Wall Street edges lower after Fed minutes

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks edged lower on Thursday after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting showed growing concern about the risks of its highly stimulative monetary policy.


Despite the concerns about the effects of its asset purchases, the Fed look set to continue its open-ended stimulus program for now.


The minutes from the December meeting showed a growing reticence about further increases in the central bank's $2.9 trillion balance sheet, which it expanded sharply in response to the financial crisis and recession of 2007-2009.


Stocks had pushed the benchmark S&P 500 index 4.3 percent higher during a two-day run as investors turned their focus to upcoming battles in Congress, including likelihood of bitter fights over spending cuts and raising the federal debt ceiling.


"As we look down the pathway here, there are some real issues in front of the market. There is going to be a new battle in two months over the debt ceiling and sequestration and fourth-quarter earnings are going to start to come into focus," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.


"There are some issues out there that could hold this market back, but on the other side of the ledger, zero interest rates are a tremendous stock market flotation device."


The rally in equities began on the last day of 2012 on optimism a deal would be reached to avert the "fiscal cliff," and avoid a possible recession. Gains continued on Wednesday, the first trading day of 2013, with Wall Street's best performance since December 20, 2011 after Congress approved a fiscal compromise.


Retailers advanced after several major companies in the sector beat expectations of modest sales increases in December, with the S&P retail index <.spxrt> up 0.8 percent and the Morgan Stanley retail index <.mvr> up 0.6 percent.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 17.47 points, or 0.13 percent, to 13,395.08. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> shed 2.30 points, or 0.16 percent, to 1,460.12. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dipped 5.19 points, or 0.17 percent, to 3,107.07.


Economic data showed U.S. private-sector employers shrugged off a looming budget crisis and stepped up hiring in December, offering further evidence of underlying strength in the economy as 2012 ended.


The government's broader monthly payrolls report, due on Friday, is expected to show the economy created 150,000 jobs compared with 146,000 in November, according to a Reuters poll. The U.S. unemployment rate is seen holding steady at 7.7 percent.


Retailers advanced after several major companies in the sector beat expectations of modest sales increases in December, with the S&P retail index <.spxrt> up 0.8 percent and the Morgan Stanley retail index <.mvr> up 0.6 percent.


Shares in Costco Wholesale Corp rose 1.4 percent to $102.85 after the company reported a better-than-expected 9 percent rise in December sales at stores open at least a year.


Gap Inc stock climbed 3.1 percent to $32.33 following news that the retailer will buy women's fashion boutique Intermix Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported.


Family Dollar Stores Inc stumbled 12 percent to $56.38 on the company's report of lower-than-expected quarterly profit.


(Additional reporting by Angela Moon, Editing by Bernadette Baum and Kenneth Barry)



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Dozens of Syrians Killed in Explosions Around Damascus


Andoni Lubaki/Associated Press


Rebel fighters patrol a neighborhood in Aleppo on Wednesday.







BEIRUT, Lebanon — Dozens of Syrians were killed or wounded in an explosion at a gas station east of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Wednesday, and explosions in another Damascus suburb killed at least six people and wounded many more, including women and children, according to videos and reports from antigovernment activists.




The violence came as the United Nations released a study showing that more than 60,000 people had been killed in Syria’s 22-month-old conflict, a third higher than estimates by antigovernment activist groups.


Also on Wednesday, the family of James Foley, a reporter for the Global Post Web site, announced that Mr. Foley had been kidnapped on Nov. 22 by unidentified gunmen in northwest Syria. Mr. Foley had survived an abduction in Libya while covering the conflict there.


A recent flurry of diplomatic activity by Russia, the United Nations’ special envoy and others aimed at finding a political solution appeared to founder in recent days as neither Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, nor his opponents expressed a willingness to make concessions to end the bloody conflict.


The explosion near Damascus, which witnesses blamed on an airstrike, took place in a heavily contested suburban area. It hit a gas station where scores of people had lined up for fuel, which had just become available there after about a month, residents said. Videos posted by antigovernment activists showed charred bodies.


One man, using the nickname Abu Fuad, said in a telephone interview that he had just filled up his gas tank and was driving away when he heard the screech of fighter jets.


He was less than a quarter mile away when he heard the explosions, he said.


“There were many cars waiting their turn,” he said. “Yesterday, we heard that the government sent fuel to the gas station here, so all the people around came to fill up their cars.”


In a sign of the depth of distrust the conflict has spawned, Abu Fuad suggested that restocking the station was a government ruse. “They sent fuel as a trap,” he said.


In northern Syria, rebels used rockets to attack the Taftanaz military airport, a long-contested area in the province of Idlib, activists reported. Rebels have also stepped up attacks on airports in the neighboring province of Aleppo, trying to disrupt the warplanes and helicopters that government forces increasingly rely on for attacks, and even for supply lines, in the north.


The United Nations study suggested that the human toll of the war was even greater than previously estimated. Two days ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a rebel group that tracks the war from Britain, reported 45,000 deaths, mostly civilian, since the conflict began in March 2011.


“The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking,” the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said in a statement after her agency released the study.


“We must not compound the existing disaster by failing to prepare for the inevitable — and very dangerous — instability that will occur when the conflict ends,” she added. To avoid repeating the experience of collapsed states like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, she said, “serious planning needs to get under way immediately, not just to provide humanitarian aid to all those who need it, but to protect all Syrian citizens from extrajudicial reprisals and acts of revenge.”


The study’s surprisingly high death toll reflected only those killings in which victims had been identified by their full name, and the date and location of their death had been recorded, leaving the possibility of many more dead.


Independent researchers compiled reports of more than 147,000 killings in Syria’s conflict from seven sources, including the government. When duplicates were removed, there remained a list of 59,648 people killed between March 2011 and the end of November.


Meanwhile, John Foley, James Foley’s father, stressed that his son was an “objective journalist” and issued a plea to his captors to contact the family so that they can work for his release.


“We want Jim to come safely home, or at least we need to speak with him to know he’s O.K.,” John Foley said. “Jim is an objective journalist and we appeal for the release of Jim unharmed. To the people who have Jim, please contact us so we can work together toward his release.”


Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.



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Apple reportedly considering Waze acquisition to help fix iOS Maps app









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Robin Roberts Reunites with Her Dog 100 Days After Bone Marrow Transplant















01/02/2013 at 03:30 PM EST



This may have been the best New Year's yet for Robin Roberts.

Exactly 100 days after successfully undergoing a bone marrow transplant, the Good Morning America host was reunited with her beloved dog, KJ, just days before ringing in 2013.

"Look who made it back for my 100 day celebration," she Tweeted on Dec. 29, with a photo of herself and KJ in a cuddly embrace. "We just keep staring at each [other] … can't believe she's finally home."

Roberts, who had the transplant Sept. 20, suffers from a rare blood disorder called myelodysplastic syndrome. The 100-day mark is a criticial milestone in her long recovery and she celebrated it on Twitter earlier that day.

"Every morning I mark the day post my bone marrow transplant. Today I reached a major milestone ... Day 100! Blessings..XO," she wrote.

In November, Roberts said that with each day comes a newfound strength.

"It's a journey that kind of zigzags, and there are complications and things like that, but I feel good. I feel stronger every day," she told her sister and donor, Sally-Ann Roberts, in an interview.

With KJ now by her side, her support system is even larger.

"Couldn't resist sharing one more photo … KJ already feeling right at home," she wrote, with a photo of the dog snoozing on her leg. "So happy to have the lil girlback."

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating


This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.


After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.


It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.


All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.


For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.


Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."


What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.


"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.


Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.


What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.


A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.


The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.


Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.


Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.


"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.


The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.


A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.


Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.


"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."


___


Online:


Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe


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Wall Street rallies on "fiscal cliff" agreement

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks began the new year with a broad rally on Wednesday, sparked by a last-minute deal in Washington to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts that threatened to derail the economy.


In 2013's first trading session, the S&P 500 was on target for its best percentage gain since November 19 and highest close since October 19.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 229.64 points, or 1.75 percent, to 13,333.78. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 26.53 points, or 1.86 percent, to 1,452.72. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> jumped 74.26 points, or 2.46 percent, to 3,093.77.


U.S. markets were closed on Tuesday for New Year's Day.


Nine stocks rose for every one falling on the New York Stock Exchange and all 10 of the S&P 500 industry sector indexes gained at least 1 percent. The S&P financial index <.gspf> was up 2.2 percent.


The S&P Information Technology index <.gspt> gained 2.1 percent, including Hewlett-Packard , which climbed nearly 5 percent to $14.95. HP's gain followed a miserable 2012 when the stock fell nearly 45 percent.


Congress passed a bill to prevent huge tax hikes and delay spending cuts that would have pushed the world's largest economy off a "fiscal cliff" and possibly into recession.


The vote avoided steep income-tax increases for a majority of Americans but failed to resolve a major showdown over cutting the budget deficit, leaving investors and businesses with only limited clarity about the outlook for the economy. Spending cuts of $109 billion in military and domestic programs were temporarily delayed, and another fight over raising the U.S. debt limit also looms.


"We got through the fiscal cliff. The next big thing, and probably more contentious thing, is negotiating the debt ceiling and possibly entitlement reform in early 2013," said Jim Russell, senior equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.


Hard choices about budget cuts and the critical need to raise the debt ceiling will confront Congress about the same time in two months "so the fur will be flying," Russell said.


U.S. stocks ended 2012 with the S&P 500 up 13.4 percent for the year, as investors largely shrugged off worries about the fiscal cliff. For the year, the Dow gained 7.3 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 15.9 percent.


Bank shares rose following news that U.S. regulators are close to securing another multibillion-dollar settlement with the largest banks to resolve allegations that they unlawfully cut corners when foreclosing on delinquent borrowers.


Bank of America Corp rose 3 percent to $11.95 and Citigroup Inc gained 3.7 percent to $41.03. The KBW bank index <.bkx> rose 2.4 percent and the S&P financial sector <.gspf> climbed 2.2 percent.


Shares of Zipcar Inc surged 48.2 percent to $12.21 after Avis Budget Group Inc said it would buy Zipcar for about $500 million in cash to compete with larger rivals Hertz and Enterprise Holdings Inc. Avis advanced 4.8 percent to $20.78.


Shares of Apple rose 2.5 percent to $545.56, helping to lift the S&P technology index <.gspt> up 2.3 percent following a report that the most valuable tech company has started testing a new iPhone and a new version of its iOS software.


Economic data showed U.S. manufacturing ended 2012 on an upswing despite fears about the fiscal cliff, but construction spending fell in November for the first time in eight months.


(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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Clashes in West Bank Injure Palestinians





JERUSALEM — Violent clashes broke out on Tuesday between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in a village in the northern West Bank, leaving up to 30 Palestinians injured, after an undercover Israeli force entered the village to arrest a wanted militant, according to Palestinian news reports and the Israeli military.




The military said two soldiers were wounded, neither seriously, by rocks thrown by Palestinians. A spokeswoman for the Israeli military, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under army rules, said the purpose of Tuesday’s raid on the village, Tamoun, was to arrest a resident, Murad Bani Odeh, who she said was suspected of being a terrorist. Both the military and Palestinian reports identified Mr. Odeh, who was captured by the Israeli forces, as a member of Islamic Jihad, an extremist organization.


In the raid, an undercover force, reportedly disguised as vegetable merchants, entered the village first. When youths started throwing stones and a violent riot broke out, regular forces came in and dispersed the crowd with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. The military spokeswoman denied Palestinian reports that the soldiers also used live fire.


The confrontation was the latest manifestation of the simmering unrest and disturbances that have spread across the West Bank since mid-November, when Israel embarked on a fierce eight-day military campaign against the rocket-launching infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the militant group Hamas.


It also comes after years of stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, an issue that has re-emerged in recent days as an Israeli election issue, with Israelis scheduled to go to the polls on Jan. 22.


The fate of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — territories that the Palestinians claim for a future state — is always a core, if sometimes underlying, issue for Israeli voters. Until now, the leaders of the two largest political forces, the rightist Likud-Beiteinu joint ticket and the center-left Labor Party, had mostly avoided the subject, aware of public fatigue and skepticism about the prospects of a peace deal and preferring to refocus the debate onto security and socioeconomic issues.


But the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, a veteran politician who is now supposed to stay out of politics and play a mostly symbolic role, intervened in the election campaign on Sunday, telling a large group of visiting Israeli ambassadors that he considered the president of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to be a partner for peace.


“No one will change my opinion about Abu Mazen,” he said in broadcast remarks, referring to Mr. Abbas by his popular name, “even if they say I cannot express it because I’m the president.” Israel, he added, “must complete the task of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians without further delay.”


The remarks infuriated Likud-Beiteinu, which issued a sharp statement condemning Mr. Peres for expressing what it called a “personal political opinion that is disconnected from the Israeli public’s stance regarding Abu Mazen, the peace refusenik.”


Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud-Beiteinu, who has endorsed a two-state solution under certain conditions, responded on Tuesday with a statement that called for extreme caution and an Israeli foot on the brakes.


“In Egypt, the regime has been replaced, in Syria the regime is being shaken and this could also happen in the Palestinian Authority areas in Judea and Samaria,” he said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names. “Everyone knows that Hamas could take over the Palestinian Authority,” he continued. “It could happen after an agreement; it could happen before an agreement, like it happened in Gaza. Therefore, as opposed to the voices that I have heard recently urging me to run forward, to make concessions and to withdraw, I think that the diplomatic process must be managed responsibly and sagaciously and not in undue haste.”


There has been a palpable rise in incidents of stone-throwing and firebombing by Palestinians against Israeli vehicles on West Bank roads, and an increase in localized clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and soldiers, according to Israeli officials. On Monday night, the military said, an Israeli civilian bus traveling south of Hebron was shot at. There were no injuries.


The spike in unrest comes after four years of relative stability in the West Bank, and it has led some Israeli commentators to speculate about the chances of a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.


Israeli and Palestinian officials say privately that they have no evidence of plans for a full-blown uprising, though nobody could rule out a spontaneous outburst triggered by some unforeseen incident. Mr. Abbas has stated publicly that he will not support an armed uprising on his watch.


In the meantime, the Israeli military says it has been trying to balance proactive counterterrorism measures — like widespread arrests of militants belonging to Hamas and other armed groups — with a policy of restraint when faced with rioters, to try to prevent Palestinian fatalities and a subsequent spiral of violence.


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Len Goodman, Dancing with the Stars Judge, Marries Longtime Girlfriend















01/01/2013 at 02:15 PM EST



From the judges' table to the altar!

Len Goodman of Dancing with the Stars tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend Sue Barrett on Sunday in London.

The couple exchanged vows during a surprise ceremony in front of 30 family members and friends.

Goodman, 68, and Barrett, 47, have been together for more than 10 years.

"I've had a marvelous day and now my gorgeous Sue is the new Mrs. Goodman," the ballroom dancing expert tells the Daily Mail.

This is Goodman's third marriage.

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"Fiscal cliff" moves to House, timing and outcome uncertain


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington's last-minute scramble to step back from a recession-inducing "fiscal cliff" shifted to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday after the Senate approved a bipartisan deal to avoid steep tax hikes and spending cuts.


In a rare late-night show of unity, the Senate voted 89 to 8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while keeping income taxes low on more moderate earners.


The bill's prospects were less certain in the House, where a vote had not yet been scheduled.


Republicans, unhappy that the bill contained over $600 billion in tax increases but only around $12 billion in spending cuts, said they may change it more to their liking and send it back to the Senate. Party leaders planned to take the temperature of rank-and-file lawmakers over the afternoon before deciding on a course of action.


"My recommendation would be not to take a package put together by a bunch of sleep-deprived octogenarians on New Year's Eve," said Representative Steve LaTourette, a moderate Republican from Ohio who is a close ally of House Speaker John Boehner.


Republicans could face a backlash if they scuttle the deal. Income tax rates technically rose back to 1990s levels for all Americans at midnight, and public opinion polls show Republicans would shoulder the blame if Congress fails to act.


Many conservative Republicans have rejected tax increases on any Americans, no matter how wealthy. Some liberal Democrats were also upset with the complex deal, which they thought gave away too much.


Lingering uncertainty over U.S. tax and spending policy has unnerved investors and depressed business activity for months, and lawmakers had hoped to reach a deal before Tuesday, when a broad range of automatic tax increases and spending cuts would begin to punch a $600 billion hole in the economy.


Financial markets have avoided a steep plunge on the assumption that Washington would ultimately avoid pushing the country off the fiscal cliff into a recession.


With financial markets closed for the New Year's Day holiday, lawmakers have one more day to close the deal.


"My district cannot afford to wait a few days and have the stock market go down 300 points tomorrow if we don't get together and do something," Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, said on the House floor.


LATE-NIGHT DRAMA


The bill passed by the Senate at around 2 a.m. would raise income taxes on families earning more than $450,000 per year and limit the amount of deductions they can take to lower their tax bill.


Low temporary rates that have been in place for less affluent taxpayers for the past decade would be made permanent, along with a range of targeted tax breaks put in place by President Barack Obama in the depths of the 2009 recession.


However, workers would see up to $2,000 more taken out of their paychecks annually as a temporary payroll tax cut was set to expire.


The bill would also delay an across-the-board spending cut in domestic and military programs for two months, and extend jobless benefits for 2 million long-term unemployed people who otherwise would see them run out.


The bill would raise taxes on less than 1 percent of the population, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.


However, that may be too much for conservative Republicans in the House, who last month scuttled an effort by Boehner to limit tax increases to those who earn more than $1 million. He has faced insurrections from his conservative wing in other budget showdowns over the past two years.


Republicans had hoped to include significant spending cuts in the deal to narrow trillion-dollar budget deficits. Conservatives were already looking forward to the next battle over the debt ceiling, in late February, to extract deficit reduction measures from the Democratic president.


The White House has floated $600 billion worth of spending cuts in earlier negotiations, and Obama said he would be willing to tackle deficit reduction over the coming months.


"There's more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I'm willing to do it," he said in a statement urging the House to pass the current bill.


Vice President Joe Biden, who was instrumental in pushing through the Senate measure, addressed a closed-door meeting of House Democrats seeking their support to pass the bill.


The conservative Club for Growth urged a "no" vote on the Senate measure, and warned that Republicans who support it could face a primary challenge when they run for re-election in two years.


Liberal groups also have urged Democrats to reject the deal.


Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO labor union, wrote on Twitter that the deal does not raise taxes enough on the wealthy and "sets the stage for more hostage taking" by Republicans in future budget confrontations.


Obama had originally sought to raise taxes on households making more than $250,000. Even with the higher threshold, the White House said is getting 85 percent of the revenue it wanted.


Republican Representative Tom Cole said his House colleagues should pass the Senate bill rather than try to change it.


"We ought to take this deal right now, and we'll live to fight another day," Cole said on MSNBC.


(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Mark Felsenthal, Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Alistair Bell)



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Ruthless Smuggling Rings Put Rhinos in the Cross Hairs





KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa — They definitely did not look like ordinary big-game hunters, the stream of slender young Thai women who showed up on the veld wearing tight blue jeans and sneakers.




But the rhinoceros carcasses kept piling up around them, and it was only after dozens of these hulking, relatively rare animals were dead and their precious horns sawed off that an extravagant scheme came to light.


The Thai women, it ends up, weren’t hunters at all. Many never even squeezed off a shot. Instead, they were prostitutes hired by a criminal syndicate based 6,000 miles away in Laos to exploit loopholes in big game hunting rules and get its hands on as many rhino horns as possible — horns that are now literally worth more than gold.


“These girls had no idea what they were doing,” said Paul O’Sullivan, a private investigator in Johannesburg who helped crack the case. “They thought they were going on safari.”


The rhino horn rush has gotten so out of control that it has exploded into a worldwide criminal enterprise, drawing in a surreal cast of characters — not just Thai prostitutes, but also Irish gangsters, Vietnamese diplomats, Chinese scientists, veterinarians, chopper pilots, antiques dealers and recently an American rodeo star looking for a quick buck who used Facebook to find some horns.


Driven by a common belief in Asia that ground-up rhino horns can cure cancer and other ills, the trade has also been embraced by criminal syndicates that normally traffic drugs and guns, but have branched into the underground animal parts business because it is seen as “low risk, high profit,” American officials say.


“Get caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine, you will receive a very significant prison sentence,” said Ed Grace, a deputy chief with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. But with a kilogram of rhino horn, he added, “you may only get a fine.”


The typical rhino horn is about two feet long and 10 pounds, much of it formed from the same substance as fingernails. Yet it can fetch nearly $30,000 a pound, more than crack cocaine, and conservationists worry that this “ridiculous price,” as one wildlife manager put it, could drive rhinos into extinction.


Gangs are so desperate for new sources of horn that criminals have even smashed into dozens of glass museum cases all across Europe to snatch them from exhibits.


“Astonishment and rage, that’s what we felt,” said Paolo Agnelli, a manager at the Florence Museum of Natural History, after three rhino horns were stolen last year, including a very rare one from 1824.


American federal agents recently staged a cross-country undercover rhino horn sting operation, called Operation Crash, “crash” being the term for a herd of rhinos.


Among the 12 people arrested: Wade Steffen, a champion steer wrestler from Texas, who pleaded guilty in May to trafficking dozens of horns that he found through hunters, estate sales and Facebook; and two members of an Irish gang — the same gang suspected of breaking into the museums across Europe.


In an e-mail to an undercover agent, an Irish gangster bragged: “Believe me WE NEVER LOSES A HORN TO CUSTOMS, we have so many contacts and people payed off now we can bring anything we want out of nearly any country into Europe.”


Corruption is a huge element, just like in the illegal ivory trade, in which rebel groups, government armies and threadbare hunters have been wiping out tens of thousands of elephants throughout Africa, selling the tusks to sophisticated criminal networks that move them across the globe with the help of corrupt officials.


Here in South Africa, home to the majority of the world’s last surviving 28,000 rhinos or so, the country is throwing just about everything it has to stop the slaughter — thousands of rangers, the national army, a new spy plane, even drones — but it is losing.


The number of rhinos poached in South Africa has soared in the past five years, from 13 killed in 2007 to more than 630 this year. The prehistoric, battleship-gray animals are often found on their knees, bleeding to death from a gaping stump on their face.


“Ever seen a dead rhino?” said Philip Jonker, who works for a private security firm that has gone into wildlife protection. “It’s worse than going to a funeral.”


Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.



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