Case of Wall Street greed gone too far

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was one of the executives whose stock award was accelerated to beat higher tax rate.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Goldman Sachs granted $65 million in stock to execs before new tax rates began


• Susan Antilla says the firm's CEO had endorsed higher rates, called for entitlement cuts


• She says Goldman benefits from the implicit promise that U.S. will bail it out


• Antilla: It was unseemly for Goldman to rush the payments to shield execs from new rates

Editor's note: Susan Antilla is a columnist at Bloomberg View and a contributor to TheStreet.com. She has written about finance for more than 30 years. She is author of "Tales From the Boom-Boom Room: The Landmark Legal Battles That Exposed Wall Street's Shocking Culture of Sexual Harassment." Follow her on Twitter @antillaview.

(CNN) -- Nobody likes to pay taxes, so can you blame the good folks at Goldman Sachs & Co. for doing what they could to avoid the higher rates that kicked in on January 1?

While the rest of us were donning our party clothes on New Year's Eve, the legal worker bees at Goldman were pushing the send button on 10 regulatory filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

By the time the ball dropped in Times Square, regulators had been notified that $65 million in Goldman stock had been granted a month early, helping a cluster of powerful multimillionaire executives trim their tax tab.

Among the 10 who shared that $65 million, Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn and Chief Financial Officer David Viniar wound up with $8.4 million apiece in Goldman stock.

Susan Antilla

Blankfein's compensation in 2011 was $16.2 million. Cohn and Viniar that year made $15.8 million. Even Gordon Gekko would be impressed to see that bosses making that much money were able to catch a tax break for a couple hundred thousand.

The 10 executives who skirted 2013's higher rates were not the only Goldmanites who benefited from the "accelerated" vesting. Michael DuVally, a Goldman spokesman, acknowledged there was "a group larger than" the 10 but declined to say how many. DuVally would not comment on who made the decision to grant the shares early.

The shrewd Goldman move is hardly unique among rich business executives or even 99 percenters of more modest means. It was no secret that higher taxes were coming this year, and taxpayers of all shapes and sizes did what they could to ensure that "tax events" would occur in 2012.

Even environmental activist and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore tried, albeit without success, to unload his Current TV to Al Jazeera before the new year dawned.

What makes the Goldman move distasteful is that it wasn't even two months ago that CEO Blankfein was mouthing off in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he endorsed tax increases "especially for the wealthiest" -- along with a plug to cut entitlements to all you freeloaders out there.

If you're pushing the position that the rich should pay more to help fix the deficit, it doesn't quite follow to employ a tax dodge, says Dennis Kelleher, president of the Washington-based public interest group Better Markets Inc.

"Goldman's quickie year-end tax shenanigans deprived the government of what it otherwise would get," he says. "So they either cause the debt to go up, or cause others to pay more by the taxes they are avoiding."

DuVally, the Goldman spokesman, declined to comment when I asked whether it was inconsistent for Goldman to make a move for its executives to avoid taxes after Blankfein endorsed increases for the wealthy.

I've got to hand it to Goldman. The firm is a master of the "have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too" brand of politics and public relations. One minute, Goldman is cranking out press releases about its devotion to women entrepreneurs in its philanthropic "10,000 women" program. The next, it is announcing its annual list of new partners that includes a paltry 10 women but 60 men.

Goldman was a victim on the defensive when Greg Smith, a former employee, wrote a New York Times op-ed on March 14, blasting the firm for having "morally bankrupt people" who needed to be weeded out. You could almost feel sorry for poor Goldman, which shipped out a memo reminding employees that their estimable employer had been named one of the best places to work in the United Kingdom only weeks before the London-based Smith's "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" essay.

By the time Smith published a book seven months later, the firm had turned ruthless revenge-seeker, even sharing parts of Smith's self-evaluations with the media. A "best place to work?" Really? Careful what you say in the press -- and in your HR file -- if you get your paycheck from a Goldman-style operation.

The brouhaha over Smith's op-ed and book stirred up debate of the "What did you expect of an investment bank operating in capitalistic society?" type.

Fair enough. Banks are not in the philanthropy business -- even if they spend as much time as Goldman does talking about its good deeds and famous "business principles." ("Our clients always come first" is famously No. 1 on the list.)

At Goldman and other "too big to fail" banks, though, employees walk through the doors each morning knowing that the rest of us will be forced to bail them out again should another crisis ensue. We taxpayers provide the insurance policy that they enjoy without ever sending us premiums. In October of 2008, Goldman got $10 billion in taxpayer money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which it ultimately paid back.

Blankfein, like other bank CEOs, would later make the case that Goldman wasn't "relying on" that government help.

But leaf through the tomes of some of the regulators who lived through the crisis, and you start to wonder whether our tax-dodging heroes might be out of jobs today if the public hadn't fronted a bailout.

From "Bull by the Horns," by former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman Sheila Bair: Goldman and Morgan Stanley were "teetering on the edge" in the fall of 2008.

From "Bailout: An Inside Account of how Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street," by Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program: Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke "confided that he believed that Goldman Sachs would have been the next to go" after Morgan Stanley.

We need to change the conversation here.

Goldman and its too-big-to-fail brethren are banks that accepted welfare and are in debt to U.S. taxpayers for averting disaster. This hasn't been about hard-nosed capitalism since those first TARP wire transfers made their way into Goldman Sachs' coffers.

As for the bank's recent tax-reduction maneuver, it's another reminder that Goldman's management is either clueless about how bad it looks or doesn't care. Sometimes bad PR is a just a cost of doing business.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Susan Antilla.

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Attorney: Poisoned lottery winner's widow has 'nothing to hide'

The widow of a West Rogers Park man who died of cyanide poisoning weeks after winning a $1 million lottery jackpot was questioned extensively by Chicago police last month after the medical examiner's office reclassified the death as a homicide, her attorney told the Tribune on Tuesday.

Authorities investigating the death of Urooj Khan also executed a search warrant at the home he had shared with his wife, Shabana Ansari, according to Steven Kozicki, her attorney. Ansari later was interviewed by detectives for more than four hours, answering all their questions, the attorney said.

"She's got nothing to hide," Kozicki said.

The mystery surrounding Khan's death — first reported by the Tribune in a front-page story Monday — has sparked international media interest.

Cook County authorities said Tuesday that they plan to go to court in the next few days for approval to exhume Khan's remains at Rosehill Cemetery. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Medical Examiner Stephen J. Cina said he sent a sworn statement to prosecutors laying out why the body must be exhumed.

"I feel that a complete autopsy is needed for the sake of clarity and thoroughness," Cina said.

Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office, confirmed that papers seeking the exhumation would be filed soon in the Daley Center courthouse.

Khan, who owned a dry cleaning business on the city's North Side, died unexpectedly in July at 46, just weeks after winning a million-dollar lottery prize at a 7-Eleven store near his home. Finding no trauma to his body and no unusual substances in his blood, the medical examiner's office declared his death to be from natural causes and he was buried without an autopsy.

About a week later, a relative told authorities to take a closer look at Khan's death. By early December, comprehensive toxicology tests showed that Khan had died of a lethal amount of cyanide, leading the medical examiner's office to reclassify the death a homicide and prompting police and prosecutors to investigate.

While a motive has not been determined, police have not ruled out that Khan was killed because of his big lottery win, a law enforcement source has told the Tribune. He died before he could collect the winnings — about $425,000 after taxes and because he decided to take a lump-sum payment.

According to court records obtained by the Tribune, Khan's brother has squabbled with Ansari over the money in probate court. The brother, Imtiaz, raised concern that because Khan left no will, his 17-year-old daughter from a previous marriage would not get "her fair share" of her father's estate. Khan and Ansari did not have children.

Al-Haroon Husain, an attorney for Ansari in the probate case, said the money was all accounted for and the estate was in the process of being divided up by the court. Under Illinois law, the estate typically would be split evenly between the surviving spouse and Khan's only child, he said.

Kozicki, Ansari's criminal defense attorney, said his client adored her husband and had no financial interest in seeing harm come to him.

"Now in addition to grieving her husband, she's struggling to run the business that he essentially ran while he was alive," Kozicki said. "Once people analyze it, they (would) realize she's in a much worse financial position after his death than she was before."

Reached by phone Tuesday evening at the family dry cleaners, Ansari denied reports that she had fed her husband a traditional Indian meal of ground beef curry before he died. She said he wasn't feeling well after awakening in the middle of the night. She said he sat in a chair and soon collapsed. She then called 911.

Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, speaking Tuesday at an unrelated news conference, remarked that he had never seen a case like this in 32 years in law enforcement.

"So I'll never say that I've seen everything," he told reporters.

jmeisner@tribune.com

jgorner@tribune.com

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Venezuela postpones inauguration for cancer-stricken Chavez

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will postpone the inauguration of President Hugo Chavez for a new term due to health problems, the government said on Tuesday, another sign the socialist leader's cancer may be bringing an end to his 14 years in power.

The 58-year-old former soldier who has dominated the South American OPEC nation since 1999 has not been heard from since surgery on December 11 in Cuba - his fourth operation since he was diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer in June 2011.

The announcement outraged opposition leaders who insist that Chavez must be sworn in before the National Assembly on January 10 as laid out in the constitution, or temporarily step aside and leave an ally in power.

"The commander president wants us to inform that, based on his medical team's recommendations, the post-operative recovery should extend past January 10," said Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's chosen successor, in a letter read to the legislature.

"As a result, he will not be able to be present at the National Assembly on that date."

The letter said authorities would seek another date for the inauguration ceremony but did not say when it would take place or give a time frame for Chavez's return from Havana.

Rather than being sworn in by the legislature, he would take his oath at a later date before the Supreme Court, the letter said, as allowed by the constitution.

Government leaders insist Chavez is completely fulfilling his duties as head of state, even though official medical bulletins say he has a severe pulmonary infection and has had trouble breathing.

The government has called for a massive rally outside the presidential palace on Thursday, and allied presidents including Uruguay's Jose Mujica and Bolivia's Evo Morales have confirmed they will visit Venezuela this week despite Chavez's absence.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has announced plans to visit Chavez in Havana on Friday.

But the unprecedented silence by the president - famous for regularly speaking for hours in meandering broadcasts - has left many convinced he could be in his last days.

His resignation or death would upend politics in the oil-rich nation, where he enjoys a deity-like status among poor supporters thankful for his social largesse.

His critics call him a fledgling dictator who has squandered billions of dollars from crude sales while dashing the independence of state institutions.

CONSTITUTION DISPUTE

The constitution does not specify what happens if the president does not take office on January 10.

The Supreme Court, controlled by Chavez allies, called a news conference for Wednesday. It is widely expected to announce an interpretation of the constitution that will give Chavez leeway to take office when he is fit to do so.

If he dies or steps aside, new elections would be called within 30 days. Before leaving for Havana in December, the president instructed his supporters to back Maduro in that vote if he were unable to continue.

Opposition leaders argue that Congress chief and Chavez ally Diosdado Cabello should take over, as mandated by the constitution if the president's absence is formally declared.

Cabello has ruled that out, saying the president continues to be in charge.

"Who could have believed the opposition would be screaming for Diosdado Cabello to be given the presidency of the republic?" he said during a rambunctious session of Congress. "That's crazy, the opposition is losing it."

Meanwhile opposition deputies accused the Socialist Party of failing to follow Chavez's instructions - a scene that would have been unimaginable before Chavez's prolonged absence.

"President Chavez is the only one among you who has spoken clearly," said opposition leader Julio Borges.

He was drowned out by pro-Chavez deputies clapping and chanting the socialist leader's name and rebuffed by Cabello, who had long been considered a potential successor to Chavez until he was passed over for Maduro.

"It's not my fault you weren't chosen, don't take your frustration out on me," Borges quipped.

Another opposition deputy complained that during the debate a copy of the constitution was thrown across the chamber from the direction of the Socialist Party's deputies.

Chavez's supporters have held near-daily vigils for his recovery, while opposition activists accuse the president's allies of a Cuban-inspired manipulation of the situation.

Maduro has taken over the day-to-day running of the government and looks set to continue in the role past Thursday.

The mustachioed former bus driver lacks Chavez's charisma, but he has sought to imitate the president's style with vituperative attacks on the opposition and televised ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

With the micro-managing Chavez away, major policy decisions in Venezuela, such as a widely expected devaluation of the bolivar currency, appear to be on hold.

Venezuelan bond prices, which had soared in recent weeks on Chavez's health woes, dipped on Monday and Tuesday as investors' expectations of a quick government change apparently dimmed.

"The 'regime change' euphoria seems excessive taking into account the unclear legal transition and perhaps, more importantly, the risk that regime change does not allow for policy change," New York-based Jefferies' managing director Siobhan Morden said in a note on the bonds.

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Eric Beech)

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Wall Street edges off five-year high, awaits earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks lost ground on Monday, as investors drew back from recent gains that lifted the S&P 500 to a five-year high, in anticipation of sluggish growth in corporate profits.

Shares of financial companies dipped after a group of major U.S. banks agreed to pay a total of $8.5 billion to end a government inquiry into faulty mortgage foreclosures. The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, was down 0.3 percent.

Other sectors were hit as well, most notably energy and utilities. The S&P 500 energy sector index <.gspe> fell 0.8 percent and the utilities sector <.gspu> was off 1.1 percent.

The day's decline came a session after the S&P 500 finished at a five-year high, boosted by a budget deal and strong economic data. The S&P 500 rose 4.6 percent last week, the best weekly gain in more than a year.

"It's a little bit of taking some risk off the table ahead of profit season, you're not going to see anything all that great" on earnings, said Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrera Capital Markets Inc in Boston.

Earnings are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results, and analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Fourth-quarter earnings growth is expected to come in at 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Aluminum company Alcoa Inc begins the reporting season by announcing its results after Tuesday's market close. Alcoa shares fell 1.7 percent at $9.10.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 50.92 points, or 0.38 percent, to 13,384.29. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 4.58 points, or 0.31 percent, to 1,461.89. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 2.84 points, or 0.09 percent, to 3,098.81.

Ten mortgage servicers - including Bank of America , Citigroup , JPMorgan , and Wells Fargo - agreed on Monday to pay $8.5 billion to end a case-by-case review of foreclosures required by U.S. regulators.

In a separate case, Bank of America also announced roughly $11.6 billion of settlements with mortgage finance company Fannie Mae and a $1.8 billion sale of collection rights on home loans.

The bank also entered into agreements with Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and Walter Investment Management to sell about $306 billion of residential mortgage servicing rights.

Bank of America shares lost 0.2 percent at $12.09 while Nationstar Mortgage Holdings jumped 16.8 percent to $38.83.

Citigroup shares were up 0.09 percent to $42.47, and Wells Fargo shares fell 0.5 percent to $34.77.

"The financials probably have the wind behind them now with a lot of the regulations coming out ... the market has to absorb a lot of the gains, and for that reason there's a pullback from this level," said Warren West, principal at Greentree Brokerage Services in Philadelphia.

Shares of U.S. jet maker Boeing Co dropped 2 percent after a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft with no passengers on board caught fire at Boston's Logan International Airport on Monday morning.

Amazon.com shares hit their highest price ever at $269.22 after Morgan Stanley raised is rating on the stock. Shares were up 3.6 percent at $268.46.

Video-streaming service Netflix Inc shares gained 3.4 percent to $99.20 after it said it will carry previous seasons of some popular shows produced by Time Warner's Warner Bros Television.

Walt Disney Co stock fell 2.3 percent to $50.97. The company started an internal cost-cutting review several weeks ago that may include layoffs at its studio and other units, three people with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

Volume was lower than average, as 4.78 billion shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq. This is well below the 2012 average of 6.42 billion per session.

Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,629 to 1,363, while on the Nasdaq decliners beat advancers 1,438 to 1,066.

(Reporting By Gabriel Debenedetti; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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Bama bashes Notre Dame 42-14 in BCS title game

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — The coach no longer wears houndstooth. The result is the same. Another Alabama dynasty.

Quieting the Irish by the first play of the second quarter, Eddie Lacy, AJ McCarron and the No. 2 Crimson Tide rolled top-ranked Notre Dame 42-14 for the BCS championship Monday night, locking up a second straight national title and third in four years with another laugher of a title game.

The Bear would've been especially proud of this one — Nick Saban and the Tide romping to the second-biggest rout of the BCS era that began in 1999.

"We're going for it next year again," said Alabama offensive tackle Cyrus Kouandijo, only a sophomore but already the owner of two rings. "And again. And again. And again. I love to win. That's why I came here."

Lacy, the game's offensive MVP, ran for one touchdown and caught a pass for another in the final minute of the opening half. He spun away from the vaunted Notre Dame defense not once, but twice, to cap a 28-0 blitz before the bands even got on the field.

"They just did what Alabama does," moaned Manti Te'o, Notre Dame's star linebacker and Heisman Trophy finalist.

Lacy finished with 140 yards on 20 carries, coming up with two of his best performances in the two biggest games of the year. He rushed for a career-high 181 yards in a thrilling victory over Georgia in the SEC title game, and was nearly as dominant against the Irish. McCarron wasn't too shabby, either, completing 20 of 28 passes for four touchdowns and 264 yards, adding another dazzling effort on top of his MVP in last year's title game.

You could almost hear television sets around the country flipping to other channels, a hugely anticipated matchup between two of the nation's most storied programs reduced to nothing more than the second straight BCS blowout for the Crimson Tide.

"We've had a lot of really great football players who've worked really hard," Saban said. "Because we've had a great team, we've been able to have a significant amount of success."

Alabama (13-1) scored 69 straight points against its title game opponents, going back to getting the final 13 against Texas in 2010, followed by a stifling 21-0 victory over LSU for last year's crown, then scoring the first 35 points on Notre Dame. Saban's team made the Irish (12-1) look like a squad that would be hard-pressed to finish in the middle of the pack in the mighty Southeastern Conference, which has now won seven straight national championships.

The Crimson Tide wrapped up its ninth Associated Press national title, breaking a tie with Notre Dame for the most by any school and gaining a measure of redemption for a bitter loss to the Irish almost four decades ago: the epic Sugar Bowl in which Ara Parseghian's team edged Bear Bryant's powerhouse 24-23.

Bryant won five AP titles during his brilliant career. The way things are going, Saban might just chase him down.

The diminutive man with the perpetual scowl has guided Alabama to the top spot in the rankings three times since arriving in Tuscaloosa in 2007, and if he's serious about finishing his career with the job he has, there seems no reason he can't win a few more before he's done with "The Process."

Already, Saban is the first coach in the BCS era to win national titles at different schools, capturing his first at LSU during the 2003 season. Now, he's the first coach with back-to-back BCS titles, and given the youthfulness of his team, Alabama figures to go into next season as a heavy favorite.

In an interesting twist, Saban's fourth college title came in the stadium where he had the only stumble of his coaching career, a two-year tenure with the NFL's Miami Dolphins that ended ugly, with the coach insisting he wasn't planning to leave — then bolting for Alabama just two weeks later. His tactics may have been underhanded, but it's hard to argue with the call he made.

Before a record Sun Life Stadium crowd of 80,120 that definitely included more green than crimson, Lacy ran right through Te'o and the Irish on a 20-yard touchdown run before the game was 3 minutes old, capping an 82-yard drive that was longest of the season given up by the Fighting Irish.

It would only get worse. Alabama marched right down the field on its second possession, this one a 10-play, 61-yard pounding that finished with McCarron completely faking out the defense and lofting a 3-yard touchdown pass to Michael Williams, standing all alone in the back of the end zone.

On the first play of the second quarter, T.J. Yeldon powered over from the 1 to make it 21-0, the finish to another impressive drive — this one covering 80 yards — that included two long completions by McCarron. First, he went to Kevin Norwood on a 25-yard gain. Then, he hooked up with freshman Amari Cooper for a 27-yard gain to the Notre Dame 6.

By that point, it was clear to everyone that Notre Dame's hopes of winning its first national championship since 1988 were all done. But Alabama just poured it on.

"We've got to get physically stronger, continue close the gap there," said Brian Kelly, the Irish's third-year coach. "Just overall, we need to see what it looks like. Our guys clearly know what it looks like now — a championship football team. That's back-to-back national champions. That's what it looks like. That's what you measure yourself against there. It's pretty clear across the board what we have to do."

Lacy's 11-yard touchdown reception with 31 seconds left in the half left the Irish fans shaking the heads in disbelief, while the Alabama faithful broke out that familiar "SEC! SEC! SEC!"

Alabama made it 35-0 on McCarron's second TD pass of the night, a 34-yarder to Cooper without a Notre Dame defender in sight.

The Irish finally scored late in the third quarter, a 2-yard run by Everett Golson that served no other purpose except to end Alabama's remarkable scoreless streak in the BCS title games, which stretched to 108 minute and 7 seconds — the equivalent of nearly two full games — before the Notre Dame quarterback fought his way into the end zone.

The only BCS title game that was more of a blowout was USC's 55-19 victory over Oklahoma in the 2005 Orange Bowl, a title that was later vacated because of NCAA violations.

About the only time Alabama stumbled was when McCarron had a miscommunication with his All-American center, Barrett Jones, in the closing seconds. The fiery McCarron shouted at Jones, who just shoved him away. But as the seconds ticked off, they were right on the same page, hugging Saban and celebrating another title.

Notre Dame went from unranked in the preseason to the top spot in the rankings by the end of the regular season. But that long-awaited championship will have to wait at least one more years. Golson completed his first season as the starter by going 21 of 36 for 270 yards, with a touchdown and an interception. But he got no help from the running game, which was held to 32 yards — 170 below their season average.

Kelly had vowed this was only beginning, insisting the bar has been raised in South Bend no matter what the outcome.

"We made incredible strides to get to this point," he said. "Now it's pretty clear what we've got to do to get over the top."

___

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

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Monster Black Hole Burp Surprises Scientists

LONG BEACH, Calif. – Astronomers have discovered what appears to be colossal belch from a massive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy. The outburst was 10 times as bright as the biggest star explosion, scientists say.

The potential super-sized black hole burp find came as astronomers studied the galaxy NGC 660, which is located 44 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.

“The discovery was entirely serendipitous. Our observations were spread over a few years, and when we looked at them, we found that one galaxy had changed over that time from being placid and quiescent to undergone a hugely energetic outburst at the end,” study researcher Robert Minchin of Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico said in a statement.

To determine whether the outburst was from a supernova — the explosive end of a star —  or the galaxy’s core, the researchers used the High Sensitivity Array, a global network of telescopes that includes the Very Long Baseline Array, the Arecibo Telescope, the NSF’s 100-meter Green Bank Telescope, and the 100-meter Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Germany.

Instead of an expanding ring of material suggesting a supernova event, the researchers found five locations with bright radio emissions clustered around the galaxy’s core.

“The most likely explanation is that there are jets coming from the core, but they are precessing, or wobbling, and the hot spots we see are where the jets slammed into the material near the galaxy’s nucleus,” said Chris Salter, also of the Arecibo Observatory.

 Those jets, the researchers said, would mean the outburst likely came from a supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy NGC 660. As the black hole devours dust and mass, it pulls a whirling disk of matter into its heart that spews jets of particles as it is consumed.

Supermassive black holes are colossal structures at the cores of galaxies that are between millions and billions of times as massive as the sun. They are much larger than stellar-mass black holes, which are created from the deaths of giant stars and can contain the mass of about 10 suns.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.

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In India, questions over decision to treat rape victim overseas

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The decision to fly the victim of a gang rape that outraged India for treatment in Singapore made little medical sense as the woman was so severely injured that her death was all but inevitable, doctors say.

The government, on the back foot after furious street protests and stinging criticism of authorities over the December 16 rape in the capital, New Delhi, has struggled to defend its decision to send the 23-year-old physiotherapy student overseas. She died 48 hours later.

With a deadly infection seeping into her blood from damage done to her intestines during the assault, complicated by a cardiac arrest and damage to the brain, she was just clinging to life when she was flown 2,500 miles from New Delhi to Singapore late on December 26, doctors said.

"It was ethically and morally wrong to have taken her out, given that she was sinking and her chances of survival were next to zero at that stage," said a doctor at New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which was advising the team treating the woman at a sister hospital across the street.

"Such a thing raises false hopes in the minds of the family, the community. No doctor in his right mind would do this, unless you want to get the patient off your back," said the doctor, who declined to be identified, saying colleagues at the government-run hospital who had spoken out had been warned of consequences in what has become a politically explosive case.

The woman, who was assaulted by five men and a teenager on a moving bus after a male companion was beaten unconscious, cannot be named under an Indian law that prohibits identifying victims of rape.

Another doctor who was consulted during the woman's care at New Delhi's Safdarjang hospital, where she was taken following the assault, said she had been getting the best possible treatment in India and the question of why she was shifted should be answered by the government.

Many security officials have said they feared the protests would escalate if the woman had died in New Delhi, but the government has said the only consideration was her wellbeing.

"The idea was to give her the best possible treatment," said Harish Rawat, a government minister who attended a cabinet meeting on the woman's condition and the efforts to save her.

"I don't think the idea was to run away from the problem. Death here or death abroad would still have the same impact," he said. "We felt if there was a chance to save her, it should be tried. Take her to a transplant facility abroad."

At the time of the transfer, authorities at Safdarjang said her condition was critical which was why they decided to move her to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital, which specialized in multi-organ transplant.

But a transplant for her damaged intestine, if at all possible, was months away, doctors said. At the time of her transfer, the woman, unconscious since a heart attack the previous night, was in no condition to go through such an operation.

"One cannot think about intestinal transplant at this moment," Samiran Nundy, the head of surgical gastroenterology and organ transplantation at the Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi, was quoted as saying in newspapers.

"First, the infection spreading in her should be stopped, then one can think about transplant."

Within 40 hours of her arrival in Singapore, doctors called her family and told them the end was near, even as millions prayed at home in the hope that she would pull through.

"Sepsis followed by cardiac arrest is a terminal event in 99 percent of cases," said the doctor at AIIMS, referring to blood infection.

"Doctors will have anecdotal evidence about one or two cases in their whole career of somebody who survived. I had one case, a woman, but she too died within a month. Yes, miracles happen, but you were not looking at one in this case. It was clear to everyone, especially after the cardiac arrest."

PROTESTS AND PANIC

Piecing together the events leading up to her death tells a tale of authorities in Delhi trying to defuse public anger over the attack by initially insisting that she was getting the best possible treatment, and then, as things began to go wrong, getting increasingly worried that the protests that tapped a deep vein of frustration, could spin out of control.

The alarm bells for the government rang late on Christmas night when the woman suffered the cardiac arrest. That was nine days after she was brought in to Safdarjang hospital in a life-threatening condition after the brutal assault - she was assessed then as 5 on a scale in which 6 is rated as no chance of survival.

After the heart attack, her pulse rate became critically low. Doctors resuscitated her after three to four minutes but by then she had become unconscious, caused by lack of blood to the brain. She never regained consciousness from that point on.

Equally worrisome, the infection from her injured intestines had seeped into her blood and was spreading to her vital organs.

For the government, shaken by the scale and intensity of the protests that focused on the lack of safety in the capital for women, the deterioration in her health was cause for concern.

Even as the federal cabinet met the next morning, arrangements to fly the woman for treatment in Singapore were being put in place.

One official said the public mood was so fragile that the government felt that if she died in India, some people would have blamed the government for not sending her abroad for treatment.

"You can argue this the other way. They would have said 'if Sonia can go abroad, why not this girl'," the official said, referring to the head of the ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, who travels abroad for treatment of an undisclosed condition.

Outside the prime minister's office where the cabinet met, thousands of baton-wielding police including crack members of Rapid Action Force kept the area under a lockdown. Days earlier, pitched battles broke out between hundreds of protesters and police at the scene, in which a policeman was killed.

Protesters had climbed the walls of South and North Block, the high-security seat of government, while others swarmed towards the iron gates of the presidential palace. They carried placards such as "The only two women safe in Delhi are Sonia Gandhi and Sheila Dikshit". Dikshit is the chief minister, the top elected official of the local government of Delhi.

A government official privy to the handling of the protests said the administration had not anticipated that so many students would come out onto the streets and that the protests would last for so many days.

But when protesters showed up at the presidential palace, the line had been crossed in the security agencies' mind.

"It was a near-breach of security at the presidential palace. The officials tasked with security didn't know how to control the protesters, if they had jumped over its gates. Would you fire at the students, the housewives?" the official asked.

The Intelligence Bureau, which coordinates all domestic intelligence, had been warning that the public mood may turn uglier, the official said.

NO PASSPORTS

At Safdarjung on the morning of December 26, a team of doctors arrived from Medanta Medicity, a private medical centre which runs an air ambulance service. Their mandate was to assess whether she could survive the airlift, said Dr Yatin Mehta, head of critical care at Medicity.

"The decision was to take her out of the country. Our job was to determine whether she could take the airlift, not whether she should be going or not," said Mehta, who accompanied the woman on the flight.

He said the option of sending her to Cambridge in Britain to a hospital that specializes in transplants, was considered but dropped because it would have involved a refueling stop for the aircraft and a two-hour road trip upon landing in London.

Flying her to the Canadian city of Toronto, which also has a specialized organ transplant centre, was also vetoed. They zeroed in on Singapore, six hours flying time away.

It is highly unusual for someone to be flown out of India for critical care. If anything, the traffic is the reverse, with people travelling to the country for treatment.

In the event, the transfer to Singapore was successful, Mehta said, although the woman suffered a drop in blood pressure during the flight. "We were prepared for that. We handed her over to Mount E in the same condition she left the hospital in Delhi," he said, referring to the Singapore hospital.

The woman's family first got wind of the plan to transfer her at hospital in Delhi, when her brother noticed a flurry of activity and a staff member said that doctors were considering moving her.

"We accepted the decision. We were not interfering in the treatment. The doctors said it was in the best interest of our sister, we accepted it. Our only condition was to save her," the brother told Reuters.

Shortly afterwards, officials from the foreign ministry arrived and issued the family travel documents, since none of them had a passport. Their pictures were taken at the hospital.

Three ambulances arrived at the hospital. One of the ambulances headed into the interior of the city and another took the route to the Medanta centre, followed by a convoy of television crews.

A third, carrying the woman, sped away to a special section of Delhi airport, giving everyone the slip.

After she was taken to Singapore, authorities in the city-state's Mount Elizabeth Hospital were frank about her bleak chances for survival.

"The patient is currently struggling against the odds, and fighting for her life," Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Loh said in a statement a day after she was admitted.

"Our medical team's investigations upon her arrival at the hospital yesterday showed that in addition to her prior cardiac arrest, she also had infection of her lungs and abdomen as well as significant brain injury."

Later that day, Soh said her condition was deteriorating.

Her family was told the end was near.

"We didn't expect her to go so quickly," said her brother, who was with her when she died. "At 9:30 p.m., the doctors called us in and said they were sorry, they couldn't do anything more. Her vital organs were failing."

"We went inside and stayed with her the whole night. We saw her heart beat slowing down on the machine. It kept dropping and then dropped to zero. The time was 4:05 a.m."

(Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in New Delhi and Kevin Lim in Singapore; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Asian shares slip, Basel ruling supports banks

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asian stocks drifted down on Monday as investors booked profits from a New Year rally that had pushed markets to multi-month highs, although financial stocks gained after global regulators decided to relax draft plans for tough new bank liquidity rules.

Commodity prices mostly held steady, supported by data showing the U.S. economy continuing on a path of slow but steady recovery that propelled Wall Street stocks to a five-year high.

Financial bookmakers called Europe's main share indexes to open flat or slightly lower, while S&P 500 index futures traded in Asia eased 0.2 percent, pointing to a weaker start in New York.

"It just seems like markets are entering a consolidation phase after recent gains and with most markets trading at fresh 12-month highs," said Stan Shamu, market strategist at financial spreadbetting firm IG in Melbourne.

The dollar fell against the yen, coming off a two-and-a-half year peak it had logged against the Japanese currency as investors adjusted to the possibility of more monetary stimulus in 2013 from the Bank of Japan and less from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus>, which had reached its highest level since August 2011 on Thursday, eased 0.1 percent, while Tokyo's Nikkei share average <.n225> retreated after touching a 23-month high in early trade to close down 0.8 percent. <.t/>

CASH BUFFERS

The MSCI benchmark's financial sector sub-index <.miapjfn00pus> firmed after the Basel Committee of banking supervisors agreed on Sunday to give banks four more years and greater flexibility to build up cash buffers so they can use some of their reserves to help struggling economies.

HSBC Holdings Hong Kong shares rose 1 percent, while Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd gained 0.6 percent. <.hk><.ax/>

Shares in Japanese exporters were supported by the trend of a weakening yen, which traded around 87.85 to the dollar, up 0.3 percent on the day, after the U.S. currency rose as far as 88.40 yen, its highest in nearly two-and-a-half years, on Friday.

The dollar posted a gain of around 2.7 percent against the yen last week, its biggest weekly rise in more than a year. Its gains had accelerated after minutes from the Federal Reserve's December meeting showed some policymakers had considered ending the Fed's bond-buying program as early as this year.

By contrast, many investors are now betting that Japan's new government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will push to weaken the yen and drive through aggressive fiscal stimulus, and pressure the Bank of Japan to do the same on the monetary side.

Although the dollar may pull back against the yen given the speed of its rise over the past month, its uptrend seems likely to remain intact, said Hiroshi Maeba, head of FX trading Japan for UBS in Tokyo.

"My sense is that the market could still head much higher," Maeba said. "I think 90 yen might be reached pretty soon."

The dollar firmed against the euro, which traded around $1.3035.

The U.S. stock benchmark S&P 500 index <.spx> closed at its highest level since December 2007 on Friday after data showed a steady pace of jobs growth and brisk expansion of the services sector in the world's biggest economy.

That offered support to growth-sensitive commodities, with copper little changed just below $8,100 a tonne, while Brent crude oil eased a little to around $111.20.

Spot gold firmed 0.3 percent to around $1,660 an ounce.

(Additional reporting by Masayuki Kitano; Editing by Eric Meijer)

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RG3 hurt, Seattle tops Redskins 24-14 in playoffs

LANDOVER, Md. (AP) — Russell Wilson raced ahead to throw the final block on Marshawn Lynch's fourth-quarter, go-ahead touchdown run, doing just enough to get in the way of the Washington Redskins safety near the goal line.

Less than a minute later, Robert Griffin III's knee buckled as he tried to field a bad shotgun snap, the pain so bad that he didn't even try to recover the ball.

The last rookie quarterback standing in the NFL playoffs is Wilson — the third-round pick who teamed with Lynch on Sunday to lead the Seattle Seahawks to a 24-14 victory over Griffin and the Redskins.

"Marshawn always tells me, 'Russ, I got your back, no matter what,'" Wilson said. "So I just try to help him out every once in a while."

And the latest debate over the wisdom of keeping an injured franchise player on the field — when he's obviously nowhere near his best — starts with coach Mike Shanahan, who let Griffin keep going until the QB could absolutely go no more.

"I think I did put myself at more risk," Griffin said. "But every time you get on the field, you're putting yourself on the line."

Lynch ran for 132 yards, and Wilson completed 15 of 26 passes for 187 yards and ran eight times for 67 yards as Seahawks overcame a 14-0 first-quarter hole — their biggest deficit of the season — and will visit the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons next Sunday.

Meanwhile, Griffin was headed for an MRI exam to determine the extent of the damage on his re-injured right knee. He was already playing with a big black brace, having sprained the lateral collateral ligament about a month ago against the Baltimore Ravens. He hadn't looked his usual self in the two games he had played since, and he was obviously hobbled after falling awkwardly while throwing an incomplete pass in the first quarter Sunday.

In the fourth quarter, Griffin labored on a 9-yard run that made him look 32 years old instead of 22.

"He said, 'Hey, trust me. I want to be in there, and I deserve to be in there,'" Shanahan said. "I couldn't disagree with him."

Shanahan said he'll probably second-guess himself over his decision. He has the entire offseason to do so. And, whatever the injury, Griffin at least has time to recover.

Wilson, on the other hand, will carry on. The day began with three rookie quarterbacks in the playoffs, but No. 1 overall pick Andrew Luck was eliminated when Indianapolis lost to Baltimore.

Seattle is riding a six-game winning streak, having left behind any doubts that the team can hold its own outside the Pacific Northwest. The Seahawks were 3-5 on the road in the regular season and had lost eight straight road playoff games, the last win coming in 1983 against the Miami Dolphins.

"It was only two touchdowns, but it's still a big comeback and, in this setting and the crowd, it's a marvelous statement about the guys' resolve and what is going on," Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. "It's not about how you start but how you finish."

Seattle's defense shut down the Redskins after a rough start. Washington had 129 yards in the first quarter and 74 for the rest of the game. Griffin was 6 for 9 for 68 yards and two touchdowns after 15 minutes; he was 4 for 10 for 16 yards with one interception the rest of the way.

"It was hard to watch RG3 tonight," Carroll said. "It was hard on him. He was freaking gallant."

The numbers were reversed for the Seahawks, who rediscovered Lynch in the second quarter and put together three consecutive scoring drives to pull within a point, 14-13, at halftime.

Steven Hauschka, who injured his left calf during the first half and had to relinquish kickoff duties, nevertheless sandwiched field goals of 32 and 29 yards around a 4-yard touchdown pass from Wilson to Michael Robinson. Wilson fumbled on the TD drive, but the ball was fortuitously scooped up by Lynch, who ran for a 19-yard gain.

The Seahawks controlled the second half, but then it was Lynch's turn to fumble — at Washington's 1-yard line. The Redskins recovered this one, and the Seahawks had another drive get to Washington's 28 before a sack forced a punt — rather than a long field goal attempt by an injured kicker.

But the Seahawks kept coming. Wilson led the way for two big change-of-direction runs by Lynch in the game, the second one a 27-yard scoring run with 7:08 remaining.

A 2-point conversion gave the Seahawks a 21-14 lead, and then came the moment that essentially put the outcome to rest.

On the second play of the Redskins' next possession, Griffin's knee bent the wrong way on a second-and-22 at the Washington 12. He lay on the ground as the Seahawks pounced on the ball.

Griffin walked off the field under his own power, but he was done for the night. By the end of the game, he was sitting alone on the white sideline bench, his brace discarded on a bench next to him.

With good field position, the Seahawks kicked a short field goal to give them the insurance they needed. Fellow rookie Kirk Cousins, subbing for Griffin, was unable to rally the Redskins in the final minutes.

"Despite the fact that we have a 'nobody' team," Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman said, "a team not full of first-rounders and things like that, we have a lot of guys that play at a high level."

NOTES: DE Chris Clemons, Seattle's best pass rusher, hurt his left knee in the third quarter and did not return. He will undergo an MRI. "We're concerned about it," Carroll said. ... Redskins LG Kory Lichtensteiger re-injured his sprained left ankle in the first quarter. ... The playoff meeting between the two teams was the third, but first outside Seattle. The Seahawks won 20-10 in January 2006, and 35-14 in January 2008. Those were the last two postseason games played by the Redskins. ... Redskins LT Trent Williams shoved Sherman in the face as the teams met on the field after the final whistle. "It was a dirty move by Trent Williams," Sherman said. "I can understand why he's frustrated; it's the end of their season." Williams took responsibility and said he acted in an "immature manner." Later, Sherman tweeted that he received "a very classy text" message from Williams and there's "no ill will either way."

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Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

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

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Biofuels cause pollution, not as green as thought – study

OSLO (Reuters) – Green schemes to fight climate change by producing more bio-fuels could actually worsen a little-known type of air pollution and cause almost 1,400 premature deaths a year in Europe by 2020, a study showed on Sunday.

The report said trees grown to produce wood fuel – seen as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal – released a chemical into the air that, when mixed with other pollutants, could also reduce farmers’ crop yields.

“Growing biofuels is thought to be a good thing because it reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Nick Hewitt, who worked on the study with colleagues from England’s Lancaster University.

“What we’re saying is ‘yes, that’s great, but biofuels could also have a detrimental effect on air quality’,” he added.

The report, in the journal Nature Climate Change, looked into the impact of a European Union scheme to slow climate change by producing more biofuels.

Hewitt told Reuters there would be a similar impact wherever biofuels were produced in large quantities in areas suffering air pollution, including the United States and China.

Poplar, willow or eucalyptus trees, all used as fast-growing sources of renewable wood fuel, emit high levels of the chemical isoprene as they grow, the study said. Isoprene forms toxic ozone when mixed with other air pollutants in sunlight.

“Large-scale production of biofuels in Europe would have small but significant effects on human mortality and crop yields,” said Hewitt.

“As far as we know, no one has looked at the air quality of growing biofuel crops before,” he added.

The report estimated that ozone from wood-based energy to meet the European Union’s 2020 goal would cause nearly 1,400 premature deaths a year, costing society $ 7.1 billion.

The European plan would also would reduce the annual value of wheat and maize production by $ 1.5 billion since ozone impairs crop growth, the study added.

LUNG PROBLEMS

Siting new biofuel plantations far away from polluted population centres would help limit ozone formation, the study suggested. Genetic engineering might be used to reduce isoprene emissions, it said.

Ozone can cause lung problems and is blamed for killing about 22,000 people a year in Europe. Overall air pollution, mainly from fossil fuels, causes about 500,000 premature deaths in Europe a year, according to the European Environment Agency.

Sunday’s study did not compare the potential damage caused by biofuels to the impact on human health from producing coal, oil or natural gas as part of policies to slow global warming. “We’re not in a position to make that comparison,” Hewitt said.

He noted that the main reason to shift to biofuels was to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, mainly from fossil fuels, that U.N. studies project will become ever more damaging this century.

The United Nations’ World Health Organization estimates global warming has caused more than 140,000 deaths annually worldwide since the 1970s.

The biggest impact was recorded in developing nations where the floods, droughts and other disasters blamed on climate change left millions suffering from diarrhea, malnutrition, malaria and dengue fever.

Burning biofuels is viewed as neutral for climate change because plants soak up carbon when they grow and release it when they burn or rot. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, add carbon to the atmosphere from underground stores millions of years old.

Biofuels are often blamed for causing food price spikes by competing for cropland. Responding to such criticisms, the European Commission said last year it aimed to limit crop-based biofuels – such as from maize or sugar – to five percent of transport fuels.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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