Rihanna sat stoically as the judge discussed Brown's case.

Then, hours later, the couple was photographed leaving a recording studio together in Brown's Porsche around 4:30 a.m., after having spent five hours together inside.

Following the assault in 2009, the couple parted ways. But in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, the "Diamonds" singer revealed they rekindled their romance.

"Even if it's a mistake, it's my mistake. After being tormented for so many years, being angry and dark, I'd rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle it," she said.

But Rihanna insists that things are "different now."

"We don't have those types of arguments anymore. We have each other. We know exactly what we have now, and we don't want to lose that," she told the magazine.

Rihanna and Chris Brown

RACHPOOT / XPOSUREPHOTOS.COM

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Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.

It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.

Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.

"We're talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs," bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study's leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.

In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk.

"It's a very big difference," Judd said. "The message for people in the middle is there's a graded risk" — the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week.

Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them. More than 20,000 people 45 or older — half of them black — from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles:

—Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.

—Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.

—Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and whole-grain bread.

—Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.

—Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.

"They're not mutually exclusive" — for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.

Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn't seem to affect stroke risk.

There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it.

There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plant-based meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.

The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed.

Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure — a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cuisine — revealed she had a year ago.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc. funded the study.

"This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content," said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital.

"I don't mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I'm in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don't have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff."

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Wall Street dips on renewed euro zone concerns

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares fell on Thursday after the euro currency dropped against the safe-haven dollar and yen, raising worries about Europe's outlook and curbing investors' appetite for risky assets such as stocks.

The euro sank after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the exchange rate was important to growth and price stability, which investors took as a sign the bank is concerned about the euro's advance in recent days.

U.S. stocks have been in an uninterrupted uptrend for most of the year, with the S&P 500 gaining more than 5 percent for 2013.

"The market is a bit shaky on the back of some of the Draghi comments" amid worry the strength of the euro might hamper economic recovery, said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at LEK Securities in New York.

"Whether this ignites renewed concerns about the euro debt struggles and Europe in general is yet to be seen, but the market is looking for any reason to take a profit. It is just consolidating near multi-year highs, taking a respite before we advance higher."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 92.05 points, or 0.66 percent, at 13,894.47. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 7.93 points, or 0.52 percent, at 1,504.19. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 14.95 points, or 0.47 percent, at 3,153.52.

Housing and retail stocks were the day's biggest decliners. The housing sector index <.hgx> was off 1 percent and the S&P housing index <.spxrt> was off 0.5 percent.

Top U.S. retailers reported strong January sales after offering compelling merchandise that drew in shoppers facing a hit to their take-home pay from higher payroll taxes.

Macy's Inc rose 1.3 percent to $40.01 after reporting January same store sales rose 11.7 percent.

But Ann Inc dropped 6.6 percent to $30.63 after forecasting fourth-quarter sales below analysts' expectations.

Fund manager David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital on Thursday said it has sued Apple Inc and said the company needs to do more to unlock value for shareholders. Apple shares gained 1.2 percent at $460.16.

Akamai Technologies Inc lost 15.6 percent to $35.06 as the worst performer on the S&P 500 after the Internet content delivery company forecast current-quarter revenue below analysts' expectations.

Initial jobless claims dipped last week, with the four-week moving average falling to its lowest level since March 2008, signaling the economy continues to recover slowly.

A separate report said fourth-quarter productivity registered its biggest drop in nearly two years, while unit labor costs jumped 4.5 percent, more than economists expected.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning, of 317 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 69 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies rose 5 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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IHT Rendezvous: Stark Numbers Reveal the Scale of Elephant Killings

HONG KONG — The past couple of years has seen a stream of news about elephant killings and increasingly massive ivory seizures, a stream so relentless that it has become numbing.

A study released on Wednesday, however, still has the power to shock. Over the past eight years or so, according to the study, 11,000 elephants have been killed by poachers in the western African state of Gabon, where the Minkébé National Park once held the continent’s largest forest elephant population. Two-thirds of the park’s elephant population has been wiped out since 2004.

“The situation is out of control. We are witnessing the systematic slaughter of the world’s largest land mammal,” said Bas Huijbregts, head of the Central African strand of WWF’s global campaign against illegal wildlife trade, Wildlife Conservation Society, which conducted the study with the WWF and the Gabonese National Parks Agency, said the data represented trends across all remaining forest elephant strongholds in the region, and pointed to a “regional crisis.”

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa, is believed to have between 7,000 and 10,000 elephants — less than 10 percent of its population 20 years ago.

In the Central African Republic, which had as many as 80,000 elephants in the mid-1980s, the numbers are now down to just a few thousand as poachers are taking advantage of the political instability in the country to hunt the creatures.

And last year, hundreds of elephants were killed for their tusks in Cameroon, another western African nation.

Moreover, the Gabon slaughter has taken place in a country that had been thought to be less badly hit by poaching than other parts of Africa.

As my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman reported last year, Gabon’s government, blessed with billions of dollars of oil money, has made many of the right moves to protect its animals, setting aside chunks of land for national parks, and even lighting a pyramid of 10,000 pounds of ivory on fire to make the point that the trade was reprehensible.

As I wrote last year, demand for ivory from China is the leading driver behind the illegal trade, compounded by improved transport, trade links and a rise in the presence of Chinese nationals in Africa. And although the Chinese authorities are helping with awareness campaigns, what is really needed is on-the-ground enforcement, to help trace and combat the activities of Chinese middlemen in the illicit trade, experts have said.

For the crisis to be comprehensively addressed, Mr. Huijbregts of the WWF commented Wednesday, “the international intelligence community needs to get involved in this fight as soon as possible, in order to identify, track and put out of business these global criminal networks, which corrupt governments, erode national security and hamper economic development prospects.”

Unless the governments of the region and demand countries treat this issue as an international emergency, he said, “we cannot rule out that, in our lifetime, there will no longer be any viable elephant populations in Central Africa.”

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Nova Scotia gives BlackBerry $10 million over five years to keep jobs

HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government is giving tech giant BlackBerry (TSX:BB) $ 10 million over five years to help the company keep at least 400 jobs in the province.

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter says in return, BlackBerry has committed to spend $ 4 million a year on a facility that would purchase new equipment and conduct research and development.

Last summer, the company laid off about 95 people from its Halifax-area operations following its announcement that it would be reducing its global workforce by 5,000.

Neither Dexter nor company officials would confirm how many people currently work at the Halifax office.

A company official says the government approached BlackBerry asking what it could do to help it stay in Nova Scotia after the last round of layoffs.

The funding comes two days after the launch of the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone in Canada.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bethenny Frankel Anxious Over Dog Cookie's Limp

People Pets

02/06/2013 at 01:00 PM EST

Bethenny Frankel and Cookie

Adam Nemser/Startraks

All's not well at home for Bethenny Frankel, who, after splitting with husband Jason Hoppy, is now dealing with her beloved dog Cookie's ailing health.

"My first baby [Cookie] is limping," the star shared with her Twitter followers Wednesday. "She's 12 & it makes me sad & gives me anxiety."

Often seen on Bethenny Ever After, Cookie has been by Frankel's side for most of her reality TV career, but her most recent health woe is the latest in a series of complications for the canine.

In April 2012, Cookie was admitted to the hospital after Frankel shared she was vomiting repeatedly. Following a brief stay, she was released with a catheter and a cone, and the Bravo star revealed Cookie was battling an infection.

Two months later, after Frankel and her family moved to Los Angeles for her talk show, the media maven again took to Twitter to write about Cookie's case of the fleas.

"She has gnawed & scratched her body to death. She isn't liking LA," Frankel posted.

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Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

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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