'The Help,' Dujardin win at lively SAG Awards (omg!)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Finally, an awards show with some surprises and spontaneity.

The Screen Actors Guild Awards featured some unexpected winners, including "The Help" for best overall cast performance and Jean Dujardin for best actor in "The Artist" alongside some of the longtime favorites in movies and television.

But there was a looseness and a playfulness that permeated the Shrine Exposition Center Sunday night ? maybe because it was a room full of people who love to perform, without the rigidity of one single host to lead them.

Unlike the great expectations that came with the sharp-tongued Ricky Gervais' reprisal at the Golden Globes a couple weeks ago or the much-anticipated return of Billy Crystal to the Academy Awards next month, there was no master of ceremonies at the SAG Awards. The presenters and winners seemed to have more room to improvise and put their own spin on the evening ? but mercifully, the show itself still managed to wrap up on time after just two hours.

And so we had three of the stars of best-cast nominee "Bridesmaids" ? Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Melissa McCarthy ? introducing their comedy with a joke about turning the name "Scorsese" into a drinking game, which became a running gag throughout the night. When HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" won the award for best drama series cast, among the first words star Steve Buscemi uttered in accepting the prize were "Martin Scorsese" ? he just happens to be one of the show's executive producers.

One of the more exciting moments of the night was the announcement of Dujardin's name in the best-actor category for his performance in the silent, black-and-white homage "The Artist." In winning the award for his portrayal of a silent-film star who finds his career in decline with the arrival of talkies, Dujardin definitely boosts his chances at the Oscars on Feb. 26. Little-known in the United States before this, the French comic bested bigger names like George Clooney ("The Descendants"), Brad Pitt ("Moneyball") and Leonardo DiCaprio ("J. Edgar").

If he follows this up with an Academy Award, Dujardin would become the first French actor ever to take the prize. Asked backstage how it would feel, Dujardin launched into a jaunty rendition of "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem.

"Pressure, big pressure," Dujardin then added in his halting English. "It's unbelievable. It's amazing already. Too early to tell."

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer continued to cement their front-runner status in the actress and supporting actress categories, respectively, for their formidable work in "The Help." Both women play black maids in 1960s Mississippi who dare to go public about the bigotry they've endured.

"I just have to say that the stain of racism and sexism is not just for people of color or women. It's all of our burden, all of us," Davis said, accepting the ensemble prize on behalf of her "The Help" co-stars.

Backstage, Davis said of her own victory: "A few more people checked my name in the box for whatever reason. This time I kind of fooled them."

Meanwhile, Christopher Plummer picked up yet another supporting-actor prize for his lovely turn as an elderly widower who finally comes out as gay in "Beginners." Plummer won at the Golden Globes and is nominated for an Oscar. He would become the oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award at age 82, two years older than Jessica Tandy was when she won best actress for "Driving Miss Daisy."

Backstage, Plummer joked when asked if he would like to win an Oscar, an honor so elusive during his esteemed 60-year career that he did not even receive his first Academy Award nomination until two years ago, for "The Last Station."

"No, I think it's frightfully boring," Plummer said. "That's an awful question. Listen, we don't go into this business preoccupied by awards. If we did, we wouldn't last five minutes."

The win for overall cast for "The Help," when "The Artist" and "The Descendants" have been the favorites all along, makes the conversation more interesting but it isn't necessarily an indicator of how the film will do come Oscar time.

The guild's ensemble prize, considered its equivalent of a best-picture honor, has a spotty record at predicting what will win the top award at the Oscars. While "The King's Speech" won both honors a year ago, the SAG ensemble recipient has gone on to claim the top Oscar only eight times in the 16 years since the guild added the category.

The winners at the SAG ceremony often do go on to earn Oscars, however. All four acting recipients at SAG last year later took home Oscars ? Colin Firth for "The King's Speech," Natalie Portman for "Black Swan" and Christian Bale and Melissa Leo for "The Fighter."

On the television side, comedy series awards went to "Modern Family" for best ensemble; Alec Baldwin as best actor for "30 Rock"; and Betty White as best actress for "Hot in Cleveland."

"You can't name me, without naming those other wonderful women on 'Hot in Cleveland,'" the 90-year-old White said. "This nomination belongs to four of us. Please, please know that I'm dealing them right in with this. I'm not going to let them keep this, but I'll let them see it."

The TV drama show winners were: Jessica Lange as best actress for "American Horror Story"; and Buscemi as best actor for "Boardwalk Empire."

For TV movie or miniseries, Kate Winslet won as best actress for "Mildred Pierce," while Paul Giamatti was named best actor for "Too Big to Fail."

The guild gave its lifetime achievement award to Mary Tyler Moore, presented by Dick Van Dyke, her co-star on the 1960s sit-com "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Moore recalled that when she entered show business at age 18 in 1955, there were already six others Mary Moores in the Screen Actors Guild. Told to change her name, she quickly added Tyler, the middle name she shares with her father, George.

"I was Mary Tyler Moore. I spoke it out loud. Mary Tyler Moore. It sounded right so I wrote it down on the form, and it looked right," she said. "It was right. SAG was happy, my father was happy, and tonight, after having the privilege of working in this business among the most creative and talented people imaginable, I too am happy, after all."

___

AP writers David Germain and Beth Harris contributed to this report.

___

Online:

http://www.sagawards.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_help_dujardin_win_lively_sag_awards070044601/44350968/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/help-dujardin-win-lively-sag-awards-070044601.html

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Police open fire at Bangladesh protesters, 3 dead (AP)

DHAKA, Bangladesh ? Police fired guns and used batons on crowds of stone-throwing opposition activists in several Bangladesh towns Sunday, killing at least three people and injuring more than 100, a news report and doctors at two hospitals said.

The opposition party said 1,200 of its activists were arrested, but the figure could not immediately be confirmed.

The main Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its key Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami are demanding an independent caretaker government oversee elections. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina scrapped the 15-year-old system last year, saying it contradicted the constitution.

The opposition, led by Hasina's archrival former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, says elections will be rigged if held under the current government and without a caretaker system in place.

Clashes during Sunday's nationwide protests were reported in about a dozen towns, Desh television station said.

Two men died from bullet wounds at a government hospital in the eastern town of Chandpur, physician Mahmudunnabi told The Associated Press by phone.

They were shot by police who fired at a procession of protesters trying to march forward by breaking a police barricade, the United News of Bangladesh agency said.

Separately, a youth died and four people with bullet wounds were being treated at a government hospital in Laxmipur, another eastern town, said doctor Mohammad Nizam Uddin.

The identities of the dead were not immediately clear. Zia's party claimed one was a party activist while media reports said two others were rickshawpullers.

Hasan Mahmud Khandaker, the country's police chief, said authorities would investigate the violence to determine what actually happened.

Police arrested about 1,200 activists, opposition spokesman Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said. The figure could not be confirmed immediately.

The South Asian nation's politics became tense recently as the opposition has geared up its anti-government protests targeting the next general election due in 2014.

Hasina's government is also at loggerheads with Zia and the largest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami over its effort to try suspected war criminals involving the 1971 independence war against Pakistan.

Five top officials and a former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami facing charges of war crimes are currently behind bars for their alleged role in the nine-month war in which the government said at least 3 million people were killed by the Pakistani army in collaboration with the suspects. Two others of Zia's party also face similar charges of crimes against humanity that include killing, rape and arson.

Zia and Jamaat-e-Islami party have rejected the trial and said it is politically motivated to eliminate the opposition.

The opposition parties also held several general strikes in recent months.

Violent protests are common opposition tactics to embarrass the government in Bangladesh, a fragile parliamentary democracy that has a history of two successful and 19 failed military coups since 1971 when the country won independence from Pakistan.

On Jan. 19, the Bangladesh military said it foiled a plot by a group of hardline officers, their retired colleagues and Bangladeshi conspirators living abroad to overthrow Hasina.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_as/as_bangladesh_opposition_protest

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EU leaders struggle to reconcile austerity, growth

BRUSSELS?? European leaders struggled to reconcile austerity with growth on Monday at a summit due to approve a permanent rescue fund for the euro zone and put finishing touches to a German-driven pact for stricter budget discipline.

Officially, the half-day summit was meant to focus mainly on ways to revive growth and create jobs at a time when governments across Europe are having to cut public spending and raise taxes to tackle mountains of debt.

But disputes over the limits of austerity, and about Greece's unresolved debt restructuring negotiations with private bondholders, may sour efforts to send a more optimistic message that Europe is getting on top of its debt crisis.

The risk premium on southern European government bonds rose while the euro and stocks fell on concerns about a lack of tangible progress in the Greek debt talks and gloom about Europe's economic outlook.

Highlighting those fears, Spain's economy contracted in the last quarter of 2011 for the first time in two years and looks set to slip into a long recession.

And France halved its 2012 growth forecast to a mere 0.5 percent in another potentially ominous sign for President Nicolas Sarkozy's troubled bid for re-election in May. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the cut would not entail further budget savings measures.

Conservative Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, attending his first EU summit, said Madrid was clearly not going to meet its target of 2.3 percent growth this year. That has raised big doubts about whether it can cut its budget deficit from around 8 percent of economic output in 2011 to 4.4 percent by the end of this year as promised.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso hinted that Brussels may ease Spain's near-unattainable 2012 deficit target after it updates EU growth forecasts on February 23.

Italy, rushing through sweeping economic reforms under new Prime Minister Mario Monti, was rewarded with a significant fall in its borrowing costs at an auction of 10- and 5-year bonds, despite double-notch downgrades of its credit rating by Standard & Poor's and Fitch this month.

But Portugal's slide towards becoming the next Greece - needing a second bailout to avoid chaotic bankruptcy - gathered pace as banks raised the cost of insuring government bonds against default and insisted the money be paid up front instead of over several years.

The yield spread on 10-year Portuguese bonds over safe haven German Bunds topped 15 percentage points for the first time in the euro era. It cost a record 3.9 million euros ($5.12 million) to insure 10 million euros of Portuguese debt.

Outlawing Keynes?
With Britain standing aloof, most of the other 26 EU leaders were set to approve a fiscal pact to write balanced budget rules into their national law, despite economists' doubts about the wisdom of effectively outlawing deficit spending.

"To write into law a Germanic view of how one should run an economy and that essentially makes Keynesianism illegal is not something we would do," a British official said.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz told the leaders the new fiscal treaty was unnecessary and unbalanced, because it failed to combine budget rigor with necessary investment in public works to create jobs.

The 17th summit in two years as the EU battles to resolve its sovereign debt problems was called to shift the narrative away from politically unpopular austerity and towards growth.

Despite the rhetoric on growth, debate over strengthening the euro zone's financial defenses and lowering Greece's debt burden are likely to dominate the talks.

Negotiations between the Greek government and private bondholders over the restructuring of 200 billion euros of Greek debt made progress over the weekend, but were not concluded before the summit began.

A Greek official said Prime Minister Lucas Papademos would give the summit a brief report on the situation and meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the sidelines.

Until there is a deal between Greece and its private bondholders, EU leaders cannot move forward with a second, 130 billion euro rescue program for Athens, which they originally agreed to at a summit last October.

Germany caused outrage in Greece by proposing last week that a European commissar take control of Greek public finances to ensure it meets fiscal targets. Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said that to make his country choose between national dignity and financial assistance ignored the lessons of history.

The German idea won cautious backing from the Dutch and Swedish prime ministers.

"We need to have things in place for monitoring that they are really doing what they are promising," Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt told reporters on arrival.

But Merkel played down the idea of placing Greece under stewardship, saying: "We are having a debate that we shouldn't be having. This is about how Europe can be supportive so Greece can comply, so there are targets."

Permanent rescue fund
The leaders were to sign a treaty creating the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a 500-billion-euro permanent bailout fund that is due to become operational in July, a year earlier than first planned.

But there was a last-minute hitch over the terms of a 'fiscal compact treaty' tightening budget rules when four central European states demanded that countries planning to join the euro be allowed to attend all euro zone summits.

The prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia agreed to seek an amendment to the text as a condition for joining the pact, a Hungarian spokesman said.

The ESM was meant to replace the European Financial Stability Facility, a temporary fund that has been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal.

But pressure is mounting - including from Italy's Monti, IMF chief Christine Lagarde and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner - to combine the resources of the two funds to create a

super-firewall of 750 billion euros ($1 trillion).

The International Monetary Fund says if Europe puts up more of its own money, that will convince others to contribute more resources to the IMF, boosting its crisis-fighting abilities and improving market sentiment.

But Germany has so far resisted such a step.

Merkel has said she will not discuss the issue of the ESM/EFSF's ceiling until the next EU summit in March. Meanwhile, financial markets will continue to worry that there may not be sufficient rescue funds available to help the likes of Italy and Spain if they run into renewed debt funding problems.

"There are certainly signals that Germany is willing to consider it and it is rather geared towards March from the German side," a senior euro zone official said.

The sticking point is German public opinion which is tired of bailing out the euro zone's financially less prudent.

The summit was expected to announce that up to 20 billion euros of unspent funds from the EU's 2007-2013 budget will be recycled towards job creation, especially among the young, and will commit to freeing up bank lending to small- and medium-sized companies.

But with no new public money available for a stimulus, leaders focused mainly on promoting structural reforms such as loosening labor market regulation, cutting red tape for business and promoting innovation.

However, they were unlikely to resolve a decade-old battle over creating a single European patent which would reduce the high cost of registering inventions and protecting intellectual property. Firms currently have to register patents in each of the 27 member states. The streamlining has long been stymied by disputes over language and the location of an EU patent court.

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46191196/ns/business-world_business/

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Iran web developer sentenced to death (AP)

TEHRAN, Iran ? Iran's state media say the Supreme Court has upheld a death sentence against a web developer convicted of spreading corruption.

The semiofficial Fars news agency says blogger Saeed Malekpour was found guilty of promoting pornographic sites. It says the Supreme Court approved the death sentence handed down by a Revolutionary Court that deals with security crimes.

Malekpour was reported imprisoned in October, 2008 and confessed on Iranian TV that he developed and promoted pornographic websites.

The website gerdab.ir, affiliated with the elite Revolutionary Guard, called Malekpour the head of the biggest Persian-language network of pornographic websites.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_death_sentence

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Republican Santorum heads home as he lags in Florida (Reuters)

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) ? Trailing in opinion polls, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum headed home to Pennsylvania on Friday for a short visit, effectively turning his back on the Florida primary that has become a two-man race between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

While Romney and Gingrich battle it out in Florida, Santorum is returning to attend a fundraiser, prepare his tax returns for release and hold a news conference in West Chester.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Friday showed Santorum on only 13 percent in Florida, way back in third place.

Santorum, a devout Catholic who has tried to position himself as the social conservative alternative to Romney, dismissed speculation he might quit after Florida.

"I will make an absolute statement; there hasn't been a discussion and not even approaching a discussion to discuss a discussion as to whether to get out of this race," he told CNN.

He plans to return to Florida on the weekend for final campaigning but he has been is unable to compete with Romney and Gingrich in spending on TV ads in the big Florida markets. Santorum is now looking beyond Tuesday's primary here.

"We're focused on Nevada and Colorado where we think there are more opportunities for us," he said on Thursday after giving a speech on "Faith, Family, and Freedom" to a group of about 200 college students at Florida State University. "We're going to stay in this race for the long haul."

WAITING FOR GINGRICH SLIP?

Asked if he was banking on a slip up by Gingrich to allow him to emerge as the alternative to Romney, Santorum said:

"The fact is that other candidates in the race have a lot of problems that make their candidacy less than optimal for the Republicans in this general election ... Lots of things are going to happen between now and August."

Though Santorum narrowly won the Iowa primary - the first contest in the state-by-state battle for the Republican presidential nomination to challenge President Barack Obama on November 6 - he has since faded as Gingrich has outperformed him in debates and tapped into support from social conservatives and the Tea Party faithful.

"Santorum appears to be doomed and his candidacy looks foolish, but if anybody could commit a colossal error in this race it's Gingrich - he likes to throw verbal hand grenades," said Ed Costantini, emeritus professor of political science at University of California, Davis.

Santorum has questioned the conservative credentials of his two main rivals, Gingrich and Romney, portraying them as flip-floppers and too conciliatory on fiscal and social issues.

Pam Olsen, the leader of the International House of Prayer, a Christian group in Tallahassee, said she was backing Santorum, the father of seven children, because his commitment to family values has never wavered.

"He's the right person at this time in history to get America back in the right direction," she said.

Santorum's stump speech often includes a fire-and-brimstone and angry criticism of what he regards as government policies that limit freedom.

For dramatic effect at Florida State University, Santorum threw a palm-sized book onto the floor to symbolize that the declaration of independence and the constitution were under attack by "modern, progressive, liberal" values that "will destroy America."

He also railed against courts for extending rights to special interest groups, apparently a reference to gay marriage and abortion.

(Editing by Alistair Bell)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/pl_nm/us_usa_campaign_santorum

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Union membership slipped further as attacks came in 2011 (Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) ? The percentage of workers represented by a union dipped slightly in 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday, as organized labor came under attack in states once considered union strongholds, including Wisconsin and Ohio.

In 2011, 11.8 percent of U.S. workers were represented by a union, the BLS said, down from 11.9 percent in 2010 and compared to a peak of 28.3 percent of the workforce in 1954.

Strip out government workers, where 37 percent of the work force nationally is unionized, and union penetration of private industry was just 6.9 percent in 2011, unchanged from 2010.

The total number of union members actually grew slightly last year, to 14,764,000 from 14,715,000 in 2010. But the number of workers represented by organized labor remained steady while the overall number of workers employed in the economy grew, the BLS said.

The number of unionized workers in Wisconsin fell nearly 6 percent in Wisconsin last year, to 358,000 from 380,000, the BLS said, as Republicans passed controversial curbs on the bargaining rights of public sector workers. That bitter debate spurred the largest street marches in Madison since the Vietnam War and two rounds of recall elections so far.

Only 14.1 percent of the state's workers were unionized at the end of 2011, the BLS said, down from 15.1 percent in 2010.

But in other Midwest states that have been battlegrounds for organized labor, the picture was more mixed, the BLS said.

In Indiana, which is poised to enact a right-to-work law banning unions from collecting mandatory dues from workers, union representation actually grew last year, the BLS said.

In 2011, 333,000 workers in the state were represented by a union, up from 313,000 workers in 2010. As a result, 12.4 percent of the state's workforce was union represented in 2011, up from 12.2 percent in 2010.

In Ohio, where an effort to impose union curbs on public workers similar to Wisconsin's was overturned by voters in a November referendum, the percentage of workers represented by a union remained unchanged at 14.7 percent.

The BLS said the highest union penetration rate in 2011 was in New York state, where 24.1 percent of workers were members of a union, followed by Alaska with 22.1 percent of the workforce unionized and Hawaii with 21.5 percent.

The BLS said union presence was weakest in North Carolina, where just 2.9 percent of workers were union members, followed by South Carolina (3.4 percent) and Georgia (3.9 percent).

(Reporting by James Kelleher. Editing by Peter Bohan.)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/us_nm/us_unions_membership

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Sajak: Vanna and I drank between 'Wheel' tapings (AP)

NEW YORK ? The "Wheel of Fortune" wasn't the only thing spinning for Pat Sajak and Vanna White back in the day.

Sajak said in an interview on ESPN2 this week that the long-time game show team would occasionally walk over to a restaurant for "two or three or six" margaritas during a break in taping early "Wheel of Fortune" shows in California. Sajak has hosted the show since 1981; White joined him a year later.

Sajak recalled the margarita stops after answering "yes" to a question about whether he had ever hosted the show "a little bit drunk."

Although he joked that he had "trouble recognizing the alphabet" for shows taped after the drinks, no one ever said anything to them.

Now that he's older, Sajak said he couldn't do that anymore.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_en_ot/us_people_sajak

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A flaky winter in Yosemite

Reporting from Yosemite National Park -- Winter in the high country is usually a season of icy quiet. Birds leave, bears hibernate, and only a few hardy people on skis or snowshoes pass through en route to snow-covered granite domes.

But Christmas and New Year's Day came and went, then Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, and still only auburn pine needles covered the ground. Chattering squirrels, normally tucked away in their winter nests, perched on top of "Snow Play Area" signs, with no snow in sight.

Until a series of late January storms dropped more than 2 feet of snow ? still far below the norm ? many wondered if it was going to be the year the snows never came.

In this spine-country of grandeur and extremes, where people often mark time by natural events such as "the year of the big flood," this is the year of the weird winter.

At Crane Flat Gas Station and Market, a final stopping point to the Yosemite-area back country, cashier Candy Moody watched customers come in wearing baseball caps instead of ski hats.

"You start wondering: OK, so is it never going to snow or are we going to get hit and hit hard?" she said on a mid-January day. "The whole year has been strange. No bears in the spring, and this place is usually crawling with bears.? Everything was turned upside down."

Even for a La Ni?a year, this is an exceptionally dry season ? the driest California has seen in more than 30 years. But while climate models predict that the Sierra snowpack will shrink in coming decades, those familiar with California's weather history caution that in the short term, anomaly is the norm here.

"California is pretty much the most volatile place in the contiguous United States," said Dan Cayan, a research meteorologist who heads the California Climate Change Center. "We've always seen huge variations in weather from year to year and decade to decade," he said.

California 120 at Tioga Pass, about 10,000 feet high , offered rare unobstructed winter passage to the top of California until Jan. 17, the latest recorded date it's been open since record keeping began in 1933. People flocked to ice skate on Tenaya Lake, which usually would be buried beneath snow. The lake gave off deep, booming sounds as the ice expanded in the sun.

"One family had a five-on-five hockey game on the ice. A bride walked out on the lake ? a beautiful wedding dress on the frozen ice in the sun ? everyone was rushing to take advantage of these probably once-in-a-lifetime opportunities," said John DeGrazio, owner of Yexplore, a guide service. "I climbed Half Dome twice, ice-skated in short-sleeves. I was on top of Mt. Whitney on New Year's Day."

But by January, "fun, fun, fun" had turned to uneasiness, DeGrazio said. "People would start out talking about the next adventure, but it would turn into 'When is the snow coming? What if the snow doesn't come?' "

In the famed Yosemite Valley below, the only destination for the vast majority of tourists, the snow-less season created unusual sights well into January. All the roads were open. The only area closed was Badger Pass Ski Area. Staff at the hotels scrambled to set up rock climbing walls and archery practice to entertain would-be skiers. The bicycle rental stand was doing business. There were even mule rides.

Locals taking advantage of the mild weather and open roads helped make up for others postponing their trips ? but ski tourism is a much bigger business than fair-weather tourism.

Jordan Creamer, a bartender and waiter at Tenaya Lodge, saw 200 guests cancel their reservations in one day.

On the other hand, because business at the lodge was slow, Creamer, 27, had Christmas off for the first time in his adult life, so his family, including his brother, Dodgers pitcher Ted Lilly, came to his house for the holiday.

At the park's south entrance, rangers Donna Dozier and Corey Kniss grew weary, week after week, of the question "Where's the snow?" Dozier bought a can of artificial snow and sprayed the windows of their stand so they could point to something white. In the window, in the fake dusting, she wrote, "Let It Snow."

When the storms did come, lasting Thursday to Monday, they dropped mostly rain at the lower elevations.

It took a heavy toll. Because there had been no previous rain, dry ground was swept away. Gusting winds wreaked havoc. On Saturday, a branch fell from a huge tree, killing a 27-year-old ranger who was asleep in his tent cabin.

The next day, a rock slide took out a section of a main highway into the park.

California 120, the route that most Bay Area residents use to get to Yosemite, is closed indefinitely.

There is snow. Badger Pass Ski Area, which does not make its own snow, was expected to open Thursday. But even though Yosemite is known to have big March snowstorms (last year, on March 20, the last day of winter, a storm dumped three feet of snow, closing all highway entrances and prompting an evacuation) total snowfall is likely to be far less normal.

This week at the south entrance, there was rain, sun and brief periods of big, feathery snowflakes, leaving only a light dusting of white on the landscape.

Dozier added one more word to her "Let It Snow" message: "more."

diana.marcum@latimes.com

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/dNLAMg9E3RI/la-me-tioga-pass-20120127,0,7688362.story

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Davos leaders look to China's investments abroad (AP)

DAVOS, Switzerland ? Chinese investment abroad is drawing scrutiny as global leaders increasingly look to China to prop up the world economy, even as some remain wary of the country's dominance.

The head of one of China's biggest private equity firms said Thursday that foreign prejudice about Chinese investment is unfair and that Chinese investors are still learning a game that much of the world has been playing for decades.

Worries that Europe's slowdown would hurt stronger economies are overshadowing discussions at this week's World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Attention turned Thursday to how China can help.

Chinese companies and government funds have been using vast reserves of cash to buy up foreign companies and invest in foreign government bonds in recent years. But with billions of dollars in Chinese investments pouring into their countries, some governments have accused China of seeking to exploit the economic weakness of others to grab valuable natural and technological resources at rock bottom prices.

President Barack Obama's administration also has repeatedly accused China of breaking global trade rules by giving unfair protection to its companies and domestic workers.

"The vast majority of Chinese companies are trying to follow the rules as they understand it," said John Zhao, CEO of Hony Capital. "But many Chinese companies are still trying to learn the rules." His company controls PC maker Lenovo, which bought IBM's computer division in 2005.

The director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, said China will continue to face "public perception problems" from its investments abroad.

"We will see in the years to come, as China's investments grow and grow. ... We will have the same sort of political turbulences as we have had on trade for the last 10 years," he said.

One way for China to ease the rest of the world's fears about its extravagant corporate shopping sprees is be more open about its vast poverty problem at home, said Lamy.

"In order for this to result in a win-win game a number of public perception issues have to be addressed," he said.

Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld reminded listeners that China's companies aren't the only ones with a reputation problem.

"We in the Western world have had a long tradition of corporate misdeeds," he said, citing Enron in the United States and Parmalat of Italy ? both of which collapsed after years of hiding massive holes in their accounts.

Yale President Richard C. Levin suggested the rest of the world could be grateful for China's investment interest, as eventually the country of more than 1 billion people will have to start spending more of its cash on problems at home, including the lack of proper social security for an aging population.

"Some fraction of these trillions could be used domestically," he said.

The head of the Asian Development Bank said Asia already has been affected by the ongoing European financial crisis in two ways ? through the withdrawal of credit in Asia by many European banks and financial institutions, and a drop in trade, which will impact China because Europe is its largest export market.

"I really hope that the European financial crisis can be overcome," Haruhiko Kuroda said in an interview with The Associated Press.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country doesn't use the troubled euro, urged the eurozone to impose fiscal discipline and integrate its budget policies more, and expressed support for jointly issued eurobonds.

Cameron defended "genuine market capitalism" against those who favor "state capitalism" such as that practiced in China or Russia. He said free-market countries with rule of law where governments can be successfully challenged in court "have got to stand up and shout about their values. ... I don't think we should give up in this battle at all."

Cameron also joined Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in backing the idea of a free-trade deal between the European Union and the U.S., claiming that a trans-Atlantic pact could deliver a much-needed boost to global commerce.

The Davos forum, where business and political leaders gather every year in an invitation-only event, is under growing criticism by those who feel it's too removed from the real world.

Activists from Occupy Davos are camping out in igloos and yurts to call attention to income inequality.

"This is a man-made crisis and the people who have caused the crisis, many of whom are in Davos, should be held to account," said Salil Shetty, the secretary general of Amnesty International, told AP.

Leaders at the Davos forum are looking later Thursday at challenges to democratic institutions around the world, including such developments as the Occupy movement.

Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and other leaders appealed on behalf of the millions of people who do not have enough food to eat.

"The world can feed itself. Africa can feed itself. The problem is we have vulnerable populations who do not have access," Okonjo-Iweala said.

Malnourished people, particularly kids, are more susceptible to dying from malaria and other diseases in Africa, said Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose philanthropy has mainly focused on promoting health. He pledged $750 million to the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

___

John Heilprin and Edith M. Lederer in Davos contributed to this story.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_davos_forum

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Ecuador to crack down on clinics that 'cure' gays (AP)

QUITO, Ecuador ? Ecuador will investigate and act forcefully against any clinics found to be trying to force homosexuals to change their sexual orientation, a Health Ministry official said Thursday.

Gay rights activists in the South American country say four clinics that engaged in coercive practices, three in the capital, have been shut down in recent months but that others still to operate clandestinely.

"Sadly, authorities have not yet taken the corrective measures necessary to regulate the work of clinics that offer 'de-homosexualization' treatment,'" said Efrain Soria, director of Fundacion Equidad, an anti-discrimination group.

Health Ministry official David Troya told The Associated Press the agency will deal firmly and drastically with any clinics that offer such treatments, which have been denounced by critics as abusive.

Newly named Health Minister Carina Vance, who studied at the University of California and has publicly defended gay rights, is hiring someone to work exclusively on the issue, said Troya, an adviser to Vance.

"We are going to take the necessary measures in a firm and drastic manner as regards this subject," he said.

The ministry is "clear and emphatic" that in line with the World Health Organization findings, "homosexuality is not an illness and that as such a cure can't be suggested, so that whoever offers treatments is deceiving people and acting illegally," Troya said.

Paola Concha told the AP that her family sent her in 2006 to a clinic to "cure" her of homosexuality.

"I received physical and verbal aggression during the 18 months I was interned in one of these centers," she said. "Nearly daily they beat me, and many times I was handcuffed to a pipe."

Concha said the women's ward of the clinic where she was held was later closed. She said other women who were "treated" along with her are afraid to go public with their stories.

Troya said the few clinics offering "de-homosexualizion treatment" that were shuttered by authorities were closed not because they offered such services but for other reasons, such as failing to meet sanitary standards.

Soria, the anti-discrimination activist, said complaints had been filed in courts against all of the closed clinics.

He said the clinics running "de-homosexualization" programs camouflage themselves by advertising that they treat such disorders as substance abuse.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_ecuador_gays_clinics

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Scotland: Let 16-year-olds vote on independence (AP)

LONDON ? Teenagers of 16 and 17 would be eligible to cast ballots in a Scottish independence referendum that could see the breakup of Britain within four years, under proposals announced Wednesday by Scotland's leader.

First Minister Alex Salmond announced the Scottish government's preferred options for the vote on whether to sever ties from Britain, which it plans to hold in the fall of 2014. A "yes" vote would lead to independence taking effect with a May 2016 election for the Scottish Parliament.

Salmond told Scottish lawmakers in the Edinburgh assembly the ballot would ask "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?" but could also include a third option, for increased autonomy short of full independence.

And he said the voting age should be lowered from the current 18.

"If a 16-year-old in Scotland can register to join the army, get married and pay taxes, surely he or she should be able to have a say in this country's constitutional future?" Salmond said.

The details are subject to consultation with Scottish voters ? and negotiations with the British government in London, which insists it has the final authority to authorize a binding referendum.

It has offered the Scottish administration the powers to hold such a vote, but wants a say in the timing and could insist that the Electoral Commission, which will run the referendum, be allowed to set the question. Salmond's proposed wording is likely to be seen by his opponents as slanted in favor of independence.

Opponents of independence want to hold the vote as soon as possible, because polls suggest only about a third of Scots favor independence.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said the ballot should pose a straight yes-no question, and not include a third option, which has been dubbed maximum devolution or "devo max."

But Salmond said that "if there is an alternative of maximum devolution which would command wide support in Scotland, then it is only fair and democratic that option should be among the choices open to the people of Scotland."

Cameron stressed Wednesday that everyone in Britain, not just Scots, should have a say in any changes to Scotland's status.

He said, "The point that everyone needs to understand is that options for further devolution, options for changes across the United Kingdom, are matters all of the United Kingdom should rightly discuss."

Michael Moore, the minister in Cameron's government responsible for Scotland, was due to hold talks with Salmond on Friday. But his office said the meeting had been postponed because Moore has chicken pox.

Scotland and England united in 1707 to form Great Britain. Scotland gained significant autonomy after voting in 1997 to set up the Edinburgh-based Scottish Parliament. But some Scots want to go further and make the nation of 5 million people an independent country within the European Union.

Salmond, who leads the separatist Scottish National Party, said that independence would bring "a new, more modern relationship between the nations of these islands ? a partnership of equals."

He said an independent Scotland would keep Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, but would not send troops to "illegal wars like Iraq, and we won't have nuclear weapons based on Scottish soil." Scotland is currently home to Britain's fleet of nuclear-armed submarines.

Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont, whose party opposes independence, accused Salmon of belittling Scots who wished to remain in Britain.

"Why does he assert as fact that we all wish to be independent of each other when we all know, as families and communities, we want to come together in partnership and cooperation?" she said.

____

Online: Scottish Government referendum consultation paper: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Consultations/Current

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_scotland

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Obama to take on economy in State of the Union (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Addressing a divided nation amid a determined GOP campaign to take his job, President Barack Obama is preparing to issue a populist cry for economic fairness as he aims to corral the sympathies of middle-class voters 10 months before Election Day.

Obama delivers his third State of the Union address Tuesday in a capital and country shot through with politics, with his re-election campaign well under way and his potential GOP opponents lobbing attacks against him daily as they scrap for the right to take him on.

Obama's 9 p.m. EST address to a joint session of Congress and millions of television viewers will be as much as anything an argument for his re-election, the president's biggest, best chance so far to offer a vision for a second term.

Senior political adviser David Plouffe said Tuesday morning the president is "happy to have a debate" about his performance.

Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser now at the Brookings Institution, said, "Almost by definition it's going to be at least as much a political speech as a governing speech."

"The president must run on his record," Galston said, "and that means talking candidly and persuasively with the country about the very distinctive nature of the challenges the American economy faced when he took office and what has gone right for the past three years, and what needs to be done in addition."

With economic anxiety showing through everywhere, the speech will focus on a vision for restoring the middle class, with Obama facing the tricky task of persuading voters to stick with him even as joblessness remains high at 8.5 percent. Obama can point to positive signs, including continued if sluggish growth; his argument will be that he is the one to restore economic equality for middle-class voters.

Implicit in the argument, even if he never names frontrunners Gingrich and Mitt Romney, is that they are on the other side.

Obama's speech will come as Gingrich and Romney have transformed the Republican campaign into a real contest ahead of Florida's crucial primary next week. And he'll be speaking on the same day that Romney, a multimillionaire, released his tax returns, offering a vivid illustration of wealth that could play into Obama's argument about the growing divide between rich and poor.

Asked in an interview Tuesday about Romney's relatively modest tax rate in the range of 15 percent, given that he's a multi-millionaire, Plouffe said, "We need to change our tax system. We need to change our tax code so that everybody is doing their fair share."

Obama will frame the campaign to come as a fight for fairness for those who are struggling to keep a job, a home or college savings and losing faith in how the country works.

The speech will feature the themes of manufacturing, clean energy, education and American values. The president is expected to urge higher taxes on the wealthy, propose ways to make college more affordable, offer new steps to tackle a debilitating housing crisis and push to help U.S. manufacturers expand hiring.

Aides said the president would also outline more specifics about the so-called "Buffett Rule", which Obama has previously said would establish a minimum tax on people making $1 million or more in income. The rule was named after billionaire Warren Buffett, who has said it is unfair that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on Twitter Tuesday that Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, would attend the State of the Union in the first lady's box.

Even before Obama delivered his speech, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said he already felt "a sense of disappointment."

"While we don't yet know all of the specifics, we do know the goal," he said. "Based on what the president's aides have been telling reporters, the goal isn't to conquer the nation's problems. It's to conquer Republicans. The goal isn't to prevent gridlock, but to guarantee it."

For three days following his speech, Obama will promote his ideas in five states key to his re-election bid. On Wednesday he'll visit Iowa and Arizona to promote ideas to boost American manufacturing; on Thursday in Nevada and Colorado he'll discuss energy; and in Michigan Friday he'll talk about college affordability, education and training. Polling shows Americans are divided about Obama's overall job performance but unsatisfied with his handling of the economy.

The lines of argument between Obama and his rivals are already stark, with America's economic insecurity and the role of government at the center.

The president has offered signals about his speech, telling campaign supporters he wants an economy "that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few." Gingrich, on the other hand, calls Obama "the most effective food stamp president in history." Romney says Obama "wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society."

Obama will make bipartisan overtures to lawmakers but will leave little doubt he will act without their help when it's necessary and possible, an approach his aides say has let him stay on offense.

The public is more concerned about domestic troubles over foreign policy than at any other time in the past 15 years, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Some 81 percent want Obama to focus his speech on domestic affairs, not foreign ones; just five years ago, the view was evenly split.

On the day before Obama's speech, his campaign released a short Web ad showing monthly job losses during the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, with positive job growth for nearly two Obama years. Republicans assail him for failing to achieve a lot more.

House Speaker John Boehner, responding to reports of Obama's speech themes, said it was a rehash of unhelpful policies. "It's pathetic," he said.

Presidential spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that Obama is not conceding the next 10 months to "campaigning alone" when people need economic help. On the goals of helping people get a fair shot, Carney said, "There's ample room within those boundaries for bipartisan cooperation and for getting this done."

Plouffe appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" and was interviewed on NBC's "Today" show and "CBS This Morning."

___

Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Julie Pace contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_state_of_the_union

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Murtazin: 'Nokia Lumia 910 will arrive in May, pack 12MP camera'

Ah, Eldar Murtazin. Sometimes he's (sort of) right, sometimes he's wrong. But he manged to predict the Nokia-WinPho love-in ahead of any official announcement and that still counts for something, right? His latest missive concerns the news of the Lumia 900's likely summer-time flight across the Atlantic. While it's not going to tout the LTE radios of the American edition, Eldar's more concerned about a phone that no-one's yet heard of. Yes, the Lumia 910, which according to the thorn in Nokia's side, will land in the old country sometime in May -- ahead of the posited June launch for the Lumia 900 in the UK. Murtazin is keeping any other details close to his chest for now, aside from the tantalizing mention of a whopping 12 megapixel camera. We know that Nokia knows exactly how to craft a good cameraphone, but we're keeping this rumor firmly in the maybe-could-be-possibly camp, right next to the salt mines.

Murtazin: 'Nokia Lumia 910 will arrive in May, pack 12MP camera' originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/MzanBv2cZZ4/

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La. seafood board may buy N.O. arena naming rights (AP)

NEW ORLEANS ? The Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board says it may use some of the $30 million it received from BP PLC after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill to buy naming rights for the New Orleans Arena, where the NBA's Hornets play.

Executive director Ewell Smith said Tuesday the promotional value would be part of a campaign to restore confidence in Gulf seafood. Many seafood grounds were closed during the spill.

Smith said the campaign could include setting up Louisiana seafood vendor booths at other NBA arenas around the country.

He said the board has spoken with the Hornets and is awaiting more information. The arena is state-owned. A deal, he said, could come within 90 days.

The naming rights proposal was first reported in The Courier of Houma.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mexico/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_re_us/us_no_arena_naming_rights

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Warrant needed for GPS tracking, high court says

File - This Jan. 5, 2011 file photo shows Yasir Afifi at his home in San Jose, Calif., where a GPS tracking device was placed on his car. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

File - This Jan. 5, 2011 file photo shows Yasir Afifi at his home in San Jose, Calif., where a GPS tracking device was placed on his car. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In a rare defeat for law enforcement, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed on Monday to bar police from installing GPS technology to track suspects without first getting a judge's approval. The justices made clear it wouldn't be their final word on increasingly advanced high-tech surveillance of Americans.

Indicating they will be monitoring the growing use of such technology, five justices said they could see constitutional and privacy problems with police using many kinds of electronic surveillance for long-term tracking of citizens' movements without warrants.

While the justices differed on legal rationales, their unanimous outcome was an unusual setback for government and police agencies grown accustomed to being given leeway in investigations in post-Sept. 11 America, including by the Supreme Court. The views of at least the five justices raised the possibility of new hurdles down the road for police who want to use high-tech surveillance of suspects, including various types of GPS technology.

"The Supreme Court's decision is an important one because it sends a message that technological advances cannot outpace the American Constitution," said Donald Tibbs, a professor at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University. "The people will retain certain rights even when technology changes how the police are able to conduct their investigations."

A GPS device installed by police on Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones' Jeep and tracked for four weeks helped link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before an appeals court overturned his conviction.

It's not clear how much difficulty police agencies would have with warrant requirements in this area; historically they are rarely denied warrants they request. But the Obama administration argued that getting one could be cumbersome, perhaps impossible in the early stages of an investigation. In the Jones case, police got a warrant but did not install the GPS device until after the warrant had expired and then in a jurisdiction that wasn't covered by the document.

Justice Antonin Scalia said the government's installation of the device, and its use of the GPS to monitor the vehicle's movements, constituted a search, meaning a warrant was required. "Officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote.

Relying on a centuries-old legal principle, he concluded that the police action without a warrant was a trespass and therefore an illegal search. He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

All nine justices agreed that the GPS monitoring on the Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, a decision the American Civil Liberties Union said was an "important victory for privacy."

But there was a major division between Scalia, the court's conservative leader, and Justice Samuel Alito, a former federal prosecutor and usually a Scalia ally, over how much further the court should go beyond just saying that police can't put a GPS device on something used by a suspect without a warrant.

Alito wrote, in a concurring opinion, that the trespass was not as important as the suspect's expectation of privacy and the duration of the surveillance.

"The use of longer-term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy," Alito wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor in her concurring opinion specifically said she agreed with Alito on this conclusion.

No justice embraced the government's argument that the surveillance of Jones was acceptable because he had no expectation of privacy for the Jeep's location on public roads.

Alito added, "We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the four-week mark."

Regarding the issue of duration, Scalia wrote that "we may have to grapple" with those issues in the future, "but there is no reason for rushing forward to resolve them here."

Sotomayor, in her separate opinion, wrote that it may be time to rethink all police use of tracking technology, not just long-term GPS.

"GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person's public movement that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, religious and sexual associations," Sotomayor said. "The government can store such records and efficiently mine them for information for years to come."

Alito also said the court and Congress should address how expectations of privacy affect whether warrants are required for remote surveillance using electronic methods that do not require the police to install equipment, such as GPS tracking of mobile telephones. Alito noted, for example, that more than 322 million cellphones have installed equipment that allows wireless carriers to track the phones' locations.

"If long-term monitoring can be accomplished without committing a technical trespass ? suppose for example, that the federal government required or persuaded auto manufacturers to include a GPS tracking device in every car ? the court's theory would provide no protection," Alito said.

Sotomayor agreed. "It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to their parties," she said.

Washington lawyer Andy Pincus called the decision "a landmark ruling in applying the Fourth Amendment's protections to advances in surveillance technology." Pincus has argued 22 cases before the Supreme Court and filed a brief in the current case on behalf of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group with expertise in law, technology and policy.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the court's decision was "a victory for privacy rights and for civil liberties in the digital age." He said the ruling highlighted many new privacy threats posed by new technologies. Leahy has introduced legislation to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that specifies standards for government monitoring of cellphone conversations and Internet communications.

The lower appellate court that threw out Jones' conviction also objected to the duration of the surveillance.

The case is U.S. v. Jones, 10-1259.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-23-US-Supreme-Court-GPS-Tracking/id-0eaef4865ba74012a3f25c9604841106

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Wall Street pauses after rally; bellwether earnings eyed (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks ended little changed on Monday as investors took a pause from a recent rally, awaiting earnings from bellwethers such as Apple later in the week.

The S&P 500 is up nearly 5 percent so far this year as an improving U.S. economy has boosted investor optimism. The Dow and S&P 500 both had their best weekly performances in a month last week.

"Investors are reserved after a mixed bag of results. Many companies have announced sluggish results, portraying a cautious environment going forward," said Robert Lutts, chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts.

"The expectations are very moderate in the market, so a little bit of good news could lead to a significant pop in a stock."

According to Thomson Reuters data, 15 percent of S&P 500 companies have reported earnings, and just 59 percent posted results above Wall Street expectations. That percentage trails the average of about 70 percent, though the rate is expected to improve as earnings season gathers steam.

Among the 117 S&P 500 companies expected to report earnings this weeks is tech company Apple Inc (AAPL.O), due after the closing bell on Tuesday.

The euro zone crisis remained in the background for the market but has had less of an effect on stocks lately. Germany and France pushed for a deal between Greece and its private creditors, and the two said they still were dedicated to a new bailout needed by Athens by March to stave off default.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) slipped 11.66 points, or 0.09 percent, at 12,708.82. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was up 0.62 point, or 0.05 percent, at 1,316.00. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was down 2.53 points, or 0.09 percent, at 2,784.17.

In addition to Apple, a number of Dow components are due to report earnings on Tuesday - Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), Travelers Companies Inc (TRV.N), McDonald's Corp (MCD.N), DuPont (DD.N) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N).

The Federal Reserve is likely to say this week that it will not start raising interest rates again until the first half of 2014, more than five years after cutting them to near zero, a Reuters poll of leading Wall Street economists showed.

The U.S. central bank will begin a new practice of announcing policymakers' interest rate projections when a two-day meeting ends on Wednesday.

Halliburton Co (HAL.N) shares fell 2.1 percent to $35.44 after the world's second largest oilfield services group warned the deep slump in U.S. natural gas prices could cause near-term disruptions that pinch first-quarter earnings.

On a positive note, Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK.N) gained 6.3 percent to $22.28 after it said it will reduce dry gas drilling and cut production in response to natural gas prices falling below "economically attractive" levels. Natural gas shares were among the day's best performers, with an index of those stocks (.XNG) rising 3.6 percent.

Research In Motion Ltd (RIM.TO)(RIMM.O) fell 8.5 percent to $15.56 as analysts were skeptical about the resignation of the BlackBerry maker's co-chief executives.

Sears Holding Corp (SHLD.O) fell 3.3 percent to $47.39 after rising as high as $54.76 in what analysts said could be a short squeeze.

The stock is the most shorted stock in the S&P 500, according to Data Explorers, with 94 percent of shares available used to sell short. The retailer has been the best performing stock in the index for the year, up more than 50 percent.

"That is a classic short squeeze. There have been headlines all over the name now for the better part of a month or so and it's largely been quite negative," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital in Jersey City, New Jersey.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120123/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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Gingrich pushes for campaign cash (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Fresh off a resounding victory, Newt Gingrich faces a formidable financial challenge as he storms into Florida ? raising money.

The former House speaker ? whose campaign still is carrying debt ? has little choice but to move rapidly to convert momentum from his South Carolina triumph into dollars to spend in Florida, a much larger and more diverse state with multiple media markets that bear a hefty $2 million price tag to blanket the state with TV ads over the next week.

He's already working to tap into Rick Perry's deep base of donors, following the Texas governor's departure from the race and endorsement, as well as the vast grassroots network of his now defunct political group, American Solutions. And, even if aides won't publicly acknowledge it, Gingrich probably also is betting on his wealthy friends continuing to open their wallets to a political action committee working to help elect the former Georgia congressman.

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson essentially saved Gingrich's campaign as the race turned to South Carolina almost two weeks ago by pouring $5 million into the Winning Our Future super PAC that aired ads tearing into chief rival Mitt Romney, helping pave the way for a Gingrich victory. With Gingrich now winning, it's tough to see how Adelson returns to the sidelines now.

Even before his South Carolina victory, a confident Gingrich said in Orangeburg, S.C.: "We will have what we need to compete."

But the urgency was clear in the minutes after The Associated Press declared him the winner Saturday night.

He quickly sent a tweet thanking supporters and appealing for a flood of donations for the Jan. 31 primary. "Help me deliver the knockout punch in Florida. Join our Moneybomb and donate now," said his tweet. And later, he pleaded in an email: "If you want to see a Reagan conservative as the nominee, and if you want to watch us run circles around Barack Obama in the debates with bold, conservative ideas, then please make a donation today."

Gingrich's campaign did not immediately respond to questions about whether the financial floodgates have opened in the wake of his victory.

Aides have said he raised roughly $9 million in the final quarter of last year. But the campaign still is carrying about a half a million dollars in debt from spring and summer when his campaign was struggling.

In that same time period Romney says he has raised $24 million. And he and his allies have been on the air in Florida ? alone ? for weeks, blanketing the state with his campaign pitch and targeting the thousands of Florida Republicans who have been casting absentee ballots since last month.

Given all that and with only nine days before the primary, there's no time for Gingrich to waste.

He was spending Sunday in Washington, attending a church service and working to raise money behind the scenes, including reaching out to former Perry donors who helped the Texas governor raise $17 million during the third quarter of 2011.

A giant plea for money also greeted visitors to Gingrich's website Sunday in hopes that fans of his books and time on the speaking circuit would donate.

Gingrich will have help.

Super PACs, like the pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future that's independent of his campaign, are certain to play aggressively in Florida, perhaps to a greater level than they did in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The independent groups can spend unlimited amounts of money in elections since federal court rulings in 2010 stripped away previous restrictions. The super PACs can't coordinate with campaigns, but many ? including Gingrich's and Romney's ? are staffed by people with ties to the candidates.

Already the pro-Romney super PAC ? Restore Our Future ? has spent a jaw-dropping $4 million in advertising in Florida, with Romney himself doling out nearly $2.5 million. Gingrich and his allies have yet to run an ad in the state.

At a deficit already, Winning Our Future and others supporting Gingrich expect that the spigot of money will continue flowing.

Still, they will be competing for dollars with super PACs supporting other candidates, particularly the Red, White and Blue Fund that's supporting former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

"Even if he gets 1 percent in South Carolina, I'm still for Rick," said Foster Friess, a Wyoming businessman who's been a major backer to the Santorum-leaning super PAC.

Gingrich's reliance on outside support is a reversal. He decried the influence of the independent groups in Iowa as they battered him in the state, and pledged to run a positive campaign. Then he kept losing. And a super PAC rushed to his defense.

The candidate himself has struggled to raise money this year despite being known for his fundraising prowess that dates to the 1990s when he engineered the Republican takeover of the House. After he left Congress, he turned his conservative political group, American Solutions for Winning the Future into a fundraising powerhouse, using the cash to continue a busy travel schedule that kept his name in the news. Gingrich owns the groups donor list.

When his campaign imploded last year, Gingrich relied on using that grass-roots network and social media to raise money.

"He's done well with less money than Romney," said John Grant, a Baptist leader and one of Gingrich's Florida evangelical chairmen. "It's because he's the atypical candidate."

____

McCaffrey reported from Columbia, S.C., and Gillum from Washington.

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Follow Shannon McCaffrey at http://twitter.com/smccaffrey13 or Jack Gillum at http://twitter.com/jackgillum

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120122/ap_on_el_pr/us_gingrich

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Bullied as a kid, Peter Jackson fights back on film (Reuters)

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) ? The high-profile case of the West Memphis Three murderers might seem like an odd choice of films for director Peter Jackson, but the "Lord of the Rings" maker has come to Sundance with a documentary about the case and a new revelation of a possible suspect.

Jackson, who helped bankroll the defense of the three convicted killers who are now out of jail nearly 20 years after the crime, and the legal team claim they have testimony that the stepfather of one of the victims is the real murderer.

Whether that allegation eventually proves true will await prosecutors' action in West Memphis, Arkansas where the murders took place in 1993, and so far the prosecution has stuck by its belief they had the right culprits all along.

But where Jackson and one of the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols, are concerned, their documentary "West of Memphis" and this new testimony takes the fight further.

"It's got to be dealt with," Jackson told Reuters on Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival. "You can't just leave a murder case like that hanging in the air."

The high-profile case of the West Memphis Three who were tried and convicted as teens of murdering three boys prompted a call to action for Jackson when first told the disturbing tale of the young men linked to a grisly murder who were ultimately released from prison in August 2011.

"I was bullied and regarded as little bit of an oddball myself," Jackson told Reuters on Saturday. "And I see that happening to somebody else, so I just want to help them."

Jackson and director Amy Berg debuted "West of Memphis" at Sundance on Friday, and simultaneously defense lawyers issued a press release detailing their new revelations.

The documentary follows the case of what many believe was the wrongful conviction of Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, who were teenagers when they were accused of killing three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993.

The case already has been made famous by the HBO documentary series "Paradise Lost," but the story of the three jailed boys struck a chord in the Jackson and his wife and producing partner Fran Walsh as far back as 2005.

"It's an American story but it's a human story as well," Jackson said. "When you look at the original 'Paradise Lost' film, you see three kids who can't defend themselves, being persecuted in a medieval way -- witchcraft, satanic worship. It was kind of primitive. It makes you angry, so Fran and I contacted (Echols' wife) Lorri Davis and asked what we could do to help."

Jackson said he and Walsh funded the defense team's investigation anonymously, spending "more than thousands" of dollars paying bills for such things as DNA tests and sending investigators to interview additional witnesses.

"We're still doing that," Jackson said.

Only one week ago, he said, the filmmakers shot and edited the new revelation into the documentary, but they had no time to include the footage in early screenings.

NEW REVELATION

According to Jackson, Echols and the defense team, the nephew of Terry Hobbs -- Michael Hobbs, Jr. -- has told friends that his uncle committed the crime. Terry Hobbs' stepson, Stevie Branch, was among the murder victims.

Hobbs has long denied any wrongdoing and police have never considered him a suspect, according to media reports. Reuters was unable to reach Hobbs for comment.

For Jackson, the idea of actually making a documentary on the West Memphis Three didn't arise until 2008, after DNA and forensic findings paid for by Jackson and Walsh, were dismissed by the original judge presiding over the trial. He found the evidence as not being compelling enough to reopen the case.

"Whenever new evidence came and we tried to present it to the judge, he refused to hear it," said Echols, now 37. He and his wife are producers on the film alongside Jackson and Walsh.

"The only way to let the public know what was going on with this case was by doing a documentary. It was Peter's idea of 'well, why don't we get this evidence out to the public if the courts are going to refuse to hear it?'"

"West of Memphis" follows the three convicted killers until just after they were released last August in a legal maneuver known as an "Alford Plea," whereby the men plead guilty in their own best interest while asserting innocence.

But the trio, their families, their lawyers, Jackson, Walsh and director Berg haven't stopped fighting.

"You have to push this hard in order to get a reaction," said Berg. "I feel that we have gone further than anybody else has gone and we've put it out there for people to act."

The film received strong initial reviews from critics here at Sundance. The Hollywood Reporter labeled it a "gripping overall picture of the West Memphis 3 wrongful-conviction saga" and summed up, "Thorny, blood-boiling and finely made, it deserves a theatrical push."

(Editing by Christine Kearney and Bob Tourtellotte)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120122/people_nm/us_sundance_peterjackson

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