Wall Street flat after GDP shock, Fed awaited

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday as data showing the economy unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter was offset by positive parts of the report and strong results from Boeing Co and Amazon.com Inc.


Economists stressed that the 0.1 percent contraction in U.S. gross domestic product, caused partly by a plunge in government spending and lower business inventories, is not an indicator of recession.


"Inventories came down and that subtraction is actually positive for the private sector," said Jim Russell, chief equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.


"A lot of the important components going forth are there, like consumption by individuals and capital spending, and they are looking strong."


Wall Street opened slightly higher despite the GDP data, with traders awaiting a statement from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday after its two-day policy-setting meeting. The Fed is expected to keep monetary policy on a steady, accommodative path, though debate continues over when it should curtail its bond-buying program.


The S&P 500 held above 1,500, seen by market technicians as an inflection point that will determine the overall direction in the near term. The index is on track to post its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997.


"This is a very modest pullback after a steep run," said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management in New York.


"It is too soon for the Fed to start talking about the end of (their bond buying program); the economy needs stimulus to sustain this recovery."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 3.7 points or 0.03 percent, to 13,950.72, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 0.96 point or 0.06 percent, to 1,506.88 and the Nasdaq composite <.ixic> added 4.9 points or 0.16 percent, to 3,158.55.


Both Boeing and Amazon shares gained after earnings beat expectations, continuing a trend this quarter of high-profile names advancing after results.


Amazon rose 6.1 percent to $276.28 and Boeing rose 1.2 percent to $74.53.


Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 192 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season 68.8 percent have been above analyst expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


Chesapeake Energy rose 5.4 percent to $19.99 a day after it said Aubrey McClendon would step down as chief executive. The last year has been marked by civil and criminal probes into the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer.


Research In Motion shares fell 4.4 percent to $14.97 after the company, which is changing its name to BlackBerry, unveiled a long-delayed line of smartphones in hopes of a comeback into a market it once dominated.


Giving the market extra support, private sector employment topped forecasts with the ADP National Employment report showing 192,000 jobs added in January, higher than the 165,000 expectation.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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Lewis tells Harbaugh 'nothing to' report


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Ravens coach John Harbaugh says star linebacker Ray Lewis assured him "there's nothing to" a magazine report linking him to a company that makes deer-antler spray containing a banned performance enhancer.


Harbaugh said Wednesday morning he spoke with Lewis. The coach said Lewis "knows there is nothing to it. He understands it's something he's never been involved in."


On Tuesday, Sports Illustrated reported that Lewis sought help from a company that makes the unorthodox product to speed his recovery from a torn right triceps. Lewis missed 10 games with the injury.


"He laughed about it," Harbaugh said, referring to Lewis. "He told me there's nothing to it. He's told us in the past and now that he has never taken any of it."


Baltimore plays the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl on Sunday in the final game of Lewis' career.


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West Virginia gas prices spike from last week






CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The up-and-down pattern of gas prices is on the upswing again in West Virginia.


The Triple A’s weekly Fuel Gauge report on statewide pump prices finds that the price of a gallon of gas went up 8 cents this week.






The average $ 3.51 West Virginians are paying for a gallon of regular unleaded is 15 cents higher than the national average. The auto club says the higher pump prices have a silver lining. That’s because they rose in response to positive economic news.


Fuel prices in the state range from a low of $ 3.46 in Parkersburg to a high of $ 3.61 in Martinsburg.


Energy News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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BlackBerry must remember strengths




BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins displays one of the new Blackberry 10 smartphones at the product launch January 30.




STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • BlackBerry sales have slumped in the U.S. but is still strong in emerging markets

  • New models launched should remember why they are popular in developing world

  • In places like Brazil and South Africa, the 10 is the update to their current phone

  • in Sub-Saharan Africa there is expected to be 175 million new customers in the next 3 years




Watch Jim Clancy on CNN International's "The Brief" at 4p.m. ET GMT Friday.


(CNN) -- BlackBerry's loss of market share in the U.S. is the stuff of legends. Last fall, it was estimated only about 2% of American phone users were still carrying their BlackBerry mobile with its iconic keypad.


But consider this: sub-Saharan Africa is expected to add 175 million new mobile users in just the coming 3 years. That's according to the GSMA, which represents the world's mobile operators.


"Mobile has already revolutionized African society and yet demand still continues to grow by almost 50 percent a year," said Tom Phillips, Chief Government and Regulatory Affairs Officer, GSMA.


That could be good news indeed for BlackBerry. Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, estimates it holds a 70% market share in countries like South Africa.


The company's new phones, announced this week, are not the ones some of its best customers in emerging markets would like to buy. They're too expensive. But Research in Motion -- which also this week changed its company name to BlackBerry -- is pledging some of its six new models will address that.


While millions in China, Europe and the U.S. have adopted Android or iOS smartphones with a vengeance, millions more users in emerging markets are enthused about what's in store for the new BlackBerry 10. It's the update for what many of them are already using.






They live in countries like Brazil, Malaysia, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. They have embraced the BlackBerry for a combination of factors that all point to the different way mobile devices are used.


Unlike their counterparts in Europe and America, the mobile in their pocket is more likely to be their primary link to the internet.


BlackBerry Messenger is the connection that allows these users unlimited conversations without paying charges for SMS data. While young, brand-conscious Chinese may be willing to part with several months' salary to buy the latest iPhone, African users are looking for more practical (and cheaper) connections.


What separates developed countries from their developing counterparts at street level can be summed up in a single word: infrastructure.


Isobel Coleman, senior fellow and Director of the Civil Society, Markets and Democracy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, says mobile technology has proved it can bridge the gap where infrastructure is lacking.


"It's a culture, it's an economy, it's innovation, education, healthcare, it's all of these things," says Coleman.


You can take that to the bank. For many Africans, their cell phone account is the first bank account they've ever owned.


In emerging markets, mobile phone banking is growing because of the lack of infrastructure. Fewer bank branches often mean long distances to travel and long lines once you've arrived.


Africans are expected to transfer more than $200 billion per year or 18% of the continent's GDP by 2015.


Oh, and that keyboard. No matter where you are in the world, there will always be a demand for a keyboard that clicks. The company appears to understand that as BlackBerry 10 models come with both soft keypads and the traditional BlackBerry buttons.


I asked some of my Twitter followers to weigh in on the BlackBerry 10 roll out. While some said Android or Apple's iOS were in their future plans, many others expressed continued enthusiasm for the BlackBerry.


Soji, a pianist and teacher in Nigeria tweeted back "I'm falling in love with this BB. Cheaper to own."


From Kuala Lumpur, Amir wrote "I need a physical keyboard to type while also having a touch-screen for photos etc. Security factor also important."


Hans-Eric from South Africa reinforced the sentiments of many mobile users in emerging markets: "The cost of data is simply too high without it (BlackBerry.)"


The voices from emerging markets couldn't have been clearer. What they expect from BlackBerry 10 is a stronger, longer lasting battery, durability and continued low cost connectivity.


CFR's Coleman agrees that BlackBerry (and anyone else) trying to win and hold this mobile device sector has to understand how these devices are being used and give the customers what they want.


"Cheap. Rugged. Not too many bells and whistles. Practical."


There is little doubt smartphones are changing the way people use the internet, how they bank, shop and interact socially.


But it's worth keeping in perspective that in a world where there are now an estimated 1 billion smartphones, there are 5 billion feature phone users. That's a lot of upside growth potential for BlackBerry and all the other players out there.







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At 42 dead, January homicide count is city's worst since 2002









When Kimberly Common visited her mother in the hospital Monday, the two spoke of how much they missed Common's son, Antonio, who was slain 15 months ago at the age of 23.

By Tuesday afternoon, the family's tragedy deepened as Common's older son, Devin, 27, was fatally shot near their home in the Park Manor neighborhood a little past noon. As she stood on a sidewalk by her son's sheet-covered body, Common recalled his last words to her: "I'll be back. I'm going to the store."

"That's the same thing" Antonio said before he was killed in October 2011, the mother of two other children said as tears streamed down her face.

A little more than two hours later, a 15-year-old girl had also been shot to death, bringing to 42 the number of homicides so far in 2013, making this month the most violent January in Chicago since 2002. The bloody start to the new year comes as the Police Department hoped it had begun to turn the corner after a violent 2012 that saw homicides exceed 500, bringing unflattering national attention to Chicago.

At a press conference a day after meeting with President Barack Obama in the White House along with police chiefs from Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo. — sites of horrible mass shootings last year — Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy expressed concern and regret for the wave of gun violence as January draws to a close. Seven people were killed Saturday alone.

"It's disappointing," said McCarthy, who defended his crime prevention strategies while noting that he had sat down with some of the "brightest minds" in the country for four hours in Washington and heard little advice beyond what he's already been doing.

"You don't throw out everything you're doing because you had a bad couple of days," McCarthy told reporters. "And unfortunately today's (Tuesday) a bad day, too."

By Tuesday evening, three people had been slain — all in broad daylight — on a day in which temperatures soared to 63, a record for Jan. 29. In addition to Devin Common, a 20-year-old man was shot in the head in the East Side neighborhood at about 8 a.m.; the 15-year-old girl was shot at about 2:30 p.m. a few blocks from King College Prep after finishing classes at the North Kenwood high school.

With two days still left in the month, this marked the second consecutive January in which Chicago has hit at least 40 homicides. The 40 homicides last January represented a jump of 43 percent from 28 in January 2011. While Chicago never quite recovered over the rest of the year from an even sharper jump in violence over the first quarter of 2012, homicides fell or were flat in the year's last four months.

Crime experts caution it's way too early to suggest the disappointing January numbers mean violence in Chicago will continue at a similar pace throughout this year.

But Arthur Lurigio, a criminologist, said the January numbers sure aren't encouraging.

"It certainly bodes ill for this year's projected homicide figures because it appears to be a continuation of the violent trends observed through many months of 2012," says Lurigio, a professor at Loyola University Chicago.

The city's homicide woes continue to draw unwanted attention for McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, including an article Tuesday in the satirical national publication The Onion that was headlined: "Chicago's Annual Homicide Drive Off To Most Promising Start In Decades."

But there was no humor to be found in violence-plagued spots principally on the city's South and West Sides.

Through Monday, the West Side's Harrison District leads the city in homicides with seven, three on Saturday alone, followed by the South Side's Englewood District with five. While it is clearly too early to draw conclusions, those numbers could be unsettling for police officials because throughout 2012, Emanuel and McCarthy had touted those two districts as successes after they flooded "conflict zones" in both with additional officers a year ago.

University of Chicago criminologist Jens Ludwig said a plausible explanation for the woeful January homicide numbers could be the budget problems confronting cities throughout the country. Emanuel's budget for 2013 calls for the hiring of an additional 500 police officers, but the police union has contended that number falls far short of the void created by cops retiring.

Ludwig said big cities such as Chicago could use help from the federal government.

"Cities can't run budget deficits when economic conditions turn down, which means that usually cities have to scale back police spending at the very time you'd want them to, if anything, increase the number of police on the streets," Ludwig said. "Only the federal government can help solve this with their ability to run budget deficits during economic downturns."

At the press conference Tuesday, McCarthy continued to emphasize that Chicago police are removing more illegal guns from the streets than authorities in any other major city in the U.S. During the first three weeks of January, he said, two of Chicago's 22 police districts seized more illegal guns than were collected in all of New York City.

But one reason for that, McCarthy said, was New York's tougher penalties for gun offenses. "... When people get caught with (illegal) guns in New York, they go to jail," he said. "… As a result they're not carrying guns with impunity."

For Devin Common's mother, the loss of her second son was almost too much to bear. Police said Common was on his way to buy coffee when he was shot Tuesday near East 75th Street and South Champlain Avenue.

Standing by his body at the crime scene, Common's sister, Jermaka, 26, cried softly as friends and neighbors embraced her and her mother.

"This didn't make no sense for him to get gunned down like that," she said. "This is not fair at all."

Tribune reporters Ellen Jean Hirst, Liam Ford and Carlos Sadovi contributed.

jgorner@tribune.com

jmdelgado@tribune.com



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Merkel urges Egypt's Mursi to hold crisis dialogue


CAIRO/BERLIN (Reuters) - Authorities in an Egyptian city scaled back a curfew imposed by President Mohamed Mursi, and the Islamist leader cut short a visit to Europe on Wednesday to deal with the deadliest violence in the seven months since he took power.


Two more protesters were shot dead before dawn near Cairo's central Tahrir Square on Wednesday, a day after the army chief warned that the state was on the brink of collapse if Mursi's opponents and supporters did not end street battles.


More than 50 people have been killed in the past seven days of protests by Mursi's opponents, raising global concern over whether the Islamist leader can restore stability to the most populous Arab country.


Mursi imposed a curfew and a state of emergency on three Suez Canal cities on Sunday but that only seemed to further provoke crowds in a week of unrest marking the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.


The governor of Ismailia, one of the three canal cities, said on Wednesday he was scaling back the curfew, which would now take effect nightly from 2:00 a.m. instead of 9:00 p.m..


Mursi, speaking in Berlin before hurrying home to deal with the crisis, called for dialogue with opponents but would not commit to their demand that he first agree to include them in a unity government.


Asked about that proposal, he said the next government would be formed after parliamentary elections in April.


Egypt was on its way to becoming "a civilian state that is not a military state or a theocratic state", Mursi said.


The violence at home forced Mursi to scale back his European visit, billed as a chance to promote Egypt as a destination for foreign investment. He flew to Berlin but called off a trip to Paris and was due back home after only a few hours in Europe.


Chancellor Angela Merkel, who met him, echoed other Western leaders who have called on him to give his opponents a voice.


"One thing that is important for us is that the line for dialogue is always open to all political forces in Egypt, that the different political forces can make their contribution, that human rights are adhered to in Egypt and that of course religious freedom can be experienced," she said at a joint news conference with Mursi.


SPIRIT OF REVOLUTION


Mursi's critics accuse him of betraying the spirit of the revolution by keeping too much power in his own hands and those of his Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement banned under Mubarak which won repeated elections since the 2011 uprising.


Mursi's supporters say the protesters want to overthrow Egypt's first democratically elected leader. The current unrest has deepened an economic crisis that saw the pound currency tumble in recent weeks.


Near Cairo's Tahrir Square on Wednesday morning, dozens of protesters threw stones at police who fired back teargas, although the scuffles were brief.


"Our demand is simply that Mursi goes, and leaves the country alone. He is just like Mubarak and his crowd who are now in prison," said Ahmed Mustafa, 28, a youth who had goggles on his head to protect his eyes from teargas.


Opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei called for a meeting of the president, ministers, the ruling party and the opposition to halt the violence. But he also restated the precondition that Mursi first commit to seeking a national unity government.


The worst violence has been in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, where rage was fuelled by death sentences passed against soccer fans for roles in deadly riots last year.


After decades in which the West backed Mubarak's military rule of Egypt, the emergence of an elected Islamist leader in Cairo is probably the single most important change brought about by the wave of Arab revolts over the past two years.


Mursi won backing from the West last year for his role in helping to establish a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians that ended a conflict in Gaza. But he then followed that with an effort to fast-track a constitution that reignited dissent at home and raised global concern over Egypt's future.


Western countries were alarmed this month by video that emerged showing Mursi making vitriolic remarks against Jews and Zionists in 2010 when he was a senior Brotherhood official.


German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said ahead of Mursi's visit that the remarks, in which Mursi referred to Zionists as "descendants of apes and pigs" were "unacceptable".


"NOT AGAINST JEWS"


Asked about those remarks at the news conference with Merkel, Mursi repeated earlier explanations that they had been taken out of context.


"I am not against the Jewish faith," he said. "I was talking about the practices and behavior of believers of any religion who shed blood or who attack innocent people or civilians. That's behavior that I condemn."


"I am a Muslim. I'm a believer and my religion obliges me to believe in all prophets, to respect all religions and to respect the right of people to their own faith," he added.


Egypt's main liberal and secularist bloc, the National Salvation Front, has so far refused talks with Mursi unless he promises a unity government including opposition figures.


"Stopping the violence is the priority, and starting a serious dialogue requires committing to guarantees demanded by the National Salvation Front, at the forefront of which are a national salvation government and a committee to amend the constitution," ElBaradei said on Twitter.


Those calls have also been backed by the hardline Islamist Nour party - rivals of Mursi's Brotherhood. Nour and the Front were due to meet on Wednesday, signaling an unlikely alliance of Mursi's critics from opposite ends of the political spectrum.


Brotherhood leader Mohamed El-Beltagy dismissed the unity government proposal as a ploy for the Front to take power despite having lost elections. On his Facebook page he ridiculed "the leaders of the Salvation Front, who seem to know more about the people's interests than the people themselves".


In a sign of the toll the unrest is having on Egypt's economy, ratings agency Fitch downgraded its sovereign rating by one notch to B on Wednesday.


German industry leaders see potential in Egypt but are concerned about political instability.


"At the moment many firms are waiting on political developments and are cautious on any big investments," said Hans Heinrich Driftmann, head of Germany's Chamber of Industry and Commerce.


(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh and Marwa Awad in Cairo, Stephen Brown and Gernot Heller in Berlin and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Peter Millership)



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Wall Street flat, investors look for new catalyst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were flat on Tuesday as investors looked for new reasons in economic data or earnings to extend a rally that pushed major averages near five-year highs.


Equities have been on a tear lately, with the S&P 500 recently climbing for eight straight sessions, extending its rise in January to 5.1 percent. The index hovered around 1,500, suggesting there was still support for a market that has been hovering around five-year highs.


"A move like this in one month is extraordinary, and keeping the gains going will depend on concrete news like earnings and data that show the economy is getting better," said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia. "We haven't seen enough of that to make people jump in after the rally we've had."


The gains have largely come on a strong start to earnings season, though results were mixed on Tuesday with Pfizer Inc rising but Ford Motor Co dropping after its report.


Both companies reported profits that topped expectations, but Ford also forecast a wider loss in its European segment. Shares dropped 3.6 percent to $13.32 as one of the biggest percentage losers on the S&P 500.


Pfizer, a Dow component, rose 1.2 percent to $27.16 after its results while Eli Lilly and Co rose 1.2 percent to $53.25 after reporting adjusted fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that beat expectations.


In economic news, stocks retreated slightly after data showed U.S. consumer confidence dropped to its lowest level in more than a year in January. Americans were more pessimistic about the economic outlook and their financial prospects, according to the Conference Board.


In addition, home prices rose 0.6 percent in November, as expected, according to the S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index. The news comes a day after data showed an unexpected drop in December pending home sales.


Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 150 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 67.3 percent have beaten analysts' expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 13.40 points, or 0.10 percent, at 13,895.33. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 1.01 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,499.17. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 18.21 points, or 0.58 percent, at 3,136.09.


The Nasdaq was pressured by a pair of disappointing tech outlooks. Seagate Technology Plc forecast third-quarter revenue below expectations while BMC Software Inc gave a 2013 profit view that was below forecasts.


Seagate shares slumped 8.7 percent to $34.10 while BMC fell 7.8 percent to $41.


On the upside in technology, Yahoo Inc rose 1.2 percent to $20.55 a day after forecasting a rise in annual revenue.


The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee is due to hold two days of meetings on interest rates beginning on Tuesday.


In a sign of an improved view towards equities, investors poured $55 billion in new cash into stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in January, the biggest monthly inflow on record, research provider TrimTabs Investment Research said.


(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)



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Report links A-Rod with PED use; MLB investigates


NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball says it is "extremely disappointed" about a new report that says records from an anti-aging clinic in the Miami area link Alex Rodriguez and other players to the purchase of performance-enhancing drugs.


The Miami New Times said in a story Tuesday that it had obtained files through an employee at a recently closed clinic called Biogenesis.


MLB responded with a statement that says "through our Department of Investigations, we have been actively involved in the issues in South Florida." The unsigned statement also says "we are always extremely disappointed to learn of potential links between players and the use of performance-enhancing substances."


Other players on the list include Melky Cabrera, Gio Gonzalez, Bartolo Colon and Nelson Cruz. Cabrera and Colon were each suspended for failing drug tests last season. Rodriguez has admitted using steroids from 2001-03 but insisted he stopped after that.


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Staggering Stats: Cats Kill Billions of Animals a Year






Cats kill billions of birds every year and even more tiny rodents and other mammals in the United States, a new study finds.


According to the research, published today (Jan. 29) in the journal Nature Communications, cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 billion and 20.7 billion small mammals, such as meadow voles and chipmunks.






Though it’s hard to know exactly how many birds live in the United States, the staggering number of bird deaths may account for as much as 15 percent of the total bird population, said study co-author Pete Marra, an animal ecologist with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.


Staggering toll


Marra and his colleagues are looking at human-related causes for bird and wildlife deaths in the country, from windmills and glass windows to pesticides.


But first, Marra and his team looked at the impact of the feline population, one of the biggest putative causes of bird demise in the country.       


While past studies had used critter cams or owner reports to estimate the number of birds killed by cats, those studies were usually small and not applicable to the entire country, Marra told LiveScience.


For this broader analysis, the team first looked at all prior studies on bird deaths and estimated that around 84 million owned-cats live in the country, many of which are allowed outdoors. [In Photos: America's Favorite Pets]


“A lot of these cats may go outside and go to 10 different houses, but they go back to their house and cuddle up on Mr. Smith’s lap at night,” Marra said.


Based on an analysis of past studies, the researchers estimated that each of those felines killed between four and 18 birds a year, and between eight and 21 small mammals per year.


But the major scourges for wildlife were not those free-ranging, owned-cats, but instead feral and un-owned cats that survive on the streets. Each of those kitties — and the team estimates between 30 million and 80 million of them live in the United States — kills between 23 and 46 birds a year, and between 129 and 338 small mammals, Marra said.


And, it seems, the small rodents taken by felines aren’t Norway rats or apartment vermin, but native rodent species such as meadow voles and chipmunks, he added.


No easy answers


One obvious step to reduce the mass wildlife death is to keep kitties indoors, Marra said.


Perhaps seeing their furry friends bring in a meadow vole or a cardinal will spur cat owners to say, “Listen, Tabby, we’re going to have a heart-to-heart talk about how much time you spend outside,” he said.


Wild cats pose tougher questions, because capture and sterilization approaches have varying levels of success depending on the community, said Bruce Kornreich, a veterinarian at Cornell University’s Feline Health Center, who was not involved in the study.


While keeping owned-cats indoors is the best way to benefit both kitties and wildlife, a complete cat ban, like the one recently proposed in New Zealand, is probably not the answer, he said.


For one, it’s not clear how completely removing cats from outdoors would affect the ecosystem.


“It may be in some cases that cats may also be keeping other species that may negatively impact bird and other small mammal populations in check,” Kornreich told LiveScience.


Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We’re also on Facebook & Google+


Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Animal and Pets News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Why haven't we learned from fires?






STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • Pyrotechnics, overcrowding, poor exits have contributed to tragic fires in recent years

  • You would think the world would have learned from past incidents, John Barylick says

  • Concertgoers have to be their own fire marshals, he says




Editor's note: John Barylick, author of "Killer Show," a book on the 2003 Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island, is an attorney who represented victims in wrongful death and personal injury cases arising from the fire.


(CNN) -- Sunday morning we awoke to breaking news of another tragic nightclub fire, this time in Brazil. At last report the death toll exceeded 230.


This tragedy is not without precedent. Next month will mark the 10th anniversary of a similar nightclub fire in Rhode Island. At this sad time, it's appropriate to reflect on what we've learned from club fires -- and what we haven't.


Rhode Island's Station nightclub fire of 2003, in which 100 concertgoers lost their lives, began when fireworks set off by Great White, an 80s heavy metal band, ignited flammable packing foam on the club's walls.


Deadly blazes: Nightclub tragedies in recent history



John Barylick

John Barylick





Panicked patrons stampeded toward the club's main exit, and a fatal pileup ensued. Contributing to the tragedy were illegal use of pyrotechnics, overcrowding and a wall covering that would have failed even the most rudimentary flammability tests.


Video images of the Station fire were broadcast worldwide: A concert begins; the crowd's mood changes from merry, to curious, to concerned, to horrified -- in less than a minute. You'd think the world would have learned from it. You would be wrong.



The following year, the Republica Cromanon nightclub in Argentina went up in flames, killing 194 people. The club was made to hold about 1,000 people, but it was estimated that more than 3,000 fans were packed inside the night of the fire, which began when fans began lighting flares that caught the roof on fire.


Echoes of the past: Rhode Island victims 'can't help but watch'


Then, in January 2009, at least 64 New Year's revelers lost their lives in a nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand, after fire ignited its ceiling. Many were crushed in a rush to get out of the club. In December of that same year, a fire in a Russian nightclub, ignited by pyrotechnics, killed 156 people. Overcrowding, poor exits, and indoor fireworks all played roles in these tragedies; yet no one bothered to learn from mistakes of the past.


While responsibility for concert disasters unquestionably lies with venue operators, performers and promoters, ultimately, we, as patrons of clubs and concerts, can enhance our own safety by taking a few simple steps. The National Fire Protection Association urges concertgoers to:


• Be observant. Is the concert venue rundown or well-maintained? Does the staff look well-trained?


• As you proceed to your seat, observe how long the process takes. Could you reverse it in a hurry? Do you pass through pinch points? Is furniture in the way?


• Once seated, take note of the nearest exit. (In an emergency, most people try to exit by the door they entered, which is usually not the closest, and is always overcrowded.) Then, share the location of that nearest exit with your entire party. Agree that at the first sign of trouble, you will all proceed to it without delay.


• Once the show begins, remain vigilant. If you think there's a problem, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. Do not stay to "get your money's worth" despite concerns about safety. Do not remain to locate that jacket or bag you placed somewhere. No concert is worth your life. Better to read about an incident the next day than be counted as one of its statistics.


Read more: How to protect yourself in a crowd


To be sure, all fire codes must be vigorously enforced, and club and concert hall operators must be held to the highest standards. A first step is banning indoor pyrotechnics in all but the largest, stadium-type venues.


But, ultimately, we are our own best "fire marshals" when it comes to avoiding, and escaping, dangerous situations. We can still enjoy shows. But it is up to us to look out for our own safety.


In coming days, Rhode Islanders will follow the unfolding news from Brazil with a sense of queasy deja vu -- the rising body counts, the victim identification process, the grieving families, and the assigning (and dodging) of blame. If only they had learned from our tragedy.


Eerie sounds of cell phones amid disaster adds to first-responder toll


The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Barylick.







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