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

Label: World

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)

Fiery Orioles manager Earl Weaver dead at 82

Label: Technology

BALTIMORE (AP) — Loved in Baltimore long after he ended his Hall of Fame career, Earl Weaver remained an Oriole to the end.

The notoriously peppery Hall of Fame manager died at age 82 on a Caribbean cruise associated with the Orioles, his marketing agent said Saturday.

The Duke of Earl, as he was affectionately known in Baltimore, took the Orioles to the World Series four times over 17 seasons but won only one title, in 1970. His .583 winning percentage ranks fifth among managers who served 10 or more seasons in the 20th century.

Dick Gordon said Weaver's wife told him that Weaver went back to his cabin after dinner and began choking between 10:30 and 11 Friday night. Gordon said a cause of death has not been determined.

"It's a sad day. Earl was a terrific manager," Vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette said. "The simplicity and clarity of his leadership and his passion for baseball was unmatched. He's a treasure for the Orioles. He leaves a terrific legacy of winning baseball with the Orioles and we're so grateful for his contribution. He has a legacy that will live on,"

Weaver will forever remain a part of Camden Yards. A statue of him was dedicated last summer in the stadium's flag court, along with the rest of the team's Hall of Fame members.

"Earl Weaver stands alone as the greatest manager in the history of the Orioles organization and one of the greatest in the history of baseball," Orioles owner Peter Angelos said. "This is a sad day for everyone who knew him and for all Orioles fans. Earl made his passion for the Orioles known both on and off the field. On behalf of the Orioles, I extend my condolences to his wife, Marianna, and to his family."

Weaver was a salty-tongued manager who preferred to wait for a three-run homer rather than manufacture a run with a stolen base or a bunt. While some baseball purists argued that strategy, no one could dispute the results.

"Earl was well known for being one of the game's most colorful characters with a memorable wit, but he was also amongst its most loyal," Commissioner Bud Selig said. "On behalf of Major League Baseball, I send my deepest condolences to his wife, Marianne, their family and all Orioles fans."

Weaver had a reputation as a winner, but umpires knew him as a hothead. Weaver would often turn his hat backward and yell directly into an umpire's face to argue a call or a rule, and after the inevitable ejection he would more often than not kick dirt on home plate or on the umpire's shoes.

"He was an intense competitor and smart as a whip when it comes to figuring out ways to beat you," said Davey Johnson, who played under Weaver in the minor leagues and with the Orioles from 1965 to 1972.

He was ejected 91 times, including once in both games of a doubleheader.

Asked once if his reputation might have harmed his chances to gain entry into the Hall of Fame, Weaver admitted, "It probably hurt me."

Not for long. He entered the hall in 1996.

"When you discuss our game's motivational masters, Earl is a part of that conversation," Baseball Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson said. "He was a proven leader in the dugout and loved being a Hall of Famer. Though small in stature, he was a giant as a manager."

His ejections were overshadowed by his five 100-win seasons, six AL East titles and four pennants. Weaver was inducted 10 years after he managed his final game with Baltimore at the end of an ill-advised comeback.

In 1985, the Orioles' owner at the time, Edward B. Williams, coaxed Weaver away from golf to take over a struggling squad. Weaver donned his uniform No. 4, which had already been retired by the team, and tried to breathe some life into the listless Orioles.

Baltimore went 53-52 over the last half of the 1985 season, but finished seventh in 1986 with a 73-89 record. It was Weaver's only losing season as a major-league manager, and he retired for good after that.

"If I hadn't come back," Weaver said after his final game, "I would be home thinking what it would have been like to manage again. I found out it's work."

Weaver finished with a 1,480-1,060 record. He won Manager of the Year three times.

"I had a successful career, not necessarily a Hall of Fame career, but a successful one," he said.

Weaver came to the Orioles as a first base coach in 1968, took over as manager on July 11 and went on to become the winningest manager in the history of the franchise.

"Earl was such a big part of Orioles baseball and personally he was a very important part of my life and career and a great friend to our family," Hall of Fame shortstop Cal Ripken said. "His passion for the game and the fire with which he managed will always be remembered by baseball fans everywhere and certainly by all of us who had the great opportunity to play for him. Earl will be missed but he can't and won't be forgotten."

He knew almost everything about the game. He was also a great judge of human character, and that's one of the main reasons why he was loved by a vast majority of his players even though he often rode them mercilessly from spring training into October.

"His bark was worse than his bite, but you had to know him and kind of grow up with him, and then you loved him like a father," Johnson said. "He was a used-car salesman in the minor leagues during the offseason, so he learned a lot of ways to sell you on just about anything."

Pat Dobson, who pitched two seasons under Weaver, said, "Certainly, the years I played for him were the two most enjoyable years I've had."

During games Weaver smoked cigarettes in the tunnel leading to the dugout and he never kicked the habit. He suffered a mild heart attack in August 1998, and the Orioles' manager at the time, Ray Miller, wondered aloud how his mentor was holding up.

"I wouldn't want to talk to him if he hasn't had a cigarette in 10 days," Miller joked. "They've probably got him tied to a chair."

Weaver was a brilliant manager, but he never made it to the majors as a player. He finally quit after spending 13 years as a second baseman in the St. Louis organization.

"He talked about how he could drive in 100 runs a year, score 100 runs and never make an error," Johnson said. "He said he never got to the big leagues because the Cardinals had too many good players in front of him."

The 10 Weirdest Inaugurations in US History

Label: World

President Barack Obama will put his hand on a Bible for the 57th inauguration ceremony Monday (Jan. 21) and kick off his next four years in office. And while everything may come off without a hitch, inaugurations haven’t always gone smoothly. From Richard Nixon‘s parade of dead birds to Calvin Coolidge‘s impromptu inauguration, here are some of the most bizarre swearing-in days in U.S. history.

Drunken oratory

In 1865, Andrew Johnson gave a train-wreck of a speech on the big day. The vice president usually gives a short and smooth speech prior to the president’s address. But the 16th vice president, who later became the 17th president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated that year, was ill with typhoid fever and took the medicine of the day, whiskey, the night before. The hangover must have gone to his head: During the speech, he bragged about his humble origins and his triumph over Confederate rebels. Lincoln reportedly looked on in horror, while the former vice president Hannibal Hamlin tugged at his coattails in a failed bid to get him to stop.

Dead birds

Ulysses S. Grant thought that canaries would add a festive touch to his inaugural ball in 1873, the beginning of his second term. Unfortunately, the 18th president failed to anticipate the cold temperatures — the morning low was 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 degrees Celsius), the coldest March day on record. With wind chill, the day felt like a blustery minus 15 F to minus 30 F (minus 26 C to minus 34 C). All told, about 100 birds froze to death during Grant’s inauguration. [The World's Weirdest Weather]

More dead birds

Birds don’t seem to do well on Inauguration Day. During Richard Nixon‘s Inauguration Day parade in 1973, he wanted to make sure pigeons didn’t ruin his big day. The 37th president had a chemical bird repellant sprayed all along the inaugural parade route. The streets were strewn with dozens of dead pigeons.

Coat-check blunders

Grant’s inaugurations suffered from several blunders. Not only did he inadvertently lead to mass bird death at the second inauguration, his first inauguration in 1869 saw outright brawls. The people staffing the coat-check area couldn’t read the claim tickets, so as people waited ever longer to pick up their outerwear, fights broke out and some guests abandoned their jackets and hats. “Illiterate workers mixed up everyone’s coat claims, leading to fights among the men and tears among the women,” writes Jim Bendat in “Democracy’s Big Day: The Inauguration of our President 1789-2009″ (iUniverse Star, 2008).

Quiet ceremony

Calvin Coolidge, known as “Silent Cal,” was notorious for talking little and doing things with no fanfare. That includes the start of his presidency. He was staying with his father in rural Vermont when news came that President Warren G. Harding had died. Because the 30th president’s father happened to be a justice of the peace, his father performed the swearing in right there, without an audience.

Killer speech

William Henry Harrison’s inauguration speech was deadly dull. The ninth president of the United States stood so long in the cold, rainy weather to give his inauguration speech that he caught a chill, got pneumonia and died just a month later. But not everyone thinks the speech killed him; he may have gotten his cold three weeks later, meaning his rainy day performance wasn’t to blame for his demise. [The Strangest Elections in US History]

House party from hell

After Andrew Jackson’s inauguration in 1829, the seventh president threw an epic party at the White House straight out of an ’80s movie. Jackson was notorious for his frontier-style, “man of the people” mystique and he attracted a similarly rough crowd. The louts crashed the party, sloshed through the house in muddy shoes, broke china and ripped the curtains down. To get them to leave, the staff used a time-tested trick: Leaving a tub of whiskey on the front lawn.

Debating a little girl

In 1929, when President Herbert Hoover was sworn in, the chief justice who administered the oath, William Howard Taft, garbled it, substituting the word “maintain” for “protect.” An eighth-grade girl named Helen Terwilliger caught the flub, and sent Taft a note. Instead of admitting the error, Taft wrote a letter insisting he got the words right, and movie buffs eventually played their newsreels to determine who was right. The eighth-grader held the day and Taft eventually conceded he was wrong.

Running for office

President James Buchanan had an extreme case of diarrhea on his Inauguration Day in 1857. Prior to the inauguration, the 15th president of the United States had contracted a case of “National Hotel Disease,” by staying at a shady establishment. The stubborn case of dysentery lingered past his inauguration, and Buchanan needed a doctor nearby during the ceremony.

Some air, please

While partying has always been a major part of the inaugural tradition, guests were considerably rowdier in years past. During James Madison’s inaugural ball in 1809, the weather got so hot that patrons reportedly broke out the windows at Long’s Hotel so they could breathe. (Tickets for the ball apparently cost $ 4 each.)

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Why Africa backs French in Mali

Label: Lifestyle

French-led Mali offensive

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

French intervention in Mali could be turning point in relationship with Africa, writes Lansana Gberie

France's meddling to bolster puppet regimes in the past has outraged Africans, he argues

He says few in Africa would label the French action in Mali as 'neo-colonial mission creep'

Lansana: 'Africa's weakness has been exposed by the might of a foreign power'

Editor's note: Dr. Lansana Gberie is a specialist on African peace and security issues. He is the author of "A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone." He is from Sierra Leone and lives in New York.

(CNN) -- Operation Serval, France's swift military intervention to roll back advances made by Jihadist elements who had hijacked a separatist movement in northern Mali, could be a turning point in the ex-colonialist's relationship with Africa.

It is not, after all, every day that you hear a senior official of the African Union (AU) refer to a former European colonial power in Africa as "a brotherly nation," as Ambroise Niyonsaba, the African Union's special representative in Ivory Coast, described France on 14 January, while hailing the European nation's military strikes in Mali.

France's persistent meddling to bolster puppet regimes or unseat inconvenient ones was often the cause of much outrage among African leaders and intellectuals. But by robustly taking on the Islamist forces that for many months now have imposed a regime of terror in northern Mali, France is doing exactly what African governments would like to have done.

Lansana Gberie

This is because the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), Ansar Dine and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are a far greater threat to many African states than they ever would be to France or Europe.

See also: What's behind Mali instability?

Moreover, the main underlying issues that led to this situation -- the separatist rebellion by Mali's Tuareg, under the banner of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), who seized the northern half of the country and declared it independent of Mali shortly after a most ill-timed military coup on 22 March 2012 -- is anathema to the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Successful separatism by an ethnic minority, it is believed, would only encourage the emergence of more separatist movements in a continent where many of the countries were cobbled together from disparate groups by Europeans not so long ago.

But the foreign Islamists who had been allies to the Tuaregs at the start of their rebellion had effectively sidelined the MNLA by July last year, and have since been exercising tomcatting powers over the peasants in the area, to whom the puritanical brand of Islam being promoted by the Islamists is alien.

ECOWAS, which is dominated by Nigeria -- formerly France's chief hegemonic foe in West Africa -- in August last year submitted a note verbale with a "strategic concept" to the U.N. Security Council, detailing plans for an intervention force to defeat the Islamists in Mali and reunify the country.

ECOWAS wanted the U.N. to bankroll the operation, which would include the deployment a 3,245-strong force -- to which Nigeria (694), Togo (581), Niger (541) and Senegal (350) would be the biggest contributors -- at a cost of $410 million a year. The note stated that the objective of the Islamists in northern Mali was to "create a safe haven" in that country from which to coordinate "continental terrorist networks, including AQIM, MUJAO, Boko Haram [in Nigeria] and Al-Shabaab [in Somalia]."

Despite compelling evidence of the threat the Islamists pose to international peace and security, the U.N. has not been able to agree on funding what essentially would be a military offensive. U.N. Security Council resolution 2085, passed on 20 December last year, only agreed to a voluntary contribution and the setting up of a trust fund, and requested the secretary-general "develop and refine options within 30 days" in this regard. The deadline should be 20 January.

See also: Six reasons events in Mali matter

It is partly because of this U.N. inaction that few in Africa would label the French action in Mali as another neo-colonial mission creep.

If the Islamists had been allowed to capture the very strategic town of Sevaré, as they seemed intent on doing, they would have captured the only airstrip in Mali (apart from the airport in Bamako) capable of handling heavy cargo planes, and they would have been poised to attack the more populated south of the country.

Africa's weakness has, once again, been exposed by the might of a foreign power.
Lansana Gberie

Those Africans who would be critical of the French are probably stunned to embarrassment: Africa's weakness has, once again, been exposed by the might of a foreign power.

Watch video: French troops welcomed in Mali

Africans, however, can perhaps take consolation in the fact that the current situation in Mali was partially created by the NATO action in Libya in 2010, which France spearheaded. A large number of the well-armed Islamists and Tuareg separatists had fought in the forces of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, and then left to join the MNLA in northern Mali after Gadhafi fell.

They brought with them advanced weapons, including shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles from Libya; and two new Jihadist terrorist groups active in northern Mali right now, Ansar Dine and MUJAO, were formed out of these forces.

Many African states had an ambivalent attitude towards Gadhafi, but few rejoiced when he was ousted and killed in the most squalid condition.

A number of African countries, Nigeria included, have started to deploy troops in Mali alongside the French, and ECOWAS has stated the objective as the complete liberation of the north from the Islamists.

The Islamists are clearly not a pushover; though they number between 2,000 and 3,000 they are battle-hardened and fanatically driven, and will likely hold on for some time to come.

The question now is: what happens after, as is almost certain, France begins to wind down its forces, leaving the African troops in Mali?

Nigeria, which almost single-handedly funded previous ECOWAS interventions (in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, costing billions of dollars and hundreds of Nigerian troops), has been reluctant to fund such expensive missions since it became democratic.

See also: Nigerians waiting for 'African Spring'

Its civilian regimes have to be more accountable to their citizens than the military regimes of the 1990s, and Nigeria has pressing domestic challenges. Foreign military intervention is no longer popular in the country, though the links between the northern Mali Islamists and the destructive Boko Haram could be used as a strategic justification for intervention in Mali.

The funding issue, however, will become more and more urgent in the coming weeks and months, and the U.N. must find a sustainable solution beyond a call for voluntary contributions by member states.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Lansana Gberie.

2 shot to death in separate attacks on South, Northwest sides

Label: Health

About 9:15 p.m., a man was shot to death inside a Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen, 5500 W. North Ave. (January 19, 2013)

Two young men were shot to death during another night of gun violence in Chicago Friday: One inside a well-lit restaurant along a West Side thoroughfare, the other in a dark gangway on a South Side block populated by vacant brick buildings.

The Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen at 5500 W. North Ave. where Marshall Fields-Hall died is fortified: a chain link fence with barbed and razor wire encircles part of the roof near cooling units and thick glass separates the dining area from the cash registers. Food and money exchange hands through small openings at the counter.

Fields-Hall's killer was on foot when he fired four shots into the restaurant from the outside about 9:15 p.m., police said, close enough to the glass window that detectives had to step over shell casings and red tape when they opened the door to get inside. The holes in the glass, spiderwebbed by the impact, were all within a couple inches of each other, and there were bits of glass on a small ledge inside.

Photo: Scene of fatal shooting

2 shot in Englewood neighborhood

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Reggie Stiff was working in the back of the restaurant preparing an order when the shooting began. The pops didn't sound like gunfire, he said, but more like "a hammer hitting a table real hard."

He came out from the back and the workers up front were "just looking dazed," he said.

Fields-Hall, 21, who lived nearby on the 1500 block of North Luna Avenue, was unresponsive on the scene when police found him but was taken to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, police said. He was pronounced dead there at 9:55 p.m.

Across the street, separated by three police cars and crime scene tape stretched by strong wind, Fannie White stood with her two great grandchildren, who were playing on a small concrete stoop in front of a boarded-up sandwich shop, running in circles around a brick pillar on the corner of a patio.

"I adopted him as my grandson," Fannie White said. "It's really hard."

White said she wasn't sure how she was going to explain the death to the children, who knew Fields-Hall.

Trese Butler stood next to White and the children, trying to understand what happened after someone had called her to say her friend was shot and that people were talking about it on Facebook.

"He just made 21. We're all trying to piece this together," said Butler, who walked to the scene from her home about a block away. "To me, he's still a baby."

After a couple minutes, the four left together, westbound on North Avenue. The four-lane road with parking on both sides is dotted with liquor stores, sandwich shops and blue-light police department cameras.

"This is the first Friday ever ain't nobody outside," Butler said before she left, adding that the block was usually bustling. "It's very rare. Very rare."

Across town, about the same time Fields-Hall was being taken to the hospital, police found 19-year-old Jovantay Alexander lying dead on his back between two brick buildings in the Back of the Yards neighborhood with a gunshot wound to the head.

Police had responded to a shots fired call and found Alexander where he had been shot. Police said nobody in the neighborhood, along the 5400 block of South Laflin Street, knew the man, who authorities said lived in the 1800 block of East 72^nd Street in the South Shore neighborhood. It doesn't appear that he was affiliated with a gang.

A handful of detectives stood over Alexander with large flashlights, examining the rest of his body for wounds and other evidence. A single officer blocked northbound traffic on the one-way street, north of an alley that runs parallel to Garfield Boulevard.

Fields-Hall was the 28^th person killed in Chicago this year. Alexander was the 29^th. They were among at least eleven people shot Friday afternoon into Saturday morning across the city.

In the other shootings:

• A 35-year-old man told police he "heard shots and felt pain" when someone shot him just before 4 a.m. Saturday morning in the 1600 block of North Sawyer Avenue, police said. The man, who police said was a gang member, was taken from the Logan Square crime scene to Stroger Hospital in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the arm, police said.

The victim had been paroled in 2011 after having served about 18 years in prison on first degree murder charges filed in 1993, when he was 16, according to state records. Police said he is a gang member who was shot at by the passenger in a white vehicle that approached him from the south as he tried to get into his car.

Algerian army stages "final assault" on gas plant

Label: Business

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army carried out a dramatic final assault to end a siege by Islamic militants at a desert gas plant on Saturday, killing 11 al Qaeda-linked gunmen after they took the lives of seven more foreign hostages, the state news agency said.

The state oil and gas company, Sonatrach, said the militants who attacked the plant on Wednesday and took a large number of hostages had booby-trapped the complex with explosives, which the army was removing.

"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a source familiar with the operation told Reuters.

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the hostage situation had been "brought to an end" by the Algerian army assault on the militants.

The exact death toll among the gunmen and the foreign and Algerian workers at the plant near the town of In Amenas remained unclear, although a tally of reports from various sources indicated that several dozen people had been killed.

The Islamists' attack on the gas plant has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara and pushed Islamic radicalism in northern Africa to centre stage.

Some Western governments expressed frustration at not being informed of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. Algeria's response to the raid will have been conditioned by the legacy of a civil war against Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives.

HOSTAGES FREED

As the army closed in, 16 foreign hostages were freed, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans and one Portuguese. Britain said fewer than 10 of its nationals at the plant were unaccounted for and it was urgently seeking to establish the status of all Britions caught up in the crisis.

The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.

BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Saturday four of its 18 workers at the site were missing. The remaining 14 were safe.

The crisis at the gas plant marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

The captors said their attack on the Algerian gas plant was a response to the French offensive in Mali. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the week since France launched its strikes.

Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified gas compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to the French intervention in neighboring Mali.

Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.

Before the final assault, different sources had put the number of hostages killed at between 12 and 30, with many foreigners still unaccounted for, among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons and Americans.

The figure of 30 came from an Algerian security source, who said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said nobody was going to attack the United States and get away with it.

"We have made a commitment that we're going to go after al Qaeda wherever they are and wherever they try to hide," he said during a visit to London. "We have done that obviously in Afghanistan, Pakistan, we've done it in Somalia, in Yemen and we will do it in North Africa as well."

BURNED BODIES

Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 unidentified burned bodies at the plant, a source told Reuters.

The field commander of the group that attacked the plant is a fighter from Niger called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, according to Mauritanian news agencies. His boss, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria's civil war of the 1990s, appears not to have joined the raid.

Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed irritation that the army assault was ordered without consultation and officials grumbled at the lack of information.

But French President Francois Hollande said the Algerian military's response seemed to have been the best option given that negotiation was not possible.

"When you have people taken hostage in such large number by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages - as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most appropriate because there could be no negotiation," Hollande said.

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.

Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.

Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.

The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.

France says the hostage incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary. Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year.

(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Rosalind Russell)

Wall Street slips after disappointing Intel results

Label: World

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Friday from a five-year high for the S&P 500 as a weak outlook from tech heavyweight Intel offset a better-than-expected quarterly profit at Morgan Stanley.

But the S&P 500 was still on track to end higher for a third consecutive week.

Shares of Intel Corp slumped nearly 7 percent to $21.11 a day after it forecast quarterly revenue below analysts' estimates and announced plans for increased capital spending amid slow demand for personal computers.

"Intel earnings weren't that bad, although their revenue was weak. It sparks fears about not only the company but about the whole PC sector, and that's pressuring the market today," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York.

The Intel results were offset somewhat by Morgan Stanley , which reported a fourth-quarter profit after a year-earlier loss, helped by higher revenue at the bank's institutional securities business. Its stock jumped 7.4 percent to $22.29.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings rose an estimated 2.5 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. Expectations for the quarter have dropped considerably since October, when a 9.9 percent gain was estimated.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 15.17 points, or 0.11 percent, at 13,580.85. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 3.51 points, or 0.24 percent, at 1,477.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 13.98 points, or 0.45 percent, at 3,122.03.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose to its highest since late 2007, and that could prompt investors to lock in recent gains, analysts said.

Despite the day's decline, market sentiment was still positive on speculation that chances were better of avoiding a debt ceiling fight in Washington. House Republicans signaled on Thursday they might support a short-term extension of U.S. borrowing authority next month.

"The debt ceiling issue is sort of out of the news. The market has definitely become complacent. And we all know that the issue will be dealt with, we just need to find out when. If December is any guide, they are going to leave it up to the last minute so the market is definitely more complacent than it should be for now," Ghriskey said.

Reflecting the complacency, the CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, fell 4.1 percent at just above 13. The VIX usually moves inversely to the S&P 500 as it is used as a hedge tool against further market decline.

Economic data from China provided some support to the market, though the focus remained on U.S. corporate earnings. The country's economy grew at a modestly faster-than-expected 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter, the latest sign the world's second-biggest economy was pulling out of a post-global financial crisis slowdown which saw it grow in 2012 at its weakest pace since 1999.

General Electric reported a better-than-expected rise in earnings, spurred by robust demand in China and oil-producing countries. Shares were up 2.9 percent to $21.92.

Despite the gains by Morgan Stanley, financial stocks sagged as Capital One Financial reported disappointing profit. Capital One slumped 7.7 percent to $56.87, while the KBW bank index <.bkx> slipped 0.9 percent.

Research In Motion climbed 6.6 percent to $15.91 after Jefferies Group boosted the BlackBerry maker's rating and price target.

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

Hamilton: Armstrong must tell everything he knows

Label: Technology

Tyler Hamilton recognized what he saw during Lance Armstrong's televised confession to doping.

"He's broken. He's broken," Hamilton said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. "I've never seen him even remotely like that. It doesn't please me to see that."

Hamilton rode for Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team during his first three Tour de France titles. Hamilton's public confessions to doping — first in a candid-but-halting "60 Minutes" interview in 2011, then later in a tell-all book that came out last summer — provided key evidence in the case against Armstrong.

On Thursday, Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey aired, and the cyclist admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs to fuel all seven of his Tour de France victories.

Hamilton, who said he felt a huge sense of relief after telling the truth, applauded Armstrong's decision to come clean, calling it a "big first step," but only a beginning.

"It's what he does moving forward," Hamilton said in a phone interview. "He's saying some of the right things now but the proof is in the pudding. If he just goes and hides away, people are not going to be happy. But if he does the right thing, speaks to Travis Tygart and WADA and tells everything he knows, that's going to make a big difference."

Both Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman have said Armstrong will need to offer more than a televised confession to make amends and possibly have his lifetime sports ban reduced.

While admitting to doping in his interview, Armstrong contradicted a key point of Hamilton's: That Armstrong told him he tested positive during the 2001 Tour de Suisse and conspired with International Cycling Union officials to cover it up — in exchange for a donation.

"That story wasn't true. There was no positive test, no paying off of the labs. There was no secret meeting with the lab director," Armstrong told Winfrey.

Asked about that, Hamilton told the AP: "I stand by what I said. It's all out there. I don't know if it's a legal thing, or why he said that. It doesn't really bother me that much."

Hamilton was also among numerous riders who described the immense pressure Armstrong put on them to take part in the doping. Armstrong told Winfrey nobody was forced to dope.

"Nobody took a syringe and forced it into my arm. I made that decision on my own," Hamilton said. "But you did feel the pressure. When it was all set up for my first blood-doping experience in 2000, when I flew to Spain on Lance's private jet, I don't know what would've happened to me if I'd said, 'I'll stick with EPO but no blood doping.' I assume they would've been angry about it. For me, it was a no-brainer."

Armstrong said he had reached out to some of the people he felt he owed apologies. Hamilton has not heard from him, however, and didn't sound like he was waiting by the phone.

Hamilton called the entire episode a "huge life lesson" and said Armstrong can help the sport if he's willing to do more, especially if it involves providing information about doctors, managers and other higher-ups in cycling.

"There are still a lot of bad apples in this sport," Hamilton said. "Lance Armstrong did not act alone. There are plenty of people out there who still think they got away with it. I don't think he wants to rat anybody out. But he didn't do this by himself and he didn't learn this by himself."

Scientist Proposes to Girlfriend in Amazing Northern Lights Time-Lapse Video

Label: World

Dazzling green, purple and turquoise auroras glimmer in the sky over Iceland while a man proposes to his girlfriend in a new time-lapse video.

Neuroscientist Alex Rivest shot the amazing aurora time-lapse video, which featured his own proposal, over several days and nights in September 2012.

“On a trip to Iceland I asked my girlfriend to marry me under the aurora borealis,” Rivest wrote in a video caption. “She said yes.”

The couple is seen hugging after Rivest bows down on one knee toward the end of the footage, all while gorgeous displays of the Northern Lights dance in the night sky.

“Iceland is a pretty amazing place to watch the stars and the aurora,” Rivest told SPACE.com.

The aurora borealis, as well as its Southern Hemisphere counterpart, the aurora australis, is created when charged particles from the sun hit atoms in Earth’s high-altitude atmosphere, which are directed by the planet’s magnetic field. The resulting light show has been dubbed the northern lights in the north, and the southern lights in the south.

Rivest has a Ph.D. from MIT and studies how brains form episodic memories. Rivest is also the founder of a non-profit called Blue Kitabu, which works to build sustainable schools in Ghana and Kenya. And of course, he’s also an avid photographer and videographer.

The aurora time-lapse was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 40D, using a triggering device from pclix.com.

This isn’t the first time an astronomical event has served as a backdrop for a marriage proposal caught on video. Last year, stargazer Shookie Basuroy proposed to girlfriend Rajeep while watching a total solar eclipse from a hot air balloon above Cairns, Australia, on Nov. 14.

Rajeep, like Rivest’s girlfriend, said “yes.”

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

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U.S. 'needs tougher child labor rules'

Label: Lifestyle

Cristina Traina says in his second term, Obama must address weaknesses in child farm labor standards

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Cristina Traina: Obama should strengthen child farm labor standards

She says Labor Dept. rules allow kids to work long hours for little pay on commercial farms

She says Obama administration scrapped Labor Dept. chief's proposal for tightening rules

She says Labor Dept. must fix lax standards for kid labor on farmers; OSHA must enforce them

Editor's note: Cristina L.H. Traina is a Public Voices Op Ed fellow and professor at Northwestern University, where she is a scholar of social ethics.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama should use the breathing space provided by the fiscal-cliff compromise to address some of the issues that he shelved during his last term. One of the most urgent is child farm labor. Perhaps the least protected, underpaid work force in American labor, children are often the go-to workers for farms looking to cut costs.

It's easy to see why. The Department of Labor permits farms to pay employees under 20 as little as $4.25 per hour. (By comparison, the federal minimum wage is $7.25.) And unlike their counterparts in retail and service, child farm laborers can legally work unlimited hours at any hour of day or night.

The numbers are hard to estimate, but between direct hiring, hiring through labor contractors, and off-the-books work beside parents or for cash, perhaps 400,000 children, some as young as 6, weed and harvest for commercial farms. A Human Rights Watch 2010 study shows that children laboring for hire on farms routinely work more than 10 hours per day.

As if this were not bad enough, few labor safety regulations apply. Children 14 and older can work long hours at all but the most dangerous farm jobs without their parents' consent, if they do not miss school. Children 12 and older can too, as long as their parents agree. Unlike teen retail and service workers, agricultural laborers 16 and older are permitted to operate hazardous machinery and to work even during school hours.

In addition, Human Rights Watch reports that child farm laborers are exposed to dangerous pesticides; have inadequate access to water and bathrooms; fall ill from heat stroke; suffer sexual harassment; experience repetitive-motion injuries; rarely receive protective equipment like gloves and boots; and usually earn less than the minimum wage. Sometimes they earn nothing.

Little is being done to guarantee their safety. In 2011 Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis proposed more stringent agricultural labor rules for children under 16, but Obama scrapped them just eight months later.

Adoption of the new rules would be no guarantee of enforcement, however. According to the 2010 Human Rights Watch report, the Department of Labor employees were spread so thin that, despite widespread reports of infractions they found only 36 child labor violations and two child hazardous order violations in agriculture nationwide.

This lack of oversight has dire, sometimes fatal, consequences. Last July, for instance, 15-year-old Curvin Kropf, an employee at a small family farm near Deer Grove, Illinois, died when he fell off the piece of heavy farm equipment he was operating, and it crushed him. According to the Bureau County Republican, he was the fifth child in fewer than two years to die at work on Sauk Valley farms.

If this year follows trends, Curvin will be only one of at least 100 children below the age of 18 killed on American farms, not to mention the 23,000 who will be injured badly enough to require hospital admission. According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries. It is the most dangerous for children, accounting for about half of child worker deaths annually.

The United States has a long tradition of training children in the craft of farming on family farms. At least 500,000 children help to work their families' farms today.

Farm parents, their children, and the American Farm Bureau objected strenuously to the proposed new rules. Although children working on their parents' farms would specifically have been exempted from them, it was partly in response to worries about government interference in families and loss of opportunities for children to learn agricultural skills that the Obama administration shelved them.

Whatever you think of family farms, however, many child agricultural workers don't work for their parents or acquaintances. Despite exposure to all the hazards, these children never learn the craft of farming, nor do most of them have the legal right to the minimum wage. And until the economy stabilizes, the savings farms realize by hiring children makes it likely that even more of them will be subject to the dangers of farm work.

We have a responsibility for their safety. As one of the first acts of his new term, Obama should reopen the child agricultural labor proposal he shelved in spring of 2012. Surely, farm labor standards for children can be strengthened without killing off 4-H or Future Farmers of America.

Second, the Department of Labor must institute age, wage, hour and safety regulations that meet the standards set by retail and service industry rules. Children in agriculture should not be exposed to more risks, longer hours, and lower wages at younger ages than children in other jobs.

Finally, the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration must allocate the funds necessary for meaningful enforcement of child labor violations. Unenforced rules won't protect the nearly million other children who work on farms.

Agriculture is a great American tradition. Let's make sure it's not one our children have to die for.

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U.S. 'needs tougher child labor rules'

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