Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Earl Weaver dead at 82, Orioles say

BALTIMORE (AP) — Earl Weaver, the fiery Hall of Fame manager who won 1,480 games with the Baltimore Orioles, has died, the team says. He was 82.

The Duke of Earl, as he was affectionately known in Baltimore, took the Orioles into the World Series four times over 17 seasons but won only one title, in 1970. His .583 winning percentage ranks fifth among managers who served 10 or more seasons in the 20th century.

Weaver was a salty-tounged manager who preferred to wait for a three-run homer rather than manufacture a run with a stolen base or a bunt. While some baseball purists argued that strategy, no one could dispute the results.

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Celestial Wonder Looks Uncannily Like a Manatee

A watery-looking nebula in deep space is being renamed after the sea creature it strongly resembles: a manatee.

The nebula is the leftovers from a star that died in a supernova explosion about 20,000 years ago. Before it died, the giant star puffed out its outer gaseous layers, which now swirl in green-and-blue clouds around the dead hulk of the star, which has collapsed into a black hole.

Known officially as W50, the celestial object is being dubbed the Manatee Nebula  by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), during a ceremony today (Jan. 19) at the Florida Manatee Festival in Crystal River, Fla. The NRAO will also unveil a new photo of the nebula taken by the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope network in New Mexico.

“When the VLA’s giant W50 image reached the NRAO director’s office, Heidi Winter, the director’s executive assistant, saw the likeness to a manatee, the endangered marine mammals known as ‘sea cows’ that congregate in warm waters in the southeastern United States,” NRAO officials wrote in a statement.”

At Winter’s suggestion, NRAO decided to collaborate with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to confer the new nickname on the nebula. [Gallery: Strange Nebula Shapes, What Do You See?]

Manatees are huge mammals that average about 10 feet (3 meters) long and tend to weigh over 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms). These gentle giants propel themselves with flippers, and spend up to eight hours a day munching on sea plants.

The new photo shows the manatee nebula seemingly mimicking a trademark pose of the animal, which is often seen floating on its back, with flippers crossed over belly.

Manatees are endangered, in part because boat propellers often cut deep gashes into the herbivores’ sides, injuring or killing many manatees every year.  The nebula, too, bears streaky scars carved out by particles in the two protruding jets emitting from the black hole at its core.  

Crystal River Refuge, established in 1983 to protect the endangered West Indian manatee, is the home of the largest natural concentration of manatees in Florida.

The Manatee Nebula, which lies 18,000 light-years away in the constellation of Aquila, isn’t the only celestial object named after an Earthly creature: It is joined in the cosmos by the Crab Nebula, the Eagle Nebula, and the Pelican Nebula, among others.

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

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Why Africa backs French in Mali

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• French intervention in Mali could be turning point in relationship with Africa, writes Lansana Gberie


• France's meddling to bolster puppet regimes in the past has outraged Africans, he argues


• He says few in Africa would label the French action in Mali as 'neo-colonial mission creep'


• Lansana: 'Africa's weakness has been exposed by the might of a foreign power'

Editor's note: Dr. Lansana Gberie is a specialist on African peace and security issues. He is the author of "A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone." He is from Sierra Leone and lives in New York.

(CNN) -- Operation Serval, France's swift military intervention to roll back advances made by Jihadist elements who had hijacked a separatist movement in northern Mali, could be a turning point in the ex-colonialist's relationship with Africa.

It is not, after all, every day that you hear a senior official of the African Union (AU) refer to a former European colonial power in Africa as "a brotherly nation," as Ambroise Niyonsaba, the African Union's special representative in Ivory Coast, described France on 14 January, while hailing the European nation's military strikes in Mali.

France's persistent meddling to bolster puppet regimes or unseat inconvenient ones was often the cause of much outrage among African leaders and intellectuals. But by robustly taking on the Islamist forces that for many months now have imposed a regime of terror in northern Mali, France is doing exactly what African governments would like to have done.

Lansana Gberie

This is because the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), Ansar Dine and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are a far greater threat to many African states than they ever would be to France or Europe.

See also: What's behind Mali instability?

Moreover, the main underlying issues that led to this situation -- the separatist rebellion by Mali's Tuareg, under the banner of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), who seized the northern half of the country and declared it independent of Mali shortly after a most ill-timed military coup on 22 March 2012 -- is anathema to the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Successful separatism by an ethnic minority, it is believed, would only encourage the emergence of more separatist movements in a continent where many of the countries were cobbled together from disparate groups by Europeans not so long ago.

But the foreign Islamists who had been allies to the Tuaregs at the start of their rebellion had effectively sidelined the MNLA by July last year, and have since been exercising tomcatting powers over the peasants in the area, to whom the puritanical brand of Islam being promoted by the Islamists is alien.

ECOWAS, which is dominated by Nigeria -- formerly France's chief hegemonic foe in West Africa -- in August last year submitted a note verbale with a "strategic concept" to the U.N. Security Council, detailing plans for an intervention force to defeat the Islamists in Mali and reunify the country.

ECOWAS wanted the U.N. to bankroll the operation, which would include the deployment a 3,245-strong force -- to which Nigeria (694), Togo (581), Niger (541) and Senegal (350) would be the biggest contributors -- at a cost of $410 million a year. The note stated that the objective of the Islamists in northern Mali was to "create a safe haven" in that country from which to coordinate "continental terrorist networks, including AQIM, MUJAO, Boko Haram [in Nigeria] and Al-Shabaab [in Somalia]."

Despite compelling evidence of the threat the Islamists pose to international peace and security, the U.N. has not been able to agree on funding what essentially would be a military offensive. U.N. Security Council resolution 2085, passed on 20 December last year, only agreed to a voluntary contribution and the setting up of a trust fund, and requested the secretary-general "develop and refine options within 30 days" in this regard. The deadline should be 20 January.

See also: Six reasons events in Mali matter

It is partly because of this U.N. inaction that few in Africa would label the French action in Mali as another neo-colonial mission creep.

If the Islamists had been allowed to capture the very strategic town of Sevaré, as they seemed intent on doing, they would have captured the only airstrip in Mali (apart from the airport in Bamako) capable of handling heavy cargo planes, and they would have been poised to attack the more populated south of the country.

Africa's weakness has, once again, been exposed by the might of a foreign power.
Lansana Gberie

Those Africans who would be critical of the French are probably stunned to embarrassment: Africa's weakness has, once again, been exposed by the might of a foreign power.

Watch video: French troops welcomed in Mali

Africans, however, can perhaps take consolation in the fact that the current situation in Mali was partially created by the NATO action in Libya in 2010, which France spearheaded. A large number of the well-armed Islamists and Tuareg separatists had fought in the forces of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, and then left to join the MNLA in northern Mali after Gadhafi fell.

They brought with them advanced weapons, including shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles from Libya; and two new Jihadist terrorist groups active in northern Mali right now, Ansar Dine and MUJAO, were formed out of these forces.

Many African states had an ambivalent attitude towards Gadhafi, but few rejoiced when he was ousted and killed in the most squalid condition.

A number of African countries, Nigeria included, have started to deploy troops in Mali alongside the French, and ECOWAS has stated the objective as the complete liberation of the north from the Islamists.

The Islamists are clearly not a pushover; though they number between 2,000 and 3,000 they are battle-hardened and fanatically driven, and will likely hold on for some time to come.

The question now is: what happens after, as is almost certain, France begins to wind down its forces, leaving the African troops in Mali?

Nigeria, which almost single-handedly funded previous ECOWAS interventions (in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, costing billions of dollars and hundreds of Nigerian troops), has been reluctant to fund such expensive missions since it became democratic.

See also: Nigerians waiting for 'African Spring'

Its civilian regimes have to be more accountable to their citizens than the military regimes of the 1990s, and Nigeria has pressing domestic challenges. Foreign military intervention is no longer popular in the country, though the links between the northern Mali Islamists and the destructive Boko Haram could be used as a strategic justification for intervention in Mali.

The funding issue, however, will become more and more urgent in the coming weeks and months, and the U.N. must find a sustainable solution beyond a call for voluntary contributions by member states.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Lansana Gberie.

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Notre Dame's Te'o: 'There is no way that I could be part of this'

James Brown, host of "The NFL Today" on CBS Sports, talks to Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell about the Manti Te'o hoax and its possible effect on his future.

Manti Te'o broke his silence late Friday and denied any involvement in the dead girlfriend hoax that has consumed the former Notre Dame All-American for days, while saying the man behind the ruse apologized two days ago via social media.

"I wasn't faking it," Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap in an off-camera interview. "I wasn't part of this."

A 22-year-old named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo allegedly preyed upon Te'o in creating a bogus woman named Lennay Kekua who began an online- and telephone-only relationship with Te'o, Notre Dame's bellwether linebacker, only to die in September of leukemia and create a personal back story that propelled Te'o to national renown but ultimately crumbled this week.

Schaap reported after a two and a half hour interview with Te'o that the player wasn't completely sure Kekua did not exist until two days ago -- when Tuiasosopo reached out to Te'o via Twitter to admit he was behind the hoax and apologize for it.

Te'o told ESPN that he understood two men and one woman were involved, though he doesn't know the identities of the individuals other than Tuiasosopo. ESPN asked Te'o what he believed should happen to Tuiasosopo.

"I hope he learns," Te'o said. "I hope he understands what he's done. I don't wish an ill thing to somebody. I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."

Te'o told ESPN he was never asked for money, but Kekua once requested his checking account number in order to send him money. Te'o did not provide it.

As for at least one glaring inconsistency -- the story of how Te'o and Kekua met -- the former Irish star admitted to a lie. The relationship, such as it was, began during Te'o's sophomore year at Notre Dame via Facebook, he told ESPN. He attempted to contact Kekua via Skype and Facetime but never saw a face on the other end, Te'o said.

And as for the story of meeting Kekua on the field at Stanford in 2009, a tale retold by his father in October, Te'o said: "I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away."

"I knew that - I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn't meet," Te'o said. "And that alone people find out that this girl who died I was so invested in, and I didn't meet her as well."

One published detail, though, eluded Te'o's explanation. An October story in the South Bend Tribune depicted Te'o and Kekua touching hands in their initial meeting. That was not part of the fabrication Te'o passed along to his father, who was the paper's source for the anecdote.

"I'd never told anybody that I've touched her hand," Te'o told ESPN.

Te'o also was asked why he never visited Kekua in the hospital while she battled leukemia.

"It never really crossed my mind," Te'o said. "I don't know. I was in school."

He then added that the purported Kekua family told him not to come to what was obviously a non-existent funeral, per Lennay Kekua's wishes.

"They didn't want -- and I didn't want myself -- I didn't want that to be the first time that I saw her was laying in a coffin," Te'o said.

As for the Dec. 6 call in which Lennay Kekua reentered his realm, Te'o presented the following sequence as written in the ESPN.com story:

He received a phone call from the number Kekua had used. He answered and a woman's voice on the other end said there was something she needed to tell him, but it could wait until after the national title game on Jan. 8.

"I said you have to tell me now, because if you don't tell me now, I'm still going to think about it," Te'o said. "... She said, well, Manti, it's me. That's all she said. And I played stupid for a little bit. I was like, oh, I know it's you, U'ilani (Kekua's purported sister) .What do you mean? And she's like, no, Manti, it's me."

Te'o asked who "me" was.

"She said, it's Lennay," he said. "So we carried on that conversation, and I just got mad. I just went on a rampage. How could you do this to me? I ended that conversation by saying, simply this: You know what, Lennay, my Lennay died on Sept. 12."

ESPN reported Friday that Tuiasosopo called a friend from church in early December and admitted he duped Te'o, without the Notre Dame linebacker playing a part in the deception. Deadspin.com, which broke the girlfriend hoax story Wednesday, reported that Te'o might have played a role in the fraud.

Te'o denied that he used the situation to enhance his Heisman Trophy candidacy. He finished second in the voting to Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel.

"When (people) hear the facts, they'll know," Te'o told ESPN. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."

Te'o did say the ordeal weighed on him during Notre Dame's 42-14 loss to Alabama in the BCS title game, in which he played arguably one of the worst games of his career.

Te'o evidently told ESPN that a group of people related to Tuiasosopo showed up at the Notre Dame team hotel before the game and that Te'o knew they were there because they took photos in the lobby.

"It affected me," Te'o said. "When you're stuck in big game like that... people depend on you. You need to perform."

bchamilton@tribune.com

Twitter @ChiTribHamilton

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Algerian army stages "final assault" on gas plant

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army on Saturday carried out a "final assault" on al Qaeda-linked gunmen holed up in a desert gas plant, killing 11 of the Islamists after they took the lives of seven foreign hostages.

"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a local source familiar with the operation told Reuters.

The state oil and gas company, Sonatrach, said the militants who attacked the plant on Wednesday and took a large number of hostages had booby-trapped the gas complex with explosives.

The exact death toll among the gunmen and the foreign and Algerian workers at the plant near the town of In Amenas close to the Libyan border remained unclear.

Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 burned bodies at the plant. Efforts were underway to identify the bodies, the source told Reuters, and it was not clear how they had died.

Sixteen foreign hostages were freed on Saturday, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans, two Germans and one Portuguese.

Britain said fewer than 10 of its nationals at the plant were unaccounted for.

The attack on the plant swiftly turned into the biggest international hostage crises in decades, pushing Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.

Reports earlier put the number of hostages killed at between 12 to 30, with many foreigners still unaccounted for, among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons and Americans.

The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details. The French defense minister said he understood there were no more French workers among the hostages.

Two Norwegians were released overnight, leaving six unaccounted for, while Romania said three of its nationals had been freed. A number of Japanese engineering workers were still unaccounted for.

Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to a French military operation in neighboring Mali.

Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched its operation, but many hostages were killed.

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London, Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries in Dublin, Andrew Quinn and David Alexander in Washington, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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Wall Street edges lower on earnings, China data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell modestly on Friday, a day after the S&P 500 rose to its highest level in five years, as a weak outlook from Intel was weighed against encouraging data out of China and a fourth-quarter profit at Morgan Stanley .

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 6.68 points, or 0.05 percent, at 13,589.34. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.60 points, or 0.18 percent, at 1,478.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 10.63 points, or 0.34 percent, at 3,125.37.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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IOC VP: Armstrong must tell 'whole truth'

LONDON (AP) — Lance Armstrong's doping confession to Oprah Winfrey was "too little, too late" and failed to provide any new information that will help clean up the sport he tarnished through years of cheating, the vice president of the IOC said Friday.

A day after stripping Armstrong of his bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the IOC urged the disgraced former Tour de France champion to supply details to anti-doping authorities in order to "bring an end to this dark episode."

In an interview with The Associated Press, IOC vice president Thomas Bach said Armstrong's admission to Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs — after years of vehement denials —was not enough.

"If he thinks this interview would help him get credibility back, I think this is too little, too late," said Bach, a German lawyer who leads the IOC's anti-doping investigations. "It's a first step in the right direction, but no more.

"If he really loves his sport and wants to regain at least some credibility, then he should tell the whole truth and cooperate with the relevant sports bodies."

Armstrong is under pressure to come clean to the World Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and the independent commission set up the International Cycling Union.

"We have three sports bodies he can address," Bach said by telephone. "He needs to give testimony under oath. After lying for more than a dozen years, he needs to be questioned by experts and not just in a well-orchestrated interview."

In a statement from Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC said: "We now urge Armstrong to present all the evidence he has to the appropriate anti-doping authorities so that we can bring an end to this dark episode and move forward, stronger and cleaner."

In the interview with Winfrey, Armstrong acknowledged that he used EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone and blood transfusions in order to win the Tour de France seven times.

"This is not enough," said Bach, who is a leading contender to succeed Jacques Rogge as IOC president in elections in September. "I hoped he would be more precise, that you would get an idea of who were the people behind him. He's even protected the famous Dr. Ferrari."

Bach was referring to Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, who worked closely with Armstrong and has been accused of being a mastermind of the cyclist's doping program.

"In some parts of the interview he was pretty evasive, in some parts contradicting himself," Bach said.

Bach said the interview offered no information beyond the USADA report that detailed widespread doping by Armstrong and his teammates and led to the stripping of his Tour titles and a lifetime ban from Olympic sports.

"We have no new facts — not a single new fact going beyond the USADA report," Bach said.

Armstrong denied in the interview that cycling body UCI covered up positive tests or helped him avoid detection.

Bach said the interview provided no allegations that would put cycling's Olympic status in jeopardy. Senior Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, a former head of WADA, suggested this week that cycling could be kicked out of the Olympics if there was proof of UCI collusion with Armstrong.

"I still hope for a full inquiry, but in general, you have to consider the anti-doping system since then has changed very much for the better," Bach said. "The UCI has introduced the blood passport, there is more target testing and out-of-competition testing and better methods for detecting EPO. You cannot draw conclusions from 10 years ago."

In Lausanne, the IOC said it "unreservedly condemns" the actions of Armstrong and all drug cheats.

"This is indeed a very sad day for sport but there is a positive side if these revelations can begin to draw a line under previous practices," the statement said. "It is the IOC's firm expectation that all parties involved will draw the necessary lessons from this case and continue to take all measures to ensure a level playing field for all athletes."

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U.S. 'needs tougher child labor rules'

Cristina Traina says in his second term, Obama must address weaknesses in child farm labor standards

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Cristina Traina: Obama should strengthen child farm labor standards


• She says Labor Dept. rules allow kids to work long hours for little pay on commercial farms


• She says Obama administration scrapped Labor Dept. chief's proposal for tightening rules


• She says Labor Dept. must fix lax standards for kid labor on farmers; OSHA must enforce them

Editor's note: Cristina L.H. Traina is a Public Voices Op Ed fellow and professor at Northwestern University, where she is a scholar of social ethics.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama should use the breathing space provided by the fiscal-cliff compromise to address some of the issues that he shelved during his last term. One of the most urgent is child farm labor. Perhaps the least protected, underpaid work force in American labor, children are often the go-to workers for farms looking to cut costs.

It's easy to see why. The Department of Labor permits farms to pay employees under 20 as little as $4.25 per hour. (By comparison, the federal minimum wage is $7.25.) And unlike their counterparts in retail and service, child farm laborers can legally work unlimited hours at any hour of day or night.

The numbers are hard to estimate, but between direct hiring, hiring through labor contractors, and off-the-books work beside parents or for cash, perhaps 400,000 children, some as young as 6, weed and harvest for commercial farms. A Human Rights Watch 2010 study shows that children laboring for hire on farms routinely work more than 10 hours per day.

As if this were not bad enough, few labor safety regulations apply. Children 14 and older can work long hours at all but the most dangerous farm jobs without their parents' consent, if they do not miss school. Children 12 and older can too, as long as their parents agree. Unlike teen retail and service workers, agricultural laborers 16 and older are permitted to operate hazardous machinery and to work even during school hours.

In addition, Human Rights Watch reports that child farm laborers are exposed to dangerous pesticides; have inadequate access to water and bathrooms; fall ill from heat stroke; suffer sexual harassment; experience repetitive-motion injuries; rarely receive protective equipment like gloves and boots; and usually earn less than the minimum wage. Sometimes they earn nothing.

Little is being done to guarantee their safety. In 2011 Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis proposed more stringent agricultural labor rules for children under 16, but Obama scrapped them just eight months later.

Adoption of the new rules would be no guarantee of enforcement, however. According to the 2010 Human Rights Watch report, the Department of Labor employees were spread so thin that, despite widespread reports of infractions they found only 36 child labor violations and two child hazardous order violations in agriculture nationwide.

This lack of oversight has dire, sometimes fatal, consequences. Last July, for instance, 15-year-old Curvin Kropf, an employee at a small family farm near Deer Grove, Illinois, died when he fell off the piece of heavy farm equipment he was operating, and it crushed him. According to the Bureau County Republican, he was the fifth child in fewer than two years to die at work on Sauk Valley farms.

If this year follows trends, Curvin will be only one of at least 100 children below the age of 18 killed on American farms, not to mention the 23,000 who will be injured badly enough to require hospital admission. According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries. It is the most dangerous for children, accounting for about half of child worker deaths annually.

The United States has a long tradition of training children in the craft of farming on family farms. At least 500,000 children help to work their families' farms today.

Farm parents, their children, and the American Farm Bureau objected strenuously to the proposed new rules. Although children working on their parents' farms would specifically have been exempted from them, it was partly in response to worries about government interference in families and loss of opportunities for children to learn agricultural skills that the Obama administration shelved them.

Whatever you think of family farms, however, many child agricultural workers don't work for their parents or acquaintances. Despite exposure to all the hazards, these children never learn the craft of farming, nor do most of them have the legal right to the minimum wage. And until the economy stabilizes, the savings farms realize by hiring children makes it likely that even more of them will be subject to the dangers of farm work.

We have a responsibility for their safety. As one of the first acts of his new term, Obama should reopen the child agricultural labor proposal he shelved in spring of 2012. Surely, farm labor standards for children can be strengthened without killing off 4-H or Future Farmers of America.

Second, the Department of Labor must institute age, wage, hour and safety regulations that meet the standards set by retail and service industry rules. Children in agriculture should not be exposed to more risks, longer hours, and lower wages at younger ages than children in other jobs.

Finally, the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration must allocate the funds necessary for meaningful enforcement of child labor violations. Unenforced rules won't protect the nearly million other children who work on farms.

Agriculture is a great American tradition. Let's make sure it's not one our children have to die for.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Cristina Traina.

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Exhumation starts for lottery winner poisoned by cyanide

Several helicopters hovered over Rosehill Cemetery on Chicago's North Side this morning as police exhumed the body of a West Rogers Park man who died of cyanide poisoning last summer after winning a million-dollar lottery.

A hearse was being opened in front of a green tent set up at the grave site just north of Peterson Avenue and Urooj Khan's body was loaded into it. An evidence technician snapped a photo of it before the hearse's rear doors were closed up and the vehicle began driving away across the grass on the cemetery, escorted by a Chicago police evidence technician squad car and several other marked and unmarked police vehicles. They exited west onto Peterson Avenue.

The whole exhumation process lasted about two hours.

A medical examiner's office spokeswoman, Mary Paleologos, said if Khan's body is frozen, his autopsy will be performed at 7 a.m. Saturday. If not, the autopsy will be today. Paleologos also said Khan's body will be buried again on Monday.

A few medical examiner's office personnel were on hand for the exhumation, including Dr. Marta Helenowski, the forensic pathologist who originally handled Khan's case.

A backhoe and three or four pickup trucks were stationed at the grave site in the middle of the northern section of Rosehill earlier this morning, where a beam of light could be seen shining over Khan's headstone. The backhoe soon began its work digging into the ground at the grave site. In addition to the backhoe, one or two workers were seen helping dig up the body with shovels.

A large tent was set up at the site where some two dozen police officers were gathered. Among the officers are two Chicago police evidence technicians, Paleologos said. One was taking still photos of the exhumation, while the other was shooting video.

An unmarked police car and two blue barricades blocked off the Peterson Avenue gate to Rosehill, the only entrance and exit in the northern section of the cemetery.

Four TV trucks sat parked along the fence about 100 yards west of the grave site along Oakley Avenue, the designated staging area for the media. A group of about a dozen photographers, a videographer and TV reporters stood along the Peterson Avenue fence, next to where traffic moved along the busy thoroughfare like any normal morning rush hour.

A few passersby gazed at the police activity at the grave site from Oakley Avenue. One, curious about large presence inside the cemetery, was surprised to learned from a Tribune reporter that it was Khan's body being dug up. Another thought someone was having a funeral.

The exhumation of Khan's remains – scheduled to begin at about 7 a.m. – will come about six months after he was buried at Rosehill. In court papers last week, Chief Medical Examiner Stephen J. Cina said it was important to exhume the remains "as expeditiously as possible" since Khan's body was not embalmed.

In court papers, Cina said it was necessary to perform a full autopsy to "further confirm the results of the blood analysis as well as to rule out any other natural causes that might have contributed to or caused Mr. Khan's death."

A pathologist will take samples of Khan's stomach contents to try to determine how the cyanide was ingested, Mary Paleologos, Cina's spokeswoman, has said. They will also look at other organs such as the lungs to make certain the cyanide wasn't inhaled, she said.

The exhumation comes after the Tribune broke the story on Jan. 7 about Khan's mysterious death, sparking international media interest in the case.

The medical examiner's office initially ruled Khan's July 20 death was from hardening of the arteries when there were no signs of trauma on the body and a preliminary blood test didn't raise any questions. But the investigation was reopened about a week later after a relative suggested to authorities that Khan's death "may have been the result of poisoning," prosecutors said in a court filing seeking the exhumation.

The medical examiner's office contacted Chicago police Sept. 11 after tests showed cyanide in Khan's blood. By late November, more comprehensive toxicological tests showed lethal levels of the toxic chemical and the medical examiner's office declared his death a homicide.

Khan's widow, Shabana Ansari, who has hired a criminal-defense lawyer, told the Tribune last week that she had been questioned for more than four hours by detectives and had fully cooperated.  She said the detectives had asked her about ingredients she used to prepare his last meal of lamb curry, shared by Ansari, her father-in-law Fareedun Ansari and Khan's daughter from a previous marriage, Jasmeen, 17.

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

According to court records obtained by the Tribune, Khan's brother has squabbled with Shabana Ansari over the lottery winnings in probate court. The brother, ImTiaz Khan, raised concern that since Khan left no will, Jasmeen Khan would not get "her fair share" of her father's estate.

Khan and Ansari did not have children together. Since her father's death, Jasmeen Khan has been living with Khan's siblings.

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 state law, the estate typically would be split evenly between the spouse and Khan's only child, he said.

In addition, almost two years ago, the Internal Revenue Service placed liens on Khan's residence on West Pratt Boulevard in an effort to collect more than $120,000 in back taxes from his father-in-law,  Fareedun Ansari, who still lives at the home with his daughter.

Fareedun and Shabana Ansari have denied involvement in Khan's death.

jgorner@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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