Steroids fallout: No BB Hall for Bonds, Clemens

NEW YORK (AP) — No one was elected to the Hall of Fame this year. When voters closed the doors to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa, they also shut out everybody else.For only the second time in four decades, baseball writers failed to give any player the 75 percent required for induction to Cooperstown, sending a powerful signal that stars of the Steroids Era will be held to a different...

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Hall of Famers happy to see Bonds, Clemens denied

NEW YORK (AP) — Nobody was happier about the Hall of Fame shutout than the Hall of Famers themselves.Goose Gossage, Al Kaline, Dennis Eckersley and others are in no rush to open the door to Cooperstown for anyone linked to steroids.Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa: Keep 'em all out of our club."If they let these guys in ever — at any point — it's a big black eye for the Hall and for baseball,"...

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Baseball-MLB, players agree to expand drug testing

Jan 10 (Reuters) - Major League Baseball and the players' union have agreed to expand their drug program to include random in-season blood testing for human growth hormone and a new test for testosterone, they said on Thursday.The testing will start this season.MLB has been conducting random blood testing for the detection of HGH among minor league players since July 2010.Starting this season, the...

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British retailers start online sales early

REUTERS/Paul HackettLONDON (Reuters) - British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores.Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT....

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China may require real name registration for internet access

BEIJING (Reuters) - China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity.A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for...

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Tajikistan blocks scores of websites as election looms

DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Tajikistan blocked access to more than 100 websites on Tuesday, in what a government source said was a dress rehearsal for a crackdown on online dissent before next year's election when President Imomali Rakhmon will again run for office.Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He...

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Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.'s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies...

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Netflix blames Amazon for Christmas Eve outage

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc's streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas Day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies...

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Markets rise as Alcoa sees stronger demand

LONDON (AP) — World stock markets rose Wednesday after the fourth-quarter earnings season got off to a positive start in the U.S. with aluminum giant Alcoa forecasting higher demand for 2013.Sales of aluminum have been hurt by the weak global economy, but Alcoa predicted a 7 percent increase in demand this year, slightly better than the 6 percent increase in 2012. Because Alcoa supplies so many key...

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Wall Street gains as earnings flow in; Alcoa up

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose on Wall Street Wednesday after U.S. corporate earnings reports got off to a good start.The Dow Jones industrial average rose 57 points to 13,396 as of 2:12 p.m. EST. The Dow is coming off of two days of losses.The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained four points to 1,461 and the Nasdaq composite rose 16 points to 3,108.Having rallied after a last-minute resolution stopped...

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Wall Street gains as earnings flow in; Boeing up

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose on Wall Street Wednesday after U.S. corporate earnings reports got off to a good start.The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 61.66 points to 13,390.51, its first gain of the week. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 3.87 points to 1,461.02, and the Nasdaq composite rose 14 to 3,105.81.Having rallied after a last-minute resolution stopped the U.S. from going over...

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Oakley challenges Nike over McIlroy move

American sunglasses maker Oakley has launched legal action to try to retain its sponsorship of world number one golfer Rory McIlroy who is set to become the new face of sportswear giant Nike.U.S. PGA champion McIlroy is poised to rubber-stamp a 10-year deal with U.S. company Nike worth as much as $250 million, according to media reports.Nike is set to supply the 23-year-old Northern Irishman's clubs...

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Institute of Medicine to study U.S. youth sports concussions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Institute of Medicine launched on Monday a sweeping study of rising sports-related concussions among U.S. youth, amid concerns that the injuries may have contributed to the suicides of professional football players.The Institute, part of the private, non-profit National Academies, will probe sports-related concussions in young people from elementary school through early...

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Jets sack offensive coordinator Sparano after losing season

(Reuters) - The New York Jets have fired offensive coordinator Tony Sparano, the National Football League team said on Tuesday in the latest shakeup to the franchise's coaching staff after a disappointing season.Sparano, who was head coach of the Miami Dolphins from 2008 to 2011, spent just one season in charge of a Jets offense that ranked 30th in the league in total offense."At the end of the day,...

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RPT-Wall St Week Ahead: 'Cliff' concerns give way to earnings focus

NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Investors' "fiscal cliff"worries are likely to give way to more fundamental concerns,such as earnings, as fourth-quarter reports get under way thisweek.Financial results, which begin after the market closes onTuesday with aluminum company Alcoa, are expected to beonly slightly better than the third-quarter's lacklusterresults. As a warning sign, analysts' current estimates...

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Wall Street cheers "cliff" deal, but only for now

When lawmakers delivered a long-delayed, last-minute agreement on the budget, Wall Street celebrated. And it would be easy to think that the surge in the Dow the following day meant that investors had put their concerns about Washington's political gridlock behind them.The Dow Jones industrial average surged on the news, but that doesn't mean the volatility is over. In fact, there could be more turmoil...

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Analysis - U.S. fiscal crisis seen hurting tech earnings

Warning to investors: major U.S. technology companies could miss estimates for fourth-quarter earnings as "fiscal cliff" worries likely led some corporate clients to tighten their belts last month and refrain from spending all of their 2012 IT budgets.Tech companies usually enjoy a spike in orders in December as corporations use money left over in their budgets to buy goods on their wish lists -...

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Reports: sled crash kills 6 on Italian ski slope

ROME (AP) — Italian news reports say a motorized sled making a night run down an Italian ski slope slammed into a fence and flipped over into a ditch, killing six tourists and severely injuring two others aboard.RAI state radio reported early Saturday that the sled's occupants were Russian tourists. The crash occurred on an unlit slope late Friday on Mount Cermis in northeast Italy. Victims' names...

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Italy: 6 Russian tourists die in snowmobile crash

ROME (AP) — Italian news reports say six Russian tourists were killed and two others were injured after their snowmobile slammed into a fence and flipped over into a ditch during a night run down an Italian ski slope.RAI state radio reported early Saturday that the crash occurred on an unlit slope late Friday on Mount Cermis in northeast Italy. Victims' names were not immediately available. Cause...

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Excavators head to Myanmar to find WWII Spitfires

LONDON (AP) — An airplane-obsessed farmer, a freelance archaeologist and a team of excavators are heading to the Myanmar city of Yangon on Saturday to find a nearly forgotten stash of British fighter planes thought to be carefully buried beneath the former capital's airfield.The venture, backed with a million-dollar guarantee from a Belarusian videogame company, could uncover dozens of Spitfire aircraft...

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