New whooping cough strain in US raises questions

NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers have discovered the first U.S. cases of whooping cough caused by a germ that may be resistant to the vaccine.

Health officials are looking into whether cases like the dozen found in Philadelphia might be one reason the nation just had its worst year for whooping cough in six decades. The new bug was previously reported in Japan, France and Finland.

"It's quite intriguing. It's the first time we've seen this here," said Dr. Tom Clark of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. cases are detailed in a brief report from the CDC and other researchers in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Whooping cough is a highly contagious disease that can strike people of any age but is most dangerous to children. It was once common, but cases in the U.S. dropped after a vaccine was introduced in the 1940s.

An increase in illnesses in recent years has been partially blamed on a version of the vaccine used since the 1990s, which doesn't last as long. Last year, the CDC received reports of 41,880 cases, according to a preliminary count. That included 18 deaths.

The new study suggests that the new whooping cough strain may be why more people have been getting sick. Experts don't think it's more deadly, but the shots may not work as well against it.

In a small, soon-to-be published study, French researchers found the vaccine seemed to lower the risk of severe disease from the new strain in infants. But it didn't prevent illness completely, said Nicole Guiso of the Pasteur Institute, one of the researchers.

The new germ was first identified in France, where more extensive testing is routinely done for whooping cough. The strain now accounts for 14 percent of cases there, Guiso said.

In the United States, doctors usually rely on a rapid test to help make a diagnosis. The extra lab work isn't done often enough to give health officials a good idea how common the new type is here, experts said.

"We definitely need some more information about this before we can draw any conclusions," the CDC's Clark said.

The U.S. cases were found in the past two years in patients at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. One of the study's researchers works for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which makes a version of the old whooping cough vaccine that is sold in other countries.

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JournaL: http://www.nejm.org

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Wall Street extends losses as retail, housing stocks fall

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "The Avengers," or at least most of the members of the world-saving crew, will assemble on the stage of this year's Academy Awards. Castmates Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo will present an Oscar together, show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced Wednesday. Missing in action are Scarlett Johansson, who played Black Widow but is currently starring in a revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" on Broadway, and Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor. ...

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IHT Rendezvous: The Best Asian Art? You Can Vote on It

HONG KONG — Heading into its 10th year, the Sovereign Asian Art Prize has grown far beyond its Hong Kong base to span the very edges of the continent, including former Soviet republics and the Middle East.

Its list of 30 finalists, announced last week, was light on the usual contemporary art superpowers — there was only one name from mainland China — and heavy on Muslim-majority states that may not get as much attention in the art world. Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Oman and the Palestinian territories produced finalists for the first time.

Sovereign focuses on developing talents from developing nations. The $30,000 award goes to a mid-career artist — someone who may be acclaimed in his or her home country, but who has not made it big internationally. (Its sponsor, the Hong Kong-based Sovereign Group, also has an award in Africa).

The majority of the Asian finalists are in their 30s and working in photography, prints or mixed media. While politics is nothing new in contemporary Asian art — those ironic Chairman Mao heads have become a stereotype in Chinese painting — these works also offer views on faith, culture and sexuality. (You can vote for your favorite here.)

Saudi Arabia is represented by Shadia Alem, whose photographic work “Supreme Ka’ba of God” represents her birthplace, Mecca.

“Wedding Memory” by Hassan Meer of Oman depicts a bride and groom, her face partly veiled, his entirely covered.  The catalog notes describe the backdrop as the “room that accommodates the consummation of the marriage,”  though the black-and-white image shows the exterior of a home half-destroyed and marked by graffiti.

Raeda Saadeh, from the Palestinian territories, was born in Umm al-Fahm, an Arab city in the Haifa district of Israel. Her photograph “Penelope” depicts the mythical Greek figure calmly knitting and waiting on a pile of rubble and wire in East Jerusalem, where Israeli forces had destroyed homes.

Evgeny Boikov — representing Kyrgyzstan, but originally from Azerbaijan — depicts a protester who is said to represent the 2005 and 2010 uprisings in Kyrgyzstan, the former Soviet state. Mr. Boikov uses industrial-sized printers (the kind usually used for billboa rds) to print on small canvases. The result is the indigo imprint of a man bent over, though it’s not clear whether from pain, exertion or something else.

From neighboring Kazakhstan, Said Atabekov photographs a girl holding a korpeshe, a traditional textile used as bedding, made here in the likeness of an American flag.

Also using textiles, Risham Syed, who teaches art in her native Pakistan, used acrylic, lace and army coat buttons on a square of Pakistani printed cotton to  riff on Thomas Cole’s 19th-century painting “Indians Viewing the Landscape.”

Pakistan and Hong Kong had the best showings, with four finalists.

Faiza Butt printed a poem on a light box, in Urdu on one side and English on the other. It’s a pretty, almost floral-looking work at first glance. On a closer look, you can see that she has used debris, garbage and half-eaten food as decoration.

Muhammad Ali, 24, fashioned a sepia-toned homoerotic portrait of two scantily clad men, an image that might not be risqué in the West but which could be controversial in a country where homosexuality is illegal.

Waseem Ahmed’s “Fusion” is also sexually charged. A  female nude, rendered in the type of Mughal classical art, is overlaid with details from a Western painting of Adam and Eve, just their groins showing, covered by fig leaves.

When the Man Asian Literary Prize was announced last month,  it called into question two issues concerning arts prizes in Asia. First, where, exactly, does Asia begin and end? (The Man Asia included Orhan Pamuk on its short list, although Mr. Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel laureate, has written about his desire for Turkey to join the European Union). The second is whether Asia’s budding cultural scene still needs Western corporate support. The Man Group, the hedge fund management firm, has said it would no longer underwrite the literary prize. The Sovereign Art Prize has the Swiss bank Julius Bär behind it.

An exhibition of the finalists runs through Friday at Exchange Square in Hong Kong and will later travel to Seoul and Singapore. The winner will be announced, and the works will be auctioned by Christie’s, at the Four Seasons in Hong Kong on Feb. 21.

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Monopoly Drops Iron, Adds Cat Token to Classic Board Game

People Pets

By Amy Jamieson

02/06/2013 at 10:40 AM EST

The votes are in and the iron is out.

After an online vote, the iron token in Monopoly's classic board game has been replaced with a shiny shorthaired cat wearing an "M" on her collar. The feline was chosen by fans in a separate online vote and beat out a new guitar, helicopter, diamond ring and toy robot with 31 percent of the vote.

The sometimes-detested home appliance received the least amount of clicks in a save this token vote that began Jan. 9 and closed Feb. 5.

"Breaking News: The Iron has been eliminated from Monopoly and will be replaced by a new cat token," reads a message posted Wednesday on the game's official Facebook page.

The pretty kitty joins the standard battleship, racer, shoe, wheelbarrow, thimble, top hat and another fair-weather furry friend, the Scottie dog. It will be included in the new edition of the game, which hits stores in mid- to late 2013, Hasbro said.

"We know that cat lovers around the world will be happy to welcome the new cat token into the Monopoly game," said Eric Nyman, senior vice president and global brand leader for Hasbro Gaming. "While we're a bit sad to see the iron go, the cat token is a fantastic choice by the fans and we have no doubt it will become just as iconic as the original tokens."

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Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.

With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until there's a ruling on their lawsuit seeking to block it altogether. The measure would bar many eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces.

"It would be a tremendous waste of expense, time, and effort for our members to incur all of the harm and costs associated with the ban if this court decides that the ban is illegal," Chong Sik Le, president of the New York Korean-American Grocers Association, said in court papers filed Friday.

City lawyers are fighting the lawsuit and oppose postponing the restriction, which the city Board of Health approved in September. They said Tuesday they expect to prevail.

"The obesity epidemic kills nearly 6,000 New Yorkers each year. We see no reason to delay the Board of Health's reasonable and legal actions to combat this major, growing problem," Mark Muschenheim, a city attorney, said in a statement.

Another city lawyer, Thomas Merrill, has said officials believe businesses have had enough time to get ready for the new rule. He has noted that the city doesn't plan to seek fines until June.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials see the first-of-its-kind limit as a coup for public health. The city's obesity rate is rising, and studies have linked sugary drinks to weight gain, they note.

"This is the biggest step a city has taken to curb obesity," Bloomberg said when the measure passed.

Soda makers and other critics view the rule as an unwarranted intrusion into people's dietary choices and an unfair, uneven burden on business. The restriction won't apply at supermarkets and many convenience stores because the city doesn't regulate them.

While the dispute plays out in court, "the impacted businesses would like some more certainty on when and how they might need to adjust operations," American Beverage Industry spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger said Tuesday.

Those adjustments are expected to cost the association's members about $600,000 in labeling and other expenses for bottles, Vice President Mike Redman said in court papers. Reconfiguring "16-ounce" cups that are actually made slightly bigger, to leave room at the top, is expected to take cup manufacturers three months to a year and cost them anywhere from more than $100,000 to several millions of dollars, Foodservice Packaging Institute President Lynn Dyer said in court documents.

Movie theaters, meanwhile, are concerned because beverages account for more than 20 percent of their overall profits and about 98 percent of soda sales are in containers greater than 16 ounces, according to Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners of New York State.

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Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Wall Street slips after Tuesday rally, results eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dipped on Wednesday as investors, awaiting fresh trading incentives, locked in profits after recent rallies took the S&P 500 to five-year highs.

Transportation stocks were among the worst performers weighed down by an 8.2 percent drop in CH Robinson Worldwide , which dropped 8.2 percent to $61.53 after reporting fourth-quarter earnings.

The Dow Jones Transportation index <.djt> shed 0.6 percent after closing at an all-time high on Tuesday. The index has surged more than 10 percent this year so far.

A 6-percent advance this year so far has lifted the benchmark S&P 500 index to its highest since December 2007, while the Dow <.dji> briefly climbed above 14,000 recently, making it a challenge for investors to continue pushing the equity market upward in the absence of strong catalysts.

"You knew a correction was coming; the question was whether they were going to tease you and get it close and then start selling it off or get (the Dow) up to 14,000 and then start to make a move to the sell side," said Gordon Charlop, managing director at Rosenblatt Securities in New York.

"We got a quick move and it's really just not healthy for markets to go one way, so the idea that a little bit of a correction is due isn't troublesome to me at all."

Walt Disney Co was among the bright spots, up 1.4 percent to $55.07 after the company topped estimates for quarterly adjusted earnings and gave an optimistic outlook for the next few quarters.

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

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

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> lost 35.52 points, or 0.25 percent, at 13,943.78. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> slipped 3.17 points, or 0.21 percent, at 1,508.12. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> shed 4.34 points, or 0.14 percent, at 3,167.24.

The benchmark S&P index rose 1.04 percent Tuesday, its biggest percentage gain since a 2.5-percent advance on January 2, when legislators sidestepped a "fiscal cliff" of spending cuts and tax hikes that could have hurt a fragile U.S. economic recovery.

Ralph Lauren Corp climbed 7.4 percent to $177.13 as the best performer on the S&P 500 after reporting renewed momentum in its holiday-quarter sales and profits.

Time Warner Inc jumped 4.3 percent to $52.11 after reporting higher fourth-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates, as growth in its cable networks offset declines in its film, TV entertainment and publishing units.

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

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Bulgaria Implicates Hezbollah in Deadly Israeli Bus Blast

Reuters

Bulgaria's Burgas airport on July 18 after an explosion on a bus carrying Israeli tourists outside the airport.

SOFIA, Bulgaria — The Bulgarian government said on Tuesday that two of the people behind a deadly bombing attack that targeted an Israeli tour bus six months ago were believed to be members of the military wing of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The announcement could force the European Union to reconsider whether to designate the group as a terrorist organization and crack down on its extensive fund-raising operations across the continent. That could have wide-reaching repercussions for Europe’s uneasy détente with the group, which is an influential force in Middle East politics, considers Israel an enemy and has extensive links with Iran.

Bulgaria’s interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, said at a news conference that the investigation into the bombing in Burgas in July 2012 found that a man with an Australian passport and a man with a Canadian passport were two of the three conspirators involved in the attack, which claimed the lives of five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver.

Bulgarian investigators had “a well-founded assumption that they belonged to the military formation of Hezbollah,” Mr. Tsvetanov said.

Bulgarian officials have found themselves under pressure from Israel and the United States, which consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization, to blame it for the bus attack. But the Bulgarians also have been facing pressure from European allies like Germany and France, which regard Hezbollah as a legitimate political organization, to temper any finding on the sensitive issue.

Mr. Tsvetanov spoke to reporters here after briefing top government officials and security personnel about the state of the investigation.

“We have followed their entire activities in Australia and Canada so we have information about financing and their membership in Hezbollah,” he said.

Mr. Tsvetanov did not mention Iran, however, Hezbollah’s ally and chief backer.

Analysts said the bombing was just one chapter in a shadow war pitting Israel against Iran and Hezbollah. Israel is believed to be behind the killings of Iranian nuclear scientists. Operatives of the Iranian Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, were believed to be behind a series of plots against Israeli targets in Thailand, India and Georgia. Israeli officials said the Burgas attack bore the hallmarks of a Hezbollah operation.

The European calculation all along has been that whatever its activities in the Middle East, Hezbollah does not pose a threat on the Continent. Thousands of Hezbollah members and supporters operate in Europe essentially unrestricted, raising money that is funneled back to the group in Lebanon.

Changing the designation to a terrorist entity raises the prospect of unsettling questions for Europe — how to deal with those supporters, for example — and the sort of confrontation governments have sought to avoid.

“There’s the overall fear if we’re too noisy about this, Hezbollah might strike again, and it might not be Israeli tourists this time,” said Sylke Tempel, editor in chief of the German foreign affairs magazine Internationale Politik.

The significance of their determination has put pressure on Bulgarian officials, who would like to maintain strong ties with Israel and the United States, and European allies like France and Germany. Bulgarian officials had maintained a studied silence for more than six months since the attack.

“If you factor in the suspicion that there are political implications beyond Bulgaria’s borders, it’s completely understandable that they’ve been playing for time,” said Dimitar Bechev, head of the Sofia office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Tsvetanov spoke after the meeting of the president’s council for national security, which includes the prime minister, top cabinet members and military and security personnel.

Bulgarian officials are acutely aware of the consequences of their findings even though larger European Union members did not exert blatant pressure on them regarding the Hezbollah question. “It was not a campaign,” said Philipp Missfelder, a leading member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the foreign policy spokesman for the party in Parliament. “Some German officials dropped a few words.”

But Mr. Missfelder said that attitudes toward Hezbollah were gradually shifting. “It’s clear that they are steered from Iran and they are destabilizing the region,” Mr. Missfelder said. “The group that thinks Hezbollah is a stabilizing factor is getting smaller.”

Hezbollah’s dual nature as what Western intelligence agencies call a terrorist organization and a political party with significant social projects, including schools and health clinics, make it more difficult to dismiss. Hezbollah is a significant political actor in Lebanon, and many European officials are particularly wary of upsetting the status quo as the civil war drags on in Syria.

Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

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Michael Douglas Has Dating Advice for His Son: Be Courteous

MediaPunch Inc/Rex USA

For most parents, nothing is scarier than the idea of their teen starting to date — even if you’re Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose 12-year-old son Dylan is entering that arena.

“I’m trying to digest it all, and I’m just trying to remember what it’s like to be in a teenage romance,” Douglas, 68, told PEOPLE at Thursday’s New York premiere of Zeta-Jones’s new film Side Effects, sponsored by Cinema Society and Michael Kors.

“And what I remember scares me as a father!”

Actually, the doting dad says he set relaxed dating rules for Dylan, because his son is so responsible.

“I’m not the over-protective dad,” says the Oscar winner. “Dylan is a great kid and I trust him. He’s having fun and conducting himself very well.”

And does the star of HBO’s Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra — who gets to kiss Matt Damon onscreen — determine which girls Dylan can or cannot date?

“I don’t have much say in it. I keep my mouth shut,” said Douglas. “But I like his choices so far.”

Douglas, who has been happily married to Zeta-Jones, 43, for 12 years, has one piece of advice to give to his son about courting women: always be courteous.

“Unsolicited advice is a hostile gesture. I remembered that from a long time ago,” he says with a laugh. “But I want him to know to always be polite and respectful and just don’t try to hard. If he asks me for specific advice, I’ll have a long talk with him.”

As for his own relationship with Zeta-Jones, “Catherine and I are doing well,” he said. “She is more beautiful than ever inside and out. I support her with everything and she is simply the best.”

– Paul Chi

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Wall Street rebounds from weakness, Dell to go private

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Stocks rose on Tuesday as investors sought bargains following the market's worst daily session since November and more companies reported results that were stronger than expected.

Major stock indexes had dropped about 1 percent in Monday's session, pressured by renewed worries over the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis. Still, equities have been strong performers recently, with the benchmark S&P 500 index up 4.9 percent for 2013.

Dell Inc agreed to go private in a $24.4 billion deal that was widely expected. Shares of the computer maker rose 0.7 percent to $13.36 after a brief trading halt.

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

"Stocks are really the only place investors can go for any kind of real return, and that's enough to have people continuing to come into the market, not just buying on dips but in general," said Thomas Nyheim, portfolio manager at Christiana Trust in Greenville, Delaware.

Archer Daniels Midland reported revenue and adjusted fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, boosted by strong global demand for oilseeds. Shares rose 4 percent to $29.58.

Estee Lauder Cos Inc gained 4.5 percent to $63.78 after reporting results.

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

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

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 83.88 points, or 0.60 percent, at 13,963.96. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 9.16 points, or 0.61 percent, at 1,504.87. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 10.80 points, or 0.35 percent, at 3,141.97.

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

McGraw-Hill extended its Monday decline, slumping 7.1 percent to $46.68 as the U.S. Justice Department launched a civil lawsuit against the company and its unit, Standard & Poor's, over mortgage bond ratings. The action marks the first such federal action against a credit rating agency related to the recent financial crisis.

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

U.S. shares of BP Plc rose 1.8 percent to $44.38 after the company reported earnings that beat expectations and said underlying financial momentum would be "strongly evident" by 2014.

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

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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