Iran's Ahmadinejad in Egypt on historic visit

CAIRO (Reuters) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Egypt on Tuesday on the first trip by an Iranian president since the 1979 revolution, underlining a thaw in relations since Egyptians elected an Islamist head of state.

President Mohamed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood politician elected in June, kissed Ahmadinejad as he disembarked from his plane at Cairo airport. The leaders walked down a red carpet, Ahmadinejad smiling as he shook hands with waiting dignitaries.

Visiting Cairo to attend an Islamic summit that begins on Wednesday, the president of the Shi'ite Islamist republic is due to meet later on Tuesday with the grand sheikh of al-Azhar, one of the oldest seats of learning in the Sunni world.

Such a visit would have been unthinkable during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the military-backed autocrat who preserved Egypt's peace treaty with Israel during his 30 years in power and deepened ties between Cairo and the West.

"The political geography of the region will change if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question," Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based TV station, on the eve of his visit.

He said he wanted to visit the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory which neighbors Egypt to the east and is run by the Islamist movement Hamas. "If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people," Ahmadinejad said.

Analysts doubt that the historic changes that brought Mursi to power in Egypt will result in a full restoration of diplomatic ties between states whose relations were broken off after the Iranian revolution and the conclusion of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

OBSTACLES TO FULL TIES

At the airport the two leaders discussed ways of boosting relations between their countries and resolving the Syrian crisis "without resorting to military intervention", Egyptian state media reported.

Egypt is concerned by Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to crush an uprising inspired by the revolt that swept Mubarak from power two years ago. Egypt's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population is broadly supportive of the uprising against Assad's Alawite-led administration.

The Mursi administration also wants to safeguard relations with Gulf Arab states that are supporting Cairo's battered state finances and are deeply suspicious of Iran.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr reassured Gulf Arab allies that Egypt would not jeopardize their security.

"The security of the Gulf states is the security of Egypt," he told the official MENA news agency, in response to questions about Cairo's opening to Iran and its impact on other states in the region.

Mursi wants to preserve ties with the United States, the source of $1.3 billion in aid each year to the influential Egyptian military.

His government has established close ties with Hamas, a movement backed by Iran and shunned by the West because of its hostility to Israel, but its priority is addressing Egypt's deep economic problems.

"The restoration of full relations with Iran in this period is difficult, despite the warmth in ties ... because of many problems including the Syrian crisis and Cairo's links with the Gulf states, Israel and the United States," said one former Egyptian diplomat.

Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of preparatory meetings for the two-day Islamic summit, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he was optimistic that ties could grow closer.

"We are gradually improving. We have to be a little bit patient. I'm very hopeful about the expansion of the bilateral relationship," he said. Asked where he saw room for closer ties, he said: "Trade and economics."

Ahmadinejad's visit to Egypt follows Mursi's visit to Iran in August for a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the 1,000-year-old al-Azhar mosque and university, will meet Ahmadinejad at his offices in mediaeval Islamic Cairo, al-Azhar's media office said.

Salehi, the Iranian foreign Minister, stressed the importance of Muslim unity when he met Sheikh al-Tayeb at al-Azhar last month.

Egypt and Iran have taken opposite courses since the late 1970s. Egypt, under Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and became a close ally of the United States and Europe. Iran from 1979 turned into a center of opposition to Western influence in the Middle East.

Symbolically, Iran named a street in Tehran after the Islamist who led the 1981 assassination of Sadat.

Egypt gave asylum and a state funeral to Iran's exiled Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown by the 1979 Iranian revolution. He is buried in a medieval Cairo mosque alongside his ex-brother-in-law, Egypt's last king, Farouk.

(Additional reporting by Ayman Samir and Alexander Diadosz; Editing by Andrew Roche and Paul Taylor)

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Analysis: New miner wants in on the chummy global potash club

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Potash miner Prospect Global Resources Inc won't open its first mine until at least 2015, but the American upstart is already upsetting the multibillion-dollar fertilizer industry where a few players control a crucial ingredient in the global food chain.

China, with an insatiable appetite for fertilizer to help feed its growing population, has long been dependent on Canpotex, the Canadian sales agency that supplies a third of the world's potash.

But in December, Canpotex reluctantly agreed to a six-month supply contract with China at $400 per tonne, a $70 per tonne discount from its last contract price and a steeper cut than expected.

China got the cheaper price partly because it used as leverage a separate 10-year agreement inked last October with Prospect.

While macroeconomic and local factors - from economic growth to weather and production issues - do influence the contracts, Prospect's arrival is chipping away at Canpotex's near-monopoly. The stakes are high in a business that typically has profit margins of around 50 percent.

"We think Prospect Global is the best potash investment opportunity in North America," said Steven Sugarman of COR Capital, a private equity firm that is the company's fifth-largest shareholder. "We like the geology, we like the location and the team they've put together."

With demand for corn and other commodities booming around the world - and potash prices up roughly 150 percent in the past decade - food and fertilizer are hot commodities. Prices have cooled recently, but are still at decade-highs.

BlackRock Inc , Apollo Global Management LLC, and Ted Waitt, the co-founder of computer company Gateway, have taken note. They invested in Prospect - which went public last year - largely as a bet on a shake-up of the fertilizer industry.

Prospect is also helmed by some big names in the fertilizer industry. James Dietz, a Prospect board member, was Potash Corp's chief operating officer for more than 10 years, and Patrick Avery, Prospect's chief executive, previously ran Intrepid Potash Inc , which has mines in New Mexico.

Prospect finds itself an unwelcome new kid on the block, with rivals quick to cast doubt on its ability to hang tough amid the fertilizer industry's highs and lows.

"I don't take it seriously whatsoever," said Jim Prokopanko, chief executive of much-larger rival Mosaic Co , which owns Canada's Esterhazy, the world's largest potash mine.

"It'll be a small producer if it ever sees the light of day," he said in an interview.

That view is being tested as Canpotex, which is controlled by Mosaic, Potash Corp and Agrium Inc , negotiates a supply deal with India. Most analysts expect that contract price to be lower than its predecessor.

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

Prospect is the largest of three companies developing a potash reserve in Holbrook, Arizona, an arid, flat scruff of land in the state's northeast corner.

Passport Potash Inc and privately held Hunt Consolidated Inc are exploring other parts of the reserve, though Prospect is farthest along in terms of development and funding.

Despite a BNSF train depot and several large tourist attractions - a meteorite exploded over Holbrook 100 years ago, attracting rock collectors - the town's unemployment rate is 13.5 percent. Mining promises to change that.

Arizona's potash deposit was quietly forgotten after a small geological expedition uncovered it in the 1960s. The deposit started to get more attention in 2008, as potash prices started to climb high enough to justify the more than $1 billion needed to develop a mine.

To exploit the land, Avery and other executives initially drew in BlackRock and other high-profile debt and equity investors. The group bought a publicly listed shell company to allow them to quickly become a listed company in June 2012 without going through the normal process of an initial public offering.

Several stock offerings since the firm became listed have diluted shares and pushed Prospect's stock down 40 percent in the past six months. More capital may be needed, a step that could further dent the share price.

"We are talking to other groups about more equity stakes to help us get started on drilling," Avery said.

Apollo is finalizing a $100 million debt financing deal, and BlackRock is the company's third-largest stockholder, with more than 5 million shares.

Top shareholders, many of whom invested before the firm went public, have said they believe the company is a long-term investment that will radically alter the fertilizer market.

If fully developed, Holbrook's fertilizer deposit would nearly double annual U.S. production of potash, one of the most-important nutrients that farmers apply to boost harvests.

Russia and Canada have the world's largest potash reserves, each with more than 3 billion tonnes compared with 130 million tonnes in the United States. The grade of Holbrook's potash deposit, at 11 percent to 13 percent, is roughly half the industry average.

But Prospect's production costs will be lower than those of its rivals because of milder weather and less digging required to reach the deposits, boosting margins.

Canpotex and Russian rivals operate primarily in colder climates and have potash reserves about 3,700 feet deep. Mosaic had to freeze an underground lake just to reach Saskatchewan's Esterhazy mine.

Prospect's Arizona potash deposit, by contrast, is roughly 1,000 feet deep in a year-round warm climate and closer to key West Coast ports than Canpotex facilities in Canada.

"A lot of these positive issues offset the lower grade reports," said Steven Rauzi of the Arizona Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees potash drilling in the state.

Prospect expects it will only cost about $112 per tonne to produce potash at its Arizona mine. The industry average is roughly $135 per tonne. That makes profit margins especially high, with market prices for potash above $400 per tonne.

China is taking 25 percent of Prospect's forecast 2 million tonnes of annual potash production, or 500,000 tonnes a year, an amount that will still make China the largest importer of American potash. The rest, if sold abroad, will only further roil Prospect's rivals when it hits the global market as competition intensifies to feed a growing population.

Canpotex will supply 1 million tonnes to China under a six-month supply contract that expires in June. But the fact that China was able to cut part of its dependence on Canadian potash showed that the world's second-largest economy is getting creative to feed its people.

For every $10 per tonne drop in the price of potash, Potash Corp's earnings slip by 7 cents per share, according to Credit Agricole.

That's not lost on Potash Corp analysts and investors, who peppered CEO Bill Doyle about Prospect in an earnings call last fall. Doyle played down the threat.

"If you look at the economics of the business today, there is no return on that investment," Doyle said of Prospect Global. "We don't pay much attention to it."

Prospect CEO Avery, however, points to the world's growing need for food, and adds that he is bullish on his company's potential - if for no other reason than the land on which it sits. "It is amazing," he said, "how well situated our plot of land is."

(Reporting By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Patricia Kranz and Claudia Parsons)

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Ravens edge 49ers 34-31 in electric Super Bowl

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — For a Super Bowl with so many story lines, this game came up with quite a twist.

Try a blackout that turned a blowout into a shootout — capped by a brilliant defensive stand.

The Baltimore Ravens survived a frenzied comeback by the San Francisco 49ers following a 34-minute delay in the third quarter for a power outage Sunday night, winning their second championship 34-31. Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco threw three first-half touchdown passes, Jacoby Jones ran back the second-half kickoff a record 108 yards for a score, and star linebacker Ray Lewis' last play fittingly was part of a defensive effort that saved the victory.

"To me, that was one of the most amazing goal-line stands I've ever been a part of in my career," said Lewis, who announced a month ago he would retire when the Ravens were done playing.

They are done now, with another Vince Lombardi Trophy headed for the display case.

"What better way to do it," Lewis said, "than on the Super Bowl stage?"

That stage already was loaded with plots:

—The coaching Harbaughs sibling rivalry, won by older brother John, who said the postgame greeting with Jim was "painful."

—Flacco's emergence as a top-level quarterback, and his impending free agency.

—Colin Kaepernick's rapid rise in the last two months as 49ers QB.

—The big game's return to the Big Easy for the first time in 11 years, and the first time since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005.

—Lewis' self-proclaimed "last ride."

But when the Superdome lost power, well, that wasn't in anyone's scenario.

Flacco and the Ravens (14-6) were turning the game into a rout, leading 28-6 when, without even a flicker of warning, several banks of lights and the scoreboards went dark. Players from both sides stretched and chatted with each other in as bizarre a scene as any Super Bowl has witnessed.

"The bad part was we started talking about it," said safety Ed Reed, who had the game's only interception. "That was mentioned. It was like they were trying to kill our momentum."

After power was restored, the 49ers began playing lights out.

San Francisco (13-5-1), in search of its sixth Lombardi Trophy in as many tries, got back in the game almost immediately.

Michael Crabtree's 31-yard touchdown reception, on which he broke two tackles, made it 28-13. A few minutes later, Frank Gore's 6-yard run followed a 32-yard punt return by Ted Ginn Jr., and the 49ers were within eight.

Ray Rice's fumble at his 24 led to David Akers' 34-yard field goal, but Baltimore woke up for a long drive leading to rookie Justin Tucker's 19-yard field goal.

San Francisco wasn't done challenging, though, and Kaepernick's 15-yard TD run, the longest for a quarterback in a Super Bowl, made it 31-29. A 2-point conversion pass failed when the Ravens blitzed.

Tucker added a 38-yarder with 4:19 remaining, setting up the frantic finish.

Kaepernick couldn't get the 49ers into the end zone on the final three plays. The last was a pass into the right corner of the end zone to Crabtree that involved some incidental bumping. Jim Harbaugh insisted a flag should have been thrown.

"There's no question in my mind that there was a pass interference and then a hold," Jim Harbaugh said.

Ravens punter Sam Koch took a safety for the final score with 4 seconds left. Koch's free kick was returned by Ginn to midfield as time ran out.

"How could it be any other way? It's never pretty. It's never perfect. But it's us," John Harbaugh said of his Ravens. "It was us today."

Barely.

"Yeah, I think that last drive when we got the ball and had time to go down and score a touchdown," Kaepernick said, "we thought it was our game."

But the championship is Baltimore's.

As for the foul-up at America's biggest sporting event, officials revealed that an "abnormality" in the power system triggered an automatic shutdown, forcing backup systems to kick in. But no one was sure what caused the initial problem.

Everything changed after that until Lewis and Co. shut it down. But there were plenty of white-knuckle moments and the Ravens had to make four stops inside their 7 at the end.

"I think it speaks to our resolve, speaks to our determination, speaks to our mental toughness," John Harbaugh said. "That is what wins and loses games."

At 4 hours, 14 minutes, it was the longest Super Bowl ever.

Flacco's arrival as a championship quarterback — he had 11 postseason TD passes, tying a league mark, and no interceptions — coincides with Lewis' retirement. The win capped a sensational four games since Lewis announced he was leaving the game after 17 Hall of Fame-caliber years.

The Ravens will become Flacco's team now, provided he reaches agreement on a new contract.

Flacco's three TD passes in the opening half tied a Super Bowl record. They covered 13 yards to Anquan Boldin, 1 to Dennis Pitta and 56 to Jones.

That start boosted him to the MVP award.

"They have to give it to one guy and I'm not going to complain that I got it," Flacco said.

John Harbaugh had no complaints about getting that other trophy named after that Green Bay coach. But he struggled to balance it with the disappointment his brother was feeling.

"The meeting with Jim in the middle (of the field for the postgame handshake) was probably the most difficult thing I have ever been associated with in my life," the Ravens coach said.

The wild scoring made this the second championship in the NFL's 80-year title game history in which both teams scored at least 30 points. Pittsburgh's 35-31 win over Dallas in 1979 was the other.

The Ravens stumbled into the playoffs with four defeats in its last five regular-season games as Lewis recovered from a torn right triceps and Flacco struggled. Harbaugh even fired his offensive coordinator in December, a stunning move with the postseason so close.

But that — and every other move Harbaugh, Flacco and the Ravens made since — were right on target.

New Orleans native Jones, one of the stars in a double-overtime playoff win at Denver, seemed to put the game away with his record 108-yard sprint with the second-half kickoff.

Soon after, the lights went out — and when they came back on, the Ravens were almost powerless to slow the 49ers.

Until the final moments.

"The final series of Ray Lewis' career was a goal-line stand," Harbaugh said.

Lewis was sprawled on all fours, face-down on the turf, after the end zone incompletion.

"It's no greater way, as a champ, to go out on your last ride with the men that I went out with, with my teammates," Lewis said. "And you looked around this stadium and Baltimore! Baltimore! We coming home, baby! We did it!"

Jim Harbaugh, the coach who turned around the Niners in the last two years and brought them to their first Super Bowl in 18 years, had seen his team make a similarly stunning comeback in the NFC championship at Atlanta, but couldn't finish it off against Baltimore.

"Our guys battled back to get back in," the 49ers coach said. "I thought we battled right to the brink of winning."

The 49ers couldn't have been sloppier in the first half, damaging their chances with penalties — including one on their first play that negated a 20-yard gain — poor tackling and turnovers. Rookie LaMichael James fumbled at the Baltimore 25 to ruin an impressive drive, and the Ravens converted that with Flacco's 1-yard pass to Pitta for a 14-3 lead.

On San Francisco's next offensive play, Kaepernick threw behind Randy Moss and always dependable Reed picked it off. A huge scuffle followed that brought both Harbaughs onto the field and saw both sides penalized 15 yards for unnecessary roughness.

Reed, also a New Orleans native, tied the NFL record for postseason picks with his ninth.

Baltimore didn't pounce on that mistake for points. Instead, Tucker's fake field goal run on fourth-and-9 came up a yard short when Chris Culliver slammed him out of bounds.

The Ravens simply shrugged, forced a three-and-out, and then unleashed Jones deep. Just as he did to Denver, he flashed past the secondary and caught Flacco's fling. He had to wait for the ball, fell to the ground to grab it, but was untouched by a Niner. Up he sprang, cutting left and using his speed to outrun two defenders to the end zone.

Desperate for some points, the 49ers completed four passes and got a 15-yard roughing penalty against Haloti Ngata, who later left with a knee injury. But again they couldn't cross the goal line, Paul Kruger got his second sack of the half on third down, forcing a second field goal by Akers, from 27 yards.

When Jones began the second half by sprinting up the middle virtually untouched — he is the second player with two TDs of 50 yards or more in a Super Bowl, tying Washington's Ricky Sanders in 1988 — the rout was on.

Then it wasn't.

"Everybody had their hand on this game," 49ers All-Pro linebacker Patrick Willis said. "We point the fingers at nobody. We win together and we lose together, and today we lost it."

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Bones of King Richard III Found

The body of the lost and vilified English king Richard III has finally been found.

Archaeologists announced today (Feb. 4) that bones excavated from underneath a parking lot in Leicester “beyond reasonable doubt,” belong to the medieval king. Archaeologists announced the discovery of the skeleton in September. They suspected then they might have Richard III on their hands because the skeleton showed signs of the spinal disorder scoliosis, which Richard III likely had, and because battle wounds on the bones matched accounts of Richard III’s death in the War of the Roses.

The announcement comes a day after the archaeologists had released an image of the king’s battle-scarred skull.

To confirm the hunch, however, researchers at the University of Leicester conducted a series of tests, including extracting DNA from the teeth and a bone for comparison with Michael Ibsen, a modern-day descendant of Richard III’s sister Anne of York.

Indeed, the researchers found the genetics matched up between Ibsen and that from the skeleton. “The DNA remains points to these being the remains of Richard III,” University of Leicester genetics expert Turi King said during a press briefing.

The history of Richard III

Richard III was born in 1452 and ruled England from 1483 to 1485, a reign cut short by his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the decisive battle in the English civil war known as the War of the Roses. [See Images of the Skull & Search for Richard III's Grave]

Richard III’s historical reputation is a twisted one, rife with accusations that he had his two young nephews murdered to secure his spot on the throne. The Shakespeare play “Richard III” cemented the king’s villainous reputation about 100 years after the monarch died.

But Richard III’s true legacy is a source of controversy. According to the Richard III Society, which has been involved in the archaeological search for the king’s remains, many of the crimes Shakespeare attributes to Richard III are on shaky grounds. Even the deaths of the young princes remain in dispute.

After the king’s death in battle, he was brought to Leicester and reportedly interred at the church of the Grey Friars, a location long lost to history. Unsubstantiated rumors sprung up around the missing grave, such as that Richard III’s bones had been dug up and thrown in a river, or that his coffin was used as a horse-trough.

Relying on historical records, University of Leicester archaeologists began excavating a city council parking lot in Leicester in August 2012 in search of the Grey Friars church. They soon found medieval window frames, glazed floor tiles and roof fragments, suggesting that they were on the right track.

Shortly thereafter, the team unearthed human remains, including both a female skeleton (possibly an early church founder) and a male skeleton with a spine curved by scoliosis. The male skeleton’s skull was cleaved with a blade, and a barbed metal arrowhead was lodged among the vertebrae of the upper back.

New discoveries

An analysis of the skeleton, ongoing ever since, revealed many characteristics consistent with Richard III, including that the man died in his late 20s or 30s (Richard III supposedly died at age 32), and he had a slender, “almost female build,” said Jo Appleby, the University of Leicester’s osteology expert. [Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond]

The man would’ve had so-called idiopathic adolescent-onset scoliosis, meaning the cause is unclear though the individual would have developed the disorder after age 10; the curvature would’ve put pressure on the man’s heart and lungs and could’ve caused pain, Appleby said. However, unlike historical records would suggest, the skeleton of Richard III showed no signs of a withered arm.

Appleby and her colleagues found and examined 10 wounds on the skeleton, including eight on the skull. None of the wounds could have been inflicted after the body was buried, though some of the wounds are consistent with being post-mortem, possibly as a way to further humiliate the king in 1485, Appleby said.

What does the discovery mean for the king’s villainous reputation?

“It will be a whole new era for Richard III,” Lynda Pidgeon of the Richard III Society told the Associated Press. “It’s certainly going to spark a lot more interest. Hopefully people will have a more open mind toward Richard.”

Where will they be re-interred? The University of Leicester has jurisdiction over the remains, and said today the Richard III skeleton would be buried under Leicester Cathedral.

Other interested parties had voiced their own opinions: The Richard III Foundation and the Society of Friends of Richard III, based in York, England, argue the remains should be reburied in York, since the king was fond of that city. The Richard III Society has remained officially neutral. Meanwhile, some online petitions have argued the reburial should take place at Westminster Abbey or Windsor Castle.

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Should we still fear al Qaeda?

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Peter Bergen: U.K. politicians called North Africa terror an existential threat


• Bergen says core al Qaeda has been greatly weakened, hasn't mounted serious operations


• Terror groups loosely affiliated with al Qaeda have also lost ground, he says


• Bergen: Jihadist violence does continue, but it does no good to overstate threat

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad", and a director at the New America Foundation.

Washington (CNN) -- The attack in January on a gas facility in Algeria by an al Qaeda-linked group that resulted in at least 37 dead hostages has sparked an outpouring of dire warnings from leading Western politicians.

British Prime Minister David Cameron described a "large and existential threat" emanating from North Africa. Tony Blair, his predecessor as prime minister, agreed saying, "David Cameron is right to warn that this is a battle for our values and way of life which will take years, even decades."

Hang on chaps! Before we all get our knickers in a tremendous twist: How exactly does an attack on an undefended gas facility in the remotest depths of the Algerian desert become an "existential threat" to our "way of life"?

Across the Atlantic, American politicians also got into sky-is-falling mode. Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, fulminated, "This is going to get worse. You cannot allow this to become a national security issue for the United States. And I argue it's already crossed that threshold."

Peter Bergen

Previous real U.S. national security threats and their manifestations include 9/11, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (from the potential use of nuclear weapons) with the Soviets, Pearl Harbor and Hitler's armies taking over much of Europe.

A ragtag group of jihadists roaming the North African deserts is orders of magnitude less significant than those genuine threats to the West and is more comparable to the threats posed by the bands of pirates who continue to harass shipping off the coast of Somalia. They are surely a problem, but a localized and containable one.

Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics and also feed the self-image of these terrorists who aspire to attack the West, but don't have the capacity to do so. Terrorism doesn't work if folks aren't terrorized.

North African group hasn't attacked in the West

Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics...
Peter Bergen

Much has been written, for instance, in recent weeks about al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda's North African affiliate, a splinter group of which carried out the attack on the Algerian gas facility. But according to Camille Tawil, who has authoritatively covered Islamist militant groups over the past two decades for the leading Arabic daily Al-Hayat and has written three books about al Qaeda, AQIM doesn't threaten the West: "To my knowledge no known attacks or aborted attacks in the West have been linked directly to AQIM."

AQIM was formed seven years ago so the group has had more than enough time to plot and carry out an attack in the West. By way of comparison, it took two years of serious plotting for al Qaeda to plan the 9/11 attacks.

So, what is the real level of threat now posed by al Qaeda and allied groups?

Let's start with "core al Qaeda" which attacked the United States on 9/11 and that is headquartered in Pakistan. This group hasn't, of course, been able to pull off an attack in the United States in twelve years. Nor has it been able to mount an attack anywhere in the West since the attacks on London's transportation system eight years ago.

Core al Qaeda on way to extinction

Osama bin Laden, the group's founder and charismatic leader, was buried at sea a year and half ago and despite concerns that his "martyrdom" would provoke a rash of attacks in the West or against Western interests in the Muslim world there has instead been.... nothing.

Meanwhile, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan during President Obama's tenure alone have killed 38 of al Qaeda's leaders in Pakistan, according to a count by the New America Foundation.

Those drone strikes were so effective that shortly before bin Laden died he was contemplating ordering what remained of al Qaeda to move to Kunar Province in the remote, heavily forested mountains of eastern Afghanistan, according to documents that were discovered following the SEAL assault on the compound where bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Core al Qaeda is going the way of the dodo.

Affiliates are no better off

And a number of the affiliates of core al Qaeda are in just as bad shape as the mother ship.

Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the virulent Southeast Asian al Qaeda affiliate that killed hundreds in the years after 9/11 is largely out of business. Why so? JI killed mostly Westerners in its first attacks on the tourist island of Bali in 2002, but the subsequent Bali attack three years later killed mostly Indonesians. So too did JI's attacks on the Marriott hotel in the capital Jakarta in 2003 and the Australian embassy in 2004. As a result, JI lost any shred of popular support it had once enjoyed.

At the same time the Indonesian government, which at one point had denied that JI even existed, mounted a sophisticated campaign to dismantle the group, capturing many of its leaders and putting them on trial.

In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group, a number of whose leaders had trained in Afghanistan in al Qaeda's camps, and which specialized in kidnapping Westerners in the years after 9/11, was effectively dismantled by the Philippine army working in tandem with a small contingent of U.S. Special Operations Forces.

In Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban in 2009 took over the once-tranquil mountainous vacation destination of Swat, and destroyed some 180 schools and beheaded 70 policemen there. Suddenly, they were only 70 miles from the capital Islamabad and some warned that the Pakistani state was in danger. Today, the Pakistani Taliban have been rolled back to their bases along the Afghan border and 16 of their leaders have been killed by CIA drones since President Obama took office.

Al Qaeda militants based in Saudi Arabia mounted a terrorist campaign beginning in 2003 that killed dozens of Saudis, and they also attacked a number of the oil workers and oil facilities that lie at the heart of the Saudi economy. This prompted the Saudi government to mount such an effective crackdown that the few remaining al Qaeda leaders who were not killed or captured have in recent years fled south to Yemen where the remnants of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are now based.

From its new headquarters in Yemen AQAP has made serious efforts to attack the United States, sending the "underwear bomber" to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and also smuggling bombs on to U.S.-bound cargo shipments in October 2010.

None of these attempts were successful.

Yemen militants decimated

As a result of the threat posed by AQAP, the United States has mounted a devastating campaign against the group over the past three years. There was one American drone strike in Yemen in 2009. In 2012 there were 46. That drone campaign has killed 28 prominent members of the group, according to a count by the New America Foundation. Among them was the No. 2 in AQAP, Said al-Shihri, who was confirmed to be dead last week.

In the chaos of the multiple civil wars that gripped Yemen in 2011, AQAP seized a number of towns in southern Yemen. But AQAP has now been pushed out of those towns because of effective joint operations between U.S. Special Operations Forces, the CIA and the Yemeni government.

The Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, even went to the United Nations General Assembly in September where he publicly endorsed the use of CIA drones in his country, something of a first.

A couple of years ago, al Qaeda's Somali affiliate, Al- Shabaab ("the youth" in Arabic) controlled much of southern Somalia including key cities such as the capital Mogadishu.

Once in a position of power, Shaabab inflicted Taliban-like rule on a reluctant Somali population, which eroded its popular legitimacy. Shabaab was also the target of effective military operations by the military of neighboring Kenya, troops of the African Union and U.S. Special Operation Forces.

As a result, today the group controls only some rural areas and for the first time in two decades the United States has formally recognized a Somali government.

Mali conflict shows weakness of jihadist militant groups

Similarly, groups with an al Qaeda-like agenda captured most of northern Mali last year, a vast desert region the size of France. Once in power they imposed Taliban-like strictures on the population, banning smoking and music and enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law with the amputation of hands. The militants also destroyed tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on the grounds that the tombs promoted "idol worship."

None of these measures endeared the jihadist militants to the population of Mali. In the past weeks, as a relatively small force of some 2,000 French soldiers has rolled through Mali putting the militants on the run, the French have been cheered on by dancing and singing Malians.

When French soldiers are greeted as an army of liberation in an area of the world that in the past century was part of a vast French empire, you can get a sense of how much the jihadist militants had alienated the locals.

Last week the French military took the city of Timbuktu. The defeat of the al Qaeda-linked groups as effective insurgent forces in Mali is now almost complete.

What has just happened in Mali gets to the central problem that jihadist militant groups invariably have. Wherever they begin to control territory and population they create self-styled Islamic "emirates" where they then rule like the Taliban.

Over time this doesn't go down too well with the locals, who usually practice a far less austere version of Islam, and they eventually rise up against the militants, or, if they are too weak to do so themselves, they will cheer on an outside intervention to turf out the militants.

The classical example of this happened in Iraq where al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) controlled Anbar Province, about a third of the country in 2006. AQI cadres ruled with an iron fist and imposed their ultrafundamentalist rule on their fellow Sunnis, who they killed if they felt they were deviating from their supposedly purist Islamic precepts.

This provoked the "Sunni Awakening" of Iraqi tribes that rose up against AQI. These tribes then allied with the U.S. military and by the end of 2007 AQI went from an insurgent group that controlled vast territories to a terrorist group that controlled little but was still able to pull off occasional spectacular terrorist attacks in Baghdad.

Jihadist violence still a threat

The collapse of core al Qaeda and a number of its key affiliates does not, of course, mean that jihadist violence is over. Such religiously motivated mayhem has been a feature of the Muslim world for many centuries. Recall the Assassins, a Shia sect that from its base in what is now Iran dispatched cutthroats armed with daggers to kill its enemies around the Middle East during the 12th and 13th centuries. In so doing the sect gave the world the useful noun "assassin."

And so while core al Qaeda and several of its affiliates and like-minded groups are in terrible shape, there are certainly groups with links to al Qaeda or animated by its ideology that are today enjoying something of a resurgence.

Most of these groups do not call themselves al Qaeda, which is a smart tactic, as even bin Laden himself was advising his Somali affiliate, Al Shabaab, not to use the al Qaeda name as it would turn off fundraisers because the shine had long gone off the al Qaeda brand, according to documents recovered at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.

One such militant group is the Nigerian Boko Haram, which bombed the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria in 2011 and has also attacked a wide range of Christian targets in the country. However, the group has shown "no capability to attack the West and also has no known members outside of West Africa," according to Virginia Comolli of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies who tracks the group.

Ansar al-Sharia, "Supporters of Sharia," is the name taken by the militant group in Libya that carried out the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September in which four Americans were killed. Similarly, in Yemen militants that are aligned with al Qaeda have labeled themselves Ansar al-Sharia.

But this new branding hasn't done the militants much good in either country. In Libya, shortly after the attack on the U.S. consulate, an enraged mob stormed and took over Ansar al Sharia's headquarters in Benghazi. And, as we have seen, in Yemen the jihadists have now been forced out of the towns in the south that they had once held.

One strong foothold in Syria

The one country where jihadist militants have a serious foothold and are likely to play an important role for some period in the future is in Syria. That is because of a perfect storm there that favors them. The Sunni militants in Syria are fighting the regime of Bashir al Assad, a secular dictator who is also an Alawite, which many Muslims believe to be a heretical branch of Shiism.

For the jihadists, Assad's secularism makes him an apostate and his Alawi roots also make him a heretic, while his brutal tactics make him an international pariah. This trifecta makes funding the Sunni insurgency highly attractive for donors in the Gulf.

And for the Arabs who form the heart of al Qaeda the fight against Assad is in the heart of the Arab world, a contest that happens to border also on the hated state of Israel. Also Syria was for much of the past decade the entry point for many hundreds of foreign fighters who poured into Iraq to join Al Qaeda in Iraq following the American invasion of the country. As a result, al Qaeda has long had an infrastructure both in Syria and, of course, in neighboring Iraq.

The Al Nusra Front is the name of arguably the most effective fighting force in Syria. In December the State Department publicly said that Al Nusra, which is estimated to number in the low thousands and about 10% of the fighters arrayed against Assad, was a front for Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Al Nusra certainly seems to have learned from AQI's mistakes. For starters, it doesn't call itself al Qaeda. Secondly, it hasn't launched a campaign to crack down on social issues such as smoking or listening to music and so has not alienated the local Sunni population as AQI did in Iraq.

Barak Barfi, a journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation who has spent several months on the ground in Aleppo in northwestern Syria reporting on the opposition to Assad, says Nusra fighters stand out for their bravery and discipline: "They are winning over the hearts and minds of Aleppo residents who see them as straight shooters. There is a regimented recruiting process that weeds out the chaff. Their bases are highly organized with each person given specific responsibilities."

Arab Spring countries seen as an opportunity

The chaotic conditions of several of the countries of the "Arab Spring" are certainly something al Qaeda views as an opportunity. Ayman al-Zawahiri the leader of the group, has issued 27 audio and video statements since the death of bin Laden, 10 of which have focused on the Arab countries that have experienced the revolutions of the past two years.

But if history is a guide, the jihadist militants, whether in Syria or elsewhere, are likely to repeat the mistakes and failures that their fellow militants have experienced during the past decade in countries as disparate as Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and now, Mali.

That's because encoded in the DNA of al Qaeda and like-minded groups are the seeds of their own destruction because in power they rule like the Taliban, and they also attack fellow Muslims who don't follow their dictates to the letter. This doesn't mesh very well with these organizations' claims that they are the defenders of Muslims.

These groups also have no real plans for the multiple political and economic problems that beset much of the Islamic world. And they won't engage in normal politics such as elections believing them to be "un-Islamic."

This is invariably a recipe for irrelevance or defeat. In not one nation in the Muslim world since 9/11 has a jihadist militant group seized control of a country. And al Qaeda and its allies' record of effective attacks in the West has been non-existent since 2005.

With threats like these we can all sleep soundly at night.

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Beyonce puts Super Bowl ring on halftime; Hudson, Keys flawless

Beyonce looked like she stepped off from the recent air-brushed perfection of her GQ magazine cover, danced like a junior Tina Turner and generally owned her 12 minutes on a worldwide stage Sunday like few Super Bowl performers ever have.

But there were a few nagging questions: Was she live or was she canned? Or perhaps more to the point: Did it matter?

Beyonce’s performance had the lip-sync police out in force. The pop star fessed up to singing with a backing tape at the presidential inauguration a few weeks ago, but that should come as no surprise. Canned performances have been business as usual at Super Bowl-sized events for decades. For most performers, the question isn’t whether to use a backing tape, but whether to sing into an open microphone while the tape serves as a kind of aural safety net.

Sound engineers note that the entire performance has to be set up in six minutes at halftime, with no guarantees that the singer will be able to hear herself or that there will be technical glitches that compromise the performance. Most artists are in it strictly to look and sound good anyway. They don’t view it as a “performance” so much as a way to promote product to more than 100 million TV viewers; in Beyonce’s case, it was a free ad for her recent reunion and greatest hits album with Destiny’s Child.

And, wow, guess what? There she was with her Destiny Child companions Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams! Williams coyly said there was nothing to the reunion rumors a few years ago, citing her commitment to appear in a touring version of the Broadway play “Fela!,” but miraculously she found a way to clear her schedule just in time.

The leather-clad trio looked like a walking, strutting advertisement for a dominatrix-boutique franchise. But Rowland and Williams came off as Beyonce’s backing band, dutifully singing harmonies on one of the singer’s biggest solo singles, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." Her Destiny’s Child accomplices were part of a huge ensemble of dancers and musicians that appeared to consist entirely of women.

Otherwise, it was the high-heeled Beyonce stomping her imprint on libidos everywhere: the silhouetted opening countoff into “Crazy in Love,” topped with a firecracker-spewing guitar solo; the Jamaican dancehall flavor of “Baby Boy”; the closing, signature ballad “Halo.” On the latter, the close-up TV images suggested that the singer was indeed belting it out, at least semi-“live.” But by then the verdict was already in: Beyonce affirmed that she’s the reigning all-purpose multimedia celebrity of our era, and she knows how to entertain.

The musical prelude to the game was relatively low-key in comparison. Marvin Gaye gave one of the longest and most celebrated versions of the National Anthem at a sporting event ever in 1983 at the NBA All-Star Game. But at 2:40, Alicia Keys went six seconds longer than Gaye in her interpretation before Sunday's kickoff.

Seated at a white grand piano, Keys offered a blues and jazz-tinged version of the technically demanding song. Like Gaye, she made the song seem fragile, even poignant, the intimacy undercutting any threat of the showboating that sank Christina Aguilera’s interpretation two years ago. There are many ways to perform the anthem – Kelly Clarkson belted out a concise, fat-free version in 1:34 at last year’s Super Bowl. But Keys certainly delivered one of the best of recent vintage.

Its tone was appropriate given what preceded it: Jennifer Hudson’s “America the Beautiful.” The singer gave a dignified reading, but the focus was deservedly on her smiling choir: 26 white-shirted, beribboned students from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, the scene of a mass murder last year that claimed 26 lives. Hudson herself has been a victim of gun violence; her performance of the National Anthem at the 2009 Super Bowl came only months after her mother, brother and nephew were killled in their Englewood home in Chicago.

greg@gregkot.com

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Mali Tuaregs seize two Islamist leaders fleeing French strikes

KIDAL, Mali (Reuters) - Tuareg rebels in northern Mali said on Monday they had captured two senior Islamist insurgents fleeing French air strikes toward the Algerian border, and France pressed ahead with its bombing campaign against al Qaeda's Saharan desert camps.

Pro-autonomy Tuareg MNLA rebels said they had seized Mohamed Moussa Ag Mohamed, an Islamist leader who imposed harsh sharia law in the desert town of Timbuktu, and Oumeini Ould Baba Akhmed, believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of a French hostage by the al Qaeda splinter group MUJWA.

"We chased an Islamist convoy close to the frontier and arrested the two men the day before yesterday," Ibrahim Ag Assaleh, spokesman for the MNLA, told Reuters from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. "They have been questioned and sent to Kidal."

France has deployed 3,500 ground troops, and warplanes and armored vehicles in its three-week-old Operation Serval (Wildcat) in Mali which has broken the Islamists' 10-month grip on northern towns, where they imposed sharia law.

Paris and its international partners want to prevent the Islamists from using Mali's vast desert north as a base to launch attacks on neighboring African countries and the West.

The MNLA, which seized control of northern Mali last year only to be pushed aside by better-armed Islamist groups, regained control of its northern stronghold of Kidal last week when Islamist fighters fled French airstrikes into the nearby desert and rugged Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.

The Tuareg group says it is willing to help the French-led mission by hunting down Islamists. It has offered to hold peace talks with the government in a bid to heal wounds between Mali's restive Saharan north and the black African-dominated south.

"Until there is a peace deal, we cannot hold national elections," Ag Assaleh said, referring to interim Malian President Dioncounda Traore's plan to hold polls on July 31.

Many in the southern capital Bamako - including army leaders who blame the MNLA for executing some of their troops at the Saharan town of Aguelhoc last year - strongly reject any talks.

French special forces took the airport in Kidal on Tuesday, reaching the most northern city previously held by the Islamist alliance. Though the MNLA says it controls Kidal, a Reuters reporter in the town saw a contingent of Chadian troops - part of a U.N.-backed African mission being deployed to help retake northern Mali - backing up French special forces there.

TARGETING REBEL BASES, DEPOTS

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said warplanes were continuing bombing raids on Islamists in Mali's far north to destroy their supply lines and flush them out of remote areas.

"The objective is to destroy their support bases, their depots because they have taken refuge in the north and north-east of the country and can only stay there in the long-term if they have the means to sustain themselves," Fabius said.

"The army is working to stop that," he told French radio.

Jets attacked rebel camps on Sunday targeting logistics bases and training camps used by the al Qaeda-linked rebels near Tessalit, close to the Algerian border.

French President Francois Hollande made a one-day trip to Mali on Saturday, promising to keep troops in the country until the job of restoring government control in the Sahel state was finished. He was welcomed as a savior by cheering Malians.

The rebels' retreat to hideouts in the remote Adrar des Ifoghas mountains - where Paris believes they are holding seven French hostages - heralds a potentially more complicated new phase of France's intervention in its former colony.

"We are still in the same war, but we're entering a new battle," said Vincent Desportes, a French former general and now associate professor at Science-Po university in Paris.

"We will look to gradually wear out and destroy the terrorists that are sheltering in the Ifoghas. It's now a war of intelligence (services), strikes and probably action by special forces in the background."

Hollande said on Saturday that Paris would withdraw its troops from Mali once the landlocked West African nation had restored sovereignty over its territory and a U.N.-backed African military force could take over from the French soldiers.

Drawn mostly from Mali's West African neighbours, this force is expected to number more than 8,000. But its deployment has been badly hampered by shortages of kit and airlift capacity and questions about who will fund the estimated $1 billion cost.

Fabius said French soldiers may soon pull back from Timbuktu. Its residents had celebrated their liberation from the Islamists, who had handed down punishments including whipping and amputation for breaking sharia law.

The rebels also smashed sacred Sufi mausoleums and destroyed or stole some 2,000 ancient manuscripts at the South African-sponsored Baba Ahmed Institute, causing international outcry.

"A withdrawal could happen very quickly," Fabius said. "We're working towards it because we have no desire to stay there for the long-term.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris, Daniel Flynn in Dakar and David Lewis in Timbuktu; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Jon Boyle)

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"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights.

That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January.

Late-stage bull markets are typically marked by an influx of small investors coming late to the party - such as when your waiter starts giving you stock tips. For that to happen you need a good story. The "great rotation," with its monumental tone, is the perfect narrative to make you feel like you're missing out.

Even if something approaching a "great rotation" has begun, it is not necessarily bullish for markets. Those who think they are coming early to the party may actually be arriving late.

Investors pumped $20.7 billion into stocks in the first four weeks of the year, the strongest four-week run since April 2000, according to Lipper. But that pales in comparison with the $410 billion yanked from those funds since the start of 2008.

"I'm not sure you want to take a couple of weeks and extrapolate it into whatever trend you want," said Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup. "We have had instances where equity flows have picked up in the last two, three, four years when markets have picked up. They've generally not been signals of a continuation of that trend."

The S&P 500 rose 5 percent in January, its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997, driving speculation that retail investors were flooding back into the stock market.

Heading into another busy week of earnings, the equity market is knocking on the door of all-time highs due to positive sentiment in stocks, and that can't be ignored entirely. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> ended the week about 4 percent from an all-time high touched in October 2007.

Next week will bring results from insurers Allstate and The Hartford , as well as from Walt Disney , Coca-Cola Enterprises and Visa .

But a comparison of flows in January, a seasonal strong month for the stock market, shows that this January, while strong, is not that unusual. In January 2011 investors moved $23.9 billion into stock funds and $28.6 billion in 2006, but neither foreshadowed massive inflows the rest of that year. Furthermore, in 2006 the market gained more than 13 percent while in 2011 it was flat.

Strong inflows in January can happen for a number of reasons. There were a lot of special dividends issued in December that need reinvesting, and some of the funds raised in December tax-selling also find their way back into the market.

During the height of the tech bubble in 2000, when retail investors were really embracing stocks, a staggering $42.7 billion flowed into equities in January of that year, double the amount that flowed in this January. That didn't end well, as stocks peaked in March of that year before dropping over the next two-plus years.

MOM AND POP STILL WARY

Arguing against a 'great rotation' is not necessarily a bearish argument against stocks. The stock market has done well since the crisis. Despite the huge outflows, the S&P 500 has risen more than 120 percent since March 2009 on a slowly improving economy and corporate earnings.

This earnings season, a majority of S&P 500 companies are beating earnings forecast. That's also the case for revenue, which is a departure from the previous two reporting periods where less than 50 percent of companies beat revenue expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Meanwhile, those on the front lines say mom and pop investors are still wary of equities after the financial crisis.

"A lot of people I talk to are very reluctant to make an emotional commitment to the stock market and regardless of income activity in January, I think that's still the case," said David Joy, chief market strategist at Columbia Management Advisors in Boston, where he helps oversee $571 billion.

Joy, speaking from a conference in Phoenix, says most of the people asking him about the "great rotation" are fund management industry insiders who are interested in the extra business a flood of stock investors would bring.

He also pointed out that flows into bond funds were positive in the month of January, hardly an indication of a rotation.

Citi's Levkovich also argues that bond investors are unlikely to give up a 30-year rally in bonds so quickly. He said stocks only began to see consistent outflows 26 months after the tech bubble burst in March 2000. By that reading it could be another year before a serious rotation begins.

On top of that, substantial flows continue to make their way into bonds, even if it isn't low-yielding government debt. January 2013 was the second best January on record for the issuance of U.S. high-grade debt, with $111.725 billion issued during the month, according to International Finance Review.

Bill Gross, who runs the $285 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, commented on Twitter on Thursday that "January flows at Pimco show few signs of bond/stock rotation," adding that cash and money markets may be the source of inflows into stocks.

Indeed, the evidence suggests some of the money that went into stock funds in January came from money markets after a period in December when investors, worried about the budget uncertainty in Washington, started parking money in late 2012.

Data from iMoneyNet shows investors placed $123 billion in money market funds in the last two months of the year. In two weeks in January investors withdrew $31.45 billion of that, the most since March 2012. But later in the month money actually started flowing back.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Super Bowl of firsts, lasts, bests

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The journey to this Super Bowl wound through bounties and replacement refs, eventually bringing the big game back to the Big Easy — with a replacement quarterback, a sibling rivalry and a grand exit for one of the NFL's greatest players, clouded by the obscure healing powers of deer-antler spray.

It is a Super Bowl of comebacks, of firsts and lasts, and — if San Francisco wins — the best.

A win over the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday gives the 49ers six championships, matching Pittsburgh's titles in the Super Bowl era. Unlike the Steelers, the Niners have never lost one.

Of course, they haven't won one in 18 years, either.

"There's a tradition with the San Francisco 49ers, but I think these guys are paving their own way," said Hall of Fame receiver and three-time champion Jerry Rice. "They're playing with a lot of swagger."

Or as owner Denise DeBartolo York said, "We've come full circle and the dynasty will prevail."

New Orleans has come full circle, too. Ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, losing a quarter of its population, abandoned by the Saints for an entire season, the city couldn't imagine hosting another Super Bowl. But as New Orleans recovered and rebuilt, it envisioned staging what Patriots owner Robert Kraft calls "the pre-eminent sporting event."

The NFL agreed it was time to return. And even if Commissioner Roger Goodell is despised here after slapping the Saints with suspensions and fines in the bounty scandal, the vibes from the French Quarter and Warehouse District this week have been supportive, even uplifting.

"It's also terrific for us to be back here in New Orleans," Goodell said, joking about voodoo dolls in his likeness. "Our 10th Super Bowl here, the first since Katrina, and it's clear this city is back bigger and better than ever."

There's the tale of the head coaching brothers, Baltimore's John and San Francisco's Jim, the first siblings to face off in a Super Bowl. And Ray Lewis, the pre-eminent linebacker of his generation on his self-proclaimed last ride. (His farewell party was somewhat sidetracked for two days this week when Lewis waved off a report that he tried to get unusual products like deer-antler spray to speed his recovery from an arm injury that sidelined him for 10 games.)

"There are so many storylines to this game that make it bigger than just the Super Bowl," 49ers CEO Jed York said.

Such as the Harbaughs plot about sons of a lifetime coach who took different paths to the top of the NFL.

John, older by 15 months, has made his career standing on the sideline with a headset. He's the only head coach to win playoff games in his first five seasons; his quarterback, Joe Flacco, has the same distinction as he heads into his first Super Bowl. Jim Harbaugh was a first-round draft pick and quarterbacked four teams in 14 pro seasons before going into coaching. He was an immediate success at San Diego — the Toreros in the college Pioneer League, not the Chargers in the NFL — and Stanford before the 49ers won a bidding war for him in 2011.

This week's family reunion has been light-hearted, though that figures to change Sunday.

"It's probably a little tougher emotionally," John Harbaugh said of facing his brother. "It's a little tougher just from the sense of I don't think you think about it when you're coaching against somebody else; it's more about the scheme and the strategy. There's a little bit of a relationship element that's more strong than maybe coaching against someone else.

"I'll have a better answer for you after the game. I've never been through this before. This is all new."

And oh-so-new for the QBs, Flacco and Colin Kaepernick.

Flacco is no fluke, holding the career record for road playoff wins with six. But until outplaying Peyton Manning and Tom Brady this year, he hadn't gotten the Ravens to the Super Bowl. He has eight touchdown passes and no interceptions in the postseason, padding a resume that soon will make him one very highly paid quarterback: Flacco's contract expires after this game. Even with a franchise tag applied by Baltimore (13-6), he'll make about $14.6 million next season.

"I think when you talk about winning as quarterbacks in the playoffs," Flacco said, "I would think that all of them have Super Bowl victories. So that's really the only one that matters, and that's what we're trying to get."

Naturally, so are the 49ers (13-4-1), whose midseason adoption of the pistol offense to best use Kaepernick's dynamic versatility added a dimension no one has been able to stop. The Niners might never have taken such a huge step had incumbent Alex Smith, in the midst of his best season, not sustained a concussion on Nov. 11. Kaepernick took over and the offense took off.

Once Smith was healthy, he no longer was the starter. Jim Harbaugh gambled by sticking with the raw second-year quarterback who brought more game-breaking skills to the position.

Difficult decisions like that are sometimes foolhardy, sometimes inspired.

This one worked superbly, and Kaepernick stands one victory from joining Joe Montana and Steve Young as a 49er Super Bowl champion.

"It was tough watching this team do well and not being able to contribute," said Kaepernick, more recognized before his promotion for his collection of tattoos than for his strong arm and sprinter's speed. "For me, what kept me going was the fact that I might get an opportunity to get out there. When I did, I needed to take advantage of it."

The 49ers hope to take advantage in the same Superdome where they were at their most dominant, beating Denver 55-10 in 1990 in the biggest rout the Super Bowl has seen.

The Steelers are recognized as the true powerhouse of the Super Bowl era, which is nearly a half-century old. Four of those titles came in the 1970s, with Mean Joe Greene and the Steel Curtain shutting down opponents while Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris and Lynn Swann were scoring on them.

But the last two were in 2005 and 2008, and they've been perennial playoff qualifiers, too. That kept them in the football forefront.

For the 49ers the golden years of Montana, Rice, Young and Ronnie Lott ended with the 1994 season. They didn't even make the playoffs from 2003-10, and this is their first trip back to the Super Bowl.

Rice sees Super Bowl win No. 6 coming Sunday.

"I just think we had players who played well in the big game," he said. "My best football that I played, I think, happened in the playoffs and in the Super Bowl. I think it's the same with these players."

None of whom, except for center Jonathan Goodwin and linebacker Clark Haggans, has won a title. That's still one more ring than the Ravens have: Lewis is the sole NFL champion in Baltimore.

Lewis hungers for these teammates to taste their first title — and to do it in his last game.

"I've touched the Lombardi (Trophy), and I know how it feels," the perennial All-Pro said. "For these guys who've made this journey with me to feel that, it would be the perfect ending for my career."

Like Lewis, 49ers receiver Randy Moss also could be suiting up for the final time, although he hopes to play another year.

Grabbed off the scrap heap after his career spiraled into oblivion and no team would touch him in 2011, Moss didn't do much on the field (28 catches, 434 yards) this season. His loudest headlines came this week when he proclaimed himself the greatest receiver ever; maybe he's never seen Rice's numbers.

Teammates say Moss was very influential as a mentor and teacher.

"Randy's like my older brother," said Michael Crabtree, who emerged as a top receiver in his fourth pro season. "An older brother you would have that's been through a lot that you just can learn from just talking to him, watching him.

"He's a legend and I hope he'll be here next year."

Lewis won't be. He'll don the face paint, put on his No. 52 for the final time, and see if he can replicate the championship of a dozen years ago.

"You can never top the first one, because that's an unknown feeling," Lewis said before adding with a chuckle, eyes widening, "but a second one — that might be the only way you really can top it."

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Exxon’s 2012 profit of $44.9B just misses record

Exxon Mobil Corp. nearly set a record for annual profit. The oil giant reported Friday that 2012 net income was $ 44.88 billion, just $ 340 million — less than 1 percent — short of the company’s record set in 2008, when crude oil prices hit an all-time high. Exxon‘s profit for the last 10 years totals $ 343.4 billion.

— $ 44.88 billion in 2012

— $ 41.06 billion in 2011

— $ 30.46 billion in 2010

— $ 19.28 billion in 2009

— $ 45.22 billion in 2008

— $ 40.61 billion in 2007

— $ 39.50 billion in 2006

— $ 36.13 billion in 2005

— $ 25.33 billion in 2004

— $ 20.96 billion in 2003

Source: Exxon Mobil annual reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Energy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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