S&P 500 vaults 1,500 as earnings cheer Wall Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 index on Friday closed above 1,500 for the first time in more than five years as strong earnings reports, including Procter & Gamble's, helped the benchmark extend its rally to eight days.

The winning streak is the longest in eight years and left the S&P 500 about 4.1 percent away from its all-time closing high of 1,565.15 on October 9, 2007.

The equity market's strong start this year has been attributed to solid corporate results, an agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power, encouraging signs from the global economy and seasonal inflows into stocks.

Procter & Gamble shares led the Dow and S&P higher with a 4 percent gain to $73.25 after the world's top household products maker's quarterly profit soared past expectations. The company also raised its sales and earnings outlook for the fiscal year.

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell in December but rose in 2012 to the highest level since 2009, a sign the U.S. housing market turned a corner last year.

"Economic data in the U.S. has been trending higher, albeit modestly. Things are incrementally better," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

"The market was able to move forward despite deterioration in Apple and that's also a positive."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 70.65 points or 0.51 percent, to 13,895.98, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 8.14 points or 0.54 percent, to 1,502.96 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 19.33 points or 0.62 percent, to 3,149.71.

The S&P 500 closed at its highest since December 10, 2007 and the Dow ended at its highest since October 31, 2007.

Apple shares dropped 2.4 percent to $439.88, and the iPhone maker lost its coveted title as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization to Exxon Mobil Corp .

Apple's market cap fell to $413 billion, down roughly $250 billion from its September peak. Apple's fall is about equal to the entire value of Google Inc .

Adding to the bullish tone, German business morale improved for a third consecutive month in January to its highest in more than six months. In addition, European banks said they will repay the European Central Bank much more than expected of the loans the bank gave them during the crisis.

"Good news in credit markets helps set the stage for (more investment in) riskier assets," Krosby said.

For the week, the Dow rose 1.8 percent, the S&P climbed 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq rose 0.5 percent. It was the fourth straight week of gains for all three indexes.

Helping to lift the Nasdaq on Friday, Starbucks , rose 4.1 percent to $56.81 after the coffee retailer reported stronger-than-expected sales in the United States and Asia. {ID:nL1N0ATH04]

Netflix added 15.5 percent to $169.56, following its massive 42.2 percent jump Thursday after it announced a surprise jump in subscribers to its video streaming service.

Thomson Reuters data through Friday showed that of the 147 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings, 68 percent exceeded expectations. Since 1994, 62 percent of companies have topped expectations, while the average over the past four quarters stands at 65 percent.

Halliburton Co shares jumped 5.1 percent to $39.72 after the world's second-largest oilfield services company reported higher-than-expected earnings and sales for the fourth quarter.

About 6.2 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average during January 2012 of about 6.93 billion shares.

On the NYSE, more than three issues rose for every two that fell and on Nasdaq five rose for every four decliners.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Formally Lifting a Combat Ban, Military Chiefs Stress Equal Opportunity

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday formally lifted the military’s ban on women in combat, saying that not every woman would become a combat soldier but that every woman deserved the chance to try.

They said that the new policy was in many ways an affirmation of what was already occurring on the battlefield, where women have found themselves in combat over the past decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that it was essential that the military offer fully equal opportunities to both women and men.

“They’re fighting and dying together, and the time has come for our policies to reflect that reality,” Mr. Panetta said at a packed Pentagon news conference.

General Dempsey, like Mr. Panetta, said that his views had evolved as he came into contact with women in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he first got to Baghdad in 2003 as a division commander, he said, he got into a Humvee for his first trip out of his base.

“I asked the driver, you know, who he was and where he was from, and I slapped the turret gunner on the leg, and I said, ‘Who are you?'” General Dempsey recalled. “And she leaned down and said, ‘I’m Amanda.’ And I said, ‘Oh, O.K. So a female turret gunner is protecting a division commander.'”

Mr. Panetta and General Dempsey said they had worked together on lifting the ban for more than a year and had regularly briefed President Obama on developments. They described him as highly supportive of the decision but not intimately involved in the process.

In December, Pentagon officials said, Mr. Panetta and the Joint Chiefs reached a tentative agreement that women should be permitted in combat. Mr. Panetta thought about it over the holidays and returned early this month to receive a letter dated Jan. 9 from General Dempsey strongly recommending the change.

In the most vocal official opposition to the changes, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is set to become the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, warned that some in Congress may seek legislation to limit the combat jobs open to women.

“I want everyone to know that the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which I am the ranking member, will have a period to provide oversight and review,” Mr. Inhofe said in a statement. “During that time, if necessary, we will be able to introduce legislation to stop any changes we believe to be detrimental to our fighting forces and their capabilities. I suspect there will be cases where legislation becomes necessary.”

Pentagon officials said that the different services would have until May 15 to submit their plans for carrying out the new policy, but that the military wanted to move as quickly as possible to open up combat positions to women. Military officials said that there were more than 200,000 jobs now potentially open to women in specialties like infantry, armor, artillery and elite Special Operations commando units like the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers.

If a service determines that a specialty should not be open to women, Pentagon officials said that representatives of the service would have to make the case to the defense secretary by January 2016.

Officials said repeatedly that they would not lower the physical standards for women in rigorous combat jobs like the infantry, but they said they would review standards for all the military specialties in coming months and potentially change them to keep up with, for example, advances in equipment and weaponry. Marine officials also said they might change the initial physical standards that recruits have to meet before they are sent off to boot camp.

At a Pentagon briefing about the changes, reporters asked several times about two women who entered the Marines’ brutal Infantry Officer Course in Quantico, Va., last year as an experiment, since neither at the time would have been allowed to serve in the infantry. One woman dropped out on the first day, and the other withdrew later because of physical ailments, including stress fractures. Many men fail the course as well. Marine officials said they were determined to open up jobs to women as long as they qualified for them.

Pentagon officials and military officers said it remained unclear how many women would apply to join the elite commando and counterterrorism forces, and some of those combat jobs might be among any that are proposed for exclusion. A high percentage of men fail to make the cut for those units, which include the Army Rangers and the Green Berets, and Navy SEAL teams.

Army leaders said an important initiative would be to create a cohort of female officers and noncommissioned officers who could provide leadership in combat units that would be accepting female soldiers for the first time. Policies may have to change to allow those officers to move from one military specialty to another.

The Army has also conducted studies on the psychological, cultural and social aspects of integrating women into units that have long been a male-only domain. Those studies are expected to guide how the ground forces alter their base housing, training and deployment infrastructure.

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Microsoft profit dips on lower Xbox holiday sales

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp reported a dip in fiscal second-quarter profit on Thursday, as weaker sales of its Xbox game system in the holiday quarter offset a solid start for its new Windows 8 operating system.

The world’s largest software company reported profit of $ 6.4 billion, or 76 cents per share, compared to $ 6.6 billion, or 78 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Overall sales rose 3 percent to $ 21.5 billion.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Jenna Fischer Cried Tears of Joy over John Krasinski's Office Casting

TV Watch

By Dahvi Shira

01/24/2013 at 04:50 PM EST

Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski

Jason LaVeris/Filmmagic

It was love at first audition for Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski.

Fischer who plays Pam to Krasinski's Jim on The Office, isn't sure their characters would have become the fan-favorites they are if he hadn't been chosen to play her husband.

"I was paired up with John often and I thought this was good because he was my favorite Jim," Fischer, 38, explains on Thursday's episode of The Jeff Probst Show, says of the final round of eight actors – four Pams and four Jims.

"On the second day, John whispered to me, 'You're my favorite Pam. I hope you get it.' "

Needless to say, when the actress heard the news about her newly-casted costar, she was overjoyed.

"When they called me and said I got the role, I said, 'Who's Jim – did you cast John Krasinski?' " Fischer says. "They said, 'Yes' and I started crying because I knew it would be good. And I mean this honestly – I can't do Pam without him. In the way you need the right partner to have a great marriage, I needed the right costar to have this relationship.”

Getting the role that skyrocketed Fischer's career may indirectly be thanks to Alyson Hannigan, who – for once – didn't try out for the same part.

"I had been knocking around Los Angeles for about eight years going to various auditions. I would do eight auditions for a new television show and then at the very end they would offer the role to Alyson Hannigan," the actress admits.

"She was my biggest competition … I would get to the final audition and I'd go, 'I know I've got this one.' And then she'd walk in the door and I'd go, 'Nope.' "

Now that it's the beginning of the end for The Office – Thursday's episode will reveal the secrets behind the documentary crew filming at Dunder Mifflin all these years – can Fischer share any behind-the-scenes scoop?

"Around the holidays we do our online Christmas shopping. Phyllis [Smith] is hilarious – she pays her bills online, in the background," the actress reveals. "She brings in these stacks of papers and you see her over there, clicking on her bank. She's just paying bills."

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Penalty could keep smokers out of health overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.

The Affordable Care Act — "Obamacare" to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.

For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.

Younger smokers could be charged lower penalties under rules proposed last fall by the Obama administration. But older smokers could face a heavy hit on their household budgets at a time in life when smoking-related illnesses tend to emerge.

Workers covered on the job would be able to avoid tobacco penalties by joining smoking cessation programs, because employer plans operate under different rules. But experts say that option is not guaranteed to smokers trying to purchase coverage individually.

Nearly one of every five U.S. adults smokes. That share is higher among lower-income people, who also are more likely to work in jobs that don't come with health insurance and would therefore depend on the new federal health care law. Smoking increases the risk of developing heart disease, lung problems and cancer, contributing to nearly 450,000 deaths a year.

Insurers won't be allowed to charge more under the overhaul for people who are overweight, or have a health condition like a bad back or a heart that skips beats — but they can charge more if a person smokes.

Starting next Jan. 1, the federal health care law will make it possible for people who can't get coverage now to buy private policies, providing tax credits to keep the premiums affordable. Although the law prohibits insurance companies from turning away the sick, the penalties for smokers could have the same effect in many cases, keeping out potentially costly patients.

"We don't want to create barriers for people to get health care coverage," said California state Assemblyman Richard Pan, who is working on a law in his state that would limit insurers' ability to charge smokers more. The federal law allows states to limit or change the smoking penalty.

"We want people who are smoking to get smoking cessation treatment," added Pan, a pediatrician who represents the Sacramento area.

Obama administration officials declined to be interviewed for this article, but a former consumer protection regulator for the government is raising questions.

"If you are an insurer and there is a group of smokers you don't want in your pool, the ones you really don't want are the ones who have been smoking for 20 or 30 years," said Karen Pollitz, an expert on individual health insurance markets with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "You would have the flexibility to discourage them."

Several provisions in the federal health care law work together to leave older smokers with a bleak set of financial options, said Pollitz, formerly deputy director of the Office of Consumer Support in the federal Health and Human Services Department.

First, the law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times as much as their youngest customers.

Second, the law allows insurers to levy the full 50 percent penalty on older smokers while charging less to younger ones.

And finally, government tax credits that will be available to help pay premiums cannot be used to offset the cost of penalties for smokers.

Here's how the math would work:

Take a hypothetical 60-year-old smoker making $35,000 a year. Estimated premiums for coverage in the new private health insurance markets under Obama's law would total $10,172. That person would be eligible for a tax credit that brings the cost down to $3,325.

But the smoking penalty could add $5,086 to the cost. And since federal tax credits can't be used to offset the penalty, the smoker's total cost for health insurance would be $8,411, or 24 percent of income. That's considered unaffordable under the federal law. The numbers were estimated using the online Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator.

"The effect of the smoking (penalty) allowed under the law would be that lower-income smokers could not afford health insurance," said Richard Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions, a nonpartisan research group that called attention to the issue with a study about the potential impact in California.

In today's world, insurers can simply turn down a smoker. Under Obama's overhaul, would they actually charge the full 50 percent? After all, workplace anti-smoking programs that use penalties usually charge far less, maybe $75 or $100 a month.

Robert Laszewski, a consultant who previously worked in the insurance industry, says there's a good reason to charge the maximum.

"If you don't charge the 50 percent, your competitor is going to do it, and you are going to get a disproportionate share of the less-healthy older smokers," said Laszewski. "They are going to have to play defense."

___

Online:

Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator — http://healthreform.kff.org/subsidycalculator.aspx

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S&P rises for seventh day but 1,500 too steep a climb

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The smallest of gains gave the Standard & Poor's 500 its seventh straight winning day on Thursday, but the index failed to hold above the 1,500 line, restrained by Apple's worst day in more than four years.

Apple Inc slid 12.4 percent to $450.50 a day after it posted revenue that missed Wall Street's forecast as iPhone sales were poorer than expected.

The sharp drop wiped out nearly $60 billion in Apple's market capitalization to less than $423 billion, leaving the company vulnerable to losing its status as the most valuable U.S. company to second-place ExxonMobil , at $416.5 billion.

The S&P 500, however, managed to hit its longest winning streak since October 2006.

"The market has sent the message it is no longer driven by the whims of Apple," said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O'Neil Securities in New York.

The S&P 500 briefly traded above 1,500 for the first time since December 12, 2007, but failed to hold above it, indicating that momentum is waning and a pullback is in the charts.

"If the market had a little bit more excitement to it, momentum players would have jumped after it broke through 1,500. Investors know the market is a little bit ahead of itself," Polcari said.

Economic data helped buoy equities as U.S. factory activity grew the most in nearly two years in January and new claims for jobless benefits dropped to a five-year low last week, giving surprisingly strong signals on the economy's pulse.

At the same time, Chinese manufacturing grew this month at the fastest pace in about two years, while data suggesting German growth picked up boosted hopes for a euro-zone recovery.

"PMI in Asia, Europe, and obviously, here in the United States, is moving in the right direction, and that's stuff people should be excited about," Polcari said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 46 points or 0.33 percent, to 13,825.33 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> inched up just 0.01 of a point, or 0 percent, to finish at 1,494.82. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 23.29 points or 0.74 percent, to end at 3,130.38, with most of that loss on Apple's slide.

The broader Russell 2000 index <.rut> also hit a milestone as it closed above 900 points for the first time.

Video streaming service Netflix Inc surprised Wall Street with a quarterly profit after it added nearly 4 million customers in the United States and abroad. Netflix shares surged 42.2 percent to $146.86, its biggest percentage jump ever.

Earnings have helped drive the stock market's recent rally. Thomson Reuters data through early Thursday showed that of the 133 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 66.9 percent have exceeded expectations - above the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

About 6.8 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average during January 2012 of about 6.93 billion shares.

Roughly five issues rose for every four that fell on both the NYSE and Nasdaq.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

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The Lede Blog: Clinton Testifies on Benghazi Attacks

The Lede followed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

At a House Committee hearing last October investigating the attack, as reported on The Lede, State Department officials and security experts who served on the ground offered conflicting assessments about what resources were requested and made available to deal with growing security concerns in Tripoli and Benghazi.

Mrs. Clinton had been scheduled to testify before Congress last month, but an illness, a concussion and a blood clot near her brain forced her to postpone her appearance.

As our colleagues Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported, four State Department officials were removed from their posts on last month after an independent panel criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

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Racy Victorian divorces online at genealogy website

LONDON (Reuters) – The original Mrs Robinson’s diary and scandalous suggestions about a former heir to the British throne are all part of the latest ancestral revelations to go online.

British genealogical website Ancestry.co.uk said on Tuesday it has put the transcripts of thousands of Victorian divorce proceedings online, which reveal the racy details of an era that most modern Britons consider to have been dominated by imperial duty, a stiff upper lip and formal familial relations.

The UK Civil Divorce Records, 1858-1911 date from the year when the Matrimonial Causes Act removed the jurisdiction of divorce from the church and made it a civil matter.

Before this, a full divorce required intervention by Parliament, which had only granted around 300 since 1668. The records also include civil court records on separation, custody battles, legitimacy claims and nullification of marriages, according to the website.

Primarily due to their high cost, divorces were relatively rare in the 19th century, with around 1,200 applications made a year, compared to approximately 120,000 each year today, and not all requests were successful due to the strength of evidence required.

The rarity of such cases, combined with the fact that it was wealthy, often well-known nobility involved, made the divorce proceedings huge public scandals, played out in the press as real life soap operas.

Famously high-profile divorces included that of Henry and Isabella Robinson, the inspiration for the novel “Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace”, by Kate Summerscale.

Henry Robinson sued for divorce after reading his wife Isabella’s diary, which included in-depth details of her affair with a younger married man.

The diary was used as court evidence and when reported by the media became a huge scandal, partly because of the language used within the journal. Isabella, however, claimed the diary was a work of fiction, which led to her victory in court.

Conservative MP and baronet, Charles Mordaunt, filed for divorce in 1869 from his wife Harriet who stood accused of adultery with multiple men.

The case became national news when the Prince of Wales was rumored to be among the men who had had an affair with her. This rumor was never proven and Lady Mordaunt was eventually declared mad and spent the rest of her life in an asylum.

“At the time, such tales often developed into national news stories, but now they’re more likely to tell us something about the double standards of the Victorian divorce system or help us learn more about the lives of our sometimes naughty ancestors,” Ancestry.co.uk UK Content Manager Miriam Silverman said in a statement on Tuesday.

When the divorce laws first came into effect, men could divorce for adultery alone, while women had to supplement evidence of cheating with solid proof of mistreatment, such as battery or desertion.

Despite this double standard, roughly half of the records are accounts of proceedings initiated by the wife. Many of the nullifications of marriages fall into this category, with failure to consummate the nuptials a common reason.

One such example in the records shows a Frances Smith filing for divorce in 1893 under such grounds.

In the court ledgers it is noted that the marriage was never consummated, with the husband incapable “by reason of the frigidity and impotency or other defect of the parts of generation” and “such incapacity is incurable by art or skill” following inspection.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; editing by Patricia Reaney)

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Whitney Houston's Mom Cissy: 'I'm Angry She Died Alone'

People Exclusive

By Liz McNeil

01/23/2013 at 05:00 PM EST

Cissy Houston and Whitney Houston in 1985

Jack Vartoogian/Getty

Nearly one year after Whitney Houston's shocking death, her mom Cissy Houston often asks herself: "Could I have saved her somehow?"

In a revealing new memoir, Remembering Whitney (Harper Collins), Cissy, 79, writes candidly about her daughter's severe drug problems and the downward spiral that led to her death by drowning in a hotel bathtub with traces of cocaine still in her system.

"She started partying and she didn't really know how to stop," says Cissy. "I used to wonder what she was doing at night, where she was."

But when she tried to contact her, Whitney often didn't return her call.

"Whitney hid from me," says Cissy. And when she did see her, she was often afraid to confront her daughter. Shocked at her skeletal appearance at the Michael Jackson tribute concert in 2001, she never expressed concern.

"What was the point?" she asks. "I didn't want her to run completely away from me."

She doesn't believe former husband Bobby Brown was the cause.

"I blame him for the way he treated her," she says, "but I don't blame him for her drug problems." Still, she adds: "He was no help to her at all."

Cissy also writes for the first time about her daughter's relationship with former assistant Robyn Crawford, who became her creative director.

"I just didn’t want her with my daughter," she says. "I know nothing about a romantic relationship. That's what everybody said but they didn't know either."

She admits, Crawford "cared for her" and reveals for the first time that she was the first one to come tell her Whitney had a drug problem.

Cissy is still tormented by her daughter's sudden death. "I'm angry she died alone, in those conditions," she says. "I'm still mad about that."

Still, she hopes her book will remind people "what a good person she was. I want people to know the truth about her, how she really was."

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Scientists to resume work with lab-bred bird flu

WASHINGTON (AP) — International scientists who last year halted controversial research with the deadly bird flu say they are resuming their work as countries adopt new rules to ensure safety.

The outcry erupted when two labs — in the Netherlands and the U.S. — reported they had created easier-to-spread versions of bird flu. Amid fierce debate about the oversight of such research and whether it might aid terrorists, those scientists voluntarily halted further work last January — and more than three dozen of the world's leading flu researchers signed on as well.

On Wednesday, those scientists announced they were ending their moratorium because their pause in study worked: It gave the U.S. government and other world health authorities time to determine how they would oversee high-stakes research involving dangerous germs.

A number of countries already have issued new rules. The U.S. is finalizing its own research guidelines, a process that Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said should be completed within several weeks.

In letters published in the journals Science and Nature this week, scientists wrote that those who meet their country's requirements have a responsibility to resume studying how the deadly bird flu might mutate to become a bigger threat to people — maybe even the next pandemic. So far, the so-called H5N1 virus mostly spreads among poultry and other birds and rarely infects people.

"The risk exists in nature already. Not doing the research is really putting us in danger," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus University in the Netherlands separately created the new virus strains that could spread through the air.

The controversy flared just over a year ago, when U.S. officials, prompted by the concerns of a biosecurity advisory panel, asked the two labs not to publish the results. They worried that terrorists might use the information to create a bioweapon. More broadly, scientists debated whether creating new strains of disease is a good idea, and if so, how to safeguard against laboratory accidents.

Ultimately, the flu researchers prevailed: The government decided the data didn't pose any immediate terrorism threat after all, and the two labs' work was published last summer.

Fouchier said that within weeks, he will begin new research in the Netherlands, with European funding, to explore exactly which mutations are the biggest threat. He said the work could enable scientists today to be on the lookout as bird flu continually evolves in the wild.

U.S.-funded scientists cannot resume their studies until the government's policy is finalized.

But the NIH had paid for the original research — and it would have been approved under the soon-to-come expanded policy as well, Fauci told The Associated Press. That policy will add an extra layer of review to higher-risk research, to ensure that it is scientifically worth doing and that safety and bioterrorism concerns are fully addressed up-front, he said.

Had that policy been in place over a year ago, it could have averted the bird flu debate, Fauci said: "Our answer simply would have been, yes, we vetted it very carefully and the benefit is worth any risk. Period, case closed."

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