Yahoo CEO says Microsoft search deal underperforms

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said the company's search partnership with Microsoft Corp was not delivering the market share gains or the revenue boost that it should.

"One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other," Mayer said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

In her first appearance at an investor conference since taking the reins of the struggling Web portal in July, Mayer said she planned to prune a sprawling lineup of mobile apps and she reiterated her focus on enticing consumers to spend more time on Yahoo's online properties, in order to display more money-making ads.

"I'm not confused. Our biggest business problem right now is impressions. Basically can we grow impressions, can we get growth happening here," Mayer said.

Yahoo shares finished Tuesday's regular trading session up 31 cents at $21.21.

Mayer, 37, took over after a tumultuous period at Yahoo in which former CEO Scott Thompson resigned after less than 6 months on the job over a controversy about his academic credentials and in which Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and cut his ties with the company.

Yahoo's revenue in 2012 was flat year-over-year, at roughly $5 billion, and down from roughly $6.3 billion in 2010.

"We need to see monetization working better because we know that it can and we've seen other competitors in the space illustrate how well it can work," Mayer said of the search deal with Microsoft.

Yahoo and Microsoft entered into a 10-year search partnership in 2010, hoping their combined efforts could mount a more competitive challenge to Google Inc, the world's No.1 search engine. But the partnership has not lived up to expectations.

Google remains the dominant search engine, with a 66.7 percent share of the U.S. market in December, almost unchanged from its 66.6 percent share two years earlier, according to online analytics firm comScore.

Microsoft had 16.3 percent share and Yahoo had 12.2 percent share in December, a reversal of two years earlier when Yahoo's U.S. search share was 16 percent and Microsoft had 12 percent share.

Yahoo's stock has risen more than 30 percent since Mayer took the helm in July, reaching its highest levels since 2008.

Analysts say that part of the stock's rise has been driven by significant stock buybacks, using proceeds from a $7.6 billion deal to sell half of its 40 percent stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group.

Mayer said that she viewed the company's relationship with Yahoo Japan, which is partly owned by Softbank, as "strategic" to the company. Under previous CEOs, Yahoo had engaged in unsuccessful discussions to "monetize" its roughly 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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Body slam for wrestling: Sport cut from Olympics

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — For wrestling, this may have been the ultimate body slam: getting tossed out of the Olympic rings.

The vote Tuesday by the IOC's executive board stunned the world's wrestlers, who see their sport as popular in many countries and steeped in history as old as the Olympics themselves.

While wrestling will be included at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, it was cut from the games in 2020, which have yet to be awarded to a host city.

2004 Olympic Greco-Roman champion Khasan Baroev of Russia called the decision "mind-boggling."

"I just can't believe it. And what sport will then be added to the Olympic program? What sport is worthy of replacing ours?" Baroev told the ITAR-Tass news agency. "Wrestling is popular in many countries — just see how the medals were distributed at the last Olympics."

American Rulan Gardner, who upset three-time Russian Olympic champion Alexander Karelin at the Sydney Games in an epic gold-medal bout known as the "Miracle on the Mat," was saddened by the decision to drop what he called "a beloved sport."

"It's the IOC trying to change the Olympics to make it more mainstream and more viewer-friendly instead of sticking to what they founded the Olympics on," Gardner told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Logan, Utah.

The executive board of the International Olympic Committee reviewed the 26 sports on its summer program in order to remove one of them so it could add one later this year. It decided to cut wrestling and keep modern pentathlon — a sport that combines fencing, horse riding, swimming, running and shooting — and was considered to be the most likely to be dropped.

The board voted after reviewing a report by the IOC program commission report that analyzed 39 criteria, including TV ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping policy and global participation and popularity. With no official rankings or recommendations contained in the report, the final decision by the 15-member board was also subject to political, emotional and sentimental factors.

"This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "In the view of the executive board, this was the best program for the Olympic Games in 2020. It's not a case of what's wrong with wrestling; it is what's right with the 25 core sports."

According to IOC documents obtained by the AP, wrestling ranked "low" in several of the technical criteria, including popularity with the public at the London Games — just below 5 on a scale of 10. Wrestling sold 113,851 tickets in London out of 116,854 available.

Wrestling also ranked "low" in global TV audience with a maximum of 58.5 million viewers and an average of 23 million, the documents show. Internet hits and press coverage were also ranked as low.

NBC, which televises the Olympics in the U.S., declined comment.

The IOC also noted that FILA — the international wrestling federation — has no athletes on its decision-making bodies, no women's commission, no ethics rules for technical officials and no medical official on its executive board.

Modern pentathlon also ranked low in general popularity in London, with 5.2 out of 10. The sport also ranked low in all TV categories, with maximum viewership of 33.5 million and an average of 12.5 million.

FILA has 177 member nations, compared to 108 for modern pentathlon.

Modern pentathlon, which has been on the Olympic program since the 1912 Stockholm Games, was created by French baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement.

It also benefited from the work of Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the son of the former IOC president who is a UIPM vice president and member of the IOC board.

"We were considered weak in some of the scores in the program commission report but strong in others," Samaranch told the AP. "We played our cards to the best of our ability and stressed the positives."

Klaus Schormann, president of governing body UIPM, lobbied hard to protect his sport's Olympic status and it paid off in the end.

"We have promised things and we have delivered," he said after Tuesday's decision. "That gives me a great feeling. It also gives me new energy to develop our sport further and never give up."

The IOC executive board will meet in May in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to propose for 2020 inclusion. The final vote will be made at the IOC session, or general assembly, in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Wrestling will now join seven other sports in applying for 2020, but it is extremely unlikely that it would be voted back in so soon after being removed by the executive board.

The other sports vying for a single opening in 2020 are a combined bid from baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu, a martial art.

"Today's decision is not final," Adams said. "The session is sovereign and the session will make the final decision."

Wrestling featured 344 athletes competing in 11 medal events in freestyle and seven in Greco-Roman at last year's London Olympics, with Russia dominating the podium but Iran and Azerbaijan making strong showings. Women's wrestling was added to the Olympics at the 2004 Athens Games.

Karelin noted in an interview with Vyes' Sport that Russians and Soviets have won 77 gold medals.

"It's understandable that a lot of people didn't like this," Karelin said. "I'm not a supporter of conspiracy theory, but it seems to me that the underlying cause here is obvious."

Tuesday's decision came via secret ballot over four rounds, with 14 members voting each time on which sport should not be included in the core group. IOC President Jacques Rogge did not vote.

Three sports were left in the final round: wrestling, field hockey and modern pentathlon. Eight members voted against wrestling and three each against the other two sports. Taekwondo and canoe kayaking survived the previous rounds.

"I was shocked," said IOC board member Rene Fasel of Switzerland.

"It was an extremely difficult decision to take," added IOC Vice President Thomas Bach of Germany. "The motivation of every member is never based on a single reason. There are always several reasons. It was a secret vote. There will always be criticism, but I think the great majority will understand that we took a decision based on facts and for the modernization of the Olympic Games."

Wrestling was featured in the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896. Along with Russia's Karelin, it has produced such American stars as Gardner, Bruce Baumgartner, Jeff Blatnick and Jordan Burroughs.

U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun also expressed surprise at the IOC decision, citing "the history and tradition of wrestling, and its popularity and universality."

"It is important to remember that today's action is a recommendation, and we hope that there will be a meaningful opportunity to discuss the important role that wrestling plays in the sports landscape both in the United States and around the world," Blackmun said in a statement. "In the meantime, we will fully support USA Wrestling and its athletes."

FILA said in a statement that it was "greatly astonished" by the decision, adding that the federation "will take all necessary measures to convince the IOC executive board and IOC members of the aberration of such decision against one of the founding sports of the ancient and modern Olympic Games."

It said it has always complied with IOC regulations and is represented in 180 countries, with wrestling the national sport in some of them.

The federation, which is headed by Raphael Martinetti and based in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, said it would meet next week in Thailand to discuss the matter.

Gardner cited wrestling's worldwide popularity and urged a campaign to keep it in the Olympics.

"It just seems like wrestling — if we don't fight, we're going to die," he said. "At this point, it's time for everybody to man up and support the program."

The decision hit hard in Russia, which has long been a power in the sport.

Mikhail Mamiashvili, president of the Russian Wrestling Federation, suggested FILA had not done enough to keep the sport in the games.

"We want to hear what was done to prevent this issue from even being discussed at the board," he said on the Rossiya TV channel.

In comments carried by ITAR-Tass, Mamiashvili added: "I can say for sure that the roots of this problem is at the FILA. I believe that Martinetti's task was to work hard, socialize and defend wrestling's place before the IOC."

Alexander Leipold, a 2000 Olympic champion from Germany and former freestyle German team coach, said he was shocked.

"We are a technical, tactical martial sport where the aim is not to harm the opponent," he said. "Competing at the Olympics is the greatest for an athlete."

Wrestling's long history in the Olympics has featured some top names and moments:

— Karelin won the super-heavyweight gold in Greco-Roman over three straight Olympics — 1988, 1992 and 1996 — until his streak was ended by Gardner, who beat him for the gold in 2000.

— Baumgartner won four Olympic medals, including golds in 1984 and 1992.

— Blatnick overcame cancer to win gold in Greco-Roman at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, bursting into tears after the match. Blatnick died last year at age 55.

— Burroughs emerged as the star of the sport in London, where he won the 74-kilogram gold.

The last sports removed from the Olympics were baseball and softball, voted out by the IOC in 2005 and off the program since the 2008 Beijing Games. Golf and rugby will be joining the program at the 2016 Games in Rio.

Among those in Lausanne were the leaders of the recently created World Baseball Softball Confederation. The two sports agreed last year to merge in a joint bid to return to the games.

Don Porter, the American who heads international softball, and Riccardo Fraccari, the Italian who leads baseball, are working out the final details of their unified body ahead of their presentation to the IOC in May.

A major hurdle remains the lack of a commitment from Major League Baseball to release top players for the Olympics.

Porter and Fraccari said they hope to have another meeting with MLB officials in April in Tokyo.

"The next thing is to sit down with them and see how they can help us," Porter said. "It all depends on the timing, the timing of the season. It's not an easy decision to allow players a week off."

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Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow and Luke Meredith in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story.

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly

In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.

Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.

After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.

The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.

The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.

"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."

He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.

In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.

However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.

Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.

They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.

Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.

After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.

Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.

The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.

One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.

"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."

Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.

___

Online:

Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney

Study: http://gucasym.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Beyonce joined by Oprah at documentary premiere

NEW YORK (AP) — Oprah Winfrey made a surprise appearance Tuesday night at the premiere of Beyonce's HBO documentary, 'Life is But a Dream,' posing with the star and speaking of the candor she showed in making it.

The film takes a no-holds-barred look at moments in the 31-year old singer's life, including her miscarriage, reports of faking her pregnancy, and firing her father as her manager.

While the revelations Beyonce makes about herself in the film are comparable to the results Winfrey usually gets from her tough style of interviewing, the talk show host gave kudos to the singer.

Winfrey said Beyonce did a "much better job" of telling her own story. "I wouldn't have been in the bedroom and in the closet and in the car and on vacation," she said.

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Downtown condo market showing signs of life

Downtown Chicago's condo market is on the rebound after many moribund years, as sales volume and pricing improve in a market constrained by a lack of inventory.

It's a rare piece of good news for downtown condo owners as well as for developers pondering projects and trying to line up financing.

With a steady stream of apartment projects delivering in the next two years, the lack of new condo construction could signal opportunities for companies interested in pursuing smaller projects in key neighborhoods because the demand is there. Until those projects materialize, condo owners looking to sell face a better market than they have in several years.

Sales of existing downtown condos rose 31.2 percent last year, to 4,675 units sold, while the median sales price of $300,000 was a gain of about 2.6 percent from 2011, according to data from Appraisal Research Counselors.

Another piece of good news for current condo owners: Of the 65 downtown buildings studied by the firm, the average sales price per square foot of units sold during the second half of last year rose while the number of distressed condo sales in those buildings saw a substantial drop. Distressed sales, which accounted for  28 percent of sales since 2010, fell to 17 percent of sales during the second half of 2012.

In addition, only 1,104 newly constructed condo units remain unsold downtown.

"When we see more transactions occurring, that's a really good indication of demand," said Gail Lissner, a vice president at the firm. "The look of the condo market has changed in terms of unsold inventory."

Lissner's remarks came Tuesday during a lunchtime briefing on the local housing market.

Most of the unsold inventory, more than 500 units, is in the South Loop and the bulk of it is in the newly named and repositioned 500-unit South Loop Luxury by Related.

The three buildings, once called One Museum Park West, 1600 Museum Park and Museum Park Place 2 were taken over by New York-based Related Cos. in July have been renamed the Grant, Adler Place and Harbor View, respectively.

Since December, 40 units there are under contract, according to Related Midwest, which officially launched sales in the project Tuesday.

Other new projects reporting positive sales trends are Park Monroe Phase II, a 48-unit adaptive reuse project with 16 sales and CA3, a 40-unit building with 18 sales.

"These are all great indicators of strong sales," Lissner said. "Price stabilization has occurred in the market. You don't hear people talking about bottoming out. That was so yesterday."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Slain teen's dad: 'The healing can start' after 2 charged with murder

Two reputed gang members were out for revenge from a previous shooting when they opened fire on a group of students in a South Side park last month, killing 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton in a heartbreaking case that has brought national attention to Chicago's rampant gun violence, police said.

Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20, were each charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery with a firearm in the Jan. 29 attack that also left two teens wounded.

Ward confessed to police that he and Williams mistook a Pendleton companion for rivals who had shot and wounded Williams last July, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said at a news conference Monday night at the Area Central police headquarters.

Ward told police that he and Williams got out of their car, crept up on the group and opened fire in Harsh Park, McCarthy said. Williams then drove them from the scene, he said.

"The offenders had it all wrong. They thought the group they shot into included members of a rival gang. Instead it was a group of upstanding, determined kids who, like Hadiya, were repulsed by the gang lifestyle," said McCarthy, flanked by two dozen detectives and gang investigators who worked the case.

Detectives arrested the two Saturday night as the suspects were on their way to a suburban strip club to celebrate a friend's birthday, McCarthy said. Pendleton had been buried only hours earlier in a funeral attended by first lady Michelle Obama.

"I don't even know what to say about that," McCarthy said. "They were going out to celebrate at a strip club."

Williams did not confess and police have not recovered a weapon, McCarthy said. Both are due in bond court Tuesday.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, said Monday night that news of the charges marked the first time since his daughter's slaying that he had a "legitimate" smile on his face.

"I'm ecstatic that they found the two guys," he told the Tribune during a brief telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he and wife Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton will attend the State of the Union address Tuesday as guests of President Barack Obama. "(I'm) thanking God that these two guys are off the streets, so that this doesn't happen to another innocent person."

Danetria Hutson, 15, a classmate who held Hadiya in her arms after she was shot, said she and others who witnessed the shooting have had nightmares.

"A lot of us were actually paranoid because the guys were still out there," Hutson said in a telephone interview. "They knew where we went to school."

McCarthy said that two days before the killing, police had stopped Ward in his Nissan Sentra as part of a routine gang investigation. That information wound up being the starting point for detectives when witnesses in the shooting described seeing a similar car driving away from the shooting scene, he said.

Through surveillance and interviews — including several fruitful interviews with parolees in the neighborhood — detectives were able to home in on Ward and Williams, McCarthy said. On Saturday night, the decision was made to stop the two if they were spotted. Police watched as they departed in a caravan of cars headed to the strip club in Harvey. They were stopped near 67th Street and South King Drive and taken in for questioning.

McCarthy said Williams was shot July 11 at 39th Street and South Lake Park Avenue, and an arrest was made. But that gunman was let go after Williams refused to cooperate, McCarthy said.

McCarthy also noted that at the time of Hadiya's slaying, Ward was on probation for a weapons conviction. McCarthy said weak Illinois gun laws allowed Ward to avoid jail time because of the absence of mandatory minimum sentences.

"This incident did not have to occur," McCarthy said. "And if mandatory minimums existed in the state of Illinois, Michael Ward would not have been on the street to commit this heinous act."

In announcing the charges, McCarthy praised the "meticulous" detective work that led to the arrests, but he also expressed frustration that despite a $40,000 reward for information in the shooting, no one who had knowledge of the crime came forward.

"While we received a lot of tips in this particular case and the community really stepped up and tried to help us, I'm sad to point out that we did not get our target audience to step up," the superintendent said.

Hadiya was fatally shot about a mile north of the president's Kenwood neighborhood home a little more than a week after the King College Prep honor student performed with her school band near Washington during inauguration festivities.

Hadiya's death occurred during the deadliest January in Chicago since 2002. It also came on the heels of a homicide total last year that was the highest since 2008 and the second highest since 2003.

The first lady's attendance at Hadiya's funeral pushed Chicago further into the spotlight of a debate over gun violence that has polarized Congress and led the president to take his plans for gun control on the road to garner more public support. The president is scheduled to appear in Chicago on Friday to talk about violence.

In the days after Hadiya's death, clergy and community leaders raised the $40,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the teen's killer or killers.

The victim's father acknowledged that true closure will come if Ward and Williams are convicted of the crimes. But the charges, he said, are a good start.

"Right now, I can say to you that the healing can start," Pendleton said.

jmeisner@tribune.com

jgorner@tribune.com

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Judge speeds up schedule in Apple versus Einhorn case

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A judge approved Apple Inc's request to speed up the schedule in a lawsuit filed by star hedge fund manager David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital, part of an effort to get the company to share its huge cash reserves with investors.

U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan of the Southern District of New York on Monday brought forward the legal schedule by a few days at Apple's request, which argued that the issue would have a big impact on the upcoming shareholder meeting on February 27.

Apple told the judge that the request to modify the schedule had the support of Einhorn's counsel.

Einhorn, a well-known short-seller and Apple gadget fan, shocked Wall Street last week by suing Apple to stop the iPhone maker from eliminating from its charter the ability to issue preferred stock without shareholder approval.

He wants Apple to return a bigger piece of its $137 billion cash pile to investors, through the issuance of perpetual preferred shares that pay dividends to existing shareholders.

Einhorn is objecting to how the proposed charter change is bundled together with two other corporate governance-related proposals in the proxy document for the annual meeting.

The lawsuit contends Apple violated Securities and Exchange Commission rules that prohibit companies from "bundling" unrelated matters into a single proposal for a shareholder vote.

Apple says removing the board's ability to issue preferred stock at its discretion heightens governance, because future issuances would then require shareholder approval.

The company will file its response to the lawsuit by the end of Wednesday while Greenlight will file its own response papers by Friday. The judge ordered both parties to appear for oral arguments on February 19.

Apple has said that the proposal in its proxy had the support of many shareholders, and striking such a "blank check" provision from its charter would not preclude preferred share issuances in future.

The law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP is representing Apple in the case, with San Francisco-based partner George Riley arguing for Apple.

(Reporting By Poornima Gupta; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Mullens, Bobcats end Celtics' win streak 94-91

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — All in all, Monday proved to be a painful night for the Boston Celtics.

Not only did the Celtics have their seven-game losing streak snapped at the hands of the NBA's worst team, but they might have suffered yet another costly injury in their 94-91 loss to the Charlotte Bobcats.

Backup guard Leandro Barbosa, who has seen increased playing time since the season-ending injury to Rajon Rondo, injured his left knee late in the third quarter and had to be carried to the locker room by a trainer and teammate.

Coach Doc Rivers said Barbosa will have an MRI on Tuesday.

"It doesn't look great but we'll see," Rivers said.

In the seven games since Rondo's injury Barbosa had averaged nine points while playing an average of 22.5 minutes. The Celtics had won all seven games.

All of that came crashing down Monday night.

This night belonged to Charlotte's unheralded big man, Byron Mullens.

The four-year NBA veteran turned in a career game with 25 points and 18 rebounds as the Bobcats snapped a seven-game losing streak.

The 7-foot Mullens hit 10 of 16 shots from the field, including 4 of 5 from 3-point range. Ramon Sessions had 19 points for the Bobcats, including the go-ahead jumper from 18 feet with 25.7 seconds left. Kemba Walker had 18 points, six assists and six rebounds, and Gerald Henderson chipped in with 16 points.

Mullens was playing his fifth game after missing 19 with an ankle injury.

"It's big time," Walker said of Mullens' effort. "We need that from him. We need that from Byron and he can do it. We know he can do it every night. He is very capable. When he has big games like that, you know, I think that gives us a much better chance."

Mullens said he was more pleased with his rebounding than his scoring "because that is not what I'm known for.

"I just have to show the league and this organization that I can rebound," he said.

Kevin Garnett had 16 points and 13 rebounds for the Celtics, but missed a key 18-footer that would have given Boston the lead late in the game. Paul Pierce and Avery Bradley had chances to send the game into overtime in the final seconds, but missed open 3-pointers.

Jeff Green had 18 points for the Celtics and Pierce finished with 13 points, eight assists and eight rebounds.

"We had a win streak going and we had momentum going," Celtics guard Courtney Lee said. "We wanted finish out the rest of these games going into the (All-Star) break. So it's definitely a letdown. This one hurts more because we had the lead with one minute to go."

It was a back-and-forth game throughout.

After Henderson gave the Bobcats an 85-84 lead with 3:58 remaining, Jason Terry made a 3 from the wing and Garnett followed with a turnaround jumper in the lane to push the Boston lead to four.

It appeared as though the Bobcats were on their way to another fourth quarter collapse.

But trailing by four, Henderson hit a 3-point with 1:01 left. After Bradley missed an open jumper, Sessions came free off a screen and knocked down an 18-footer to give the Bobcats the lead with 25.7 seconds remaining.

The Celtics called timeout but Garnett missed from the left wing. Mullens grabbed his 18th rebound and the Walker made a pair of key free throws to give the Bobcats a three-point lead with 14.8 seconds left.

Boston set up an inbounds play and Pierce got an open look but missed. He grabbed his own rebound and dished out to the wing for Bradley, but he missed a 3 as time expired.

Boston's loss came after a triple overtime win against Denver on Thursday night, but the Celtics refused to use fatigue as an excuse.

"We put that one behind us," Green said.

As he'd planned to do before the game, Rivers went deep into his bench in the first half with 10 players seeing at least 10 minutes of action.

The Bobcats battled back in the third quarter behind 12 points from Mullens to take a 75-72 lead into the fourth. Mullens, who scored Charlotte's first 10 points of the game, did most of his damage from outside, knocking down 3-pointers and turnaround jumpers, showing great touch for a big man.

"Byron was as good as you can get in the NBA statistically in many ways," Bobcats coach Mike Dunlap said. "He's still young. He's growing. ... He's a different player because he was able to take a res. He's got live legs and he's able to see the game."

NOTES: Pierce scored in double figures for the 50th game this season. ... Bobcats center Bismack Biyombo was a force inside on the defensive end blocking four shots and grabbing seven defensive rebounds.

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

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Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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'Identity Thief' grabs $34.6M to debut at No. 1

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy's "Identity Thief" has made off with the weekend box-office title with a $34.6 million debut.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Identity Thief," Universal, $34,551,025, 3,141 locations, $11,000 average, $34,551,025, one week.

2. "Warm Bodies," Lionsgate, $11,356,090, 3,009 locations, $3,774 average, $36,481,172, two weeks.

3. "Side Effects," Open Road Films, $9,303,145, 2,605 locations, $3,571 average, $9,303,145, one week.

4. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $6,425,271, 2,809 locations, $2,287 average, $89,519,510, 13 weeks.

5. "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," Paramount, $5,753,165, 3,285 locations, $1,751 average, $43,836,018, three weeks.

6. "Mama," Universal, $4,229,665, 2,677 locations, $1,580 average, $63,951,810, four weeks.

7. "Zero Dark Thirty," Sony, $4,006,860, 2,562 locations, $1,564 average, $83,567,450, eight weeks.

8. "Argo," Warner Bros., $2,375,344, 1,405 locations, $1,691 average, $123,608,957, 18 weeks.

9. "Django Unchained," Weinstein Co., $2,303,495, 1,502 locations, $1,534 average, $154,516,627, seven weeks.

10. "Bullet to the Head," Warner Bros., $2,078,192, 2,404 locations, $864 average, $8,269,214, two weeks.

11. "Top Gun" in 3-D, Paramount, $1,965,737, 300 locations, $6,552 average, $1,965,737, one week.

12. "Lincoln," Disney, $1,873,537, 1,517 locations, $1,235 average, $173,621,006, 14 weeks.

13. "Parker," FilmDistrict, $1,867,411, 2,004 locations, $932 average, $15,848,064, three weeks.

14. "Life of Pi," Fox, $1,745,744, 924 locations, $1,889 average, $108,530,249, 12 weeks.

15. "Les Miserables," Universal, $1,555,550, 1,447 locations, $1,075 average, $143,983,705, seven weeks.

16. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," Warner Bros., $1,468,374, 1,001 locations, $1,467 average, $298,333,426, nine weeks.

17. "Parental Guidance," Fox, $1,071,766, 1,219 locations, $879 average, $74,344,256, seven weeks.

18. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $1,065,817, 757 locations, $1,408 average, $184,414,532, 15 weeks.

19. "The Impossible," Summit, $957,594, 739 locations, $1,296 average, $16,668,338, eight weeks.

20. "Quartet," Weinstein Co., $940,930, 244 locations, $3,856 average, $5,000,417, five weeks.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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