cle-and-cle

Ravens edge 49ers 34-31 in electric Super Bowl

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — For a Super Bowl with so many story lines, this game came up with quite a twist.

Try a blackout that turned a blowout into a shootout — capped by a brilliant defensive stand.

The Baltimore Ravens survived a frenzied comeback by the San Francisco 49ers following a 34-minute delay in the third quarter for a power outage Sunday night, winning their second championship 34-31. Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco threw three first-half touchdown passes, Jacoby Jones ran back the second-half kickoff a record 108 yards for a score, and star linebacker Ray Lewis' last play fittingly was part of a defensive effort that saved the victory.

"To me, that was one of the most amazing goal-line stands I've ever been a part of in my career," said Lewis, who announced a month ago he would retire when the Ravens were done playing.

They are done now, with another Vince Lombardi Trophy headed for the display case.

"What better way to do it," Lewis said, "than on the Super Bowl stage?"

That stage already was loaded with plots:

—The coaching Harbaughs sibling rivalry, won by older brother John, who said the postgame greeting with Jim was "painful."

—Flacco's emergence as a top-level quarterback, and his impending free agency.

—Colin Kaepernick's rapid rise in the last two months as 49ers QB.

—The big game's return to the Big Easy for the first time in 11 years, and the first time since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005.

—Lewis' self-proclaimed "last ride."

But when the Superdome lost power, well, that wasn't in anyone's scenario.

Flacco and the Ravens (14-6) were turning the game into a rout, leading 28-6 when, without even a flicker of warning, several banks of lights and the scoreboards went dark. Players from both sides stretched and chatted with each other in as bizarre a scene as any Super Bowl has witnessed.

"The bad part was we started talking about it," said safety Ed Reed, who had the game's only interception. "That was mentioned. It was like they were trying to kill our momentum."

After power was restored, the 49ers began playing lights out.

San Francisco (13-5-1), in search of its sixth Lombardi Trophy in as many tries, got back in the game almost immediately.

Michael Crabtree's 31-yard touchdown reception, on which he broke two tackles, made it 28-13. A few minutes later, Frank Gore's 6-yard run followed a 32-yard punt return by Ted Ginn Jr., and the 49ers were within eight.

Ray Rice's fumble at his 24 led to David Akers' 34-yard field goal, but Baltimore woke up for a long drive leading to rookie Justin Tucker's 19-yard field goal.

San Francisco wasn't done challenging, though, and Kaepernick's 15-yard TD run, the longest for a quarterback in a Super Bowl, made it 31-29. A 2-point conversion pass failed when the Ravens blitzed.

Tucker added a 38-yarder with 4:19 remaining, setting up the frantic finish.

Kaepernick couldn't get the 49ers into the end zone on the final three plays. The last was a pass into the right corner of the end zone to Crabtree that involved some incidental bumping. Jim Harbaugh insisted a flag should have been thrown.

"There's no question in my mind that there was a pass interference and then a hold," Jim Harbaugh said.

Ravens punter Sam Koch took a safety for the final score with 4 seconds left. Koch's free kick was returned by Ginn to midfield as time ran out.

"How could it be any other way? It's never pretty. It's never perfect. But it's us," John Harbaugh said of his Ravens. "It was us today."

Barely.

"Yeah, I think that last drive when we got the ball and had time to go down and score a touchdown," Kaepernick said, "we thought it was our game."

But the championship is Baltimore's.

As for the foul-up at America's biggest sporting event, officials revealed that an "abnormality" in the power system triggered an automatic shutdown, forcing backup systems to kick in. But no one was sure what caused the initial problem.

Everything changed after that until Lewis and Co. shut it down. But there were plenty of white-knuckle moments and the Ravens had to make four stops inside their 7 at the end.

"I think it speaks to our resolve, speaks to our determination, speaks to our mental toughness," John Harbaugh said. "That is what wins and loses games."

At 4 hours, 14 minutes, it was the longest Super Bowl ever.

Flacco's arrival as a championship quarterback — he had 11 postseason TD passes, tying a league mark, and no interceptions — coincides with Lewis' retirement. The win capped a sensational four games since Lewis announced he was leaving the game after 17 Hall of Fame-caliber years.

The Ravens will become Flacco's team now, provided he reaches agreement on a new contract.

Flacco's three TD passes in the opening half tied a Super Bowl record. They covered 13 yards to Anquan Boldin, 1 to Dennis Pitta and 56 to Jones.

That start boosted him to the MVP award.

"They have to give it to one guy and I'm not going to complain that I got it," Flacco said.

John Harbaugh had no complaints about getting that other trophy named after that Green Bay coach. But he struggled to balance it with the disappointment his brother was feeling.

"The meeting with Jim in the middle (of the field for the postgame handshake) was probably the most difficult thing I have ever been associated with in my life," the Ravens coach said.

The wild scoring made this the second championship in the NFL's 80-year title game history in which both teams scored at least 30 points. Pittsburgh's 35-31 win over Dallas in 1979 was the other.

The Ravens stumbled into the playoffs with four defeats in its last five regular-season games as Lewis recovered from a torn right triceps and Flacco struggled. Harbaugh even fired his offensive coordinator in December, a stunning move with the postseason so close.

But that — and every other move Harbaugh, Flacco and the Ravens made since — were right on target.

New Orleans native Jones, one of the stars in a double-overtime playoff win at Denver, seemed to put the game away with his record 108-yard sprint with the second-half kickoff.

Soon after, the lights went out — and when they came back on, the Ravens were almost powerless to slow the 49ers.

Until the final moments.

"The final series of Ray Lewis' career was a goal-line stand," Harbaugh said.

Lewis was sprawled on all fours, face-down on the turf, after the end zone incompletion.

"It's no greater way, as a champ, to go out on your last ride with the men that I went out with, with my teammates," Lewis said. "And you looked around this stadium and Baltimore! Baltimore! We coming home, baby! We did it!"

Jim Harbaugh, the coach who turned around the Niners in the last two years and brought them to their first Super Bowl in 18 years, had seen his team make a similarly stunning comeback in the NFC championship at Atlanta, but couldn't finish it off against Baltimore.

"Our guys battled back to get back in," the 49ers coach said. "I thought we battled right to the brink of winning."

The 49ers couldn't have been sloppier in the first half, damaging their chances with penalties — including one on their first play that negated a 20-yard gain — poor tackling and turnovers. Rookie LaMichael James fumbled at the Baltimore 25 to ruin an impressive drive, and the Ravens converted that with Flacco's 1-yard pass to Pitta for a 14-3 lead.

On San Francisco's next offensive play, Kaepernick threw behind Randy Moss and always dependable Reed picked it off. A huge scuffle followed that brought both Harbaughs onto the field and saw both sides penalized 15 yards for unnecessary roughness.

Reed, also a New Orleans native, tied the NFL record for postseason picks with his ninth.

Baltimore didn't pounce on that mistake for points. Instead, Tucker's fake field goal run on fourth-and-9 came up a yard short when Chris Culliver slammed him out of bounds.

The Ravens simply shrugged, forced a three-and-out, and then unleashed Jones deep. Just as he did to Denver, he flashed past the secondary and caught Flacco's fling. He had to wait for the ball, fell to the ground to grab it, but was untouched by a Niner. Up he sprang, cutting left and using his speed to outrun two defenders to the end zone.

Desperate for some points, the 49ers completed four passes and got a 15-yard roughing penalty against Haloti Ngata, who later left with a knee injury. But again they couldn't cross the goal line, Paul Kruger got his second sack of the half on third down, forcing a second field goal by Akers, from 27 yards.

When Jones began the second half by sprinting up the middle virtually untouched — he is the second player with two TDs of 50 yards or more in a Super Bowl, tying Washington's Ricky Sanders in 1988 — the rout was on.

Then it wasn't.

"Everybody had their hand on this game," 49ers All-Pro linebacker Patrick Willis said. "We point the fingers at nobody. We win together and we lose together, and today we lost it."

Should we still fear al Qaeda?

Label: Lifestyle

Mali military battles Islamist insurgents

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Peter Bergen: U.K. politicians called North Africa terror an existential threat

Bergen says core al Qaeda has been greatly weakened, hasn't mounted serious operations

Terror groups loosely affiliated with al Qaeda have also lost ground, he says

Bergen: Jihadist violence does continue, but it does no good to overstate threat

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad", and a director at the New America Foundation.

Washington (CNN) -- The attack in January on a gas facility in Algeria by an al Qaeda-linked group that resulted in at least 37 dead hostages has sparked an outpouring of dire warnings from leading Western politicians.

British Prime Minister David Cameron described a "large and existential threat" emanating from North Africa. Tony Blair, his predecessor as prime minister, agreed saying, "David Cameron is right to warn that this is a battle for our values and way of life which will take years, even decades."

Hang on chaps! Before we all get our knickers in a tremendous twist: How exactly does an attack on an undefended gas facility in the remotest depths of the Algerian desert become an "existential threat" to our "way of life"?

Across the Atlantic, American politicians also got into sky-is-falling mode. Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, fulminated, "This is going to get worse. You cannot allow this to become a national security issue for the United States. And I argue it's already crossed that threshold."

Peter Bergen

Previous real U.S. national security threats and their manifestations include 9/11, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (from the potential use of nuclear weapons) with the Soviets, Pearl Harbor and Hitler's armies taking over much of Europe.

A ragtag group of jihadists roaming the North African deserts is orders of magnitude less significant than those genuine threats to the West and is more comparable to the threats posed by the bands of pirates who continue to harass shipping off the coast of Somalia. They are surely a problem, but a localized and containable one.

Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics and also feed the self-image of these terrorists who aspire to attack the West, but don't have the capacity to do so. Terrorism doesn't work if folks aren't terrorized.

North African group hasn't attacked in the West

Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics...
Peter Bergen

Much has been written, for instance, in recent weeks about al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda's North African affiliate, a splinter group of which carried out the attack on the Algerian gas facility. But according to Camille Tawil, who has authoritatively covered Islamist militant groups over the past two decades for the leading Arabic daily Al-Hayat and has written three books about al Qaeda, AQIM doesn't threaten the West: "To my knowledge no known attacks or aborted attacks in the West have been linked directly to AQIM."

AQIM was formed seven years ago so the group has had more than enough time to plot and carry out an attack in the West. By way of comparison, it took two years of serious plotting for al Qaeda to plan the 9/11 attacks.

So, what is the real level of threat now posed by al Qaeda and allied groups?

Let's start with "core al Qaeda" which attacked the United States on 9/11 and that is headquartered in Pakistan. This group hasn't, of course, been able to pull off an attack in the United States in twelve years. Nor has it been able to mount an attack anywhere in the West since the attacks on London's transportation system eight years ago.

Core al Qaeda on way to extinction

Osama bin Laden, the group's founder and charismatic leader, was buried at sea a year and half ago and despite concerns that his "martyrdom" would provoke a rash of attacks in the West or against Western interests in the Muslim world there has instead been.... nothing.

Meanwhile, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan during President Obama's tenure alone have killed 38 of al Qaeda's leaders in Pakistan, according to a count by the New America Foundation.

Those drone strikes were so effective that shortly before bin Laden died he was contemplating ordering what remained of al Qaeda to move to Kunar Province in the remote, heavily forested mountains of eastern Afghanistan, according to documents that were discovered following the SEAL assault on the compound where bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Core al Qaeda is going the way of the dodo.

Affiliates are no better off

And a number of the affiliates of core al Qaeda are in just as bad shape as the mother ship.

Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the virulent Southeast Asian al Qaeda affiliate that killed hundreds in the years after 9/11 is largely out of business. Why so? JI killed mostly Westerners in its first attacks on the tourist island of Bali in 2002, but the subsequent Bali attack three years later killed mostly Indonesians. So too did JI's attacks on the Marriott hotel in the capital Jakarta in 2003 and the Australian embassy in 2004. As a result, JI lost any shred of popular support it had once enjoyed.

At the same time the Indonesian government, which at one point had denied that JI even existed, mounted a sophisticated campaign to dismantle the group, capturing many of its leaders and putting them on trial.

In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group, a number of whose leaders had trained in Afghanistan in al Qaeda's camps, and which specialized in kidnapping Westerners in the years after 9/11, was effectively dismantled by the Philippine army working in tandem with a small contingent of U.S. Special Operations Forces.

In Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban in 2009 took over the once-tranquil mountainous vacation destination of Swat, and destroyed some 180 schools and beheaded 70 policemen there. Suddenly, they were only 70 miles from the capital Islamabad and some warned that the Pakistani state was in danger. Today, the Pakistani Taliban have been rolled back to their bases along the Afghan border and 16 of their leaders have been killed by CIA drones since President Obama took office.

Al Qaeda militants based in Saudi Arabia mounted a terrorist campaign beginning in 2003 that killed dozens of Saudis, and they also attacked a number of the oil workers and oil facilities that lie at the heart of the Saudi economy. This prompted the Saudi government to mount such an effective crackdown that the few remaining al Qaeda leaders who were not killed or captured have in recent years fled south to Yemen where the remnants of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are now based.

From its new headquarters in Yemen AQAP has made serious efforts to attack the United States, sending the "underwear bomber" to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and also smuggling bombs on to U.S.-bound cargo shipments in October 2010.

None of these attempts were successful.

Yemen militants decimated

As a result of the threat posed by AQAP, the United States has mounted a devastating campaign against the group over the past three years. There was one American drone strike in Yemen in 2009. In 2012 there were 46. That drone campaign has killed 28 prominent members of the group, according to a count by the New America Foundation. Among them was the No. 2 in AQAP, Said al-Shihri, who was confirmed to be dead last week.

In the chaos of the multiple civil wars that gripped Yemen in 2011, AQAP seized a number of towns in southern Yemen. But AQAP has now been pushed out of those towns because of effective joint operations between U.S. Special Operations Forces, the CIA and the Yemeni government.

The Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, even went to the United Nations General Assembly in September where he publicly endorsed the use of CIA drones in his country, something of a first.

A couple of years ago, al Qaeda's Somali affiliate, Al- Shabaab ("the youth" in Arabic) controlled much of southern Somalia including key cities such as the capital Mogadishu.

Once in a position of power, Shaabab inflicted Taliban-like rule on a reluctant Somali population, which eroded its popular legitimacy. Shabaab was also the target of effective military operations by the military of neighboring Kenya, troops of the African Union and U.S. Special Operation Forces.

As a result, today the group controls only some rural areas and for the first time in two decades the United States has formally recognized a Somali government.

Mali conflict shows weakness of jihadist militant groups

Similarly, groups with an al Qaeda-like agenda captured most of northern Mali last year, a vast desert region the size of France. Once in power they imposed Taliban-like strictures on the population, banning smoking and music and enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law with the amputation of hands. The militants also destroyed tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on the grounds that the tombs promoted "idol worship."

None of these measures endeared the jihadist militants to the population of Mali. In the past weeks, as a relatively small force of some 2,000 French soldiers has rolled through Mali putting the militants on the run, the French have been cheered on by dancing and singing Malians.

When French soldiers are greeted as an army of liberation in an area of the world that in the past century was part of a vast French empire, you can get a sense of how much the jihadist militants had alienated the locals.

Last week the French military took the city of Timbuktu. The defeat of the al Qaeda-linked groups as effective insurgent forces in Mali is now almost complete.

What has just happened in Mali gets to the central problem that jihadist militant groups invariably have. Wherever they begin to control territory and population they create self-styled Islamic "emirates" where they then rule like the Taliban.

Over time this doesn't go down too well with the locals, who usually practice a far less austere version of Islam, and they eventually rise up against the militants, or, if they are too weak to do so themselves, they will cheer on an outside intervention to turf out the militants.

The classical example of this happened in Iraq where al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) controlled Anbar Province, about a third of the country in 2006. AQI cadres ruled with an iron fist and imposed their ultrafundamentalist rule on their fellow Sunnis, who they killed if they felt they were deviating from their supposedly purist Islamic precepts.

This provoked the "Sunni Awakening" of Iraqi tribes that rose up against AQI. These tribes then allied with the U.S. military and by the end of 2007 AQI went from an insurgent group that controlled vast territories to a terrorist group that controlled little but was still able to pull off occasional spectacular terrorist attacks in Baghdad.

Jihadist violence still a threat

The collapse of core al Qaeda and a number of its key affiliates does not, of course, mean that jihadist violence is over. Such religiously motivated mayhem has been a feature of the Muslim world for many centuries. Recall the Assassins, a Shia sect that from its base in what is now Iran dispatched cutthroats armed with daggers to kill its enemies around the Middle East during the 12th and 13th centuries. In so doing the sect gave the world the useful noun "assassin."

And so while core al Qaeda and several of its affiliates and like-minded groups are in terrible shape, there are certainly groups with links to al Qaeda or animated by its ideology that are today enjoying something of a resurgence.

Most of these groups do not call themselves al Qaeda, which is a smart tactic, as even bin Laden himself was advising his Somali affiliate, Al Shabaab, not to use the al Qaeda name as it would turn off fundraisers because the shine had long gone off the al Qaeda brand, according to documents recovered at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.

One such militant group is the Nigerian Boko Haram, which bombed the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria in 2011 and has also attacked a wide range of Christian targets in the country. However, the group has shown "no capability to attack the West and also has no known members outside of West Africa," according to Virginia Comolli of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies who tracks the group.

Ansar al-Sharia, "Supporters of Sharia," is the name taken by the militant group in Libya that carried out the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September in which four Americans were killed. Similarly, in Yemen militants that are aligned with al Qaeda have labeled themselves Ansar al-Sharia.

But this new branding hasn't done the militants much good in either country. In Libya, shortly after the attack on the U.S. consulate, an enraged mob stormed and took over Ansar al Sharia's headquarters in Benghazi. And, as we have seen, in Yemen the jihadists have now been forced out of the towns in the south that they had once held.

One strong foothold in Syria

The one country where jihadist militants have a serious foothold and are likely to play an important role for some period in the future is in Syria. That is because of a perfect storm there that favors them. The Sunni militants in Syria are fighting the regime of Bashir al Assad, a secular dictator who is also an Alawite, which many Muslims believe to be a heretical branch of Shiism.

For the jihadists, Assad's secularism makes him an apostate and his Alawi roots also make him a heretic, while his brutal tactics make him an international pariah. This trifecta makes funding the Sunni insurgency highly attractive for donors in the Gulf.

And for the Arabs who form the heart of al Qaeda the fight against Assad is in the heart of the Arab world, a contest that happens to border also on the hated state of Israel. Also Syria was for much of the past decade the entry point for many hundreds of foreign fighters who poured into Iraq to join Al Qaeda in Iraq following the American invasion of the country. As a result, al Qaeda has long had an infrastructure both in Syria and, of course, in neighboring Iraq.

The Al Nusra Front is the name of arguably the most effective fighting force in Syria. In December the State Department publicly said that Al Nusra, which is estimated to number in the low thousands and about 10% of the fighters arrayed against Assad, was a front for Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Al Nusra certainly seems to have learned from AQI's mistakes. For starters, it doesn't call itself al Qaeda. Secondly, it hasn't launched a campaign to crack down on social issues such as smoking or listening to music and so has not alienated the local Sunni population as AQI did in Iraq.

Barak Barfi, a journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation who has spent several months on the ground in Aleppo in northwestern Syria reporting on the opposition to Assad, says Nusra fighters stand out for their bravery and discipline: "They are winning over the hearts and minds of Aleppo residents who see them as straight shooters. There is a regimented recruiting process that weeds out the chaff. Their bases are highly organized with each person given specific responsibilities."

Arab Spring countries seen as an opportunity

The chaotic conditions of several of the countries of the "Arab Spring" are certainly something al Qaeda views as an opportunity. Ayman al-Zawahiri the leader of the group, has issued 27 audio and video statements since the death of bin Laden, 10 of which have focused on the Arab countries that have experienced the revolutions of the past two years.

But if history is a guide, the jihadist militants, whether in Syria or elsewhere, are likely to repeat the mistakes and failures that their fellow militants have experienced during the past decade in countries as disparate as Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and now, Mali.

That's because encoded in the DNA of al Qaeda and like-minded groups are the seeds of their own destruction because in power they rule like the Taliban, and they also attack fellow Muslims who don't follow their dictates to the letter. This doesn't mesh very well with these organizations' claims that they are the defenders of Muslims.

These groups also have no real plans for the multiple political and economic problems that beset much of the Islamic world. And they won't engage in normal politics such as elections believing them to be "un-Islamic."

This is invariably a recipe for irrelevance or defeat. In not one nation in the Muslim world since 9/11 has a jihadist militant group seized control of a country. And al Qaeda and its allies' record of effective attacks in the West has been non-existent since 2005.

With threats like these we can all sleep soundly at night.

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Power outage electrifies CBS Super Bowl broadcast

Label: Health

NEW YORK (AP) — When the lights went out at the Super Bowl, CBS’ telecast got a jolt.

The power outage in the Super Dome in New Orleans sent the network scrambling and silenced its announcers for about half an hour. The remarkable scene — probably the most-watched “we’re having technical difficulties” moment in television history — also made CBS’ broadcast compelling at a time when the game was looking like a blow-out.

Early in the game’s second half, a portion of the Superdome lost power, including CBS’ broadcasting booth where Jim Nantz and Phil Simms were calling the game. It led to an awkward, ambient few moments of darkness and quiet in a broadcast that’s otherwise nonstop noise. A highly orchestrated media event was suddenly forced to improvise.

It took several minutes and numerous commercial breaks for CBS to find its footing and inform viewers of the situation. Social media went wild with a stream of joke conspiracy theories.

Eventually, CBS sideline reporter Steve Tasker — the MVP on the night, regardless of the play on the gridiron — announced the problem of a “click of the lights” to viewers. Later, the halftime crew anchored by host James Brown returned to fill time with football analysis. Brown said a power surge caused the outage.

That left the CBS NFL Today crew of Brown, Dan Marino, Bill Cowher and Shannon Sharpe to improvise by talking football. With little awareness of the power outage, the group bantered about the game to pad for time, even though viewers at that point had little interest in football strategy. Marino claimed halftime performer Beyonce knocked the lights out.

Calm and collected, Nantz and Simms finally returned from their unexpected exile as the lights came back on. Simms said he momentarily thought they were going to have to call the rest of the game from the sidelines.

“Hey, the next time you decide to plug in your phone charger, give us a warning, will you?” said Nantz.

“I was doing some of my best work during that blackout,” replied Simms.

CBS issued a statement later in the game, saying that “we lost numerous cameras and some audio powered by sources in the Super Dome.” The network said it used backup power and that “all commercial commitments during the broadcast are being honored.”

The power outage may have had the ironic effect of keeping viewers glued to their TVs, amazed at seeing the biggest TV event of the year momentarily shut down. At the time of the outage, the game was becoming a rout, with the Baltimore Ravens beating the San Francisco 49ers 28-6.

But afterward, momentum shifted and the 49ers rallied, making it a close game that went down to the wire before the Ravens edged out a 34-31 victory. Close contests are essential for retaining a big Super Bowl audience, so the shift that followed the outage held major ratings implications for CBS. The last three years, the game has successively set viewership records. Last year’s Super Bowl drew 111.3 million average viewers for NBC.

But ratings are a mere point of pride for CBS, with the ads sold-out well in advance, (some at more than $ 4 million a pop). The game was also streamed live on both CBSSports.com and NFL.com.

The chaos of the power failure outshined all other aspects of CBS’ broadcast, which had seemed certain to focus on a handful of storylines: the head coaching brothers John and Jim Harbaugh (CBS scored their parents on the pregame); the threat to player safety by head injuries (a pregame segment took an optimistic view); and Ray Lewis’ final game and fraught legacy.

Nantz reminded viewers during the game of the 2000 double murder case in which Lewis testified against two men and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice. But Sharpe, Lewis’ former teammate, let him completely evade the subject in a pregame interview.

Nantz also smartly predicted the Ravens possibly taking a safety willingly at the end of the game for the sake of time and field position. Simms initially dismissed the idea, but it was what the Ravens elected to do and it was successful.

CBS didn’t overplay the Harbowl angle (if anything, it felt more like the Beyonce Bowl), and didn’t flash to the parents in the crowd until the second quarter. Director Mike Arnold did land the money shot of the game: The two coaches embracing at midfield after the game. (Its cameras and microphones also caught Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco celebrating with profanity.)

But this year’s Super Bowl broadcast will be remembered for the blackout — how CBS handled and benefited from an awkward situation. Nantz put the fitting final word on the Ravens’ win: “The adversity they faced tonight was to somehow rekindle the energy after it had been taken — literally — out of the building.”

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

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World stock markets cautious after US rally

Label: Business

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — World stock markets moved cautiously higher Monday as investors continued to feel confident about stocks following last week’s U.S. jobs report and Wall Street’s rally.

Solid corporate earnings reports and expectations that the weaker yen will enhance the bottom line of Japanese exporters also lured investors to stocks. Investors were also awaiting the release later in the day of U.S. factory orders for December.

In early European trading, Britain’s fell 0.2 percent to 6,335.65. Germany’s DAX was marginally higher at 7,834.47. France’s CAC-40 was flat at 3,772.96. Wall Street appeared headed for a slightly higher open with Dow Jones industrial futures gaining almost 0.1 percent at 13,937. S&P 500 futures were nearly unchanged at 1,506.80.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was 0.6 percent higher at 11,260.35. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.2 percent to 23,685.01. South Korea’s Kospi edged down 0.2 percent to 1,953.21. Shares in mainland China were mixed and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.3 percent to 4,907.50.

Last week, the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 14,000 on Friday for the first time in more than five years as investors became less risk-averse following solid economic indicators from the U.S. and Europe.

U.S. government revised upward how many people were hired in the last two years — adding an upbeat note to earlier news that Europe saw a lower-than-expected unemployment rate in December.

These indicators help ease investor aversion for risky assets, assuring them that the U.S. economic recovery is not losing steam and that the slump in eurozone economic activity might be bottoming out.

Improved sentiment helped the Shanghai Composite Index rise 0.4 percent to close at 2,428.15.

“The mood is improving in Shanghai with the main index surpassing 2,400 as investors are less hesitant about betting on risks,” said Yun hang-jin, a market analyst at Korea Investment Securities. “There are expectations that policies from China and other emerging markets will boost stock markets.”

Investors in Asian markets are also keen on the lunar New Year holidays starting this weekend, which could boost retail sales and increase inflow of Chinese tourists to neighboring countries.

Among individual stocks, shares of Panasonic Corp. skyrocketed more than 17 percent. The company, which reported a 61.4 billion yen ($ 667 million) profit for the October-December period Friday, has gotten a boost from a favorable exchange rate.

South Korean exporters Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. saw their shares fall 0.3 percent and 1.8 percent respectively, as the stronger won threatens to erode their overseas revenues.

Benchmark oil for March delivery fell 50 cents to $ 97.28 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 28 cents to finish at $ 97.77 a barrel on the Nymex on Friday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $ 1.3600 from $ 1.3662 in late trading Friday in New York. The dollar rose to 92.93 yen from 92.75 yen.

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How to create a tax-smart portfolio strategy

Label: World

Retirement » Creating Tax-Efficient Portfolio Plans

A diversified blend of stocks, bonds and cash in your individual retirement account is the proven path to attaining your long-term financial goals. Right?

Well, yes, but you might want to consider a more tax-efficient approach to investing.

While financial experts agree that a mix of securities can help stabilize your overall portfolio, they also note that long-term savers with both taxable and tax-favored accounts may be better served using their IRA primarily to shelter income-producing investments.

Their brokerage accounts, then, can be used for investments with lesser tax implications to maintain their ideal allocation.

Thus, a 40-something retirement saver could still maintain a mix of, say, 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds. But the investments held in his various accounts would not mirror one another, says Certified Financial Planner professional Brett Horowitz, a wealth manager and vice president with Evensky & Katz in Coral Gables, Fla.

“We can’t control the market or how it performs, but we do have control over taxes and expenses,” says Horowitz. “To the extent that we can keep inefficient vehicles in our IRAs, and reduce expenses by not holding the same securities in multiple accounts, you can potentially boost your return by up to a half a percent per year.”

That may not sound like much, but over time it can make a big difference in your net worth.

Indeed, an integrated approach that favors tax efficiency may result in higher returns by minimizing your taxable income and eliminating redundant transaction fees.

“It saves clients a lot in commissions because typically each investment is only placed in one account, so if we sell that fund, we only need to sell it once,” says Horowitz. “If the same fund were held in four accounts, you would have to multiply the commissions by four. Every penny adds up.”

Determining your asset allocation

To implement a tax-efficient strategy for your long-term retirement accounts, start by determining your optimal asset allocation, which differs for everyone depending upon his or her financial profile, age and appetite for risk, says Mike Piper, a certified public accountant and blogger at ObliviousInvestor.com.

A moderate investor 10 years from retirement, for example, might opt for 61 percent equities, 31 percent bonds, 6 percent alternatives (such as commodities and real estate investment trusts), and 2 percent cash (money market funds, certificates of deposit), says Horowitz.

That investor’s more conservative counterpart might invert his exposure to equities and bonds, while a more aggressive investor might put up to 90 percent in stocks.

Regardless of where you fall on the risk tolerance spectrum, your equity weighting should include roughly two-thirds domestic stocks and one-third international stocks, says Horowitz, who favors value and small-capitalization mutual funds in the current market environment for their upside potential.

Next, says Piper, determine which specific stocks, bonds and funds best meet your portfolio needs and list them in order from least to most tax-efficient.

“Put your least tax-efficient investments into your IRA and 401(k) first,” he says.

What belongs in your IRA?

Your IRA should include high turnover, actively managed mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that are likely to distribute gains at the end of the year, says Horowitz.

Eventually, you’ll pay ordinary income rates when you start taking distributions from your traditional IRA, but the benefit of compounded growth far outweighs the loss of the lower capital gains rate, which is reserved for investments in taxable accounts, he says.

Plus, you’ll likely be in a lower marginal tax bracket during retirement.

By comparison, earnings on investments held for more than one year in your brokerage account are taxed at the long-term capital gains rate, which was raised from 15 percent to 20 percent in 2013 for the wealthiest taxpayers as part of the American Taxpayer Relief Act.

Other good candidates for your IRA include high-yield bonds and bond funds, along with Treasuries and Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, which are all taxed as ordinary income, says Horowitz.

The same is true for real estate investment trusts, or REITs, which are required to distribute 90 percent of their income annually to shareholders in the form of dividends.

The benefit of keeping your least tax-efficient investments in your IRA may be amplified if you own a Roth, which is funded with after-tax dollars and therefore grows tax-free, says Larry Luxenberg, a portfolio manager with Lexington Avenue Capital Management in New City, N.Y.

If you don’t anticipate needing the money for many years, he says, investors “in general should consider placing their fastest-growing and riskiest assets inside of a Roth.”

The downside of placing riskier stocks inside a traditional or Roth IRA, however, is that investors would not be able to harvest losses if they underperform. Stock losses inside a taxable brokerage account can be used to offset capital gains.

What belongs in the taxable account?

Conversely, investments that do not produce a high dividend or yield, such as total market index funds and tax-managed stock funds, are best left to your brokerage account, says Piper.

Low-yielding bonds and, more specifically, municipal bonds, which are exempt from federal and often state and local taxes, also make sense for your brokerage account, says Horowitz.

Lastly, you may wish to consider parking your international stock funds in a taxable account as well, as it may be possible to get a tax credit for the foreign taxes you pay from such funds, says Luxenberg. That opportunity is lost in tax-deferred accounts, but the faster anticipated growth (and resulting capital gains) of foreign investments may outweigh that benefit over a long holding period, he adds.

Keep it simple

When it comes to structuring your retirement portfolio for tax efficiency, the name of the game is simplicity, says Ed Slott, an IRA distribution expert and author of several books about retirement, including “The Retirement Savings Time Bomb and How to Defuse It.”

Those with multiple IRAs and 401(k)s from past employers should roll their accounts into a single, traditional IRA, if they wish to defer taxes, or a Roth, if they prefer to pay taxes upfront and benefit from tax-free growth, Slott says. Either way, the fewer accounts the better.

“Older people, in particular, tend to build an inventory of IRAs because years ago they were told that more accounts meant you were more diversified,” he says. “There was some truth to that before banks were deregulated because institutions couldn’t sell one another’s products, but now they can.”

Duplicate accounts, Slott says, make it hard to determine the degree to which your investments overlap. It’s also harder to calculate your annual tax obligation on the earnings. Keeping your accounts to a minimum will help you monitor performance and reallocate as market performance ebbs and flows.

“IRAs do not exist in a vacuum,” says Slott. “You have to look at your whole portfolio, including what’s inside and outside your IRA. If you have all risky stocks in your IRA, you can hedge that with more conservative investments outside your IRA.”

Don’t be alarmed, though, when your investment accounts no longer perform in lockstep.

Retirement savers who allocate assets based on tax implication often get nervous when one part of their portfolio performs worse than others, says Horowitz.

“I’ll get a call from a husband asking why his account performed so poorly when his wife’s did so well,” says Horowitz. “The reason is that we’re trying to maximize the performance of the entire portfolio, not a single account. You can match them up so they all perform the same, but that’s the lazy way out. You’ll lose the overall efficiency by doing that.”

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Spanish worries tarnish growth outlook

Label: World

London (Reuters) - European shares edged up but the euro fell and German bonds trimmed their losses on Monday as a resurgence of worries about Europe undermined positive sentiment stemming from stronger U.S. and Chinese economic data.

However, the rising confidence in the global economic recovery underpinned oil and copper, although prices moved in narrow ranges at the start of a week which sees policy meeting by several major central banks and a summit of European leaders.

"We are now seeing a consistent story of moderate growth in the U.S. and China," said Ric Spooner, chief market analyst at CMC Markets in Sydney.

The economic outlook brightened considerably last week after data showed U.S. factory activity quickened in January and hiring increased, and after a survey of euro zone business activity suggested the worst of the region's downturn may be over.

On Sunday China's official purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the increasingly important services sector posted a fourth-straight monthly rise in January, although its slim gain added to evidence that the global recovery is a modest one.

But Spain dampened the mood in Europe by reporting that its unemployment problems are worsening as a corruption scandal threatens to engulf Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, with the opposition calling for his resignation.

"If Rajoy were really forced to resign, if we were to have new elections in Spain, that would not help the improvement we've seen in financial markets," Tobias Blattner, European economist at Daiwa Capital Markets said.

Ten-year Spanish government bond yields rose 11 basis points to 5.32 percent in early Monday trade.

The equivalent Italian yields also rose on concerns that a scandal involving a major domestic bank could boost support for the centre-right party led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi as election day approaches.

The German Bund future which had opened 53 ticks lower at 141.48, trimmed its losses to be only down 13 ticks.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> held near a 23-month high after a solid rally since the start of the year to be up 0.15 percent. London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were flat to slightly lower.

Meanwhile the euro fell 0.3 percent to a day's low of $1.3602 after the Spanish jobs data was released, with bids cited at $1.3580 and $1.3600.

(Reporting by Richard Hubbard. Editing by David Stamp)

Peterson double winner of AP NFL awards

Label: Technology

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Adrian Peterson called it a blessing in disguise.

Strange way to describe career-threatening major knee surgery.

The Minnesota Vikings' star came back better than ever, just missing Eric Dickerson's longstanding rushing record and closing out the season with two of the top NFL awards from The Associated Press: Most Valuable Player and Offensive Player of the Year.

As sort of an added bonus, he beat Peyton Manning for both of them Saturday night.

"My career could have easily been over, just like that," the sensational running back said. "Oh man. The things I've been through throughout my lifetime has made me mentally tough.

" I'm kind of speechless. This is amazing, " he said in accepting his awards, along with five others at the "2nd Annual NFL Honors" show on CBS saluting the NFL's best players, performances and plays from the 2012 season. The awards are based on balloting from a nationwide panel of 50 media members who regularly cover the NFL.

Manning's own sensational recovery, from four neck surgeries, earned him Comeback Player honors.

"This injury was unlike any other," said the only four-time league MVP. "There really was no bar or standard, there were no notes to copy. We were coming up with a rehab plan as we went."

Before sitting out 2011, Manning had never missed a start in his first 13 seasons with Indianapolis. But he was released by the Colts last winter because of his neck issues, signed with Denver and guided the Broncos to the AFC's best record, 13-3.

"Certainly you have double variables of coming off injury, not playing for over year and joining a new team. That certainly added a lot to my plate, so it was hard to really know what to expect," Manning said. "I can't tell you how grateful and thankful I am. I can't tell you how happy I am to be playing the game of football we all love so much."

Also honored were:

—Washington's Robert Griffin III, who beat out a strong crop of quarterbacks for the top offensive rookie award.

— Houston end J.J. Watt, who took Defensive Player of the Year, getting 49 of 50 votes.

— Bruce Arians, the first interim coach to win Coach of the Year after leading Indianapolis to a 9-3 record while head man Chuck Pagano was being treated for leukemia. Arians became Arizona's head coach last month.

—Carolina linebacker Luke Kuechly, the league's leader in tackles with 164, who won the top defensive rookie award.

Peterson returned better than ever from the left knee surgery, rushing for 2,097 yards, 9 short of breaking Dickerson's record. He also sparked the Vikings' turnaround from 3-13 to 10-6 and a wild-card playoff berth.

He received 30 1-2 votes to 19 1-2 for Manning.

"I played my heart out, every opportunity I had," Peterson said. "The result of that is not what I wanted, which is being in the Super Bowl game. But I have a couple of good pieces of hardware to bring back and (put) in my statue area. So it feels good."

Was the knee injury the toughest thing he'd ever overcome?

"Losing my brother at 7, seeing him get hit by a car right in front of me, that was the toughest," he said. "But as far as injuries, yes."

New England QB Tom Brady was the last winner of MVP and Offensive Player in 2010.

"Trying to get two or three like Peyton, trying to get to your level," Peterson said of his first MVP award. "But I won't be there to accept it because I'll be winning with my coach, the most important award, the team award, the Super Bowl."

Dickerson predicted Peterson could get back to 2,000 yards.

"I hope he does have a chance to do it again," Dickerson said, adding with a laugh, "but do I want him to break it? No, I do not."

Wearing a burgundy and gold tie in honor of his Redskins, Griffin said his goal is to be ready for the season opener.

"It's truly a blessing to be up there — to be able to stand, first and foremost," said Griffin, who underwent knee surgery last month. He added that next season "you'll see a better Robert Griffin."

Arians moved up from offensive coordinator and helped Indianapolis make the playoffs at 10-6, making him an easy winner in the balloting.

"It's hard to put into words the feelings of this past year," he said. "This was kind of the cherry on the top, whipped cream and everything else you put on top."

Watt swatted the competition as Denver's Von Miller got the only other vote in the most lopsided balloting of all the awards.

"It sets the bar for me," Watt said. He led the NFL with 20 1-2 sacks and also blocked an astounding 16 passes. "I want to go out and do even better. I want to do even bigger things."

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Hillary: Secretary of empowerment

Label: Lifestyle

Girls hug U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2010 tour of a shelter run for sex trafficking victims in Cambodia.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Donna Brazile: Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. Maybe she'll run for president

She says as secretary she expanded foreign policy to include effect on regular people

She says she was first secretary of state to focus on empowering women and girls

Brazile: Clinton has fought for education and inclusion in politics for women and girls

Editor's note: Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee. She is a nationally syndicated columnist, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of "Cooking with Grease." She was manager for the Gore-Lieberman presidential campaign in 2000.

(CNN) -- As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton steps down from her job Friday, many are assuming she will run for president. And she may. In fact, five of the first eight presidents first served their predecessors as secretary of state.

It hasn't happened in more than a century, though that may change should Clinton decide to run. After all, she has been a game changer her entire life.

But before we look ahead, I think we should appreciate what she's done as secretary of state; it's a high profile, high pressure job. You have to deal with the routine as if it is critical and with crisis as if it's routine. You have to manage egos, protocols, customs and Congress. You have to be rhetorical and blunt, diplomatic and direct.

CNN Contributor Donna Brazile

As secretary of state you are dealing with heads of state and with we the people. And the president of the United States has to trust you -- implicitly.

On the road with Hillary Clinton

Of all Clinton's accomplishments -- and I will mention just a few -- this may be the most underappreciated. During the election, pundits were puzzled and amazed not only at how much energy former President Bill Clinton poured into Obama's campaign, but even more at how genuine and close the friendship was.

Obama was given a lot of well-deserved credit for reaching out to the Clintons by appointing then-Sen. Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state in the first place. But trust is a two-way street and has to be earned. We should not underestimate or forget how much Clinton did and how hard she worked. She deserved that trust, as she deserved to be in the war room when Osama bin Laden was killed.

By the way, is there any other leader in the last 50 years whom we routinely refer to by a first name, and do so more out of respect than familiarity? The last person I can think of was Ike -- the elder family member who we revere with affection. Hillary is Hillary.

It's not surprising that we feel we know her. She has been part of our public life for more than 20 years. She's been a model of dignity, diplomacy, empathy and toughness. She also has done something no other secretary of state has done -- including the two women who preceded her in the Cabinet post.

Rothkopf: President Hillary Clinton? If she wants it

Hillary has transformed our understanding -- no, our definition -- of foreign affairs. Diplomacy is no longer just the skill of managing relations with other countries. The big issues -- war and peace, terror, economic stability, etc. -- remain, and she has handled them with firmness and authority, with poise and confidence, and with good will, when appropriate.

But it is not the praise of diplomats or dictators that will be her legacy. She dealt with plenipotentiaries, but her focus was on people. Foreign affairs isn't just about treaties, she taught us, it's about the suffering and aspirations of those affected by the treaties, made or unmade.

Most of all, diplomacy should refocus attention on the powerless.

Of course, Hillary wasn't the first secretary of state to advocate for human rights or use the post to raise awareness of abuses or negotiate humanitarian relief or pressure oppressors. But she was the first to focus on empowerment, particularly of women and girls.

She created the first Office of Global Women's Issues. That office fought to highlight the plight of women around the world. Rape of women has been a weapon of war for centuries. Though civilized countries condemn it, the fight against it has in a sense only really begun.

Ghitis: Hillary Clinton's global legacy on gay rights

The office has worked to hold governments accountable for the systematic oppression of girls and women and fought for their education in emerging countries. As Hillary said when the office was established: "When the Security Council passed Resolution 1325, we tried to make a very clear statement, that women are still largely shut out of the negotiations that seek to end conflicts, even though women and children are the primary victims of 21st century conflict."

Hillary also included the United States in the Trafficking in Person report. Human Trafficking, a form of modern, mainly sexual, slavery, victimizes mostly women and girls. The annual report reviews the state of global efforts to eliminate the practice. "We believe it is important to keep the spotlight on ourselves," she said. "Human trafficking is not someone else's problem. Involuntary servitude is not something we can ignore or hope doesn't exist in our own communities."

She also created the office of Global Partnerships. And there is much more.

She has held her own in palaces and held the hands of hungry children in mud-hut villages, pursuing an agenda that empowers women, children, the poor and helpless.

We shouldn't have been surprised. Her book "It Takes a Village" focused on the impact that those outside the family have, for better or worse, on a child's well-being.

As secretary of state, she did all she could to make sure our impact as a nation would be for the better.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Donna Brazile.

Mark Wahlberg, Ted to Present at Oscars

Label: Health

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Mark Wahlberg and his teddy bear co-star “Ted” will be presenters at the Oscars, the telecast producers announced Friday morning.

The duo, stars in Oscar host Seth MacFarlane‘s comedy about a man trying to turn his immature, hedonistic lifestyle around for a woman he is dating. His indulgent teddy bear, the eponymous Ted, proves to be an obstacle in that transformation.

The film is now the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

“We are happy to make it possible for Mark and Ted to make their debut appearance on the Oscar stage,” Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the show’s producers, said in a statement. “And we won’t deny that Ted used his pull with our host to get himself the booking.”

Wahlberg has twice been nominated for Academy Awards, in 2006 for his supporting role in “The Departed,” and in 2010 as a producer of the Best Picture nominee “The Fighter.”

Wahlberg and the MacFarlane-voiced Ted share the stage with a star-studded list of Oscar performers, including singers Adele, Norah Jones and Barbra Streisand. The Oscars will be broadcast on February 24 from the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center.

“I’m excited to present an Oscar with Mark Wahlberg,” Ted said in the statement. “I’m spending the next month learning to pronounce ‘Quvenzhané.’”

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China services’ slow uptick highlights mildness of recovery

Label: Business

BEIJING (Reuters) – Growth in China‘s increasingly important services sector rose for the fourth straight month in January, though the slim increase added to evidence that the recovery in the world’s second-largest economy remains a modest one.

China’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for the non-manufacturing sector rose to 56.2 in January from 56.1 in December, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Sunday.

The figure follows the bureau’s PMI for the manufacturing sector on Friday, which eased to 50.4 in January, missing market expectations. A reading above 50 indicates growth is accelerating, while one below 50 indicates it is slowing.

“This marginal rise of non-manufacturing PMI again casts doubt on the strength and sustainability of the recovery,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief China economist at Nomura in Hong Kong.

He noted that new orders declined, pointing to weaker demand, while a rise in input service prices suggested inflationary pressure.

“We believe the government cannot further loosen policies given inflationary pressure, as growth may weaken beyond Q1 as policy easing runs out of steam,” Zhang said.

The NBS said in a statement that the retail, air cargo and shipping sectors all reported levels of activity above 60 in January, though the construction sector, one of the big drivers of growth in December, ticked down slightly to 61.6 from 61.9.

The new orders index fell to 53.7 from the previous month’s 54.3, showing a slowdown in demand even though the overall figure remained well above the 50 mark separating growth from contraction.

The intermediate input price index jumped to 58.2 from 53.8 last month, indicating rising costs for enterprises, with a big rise in costs the construction sector.

MODEST RECOVERY

The marginal rise in the services PMI is consistent with the view of many economists that recent data signals a modest recovery for China and that steady policy support may well be needed to keep it on track.

A Reuters poll last month showed that China’s economic growth is likely to edge up to 8.1 percent in 2013 from 7.8 percent last year, which had been the economy‘s slowest growth since 1999.

But the recovery could fizzle in 2014 as a pick-up in inflation forces the central bank to revert to modest policy tightening, the poll found.

The services sector generated 44 percent of China’s GDP in 2011, up from 35 percent in 2000, and Beijing has acknowledged that greater consumer activity is needed to reduce the economy’s reliance on exports and investment-led growth.

The services industry has so far weathered the global slowdown much better than the factory sector, with the PMI consistently signalling healthy expansion and hitting a 10-month high of 58.0 in March.

That is partly due to a maturing economy as well as a historic shift in the last decade leading a majority of Chinese to live and work in cities rather than the countryside.

The January index of expected activity also fell from December, but remained above 60, indicating that service sector enterprises continued to be optimistic, the bureau said.

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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Ravens edge 49ers 34-31 in electric Super Bowl

Should we still fear al Qaeda?

Power outage electrifies CBS Super Bowl broadcast

World stock markets cautious after US rally

How to create a tax-smart portfolio strategy

Determining your asset allocation

What belongs in your IRA?

What belongs in the taxable account?

Keep it simple

Spanish worries tarnish growth outlook

Peterson double winner of AP NFL awards

Hillary: Secretary of empowerment

Mark Wahlberg, Ted to Present at Oscars

China services’ slow uptick highlights mildness of recovery

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