U.S. retailers scramble after lackluster holiday sales

(Reuters) – The 2012 holiday season may have been the worst for retailers since the 2008 financial crisis, with sales growth far below expectations, forcing many to offer massive post-Christmas discounts in hopes of shedding excess inventory.

While chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Gap Inc are thought to have done well, analysts expect much less from the likes of book seller Barnes & Noble Inc and department store chain J. C. Penney Co Inc.

Shares of retailers dropped sharply on Wednesday, helping drag broader indexes lower, as investors realized they were likely to be disappointed when companies start to report results in a few weeks’ time.

“The broad brush was Christmas wasn’t all that merry for retailers, and you have to ask what those margins look like if the top line didn’t meet their expectations,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.

Growth was always expected to slow this season, though an improving employment picture and rising home values had helped mitigate the worst fears. But then Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in late October, mild weather blunted sales of winter clothing and rising concern about the “fiscal cliff” became more of a reality, dragging down already-pessimistic forecasts.

The latest sign of trouble came from MasterCard Advisors Spending Pulse, which reported holiday-related sales rose 0.7 percent from October 28 through December 24, compared with a 2 percent increase last year.

The preliminary estimate from SpendingPulse was in line with other estimates showing weak growth during the holiday season, when retailers can book about 30 percent of annual sales – and in many cases, half of their profit.

“It has been a very uneven industry performance, probably at least for the last year, and that certainly continued into the holiday season,” said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, in an interview with Reuters Insider.

The latest holiday season could end up the weakest since 2008, during the last recession, when sales actually declined. The National Retail Federation had previously predicted 4.1 percent sales growth this year, versus a 5.6 percent increase a year earlier.

Markets reacted sharply to the gloomy outlook.

The S&P retail index closed down 1.7 percent, and 14 of the top 20 decliners in the broader S&P 500 were retailers or consumer brands.

INVENTORY CRUSH

To be sure, the actual percentage change in holiday sales can differ substantially, depending on which group is calculating the figure. SpendingPulse and the National Retail Federation, for example, look at different categories, which can cause some variation in their forecasts.

Regardless of how bad the figure is, one concern for retailers is that soft sales will mean an excess of inventory that will force some to slash prices.

The day after Christmas, retailers were using deep discounts to lure shoppers. Among other brands, Barnes & Noble offered 50 percent discounts in stores via email promotions on Wednesday, while Ann Inc had half-off at its Loft stores, and Macy’s Inc’s Bloomingdale’s promoted discounts of up to 75 percent in some cases.

At a Target store in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, most shoppers seemed to be spending more on groceries, toys and small gifts than on gadgets or clothes.

Despite discounts of 50 percent, there were few takers for Jason Wu glass ornaments, Oscar de la Renta canvas totes and other designer goods launched under the mass merchant’s tie-up with upscale chain Neiman Marcus.

Even in a good year, retailers would have offered discounts to lure customers, but some suggest a weak year has now forced their hands.

“Retailers are no longer chasing sales, they are chasing inventory management. That means the discounts that they would have liked to be at 50-60 (percent) off have climbed to 75 to even 80 (percent) off,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at The NPD Group.

This week’s cold, snowy weather on the heels of a warm start to December could spur people to use the gift cards they received or their remaining discretionary income to buy everything from jackets to snow blowers, said Evan Gold, senior vice president of client services at Planalytics, which tracks weather for businesses including retailers.

In December, he said, “people are out spending anyway, weather can trigger what you purchase, not if you purchase, but what you purchase.”

SANDY AND CLIFF

A variety of factors were thought to be at fault for the weak season, starting with Superstorm Sandy, which depressed sales in the U.S. Northeast in late October and early November.

Sales recovered in the second part of November, with early hours and promotions helping drive traffic during the “Black Friday” weekend after Thanksgiving, analysts said.

But there was a deep lull in early December as a winter storm in parts of the United States may have limited sales, said Michael McNamara, vice president of research and analysis at MasterCard SpendingPulse.

On top of that, there were fears that taxes will rise in the new year if Washington cannot negotiate a solution to the end-of-year “fiscal cliff” dilemma.

A recent Ipsos poll for Reuters found that only 17 percent of shoppers were spending less due to cliff fears, though analysts said the damage was still done.

“The government usually does not have a role in holidays but this year they did. They got right in the midst of it, the timing couldn’t have been any worse,” NPD’s Cohen said.

BRIGHT SPOTS

One bright spot has been online sales, which continue to grow at a faster pace.

On Christmas Day, online sales jumped 22.4 percent, outpacing the 16.4 percent increase in 2011, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracks more than 1 million e-commerce transactions a day from 500 U.S. retailers.

Whether online or off, some of the winning retailers were expected to be Wal-Mart, which attracted shoppers with early deals on the night of Thanksgiving and kept its focus on value, and apparel chains like the Gap, whose bright sweaters were successful, according to analysts.

Toys sold well, and hot items that were harder to find later in the season included certain Mattel Inc Barbie dolls and LeapFrog Enterprises Inc’s LeapPad2 tablet computer, according to B. Riley Caris analyst Linda Bolton Weiser.

For retailers that have struggled, analysts said all hope was not lost. Many have fiscal quarters that end in January, so they still have time to benefit from a post-Christmas rebound. Because Christmas fell on a Tuesday, some said they could even see a boost this week from people who have extra time off.

“There’s still a little bit more time to go until the holiday season is officially over,” Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom said.

Wal-Mart shares ended down 0.8 percent at $ 67.99 on Wednesday, while Macy’s shares were down 1.1 percent at $ 37.11, Barnes & Noble shares were down 3.5 percent at $ 14.49, Amazon.com Inc shares ended 3.9 percent lower at $ 248.63, and Ann Inc shares lost 5.1 percent to close at $ 32.06.

(Reporting by Brad Dorfman, Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Jessica Wohl in Chicago; additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Dhanya Skariachan in New York; writing by Ben Berkowitz; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Matthew Lewis)

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Toronto reaches skyward, but how dark the clouds?

TORONTO (Reuters) – Barry Fenton walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in his 30th-floor uptown Toronto penthouse suite and declared, “This is the best view of the city.”

To the south, a mass of steel-and-glass skyscrapers glinted in the bright autumn sun. Several cranes were in motion on unfinished buildings, a common sight in a city in the midst of a residential building boom.

“If you look around the core, every building you look at has a different look to it, a different ambience,” said the energetic co-founder of Lanterra Developments, one of the city’s most active builders. “That’s important.”

Fenton, 56, says he is confident the city’s condominium market will remain strong — despite warnings that it is all moving too far, too fast — and has an ambitious lineup for future development. And he is not alone in his optimism.

Toronto‘s seams are bursting with new condo and hotel towers designed by star architects like Frank Gehry and built by famed developers like Donald Trump.

But Fenton and others who see Toronto emerging from its “pokey” past — as a columnist in the Globe and Mail recently described it — face some formidable obstacles: an infrastructure buckling under soaring density rates, the laws of supply and demand and preservationists who say too many new towers are destroying the city’s character.

Canada’s central bank drew a bead on the city of 2.6 million this month in its weighty “Financial System Review,” warning of “potential future supply imbalances” in the condo market.

The Bank of Canada noted that the number of unsold condominiums in pre-construction has doubled, to 14,000, over the past year.

Greater Toronto home sales have slowed after years of steady increases. Sales fell 16 percent in November from the same month a year ago, according to the Toronto Real East Board. So far, however, prices are flattening, not falling, as some analysts have predicted.

In defiance of warnings by the central bank and economists, two mega-projects were unveiled within days of each other in October — a three-tower condo complex to be designed by Gehry and a multi-tower office project that includes a massive casino.

RACE TO THE TOP

More skyscrapers — 147 of them — are being built in Toronto than anywhere in North America, according to Emporis, the German data provider. That is twice as many as in New York, a city with about three times the population.

Toronto is getting taller fast. Fifteen buildings that will be more than 150 meters (492 feet) high are under construction, more than anywhere in the western hemisphere.

The recently completed Trump International Hotel topped out at 277 meters, just shy of Toronto’s tallest skyscraper, the 72-story First Canadian Place, which is 298 meters. That height could be exceeded by a couple of major projects on the drawing boards, including the Mirvish project.

(The city’s tallest freestanding structure, however, is the CN Tower, which soars over Toronto at 553 meters.)

“Toronto is creating a very sustainable future by building condos downtown,” said Daniel Libeskind, the American architect, who was in Toronto in October for a ceremony for one of his latest projects, the 57-story L Tower, with its sweeping, curvaceous, design that rises above the city’s modernist Sony Center for Performing Arts.

“It fights urban sprawl and brings people into the heart of the city.”

While building in big American cities and in Western Europe cratered following the financial crisis four years ago, Toronto never stopped booming. Demand for residential space has been strong, and while the office market has also been healthy, most of the new developments have been for condo projects.

Lanterra’s Fenton said his company has built some 9,000 condominium units in Toronto over the past 10 years and now has “in the hopper” up to 6 million square feet of property in downtown Toronto that is being rezoned for new projects.

Lanterra gained prominence over the past five years for the development of Maple Leaf Square, which included two condo towers, a hotel and office space, near the city’s hockey shrine, Air Canada Center, on land that had sat vacant for years.

Now it is “one of the hottest places to be,” said Fenton.

“ONE TOWER LEADS TO ANOTHER”

Some worry that Toronto can’t handle much more development.

“We have accumulated a serious infrastructure deficit,” wrote Ken Greenberg, a Toronto architect, in the Globe and Mail in October. “We have failed to make the investments in public transit that are urgently needed. Our narrow sidewalks and poorly designed streets are already jammed.”

He criticized the city officials and developers for a lack of coordinated planning. “One tower leads to another,” he said.

Despite decades of debate about transportation policy, Toronto has just two subway lines, a fleet of charming but lumbering streetcar lines and crumbling roadways.

Commuters in Toronto spend at least 80 minutes in traffic a day, on average — worse than what commuters face in London or Los Angeles — according to the Toronto Board of Trade.

Toronto’s City Planning Department did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

There is also concern about soaring neighborhood density rates. The city’s waterfront area has seen the most growth. Its population has soared 134 percent in a decade and is up 66 percent in the past five years, to 43,295, according to city data.

Toronto’s aging energy grid is strained. In July, downtown Toronto endured an eight-hour blackout after a transformer blew due to high demand. There was a similar outage last January.

THE MEGA-PROJECTS

Now two of the most ambitious projects the city has ever seen are being floated.

First out of the gate was theater impresario David Mirvish, who with his father, the late Ed Mirvish, helped create Toronto’s vibrant arts and theater scene.

In early October, Mirvish unveiled a plan for three condominium towers, with up to 85 floors each, that would be the city’s tallest buildings.

A podium at the buildings’ base would house two museums, including one for the Mirvish family’s contemporary art collection.

The Mirvish buildings would be designed by Gehry, the celebrated Canadian-born architect whose 76-story 8 Spruce Street residential tower was just completed in New York.

“These towers can become a symbol of what Toronto can be,” the 83-year-old Gehry said at project’s unveiling. “I am not building condominiums, I am building three sculptures for people to live in.”

Two weeks later, Oxford Properties Group, a Canadian developer with a $ 20 billion global real estate portfolio, announced a $ 3 billion makeover of the downtown convention center, just south of the Mirvish and Gehry project. It envisions a casino, two hotel towers and two office towers that would be among the tallest in the city.

Adam Vaughan, a city councilor whose district would encompass both projects, said a lot more planning is needed. He had kinder words for the Mirvish proposal — “it’s a transformative and astonishing proposal” — than for Oxford’s project, which he called “all out of proportion.”

“It’s time to have a really smart conversation about how we are building this neighborhood because there is a hell of lot of density arriving not just with this project but with all the projects that have been approved,” he said in an interview.

AT THE KIT KAT

Al Carbone, owner for the past three decades of the Kit Kat restaurant, doesn’t think people like Vaughan are listening to him, as the councilor and other politicians are not heeding the growing concerns about the rapid pace of development.

He said buildings are springing up too close to lot lines, creating jammed sidewalks and alleyways. And the sun does not shine on the streets like it once did.

He supports the Mirvish project, which would preserve his street, known as Restaurant Row. But he is battling a separate 47-story building that would go up steps away from his restaurant.

The plan, which still must be approved, would retain the historic facades of buildings on the street, which Carbone believes will destroy the character of the row.

“It’s a tough battle,” said Carbone, who launched the website SaveRestaurantrow.com to drum up support in opposition to the project. “You can’t have a condo on every corner.”

WHERE IS TORONTO HEADED?

Some believe Toronto is at a crossroads as developers, politicians and citizens debate the rapid changes the city’s urban landscape.

The Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee dismissed the idea that the development was somehow bad for the city in a column in October, saying the condo boom “has transformed our once-pokey downtown into a vibrant, around-the-clock urban community.”

David Lieberman, an architect who also teaches at the University of Toronto’s architectural school, agrees the new developments have been good for the city, but he is not sure the city’s citizens are ready for it.

“We have such an excellent opportunity to get things right, but there is the Canadian conservatism,” Lieberman said, sipping coffee in his studio in an old downtown Toronto house. “Canadians in their city building are not risk takers.”

(Reporting By Russ Blinch. Editing by Janet Guttsman and Douglas Royalty)

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Jessica Simpson’s Christmas gift: She’s pregnant

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Simpson‘s daughter has the news all spelled out: “Big Sis.”

Simpson on Tuesday tweeted a photo of her baby daughter Maxwell playing in the sand, the words “Big Sis” spelled out.

The 32-year-old old singer and personality has been rumored to be expecting again. The tweet appears to confirm the rumors.

“Merry Christmas from my family to yours” is the picture’s caption. Simpson used a tweet on Halloween in 2011 to announce she was pregnant with Maxwell. She is engaged to Eric Johnson and gave birth to Maxwell in May.

One possible complication regarding her pregnancy: She is a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers.

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Obesity declining in young, poorer kids: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The number of low-income preschoolers who qualify as obese or “extremely obese” has dropped over the last decade, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.

Although the decline was only “modest” and may not apply to all children, researchers said it was still encouraging.

“It’s extremely important to make sure we’re monitoring obesity in this low-income group,” said the CDC‘s Heidi Blanck, who worked on the study.

Those kids are known to be at higher risk of obesity than their well-off peers, in part because access to healthy food is often limited in poorer neighborhoods.

The new results can’t prove what’s behind the progress, Blanck told Reuters Health – but two possible contributors are higher rates of breastfeeding and rising awareness of the importance of physical activity even for very young kids.

Blanck and her colleagues used data on routine clinic visits for about half of all U.S. kids eligible for federal nutrition programs – including 27.5 million children between age two and four.

They found 13 percent of those preschoolers were obese in 1998. That grew to just above 15 percent in 2003, but dropped slightly below 15 percent in 2010, the most recent study year included.

Similarly, the prevalence of extreme obesity increased from nearly 1.8 percent in 1998 to 2.2 percent in 2003, then dropped back to just below 2.1 percent in 2010, the research team reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Whether kids are obese is determined by their body mass index (BMI) – a measure of weight in relation to height – and by their age and sex.

For example, a four-year-old girl who is 40 inches tall would be obese if she was 42 pounds or heavier. A two-year-old boy who is 35 inches tall qualifies as obese at 34 pounds or above, according to the CDC’s child BMI calculator. (The CDC’s BMI calculator for children and teens is available here:.)

The new findings are the first national data to show obesity and extreme obesity may be declining in young children, Blanck said.

“This is very encouraging considering the recent effort made in the field including by several U.S. federal agencies to combat the childhood obesity epidemic,” said Dr. Youfa Wang, head of the Johns Hopkins Global Center on Childhood Obesity in Baltimore.

Blanck said between 2003 and 2010 researchers also saw an increase in breastfeeding of low-income infants. Breastfeeding has been tied to a healthier weight in early childhood.

Additionally, states and communities have started working with child care centers to make sure kids have time to run around and that healthy foods are on the lunch menu, she added.

Parents can encourage better eating by having fruits and vegetables available at snack time and allowing their young kids to help with meal preparation, Blanck said.

Her other recommendations include making sure preschoolers get at least one hour of activity every day and keeping television sets out of the bedroom.

“The prevalence of overweight and obesity in many countries including in the U.S. is still very high,” Wang, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health in an email.

“The recent level off should not be taken as a reason to reduce the effort to fight the obesity epidemic.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/JjFzqx Journal of the American Medical Association, online December, 25, 2012.

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Taking on Guns and the NRA, One Tweet at a Time

(Updates the number of video views, petition signatures, and twitter impressions)

On Dec. 21, a group of A-list Hollywood celebrities, including Jon Hamm, Reese Witherspoon, Jamie Foxx, and Beyoncé, posted an 80-second, black-and-white video clip on YouTube calling for lawmakers to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with gun violence. The clip, uploaded the same day the National Rifle Association held a press conference calling for armed guards in schools and no new restrictions on guns, has been viewed 4 million times.

The public service announcement is well-produced and hits all the intended emotional chords as it reminds viewers of mass shootings from Columbine to Newtown. It’s is part of a broader “Demand a Plan” social media campaign by the advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns that was launched right after the Newtown massacre. (The group is co-chaired by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P., which owns Bloomberg Businessweek.) The video also raises an intriguing question: Can social media strategies somehow level the playing field with the NRA, a laser-focused, well-financed, and successful lobbying group with four million members?

John Feinblatt, who oversees MAIG and is a chief policy adviser to the mayor, is ready to go on the offensive with the NRA and thinks the moment has arrived for the gun safety movement  to make legislative advances. He says there is “enormous pent up frustration because Americans want to be safe.” Facebook (FB), Twitter, and YouTube (GOOG) can effectively focus that raw energy on Congress and President Barack Obama to get things moving and undercut the NRA’s clout in Washington. “What people want is to be heard and you have to give them that vehicle,” says Feinblatt.

The Demand a Plan site delivers that video testimonials of 30-plus survivors and victims’ family members and all manner of online tools to mobilize support and donations to pressure the White House and Congress. Some 600,000 users have signed an online petition to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, require criminal background checks on every gun sold in the U.S., and crack down on arms trafficking. The Demand a Plan campaign has generated 10 million tweet impressions since its launch on Dec. 17, according to Feinblatt. This chart of Google search results for “gun control” shows interest spiking far higher after Newtown, compared with responses to other shooting incidents, going back to 2005.

Yet it’s worth asking if a “Twitter Revolution,” to borrow from the Arab Spring lexicon, can change the U.S. gun policy debate over the long haul? Social media is a great technology for disseminating information, organizing protests, and expressing spontaneous emotion—but it is unclear how effective it might be in a prolonged legislative battle to sway, cajole, and basically electorally threaten lawmakers beholden to the NRA and gun industry money.

“Signing an online petition is easy, but getting the continuing electoral and financial support of millions is difficult,” says Harry Wilson,  a gun industry expert and a public policy professor at Roanoke College in Virginia. “If gun control groups, including MAIG, are not significantly emboldened and empowered by the Newtown tragedy, then they have lost the battle.”

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Find room for God in fast-paced world, pope says on Christmas eve

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Roman Catholics into Christmas, on Monday urged people to find room for God in their fast-paced lives filled with the latest technological gadgets.

The 85-year-old pope, marking the eighth Christmas season of his pontificate, celebrated a solemn Christmas Eve mass in St Peter’s Basilica, during which he appealed for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and an end to the civil war in Syria.

At the mass for some 10,000 people in the basilica and broadcast to millions of others on television, the pope wove his homily around the theme of God’s place in today’s modern world.

“Do we have time and space for him? Do we not actually turn away God himself? We begin to do so when we have no time for him,” said the pope, wearing gold and white vestments.

“The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have. And God? The question of God never seems urgent. Our time is already completely full,” he said.

The leader of the world’s some 1.2 billion Roman Catholics said societies had reached the point where many people’s thinking processes did not leave any room even for the existence of God.

“Even if he seems to knock at the door of our thinking, he has to be explained away. If thinking is to be taken seriously, it must be structured in such a way that the ‘God hypothesis’ becomes superfluous,” he said.

“There is no room for him. Not even in our feelings and desires is there any room for him. We want ourselves. We want what we can seize hold of, we want happiness that is within our reach, we want our plans and purposes to succeed. We are so ‘full’ of ourselves that there is no room left for God.”

PEACE CANDLE

Bells inside and outside the basilica chimed when the pope said “Glory to God in the Highest,” the words the gospels say the angels sang at the moment of Jesus’ birth.

Earlier on Monday the pope appeared at the window of his apartments in the apostolic palace and lit a peace candle, as a larger-than-life nativity scene was unveiled in St Peter’s Square below.

Reflecting on the gospel account of Jesus born in a stable because there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn, he said when people find no room for God in their lives, they will soon find no room for others.

“Let us ask the Lord that we may become vigilant for his presence, that we may hear how softly yet insistently he knocks at the door of our being and willing.

“Let us ask that we may make room for him within ourselves, that we may recognise him also in those through whom he speaks to us: children, the suffering, the abandoned, those who are excluded and the poor of this world,” he said.

He asked for prayers for the people who “live and suffer” in the Holy Land today.

The pope called for peace among Israelis and Palestinians and for the people of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and prayed that “Christians in those lands where our faith was born may be able to continue living there, that Christians and Muslims may build up their countries side-by-side in God’s peace.”

The Vatican is concerned about the exodus from the Middle East of Christians, many of whom leave because they fear for their safety. Christians now comprise five percent of the population of the region, down from 20 percent a century ago.

According to some estimates, the current population of 12 million Christians in the Middle East could halve by 2020 if security and birth rates continue to decline.

At noon (1100 GMT/6 AM ET) the pope will deliver his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing and message from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

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‘Not Fade Away’: An Age Gap Defined by the Rolling Stones

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – For David Chase, the counterculture revolution that consumed the 1960s was a generational conflict that played out against a soundtrack of killer rock songs.

“The Sopranos” creator is poised to make his film directing debut this week with the release of “Not Fade Away” at the age of 67, but for his first foray into big screen entertainment he is fixated on a younger generation, albeit one from a very different era. The movie centers on a rock band coming of age in New Jersey, and never quite making it to the big time.

It stars John Magaro (a dead-ringer for Bob Dylan), Bella Heathcote (“Dark Shadows”) and “The Sopranos” veteran James Gandolfini, here standing in for exasperated parenthood.

For Magaro, the film is really a distillation of the conflict between art and war – with the younger generation siding more with music, while the older one opted for arms.

“It’s about the threat of nuclear war in the ’60s countered by the life and hope that rock ‘n’ roll gave to a generation,” he said. “It’s the ultimate choice, really.”

That kind of generational clash was never wider than during that tumultuous decade, argues music supervisor and executive producer Steven Van Zandt, who is, after all, something of an authority on the situation thanks to his work with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

“It’s a little hard to explain to people now, but I don’t think it’s happened before the ’60s, and it hasn’t happened since,” Van Zandt said at a press conference for the film last weekend. “So maybe it was a very unique period of time, but there’s an expression called the generation gap, and it really did exist. It was the only time in history I think where the parents and their own children were completely at odds with each other. They did not relate to each other at all.”

“Not Fade Away” is not a musical, but it is a movie in which music is paramount to the story — indeed, some sections play out almost as music videos for anthems like the Rolling Stones‘ “Lady Jane” or Joey Dee and the Starliters’ “The Peppermint Twist.”

In fact, music is more totemic for the band of aspiring rockers than major historical events like the Vietnam War and the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination that unfold around them and define the decade. Van Zandt claims that kind of tunnel vision reflects his own experience during the period.

“I was there and, you know, it was, like, yeah, civil rights going on, the cities are burning down and assassinations and Vietnam, but let’s get the chords to the new Yardbirds song,” he said.

For the characters, the defining moment instead is not news reports of riots in Watts or shots of bodybags being loaded onto Chinook helicopters. Rather it is the first U.S. national television appearance by the Rolling Stones on “The Hollywood Palace” in 1964 that makes the biggest impression.

During the program, an eye-rolling Dean Martin makes it clear that the Stones’ brand of sensual blues is at odds with his Vegas style crooning.

“I saw that when it happened,” Gandolfini recalled during the press conference. “And I saw my past and future in front of me. Dean Martin making fun of the Rolling Stones. And it was the most important moment of – well, first or second most important moment of my life because the Beatles happened four months earlier, which was the first most important moment of my life.”

To help the twenty-somethings tapped to portray the film’s youthful protagonists understand the impact this music had on Gandolfini’s generation, Paramount, the studio behind the film, sent them dozens of records from the likes of the Stones and the Paul Butterfield Blues band. Though Chase joked that many actors auditioning for the roles mispronounced Mick Jagger as Mick Yagar, he found that his troop of actors quickly embraced the music that forms the spine of his movie.

“It’s so much better than what has mass appeal today,” Heathcote told TheWrap. “There’s something about it, particularly with the Stones, they don’t give a s—, they just carried that air, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were sexy guys. There was something about them that was original and so timeless.”

It also called for Van Zandt to run a musical boot camp for Magaro and the other actors who make up the band, none of whom played the instruments they were expected to use on screen. After three months of drilling, Magaro said he got the hang of the drums.

“I wouldn’t say I’m the next Ginger Baker, but I was able to play the songs,” he said. “I was lucky, because early rock ‘n’ roll like Chuck Berry and the Kinks used really simple beats.”

It all builds up to a final evocative image of a young girl, the sister of Magaro’s character and the film’s narrator, dancing in the middle of a deserted Sunset Boulevard. As she sways, she talks about the choice between Armageddon and rock. It’s clear, where Chase sides.

“What she says is a thought that I had one time at a Stones concert and it was my way of saying how powerful and how beautiful that music really is,” Chase said.

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Catholic Church urges Irish to oppose abortion law

DUBLIN (Reuters) – The head of Ireland‘s Catholic Church urged followers in his Christmas Day message to lobby against government plans to legalize abortion.

Ireland, the only EU member state that currently outlaws the procedure, is preparing legislation that would allow limited access to abortion after the European Court of Human Rights criticized the current regime.

The death last month of an Indian woman who was denied an abortion of her dying foetus and later died of blood poisoning has intensified the debate around abortion, which remains a hugely divisive subject in the predominantly Catholic country.

“I hope that everyone who believes that the right to life is fundamental will make their voice heard in a reasonable, but forthright, way to their representatives,” Cardinal Sean Brady said in a Christmas message on Tuesday.

“No government has the right to remove that right from an innocent person.”

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, a regular Mass goer, is bringing in legislation that would allow a woman to have an abortion if her life was at risk from pregnancy.

The country’s Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that abortion was permitted when a woman’s life was at risk but successive governments have avoided legislating for it because it is so divisive.

The death of Savita Halappanavar, who repeatedly asked for an abortion while she was miscarrying in an Irish hospital, highlighted the lack of clarity in Irish law that leaves doctors in a legally risky position.

Halappanavar’s death re-ignited the abortion debate and prompted large protests by groups both in favor of and against abortion.

Kenny and his conservative Fine Gael party have been criticized for tackling the abortion issue and some party members have indicated that they may not be able to back the law.

Relations between the Irish government and the once dominant Catholic Church are at an all-time low in the wake of years of clerical sex abuse scandals.

Kenny told parliament last year that the Vatican’s handling of the scandals had been dominated by “elitism and narcissism” and accused it of trying to cover up the abuse. The speech prompted the Vatican to recall its ambassador, or nuncio, to Ireland.

Brady, who has faced calls this year to resign over accusations he failed to warn parents their children were being sexually abused, said in his Christmas message that he wanted relations with government to improve.

“My hope is that the year ahead will see the relationship between faith and public life in our country move beyond the sometimes negative, exaggerated caricatures of the past.”

(Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Start of “Santa Claus rally” dampened by “cliff’ worries

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks edged lower on Monday as caution over the potential for volatility driven by worries about the U.S. “fiscal cliff” dampened enthusiasm at the start of a seasonally strong period for equities.

Investors are betting Congress will reach a deal to avert most of the austerity measures due to come into force at the start of next year. That has led to the best year for stocks since the post-financial crisis rebound. But those gains may be quickly reversed if a deal is not reached soon.

The S&P 500 index posted its biggest drop in more than a month on Friday as a Republican plan to avoid the cliff – $ 600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts that could tip the U.S. economy into recession – failed to gain traction on Thursday night.

Sharp moves like that highlight how headlines from Washington can whipsaw markets, especially during the thinly traded period over the Christmas holiday.

Still, with the S&P 500 up 0.7 percent in December and on course for its strongest month since September, some analysts are predicting that stocks will find their footing during a market seasonality known as the “Santa Claus rally.”

“Right now we’ve seen some very constructive action in the market so I think that bodes well for this being a positive seasonal ‘Santa’ period over the coming seven days,” said Ari Wald, a technical analyst at The PrinceRidge Group.

He noted an all-time high in the NYSE advance-decline line, which compares advancing and declining stocks, as indication of strong participation in the rally off November lows.

“Pull-backs are buying opportunities,” said Wald. “There has been really great participation on this move, a lot of small- and mid-cap stocks behaving well, pushing out to the upside; we’re seeing some good leadership from offensive sectors of the market as well.”

A high ratio of advancing stocks to declining issues shows there is broad participation across the equity market.

The Santa seasonality covers the last five trading days of the year and the first two of the new year. Since 1928, the S&P 500 has averaged a gain of 1.8 percent during this period and risen 79 percent of the time, according to data from PrinceRidge.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 51.76 points, or 0.39 percent, to 13,139.08. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> fell 3.49 points, or 0.24 percent, to 1,426.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 8.41 points, or 0.28 percent, to 3,012.60.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

The S&P 500 is up more than 13 percent for the year, having recovered nearly all the losses suffered in the wake of the U.S. election. The yearly gain would be the best since 2009.

Some U.S. lawmakers expressed concern on Sunday the country would go over the cliff, as some Republicans charged that was President Barack Obama‘s goal. Talks are stalled with Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner out of Washington for the holidays.

“It does seem like we are continuing through the same drift of the same thing we’ve had the past couple of weeks – ‘cliff’ talk,” said Nick Scheumann, wealth partner at Hefty Wealth Partners in Auburn, Indiana.

“You can’t trade on what you don’t know and we truly don’t know what they are going to do,” he said.

Congress is expected to return to Washington next Thursday as President Barack Obama returns from a trip to Hawaii. As the deadline draws closer, a ‘stop-gap’ deal appears to be the most likely outcome of any talks.

Trading volume was muted, with U.S. equity markets closing at 1 p.m. (1800 GMT) ahead of the Christmas Day holiday on Tuesday.

In addition, a number of European markets operated on a shortened session, with other markets closed.

U.S. retailers may not see a sales surge from this weekend as ho-hum discounts and fears about imminent tax hikes and cuts in government spending give Americans fewer reasons to open their wallets in the last few days before Christmas.

Aegerion Pharmaceuticals Inc said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Juxtapid capsules in patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, but will conduct a post-approval study to test long-term safety and efficacy. Shares fell 1.8 percent to $ 25.25.

Herbalife Ltd dipped 4.4 percent to $ 26.06 after the company said it expects to exceed its previously announced repurchase authorization guidance and has retained Moelis & Company as its strategic adviser. The declines put the stock on track for a ninth straight decline.

Yum Brands Inc advanced 1.8 percent to $ 65.01 after Shanghai’s food safety authority said the level of antibiotics and steroids in the company’s KFC chicken was within official limits.

(Reporting By Edward Krudy; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

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Syria jets kill tens as international envoy visits

BEIRUT (AP) — A government airstrike on a bakery in a rebel-held town in central Syria killed more than 60 people on Sunday, activists said, casting a pall over a visit by the international envoy charged with negotiating an end to the country’s civil war.

The strike on the town of Halfaya left scattered bodies and debris up and down a street, and more than a dozen dead and wounded were trapped in tangled heap of dirt and rubble.

The attack appeared to be the government response to a newly announced rebel offensive seeking to drive the Syrian army from a constellation of towns and village north of the central city of Hama. Halfaya was the first of the area’s towns to be “liberated” by rebel fighters, and activists saw Sunday’s attack as payback.

“Halfaya was the first and biggest victory in the Hama countryside,” said Hama activist Mousab Alhamadee via Skype. “That’s why the regime is punishing them in this way.”

The total death toll remained unclear, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 60 people were killed. That number is expected to rise, it said, because some 50 of those wounded in the strike are in critical condition.

Amateur videos posted online Sunday showed residents and armed rebels rushing to the scene. One stopped to cover a mound of human flesh lying in the street with his coat.

More than a dozen dead or seriously wounded people lay in the street near a simple, concrete building, some in puddles of blood. Near its front wall, bodies jutted from a pile of dirt and rubble on the sidewalk.

Rebels screamed in distress while trying to extract the bodies, while others carried away the wounded.

It was unclear from the videos if the building was indeed a bakery. Nearly all the dead and wounded appeared to be men, some wore camouflage, raising the possibility that the jet had targeted a rebel gathering.

For the past week, rebels have been launching attacks in the area, most notably in the nearby village of Morek, where they hope to seize control of the country’s main north-south highway, preventing the regime from getting supplies to its forces further north in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

On Saturday, one rebel group threatened to storm two predominantly Christian towns nearby if their residents did not “evict” government troops they said were using them as a base to attack nearby areas.

The activist accounts could not be independently verified due to restrictions on reporting in Syria. The Syrian government does not respond to requests for comment on its military activities.

The attack coincided with the start of a two-day visit by Lakhdar Barhimi, who represents the U.N. And the Arab League, to meet with top Syrian officials.

Brahimi has made little apparent progress toward ending Syria’s crisis since assuming his post in September, mostly because the sides appear more interested in fighting it out than in sitting down for talks.

Brahimi did not speak publicly upon arriving in Damascus for a two-day mission, and it was unclear whether he would present new ideas to end the war. His trip appeared troubled from the start.

Instead of flying directly to Syria as he had on previous visits, Brahimi landed in Beirut and traveled to the Syrian capital by land because of fighting near the Damascus airport, Lebanese officials said.

The Lebanese officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said Brahimi was expected to meet Syria’s foreign minister later Sunday and President Bashar Assad on Monday.

The trip is Brahimi’s third since taking the job following the resignation of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan after both sides disregarded a cease-fire he brokered in April.

While not advancing a comprehensive peace plan, Brahimi has called on the sides to negotiate a solution.

The security situation has gotten notably worse for the regime since his last visit, with rebels storming a number of military bases and seizing valuable munitions. Russia, Assad’s most powerful international backer, also appears to have changed his assessment of Assad’s strength, as top officials say they do not seek to preserve his regime, while still calling for a negotiated solution.

Still, neither side appears willing to talk.

In a lengthy Sunday news conference, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi repeated the Syrian government’s line that it is fighting terrorist groups backed by foreign powers who seek to destroy Syria.

Al-Zoubi said the government was willing to engage in dialogue but said the other side wasn’t.

“We speak of dialogue with those who believe in national dialogue,” he said. “But those who rejected dialogue in their statements and called for arms and use of weapons, that’s a different issue. They don’t want dialogue.”

Rebel groups refuse to talk to Assad, saying too many people have died for him to be considered part of the solution.

Violence raged elsewhere in the country on Sunday. Anti-regime activists reported government airstrikes on suburbs east of the capital and the northern province of Aleppo.

Airstrikes on the town of al-Safira, south of Aleppo, killed 13 people, including a mother and five daughters from one family, a local activist named Hussein said via Skype. He gave only his first name for fear of retribution.

The town lies next to a large military complex with factories and artillery and air defense bases. Hussein guessed the airstrike was payback for recent rebel attacks on the complex.

“The strikes don’t hit the fighters at all,” he said. “They want to take revenge on the civilians.”

The Observatory said at least 10 rebels and an unknown number of government troops were killed in clashes in Afreen, near Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, as rebels sought to storm an army base there.

Anti-regime activists say more than 40,000 people have been killed since Syria’s crisis began in March 2011.

___

Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed reporting from Damascus.

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