Summary Box: Banks stash money with ECB (AP)

SAFE DEPOSITS: Banks from the 17 countries that use the euro stashed euro347 billion ($453 billion) overnight with the European Central Bank on Thursday.

NEW HIGH: The figure, the highest for 2011, in another sign that Europe's debt crisis is still putting pressure on the banking system.

WORRYING SIGNAL: Banks use the deposit facility every day in fluctuating amounts to offload excess cash. Heavy recent use suggests that even as the ECB makes more credit available to banks they are depositing some of it ? temporarily at least ? back with the central bank at low interest rates rather than lending it.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111223/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_financial_crisis_summary_box

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Stocks edge higher after mixed economic reports

FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2011 file photo, specialist Jennifer Klesaris and trader Gregory Rowe work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Global stocks advanced Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, on further signs the U.S. economy is improving, but trading activity was muted as the traditional holiday slowdown began in earnest. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2011 file photo, specialist Jennifer Klesaris and trader Gregory Rowe work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Global stocks advanced Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, on further signs the U.S. economy is improving, but trading activity was muted as the traditional holiday slowdown began in earnest. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Stocks edged higher Friday morning after mixed economic reports failed to derail hopes that the economic recovery is strengthening.

Consumer spending and incomes rose a lackluster 0.1 percent in November, the government said. The weak gains suggest that consumers may have trouble sustaining their spending into 2012.

In another worrying sign, a measure of business investment decreased for the second straight month. Business investment has been a pocket of strong demand and spending amid a sluggish recovery. Companies bought more long-lasting manufactured goods, but the result was skewed by strength in the volatile aerospace industry.

Markets have risen this week after a string of reports lifted hopes for economic growth in the fourth quarter ending next week. New claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since April 2008, long before anyone realized the nation was in a recession.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 45 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,214 in the first hour of trading. Walt Disney Co. rose 1.3 percent, the most of the 30 stocks in the Dow. The Dow has risen for the past three days.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 4, or 0.3 percent, to 1,257. The S&P is now at roughly breakeven for the year.

The Nasdaq composite index gained 2, or 0.1 percent, to 2,601.

Trading volume was light in the final session before the Christmas holiday. The market will be closed on Monday because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year.

Traders were relieved by news that Congress extended of a payroll tax holiday for workers and emergency unemployment benefits. The programs were set to expire at the end of the year. Letting that happen would have reduced economic growth by about 1 percent, analysts said.

Among the companies making big moves:

? Rambus Inc. jumped 17 percent after the technology licensing company said it reached a patent license deal with Broadcom Corp. and settled a lawsuit with the chip maker.

? TripAdvisor Inc. surged 5.2 percent, the most in the S&P 500, as traders reassessed the value of the newly-spun off travel review website. The stock had fallen sharply since it officially started trading on Wednesday. It recovered some losses on Friday as analysts weighed its rapidly growing revenue and market share.

? Eastman Kodak Co. rose 8 percent to 68 cents after the struggling photography company said its general counsel, Laura Quatela, would become co-president Jan. 1.

____

Follow Daniel Wagner at www.twitter.com/wagnerreports .

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-23-Wall%20Street/id-f5b9fd7f642a45ce82e8f7cec76fed68

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Obama admin pushes renewable energy on 2 coasts (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration moved Tuesday to boost renewable energy on both coasts, approving onshore solar and wind farms in the West and pushing for offshore wind power in the Atlantic Ocean.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department has approved a 300-megawatt solar farm on public land in Arizona and a 200-megawatt wind farm in Southern California. The wind farm includes 186 megawatts that would be produced on federal lands.

The projects, southwest of Phoenix and east of San Diego, respectively, are the 24th and 25th renewable energy projects approved on public lands in the past two years, Salazar said, and demonstrate that the administration's commitment to renewable energy is paying dividends.

"Together, these projects will produce the clean energy equivalent of nearly 18 coal-fired power plants, so what's happening here is nothing short of a renewable energy revolution," Salazar said.

The Sonoran Solar Energy Project in Arizona, being developed by Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources, will generate enough electricity to power about 90,000 homes. The Tule Wind Project in California, developed by Iberdrola Renewables, the U.S. division of a Spanish energy company, will be able to power about 65,000 homes.

While onshore projects flourish, the administration's efforts on offshore wind have struggled. Not a single megawatt of wind power is produced offshore.

Last year, Salazar approved the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts after years of federal review, clearing the way for work to begin on the nation's first offshore wind farm.

On Tuesday, Salazar said officials are moving forward on a massive transmission project that would carry electricity produced at offshore wind farms from Virginia to New Jersey. Internet giant Google and others have pledged up to $5 billion for a network of transmission lines for offshore wind farms.

Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is soliciting interest from developers and seeking public comments on the project, which would involve building high-voltage transmission lines along the Atlantic Coast. The line would enable up to 7,000 megawatts of wind turbine capacity to be delivered to the grid, Salazar said.

The announcement comes a week after New Jersey-based NRG Energy Inc. said it is putting on hold a project that would have created a wind farm off Delaware's coast.

NRG said it is putting the project on hold because its Bluewater Wind subsidiary has been unable to find an investment partner. The proposed wind farm would have put 49 to 150 turbines about 13 miles off the Delaware coast.

The wind industry suffered another setback on Capitol Hill as Congress failed to extend a production tax credit, and a similar cash grant program for renewable energy, that supporters say has boosted the industry's strong growth.

A study commissioned by the American Wind Energy Association, an industry group, said failure to extend the tax credit could mean the loss of as many as 37,000 U.S. jobs.

Salazar has urged Congress to extend the wind credit, which expires next year, calling it a lifeline for domestic producers that could save tens of thousands of jobs and bring financial certainty to the renewable industry.

Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, called extension of the cash grant program even more crucial. The so-called 1603 Treasury grant program, approved under the 2009 economic stimulus law, provides cash grants worth 30 percent of costs for renewable projects. The program expires on Dec. 31.

"To keep the industry growing and creating jobs in the U.S., we need Congress to extend the 1603 program," Resch said, noting that the program has supported more than 22,000 renewable energy projects in 48 states. "The 1603 program has done more to expand the use of renewable energy than any other policy in U.S. history."

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has said he plans to take up tax incentives for renewable energy early next year.

__

AP energy writer Matthew Daly can be followed on Twitter: (at)MatthewDalyWDC

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111220/ap_on_re_us/us_renewable_energy

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Philadelphia columnist retires amid abuse allegations (Reuters)

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) ? Award-winning sports columnist Bill Conlin retired abruptly from the Philadelphia Daily News on Tuesday, the newspaper said, as a rival newspaper published an article accusing him of child sex abuse.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, in an article posted online on Tuesday, said three women and a man claim they were molested as children by Conlin in the 1970s.

One of them, Conlin's niece Kelley Blanchet, was quoted by the Inquirer as saying: "People have kept his secret.

"There were so many people who knew about this and did nothing," she said.

Conlin offered to retire on Tuesday afternoon, said Daily News editor Larry Platt at a news conference.

"I immediately accepted," said Platt. "It was a painful conversation."

Conlin, visited at his condominium in a gated development in Largo, Florida, by a Reuters reporter, said, "I have nothing to say" and provided contact details for his attorney before closing the door.

The condominium is about a mile from beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, and not far from the spring training camp of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team in Clearwater.

Conlin's attorney, George Bochetto, was not immediately available for comment. But he said in the newspaper that the columnist is "obviously floored by these accusations, which supposedly happened 40 years ago."

Prosecutors also could not be immediately reached for comment. A detective with the Gloucester, New Jersey prosecutor's office said in the Inquirer that criminal charges could not be pursued due to the state's statute of limitations.

According to the Inquirer, the four adults said Conlin groped and fondled them and touched their genitals when they were ages 7 to 12.

Blanchet, now a prosecutor in Atlantic City, New Jersey, told the Inquirer she and the others decided to speak out after the child sex abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State University brought back painful memories.

At Penn State, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky faces 52 counts of child sex abuse stemming from accusations from 10 adult men who say he abused them as children.

Also, at Syracuse University, a former basketball coach was accused by at least three men of abuse, and the former president of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is under investigation over allegations of abuse from former youth basketball players.

Both Philadelphia newspapers are owned by Philadelphia Media Network Inc.

"I am sickened by these allegations," said Greg Osberg, publisher of the Inquirer and Daily News, at the news conference in the Daily News' lobby.

"There were several very specific claims from multiple victims and their families to support our decision to publish this article," he said.

Platt said in the Daily News newsroom, there was "a sense of shock, outrage, a sense of sadness for the victims."

Conlin started in 1965 at the Daily News, where he wrote about Penn State and other college football, professional boxing, baseball, the Olympics and tennis.

He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year.

(Additional reporting by Robert Green; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Greg McCune and Jerry Norton)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111220/us_nm/us_columnist

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Redskins hurt Giants playoff bid with 23-10 win

Washington Redskins quarterback Rex Grossman, right, hands the ball to Niles Paul during the first quarter of an NFL football game against the New York Giants, Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Washington Redskins quarterback Rex Grossman, right, hands the ball to Niles Paul during the first quarter of an NFL football game against the New York Giants, Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) ? Rex Grossman threw a touchdown pass and the Washington Redskins put a hurt on the New York Giants and their playoff hopes with a 23-10 victory on Sunday.

Grossman threw a 20-yard scoring pass to Santana Moss, Darrel Young scored on a 6-yard run after one of the Redskins' three interceptions of Eli Manning and Graham Gano picked three field goals as Washington (5-9) won for only the second time in 10 games.

The loss knocked the Giants (7-7) out of first place in the NFC East.

Dallas (8-6) now leads the division by a game with two to go, including one with Giants on the final weekend. If New York beats the Jets and the Cowboys in its final two games it will win the division.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-12-18-Redskins-Giants/id-ed031242f8d5438480be2bba05e84c69

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Des Moines Register endorses Romney in GOP caucus (Washington Post)

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Jurors deadlock in $1B lawsuit against Microsoft (AP)

SALT LAKE CITY ? Attorneys for a Utah company that brought a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. said it will seek to retry the case with a new jury after a federal jury failed to reach a verdict.

Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

The trial began two months ago and included two days of testimony from Bill Gates last month. Jurors got the case on Wednesday. After much confusion, and some perplexing questions from the panel, they told U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz they were deadlocked by early Friday evening.

Motz repeatedly asked them if they could keep trying.

"This has been a very long and expensive case," the judge told the panel.

Novell attorneys pleaded with Motz to give the panel just one more day. In the end, however, the 12 jurors told the judge they were "hopelessly" deadlocked, and they later told lawyers a single holdout refused to vote in Novell's favor.

"He had strongly held views about the technical evidence and refused to budge," Novell attorney Jeffrey Johnson said. Jurors offered no comment after the trial.

Novell was left with little to show for a decade of effort.

"Although it's a technically complicated case, we're hoping to convince another jury that our claims have merit," Novell's corporate counsel Jim Lundberg said.

Microsoft said it would file a motion asking the judge to dismiss Novell's complaint for good and avoid a second trial.

"We remain confident that Novell's claims don't have any merit and look forward to the next steps in the process," said Steven Aeschbacher, Microsoft's associate general counsel.

Novell waited until 10 years after Microsoft left WordPerfect behind to file the lawsuit. The company said it was waiting for the U.S. government's antitrust enforcement against Microsoft to wrap up. At first Novell's case was dismissed, but it was later reinstated on appeal.

Microsoft lawyers have argued that Novell's loss of market share was its own doing because the company didn't develop a compatible WordPerfect program until long after the rollout of Windows 95. WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for word processing, but its share quickly plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft's own Office programs took hold.

Gates testified last month that he had no idea his decision to drop a tool for outside developers would sidetrack Novell. Gates said he was acting to protect Windows 95 and future versions from crashing.

He said that the company's preferred Word software was superior to WordPerfect, which was a "bulky, slow, buggy product" that did not integrate well with Windows 95.

Novell could have worked around the problem but failed to react quickly, he said.

Novell has argued that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.

Novell's lawsuit is the last major private antitrust case to follow the settlement of a federal antitrust enforcement action against Microsoft more than eight years ago.

Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group, the result of a merger that was completed earlier this year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111217/ap_on_hi_te/us_antitrust_lawsuit_microsoft

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