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Label: Technology
Kelly Clarkson Is Engaged
Label: LifestyleBy Mike Fleeman
12/15/2012 at 05:30 PM EST
Brandon Blackstock and Kelly Clarkson
Rick Diamond/Getty
Kelly Clarkson's wait for a ring is over.
"I'M ENGAGED!!!!!" she announced Saturday on Twitter. "I wanted y'all to know!! Happiest night of my life last night! I am so lucky and am with the greatest man ever."
The Grammy-nominated pop star, 30, and freshly minted fiancé Brandon Blackstock, a Nashville-based talent manager, began dating a year ago.
She joked that she was so happy it was "ruining my creativity" and that she was now "writing all this happy" stuff.
The only thing that had been missing, she said in November, was the wedding bling, and even then she was sure it would be arriving. As for her ceremony plans, she told Ellen DeGeneres: "We will totally, probably elope."
Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants
Label: HealthALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.
The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.
To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.
But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.
When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.
And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.
In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."
The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.
Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.
Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.
A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.
California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.
The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.
And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.
If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.
Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.
The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.
"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."
Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.
There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.
Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.
For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.
"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."
___
Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .
Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .
Wall Street succumbs to Apple's fall, "cliff" uncertainty
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Friday as another slide in Apple took a toll and investors unloaded some shares because of the uncertainty surrounding the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.
For the Nasdaq, this marked the second losing week in a row. All three major U.S. stock indexes ended the week slightly lower.
Apple's stock slid 3.8 percent to $509.79 after UBS cut its price target on the stock to $700 from $780. The stock of the most valuable U.S. company has been hit hard in the last three months. On Friday, Apple's stock fell after a tepid reception for the iPhone 5 in China.
The S&P Information Technology Index <.gspt> lost 1 percent as Apple fell and Jabil Circuit Inc
The possibility of a fiscal cliff deal not taking place until early 2013 is rising. The back-and-forth negotiations over the fiscal cliff in Washington have kept markets on hold in what would already be a quiet period for stocks.
"We're faced with uncertainty ... and that's going to continue now into January. It basically puts everybody on hold and (you) just have the markets kind of thrash around," said Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrera Capital Markets Inc in Boston.
President Barack Obama and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner held a "frank" meeting on Thursday at the White House to discuss how to avoid the tax hikes and spending cuts set to kick in early in 2013.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 35.71 points, or 0.27 percent, to 13,135.01 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 5.87 points, or 0.41 percent, to 1,413.58. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 20.83 points, or 0.70 percent, to close at 2,971.33.
For the week, the Dow slipped 0.2 percent, while the S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq declined 0.2 percent.
Among other Nasdaq decliners, shares of chipmaker Qualcomm
American Express Co shares fell 1.9 percent to $56.65 and ranked as the heaviest weight on the Dow.
Investors are concerned that going over the cliff could tip the economy back into recession. While a deal is expected to ultimately be reached, a drawn-out debate - like the one over 2011's debt ceiling - can erode confidence.
Best Buy Co Inc
Among the day's economic data, consumer prices fell in November for the first time in six months, indicating U.S. inflation pressures were muted. A separate report showed manufacturing grew at its swiftest pace in eight months in December.
Data out of China was encouraging, as Chinese manufacturing grew at its fastest pace in 14 months in December. The news was deemed as helpful for U.S. materials companies, including U.S. Steel
Volume was roughly 5.8 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.52 billion.
Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a ratio of about 8 to 7. On the Nasdaq, decliners barely held an edge over advancers, with 1,241 stocks falling and 1,196 shares rising.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal)
U.S., rebels urge gloomy Moscow to help oust Assad
Label: WorldBEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's rebel leadership and the United States seized on Russian pessimism over President Bashar al-Assad's future to urge Moscow to help push its ally into ceding power and end the battles closing in around his capital.
"We want to commend the Russian government for finally waking up to the reality and acknowledging that the regime's days are numbered," the U.S. State Department spokeswoman said after a senior Kremlin envoy conceded publicly on Thursday that Assad's opponents could win the 20-month-old civil war.
"The question now is, will the Russian government join those of us in the international community who are working with the opposition to try to have a smooth democratic transition?" U.S. spokeswoman Victoria Nuland added in Washington.
In Marrakech, where his new coalition won recognition from other international powers as the legitimate leadership of Syria, rebel political leader Mouaz al-Khatib said he believed Russia, ally and arms supplier to the Assad dynasty since Soviet times, was looking for ways out of its support for a lost cause.
"I believe that the Russians have woken up and are sensing that they have implicated themselves with this regime, but they don't know how to get out," al-Khatib told Reuters. He held them "particularly responsible" for helping Assad with arms but said Moscow need not "lose everything" in Syria if it changed tack.
Under President Vladimir Putin, wary since last year's Libyan war of what Russia sees as a Western drive to use the United Nations to overthrow national leaders it dislikes, Russia has blocked U.N. efforts to squeeze Assad, who has also had strong support from his long-time sponsor Iran.
But Mikhail Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister and the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, was quoted as saying in Moscow: "One must look the facts in the face."
"Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out." The Syrian government, he said, was "losing control of more and more territory" and Moscow was preparing to evacuate Russian citizens if necessary.
Nuland said Bogdanov's comments demonstrated that Moscow now "sees the writing on the wall" on Syria and said Russia should now rally behind U.N. efforts to prevent a wider bloodbath.
"They can withdraw any residual support for the Assad regime, whether it is material support (or) financial support," she said. "They can also help us to identify people who might be willing, inside of Syria, to work on a transitional structure."
DIPLOMACY
International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who has met Russian and U.S. officials twice in the past week, is seeking a solution based on an agreement reached in Geneva in June that called for the creation of a transitional government in Syria.
But Russia has repeated warnings that recognition of al-Khatib's coalition, notably by the United States, is undermining diplomacy, and rejected U.S. contentions that the Geneva agreement sent a clear message that Assad should step down.
Nuland said the Brahimi meetings could lay the framework for a political structure to follow Assad:
"We've said all along to the Russians that we are concerned that the longer that this goes on, and the longer it takes us to get to an alternative political path for Syria, the only path is going to be the military one and that is just going to bring more violence.
"We all ought to be working together."
Bogdanov, whose government has suggested that Assad himself should be allowed to see through a transition he has promised, suggested the rebels and their allies were set on a military solution and he gave little hint of detente with Washington.
"The fighting will become even more intense and (Syria) will lose tens of thousands and, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of civilians," Bogdanov was quoted as saying. "If such a price for the removal of the president seems acceptable to you, what can we do? We, of course, consider it absolutely unacceptable."
The head of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said elsewhere: "I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse."
A U.S. official said: "Assad probably still believes that Syria is his and illusions can die hard. But Assad and those closest to him have got to be feeling the psychological strain of fighting a long war that is not going their way."
DAMASCUS BATTLES
But Al-Khatib, who played down Western concerns of sectarian Sunni Islamists in rebel ranks, warned that the fighting was far from over, even as it has begun to rattle the heart of Assad's power in Damascus. On Wednesday, a car bomb killed at least 16 people in a nearby town which is home to many military families.
"The noose is tightening around the regime," al-Khatib said.
"(But) the regime still has power. People think that the regime is finished, but it still has power left, but it is demoralized and however long it lasted its end is clear."
Day and night, Damascenes can hear the thunderous sound of bombardment aimed at rebel-held and contested neighborhoods.
The city's streets have now turned into a labyrinth of checkpoints and road blocks, with several major roads permanently closed off to traffic by concrete barriers.
"We escape from one place and trouble follows," said one grandmother, Um Hassan, as she described to Reuters her family's flight from one neighborhood to another as fighting seeps into the capital. "I don't know where we can keep running to."
Nonetheless, al-Khatib played down demands for their allies to provide heavier weaponry - a request long resisted by governments wary of anti-aircraft missiles and other hardware reaching Islamist rebels who might turn them against the West.
"The Syrian people ... no longer need international forces to protect them," he said, not specifying whether he meant a no-fly zone, arms supplies or other military support.
The opposition chief said he was willing to listen to proposals for Assad to escape with his life - "The best thing is that he steps down and stops drinking the blood of the Syrian people" - and outlined three scenarios for a change of power:
Al-Khatib ruled out the Russian proposal suggesting Assad hand over power to a transitional government while remaining president, saying it was "disgraceful for a slaughtered nation to accept to have a killer and criminal at its head".
The British-based Syrian Observatory said war planes bombed rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus on Thursday and artillery was hitting Daraya and Moadamiyeh, southwestern areas near the centre where rebels have been fighting for a foothold.
Syria has relied on war planes and helicopters to bombard rebel districts but Damascus denied accusations by U.S. and NATO officials that it had fired Scud missiles in recent days. The foreign ministry said the long-range missiles were not used against "terrorist groups," a term it uses for the rebels.
At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad's security forces, and which spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.
(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Michael Roddy) For an interactive look at the uprising in Syria, please click on http://link.reuters.com/rut37s
Sony’s PlayStation 4 could lose to the next Xbox before it’s even released
Label: TechnologyI love all game consoles equally. My Xbox 360 is used equally as much as my PlayStation 3. The Wii — oh, I’ll just leave it at that. The current generation of consoles is all but over — 10-year life cycle be damned — and new consoles are rumored to be coming next fall. If not next fall, then in 2014. Whatever is the case, Sony (SNE) can’t afford to lag in third place again. Sure, the Xbox 360 and PS3 are neck-in-neck in global lifetime sales, and the Xbox 360 did have a one year head start, but coming off the disappointing PS Vita, “confidence is less high” that Sony will deliver a console next year in time to compete with Microsoft (MSFT), according to Kotaku.
[More from BGR: Has the iPhone peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S seen outselling iPhone 5]
I want a new console just as much as any other gamer. There’s a reason people are still pouncing on those Wii U consoles and flipping them on eBay. Six years is unusually long for a console to still be kicking around.
[More from BGR: Apple execs said to be ‘seething’ over Google Maps praise]
According to the well-informed Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku, the game blog that first broke news on the next-gen Xbox, Microsoft’s “Durango” is ”on the mark” and “Sony appears to inspire less confidence…due to the on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3 and the struggles of the Vita vs. how much lost confidence is due to any problems looming for PS4.“
Totilo says “confidence is high that the next Xbox will be out in time for next Christmas” and confidence is low that the PS4 will be right there on store shelves next to it.
The “on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3″ Totilo is referring to is the anchor that’s weighed the console down since launch: tougher development due to the Cell processor and less available RAM – 256MB vs. 512MB in the Xbox 360.
In the months before the PS3′s launch in 2006, Sony said the console would be the most powerful console ever created, and here we are six years later and multi-platform games on the console consistently end up being buggier and uglier than on the Xbox 360 in many cases. Cases in point: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
Sony’s in a rut right now. It has the chops to build beautiful and powerful hardware that’s a developer’s dream (ex: PS Vita), but at the same time, it’s always launching after the competition nowadays.
If Sony’s learned any lessons in the last half a decade, it better apply them to the PS4. The console needs to offer next-level processing and graphics. It needs to be backward-compatible with PS3 games and play Blu-ray discs. It should be small and quiet. It should have a strong online platform, support a greater array of apps and most importantly be easy for developers to program for.
Game exclusives will always be important, but now that games are million-dollar productions, multi-platform will be where developers hope to reap back their costs.
With Microsoft said to be preparing an “Xbox 720″ and an “Xbox Lite,” Sony can’t make the mistake of launching late or pricing the console too high. A launch in spring of 2014 would mean Sony will miss Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two biggest shopping days of the year that bring in massive sales.  Ceding sales and market share to Microsoft and Nintendo by launching late would be disastrous.
The PS3 screwed up too many times. At this point, the PS4 needs to be perfect out of the door.
This article was originally published by BGR
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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Adam Lanza Identified as Gunman in Connecticut Shooting
Label: LifestyleBy Stephen M. Silverman
12/14/2012 at 05:30 PM EST
Woman speaking with state police at the scene
Cloe Poisson/Hartford Courant/MCT/Getty
As authorities continue to investigate Friday's horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., details are beginning to emerge about the alleged gunman.
A law enforcement official tells the Associated Press that the shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the son of a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which is a K-4 school.
A second law enforcement official says the man's mother, Nancy Lanza, was a kindergarten teacher and is presumed dead.
Although Lanza wasn't named during a Friday afternoon press conference, Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance told reporters, "The shooter is deceased inside the building."
Vance put the death toll at 28 total: 20 children, six adults, the gunman and a deceased adult at a secondary location.
There are reports that the deceased adult at a secondary location was a family member found in the Lanza family home in Newtown. No further details are available.
According to reports, the alleged shooter, armed with three weapons and wearing a bullet-proof vest, entered the grade school Friday morning. He reportedly began shooting in the principal's office, then went to the kindergarten class, where he opened fire.
Study: People worldwide living longer, but sicker
Label: HealthLONDON (AP) — Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health threats.
The last comprehensive study was in 1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 — more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of children dying to about 7 million.
Malnutrition was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.
With more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by smoking and alcohol.
"The biggest contributor to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
In developed countries, such conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.
The research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
As in 1990, Japan topped the life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.
The research found wide variations in what's killing people around the world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the researchers: — Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.
— While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt," from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in Western Europe.
— In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).
— Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the rate is about 3 per 100,000.
Globally, heart disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the sixth leading cause two decades later.
While chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting too much of the focus away from those ailments.
"It's the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.
Still, she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a good model for chronic care," she said.
Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.
"We have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
He said the information in some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all the relevant health risk factors.
"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.
___
Online:
www.lancet.com
http://healthmetricsandevaluation.org
S&P 500 ends six days of gains on "cliff" worries
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 ended its six-day winning streak on Thursday, retreating as worries intensified that Washington's "fiscal cliff" negotiations were dragging on with little progress.
Anxiety about the drawn-out talks between Democrats and Republicans was enough to offset encouraging data on retail sales and jobless claims on Thursday.
There is concern that tax hikes and spending cuts, set to begin in 2013 if a deal is not reached in Washington, will hurt growth. The stock market has taken the heated rhetoric in stride of late, but downbeat remarks from Republican House Speaker John Boehner prompted some selling on Thursday.
Boehner accused President Barack Obama of "slow walking" the economy off the fiscal cliff. He is scheduled to meet with Obama later on Thursday.
"There is no conviction here and Boehner's comments - as harsh as they were - were realistic," said Jason Weisberg, managing director at Seaport Securities Corp., in New York.
"The fiscal cliff is already built in. That being said, people don't like to be told the apocalypse is coming over and over and over again. The real players in this market have already closed their books."
After coming close to a 1 percent decline for the day, the S&P 500 pared losses late in the session. The index had posted six straight sessions of gains through Wednesday's close, and at one point on Wednesday, the S&P touched its highest intraday level since October 22.
While the Federal Reserve's announcement on Wednesday of a new round of economic stimulus bolstered stocks, Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments that monetary policy would not be sufficient to offset the impact of the fiscal cliff weighed on sentiment.
Apple's stock , down 1.7 percent at $529.69, was among the biggest drags on the Nasdaq in Thursday's session, while International Business Machines
Among the day's biggest gainers, Best Buy Co
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> tumbled 74.73 points, or 0.56 percent, to 13,170.72 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 9.03 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,419.45. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> slid 21.65 points, or 0.72 percent, to end at 2,992.16.
Energy and information technology sectors were the S&P 500's weakest performers, with the S&P energy index <.gspe> down 0.9 percent.
In the energy sector, shares of Nabors Industries Ltd
The day's economic data sent some positive signals on the economy, with weekly claims for jobless benefits dropping to nearly the lowest level since February 2008, and retail sales rising in November after an October decline, improving the picture for consumer spending.
In Europe, European Union finance ministers reached agreement to make the European Central Bank the bloc's top banking supervisor, which could boost confidence in EU leaders' ability to confront the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis.
Volume was roughly 6.11 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.52 billion.
Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a ratio of about 7 to 3, and on the Nasdaq, more than five stocks fell for every three that rose.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Jan Paschal)
Russia says Syrian rebels might win
Label: WorldMOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels are gaining ground and might win, Russia's Middle East envoy said on Thursday, in the starkest such admission from a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad as the 20-month-old civil war closes in on Damascus.
Moscow was "finally waking up to reality", the United States said and it called on Russia to withdraw all support for Assad, who NATO and the rebels' new political leader forecast was heading for collapse.
"One must look the facts in the face," Russia's state-run RIA quoted Mikhail Bogdanov as saying. "Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out."
Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister and the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, said the Syrian government was "losing control of more and more territory" and Moscow was preparing to evacuate Russian citizens if necessary.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: "We want to commend the Russian government for finally waking up to the reality and acknowledging that the regime's days are numbered.
"The question now is, will the Russian government join those of us in the international community who are working with the opposition to try to have a smooth democratic transition?"
Syria has relied on war planes and helicopters to bombard rebel districts but Damascus denied accusations by U.S. and NATO officials that it had fired Scud missiles in recent days.
The foreign ministry said the long-range missiles were not used against "terrorist groups," a term it uses for the rebels, who now hold an almost continuous arc of territory from the east to the southwest of Damascus.
The head of NATO said he thought Assad's government was nearing collapse and the new leader of Syria's opposition told Reuters the people of Syria no longer needed international forces to protect them.
"The horrific conditions which the Syrian people endured prompted them to call on the international community for military intervention at various times," said Mouaz al-Khatib, a preacher who heads Syria's National Coalition.
"Now the Syrian people have nothing to lose. They handled their problems by themselves. They no longer need international forces to protect them," he added in the interview on Wednesday night, accusing the international community of slumbering while Syrians were killed.
He did not specify whether by intervention he meant a no-fly zone that rebels have been demanding for month, a ground invasion - which the opposition has warned against - or arms.
He said the opposition would consider any proposal from Assad to surrender power and leave the country, but would not give any assurances until it saw a firm proposal.
In the latest blow to the government, a car bomb killed at least 16 men, women and children in Qatana, a town about 25 km (15 miles) southwest of Damascus where many soldiers live, activists and state media said.
The explosion occurred in a residential area for soldiers in Qatana, which is near several army bases, said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He put the death toll as 17, including seven children and two women. State news agency SANA said 16 people had died.
State television showed soldiers walking by a partly collapsed building, with rubble and twisted metal on the road.
The pro-government Al-Ikhbariya TV said a second car bomb in the Damascus suburb of al-Jadideh killed eight, most of them women and children.
Apart from gaining territory in the outskirts of Damascus in recent weeks, rebels have also made hit-and-run attacks or set off bombs within the capital, often targeting state security buildings or areas seen as loyal to Assad, such as Jaramana, where twin bombs killed 34 people in November.
The Pakistani Foreign Office said security concerns had prompted it to withdraw the ambassador and all Pakistani staff from the embassy in the central suburb of East Mezzeh, a couple miles from the Interior Ministry.
BACK TO THE WALL
With his back to the wall, Assad was reported to be turning ever deadlier weapons on his adversaries.
"I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday.
Human Rights Watch said some populated areas had been hit by incendiary bombs, containing flammable materials such as napalm, thermite or white phosphorous, which can set fire to buildings or cause severe burns and respiratory damage.
The British-based Syrian Observatory said war planes were bombing rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus on Thursday and artillery was hitting Daraya and Moadamiyeh, southwestern areas near the centre where rebels have been fighting for a foothold.
At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad's security forces, and which spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.
The United States, European powers and Arab states bestowed their official blessing on Syria's newly-formed opposition coalition on Wednesday, despite increasing signs of Western unease at the rise of militant Islamists in the rebel ranks.
Western nations at "Friends of Syria" talks in Marrakech, Morocco rallied around a new opposition National Coalition formed last month under moderate Islamist cleric al-Khatib.
Russia, which along with China has blocked any U.N. Security Council measures against Assad, criticized Washington's decision to grant the coalition formal recognition, saying it appeared to have abandoned any effort to reach a political solution.
Bogdanov's remarks were the clearest sign yet that Russia is preparing for the possible defeat of Assad's government.
"We are dealing with issues of preparations for an evacuation. We have mobilization plans and are clarifying where our citizens are located," Bogdanov said.
The fall of Damascus to the rebels was not a prospect Moscow relished: "The fighting will become even more intense and (Syria) will lose tens of thousands and, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of civilians," Bogdanov told Russia Today television.
"If such a price for the removal of the president seems acceptable to you, what can we do? We, of course, consider it absolutely unacceptable."
Nuland said Russia should now back away from Assad: "They can withdraw any residual support for the Assad regime, whether it is material support (or) financial support," she said.
"They can also help us to identify people who might be willing inside of Syria to work on a transitional structure."
A British Foreign Office spokesperson said the Russian position remained largely unchanged but the situation on the ground gave Moscow an interest in finding an agreed solution, even if the chances of such a solution remained slim.
"If Russia's position on Syria had been a brick wall, it is now a brick wall with a crack in it," the spokesperson said.
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut, Samia Nakhoul and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Marrakech, Andrew Quinn in Washington and Mohammed Abbas in London; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Alastair Macdonald)
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