The , a daily record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, has been running continuously since March 1958, when a carbon dioxide monitor was installed atin Hawaii. On its first day, the observatory measured a carbon dioxide concentration of 313 parts per million (ppm). That number means there were 313 molecules of carbon dioxide in the air for every 1 million air molecules.

The number continued to climb through May 1958 and then slowly started to drop, reaching a minimum in October that year. This maximum-minimum pattern, repeated seasonally, reveals how trees withdraw carbon dioxide from the air in summer to grow and then release it through dead, decaying leaves and wood in the winter.

Upward creep

But humans release carbon dioxide into the air, too, by burning fossil fuels. This activity has caused the Keeling Curve to creep ever upward since 1958: The lows get a little higher each year, as do the highs. []

Because carbon dioxide typically peaks in May, researchers are expecting the Keeling Curve to break a milestone of 400 ppm this year. (If not, the number will almost certainly be reached in May 2014.) As of May 1 of this year, the last day data was available, the Mauna Loa observatory recorded 399.39 ppm of carbon dioxide in the air.

There will be no huge atmospheric or climatic shift once carbon dioxide hits 400 ppm, but the milestone has symbolic significance, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University.

"It is a reminder of just how uncontrolled this dangerous experiment we're playing with the planet really is," Mann told LiveScience.

What 400 ppm means

In the 1,000 years that occurred before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, atmospheric carbon dioxide held steady at around 270 to 280 parts per million.

Scientists believe that the most recent period to reach 400 ppm was the Pliocene Epoch, between 5 million and 3 million years ago, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which keeps track of the Keeling Curve.

Back then, it was a different world. Global average temperatures during the period were between 5.4 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 4 degrees Celsius) higher than today, and sea level was as much as 131 feet (40 meters) higher in some places. Even the least-affected regions saw16 feet (5 meters) higher than today's.

A major difference between then and now, though, is the speed at which carbon dioxide is rising today. Typically, in the last 40 to 50 years, the Keeling Curve shows increases of 2 to 2.5 ppm a year, Mann said. In the 1950s and 1960s, carbon dioxide increased by less than 1 ppm each year, according to Scripps.

"We're on course for more than 450 ppm in a matter of decades if we don't get ourunder control quite soon," Mann said.

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Sunday's edition of El-Watan said its journalist had broken through security lines to speak to Mubarak on Saturday before his retrial on charges of complicity in the death of protesters killed in the uprising that swept him from office.

The paper, which is fiercely critical of Mursi and his backers in the Muslim Brotherhood, splashed the story on its front page, billing it as Mubarak's first comments to the media since he was toppled in 2011.

Lawyer Farid el-Deeb said he had sent Mubarak, 85, a message asking if the interview with the reporter had happened. "He sent me a message saying this didn't happen," he said.

"All of it is incorrect ... Mubarak did not meet with him or sit with him or any of this."

El-Watan said its journalist had spoken to Mubarak in a side room at the court where his retrial began on Saturday.

It quoted the deposed leader as saying it was too early to judge Mursi and expressing concern about the economy and lax security in Egypt, which he ruled for 30 years.

Deeb said the remarks appeared to be based on comments that he himself had made to the media.

(Reporting by Shaimaa Fayed/Tom Perry; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Pedro Castro, one of the three brothers suspected of holding three women captive for nearly a decade in a Cleveland home,that the search for Amanda Berry was "a waste of money."

Castro appeared on camera in :

The search for Amanda Berry is over. For the past two days, excavating crews dug through an empty lot after receiving a tip from a convict who claimed he knew where the missing teen was buried.

Around 2:30 Friday afternoon, crews completed their search at a small lot on West 30th Street and Wade Avenue in Cleveland, but were not able to locate any remains.

Cleveland resident Pedro Castro said, Thats a waste of money.

In the July 19, 2012, segment, the 54-year-old is seen in a Hawaiian shirt and straw golf hat, sitting on the steps of a porch, pointing to the team of investigators. It's unclear whether it was the porch of the home where the women are suspected of having been held captive.

[Related: ]

Castro and other neighbors were interviewed on camera about the then-unsuccessful search.

Ive lost a lot of sleep just knowing that maybe her body is over there, Judy Rogers, another neighbor, said. I just wish we could get some kind of closure.

We had our hopes up, everyone had their hopes up," Cleveland Police Commander Thomas McCartney said in the 2012 piece. "But the other side of the coin is, we still hope for the family, maybe somewhere a girl is still alive."

Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus were found alive inside the home on Monday.

Castro and brothers Ariel, 52, and Onil, 50, have been arrested.

News that Bank of America and MBIA, a bond-insurance company, had reached a settlement over a long-running dispute propelled both companies' stocks up. BofA will pay $1.7 billion to MBIA and extend the troubled company a credit line.

MBIA soared 45 percent, or $4.46, to $14.29. Bank of America gained 5 percent, or 64 cents, to $12.88, making it the leading company in the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Dow slipped 5.07 points to close at 14,968.89. The Standard & Poor's 500 index crept up 3.08 points to 1,617.50, a gain of 0.2 percent.

Six of the 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 rose, with financial companies in the lead.

No major economic reports came out Monday, but a handful of companies reported their quarterly results. Tyson Foods, the nation's largest meat-processing company, fell 3 percent, the biggest drop in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, after saying its net income sank as costs for chicken feed rose. Tyson's stock lost 83 cents to $24.10.

Companies have reported solid quarterly profits so far this earnings season. Seven of every 10 big companies in the S&P 500 have beat the earnings estimates of financial analysts, according to S&P Capital IQ. But revenue has looked weak: six of 10 have missed revenue forecasts.

"Yet again, corporations continue to do more with less," said Dan Veru, the chief investment officer of Palisade Capital Management.

Veru said the trend is likely to lead to more mergers in the coming months, as cash-rich companies look for ways to raise their revenue. A wave of mergers could shift the stock market's rally into a higher gear, he said.

The stock market cleared new milestones Friday after the government reported that employers added more workers to their payrolls in recent months. The unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent, the lowest level in four years.

That news sent the Dow through the 15,000 mark for the first time, while the S&P 500 closed above 1,600, another first.

In Monday trading, the Nasdaq composite rose 14.34 points to 3,392.97, an increase of 0.4 percent. The price of crude oil edged up 55 cents to $96.16 and gold rose $3.80 to $1,468.10 an ounce.

In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year note inched up to 1.76 percent from 1.74 percent late Friday.

Berkshire Hathaway rose 1.3 percent, or $1.36, to $110. Warren Buffett's company turned in earnings late Friday that trumped analysts' estimates for both profit and revenue. Berkshire reported strong gains from its insurance units, Geico and General Reinsurance, its BNSF Railway company and other investments.

In a round of television interviews on Monday, Buffett said that the stock market still appears reasonably priced even though major indexes are at all-time highs. By contrast, bonds are "a terrible investment right now," he said. Buffett explained that with interest rates at historic lows, a buyer of long-term bonds is bound to take a loss when rates eventually rise.

Among other stocks in the news:

Sysco dropped 1 percent, or 33 cents, to $34.33, after the food distributor posted net income and revenue that fell short of analysts' estimates. Sysco's CEO said the company's sales were held back by bad weather that made people less willing to spend on meals away from home. Sysco's

Monster Beverage sank 2 percent after San Francisco's city attorney sued the company for allegedly marketing its caffeinated drinks to children. Last week, Monster Beverage filed a suit against the same city attorney over demands that the energy drink maker reduce the caffeine in its drinks and change its marketing practices. Monster lost $1.26 to $56.18.

Financial details of the acquisition by the British drugmaker's MedImmune unit were not disclosed.

AstraZeneca's new CEO Pascal Soriot said last month he planned to build up the company's sparse drug pipeline by striking more deals, with cardiovascular and metabolic disease a particular priority.

Cardiovascular and metabolic disease is one of three core therapy areas for AstraZeneca - along with oncology and respiratory/inflammation - but the company currently has few experimental compounds for such conditions.

AlphaCore will help plug the gap, although it will not deliver any marketable products for many years. Its leading drug candidate ACP-501, a genetically engineered liver-derived enzyme called LCAT, only completed Phase I clinical tests last year.

Drugs need to go through three phases of lengthy tests before being approved for sale.

The hope is that ACP-501 will help in the management of cholesterol to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. It could also play a role in a rare, hereditary disorder called familial LCAT deficiency in which the LCAT enzyme is absent.

"As the science in this area continues to evolve, we are committed to exploring unique pathways that could lead to new combination or standalone therapies for patients living with chronic and acute cardiovascular diseases," said MedImmune head Bahija Jallal.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

Network NBC said on Monday that Green, a former judge on the popular contest, is slated to perform his new song "Only You." Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Stewart will perform material from his upcoming album, "Time," his first release of original material in over a decade.

Stewart and Green will perform on the May 8 episode, while Grammy-winning country-pop trio Lady Antebellum will promote their forthcoming album "Golden" on the May 14 episode.

Pop singer Robin Thicke, singer-producer Pharrell Williams and rapper T.I. will all perform on the May 14 episode of "The Voice," which averages about 14 million viewers over its two weekly shows.

The competition's fourth season, which installed pop singers Shakira and Usher to replace Green and Christina Aguilera as judges, reaches its climax in June, when one of the aspiring contestants will be proclaimed the winner and get a recording contract.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey. Editing by Jill Serjeant and Andre Grenon)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of major biotechnology stocks are trading around all-time highs, but a Credit Suisse analyst said Thursday that the sector still has room to rise and should do better than the broader market in 2013.

Analyst Ravi Mehrotra raised his price target on some of the largest companies in the sector. He said that biotech stocks have done better than the broader market since the start of 2011, which could raise worries about a bubble in the sector. However Mehrotra said that's not the case. In his view the shares are strong because of successful products, and he said clinical trial results and product launches will boost large-cap biotech stocks and the broader sector in 2013.

The product launches include Medivation Inc.'s prostate cancer pill Xtandi and Biogen Idec Inc.'s multiple sclerosis pill Tecfidera, along with clinical trial data on Gilead Sciences Inc.'s latest hepatitis C regimen.

The analyst raised his target price on shares of Amgen Inc., the world's largest biotechnology company, to $115 per share from $100, increased his target for Biogen Idec shares to $225 from $200, his target for Gilead Sciences Inc. shares to $60 from $55 and his target on Celgene Corp. to $125 from $110. Mehrotra rates Biogen and Gilead shares "Outperform" and has a "Neutral" rating on Amgen and Celgene stock.

All four stocks have reached all-time highs in the last week.

Amgen's products include the anemia drugs Aranesp and Epogen; Neulasta and Neupogen, which are used to fight infection in cancer patients; and the immune disorder treatment Enbrel. Amgen shares are up about 86 percent since the start of 2011 and reached a high of $106.79 in Wednesday trading. On Thursday afternoon the stock was up 40 cents to $105.21.

Biogen received marketing approval for Tecfidera on March 27. Tecfidera is a twice-a-day pill that used to control multiple sclerosis. Biogen also makes injectable MS treatments Tysabri and Avonex. The company's stock hit an all-time high of $199.54 Tuesday and has nearly tripled since the start of 2011. Biogen Idec shares lost 9 cents to $195.65 in afternoon trading.

Gilead makes a number of HIV drugs such as Stribild, Atripla, and Truvada. Two years ago the company acquired hepatitis C drug developer Pharmasset for $11.1 billion, gaining drugs like sofosbuvir in the process. Its shares have doubled in value over the last year and set an all-time high of $49.49 on March 28. The shares were up 2 cents to $47.65 in afternoon trading.

Celgene makes cancer drugs including Revlimid, Thalomid and Abraxane. Its shares have climbed more than 90 percent since the beginning of 2011. On Thursday the stock rose 24 cents to $115.79.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Free Democrats, fighting to renew their coalition with Angela Merkel's conservatives in September's election, could face damaging new splits when they thrash out a position on a minimum wage at their weekend congress.

Merkel's Christian Democrats are riding high in the polls yet she needs the Free Democrats (FDP) to consolidate their comeback from the depths of voter distrust if she is to see off the opposition Social Democrats and Greens, who are almost as strong as her center-right bloc.

At the congress in Nuremberg, the pro-business party will settle its manifesto and decide a position on the minimum wage - a debate that cuts to the heart of its liberal values and could provoke a rebellion against party leaders.

Around 5 million workers in Germany - some 16 percent of all employees - earn less than 8.50 euros an hour, which is the minimum wage the center-left opposition wants to see.

The FDP, also known as the Liberals, has long opposed a minimum wage, arguing it smacks of a planned economy and could alienate its traditional business and professional clientele.

But party chairman Philipp Roesler is now arguing for a minimum pay level in sectors or regions where workers are not unionized - similar to Merkel's viewpoint.

With FDP traditionalists such as the party leader in the state of Saxony, Holger Zastrow, arguing it would be unworkable and threaten jobs, there is the risk of the kind of surprise attack on Roesler that has characterized recent congresses.

But having closed ranks and stopped the infighting that has repelled voters since Merkel turned to her traditional coalition partners in 2009, the party seems determined to present a united, electable front.

"We played the clown for three and a half years. Now it is somebody else's turn," a high-ranking FDP party member said.

The chancellor can certainly feel more encouraged now about her chances of continuing with her preferred coalition ally than at the start of the year.

The party took heart from an unexpectedly strong state election result of 9.9 percent in lower Saxony in January, when the polls had indicated it might struggle to breach the 5 percent threshold needed to get a seat in the state assembly.

Today, fighting talk dominates and the FDP is keen to profile itself as a party of fiscal discipline, lower taxes and liberal social values.

"Some in Europe are hoping for a change in government in Berlin, because they don't want to consolidate anymore, and want to get back to spending," FDP Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned in one newspaper, playing on German frustrations that they have to pay to keep euro zone peers afloat.

Nationally, the party is still shown at around 4-6 percent, a dramatic fall from its 14.9 percent in the 2009 election.

However, pollsters say the FDP - dubbed the party of tax advisers and dentists - has an image problem which often means voters are reluctant to declare their support publicly but prove loyal on election day, as happened in Lower Saxony.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Prominent liberation theologian Leonardo Boff said Pope Francis has what it takes to fix a church "in ruins" and shares his movement's commitment to building a church for the world's poor.

"With this pope, a Jesuit and a pope from the Third World, we can breathe happiness," Boff said Saturday at a Buenos Aires book fair. "Pope Francis has both the vigor and tenderness that we need to create a new spiritual world."

The 74-year-old Brazilian theologian was pressured to remain silent by previous popes who tried to draw a hard line between socially active priests and leftist politics. As Argentina's leading cardinal before he became pope, Francis reinforced this line, suggesting in 2010 that reading the Gospel with a Marxist interpretation only gets priests in trouble.

But Boff says the label of a closed-minded conservative simply doesn't fit Francis.

"Pope Francis comes with the perspective that many of us in Latin America share. In our churches we do not just discuss theological theories, like in European churches.Our churches work together to support universal causes, causes like human rights, from the perspective of the poor, the destiny of humanity that is suffering, services for people living on the margins."

The liberation theology movement, which seeks to free lives as well as souls, emerged in the 1960s and quickly spread, especially in Latin America. Priests and church laypeople became deeply involved in human rights and social struggles. Some were caught up in clashes between repressive governments and rebels, sometimes at the cost of their lives.

The movement's martyrs include El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose increasing criticism of his country's military-run government provoked his assassination as he was saying Mass in 1980. He was killed by thugs connected to the military hierarchy a day after he preached that "no soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God." His killing presaged a civil war that killed nearly 90,000 over the next 12 years.

The case for beatification of Romero languished under popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI due to their opposition to liberation theology, but he was put back on track to becoming a saint days after Francis became pope.

Scores of other liberation theologians were killed in the 1970s and 1980s. Six Jesuit teachers were slaughtered at their university in El Salvador in 1989. Other priests and lay workers were tortured and vanished in the prisons of Chile and Argentina. Some were shot to death while demanding land rights for the poor in Brazil. A handful went further and picked up arms, or died accompanying rebel columns as chaplains, such as American Jesuit James Carney, who died in Honduras in 1983.

While even John Paul embraced the "preferential option for the poor" at the heart of the movement, most church leaders were unhappy to see intellectuals mixing doses of Marxism and class struggle into their analysis of the Gospel. It was a powerfully attractive mixture for idealistic Latin Americans who were raised in Catholic doctrine, educated by the region's army of Marxist-influenced teachers, and outraged by the hunger, inequality and bloody repression all around them.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, hundreds of Argentine priests were affiliated with a movement that proclaimed Christian teaching "inescapably obliges us to join in the revolutionary process for urgent radical change of existing structures and to reject formally the capitalistic system we see around us ... We shall go forward in search of a Latin American brand of socialism that will hasten the coming of the new man."

John Paul and his chief theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, drove some of the most ardent and experimental liberation theologians out of the priesthood, castigated some of those who remained, and ensured that the bishops and cardinals they promoted took a wary view of leftist social activism.

Yet much of the movement remained, practiced by thousands of grassroots "base communities" working out of local parishes across the hemisphere, nurtured by nuns, priests and a few bishops who put freedom from hunger, poverty and social injustice at the heart of the Church's spiritual mission.

Hundreds of advocates at a conference in Brazil last year declared themselves ready for a comeback.

"At times embers are hidden beneath the ashes," said the meeting's final declaration, which expressed hopes of stirring ablaze "a fire that lights other fires in the church and in society."

Boff and other advocates are thrilled that this new pope spent so much time ministering in the slums, and are inspired by his writings, which see no heresy in social action.

"The option for the poor comes from the first centuries of Christianity. It is the Gospel itself," said then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio during a 2010 deposition in a human rights trial. He said that if he were to repeat "any of the sermons from the first fathers of the church, from the 2nd or 3rd century, about how the poor must be treated, they would say that mine would be Maoist or Trotskyite."

Msgr. Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, said Romero and Francis have the same vision of the church. "When he says 'a church that is poor and for the poor,' that is what Monsignor Romero said so many times," he said.

Rosa Chavez said neither was among the most radical of churchmen.

"There are many theologies of liberation," he said. "The pope represents one of these currents, the most pastoral current, the current that combines action with teaching." He described Francis' version as "theologians on foot, who walk with the people and combine reflection with action," and contrasted them with "theologians of the desk, who are from university classrooms."

John Paul II himself embraced the term "liberation theology," but was also credited with inspiring resistance to the communist regime in his native Poland, and was allergic to socialist pieties.

For 30 years, the Vatican has been seeding Latin America, Africa and Asia with cardinals "who have tended to be, adverse, to put it kindly, to liberation theology," said Stacey Floyd-Thomas, a professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

In Brazil, Sao Paulo Archbishop Odilo Scherer, widely considered a possible pope, told the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper last year that liberation theology "lost its reason of being because of its Marxist ideological underpinnings . which are incompatible with Christian theology."

"It had its merits by helping bring back into focus matters like social justice, international justice and the liberation of oppressed peoples. But these were always constant themes in the teachings of the Church," Scherer said.

In 1984, Ratzinger put Boff in Galileo's chair for a Vatican inquisition over his writings, eventually stripping him of his church functions and ordering him to spend a year in "obedient silence." Nearly a decade later, in 1993, the Vatican pressured him again, and he quit the Franciscan order.

Now Boff says Francis has brought a "new spring" to the global church.

"Josef Ratzinger. He was against the cause of the poor, liberation theology," Boff said. "But this is from last century. Now we are under a new pope."

___

Associated Press Writers Michael Warren in Buenos Aires, Jenny Barchfield in Rio de Janeiro, Marcos Aleman in San Salvador and John Rice in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Hackers sent out a false tweet on the AP feed Tuesday reporting that thehad been bombed causing a temporary $200 billion drop instock markets. Theflagship news magazine shows, and 48 Hours, also had their Twitter accounts hacked.

For news organizations whose reputations are built on credibility, the concern is real particularly as social media feeds become an increasingly integral part of the news media's overall strategy.

The media are really rushing to brainstorm about what they need to do to not only make sure that this doesnt happen again, but to reassure the public that they are reputable and trustworthy, says Peter LaMott of Levick, a consulting firm for media. What is more concerning about this AP episode is that it went right at the heart of what the company is all about its reputation for accuracy.

The number of such episodes have been on the rise in recent years, he says, noting that bothand Jeep were the victims of hacking pranks. In the AP's case, the Syrian Electronic Army known to support claimed responsibility for the hack.

Both the social media industry and news outlets are taking steps to try to head off future hacks.

For example, Twitter is moving toward a two-step authentication process as a way to improve security, according to Wired. Anytime a user tweets from a new device, the user would need to input a random code messaged to their cellphone.andalready use such a two-step process.

Meanwhile, major news outlets includingandare also approaching the problem from a different direction. They are employing services such as Storyful that quickly verify whether social media posts from other organizations or random users are accurate.

More broadly, newsrooms nationwide are urging reporters to strengthen passwords, to change them more often, and to be more aware of how hackers work.

AP reporter Mike Baker told his Twitter followers that he was a victim of phishing, a tactic in which hackers parading as legitimate entities send e-mails that ask for sensitive information, such as passwords or account numbers.

AP responded to the attack by shutting off all its Twitter accounts until all passwords were checked, which was the right thing to do, says Mr. LaMott. But the damage was done.

The agency has won back many of the Twitter followers it lost, but still the brand name is tarnished, says Ari Zoldan, CEO of Quantum Networks, which specializes in next-generation communication devices. "Fortunately, there are lots of off-the-shelf and easy-to-use systems already out there that people just dont know about yet.

One firm, Dashlane.com, sells password-generating software that takes the onus off of individuals to create and remember an array of names or dates. The firms research shows that the average American has 50 passwords. Hackers know the conventional processes by which users create them birth dates or relatives' or childrens names and have designed algorithms to identify them.

Companies will be sinking millions into this because their very reputations are at stake, says Mr. Zoldan.

Some analysts say the AP episode underlines the new, dangerously interlinked world, and they urge caution.

No matter how much encryption software becomes available, it will never be 100 percent effective, says Mark Tatge, a professor of communication atin ,He thinks companies should stop relying so heavily on cloud technologies that store massive amounts of sensitive data.

"Were putting terabytes and terabytes and terabytes of data where it can be conveniently used from many locations and thats the attraction, he says. Its cheap and efficient but companies have to learn to not put so much information in there if they are going to be devastated when someone gets ahold of it.

Staff writer Gloria Goodale contributed to this report.

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