With his younger brother following along and constantly pushing him, Moore became a rising talent in action sports.

The innovative freestyle snowmobile rider, who was hurt in a crash at the Winter X Games in Colorado, died Thursday morning. He was 25.

Moore had been undergoing care at a hospital in Grand Junction since the Jan. 24 crash. Family spokeswoman Chelsea Lawson confirmed his death, the first in the 18-year history of the X Games.

"He lived his life to the fullest. He was an inspiration," Lawson said.

A former all-terrain vehicle racer, Moore switched over to snowmobiles as a teenager and quickly rose to the top of the sport. He won four Winter X Games medals, including a bronze last season when his younger brother, Colten, captured gold.

Caleb Moore was attempting a backflip in the freestyle event in Aspen last week when the skis on his 450-pound snowmobile caught the lip of the landing area, sending him flying over the handlebars. Moore landed face first into the snow with his snowmobile rolling over him.

Moore stayed down for quite some time, before walking off with help and going to a hospital to treat a concussion. Moore developed bleeding around his heart and was flown to a hospital in Grand Junction for surgery. The family later said that Moore, of Krum, Texas, also had a complication involving his brain.

Colten Moore was injured in a separate crash that same night. He suffered a separated pelvis in the spill.

The family said in a statement they were grateful for all the prayers and support they have received from people around the world.

X Games officials expressed their condolences and said Moore, a four-time X Games medallist , would be remembered "for his natural passion for life and his deep love for his family and friends."

B.C. Vaught, Caleb Moore's agent for almost a decade, said he first saw Moore when he was racing an ATV in Minnesota and signed him up to star in some action sports movies.

Later, Moore wanted to make the switch from ATVs to snowmobiles and Vaught helped him. A natural talent, it only took Moore two weeks to master a difficult backflip.

Moore honed his skills in Krum, a town about 5,000 people 50 miles northwest of Dallas that rarely sees snow. Instead, he worked on tricks by launching his sled into a foam pit. After a brief training run on snow ramps in Michigan, he was ready for his sport's biggest stage the 2010 Winter X Games.

In that contest, Moore captured a bronze in freestyle and finished sixth in best trick. Two years later, his biography on ESPN said, "Caleb Moore has gone from 'beginner's luck' to 'serious threat.'"

That was hardly a surprise to Vaught, who said, "Whatever he wanted to do, he did it."

Vaught said Moore didn't believe his sport was too extreme, but rather "it was a lifestyle." He was good at it along with ATV racing as he accumulated a garage full of trophies.

Fellow snowmobile rider Levi LaVallee recently described Moore as a "fierce competitor."

"A very creative mind," LaVallee said. "I've watched him try some crazy, crazy tricks and some of them were successful, some of them not so much. But he was first guy to get back on a sled and go try it again. It shows a lot of heart."

X Games officials said in a statement that they would conduct a thorough review of freestyle snowmobiling events and adopt any appropriate changes.

"For 18 years, we have worked closely on safety issues with athletes, course designers and other experts. Still, when the world's best compete at the highest level in any sport, risks remain," they said, noting that Moore was hurt performing a move he had done several times before.

A pair of bag-carrying spectators at the Boston Marathon who werein the wake of the bombings have filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper, .

A surveillance photo of Salaheddin Barhoum, a teenage student at Revere High School, and Yassine Zaimi, 24, appeared on the Post's front page on April 18 under the headline "Bag Men," hours before the FBI released photographs of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers suspected of carrying out the April 15 terror attack.

The lawsuit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court on Wednesday, accuses the News Corp.-owned tabloid of "libel, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy," reports the Globe. The pair are seeking unspecified damages.

The front page would lead a reasonable reader to believe that plaintiffs had bombs in their bags, that they were involved in causing the Boston Marathon bombing, the complaint reads.

When the photo landed on the cover of the Post, Zaimi was called into his boss' office, where the office manager showed him a copy of the paper.

He immediately started shaking, his mouth went dry, and he felt as though he was having a panic attack, the complaint said.

When Barhoum was shown the paper, he "began to shake and sweat, and felt dizzy and nauseous.

[Slideshow: ]

"It's the worst feeling that I can possibly feel," Barhoumon April 18.

Barhoum, a track athlete, said he wanted to run the marathon but couldn't, so he decided to watch the April 15 race instead.

The day before the Post cover came out, photos of Barhoum and Zaimi were circulated by online message boards in the frenzy to help the FBI identify the bombing suspects. Friends alerted them to the cyberhunt, and they decided to go to police to clear their names. "Authorities questioned both men, then told them they were not suspects," the Globe said.

, federal authorities did pass "around images of Barhoum, attempting to learn more information about him." But it's unclear whether that was before or after the Post ran with the story.

The paper was widely criticized for putting out an erroneous all points bulletin, but Post editor Col Allan was unapologetic.

"We stand by our story," Allan . "The image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men, as our story reported. We did not identify them as suspects."

The Post subsequentlyreporting that Barhoum and his friend had been cleared: "The two men whose photos were being circulated internally among police have been cleared as authorities determined that neither man had any role in the Boston Marathon bombings."

El Houssein Barhoum, Salah's father,last month that his family was considering a lawsuit.

We were just scared to go outside, he said.

Unemployment claims rose and an initial estimate of first-quarter economic growth was revised slightly lower. That suggests the U.S. economy may still need some time to recover from its funk and that the Fed will keep up its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases.

"The big worry that's been hitting the market lately, that the Fed might step back prematurely, might be fading a little today on the idea that the economy does need a bit more support," Jeff Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial, said.

The rise in the Standard & Poor's 500 index was led by banking and insurance stocks, which gained 1.1 percent. Among individual bank stocks, Bank of America rose to its highest in more than two years. JPMorgan also climbed.

Banks and other stocks that stand to benefit the most from an improving economy have surged this week, a change from earlier in the year when investors favored dividend-rich stocks like utilities. Now investors are selling dividend-rich stocks and buying so-called growth stocks. The S&P's financial index is up 2.1 percent this week; its utilities index is down 2.5 percent.

Even after this week's gain, by one measure bank stocks are still less expensive than the broader market. The price-to-earnings ratio for financial companies is 14.4 for banks and insurers, compared with 16.2 for all companies in the S&P 500 index, according to FactSet.

Banks are also attractive to investors because they have the capacity to increase their dividends from the current low levels, having bolstered their cash reserves after the financial crisis, Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial, said.

"Banks appear to be on the mend," said Sheldon.

Bank of America rose 35 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $13.87. JPMorgan gained 95 cents, or 1.7 percent, $55.62 and Morgan Stanley rose 84 cents, or 3.4 percent, to $25.82.

Stocks also got a boost from deal news.

NV Energy surged $4.34, or 23 percent, to $23.62, leading a broad advance in utility companies, after a company owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway agreed to pay a premium of 23 percent to buy the Nevada-based power provider.

Clearwire, a wireless network operator, surged $1.02 cents, or 29 percent, to $4.50 after satellite TV operator Dish Network raised its bid for the company to $6.9 billion.

In economic news, the number of Americans seeking unemployment aid rose last week, a sign layoffs have increased, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims for unemployment aid rose 10,000 last week to 354,000. The government also lowered its estimate for U.S. economic growth in the first three months of the year to 2.4 percent from 2.5 percent.

The S&P 500 rose in early trading, climbing as much as 13.55 points, or 0.8 percent, by late afternoon. The index then gave up some of its gain in the last hour of trading to end up just 6.05 points, or 0.4 percent, at 1,654.41.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 21.73 points, or 0.1 percent, at 15,324.53 points. The Nasdaq composite index rose 23.78 points, or 0.7 percent, to 3,491.30.

Trading has been choppy on Wall Street this week as investors wrestle with the question of whether the Fed will ease its economic stimulus. Minutes released last week from the Fed's last policy meeting showed that some central bank officials favored slowing the purchases as early as next month, if the economy improves enough. The program has been a major factor supporting a rally in stocks by encouraging investors to buy riskier assets.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 106 points Tuesday, then fell by the same amount Wednesday, leading some market watchers to ask whether the rally that has pushed the Dow and S&P 500 index to record levels may be fizzling out.

While the prospect of a change in Fed strategy is unsettling investors, ultimately, they should welcome the end of the Fed's stimulus because it means that the economy is strong enough to stand on its own two feet, JJ Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade, said.

"It's the vote of confidence," Kinahan said. "It should mean that the overall economy is healthy."

Phone companies and the makers of consumer staples were the biggest decliners, dropping 1 percent and 0.4 percent respectively. These so-called defensive stocks that pay rich dividends have fallen out of favor this month after investors pushed their prices higher at the start of the year.

Stock investors have had a good year so far. The Dow is 16.9 percent higher and has set record closing highs on nine days in May. The S&P 500 index is up 16 percent and is on track to rise for a seventh straight month, its longest winning streak since 2009.

In commodities trading, oil rose 48 cents to $93.61 a barrel. Gold rose $20.20, or 1.5 percent, to $1,411.50 an ounce. The dollar fell against the euro and the Japanese yen.

In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year note was unchanged at 2.12 percent.

Among other stocks making big moves:

EMC, a data storage equipment maker, rose $1.27, or 5.4 percent, to $24.93 after the company said it will ramp up its stock buyback program and begin paying a quarterly dividend.

Big Lots, a discount store chain, fell $3.45, or 9 percent, to $34.93 after the company reported a 21 percent drop in quarterly income and lowered its full-year revenue forecast.

First Solar rose $3.39, or 6.5 percent, to $55.15 after the company's stock was upgraded to "buy" from "neutral" by Goldman Sachs. The investment bank says the solar energy's company's earnings may rise more than Wall Street forecasts and that it might buy other companies or its own stock as it generates more cash.

"I'll never go on any other cruise line," said Craig Dzubak, 26, of Pittsburgh, who was on his first cruise. "They couldn't have handled it any better." He said he and his wife, Chelsea, were planning their next cruise while on the flight home.

Robert Alexander of Hamilton, N.J., said he was impressed by how well-prepared everyone on board was for emergencies. An actor from the ship's theater made announcements to passengers after they were evacuated from their rooms, he said.

"It just shows the training they do," Alexander said. "Our head waiter at our dinner table was one of the first responders" to the fire.

Meanwhile, the vice president of the Grand Bahama Shipyard said the ship would be repaired at his facility, though a full assessment of damage hadn't been done yet.

"We are still working with the cruise line to assess the repairs, and I sent a crew over there this morning," Reuben Byrd said Tuesday. "I'm assuming it will be a big job for us," he added.

Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez did not immediately return phone calls or emails Tuesday afternoon about the repairs. Earlier, she said she had no updates on the incident or cause.

Byrd said the shipyard didn't know about the cause, either. The U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board planned to investigate. NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said the agency has sent one senior investigator to the Bahamas. No other details about the investigation were available Tuesday.

The fire began at 2:50 a.m. Monday and was extinguished about two hours later, with no injuries reported. Photos show a substantial area of the stern burned on several decks of the ship the length of about three football fields.

Martinez said President and CEO Adam Goldstein who met with passengers Monday in the Bahamas would not give interviews Tuesday. "We're just going to focus on getting all of our guests back to Baltimore," she wrote in an email.

The ship, which left Baltimore on Friday for a seven-night cruise, was headed originally to CocoCay, Bahamas. Royal Caribbean said the ship never lost power and was able to sail into port in Freeport, Bahamas, on Monday afternoon. It remained there Tuesday. The ship launched in 1996 and was refurbished last year.

Royal Caribbean said on its website and through social media that executives met with passengers in port. The company also said passengers will get a full refund of their fare and a certificate for a future cruise.

Aboard the ship, the captain announced that passengers needed to go to their muster stations, passenger Mark J. Ormesher told The Associated Press in an email. Immediately after, his room attendant knocked on the door and told him and his girlfriend to grab their flotation devices. The attendant said it wasn't a drill.

Ormesher, a native of England, who lives in Manassas, Va., said he and his girlfriend smelled acrid smoke as they went to their muster station, the ship's casino. The crew quickly provided instruction.

"This encouraged calm amongst the passengers," he said. Passengers were required to remain at their stations for four hours, he said, and the captain "provided us as much information as we needed to stay safe."

Ormesher, who is 25 and on his first cruise, said the air conditioner had been shut off, and as the hours passed and the ship got hot, bottled water was distributed. The crew and passengers remained calm, and helped those who needed it. Crying babies were given formula and held while their parents used the bathrooms.

After passengers were allowed to leave their stations, Ormesher said he saw water on the outside deck 5 and in the hallways. The mooring lines were destroyed he said; crew members brought new lines from storage.

The damage at the rear of the ship looked bad, Ormesher said; burned out equipment was visible.

Royal Caribbean said all guests and 796 crew were safe and accounted for. Martinez said in an email that the company was arranging 11 charter flights.

The company in a statement on its website said it is "deeply sorry for this unexpected development in our guests' vacation. We understand that this may have been a very stressful time for them. We appreciate their patience and cooperation in dealing with this unfortunate situation."

Carnival Corp. also had trouble with fire aboard ship earlier this year.

The Triumph was disabled during a February cruise by an engine room fire in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving thousands of passengers to endure cold food, unsanitary conditions and power outages while the ship was towed to Mobile, Ala. It remained there for repairs until early May when it headed back to sea under its own power.

Fran Golden, a blogger for the cruise magazine Porthole, said the two incidents are different.

"I think it's easier to make people happy when they're not stuck on a ship for four days without toilets," she said.

Still, she applauded Royal Caribbean's public relations efforts after the fire. She said sending CEO Goldstein to meet with passengers was a "brilliant move." The company also Tweeted a picture of one meeting.

"It shows that you're a responsible company. It shows that you care. It's not just, 'oh well, this incident happened,'" she said. She noted that the head of Royal Caribbean's Azamara Club Cruises line, Larry Pimentel, also met with passengers in early 2012 after a fire aboard the Azamara Quest disabled one of its engines during a cruise in Asia.

Mike Driscoll, editor of the Illinois-based publication Cruise Week, said Royal Caribbean had the benefit of hindsight and could use lessons from the recent Triumph fire in its response. He said company took charge of the response on social media, sending out photos and updates. He likened it to the company saying, "Hey, we're not hiding anything."

___

Associated Press writers Kasey Jones in Baltimore and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this report. Jeff Todd reported from Nassau, Bahamas.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Banks have failed, the yen has fallen and Japan's economy has collapsed, leading to political turmoil. Its great ally, the United States, abandons it. Then comes the final straw: an attack by North Korean guerrillas posing as Korean tourists.

"From the Fatherland, With Love", by veteran Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami, chronicles the political fumbling that is the Japanese government's response and the eventual counterattack by a motley group of homeless, psychotic misfits using largely homemade weapons.

The book is written at least partly from the point of view of the North Koreans, echoing this year's Pulitzer prize-winning novel: "The Orphan Master's Son," by Adam Johnson.

Murakami, 61, who has played in rock bands and dabbled in filmmaking, is often referred to as the "enfant terrible" of Japanese literature for the dark, satiric lens he turns on Japanese society. He spoke with Reuters about his book.

Q: You've said before that all your books start from a "seed," what was the seed for this one?

A: After the end of the bubble economy, Japan - economically, politically and socially - has had a sense of being stalled. Many seriously unsettled misfits have emerged and there are crimes as a result. There hasn't been anything big like terrorism yet, but I wondered about a group of dangerous young people getting together and doing something. On top of that, I'd had (in mind) a vague story about the North Korean High Command invading a Japanese city, Fukuoka. I started feeling that I'd like to write about those misfits facing off with the North Koreans.

Q: And from there?

A: I'd thought as far as North Korea attacking, but if the real North Korean army came, it would just turn into an ordinary war. There was a Hollywood movie just at that time with Michael Caine, and they were trying to kidnap Churchill. German soldiers dressed in English uniforms and pretending to be English military, and that became a hint for me. If you have a group of soldiers who are basically set up as rebels, that allows the government to disown them - and that intrigued me. It wouldn't become a war. If it became a war, it would just turn into a war novel. I also thought the Japanese government would end up in a very tight spot this way.

Q: North Korea, as it has shown up in novels like "The Orphan Master's Son", is really still an unknown country. How did you manage to come up with the North Korean characters?

A: I read a lot of books. A lot of books. There's also North Korean movies that most people can't see - but there's one store in Tokyo that sells those movies. I must have seen 10 movies or so. As a result, I got a pretty good idea of peoples' lives. Scenes of Pyongyang and the countryside show up in the news, and of course I also spoke with refugees from North Korea in the South. They'd always been asked about their escapes, apparently - how and why - but instead I asked about their lives, where they lived, please draw a map of the towns, diagram your houses, and so on. They all thought I was a spy.

Q: Does the fact that the misfits fight back instead of the government to repel these invaders symbolize something?

A: In principle, governments and companies are supposed to guide their organization in a certain direction and have an image of what that direction is. The basic reason Japan's government is dysfunctional is that they don't really seem to understand which direction they should move in.

In most novels, if it was just entertainment, somebody like James Bond emerges and fights everybody. I didn't want to write that kind of book, I wanted the irony of these homeless and really rather strange misfits ending up doing the fighting.

Q: Was envisioning North Korea the hardest part?

A: The North Korean High Command are the ones that tell all the stories, that made things very difficult ... They tell all the stories as if they're the only main characters. But of course there are plenty of things all people have in common - taking care of their parents, falling in love. We all have basic things in common - that we're sad if our mother dies, it hurts if you break a bone, your own son and daughter are unbelievably dear to you. So I wrote based on that, and on the movies that showed a special North Korean way of thought.

Q: Can anybody outside of North Korea understand it? Perhaps the only way is through literature.

A: Nobody really knows the truth there...The thing I think of most vividly is something that happened when the commandos, pretending to be Korean tourists, checked into the hotel. One of them touches some tissues sitting there. It's the softest thing he's ever touched in his life. There's nothing like that in North Korea. First of all they were surprised that Japan had the skills to make something like this, but then they also realized that they would never lose to people who were so soft as to use fluffy paper like this. The tissue paper is a very simple symbol that shows the distance and difference between the two countries. And when I wrote that, it was a hint to me of how to enter the minds of the commandos. I figured that would allow me to really figure out how they thought.

Q: By using this kind of device in literature, you can actually approach close to the truth.

A: Yes. It's all a question of imagination.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, editing by Paul Casciato)

"There's a few chapters before we get to the last one. So it's up to us to connect the dots first," RNC chairman Reince Priebus told reporters when asked about impeachment ahead of a New Hampshire GOP fundraiser.

Some conservatives have compared recent IRS wrongdoing to the Watergate scandal, and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., last week raised the prospect of impeachment.

"There isn't a weekend that hasn't gone by that someone says to me, 'Michele, what in the world are you all waiting for in Congress? Why aren't you impeaching the president? He's been making unconstitutional actions since he came into office,'" Bachmann said during a Washington news conference with tea party leaders.

Paul, a tea party favorite who is considering a 2016 presidential bid, said such rhetoric is premature.

"We need to figure out the truth of what happened before we go anywhere else," Paul said, standing at Priebus' side.

The Internal Revenue Service has acknowledged inappropriate scrutiny of tea party groups applying for tax-exempt status ahead of the last election.

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and other senior presidential advisers knew in late April that an upcoming report was likely to find that IRS employees had targeted conservative political groups. The White House said McDonough and the other advisers did not tell Obama about the impending report, leaving him to learn the results from news reports later.

The issue has given conservatives a new rallying cry following a disappointing 2012 election cycle. But some GOP leaders worry their criticism could backfire if it appears their attacks appear too politically motived.

While striking a moderate tone on impeachment, Paul said Monday that it "stretches credulity" to think no one else in the Obama administration knew about the misconduct.

"For goodness sake, somebody's got to be fired, if not go to prison," he said in an evening speech to roughly 500 New Hampshire Republicans gathered in the state capital.

Priebus blamed Obama for creating a culture of political "guerrilla warfare" that allowed politics to infiltrate the IRS.

"I think this is just the beginning. It's certainly not the end," Priebus said. "And I'm sure there's going to be a lot more to it. We'll see how far it goes. We'll see how high it goes, too."

NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites acquired these images of the colorful blooms on April 20 and May 4, according to . On the later date, a noticeably larger bloom occurred, fueled by nutrient runoff from French rivers and warmer temperatures in the Bay of Biscay.

provide food for a whole host of creatures, from zooplankton (small drifting animals) to whales. Through photosynthesis, the blooms harness the energy of the sun and turn carbon dioxide into sugars. Sometimes, however, they can cause problems: certain species of phytoplankton can form so-calledand produce neurotoxins that affect marine mammals as well as humans. And when they get too big, the blooms can create dead zones as the algae sinks and decomposes, consuming oxygen.

The blooms can also have beneficial environmental effects. According to a study published last summer in the journal Science, phytoplankton blooms absorb about one-third of the carbon dioxide humans emit into the air each year through burning fossil fuels.

Various pigments produce the colors of the phytoplankton blooms. For example, a type of algae called Coccolithophores makes a calcium-containing shell that creates a milky appearance, according to the Earth Observatory.

Emailor follow him onor. Follow us,or. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government bond market has weakened in recent weeks but some investment strategists fear that this may only be the beginning of an extended sell-off.

They point to the relative strength of the U.S. economy with the labor market stronger than anticipated, retail sales rising and consumer sentiment climbing to its highest level in almost six years. Even the U.S. budget deficit is narrowing at a surprisingly fast pace.

There has been some debate as to whether the stock market is reflecting reality given the 17 percent gains in the S&P 500 to a new record this year. But some prominent strategists say it is the bond market, not stocks, that is out of step with economic conditions.

James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said the investor confidence that has boosted risky assets like junk bonds and equities will soon lead to a move away from Treasuries.

"I don't think the 10-year will stop at 2 percent. I think it will end the year closer to 3 percent than 2 percent," he said.

However, the primary factor in the equation is the U.S. Federal Reserve's sustained monthly purchases of $85 billion of bonds. Its demand has helped keep interest rates low, if not as low as the record 1.38 percent touched last July.

Fed officials have of late spoken a bit more openly about paring back monthly buying. In testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned against premature tightening of monetary policy, but he also said "if we see continued improvement and we have confidence that that's going to be sustained then we could in the next few meetings we could take a step down in our pace of purchases."

"The Bernanke Fed will not be quick to pull back" on its bond purchases, said Joseph Carson, chief U.S. economist at AllianceBernstein in New York, "but if they start to talk about it in the summer and start to taper purchases as early as September, we would put the 10-year Treasury yield at 2.5 percent by the end of this year and 3 percent by the first part of next year."

The U.S. 10-year Treasury note touched 2 percent on Wednesday, selling on those Bernanke comments, putting it about 35 basis points higher than at the beginning of May. Some brokerage firms see it hitting 2.50 to 3.0 percent before the end of the year. (For graphic of US 10-year bond yields http://link.reuters.com/hek58s)

"They do need more time to evaluate whether or not this fiscal drag or the inflation/deflation outlook is going to significantly hinder growth," said Sean Murphy, Treasuries trader at Societe Generale in New York.

Investors are ever-so-slightly starting to take a more bearish view. Large speculators have largely remained on the long side in the bond market since July 2012, but last week they shifted to a modest net short position in 10-year notes for the first time since March, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.

In a note late on Monday, Goldman Sachs said bond yields are the "more distorted asset class," putting the 10-year note's "fair value" at 2.5 percent. They said yields are at least 50 basis points "below their historical relationship with growth and inflation expectations."

The 10-year note has not yielded more than 2.5 percent since August 2011. Analysts estimate that if the 10-year Treasury yield rises to 2.5 percent by year-end, the benchmark note could incur a total return loss of 3.5 percent to 5 percent in that period.

Zach Pandl, strategist at Columbia Management, said the market's growth expectations for the next quarter are still below 2 percent, "and that's below the growth trend we are seeing in the timely data on the economy."

READING THE FED

Consensus among Fed officials seems to have ever-so-slightly moved in the direction of reducing bond-buying. San Francisco Fed President John Williams and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, both considered "dovish," said the Fed could end its program before year-end if labor markets continues to improve.

But removing monetary accommodation too soon could undermine economic support when world growth remains weak and improvements in the United States may be transitory. New York Fed President William Dudley said on Tuesday that he needed to see how the economy "fights its way through the significant fiscal drag" before deciding on reducing asset purchases.

Also on Tuesday, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said the Fed should keep buying bonds, while adjusting the pace of purchases, based on economic data.

"The Fed is just beginning to see what they've been hoping for all along - which is a slightly above-trend pace of economic growth with reasonably strong job creation," said Robert Tipp, chief investment strategist at Prudential Fixed Income in Newark, New Jersey, with more than $1 trillion in assets under management.

"While they could taper purchases in the fourth quarter, for them to signal their intent too early would really be playing with fire."

(Reporting By Ellen Freilich; Editing by Martin Howell)