The Dow ended down slightly Friday, with the S&P, Nasdaq notching small gains. Mike Holland, Holland & Company, says stocks are "ridiculously" cheap and Treasuries are in a major bubble.
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By GRAHAM DUNBAR
AP Sports Writer
Associated Press Sports
updated 5:53 p.m. ET Dec. 15, 2011
GENEVA (AP) -Udinese and Rubin Kazan earned the draws they needed to advance to the Europa League knockout stage on Thursday, as Tottenham was eliminated despite beating Shamrock Rovers 4-0.
Needing to avoid defeat at home against Celtic, Udinese drew 1-1 after talismanic striker Antonio Di Natale leveled the score in first-half stoppage time. The Scottish club had led through Gary Hooper's 29th-minute goal.
Udinese go into Friday's last-32 draw with group winner Atletico Madrid which had already qualified before beating Rennes 3-1.
Rubin got its point by overcoming the early dismissal of goalkeeper Sergei Ryzhikov to draw 1-1 away to PAOK.
The Russians thereby eliminated Tottenham, who needed to overturn a deficit of three points and five goals at the start of play.
Bruges drew 1-1 with 10-man Braga as both progressed from Group H, edging out Birmingham which beat Maribor 1-0.
AZ Alkmaar also advanced thanks to a 1-1 draw. The Dutch side earned its point at home to Group G winner Metalist Kharkiv, and progressed ahead of Austria Vienna which beat last-place Malmo 2-0.
Udinese and Celtic both chased a victory that would ensure progress amid heightening tension in the final 20 minutes.
Udinese midfielder Kwadwoh Asamoah somehow missed from three yards (meters) in the 72nd minute, and Di Natale was denied by Celtic goalkeeper Fraser Forster's excellent back-to-back saves.
Celtic struck a post in the 75th, and Ch Du-Ri's shot rebounded, ricocheted off Samir Handanovic's back and was spinning toward goal when the keeper reached out to grab the ball.
Atletico cruised to victory against Rennes after Radamel Falcao's penalty opened the scoring in the 38th. Alvaro Dominguez scored four minutes later and Arda Turan struck in the 79th.
Tottenham looked well set to advance when leading 3-0 in Dublin while Rubin trailed 1-0 at Group A leader PAOK.
The Russians also had Ryzhikov sent off for conceding a 16th-minute penalty scored by PAOK winger Vieirinha.
But Rubin leveled in the 48th through Paraguay forward Nelson Valdez and held on to draw 1-1.
That result made it academic when Harry Kane scored Tottenham's fourth in stoppage-time, adding to first-half goals from Steven Pienaar, Andros Townsend and Jermain Defoe.
Tottenham reached the Champions League quarterfinals last season, but paid the price for fielding under-strength teams in Europe's second-tier competition.
"We haven't not gone through for lack of trying," Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp said. "It was disappointing. I want to win every game."
Redknapp also drew attention for apparently directing a gesture toward Shamrock fans who had targeted him with taunting chants for much of the match.
Redknapp denied making an obscene gesture, adding that opposing fans "get together and shout a load of nonsense and that is football. That's life. I don't hold any grudges."
Standard Liege and Hannover go into Friday's draw from Group B, and PSV Eindhoven and Legia Warsaw had already progressed from Group C.
Liege got a 1-0 win at FC Copenhagen through Michy Batshuayi's 31st-minute goal, while Hannover won 3-1 against Vorskla Poltava after goals from Konstantin Rauch, Didier Konan Ya and Artur Sobiech.
PSV beat Rapid Bucharest 2-1 at home, and Legia lost 2-0 away to Hapoel Tel-Aviv.
? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Researchers from Harvard University and the Broad Institute have developed a tool that can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information from around the globe, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and much more. The researchers report their findings in a paper appearing in the December 16 issue of the journal Science.
From Facebook to physics to the global economy, the world is filled with data sets that could take a person hundreds of years to analyze by eye. Sophisticated computer programs can search these data sets with great speed, but fall short when researchers attempt to even-handedly detect different kinds of patterns in large data collections.
"There are massive data sets that we want to explore, and within them, there may be many relationships that we want to understand," said Broad Institute associate member Pardis Sabeti, senior author of the paper and an assistant professor at the Center for Systems Biology at Harvard University. "The human eye is the best way to find these relationships, but these data sets are so vast that we can't do that. This toolkit gives us a way of mining the data to look for relationships."
The researchers tested their analytical toolkit on several large data sets, including one provided by Harvard colleague Peter Turnbaugh who is interested in the trillions of microorganisms that live in the gut. Working with Turnbaugh, the research team harnessed MINE to make more than 22 million comparisons and narrowed in on a few hundred patterns of interest that had not been observed before.
"The goal of this statistic is to take data with a lot of different dimensions and many possible correlations and pick out the top ones," said Michael Mitzenmacher, a senior author of the paper and professor of computer science at Harvard University. "We view this as an exploration tool ? it can find patterns and rank them in an equitable way."
One of the tool's greatest strengths is that it can detect a wide range of patterns and characterize them according to a number of different parameters a researcher might be interested in. Other statistical tools work well for searching for a specific pattern in a large data set, but cannot score and compare different kinds of possible relationships. MINE, which stands for Maximal Information-based Nonparametric Exploration, is able to analyze a broad spectrum of patterns.
"Standard methods will see one pattern as signal and others as noise," said David Reshef, a co-first author of the paper who is currently a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program and also worked on this project as a graduate student in the department of statistics at the University of Oxford. "There can potentially be a variety of different types of relationships in a given data set. What's exciting about our method is that it looks for any type of clear structure within the data, attempting to find all of them."
Not only does MINE attempt to identify any pattern within the data, but it also attempts to do so with an eye toward capturing different types of patterns equally well. "This ability to search for patterns in an equitable way offers tremendous exploratory potential in terms of searching for patterns without having to know ahead of time what to search for," said David Reshef.
MINE is especially powerful in exploring data sets with relationships that may harbor more than one important pattern. As a proof of concept, the researchers applied MINE to social, economic, health, and political data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners. When they compared the relationship between household income and female obesity, they found two contrasting trends in the data. Many countries follow a parabolic rate, with obesity rates rising with income but peaking and tapering off after income reaches a certain level. But in the Pacific Islands, where female obesity is a sign of status, countries follow a steep trend, with the rate of obesity climbing as income increases.
"Many data sets will contain these types of complicated relationships that are guided by multiple drivers," said Sabeti. MINE is able to identify these. "This greatly extends our capability to find interesting relationships in data."
Researchers can use MINE to generate new ideas and connections that no one has thought to look for before.
"Our tool is a hypothesis generator," said Yakir Reshef, a co-first author of the paper and a graduate student in the Weizmann Institute of Science. "The standard paradigm is hypothesis-driven science, where you come up with a hypothesis based on your personal observations. But by exploring the data, you get ideas for hypotheses that would never have occurred to you otherwise."
In addition to testing the ability of the suite of tools to detect patterns in biological and health data, the researchers examined data collected from the 2008 baseball season.
"One question that we thought would be particularly interesting would be to see what things were most strongly associated with salary," said David Reshef. The researchers generated a list of relationships, finding that the strongest associations with salary were hits, total bases, and an aggregate statistic that reflects how many runs a player generated for a team. "Given the stakes, baseball is so well documented. We're curious to see what can be done in this realm with tools like MINE."
Researchers from many different fields, including systems biology, computer science, statistics, and mathematics, all contributed to this project. "People are getting better at combining data from different sources, and in some ways, this project is in the spirit of that," said Yakir Reshef. "The project brought together authors from many disciplines. It symbolizes the kind of collaborations that we hope people will use this for in the future."
###
Harvard University: http://www.harvard.edu
Thanks to Harvard University for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116108/Tool_detects_patterns_hidden_in_vast_data_sets
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By The Associated Press
Ross D. Franklin / AP
Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio is accused by the Department of Justice of committing wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos.
The federal government issued a scathing report Thursday that outlines how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release, is a result of the U.S. Justice Department's three-year investigation of Arpaio's office amid complaints of racial profiling and a culture of bias at the agency's top level.
The Justice Department's conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government's harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field. (Read the full Department of Justice letter here.)
Mark Ralston / Getty Images
An illegal immigrant is processed by deputies working for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, after an operational sweep in Phoenix on July 29, 2010.
Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.
The civil rights report said federal authorities will continue to investigate complaints of deputies using excessive force against Latinos, whether the sheriff's office failed to provide adequately police services in Hispanic communities and a large number of sex-crimes cases that were assigned to the agency but weren't followed up on or investigated at all.
The report took the sheriff's office to task for launching immigration patrols, known as "sweeps," based on complaints that Latinos were merely gathering near a business without committing crimes. Federal authorities single out Arpaio himself and said his office, known as MCSO, has no clear policies to guard against the violations, even after he changed some of his top aides earlier this year.
"Arpaio's own actions have helped nurture MCSO's culture of bias," wrote Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department's civil rights division, adding that the sheriff frequently gave such racially charged letters to some of his top aides and saved them in his own files.
"MCSO is broken in a number of critical respects. The problems are deeply rooted in MCSO's culture," he said Thursday.
The Justice Department's expert on measuring racial profiling said it's the most egregious case of racial profiling in the nation that he has seen or reviewed in professional literature, Perez said.
Investigators interviewed more than 400 people, including Arpaio, reviewed thousands of documents and toured county jails as part of its probe, he said.
If the sheriff's office doesn't turn around its policies and practices, the federal government could pull millions of dollars of federal funding.
Arpaio's office did not immediately respond to AP requests for comment.
The report will require Arpaio to set up effective policies against discrimination, improve training and make other changes that would be monitored for compliance by a judge. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement. If not, the federal government will sue him and let a judge decide the complaint.
Arpaio, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America, has long denied the racial profiling allegation, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they have committed crimes and that deputies later find many of them are illegal immigrants.
Arpaio has built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration.
The report also said he and some top staffers tried to silence people who have spoken out against the sheriff's office by arresting people without cause, filing meritless lawsuits against opponents and starting investigations of critics.
One example cited by the Justice Department is former top Arpaio aide David Hendershott, who filed bar complaints against attorneys critical of the agency along with bringing judicial complaints against judges who were at odds with the sheriff. All complaints were dismissed.
The anti-corruption squad's cases against two county officials and a judge collapsed in court before going to trial and have been criticized by politicians at odds with the sheriff as trumped up. Arpaio has defended the investigations as a valid attempt at rooting out corruption in county government.
The civil rights report said Latinos are four to nine times more likely to be stopped in traffic stops in Maricopa County than non-Latinos and that the agency's immigration policies treat Latinos as if they are all in the country illegally. Deputies on the immigrant-smuggling squad stop and arrest Latino drivers without good cause, the investigation found.
A review done as part of the investigation found that 20 percent of traffic reports handled by Arpaio's immigrant-smuggling squad from March 2006 to March 2009 were stops ? almost all involving Latino drivers ? that were done without reasonable suspicion. The squad's stops rarely led to smuggling arrests.
Deputies are encouraged to make high-volume traffic stops in targeted locations. There were Latinos who were in the U.S. legally who were arrested or detained without cause during the sweeps, according to the report.
During the sweeps, deputies flood an area of a city ? in some cases, heavily Latino areas ? over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio's office.
Police supervisors, including at least one smuggling-squad supervisor, often used county accounts to send emails that demeaned Latinos to fellow sheriff's managers, deputies and volunteers in the sheriff's posse. One such email had a photo of a mock driver's license for a fictional state called "Mexifornia."
The report said that the sheriff's office launched an immigration operation two weeks after the sheriff received a letter in August 2009 letter about a person's dismay over employees of a McDonald's in the Phoenix suburb of Sun City who didn't speak English. The tip laid out no criminal allegations. The sheriff wrote back to thank the writer "for the info," said he would look into it and forwarded it to a top aide with a note of "for our operation."
Federal investigators focused heavily on the language barriers in Arpaio's jails.
Latino inmates with limited English skills were punished for failing to understand commands in English by being put in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day or keeping prisoners locked down in their jail pods for as long as 72 hours without a trip to the canteen area or making nonlegal phone calls.
The report said some jail officers used racial slurs for Latinos when talking among themselves and speaking to inmates.
Detention officers refused to accept forms requesting basic daily services and reporting mistreatment when the documents were completed in Spanish and pressured Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms that implicate their legal rights without language assistance.
The agency pressures Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms by yelling at them and keeping them in uncomfortably cold cells for long periods of time.
The Justice Department said it hadn't yet established a pattern of alleged wrongdoing by the sheriff's office in the three areas where they will continue to investigation: complaints of excessive force against Latinos, botched sex-crimes cases and immigration efforts that have hurt the agency's trust with the Hispanic community.
Federal authorities will continue to investigate whether the sheriff's office has limited the willingness of witnesses and victims to report crimes or talk to Arpaio's office.
"MCSO has done almost nothing to build such a relationship with Mariciopa County's Latino residents," Perez wrote.
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Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona shares his thoughts on the candidates' solutions to illegal immigration during a recent debate.
Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in September 2010 tells msnbc that the federal government "should be thanking me...for doing their job," rather than filing lawsuits against him for stopping illegal immigration.
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? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks fell for a second straight day on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve gave no hints of new stimulus measures to offset the effects of the worsening European debt crisis.
Though the Fed did leave the door open to further easing next year, as it has done after recent meetings, it gave no indication it was any more inclined to provide new economic stimulus.
The Fed left monetary policy on hold and said financial market turbulence posed threats to economic growth. It also characterized the U.S. economy as expanding moderately despite an apparent slowing in global growth, though it added that unemployment remains elevated and housing activity depressed.
The Fed "gave the economy a very slight upgrade, but it sort of took the wind out of domestic equities, probably because some were hoping that they would hint at another -like program," said Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, Texas.
Wall Street traded higher for much of the volatile session, but turned negative after the Fed's announcement. The losses accelerated going into the close and the S&P 500 briefly fell below its 50-day moving average. A close under that key level could signal more losses to come.
The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) slid 66.45 points, or 0.55 percent, to end at 11,954.94. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) dropped 10.74 points, or 0.87 percent, to 1,225.73. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) lost 32.99 points, or 1.26 percent, to close at 2,579.27.
The disappointment with the Fed came at the tail-end of a trading session that was largely focused on Europe, especially after German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected any suggestion of raising the limit on Europe's bailout fund.
Investors had been closely eyeing developments concerning the fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which will go into effect from the middle of next year and replace the current European Financial Stability Fund. The ESM will have an effective lending capacity of 500 billion euros.
"The developments in Europe don't address the region's short-term liquidity issues, so the next step is trying to figure that out," said Randy Frederick, director of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.
"That uncertainty is why our markets have been pressured lately. We're still all about Europe here."
Consumer-related stocks were the worst performers. Shares of Best Buy (BBY.N) tumbled 15.5 percent to $23.73 after the electronics retailer reported a quarterly profit below expectations as bigger discounts squeezed margins. The S&P consumer discretionary sector (.GSPD) fell 2 percent.
U.S. government data showed U.S. retail sales rose less than expected in November as a drop in receipts for food and beverages weighed against stronger sales of motor vehicles, tempering expectations of a strong holiday shopping season.
U.S. crude oil futures prices rose more than 2 percent, advancing above $100 a barrel at the session high, with traders citing tension between the West and Iran as a possible trigger. The S&P energy index (.GSPE) had been up more than 2 percent at its session high, but was unable to maintain its gains and closed down 0.5 percent.
The only sector to close higher was utilities (.GSPU), considered a defensive play.
Volume was light, with about 7.28 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, below last year's daily average of 8.47 billion.
More than two stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, while on the Nasdaq, about 74 percent of issues closed lower.
(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)
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