Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.

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India Ink: Insurgents in Jharkhand Plant Bombs Inside Dead Bodies

Maoist insurgents in Jharkhand state have started to hide explosive devices in the bodies of their enemies, police officials said, a new tactic in the long battle between Indian security forces and the insurgents.

On Monday, rebels killed nine Central Reserve Police Force paramilitary soldiers and three villagers in an ambush in the Karmatiya forest area of Latehar district, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southwest from the state capital of Ranchi, said state police chief Gauri Shankar Rath. After the insurgents retreated into the woods, the Central Reserve Police Force on Wednesday found the body of Babulal Patel, 29, a constable, with stitches in his abdomen, he said.

His body was flown to Ranchi by helicopter and taken to the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences for an autopsy. When the doctors saw the stitches, they grew alarmed and called the top security officials, Binay Kumar, a doctor there, said.

Using X-rays, members of a bomb disposal squad detected an improvised explosive device, or I.E.D., in the soldier’s stomach. With the help of doctors, it took over two hours for the bomb disposal unit to remove the explosive and defuse it outside.

“The I.E.D. connected with detonator batteries and a small solar panel weighing about 2.45 kilograms was extracted with utmost care from the body of the security personnel,” said Dr. Kumar. “Even a small mistake or a little pressure could have exploded the bomb device, triggering a major casualty inside the hospital,” he said. “The abdomen was stitched with surgical precision.”

A similar I.E.D. had detonated when the security personnel, along with some villagers, had removed the body of another colleague in the forest area. Three villagers were killed in that explosion on Wednesday.

Jharkhand’s police chief, Mr. Rath, said this was the first time the Maoist had used bodies as booby traps.

“With this inhuman act, the Maoists have now made it clear that they do not have any regard for human dignity, values and human lives,” said Mr. Rath. “This incident has crossed all limits of cruelty. We’ll definitely retaliate when the time comes.”

Mr. Rath called the Maoists’ most recent attack on security personnel “well planned.”

The state police official said the Maoists had ambushed the security forces under the leadership of Deo Kumar Singh, also known as Arvindji, considered among the top 10 Maoists commanders in Jharkhand and Bihar. “He has executed several deadly operations in the past,” Mr. Rath said.

Latehar’s superintendent of police, Kranti K. Garhdeshi, said that Mr. Singh also was an expert in I.E.D.’s and landmines.

In the past decade, hundreds of security personnel and civilians have been killed in battles with the Maoist insurgents in Jharkhand. The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has declared the insurgents the biggest internal security threat in India.

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BlackBerry Z10 shown off in leaked marketing materials

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Browns name Rob Chudzinski new coach

CLEVELAND (AP) — The Browns hauled their coaching search to Arizona and back. They talked to high-profile college coaches, NFL assistants and a fired pro coach who took a team to a Super Bowl.

None of them was hired.

Instead, Rob Chudzinski became their pick.

With no experience as a head coach at any level, Chudzinski was hired Thursday night by the Cleveland Browns, the team he cheered for as a kid. This is Chudzinski's third stint with the team, but this time around he's the guy in charge.

Chudzinski, who spent the past two seasons calling plays as Carolina's offensive coordinator, is the Browns' sixth full-time coach since 1999 and 14th in team history.

Just as it appeared the Browns might be going in another direction, the team selected the 44-year-old Chudzinski to revive a team that has made the playoffs just once in the past 14 years.

Chudzinski will be introduced Friday at an 11 a.m. news conference, where owner Jimmy Haslam and CEO Joe Banner likely will be asked how they selected Banner after speaking to at least seven other candidates and flirting with Chip Kelly before he returned to Oregon.

"Chud," as he's known to players and friends, Chudzinski worked as the Browns' tight ends coach in 2004 and was their offensive coordinator in 2007, when the team won 10 games — their most since an expansion rebirth in 1999.

A lifelong Browns fan who grew up in Toledo, Ohio, Chudzinski replaces Pat Shurmur, another first-time coach when he was hired, who was fired on Dec. 31 after a 5-11 season. For the past two years, Chudzinski has worked with talented Panthers quarterback Cam Newton and resuscitated Carolina's offense, which was one of the league's worst before he arrived.

When Haslam and Banner embarked on their coaching search as 2013 began, the pair vowed they would wait as long as necessary to find "the right coach" for Cleveland. They promised to give their new coach final say over the roster and planned to pair him with an executive to help pick players.

Chudzinski wasn't seen by many as an option.

And then he became the choice.

Chudzinski interviewed with the team on Wednesday, when the club also visited with Cincinnati defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer. Chudzinski appeared to be a long shot for the job, not because he wasn't qualified, but because it was thought Haslam wanted to make a big splash with his first coaching hire.

However, Chudzinski wowed Haslam and Banner during his meeting and the team decided it was time to end its search in its second week.

It's not yet known whom Chudzinski will bring in as coordinators. There are reports he may hire former San Diego coach Norv Turner to run his offense. Chudzinski worked for Turner with the Chargers.

In his first season in Carolina, Chudzinski turned Newton, the No. 1 overall draft pick, loose and the Panthers set club records for total yards (6,237) and first downs (345). Carolina also scored 48 touchdowns after getting just 17 in the season before Chudzinski arrived. The Panthers jumped from last in the league in total yardage to seventh, the biggest improvement since 1999.

Following the season, Chudzinski interviewed for head coaching jobs with St. Louis, Jacksonville and Tampa Bay before returning to Carolina.

In getting the Browns' job, Chudzinski was picked over Zimmer, Montreal Alouettes coach Marc Trestman, fired Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt and Cardinals defensive coordinator Ray Horton. Whisenhunt was in Cleveland for a second interview on Thursday, and appeared to be the front-runner. The Browns also were expected to interview Indianapolis offensive coordinator Bruce Arians.

Newton continued to develop in his second season with Chudzinski, and the QB's development may have helped his case since the Browns are hoping Brandon Weeden will improve this year after his uneven rookie season.

After his first stint on Cleveland's staff, Chudzinski spent two seasons as San Diego's tight ends coach, working with perennial Pro Bowl standout Antonio Gates.

Taking over the Browns' offense in 2007, Chudzinski helped the Browns go 10-6. They barely missed the playoffs, but four players, including quarterback Derek Anderson, made the Pro Bowl. However, in 2008, the Browns struggled on offense and a six-game losing streak led to a 4-12 finish and Romeo Crennel's firing.

Chudzinski's hiring may not be popular with Cleveland fans, many of whom at fantasies about Nick Saban or Jon Gruden or Kelly brining his supersonic offense to the NFL.

But his selection is in keeping with at least one of Banner's past moves. When he was in Philadelphia's front office, Banner went outside the box and hired Green Bay assistant Andy Reid, a relative unknown who spent 14 seasons with the Eagles.

Now that they've got their coach, the Browns can focus on finding a GM to replace Tom Heckert, fired after three seasons.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.

How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?

Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles to caregiving and the subject of a year-long course that starts at the San Francisco Zen Center in a few weeks.

This approach aims to cultivate compassion, both for older people and the people they depend on, said Ms. Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain and the course’s lead instructor. She’s also the former director of education at the Zen Hospice project in San Francisco and founder of the Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care, which is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in the area.

I caught up with Ms. Block recently, and what follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Let’s start with your experience. Have you been a caregiver?

My experience in caregiving is as a professional providing spiritual care to individuals and families when they are facing and coping with aging and sickness and loss and dying, particularly in hospital and hospice settings.

What kinds of challenges have you witnessed?

People are for the most part unprepared for caregiving. They’re either untrained or unable to trust their own instincts. They lack confidence as well as knowledge. By confidence, I mean understanding and accepting that we don’t know all the answers – what to do, how to fix things.

This past weekend, I was on the phone with a woman who’d brought her mom to live near her in assisted living. The mom had been to the hospital the day before. My conversation with the daughter was about helping her see the truth that her mother needed more care and that was going to change the daughter’s responsibilities and her life. And also, her mother was frail, elderly, and coming nearer to death.

That’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes, because we live in a death-denying society. Also, we live in a fast-paced, demanding world that says don’t sit still — do something. But people receiving care often need most of all for us to spend time with them. When we do that, their mortality and our grief and our helplessness becomes closer to us and more apparent.

How can contemplative caregiving help?

We teach people to cultivate a relationship with aging, sickness and dying. To turn toward it rather than turning away, and to pay close attention. Most people don’t want to do this.

A person needs training to face what is difficult in oneself and in others. There are spiritual muscles we need to develop, just like we develop physical muscles in a gym. Also, the mind needs to be trained to be responsive instead of reactive.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to help your mother, and she says something off-putting to you like “you’ve always been terrible at keeping house. It’s no wonder you lost my pajamas.”

The first thing is to notice your experience. To become aware of that feeling, almost like being slapped emotionally. To notice your chest tightening.

Then I tell people to take a deep breath. And say something to themselves like “soften” to address that tightness. That’s how you can stay facing something uncomfortable rather than turning away.

If I were in this position, I might say something to myself like “hello unhappiness” or “hello suffering” or “hello aging” to tether myself.

The second step would be curiosity about that experience. Like, wow, where do I feel that anger that rose up in me, or that fear? Oh, it’s in my chest. I’m going to feel that, stay with it, investigate it.

Why is that important?

Because as we investigate something we come to understand it. And, paradoxically, when we pay attention to pain it changes. It softens. It moves. It lessens. It deepens. And we get to know it and learn not to be afraid of it or change it or fix it but just come alongside of it.

Over hours, days, months, years, the mind and heart come to know pain. And the response to pain is compassion — the wish for the alleviation of pain.

Let’s go back to what mother said about your housekeeping and the pajamas. Maybe you leave the room for five minutes so you can pay attention to your reaction and remember your training. Then, you can go back in and have a response rather than a reaction. Maybe something like “Mom, I think you’re right. I may not be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m sorry I lost your pajamas. It seems like you’re having a pretty strong response to that, and I’d like to know why it matters so much to you. What’s happening with you today?”

Are other skills important?

Another skill is to become aware of how much we receive as well as give in caregiving. Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy. But the alternative is missing someone’s final chapter, and that can be a real loss.

What will you do in your course?

We’ll teach the principles of contemplative care and discuss them. We’ll have homework, such as ‘Bring me three examples of someone you were caring for who was caring toward you in return.’ That’s one way of practicing attention. And people will train in meditation.

We’ll also explore our own relationship to aging, sickness, dying and loss. We’ll tell our stories: this is the situation I was in, this is where I felt myself shut down, this was the edge of my comfort or knowledge. And we’ll teach principles from Buddhism. Equanimity. Compassion. Deep inner connectedness.

What can people do on their own?

Mindfulness training is offered in almost every city. That’s one of the core components of this approach.

I think every caregiver needs to have their own caregiver — a therapist or a colleague or a friend, someone who is there for them and with whom they can unburden themselves. I think of caregiving as drawing water from a well. We need to make sure that we have whatever nurtures us, whatever supplies that well. And often, that’s connecting with others.

Are other groups doing this kind of work?

In New York City, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care educates the public and professionals about contemplative care. And in New Mexico, the Upaya Zen Center does similar work, much of it centered around death and dying.

People who want to read about this might want to look at a new book of essays, “The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work” (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

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DealBook: Wells Fargo Profit Jumps 24% in Quarter, Driven by Mortgage Gains

8:46 a.m. | Updated

Wells Fargo reported $5.1 billion in profit for the fourth quarter on Friday, a 24 percent increase, driven by the bank’s lucrative mortgage business.

Seizing on low-interest rates that have spurred a flurry of refinancing activity, the bank again notched record profits. For the last 12 quarters, profits at the bank have increased.

In this latest quarter, Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, reported earnings of 91 cents a share, which exceeded analysts’ expectations. Ahead of the report, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated that the bank would report earnings of 89 a share.

Wells Fargo, unlike many of its rivals, has been able to steadily increase its revenue. The first bank to release fourth-quarter earnings, Wells Fargo reported $21.95 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, up 7 percent from a year earlier.

Much of the revenue gains stemmed from the bank’s consumer lending business, as borrowers jumped on record low interest rates to refinance their mortgages. Wells Fargo, which dominates the market as the nation’s largest mortgage lender, notched $125 billion in mortgage originations, up from $120 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011. Refinancing applications accounted for nearly 75 percent of that total.

The big profit in the group came from the extra money that Wells Fargo makes bundling the mortgages into bonds and selling them to the government. In the fourth quarter, the bank reported $2.8 billion of so-called net gains on its mortgages activities, up 51 percent from the previous year.

Under the tenure of its chief executive, John G. Stumpf, Wells Fargo has aggressively expanded into the mortgage market, a strategy that might help the bank surpass its rivals in profits, notably JPMorgan Chase.

Wells Fargo’s net interest margin, a closely watched profit metric that measures the difference between the interest the bank collects and the interest it pays on its own borrowings, was down slightly to 3.56 percent, from 3.89 percent a year earlier.

Profit in the community banking division, which spans Wells Fargo’s retail branches and mortgage business, increased 14 percent to $2.9 billion.

The bank successfully courted more cash from depositors, adding $72 billion in total core checking and savings deposits than a year earlier.

“The company’s underlying results were driven by solid loan growth, improved credit quality, and continued success in improving efficiency,” Wells Fargo’s chief financial officer, Tim Sloan, said in a statement.

The bank has benefited from sweeping federal stimulus initiatives that have buoyed the mortgage business. The Treasury Department has helped spur Americans to refinance their mortgages.

Wells Fargo is the reigning titan in the mortgage industry, generating roughly a third of all the mortgages across the United States. Mortgage originations continued to climb, up 4 percent to $125 billion.

Adding to its mortgage-related profit, Wells Fargo reported a $926 million profit from its servicing business, in which the bank collects payments from homeowners. That’s up roughly 6 percent from a year earlier.

Alongside the consumer loan business, Wells Fargo had gains in its wealth management business, a particular focus for the bank to defray the impact of federal regulations that dragged down profits elsewhere.

Still, Wells Fargo’s profit from residential mortgages could wane this year if the Federal Reserve halts its extensive bond buying spree.

Working to move beyond the mortgage crisis woes that have dogged the bank, Wells Fargo has been brokering deals with federal regulators. Wells Fargo was one of 10 banks that signed onto an $8.5 billion settlement this week with the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve over claims that shoddy foreclosure practices may have led to the wrongful eviction of homeowners.

The sweeping federal pact ends a deeply flawed review of millions of loans in foreclosure that was mandated by federal regulators in 2011. The review, which was ended this week, began in November 2011 amid mounting public fury that bank employees were churning through hundreds of foreclosure filings without reviewing them for accuracy.

In addition to the settlement, the bank set aside $1.2 billion to prevent foreclosures.

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Way of the World: Economists, Consensus and Healthy Debates

SAN DIEGO — This is a tough time for experts. Empowered by the Internet and embittered by the sour economy, many people doubt the wisdom of expert elites. Journalism sometimes casts further doubt by seeking polarized positions that can draw an attention-grabbing debate, or by taking refuge in he-said-she-said accounts to avoid the harder job of figuring out who’s right.

Now one tribe of specialists — economists — is striking back. Concerned that the great unwashed have come to see all economic proposals as being equally valid, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business has led an effort to figure out what economists agree on, where they diverge and how certain they are about their views.

To do that, the Booth school called on reputable economists to join its panel of experts. Each week, the panelists are asked whether they agree or disagree with a particular economic idea.

“Among practicing economists, it is understood that the media and the political process paints economists as more divided than they are,” Anil K. Kashyap, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago and a leader of the project, explained. “It is more sensational and maybe makes for better reading to have point-counterpoint. It seemed reasonable to provide some context. There’s a lot more settled issues than most people have a sense of.”

Dr. Kashyap cited as an example the gold standard, the monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold. “The gold standard is an insane idea,” he said. “I don’t know of any reputable economist who thinks it is a wise idea, but it got a lot of real political traction.”

Of the Booth panelists, 93 percent disagreed that the gold standard could improve price stability or employment.

But that is an extreme example. A paper presented this week at the annual gathering of the American Economic Association investigated the survey results in greater detail. “Based on our analysis, we conclude that there is close to full consensus among these panel members when the past economic literature on the question is large,” the authors of the paper, Roger Gordon and Gordon B. Dahl of the University of California, San Diego, wrote. “When past evidence is less extensive, differences in opinions do show up.”

But the authors did not find an ideological bias in those disagreements: “There are certainly some idiosyncratic views expressed, but we found no evidence of different camps.”

Economists, these results suggest, seek to objectively establish the truth and have a widely agreed on body of knowledge about how the economy works. In an age when it can be hard to write the word “facts” without reflexively reaching for quotation marks, that is of some comfort. But this picture of consensus among experts comes with a few caveats.

One was articulated by Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize laureate and New York Times columnist who was at the American Economic Association meeting. Mr. Krugman accepted the idea that economists share a wide body of agreed, objective and nonideological knowledge. But he argued that when it comes to one subset of issues — business-cycle macroeconomics, or how policy should respond to booms and busts — economists are both divided and biased. That matters, Mr. Krugman rightly pointed out, because outside the academy these are among the economic issues ordinary mortals care about, and fight about, the most.

The second caveat is that consensus may be more fleeting, and therefore less valuable, than the economic high priesthood might like to think. To his credit, Dr. Kashyap revealed two issues on which the economic conventional wisdom, and his own views, have changed since the financial crisis of 2008.

One is currency controls: “Having watched all this hot money flow into these markets, I am much more sympathetic to the desire to slow things down,” he said.

The second is whether central bankers should try to pop asset bubbles, an idea toward which Dr. Kashyap has softened. “I don’t think the conventional wisdom was very good on this and I was firmly in the consensus,” he said.

These shifts suggest that it is worth looking more closely at one clear subgroup among the economists in the University of California study. Dr. Gordon and Dr. Dahl searched for, and failed to detect, ideological bias or even the subtler influence of the very distinct intellectual traditions of top U.S. universities.

But they did pick up a clear difference between men and women. “Women,” they write, “tend to be more cautious in taking a stance.” For women making their way in the 21st-century world of work, that reticence is mostly a handicap — a willingness to admit to uncertainty is one reason women are paid less and can find it difficult to break through the glass ceiling.

For the benefit of the community as a whole, though, more female economists may be needed. The quest for objective economic knowledge is surely a good thing, as is the Booth effort to map what economists agree on and where they diverge. But given how profoundly and unexpectedly the world economy collapsed in 2008, maybe a little more womanly humility about that conventional wisdom would be a good thing, too.

Chrystia Freeland is editor of Thomson Reuters Digital.

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NFL player Junior Seau had brain disease CTE

Junior Seau, one of the NFL's best and fiercest players for nearly two decades, had a degenerative brain disease when he committed suicide last May, the National Institutes of Health told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Results of an NIH study of Seau's brain revealed abnormalities consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

"The brain was independently evaluated by multiple experts, in a blind fashion," said Dr. Russell Lonser, who oversaw the study. "We had the opportunity to get multiple experts involved in a way they wouldn't be able to directly identify his tissue even if they knew he was one of the individuals studied."

The NIH, based in Bethesda, Md., conducted a study of three unidentified brains, one of which was Seau's. It said the findings on Seau were similar to autopsies of people "with exposure to repetitive head injuries."

Seau's family requested the analysis of his brain.

Seau was a star linebacker for 20 NFL seasons with San Diego, Miami and New England before retiring in 2009. He died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound.

He joins a list of several dozen football players who had CTE. Boston University's center for study of the disease reported last month that 34 former pro players and nine who played only college football suffered from CTE.

"I was not surprised after learning a little about CTE that he had it," Seau's 23-year-old son Tyler said. "He did play so many years at that level. I was more just kind of angry I didn't do something more and have the awareness to help him more, and now it is too late.

"I don't think any of us were aware of the side effects that could be going on with head trauma until he passed away. We didn't know his behavior was from head trauma."

That behavior, according to Tyler Seau and Junior's ex-wife Gina, included wild mood swings, irrationality, forgetfulness, insomnia and depression.

"He emotionally detached himself and would kind of 'go away' for a little bit," Tyler Seau said. "And then the depression and things like that. It started to progressively get worse."

He hid it well in public, they said. But not when he was with family or close friends.

"We appreciate the Seau family's cooperation with the National Institutes of Health," the league said in an email to the AP. "The finding underscores the recognized need for additional research to accelerate a fuller understanding of CTE.

"The NFL, both directly and in partnership with the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and other leading organizations, is committed to supporting a wide range of independent medical and scientific research that will both address CTE and promote the long-term health and safety of athletes at all levels."

NFL teams have given a $30 million research grant to the NIH.

The NFL faces lawsuits by thousands of former players who say the league withheld information on the harmful effects concussions. According to an AP review of 175 lawsuits, 3,818 players have filed suit. At least 26 Hall of Famer members are among the players who have done so.

Seau is not the first former NFL player who killed himself, then was found to have CTE. Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling are others.

Duerson, a former Chicago Bears defensive back, left a note asking for his brain to be studied for signs of trauma before shooting himself. His family filed a wrongful death suit against the NFL, claiming the league didn't do enough to prevent or treat the concussions that severely damaged his brain.

Easterling played safety for the Falcons in the 1970s. After his career, he suffered from dementia, depression and insomnia, according to his wife, Mary Ann. He committed suicide last April.

Mary Ann Easterling is among the plaintiffs who have sued the NFL.

"It was important to us to get to the bottom of this, the truth," Gina Seau said, "and now that it has been conclusively determined from every expert that he had obviously had it, CTE, we just hope it is taken more seriously.

"You can't deny it exists, and it is hard to deny there is a link between head trauma and CTE. There's such strong evidence correlating head trauma and collisions and CTE."

Tyler Seau played football through high school and for two years in college. He says he has no symptoms of any brain trauma.

Gina Seau's son Jake, now a high school junior, played football for two seasons, but has switched to lacrosse and has been recruited to play at Duke.

"Lacrosse is really his sport and what he is passionate about," she said. "He is a good football player and probably could continue. But especially now watching what his dad went through, he says, 'Why would I risk lacrosse for football?'

"I didn't have to have a discussion with him after we saw what Junior went through."

Her 12-year-old son, Hunter, has shown no interest in playing football.

"That's fine with me," she said.

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Institute of Medicine Studying Concussions in Young Athletes

The Institute of Medicine, a federally financed research group, has started a 15-month investigation into sports-related concussions sustained by young athletes.

An ad hoc committee of scientists, which held its first meeting Monday, “will conduct a study on sports-related concussions in youth, from elementary school through young adulthood, including military personnel and their dependents,” according to the Web site of the institute, part of the National Academies of Science.

The committee will look at the causes of concussions and the “relationships to hits to the head or body during sports, and the effectiveness of protective devices and equipment.”

The committee will also review screening, diagnosis, treatment and long-term consequences of concussions and head hits.  

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Wall Street Flattens Out

Stocks rose ever so slightly on Wall Street on Thursday as stronger-than-expected exports in China, the world’s second-biggest economy, raised hopes for a more robust recovery in the global economy this year.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index added 0.2 percent, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.1 percent and the Nasdaq composite index was flat in morning trading.

Data showed China’s export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown, even as demand from Europe and the United States remained subdued.

Ford shares gained 3.2 percent after it doubled its first-quarter dividend to 10 cents a share, despite a recent drop in market share.

Adding to the bullish sentiment, Spanish benchmark government bond yields fell below 5 percent to a 10-month low on the back of a strong bond auction that raised more than the targeted amount. European stock markets were mostly higher after the European Central Bank kept benchmark interest rates steady.

“The market’s more positive and it owes a lot of that to the Chinese economic data,” said Art Hogan, managing director of Lazard Capital Markets in New York, adding that the success of the Spanish auction was also of note.

Shares of the upscale jeweler Tiffany dropped 6 percent after it said earnings for the year through Jan. 31 will be at the lower end of its forecast.

Molycorp shares dropped 20 percent after the company said revenue and cash flow would be lower than expected this year due to lower rare-earth prices.

Nokia shares jumped 14 percent on Wall Street after the Finnish handset maker said its fourth-quarter results were better than expected and that the mobile phone business achieved underlying profitability.

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