NFL's Goodell aims to share blame on player safety

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to share the blame.

"Safety," he said at his annual Super Bowl news conference, "is all of our responsibilities."

Not surprisingly, given that thousands of former players are suing the league about its handling of concussions, the topics of player health and improved safety dominated Goodell's 45-minute session Friday. And he often sounded like someone seeking to point out that players or others are at fault for some of the sport's problems — and need to help fix them.

"I'll stand up. I'll be accountable. It's part of my responsibility. I'll do everything," Goodell said. "But the players have to do it. The coaches have to do it. Our officials have to do it. Our medical professionals have to do it."

Injuries from hits to the head or to the knees, Goodell noted, can result from improper tackling techniques used by players and taught by coaches. The NFL Players Association needs to allow testing for human growth hormone to go forward so it can finally start next season, which Goodell hopes will happen. He said prices for Super Bowl tickets have soared in part because fans re-sell them above face value.

And asked what he most rues about the New Orleans Saints bounty investigation — a particularly sensitive issue around these parts, of course — Goodell replied: "My biggest regret is that we aren't all recognizing that this is a collective responsibility to get (bounties) out of the game, to make the game safer. Clearly the team, the NFL, the coaching staffs, executives and players, we all share that responsibility. That's what I regret, that I wasn't able to make that point clearly enough with the union."

He addressed other subjects, such as a "new generation of the Rooney Rule" after none of 15 recently open coach or general manager jobs went to a minority candidate, meaning "we didn't have the outcomes we wanted"; using next year's Super Bowl in New Jersey as a test for future cold-weather, outdoor championship games; and saying he welcomed President Barack Obama's recent comments expressing concern about football's violence because "we want to make sure that people understand what we're doing to make our game safer."

Also:

— New Orleans will not get back the second-round draft pick Goodell stripped in his bounty ruling;

— Goodell would not give a time frame for when the NFL could hold a game in Mexico;

— next season's games in London — 49ers-Jaguars and Steelers-Vikings — are sellouts.

Goodell mentioned some upcoming changes, including the plan to add independent neurologists to sidelines to help with concussion care during games — something players have asked for and the league opposed until now.

"The No. 1 issue is: Take the head out of the game," Goodell said. "I think we've seen in the last several decades that players are using their head more than they had when you go back several decades."

He said one tool the league can use to cut down on helmet-to-helmet hits is suspending players who keep doing it.

"We're going to have to continue to see discipline escalate, particularly on repeat offenders," Goodell said. "We're going to have to take them off the field. Suspension gets through to them."

The league will add "expanded physicals at the end of each season ... to review players from a physical, mental and life skills standpoint so that we can support them in a more comprehensive fashion," Goodell said.

With question after question about less-than-light matters, one reporter drew a chuckle from Goodell by asking how he's been treated this week in a city filled with supporters of the Saints who are angry about the way the club was punished for the bounty system the NFL said existed from 2009-11.

"My picture, as you point out, is in every restaurant. I had a float in the Mardi Gras parade. We got a voodoo doll," Goodell said.

But he added that he can "appreciate the passion" of the fans and, actually, "couldn't feel more welcome here."

___

Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

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Climate Change May Shrink Bat Moms’ Range

Each the spring, female Indiana bats leave the cool caves where they spend the winter hibernating and head north, gathering together in trees to form maternity colonies to have their young. A new study shows that climate change could squeeze these bat moms into a much smaller range over the next 50 years.

The endangered bats are currently found over most of the eastern half of the United States, but researchers found that much of Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio will become inhospitable for the species’ maternity colonies under most climates they modeled.

“We found that due to projected changes in temperature, the most suitable summer range for Indiana bats would decline and become concentrated in the northeastern United States and the Appalachian Mountains,” ecologist Susan Loeb, of the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station, said in a statement.

Previous studies have shown that animals worldwide are shifting their habitats to try to outrun climate change. But species like Indiana bats might be more vulnerable than other mammals in the face of global warming, because their reproductive cycles, hibernation patterns and migration are highly dependent on temperature, the researchers said.

“Our model suggests that once average summer (May through August) maximum temperatures reach 27.4 degrees C (81.3 degrees F), the climatic suitability of the area for Indiana bat maternity colonies declines,” Loeb said. “Once they reach 29.9 degrees C (85.8 degree F), the area is forecast to become completely unsuitable. Initially, Indiana bat maternity colonies may respond to warming temperatures by choosing roosts that have more shade than the roosts that they currently use. Eventually, it is likely that they will have to find more suitable climates.”

The tiny bats, which weigh about the same as three pennies but can have a wingspan up to 11 inches (28 centimeters), were listed as endangered in the United States in 1967. After decades of decline, the bats’ population picked up from 2000 to 2005, largely thanks to conservation efforts, but species’ numbers plunged again with the spread of the devastating white nose syndrome. Nicknamed for the powderlike fungal growth that appeared on the hibernating bats’ snouts, the mysterious bat-killing disease was first documented in New York in 2006 and has since spread to caves across the Northeast. In 2011, the number of Indiana bats reported hibernating in the northeastern United States was down by 72 percent.

According to the new study, maternity colonies in the western portion of the bats’ range likely will begin to decline, and possibly vanish, in the next 10 to 20 years, and by 2060, much of the region will be wholly unsuitable for roosting. The grim forecast has important implications for wildlife managers in the Northeast and the Appalachian Mountains, Loeb said, since these areas will likely become refuges for the bats when regions in the Midwest get too warm.

“Management actions that foster high reproductive success and survival will be critical for the conservation and recovery of the species,” she said.

The findings were detailed online in January in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

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Hillary: Secretary of empowerment

Girls hug U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2010 tour of a shelter run for sex trafficking victims in Cambodia.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Donna Brazile: Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. Maybe she'll run for president


• She says as secretary she expanded foreign policy to include effect on regular people


• She says she was first secretary of state to focus on empowering women and girls


• Brazile: Clinton has fought for education and inclusion in politics for women and girls

Editor's note: Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee. She is a nationally syndicated columnist, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of "Cooking with Grease." She was manager for the Gore-Lieberman presidential campaign in 2000.

(CNN) -- As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton steps down from her job Friday, many are assuming she will run for president. And she may. In fact, five of the first eight presidents first served their predecessors as secretary of state.

It hasn't happened in more than a century, though that may change should Clinton decide to run. After all, she has been a game changer her entire life.

But before we look ahead, I think we should appreciate what she's done as secretary of state; it's a high profile, high pressure job. You have to deal with the routine as if it is critical and with crisis as if it's routine. You have to manage egos, protocols, customs and Congress. You have to be rhetorical and blunt, diplomatic and direct.

CNN Contributor Donna Brazile

As secretary of state you are dealing with heads of state and with we the people. And the president of the United States has to trust you -- implicitly.

On the road with Hillary Clinton

Of all Clinton's accomplishments -- and I will mention just a few -- this may be the most underappreciated. During the election, pundits were puzzled and amazed not only at how much energy former President Bill Clinton poured into Obama's campaign, but even more at how genuine and close the friendship was.

Obama was given a lot of well-deserved credit for reaching out to the Clintons by appointing then-Sen. Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state in the first place. But trust is a two-way street and has to be earned. We should not underestimate or forget how much Clinton did and how hard she worked. She deserved that trust, as she deserved to be in the war room when Osama bin Laden was killed.

By the way, is there any other leader in the last 50 years whom we routinely refer to by a first name, and do so more out of respect than familiarity? The last person I can think of was Ike -- the elder family member who we revere with affection. Hillary is Hillary.

It's not surprising that we feel we know her. She has been part of our public life for more than 20 years. She's been a model of dignity, diplomacy, empathy and toughness. She also has done something no other secretary of state has done -- including the two women who preceded her in the Cabinet post.

Rothkopf: President Hillary Clinton? If she wants it

Hillary has transformed our understanding -- no, our definition -- of foreign affairs. Diplomacy is no longer just the skill of managing relations with other countries. The big issues -- war and peace, terror, economic stability, etc. -- remain, and she has handled them with firmness and authority, with poise and confidence, and with good will, when appropriate.

But it is not the praise of diplomats or dictators that will be her legacy. She dealt with plenipotentiaries, but her focus was on people. Foreign affairs isn't just about treaties, she taught us, it's about the suffering and aspirations of those affected by the treaties, made or unmade.

Most of all, diplomacy should refocus attention on the powerless.

Of course, Hillary wasn't the first secretary of state to advocate for human rights or use the post to raise awareness of abuses or negotiate humanitarian relief or pressure oppressors. But she was the first to focus on empowerment, particularly of women and girls.

She created the first Office of Global Women's Issues. That office fought to highlight the plight of women around the world. Rape of women has been a weapon of war for centuries. Though civilized countries condemn it, the fight against it has in a sense only really begun.

Ghitis: Hillary Clinton's global legacy on gay rights

The office has worked to hold governments accountable for the systematic oppression of girls and women and fought for their education in emerging countries. As Hillary said when the office was established: "When the Security Council passed Resolution 1325, we tried to make a very clear statement, that women are still largely shut out of the negotiations that seek to end conflicts, even though women and children are the primary victims of 21st century conflict."

Hillary also included the United States in the Trafficking in Person report. Human Trafficking, a form of modern, mainly sexual, slavery, victimizes mostly women and girls. The annual report reviews the state of global efforts to eliminate the practice. "We believe it is important to keep the spotlight on ourselves," she said. "Human trafficking is not someone else's problem. Involuntary servitude is not something we can ignore or hope doesn't exist in our own communities."

She also created the office of Global Partnerships. And there is much more.

She has held her own in palaces and held the hands of hungry children in mud-hut villages, pursuing an agenda that empowers women, children, the poor and helpless.

We shouldn't have been surprised. Her book "It Takes a Village" focused on the impact that those outside the family have, for better or worse, on a child's well-being.

As secretary of state, she did all she could to make sure our impact as a nation would be for the better.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Donna Brazile.

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$1 million lottery jackpot waits to be claimed

SPRINGFIELD ——

Last St. Patrick's Day, four $1 million lottery tickets were drawn in Illinois, but so far only three of the buyers have claimed their pots o' gold.

The luck of the Irish will run out March 17, the anniversary of the sale, if nobody turns in the fourth ticket that was bought at a gas station in west suburban Wood Dale.

It's far from unusual that somebody buys a winning ticket and fails to collect. Illinois amasses tens of millions of dollars in unclaimed lottery prizes each year. But winners usually cash in early rather than risk misplacing the ticket before the anniversary — and losing their windfall along with it.

Jim Batson, owner of the Marathon station on Irving Park Road where the unclaimed ticket was sold, hopes the buyer will claim the Millionaire Raffle prize before it's too late.

"We tell everybody who comes in to check between their couches and anywhere else," Batson said. "Sure feels like someone lost it."

Lottery agents have even put up a flier alerting customers to the prize and deadline.

The Millionaire Raffle is exactly what it sounds like, with 500,000 individually numbered tickets sold at $20 a pop. A computerized drawing spits out four winning tickets, each worth $1 million. The odds of capturing the top prize are 1 in 125,000.

After the drawing last year, winning tickets were turned in from convenience stores in Pocahontas, near St. Louis, and Robinson, in southern Illinois near the Indiana border. In an odd coincidence, the other winning ticket was bought less than four miles from Batson's store, at another Marathon station on Busse Road in Elk Grove Village.

The Millionaire Raffle prize is not even the largest one unclaimed and still valid. Someone bought a $6.5 million Lotto ticket at a Road Ranger truck stop in Roscoe, near the Wisconsin border, in August, but no one has turned in the winning ticket. The largest unclaimed prize in Illinois history was a $14 million Lotto ticket sold in Frankfort in January 2004. No one ever collected.

The state sold nearly $2.7 billion worth of tickets in the budget year that ended June 30, but unclaimed totals for that period are still being tallied. The previous year, the unclaimed prize winnings hit $32.4 million. The vast majority of that unclaimed cash goes into the common school fund, according to the lottery.

Most states have a similar approach with unclaimed prizes, said David Gale, executive director of the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. But some states throw unclaimed winnings back into future jackpots, and others use the money for different funds, such as helping to support programs to battle gambling addictions.

There's still a chance someone will turn in that outstanding ticket from Wood Dale as time ticks down to the expiration date. In 2011, for example, a South Side man claimed a $9 million Lotto prize just days before the winning ticket expired.

"Most people don't typically wait the full year," said Mike Lang, lottery spokesman. "But once in a while, we do get one."

Batson holds out hope for his patrons. "It would be nice if one of my regulars had won it," he said.

Whether or not the prize is claimed, Batson already has collected a lucky reward. He received the standard 1 percent commission for selling a winning ticket — a payday worth $10,000.

raguerrero2@tribune.com

Twitter @ChiTribCloutSt

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Turkish leftist group claims U.S. embassy bombing: website

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish leftist group claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy and accused Washington of using Turkey as its "slave", according to a statement posted on the internet.

The Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C) said it carried out Friday's attack, in which a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body at the embassy in Ankara, killing himself and a Turkish security guard.

In a statement on "The People's Cry" website, the DHKP-C, which is listed as terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, warned Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan he too was a target.

"Murderer America! You will not run away from people's rage," the statement said, next to a picture of the bomber, named as Alisan Sanli, wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.

Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met with his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the attacker had served time in jail on domestic terrorism charges in Turkey in the past, re-entered the country using false documents and was wanted by the authorities.

"(The bomber) was demanding to pass through the guest and staff gate of the U.S. embassy using a fake ID when he detonated the explosives," the provincial governor's office in Ankara said in a statement.

It said he had also detonated a hand grenade.

The White House condemned the bombing as an "act of terror", while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act.

U.S. officials said the DHKP-C were the main suspects in Friday's bombing but did not exclude other possibilities.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.

U.S. PATRIOT MISSILES

The DHKP-C, formed in 1978, is virulently anti-American.

It called on Washington to remove Patriot missiles, due to go operational on Monday as part of a NATO defense system, from Turkish soil. The missiles are being deployed alongside systems from Germany and the Netherlands to guard NATO-member Turkey against a spillover of the war in neighboring Syria.

"Our action is for the independence of our country, which has become a new slave of America," the statement said.

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the civil war in Syria.

It was the second attack on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an Islamist militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War and launched rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.

It has been blamed for previous suicide attacks, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square, and has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.

Friday's attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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S&P 500 rises one percent as Wall Street rallies

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks hit five-year highs with each of the three major indexes up at least 1 percent on Friday, after jobs and manufacturing data showed the economy's sluggish recovery is still on track.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 139.22 points, or 1.00 percent, to 13,999.80. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 15.04 points, or 1.00 percent, to 1,513.15. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 35.47 points, or 1.13 percent, to 3,177.60.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Goodell says agreement close on HGH testing

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says he believes there will be an agreement soon with the players' union for testing for human growth hormone.

At his annual state of the NFL news conference Friday, Goodell said he expects an agreement for the tests to be reached in time for the start of the 2013 season.

Goodell noted that the league and union agreed to the testing two years ago in the collective bargaining agreement. He said it is important to have testing to retain the integrity and the brand of the league.

Goodell also said he is not going to give up his authority to discipline players for various offenses, something he said has served the league well over the years.

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March planned for Hadiya Pendleton; reward increased to $30K

As community members made ready to march in memory of Hadiya Pendleton today, officials announced the reward for information in the slaying of the King College Prep sophomore has been increased to $30,000.

Late this morning, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and other police officials were expected to join several pastors at her high school, King College Prep, to announce the increased reward. Soon after, an anti-violence march in Hadiya's honor was scheduled to start at King, 4445 S. Drexel Blvd.

Hadiya had just finished her final exams at King College Prep, and was hanging out with friends from the school's volleyball team when she was gunned down Tuesday in Harsh Park, in the 4400 block of South Oakenwald Avenue. Thursday afternoon, police announced the reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting had increased to $24,000, up from $11,000 announced Wednesday.

Hadiya and the others had sought shelter from a rainstorm under a canopy at the park around 2:20 p.m. Tuesday when a gunman jumped a fence, ran toward them and opened fire, police said.

As the teens scattered, Hadiya and two teenage boys were shot. Hadiya was hit in the back and pronounced dead at Comer Children's Hospital less than an hour after the shooting. The wounds suffered by the boys were not life-threatening.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy stressed that neither Hadiya nor anyone in the group she was with were involved with gangs. But it appears the gunman mistook the students for members of a rival gang, he said. The shooter was last seen fleeing in a white Nissan.

“These were good kids by everything that I learned," McCarthy said at a Wednesday news conference. "Wrong place at the wrong time.”

Pastor Courtney Maxwell, the family’s pastor, has offered $6,000, increasing the reward to $30,000, according to the statement, which said Maxwell has called a press conference at Harsh Park at 11:45 a.m. 

Hadiya was shot a little more than a week after performing with the King College Prep band in Washington during President Barack Obama's inauguration festivities. The shooting occurred in a park about a mile north of Obama's Kenwood home.

The shooting has drawn the attention of both the White House, which is pushing for national gun control, and City Hall as Chicago closes on a violent January. Hadiya was the 42nd homicide victim this year in the city, where killings last year climbed above 500.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, pleaded for someone to step forward and bring the 15-year-old's killer to justice.

"She was destined for great things," he said.

Hadiya was a majorette with the band at King, one of the city's elite selective-enrollment schools. She dreamed of going to Northwestern University and talked about becoming a pharmacist or a journalist, maybe a lawyer.

Police have reported no arrests.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

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Suicide bomber kills guard at U.S. embassy in Turkey

ANKARA (Reuters) - A far-leftist suicide bomber killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, officials said, blowing open an entrance and sending debris flying through the air.

The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body after entering an embassy gatehouse. The blast could be heard a mile away. A lower leg and other human remains lay on the street.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the bomber was a member of an illegal far-left group. The White House said the suicide attack was an "act of terror", but the motivation was unclear.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past. There was no claim of responsibility.

"The suicide bomber was ripped apart and one or two citizens from the special security team passed away," said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who was attending a ceremony in Istanbul when the blast happened.

"This event shows that we need to fight together everywhere in the world against these terrorist elements," he said.

Turkish media reports identified the bomber as Ecevit Sanli, a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) leftist group, who was involved in attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul in 1997.

The DHKP-C opposes what it sees as U.S. influence over Turkish foreign policy.

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Around 400 U.S. soldiers have arrived in Turkey over the past few weeks to operate Patriot anti-missile batteries meant to defend against any spillover of Syria's civil war, part of a NATO deployment due to be fully operational in the coming days.

"HUGE EXPLOSION"

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the embassy, which is surrounded by high walls, shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.

"We're very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone said, describing the victim as a "hero" and thanking Turkish authorities for a prompt response.

A U.S. national security source said U.S. officials believed the incident was a suicide bombing but said security measures had worked properly, in that the attacker was not able to get past the outer perimeter of the compound and neither the embassy buildings were damaged, nor were U.S. personnel injured.

It was the second attack on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The attack in Benghazi, blamed on al Qaeda-affiliated militants, sparked a political furore in Washington over accusations that U.S. missions were not adequately safeguarded.

A well-known Turkish journalist, Didem Tuncay, who was on her way in to the embassy to meet Ricciardone when the attack took place, was in a critical condition in hospital.

"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos, whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.

OPPOSED TO U.S. INFLUENCE

The DHKP-C, deemed a terrorist organization by both the United States and Turkey, has been blamed for suicide attacks in the past, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square.

Guler said the bomber could have been from the DHKP-C which has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months, or a similar group.

The attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

The U.S. consulate in Istanbul warned its citizens to be vigilant and to avoid large gatherings, while the British mission in Istanbul called on British businesses to tighten security after what it called a "suspected terrorist attack".

In 2008, Turkish gunmen with suspected links to al Qaeda, opened fire on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, killing three Turkish policemen. The gunmen died in the subsequent firefight.

The most serious bombings in Turkey occurred in November 2003, when car bombs shattered two synagogues, killing 30 people and wounding 146. Part of the HSBC Bank headquarters was destroyed and the British consulate was damaged in two more explosions that killed 32 people less than a week later. Authorities said those attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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Wall Street dips on profit taking, Friday data eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Thursday as investors took profit after a mixed bag of economic data, while stellar earnings from Qualcomm helped buoy the Nasdaq.

Even with the retreat, the S&P 500 is on track to post its best month since October 2011 and its best start to a year since 1997.

Investors are expecting a pullback in equities after recent gains, though they have bought on dips over the past four weeks, analysts said. The largest daily decline on the S&P 500 so far in 2013 was Thursday's 0.39 percent drop, after data showed the economy contracted in the last quarter of 2012.

"This is a highly rotational market," said Janelle Nelson, portfolio analyst at RBC Wealth Management in Minneapolis, noting how investors dive into beaten-down sectors on the smallest encouraging news.

Job market data released earlier on Thursday showed mildly positive signs for a still-fragile economy, with jobless claims slightly higher and incomes growing at the best pace since 2004.

Those reports come ahead of Friday's payrolls report, which is expected to show employers added 160,000 jobs in January after an increase of 155,000 in December. Friday will also bring reports on consumer confidence, U.S. manufacturing, construction spending and car sales.

"The market's lack of movement is due in part to the large number of economic releases coming out tomorrow," said Nelson.

Qualcomm Inc gained 4.6 percent to $66.43 as the top boost to the Nasdaq Composite after the world's leading supplier of chips for cellphones beat analysts' expectations for quarterly profit and revenue, and raised its targets for the year.

Facebook Inc lost 2.5 percent to $30.47, a day after the social network company said it doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter. However, growth trailed some of Wall Street's most aggressive estimates.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 34.71 points or 0.25 percent, to 13,875.71; the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 4.04 points or 0.27 percent, to 1,497.92 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 1.74 points or 0.06 percent, to 3,140.57.

The S&P 500 has advanced 5 percent in January after legislators in Washington temporarily sidestepped a "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that could have derailed the economic recovery, and in the wake of better-than-expected corporate earnings.

United Parcel Service Inc lost 2 percent to $79.63 after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that were below analysts' estimates on Thursday and forecasting weaker-than-expected profit for 2013.

Kirby Corp added 6.6 percent to $70.87 and Ryder Systems Inc climbed 2.9 percent to $55.81 after posting quarterly results.

Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning shows that of the 231 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 69.3 percent have exceeded expectations, a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 3.7 percent. That's above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season, but well below a 9.9 percent profit growth forecast on October 1, the data showed.

WMS Industries Inc surged 52.6 percent to $24.98 after the company agreed to be acquired by Scientific Games Corp for $26 per share in cash. Scientific Games jumped 11.9 percent to $9.99.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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