NEW YORK (AP) -- A Raymond James analyst on Monday cut his ratings for a trio of coal companies, saying that mild winter weather has driven down the price of natural gas and reduced demand for coal.
THE OPINION: James Rollyson said that after a tough 2012, he was originally optimistic about coal company prospects in 2013, as natural gas companies slowed their production growth and natural gas prices began to rise.
Rollyson thought that higher natural gas prices would prompt some utilities to switch from gas to coal, boosting demand for the coal companies.
But while natural gas prices did rise a bit, the number of heating days in in November and December ran about 13 percent below normal and 2 percent below last year's mild winter. In addition the weather in many parts of the country is expected to remain mild, at least for the near term, further reducing heating demand, Rollyson said.
Natural gas futures prices have fallen from about $4 per 1,000 cubic feet in November to $3.27 on Monday, a drop of more than 18 percent.
Rollyson said that while natural gas prices, and demand for coal, should still be up from last year's levels, they won't be as high as previously expected and will probably delay a recovery in U.S. coal prices.
As a result he cut his ratings for Cloud Peak Energy Inc. and James River Coal Co. to "Market Perform" from "Outperform" and for Consol Energy Inc. to "Outperform" from "Strong Buy."
THE SHARES: In afternoon trading, Cloud Peak shares fell 33 cents to $19.13; James River lost 12 cents, or 3.3 percent, to $3.48; and Consol dropped 60 cents to $31.83.
In this Dec. 13, 2012 photo, a customer stops at a Bank of America ATM office in Boston. Bank of America Corp. says it will spend more than $10 billion to settle mortgage claims resulting from the housing meltdown. Under the deal announced Monday, Jan. 7, 2013, the bank will pay $3.6 billion to Fannie Mae and buy back $6.75 billion in loans that the North Carolina-based bank and its Countrywide banking unit sold to the government agency from Jan. 1, 2000 through Dec. 31, 2008. That includes about 30,000 loans. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
In this Dec. 13, 2012 photo, a customer stops at a Bank of America ATM office in Boston. Bank of America Corp. says it will spend more than $10 billion to settle mortgage claims resulting from the housing meltdown. Under the deal announced Monday, Jan. 7, 2013, the bank will pay $3.6 billion to Fannie Mae and buy back $6.75 billion in loans that the North Carolina-based bank and its Countrywide banking unit sold to the government agency from Jan. 1, 2000 through Dec. 31, 2008. That includes about 30,000 loans. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Bank of America will pay $10.3 billion to the government mortgage agency Fannie Mae to settle claims resulting from mortgage-backed investments that soured during the housing crash.
Under the deal announced Monday, Bank of America will pay $3.6 billion in cash to Fannie Mae and buy back $6.75 billion in loans that the bank and its Countrywide Financial unit sold to the agency from Jan. 1, 2000 through Dec. 31, 2008. That includes about 30,000 loans.
Also Monday, a separate settlement was announced between federal regulators and ten major banks and mortgage companies, including Bank of America, over wrongful foreclosure practices. That $8.5 billion settlement covers up to 3.8 million people who were in foreclosure in 2009 and 2010. Of those, about 400,000 may be entitled to payments, advocates estimate.
For Bank of America, its own settlement with Fannie Mae over the mortgage investments represents a "a significant step" in resolving the bank's remaining mortgage problems while also streamlining the company and reducing future expenses, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said in a statement. Moynihan's predecessor, Ken Lewis, bought Countrywide, a troubled mortgage-lending giant, in July 2008 just as the financial crisis was taking hold.
The bank's acquisition of Countrywide was initially praised by lawmakers. Bank of America was seen as stepping in to eliminate a bad actor from the mortgage market. But instead of boosting Bank of America's mortgage business, the purchase has drawn a drumbeat of regulatory fines, lawsuits and losses.
Bank of America also agreed in September to pay $2.43 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit related to its takeover of Merrill Lynch, another of Lewis's acquisitions during the financial crisis. That lawsuit was filed on behalf of investors who bought or held Bank of America stock when the company announced its plans to buy Merrill Lynch in a $20 billion deal as the banking industry and federal regulators struggled to contain fallout from the financial crisis in the fall of 2008.
The North Carolina-based bank said it would pay for the Fannie Mae settlement in part from existing reserves. Bank of America also said it would record a $2.7 billion hit to its fourth quarter earnings for 2012.
Despite the cost of the settlement, Bank of America still expects its earnings for the period to be "modestly positive," aided by a tax credit and an improvement in the valuation of its debt. Analysts are currently forecasting that the bank will report earnings per share of 19 cents, according to estimates compiled by data provider FactSet. Bank of America is scheduled to report earnings Jan. 17.
Bank of America fell 8 cents to $12.01 Monday, after opening slightly higher. The stock more than doubled in 2012, making it the best performer in the 30-member Dow Jones industrial average. It's up 3.7 percent this year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which packaged loans into securities and sold them to investors, were effectively nationalized in 2008 when they nearly collapsed under the weight of their mortgage losses.
"Fannie Mae has diligently pursued repurchases on loans that did not meet our standards at the time of origination, and we are pleased to have reached an appropriate agreement to collect on these repurchase requests," Bradley Lerman, Fannie Mae executive vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.
Bank of America also said that it is selling mortgage servicing rights on about 2 million residential mortgage loans. The loans have an aggregate unpaid principal balance of approximately $306 billion.
The transferring of the servicing rights is expected to take place throughout the year.
We've heard a rumor that Shutterfly, the photo and personal publishing company founded in 1999, is set to acquire online photo sharing and storage startup ThisLife. We're hearing the acquisition price is around $25 million.
Virtual patient may help future doctors prevent suicidePublic release date: 3-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Toni Baker tbaker@georgiahealth.edu 706-721-4421 Georgia Health Sciences University
AUGUSTA, Ga. A virtual patient named Denise may help future physicians feel more comfortable and capable assessing suicide risk.
"Primary care doctors tend to be the frontline providers for people with mental illness so we need to put the same kind of educational effort into suicide risk assessment that we put into recognizing a heart attack," said Dr. Adriana Foster, psychiatrist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University and principal investigator on an American Foundation for Suicide Prevention-funded study to determine how to do just that.
"Suicide risk assessment should be one of the must haves," said Foster, who hopes Denise, a mother and wife seeking psychiatric care for insomnia and a mood disorder, can help.
Suicide is occurring earlier and more often in the United States than ever before. Rates are up 25 percent in the last decade to 12.4 per 100,000 individuals annually. Its the second-leading cause of death for college students and third for all 15-24 year olds, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Twenty percent of high school students report having seriously considered suicide during the previous 12 months.
The new MCG study of second-year medical students is helping determine if the opportunity to ask tough questions about suicide risk to a virtual (computer-simulated) patient can help real families avoid this tragedy. Forty sophomore medical students watch a video of a physician interviewing a patient with a mood disorder. The interview includes a suicide risk assessment. Another 40 students will electronically interview Denise, who was designed by the University of Florida Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering.
Later, all the students go to MCGs Clinical Skills Center to interview an actor portraying a patient with a mood disorder. A subgroup will also interact with a second actor with a different mental health problem. These actors, called standardized patients, are trained to portray and report symptoms associated with a certain condition. Before all MCG students enter their clinically intensive third and fourth years of medical school, they spend time with these patients, honing communication and patient-examination skills.
We hope this approach will help future practitioners deal with really difficult issues such as suicide, psychosis, anxiety and depression, Foster said. Mood disorders, such as depression, are the most common mental health disorders coming to physician attention that carry a high risk of disability and suicide, she said.
The researchers hypothesize that students who interact with Denise will be better able to assess suicide risk in the standardized patients. If they are right, researchers want to share Denise with other medical students through the Association of American Medical Colleges MedEdPORTAL (see https://www.mededportal.org/), an online medical education tool collection. They also want to study Denises long-term impact on students as they take clinical rotations in psychiatry and graduate from medical school.
While students type their questions and mostly get a typed response from Denise, the virtual interaction helps them think through what to ask and the best way to ask it. In fact, Denise tells them when she doesnt understand. To enhance Denises inter-actability, MCG is sharing unanswered questions with collaborators at the University of Florida, to see if maybe she should respond. As in life, sometimes the problem is just a matter of phrasing.
Studies show that front-line providers, such as family medicine physicians, dont feel comfortable assessing suicide risk. In countries with some of the highest suicide rate, such as Japan and Hungary, targeted provider education has helped decrease rates.
MCG already uses a virtual patient with depression in the first-year curriculum to help students learn the basics of asking about a depressed mood. First- and second-year students also get several lectures and team-based learning sessions focused on mental health, Foster said. While there has been tremendous progress in the last few years introducing mental health topics to first- and second-year students, they tend to remain somewhat textbook- and other reading material-bound. We are trying to introduce more interactive methods.
Warning signs of suicide include unrelenting low mood, hopelessness, desperation, anxiety, withdrawal, sleep problems, increased alcohol and/or other drug use, impulsiveness, taking unnecessary risks and threatening suicide or expressing a strong wish to die, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
"Most suicides dont occur out of the blue," Foster said, and most suicidal individuals are open to intervention. "Most people are actually ambivalent about it and seeking help," making provider assessment and family/friend awareness even more important, she said. There is a lot of stigma, a lot of things friends and family feel they should never talk about. But when you are a doctor, a lot of your patients are going to have these types of disorders in addition to physical disorders. We want our students to be prepared and not afraid to ask questions.
###
For more information about the Virtual People Factory and Virtual Experiences Research Group at the University of Florida visit http://verg.cise.ufl.edu/
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Virtual patient may help future doctors prevent suicidePublic release date: 3-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Toni Baker tbaker@georgiahealth.edu 706-721-4421 Georgia Health Sciences University
AUGUSTA, Ga. A virtual patient named Denise may help future physicians feel more comfortable and capable assessing suicide risk.
"Primary care doctors tend to be the frontline providers for people with mental illness so we need to put the same kind of educational effort into suicide risk assessment that we put into recognizing a heart attack," said Dr. Adriana Foster, psychiatrist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University and principal investigator on an American Foundation for Suicide Prevention-funded study to determine how to do just that.
"Suicide risk assessment should be one of the must haves," said Foster, who hopes Denise, a mother and wife seeking psychiatric care for insomnia and a mood disorder, can help.
Suicide is occurring earlier and more often in the United States than ever before. Rates are up 25 percent in the last decade to 12.4 per 100,000 individuals annually. Its the second-leading cause of death for college students and third for all 15-24 year olds, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Twenty percent of high school students report having seriously considered suicide during the previous 12 months.
The new MCG study of second-year medical students is helping determine if the opportunity to ask tough questions about suicide risk to a virtual (computer-simulated) patient can help real families avoid this tragedy. Forty sophomore medical students watch a video of a physician interviewing a patient with a mood disorder. The interview includes a suicide risk assessment. Another 40 students will electronically interview Denise, who was designed by the University of Florida Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering.
Later, all the students go to MCGs Clinical Skills Center to interview an actor portraying a patient with a mood disorder. A subgroup will also interact with a second actor with a different mental health problem. These actors, called standardized patients, are trained to portray and report symptoms associated with a certain condition. Before all MCG students enter their clinically intensive third and fourth years of medical school, they spend time with these patients, honing communication and patient-examination skills.
We hope this approach will help future practitioners deal with really difficult issues such as suicide, psychosis, anxiety and depression, Foster said. Mood disorders, such as depression, are the most common mental health disorders coming to physician attention that carry a high risk of disability and suicide, she said.
The researchers hypothesize that students who interact with Denise will be better able to assess suicide risk in the standardized patients. If they are right, researchers want to share Denise with other medical students through the Association of American Medical Colleges MedEdPORTAL (see https://www.mededportal.org/), an online medical education tool collection. They also want to study Denises long-term impact on students as they take clinical rotations in psychiatry and graduate from medical school.
While students type their questions and mostly get a typed response from Denise, the virtual interaction helps them think through what to ask and the best way to ask it. In fact, Denise tells them when she doesnt understand. To enhance Denises inter-actability, MCG is sharing unanswered questions with collaborators at the University of Florida, to see if maybe she should respond. As in life, sometimes the problem is just a matter of phrasing.
Studies show that front-line providers, such as family medicine physicians, dont feel comfortable assessing suicide risk. In countries with some of the highest suicide rate, such as Japan and Hungary, targeted provider education has helped decrease rates.
MCG already uses a virtual patient with depression in the first-year curriculum to help students learn the basics of asking about a depressed mood. First- and second-year students also get several lectures and team-based learning sessions focused on mental health, Foster said. While there has been tremendous progress in the last few years introducing mental health topics to first- and second-year students, they tend to remain somewhat textbook- and other reading material-bound. We are trying to introduce more interactive methods.
Warning signs of suicide include unrelenting low mood, hopelessness, desperation, anxiety, withdrawal, sleep problems, increased alcohol and/or other drug use, impulsiveness, taking unnecessary risks and threatening suicide or expressing a strong wish to die, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
"Most suicides dont occur out of the blue," Foster said, and most suicidal individuals are open to intervention. "Most people are actually ambivalent about it and seeking help," making provider assessment and family/friend awareness even more important, she said. There is a lot of stigma, a lot of things friends and family feel they should never talk about. But when you are a doctor, a lot of your patients are going to have these types of disorders in addition to physical disorders. We want our students to be prepared and not afraid to ask questions.
###
For more information about the Virtual People Factory and Virtual Experiences Research Group at the University of Florida visit http://verg.cise.ufl.edu/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
LONDON (AP) ? Dr. Who ? who usually uses a police box for travel ? will be zooming through time and space on the edge of letters in 2013.
Britain's Royal Mail is marking the 50th anniversary of the science fiction show "Doctor Who" with a series of stamps featuring each of the 11 actors who have played the title role. Those featured include the present doctor, Matt Smith, as well as past Time Lords such as David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston.
The series will also include a miniature sheet that brings together Second Class stamps featuring four of the doctor's iconic foes ? a Dalek, an Ood, a Weeping Angel and a Cyberman.
The stamps honoring the cult British television program will be available starting at the end of March.
Bonobos will readily share food, but they'll offer it up to a strange bonobo before they give it to a member of their known group. Sophie Bushwick reports.
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Sharing is one of the hallmarks of human behavior: give me a cookie and I?m more likely to give you one later. But our bonobo cousins have an odd variation on the practice. They share with strangers before friends. The finding is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Jingzhi Tan and Brian Hare, Bonobos Share with Strangers]
Researchers tested bonobo sharing in experiments involving fourteen of the apes. All were born in the wild. In the primary experiment, bonobos were placed in a cage with food, and they could choose to admit either a known member of their group, a stranger, or both. In 51 trials, most bonobos shared the feast, but they let the stranger in first.
Why choose an outsider over a friend? In another experiment, the scientists found bonobos only shared when doing so led to a social interaction. Giving up some food to strangers lets these apes expand their social network. This behavior may have evolved to promote social tolerance, in contrast with chimps' sometimes deadly aggression against strangers. Which means that even when food is offered, there's still no such thing as a free lunch.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - An American journalist is missing after being kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in northwest Syria six weeks ago, his family said on Wednesday.
The family of freelance journalist James Foley, 39, launched a public campaign to bring him home after requesting a news blackout since Foley was taken on 22 November in Idlib province.
According to GlobalPost, a news website he had previously reported for, Foley had been driving towards the Syrian border with Turkey when he was intercepted by a car. He was forced out of his vehicle by two armed men and has not been seen or heard from since, the website said.
No group has publicly claimed responsibility. Several journalists have been abducted in Syria during the 21-month-old uprising. Last year the country was by far the most dangerous for journalists with 28 killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog.
Rebel groups fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad have detained journalists suspected of supporting the government. Pro-Assad militia have also seized journalists, including an NBC News team who were held for five days in December.
Foley is an experienced foreign correspondent who has reported from Syria, Afghanistan and Libya. In April 2011, he was captured in eastern Libya by government forces and held for 44 days before being released. He later returned to the country to cover Muammar Gaddafi's fall.
The Syrian government tightly restricts media access. Foley entered the country through rebel-held areas.
French news agency Agence France-Presse, which also used Foley's work, quoted its chairman Emmanuel Hoog as saying it was striving to secure his freedom.
"He is a professional journalist who is absolutely neutral in this conflict," Hoog said. "His kidnappers, whoever they may be, should free him immediately."
(Reporting by Sara Elizabeth Williams; Editing by Peter Graff and Alistair Lyon)
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Public release date: 3-Jan-2013
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