A Running Start for a U.S.-Europe Trade Pact

BRUSSELS — Embarking on what could be the biggest trade agreement ever in its economic sweep, officials from the United States and the European Union indicated Wednesday that they had already resolved some of the stickiest issues behind closed doors.

But the sheer ambition of the trade negotiations, which aim not only to eliminate import duties but also synchronize regulations governing products like cars, drugs and medical devices, leaves plenty of room for the talks to bog down in the type of parochial concerns that have derailed past efforts at a trans-Atlantic trade pact.

Ron Kirk, the U.S. Trade Representative, said by telephone Wednesday that this time things would be different. Already, he said, preliminary discussions between him and top E.U. officials have made “very good progress” on issues that have stymied trade relations for years, like health and safety standards applied to food. A final agreement is possible before the end of 2014, he said.

But, Mr. Kirk acknowledged, “we’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us.”

President Barack Obama endorsed a trade pact during his State of the Union address Tuesday, answering pleas from European leaders desperate for a way to speed up economic growth. Though Mr. Obama devoted only a single sentence to the topic, it was the green light that proponents of a trade deal had been hoping for.

“And tonight, I’m announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union,” Mr. Obama said, giving the potential pact a name. He added, “Because trade that is fair and free across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”

European officials on Wednesday agreed with Mr. Kirk that the timing is favorable for an agreement. And officials in both Brussels and Washington noted that the rising economic might of China gave them further incentive. A broad trade agreement could help ensure that Americans and Europeans, and not the Chinese government, would set standards on product safety or protection of intellectual property in years to come.

“You will now be setting what the rules of the road are for trade that are going to shape the global trading system,” said Karan Bhatia, a former deputy U.S. trade representative who is now vice president for global government affairs at General Electric in Washington.

Unless the United States and Europe are in agreement, in too many future trade cases, “we would be forced to accept Chinese standards,” Karel De Gucht, the trade commissioner who is expected to lead the talks on behalf of Europe, said during an interview. “That’s what it is about.”

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission — the Union’s administrative arm — said at a news conference here that a trade pact would bolster the economies of the United States and Europe.

“Both of us need growth, and both us also have budgetary difficulties,” Mr. Barroso said. “Trade is the most economic way of promoting growth.”

But Mr. De Gucht, interviewed later, added a note of caution. “The low-hanging fruit doesn’t exist here any more,” he said. “All the easy topics are off the table.”

European leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, have been pushing for a trade deal as a low-cost way of stimulating their struggling economies. Mr. Obama’s statement Tuesday will help put to rest complaints by some Europeans that the U.S. president has not paid enough attention to his country’s largest trading partner.

“A deal will create jobs on both sides of the Atlantic and make our countries more prosperous,” Mr. Cameron said in statement. “Breaking down the remaining trade barriers and securing a comprehensive deal will require hard work and bold decisions on both sides.”

Between them, the United States and Europe account for about half of global economic output and one-third of world trade. Trade in goods between the Union and America totaled $646 billion last year, according to U.S. government figures.

According to Mr. Kirk, the trade representative, the Union is the best customer for U.S. exports, buying $459 billion in goods and services and supporting 2.4 million American jobs.

“I don’t know if I would call it the biggest trade agreement in the history of the planet,” Mr. Kirk said, “but it is really a very big deal.”

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Jeff Probst Wants an All-Celebrity Season of Survivor

TV Watch

Survivor

By Steve Helling

02/13/2013 at 03:30 PM EST

Neil Patrick Harris (left) and Jeff Probst

Getty; CBS

Will Neil Patrick Harris soon be scheming his way to a Survivor victory?

It could happen. Host Jeff Probst has spoken to the How I Met Your Mother star about playing the game – and is currently looking for other celebrities who want to outwit, outplay and outlast the competition in hopes of being Sole Survivor on the long-running CBS reality show.

A celebrity season actually isn't that far fetched. Last season, The Facts of Life star Lisa Whelchel made the final three. And, in 2001, Kate Hudson and then–husband Chris Robinson showed up for an open audition for Survivor: Australia, before being turned away by producers. (How awesome would that have been?)

But for now, there's Survivor: Caramoan, the show's 26th season, premiering Wednesday night (8 p.m. ET). Ten new players will compete against ten returning players – with early favorites that include Dawn Meehan, a surprisingly tough 42-year-old mother of six from Utah, and Andrea Boehlke, a pretty blonde schemer from Wisconsin.

Catching up with PEOPLE, Jeff Probst reveals what to expect this season – and how a celebrity version would work:

Lisa Whelchel got a lot of buzz last season. Are there any other celebrities you'd like to see play the game?
Mark Burnett and I really want to do a celebrity version. We were just talking about this at a Grammy party last week. Neil Patrick Harris was there, and he told me flat out he wants to play. I challenged him and said "Do you really want to do it, or is this just a fun fantasy that will never happen?" He said, "I want to do it."

So, on the heels of NPH having the guts to say, "I'm in" – I'm putting out the challenge! If you are a celebrity and truly believe you could hack it, it's time to put up. It would be a shortened shoot – maybe 10 days or so – so you can still get back to do your movies and TV shows, and you won't lose so much weight that your agents will panic. But rest assured it will still kick your ass. If we can get a truly great cast together I think CBS would go for it.

Sounds fantastic. But until that happens, there's Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites. What can we expect?
Even for Survivor, this is quite an unpredictable season. Evacuations, an impromptu tribal council, emotional breakdowns and a great finish. Of the 26 seasons we've done, I believe this will rank among the most memorable. I also think a couple of new favorites may be born this season.

You've chosen 10 returning contestants to play again – including some surprising choices. Why them?
When deciding on returning players we first look at their popularity. It doesn't mean they have to be well liked, but they must be memorable for something. Then we look at their "story." Is there an expectation surrounding their return – i.e., did Phillip learn anything from playing with Boston Rob? Will Cochran finally stand up and be heard? Will Brandon be able to control his emotions? Can Malcolm finish what he started? With this group we felt each has a story worth telling.

The fans seem awfully young. (Four of the five female fans are under 25.) Do they even stand a chance?
We have a fairly young group of fans, but they know the game well and many have been itching to play for a long time. The question is, will their adoration of the favorites make them vulnerable to a blindside? Or will their enthusiasm be the energy they need to keep up? Favorites have a major advantage going into day one.

Last season, contestant Sarah Dawson caught you by surprise when she kissed you – twice! Have you hired bodyguards to guard your personal space?
It's funny how many people have asked me if I was offended by the kisses. I wasn't at all. The kiss that happened at tribal council was probably due to the delirium brought on by not eating for so long. The kiss at the live reunion show was a funny button at the end of a great season of Survivor. The best part was looking out in the audience to see my wife Lisa laughing hysterically.

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Clues to why most survived China melamine scandal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists wondering why some children and not others survived one of China's worst food safety scandals have uncovered a suspect: germs that live in the gut.

In 2008, at least six babies died and 300,000 became sick after being fed infant formula that had been deliberately and illegally tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. There were some lingering puzzles: How did it cause kidney failure, and why wasn't everyone equally at risk?

A team of researchers from the U.S. and China re-examined those questions in a series of studies in rats. In findings released Wednesday, they reported that certain intestinal bacteria play a crucial role in how the body handles melamine.

The intestines of all mammals teem with different species of bacteria that perform different jobs. To see if one of those activities involves processing melamine, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Shanghai Jiao Tong University gave lab rats antibiotics to kill off some of the germs — and then fed them melamine.

The antibiotic-treated rats excreted twice as much of the melamine as rats that didn't get antibiotics, and they experienced fewer kidney stones and other damage.

A closer look identified why: A particular intestinal germ — named Klebsiella terrigena — was metabolizing melamine to create a more toxic byproduct, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Previous studies have estimated that fewer than 1 percent of healthy people harbor that bacteria species. A similar fraction of melamine-exposed children in China got sick, the researchers wrote. But proving that link would require studying stool samples preserved from affected children, they cautioned.

Still, the research is pretty strong, said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, who wasn't involved in the new study.

More importantly, "this paper adds to a growing body of evidence which suggests that microbes in the body play a significant role in our response to toxicity and in our health in general," Gilbert said.

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Wall Street rally stalls, S&P 500 skims November 2007 high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday amid investor caution after the S&P 500 index briefly hit its highest intraday level since November 2007.

The benchmark index got a boost from Comcast Corp , which said it will buy the rest of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion from General Electric Co .

Equities have been strong performers until recently, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, which helped the S&P 500 to rise 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow industrials are about 1 percent away from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.

Those gains have left the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors are likely to take profit amid a dearth of new catalysts. While analysts see an upward bias in stocks, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes light with indexes at multi-year highs.

"I was expecting a 12-15 percent return on the S&P for the whole year of 2013, and we have done about half of that in just 5-6 weeks," said Jack De Gan, principal at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

"We will hit resistance, but the fundamentals and (microeconomic) picture are looking good, so if there is a correction, it's going to be a brief one."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 39.17 points, or 0.28 percent, at 13,979.53. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.80 points, or 0.05 percent, at 1,520.23. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 7.01 points, or 0.22 percent, at 3,193.50.

Investors shrugged off the latest economic data, which showed that retail sales rose just 0.1 percent, as expected, in January as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending.

The S&P 500 was well above its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, a sign the market could be overbought.

Comcast agreed late Tuesday to buy General Electric Co's remaining 49 percent stake in NBC Universal for $16.7 billion. Comcast jumped 4.4 percent to $40.70 as the S&P's top percentage gainer while Dow component GE was up 3.3 percent to $23.33.

Deere & Co reported earnings that beat expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook. After initially rallying in premarket trading, the stock fell 3 percent to $91.13.

According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Industrial and construction shares fell, though President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address late Tuesday, called for $50 billion in spending to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges.

The Dow Jones Home Construction index <.djushb> was off 0.5 percent.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Bernadette Baum)

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Politics in Bangladesh Jolted by Huge Protests

Andrew Biraj/Reuters

Plain clothes police officers arrest a  Jamaat-e-Islami activist. Clashes erupted after the Bangladeshi government rejected a request by Jamaat leaders to stage a counterprotest against the youth demonstrations.

NEW DELHI — Huge daily demonstrations in the heart of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, are upending the nation’s politics and illustrating how heavily the country’s bloody past still weighs on its present. Thousands of protesters, most of them college students and other young people, demonstrated again on Tuesday, fueled by broad public anger over a recent ruling by the country’s special war crimes tribunal that they say was too lenient.

Though the protests have been peaceful, a gunfight erupted in another part of Dhaka on Tuesday when followers of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamic political party, vandalized vehicles and clashed with the police. Earlier in the day, the Bangladeshi government had rejected a request by Jamaat leaders to stage a counterprotest against the youth demonstrations.

For more than two years, the Bangladeshi government has been prosecuting defendants accused of atrocities during the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. On Feb. 5, the special tribunal hearing the cases convicted Abdul Quader Mollah, 65, now a leader of the Jamaat party, on charges of rape and mass murder, and sentenced him to life in prison.

Within hours of the verdict, protesters gathered at Shahbagh, a major intersection in the center of the capital near Dhaka University. Their message was loud and clear: they thought the life sentence was too lenient, possibly the result of a political deal, and they demanded that Mr. Mollah be sentenced to death. Protesters waved torches and banners and chanted slogans like “Joy Bangla.”

“We were really surprised” at the large turnout the first day, said Imran H. Sarkar, one of the organizers. “But young people were very concerned.” Last weekend, the crowds swelled to 200,000 or more by some estimates.

Protests and strikes, common in Dhaka, are often coordinated and organized by political parties. But the Shahbagh protests, as the demonstrations over the verdict have come to be known, were organized by bloggers, and have attracted poets, artists, social activists and untold numbers of other citizens. Related protests are being held in other cities.

The protesters have directed their ire at Jamaat-e-Islami, which has been accused of opposing independence and collaborating with Pakistani forces during the 1971 war, charges the party has denied. At the Shahbagh protests, thousands of people pledged to boycott the Jamaat party and its related businesses, and a delegation of protest leaders presented the Bangladeshi Parliament with a list of demands, including that laws be changed so that Mr. Mollah’s life sentence can be appealed.

Political analysts in Bangladesh say the youth demonstrations reflect broad public disenchantment with the usual style of Bangladeshi politics. Debapriya Bhattacharya, a Bangladeshi economist and former United Nations diplomat, said that the demands for tough sentencing reflected a broader public desire for closure on the 1971 war, in which rapes and assaults of women were common and an estimated three million people were killed.

“There is a general understanding among the people that they want justice in the case,” said Mr. Bhattacharya, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Dialogue, a leading research institute in Dhaka. “And somehow, at the end of the day here, justice is about capital punishment.”

The protests, he said, are entwined with a rising patriotism among many young Bangladeshis, who are proud of their country’s progress, even as they often distrust the established political parties. “This is something different and something new,” Mr. Bhattacharya said of the protests. “This is the rise of a new social force that can change the political calculus in the country.”

The Awami League, the political party leading the national government, now faces political pressure from opposing directions. The Shahbagh protesters are complaining that the recent verdict is too lenient, while opposition parties, including the Jamaat party, have accused the government of manipulating the tribunal to ensure convictions of their leaders.

One justice has resigned from the tribunal over irregularities in its proceedings. Before its verdict on Feb. 5, Jamaat and other opposition parties staged huge protests against the tribunal’s proceedings; they sought to renew those protests on Tuesday but the government denied their request. Tensions are expected to remain high as the tribunal issues more verdicts in coming weeks.

The scattered violence on Tuesday occurred about a mile away from the Shahbagh protest site. Followers of Jamaat and members of the party’s youth wing were photographed smashing vehicles and clashing with security officers. Authorities say the Jamaat followers opened fire with machine guns and that the police responded with rubber bullets. Bangladeshi media reported that at least 10 people were injured by the rubber bullets, and that members of the Jamaat youth wing were seen firing weapons and throwing fire bombs.

Julfikar Ali Manik contributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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Ed Sheeran: Five Things to Know

By JESSICA HERNDON

02/12/2013 at 03:50 PM EST

Elton John doesn't perform with just anyone. So when he took the stage at Sunday night's Grammys with folkie Brit Ed Sheeran to duet on the newcomer's Grammy nominated hit "The A Team," it was a moment to remember.

Here are five things to know about the 21-year-old folk singer, whose debut, +, has sold over two million copies worldwide.

1. He's penned tracks for both Taylor Swift and One Direction
Sheeran cowrote "Everything Has Changed," off of Taylor Swift's latest album Red. "It was fate," he says of how he and Swift, 23, connected. The two musicians, who were fans of each other's work, "just started hanging out," says Sheeran. He also cowrote One Direction's hit "Little Things." Who's his favorite 1D member? Harry Styles, who was his pal prior to the boy band hitting it big.

2. He digs his red hair
"It makes me individual and makes me stand out," he says. "It would be foolish to change it." And he's in good company with fellow musicians like Florence + the Machine also sporting red tresses. "There are more redheads in pop than you think!"

3. He has a big crush on another (occasional) redhead
Though he jokes about wishing he could have taken Eva Longoria as his date to the Grammys, Sheeran says he really holds a candle for actress Emma Stone. "But she's all kinds of taken now so I need to find someone else," he chuckles. Could he find love with pal Swift? "I don't know if I'm her type," he says of the singer, for whom he'll open for on her upcoming Red Tour.

4. He can deliver one heck of a rhyme
Influenced by Eminem, the guitar player swiftly raps "Like everything I say seems to always sound awkward/Like our last kiss it was perfect, we were nervous/On the surface" on his tune "U.N.I." "I was brought up on Bob Dylan and Van Morrison," he says. "Now-a-days I listen to [rapper] Kendrick Lamar."

5. He's a loyal customer
There's one dish he can't wait to sit down and devour whenever he travels back to England. "The Portuguese chicken at a restaurant called Nando's," says Sheeran. "That's the sh--!"

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

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Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Wall Street edges up, Dow nears all-time high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged higher on Tuesday, putting the Dow within striking distance of all-time highs as investors looked ahead to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, which is expected to focus on the economy.

Jobs and economic growth are seen as major themes of Obama's speech, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Wednesday). Investors will also listen for any clues on a deal with Republicans to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1, including the tone of the speech.

The S&P 500 has risen for the past six weeks, putting it up 6.7 percent so far this year, while the Dow is about 1 percent away from its all-time intraday record of 14,198.10, reached in October 2007.

But gains have been harder to come by since the benchmark S&P index hit a five-year high on February 1. The market has had to consolidate strong gains at the year's start while investors search for reasons to drive stocks higher.

"We're likely to settle in for a period and digest the gains we've had, though there's still a bias towards positive momentum," said Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens Bancshares in Raleigh, North Carolina. "Questions over government spending are the big overhang, and we're looking for Obama to inspire some confidence over that tonight."

The White House has signaled Obama will urge investment in infrastructure and clean energy, suggesting companies in those sectors may be volatile in Wednesday's session.

"Gun makers could also see a reaction if Obama talks about anything with respect to gun control," said Teal, who helps oversee $5 billion. Shares of Smith & Wesson were flat at $9.13 while Sturm Ruger was up 0.5 percent at $53.96.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 58.06 points, or 0.42 percent, at 14,029.30. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 3.34 points, or 0.22 percent, at 1,520.35. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.91 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,190.09.

Housing shares were among the strongest of the day, led by a 14.4 percent jump in Masco Corp to $20.35 after the home improvement product maker said it expects new home construction to show strong growth in 2013. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> rose 4.3 percent.

Avon Products Inc surged 23 percent to $21.25 as the S&P 500's top percentage gainer after the cosmetics company reversed sales declines and cut costs.

On the downside, Coca-Cola Co fell 2.7 percent to $37.58 and were the biggest drag on the Dow after reporting revenue that was below estimates, hurt by a weaker-than-expected performance in Europe.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber shares slipped 0.4 percent to $13.86 after it posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit but cut its 2013 forecast due to weakness in the European automotive market.

Michael Kors Holdings shares jumped 10.8 percent to $63.18 after the fashion company handily beat Wall Street's estimates and raised its full-year outlook.

With earnings season starting to wind down, Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning shows of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Rabbi David Hartman, 81, Champion of an Adaptive Judaism

JERUSALEM — Rabbi David Hartman, an American-born Jewish philosopher who promoted a liberal brand of Orthodoxy and created a study center that expressed his commitment to pluralism by bringing together leaders from all strains of Judaism, died on Sunday at his home here. He was 81.

His son Donniel said the death came after a long illness.

Rabbi Hartman, who was a professor at Hebrew University for more than 20 years, was a leading advocate of the idea that Jews are partners with God in a covenant, and that they should therefore adapt religious observance to modern values in a multicultural world.

A charismatic teacher and prolific author, he encouraged students to question tradition and urged people of different backgrounds and ideologies to pore over Jewish texts together, a practice more common in his native United States than his adopted country.

“At the center of his thinking was a kind of counter-religious idea, where religious life is a life of affirmation, not a life of denial,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University and Rabbi Hartman’s former son-in-law. “If human life is not denied by the force of revelation, but it’s actually a participant in revelation, then human life has to come to its full fledge, with its moral convictions, with its encounter with the world.”

The Shalom Hartman Institute, which Rabbi Hartman founded in his father’s name in 1976, has become a theological and cultural landmark, particularly for the thousands of Diaspora Jews who attend frequent conferences or spend summers studying there. With an annual budget of $18 million and a staff of 125, the institute has sponsored two Jerusalem high schools, runs a research center, opened a branch in Manhattan and trained more than 1,000 Israeli military officers. In the last year, according to the institute, more than 5,000 people across North American participated in a Hartman learning series called iEngage.

But Rabbi Hartman’s progressive, universalistic approach was embraced more in the United States than in Israel, where some challenged his status as Orthodox and shunned his open-mindedness as heresy. He received honorary doctorates from Yale and Hebrew Union College, a Reform institution with three branches in the United States and one in Jerusalem, but not the coveted Israel Prize. His never receiving it was a source of painful regret, several people close to him said.

In recent years he had been highly critical of the growing influence of the ultra-Orthodox on public life. He described as “insane” an ultra-Orthodox boycott of a military ceremony in which women sang.

“What is happening today with religion is more dangerous than what’s happening with the Arabs — the Arabs want to kill my body, the Jews are killing my soul,” Rabbi Hartman said in a 2011 interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Aharanot. “I want to return the Torah to the Labor Party, to the entire people of Israel. I don’t want religion to be the private property of certain people. I don’t want the length of the sidelocks to be the determining factor.”

David Hartman was born on Sept. 11, 1931 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, one of six children of Shalom and Batya Hartman, Hasidim who had moved to New York from Israel. Donniel Hartman said that the family was poor — Shalom peddled sheets and pillowcases door to door — but that the four boys became rabbis and the two girls married rabbis.

Rabbi Hartman was ordained by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, perhaps the most important Orthodox thinker of the 20th century, and received a doctorate of philosophy from McGill University in Montreal. He was a pulpit rabbi in the Bronx and Montreal before moving to Israel in 1971 as part of a generation of Zionists inspired by the Israeli victory in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

Rabbi Hartman published several books in English and Hebrew, including two about Maimonides, the Torah scholar of the Middle Ages; one on the theological legacy of Rabbi Soloveitchik; and two about his own spiritual evolution. He was an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister; Teddy Kollek, the longtime mayor of Jerusalem; and Zevulun Hammer, Israel’s education minister from 1977 to 1984.

“He was a public philosopher for the Jewish people,” said Michael J. Sandel, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard who has written about Rabbi Hartman’s work. “As Maimonides drew Aristotle into conversation with Moses and Rabbi Akiva, so Hartman renovated Jewish thought by bringing the liberal sensibilities to bear on Talmudic argument.”

Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, described the Hartman Institute as “a little island of pluralism amidst a sea of what was often religious fanaticism,” but noted that “he had to establish his own institutions precisely because, unlike Soloveitchik, he was not really welcomed” by Israel’s religious establishment.

Avi Sagi, a professor at Bar Ilan University and a Hartman fellow who edited a two-volume set on the rabbi’s work, said of him, “He gave me the opportunity to think without any limitation.”

Besides his son Donniel, who replaced him as president of the Hartman Institute, Rabbi Hartman is survived by four other children, including a daughter, Tova, who helped found Shira Hadasha, a feminist Orthodox congregation in Jerusalem; 16 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He is also survived by his former wife, Barbara; the couple had married twice and were divorced twice.

Yedidia Z. Stern, a law professor and vice president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said Rabbi Hartman’s charisma and curiosity were apparent even a few weeks before his death, during a Sabbath meal at Donniel Hartman’s home.

“He was ignoring the adults at the table; he was talking to my kids,” Professor Stern said. “He was asking them about school: Do they like the curriculum, what do they think should be different? Even when he was very sick, you can see the life coming out.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 11, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the number Hebrew Union College branches in the United States.  Hebrew Union College has three branches in the United States and one in Jerusalem, not four in the United States.

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Ahmad Rashad Divorcing Sale Johnson

02/11/2013 at 03:45 PM EST

Sale Johnson and Ahmad Rashad

Charley Gallay/Getty

Ahmad Rashad and Sale Johnson are ending their marriage.

The sportscaster, 63, and Johnson, who wed in 2007, confirmed the news to PEOPLE in a joint statement on Monday.

"This process, while difficult, is and has always been amicable – despite erroneous press reports to the contrary – and we remain committed to jointly raising our daughter," they say. "We appreciate the respect of our privacy during this trying time."

This will be the fourth divorce for Rashad, while Johnson was previously married to Johnson & Johnson billionaire Woody Johnson. Rashad inherited three stepdaughters from his ex's former marriage, including the late Casey Johnson.

• Reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA

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