Rolling Stones turn back clock with hit-filled comeback

LONDON (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones turned back the clock in style on Sunday with their first concert in five years, strutting and swaggering their way through hit after familiar hit to celebrate 50 years in business.

Before a packed crowd of 20,000 at London‘s O2 Arena, they banished doubts that age may have slowed down one of the world’s greatest rock and roll bands, as lead singer Mick Jagger launched into “I Wanna Be Your Man”.

More than two hours of high-octane, blues-infused rock later, and they were still going strong with an impressive encore comprising “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.

In between there were guest appearances from American R&B singer-songwriter Mary J. Blige, who delivered a rousing duet with Jagger on “Gimme Shelter” and guitarist Jeff Beck who provided the power chords for “I’m Going Down”.

Former Rolling Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor were also back in the fold, performing with the regular quartet of Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards on guitar and Charlie Watts on drums for the first time in 20 years.

“It took us 50 years to get from Dartford to Greenwich!” said Jagger, referring to their roots just a few miles from the venue in southeast London. “But you know, we made it. What’s even more amazing is that you’re still coming to see us…we can’t thank you enough.”

The Sunday night gig was the first of two at the O2 Arena before the band crosses the Atlantic to play three dates in the United States.

The mini-tour is the culmination of a busy few months of events, rehearsals and recordings to mark 50 years since the rockers first took to the stage at the Marquee Club on London‘s Oxford Street in July, 1962.

There has been a photo album, two new songs, a music video, a documentary film, a blitz of media appearances and a handful of warm-up gigs in Paris.

“STYLE AND PANACHE”

The reunion nearly did not happen. One factor behind the long break since their record-breaking “A Bigger Bang” tour in 2007 has been Wood’s struggle with alcohol addiction, while Jagger and Richards also fell out over comments the guitarist made about the singer in a 2010 autobiography.

But they eventually buried the hatchet, and Richards joked in a recent interview: “We can’t get divorced – we’re doing it for the kids!”

Critics were fulsome in their praise of the first comeback gig.

“Keith Richards has said that the beauty of rock and roll is that every night a different band might be the world’s greatest. Well, last night at the O2 Arena, it was the turn of the Rolling Stones themselves to lay claim to the title they invented,” wrote Neil McCormick of the Daily Telegraph.

“And they did it with some style and panache.”

The big question on every fan’s lips is whether the five concerts lead to a world tour and even new material. The Stones sang their two new tracks “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot”, which appeared on their latest greatest hits album “GRRR!”.

Richards has hinted that the five concerts ending at the Newark Prudential Center in the United States on December 15 would not be the last.

“Once the juggernaut starts rolling, it ain’t gonna stop,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “So without sort of saying definitely yes – yeah. We ain’t doing all this for four gigs!”

The band has come in for criticism from fans about the high price of tickets to the shows – they ranged from around 95 pounds ($ 150) to up to 950 pounds for a VIP seat.

The flamboyant veterans, whose average age is 68, have defended the costs, saying the shows were expensive to put on, although specialist music publication Billboard reported the band would earn $ 25 million from the four shows initially announced. A fifth was added later.

“Everybody all right there in the cheap seats,” Jagger asked pointedly as he looked high to his left at the arena. “They’re not really cheap though are they? That’s the trouble.”

Among the biggest cheers on the night were for classics including “Wild Horses”, “It’s Only Rock and Roll” and “Start Me Up”.

There was even time for the odd reference to their advancing years.

“Good to see you all,” said Richards with a mischievous grin. “Good to see anybody.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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UnitedHealth forecasts 2013 profit below Wall St view

(Reuters) – UnitedHealth Group Inc , the largest U.S. private health insurer, said on Monday it expected 2013 earnings of $ 5.25 to $ 5.50 per share, below analysts‘ expectations.

Revenue should be $ 123 billion to $ 124 billion, the company said, higher than the Wall Street target. UnitedHealth gave the forecast in a statement ahead of a Tuesday meeting with analysts and investors.

Analysts had expected 2013 earnings of $ 5.58 per share on revenue of $ 119.12 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

UnitedHealth said during a quarterly conference call in October that analysts’ estimates for 2013 were too high, citing the weak economy and government efforts to rein in the deficit. At that time, the consensus was for earnings of $ 5.60 per share.

UnitedHealth has a history of exceeding its forecast, Oppenheimer analyst Michael Wiederhorn said in a research note. “Overall, we believe UNH’s outlook will prove conservative,” he wrote.

Wiederhorn said it was not immediately clear if the Wall Street consensus outlook for 2013 revenue was comparable and included sales from Brazil’s Amil Participacoes SA , which it acquired for $ 4.9 billion.

UnitedHealth also reaffirmed its 2012 outlook for earnings of $ 5.20 to $ 5.25 per share.

(Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Jeffrey Benkoe)

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Jobless benefits at risk of going over cliff

In recent months, consumer confidence has risen as the unemployment rate has come down and the housing recovery builds momentum. This weekend's strong start to the holiday shopping season is another sign of an economy that's doing much better than feared.

Related: Black Friday Weekend by the Numbers

But the recession never ended for millions of Americans and many of them now face a frightening prospect: the loss of unemployment benefits.

"More than 40% of the nearly five million Americans who receive unemployment insurance are set to lose those benefits if federal programs expire as scheduled at year-end," The WSJ reports. "Already this year, hundreds of thousands of people have exhausted their jobless benefits. Now, virtually everyone left in the federal programs would lose their benefits if the programs expire as scheduled at year-end."

The roughly 2.1 million Americans at risk are currently receiving benefits through federally backed programs that Congress approved starting in 2008. Those programs, designed to extend benefits beyond the six-month time frame typically offered by states, are now set to expire.

Addressing this issue raises many complex issues, as Henry and I discuss in the accompanying clip. Anecdotal evidence suggests that long-term unemployment benefits have proven to be a disincentive for some Americans to find work, which obviously isn't a desired outcome. On the other hand, eliminating those benefits would put millions of Americans at risk of falling into the depths of poverty, which isn't good for society at large.

One potential solution: requiring people receiving unemployment benefits to do something to earn it, depending on their skills and physical capabilities. Whether collecting garbage on highways or visiting nursing homes or working on infrastructure projects, there are plenty of things people can do to make a positive contribution in exchange for maintaining their unemployment benefits.

At this point, there seems to be very little discussion about this issue — or the broader issue of infrastructure spending — in the ongoing debate about the fiscal cliff.

In a separate but related development, the temporary 2% payroll tax cut is also set to expire on Dec. 31. As of now, it appears the payroll tax cut will be allowed to expire, raising taxes by $1,040 a year for an average family of four earning $50,000.

Related: Here's Why Your Taxes Are Going Up 2% Next Year: Just Explain It

As with unemployment benefits, this issue appears to have been lost in the fiscal cliff discussions, which seems to have become fixated on individual tax rates.

Aaron Task is the host of The Daily Ticker and Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo! Finance. You can follow him on Twitter at @aarontask or email him at altask@yahoo.com

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Yes, the Government Can Still Spy on Your Digital Life (for Now)

Ahead of a controversial Senate debate on digital privacy this week, the battle over warrantless cell-phone and Internet searches is beginning to take shape — even as law-enforcement agencies continue to carry out the searches anyway. Judges across the country have thrown out cases that used tracked digital American lives without warrants, but others haven’t, reports The New York Times‘s Somini Sengupta. A DC court, for example, compared text messages to voicemail messages, which because they can be overheard are not protected by state privacy laws, argued one judge. A Louisiana court is deciding if cell-phone records are like business records. Another court ruled that GPS cell phone tracking without a warrant was fine, too. Others, however, argue that cell phones are more than just a paper trail. One judge called cell phones “raw, unvarnished and immediate, revealing the most intimate of thoughts and emotions,” as in something that is subject to higher privacy standards. Meanwhile, we see the same inconsistencies with Internet protections, reports The Wall Street Journal‘s Joe Pallazolo. A federal court recently ruled that people who use their neighbors’ WiFi without permission forfeit privacy, opening up government officials to warrantless searches. The same ruling other courts have made for IP addresses. However, the law isn’t that clear-cut, either, argues George Washington University professor Oren Kerr. 

RELATED: Anonymous’s and LulzSec’s Overlapping, FBI-Thwarting Pasts

Without clear rules, government agencies have continued investigations with warrantless searches. As people have started using cell phones more often and for more than just calling, law enforcement agency requests for cell-phone information have increased, reported The New York Times‘s Eric Lichtblau earlier this year. AT&T gets more than 700 requests a day from various agencies, triple what it got in 2007, he notes. Last year, the total number of requests came in at at least 1.3 million. At the same time, the application for wiretapping warrants declined 14 percent last year to 2,732, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. A curious pattern considering the requests for information have gone up. Though these wireless carriers say they require a search warrant, a court order or a formal subpoena to release information, “in cases that law enforcement officials deem an emergency, a less formal request is often enough,” writes Lichtblau. Or, it’s possible that law enforcement has opted for other forms of tracking that don’t require warrants, at least not according to some judges. 

RELATED: Saints GM Denies Using Nixonian Dirty Tricks; Directing the NFL Draft

A Senate debate beginning Thursday to make changes on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act might bring some clarity to these issues. However, it’s unclear if the revised bill will give the government more or less power, and it doesn’t sound like the vote will apply to all cell phone or Internet data. An early draft of the bill reportedly allowed warrantless e-mail searches, reported CNET’s Declan McCullagh. Since, Senator Patrick Leahy, who is spearheading the bill, has denied that the updates to the regulation will do that, however. Instead, the revised bill will require search warrants to get into email no matter how old, says Sengupta. That should presumably apply to some of our smartphone and Internet data, too. But it doesn’t address text messages or location information, other concerns of consumers.

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Cyber Monday sales poised to hit $1.5B

Americans are returning to work today after the extended Thanksgiving weekend just in time for Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year. 

Shoppers are expected to spend more than $1.5 billion today, up 20 percent from last year, according to research firm comScore. 

It has already been a big holiday weekend with a record $59.1 billion spent at U.S. stores and websites, according to the National Retail Federation.

Online sales on Thanksgiving Day, traditionally not a popular day for online shopping, rose 32 percent from last year to $633 million, according to comScore. And online sales on Black Friday were up 26 percent from the same day last year, to $1.042 billion. It was the first time online sales on Black Friday surpassed $1 billion.

The National Retail Federation says 247 million shoppers hit stores and websites to cash in on savings during the holiday weekend, up 9 percent from last year. Nearly two-thirds of those shoppers went to stores or hit the web on Black Friday.

Black Friday is now history along with Small Business Saturday. Now, it's Cyber Monday's turn.

At midnight, Amazon.com was offering as much as 60 percent off a Panasonic VIERA 55-inch TV that's usually priced higher than $1,000. Sears is offering $430 off a Maytag washer and dryer, each on sale for $399. And Kmart is offering 75 percent off diamond earrings.

"Cyber Monday is really all about doing your homework, and it really means looking for the really good deals" retail analyst Marshal Cohen said. "If it's a really good deal, grab it."

But Cyber Monday might be losing its luster. The busiest day for Internet shopping has been overshadowed this year by online sales that started as early as Thanksgiving Day.

"Look for Cyber Monday to be important, but not necessarily getting that same growth rate that they've had in years past," Cohen said.

The rise in smartphones and tablets has changed consumers' shopping habits since Cyber Monday's inception seven years ago. Cyber Monday was first widely publicized by Shop.org in 2005 to persuade shoppers to buy online, as people were still warming to e-commerce.

"There were so many deals being offered online, starting from Wednesday and all the way through the weekend and now some of the money has already been spent," Cohen said.

Cyber Monday is also an easier alternative for people who don't like long lines and chaos that comes with the Black Friday weekend. This season proved to be no different from past Black Friday horror stories.

A man suspected of shoplifting two DVD players from a Lithonia, Ga., Walmart Sunday died after an altercation with two store employees and a contract security guard.

When officers arrived at the scene, they found the employees on top of the middle-aged man, according to a police report obtained by ABC News affiliate WSB-TV. When an officer bent down to handcuff the suspect, he noticed there was no resistance.

At that point, the officer noticed the suspect was bleeding from the nose and mouth, according to the report. He was transported to DeKalb Medical-Hillandale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

"This is truly a sad situation," Dianna Gee, a Walmart spokeswoman, said in a statement issued to ABC News. "We don't know all of the facts right now. We're in the process of working with law enforcement to determine all of the facts and cooperating and providing any information we have to assist in the investigation."

Gee said the contract security guard will no longer be providing services to the retailer. The two store employees have been suspended with pay while Walmart assists police in the investigation.

ABC News' Alyssa Newcomb, Susana Kim, ABC News Radio and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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“Searching for Sugar Man,” “First Cousin Once Removed” Win at International Documentary Festival

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Searching for Sugar Man” is continuing to find critical acclaim.

Malik Benjelloul‘s documentary about musician Rodriguez, who abandoned music only to find his career resuscitated after becoming hugely popular in South Africa, won the Best Music Documentary award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the festival said Friday.

“Sugar Man” also took home the Audience award.

Alan Berliner’s documentary “First Cousin Once Removed,” about his uncle’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, also scored big, winning for Best Feature-Length Documentary.

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UN climate talks open in Qatar

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it.

The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.

Attempts to create a new climate treaty failed in Copenhagen three years ago but countries agreed last year to try again, giving themselves a deadline of 2015 to adopt a new treaty.

A host of issues need to be resolved by then, including how to spread the burden of emissions cuts between rich and poor countries. That’s unlikely to be decided in the Qatari capital of Doha, where negotiators will focus on extending the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions deal for industrialized countries, and trying to raise billions of dollars to help developing countries adapt to a shifting climate.

“We all realize why we are here, why we keep coming back year and after year,” said South Africa Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who led last year’s talks in Durban, South Africa. “We owe it to our people, the global citizenry. We owe it to our children to give them a safer future than what they are currently facing.”

The U.N. process is often criticized, even ridiculed, both by climate activists who say the talks are too slow, and by those who challenge the scientific near-consensus that the global temperature rise is at least partly caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

The concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide has jumped 20 percent since 2000, according to a U.N. report released last week.

A recent projection by the World Bank showed temperatures are on track to increase by up to 4 degrees C (7.2 F) this century, compared with pre-industrial times, overshooting the 2-degree target that has been the goal of the U.N. talks.

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Body of Turkish ex-leader shows signs of poisoning: paper

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – An autopsy on the exhumed body late President Turgut Ozal, who led Turkey out of military rule in the 1980s, has revealed evidence of poisoning, a newspaper reported on Monday.

There had long been rumors Ozal, who died of heart failure in 1993 aged 65, was murdered by militants of the “deep state” – a shadowy nationalist strain within the Turkish establishment of the day. He had angered some with his efforts to end the Kurdish conflict and survived on assassination bid in 1988.

His body, dug up last month on the orders of prosecutors investigating suspicions of foul play in his death, contained the banned insecticide DDT and the related compound DDE at ten times the normal level, Today’s Zaman cited sources from the state Forensic Medicine Institute (ATK) as saying.

“Ozal was most likely poisoned with four separate substances,” the paper reported the sources as saying, also naming the toxic metal cadmium and the radioactive elements americium and polonium as substances found in Ozal’s remains.

Forensic institute officials declined to comment.

Ozal, whose economic reforms easing the grip of the state on business helped shape modern Turkey, was in poor health. After undergoing a triple heart bypass operation in the United States in 1987, he kept up a grueling schedule and remained overweight until he died.

His moves to end a Kurdish insurgency and create a Turkic union with central Asian states have been cited as motives for would-be enemies in “deep state“, in which security establishment figures and criminal elements colluded.

It was Turkey’s military leaders who appointed him as a minister after a period of military rule following a 1980 coup.

He went on to dominate Turkish politics as prime minister from 1983 to 1989. Parliament then elected him president, but those close to him believe his reform efforts displeased some in the security establishment.

While prime minister, Ozal survived an assassination attempt by a right-wing gunman in 1988 when he was shot at a party congress, injuring a finger.

Turkish political history has been littered with military coups, alleged anti-government plots and extra-judicial killings. A court is currently trying hundreds of people suspected of links to a nationalist underground network known as “Ergenekon” accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

A media report at the start of November said Ozal’s autopsy had revealed high levels of the pesticide strychnine, but the ATK subsequently denied the report.

The head of the ATK has said the institute aims to complete its work in December and that its report would be handed over to prosecutors.

(Reporting by Seda Sezer; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

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Egypt’s Mursi faces judicial revolt over decree

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi faced a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered violence in the street and exposed the country’s deep divisions.

The Judges’ Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the “downfall of the regime” – the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year.

Mursi’s political opponents and supporters, representing the divide between newly empowered Islamists and their critics, called for rival demonstrations on Tuesday over a decree that has triggered concern in the West.

Issued late on Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. The decree defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year.

It also shields the Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt’s new constitution from a raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution, and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.

Egypt’s highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an “unprecedented attack” on the independence of the judiciary. The Judges’ Club, meeting in Cairo, called on Mursi to rescind it.

That demand was echoed by prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. “There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says ‘let us split the difference’,” he said.

“I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity,” he said in an interview with Reuters and the Associated Press.

More than 300 people were injured on Friday as protests against the decree turned violent. There were attacks on at least three offices belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mursi to power.

POLARISATION

Liberal, leftist and socialist parties called a big protest for Tuesday to force Mursi to row back on a move they say has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.

In a sign of the polarization in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood called its own protests that day to support the president’s decree.

Mursi also assigned himself new authority to sack the prosecutor general, who was appointed during the Mubarak era, and appoint a new one. The dismissed prosecutor general, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, was given a hero’s welcome at the Judges’ Club.

In open defiance of Mursi, Ahmed al-Zind, head of the club, introduced Mahmoud by his old title.

The Mursi administration has defended the decree on the grounds that it aims to speed up a protracted transition from Mubarak’s rule to a new system of democratic government.

Analysts say it reflects the Brotherhood’s suspicion towards sections of a judiciary unreformed from Mubarak’s days.

“It aims to sideline Mursi’s enemies in the judiciary and ultimately to impose and head off any legal challenges to the constitution,” said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations.

“We are in a situation now where both sides are escalating and its getting harder and harder to see how either side can gracefully climb down.”

ADVISOR TO MURSI QUITS

Following a day of violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the smell of tear gas hung over the capital’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011 and the stage for more protests on Friday.

Youths clashed sporadically with police near the square, where activists camped out for a second day on Saturday, setting up makeshift barricades to keep out traffic.

Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt’s most widely read dailies, hailed Friday’s protest as “The November 23 Intifada”, invoking the Arabic word for uprising.

But the ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist groups that have been pushing for tighter application of Islamic law in the new constitution have rallied behind Mursi’s decree.

The Nour Party, one such group, stated its support for the Mursi decree. Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, which carried arms against the state in the 1990s, said it would save the revolution from what it described as remnants of the Mubarak regime.

Samir Morkos, a Christian assistant to Mursi, had told the president he wanted to resign, said Yasser Ali, Mursi’s spokesman. Speaking to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Morkos said: “I refuse to continue in the shadow of republican decisions that obstruct the democratic transition”.

Mursi’s decree has been criticized by Western states that earlier this week were full of praise for his role in mediating an end to the eight-day war between Israel and Palestinians.

“The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy, Marwa Awad, Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed and Reuters TV; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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Saudi telco regulator suspends Mobily prepaid sim sales

(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia‘s No.2 telecom operator Etihad Etisalat Co (Mobily) has been suspended from selling pre-paid sim cards by the industry regulator, the firm said in a statement to the kingdom’s bourse on Sunday.

Mobily’s sales of pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, sim cards will remain halted until the company “fully meets the prepaid service provisioning requirements,” the telco said in the statement.

These requirements include a September order from regulator, Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC). This states all pre-paid sim users must enter a personal identification number when recharging their accounts and that this number must be the same as the one registered with their mobile operator when the sim card was bought, according to a statement on the CITC website.

This measure is designed to ensure customer account details are kept up to date, the CITC said.

Mobily said the financial impact of the CITC’s decision would be “insignificant”, claiming data, corporate and postpaid revenues would meet its main growth drivers.

The firm, which competes with Saudi Telecom Co (STC) and Zain Saudi, reported a 23 percent rise in third-quarter profit in October, beating forecasts.

Prepaid mobile subscriptions are typically more popular among middle and lower income groups, with telecom operators pushing customers to shift to monthly contracts that include a data allowance.

Customers on monthly, or postpaid, contracts are also less likely to switch provider, but the bulk of customers remain on pre-paid accounts.

Mobily shares were trading down 1.4 percent at 0820 GMT on the Saudi bourse.

(Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Dinesh Nair)

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