S&P 500 posts biggest monthly gain since October 2011

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Thursday on caution ahead of Friday's all-important jobs report, but the S&P 500 still posted its best monthly gain since October 2011.

The benchmark S&P 500 advanced 5.1 percent in January as investors cheered a compromise that temporarily postponed the impact of the "fiscal cliff" and fourth-quarter earnings were better than expected.

The S&P 500 registered its largest monthly advance since a rise of more than 6 percent in October 2011 and the best January showing since a 6.1 percent jump in 1997. For the month, the Dow gained 5.8 percent and the Nasdaq rose 4.1 percent.

Investors expect a pullback in equities after the recent gains, though they have bought on dips over the past four weeks. The largest daily decline on the S&P 500 so far in 2013 was Wednesday's 0.39 percent drop after data showed the economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012.

On Friday, the government is due to release January's employment figures at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT). Economists polled by Reuters expect non-farm payrolls to show employers added 160,000 jobs compared with a rise of 155,000 in December. The unemployment rate is likely to hold steady at 7.8 percent.

A survey by payroll processing company ADP on Wednesday showed private sector employment rose higher than expected last month, but the government's measure of jobless benefits claims increased last week.

"It's the calm before the potential storm. The uncertainty about tomorrow's numbers comes from that fact that we had a decent ADP report but the weekly claims were not so great," said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.

In a separate report, the Commerce Department said American incomes rose 2.6 percent last month, the biggest increase since December 2004.

"We could see an overly sensitive market to a bad number tomorrow, given that we've been up without a major correction, and that makes the market sensitive to the downside."

Friday will also bring reports on consumer confidence, U.S. manufacturing, construction spending and car sales.

Limiting losses on the Nasdaq composite index, Qualcomm gained 3.9 percent to $66.02 after the world's leading supplier of chips for cellphones beat analysts' expectations for quarterly profit and revenue and raised its targets for the year.

Facebook shares fell 0.8 percent to $30.98 after falling as low as $28.74 a day after the social network company said it doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter. However, growth trailed some of Wall Street's most aggressive estimates.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 49.84 points, or 0.36 percent, at 13,860.58. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 3.85 points, or 0.26 percent, at 1,498.11. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 0.18 points, or 0.01 percent, at 3,142.13.

UPS shares lost 2.4 percent to $79.29 after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that were below analysts' estimates on Thursday and forecasting weaker-than-expected profit for 2013.

Constellation Brands shares tumbled 17.4 percent to $32.36 after the U.S. Justice Department moved to stop Anheuser-Busch InBev from buying the half of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo that it does not already own. Constellation would have distributed Corona beer in the United States if the transaction had been approved.

Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning shows that of the 231 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 69.3 percent have exceeded expectations, a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings rose 3.7 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. That's above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season but well below a 9.9 percent profit growth forecast on October 1.

(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)

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Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

SAN FRANCISCO — For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.

The New York Times published an article in October about the wealth of the family of China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in both English and Chinese.

After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.

The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network. They broke into the e-mail accounts of its Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the reports on Mr. Wen’s relatives, and Jim Yardley, The Times’s South Asia bureau chief in India, who previously worked as bureau chief in Beijing.

“Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied,” said Jill Abramson, executive editor of The Times.

The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on The Times by first penetrating computers at United States universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by The Times. This matches the subterfuge used in many other attacks that Mandiant has tracked to China.

The attackers first installed malware — malicious software — that enabled them to gain entry to any computer on The Times’s network. The malware was identified by computer security experts as a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China. More evidence of the source, experts said, is that the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors in the past.

Security experts found evidence that the hackers stole the corporate passwords for every Times employee and used those to gain access to the personal computers of 53 employees, most of them outside The Times’s newsroom. Experts found no evidence that the intruders used the passwords to seek information that was not related to the reporting on the Wen family.

No customer data was stolen from The Times, security experts said.

Asked about evidence that indicated the hacking originated in China, and possibly with the military, China’s Ministry of National Defense said, “Chinese laws prohibit any action including hacking that damages Internet security.” It added that “to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless.”

The attacks appear to be part of a broader computer espionage campaign against American news media companies that have reported on Chinese leaders and corporations.

Last year, Bloomberg News was targeted by Chinese hackers, and some employees’ computers were infected, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s internal investigation, after Bloomberg published an article on June 29 about the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, China’s vice president at the time. Mr. Xi became general secretary of the Communist Party in November and is expected to become president in March. Ty Trippet, a spokesman for Bloomberg, confirmed that hackers had made attempts but said that “no computer systems or computers were compromised.”

Signs of a Campaign

The mounting number of attacks that have been traced back to China suggest that hackers there are behind a far-reaching spying campaign aimed at an expanding set of targets including corporations, government agencies, activist groups and media organizations inside the United States. The intelligence-gathering campaign, foreign policy experts and computer security researchers say, is as much about trying to control China’s public image, domestically and abroad, as it is about stealing trade secrets.

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Rape trial of teenaged football players to be open to public: Ohio judge

(Reuters) – The controversial trial of two high school football players accused of raping a classmate will remain open to the public and will not be relocated to another town, an Ohio judge ruled on Wednesday.

Prosecutors and an attorney representing the accuser had sought a closed trial, arguing that public access to the juvenile trial would subject the accuser to unwanted publicity and make potential witnesses reluctant to testify.

Visiting Hamilton County Judge Tom Lipps said the presence of the media would prevent inaccurate reporting and enhance public confidence in the juvenile justice system, according to his written ruling, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

“An open hearing is especially valuable where rumors, mischaracterizations and opinions unsupported by facts have reportedly been repeated in social media postings and other published outlets,” Lipps wrote. “An open hearing will diminish the influence of such postings and publications.”

Prosecutors have accused Ma’Lik Richmond and Trent Mays, both 16, of raping a classmate at a party attended by many teammates last August in Steubenville, a close-knit city of 19,000 near the Pennsylvania border.

The case attracted national attention after the hacker activist group Anonymous publicized a picture of two young men carrying a girl by her wrists and ankles and released a video showing other young men joking about the alleged assault.

Richmond’s lawyer, Walter Madison, said previously on CNN that his client was one of the young men in the photograph – which he said was taken out of context – but does not appear in the video. A lawyer for Mays has not publicly commented on the postings.

Community leaders have accused authorities of protecting the school’s popular football program by not charging more players who could have prevented the alleged attack.

Lipps also ruled on Wednesday that the trial will remain in Steubenville. He set a trial date for March 13.

Reuters generally does not identify people who say they have been victims of sex crimes.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch, Bernard Orr)

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Jason London Suffered 'Brutal Attack' While Being Arrested: Rep

By Maggie Coughlan and Ken Lee

01/30/2013 at 08:30 PM EST

After being arrested following a bar fight in Scottsdale, Ariz., over the weekend, Jason London insists the incident isn't what it seems.

"The details of the events leading up to the incident are still being worked out with the help of many eyewitness testimonies; people who were there with Jason for the duration of the evening and with the recollection Jason does have. We will undoubtedly get to the bottom of the specifics. Neither Jason nor any of the witnesses we have spoken to have any recollection of anything even feeling like it was going south," according to a statement released by London's rep.

The statement claims that "excessive force" was used by the four bouncers during the altercation at the Martini Ranch.

The statement continues: "Bars are institutions where there are drunk people who are sometimes inappropriate and even violent. It is the bouncers' job to remove the problem and if it is necessary, to use force in order to secure the safety of the establishment and patrons. It is not acceptable to retaliate with brutality once that has been accomplished."

London's injuries include "a right orbital fracture, a right maxillary sinus fracture, multiple contusions, multiple hematomas and concussion."

But the cause of the scuffle remains unclear: "In the midst of having a good time, Jason does remember one of the guys saying something about Jason looking at his friend's girl wrong and grabbing and dragging him. The next thing Jason remembers was coming to with the cops arresting him," the statement reads.

Following his arrest, the actor – who is best known for his role in Dazed and Confused – allegedly intentionally defecated in the backseat of a patrol car, the police report claims.

The report also states that the twin brother of Jeremy London continually cursed at the officer, dropping a homophobic slur and telling the officer to "look me up" because "I'm rich" and "a famous actor."

Managers for the Martini Ranch weren't immediately available for comment.

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Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths

Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.

All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.

Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting from real solutions to the nation's weight problems.

"The evidence is what matters," and many feel-good ideas repeated by well-meaning health experts just don't have it, said the lead author, David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Independent researchers say the authors have some valid points. But many of the report's authors also have deep financial ties to food, beverage and weight-loss product makers — the disclosures take up half a page of fine print in the journal.

"It raises questions about what the purpose of this paper is" and whether it's aimed at promoting drugs, meal replacement products and bariatric surgery as solutions, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and food studies.

"The big issues in weight loss are how you change the food environment in order for people to make healthy choices," such as limits on soda sizes and marketing junk food to children, she said. Some of the myths they cite are "straw men" issues, she said.

But some are pretty interesting.

Sex, for instance. Not that people do it to try to lose weight, but claims that it burns 100 to 300 calories are common, Allison said. Yet the only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average — "disappointing, isn't it?" — and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking, he said.

That's for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn't measure the women's experience.

Among the other myths or assumptions the authors cite, based on their review of the most rigorous studies on each topic:

—Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don't have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the "small changes" concept is based on an "oversimplified" 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.

—School gym classes have a big impact on kids' weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.

—Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.

—Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.

—Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.

—Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.

Some things may not have the strongest evidence for preventing obesity but are good for other reasons, such as breastfeeding and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, the authors write. And exercise helps prevent a host of health problems regardless of whether it helps a person shed weight.

"I agree with most of the points" except the authors' conclusions that meal replacement products and diet drugs work for battling obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, a prominent obesity research with Boston Children's Hospital who has no industry ties. Most weight-loss drugs sold over the last century had to be recalled because of serious side effects, so "there's much more evidence of failure than success," he said.

___

Online:

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

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

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

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Wall Street ends lower after Fed statement

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve said in its latest statement that economic growth had stalled but indicated the pullback was likely temporary.

Stocks were flat for most of the session prior to the Fed statement at the end of a two-day policy meeting. The Fed repeated its pledge to keep purchasing securities until employment improves substantially.

The statement followed data that showed the economy, as measured by gross domestic product, unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter. Economists stressed that the 0.1 percent contraction, caused partly by a plunge in government spending and lower business inventories, is not an indicator of recession.

"The unemployment rate is likely to fall below 6.5 percent next year, so the Fed may be raising interest rates as soon as mid-2014. The fiscal drag from the tax increases will be offset this quarter by rebuilding post-Sandy, so real GDP growth should still come in at 2 percent," said Kurt Karl, chief economist at Swiss Re.

The S&P 500 held above 1,500, seen by technical analysts as an inflection point that will determine the overall direction in the near term. The index is on track to post its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997.

"This is a very modest pullback after a steep run," said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management in New York.

"It is too soon for the Fed to start talking about the end of (their bond buying program). The economy needs stimulus to sustain this recovery."

Chesapeake Energy rose 6 percent to $20.11 a day after it said Aubrey McClendon would step down as chief executive. The company has had a tumultuous year in which a series of Reuters investigations triggered civil and criminal probes of the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer.

After the bell, shares of Facebook Inc fell 5.9 percent to $29.40 following the company's earnings announcement. Facebook said its revenue in the fourth quarter grew 40 percent year-on-year to $1.585 billion.

Both Boeing Co and Amazon.com shares gained after earnings beat expectations, continuing a trend this quarter of high-profile names advancing after results.

Amazon rose 4.8 percent to $272.76 and Boeing rose 1.3 percent to $74.59.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 44.00 points, or 0.32 percent, at 13,910.42. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 5.88 points, or 0.39 percent, at 1,501.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 11.35 points, or 0.36 percent, at 3,142.31.

Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 192 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 68.8 percent have been above analyst expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

Research In Motion shares fell 12 percent to $13.78 after the company, which is changing its name to BlackBerry, unveiled a long-delayed line of smartphones in hopes of a comeback into a market it once dominated.

Giving the market extra support, private sector employment topped forecasts with the ADP National Employment report showing 192,000 jobs were added in January, higher than the 165,000 expectation.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Google Maps’ New Target: Secretive North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea may be the world’s most shrouded country, but on Tuesday Google Maps lifted the veil just a little, uploading a map of the police state complete with street names in the capital.

The new map, built with the help of what Google called “a community of citizen cartographers,” provides people with a peek at places they previously may only have read about, probably in articles about the North’s nuclear program or its devastating food shortages. The map of Pyongyang, the capital, shows all sorts of landmarks — the tower that celebrates the country’s self-reliance doctrine of Juche and Kim Il-sung Square, where military parades are held — as well as hotels, schools and hospitals.

Users can zoom in and post comments and photos; the map also includes what the site suggests are four gulags, marked as gray splotches. The map is still empty in most areas of the country, but is much more detailed than the one that was on the site until Tuesday, which was mostly blank.

In a sign of just how hermetic the country is, Google said North Korea was the last country in the world to get a relatively detailed map.

While North Korea experts point out that other more sophisticated maps exist and that Google Earth provides a satellite image that includes major cities and sites, some suggest that the easily accessible Google Maps will probably draw more casual viewers.

Even Curtis Melvin, who has created what many consider the most definitive public online map (on a Johns Hopkins University site), said Google Maps had “provided the umph to get more eyes focused on the issue. North Korea is a serious policy, humanitarian and security challenge, and the more information we have, the better.”

The posting of the map — and Google’s call for still more mapping information on the North from users — focused new attention on the North at a time when the country is locked in a tense standoff with the United States and its allies over tightened sanctions and has promised a third nuclear test.

Google’s initiative also came three weeks after its executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, visited Pyongyang in a highly publicized yet controversial trip organized by Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico. Mr. Schmidt said he urged North Korean officials he met in Pyongyang to let more North Koreans use the Internet.

Google said Tuesday that the posting of the map project was unrelated to Mr. Schmidt’s visit, which the company says was a personal trip.

On Tuesday, Mr. Schmidt said by e-mail that the new North Korea map “sheds a bit more light on what is happening in this remote country.”

There was no immediate North Korean reaction to Google’s announcement.

Citing privacy concerns, Google would not say how many contributors there were or who they were, but experts expect future postings to include those from the thousands who have fled North Korea in recent years.

The “citizen cartographers” were able to contribute using Map Maker, a crowdsourcing tool in the style of Wikipedia that allows users to edit or add to Google Maps. The company said the North Korea contributions had been coming in for several years, but Google held back the changes until it had time to vet the information as best it could, given how closed the North is.

Google Maps is unlikely to provide new information to policy makers who already have satellite maps from years of surveillance, nor will it get much of a following in the North itself, where the secretive leaders allow Internet access to only a small portion of the elite, who are closely watched.

But the crowdsourcing project provides a tool for users anywhere to help identify at least some features that the government in Pyongyang does not want the world to know. (The government cherishes secrecy to such an extent that its propagandists liked to boast: “When our enemies try to peek into our republic, they only see a fog.”)

Already, critics of the North’s authoritarian government and the backward economic policies that keep its people starving were posting sardonic comments by clicking on the “review” link often reserved for rating mapped businesses, restaurants and tourist sites.

One reviewer wrote, regarding bronze statues in Pyongyang of Mr. Kim, the country’s founder, and his son: “Wow, the Korean people must really have loved it under Kim Il Sung, to think they raised this gigantic statue voluntarily on their spare time while they was gloriously lacking food and metal for basic agricultural equipment.”

Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco. Shreeya Sinha contributed reporting from New York.

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BlackBerry 10 said to be inadequate for helping RIM overcome its ‘demons’

After hitting a seven-year low of $ 6.22 this past summer, shares of Research in Motion (RIMM) have rebounded and climbed more than 100% in the past six months. The company that was previously written off by Wall Street investors has seen a significant boost in recent months as anticipation grows for its BlackBerry 10 operating system. But while a number of analysts have voiced their support for RIM, not everyone is convinced.

[More from BGR: Apple’s 128GB iPad shows the world exactly what Apple does best]

Jan Dawson of Ovum explained, per Benzinga, that RIM continues to “face the twin demons of consumer-driven buying power and a chronic inability to appeal to mature market consumers,” and he believes BlackBerry 10 won’t change this. The analyst said that due to a strong user base of 79 million subscribers and profitability still in the black, the company will remain for years to come. He was quick to note, however, that its glory days are in the past and “it is only a matter of time before it reaches a natural end.”

[More from BGR: Apple unveils new 128GB iPad]

Dawson previously wrote that RIM’s strategy seems to be focused on building the best devices for current BlackBerry users “rather than something that will necessarily win converts from other platforms.”

“The points of differentiation RIM has focused on in teasers for the new platform confirm this – better multitasking, productivity, email, contacts and calendar applications and so on, rather than a better gaming, content consumption or social networking experience,” he said.

Shares of RIM are down more than 6% on Monday, a day before the company is set to unveil its BlackBerry 10 operating system.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ashley Judd Splits from Husband Dario Franchitti

01/29/2013 at 08:05 PM EST

Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti

Robin Marchant/Wireimage

Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are splitting after more than a decade of marriage.

"We have mutually decided to end our marriage. We'll always be family and continue to cherish our relationship based on the special love, integrity, and respect we have always enjoyed," Judd, 44, and Franchitti, 39, tell PEOPLE exclusively in a statement on Tuesday.

After being engaged for about two years, the Missing star and the racecar driver tied the knot in a highly private ceremony in Scotland in 2001.

Judd's sister, Wynonna Judd, served as maid of honor, while the groom's brother Mario was the best man. – Julie Jordan

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Soldier with new arms determined to be independent

BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.

Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after getting a double-arm transplant.

Wounded by a roadside bomb in 2009, the former soldier said he could get by without legs, but he hated living without arms.

"Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," the 26-year-old New Yorker told reporters Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Doctors don't want him using his new arms too much yet, but his gritty determination to regain independence was one of the chief reasons he was chosen to receive the surgery, which has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.

That's the message Marrocco said he has for other wounded soldiers.

"Just not to give up hope. You know, life always gets better, and you're still alive," he said. "And to be stubborn. There's a lot of people who will say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway. Work your ass off and do it."

Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, head of the team that conducted the surgery, said the new arms could eventually provide much of the same function as his original arms and hands. Another double-arm transplant patient can now use chopsticks and tie his shoes.

Lee said Marrocco's recovery has been remarkable, and the transplant is helping to "restore physical and psychological well-being."

Tuesday's news conference was held to mark a milestone in his recovery — the day he was to be discharged from the hospital.

Next comes several years of rehabilitation, including physical therapy that is going to become more difficult as feeling returns to the arms.

Before the surgery, he had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

"We'll get it back together. We've been through a lot worse than that," his father, Alex Marrocco, said.

For the next few months, Marrocco plans to live with his brother in an apartment near the hospital.

The former infantryman said he can already move the elbow on his left arm and rotate it a little bit, but there hasn't been much movement yet for his right arm, which was transplanted higher up.

Marrocco's mother, Michelle Marrocco, said he can't hug her yet, so he brushes his left arm against her face.

The first time he moved his left arm was a complete surprise, an involuntary motion while friends were visiting him in the hospital, he said.

"I had no idea what was going through my mind. I was with my friends, and it happened by accident," he recalled. "One of my friends said 'Did you do that on purpose?' And I didn't know I did it."

Marrocco's operation also involved a technical feat not tried in previous cases, Lee said in an interview after the news conference.

A small part of Marrocco's left forearm remained just below his elbow, and doctors transplanted a whole new forearm around and on top of it, then rewired nerves to serve the old and new muscles in that arm.

"We wanted to save his joint. In the unlucky event we would lose the transplant, we still wanted him to have the elbow joint," Lee said.

He also explained why leg transplants are not done for people missing those limbs — "it's not very practical." That's because nerves regrow at best about an inch a month, so it would be many years before a transplanted leg was useful.

Even if movement returned, a patient might lack sensation on the soles of the feet, which would be unsafe if the person stepped on sharp objects and couldn't feel the pain.

And unlike prosthetic arms and hands, which many patients find frustrating, the ones for legs are good. That makes the risks of a transplant not worth taking.

"It's premature" until there are better ways to help nerves regrow, Lee said.

Now Marrocco, who was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, is looking forward to getting behind the wheel of his black 2006 Dodge Charger and hand-cycling a marathon.

Asked if he could one day throw a football, Dr. Jaimie Shores said sure, but maybe not like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.

"Thanks for having faith in me," Marrocco interjected, drawing laughter from the crowd.

His mother said Marrocco has always been "a tough cookie."

"He's not changed that, and he's just taken it and made it an art form," Michelle Marrocco said. "He's never going to stop. He's going to be that boy I knew was going to be a pain in my butt forever. And he's going to show people how to live their lives."

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Associated Press Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and AP writer David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., contributed to this report.

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