US fixed mortgage rates fall to new record lows

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fixed U.S. mortgage rates fell again to new record lows, providing prospective buyers with more incentive to brave a modestly recovering housing market.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average on the 30-year loan dropped to 3.62 percent. That's down from 3.66 percent last week and the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.
The average rate on the 15-year mortgage, a popular refinancing option, slipped to 2.89 percent, below last week's previous record of 2.94 percent.
The rate on the 30-year loan has fallen to or matched record low levels in 10 of the past 11 weeks. And it's been below 4 percent since December.
Cheap mortgages have provided a lift to the long-suffering housing market. Sales of new and previously occupied homes are up from the same time last year. Home prices are rising in most markets. And homebuilders are starting more projects and spending at a faster pace.
The number of people who signed contracts to buy previously occupied homes rose in May, matching the fastest pace in two years, the National Association of Realtors reported last week. That suggests Americans are growing more confident in the market.
Low rates could also provide some help to the economy if more people refinance. When people refinance at lower rates, they pay less interest on their loans and have more money to spend. Many homeowners use the savings on renovations, furniture, appliances and other improvements, which help drive growth.
Still, the pace of home sales remains well below healthy levels. Many people are still having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can't afford larger down payments required by banks.
And the sluggish job market could deter some would-be buyers from making a purchase this year. The U.S. economy created only 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year. The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent last month, up from 8.1 percent in April.
The government reports Friday on June employment.
Mortgage rates have been dropping because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. A weaker U.S. economy and uncertainty about how Europe will resolve its debt crisis have led investors to buy more Treasury securities, which are considered safe investments. As demand for Treasurys increase, the yield falls.
To calculate average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week.
The average does not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.
The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.8 point, up from 0.7 percent last week. The fee for 15-year loans also was 0.7 point, unchanged from the previous week.
The average rate on one-year adjustable rate mortgages fell to 2.68 percent, down from 2.74 percent last week. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans rose to 0.5 point, up from 0.4 point.
The average rate on five-year adjustable rate mortgages was unchanged at 2.79 percent. The fee stayed at 0.6 point.

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W.Va. teachers to attend 'Finance University'

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia University's business school is teaming up with the state auditor's office and a nonprofit economic literacy group called the West Virginia Jump$start Coalition to present a conference for educators to learn personal finance — and how to teach it to their students.
This year's Finance University is the 10th annual event for middle- and high-school teachers. It will be held Monday through Friday at the Charleston Conference Center.
Conference organizers say that participants will take a course to prepare for teaching their students personal-finance topics, including credit-card use, saving and investing, insurance, retirement plans, and more. Fifteen financial experts also are expected to give presentations.

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Average on 30-year US mortgage stays at 3.55 pct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage held steady this week, staying slightly above the lowest level on record. Low mortgage rates have aided a modest housing recovery.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan was unchanged at 3.55 percent. In July, the rate fell to 3.49 percent, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.
The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, slipped to 2.85 percent, down from 2.86 percent last week. That's above the record low of 2.80 percent.
Cheap mortgages have helped lift the housing market. Sales of new and previously occupied homes are well above last year's levels. Low rates have also allowed people to refinance, which lowers monthly mortgage payments and helps boosts consumer spending.
Home prices are increasing more consistently this year, largely because the supply of homes has shrunk while sales have risen. And the number of Americans who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth declined in the second quarter.
Still, the housing market has a long way back. Home sales are below healthy levels. And many people are still having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can't afford larger down payments required by banks.
Mortgage rates are low because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. A weaker U.S. economy and uncertainty about how Europe will resolve its debt crisis have led investors to buy more Treasury securities, which are considered safe investments. As demand for Treasurys increase, the yield falls.
To calculate average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week.
The average does not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.
The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.6 point, down from 0.7 point last week. The fee for 15-year loans was changed at 0.6.
The average rate on one-year adjustable rate mortgages was steady at 2.61 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans also was unchanged, at 0.4 point.
The average rate on five-year adjustable rate mortgages fell to 2.72 percent from 2.75 percent. The fee declined to 0.6 point from 0.7.

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Ahead of the Bell: Weekly mortgage rates

WASHINGTON (AP) — Loan buyer Freddie Mac reports Thursday on whether mortgage rates are continuing to hold near recent low rates.
Last week the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage held steady at 3.55 percent, slightly above the record low of 3.49 percent that was reached in July. Meanwhile, the average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, dipped to 2.85 percent from 2.86 percent.
Cheap mortgages have helped the housing market recover this year. Sales of new and previously occupied homes are well above last year's levels.
Home prices are increasing more consistently this year, largely because the supply of homes has shrunk while sales have risen. And the number of Americans who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth declined in the second quarter.
Still, the housing market has a long way back. Home sales are below healthy levels. And many people are still having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can't afford larger down payments required by banks.

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Rate on 30-year mortgage hits record low 3.40 pct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages fell again to new record lows. The decline suggests the Federal Reserve's stimulus efforts may be having an impact on mortgage rates.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan dropped to 3.40 percent. That's down from last week's rate of 3.49 percent, which was the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.
The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, fell to 2.73 percent, down from the record low of 2.77 percent last week.
The Fed is spending $40 billion a month to buy mortgage-backed securities. The goal is to lower mortgage rates and help the housing recovery. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the program will continue until there is substantial improvement in the job market.
Some economists expect mortgage rates to fall even further because of the Fed's bond purchases.
The housing market already is benefiting from the lowest mortgage rates on record. Sales of both previously occupied and newly built homes in the U.S. are up from last year. Home prices are rising more consistently. And builders are more confident in the market and are starting to build more homes.
The broader economy is also likely to benefit from a revival in the housing market. When home prices rise, Americans typically feel wealthier and spend more.
Still, the housing market has a long way back. Sales and construction rates remain below healthy levels.
And some economists question whether lower rates will make much of a difference. The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage has been below 4 percent since early December. So most people who can qualify have likely already taken advantage of the lower rates.
Many people who would like to refinance or buy a home can't because they fail to meet stricter lending requirements or don't have enough money to make a down payment.
To calculate average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week.
The average does not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.
The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.6 point, unchanged from last week. The fee for 15-year loans also held steady at 0.6 point.
The average rate on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages dipped to 2.60 percent from 2.61 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans was unchanged at 0.4 point.
The average rate on five-year adjustable-rate mortgages fell to 2.71 percent from 2.76 percent. The fee remained at 0.6 point.

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Pope pardons ex-butler who stole, leaked documents

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI granted his former butler a Christmas pardon Saturday, forgiving him in person during a jailhouse meeting for stealing and leaking private papers in one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times.
After the 15-minute meeting, Paolo Gabriele was freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lives with his wife and three children. The Vatican said he couldn't continue living or working in the Vatican, but said it would find him housing and a job elsewhere soon.
"This is a paternal gesture toward someone with whom the pope for many years shared daily life," according to a statement from the Vatican secretariat of state.
The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles, intrigue and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons in the highest levels of the Catholic Church.
Gabriele, 46, was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found what they called an "enormous" stash of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal on Oct. 6 and has been serving his 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks.
He told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the 85-year-old pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican and thought that exposing it publicly would put the church back on the right track.
The publication of the leaked documents, first on Italian television then in Nuzzi's book "His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI's Secret Papers" convulsed the Vatican all year, a devastating betrayal of the pope from within his papal family that exposed the unseemly side of the Catholic Church's governance.
The papal pardon had been widely expected before Christmas, and the jailhouse meeting Benedict used to personally deliver it recalled the image of Pope John Paul II visiting Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot him in 1981, while he served his sentence in an Italian prison.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was "intense" and "personal" and said that during it Benedict "communicated to him in person that he had accepted his request for pardon, commuting his sentence."
None of the documents threatened the papacy. Most were of interest only to Italians, as they concerned relations between Italy and the Vatican and a few local scandals and personalities. Their main aim appeared to be to discredit Benedict's trusted No. 2, the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
Vatican officials have said the theft shattered the confidentiality that typically governs correspondence with the pope. Cardinals, bishops and everyday laymen write to him about spiritual and practical matters assuming that their words will be treated with the discretion for which the Holy See is known.
As a result, it prompted a remarkable reaction, with the pope naming a commission of three cardinals to investigate alongside Vatican prosecutors. Italian news reports have said new security measures and personnel checks have been put in place to prevent a repeat offense.
Gabriele insisted he acted alone, with no accomplices, but it remains an open question whether any other heads will roll. Technically the criminal investigation remains open, and few in the Vatican believe Gabriele could have construed such a plot without at least the endorsement if not the outright help of others.
A Vatican computer expert, Claudio Sciarpelletti, was convicted Nov. 10 of aiding and abetting Gabriele by changing his testimony to Vatican investigators about the origins of an envelope with Gabriele's name on it that was found in his desk. His two-month sentence was suspended.
Benedict met this past week with the cardinals who investigated the origins of the leaks, but it wasn't known if they provided him with any further updates or were merely meeting ahead of the expected pardon for Gabriele.
As supreme executive, legislator and judge in Vatican City, the pope had the power to pardon Gabriele even before he went to trial. The only question was when it would come.

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Pope grants pre-Christmas pardon to former butler

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict made a surprise pre-Christmas visit to the jail holding his former butler on Saturday and pardoned him for stealing and leaking documents that alleged corruption in the Holy See.
The pope and Paolo Gabriele spent about 15 minutes together before Gabriele was freed and allowed to return to his family in their Vatican apartment, a Vatican spokesman said.
Gabriele was convicted of aggravated theft on October 6 in a case that shone unwelcome publicity on the Vatican and had been serving an 18-month sentence in a jail cell in the city state's police headquarters.
"This was a paternal gesture towards a person with whom the pope shared his daily life for several years," Father Federico Lombardi, a spokesman, said.
"This is a happy ending in this Christmas season," he said.
Gabriele was arrested in May after Vatican police found many documents in his possession that had been stolen from the pope's office.
The former butler gave them to the media in what mushroomed into an embarrassing scandal for Benedict's pontificate that became known as "Vatileaks".
Gabriele told investigators he had leaked the documents because he saw "evil and corruption everywhere in the Church" and that information was being hidden from the pope.
The Vatican said the pope had also pardoned a second Vatican employee, Claudio Sciarpelletti, who was convicted in a separate trial of helping Gabriele and given a two month suspended sentence.
Gabriele will no longer be able to work in the Vatican but will be helped to find a job and start a new life outside its walls together with his family, the Vatican said.
"VISCERAL LOVE"
Gabriele, 46, told the court that convicted him at the trial - one of the most sensational in the recent history of the Holy See - that he did not consider himself a thief and that he had done what he did out of "visceral" love for the Church.
In one of the most dramatic betrayals of trust in Vatican history, Gabriele, who served the pope his meals and helped him dress, photocopied sensitive documents under the nose of his immediate superiors in a small office adjacent to the papal living quarters in the Apostolic Palace.
He then hid more than 1,000 copies and original documents, including some the pope had marked "to be destroyed," among many thousands of other papers and old newspaper clippings in a huge armoire in the family apartment inside the Vatican walls.
A former member of the small, select group known as "the papal family", Gabriele was one of fewer than 10 people who had a key to an elevator leading directly to the pope's apartments.
He said during the trial that from his perch as papal butler he was able to see how easily a powerful man could be manipulated by aides and kept in the dark about things he should have known.
In the course of the trial, intimate details emerged of the inner workings of an institution long renowned for its secrecy.
The documents Gabriele leaked triggered one of the biggest crises of Pope Benedict's papacy when they emerged in a muckraking expose by an Italian journalist earlier this year.
The case was all the more embarrassing for the Vatican because it came at a time when it was trying to limit the reputational fallout from a series of scandals involving sexual abuse of minors by clerics around the world as well as from mismanagement at its bank.

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Merkel rival attacks Germany's soaring arms exports

BERLIN (Reuters) - Peer Steinbrueck, set to challenge Angela Merkel as German leader next year, criticized her centre-right government on Saturday for letting arms exports surge and vowed to end that if his centre-left opposition wins power.
The former finance minister, nominated to lead the Social Democrats (SPD) into September's election against Merkel, said it was a scandal that Germany has become the world's third largest arms exporter on her watch.
Arms exports are a sensitive issue in Germany due to its Nazi past and the role arms makers such as Krupp played in stoking 19th and 20th century wars with exports to both sides.
After World War Two, successive West German and later united German governments placed tight restrictions on arms exports, especially to regions where there were armed conflicts or where human rights were poorly respected.
"It's a scandal and extremely dangerous that Germany has become the world's third largest exporter of weapons," Steinbrueck, who hopes to form a coalition with the Greens party, told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper on Saturday.
"An SPD-Greens government led by me would change that," said Steinbrueck, 65. "We're even exporting weapons to regions in conflict and to areas where human rights aren't respected."
The SPD and Greens would win a combined 43 percent of the vote, according to an ARD TV opinion poll by the Infratest dimap institute published on Friday. That is more than Merkel's conservatives but not enough to form a majority coalition.
Merkel's conservatives would win 40 percent. Her Free Democrat (FDP) allies would win 4 percent, failing to clear the 5 percent hurdle needed for seats. The Left party would win 7 percent, according to the poll. If so, the SPD-Greens bloc would need 48 percent of votes to secure a parliamentary majority.
As a result, many analysts see a repeat of the 2005-2009 grand coalition of Merkel's conservatives and the SPD as a likely election outcome.
In 2001 Germany was the world's sixth largest arms exporter with $925 million sold abroad, behind the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Italy.
Germany now trails only the United States and Russia after exporting $2.476 billion in 2010, according to latest available data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Germany ranks ninth in the world on its own defense spending.
Steinbrueck's pre-Christmas attack on Merkel for the increased arms exports is not likely to figure as a major election issue in 2013. But it reflects his fighting spirit on an issue that is important for some leftist voters.
It also aims to deflect criticism from Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, an FDP leader who last week blamed the SPD-Greens' government from 1998 to 2005 for the increase in arms exports. He said many recent weapons deliveries to the Middle East were set up under the SPD-Greens government.
Steinbrueck, facing an uphill battle against the popular Merkel, said he was not afraid to criticize her government's foreign policies, adding he would rely on advice from his friend, former Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
"I've been around in the world quite a bit," Steinbrueck told the newspaper. "At the appropriate time, I'll be making comments on foreign policy on the campaign trail."
The arms issue has made it into the headlines amid a recent report in Der Spiegel magazine that Saudi Arabia wants to buy several hundred armored fighting vehicles from Germany.
Der Spiegel suggested the vehicles could be used in combating possible demonstrations. According to other media reports Germany gave pre-approval for the export of 270 Leopard 2 tanks to Saudi Arabia in 2011. The government has declined to comment.

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Car bomb kills five in Damascus: Syrian Observatory

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A car bomb killed five people and wounded dozens in the eastern Damascus district of Qaboun on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Another activist group in Damascus gave no figures for the number of people killed in the blast but said bodies were still being recovered from wreckage caused by the explosion.
The British-based Observatory, which monitors violence across Syria through a network of sources on the ground, also reported clashes between rebel fighters and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the edge of the southern Damascus neighborhood of Hajar al-Aswad.
The district is next to the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, which was taken over by rebels this week.
The Observatory says 44,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising erupted against Assad in March last year.

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UK prosecutors consider charges over royal hoax callapologised for their actions.

LONDON (Reuters) - British detectives investigating the death of a nurse found hanged after she took a prank phone call at a hospital treating Prince William's pregnant wife Kate have passed an evidence file to prosecutors, police said on Saturday.
Public prosecutors must decide whether the case is strong enough to bring charges over a stunt that was condemned around the world and fuelled concerns about media ethics.
Indian-born Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found hanging in her hospital lodgings in London, days after she answered the hoax call from an Australian radio station, an inquest heard.
She put the call through to a colleague who disclosed details of the Duchess of Cambridge's condition during treatment for an extreme form of morning sickness in the early stages of pregnancy.
"Officers submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for them to consider whether any potential offences may have been committed by making the hoax call," London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
A CPS spokesman confirmed it had received the file, but declined to comment on the timing or nature of possible charges.
"That is what we will be considering," he said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has described the case as a "complete tragedy" and has said many lessons will have to be learned from the nurse's death.
Australia's media regulator has launched an investigation into the phone call. Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of radio station 2Day FM, has apologized for the stunt.
Britain's own media is already under pressure to agree a new system of self-regulation and avoid state intervention following a damning inquiry into reporting practices.
The presenters who made the call, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, have apologised for their actions.

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Soccer-Juve defender Chiellini faces lengthy layoff

ROME, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini has confirmed that he will miss Friday's Serie A meeting with Cagliari due to a calf injury.
The 28-year-old Chiellini underwent a scan on Thursday and while an exact timeline for a possible return is unknown, he could be facing up to three months on the sidelines.
"Unfortunately the calf injury has been confirmed and I have to stop for a while," Chiellini wrote on his Twitter page.
"But I am going to do my best to come back as soon as possible and stronger than before! Thank you all very much for all the messages for a fast recovery that you are sending me!"
Friday's match will take place at Parma's Ennio Tardini stadium after Cagliari's usual home ground, the Is Arenas stadium, failed to receive clearance from the local council.
Juventus are top of Serie A with 41 points, seven clear of the second-placed Inter Milan.

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Soccer-Qatar plough up to 200 mln euros a year into PSG-media

PARIS, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Qatar will pour up to 200 million euros ($265 million) a year into Paris Saint-Germain under an advertising contract designed to help the French club meet UEFA's financial fair-play rules, according to French media.
The deal, already submitted to French football's controlling body (DNCG), has been struck with the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) and will run until 2016, daily Le Parisien said on Thursday.
PSG have spent more than 250 million euros in transfers since the Qatari fund QSI bought the club in June 2011 and must comply with new financial fair play regulations, which require clubs not to spend more than they earn.
PSG are playing in the Champions League for the first time since 2004 and broadcasting rights for the French top flight are the lowest in the top European leagues, so the club were looking for a new revenue source.
According to Le Parisien, QTA will pay between 150 and 200 million a year to PSG for the club's help in promoting the country abroad. QTA is linked to the Qatari state, as are the club's owners QSI.
The deal is retroactive, meaning QTA will put the money in the club for 2012 to help PSG bear the cost of their latest signings, including striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic who is reportedly earning a net 14 million euros a year.

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Column: Messi & Co. will win without coach

Even if Lionel Messi and his Barcelona teammates had no coach to guide them, you would think long and hard about betting against perhaps the greatest collection of players assembled by one club. Their success is built on foundations so solid it has seemingly become self-perpetuating, almost capable of taking care of itself.
So Messi & Co. will weather the absence, hopefully brief and temporary, of Tito Vilanova while he undergoes chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Even if the coach's recovery from the recurrence of a tumor on a saliva gland takes longer than expected, his team is plenty strong enough to keep winning without him, to wrest the Spanish league title from Real Madrid and to muscle past AC Milan in March to advance deep into the final rounds of the Champions League and even win that, too.
For such an astoundingly talented and well-blended team to underperform in either of those competitions in 2013 would be shocking, regardless of who is coaching it. The acid disappointment of losing La Liga to Madrid and falling to Chelsea in the Champions League semifinal in 2012 should be motivation enough for the players, without needing Vilanova to remind them they should do better next year.
Barcelona is less coach-centric than other teams, because its methods, tactics, philosophy and identity are woven into its fabric, not dependent on any single personality. At Manchester United, Real Madrid or Arsenal, the imprint of managers Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger is evident. If those strong leaders took protracted time off, there would be probing questions about how their players might cope without them. But only a lengthy injury for Messi, its record-setting goal scorer, would spark grave doubts about Barcelona's chances of success in the months ahead. At Barca, the players are for the most part brighter stars than Vilanova, their coach. But at Real Madrid, Man United and Arsenal, it's mostly the other way round.
The center of Barcelona's universe isn't a person but a training academy, La Masia. That is where Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez, Gerard Pique, Carles Puyol and other vertebrae in the backbone of Barcelona's first team were drenched in the club's traditions. Once housed in an 18th-century Catalan farmhouse, the academy is now in a modern five-story building located at Barca's training grounds on the outskirts of the city. Vilanova is a La Masia alumni. So is the man he replaced as coach at the end of last season, Pep Guardiola. So is Vilanova's assistant coach, Jordi Roura.
Roura will warm Vilanova's seat and direct the team while he is on sick leave but won't formally replace him as coach — a nice touch that makes Barcelona look like a club with class, which sticks by its own through thick and thin.
Barcelona said that after surgery Thursday on his parotid gland and a few days in hospital, Vilanova might be able to coach during his expected six weeks of chemo and radiation treatment. Until he's back, Barcelona sports director Andoni Zubizarreta said the team was in "great hands" with Roura. A former Barcelona player under coach Johan Cruyff, Roura worked on Guardiola's staff, studying rival teams, before becoming Vilanova's assistant coach.
La Masia's production line of success and talent gives Barcelona continuity in difficult times like these. While other clubs head-hunt managers, chopping and changing in search of success, Barcelona's deep wells of experience have enabled it to recruit in-house for leadership since Guardiola replaced Dutchman Frank Rijkaard as coach in 2008.
Even though Vilanova is undefeated in the Spanish league this season and has led the team to the best league start ever by any team in Spain, his sudden absence mid-season shouldn't provoke a slump and might barely be noticed on the field. Tactics and lineups didn't change massively when Guardiola handed over the reins to Vilanova, nor will they while Roura is caretaking. Barcelona calls itself "more than a club." It is also more than any one coach.
"Few things have changed," midfielder Xavi said Dec. 13, talking about the handover from Guardiola to Vilanova. "Everything has stayed the same."
It was Guardiola who once described Barcelona soccer so succinctly: "Take the ball, pass the ball, take the ball, pass the ball." It is, of course, more complex than that. But Messi and his teammates have for years now been honing Barcelona's passing game into an art. They could probably find each other with their eyes shut and definitely with Roura on the coach's bench.
Barcelona has a nine-point league lead over Atletico Madrid and a 13-point jump on Real Madrid after just 16 games — a gap so whopping that Atletico coach Diego Simeone said Spain's top league has become "boring." Although this won't be how he or the players think, Roura can afford to lose a few games before he will come under sustained pressure for wins. His first match is at Valladolid in the league on Saturday, Barcelona's last game of 2012.
Barcelona's announcement this week that Messi, Xavi and Puyol all agreed to renew their contracts also gives the team long-term stability and removes an issue that potentially could have distracted the players and Roura.
Since last month, Barcelona has again been able to field Puyol and Pique in defense together after both recovered from injuries. David Villa also looks like the dangerous forward he used to be before eight months out with a broken leg. And Messi, well, how can more praise be heaped on a player who has scored a record 90 goals in 2012?
So no excuses.
Barcelona should keep winning while Vilanova gets better.
He surely wouldn't settle for anything less.

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UPDATE 1-Soccer-Hearts hit by transfer embargo over unpaid bonus

LONDON, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Hearts will be banned from buying players during the January window after the Scottish Premier League (SPL) extended a transfer embargo following the club's failure to pay bonuses to their squad.
The club announced earlier that they had raised more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) by selling shares to their fans. But this amount was some way short of the target and they warned supporters the club's financial crisis was far from over.
Hearts also informed the SPL that it had not paid a number of bonuses and appearance payments.
The SPL said in a statement it had therefore decided to extend a so-called remuneration default which means Hearts are unable to sign players until "the SPL Board is satisfied that the remuneration default no longer continues".
Hearts must also attend a disciplinary hearing at a date yet to be fixed. The Edinburgh club, ninth in the 12-club league, said they were consulting with their legal advisers.
The existing 60-day ban, due to run out on Dec. 23, was imposed in October following late salary payments to players.
Lithuanian businessman Vladimir Romanov is the largest shareholders in Hearts who have debts of around 24 million pounds. Earlier this month the club agreed to pay 1.5 million pounds over the next three years to settle a tax dispute.
Hearts also cleared a separate tax bill of 450,000 pounds which lifted the immediate threat of liquidation.
Rangers, who have been champions 54 times, collapsed under their debts this year and were demoted to the fourth tier in Scotland. This week Rangers raised 22 million pounds via a listing on the stock market.

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Soccer-Dutch Cup last 16 results

Dec 20 (Infostrada Sports) - Results from the Dutch Cup Last 16 matches on Thursday
Last 16
Thursday, December 20
Groningen - Ajax Amsterdam 0-3 (halftime: 0-1)
Wednesday, December 19
Heerenveen - Feyenoord 2-2 (halftime: 0-1, 90 mins: 2-2, penalty shootout: 6-7)
Feyenoord win 7-6 on penalties.
Vitesse Arnhem - ADO '20 (III) 10-1 (halftime: 2-0)
Go Ahead Eagles Deventer (II) - PEC Zwolle 2-3 (halftime: 0-0, 90 mins: 1-1) AET
NAC Breda - Heracles Almelo 1-3 (halftime: 1-1)
Tuesday, December 18
Rijnsburgse Boys (III) - PSV Eindhoven 0-4 (halftime: 0-3)
Den Bosch (II) - SC Cambuur (II) 1-0 (halftime: 1-0)
FC Dordrecht (II) - AZ Alkmaar 2-4 (halftime: 0-3)

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