WASHINGTON (AP) ? Federal authorities have seized the domain names of 150 websites accused of selling counterfeit or pirated merchandise.
The seizures were announced on "Cyber Monday," the day that for many shoppers kicks off the online holiday shopping season. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with the FBI, led the investigation.
ICE officials said the websites, which sold professional sports jerseys, golf equipment and DVD sets among other items, will now greet visitors with a seizure banner that notifies them of the federal action and informs them that copyright infringement is a federal crime.
If you need additional pantry space consider repurposing Ikea STUVA Children's storage benches and cabinets into a nicely-sized pantry. Ikea Hackers reports that three STUVA cabinets fit perfectly onto two STUVA storage benches.
It's not the least expensive storage option (2 benches and 3 cabinets will set you back around $540) but for the amount of storage space and modern aesthetics it's not a bad deal if it works for your home and it looks much better than milk crates and zip ties.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? As a result of the poor box-office performance of "Happy Feet Two," 600 of the 700 employees at the digital production studio behind the animated movie reportedly have received their walking papers.
Employees at Dr. D Studios, which is based in Sydney, Australia, have been told they will be laid off in the coming weeks, according to IF.com.au. TheWrap was unable to reach Dr. D for comment.
The film, a sequel to 2006's Academy Award-winning "Happy Feet" -- which grossed $384.3 million off a budget of $100 million -- had amassed only an estimated $30.3 million worldwide as of Thursday.
There may be a silver lining for some of the employees, who reportedly have been offered a job at a new company that Kennedy-Miller Mitchell Films -- which launched Dr. D as a joint partnership with Omnilab Media -- plans to get off the ground in early 2012. KMM was founded in 1973 by "Happy Feet" director George Miller and producer Byron Kennedy.
In addition to the layoffs, KMM and Omnilab are reportedly at odds, and there is the possibility that the partnership between the two companies may be dissolved.
Released on November 18, "Happy Feet Two" has not found much success. It opened in 3,606 theaters and came in second at the box office during its debut weekend, grossing $21.2 million. Its estimated budget was $140 million.
"We obviously came in a little bit under our expectations on 'Happy Feet,' " Warner Bros. President of Distribution Dan Fellman told TheWrap. "The market expands enormously over the holiday. By next Monday, we'll know whether we're in good shape."
With three new family films released this week -- "The Muppets," "Hugo" and "Arthur Christmas" -- "Happy Feet Two" is unlikely to gain further traction.
Dr. D Studios, which specializes in digital feature film production and high-end special effects, reportedly had hoped to compete with Peter Jackson's Weta Digital in neighboring New Zealand. The studio is also attached to the long-delayed fourth "Mad Max" film, "Fury Road"; Miller was the director, producer and writer for the first three installments.
According to DrDStudios.com, "Fury Road" is in pre-production, although the site also includes an out-of-date notice that "Happy Feet Two" is in production. There are no job openings listed on the site.
CAIRO ? Egypt's military rulers picked a prime minister from ousted leader Hosni Mubarak's era to head the next government, according to state television, a choice that will almost certainly intensify criticism by tens of thousands of protesters accusing the generals of trying to extend the old guard and demanding they step down immediately.
Kamal el-Ganzouri, 78, served as prime minister between 1996 and 1999 and was deputy prime minister and planning minister before that. He also was a provincial governor under the late President Anwar Sadat.
"Illegitimate, illegitimate!" chanted the crowds at Cairo's central Tahrir Square on hearing news of el-Ganzouri's appointment.
"Not only was he prime minister under Mubarak, but also part of the old regime for a total of 18 years," said protester Mohammed el-Fayoumi, 29. "Why did we have a revolution then?"
The announcement followed a meeting late Thursday between el-Ganzouri and senior military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi. Tantawi was Mubarak's defense minister of 20 years and served in the government headed by el-Ganzouri.
El-Ganzouri will replace Essam Sharaf, who resigned this week after nearly nine months in office amid deadly clashes between police and protesters calling for the military to immediately step down.
Sharaf was criticized for being weak and beholden to the generals. The television announcement said el-Ganzouri will enjoy "authority," but did not elaborate.
El-Ganzouri's appointment was likely to deepen the anger of the protesters, already seething over the military's perceived reluctance to dismantle the legacy of Mubarak's 29-year rule.
Protesters chanting, "Leave, leave!" filled up Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday for what has been dubbed by organizers as "The Last Chance Million-Man Protest" aimed at forcing the military council to yield power.
Pro-reform leader and Nobel peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei was mobbed by hundreds of supporters as he arrived in the square and took part in Friday prayers, leaving shortly afterward.
"He is here to support the revolutionaries," said protester Ahmed Awad, 35. "He came to see for himself the tragedy caused by the military."
Swelling crowds of demonstrators chanted, "The people want to bring down the marshal", in reference to Tantawi, who took over the reins of power from Mubarak.
The rally comes one day after the military offered an apology for the killing of nearly 40 protesters in five days of deadly clashes, mostly centered around Tahrir Square. This was the longest spate of uninterrupted violence since the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak on Feb. 11. The streets were relatively calm on Friday as a truce negotiated Thursday in Cairo continued to hold.
The military also has said that parliamentary elections due to start Monday will go ahead on schedule despite the unrest in Cairo and a string of other cities to the north and south of the capital.
Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square ? angry at the military for failing to stabilize the country, salvage the economy or bring democracy ? say they will not leave the sprawling plaza until the generals step down in favor of a civilian presidential council. Their show of resolve resembles that of the rallies which forced Mubarak to give up power.
The military has rejected calls to immediately step down, saying its claim to power is supported by the warm welcome given to troops who took over the streets from the discredited police early in the anti-Mubarak uprising as well as an overwhelming endorsement for constitutional amendments they proposed in a March referendum.
Tantawi has offered another referendum on whether his military council should step down immediately.
Such a vote, activists say, would divide the nation and likely open the door for a deal between the military and political groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt's largest and best organized group, the Brotherhood is notorious for its opportunism and thirst for power. It was empowered after the fall of Mubarak, regaining legitimacy after spending nearly 60 years as an outlawed group.
Celebrities Who Experiment with Sex–Girls Talkin Smack Scarlett Johansson to Direct New Movie–Tonic Gossip Britney Spears Opens Up About Crazy Life–Bitten & Bound Bruce Willis’ [...]
Andrew Luck set the school record for the most career touchdown passes and eclipsed his own single-season mark, throwing for 233 yards and four scores to lead fourth-ranked Stanford past No. 22 Notre Dame 28-14 in his home finale Saturday night.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? It may not help the economy, but President Barack Obama found another move he can make without congressional approval on Wednesday: pardon a turkey.
Obama, a Democrat, has spent the last several weeks criticizing the Congress and Republicans for not embracing his jobs proposals, launching a "We Can't Wait" campaign to highlight executive actions he was taking to boost the economy without lawmakers' input.
With tongue in cheek, the president brought the same logic -- minus the economic incentive -- to the annual White House ritual of sparing a turkey.
Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, and turkey is the centerpiece of the traditional holiday meal.
"Some of you may know that recently I've been taking a series of executive actions that don't require congressional approval," Obama told a chuckling crowd at the White House, with his daughters standing at his side.
"Well, here's another one. We can't wait to pardon these turkeys. Literally. Otherwise, they'd end up next to the mashed potatoes and stuffing."
Obama, grinning, raised his hand over one bird, dubbed "Liberty," and pronounced it safe from slaughter.
Obama said Liberty was chosen from a flock of 30 birds and raised by students from a high school in Minnesota, near the farm where the birds came from.
He used the occasion to poke fun at Washington and the media, saying Liberty and his feathered friend Peace, who was not visible, had been trained for an outing before the press.
"I'm told that in order to prepare Liberty and Peace for their big day, the students exposed them to loud noises and flash bulbs so that they'd be ready to face the White House press corps. This is actually true," he said.
"They also received the most important part of their media training, which involves learning how to gobble without really saying anything," Obama deadpanned.
Both birds will spend their remaining days living at Mount Vernon, the estate of the first U.S. president, George Washington.
"So Liberty is ready for his turn in the spotlight. And after he finishes a round of cable hits and a few Sunday shows, he's going to retire to a life of leisure at Mount Vernon -- the same place where George Washington spent his golden years," Obama joked.
Obama and his family later went to a local food bank. Before they left he said they would bring with them "two unnamed turkeys, who weren't so lucky."
As Queen's front-man, Freddie Mercury's overpowering vocals, four-octave range, and thundering stage presence couldn't be ignored. As a high-profile victim of the US AIDS epidemic, his death on Thanksgiving Day, 1991 couldn't be ignored either. Tonight's Soundtrack honors Mr. Fahrenheit and marks the 20th anniversary of his passing. More »
(Reuters) ? New York's highest court allowed the state on Tuesday to proceed with a lawsuit that had accused First American Corp and its eAppraiseIT unit of colluding with the former Washington Mutual Inc to fraudulently inflate home values.
The Court of Appeals rejected the defendants' argument that federal law precluded New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from pursuing claims alleging fraud and violations of real estate appraisal independence rules. It upheld a June 2010 ruling by an intermediate state appeals court.
The eAppraiseIT unit is now part of CoreLogic Inc, which was created when First American split last year into that company and First American Financial Corp.
Andrew Cuomo, Schneiderman's predecessor and now New York's governor, had accused First American and eAppraiseIT in a November 2007 lawsuit of caving to pressure from Washington Mutual to use appraisers who provided inflated appraisals, to win more business.
Lenders that use inflated appraisals can sometimes make larger loans, including to borrowers who cannot afford them, and as a result collect higher fees.
Writing for a 6-1 Court of Appeals majority, Judge Carmen Ciparick said the attorney general's authority to pursue state law claims would at most only "incidentally affect" the lending operations of a federal savings association. Thus, she said federal law should not pre-empt the state law claims.
A lawyer for the defendants had no immediate comment on the decision. A spokesman for Schneiderman did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
Washington Mutual failed in September 2008 in large part because it kept tens of billions of dollars of risky home loans that it had made on its balance sheet. JPMorgan Chase & Co bought the thrift's main banking operations.
In morning trading, CoreLogic shares were down 19 cents at $12.11, and First American Financial shares rose 17 cents to $11.33.
The case is Cuomo v. First American Corp et al, New York State Court of Appeals, No. 184.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Maureen Bavdek)
They call it 'guppy love': UCLA biologists solve an evolution mysteryPublic release date: 23-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Stuart Wolpert swolpert@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0511 University of California - Los Angeles
Guppies in the wild have evolved over at least half-a-million years long enough for the males' coloration to have changed dramatically. Yet a characteristic orange patch on male guppies has remained remarkably stable, though it could have become redder or more yellow. Why has it stayed the same hue of orange over such a long period of time?
Because that's the color female guppies prefer.
"Sometimes populations have to evolve just to stay the same," said Greg Grether, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and co-author of a study published Nov. 23 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, a major journal for research in evolutionary biology.
"In this case, the males have evolved back over and over again to the color that females prefer," said Grether, who noted that there are many examples in which there is less variation among populations of a species than life scientists would expect.
The new study, funded by the National Science Foundation, "provides a neat solution to a mystery that has puzzled me for years," he said.
The orange patches on male guppies are made up of two pigments: carotenoids (which they ingest in their diets and are yellow) and drosopterins (which are red and which their bodies produce). Carotenoids are the same pigments that provide color to vegetables and fruits. Plants produce carotenoids, but animals generally cannot; guppies obtain most of their carotenoids from algae.
UCLA's Kerry Deere, the lead author of the study, conducted experiments in which she presented female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) with a choice of males with low, medium and high levels of drosopterin to see which males they preferred. In her experiments, the females were given a wider range of pigment choices than they would find in the wild. Deere, who was a graduate student of ecology and evolutionary biology in Grether's laboratory at the time and is currently a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in human genetics, conducted more than 100 mate-choice trials.
The females strongly preferred the intermediate males, those whose patches, or spots, were the right hue of orange not too red and not too yellow.
"The females preferred the males with an intermediate drosopterin level by a highly significant margin," Deere said.
"Males that are closer to this preferred hue probably have more offspring," Grether said.
If guppies were dependent only on carotenoids for their orange coloration, one would expect to find large changes in the color of their orange patches because the availability of algae varies by location. Guppies are native to Trinidad and Venezuela; the ones in this study were from Trinidad.
(Unlike the colorful guppies sold in pet stores, female guppies in the wild do not have bright coloration like the orange patches. Males are not as ornate, or as large, as the pet-store variety either.)
"A pattern I discovered 10 years ago, which was mysterious at first, is that in locations where more carotenoids are available in their diet, guppies produce more of the drosopterins," Grether said. "There is a very strong pattern of the ratio of these two kinds of pigments staying about the same.
"To human eyes at least, as the proportion of carotenoids in the spots goes up, the spots look yellower, and as the proportion of drosopterins goes up, the spots look redder. By maintaining a very similar ratio of the two pigments across sites, the fish maintain a similar hue of orange from site to site. What is maintaining the similar pigment ratio across sites and across populations? The reason for the lack of variation is that genetic changes counteract environmental changes. The males have evolved differences in drosopterin production that keep the hue relatively constant across environments. As a result of Kerry's experiment, we now have good evidence that female mate choice is responsible for this pattern."
While there are many cases in nature in which genetic variation in a trait masks environmental variation, there are very few examples where the cause is known.
"I originally assumed if there was variation among populations in drosopterin production, it would be the populations where carotenoid availability was lowest that were producing more of these synthetic pigments to compensate for the lack of carotenoids in their diet. But we found the opposite pattern," Grether said. "They're not using drosopterins as a carotenoid substitute; they're matching carotenoid levels with drosopterins. Why they are doing that was
a mystery. The answer appears to be that it enables them to maintain the hue that female guppies prefer."
###
Co-authors on the study were Janet Sinsheimer, a professor of biostatistics, biomathematics and human genetics at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, and former UCLA undergraduate Aida Sun.
Grether received funding from the National Science Foundation. Deere received fellowship funding from the National Institutes of Health.
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
For more news, visit the http://newsroom.ucla.edu and follow us on Twitter @UCLAnewsroom
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
They call it 'guppy love': UCLA biologists solve an evolution mysteryPublic release date: 23-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Stuart Wolpert swolpert@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0511 University of California - Los Angeles
Guppies in the wild have evolved over at least half-a-million years long enough for the males' coloration to have changed dramatically. Yet a characteristic orange patch on male guppies has remained remarkably stable, though it could have become redder or more yellow. Why has it stayed the same hue of orange over such a long period of time?
Because that's the color female guppies prefer.
"Sometimes populations have to evolve just to stay the same," said Greg Grether, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and co-author of a study published Nov. 23 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, a major journal for research in evolutionary biology.
"In this case, the males have evolved back over and over again to the color that females prefer," said Grether, who noted that there are many examples in which there is less variation among populations of a species than life scientists would expect.
The new study, funded by the National Science Foundation, "provides a neat solution to a mystery that has puzzled me for years," he said.
The orange patches on male guppies are made up of two pigments: carotenoids (which they ingest in their diets and are yellow) and drosopterins (which are red and which their bodies produce). Carotenoids are the same pigments that provide color to vegetables and fruits. Plants produce carotenoids, but animals generally cannot; guppies obtain most of their carotenoids from algae.
UCLA's Kerry Deere, the lead author of the study, conducted experiments in which she presented female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) with a choice of males with low, medium and high levels of drosopterin to see which males they preferred. In her experiments, the females were given a wider range of pigment choices than they would find in the wild. Deere, who was a graduate student of ecology and evolutionary biology in Grether's laboratory at the time and is currently a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in human genetics, conducted more than 100 mate-choice trials.
The females strongly preferred the intermediate males, those whose patches, or spots, were the right hue of orange not too red and not too yellow.
"The females preferred the males with an intermediate drosopterin level by a highly significant margin," Deere said.
"Males that are closer to this preferred hue probably have more offspring," Grether said.
If guppies were dependent only on carotenoids for their orange coloration, one would expect to find large changes in the color of their orange patches because the availability of algae varies by location. Guppies are native to Trinidad and Venezuela; the ones in this study were from Trinidad.
(Unlike the colorful guppies sold in pet stores, female guppies in the wild do not have bright coloration like the orange patches. Males are not as ornate, or as large, as the pet-store variety either.)
"A pattern I discovered 10 years ago, which was mysterious at first, is that in locations where more carotenoids are available in their diet, guppies produce more of the drosopterins," Grether said. "There is a very strong pattern of the ratio of these two kinds of pigments staying about the same.
"To human eyes at least, as the proportion of carotenoids in the spots goes up, the spots look yellower, and as the proportion of drosopterins goes up, the spots look redder. By maintaining a very similar ratio of the two pigments across sites, the fish maintain a similar hue of orange from site to site. What is maintaining the similar pigment ratio across sites and across populations? The reason for the lack of variation is that genetic changes counteract environmental changes. The males have evolved differences in drosopterin production that keep the hue relatively constant across environments. As a result of Kerry's experiment, we now have good evidence that female mate choice is responsible for this pattern."
While there are many cases in nature in which genetic variation in a trait masks environmental variation, there are very few examples where the cause is known.
"I originally assumed if there was variation among populations in drosopterin production, it would be the populations where carotenoid availability was lowest that were producing more of these synthetic pigments to compensate for the lack of carotenoids in their diet. But we found the opposite pattern," Grether said. "They're not using drosopterins as a carotenoid substitute; they're matching carotenoid levels with drosopterins. Why they are doing that was
a mystery. The answer appears to be that it enables them to maintain the hue that female guppies prefer."
###
Co-authors on the study were Janet Sinsheimer, a professor of biostatistics, biomathematics and human genetics at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, and former UCLA undergraduate Aida Sun.
Grether received funding from the National Science Foundation. Deere received fellowship funding from the National Institutes of Health.
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
For more news, visit the http://newsroom.ucla.edu and follow us on Twitter @UCLAnewsroom
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Traders Richard Cohen, left, and Lewis Vande-Pallen, right, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Stocks are taking a sharp fall in early trading Monday amid reports that a congressional committee will fail to agree on a plan to cut the U.S. government's budget deficit.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Traders Richard Cohen, left, and Lewis Vande-Pallen, right, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Stocks are taking a sharp fall in early trading Monday amid reports that a congressional committee will fail to agree on a plan to cut the U.S. government's budget deficit.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Specialists James Denaro, Christopher Culhane, and Glenn Carell, left to right, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Stocks are taking a sharp fall in early trading Monday amid reports that a congressional committee will fail to agree on a plan to cut the U.S. government's budget deficit.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Stocks are taking a sharp fall in early trading Monday amid reports that a congressional committee will fail to agree on a plan to cut the U.S. government's budget deficit.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
NEW YORK (AP) ? The stock market was not exactly surprised that the so-called supercommittee failed to reach a deal to cut the federal deficit. But since summer, investors have bought at the first sign of hope and sold at the first hint of trouble.
So on Monday, they sold big.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down as much as 342 points after the special committee of Congress assigned to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years indicated that there would be no deal.
"They're essentially giving up," said Robert Robis, head of fixed income macro strategies at ING Investment Management.
The supercommittee stalemate is supposed to trigger automatic spending cuts across the government, but there were already hints that Congress would find a way around them. Analysts say that could lead to another downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.
In addition, the breakdown raises questions about how Congress will find a way to extend a 2 percentage point cut in the Social Security tax. Congress passed it for one year, and some lawmakers support extending it because economic growth remains weak.
Each of those measures puts cash in the pockets of Americans, who can spend it and help the economy grow.
It also shows lawmakers may not be able to make progress on anything budget-related in the coming months, said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist with Banyan Partners LLC in New York.
"It shows that there's a bigger problem at hand, and if they can't work to resolve these relatively small yet meaningful issues, what's going to happen if we get into a situation like Europe is in?" he said. "And we're kind of headed there."
The result was another day of heavy selling in a market that has grown used to big swings. Just before 3 p.m. EST, the Dow was down 254 points at 11,542, a 2.2 percent decline.
Volatility seized the stock market in late July, when Congress was wrestling with whether to raise the limit on how much the federal government can borrow.
The Dow rose or fell 100 points or more on 15 trading days in August, 16 in September and 15 in October. It was on pace Monday for its 10th triple-digit move this month, with six trading days to go.
"People are getting so short-term oriented now that all they know is how to make day trades," he said.
The selling swung the Dow from a gain for the year to a loss, the first time that has happened in a month.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, Moody's, a prominent ratings agency, warned France that its top-notch AAA credit rating remains "under pressure." In a weekly note, a Moody's analyst said that high borrowing costs for France could have "negative credit implications."
One European country after another has fallen into crisis because of debt. Wary of the ability of countries to pay back their loans, bond investors have insisted on higher returns on national bonds, pushing borrowing costs to dangerous levels.
Stocks fell 3.4 percent in both Germany and France ? bigger declines than in the United States. Germany and France are the two largest economies in Europe.
Investors still see American debt as safe, despite the failure of the supercommittee. On Monday, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.97 percent. It traded at 2.01 percent late Friday.
Because bond yields move in the opposite direction from bond prices, the lower yields are a sign that investors are buying American bonds and believe in their safety.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 23, or 1.9 percent, to 1,193, and all but a handful of companies in the index declined for the day. The S&P 500 fell 3.8 percent last week, its worst since September.
The Nasdaq composite index declined 51, or 2 percent, to 2,522. In Europe, the main stock indexes in France and Germany lost 3.4 percent.
The steepest falls last week came Wednesday and Thursday, after Fitch, another ratings agency, warned that the European debt crisis could hit the largest American banks. The S&P 500 is down more than 5 percent for the year. On Nov. 15, it was up slightly.
The declines Monday were broad. Energy and technology stocks lost the most. All 30 stocks in the Dow average fell, led by Boeing Co. with a 4.7 percent decline.
The dollar rose along with U.S. Treasury prices.
Gilead Sciences Inc. stock plunged almost 10 percent, the most in the S&P 500. The company plans to buy drug developer Pharmasset Inc. for $11 billion. Pharmasset, which has an experimental hepatitis C drug in late-stage clinical trials, jumped 85 percent.
Alleghany Corp. fell 7 percent after the property and casualty insurer said it had agreed to buy the reinsurance company Transatlantic Holdings Inc. for $3.4 billion. Transatlantic edged up 1 percent.
Irish electronics company Cooper Industries PLC bucked the market trend, rising 2.6 percent, after S&P said it will be added to the S&P 500 index. Stocks often rally when they are added to major indexes, because investment funds that mirror the indexes must buy them.
Hewlett-Packard fell 3.5 percent ahead of its fiscal fourth quarter earnings report, due out after the market closes on Monday. An analyst with Baird Equity Research said he expects HP to lower its outlook for the next fiscal year.
___
Wagner reported from Washington.
Daniel Wagner can be reached at www.twitter.com/wagnerreports.
If you need additional pantry space consider repurposing Ikea STUVA Children's storage benches and cabinets into a nicely-sized pantry. Ikea Hackers reports that three STUVA cabinets fit perfectly onto two STUVA storage benches. 
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