Father saw 'horrifying' accident injure son during opera rehearsal

Lyric actor injured in fire accident. (WGN - Chicago)

A fire-breathing stilt walker burned when flames flared up on his face during a dress rehearsal at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is expected to be released from the hospital Thursday, his father told the Chicago Tribune.

“It’s horrifying,” said Clifton Truman Daniel, 55, who was in the audience watching his son Wesley when the mishap occurred late Monday afternoon. “You don’t believe it. At first, everything’s fine. You’re proud of him. You’re amazed at what he’s learned to do, and suddenly he’s in trouble.”

The 24-year-old actor was taken in serious-to-critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital suffering burns to his throat and second-degree burns to his face, fire officials said. Initially, it was thought Daniel was not suffering breathing problems, but he apparently was and was transferred to Loyola University Medical Center in critical condition, officials said.

Doctors intubated Daniel as a precaution to help him breathe, his father said. But there was no damage to his lungs or airway and the tube was removed Monday night, according to his father.

"Doctors likened them to a severe sunburn and he will heal,” his father said of the burns. “He shouldn’t have any scarring.”

Clifton Daniel said he was happily sitting in the audience of the Lyric Opera, watching his son walk on stilts and spit fire out of his mouth.

He watched as Wesley Daniel picked up a torch and a little jar of fluid and blew two fire balls. Then suddenly his son’s mask was on fire and he started patting his neck and chest before walking across the stage toward stagehands who were carrying fire extinguishers.

Daniel said he ran to his son backstage, where he was being treated with compresses. Paramedics had already been called and his son was upbeat, even giving a thumbs-up, the father said.

Clifton Truman Daniel said he is the grandson of former President Harry S. Truman and Wesley Daniel is the president's great-grandson.

Wesley Daniel said his son graduated from Roosevelt University and has been acting for about three years. He was hired as a back-up for the opera “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg” in case someone called in sick or didn’t show up. Wesley Daniel stepped in when an actor was injured last week, his father said.

Tribune photographer Jason Wambsgans, who was at the rehearsal, said it appeared Daniel had spilled propellant "on his chin or his chest or something. It kind of consumed him, and he was staggering across the stage and then fell off his stilts on the opposite side of the stage.”

Wambsgans said he arrived at the rehearsal at the beginning of the third act to take pictures for an upcoming Tribune review of the opera “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.”

The first scene of the third act took about an hour. It was in the second scene when Wambsgans pulled out a long-angle lens to take pictures of the busy stage full of extras, in this case, circus performers. Daniel was one of them.

When it appeared that Daniel, on stilts, was ready to put some sort of propellant in his mouth to shoot fireballs, Wambsgans said he started snapping and captured the flames flaring up on Daniel.

Wambsgans said he saw people in the wings of the stage spraying Daniel with fire extinguishers. “Half of the extras were transfixed by that,” Wambsgans said.

It took about 15 more seconds before the rest of the extras stopped singing and acting, realizing what had happened, he said.

After a 30-minute break, a visibly distressed crew was back rehearsing, Wambsgans said. But the rehearsal was cut short, ending about 6 p.m.

Daniel was wearing a flame-proof costume and mask, a spokeswoman for the Lyric said in an email.  The dress rehearsal was interrupted, but it later resumed and was in the last act of “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg” by about 5:30 p.m.

Daniel was performing a stunt that had been approved by the Fire Department, according to the Lyric.

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Iran's Ahmadinejad kissed and scolded in Egypt

CAIRO (Reuters) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was both kissed and scolded on Tuesday when he began the first visit to Egypt by an Iranian president since Tehran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

The trip was meant to underline a thaw in relations since Egyptians elected an Islamist head of state, President Mohamed Mursi, last June. But it also highlighted deep theological and geopolitical differences.

Mursi, a member of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, kissed Ahmadinejad after he landed at Cairo airport and gave him a red carpet reception with military honors. Ahmadinejad beamed as he shook hands with waiting dignitaries.

But the Shi'ite Iranian leader received a stiff rebuke when he met Egypt's leading Sunni Muslim scholar later at Cairo's historic al-Azhar mosque and university.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the 1,000-year-old seat of religious learning, urged Iran to refrain from interfering in Gulf Arab states, to recognize Bahrain as a "sisterly Arab nation" and rejected the extension of Shi'ite Muslim influence in Sunni countries, a statement from al-Azhar said.

Visiting Cairo to attend an Islamic summit that begins on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad told a news conference he hoped his trip would be "a new starting point in relations between us".

However, a senior cleric from the Egyptian seminary, Hassan al-Shafai, who appeared alongside him, said the meeting had degenerated into an exchange of theological differences.

"There ensued some misunderstandings on certain issues that could have an effect on the cultural, political and social climate of both countries," Shafai said.

"The issues were such that the grand sheikh saw that the meeting ... did not serve the desired purpose."

The visit would have been unthinkable during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the military-backed autocrat who preserved Egypt's peace treaty with Israel during his 30 years in power and deepened ties between Cairo and the West.

"The political geography of the region will change if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question," Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based TV station, on the eve of his trip.

He said he wanted to visit the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory which neighbors Egypt to the east and is run by the Islamist movement Hamas. "If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people," Ahmadinejad said.

Analysts doubt that the historic changes that brought Mursi to power will result in a full restoration of diplomatic ties between states whose relations were broken off after the conclusion of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

OBSTACLES TO FULL TIES

At the airport the two leaders discussed ways of improving relations and resolving the Syrian crisis "without resorting to military intervention", Egyptian state media reported.

Egypt is concerned by Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to crush an uprising inspired by the revolt that swept Mubarak from power two years ago. Egypt's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population is broadly supportive of the uprising against Assad's Alawite-led administration.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr sought to reassure Gulf Arab allies - that are supporting Cairo's battered state finances and are deeply suspicious of Iran - that Egypt would not jeopardize their security.

"The security of the Gulf states is the security of Egypt," he said in remarks reported by the official MENA news agency.

Mursi wants to preserve ties with the United States, the source of $1.3 billion in aid each year to the influential Egyptian military.

"The restoration of full relations with Iran in this period is difficult, despite the warmth in ties ... because of many problems including the Syrian crisis and Cairo's links with the Gulf states, Israel and the United States," said one former Egyptian diplomat.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he was optimistic that ties could grow closer.

"We are gradually improving. We have to be a little bit patient. I'm very hopeful about the expansion of the bilateral relationship," he told Reuters. Asked where he saw room for closer ties, he said: "Trade and economics."

Egypt and Iran have taken opposite courses since the late 1970s. Egypt, under Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and became a close ally of the United States and Europe. Iran from 1979 turned into a center of opposition to Western influence in the Middle East.

Symbolically, Iran named a street in Tehran after the Islamist who led the 1981 assassination of Sadat.

Egypt gave asylum and a state funeral to Iran's exiled Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian revolution. He is buried in a mosque beside Cairo's mediaeval Citadel alongside his ex-brother-in-law, Egypt's last king, Farouk.

(Additional reporting by Ayman Samir, Marwa Awad and Alexander Diadosz; Writing by Paul Taylor and Tom Perry; Editing by Andrew Roche and Robin Pomeroy)

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Wall Street retreats, Nasdaq and S&P 500 off 1 percent

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks declined on Monday after a disappointing report on factory orders, retreating from gains in the prior session that left the S&P 500 at a five-year high and the Dow above 14,000.

Investors also grew wary on political uncertainty in the euro zone, leading to a sharp rise in Spanish government bond yields.

Chevron and Wal-Mart were among the biggest drags on the Dow after analyst downgrades.

"S&P technicals are at overbought levels, and risk off harbingers, such as Spanish 10-year yields, which are much more difficult for central bankers to tame, have bounced off recent lows," said Peter Cecchini, managing director at New York-based Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.

Spanish and Italian bond yields rose, renewing worries about the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis. Spain's prime minister faced calls to resign over a corruption scandal, while a probe of alleged misconduct involving an Italian bank were expected to widen three weeks before a national election.

The benchmark S&P 500 rose on Friday, leaving it roughly 60 points away from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, while the Dow's march above 14,000 was the highest for the index since October 2007.

The S&P index <.spx> is up 5.5 percent for the year, with nearly half of the gains coming after U.S. legislators sidestepped temporarily the "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts.

Data from the Commerce Department showed overall factory orders rose 1.8 percent during the month, below economists' expectations. The report said capital goods orders outside of the defense and aircraft industries, edged 0.3 percent lower in December. The category is seen as a gauge of U.S. business investment plans.

Economic data has pointed to a modest U.S. recovery, but the data has not been strong enough to upset investor expectations the Federal Reserve will continue its stimulus policy that has buoyed stocks.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 134.39 points, or 0.96 percent, to 13,875.40. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 15.16 points, or 1.00 percent, to 1,498.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> fell 39.32 points, or 1.24 percent, to 3,139.77.

Chevron Corp dipped 1.1 percent to $115.23 after UBS cut its rating to neutral, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc shed 1.7 percent to $69.26 after JP Morgan lowered its rating on the world's largest retailer and reduced its price target.

Oracle Corp lost 3 percent to $35.09 after the company agreed to buy network gear maker Acme Packet Inc for about $1.9 billion. Acme Packet shares surged 22.2 percent to $29.24.

Shares of household products company Clorox rose 1.8 percent to $80.53 after the company's quarterly profit beat analysts' estimates as a severe flu season boosted sales of disinfecting wipes.

Earnings are due from Anadarko Petroleum Corp and Yum! Brands Inc , owner of fast-food chains, after the closing bell.

According to Thomson Reuters data, of the 256 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings through Monday morning, 68.4 percent have reported earnings above analyst expectations compared with the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are expected to rise 4.4 percent, according to the data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings forecast on October 1.

Herbalife Ltd slumped 4.5 percent to $33.46 after The New York Post reported the seller of weight loss products is facing a probe by the Federal Trade Commission.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Goodell: New Orleans 'terrific,' despite blackout

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says New Orleans was a "terrific" Super Bowl host and that the Superdome power outage that delayed the game for 34 minutes will have no effect on the city's future bids to host the league's championship.

Goodell says, "The most important thing is to make sure people understand it was a fantastic week," and that it "will be remembered as one of the great Super Bowl weeks."

New Orleans has now hosted 10 Super Bowls. Officials have said they will bid to host an 11th in 2018 to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the city's founding.

Goodell says the outage is not of great concern going forward because it is "fixable," and the league will look forward to evaluating New Orleans' next Super Bowl bid.

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Oldest Spider Crabs Discovered in Fossil Reef

The remains of eight new species of crustaceans, including the oldest known spider crabs that lived 100 million years ago, have been uncovered in a fossil reef in northern Spain, scientists report.

The fossils were found in the abandoned Koskobilo quarry alongside other species of decapod crustaceans (a group that includes crabs, shrimp and lobsters). The two oldest-known spider crabs, named Cretamaja granulata and Koskobilius postangustus, are much older than the previous record holder, said study author Adiël Klompmaker, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.

“The previous oldest one was from France and is some millions of years younger,” Klompmaker told LiveScience, referring to the spider crabs. “So this discovery in Spain in quite impressive and pushes back the origin of spider crabs as known from fossils.”

C. granulatawas about 0.6 inches (15 millimeters) long and showed distinctive features to suggest it was a spider crab, including two diverging spines coming out of its rostrum (the extended portion of the carapace, or shell, in front of the eyes) and a somewhat pear-shaped carapace. The fossil spider crab also sported spines on its sides at the front of the body. [See Photos of the Ancient Spider Crabs]

The reef where they were found seems to have vanished shortly after these creatures lived. “Something must have happened in the environment that caused reefs in the area to vanish, and with it, probably many of the decapods that were living in these reefs,” Klompmaker said. “Not many decapods are known from the time after the reefs disappeared in the area,” added Klompmaker, who details the findings in a forthcoming issue of the journal Cretaceous Research.

With a team of researchers from the United States, the Netherlands and Spain, Klompmaker collected fossils in the Koskobilo quarry in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

“We went there in 2008, and in the first two hours found two new species,” Klompmaker said in a statement. “That’s quite amazing — it just doesn’t happen every day.”

With the new findings, some 36 decapod species are known to have existed at the abandoned quarry, making it one of the most diverse localities for decapods during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago), Klompmaker said.

The researchers also found there were more diverse ancient decapods living within the reefs — where they fed, mated and sought shelter — than in other parts of the ocean.

“One of the main results of this research is that decapod crustaceans are really abundant in reefs in the Cretaceous,” Klompmaker wrote in an email. “The presence of corals seemed to promote decapod biodiversity as early as 100 million years ago and may have served as nurseries for speciation.”

Last year, Klompmaker reported finding fossils of tiny lobsters huddled together in the seashell of an extinct mollusk known as an ammonoid. The “embracing” lobsters, found in a rock quarry in southern Germany, suggested these fearsome-looking crustaceans were sociable as long ago as 180 million years, when the little crustaceans lived.

“This is the oldest example of gregarious behavior for lobsters in the fossil record — and not just lobsters but the entire group of decapods, which includes lobsters, crabs and shrimp,” Klompmaker, who was at Kent State University, said at the time. “What this tells us is that this type of behavior of grouping together may have been very beneficial early on in the evolution of these crustaceans.”

Klompmaker was also part of a team that discovered a new hermit crab at the same quarry, naming it after Michael Jackson (Mesoparapylocheles michaeljacksoni), as it was found around the time the singer died.

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

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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$5 million bail in 'exceptionally brutal' Aurora murder

An Aurora man was ordered held on $5 million bail today for allegedly beating a young woman to death with a hammer and then torching her body and her car, a crime a prosecutor labeled “exceptionally brutal.”

Juan Garnica Jr., 18, of the 400 block of East Ashland Avenue, appeared briefly via video in Kane County bond court, his first court appearance since he was charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in the death of Abigail Villalpando, 18, of Aurora.

It was the first homicide in Aurora since 2011, more than 400 days ago, according to city spokesman Dan Ferrelli.

Two other men have been charged with concealing the homicide.

Judge Christine Downs set bail for one of the men, Enrique Prado, 19, of Aurora, at $100,000. Assistant State’s Attorney Bill Engerman told the judge that police have no evidence that Prado, who also faces arson charges, participated in the murder of Villalpando. Prado has also been cooperative with police since his arrest, the prosecutor said.

A third man, 20-year-old Jose Becerra, did not appear in court this morning. He may appear this afternoon on his charge of concealment of a homicidal death.

Villalpando’s body, which was so badly burned that it had to be identified through dental records, was discovered in a wooded area near Montgomery Sunday morning, about two days after her car was found engulfed in flames under a bridge in Aurora.

Police said the victim met Prado and Garnica Thursday at Prado’s home, and that Garnica hit Villalpando in the head several times with a hammer after Prado left the room. Engerman declined to disclose why VIllalpando went to the house, but police did say she knew Garnica and Prado.

Police have not disclosed a motive for the attack.

Sometime Thursday night , Garnica allegedly drove the victim’s car to the High Street bridge over the railroad tracks on the city’s near east side an left it there. Villalpando’s body was concealed in a container in Prado’s garage, police said.

On Friday, Garnica and Prado bought a can of gas, which Garncia used to torch Villalpando’s 2003 Nissan Altima. Garnica then allegedly burned the victim’s body in a barrel in the backyard at Prado’s house. He then enlisted Becerra to help dump the body, police said.

Villalpando’s family reported her missing about 2:30 a.m. Friday, after she failed to show up at her waitress job at a  Denny’s at the Fox Valley Center shopping center. A restaurant employee called the family around 5 p.m. Thursday to report that she had not showed up for work.

Engerman said Garnica has a 2011 arrest for a stolen car, a charge that was later reduced to criminal trespass to a vehicle.

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Syrian opposition chief says offers Assad peaceful exit

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib urged President Bashar al-Assad on Monday to respond to his initiative for dialogue, saying it was aimed at ending the bloodshed and helping "the regime leave peacefully".

Speaking after meeting senior Russian, U.S. and Iranian officials at the weekend, Alkahtib said none of them had a plan to end the civil war and Syrians must find their own resolution.

"The big powers have no vision ... Only the Syrian people can decide on the solution," the Syrian National Coalition leader told Al Jazeera Television.

The moderate Islamist preacher announced last week he was prepared to talk to Assad's representatives. Although he set several conditions, the move broke a taboo on contacts with authorities and dismayed many in opposition ranks who insist on Assad's departure as a precondition for negotiation.

Alkhatib said it was not "treachery" to seek dialogue to end a conflict in which more than 60,000 people have been killed, 700,000 have been driven from their country and millions more are homeless and hungry.

"The regime must take a clear stand (on dialogue) and we say we will extend our hand for the interest of people and to help the regime leave peacefully," he told the Qatar-based channel. "It is now in the hands of the regime."

Assad announced last month what he said were plans for reconciliation talks to end the violence but - in a speech described by U.N. Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi as narrow and uncompromising - he said there would be no dialogue with people he called traitors or "puppets made by the West".

Syria's uprising erupted 22 months ago with largely peaceful protests, escalating into a civil war that pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad, who is from Syria's Alawite minority and whose family has ruled Syria for 42 years.

POWERS DIVIDED

The violence has divided major powers, with Russia and China blocking U.N. Security Council draft resolutions backed by the United States, European Union and Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states that could have led to U.N. sanctions on Assad. Shi'ite Iran has remained his strongest regional backer.

Alkhatib said that the international deadlock meant that only Syrians could stave off further humanitarian disaster.

"We will find a solution, there are many keys," he said. "If the regime wants to solve (the crisis), it can take part in it. If it wants to get out and get the people out of this crisis, we will all work together for the interest of the people and the departure of the regime."

One proposal under discussion was the formation of a transitional government, Alkhatib said, without specifying how he thought it could come about. World powers agreed a similar formula seven months ago but then disagreed over whether that could allow Assad to stay on as head of state.

Activists reported clashes between the army and rebel fighters to the east of Damascus on Monday and heavy shelling of rebel-held areas of the central city of Homs. The Jobar neighborhood, on the southwestern edge of Homs, was hit by more than 100 rockets on Monday morning, one activist said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 180 people had been killed across the country on Sunday, including 114 rebel fighters and soldiers. Sunday's death toll also included 28 people killed in the bombardment of a building in the Ansari district of the northern city of Aleppo.

Assad has described the rebel fighters as foreign-backed Islamist terrorists and said a precondition for any solution is that Turkey and Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab states stop funding, sheltering and arming his foes.

Rebels and activists say Iran and the Lebanese Shi'ite military group Hezbollah have sent fighters to reinforce Assad's army - a charge that both deny.

ECONOMIC SUPPORT

"The army of Syria is big enough, they do not need fighters from outside," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in Berlin on Monday.

"We are giving them economic support, we are sending gasoline, we are sending wheat. We are trying to send electricity to them through Iraq, we have not been successful."

Another Iranian official, speaking in Damascus after talks with Assad, said on Monday that Israel would regret an air strike against Syria last week, without spelling out whether Iran or its ally planned a military response.

"They will regret this recent aggression," said Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

Salehi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden all met Alkhatib in Munich at the weekend and portrayed his willingness to talk with Syrian authorities as a major step towards resolving the war.

But Alkhatib is under pressure from other members of the exiled leadership in Cairo for saying he would be willing to talk to Assad, albeit on condition that Assad releases 160,000 prisoners and issues passports to the tens of thousands who have fled to neighboring countries without travel documents.

Walid al-Bunni, a member of the Coalition's 12-member politburo, dismissed Alkhatib's meeting with Salehi.

"It was unsuccessful. The Iranians are unprepared to do anything that could help the causes of the Syrian Revolution," Bunni, a former political prisoner, told Reuters from Budapest.

Bunni said the Coalition was preparing a meeting of all its 70 members in Cairo to hear from Alkhatib about his diplomatic moves.

Alkhatib, whose family are custodians of the Umayyad Mosque in the historic centre of Damascus, is seen as a bulwark against the radical Islamist Salafist forces who wield heavy influence in the armed opposition.

(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai and Stephen Brown in Berlin; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights.

That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January.

Late-stage bull markets are typically marked by an influx of small investors coming late to the party - such as when your waiter starts giving you stock tips. For that to happen you need a good story. The "great rotation," with its monumental tone, is the perfect narrative to make you feel like you're missing out.

Even if something approaching a "great rotation" has begun, it is not necessarily bullish for markets. Those who think they are coming early to the party may actually be arriving late.

Investors pumped $20.7 billion into stocks in the first four weeks of the year, the strongest four-week run since April 2000, according to Lipper. But that pales in comparison with the $410 billion yanked from those funds since the start of 2008.

"I'm not sure you want to take a couple of weeks and extrapolate it into whatever trend you want," said Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup. "We have had instances where equity flows have picked up in the last two, three, four years when markets have picked up. They've generally not been signals of a continuation of that trend."

The S&P 500 rose 5 percent in January, its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997, driving speculation that retail investors were flooding back into the stock market.

Heading into another busy week of earnings, the equity market is knocking on the door of all-time highs due to positive sentiment in stocks, and that can't be ignored entirely. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> ended the week about 4 percent from an all-time high touched in October 2007.

Next week will bring results from insurers Allstate and The Hartford , as well as from Walt Disney , Coca-Cola Enterprises and Visa .

But a comparison of flows in January, a seasonal strong month for the stock market, shows that this January, while strong, is not that unusual. In January 2011 investors moved $23.9 billion into stock funds and $28.6 billion in 2006, but neither foreshadowed massive inflows the rest of that year. Furthermore, in 2006 the market gained more than 13 percent while in 2011 it was flat.

Strong inflows in January can happen for a number of reasons. There were a lot of special dividends issued in December that need reinvesting, and some of the funds raised in December tax-selling also find their way back into the market.

During the height of the tech bubble in 2000, when retail investors were really embracing stocks, a staggering $42.7 billion flowed into equities in January of that year, double the amount that flowed in this January. That didn't end well, as stocks peaked in March of that year before dropping over the next two-plus years.

MOM AND POP STILL WARY

Arguing against a 'great rotation' is not necessarily a bearish argument against stocks. The stock market has done well since the crisis. Despite the huge outflows, the S&P 500 has risen more than 120 percent since March 2009 on a slowly improving economy and corporate earnings.

This earnings season, a majority of S&P 500 companies are beating earnings forecast. That's also the case for revenue, which is a departure from the previous two reporting periods where less than 50 percent of companies beat revenue expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Meanwhile, those on the front lines say mom and pop investors are still wary of equities after the financial crisis.

"A lot of people I talk to are very reluctant to make an emotional commitment to the stock market and regardless of income activity in January, I think that's still the case," said David Joy, chief market strategist at Columbia Management Advisors in Boston, where he helps oversee $571 billion.

Joy, speaking from a conference in Phoenix, says most of the people asking him about the "great rotation" are fund management industry insiders who are interested in the extra business a flood of stock investors would bring.

He also pointed out that flows into bond funds were positive in the month of January, hardly an indication of a rotation.

Citi's Levkovich also argues that bond investors are unlikely to give up a 30-year rally in bonds so quickly. He said stocks only began to see consistent outflows 26 months after the tech bubble burst in March 2000. By that reading it could be another year before a serious rotation begins.

On top of that, substantial flows continue to make their way into bonds, even if it isn't low-yielding government debt. January 2013 was the second best January on record for the issuance of U.S. high-grade debt, with $111.725 billion issued during the month, according to International Finance Review.

Bill Gross, who runs the $285 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, commented on Twitter on Thursday that "January flows at Pimco show few signs of bond/stock rotation," adding that cash and money markets may be the source of inflows into stocks.

Indeed, the evidence suggests some of the money that went into stock funds in January came from money markets after a period in December when investors, worried about the budget uncertainty in Washington, started parking money in late 2012.

Data from iMoneyNet shows investors placed $123 billion in money market funds in the last two months of the year. In two weeks in January investors withdrew $31.45 billion of that, the most since March 2012. But later in the month money actually started flowing back.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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What comes now for NFL after tumultuous season?

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Super Bowl closes a tumultuous year for the NFL.

Suicides by former NFL players. Thousands of others filing concussion lawsuits. New studies linking football to brain disease. Still no testing for human growth hormone. The specter of other purported performance-enhancing products — deer-antler spray, anyone? — being peddled to players.

A pay-for-pain bounty scandal. A lockout of officials resolved only after a ludicrous game-ending call. Zero minority hires for 15 coach or general manager openings.

And yet the league is as popular as ever.

Advertisers paid nearly $4 million per 30-second television commercial for the right to reach the 100 million or so Americans expected to tune in to Sunday's Super Bowl between the AFC champion Baltimore Ravens and NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. Eleven of the 12 most-watched TV programs during the last 2½ years were NFL postseason games, according to the league.

Uncertain, though, is what the future holds for an NFL still coming to grips with the dangers of a brutal sport that makes it tremendously wealthy.

"The game has changed and keeps changing. ... It is such a violent game, and such a collision game, that careers are going to be kind of like not long at all. Because you take those licks — you've only got so many in your body, and at some point that's going to wear it out," said Ravens running backs coach Wilbert Montgomery, who played that position for the Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions from 1977-85.

Montgomery said he got six concussions in one season alone, and others along the way, including one that knocked him out cold a few days before playing for the Eagles in the NFC title game at the end of the 1980 season.

"I know one thing: Back then, it didn't make any difference. They gave you smelling salts and then, after that, you went back in," Montgomery said. "I have headaches all the time. That's why I say my wife is always messing with me when I have outbursts, saying, 'You've been hit too many times upside the head.'"

Montgomery laughed for a moment. Then he rubbed his forehead and continued talking, mentioning former teammate and friend Andre Waters and opponent Dave Duerson. Both committed suicide; researchers studied their brain tissue and found signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative disease also found in boxers and often linked with repeated blows to the head. Former star linebacker Junior Seau, who shot himself in May, also was found to have CTE. Baltimore's starting center on Sunday, Matt Birk, has pledged to donate his brain for study when he dies.

"It's a serious thing," Montgomery said. "It's scary."

When the President of the United States refers to fans perhaps having a guilty conscience when watching a game and parents thinking twice before allowing a child to play — as Barack Obama did in a recent interview with The New Republic — it sends a strong signal about what confronts the NFL today.

"If I was worried about my health," 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick said, "I wouldn't be playing football."

So the league must figure out how to deal with "walking a fine line," as 49ers CEO Jed York described it: The two-sided task of making the game safer, which Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledges is imperative, while not making it "too safe," thereby diminishing the popularity of an enterprise that is violent by its very nature.

"There's no question that that is a bit of a conundrum. But to me, we've got to place more weight on player safety," New York Giants co-owner John Mara said. "The rules changes that we've implemented over the past five or six years have not made the game any less exciting. If anything, the game is as exciting as ever, and I strongly believe that we can make additional improvements in the rules and we're not going to lose anything in terms of excitement on the field."

Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti is convinced the NFL will strike the proper balance.

"What did they do for boxing when they made them go from 6-ounce, to 8-ounce to 12-ounce gloves or whatever? Did it change boxing? Not really," Bisciotti said. "I believe that with every change, there will be a correction. ... And I believe that we as a league and the (players' union) will agree on things that don't take football out of football."

In a series of moves that began shortly after Goodell was grilled at a congressional hearing, the league has changed concussion return-to-play guidelines, adjusted rules for kickoffs — and floated the idea of eliminating them altogether — stepped up punishment of illegal hits, and stopped arguing against the players' wish for independent neurology specialists on the sidelines during games.

Even if there are some players who in one breath worry about whether their health is imperiled, and in the next say, "We're basically going to be playing two-hand touch in a while" — Baltimore nose tackle Terrence Cody's words this week — the head of their union points out that prudence and popularity do not have to be mutually exclusive.

"The reality of it is, 'football as we know it' has evolved over decades. ... Our job is to have an unqualified commitment to the health and safety of the people who play the game, and then to make those changes where we see necessary," NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith said.

"I don't think there is this thing of 'football as we know it.' What we have is football that has constantly developed," Smith said. "And even with all of the (recent) rule changes ... my guess is this Super Bowl will be the highest-rated of all time."

Indeed, while the concussion lawsuits mount — a U.S. District Court judge in Philadelphia will hear oral arguments in April on the NFL's effort to dismiss a group of cases — and questions arise about what insurers will charge the league moving forward, the money does keep rolling in. Revenues already topped $9 billion at the time of the last labor deal in 2011, and new TV contracts will only help increase it.

"At $10-to-$12 billion? It ain't going nowhere," said Warren Sapp, a retired defensive tackle elected Saturday to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and who now works for the NFL Network, another piece of the league's marketing machine. "We play a beautiful game. We hit each other. (Players) have to take care of each other better. Then it will be fine."

Meantime, the NFL continues to look for new ways to increase its cash flow.

During his state of the league address two days before the Super Bowl, Goodell did not rule out increasing the regular season from 16 to 18 games, and he reiterated the possibility of expanding the postseason, too. He announced that two 2013 games in London already are sold out, and there could be three in future seasons — down a path that, eventually, could lead to a franchise based in Britain.

"For you to be adding games to the season, are you looking out for player safety? Or are you trying to generate more player revenue?" 49ers receiver Randy Moss said. "If you're trying to look and protect the players, and keep it healthier and better every year, I don't think it's a good idea."

Several players in this year's Super Bowl were incredulous that the league would even consider more games. A handful voiced concern over a disconnect between players and owners.

The president of the NFLPA, former Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth, said he wonders how truthful Goodell and other NFL officials are being when they say — as they often do — that players' well-being is a priority.

"The league, their No. 1 focus — at least they say their No. 1 focus — is health and safety. And we say our No. 1 focus is health and safety. How come we have such a hard time moving the ball on some health and safety issues?" Foxworth said. "I believe health and safety is on their list of top five things, but it comes in well behind increasing the bottom line."

___

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

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Exxon’s 2012 profit of $44.9B just misses record

Exxon Mobil Corp. nearly set a record for annual profit. The oil giant reported Friday that 2012 net income was $ 44.88 billion, just $ 340 million — less than 1 percent — short of the company’s record set in 2008, when crude oil prices hit an all-time high. Exxon‘s profit for the last 10 years totals $ 343.4 billion.

— $ 44.88 billion in 2012

— $ 41.06 billion in 2011

— $ 30.46 billion in 2010

— $ 19.28 billion in 2009

— $ 45.22 billion in 2008

— $ 40.61 billion in 2007

— $ 39.50 billion in 2006

— $ 36.13 billion in 2005

— $ 25.33 billion in 2004

— $ 20.96 billion in 2003

Source: Exxon Mobil annual reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

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