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Investors should instead take the emerging markets scare that drove stocks down about 6 percent at the end of January as a warning of more risks to come. Things have changed from 2013, they stress, and this is no longer a market that will lift all boats indiscriminately. So playing some defense is appropriate.

Cantor Fitzgerald, for one, said it was considering new hedges at these levels. Peter Cecchini, global head of equity derivatives in New York, said markets would be "far more sensitive to bad news" in the current environment, which "presents a new volatility paradigm in which risk management will be rewarded rather than punished."

With few obvious justifications for stocks climbing further, investors are left in the position they were in at the beginning of the year: unsure about the economy and earnings, but facing an environment where few other assets offer the same potential return as the equity market.

Despite the rebound in the past two weeks that has taken the S&P 500 to within 0.5 percent of its all-time closing high, investors have been more circumspect in their approach. Trading volume on down days has far outpaced the action in positive sessions, indicating traders are more eager to unload shares than chase gains.

Investment flows have followed a comparable pattern, according to Lipper's fund-tracking data. Investors returned money to equity funds in the latest week, adding nearly $6.9 billion in the period ended February 12, but that pales in comparison to the more than $22 billion yanked from stock funds over the previous two weeks.

In another bearish sign, margin debt hit its fourth straight monthly record in December at $444.93 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data, a factor that has historically preceded market pullbacks, including shortly before the pre-financial crisis top in July 2007.

Increased debt creates the potential for margin calls, which occur when securities purchased with borrowed money fall below a certain value, forcing the investor to sell assets.

For sure, U.S. stock investors are giving the economy the benefit of the doubt for now, with some weak economic data being pinned on the arctic weather and heavier-than-normal snow storms that have gripped much of the country.

But if the data for such indicators as payrolls and industrial production doesn't improve as spring approaches, patience may soon run thin.

Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich's resignation prompted tit-for-tat calls for the Social Democrats, who share power in Chancellor Angela Merkel's "grand coalition", to offer up a scalp of their own.

However, analysts expect the coalition, which has a large parliamentary majority, to return to business as usual after a brief spell of shin-kicking between Merkel's conservatives, its Bavarian sister party led by Horst Seehofer and the Social Democrats of Sigmar Gabriel.

"The scandal is detrimental to the atmosphere in the coalition and its image, and I think it's going to take a while for it to properly get back to work," said Carsten Koschmieder, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University.

"But Merkel, Seehofer and Gabriel know there's no alternative. Merkel doesn't have another coalition partner in the wings and they all know they'd probably lose support in new elections. So despite the fighting, the coalition will survive."

Merkel's grand coalition, which was sworn in only two months ago, has to tackle delicate reforms of the energy and pension systems. But Friedrich's resignation last Friday was over allegations dating from when he held a different position in a different government.

As interior minister in Merkel's previous center-right coalition, Friedrich is alleged to have inappropriately passed on confidential information about a looming investigation into a prominent Social Democrat (SPD) lawmaker last year.

Prosecutors have complained this may have compromised their inquiry into alleged possession of child pornography.

What began as a domestic scandal turned into a major dispute when the Social Democrats' parliamentary leader Thomas Oppermann said Friedrich had warned the SPD about the investigation last October.

Conservatives are now angry that Friedrich, a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, has been sacrificed while no member of the SPD has gone, even though the party is also caught up in the scandal.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert played down media talk of a government crisis, while Bavarian premier Seehofer said the coalition's fate was not in doubt and Gabriel said the SPD also wanted to get back to work immediately.

"I can understand why the conservatives are angry," Gabriel said, adding that he was sorry Friedrich had resigned for trying to help the SPD but insisting the coalition would soldier on.

KB Kookmin Bank, Lotte Card and NH Nonghyup Card will each be fined 6 million won (£3,371; $5,640).

They will also be banned from issuing new credit cards for three months.

This comes after financial data on more than 20 million people - more than 40% of South Korea's population - was stolen and sold to marketing firms.

South Korea's Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said the three firms had "neglected their legal duties of preventing any leakage of customer information".

Last month, branches of the three firms were swamped with thousands of angry customers looking to cancel their cards or be issued new ones.

The three bosses of the credit card firms involved made a public apology for the breach, and several executives have resigned or offered to step down over the issue.

The data was stolen by a computer contractor working for personal credit ratings firm Korea Credit Bureau, who was arrested last month.

He allegedly stole the data - which included names, social security numbers and phone numbers - by saving it on a USB stick between October 2012 and December last year.

South Korea has one of Asia's highest usage rates for credit cards - an average adult owns multiple cards and will regularly switch companies in order to get better deals or rewards.

However, an increasing number of South Korean firms have been the subject of cyber-attacks.

In 2012, two hackers were arrested for getting hold of the details of 8.7 million subscribers to KT Mobile.

"We are determined to defend our country," said Maduro on state television Sunday night.

The expulsions come after two weeks of sporadic protests against across the country. Students and opposition supporters have taken to the streets, angry with the country's high murder rate and crumbling economy.

Tear gas and water cannons were used in Caracas repeatedly last week to disperse troublemakers who pelted police with rocks and burned trash in the streets. At least three people have been killed in the violence.

Opposition leader Leopoldo López has backed the protests though now faces an arrest warrant on charges of murder and terrorism. He will lead a march on Tuesday through Caracas and says he will surrender to authorities if arrested.

"I've got nothing to fear. I've done nothing wrong," he said in a video released on YouTube on Sunday evening, calling for the march to be peaceful. "If there is an illegal decision to jail me, I will accept it… We're on the right side of history, the right side of justice."

In a statement released on Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States is "deeply concerned by rising tensions and violence surrounding this week's protests in Venezuela."

Kerry said the administration is "particularly alarmed by reports that the Venezuelan government has arrested or detained scores of anti-government protesters and issued an arrest warrant for opposition leader Leopoldo López."

The government here described the statement as part of Washington's attempts to "promote and legitimize the destabilization of Venezuelan democracy."

The expulsion of U.S. diplomats is a common political maneuver here. Three U.S. diplomats were expelled in September, accused of sabotaging the country's economy. "Yankees, go home!" Maduro said definitely on state television when making the announcement.

Just hours before announcing the death of predecessor Hugo Chávez in March, Maduro expelled two U.S. diplomats, accusing them of spying. In the same televised address, he accused the United States of poisoning Chávez, who died from cancer.

During an approximately 40-minute chat with bloggers in Beijing on Saturday, Kerry expressed his support for online freedom in China, as well as for human rights in general.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said outsiders had no right to pass judgment and misunderstood the real situation.

"If China's Internet had not gone through enormous development in the past few years then where would these bloggers have come from?" she told a daily news briefing.

"China's affairs must be decided by Chinese people based on their own national condition. Using methods like this to push China in a direction of change they want, isn't that rather naive?" Hua added.

"I think the topic of this discussion could have been even more open, for example discussing Snowden's case and issues like that," she said, referring to the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor whose leaks have embarrassed Washington.

Last year, China's Communist Party renewed a heavy-handed campaign to control online interaction, threatening legal action against people whose perceived rumors on microblogs such as Sina Weibo are reposted more than 500 times or seen by more than 5,000 people.

Rights groups and dissidents have criticized the crackdown as another tool for the party to limit criticism and to further control freedom of expression.

The government says such steps are needed for social stability and says every country in the world seeks to regulate the Internet.

Sure, Silicon Valley is home to most huge tech household names (Apple, Facebook, Twitter, eBay and so many more), with New York (Tumblr) and Boston (Trip Advisor) creeping up, but as he sees it, why not Ohio or Michigan?

Hundreds of brilliant engineers are churned out yearly from top Midwestern schools like Ohio State University and University of Michigan. Graduates shouldn't have to leave for California to get funding for their dreams, he says.

So Olsen is literally putting investors' money where his mouth is, with a $250 million fund to bankroll tech start-ups from the Midwest.

"Silicon Valley is great," he says. "But everyone forgets that 40 years ago it was just apple fields and orchards. When we look around the Midwest, we see a lot of the raw ingredients for what could potentially be a great economic driver for tech, which over time will create great industries."

Olsen and partner Mark Kvamme are general partners at Drive Capital, which is based in the heart of Ohio's capital city here, in the city's trendy Short North district. It's a quick hop from 50,000 student-plus Ohio State University, in a historic neighborhood lined with funky coffee shops, antique stores and fancy restaurants.

Olsen and Kvamme are Ohio natives who worked together at the Silicon Valley-based Sequoia Capital firm. Sequoia's hit list includes some of the most successful tech firms ever, including Google, Apple, YouTube, PayPal, Instagram, Yahoo and Zappos.

At Sequoia, Olsen and Kvamme helped fund over 20 companies, including LinkedIn and comedy website Funny or Die. Kvamme left Sequoia to return to Ohio to work with the state economic development team. He liked what he saw and convinced Olsen to return and open a VC firm focused on the Midwest.

Their territory extends from Ann Arbor, Mich., and Pittsburgh through the three Ohio cities — Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati — and Indianapolis, Kansas City, Chicago and Minneapolis.

So far, the pair have invested in four Midwest companies, including Cincinnati-based travel advice website Roadtrippers, Chicago-based Channel IQ, which helps manufacturers set prices, Ann Arbor's farm software firm FarmLogs, and Columbus-based health care firm CrossChx.

James Fisher picked up $2.5 million for his Roadtrippers after Drive met him in Cincinnati, where Roadtrippers was based in the four-month Brandery accelerator program. He had expected to eventually find funding in California — and was pleasantly surprised when he didn't have to leave, he says.

Can the Drive Capital dream come true for others?

Gross domestic product rose by 1% on an annualised basis in the three-month period to December, compared with market estimates for a 2.8% expansion.

This was due to weaker private consumption and capital spending, as well as lower export figures.

However, this was Japan's fourth straight quarterly expansion.

The latest figures highlight questions about the sustainability of Japan's economic recovery, and whether the government's policy of 'Abenomics' is working.

"The disappointing GDP result is a reflection of the limit of Abenomics," Takuji Okubo, chief economist at Japan Macro Advisors in Tokyo said.

"Fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus can only do so much without the actual change in the competitiveness of Japanese economy.

"Only when there is a real change in the competitiveness of the Japanese companies, and a positive change in the long term economic outlook will there be a real change in Japan's growth performance."

Trade deficit

Since taking office over a year ago, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has implemented an aggressive stimulus programme aimed at weakening the value of the Japanese currency.

The hope was that a weaker currency would spur purchases of Japanese products such as cars, since they become cheaper to buy abroad.

The Japanese yen lost about 18% of its value against the US dollar last year as a result of his policies, but the boost to exports has been limited.

That is because Japan has also seen a surge in imports, mostly of fuel, to supply the country with power after its nuclear plants were mothballed following the 2011 Fukushima crisis.

This has caused the world's third-largest economy to log an increasingly large and persistent trade deficit.

Sales tax rise

Japan is also struggling to rein in one of the developed world's biggest public debts, which economists have warned could hurt the country's fiscal health in the long term.

To address this, Mr Abe pushed through legislation last year that will see the consumption tax rise to 8% from 5%.

However, Japan's GDP is forecast to shrink in the April-to-June period because of the increase in sales tax, since consumers are expected to put off purchases as a result of the higher price tags.

"I am not so concerned about domestic demand given a buying rush ahead of a sales tax hike in April will play out more strongly in the current quarter," said Taro Saito, senior economist at NLI Research Institute.

Mr Okubo, meanwhile, forecasts Japan will fall into a recession in 2015.

The plane's second-in-command, who was not carrying a weapon, took control of the plane when the pilot left the cockpit to use the toilet. After landing, he left the aircraft via a cockpit window, without harming passengers or crew, police spokesman Pierre Grangean told a news conference.

"Just after landing, the co-pilot came out of the cockpit and ran to the police and said, 'I'm the hijacker.' He said he is not safe in his own country and wants asylum," Grangean said.

As passengers left the plane, which was parked near the end of the runway, they were checked by police as they held their hands on their necks, a Reuters witness said.

Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous country, is among the continent's fastest growing economies. The opposition and rights campaigners accuse the government of stifling dissent and torturing political detainees.

But it is rare for government officials and employees - Ethiopian Airlines is run by the state - to seek asylum. The last senior official to do so fled to the United States in 2009.

Flight ET702 departed the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday evening and was bound for Rome. The plane was hijacked at about 0330 GMT (10:30 PM EST Sunday) while over northern Italy, Grangean said. It landed at Geneva at 6:02 a.m. (0502 GMT).

He said the co-pilot, an Ethiopian born in 1983, locked the flight deck door when the pilot went to the toilet. He then asked to refuel at Geneva, landed the plane, climbed down on an emergency exit rope from a cockpit window, and gave himself up.

Robert Deillon, CEO of Geneva airport, said air traffic controllers learnt the plane had been hijacked when the co-pilot keyed a distress code into the aircraft's transponder,

"There is ... a code for hijack. So this co-pilot put in the code for 'I just hijacked the aircraft'," he said. As the plane was over Italy at the time, two Italian Eurofighters were scrambled to accompany it, he said.

Ethiopian Airlines said in a short statement that the Boeing aircraft had been "forced to proceed" to Geneva.

State-run Ethiopian television said there were 193 passengers on board the Boeing aircraft, including 140 Italian nationals.

ASYLUM

The last senior Ethiopian official to seek asylum was Ermias Legesse, a state minister of information who fled to the United States in 2009.

The brief drama in Geneva on Monday morning caused the cancellation of some short-haul flights and some incoming flights were diverted to other airports. Hundreds of passengers booked on disrupted flights sought to change their tickets.

Last year China's Communist Party renewed a heavy-handed campaign to control online interaction, threatening legal action against people whose perceived rumors on microblogs such as Sina Weibo are reposted more than 500 times or seen by more than 5,000 people.

Rights groups and dissidents have criticized the crackdown as another tool for the party to limit criticism of it and to further control freedom of expression.

The government says such steps are needed for social stability reasons and says every country in the world seeks to regulate the Internet.

During an approximately 40 minute discussion with Kerry on Saturday, the bloggers focused on the need for internet freedom, human rights, China's territorial dispute with Japan and even President Barack Obama's travel plans, according to a U.S. reporter who attended the session on behalf of journalists travelling with Kerry.

Kerry said he had urged Chinese leaders to support Internet freedom and raised the issue of press freedom, in a country with tight controls on what the media can say and which blocks popular foreign social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

"Obviously we think that the Chinese economy will be stronger with greater freedom of the Internet," he said.

Blogger Zhang Jialong asked if the United States would get together with the "Chinese who aspire for freedom" and help "tear down the great Internet firewall", complaining that U.S. companies were helping Beijing block access to sites like Twitter.

Kerry said it was the first time he had heard complaints that U.S. companies were helping the Chinese government control access to the internet and that he would look into it.

Microsoft Corp denied this week it was omitting websites from its Bing search engine results for users outside China after a Chinese rights group said the U.S. firm was censoring material the government deems politically sensitive.

The United States and China have long clashed over freedom of expression and human rights, with Washington frequently calling for the release of dissidents such as anti-corruption campaigner Xu Zhiyong and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.

Kerry said that he had raised human rights at high levels.

"We constantly press these issues at all of our meetings, whether it is in the United States or here, at every level, and we will continue to do so," he added.

But it was not the United States' role to lecture, he said, as "no one country can come crashing in and say 'do this our way, it is better'".

It would avoid emails and other data automatically passing through the United States.

In her weekly podcast, she said she would raise the issue on Wednesday with French President Francois Hollande.

Revelations of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) have prompted huge concern in Europe.

Disclosures by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden suggested even the mobile phones of US allies, such as Mrs Merkel, had been monitored by American spies.

Classified NSA documents revealed that large amounts of personal data are collected from the internet by US and British surveillance.

Mrs Merkel criticised the fact that Facebook and Google can be based in countries with low levels of data protection while carrying out business in nations that offer more rigorous safeguards.

"Above all, we'll talk about European providers that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldn't have to send emails and other information across the Atlantic," she said.

"Rather, one could build up a communication network inside Europe."

Sensitive

There was no doubt that Europe had to do more in the realm of data protection, she said.

A French official was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying that the government in Paris planned to take up the German initiative.

Personal privacy is a sensitive issue in Germany where extensive surveillance was carried out under the Nazis and in communist East Germany.

A foreign policy spokesman for Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats, Philipp Missfelder, recently said revelations about US spying had helped bring relations with Washington down to their worst level since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Fed, whose board of governors meets on Tuesday, will require overseas banks to hold as much capital in the United States as their local rivals.

The reform is designed to address concerns that U.S. taxpayers will need to foot the bill if European and Asian regulators treat U.S. subsidiaries with low priority if they need to rescue one of their banks.

Foreign banks with sizeable operations on Wall Street such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays have pushed back hard against the plan because it means they will need to transfer costly capital from Europe.

Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo, in charge of financial regulation, has given little sign the Fed will relent, however, and the financial industry expects no wholesale change from when the proposed rule came out in December 2012.

"(He) certainly does not suggest that they're moving toward greater leniency, at least for the largest institutions," said Greg Lyons, a partner working on banking regulation at law firm Debevoise & Plimpton in New York.

The Fed declined to comment.

Europe and the United States have squabbled over how to apply their rules to overseas banking units, and the Fed's plan, as well as its tougher reading of globally agreed capital rules, have widened the rift.

The Fed proposal requires the largest overseas banks to set up an intermediate holding company in the United States that will be subject to the same capital, leverage and other requirements as U.S. bank holding companies.

This would give banks less flexibility to move money around than under the current rules, which allow banks to use capital legally allocated in their home country. In some cases, the U.S. rules are tougher than elsewhere.

TIT FOR TAT

One of the changes the Fed's five-member board may make when it votes on the final rule is to lower the number of banks that need to comply with the strictest requirements, several people working in the industry said.

"We believe ... that they ... carved it back to those foreign banks that have $50 billion in assets here in the U.S.," said one industry source.

In some apps, the price for free is in-your-face marketing. That means kids are bombarded with banner ads for a variety of products and/or enticed into downloading dubious games as a "reward."

Another form of free apps is called freemium. In this model, you can play the game for free, but the gameplay is set up to get frustrating unless you buy your way out of difficult or time-sucking situations.

The better route to go when kids are involved is free apps that are genuinely free or apps that provide some content for free and then offer more as an in-app purchase presented only to parents. That way kids can enjoy a free app without suffering through hidden or aggressive in-app marketing.

Here are five apps that use that better route — they are truly free and good for kids.

NFL Play 60

(American Heart Association, best for ages 4-up, Free, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)

Combining real exercise with an endless runner app, The American Heart Association, in conjunction with National Football League, has created a free app that gets kids moving. To make their character run on the screen, kids have to actually run in place and jump while holding their device. Kids earn coins by tilting the device to shift their running character onto different paths. The goal is to run as far as you can without being stopped by an obstacle. By copying the gameplay made popular by well-known endless runners such as Temple Run and Despicable Me: Minion Rush, kids will be drawn to the gaming while getting fit.

Awesome Eats

Whole Foods Foundation, best for ages 6-up, Free, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 3.5 stars

Foods become characters in this fast-paced game about sorting, stacking and packing veggies, fruits and recycling. Sandwiched between fun puzzle levels about flinging anthropomorphized food onto the correct conveyor belt are messages from the Whole Foods Foundation about healthy eating. This app is a winner because it combines quick thinking and fast food flinging into a game that imparts healthy advice.

Alien Assignment

Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College, best for ages 4-8, Free, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 4 stars