Wall Street Week Ahead: Bears hibernate as stocks near record highs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks have been on a tear in January, moving major indexes within striking distance of all-time highs. The bearish case is a difficult one to make right now.

Earnings have exceeded expectations, the housing and labor markets have strengthened, lawmakers in Washington no longer seem to be the roadblock that they were for most of 2012, and money has returned to stock funds again.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> has gained 5.4 percent this year and closed above 1,500 - climbing to the spot where Wall Street strategists expected it to be by mid-year. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> is 2.2 percent away from all-time highs reached in October 2007. The Dow ended Friday's session at 13,895.98, its highest close since October 31, 2007.

The S&P has risen for four straight weeks and eight consecutive sessions, the longest streak of days since 2004. On Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 ended at 1,502.96 - its first close above 1,500 in more than five years.

"Once we break above a resistance level at 1,510, we dramatically increase the probability that we break the highs of 2007," said Walter Zimmermann, technical analyst at United-ICAP, in Jersey City, New Jersey. "That may be the start of a rise that could take equities near 1,800 within the next few years."

The most recent Reuters poll of Wall Street strategists estimated the benchmark index would rise to 1,550 by year-end, a target that is 3.1 percent away from current levels. That would put the S&P 500 a stone's throw from the index's all-time intraday high of 1,576.09 reached on October 11, 2007.

The new year has brought a sharp increase in flows into U.S. equity mutual funds, and that has helped stocks rack up four straight weeks of gains, with strength in big- and small-caps alike.

That's not to say there aren't concerns. Economic growth has been steady, but not as strong as many had hoped. The household unemployment rate remains high at 7.8 percent. And more than 75 percent of the stocks in the S&P 500 are above their 26-week highs, suggesting the buying has come too far, too fast.

MUTUAL FUND INVESTORS COME BACK

All 10 S&P 500 industry sectors are higher in 2013, in part because of new money flowing into equity funds. Investors in U.S.-based funds committed $3.66 billion to stock mutual funds in the latest week, the third straight week of big gains for the funds, data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper service showed on Thursday.

Energy shares <.5sp10> lead the way with a gain of 6.6 percent, followed by industrials <.5sp20>, up 6.3 percent. Telecom <.5sp50>, a defensive play that underperforms in periods of growth, is the weakest sector - up 0.1 percent for the year.

More than 350 stocks hit new highs on Friday alone on the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt> recently climbed to an all-time high, with stocks in this sector and other economic bellwethers posting strong gains almost daily.

"If you peel back the onion a little bit, you start to look at companies like Precision Castparts , Honeywell , 3M Co and Illinois Tool Works - these are big, broad-based industrial companies in the U.S. and they are all hitting new highs, and doing very well. That is the real story," said Mike Binger, portfolio manager at Gradient Investments, in Shoreview, Minnesota.

The gains have run across asset sizes as well. The S&P small-cap index <.spcy> has jumped 6.7 percent and the S&P mid-cap index <.mid> has shot up 7.5 percent so far this year.

Exchange-traded funds have seen year-to-date inflows of $15.6 billion, with fairly even flows across the small-, mid- and large-cap categories, according to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group, in New York.

"Investors aren't really differentiating among asset sizes. They just want broad equity exposure," Colas said.

The market has shown resilience to weak news. On Thursday, the S&P 500 held steady despite a 12 percent slide in shares of Apple after the iPhone and iPad maker's results. The tech giant is heavily weighted in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx> and in the past, its drop has suffocated stocks' broader gains.

JOBS DATA MAY TEST THE RALLY

In the last few days, the ratio of stocks hitting new highs versus those hitting new lows on a daily basis has started to diminish - a potential sign that the rally is narrowing to fewer names - and could be running out of gas.

Investors have also cited sentiment surveys that indicate high levels of bullishness among newsletter writers, a contrarian indicator, and momentum indicators are starting to also suggest the rally has perhaps come too far.

The market's resilience could be tested next week with Friday's release of the January non-farm payrolls report. About 155,000 jobs are seen being added in the month and the unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.8 percent.

"Staying over 1,500 sends up a flag of profit taking," said Jerry Harris, president of asset management at Sterne Agee, in Birmingham, Alabama. "Since recent jobless claims have made us optimistic on payrolls, if that doesn't come through, it will be a real risk to the rally."

A number of marquee names will report earnings next week, including bellwether companies such as Caterpillar Inc , Amazon.com Inc , Ford Motor Co and Pfizer Inc .

On a historic basis, valuations remain relatively low - the S&P 500's current price-to-earnings ratio sits at 15.66, which is just a tad above the historic level of 15.

Worries about the U.S. stock market's recent strength do not mean the market is in a bubble. Investors clearly don't feel that way at the moment.

"We're seeing more interest in equities overall, and a lot of flows from bonds into stocks," said Paul Zemsky, who helps oversee $445 billion as the New York-based head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management. "We've been increasing our exposure to risky assets."

For the week, the Dow climbed 1.8 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.5 percent.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Stock index futures signal mixed Wall Street open

LONDON (Reuters) - Stock futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street on Friday, with futures for the S&P 500 rising 0.2 percent, the Dow Jones futures down 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.3 percent.

Apple stepped up audits of working conditions at major suppliers last year, discovering multiple cases of underage workers, discrimination and wage problems.

Samsung Electronics turned cautious on spending for the first time since the global financial crisis, keeping its annual investment plan unchanged at 2012 levels, as demand for computer chips wanes and the smartphone market slows.

Procter & Gamble , the world's top household products maker, and smaller rival Kimberly-Clark will kick off the earnings season for U.S. household products makers. Halliburton , the world's second-largest oilfield services company, is also due to report results.

Honeywell , the diversified U.S. manufacturer, will be in focus as it reports earnings, with modest growth in demand for systems used to manage large buildings expected to be offset by declining sales to the military.

The Commerce Department releases new home sales data for December at 1500 GMT. Economists forecast a total of 385,000 annualized units, compared with 377,000 in November.

Economic Cycle Research Institute releases its weekly index of economic activity for January 18 at 1530 GMT. In the prior week the index read 130.

European shares <.fteu3> rose 0.1 percent after a survey showed German business morale improved for a third consecutive month in January.

The smallest of gains gave the Standard & Poor's 500 its seventh straight winning day on Thursday, but the index failed to hold above the 1,500 line, restrained by Apple's worst day in more than four years.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 0.33 percent at the close, the S&P 500 <.spx> ended flat and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 0.74 percent. Most of the Nasdaq's loss was due to Apple's slide of more than 12 percent after disappointing earnings.

(Reporting by Atul Prakash; Editing by Susan Fenton)

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Cold snap torments those still without heat after Sandy

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Arctic air gripped parts of the United States on Thursday, making life miserable for people still without heat months after superstorm Sandy and turning steam from a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania into a snowfall substantial enough to shovel.

In Ely, Minnesota, the latest in a string of frigid days plunged the mercury to 29 below zero Fahrenheit (minus 34 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service. The stunningly low temperature, which came without factoring in wind chill, was recorded under calm skies near Minnesota’s border with Canada, the weather service said.

In Brooklyn, New York, where about 200 homes slammed by Sandy in October remained without heat, “It’s just getting colder and colder,” said Doreen Greenwood-Garson, chief of the Gerritsen Beach Fire Department.

Nightly, the volunteer department has loaded its ambulance with donated space heaters and free hot meals and delivered them to shut-ins, said Greenwood-Garson, a real estate broker. Already it has given away a total of 60 space heaters and each night about 50 meals, she said.

In Long Beach on New York’s Long Island, the Martin Luther King Center, a community gathering spot, ran out of donated space heaters, said James Hodge, a city employee who is coordinating relief efforts there and is without heat in his own home.

“I even gave out my own personal heaters that I was sleeping with,” Hodge said.

He and his two brothers have been sleeping in several layers of clothes under piles of blankets near pots of hot water, their breath still visible in the cold of their home.

The center has been hosting more than 100 people during the day who needed a warm place to stay for a few hours, particularly school-children, who are being provided hot food, Hodge said.

Hodge said he was concerned that some people still suffering from the storm’s damage may be increasingly reluctant to seek help as time went on.

“Do I ask three months later for a sweater?” he said. “Do I ask for some food three months later when everyone thinks I’m fine, when I should be back on my feet? I think some people suffer from not asking because they’re worried about who’s going to question them.”

New York City is making free emergency repairs to thousands of Sandy-damaged homes under its newly created Rapid Repairs program, which supplies furnaces, water heaters and other materials and pays contractors to make repairs at no cost to residents and landlords.

As of Wednesday, the program had restored heat, power or hot water to more than 12,000 homes in 7,363 buildings, work was underway in another 1,870 buildings and repairs had yet to start in 2,620 buildings, a spokesman for the program said.

Temperatures were expected to rise a bit when a snowstorm was predicted for Friday to blanket Midwestern and Atlantic coastal states, according to meteorologist Alex Sosnowski of Accuweather.com.

In Pennsylvania, some residents already have been shoveling, after steam from cooling stacks of a nuclear power plant in Shippingport, 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh near the Ohio border, met the cold snap on Tuesday.

As a result, snow fell over area homes for about six hours, said Fred McMullen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Ground-level cold air met the stacks’ warm moist air, forming a cloud that produced snowflakes, he said.

“Don’t eat glowing snow!” Philadelphia Daily News reporter David Murphy jokingly wrote on Twitter.

Accuweather.com noted the Shippingport snow was neither fluorescent nor radioactive.

(Additional reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis and Drew Singer in Pittsburgh, Writing by Barbara Goldberg, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, David Gregorio and Kenneth Barry)

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Stock futures signal losses; all eyes on Apple

PARIS (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Thursday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.22 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.02 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 1.3 percent at 1014 GMT.

Shares of Apple Inc will be in the spotlight after the world's biggest tech company missed Wall Street's revenue forecast for the third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears that its dominance of consumer electronics is slipping.

Shares of the company traded in Frankfurt were down 8 percent early. They sank 10 percent to $463 in after-hours trade on Wall Street on Wednesday night, wiping out some $50 billion of its market value - nearly equivalent to that of Hewlett-Packard and Dell combined.

A U.S. trade panel that specializes in patent disputes will review a potentially key decision in the patent fight between Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc over smartphones and tablets.

European shares were mostly flat in morning trade, as bullish economic data out of China offset Apple's weaker-than-expected figures which fanned earnings worries in the technology sector. <.eu/>

Noble Corp , owner of the world's third-largest offshore drilling fleet, reported on Wednesday a lower-than-expected quarterly profit as it struggled with maintenance for five high-end rigs, even as demand for its most capable units increased.

Raymond James Financial Inc said quarterly profit rose 27.6 percent, boosted by strong performance from its brokerage and capital markets divisions.

Investors in U.S.-based mutual funds pumped $9.32 billion into stock funds in the week ended January 16, the second consecutive week of inflows for such funds, data from the Investment Company Institute showed on Wednesday.

Hard disk drive maker Western Digital Corp's second-quarter results beat analysts' expectations, helped by growth in its enterprise segment. Shipment in the enterprise segment rose about 10 percent from first-quarter levels to 6.63 million units, analyst Nehal Chokshi of Technology Insights Research told Reuters.

Japanese regulators have joined their U.S. counterparts in all but ruling out overcharged batteries as the cause of recent fires on the Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner, which has been grounded for a week with no end in sight.

Amgen Inc on Wednesday projected revenue for 2013 that exceeds Wall Street estimates and said it was on track to deliver on its 2015 forecasts well ahead of schedule.

Pamplona Capital Management, holder of 9.3 percent of Nabors Industries Ltd , has become "increasingly concerned" about the underperformance of the drilling rig contractor's shares, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Symantec Corp plans to slash its management ranks and reorganize into 10 business areas, but has decided not to sell off major assets after a strategic review by its new early this month.

SanDisk Corp's modest revenue outlook disappointed investors looking for a rebound in memory chips widely used in smartphones and tablets, sending its shares lower.

Netflix Inc surprised Wall Street on Wednesday with a quarterly profit after the video subscription service added nearly 4 million customers in the United States and abroad, sending its shares 35 percent higher in after-hours trading.

Among the companies set to report results on Thursday feature Bristol-Myers Squibb , Lockheed Martin , 3M Company , Microsoft , Raytheon , Starbucks , AT&T Inc. , and Xerox Corp. .

On the macro front, investors awaited weekly jobless claims, at 1330 GMT, Markit Manufacturing PMI for January, due at 1358 GMT, and December leading economic indicators, due at 1500 GMT.

The S&P 500 rose for a sixth day on Wednesday after stronger-than-expected profits from IBM and Google but the rally could be halted as Apple's after-hours miss sent its shares lower.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 67.12 points or 0.49 percent, to 13,779.33, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 2.25 points or 0.15 percent, to 1,494.81, and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 10.49 points or 0.33 percent, to 3,153.67.

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson)

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Neanderthal cloning chatter highlights scientific illiteracy

BOSTON (Reuters) – After spending the weekend reading blog posts claiming that he was seeking an “extremely adventurous female human” to bear a cloned Neanderthal baby – which was news to him – Harvard geneticist George Church said it may be time for society to give some thought to scientific literacy.

Church became the subject of dozens of posts and tabloid newspaper articles calling him a “mad scientist” after giving an interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel.

In the interview, Church discussed the technical challenges scientists would face if they tried to clone a Neanderthal, though neither he nor the Der Spiegel article, which was presented as a question and answer exchange, said he intended to do so.

“Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby,” read one headline, on the website of London’s Daily Mail.

But Church explained on Wednesday that he was simply theorizing.

Still, the readiness of bloggers, journalists and readers to believe he was preparing an attempt to clone a Neanderthal, a species closely related to modern humans that went extinct some 30,000 years ago, led Church to ponder scientific literacy.

“The public should be able to detect cases where things seem implausible,” Church said in an interview at his office at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “Everybody’s fib detector should have been going off. They should have said, ‘What? Who would believe this?’ … This really indicates that we should have scientific literacy.”

Despite the spate of articles comparing him to the character in the book and movie “Jurassic Park” who attempts to open a theme park filled with living dinosaurs, Church said he plans to continue speaking publicly about his research, which focuses on using genes to treat and prevent disease.

Given the number of policy debates driven by science – from how to address climate change, to space exploration, to public health concerns – scientists should not back away from talking to the media, Church said.

“We really should get the public of the entire world to be able to detect the difference between a fact and a complete fantasy that has been created by the Internet,” he said.

In the Der Spiegel article, which Church said reported his words accurately, and his recent book “Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves,” Church theorized that studying cloned Neanderthals could help scientists better understand how the human mind works. Scientists have already extracted DNA from Neanderthal bones.

But such experiments would pose a host of ethical concerns – including how many Neanderthals would be created and whether they would be treated as mere study subjects or as beings with their own rights, Church said.

“I do want to connect the public to science because there are so many decisions to be made if the way they learn it, if they learn it faster by talking about Neanderthals than they did by getting rote learning in high school, that’s great,” he said.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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Stock index futures signal lower Wall Street open

LONDON (Reuters) - Stock futures pointed to a slightly lower open on Wall Street on Wednesday after gains in the previous session, with futures for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 falling 0.1 to 0.2 percent.

A measure to extend the U.S. debt limit for nearly four months moved closer to a vote and the White House said the president would sign the bill if it cleared Congress, easing uncertainty that could have threatened the U.S. economy.

Focus will be on Apple results. Analysts on average estimate Apple's fiscal first-quarter earnings per share at $13.41, down slightly from $13.87 in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue is seen up 18 percent at $54.7 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Other major companies announcing results include Well point , McDonald's and Abbott .

Revenue from Google Inc's core Internet business outpaced many analysts' expectations during the crucial holiday quarter and advertising rates fell less than in previous periods, pushing its shares up roughly 5 percent. Google shares in Frankfurt were up 4.7 percent on Wednesday.

IBM , the world's largest technology services company, gave a better than expected 2013 outlook after a solid fourth quarter that analysts say has more to do with Big Blue's smooth execution than a vibrant tech spending environment. IBM's shares in Frankfurt were 4 percent higher on Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association releases Weekly Mortgage Market Index for the week ended January 18 at 1200 GMT. The index read 836.5 and the refinancing index was 4,563.7 in the previous week.

JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon apologized to shareholders for the $6 billion loss caused by the so-called "whale" trade, calling it a "terrible mistake," but said the bank has moved on and is still highly profitable.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday he would hold a referendum before the end of 2017 to decide whether Britain remains a member of the European Union, provided he wins the next election.

ICSC/Goldman Sachs release chain store sales for the week ended January 18 at 1245 GMT. In the previous week, sales fell 0.6 percent.

Redbook releases its index of department and chain store sales for January at 1355 GMT. In December, sales fell 0.3 percent.

At 1455 GMT, the Institute for Supply Management Chicago releases annual revisions to its index of manufacturing activity. In December, the index read 51.6.

European shares <.fteu3> were flat in early trading on Wednesday, with encouraging earnings reports from some companies underpinning the market.

Bank and commodity shares led the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index to a fresh five-year closing high on Tuesday on hopes that the global economy continues to mend.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 62.51 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,712.21 at the close on Tuesday. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained 6.58 points, or 0.44 percent, to 1,492.56. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 8.47 points or 0.27 percent, to 3,143.18.

(Reporting by Atul Prakash/editing by Chris Pizzey, London MPG Desk, +44 (0)207 542-4441)

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Cold weather perfect for grape harvest

CLEVELAND – So, what were you doing during last night’s deep freeze? Hopefully, keeping warm indoors.

Well, Folks at Ferrante Winery , in Geneva, were out in the vineyards harvesting wine grapes.

Nick Ferrante has waited all winter for just this kind of weather. Every year, he sets aside several acres of Vidal wine grapes and leaves the clusters hanging on the vine. Once the temperatures drop into the teens, the grapes freeze. Once the grapes freeze, it’s time to make one of Ohio’s premier beverages: ice wine.

“Tonight’s the right night,” said Nicholas Ferrante, winemaker at the Ashtabula County winery. “I made the decision to allow the grapes to hang until colder temperatures created a solid freeze.”

To make the best ice wine, you’ve gotta have it cold. Temperatures in the middle and upper teens are best.

Most of the water left in each berry will freeze, but the sugars and other flavors will not. The winemakers rush to press the grapes while they are still frozen. This results in pure, undiluted flavors and high sugar content, with very little water in the mix. That’s the perfect ingredients for ice wine.

But when to harvest is the question. Most Ohio wineries harvested their ice wine grapes back in December during the brief holiday cold spell.

“I didn’t think it was quite cold enough back then,” Ferrante said.

This decision to wait did not come without consequences. Each day on the vine cuts down on the yield. The grapes actually shrivel up like raisins as the they slowly dry out during the fall. Netting around the vines attempts to keep animals from enjoying the sweet fruit. But, deer and raccoons still manage to snack through the netting.

Despite the lower yield in fruit, allowing the grapes to hang on the vine even longer concentrates the flavors and increases the sugar content of each berry. The result is a sweet, incredibly delicious, dessert wine.

Last night, the harvesters battled wind chills below zero and heavy snow squalls. But, the efforts were worth it.

“Brix (percent of sugar in each grape) soared into the high 40s,” said winery owner MaryJo Ferrante. “It was amazing to be with the winery guys and see firsthand how it’s done. It gives me a renewed appreciation of the art of ice wine making.”

Once the grapes were pressed, the resulting liquid was immediately poured into the fermenters. The shivering workers harvested between eight and 10 tons of grapes. Although, that may sound like a lot, its really not.

“That will only produce about 300 gallons of ice wine,” Nick said.

The picked fruit averaged about 35 percent sugar overall. The resulting wine will be about 15 percent sugar after fermentation. 

“Vidal blanc ice wine is a much sought-after dessert wine,” MaryJo said. “(It has) rich aromas of apricot and orange blossoms with flavors of honey and ripe melon.”

The wine will be bottled in the spring. Several other northern Ohio wineries produce ice wine. The 10th Annual Grand River Valley Ice Wine Festival will be held during the weekends of March 2, 9 and 16 from noon to 5 p.m. at participating wineries in the Grand River Valley region.

Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Stock index futures signal mixed open

PARIS (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street on Tuesday after Monday's holiday. S&P 500 futures were up 0.1 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.22 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.21 percent at 1035 GMT.

European shares fell in morning trade, with Germany's blue-chip DAX <.gdaxi> among the laggards, dragged down by large futures trades and led by Deutsche Bank shares. <.eu/>

Investors awaited a raft of company results on Tuesday from bellwethers such as CSX , DuPont , Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson , Texas Instruments and Verizon .

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

Boeing will be in focus again after U.S. and Japanese aviation safety officials investigating problems with the 787 Dreamliner visited the headquarters of the plane's battery maker on Monday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc plans to cut ties immediately with suppliers who subcontract work to factories without the retailer's knowledge, changing its policy after a fire killed more than 100 garment workers in Bangladesh, the Wall Street Journal reported.

On the macro side, investors awaited existing home sales for December, due at 1500 GMT, while the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is set to release its January indexes on area manufacturing and service sectors, also at 1500 GMT.

The Dow and S&P 500 closed at five-year highs on Friday as the market registered a third straight week of gains on a solid start to the quarterly earnings season.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 53.68 points, or 0.39 percent, at 13,649.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 5.04 points, or 0.34 percent, at 1,485.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.30 points, or 0.04 percent, at 3,134.71.

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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Space Explosion to Blame for Tree Ring Mystery, Astronomers Say

More than 1,200 years ago, some mysterious event was recorded in tree rings in a Japanese cedar forest.

While one study suggested a solar flare was to blame, a new group of researchers are pointing toward a gamma-ray burst, a powerful space explosion.

The ancient cedar trees record a rare event around 774 or 775 A.D. This shows up in a sharp rise in the amount of radioactive carbon-14 and beryllium-10 recorded in the trees’ rings, which can be created by incoming particles from space.

But what caused an influx of radiation?

Tree ring mystery

According to astronomers Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhauser of the Astrophysics Institute of the University of Jena in Germany, the most likely culprit was a gamma-ray burst. [Amazing Solar Flare of Oct. 22, 2012 (Photos)]

These bursts can be caused when two compact objects, such black holes or neutron stars, slam into each other and release a flood of high-energy gamma-ray radiation.

Such an interpretation, the scientists argue, fits the tree ring mystery, because a gamma-ray burst would be powerful enough to cause the uptick in carbon-14 and beryllium-10. It also fits with the fact that no rare celestial event was observed that year on Earth, at least according to records available now.

The researchers calculated that a gamma-ray burst at a distance of 3,000 and 12,000 light-years from Earth best fits the data.

“If the gamma-ray burst had been much closer to the Earth it would have caused significant harm to the biosphere,” Neuhauser said in a statement. “But even thousands of light-years away, a similar event today could cause havoc with the sensitive electronic systems that advanced societies have come to depend on.”

Rare chemicals

The rare forms of carbon and beryllium, which are heavier than the normal varieties of those elements, are created when radiation from space collides with nitrogen atoms in Earth’s atmosphere, which then decay into carbon-14 and beryllium-10.

Both chemicals are unstable and decay on predictable time scales, allowing scientists to trace these particular tree rings back to such a specific time in the past. The fact that the jump in carbon-14 and beryllium-10 was only seen in one year’s rings means whatever sparked their creation was short-lived.

“The challenge now is to establish how rare such carbon-14 spikes are, i.e., how often such radiation bursts hit the Earth,” Neuhauser said. “In the last 3,000 years, the maximum age of trees alive today, only one such event appears to have taken place.”

Best solution

The researchers say a gamma-ray burst explanation fits better than a solar flare, because most flares from the sun would not be powerful enough to create such a spike. Plus, they argue, a super-strong solar flare would likely have created extra-special aurora displays, which were not seen, according to historical records.

However, astrophysicists Adrian Melott of the University of Kansas and Brian Thomas of Washburn University say a flare would have to have been only about 10 or 20 times more powerful than the greatest flare on record, the so-called Carrington event of 1859. Since the records don’t go back very far, such an occurrence is not out of the realm of possibility, they say.

To distinguish between the different interpretations, historians will have to look for further hints in the historical records. Neuhauser and Hambaryan also suggest looking for the object that might have resulted from the merger that caused the gamma-ray burst, which would be a 1,200-year-old black hole or neutron star that lies between 3,000 to 12,000 light-years away, but lacks the characteristic gas and dust clouds of a supernova remnant.

They report their findings Jan. 21 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook & Google+. 

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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European shares test two-year highs, yen volatile before BOJ

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares inched towards two-year highs and German Bund futures dipped on Monday, as a political attempt to break a budget impasse in the United States revived appetite for shares and dented appetite for safe-haven assets.

U.S. House Republican leaders said on Friday they would seek to pass a three-month extension of federal borrowing authority in the coming days to buy time for the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass a plan to shrink budget deficits.

European shares <.fteu3> were supported by the news <.eu>, but with no clear response from the Democrats and a thin session expected due to a market holiday in the United States, the impact on other assets such as Bunds is likely to be limited.

London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> opened between 0.4 and 0.5 percent higher, lifting the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 0.3 percent and MSCI's world index 0.1 percent. <.l><.eu/>

"There's a bit of encouragement coming out of the U.S.," said Toby Campbell-Gray, head of trading at Tavira Securities in Monaco.

He added that equity markets had remained resilient in the face of an uncertain economic outlook as many investors had stepped in to buy "on the dip" on days when shares had fallen.

Ahead of the region's first finance ministers' meeting of the year the euro was steady against the dollar, while the yen firmed after touching a new low, ahead of a Bank of Japan decision expected to deliver bold monetary easing.

The dollar slipped back to a low of 89.42 yen and was last trading at 89.57 yen, while the euro also fell to a low of 119.08 and last traded at 119.27 yen.

With little in the way of economic data or debt issuance and U.S. markets shut for the Martin Luther King Jr. public holiday, it was expected to be a fairly quite market day.

Oil prices took their cues from a report in the United States at the end of last week that showed consumer sentiment at its weakest in a year as a result of the uncertainty surrounding the country's debt crisis.

Concerns about demand overshadowed supply disruption fears reinforced by the Islamist militant attack and hostage-taking at a gas plant in Algeria, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

U.S. crude futures fell 0.5 percent to $95.08 a barrel, while Brent fell 0.3 percent to $111.55 early on Monday but had recovered to almost flat as European trading gathered pace.

(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Snow woe: Winter weather causes delays, cancellations at Heathrow, other European airports

LONDON – Scores of fights have been cancelled as snow and ice blanket much of Britain.

London’s Heathrow airport says it has cancelled about 130 flights, 10 per cent of the daily total, compared to 20 per cent on Sunday.

Flights have been disrupted since Friday at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which has seen long lines and stranded passengers camping out on its terminal floors.

Heathrow says it has spent millions improving its winter resilience since the airport was virtually shut down by snow for several days in December 2010. But it says low visibility means it must leave bigger gaps between planes, triggering delays and cancellations.

Train services are also disrupted, and hundreds of schools across Britain are closed.

There are also delays and cancellations Monday at airports in Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

Weather News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Latest Inaugural Forecast: Bit Warmer Than in 2009

Consider it the first fact check of a Barack Obama campaign pledge for his second term: Will he, or Mother Nature, deliver on promised warmer Inauguration Day weather?

It’s shaping up as a close call.

In September, while campaigning in Colorado, Obama was talking to a potential voter who mentioned he had been one of the hundreds of thousands of people outdoors at Obama‘s bone-chilling first inaugural in 2009, when the noontime temperature was 28 degrees. Obama promised: “This one is going to be warmer.”

Scientifically, the president doesn’t have control of day-to-day weather. While his policies can lessen or worsen future projected global warming on a large scale, they cannot do anything about Washington‘s daily temperature on Jan. 21.

Still, it’s a promise that for a long time looked close to a sure thing. The history of local weather was on Obama’s side.

On average, the normal high is 43 degrees and the normal low is 28, but that’s just around dawn. There have been 19 traditional January inaugurations and only two were colder. Ronald Reagan‘s second in 1985 was a frigid 7 with subzero wind chills and John F. Kennedy‘s in 1961 was a snow-covered 22. Jimmy Carter’s 1977 inauguration also was 28.

Then there was the general warming trend Washington had been stuck in. The last time the nation’s capital stayed below freezing all day was Jan. 22, 2011. The city has gone a record 700-plus days since it had 2 inches or more of snow.

An Arctic cold front looks to be racing toward the mid-Atlantic, so it will be cooler than normal on Monday, but probably not cooler than 2009, said Nikole Listemaa, a senior forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Sterling, Va., that oversees forecasts for the capital area.

Look for highs around 40 degrees with noon temperatures in the mid- to upper 30s, Listemaa said Saturday. That would keep Obama’s pledge.

There’s also a 30 percent chance of light snow showers for Monday. But the Arctic cold front won’t arrive until Monday night into Tuesday, Listemaa added.

Extreme cold on Inauguration Day, folklore says, can be a killer.

In 1841, newly elected president William Henry Harrison stood outside without a coat or hat as he spoke for an hour and 40 minutes. He caught a cold that day and it became pneumonia and he died one month after being sworn in.

Twelve years later, outgoing first lady Abigail Fillmore got sick from sitting outside on a cold wet platform as Franklin Pierce was inaugurated and she died of pneumonia at the end of the month. Doctors now know that pneumonia is caused by germs, but prolonged exposure to extreme cold weather may hurt the airways and make someone more susceptible to getting sick.

There’s one thing Washington‘s history shows. Bad weather generally creates bad traffic jams.

Kennedy found that out in his 1961 inauguration when 8 inches of snow fell overnight and crippled the city for what at that time was Washington‘s worst traffic jam. Thousands of cars were abandoned in the snow.

———

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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‘Planetary Parks’ Could Protect Space Wilderness

It’s a wilderness out there in outer space. And as robotic surrogates set the stage for human footprints on Mars and other planetary bodies, just how much respect for other worlds should we have?

One suggested response would establish planetary parks for the solar system, an answer that ties together space science and exploration, ethics, law, policy, diplomacy and communications.

The parks would be organized under a single management system, with clear regulations for protection and use. But just what are the benefits of establishing a park system on target planets and moons before starting an intense program of exploration, and exploitation, of bodies in our solar system?

Planetary protection

A system of planetary parks fits with the ideas of such groups as the Committee on Space Research, advocates of the proposal note. COSPAR’s long list of agenda items includes an active discussion of planetary protection.

COSPAR’s objectives are to promote, on an international level, scientific research in space, with emphasis on the exchange of results, information and opinions. The organization also aims to provide a forum, open to all scientists, for the discussion of problems that may affect scientific space research.

Indeed, participants broached the planetary parks idea in June 2010 during COSPAR’s Workshop on Ethical Considerations for Planetary Protection in Space Exploration, held at Princeton University.

Why now?

“I think the concept is a useful one, and as we know more about planets like Mars, there is even more reason to think about developing planetary parks as we have the information to define where they might go,” said Charles Cockell, a professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and a leading proponent of the notion.

A network of parks on Mars would aim to preserve different regions on the Red Planet because of the variety of environments it contains.

Mars is home to deserts, extinct shield volcanoes, canyons and polar ice caps. By preserving representative portions of these features, a diversity of planetary parks with different features of outstanding beauty and intrinsic, natural worth could be established. The parks would also allow for maximum preservation of scientific heritage, both geologically and — perhaps — biologically. [6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System]

Red Planet rules

Space preservationists could apply such a system elsewhere, including the moon, and on asteroids and satellites of the giant planets. But, specifically for Martian parks, the following rules might apply:

• No spacecraft or vehicle parts to be left within the park


• No landing of unmanned spacecraft within the park


• No waste to be left within the park


• Access only on foot or via surface vehicle along predefined routes, or by landing in a rocket-powered vehicle in predefined landing areas


• All suits, vehicles and other machines used in the park to be sterilized on their external surfaces to prevent microbial shedding

As for those dismissive of the idea, Cockell told SPACE.com that he thinks such reactions occur primarily because there isn’t anyone on Mars or anywhere else beyond Earth orbit at the moment — so why would you want to set up parks?  

Partly scientific, partly ethical

A few reasons explain why parks are a good idea, even without any people on Mars, advocates say.

“I think the reasons are two-fold. It is partly scientific and partly ethical,” Cockell said, pointing out:

• One scientific argument is that it’s useful to keep areas of other planetary bodies free of human activity, to maintain pristine conditions that can be used to answer scientific questions. This may turn out to be essential if researchers discover life elsewhere. It’s also consistent with existing COSPAR planetary-protection policies that seek to prevent harmful contamination of other planetary bodies in order to preserve their scientific potential.


• One ethical argument is that it says something about our species that we think about our actions elsewhere and attempt to mitigate our impact prior to establishing a permanent presence beyond the Earth. We might want to preserve some places in pristine condition for future generations. We may also want to protect unknown benefits that could potentially be gained from places in space that human activity has not altered.

Expansion of private enterprise

“I think now is the time to do this because we are entering into a new era of both government and private exploration, which promises the possibility of many new organizations developing a spacefaring capability,” Cockell said. “It would seem then that now is a good time to think about these questions afresh.”

Cockell said that the idea is not to restrict space exploration, but rather to ensure that it is done in a thoughtful and far-sighted manner.

“By establishing parks, we might better be able to define those areas that should be left free of regulations and free for commercial development,” Cockell said. “So they can be used as an impetus to help us think about places that should be left to ensure the unfettered expansion of private enterprise into space, as well as places we might want to turn into our first planetary parks.”

Potential-use conflicts

Another leading thinker in this area is Gerda Horneck, at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, Germany. While not expressing an official view of DLR, she sees the initiative as analogous to national park systems right here on Earth.

“A planetary park system could extend the reasons for practical protection policies beyond the utilitarian protection of scientific resources emphasized by planetary protection … into other utilitarian and intrinsic value arguments,” Horneck told SPACE.com.

She added that such planetary park systems could still allow for the development of non-park areas by commercial enterprises, while incorporating regional protection for other objectives: scientific interest and use, preservation of historic value or natural beauty, or preservation for future generations.

“Thus, a strategy of planetary parks for the solar system could help solve future potential-use conflicts, incorporate both utilitarian and intrinsic-value arguments and be organized under a single management system, with clear regulations for protection and use,” Horneck said.

Such an approach would also address considerations about moral and legal definitions of wilderness on other planetary bodies, Horneck added, “and would allow us to express a respect for other worlds.”

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society’s Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Chinese, U.S. data push shares to 20-month high

LONDON (Reuters) - World shares hit a 20-month high on Friday as encouraging data from the United States and China boosted prospects for the global economy, while the yen hit new lows ahead of next week's Bank of Japan meeting.

China's economy grew at a slightly faster-than-expected 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, the latest sign it is pulling out of a post-global financial crisis slowdown that produced its weakest year of economic growth since 1999.

The positive news came on top of strong U.S. labor and housing market reports on Thursday, providing fresh impetus to a recent strong and broad financial market rally.

MSCI's index of leading world shares <.miwd00000pus> hit its highest level since May 2011 at 552.16 points after Tokyo and Hong Kong stock markets surged and the S&P 500 in New York hit a five-year high.

Industrial commodities and oil also benefited, with palladium reaching a 16-month high and platinum a three-month high, while Brent crude added 28 cents to stand at $111.38 a barrel by 1030 GMT.

"We've got good numbers out of China, we had some good numbers out of U.S. yesterday ... The general sentiment is pretty good," said Neil Marsh, strategist at New edge.

"There will probably be some phases of consolidation as we go forward, but the markets remain pretty resilient. More people are putting their cash to work now in riskier assets like equities, and there is no sign of that stopping at the minute."

European stocks were mostly higher by mid-morning, with London's FTSE 100 <.ftse> and Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> up 0.4 and 0.2 percent, respectively, but Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> was 0.1 percent in the red <.l><.eu><.n>.

British retail sales posted a surprise monthly fall in December, dashing hopes that Christmas shoppers would provide a last-minute boost to an economy on the verge of another contraction.

Like much of Europe, consumer spending in Britain has come under pressure from a combination of below-inflation wage growth, worries about the economy and government austerity measures. 䄀 "What is disappointing is that, after about a year of a pick-up in retail activity, the high street seems to have stalled again over the past few months. We're looking at modest growth in the British economy over 2013," said Phillip Shaw, an economist at Investec.

YEN SLIDE RESUMES

The strong U.S. data and mounting expectations for more aggressive easing by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) next week lifted the dollar as high as 90.21 yen, its highest since June 2010, and the euro to its peak since May 2011 of 120.73 yen.

The single currency was starting to lose ground against the dollar as midday approached, trading down 0.2 percent at $1.3350.

Expectations that the new Japanese government will pursue massive fiscal spending and push for more aggressive BOJ easing to drive Japan out of years of deflation and economic slump have spurred heavy yen selling since November.

Sources told Reuters the BOJ will at its January 21-22 meeting consider removing the 0.1 percent floor on short-term interest rates and commit to open-ended asset buying until the 2 percent inflation target is reached.

"A lot is priced in for next week's BOJ meeting. If asset purchases by the BOJ were unlimited, that could lead to significantly higher levels in dollar/yen and euro/yen levels," said Peter Kinsella, currency strategist at Commerzbank. "Levels past 93-95 yen within the next two-three weeks is not unreasonable."

LTRO ANTICIPATION

U.S. stock futures pointed to a broadly steady restart on Wall Street after the S&P 500 climbed to a five-year high on Thursday.

In bond markets, German two-year government bond yields rose 0.25 percent to near their highest in nearly 10 months, with traders citing growing concerns over potentially large scale early repayments of the ultra-cheap three-year loans the European Central Bank flooded markets with from late 2011.

The ECB will on January 25 publish how much will be repaid in the January 30 first round of repayments. A larger-than-expected return of around 400 billion euros would effectively tighten money market conditions and push up the price banks charge to lend to each other.

"The (German) front-end is being hit by the LTRO story," one bond trader said. "My view is it's oversold, but there's something else at play there, so it's very difficult to trade against it."

(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Futures signal mixed Wall Street open

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. stock futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street on Thursday, with futures for the S&P 500 rising 0.1 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.2 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures falling 0.1 percent.

Airlines scrambled on Thursday to rearrange flights as Europe, Japan and India joined the United States in grounding Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner passenger jets while battery-related problems are investigated.

Earnings reports from major U.S. companies such as Citigroup , Intel , Bank of America and BlackRock , due later in the day, will be scrutinized for hints about the market's near-term direction.

First-time claims for jobless benefits for the week ended January 12 are due at 1330 GMT. Economists forecast a total of 365,000 new filings, compared with 371,000 in the previous week.

The Commerce Department releases housing starts and permits for December at 1330 GMT. Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 903,000 permits in December, compared with 900,000 in the previous month.

Top executives at Goldman Sachs have been considering deep cuts to staffing levels and pay for at least two years, but feared too many layoffs would leave the firm unprepared for an eventual pickup in business, people familiar with the bank said.

Shares in Dutch telecoms company KPN rose more than 4 percent on Thursday after a report that U.S. peer AT&T is looking at an acquisition in Europe, including KPN and UK carrier Everything Everywhere.

AT&T is considering buying a telecoms company in Europe to offset growth constraints in its home market, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the company's thinking.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd reported a 32 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit as its cutting-edge technology keeps it ahead of rivals in the mobile gadget boom.

Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank releases its January business activity survey at 1500 GMT. Economists forecast a reading of 5.8, versus 4.6 in December.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> was flat in morning trading on Thursday.

The S&P 500 ended nearly flat on Wednesday as solid earnings from two major banks and a bounceback in Apple shares offset concerns about a lower forecast for global growth in 2013.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 23.66 points, or 0.17 percent, at 13,511.23 on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.29 points, or 0.02 percent, at 1,472.63. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 6.77 points, or 0.22 percent, at 3,117.54.

(Reporting by Atul Prakash; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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Crabs Really Do Feel Pain: Study

Scientists have long held that crabs are unable to feel pain because they lack the biology to do so, but behavioral evidence has recently shown otherwise. Now, new research further supports the hypothesis that crabs feel pain by showing that crabs given a mild shock will take steps to avoid getting shocked in the future.

From humans to fruit flies, numerous species come equipped with nociception, a type of reflex that helps avoid immediate tissue damage. On the other hand, pain, which results in a swift change of behavior to avoid future damage, isn’t so widespread. (Research has also shown naked mole rats may be immune to pain.)

In the new study, researchers allowed shore crabs (Carcinus maenas) to choose between one of two dark shelters in a brightly lit tank. One shelter came with a mild shock. After just two trials, crabs that initially chose the shocking shelter began opting for the zapless shelter, suggesting they learned to discriminate between the two options and headed for the less painful one.

“It’s almost impossible to prove an animal feels pain, but there are criteria you can look at,” said lead researcher Robert Elwood, an animal behaviorist at Queen’s University, Belfast, in the U.K. “Here we have another criteria satisfied — if the data are consistent, a body of evidence [showing crabs feel pain] can build up.”

Building evidence

Elwood initially set out to see if crabs and other crustacean decapods feel pain after a chef posed him the question around eight years ago. If the invertebrates (animals without backbones) feel pain, he reasoned, their reactions to unpleasant stimuli would be more than the simple reflex of nociception — the experience would change their long-term behavior.

Elwood’s first experiment showed that prawns whose antennae were doused with caustic soda vigorously groomed their antennae, as if trying to ameliorate pain. Importantly, this behavior didn’t occur if Elwood treated the antennae with an anesthetic first.

Another experiment showed that hermit crabs would leave their shells if given a mild shock. “A naked crab is basically a dead crab — they were trading off avoiding the shock with getting out of the shell,” Elwood told LiveScience, adding that many of the crabs moved into new shells if any were available. [The 10 Weirdest Animal Discoveries]

For his new study, Elwood tested 90 shore crabs, which naturally seek dark spaces, to see if they exhibited “avoidance learning” and would discriminate between a dangerous and a safe area. Half of the crabs were shocked upon entering the first chamber of their choice, while the other half were not. For each crab, the jolting chamber stayed the same throughout the 10 trials.

In the second trial, most of the crabs returned to their original shelter; whether they were shocked in the first trial had little effect on their second choice. However, crabs were more likely to change shelter in the third trial if they were shocked in the second trial. And as the trials wore on, crabs that chose incorrectly became more likely to exit the unpleasant chamber, brave the bright arena and hide in the alternate shelter. By the final test, the majority of the crabs chose the nonshock shelter at first go.

Time for change?

The research “provides evidence that supports the issue that crabs — and other crustacean decapods as well — feel pain,” Francesca Gherardi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Florence in Italy who wasn’t involved in the study, told LiveScience in an email. “It is avoidance learning that makes the difference.”

Animals in pain should quickly learn to avoid the unpleasant stimulus and show long-term changes in behavior, Gherardi noted. More research is needed on decapods’ avoidance learning and “discrimination abilities between painful and nonpainful situations,” he said.

Elwood said he thinks future research should go in a different direction. Stress often comes with pain, he said, so other experiments could look at changes in crustacean hormones or heart rates due to shock.

Whatever the case, Elwood feels it may be time to reconsider the treatment of decapods in the food industry. “If the evidence for pain in decapods continues to stack up with mammals and birds that already get some protection, then perhaps there should be some nod in that direction for these animals,” he said.

The study was published today (Jan. 16) in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We’re also on Facebook &Google+.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Stock index futures point to lower open on Wall Street, Boeing in focus

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.3 percent, Dow Jones futures off 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq 100 contract 0.1 percent lower at 0922 GMT.

Banks <.sx7p> will be in focus, with results due from several big names, including BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Of the S&P 500 <.spx> companies that have reported to date, 25 percent have missed fourth-quarter earnings forecasts and 29 percent have undershot on revenues, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data.

Shares in General Motors fell after the bell on Tuesday after the automaker said it expects operating profit to rise "modestly" this year - a comment that is expected to prompt analysts to downgrade their forecasts.

Boeing will be in focus on concerns about the safety of its Dreamliner. Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of 787s on Wednesday after one of the passenger jets made an emergency landing.

India will decide on whether to ground national carrier Air India's Dreamliner jets after the U.S. company submits a report on the aircraft's safety.

Global growth concerns remain in the spotlight after the World Bank slashed its economic forecasts for developed nations this year.

A plunge in European car sales in December added to the gloom.

U.S. December inflation figures are due at 1330 GMT, followed by industrial output at 1415 GMT.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> added 27.57 points, or 0.20 percent, to 13,534.89 on Tuesday, while the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 1.66 points, or 0.11 percent, to 1,472.34 after stronger-than-expected retail data.

Tech heavyweight Apple dragged on the Nasdaq for a third day <.ixic>, with the index falling 0.2 percent.

Major European indexes edged lower on Wednesday, after recent gains took them to multi-month highs <.fteu3><.eu>. Profit taking also pushed Japan's Nikkei benchmark to its biggest one-day drop in eight months <.n225>.

(Reporting By Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Susan Fenton)

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Apple’s stock ticker woes jeopardize its status as the world’s most valuable company

We all know that Apple’s (AAPL) share price has been in a downward spiral lately, and the company could soon lose its status as the world’s most valuable company if things don’t turn around. As John Paczkowski at AllThingsD points out, Apple’s current market cap of around $ 456 billion is just over $ 50 billion greater than Exxon Mobil, which is the world’s second most valuable company with a market cap of $ 407 billion. While Apple still has a way to go before it falls back into the #2 position, Paczkowski thinks that significantly weaker-than-expected iPhone 5 sales may be enough to do the trick. One way or another, we’ll find out with Apple’s earnings next week whether the current Wall Street panic over Apple is legitimate or if it’s all been a bunch of noise.

[More from BGR: HTC One SV review]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Energy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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