The airline’s revenue climbed slightly, however, as the average fare increased almost $8 from a year ago.

Southwest said that bookings for the first three months of 2013 look strong. It said that based on bookings and ticket prices so far, a key revenue measure should rise by between 2 and 3 percent in January compared with the same month last year.

Although the rate of airfare increases has slowed since 2011, fares are still going up partly because airlines are limiting the number of flights, making seats more scarce. Southwest expects the industry as a whole to run about 1 to 2 percent fewer flights in early 2013 than in the same period last year.

Southwest, the nation’s fourth-biggest airline, will consider cramming more flights into the busier middle of the day and reducing daily flights on some routes that aren’t profitable enough.

“I hope what we have less of is eliminating nonstop service between city pairs but … that is a possibility,” said CEO Gary Kelly. He didn’t name the routes that could be affected.

On a conference call, analysts pressed Kelly on whether he might reverse Southwest’s “bags-fly-free” policy. Kelly said the policy helps his airline draw customers away from competitors — more than offsetting money lost by not charging fees — and that charging for bags now would damage the company’s image.

“Customers hate bag fees, so I think by definition there would be an impact to the brand,” he said.

Southwest reported fourth-quarter net income of $78 million, or 11 cents per share. That’s down from $152 million, or 20 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items such as fuel contracts, the net income would have been 9 cents per share, beating the 7-cents-per-share forecast among analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Revenue ticked up 1.6 percent to $4.17 billion but fell short of the $4.20 billion that analysts expected.

Expenses rose faster, however, by 3.1 percent. Labor costs rose and maintenance costs jumped significantly as the airline continued to overhaul the cabins inside many of its planes.

Spending on fuel, the airline’s biggest expense, rose a modest 0.7 percent. Southwest is forecasting a welcome drop in its first-quarter fuel bill, to $3.30 per gallon from $3.44.

The cost increases were still less than some analysts expected. Standard & Poor’s analyst Jim Corridore said he expects revenue to rise faster than most costs in 2013.

The average fourth-quarter fare on Southwest and its AirTran Airways subsidiary was $148.02, up 5.4 percent from $140.38 a year earlier.

Passengers flew 1.4 percent fewer miles on Southwest than a year earlier, and planes were less full — 79.6 percent occupancy, down from 80.5 percent.

Southwest earned $421 million in 2012, its 40th straight profitable year, a streak that Kelly called “a remarkable feat and a record unmatched in the airline industry.”

Southwest shares rose 3 cents to $11.39 in afternoon trading. They have gained about 50 percent since last August, rising along with other airline stocks. Investors have been encouraged by stronger financial performance at the airlines and the possibility that a potential merger of American Airlines and US Airways would increase the industry’s ability to raise fares.

Source – AP Dallas

Obama also named Richard Cordray to stay on as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The president used a recess appointment last year to bypass congressional opposition and install the former Ohio attorney general as head of the bureau. That appointment expires at the end of this year.

White spent nearly a decade as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, handling an array of white-collar crimes and complex securities and financial fraud cases. She brought down mobster John Gotti and won convictions in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Obama said that experience makes White well-suited to implement legislation he championed to change the behavior on Wall Street.

“I’d say that’s a pretty good run. You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” Obama said at the White House. “As one former SEC chairman said, Mary Jo does not intimidate easily, and that’s important because she has a big job ahead of her.”

If confirmed by the Senate, White would take over the SEC from Elisse Walter, who is serving out the rest of former SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro’s term. Schapiro resigned in December.

In 2000, White led the criminal prosecution of more than 100 people — including members of all five New York crime families — accused of strong-arming brokers and manipulating prices of penny stocks. At the time the action was called one of the biggest crackdowns on securities fraud in U.S. history.

White’s office also won a record $606 million in restitution from the securities arm of the Republic New York Corp. bank in 2001. That year, the bank pleaded guilty to conspiring with an investment adviser to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from Japanese investors.

Cordray has run the consumer bureau since last year. Senate Republicans had opposed Cordray, as well as the concept of the consumer bureau.

Before she was elected to the Senate last fall, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., conceived of the idea of a consumer protection bureau. Obama considered naming her as commissioner, but her nomination would likely have run into deep opposition on Capitol Hill.

White, 65, heads the litigation department at law firm Debevoise & Plimpton.

She was the first woman to hold the position of U.S. attorney in Manhattan, one of the most prestigious positions in federal law enforcement. During her tenure from 1993 to 2002, White won convictions of white-collar criminals, drug traffickers and international terrorists. The most notable conviction was Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

She led the prosecution of Gotti when she was acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn in 1992. Gotti died in prison in 2002.

If confirmed by the Senate, White would be the first prosecutor to head the 79-year-old SEC. Most SEC chairmen have come from Wall Street or the ranks of private securities lawyers. The choice of White is likely intended to bolster the agency’s enforcement profile in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

White’s background differs sharply from that of Schapiro, who guided the agency in the four years after the crisis. Schapiro worked at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the securities industry’s self-policing organization. Some consumer advocates have said Schapiro’s experience as CEO of FINRA made her more likely to seek compromise and less likely to aggressively pursue misconduct.

During Shapiro’s tenure, the SEC reached major settlements with the biggest banks on Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank. But critics said the penalties were small compared with the banks’ revenues. And they complained that no senior executives were held accountable.

White would be expected to give high priority to expanding the enforcement efforts.

At the same time, much of the pressing work facing the agency involves writing new rules. The SEC is seeking stricter rules for money-market mutual funds and must get into shape the so-called Volcker Rule, which would bar banks from making certain trades for their own profit.

As head of litigators at Debevoise & Plimpton, White has represented a number of financial institutions likely to have crossed swords with the SEC in enforcement cases. Her clients also included former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, whom she represented in a 2010 civil lawsuit by then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo accusing Lewis of misleading shareholders in the bank’s merger with Merrill Lynch.

White also represented the largest U.S. hospital chain, HCA, in the insider-trading investigations by the SEC and the Justice Department of former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., whose family owned HCA. The investigations were closed in 2007 with no charges filed against Frist.

Source – AP Washington

In the last four months, more than 140 outbreaks in the U.S. have been caused by the new Sydney strain of norovirus. These kinds of contagious bugs cause bouts of diarrhea and vomiting.

The new strain may not be unusually dangerous; some scientists don’t think it is. But it is different, and many people might not be able to fight off its gut-wrenching effects.

It often spreads in places like schools, cruise ships and nursing homes. The new strain was blamed for a recent outbreak on the Queen Mary 2.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on the new strain Thursday.

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

Spain has now topped that figure, one of the highest in the developed world, as unemployment in the European county reached 26.02% in the fourth quarter of 2012. There are 5.9 million people out of work in the country.

Spain shed 363,000 jobs in the fourth quarter as the government implemented austerity measures to satisfy bond holders. Investors are more confident in Spain’s economy now, but that hasn’t meant much for those out of work. Young people have been especially affected, with 100,000 fewer people age 20-24 employed, according to statistics released by Spain’s National Office of Statistics.

Spain’s unemployment rate is double that of the rest of the Eurozone nations. The country’s weak economy has caused an exodus of both Spaniards and foreigners moving to other European countries and the United States in search of a more stable economy. About 70% more people left Spain in 2011 than in 2010, statistics show.

The nation has lost 850,000 jobs over the last year. Unemployment is especially rampant in the south part of the county, which had flourished from a housing boom beginning a decade ago.

The Spanish government has started developing strategies to entice people to buy up those surplus homes. Last year, it said it was considering offering residency to foreigners who bought property worth $200,000 or more. That could be an easy sell for people with cash on hand: A three-bedroom in Alicante, on the Mediterranean, costs just $130,000.

There are an estimated 700,000 vacant homes in Spain.

Source – Los Angeles Times

TMZ, on Jan. 24, set the record straight amid rumors that Shaggy died. However, the rapper is not dead and is merely next in “line” for pranksters spreading the usual hoax about a celebrity’s demise.

Shaggy, real name, Orville Richard Burrell, after 20-plus years in the business, remains a respected musical fixture.

The Jamaican-American first appeared on the music charts with his 1993 debut release of “Oh Carolina.” However, it was his “Boombastic” hit in 1995 that put him on the map.

In 2000, the gifted rapper followed up on his success with a 6x-certified “Hot Shot” album, which featured the hit singles, “Angel” and “It Wasn’t Me.”

Back in June of last year, Shaggy released a string of collaborations and formed his own record label called, Ranch Entertainment.

So there; Shaggy is not dead and is likely getting a boost in popularity from the latest celebrity death hoax.

Nichols was a workhouse at ESPN, contributing to “SportsCenter,” “NBA Countdown,” “Sunday NFL Countdown” and ESPN’s newsmagazine “E:60.” The new CNN program, which will debut “later this year” also opens up synergistic possibilities for Turner, which has invested heavily in sports programming under David Levy. The company has in the last few years secured NCAA basketball playoff games, and signed new long-term deals with the NBA and MLB.

The move also underscores new CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker‘s desire to diversify news on the network, moving beyond politics and the same handful of stories that get repeated on all the cable channels.

“We’re just thrilled that a sports journalist of Rachel’s stature and expertise will now be a regular part of the CNN lineup,” said Zucker in a statement. “Her arrival, beginning next week, is an important step in expanding the range of programming and storytelling on CNN.”

Holywood Life Report…..

“The world’s most notorious womanizer Tiger Woods has begun his first serious relationship since his marriage to Elin Nordegren ended in 2010. The Masters winner has been dating Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn since November, and he is so crazy about her that he took her on a romantic trip to Antigua! However, Lindsey’s friends are concerned about their friend dating a man who cheated on his wife with so many women.”

According to an Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman, the pickup truck was traveling the wrong way at around 2:15 p.m. on Interstate 10 in Casa Grande south of Phoenix, when it collided head on with a charter bus.

The driver of the pickup was declared dead at the scene, while several passengers on the bus were being treated for injuries, some of which are serious.

The girl had been boarded the school bus at around 6.30am, which was making its way to Palm Glades Preparatory Academy Charter School in Miami.

Authorities have confirmed that the suspected shooter was another student, who has been arrested. According to the local police department, the victims 7 year old sibling was a witness to the shooting incident. The bus did not have any surveillance cameras in place.

While the 13 year old girl had been airlifted to Miami Children’s Hospital, she was later pronounced dead.

Authorities have stated that any motive for the shooting had not yet been determined and police were currently investigating the relationship between the victim and the suspected shooter.

No other children on the bus had suffered any injuries and were taken to the homicide bureau for questioning, according to authorities.

So high has been the demand for the Wii U Deluxe, it has more or less sold out just about everywhere. Even the basic model is pretty difficult to get a hold of right now.

Wii U preorder’s had completely sold out prior to launch, so it was always going to be difficult to grab one. GameStop had 1.2 million preorder’s on their books, with a waiting list in excess of 500,000.

No need to get in a panic though, if you are looking to get a hold of one before Christmas, there is still 5 weeks to go and chances are more stocks will be in stores pretty soon. Definitely worth while waiting for a couple of weeks yet, before paying triple the price or more to some person who is willing to sell theirs.