Saturday, April 27, 2013

Amazon growth slows, while profit margins expand

By Alistair Barr

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's revenue growth slowed in the first quarter as the world's largest Internet retail struggled overseas, but margins jumped on lower shipping expenses and the expansion of more profitable new businesses.

Amazon shares fell 1.9 percent to $269.43 in after-hours trading on Thursday following the results.

"The message there is North America was better than expected but international was softer. The question is ... 'Is this a reflection of macro trends in Europe, or is there something else going on there?'" said Telsey Advisory Group analyst Tom Forte.

Europe's lackluster economies are weighing on corporate sales in the region - even for fast-growing e-commerce businesses. EBay Inc, Amazon's main rival, reported disappointing results last week and noted European weakness.

Amazon's revenue rose 22 percent to $16.07 billion, propelled by growing sales of digital content, cloud-computing services and gains in its main retail business. But it was a decline from 36 percent growth in the first quarter of 2012.

International revenue rose 16 percent in the most-recent quarter, year-over-year, down from a 31 percent growth rate in the same period of 2012.

During a conference call with analysts on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak was peppered with questions about slowing growth.

"There is some softness from a macro standpoint that others are seeing," the CFO said.

Amazon has also struggled to grow in China and the CFO told analysts the company is still in "investment mode" in that country.

Szkutak reported that total year-over-year unit growth, which measures the number of items Amazon sells, was 30 percent in the first quarter, down from 49 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

"Unit growth is slowing which disappointed some," said Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie. "The law of large numbers is affecting Amazon too. You can't grow 100 percent forever, otherwise you become the universe."

GROSS MARGINS A BRIGHT SPOT

Amazon forecast second-quarter revenue of $14.5 billion to $16.2 billion and operating results from break-even to $350 million. The latter guidance excludes stock-based compensation expenses and other items such as amortization of intangible assets.

Wall Street was looking for second-quarter revenue of $15.94 billion and operating results of $452 million, according to Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

Despite weaker growth and a cautious forecast, Amazon's results showed that the company is becoming more profitable.

Gross profit margin, a closely watched measure of profitability, came in at a better-than-expected 26.6 percent, compared with 24 percent a year earlier.

The first-quarter gross margin was the highest in at least a decade, according to Scott Tilghman, an analyst at B Riley & Co.

Amazon is building distribution warehouses closer to customers, reducing shipping costs. It has also been charging third-party merchants on its marketplace higher fees for shipping and warehouse storage.

In the first quarter, net shipping costs were 4.7 percent of sales, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier.

Moving into other areas is also boosting margins.

The company mainly operates as a retailer, buying physical products at wholesale prices, storing them and then selling at a slight mark-up to consumers online. But it has expanded into other businesses that are potentially more profitable, including cloud computing, advertising, digital content and acting as an online marketplace for other merchants.

These newer businesses are growing faster than the company's original retail operations, boosting profitability.

Amazon's web services (AWS) and advertising businesses are reported in a segment the company calls "other." Revenue from this area surged 59 percent to $798 million in the quarter.

"At the end of the day, at least on that (profit) basis, they are showing some very good progress," said Evercore analyst Ken Sena. "You are seeing benefit from the higher-margin Amazon Web Services business, and also higher-margin third-party marketplace business."

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/amazon-growth-slows-while-profit-margins-expand-084256870--sector.html

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Japan transport minister: Government to issue permit to resume Boeing 787 flights

April 25 (Reuters) - Fenerbahce 1 Benfica 0 - Europa League semi-final first leg result At Sukru Saracoglu stadium Scorer - Egemen Korkmaz 72 Halftime: 0-0 Fenerbahce: 1-Volkan Demirel; 33-Reto Ziegler, 2-Egemen Korkmaz, 6-Joseph Yobo, 77-Gokhan Gonul; 5-Mehmet Topal, 14-Raul Meireles (48-Salih Ucan 54); 7-Moussa Sow (27-Milos Krasic 86), 16-Cristian Baroni (21-Selcuk Sahin 86), 11-Dirk Kuyt, 99-Pierre Webo Benfica: 1-Artur; 14-Maxi Pereira, 33-Jardel, 24-Ezequiel Garay, 25-Melgarejo; 89-Andre Gomez (17-Carlos Martins 81), 10-Pablo Aimar (20-Nicolas Gaitan 46), 21-Nemanja Matic; 15-Ola John ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japan-transport-minister-government-issue-permit-resume-boeing-001100848--finance.html

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CA-NEWS Summary

Anger on streets as Bangladesh building toll passes 300

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh textile workers vented their anger on Friday, burning cars and clashing with police, as the death toll passed 300 following the collapse of a building housing factories that made low-cost garments for Western brands. Miraculously rescuers were still pulling people alive from the rubble - 72 since daybreak following 41 found in the same room overnight - two days after the eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka.

Obama: Chemical weapons use in Syria would be "game changer"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama warned President Bashar al-Assad on Friday that any use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war would be a "game changer" but cautioned that intelligence assessments that such weapons had been deployed were still preliminary. Speaking a day after the White House said for the first time that Assad's government had likely used chemical weapons on a small scale, Obama talked tough while appealing for patience as he sought to fend off pressure at home and abroad for a swift U.S. response.

Fire kills dozens in Russian psychiatric hospital

RAMENSKY, Russia (Reuters) - Thirty-eight people were killed, most of them in their beds, in a fire that raged through a psychiatric hospital near Moscow on Friday, raising questions about the care of mentally ill patients in Russia. The fire, which broke out at around 2 a.m. (6 p.m. ET on Thursday), swept through a single-storey building at the hospital, a collection of wood and brick huts with bars on some windows that was home to people sent there on grounds of mental illness by Russian courts.

Boston bomb suspect moved to prison from hospital

BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been moved to a prison medical center from the hospital where he had been held since his arrest a week ago while recovering from gunshot wounds, U.S. officials said on Friday. The 19-year-old ethnic Chechen, wounded in a late-night shootout with police on April 18 hours after authorities released pictures of him and his older brother as suspects, was charged on Monday and could face the death penalty if convicted. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in the shootout.

"Evidence" of Syria chemical weapons use not up to U.N. standard

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Assertions of chemical weapon use in Syria by Western and Israeli officials citing photos, sporadic shelling and traces of toxins do not meet the standard of proof needed for a U.N. team of experts waiting to gather their own field evidence. Weapons inspectors will only determine whether banned chemical agents were used in the two-year-old conflict if they are able to access sites and take soil, blood, urine or tissue samples and examine them in certified laboratories, according to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which works with the United Nations on inspections.

Islamist says Egypt should press on with judge reforms

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Islamist-dominated parliament must move quickly to adopt judicial reforms that have sparked a revolt by judges, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm argued on Friday. The proposed reforms, which would get rid of more than 3,000 judges by lowering the retirement age, have widened the rift between President Mohamed Mursi's government and a judiciary seen by its critics as a last bastion of the old regime that was toppled in the 2011 revolution.

Top British publicist charged with 11 sex assaults

LONDON (Reuters) - Celebrity publicist Max Clifford on Friday became the first high profile figure to be charged in a wide-ranging investigation into a sex scandal that has grabbed front page headlines in Britain in recent months. Clifford, 70, was charged with 11 counts of indecent assault, prosecutors said, including on two underage girls, after being arrested in December as part of an investigation into sex crime allegations against the late Jimmy Savile.

Bombs kill at least 20 across Iraqi capital

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bomb blasts in Baghdad killed at least 20 more people on Friday at the end of a week of bloodshed that prompted a United Nations envoy to warn Iraq was "at a crossroads". More than 160 people have been killed since Tuesday, when troops stormed a Sunni protest camp near Kirkuk, triggering clashes that quickly spread to other Sunni areas in western and northern provinces.

Russian court denies punk band convict Tolokonnikova parole

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court refused to release from prison one of two jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band so that she can look after her young daughter. The court on Friday rejected Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's appeal for parole eight months after she was handed a two-year prison sentence for the band's performance of a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral.

Bosnian regional president arrested in graft probe

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - The president of Bosnia's autonomous Muslim-Croat federation and 19 others were arrested on Friday in an anti-corruption probe that also targeted the offices of the regional government, a spokesman for the state prosecutor said. The raid on Zivko Budimir's Sarajevo office and the regional government in the southern town of Mostar is the most high-profile anti-graft operation in Bosnia since independence more than two decades ago.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-news-summary-023356509.html

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Toll in Bangladesh building collapse climbs to 290

A Bangladeshi rescuer looks out from a hole cut in the concrete as he looks for survivors at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi rescuer looks out from a hole cut in the concrete as he looks for survivors at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi woman survivor is lifted out of the rubble by rescuers at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

In this image taken from AP video, garment worker Mohammad Altab moans to rescuers for help while trapped between concrete slabs and next to two corpses in a garment factory that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Deep cracks visible in the walls of the Bangladesh garment building had compelled police to order it evacuated a day before it collapsed, officials said Thursday. More than 200 people were killed when the eight-story building splintered into a pile of concrete because factories based there ignored the order and kept more than 2,000 people working. (AP Photo/AP video)

In this image taken from AP video, garment worker Mohammad Altab moans to rescuers for help while trapped between concrete slabs and next to two corpses in a garment factory that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Deep cracks visible in the walls of the Bangladesh garment building had compelled police to order it evacuated a day before it collapsed, officials said Thursday. More than 200 people were killed when the eight-story building splintered into a pile of concrete because factories based there ignored the order and kept more than 2,000 people working. (AP Photo/AP video)

Bangladeshi people gather as rescuers look for survivors and victims at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh,Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (AP Photo/A.M.Ahad)

(AP) ? Crews bored deeper Friday into the wreckage of a garment-factory building that collapsed two days earlier, hoping for miracle rescues that would prevent the death toll from rising much higher, as angry relatives of the missing clashed with police.

Some of those trapped under fallen concrete in the Rana Plaza building were still alive, rescue workers said, but they were so badly hurt and weakened that they will need to be extricated within a few hours if they are to survive.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, said the death toll at the Rana Plaza building had reached 290, and that 2,200 people have been rescued. The garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside it when it collapsed Wednesday.

Hundreds of rescuers, some crawling through the maze of rubble, spent a third day working amid the cries of the trapped and the wails of workers' relatives gathered outside the building, which housed numerous garment factories and a handful of other companies.

Police cordoned off the building site, pushing back thousands of bystanders and relatives, after rescue workers said the crowds were hampering their work.

Clashes erupted between relatives of those still trapped and police officers, who used batons to disperse the mobs. Police said 50 people were injured in the clashes.

"We want to go inside the building and find our people now. They will die if we don't find them soon," said Shahinur Rahman, whose mother is missing.

An army rescue worker, Maj. Abdul Latis, said he found one survivor still trapped under concrete slabs, surrounded by several bodies. At another place in the building, four survivors were found pinned under the debris, a fire official said.

The rescue workers said they were proceeding very cautiously inside the crumbling building, using their hands, hammers and shovels, to avoid more injuries to trapped survivors and avoid further collapses.

Police say cracks in the building had led them to order an evacuation of the building the day before it fell, but the factories ignored the order.

A military official, Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, told reporters that search and rescue operations would continue until at least Saturday.

"We know a human being can survive for up to 72 hours in this situation. So our efforts will continue non-stop," he said.

Some people have been pulled out of the wreckage alive, though severely weakened, more than a day after the collapse.

Forty people had been trapped on the fourth floor of the building until rescuers reached them Thursday evening. Twelve were soon freed, and crews worked to get the others out safely, said Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations. Crowds at the scene burst into applause as survivors were brought out.

The odor of decaying bodies at the site of the collapse, in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, is a constant reminder that many garment workers were not so lucky.

Thousands of workers from the hundreds of garment factories across the Savar industrial zone and other nearby industrial areas have taken to the streets to protest the collapse and poor safety standards.

Local news reports said protesters had smashed dozens of vehicles at one strike Friday. Most of the other protests were largely peaceful.

The disaster is the worst ever for Bangladesh's booming and powerful garment industry, surpassing a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve the country's worker-safety standards.

Instead, very little has changed in Bangladesh, where wages, among the lowest in the world, have made it a magnet for numerous global brands.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-26-AS-Bangladesh-Building-Collapse/id-996fb287a6c24e4bb40e01d2df57ec44

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Boston bombing suspects' mom in terror database

FILE - This April 25, 2013 file photo shows the mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, left, speaking at a news conference in Makhachkala, the southern Russian province of Dagestan. Two government officials tell The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies added the Boston bombing suspects' mother to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack. At right is her sister-in-law Maryam. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev, File)

FILE - This April 25, 2013 file photo shows the mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, left, speaking at a news conference in Makhachkala, the southern Russian province of Dagestan. Two government officials tell The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies added the Boston bombing suspects' mother to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack. At right is her sister-in-law Maryam. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev, File)

(AP) ? U.S. intelligence agencies added the mother of the Boston bombing suspects to a government terrorism database 18 months before the bombings, two officials told The Associated Press. She called it "lies and hypocrisy" and said she has never been linked to crimes or terrorism.

The CIA asked for the Boston terror suspect and his mother to be added to a terrorist database in the fall of 2011, after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that both had become religious militants, according to officials briefed on the investigation. About six months earlier, the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, also at Russia's request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism.

The revelation that the FBI had also investigated Tsarnaeva and the CIA arranged for her to be added to the terrorism database deepened the mystery around the family. The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who immigrated to the Boston area in the past 11 years. Tsarnaeva, a naturalized U.S. citizen who has appeared on television interviews since the attacks and reversed her decision to return to the U.S. after the bombings, has said her sons could never have been behind the deadly attacks and believes they were framed.

The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the ongoing case.

Tsarnaev, who died in a gun battle with police last week, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, are accused of carrying out the bombings. Officials said that before he was advised of his constitutional rights to remain silent or consult a lawyer, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted to FBI interrogators that the brothers committed the bombings and that he was recruited by his brother to participate only a week or two before the attacks.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken overnight from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during a getaway attempt, and transferred to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles from Boston, the U.S. Marshals Service said. The facility at the former Fort Devens Army post treats federal prisoners.

Also, FBI agents Friday picked through a landfill near the campus of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student. FBI spokesman Jim Martin would not say what investigators were looking for.

Previously U.S. officials have said only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan. But in March 2011, the Russians asked the FBI to look into his mother as well because of concerns they were religious militants who planned to travel back to Russia, the official said.

The FBI found nothing to link either person to terrorism, and the FBI closed the investigations in June 2011. Then, the Russians in the fall sent the same warning to the CIA. The CIA asked the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to add the mother's and son's names to its huge, classified database of people known to be terrorists and those who are suspected of having terror ties, called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.

Being in that database does not mean the U.S. government has evidence that links someone to terrorism. About a year ago, there were some 745,000 names in the database. Intelligence analysts add names and partial names to TIDE when terror-related intelligence is shared with them.

Tsarnaeva said it would not surprise her if she was listed in a U.S. terror database.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told the AP from Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

A search of U.S. criminal records showed only that Tsarnaeva was arrested in June 2012 in Natick, Mass., on a shoplifting charge over the alleged theft of $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a Lord & Taylor department store. She was arrested and charged with larceny over $250 and two counts of malicious or wanton property damage. Tamerlan had traveled to Russia in January 2012 and returned in July.

Tsarnaeva accused U.S. law enforcement of killing her elder son.

"They are already talking about that we are terrorists, I am terrorist, they've told that I was doing something terroristic," Tsarnaeva said.

Some lawmakers in Washington have questioned whether the FBI adequately investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother in 2011. Over the course of that year, the FBI reached out to Russia three times for more information, U.S. officials said. The first time was in March 2011, when they received the initial tip from the Russians. The second was in June 2011 when they were preparing to close the investigation. The third time was in the fall of 2011 after the CIA received the same tip from the Russians.

One of the officials said the FBI never found the type of derogatory information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother that would have elevated their profiles among counterterrorism investigators or would have formally placed them on a terror watch list.

___

Associated Press reporters Pete Yost and Kimberly Dozier in Washington and Arsen Mollayev and Max Seddon in Dagestan contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-26-Boston%20Marathon-Terror%20Database/id-da72b3a8d7914dd6aa9710d019ccfc45

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U.S. plans to drop gray wolves from endangered list

Federal authorities intend to remove endangered species protections for all gray wolves in the Lower 48 states, carving out an a exception for a small pocket of about 75 Mexican wolves in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico, according to a draft document obtained by The Times.

The sweeping rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would eliminate protection for wolves 18 years after the government reestablished the predators in the West, where they had been hunted to extinction. Their reintroduction was a success, with the population growing to the thousands.

But their presence has always drawn protests across the Intermountain West from state officials, hunters and ranchers who lost livestock to the wolves. They have lobbied to remove the gray wolf from the endangered list.

Once those protections end, the fate of wolves is left to individual states. The species is only beginning to recover in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. California is considering imposing its own protections after the discovery of a lone male that wandered into the state's northern counties from Oregon two years ago.

The species has flourished elsewhere, however, and the government ended endangered status for the gray wolf in the northern Rockies and Great Lakes regions last year.

Mike Jimenez, who manages wolves in the northern Rockies for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said delisting in that region underscored a "huge success story." He said that while wolves are now legally hunted in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, the federal agency continues to monitor pack populations and can reinstate protections should numbers reach levels that biologists consider to be dangerously low.

Scientists and conservationists who reviewed the plan said its reasoning is flawed. They challenged how the agency reconfigures the classification of wolf subspecies and its assertion that little habitat remains for wolves.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, the former director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and now the president of Defenders of Wildlife, said the decision "reeks of politics" and vowed that it will face multiple legal challenges.

"This is politics versus professional wildlife management," Clark said. "The service is saying, 'We're done. Game over. Whatever happens to wolves in the U.S. is a state thing.' They are declaring victory long before science would tell them to do so."

The Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to release its decision to delist the wolves in coming weeks and it could become final within a year. Brent Lawrence, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, said Thursday that the agency would not comment.

The proposed rule is technically a draft until it is entered into the Federal Register.

Some scientists agreed with the decision to delist the wolves. But several took exception to some of the findings that the agency included in the document, including the scientifically disputed issue of defining wolf subspecies.

"It's a little depressing that science can be used and pitched in this way," said Bob Wayne, a professor of evolutionary biology at UCLA.

Wolves were once common and ranged across much of the continental United States, a vestigial symbol of the Old West and its expanse of open, wild country.

But as the West became urbanized and ranching spread, government-subsidized hunting that offered bounties for wolf kills virtually wiped out the animals by the 1930s.

A half-century later, scientists recognized the value in restoring top predators to re-balance ecosystems, and federal wildlife managers hashed out a reintroduction program. A group of 66 Canadian wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and the animals have thrived, exceeding recovery goals each year. More than 1,600 now roam the northern Rockies, although last year the population fell by 7%.

Wolves and their presence on the landscape have always elicited passionate responses and stirred political action. In 2011, for example, language that Congress buried in a defense appropriations bill directed the Interior secretary to remove most wolves in the Rockies from the endangered classification. Such decisions are normally left to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Delisting is not common, and is generally accompanied by much fanfare as the move signifies a great effort in pulling a species back from the brink of extinction. Only two dozen species have ever been removed from the list.

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity has been tracking the progress of Mexican wolves and applauded the decision to designate that species as endangered.

"The importance of a subspecies listing is that it will finally compel the service to do what it says it's wanted to do for 25 years ? which is to complete a recovery plan," he said.

The recognition of the Mexican gray wolf as a subspecies represents an about-face for the agency. The Fish and Wildlife Service denied a listing petition for the Mexican wolf in October.

The Mexican wolf reintroduction program, begun in 1995, has been a disaster. Only one wolf has been released from the captive breeding program in the last four years ? in January. That male was recaptured three weeks later.

julie.cart@latimes.com

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/u6gsPQMzrNM/la-me-wolves-20130426,0,1479609.story

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