Khamenei rebuffs U.S. offer of direct talks


DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's highest authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday slapped down an offer of direct talks made by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden this week, saying they would not solve the problem between them.


"Some naive people like the idea of negotiating with America, however, negotiations will not solve the problem," Khamenei said in a speech to officials and members of Iran's air force carried on his official website.


"If some people want American rule to be established again in Iran, the nation will rise up to face them," he said.


"American policy in the Middle East has been destroyed and Americans now need to play a new card. That card is dragging Iran into negotiations."


Khamenei made his comments just days after Joe Biden said the United States was prepared to meet bilaterally with the Iranian leadership. "That offer stands but it must be real and tangible," Biden said in a speech in Munich.


With traditional fiery rhetoric, Khamenei lambasted Biden's offer, saying that since the 1979 revolution the United States had gravely insulted Iran and continued to do so with its threat of military action.


"You take up arms against the nation of Iran and say: 'negotiate or we fire'. But you should know that pressure and negotiations are not compatible and our nation will not be intimidated by these actions," he added.


Relations between Iran and the United States were severed in 1979 after the overthrow of Iran's pro-western monarchy and diplomatic meetings between officials have since been very rare.


ALL OPTIONS STILL "ON THE TABLE"


Currently U.S.-Iran contact is limited to talks between Tehran and a so-called P5+1 group of powers on Iran's disputed nuclear program which are to resume on February 26 in Kazakhstan.


Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said he was skeptical the negotiations in Almaty could yield a result, telling Israel Radio that the United States needed to demonstrate to Iran that "all options were still on the table".


Israel, widely recognized to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has warned it could mount a pre-emptive strike on Iranian atomic sites. Israel sees its existence as directly threatened by the prospect of an nuclear-armed Iran, given Tehran's refusal to recognize the existence of the Jewish state.


"The final option, this is the phrasing we have used, should remain in place and be serious," said Meridor.


"The fact that the Iranians have not yet come down from the path they are on means that talks ...are liable to bring about only a stalling for time," he said.


Iran maintains its nuclear program is entirely peaceful but Western powers are concerned it is intent on developing a weapons program.


Many believe a deal on settling the nuclear issue is impossible without a U.S.-Iranian thaw. But any rapprochement would require direct talks addressing many sources of mutual mistrust that have lingered since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent U.S. embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.


Moreover, although his re-election last November may give President Barack Obama a freer hand to pursue direct negotiations, analysts say Iran's own presidential election in June may prove an additional obstacle to progress being made.


(Additional reporting by Dan Williams; Editing by William Maclean and Jon Boyle)



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Wall Street stymied as investors lack catalysts to trade

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were little changed on Wednesday as investors, without any major economic reports to guide them, awaited fresh incentives to trade after rallies took the S&P 500 to five-year highs.


Transportation stocks were among the worst performers, weighed down by a 10 percent drop in CH Robinson Worldwide to $60.40 after the freight transport company posted a lower-than-expected adjusted quarterly profit.


The Dow Jones Transportation index <.djt> shed 0.3 percent after closing at a record high Tuesday for a gain of more than 10 percent in 2013.


The benchmark S&P 500 index has advanced 6 percent this year, climbing to its highest since December 2007. The Dow industrials <.dji> have risen above 14,000 recently, making it a challenge for investors to push stocks higher in the absence of strong positive catalysts.


"Overall, we believe that the next near-term market dip should provide an opportunity to buy stocks ahead of rallies higher in the coming months, but we are skeptical about the long-term sustainability of these gains due to the maturing age of the bull market," said Ari Wald, equity research analyst at C&Co\PrinceRidge in New York.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 5.28 points, or 0.04 percent, at 13,984.58. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.56 point, or 0.04 percent, at 1,511.85. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 1.67 points, or 0.05 percent, at 3,173.25.


The tech-heavy Nasdaq index was supported by Apple Inc , which rose 1.1 percent to $462.62.


Walt Disney Co was among the bright spots, up 1.1 percent at $60.31, after the company beat estimates for quarterly adjusted earnings and gave an optimistic outlook for the next few quarters.


According to Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday morning, of 301 companies in the S&P 500 <.spx> that have reported earnings, 68.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters. In terms of revenue, 65.8 percent of companies have topped forecasts.


Looking ahead, fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to grow 4.7 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


The benchmark S&P index rose 1.04 percent Tuesday, its biggest percentage gain since a 2.5-percent advance on January 2 after lawmakers agreed on a temporary delay of the "fiscal cliff."


Ralph Lauren Corp climbed 8 percent to $178.15 as the best performer on the S&P 500 after reporting renewed momentum in its holiday-quarter sales and profits.


Time Warner Inc jumped 4.4 percent to $52.15 after reporting higher fourth-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates, as growth in its cable networks offset declines in its film, TV entertainment and publishing units.


Visa , the world's largest credit and debit card network, is expected to report earnings per share of $1.79 for its first quarter, up from $1.49 a year earlier. Smaller rival MasterCard MA.N recently reported better-than-expected results but said its revenue growth could slow in the first half of the year due to economic uncertainty.


(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Kenneth Barry)



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Should we still fear al Qaeda?














































































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STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • Peter Bergen: U.K. politicians called North Africa terror an existential threat

  • Bergen says core al Qaeda has been greatly weakened, hasn't mounted serious operations

  • Terror groups loosely affiliated with al Qaeda have also lost ground, he says

  • Bergen: Jihadist violence does continue, but it does no good to overstate threat




Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad", and a director at the New America Foundation.


Washington (CNN) -- The attack in January on a gas facility in Algeria by an al Qaeda-linked group that resulted in at least 37 dead hostages has sparked an outpouring of dire warnings from leading Western politicians.


British Prime Minister David Cameron described a "large and existential threat" emanating from North Africa. Tony Blair, his predecessor as prime minister, agreed saying, "David Cameron is right to warn that this is a battle for our values and way of life which will take years, even decades."


Hang on chaps! Before we all get our knickers in a tremendous twist: How exactly does an attack on an undefended gas facility in the remotest depths of the Algerian desert become an "existential threat" to our "way of life"?


Across the Atlantic, American politicians also got into sky-is-falling mode. Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, fulminated, "This is going to get worse. You cannot allow this to become a national security issue for the United States. And I argue it's already crossed that threshold."



Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen



Previous real U.S. national security threats and their manifestations include 9/11, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (from the potential use of nuclear weapons) with the Soviets, Pearl Harbor and Hitler's armies taking over much of Europe.


A ragtag group of jihadists roaming the North African deserts is orders of magnitude less significant than those genuine threats to the West and is more comparable to the threats posed by the bands of pirates who continue to harass shipping off the coast of Somalia. They are surely a problem, but a localized and containable one.


Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics and also feed the self-image of these terrorists who aspire to attack the West, but don't have the capacity to do so. Terrorism doesn't work if folks aren't terrorized.


North African group hasn't attacked in the West



Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics...
Peter Bergen



Much has been written, for instance, in recent weeks about al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda's North African affiliate, a splinter group of which carried out the attack on the Algerian gas facility. But according to Camille Tawil, who has authoritatively covered Islamist militant groups over the past two decades for the leading Arabic daily Al-Hayat and has written three books about al Qaeda, AQIM doesn't threaten the West: "To my knowledge no known attacks or aborted attacks in the West have been linked directly to AQIM."


AQIM was formed seven years ago so the group has had more than enough time to plot and carry out an attack in the West. By way of comparison, it took two years of serious plotting for al Qaeda to plan the 9/11 attacks.


So, what is the real level of threat now posed by al Qaeda and allied groups?


Let's start with "core al Qaeda" which attacked the United States on 9/11 and that is headquartered in Pakistan. This group hasn't, of course, been able to pull off an attack in the United States in twelve years. Nor has it been able to mount an attack anywhere in the West since the attacks on London's transportation system eight years ago.


Core al Qaeda on way to extinction


Osama bin Laden, the group's founder and charismatic leader, was buried at sea a year and half ago and despite concerns that his "martyrdom" would provoke a rash of attacks in the West or against Western interests in the Muslim world there has instead been.... nothing.


Meanwhile, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan during President Obama's tenure alone have killed 38 of al Qaeda's leaders in Pakistan, according to a count by the New America Foundation.








Those drone strikes were so effective that shortly before bin Laden died he was contemplating ordering what remained of al Qaeda to move to Kunar Province in the remote, heavily forested mountains of eastern Afghanistan, according to documents that were discovered following the SEAL assault on the compound where bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan.


Core al Qaeda is going the way of the dodo.


Affiliates are no better off


And a number of the affiliates of core al Qaeda are in just as bad shape as the mother ship.


Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the virulent Southeast Asian al Qaeda affiliate that killed hundreds in the years after 9/11 is largely out of business. Why so? JI killed mostly Westerners in its first attacks on the tourist island of Bali in 2002, but the subsequent Bali attack three years later killed mostly Indonesians. So too did JI's attacks on the Marriott hotel in the capital Jakarta in 2003 and the Australian embassy in 2004. As a result, JI lost any shred of popular support it had once enjoyed.


At the same time the Indonesian government, which at one point had denied that JI even existed, mounted a sophisticated campaign to dismantle the group, capturing many of its leaders and putting them on trial.


In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group, a number of whose leaders had trained in Afghanistan in al Qaeda's camps, and which specialized in kidnapping Westerners in the years after 9/11, was effectively dismantled by the Philippine army working in tandem with a small contingent of U.S. Special Operations Forces.


In Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban in 2009 took over the once-tranquil mountainous vacation destination of Swat, and destroyed some 180 schools and beheaded 70 policemen there. Suddenly, they were only 70 miles from the capital Islamabad and some warned that the Pakistani state was in danger. Today, the Pakistani Taliban have been rolled back to their bases along the Afghan border and 16 of their leaders have been killed by CIA drones since President Obama took office.


Al Qaeda militants based in Saudi Arabia mounted a terrorist campaign beginning in 2003 that killed dozens of Saudis, and they also attacked a number of the oil workers and oil facilities that lie at the heart of the Saudi economy. This prompted the Saudi government to mount such an effective crackdown that the few remaining al Qaeda leaders who were not killed or captured have in recent years fled south to Yemen where the remnants of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are now based.


From its new headquarters in Yemen AQAP has made serious efforts to attack the United States, sending the "underwear bomber" to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and also smuggling bombs on to U.S.-bound cargo shipments in October 2010.


None of these attempts were successful.


Yemen militants decimated


As a result of the threat posed by AQAP, the United States has mounted a devastating campaign against the group over the past three years. There was one American drone strike in Yemen in 2009. In 2012 there were 46. That drone campaign has killed 28 prominent members of the group, according to a count by the New America Foundation. Among them was the No. 2 in AQAP, Said al-Shihri, who was confirmed to be dead last week.


In the chaos of the multiple civil wars that gripped Yemen in 2011, AQAP seized a number of towns in southern Yemen. But AQAP has now been pushed out of those towns because of effective joint operations between U.S. Special Operations Forces, the CIA and the Yemeni government.


The Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, even went to the United Nations General Assembly in September where he publicly endorsed the use of CIA drones in his country, something of a first.


A couple of years ago, al Qaeda's Somali affiliate, Al- Shabaab ("the youth" in Arabic) controlled much of southern Somalia including key cities such as the capital Mogadishu.


Once in a position of power, Shaabab inflicted Taliban-like rule on a reluctant Somali population, which eroded its popular legitimacy. Shabaab was also the target of effective military operations by the military of neighboring Kenya, troops of the African Union and U.S. Special Operation Forces.


As a result, today the group controls only some rural areas and for the first time in two decades the United States has formally recognized a Somali government.


Mali conflict shows weakness of jihadist militant groups


Similarly, groups with an al Qaeda-like agenda captured most of northern Mali last year, a vast desert region the size of France. Once in power they imposed Taliban-like strictures on the population, banning smoking and music and enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law with the amputation of hands. The militants also destroyed tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on the grounds that the tombs promoted "idol worship."


None of these measures endeared the jihadist militants to the population of Mali. In the past weeks, as a relatively small force of some 2,000 French soldiers has rolled through Mali putting the militants on the run, the French have been cheered on by dancing and singing Malians.


When French soldiers are greeted as an army of liberation in an area of the world that in the past century was part of a vast French empire, you can get a sense of how much the jihadist militants had alienated the locals.


Last week the French military took the city of Timbuktu. The defeat of the al Qaeda-linked groups as effective insurgent forces in Mali is now almost complete.


What has just happened in Mali gets to the central problem that jihadist militant groups invariably have. Wherever they begin to control territory and population they create self-styled Islamic "emirates" where they then rule like the Taliban.


Over time this doesn't go down too well with the locals, who usually practice a far less austere version of Islam, and they eventually rise up against the militants, or, if they are too weak to do so themselves, they will cheer on an outside intervention to turf out the militants.


The classical example of this happened in Iraq where al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) controlled Anbar Province, about a third of the country in 2006. AQI cadres ruled with an iron fist and imposed their ultrafundamentalist rule on their fellow Sunnis, who they killed if they felt they were deviating from their supposedly purist Islamic precepts.


This provoked the "Sunni Awakening" of Iraqi tribes that rose up against AQI. These tribes then allied with the U.S. military and by the end of 2007 AQI went from an insurgent group that controlled vast territories to a terrorist group that controlled little but was still able to pull off occasional spectacular terrorist attacks in Baghdad.


Jihadist violence still a threat


The collapse of core al Qaeda and a number of its key affiliates does not, of course, mean that jihadist violence is over. Such religiously motivated mayhem has been a feature of the Muslim world for many centuries. Recall the Assassins, a Shia sect that from its base in what is now Iran dispatched cutthroats armed with daggers to kill its enemies around the Middle East during the 12th and 13th centuries. In so doing the sect gave the world the useful noun "assassin."


And so while core al Qaeda and several of its affiliates and like-minded groups are in terrible shape, there are certainly groups with links to al Qaeda or animated by its ideology that are today enjoying something of a resurgence.


Most of these groups do not call themselves al Qaeda, which is a smart tactic, as even bin Laden himself was advising his Somali affiliate, Al Shabaab, not to use the al Qaeda name as it would turn off fundraisers because the shine had long gone off the al Qaeda brand, according to documents recovered at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.


One such militant group is the Nigerian Boko Haram, which bombed the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria in 2011 and has also attacked a wide range of Christian targets in the country. However, the group has shown "no capability to attack the West and also has no known members outside of West Africa," according to Virginia Comolli of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies who tracks the group.



Ansar al-Sharia, "Supporters of Sharia," is the name taken by the militant group in Libya that carried out the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September in which four Americans were killed. Similarly, in Yemen militants that are aligned with al Qaeda have labeled themselves Ansar al-Sharia.


But this new branding hasn't done the militants much good in either country. In Libya, shortly after the attack on the U.S. consulate, an enraged mob stormed and took over Ansar al Sharia's headquarters in Benghazi. And, as we have seen, in Yemen the jihadists have now been forced out of the towns in the south that they had once held.


One strong foothold in Syria


The one country where jihadist militants have a serious foothold and are likely to play an important role for some period in the future is in Syria. That is because of a perfect storm there that favors them. The Sunni militants in Syria are fighting the regime of Bashir al Assad, a secular dictator who is also an Alawite, which many Muslims believe to be a heretical branch of Shiism.


For the jihadists, Assad's secularism makes him an apostate and his Alawi roots also make him a heretic, while his brutal tactics make him an international pariah. This trifecta makes funding the Sunni insurgency highly attractive for donors in the Gulf.


And for the Arabs who form the heart of al Qaeda the fight against Assad is in the heart of the Arab world, a contest that happens to border also on the hated state of Israel. Also Syria was for much of the past decade the entry point for many hundreds of foreign fighters who poured into Iraq to join Al Qaeda in Iraq following the American invasion of the country. As a result, al Qaeda has long had an infrastructure both in Syria and, of course, in neighboring Iraq.


The Al Nusra Front is the name of arguably the most effective fighting force in Syria. In December the State Department publicly said that Al Nusra, which is estimated to number in the low thousands and about 10% of the fighters arrayed against Assad, was a front for Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).


Al Nusra certainly seems to have learned from AQI's mistakes. For starters, it doesn't call itself al Qaeda. Secondly, it hasn't launched a campaign to crack down on social issues such as smoking or listening to music and so has not alienated the local Sunni population as AQI did in Iraq.


Barak Barfi, a journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation who has spent several months on the ground in Aleppo in northwestern Syria reporting on the opposition to Assad, says Nusra fighters stand out for their bravery and discipline: "They are winning over the hearts and minds of Aleppo residents who see them as straight shooters. There is a regimented recruiting process that weeds out the chaff. Their bases are highly organized with each person given specific responsibilities."


Arab Spring countries seen as an opportunity


The chaotic conditions of several of the countries of the "Arab Spring" are certainly something al Qaeda views as an opportunity. Ayman al-Zawahiri the leader of the group, has issued 27 audio and video statements since the death of bin Laden, 10 of which have focused on the Arab countries that have experienced the revolutions of the past two years.


But if history is a guide, the jihadist militants, whether in Syria or elsewhere, are likely to repeat the mistakes and failures that their fellow militants have experienced during the past decade in countries as disparate as Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and now, Mali.


That's because encoded in the DNA of al Qaeda and like-minded groups are the seeds of their own destruction because in power they rule like the Taliban, and they also attack fellow Muslims who don't follow their dictates to the letter. This doesn't mesh very well with these organizations' claims that they are the defenders of Muslims.


These groups also have no real plans for the multiple political and economic problems that beset much of the Islamic world. And they won't engage in normal politics such as elections believing them to be "un-Islamic."


This is invariably a recipe for irrelevance or defeat. In not one nation in the Muslim world since 9/11 has a jihadist militant group seized control of a country. And al Qaeda and its allies' record of effective attacks in the West has been non-existent since 2005.


With threats like these we can all sleep soundly at night.


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License number leads cops to salon robbery suspect









The Evanston man charged with robbing nearly a dozen hair salons in Chicago, Skokie, Morton Grove, Broadview and Niles was apprehended seven hours after the last reported robbery, when a witness provided a partial license plate to authorities, police said today.

Jason Logsdon, 41, of the 900 block of Chicago Avenue in Evanston, is charged with 11 counts of felony armed robbery, according to the Cook County state's attorney's office.

“Everyone had a common goal, to get an offender off the street that was terrorizing small business owners,” said Tom Byrne, chief of detectives for the Chicago Police Department, during the news conference in Skokie.

Logsdon was taken into custody Monday in Skokie, hours after a robbery on the North Side, authorities said. He is suspected of robbing hair salons that include one in Broadview; five in Chicago; one in Morton Grove; two in Niles; and two in Skokie, authorities said.

Skokie police found that they had stopped Logsdon for two minor traffic violations within the past year, before the string of robberies occurred.

The DuPage County State’s Attorney’s office is pursuing additional charges against Logsdon in connection for two robberies in Lombard, one in Glen Ellyn and one in Bensenville, officials said.

The Cook County charges were filed after witnesses viewed line-ups at the Skokie police station, authorities said. Officials declined to discuss the type of weapon used, but said that his motive at least initially was financial.

A pattern of robberies began emerging in late December, said Brian Baker, commander in charge of the investigative division in Skokie, said Brian Baker, Skokie’s commander in charge of the investigative division.

Logsdon was arrested after a salon in the Wicker Park neighborhood was hit. A man stole about $250 in cash from a Great Clips salon in the 1200 block of a well-trafficked North Ashland Avenue around 10:45 a.m. Monday, police said.

The man took out a handgun before presenting a dark bag to three salon workers, which one of them filled with money, Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Daniel O'Brien said. Wearing a red and gray jacket, blue jeans and a hat and scarf, the man walked north on Ashland and hopped in a gray colored sedan, which left driving southbound, police said.

No one was injured, police said.

A witness from that robbery provided a license plate number that was one digit off, Baker said. Chicago police ran variations on the number until they found a vehicle with a similar make and model as reported by the witness. The person who owned the car that Logsdon was driving had “no knowledge that these (robberies) were occurring,” Baker said.

Last Tuesday, a man robbed a Great Clips salon in the 1000 block of West Webster Avenue in the Sheffield Neighbors neighborhood, according to police. The man was given cash and fled the store, police said. Police think the same man may have held up salons in the 1200 block of North Clybourn Avenue on Jan. 21 and salons in the 1200 and 1300 blocks of West Fullerton Avenue in December.

Other police agencies have warned that the same man may be responsible for robberies in Niles, Skokie, Morton Grove, Bensenville, Lombard, and Glen Ellyn.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com


Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking





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Wall Street bounces back, Dow briefly passes 14,000

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday, with the Dow rising above 14,000, as earnings came in stronger than expected and investors sought bargains a day after the market's biggest drop since November.


Dell Inc's stock rose after the world's No. 3 computer maker agreed to be taken private in a $24.4 billion deal, the largest leveraged buyout since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The stock gained 0.8 percent to $13.39 after a delayed open.


Major stock indexes fell about 1 percent in Monday's selloff, pressured by renewed worries over the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis. Still, equities have been strong performers recently, with the benchmark S&P 500 index up about 5 percent for 2013.


Wall Street has advanced on strong fourth-quarter earnings and signs of improved economic growth, suggesting the market's longer-term trend remains higher.


"Yesterday was the first real down day of the year, which shows that we are in this strong bull market. Today we are back to the normal pattern. People are realizing that we've overreacted to Europe yesterday," said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners in New York.


"Money in the euro, euro bonds and euro stocks are coming back to the good, old U.S. stock market and 1,545 (on the S&P 500) is the short-term target, probably in the first half of the year."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 110.50 points, or 0.80 percent, at 13,990.58 after rising as high as 14,006. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 13.42 points, or 0.90 percent, at 1,509.13. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 30.96 points, or 0.99 percent, at 3,162.13.


Archer Daniels Midland reported revenue and adjusted fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, boosted by strong global demand for oilseeds. Shares rose 3.4 percent to $29.40.


Estée Lauder Cos Inc reported a higher quarterly profit on Tuesday and raised its full-year profit forecast. The stock rose to a new 52-week high of $66.07 earlier but traded at around $64 in afternoon.


According to Thomson Reuters data, of the 53 percent of S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings thus far, 69 percent have beaten profit expectations, over the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to rise 4.5 percent, according to the data, above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season but well below the 9.9 percent forecast on October 1.


The S&P is less than 5 percent away from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, reached in October 2011.


McGraw-Hill slumped 5.4 percent to $47.55 after the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against it seeking $5 billion over mortgage bond ratings. Standard & Poor's, a McGraw Hill unit, was accused of inflated ratings and understated risks out of a desire to gain more business from investment banks.


The stock has dropped more than 20 percent over the past two days.


U.S. shares of BP Plc rose 1.1 percent to $44.07 after the company reported earnings that beat expectations and said underlying financial momentum would be "strongly evident" by 2014.


The Institute for Supply Management's non-manufacturing index was 55.2 in January, as expected and down slightly from the previous month.


(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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Vonn hospitalized after crash in super-G at worlds


SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) — Lindsey Vonn crashed and apparently hurt her right knee during a super-G at the world championships Tuesday and was taken to a hospital by helicopter.


Austria's ski federation president said doctors told him that Vonn tore her cruciate and lateral ligaments. Peter Schroecksnadel added that this is "the only injury she has, nothing besides this."


The U.S. team gave no immediate update on Vonn's condition but said it would release a statement later in the day.


This is the sixth straight major championship in which Vonn has been hit with injuries. This crash comes almost exactly one year before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.


The four-time overall World Cup champion lost balance on her right leg while landing after a jump. Her ski came off immediately, and she slid off course and hit a gate before coming to a halt. She was treated on the slope for 12 minutes before being going to the hospital.


Vonn returned to the circuit last month after an almost monthlong break from racing to fully recover from an intestinal illness that put her in a hospital for two days in November.


Vonn trailed race winner Tina Maze of Slovenia by 0.12 seconds shortly before the crash.


The race, which was postponed for 3½ hours because of fog, resumed after another 15-minute delay. Several racers struggled with the conditions.


"It's not a very difficult course but in some parts you couldn't see anything," Fabienne Suter of Switzerland said.


Vonn is building a long list of medical mishaps. Two years ago, she pulled out midway through the last worlds in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, because of a mild concussion. At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Vonn skied despite a severely bruised shin to win the downhill and take bronze in the super-G.


At the 2009 worlds in Val d'Isere, France, she sliced her thumb on a champagne bottle after sweeping gold in the downhill and super-G, forcing her out of the giant slalom. At the 2007 worlds in Are, Sweden, Vonn injured her knee in training and missed her final two events.


And at the 2006 Turin Olympics, she had a horrific crash during downhill training and went directly from her hospital room to the mountain to compete in four of her five events.


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Richard III 'still the criminal king'



















Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen


Richard III on stage and screen





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STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • Dan Jones: Richard III's remains found; some see chance to redeem his bad reputation

  • Jones says the bones reveal and confirm his appearance, how he died and his injuries

  • Nothing changes his rep as a usurper of the Crown who likely had nephews killed, Jones says

  • Jones: Richard good or bad? Truth likely somewhere in between




Editor's note: Dan Jones is a historian and newspaper columnist based in London. His new book, "The Plantagenets" (Viking) is published in the US this Spring. Follow him on Twitter.


(CNN) -- Richard III is the king we British just can't seem to make our minds up about.


The monarch who reigned from 1483 to 1485 became, a century later, the blackest villain of Shakespeare's history plays. The three most commonly known facts of his life are that he stole the Crown, murdered his nephews and died wailing for a horse at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. His death ushered in the Tudor dynasty, so Richard often suffers the dual ignominy of being named the last "medieval" king of England -- in which medieval is not held to be a good thing.


Like any black legend, much of it is slander.


Richard did indeed usurp the Crown and lose at Bosworth. He probably had his nephews killed too -- it is unknowable but overwhelmingly likely. Yet as his many supporters have been busy telling us since it was announced Monday that Richard's lost skeleton was found in a car park in Leicester, he wasn't all bad. In fact, he was for most of his life loyal and conscientious.



Dan Jones

Dan Jones



To fill you in, a news conference held at the University of Leicester Monday confirmed what archaeologists working there have suspected for months: that a skeleton removed from under a parking lot in the city center last fall was indeed the long-lost remains of Richard III.


His official burial place -- under the floor of a church belonging to the monastic order of the Greyfriars -- had been lost during the dissolution of the monasteries that was carried out in the 1530s under Henry VIII. A legend grew up that the bones had been thrown in a river. Today, we know they were not.


What do the bones tell us?


Well, they show that Richard -- identified by mitochondrial DNA tests against a Canadian descendant of his sister, Anne of York -- was about 5-foot-8, suffered curvature of the spine and had delicate limbs. He had been buried roughly and unceremoniously in a shallow grave too small for him, beneath the choir of the church.


He had died from a slicing blow to the back of the head sustained during battle and had suffered many other "humiliation injuries" after his death, including having a knife or dagger plunged into his hind parts. His hands may have been tied at his burial. A TV show aired Monday night in the UK was expected to show a facial reconstruction from the skull.


Opinion: What will the finding of Richard III mean?



In other words, we have quite a lot of either new or confirmed biographical information about Richard.


He was not a hunchback, but he was spindly and warped. He died unhorsed. He was buried where it was said he was buried. He very likely was, as one source had said, carried roughly across a horse's back from the battlefield where he died to Leicester, stripped naked and abused all the way.


All this is known today thanks to a superb piece of historical teamwork.


The interdisciplinary team at Leicester that worked toward Monday's revelations deserves huge plaudits. From the desk-based research that pinpointed the spot to dig, to the digging itself, to the bone analysis, the DNA work and the genealogy that identified Richard's descendants, all of it is worthy of the highest praise. Hat-tips, too, to the Richard III Society, as well as Leicester's City Council, which pulled together to make the project happen and also to publicize the society and city so effectively.


However, should anyone today tell you that Richard's skeleton somehow vindicates his historical reputation, you may tell them they are talking horsefeathers.


Back from the grave, King Richard III gets rehab






Richard III got a rep for a reason. He usurped the Crown from a 12-year old boy, who later died.


This was his great crime, and there is no point denying it. It is true that before this crime, Richard was a conspicuously loyal lieutenant to the boy's father, his own brother, King Edward IV. It is also true that once he was king, Richard made a great effort to promote justice to the poor and needy, stabilize royal finances and contain public disorder.


But this does not mitigate that he stole the Crown, justifying it after the fact with the claim that his nephews were illegitimate. Likewise, it remains indisputably true that his usurpation threw English politics, painstakingly restored to some order in the 12 years before his crime, into a turmoil from which it did not fully recover for another two decades.


So the discovery of Richard's bones is exciting. But it does not tell us anything to justify changing the current historical view of Richard: that the Tudor historians and propagandists, culminating with Shakespeare, may have exaggerated his physical deformities and the horrors of Richard's character, but he remains a criminal king whose actions wrought havoc on his realm.


Unfortunately, we don't all want to hear that. Richard remains the only king with a society devoted to rehabilitating his name, and it is a trait of some "Ricardians" to refuse to acknowledge any criticism of their hero whatever. So despite today's discovery, we Brits are likely to remain split on Richard down the old lines: murdering, crook-backed, dissembling Shakespearean monster versus misunderstood, loyal, enlightened, slandered hero. Which is the truth?


Somewhere in between. That's a classic historian's answer, isn't it? But it's also the truth.


Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.


Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.


The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Jones.






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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.


jdelgado@tribune.com


lford@tribune.com








ehirst@tribune.com



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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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