Bears eliminated from playoff picture after Vikings beat Packers

Jay Glazer looks ahead to coaching decisions.

DETROIT — The Bears could spend between now and wild-card weekend counting the reasons they will be sitting at home with 10 wins.

A defensive meltdown in Week 13 against the Seahawks and a brutal loss at Minnesota the following week are good places to start. Their time will be better spent, however, compiling ways they can improve in 2013 after a second-half collapse could not be saved by road wins over the lowly Cardinals and Lions at the end of a season that began with great promise.

The Bears held on for a 26-24 victory over the Lions on Sunday at Ford Field, but their playoff dreams were dashed a little more than three hours later as the Vikings upset the Packers 37-34 on Blair Walsh's 29-yard field goal as time expired.

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The Bears join the 1996 Redskins as the only teams since the playoffs were expanded to 12 teams to miss the playoffs after a 7-1 start. An easy first-half schedule turned challenging, an opportunistic defense stopped scoring touchdowns and the offense again failed to blossom in the fourth season for quarterback Jay Cutler, who will enter the final year of his contract with scarce reasons for the franchise to guarantee him tens of millions of dollars.

Under first-year offensive coordinator Mike Tice, wide receiver Brandon Marshall rewrote the team record books, but far too often there was no semblance of balance, and an offensive line general manager Phil Emery did little to augment played a lot like the one he inherited. Whether the failures were due more to personnel, scheme or play calling, ultimately it's the offense of head coach Lovie Smith, who failed to guide his team to the postseason for the fifth time in six years.

Questions will persist about the future of Smith, who has an 81-63 regular-season record in nine seasons, until Emery announces his plan. It will be interesting to see what role Chairman George McCaskey takes; most believe it was his call to fire GM Jerry Angelo a year ago.

Smith is signed through next season, and Emery has been conspicuously silent this season, although he said on the WBBM-AM 780 pregame show Sunday that Smith "has done an outstanding job coaching the Bears."

"It is the full season and the whole body of work," Emery said of how he will judge Smith.

Bringing back Smith as a lame duck could be a disastrous distraction but would not be unprecedented. President Ted Phillips required Emery to keep Smith for this season, and Phillips lauded Smith for his "consistency" in explaining the decision.

Smith generally has avoided long losing streaks, but the Bears lost five of six before the final two wins. They also consistently have missed the playoffs since the 2006 Super Bowl season, and if Emery makes the unusual move of firing a coach coming off a 10-win season, it will condemn the organization's failure to clean house a year ago.

Middle linebacker Brian Urlacher, the face of the franchise for 13 seasons, has an expiring contract, and his future could be tied to Smith's. Pro Bowl defensive tackle Henry Melton might be headed to free agency. The aging defense was solid for most of the season but needs more young firepower at a time when the offense must be upgraded.

The offense showed some life Sunday, even if it couldn't put the Lions away as four trips to the red zone resulted in only one touchdown — a 1-yard run by Matt Forte, who had a season-high 24 carries for 103 yards.

Cutler, who said during the week he didn't know how the offense would get more receivers involved besides Marshall, completed five passes for 109 yards to Earl Bennett, including a 60-yard touchdown that featured nice blocking by Marshall. Alshon Jeffery had four receptions for 76 yards, while Marshall was targeted 14 times but made just five catches for 42 yards.

The Lions clawed back with three 80-yard scoring drives, but the defense got a stop when it needed one as cornerback Tim Jennings deflected a pass for Kris Durham with less than four minutes to play before Forte helped run out the clock.

Asked how he would view a 10-win season with no playoffs, Forte said, "We'll have to look forward to next year."

First, we'll see what change a new year brings.

bmbiggs@tribune.com

Twitter @BradBiggs

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Kobe Bryant Finally Joins Twitter — Kind Of

Long among the sports world’s biggest Twitter holdouts, Kobe Bryant has finally joined the social network. But he hasn’t opened an account, and won’t be around for long.

Social savvy fans are being blessed with his presence thanks to Nike Basketball, which has turned over its account to Bryant since Tuesday.

[More from Mashable: Avery Johnson’s Teenage Son Unloads on Twitter After NBA Firing]

Nike Basketball, which sponsors Bryant and produces his official sneaker, announced the Kobe takeover in a Christmas Day tweet. The account’s name is now “Kobe Bryant” although its handle remains @nikebasketball. Kobe has spent the past few days tweeting about a variety of subjects using a series of hashtags that play off the theme #counton-fill-in-the-blank.

He’s tweeted about the Lakers progress as a team:

[More from Mashable: FanDuel Is Fantasy Sports With a Twist]

He’s tweeted behind-the-scenes snippets of training and treatment:

And he’s tweeted a totally normal, typical, everyday holiday family portrait:

Bryant actually joined Twitter for realsies back in 2011, but then deleted the account after racking up more than 35,000 followers in a just a few hours. He’s one of the NBA’s few stars without a Twitter presence. Nearly 90% of the league’s players are on the social network, according to Twitter.

But Bryant did become much more active on Facebook this summer, especially while traveling with the United States’ Olympic basketball team. He has nearly 15 million fans there, and reportedly writes his status updates and messages himself, with editing and actual posting done by support staff. In November he asked Facebook fans whether to join Instagram or Twitter next, and on Monday hinted in a status update that he may soon open an Instagram account.

What athletes would you most like to see get more active on social media? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS: 30 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts This NBA SEASON

1. @NBA

The NBA is arguably the world’s most engaging sports league on social media. Follow its official Twitter account for news, highlights and promotions.

Click here to view this gallery.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr, Keith Allison

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Comedian Katt Williams arrested in LA

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Katt Williams, the comedian who has repeatedly found himself on the wrong side of the law, is out on bail after being arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of child endangerment and possession of a stolen gun.

Police Officer Norma Eisenman says Williams was taken into custody Friday after the LA County Department of Children and Family Services did a welfare check at his home. Authorities found more than one firearm, one of which had been reported stolen.

Eisenman says the DCFS did not specify how many children lived at the home or whether they were removed.

The 41-year-old was arrested this month on a felony warrant related to a police chase. In November, he was accused of hitting a man on the head with a bottle during a fight.

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Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Revolutionary in the Study of the Brain, Dies at 103

Fabio Campana/European Pressphoto Agency

Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate, in 2007.

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks, opening the way for the study of how those processes can go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Rome. She was 103.

Her death was announced by Mayor Gianni Alemanno of Rome.

“I don’t use these words easily, but her work revolutionized the study of neural development, from how we think about it to how we intervene,” said Dr. Gerald D. Fishbach, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at Columbia.

Scientists had virtually no idea how embryo cells built a latticework of intricate connections to other cells when Dr. Levi-Montalcini began studying chicken embryos in the bedroom of her house in Turin, Italy, during World War II. After years of obsessive study, much of it at Washington University in St. Louis with Dr. Viktor Hamburger, she found a protein that, when released by cells, attracted nerve growth from nearby developing cells.

In the early 1950s, she and Dr. Stanley Cohen, a biochemist also at Washington University, isolated and described the chemical, known as nerve growth factor — and in the process altered the study of cell growth and development. Scientists soon realized that the protein gave them a new way to study and understand disorders of neural growth, like cancer, or of degeneration, like Alzheimer’s disease, and to potentially develop therapies.

In the years after the discovery, Dr. Levi-Montalcini, Dr. Cohen and others described a large family of such growth-promoting agents, each of which worked to regulate the growth of specific cells. One, called epidermal growth factor and discovered by Dr. Cohen, plays a central role in breast cancer; in part by studying its behavior, scientists developed drugs to combat the abnormal growth.

In 1986, Dr. Levi-Montalcini and Dr. Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work.

Dr. Cohen, now an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt University, said Dr. Levi-Montalcini possessed a rare combination of intuition and passion, as well as biological knowledge. “She had this feeling for what was happening biologically,” he said. “She was an intuitive observer, and she saw that something was making these nerve connections grow and was determined to find out what it was.”

One of four children, Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin on April 22, 1909, to Adamo Levi, an engineer, and Adele Montalcini, a painter, both Italian Jews who traced their roots to the Roman Empire. In keeping with the Victorian customs of the time, Mr. Levi discouraged his three daughters from entering college, fearing that it would interfere with their lives as wives and mothers.

It was not a future that Rita wanted. She had decided to become a doctor and told her father so. “He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation,” she wrote in her autobiography, “In Praise of Imperfection” (1988). He also agreed to support her.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin medical school in 1936. Two years later, Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. She began her research anyway, setting up a small laboratory in her home to study chick embryos, inspired by the work of Dr. Hamburger, a prominent researcher in St. Louis who also worked with the embryos.

During World War II, the family fled Turin for the countryside, and in 1943 the invasion by Germany forced them to Florence. The family returned at the close of the war, in 1945, and Dr. Hamburger soon invited Dr. Levi-Montalcini to work for a year in his lab at Washington University.

She stayed on, becoming an associate professor in 1956 and a full professor in 1958. In 1962, she helped establish the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome and became its first director. She retired from Washington University in 1977, becoming a guest professor and splitting her time between Rome and St. Louis.

Italy honored her in 2001 by making her a senator for life.

An elegant presence, confident and passionate, she was a sought-after speaker until late in life. “At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20,” she said in 2009.

She never married and had no children. In addition to her autobiography, she was the author or co-author of dozens of research studies and received numerous professional awards, including the National Medal of Science.

“It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain,” Dr. Levi-Montalcini wrote in her autobiography, “and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 30, 2012

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the year Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. It was 1938, not 1936.

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Airlines' plans for 2013 up in the air

Airfares will be on the rise in 2013, and those niggling airline fees will metamorphose into optional bundles of services.

Meanwhile, onboard amenities, such as Internet access, entertainment options and refreshed interiors, will abound among U.S. carriers, but tight seating in coach probably won't improve.

And 2013 might be the year you'll finally be able to keep your smartphone, iPad or Kindle turned on during takeoffs and landings.

Those are some of the predictions airline industry experts foresee in the new year. Here's the lowdown on fares, fees and flight experience for 2013.

Higher fares forecast

Airlines pushed through six fare increases in 2012. Expect a similar number in the new year, said Rick Seaney, co-founder of FareCompare.com.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see airfares rise like they did this year, between 3 and 6 percent domestically," Seaney said. That's because airlines will succeed in properly balancing supply and demand by trimming the number of seats they offer to match "decent, but bordering on tepid, demand."

Fares are typically driven by four main factors: competition, most of all, then supply, demand and oil prices. "If you look at those drivers, they are, for the most part, on the airlines' side, which gives them pricing power," Seaney said.

That doesn't mean there won't be good airfare deals on some flights on some routes. And consumers will still see lower prices during off-peak days, such as Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday departures and off-peak seasons, such as late January and early February. Like this year, summertime fares probably will stay relatively high, he said.

Airline mergers can also affect fares, and a huge one could take place early in 2013. American Airlines and US Airways are in talks about combining.

The general consensus among consumer advocates is that airline mergers aren't good for passengers.

"Any time you have two big airlines merging, that means consumers have less choice and competition is reduced, which only translates to higher prices," said Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance.

However, a bit of new evidence bucks that conventional wisdom. Despite four mega-mergers in the U.S. airline industry during the past seven years, fares have not increased significantly, just 1.8 percent per year, according to a December report from professional services firm PwC. In fact, average domestic fares decreased 1 percent from 2004 to 2011 when inflation is factored in, the report found.

Fliers know full well, however, that the fare isn't all that counts nowadays. There are those fees.

Fees get a makeover

The most noticeable trend in recent years with airline fees is that there are more of them: fees for checked bags, aisle seats, onboard meals, among many others. 

"What we hear is that people pay their fare and get to the airport and feel they're constantly being nickeled-and-dimed to death for things that used to be included," said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org. 

The top five U.S. carriers alone generated more than $12 billion in fees in 2011, with even more expected through 2012, according to the PwC report.

What consumers call fees, airlines call "unbundling" — making a la carte choices from services that used to be included in the fare.

A likely trend for 2013 might be called "rebundling," airlines packaging a few now-optional services and charging for a tier of service.

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Senate leaders to make last-ditch 'fiscal cliff' effort

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and U.S. congressional leaders agreed on Friday to make a final effort to prevent the United States from going over the "fiscal cliff," setting off intense bargaining over Americans' tax rates as a New Year's Eve deadline looms.

With only days left to avoid steep tax hikes and spending cuts that could cause a recession, two Senate veterans will try to forge a deal that has eluded the White House and Congress for months.

Obama said he was "modestly optimistic" an agreement could be found. But neither side appeared to give much ground at a White House meeting of congressional leaders on Friday.

What they did agree on was to task Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and Mitch McConnell, who heads the chamber's Republican minority, with reaching a budget agreement by Sunday at the latest.

"The hour for immediate action is here. It is now. We're now at the point where in just four days, every American's tax rates are scheduled to go up by law. Every American's paycheck will get considerably smaller. And that would be the wrong thing to do," Obama told reporters.

A total of $600 billion in tax hikes and automatic cuts to government spending will start kicking in on Tuesday - New Year's Day - if politicians cannot reach a deal. Economists fear the measures will push the U.S. economy into a recession.

Pessimism about the fiscal cliff helped push U.S. stocks down on Friday for a fifth straight day. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 158.20 points, or 1.21 percent. Retailers are blaming worries about the "fiscal cliff" for lackluster Christmas season shopping.

Under the plan hashed out on Friday, any agreement between McConnell and Reid would be backed by the Senate and then approved in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives before the end of the year.

But the House could well be the graveyard of any accord.

A core of fiscal conservatives there strongly opposes Obama's efforts to raise taxes for the wealthiest as part of a plan to close America's budget deficit. House Republicans also want to see Obama commit to major spending cuts.

Talks between Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner collapsed last week when several dozen Republicans defied their leader and rejected a plan to raise rates for those earning $1 million and above.

A Democratic aide said Boehner stuck mainly to "talking points" in Friday's White House meeting, with the message that the House had acted on the budget and it was now time for the Senate to move.

TALKS ON 'BIG NUMBERS'

The two Senate leaders and their aides will plunge into talks on Saturday that will focus mainly on the threshold for raising income taxes on households with upper-level earnings, a Democratic aide said. Analysts say both sides could agree on raising taxes for households earning more than $400,000 or $500,000 a year.

The pair will also discuss whether the estate tax should be kept at current low levels or allowed to rise, the aide said.

Democrat Reid warned of tough talks.

"It's not easy, we're dealing with big numbers, and some of that stuff we do is somewhat complicated," he said.

McConnell described Friday's White House summit, also attended by Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, as "a good meeting."

"So we'll be working hard to try to see if we can get there in the next 24 hours. So I'm hopeful and optimistic," he said.

If things cannot be worked out between the Senate leaders, Obama said he wanted both chambers in Congress to vote on a backup plan that would increase taxes only for households with more than $250,000 of annual income.

The plan would also extend unemployment insurance for about 2 million Americans and set up a framework for a larger deficit reduction deal next year.

There are signs in the options market that investor fear is taking hold. The CBOE Volatility Index, or the VIX, the market's favored anxiety indicator, has remained at relatively low levels throughout this process, but it moved on Friday above 22, the highest level since June.

But some in the market were resigned to Washington going beyond the New Year's Day deadline, as long as a serious agreement on deficit reduction comes out of the talks in early January.

"Regardless of whether the government resolves the issues now, any deal can easily be retroactive. We're not as concerned with January 1 as the market seems to be," said Richard Weiss, a senior money manager at American Century Investments.

Another component of the "fiscal cliff" - $109 billion in automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs - is set to kick in on Wednesday.

S&P rating agency said on Friday the fiscal cliff impasse did not affect the U.S. sovereign rating.

That lifted the immediate threat of a downgrade from the agency, which cut the United States' triple-A rating in August, 2011 in an unprecedented move after a similar partisan budget fight.

(Additional reporting by David Lawder, Thomas Ferraro, Rachelle Younglai and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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China tightens Internet controls, legalizes post deletion

BEIJING (Reuters) – China unveiled tighter Internet controls on Friday, legalizing the deletion of posts or pages which are deemed to contain “illegal” information and requiring service providers to hand over such information to the authorities for punishment.

The rules signal that the new leadership headed by Communist Party chief Xi Jinping will continue muzzling the often scathing, raucous online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for debate.

The new regulations, announced by the official Xinhua news agency, also require Internet users to register with their real names when signing up with network providers, though, in reality, this already happens.

Chinese authorities and Internet companies such as Sina Corp have long since closely monitored and censored what people say online, but the government has now put measures such as deleting posts into law.

“Service providers are required to instantly stop the transmission of illegal information once it is spotted and take relevant measures, including removing the information and saving records, before reporting to supervisory authorities,” the rules state.

The restrictions follow a series of corruption scandals amongst lower-level officials exposed by Internet users, something the government has said it is trying to encourage.

Li Fei, deputy head of parliament’s legislative affairs committee, said the new rules did not mean people needed to worry about being unable to report corruption online. But he added a warning too.

“When people exercise their rights, including the right to use the Internet, they must do so in accordance with the law and constitution, and not harm the legal rights of the state, society … or other citizens,” he told a news conference.

Chinese Internet users already cope with extensive censorship measures, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights and elite politics, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked.

Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina’s wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names.

The new rules were quickly condemned by some Weibo users.

“So now they are getting Weibo to help in keeping records and reporting it to authorities. Is this the freedom of expression we are promised in the constitution?” complained one user.

“We should resolutely oppose such a covert means to interfere with Internet freedom,” wrote another.

The government says tighter monitoring of the Internet is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online, disseminating pornography and spreading panic with unfounded rumors, pointing out that many other countries already have such rules.

Despite periodic calls for political reform, the party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Sally Huang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Fans to join Beyonce onstage at Super Bowl

NEW YORK (AP) — All the single ladies — and fellas — will have a chance to join Beyonce onstage at the upcoming Super Bowl.

Pepsi announced Friday that 100 fans will hit the stage when the Grammy-winning diva performs on Feb. 3 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. A contest that kicks off Saturday will allow fans to submit photos of themselves in various poses, including head bopping, feet tapping and hip shaking. Those pictures will be used in a TV ad introducing Beyonce’s halftime performance, and 50 people — along with a friend — will be selected to join the singer onstage.

The photo contest — at www.pepsi.com/halftime — ends Jan. 19, but Jan. 11 is the cut-off date for those interested in appearing onstage with Beyonce.

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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Wall Street ends sour week with 5th straight decline

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell for a fifth straight day on Friday, dropping 1 percent and marking the S&P 500's longest losing streak in three months as the federal government edged closer to the "fiscal cliff" with no solution in sight.

President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders met at the White House to work on a solution for the draconian debt-reduction measures set to take effect beginning next week. Stocks, which have been influenced by little else than the flood of fiscal cliff headlines from Washington in recent days, extended losses going into the close with the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 each losing 1 percent, after reports that Obama would not offer a new plan to Republicans. The Dow closed below 13,000 for the first time since December 4.

"I was stunned Obama didn't have another plan, and that's absolutely why we sold off," said Mike Shea, managing partner at Direct Access Partners LLC in New York. "He's going to force the House to come to him with something different. I think that's a surprise. The entire market is disappointed in a lack of leadership in Washington."

In a sign of investor anxiety, the CBOE Volatility Index , known as the VIX, jumped 16.69 percent to 22.72, closing at its highest level since June. Wall Street's favorite fear barometer has risen for five straight weeks, surging more than 40 percent over that time.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 158.20 points, or 1.21 percent, to 12,938.11 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 15.67 points, or 1.11 percent, to 1,402.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 25.59 points, or 0.86 percent, to end at 2,960.31.

For the week, the Dow fell 1.9 percent. The S&P 500 also lost 1.9 percent for the week, marking its worst weekly performance since mid-November. The Nasdaq finished the week down 2 percent. In contrast, the VIX jumped 22 percent for the week.

Pessimism continued after the market closed, with stock futures indicating even steeper losses. S&P 500 futures dropped 26.7 points, or 1.9 percent, eclipsing the decline seen in the regular session.

All 10 S&P 500 sectors fell during Friday's regular trading, with most posting declines of 1 percent, but energy and material shares were among the weakest of the day, with both groups closely tied to the pace of growth.

An S&P energy sector index slid 1.8 percent, with Exxon Mobil down 2 percent at $85.10, and Chevron Corp off 1.9 percent at $106.45. The S&P material sector index fell 1.3 percent, with U.S. Steel Corp down 2.6 percent at $23.03.

Decliners outnumbered advancers by a ratio of slightly more than 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, while on the Nasdaq, two stocks fell for every one that rose.

"We've been whipsawing around on low volume and rumors that come out on the cliff," said Eric Green, senior portfolio manager at Penn Capital Management in Philadelphia, who helps oversee $7 billion in assets.

With time running short, lawmakers may opt to allow the higher taxes and across-the-board federal spending cuts to go into effect and attempt to pass a retroactive fix soon after the new year. Standard & Poor's said an impasse on the cliff wouldn't affect the sovereign credit rating of the United States.

"We're not as concerned with January 1 as the market seems to be," said Richard Weiss, senior money manager at American Century Investments, in Mountain View, California. "Things will be resolved, just maybe not on a good timetable, and any deal can easily be retroactive."

Trading volume was light throughout the holiday-shortened week, with just 4.46 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT on Friday, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares. On Monday, the U.S. stock market closed early for Christmas Eve, and the market was shut on Tuesday for Christmas. Many senior traders were absent this week for the holidays.

Highlighting Wall Street's sensitivity to developments in Washington, stocks tumbled more than 1 percent on Thursday after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned that a deal was unlikely before the deadline. But late in the day, stocks nearly bounced back when the House said it would hold an unusual Sunday session to work on a fiscal solution.

Positive economic data failed to alter the market's mood.

The National Association of Realtors said contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose in November to their highest level in 2-1/2 years, while a report from the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago showed business activity in the U.S. Midwest expanded in December.

"Economic reports have been very favorable, and once Congress comes to a resolution, the market should resume an upward trend, based on the data," said Weiss, who helps oversee about $125 billion in assets. "All else being equal, we see any further decline as a buying opportunity."

Barnes & Noble Inc rose 4.3 percent to $14.97 after the top U.S. bookstore chain said British publisher Pearson Plc had agreed to make a strategic investment in its Nook Media subsidiary. But Barnes & Noble also said its Nook business will not meet its previous projection for fiscal year 2013.

Shares of magicJack VocalTec Ltd jumped 10.3 percent to $17.95 after the company gave a strong fourth-quarter outlook and named Gerald Vento president and chief executive, effective January 1.

The U.S.-listed shares of Canadian drugmaker Aeterna Zentaris Inc surged 13.8 percent to $2.47 after the company said it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on a special protocol assessment by the FDA for a Phase 3 registration trial in endometrial cancer with AEZS-108 treatment.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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