M&A deals lift Wall Street shares nearer a record high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday as this year's ongoing surge in merger activity suggested investors were still finding value in the market even as indexes closed in on all-time highs.

Office Depot Inc surged 9.4 percent to $5.02 after a person familiar with the matter said the No. 2 U.S. office supply retailer was in advanced talks to merge with smaller rival OfficeMax Inc , which jumped more than 20 percent.

News of the potential move came just days after Berkshire Hathaway and a partner agreed to acquire H.J. Heinz Co for $23 billion, and following a revised $20 billion takeover of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo by Anheuser-Busch InBev .

Deal activity has helped equities resist a pullback as investors use dips in stocks as buying opportunities. The S&P is up about 7 percent so far in 2013 and has climbed for the past seven weeks in its longest weekly winning streak since January 2011, though most of the weekly gains have been slim.

The Dow industrials closed 0.9 percent away from their record high while S&P 500 was 2.2 percent off its peak.

"Deals are good for the market," said Frank Lesh, a futures analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago. "The fact that they're being done is a positive."

More than $158 billion in deals has been announced so far in 2013, more than double the activity in the same period last year and accounting for 57 percent of global deal volumes, according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 53.91 points, or 0.39 percent, to 14,035.67. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 11.15 points, or 0.73 percent, to 1,530.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 21.56 points, or 0.68 percent, to 3,213.59.

Other stocks in the office supplies sector also rose. Larger rival Staples Inc shot up 13.1 percent to $14.65 as the best performer on the S&P 500.

"Equity investors have to be encouraged by M&A since, if the number crunchers are offering large premiums, that shows how much value is still in the market," said Mike Gibbs, co-head of the equity advisory group at Raymond James in Memphis, Tennessee.

On the downside, health insurance stocks tumbled, led by a 6.4 percent drop in Humana Inc to $73.01. The company said the government's proposed 2014 payment rates for Medicare Advantage participants were lower than expected and would hurt its profit outlook.

UnitedHealth Group lost 1.2 percent to $56.66. The Morgan Stanley healthcare payor index <.hmo> dropped 1.2 percent.

Wall Street's strong start to the year was fueled by better-than-expected corporate earnings, as well as a compromise in Washington that temporarily averted automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that are predicted to damage the economy.

The compromise on across-the-board spending cuts postponed the matter until March 1, at which point the cuts take effect. Ahead of the debate over the cuts, known as sequestration, further gains for stocks may be difficult to come by.

Some investors say the debate could be the catalyst for a long anticipated sell-off after the market's recent strong run.

Carter Worth, a technical analyst at Oppenheimer, pointed to the "especially complacent action of the past six weeks," noting that, as of Friday, stocks have gone 33 sessions without a dip of more than 1.5 percent.

"We would be selling aggressively into the market's current strength," he said in a research note.

Economic data showed the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index unexpectedly edged down to 46 in February from 47 in the prior month as builders faced higher material costs.

According to the Thomson Reuters data through Monday morning, of the 391 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Express Scripts rose 2.5 percent to $56.98 after the pharmacy benefits manager posted fourth-quarter earnings.

About two stocks rose for everyone that fell on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. About 6.48 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, in line with the daily average so far this year.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak Ryan Vlastelica and Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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China’s Army Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S.

This 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai is the headquarters of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army. China’s defense ministry has denied that it is responsible for initiating digital attacks.

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

Other security firms that have tracked “Comment Crew” say they also believe the group is state-sponsored, and a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate, issued as a consensus document for all 16 of the United States intelligence agencies, makes a strong case that many of these hacking groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like Unit 61398, according to officials with knowledge of its classified content.

Mandiant provided an advance copy of its report to The New York Times, saying it hoped to “bring visibility to the issues addressed in the report.” Times reporters then tested the conclusions with other experts, both inside and outside government, who have examined links between the hacking groups and the army (Mandiant was hired by The New York Times Company to investigate a sophisticated Chinese-origin attack on its news operations, but concluded it was not the work of Comment Crew, but another Chinese group. The firm is not currently working for the Times Company but it is in discussions about a business relationship.)

While Comment Crew has drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the United States — its electrical power grid, gas lines and waterworks. According to the security researchers, one target was a company with remote access to more than 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America. The unit was also among those that attacked the computer security firm RSA, whose computer codes protect confidential corporate and government databases.

Contacted Monday, officials at the Chinese embassy in Washington again insisted that their government does not engage in computer hacking, and that such activity is illegal. They describe China itself as a victim of computer hacking, and point out, accurately, that there are many hacking groups inside the United States. But in recent years the Chinese attacks have grown significantly, security researchers say. Mandiant has detected more than 140 Comment Crew intrusions since 2006. American intelligence agencies and private security firms that track many of the 20 or so other Chinese groups every day say those groups appear to be contractors with links to the unit.

While the unit’s existence and operations are considered a Chinese state secret, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that the Mandiant report was “completely consistent with the type of activity the Intelligence Committee has been seeing for some time.”

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Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.

The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.

"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.

Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.

"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."

Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.

That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.

The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.

"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."

___

Online:

Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com

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Sony slashes PS Vita pricing in Japan ahead of PlayStation 4 unveiling

As Sony’s (SNE) struggles continue in the portable gaming market, the consumer electronics giant announced on Monday that it will slash the price of its PlayStation Vita console in Japan. Beginning late next week, both the Wi-Fi-only and 3G-connected versions of the Vita will drop to 19,980 yen including taxes, or $ 215.42 USD at Monday’s exchange rate. The Wi-Fi model currently costs 24,980 yen ($ 269.33 USD) and the 3G model is priced at 29,980 yen ($ 323.24 USD) until February 28th when the price drops take effect. Sony hasn’t said anything about cutting the cost of the portable console outside of Japan, but it may make some announcements during its PlayStation 4 event on Wednesday. The company’s full press release follows below.

PlayStation ® Vita price revision
February 28, 2013 (Thursday) retail price of 19,980 yen (tax included)

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]

February 28, 2013 (Thursday), ¥ 29,980 traditional Sony Computer Entertainment Japan ※ 1 (SCEJ) is, 3G/Wi-Fi model (including tax, the retail price of the PlayStation ® Vita (PS Vita below) to 19,980 yen including tax) (, Wi-Fi model will be revised (including tax) from 19,980 yen (including tax) from 24,980 yen).

By addition to the GPU and the CPU, high-performance display and a beautiful that, with such dual analog stick and the multi-touch pad on the rear panel, PS Vita, which was launched in December 2011, to deliver an immersive experience of the ultimate I will continue to provide the gaming experience. In addition to the expansion of an attractive color variations such as sapphire Cosmic Red and Blue, by the system of free software updates, such as service response to PlayStation ® Plus ※ 2 software and standard flat-rate “PlayStation” first, PS Vita users meet the needs of everyone in, I’m constantly evolving. In addition to the methods existing Wi-Fi, by which supports access to the 3G network a new, PS Vita has realized the connection of new and everyone other users in everyday life. To enjoy the PS Vita to everyone more users, we will begin offering at a price of ¥ 19,980 revision both models. As a result, the user’s everyone, you can feel free to choose the model that is appropriate for the game play style of your choice is available.

In addition, we received strong support from companies like software maker, dedicated software is PS Vita PS Vita interactive content that can be enjoyed by more than 100, you can download from the PlayStation ® Store has reached more than 1,500 ※ 3 at the end of January 2013 You had to. Our company and our future than software manufacturers, “Den 討鬼” (SEGA) “Phantasy Star Online 2″, “SOUL SACRIFICE (Soul Sacrifice)” (TECMO KOEI GAMES CO., LTD.) Sony Corporation (- from hunting action game to enjoy cooperative play, such as Computer Entertainment), the player taking the communication meeting, “Kagura 閃乱 SHINOVI VERSUS – proof of the girls” – “Oboro Muramasa”, Marvelous AQL), ​​”Tales Inc. ( Obuhatsu Pirate Musou 2 R “,” One Piece Baseball Spirits 2013 “(NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc.)” “to work, such as the long-awaited game fans (Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd.), is expected to be released one after another title is scheduled.

(Thursday), the set body and PS Vita special edition with the motif of the peripherals, the same title, and a variety of breaking down the common sense of the multi-Hunting Action “(Soul Sacrifice) SOUL SACRIFICE” March 7, 2013 change (including tax) 24,980 yen, will be released in limited quantities from (tax included) for a suggested retail price of 29,980 yen originally planned, did the “PlayStation ® Vita SOUL SACRIFICE PREMIUM EDITION”.

We will carry out a variety of campaigns to suit this price revision, to everyone in the user’s enjoy PS Vita. Please refer to the following for the campaign details.

So that you can enjoy the world of entertainment unique PS Vita to more customers in the future, SCEJ will continue to strongly promote and expand further spread of the PS Vita platform.

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Asian shares listless, yen firmer but near lows

TOKYO (Reuters) - Most Asian shares barely moved on Tuesday as a holiday in the U.S. overnight and a lack of catalysts kept many investors on the sidelines.

Concerns about the euro zone economy, U.S. fiscal talks and Chinese appetite limited gains in commodities and also weighed on the euro.

The dollar's strength against a basket of currencies <.dxy> also weighed on commodities and capped gains in gold.

"Markets have become top-heavy after rallying through early February on signs of economic recovery in the United States and Europe, and investors now await fresh factors to push prices higher from here," said Tomomichi Akuta, senior economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting in Tokyo.

"The broad sentiment is underpinned by a lack of tail risks, but investors are turning to some potentially worrying elements such as Italian elections and U.S. budget talks," he said.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> was flat after briefly touching a 18-1/2-month high. The index has gained 3.5 percent this year.

Disappointing earnings pushed European shares lower on Monday for a third straight session while U.S. markets were closed for the President's Day holiday.

The risk of an inconclusive outcome in Italy's election this weekend added to concerns while investors kept eyes on Washington where policymakers are discussing a package of budget cuts set to kick in March 1, which analysts warn could hurt the economy.

"We didn't have a lead from Wall St overnight, we also had weakness coming through from European markets overnight, so we were never expecting a strong day," said Juliette Saly, stock market analyst at Commonwealth Securities in Sydney.

Australian shares <.axjo> edged up 0.1 percent as investors focused on local corporate earnings for direction after a three-month rally that has taken the market to 4-1/2 year highs.

The Nikkei stock average <.n225> eased 0.2 percent, after closing up 2.1 percent on Monday to approach its highest level since September 2008 of 11,498.42 tapped on February 6. <.t/>

Spot gold was up 0.3 percent at $1,614.01 an ounce.

London copper inched up 0.3 percent to $8,144 a tonne as Monday's three-week low drew bargain hunting given prospects for a slowly improving global economic recovery. Unease over China's limp return to the market from a week-long break held back upside momentum, however.

U.S. crude fell 0.3 percent to $95.59 a barrel while Brent inched up 0.1 percent to $117.48.

The euro was steady around $1.3344. The currency eased slightly on Monday after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said in a speech at the European Parliament that "the exchange rate is not a policy target but is important for growth and price stability" and that its rise is "a risk."

YEN JITTERY

The yen remained near recent lows on Tuesday, as attention turned to the appointment of a new Bank of Japan governor.

The yen, which has dropped 20 percent against the dollar since mid-November, fell further at the start of the week after financial leaders from the G20 promised not to devalue their currencies to boost exports and avoided singling out Japan for any direct criticism.

The choice of the next BOJ governor and two deputies has drawn attention as a gauge of how strongly Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is committed to reflating the economy. The G20's message was that as long as Japan pursues aggressive monetary easing to achieve that goal, a weaker yen as a result of such domestic monetary policy will be tolerated, analysts say.

"But that means that some other economy's monetary conditions have been tightened," said Barclays Capital in a note.

"Japan hasn't even changed its policy stance thus far, and the effect of expectations of a looser setting have led to limited moves in domestic interest rates, but the sell-off of the JPY has been marked and has clearly caused unease in other economies," the note said.

Market reaction was muted to the release of the minutes of the BOJ's January 21-22 meeting, when the bank set a 2 percent inflation target and pledged an open-ended quantitative easing from 2014. But the yen was bought when Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters Japan has no plans to buy foreign currency bonds as part of monetary easing, a trader said.

The dollar was down 0.2 percent to 93.73 yen, but remained near its highest since May 2010 of 94.465 hit on February 11. The euro also eased 0.3 percent to 125.05 yen, below its peak since April 2010 of 127.71 yen touched on February 6.

(Additional reporting by Maggie Lu Yueyang and Thuy Ong in Sydney; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

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Downton Abbey's Season 3 Finale: Shocking, Says PEOPLE's TV Critic

Downton Abbey

By Tom Gliatto

02/17/2013 at 10:00 PM EST

Downton Abbey season 3 cast

Carnival Film & Television/PBS

Downton Abbey's third season finale on PBS's Masterpiece was, to say the least, a spoiler's paradise. The episode, which saw the Granthams and servants going on holiday in the Scottish Highlands, started on a joyful note – Lady Mary was pregnant! – and ended with a shock that would have knocked the hat off Lady Violet wobbling head.

SPOLIER ALERT: Major plot points to be revealed immediately.

Cousin Matthew (Dan Stevens) died in a car accident. He was driving back to Downton, so happy he was practically whistling, just after Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) had given birth to their son – the male Downton heir everyone has been so obsessed with since Season 1.

Many viewers probably saw this coming: For one thing, Stevens had said he was thinking of decamping before season 4 started shooting. And after the finale had its premiere broadcast in Britain in December, he blabbed all about it, including for an interview posted online by The New York Times.

Even so, the death was almost sadistically abrupt and arbitrary, especially after the soft tenderness and growing love between Mary and Matthew in recent episodes. Now we saw dead poor Matthew dumped on the cold mossy ground, eyes wide open.

You can never be sure Downton writer-creator Julian Fellowes won't pull some shameless stunt to kick-start a story – in season 2 Matthew, paralyzed during the war, suddenly leaped out of his wheelchair – but he seemed to want us to be sure that Matthew was 100% gone. I wouldn't have been surprised if the car backed over the corpse.

So ended a terribly sad season of Downton.

We already suffered the loss in childbirth of Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay). Her deathbed scene was unflinching and deeply moving as she gasped for breath and called for help. Her poor mother (Elizabeth McGovern) sobbed in despair, and the doctors couldn't agree on what to do.

Millions of viewers cried, too, and sighed for a long time afterward. Those who didn't are probably evil.

That scene was the heart of the season: Sybil was so beautiful and kind and gracious and spirited, and so different from her fractious sisters. It was if one were to discover a rare, transcendent soul among the Kardashians. Her death robbed the show of a lovely presence, and also brought out the best moments yet from McGovern and Maggie Smith, as Lady Violet.

It never ceases to annoy me, to be honest, that Lady Violet's feeble witticisms are treated as if they were Oscar Wilde one-liners on loan, like Harry Winston jewels. If you want real witticisms, try any contemporary American sitcom, including FX's Archer.

But this season, as Violet grieved, we saw how much depth Smith can invest in a single moment. At one point in the finale, she looked up as dinner was announced, and in her enormous eyes you saw a woman who wished she could just chuck the whole damn thing and dwell on her memories.

I wish I could say I will miss Matthew, but all in all an unattached Lady Mary is better than a married one. She was never sexier than in the first season, when she sneaked off to bed with velvety, sensual Mr. Pamuk, who unfortunately kicked the bucket while they made love.

Mary is a wonderful creation – the show's most original, complex character – capable of bouncing from romance to sorrow to sarcasm. You could say her love for Matthew transformed her, but it also had the potential to dull her.

Matthew was blandly handsome and good and patient and full of improving notions, but not terribly exciting. He was like a Bachelor from a much earlier period.

There isn't much else to say about the finale. Fellowes worked through a number of plots with his usual tangy glibness. The performances were all delightful, tart, full of emotion, humor and regret.

For now, we can look forward to Lady Mary at her most beautiful, because most woeful, in season 4.

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

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Facebook says it was hacked, no data compromised

Facebook Inc. says it was the target of hackers but no user information was compromised during the attack.

The social media giant said Friday on its security blog that the company discovered in January that its system had been targeted in a sophisticated attack. A handful of the company’s employees visited a developer’s website that had been compromised, which led to malware being installed on the Facebook employee laptops.

Facebook says it has found no evidence that user data was compromised.

The company has fixed the infected machines, informed law enforcement and has an investigation of its own under way. Facebook also says it was not the only company targeted in the attacks but was one of the first to discover it.

“We are working continuously and closely with our own internal engineering teams, with security teams at other companies, and with law enforcement authorities to learn everything we can about the attack, and how to prevent similar incidents in the future,” the company said on its website.

Facebook shares fell 18 cents to close at $ 28.32 and dropped another 7 cents in after-hours trading.

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Japan stocks rally, yen resumes fall after G20

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese shares jumped closer to a 33-month high as the yen slumped on Monday after Tokyo dodged direct criticism from G20 peers on the aggressive reflation plans that have weakened the currency.

The G20 opted not to single out Tokyo, but committed members to refrain from competitive devaluations and said monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth. Japan said this decision is a green light to pursue its expansionary policies.

The dollar soared 0.7 percent to 94.17 yen inching closer to its highest since May 2010 of 94.465 hit on February 11. The euro added 0.3 percent to 125.51 yen, still below its peak since April 2010 of 127.71 yen touched on February 6.

The Nikkei average <.n225> jumped 2.3 percent as exporters and banks led the pack on the softening yen. <.t/>

The market's focus is now on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's nominee for the next Bank of Japan governor. Abe is expected to announce his choice in coming days.

Sources told Reuters that former top financial bureaucrat Toshiro Muto is leading the field of candidates to govern the bank. He is expected to intensify stimulus efforts to energise the economy.

"The G20's message is that monetary easing is OK, but not to imply anything about leading a currency weaker. The G20 effect is already seen in Abe's general comments on forex today which steered away from giving specifics on a preferred level or direction for the yen," said Yunosuke Ikeda, a senior FX strategist at Nomura Securities.

Abe said on Monday that the BOJ's monetary easing is aimed at beating deflation, not at manipulating the forex market and weakening the yen, and said correcting excessive yen rises would be an appropriate policy direction. Previously, Japanese officials have noted that the current yen selling was a correction to the past excessive yen strength.

The yen's weakness weighed on emerging Asian currencies while South Korean shares <.ks11> eased 0.3 percent on concerns about the eroding competitive edge for the country's exporters.

"Japan will keep seeking the current policy. The rest of Asia will not just wait and see. That will put more pressure on Asian currencies," said Yuna Park, a currency and bond analyst at Dongbu Securities in Seoul.

A weaker yen would make other currencies relatively stronger against the dollar and fuel speculation that other Asian countries could step in to curb the strength of their currencies, Ikeda said.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> eased 0.2 percent. The pan-Asian index briefly hit a 18-1/2-month high on Friday and had its best performance since the week of January 6 with a 1.2 percent weekly gain.

On Friday, MSCI's all-country world index <.miwd00000pus>, a measure of global equity activity, traded down 0.26 percent, while European shares closed lower and U.S. stocks ended flat.

Australian shares rose 0.5 percent as miners gained on hopes that top customer China might start buying after the Lunar New Year holidays, while blue chips Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Telstra Corp Ltd dropped after trading ex-dividend.

Markets in China and Taiwan resumed trading after a week-long holiday.

STOCKS CONSOLIDATE

Data from EPFR Global on Friday underscored that a consolidation was underway in global equities after their recent rally. It showed investors worldwide pulled $3.62 billion from U.S. stock funds in the latest week, the most in ten weeks after taking a neutral stance the prior week. But demand for emerging market equities remained strong, with investors putting $1.81 billion in new cash into stock funds, the fund-tracking firm said.

Demand for commodities will likely be in focus as China returns to the market.

Investors are also expected to focus on fiscal talks in Washington, where policymakers are discussing a package of budget cuts set to kick in on March 1. Analysts say the austerity measures could hurt the U.S. economy.

U.S. crude fell 0.2 percent to $95.63 a barrel but Brent inched up 0.1 percent to $117.81.

Gold rebounded from a six-month low on Monday as bargain hunters resurfaced and jewellers in China returned to the physical market after the Lunar New Year holiday, but a firm U.S. dollar was likely to limit the upside.

(Additional reporting by Jongwoo Cheon; in Singapore; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Eric Meijer)

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Dismissed as Doomsayers, Advocates for Meteor Detection Feel Vindicated

For decades, scientists have been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet. But warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles.

Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dr. Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive, has warned about space threats.

No more. The meteor that rattled Siberia on Friday, injuring hundreds of people and traumatizing thousands, has suddenly brought new life to efforts to deploy adequate detection tools, in particular a space telescope that would scan the solar system for dangers.

A group of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who helped build thriving companies like eBay, Google and Facebook has already put millions of dollars into the effort and saw Friday’s shock wave as a turning point in raising hundreds of millions more.

“Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren’t looking?” said Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive who leads the detection effort. “This is a wake-up call from space. We’ve got to pay attention to what’s out there.”

Astronomers know of no asteroids or comets that pose a major threat to the planet. But NASA estimates that fewer than 10 percent of the big dangers have been discovered.

Dr. Lu’s group, called the B612 Foundation after the imaginary asteroid on which the Little Prince lived, is one team of several pursuing ways to ward off extraterrestrial threats. NASA is another, and other private groups are emerging, like Planetary Resources, which wants not only to identify asteroids near Earth but also to mine them.

“Our job is to be the first line of defense, and we take that very seriously,” James Green, the director of planetary science at NASA headquarters, said in an interview Friday after the Russian strike. “No one living on this planet has ever before been hurt. That’s historic.”

Dr. Green added that the Russian episode was sure to energize the field and that an even analysis of the meteor’s remains could help reveal clues about future threats.

“Our scientists are excited,” he said. “Russian planetary scientists are already collecting meteorites from this event.”

The slow awakening to the danger began long ago, as scientists found hundreds of rocky scars indicating that cosmic intruders had periodically reshaped the planet.

The discoveries included not just obvious features like Meteor Crater in Arizona, but wide zones of upheaval. A crater more than a hundred miles wide beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico suggested that, 65 million years ago, a speeding rock from outer space had raised enough planetary mayhem to end the reign of the dinosaurs.

Some people remain skeptical of the cosmic threat and are glad for taxpayer money to go toward urgent problems on Earth rather than outer space. But many scientists who have examined the issues have become convinced that better precautions are warranted in much the same way that homeowners buy insurance for unlikely events that can result in severe damage to life and property.

Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, astronomers turned their telescopes on the sky with increasing vigor to look for killer rocks. The rationale was statistical. They knew about a number of near misses and calculated that many other rocky threats whirling about the solar system had gone undetected.

In 1996, with little fanfare, the Air Force also began scanning the skies for speeding rocks, giving credibility to an activity once seen as reserved for doomsday enthusiasts. It was the world’s first known government search.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration took a lead role with what it called the Spaceguard Survey. In 2007, it issued a report estimating that 20,000 asteroids and comets orbited close enough to the planet to deliver blows that could destroy cities or even end all life. Today, with limited financing, NASA supports modest telescopes in the southwestern United States and in Hawaii that make more than 95 percent of the discoveries of the objects coming near the Earth.

Scientists lobbied hard for a space telescope that would get high above the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. It would orbit the Sun, peering across the solar system, and would have a much better chance of finding large space rocks.

But with the nation immersed in two wars and other earthly priorities, the government financing never materialized. Last year, Dr. Lu, who left the NASA astronaut corps in 2007 to work for Google, joined with veterans of the space program and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to accelerate the asteroid hunt.

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