With record highs in sight, stocks face roadblocks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - If Wall Street needs to climb a wall of worry, it will have plenty of opportunity next week.

Major U.S. stock indexes will make another attempt at reaching all-time records, but the fitful pace that has dominated trading is likely to continue. Next Friday's unemployment report and the hefty spending cuts that look like they about to take effect will be at the forefront.

The importance of whether equities can reach and sustain those highs is more than Wall Street's usual fixation on numbers with psychological significance. Breaking through to uncharted territory is seen as a test of investors' faith in the rally.

"It's very significant," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

"The thinking is, there's just not enough there for an extended bull run," he said. "If we do break through (record highs), then maybe the charts and price action are telling us there's something better ahead."

Flare-ups in the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis and next Friday's report on the U.S. labor market could jostle the market, though U.S. job indicators have generally been trending in a positive direction.

Small- and mid-cap stocks hit lifetime highs in February. Now the Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> and the S&P 500 <.spx> are racing each other to the top. The Dow, made up of 30 stocks, is about 75 points - less than 1 percent - away from its record close of 14,164.53, which it hit on October 9, 2007. The broader S&P is still 3 percent away from its closing high of 1,565.15, also reached on October 9, 2007.

The advantage may be in the Dow's court. So far in 2013, it has gained 7.5 percent, beating the S&P 500 by about 1 percent.

THE RALLY AND THE REALITY CHECK

The Dow's relative strength owes much to its unique make-up and calculation, as well as to investors' recent preference for buying value stocks likely to generate steady reliable gains, rather than growth stocks.

But the more defensive stance illustrates how stock buyers are getting concerned about this year's rally. While investors don't want to miss out on gains, they're picking up companies that are less likely to decline as much as high-flying names - if a market correction comes.

The Russell Value Index <.rav> is up 7.6 percent for the year so far, outpacing the Russell Growth Index's <.rag> 5.7 percent rise. Within the realm of the S&P 500, the consumer staples sector led the market in February, gaining 3.1 percent.

There is some concern that growth-oriented names are being eclipsed by defensive bets, said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati.

"This isn't a be-all and end-all sell signal by any means, but we would feel much more comfortable if some of the more aggressive areas, like technology and small caps, would start to gain some leadership here," Detrick said.

Signs that investors are becoming concerned about the rally's pace is evident in the options market, where the ratio of put activity to call activity has recently shifted in favor of puts, which represent expectations for a stock to fall.

"We are seeing some put hedging in the financials, building up for the past month," said Henry Schwartz, president of options analytics firm Trade Alert in New York.

The put-to-call ratio representing an aggregate of about 562 financial stocks is 1:1, when normally, calls should be outnumbering puts.

Investors have no shortage of reasons to crave the relative safety of blue chips and defensive stocks. Although markets have mostly looked past uncertainty over Washington's plans to cut the deficit, fiscal policy negotiations still pose a risk to equities.

The $85 billion in spending cuts set to begin on Friday is expected to slow economic growth this year if policymakers do not reach a new deal. Markets so far have held firm despite the wrangling in Washington, but tangible economic effects could pinch stock prices going forward.

The International Monetary Fund warned that full implementation of the cuts would probably take at least 0.5 percentage point off U.S. growth this year.

EASY MONEY AND TEPID HIRING

Investors will also take in a round of economic data at a time when concerns are percolating that the market is being pushed up less by fundamentals and more by loose monetary policy around the world.

The main economic event will be Friday's non-farm payrolls report for February. The U.S. economy is expected to have added 160,000 jobs last month, only a tad higher than in January, in a sign the labor market is healing at a slow pace. The U.S. unemployment rate is forecast to hold steady at 7.9 percent.

While lackluster data has been a catalyst in the past for stock market gains as investors bet it would ensure continued stimulus from the Federal Reserve, that sentiment may be wearing thin.

Markets stumbled last week following worries that the Fed might wind down its quantitative easing program sooner than expected.

"It shows the underpinning of the market is being driven at this point by monetary policy," Hellwig said.

With investors questioning what is behind the rally, it will make a run to record highs even more significant, Hellwig added.

"There's smart people that are in the bull camp and the bear camp and the muddle-through camp," Hellwig said. "The fact that you can statistically, using historical evidence, make a case for going higher, lower, or staying the same makes this number very important this time around."

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Comments or questions on this column can be emailed to: leah.schnurr(at)thomsonreuters.com)

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Additional reporting by Doris Frankel in Chicago; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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World Briefing | Europe: Ireland: Suspect in Terrorism Case Faces Extradition to U.S.

The United States government has petitioned the Irish High Court to extradite an Algerian man living in Ireland on terrorism charges relating to a plot to assassinate a Swedish artist, officials said Thursday. The United States alleges that the man, Ali Charaf Damache, planned to set up terrorist training camps and kill several Europeans, including a Swedish artist, Lars Vilks, whose sketch of the Prophet Muhammad’s head on a dog, published in 2007, had enraged the Islamic world. On Wednesday, Mr. Damache pleaded guilty in the Waterford Circuit Court to making a menacing phone call to an American peace activist, a charge for which he was arrested and detained in 2010. The judge sentenced him to time served and released him, but Mr. Damache was immediately rearrested on the American extradition warrant. Mr. Damache arrived in Ireland in 2000 and married an Irish woman in 2002. The relationship ended in 2008 and he then married an American citizen, Jamie Paulin Ramirez. Ms. Ramirez has pleaded guilty in the United States to charges of conspiring with Colleen LaRose, also known as Jihad Jane, to support and train terrorists.

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The 5 Most Infamous Oscar Dress Mishaps

From Anne Hathaway's controversial Prada swap to Natalie Portman's Dior diss, see how stars have created fashion drama on the red carpet

Credit: Steve Granitz/WireImage

Updated: Wednesday Feb 27, 2013 | 03:25 PM EST
By: Kate Hogan

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

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Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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Wall Street ends flat after late fade; S&P up for fourth month

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended flat on Thursday, giving up modest gains late in the session, denying the Dow a chance to inch closer to all-time highs.

The S&P 500 still managed to close out February with a fourth straight month of gains. JC Penney Co Inc was the day's biggest loser, falling 17 percent to $17.57 after the department store operator reported a steep drop in sales.

The U.S. economy grew slightly in the fourth quarter, a turnaround from an earlier estimate showing contraction, and a drop in new claims for unemployment benefits last week added to a batch of data suggesting the economy continues its sluggish improvement.

The Dow was within striking distance of its record high after a year-to-date advance of more than 7 percent. The Dow's record closing high, set on October 9, 2007, stands at 14,164.53, while the Dow's intraday record high, set on October 11, 2007, stands at 14,198.10.

The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt>, seen as a bet on future growth, is up 12.9 percent this year, and the 20-stock index hit a record intraday high earlier on Thursday.

"To push through to new highs, you would have to see consistent positive economic data in the U.S. and have Europe stabilize - those are two pretty big requirements," said Jeff Morris, head of U.S. equities at Standard Life Investments in Boston.

"It wouldn't surprise me to see us bounce around as we have the past couple of weeks," Morris added.

Volume was low for most of the session until quarterly index-rebalancing activity hit the tape at the very close of trading.

After a strong January with gains of more than 5 percent, both the Dow and the S&P 500 found gains tougher to come by in February. Minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting sparked concerns that the central bank may pull back on its stimulus measures sooner than expected, while looming U.S. budget cuts and turbulent Italian elections tempered investors' aggressiveness.

But concerns about Fed policy were eased by testimony from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke before a congressional committee earlier this week, as he defended the policy of buying bonds to keep interest rates low to boost growth, despite worries some have about possible inflation.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> shed 20.88 points, or 0.15 percent, to 14,054.49 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 1.31 points, or 0.09 percent, to 1,514.68. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> fell 2.07 points, or 0.07 percent, to end at 3,160.19.

For the month, the Dow rose 1.4 percent, the S&P 500 gained 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.6 percent.

Limited Brands and Netflix ranked among the best-performing consumer stocks. Shares of Limited Brands, the parent of retailers Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, gained 2.3 percent to $45.52. The stock of video streaming service Netflix climbed 2 percent to $$188.08.

In contrast, shares of Groupon Inc fell on weak revenue, with the daily deals company's tumbling 24.3 percent to $4.53.

Cablevision slumped 9.6 percent to $13.99 after the cable provider took a $100 million hit on costs related to Superstorm Sandy and posted deeper video customer losses than expected.

On a positive note, Mylan Inc gained 3.6 percent to $29.61 after the generic drugmaker posted a 25 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit and said it will buy a unit of India's Strides Arcolab Ltd.

Investors were keeping an eye on the debate in Washington over U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect starting Friday if lawmakers fail to reach agreement on spending and taxes. President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders arranged last-ditch talks to prevent the cuts, but expectations were low that any deal would emerge.

Volume was modest with about 6.81 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq, slightly above the daily average of 6.46 billion.

Advancing stocks slightly outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,518 to 1,446. On the Nasdaq, the decliners had a slight edge, with 1,247 shares falling and 1,201 stocks rising.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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IHT Rendezvous: Eve Best Returns to the Globe, This Time as a Director

LONDON — The recent press conference announcing the 2013 season at Shakespeare’s Globe on one level seemed like variations on an ongoing theme.

A onetime Falstaff at this address, Roger Allam, is returning to open the season as Prospero in “The Tempest,” directed by Jeremy Herrin, while the perennial favorite, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” will be seen in May in a new staging, this time from the Globe’s artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole. The 2011 Olivier winner Michelle Terry (“Tribes”) will play Titania.

The international season that so galvanized the space for six weeks last spring will return in a greatly pared-down form, and there will be three new plays, including one, “Blue Stockings” by Jessica Swale, that tells of the first female students at Cambridge University.

But it’s the last in the trio of supernaturally charged Shakespeares that promises to break fresh theatrical ground. In what represents her first-ever stab (you’ll forgive the word in context) at directing, the much-laureled actress Eve Best will stage a new production in June of “Macbeth.” Joseph Millson and Samantha Spiro have signed on as the murderous couple at the play’s black, bleak heart.

What prompted one of the most accomplished stage performers of her generation (an actress with an Olivier Award and two Tony nominations) to make the shift? The answer was arrived at via a lengthy phone call to a remote island in Denmark, where Ms. Best, 41, is currently filming “Someone You Love” for the director Lars von Trier’s Zentropa production group. This film’s specific director is Pernille Fischer Christensen.

To hear Ms. Best describe it, she thought her time at the Globe was finished, at least for a while, following a triumphant 2011 production of “Much Ado About Nothing” in which she played Beatrice opposite Charles Edwards’s no less witty and scintillating Benedick. (That staging opened within days of a contrasting commercial production of the same play, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and trumped its starrier competitor hands down.)

“I love the Globe so much,” Ms. Best recalled, “and wanted any excuse to spend some time there, having played Beatrice which was just my most favorite part ever. But I did think I was sort of running out of parts to play for a little while until I get into the world of Cleopatra and those kinds of parts” — that’s to say, Shakespeare’s more senior women.

But all that was before Mr. Dromgoole surprised Ms. Best with an offer to take on the directing of the Shakespeare tragedy in which she had made her Globe debut in 2001, opposite Jasper Britton.

“I put myself forward to direct something thinking that they might say yes in a couple of years and that if they did say yes they might start me off with something light or something simpler or more obscure,” she said.

“I was not prepared for them to turn around and say, ‘Yes, all right, and what about “Macbeth?”’ Ms. Best continued, delight evident in her voice. “It took me back. My first response was: ‘Absolutely no way; you must be kidding!’”

The play is particularly challenging at the Globe. Open to the elements, the theater is a tricky fit for a text suffused with darkness, and it can be hard to focus the gathering intensity of the Macbeths’ toxic rise and fall.

“We are in the broad daylight and the open air,” Ms. Best acknowledged, “and that particular circular shape is certainly going to have a significant effect on the kind of production ours is. We can’t set it in the dark with candles, so we just have to embrace what it is that the Globe will give us: I’m very interested in just seeing the play as clearly as we possibly can and focusing on the human relationships within it.”

Mr. Dromgoole for his part said he thought Ms. Best would be able to meet the play head-on without lots of additional mumbo jumbo. “I wanted someone who I thought could just let [“Macbeth”] play itself rather than forcing it down a tunnel of darkness.”

As it happens, Ms. Best has firsthand knowledge of both central roles. In addition to acting Lady Macbeth at the Globe, she participated in workshops of the play in New York with the Scottish actor Alan Cumming in which she played the title role opposite Mr. Cumming’s Lady. Mr. Cumming is soon to open his own solo take on the play on Broadway.

(For those collecting “Macbeths,” the West End is now hosting the film actor James McAvoy in a modern-dress, gory, commendably visceral version. That one, at the Trafalgar Studios, will have finished roughly two months before Ms. Best’s begins.)

“What’s really lovely about this play — and all Shakespeare plays obviously — is that they are so magnificently and eminently flexible,” said Ms. Best, who was sounding in no way deterred by other productions arriving before hers. “They can encompass 6 or 8 or 10 productions all going on at the same time, all equally fascinating, all equally interesting, with all kinds of different approaches.”

Nor was she sounding spooked by a famously hexed play that has on occasion brought disaster in its wake. Whereas theater lore, for instance, often insists that those involved with this text refer to it as “the Scottish play,” Ms. Best was having none of that.

“I’ve been saying it like mad,” she said. “If we’re going to be working on it for two months, life’s too short to be worried.”

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Billie Joe Armstrong Comes Clean About Rehab

By Kevin O'Donnell

02/27/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

Last September, Billie Joe Armstrong made headlines when, during his band Green Day's performance at the I Heart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas, the rocker unleashed a profanity-laced tirade that took aim at everyone from the concert's promoter, Clear Channel, to Justin Bieber.

The meltdown forced Armstrong to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month and in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the frontman, who turned 41 this month, reveals his struggle to get sober.

"I'm a blackout drinker," he reveals. "That's basically what happened [that night]."

Leading up to that infamous performance, Armstrong was struggling with a dependence on pills for anxiety and insomnia, combined with a heavy drinking problem. After the concert, he agreed to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month.

Although he declines to specify what type of medications he was taking, he tells the magazine, "I started combining them to a point where I didn't know what I was taking during the day and what I was taking at night. It was just this routine. My backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle [from all of the bottles inside]."

Armstrong, who has been married to wife Adrienne since 1994 and has two sons, Joseph and Jakob, also reveals how hard it was to go through withdrawal.

"That was gruesome, laying on the bathroom floor and just feeling like ... [pauses] I didn't realize how much of that stuff affected me." He also opens up about the toll it took on his family: "I kept [the withdrawal] away from my sons pretty good ... [And my wife] knew the deal. I'm sure it was rough for her to see me going through this."

Now, the musician insists he's on the mend and no longer drinking. "I want to put on good shows," says Armstrong, who will resume touring with Green Day on March 10 in Pomona, Calif. "I want to be reliable." 

Armstrong also admits maintaining his sobriety will be a challenge. "There is still the obsession for alcohol," he says. "There's also sleepless nights. But I have to work on it every day. Because I know what goes on out there … I've got to watch my step."

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Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links

WASHINGTON (AP) — The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.

The disorders — autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — are considered distinct problems. But findings published online Wednesday suggest they're related in some way.

"These disorders that we thought of as quite different may not have such sharp boundaries," said Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the lead researchers for the international study appearing in The Lancet.

That has implications for learning how to diagnose mental illnesses with the same precision that physical illnesses are diagnosed, said Dr. Bruce Cuthbert of the National Institute on Mental Health, which funded the research.

Consider: Just because someone has chest pain doesn't mean it's a heart attack; doctors have a variety of tests to find out. But there's no blood test for schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. Instead, doctors rely on symptoms agreed upon by experts. Learning the genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses is part of one day knowing if someone's symptoms really are schizophrenia and not something a bit different.

"If we really want to diagnose and treat people effectively, we have to get to these more fine-grained understandings of what's actually going wrong biologically," Cuthbert explained.

Added Mass General's Smoller: "We are still in the early stages of understanding what are the causes of mental illnesses, so these are clues."

The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, a collaboration of researchers in 19 countries, analyzed the genomes of more than 61,000 people, some with one of the five disorders and some without. They found four regions of the genetic code where variation was linked to all five disorders.

Of particular interest are disruptions in two specific genes that regulate the flow of calcium in brain cells, key to how neurons signal each other. That suggests that this change in a basic brain function could be one early pathway that leaves someone vulnerable to developing these disorders, depending on what else goes wrong.

For patients and their families, the research offers no immediate benefit. These disorders are thought to be caused by a complex mix of numerous genes and other risk factors that range from exposures in the womb to the experiences of daily life.

"There may be many paths to each of these illnesses," Smoller cautioned.

But the study offers a lead in the hunt for psychiatric treatments, said NIMH's Cuthbert. Drugs that affect calcium channels in other parts of the body are used for such conditions as high blood pressure, and scientists could explore whether they'd be useful for psychiatric disorders as well.

The findings make sense, as there is some overlap in the symptoms of the different disorders, he said. People with schizophrenia can have some of the same social withdrawal that's so characteristic of autism, for example. Nor is it uncommon for people to be affected by more than one psychiatric disorder.

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Online:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60223-8/abstract

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Wall Street gains on Bernanke comments, S&P above 1,500

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, with major indexes posting their best daily gains since early January, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke remained steadfast in supporting the Fed's stimulus policy and data pointed to economic improvement.

In a second day before a congressional committee, Bernanke defended the Fed's buying of bonds to keep interest rates low to boost growth. The market's jump of more than 1 percent also came on better-than-expected data on business spending plans and the housing market.

Bernanke's remarks helped the market rebound from its worst decline since November and put the S&P 500 index back above 1,500, a closely watched level that has been technical support until recently. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> closed at a level not seen since 2007 as it again pulled within striking distance of an all-time high.

Speaking before the House Financial Services Committee, Bernanke downplayed signs of internal divisions at the Fed, saying the policy of quantitative easing, or QE, has the support of a "significant majority" of top central bank officials.

Bernanke removed a headwind from markets arising from concerns the Fed's quantitative easing might end earlier than anticipated. Doubts about the Fed's intentions had broken a seven-week streak of gains by stocks.

"The Fed continues to encourage risk-taking in markets, which is a powerful tool that makes the danger not being long stocks, not in being too long," said Tom Mangan, a money manager at James Investment Research Inc in Xenia, Ohio.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 176.32 points, or 1.27 percent, at 14,076.45. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 19.07 points, or 1.27 percent, at 1,516.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 32.61 points, or 1.04 percent, at 3,162.26.

Pending home sales jumped 4.5 percent in January, three times the rate of growth that had been expected. While orders for durable goods fell more than expected in January, non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft - a closely watched proxy for business spending plans - showed the biggest gain since December 2011.

About 74 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed higher while 64 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed up.

The S&P turned very slightly higher on the week, recovering from the index's biggest daily drop since November on Monday. That drop came on concerns over Italy's election, as well as over sequestration - U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect starting on Friday if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on spending and taxes.

The index had climbed 6.3 percent for the year before pulling back on concerns about Fed policy and inconclusive elections in Italy, which rekindled fears of a new euro zone debt crisis.

"While the rally remains intact and there are reasons to be long-term bullish here, there are also reasons to not be surprised if we get a correction," said Mangan, who helps oversee $3.7 billion.

In earnings news, Priceline.com gained 2.6 percent to $695.91 after reporting adjusted earnings that beat expectations. TJX Cos Inc jumped 2.5 percent to $44.75 after the retail chain operator posted higher fourth-quarter results.

The S&P retail index <.spxrt> climbed 1.6 percent.

Target Corp offered a cautious outlook for consumer spending in 2013 following a weak holiday quarter. The stock dipped 1.1 percent to $63.32.

First Solar Inc plunged 14 percent to $27.04 after failing to give a full-year earnings and sales outlook, though it also swung to a quarterly profit.

Groupon Inc plunged 21 percent to $4.70 after the bell after reporting its fourth-quarter results.

With 93 percent of the S&P 500 companies having reported results so far, 69.5 percent beat profit expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 6.2 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

About 6.23 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, slightly below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)

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News Analysis: Now Gathering in Rome, a Conclave of Fallible Cardinals

Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press

St. Peter’s Basilica on Tuesday. Roman Catholic cardinals were gathering at the Vatican amid scandal to choose a new pope.

The sudden resignation of the most senior Roman Catholic cardinal in Britain, who stepped aside on Monday in the face of accusations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward priests years ago, showed that the taint of scandal could force a cardinal from participating in the selection of a new pope.

His exit came as at least a dozen other cardinals tarnished with accusations that they failed to remove priests accused of sexually abusing minors were among those gathering in Rome to prepare for the conclave to select a successor to Pope Benedict XVI. There was no sign that the church’s promise to confront the sexual abuse scandal had led to direct pressure on those cardinals to exempt themselves from the conclave.

Advocates for abuse victims who were in Rome on Tuesday focused particular ire on Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, and called for him to be excluded from the conclave. But Cardinal Mahony, who has vigorously defended his record, was already in Rome, posting on Twitter about the weather.

Even stalwart defenders of the church point out that to disqualify Cardinal Mahony would leave many more cardinals similarly vulnerable. Many of the men who will go into the Sistine Chapel to elect a pope they hope will help the church recover from the bruising scandal of sexual abuse have themselves been blemished by it.

“Among bishops and cardinals, certainly the old guys who have been involved for so long, sure they’re going to have blood on their hands,” said Thomas G. Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, who has served on the American bishops’ national abuse advisory board and has written three books on sexual abuse. “So when Cardinal Mahony says he’s being scapegoated, in some respects I think he’s right. All the focus is on him, but what about the other guys?”

Among the many challenges facing the church, addressing the wounds caused by sexual abuse is among the top priorities, church analysts say. When Pope Benedict was elected in 2005, many Catholics hoped that his previous experience at the helm of the Vatican office that dealt with abuse cases would result in substantive changes.

Benedict has repeatedly apologized to victims, and listened personally to their testimonies of pain. After the abuse scandal paralyzed the church in Europe in 2010, and began to emerge on other continents, Benedict issued new policies for bishops to follow on handling sexual abuse accusations, and he held a conference at the Vatican on the issue. But despite calls from many Catholics, he never removed prelates who, court cases and documents revealed, put children at risk by failing to report pedophiles or remove them from the priesthood.

It is not that these cardinals behaved so differently from the others, or that they do not have achievements to their names. It is just that they happened to come from pinpoints on the Catholic world map where long-hidden secrets became public because victims organized, government officials investigated, lawyers sued or the news media paid attention.

They include cardinals from Belgium, Chile and Italy. They include the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, who is accused of taking large monetary gifts from a religious order, the Legion of Christ, and halting an investigation into its founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel — who was later exposed as a pathological abuser and liar.

They also include cardinals reviled by many in their own countries, like Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of All Ireland, who survived an uproar after government investigations uncovered endemic cover-ups of the sexual and physical abuse of minors.

“There’s so many of them,” said Justice Anne Burke, a judge in Illinois who served on the American bishops’ first advisory board 10 years ago. “They all have participated in one way or another in having actual information about criminal conduct, and not doing anything about it. What are you going to do? They’re all not going to participate in the conclave?”

Even one cardinal frequently mentioned as a leading candidate for pope has been accused of turning a blind eye toward abuse victims. The Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet issued apologies to the many victims of abuse in church boarding schools in Quebec Province, but left behind widespread resentment when he reportedly refused to meet with them.

Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting from Santiago, Chile; Ian Austen from Ottawa; and Gaia Pianigiani from Rome.

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