Dow, S&P end sixth losing week - is seventh on tap?

The Dow and S&P 500 closed out their sixth week of losses on Friday as further signs of a global economic slowdown set the stage for more losses ahead.

The deepening gloom raised the prospect for the S&P, which suffered its worst week since August 2010, to break below the year's low of 1,250 next week.

The Nasdaq wiped out its yearly gains on Friday and also posted its biggest weekly decline since August 2010, as the latest deterioration in sentiment came on fear of flagging Chinese growth and fresh worries about Greece's debt crisis.

The Dow closed below 12,000 for the first time since mid-March.

Reflecting the bearish sentiment, options traders eyed calls on the CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, which moves inversely to the S&P 500's performance. The VIX rose 6.1 percent to end at 18.86.

"We broke below the April low, which was about 1,295 (on the S&P 500) pretty much at the open today. We are probably going to test the March lows if data next week remain weak," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"But investors are very susceptible to any kind of news and since we are very oversold here, we could see the market instantly bounce back if we get anything remotely good."

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 172.45 points, or 1.42 percent, to 11,951.91. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX slid 18.02 points, or 1.40 percent, to 1,270.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC tumbled 41.14 points, or 1.53 percent, to 2,643.73 at the close.

For the week, the Dow was down 1.6 percent, the S&P 500 was off 2.2 percent and the Nasdaq was down 3.3 percent.

The S&P 500 has fallen about 6.6 percent from its intraday peak early last month. Many see the benchmark index sliding back down to around 1,250, its March low, where valuations could bring investors back into equities.

At 1,250, the S&P 500 would be roughly 1.7 percent below current levels and approaching a 10 percent decline commonly referred to as a correction.

FINANCIALS DECLINE

Bank stocks, already under pressure, finished lower, with the KBW Banks Index .BKX dropping 0.4 percent after sliding more than 2 percent earlier in the day. The Federal Reserve said it will subject more banks to annual stress tests to determine whether they have enough capital and can raise their dividends.

Some of the biggest decliners were regional bank stocks that are now going to face annual tests.

Northern Trust Corp (NTRS.O) fell 1.2 percent to $46.77 and M&T Bank Corp (MTB.N) lost 1.2 percent to $84.41.

But large banks, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N), rose in a late rebound, on a news report that the extra capital charge on big banks will likely be 2 percent to 2.5 percent, compared with the widely predicted 3 percent, traders said.

Bank of America shares rose 1.4 percent to $10.80 and JPMorgan added 0.2 percent to $41.05.

The S&P energy index .GSPE declined 1.9 percent while the S&P index of industrial stocks .GSPI lost 1.6 percent.

China's sales to the United States and the European Union slumped to their weakest since late 2009, excluding Lunar New Year holidays, underlining the view that the world economy is stumbling.

In another negative for stocks, the euro tumbled more than 1 percent against the U.S. dollar as fears about Greece's debt returned to the forefront and investors curbed expectations about the European Central Bank's interest-rate hikes. Investors have been recently trading the correlation between stocks and the dollar.

The PHLX semiconductor index .SOX slid 1.7 percent, sinking to its lowest since early December. The SOX fell below its 200-day moving average for the first time since last October.

About 7.47 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, compared with the daily average of 7.59 billion.

Declining stocks beat advancing ones by 2,419 to 587 on the NYSE while on the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers by 1,987 to 593.

Hot Girls at One ClickA list of 100 beautiful girls. Vote for the one you like the most. See who will comes first. I will add new pictures of girls daily.

Ice melt to close off Arctic's interior riches - study

Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said.

Higher temperatures have already led to lower summer sea ice levels in the Arctic and the melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourists and oil and natural gas developers to coastal regions in coming decades.

The melting has also led to hopes that shorter Arctic shipping routes between China and Europe will open.

The Arctic is increasingly a region of deep strategic importance to the United States, Russia and China for its undiscovered resource riches and the potential for new shipping lanes. The U.S. Geological Survey says that 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and natural gas lies in the Arctic.

But the warming also will likely melt so-called "ice roads", the temporary winter roads developers now use to access far inland northern resources such as timber, diamonds and minerals, according to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"It's a resource frontier where we don't even know what all is there and I'm beginning to think we never will," Lawrence Smith, a professor of geography at the University of California Los Angeles and a co-author of the study, said about the Arctic interior.

"These places are going to become wilder and the lands are going to be abandoned and revert to a wild state."

The ice roads, made famous by the History Channel show "Ice Road Truckers", are constructed on frozen ground, rivers, lakes and swampy areas using compacted snow and ice. They cost only about two to four percent of what permanent land roads would cost, making resource extraction more cost effective in these remote areas.

As the roads melt, indigenous populations could also face increased isolation and higher costs as some goods could only reach them via airplanes.

All eight countries that border the Arctic -- Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States -- are expected to experience declines in winter-road land accessibility.

Russia will lose the most land suitable for winter road construction by area, followed by Canada and the United States, according to the modeling done in the study, which was supported by NASA's Cryosphere Program and the National Science Foundation.

DIAMOND ROAD

Northern Canada's Tibbitt-Contwoyto "diamond road," an winter road first built in 1982 and said to be the world's most lucrative ice road as it services several diamond mines, is expected to be among the routes that suffer, according to the researchers. Much of the roughly 300 mile (482 km) road runs atop frozen lakes.

By 2020 the road is projected to lose 17 percent of its up to 10-week operating season.

Oil and natural gas developers could lose access to some inland drilling, but the industry would gain access to coastal drilling and would benefit from easier shipping routes.

Timber and metal mining, however, would suffer far more because it would be cost-prohibitive to build permanent roads leading to these resources.

More study is needed to determine the potential economic losses from the melting regions and how they would compare to the opportunity, the authors said.

Hot Girls at One ClickA list of 100 beautiful girls. Vote for the one you like the most. See who will comes first. I will add new pictures of girls daily.

Rats, bees to protect African wildlife: experts

Beekeeping and breeding animals such as cane rats for food are needed to help tackle the unsustainable trade in bush meat in central Africa, conservation experts said on Friday.

Local populations rely on birds, reptiles and mammals including apes in the vast Congo Basin for food, but overhunting for so-called bush meat is leading to 'empty forest syndrome', according to a statement issued by a panel of environmental experts following a meeting on the issue in Nairobi.

"Tackling the impact of unsustainable and illegal trade in bush meat is critical for protecting the livelihoods of rural people and conserving wildlife in biodiversity-rich areas," said John Scanlon, secretary-general of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species (CITES).

Legitimate subsistence hunting is being replaced by commercial hunting and trade in endangered species including elephants and primates, said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The statement said that replacing bush meat with locally produced beef would require up to 80 percent of the Democratic Republic of Congo to become pasture.

"Therefore, there is no alternative to making the use of wildlife for food more sustainable."

The Democratic Republic of Congo, which is the size of western Europe, is home to more than 150 million hectares (370 million acres) of forest, one of the largest stretches left in Africa.

Experts say overhunting is undermining food security and also poses a threat to the forest itself, as 75 percent of tropical tree species depend on animals to spread their seeds.

Measures proposed by the experts include the promotion of beekeeping to produce honey for trade and subsistence, the introduction of community wildlife management programs, and farming cane rats for food.

Cane rats, also known as grasscutters, are large herbivorous rodents that are already farmed in some parts of Africa.

Bush meat has become big business in some countries, with the Central African Republic's informal trade estimated at $72 million dollars a year, the statement said.

Population growth and commercial trafficking were adding to pressure on local wildlife, it added.

Hot Girls at One ClickA list of 100 beautiful girls. Vote for the one you like the most. See who will comes first. I will add new pictures of girls daily.