2014 12 17 cmyk NA 04 - The Wall Street...

1
YELLOW ****** WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2014 ~ VOL. CCLXIV NO. 143 WSJ.com HHHH $3.00 DJIA 17068.87 g 111.97 0.7% NASDAQ 4547.83 g 1.2% NIKKEI 16755.32 g 2.0% STOXX 600 328.88 À 1.7% 10-YR. TREAS. À 13/32 , yield 2.070% OIL $55.93 À $0.02 GOLD $1,193.90 g $13.30 EURO $1.2512 YEN 116.41 Getty Images TODAY IN PERSONAL JOURNAL The Holiday Cooking Gold Rush PLUS A Guide to Picking Your Battles at Work CONTENTS Arts in Review.......... D5 Corporate News.... B2,3 Global Finance............ C3 Heard on Street...... C12 Home & Digital .... D1-3 In the Markets.......... C4 Opinion.................. A15-17 Property Report.. C6-8 Sports.............................. D6 Careers........................ B6,7 U.S. News................. A2-8 Weather Watch........ B8 World News....... A10-13 s Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved > What’s News i i i World-Wide n Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in northwestern Pakistan and killed at least 141 people, mainly children. A1 n Jeb Bush announced plans to “actively explore” a presidential campaign, kick- starting the 2016 race. A1 n America’s pessimism on the economy is waning, but views on race relations have turned more dour, a poll found. A4 n The Senate voted to extend a raft of temporary tax breaks through year’s end, ending a protracted struggle. A6 n Congress ended the year without extending a terror- ism insurance program that is slated to expire. A6 n Turkish soccer fans who participated in antigovernment protests went on trial, charged with plotting a coup. A10 n Australians paid tribute to two people who died in Mon- day’s hostage crisis. Ques- tions remained about the standoff’s final moments. A13 n Ukraine plans fresh bud- get cuts and economic over- hauls in a bid to secure addi- tional international aid. A12 n U.S. teenagers are more likely to use electronic ciga- rettes than traditional ones, a survey showed. A8 n The FDA urged consum- ers to avoid using pure caf- feine powder, which has been linked to two deaths. A8 n A Pennsylvania man sus- pected of murdering his ex- wife and five of her relatives was found dead. A8 i i i T he Russian ruble contin- ued its slide, fueling a selloff in emerging-market currencies and stocks. The Dow shed 0.7% after a volatile ses- sion and the yield on the 10- year Treasury fell to its lowest level since May 2013. A1, C1, C4 U.S. oil prices broke a four-session losing streak, but Brent crude, a global price gauge, settled down 2%. C4 A Pimco emerging-market fund has stumbled over a large bet on bonds issued by Russian corporations. C1 n Sony Pictures executives will let theater operators de- cide whether or not to play “The Interview” after threats of physical attacks surfaced. B1 n U.S. prosecutors are close to a deal with Alstom that would require the French com- pany to pay about $700 million to settle a bribery probe. B1 n U.S. banks relaxed loan- underwriting standards for the third straight year, a reg- ulator’s report said. C1 n A November dip in home building in the U.S. didn’t dent overall optimism in the broader housing market. A2 n Apple didn’t suppress competition for its iPod mu- sic players, a jury in a class- action suit ruled. B4 n Spain’s Repsol sealed a deal to acquire Canada’s Tal- isman for $8.3 billion. B2 n American Apparel termi- nated the employment of CEO Dov Charney. B2 n Puma said it would launch a multiyear partnership with pop star Rihanna. B6 Business & Finance MOSCOW—As Russian Presi- dent Vladimir Putin has ratch- eted up the conflict with the West for most of the year, the economic fallout on ordinary Russians has been limited. Suddenly, though, the plung- ing ruble is reawakening fears of rising prices and the kind of fi- nancial crisis Mr. Putin has sought to put behind his coun- try. As the ruble hit a record low, falling as much as 20% against the dollar Tuesday, Mos- cow residents rushed to buy electronics and other big-ticket items and drained rubles from ATMs to swap them for dollars and euros—signaling a new feel- ing of vulnerability among Rus- sians and a fresh challenge to their leader. From St. Petersburg to Sibe- ria, money changers ran out of foreign currency and were rais- ing exchange rates. Sberbank, Russia’s state savings bank, and Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest pri- vate lender, said they were expe- riencing a rush for dollars and euros. “The demand is enormous. People are bringing piles, huge piles of cash. It is madness,” said Kamila Asmalova, a manager at a Moscow branch of Sberbank. The branch ran out of foreign currency by 2 p.m., she said. Lanta Bank, a midsize Mos- cow lender, said its foreign counterparts would be unable to send foreign currency Wednes- Please turn to page A12 By James Marson, Olga Razumovskaya and Alexander Kolyandr Russia’s Economic Struggles Test Putin Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in northwest- ern Pakistan and killed at least 141 people, methodically shoot- ing schoolchildren in the head and setting fire to some victims in a horrifying 9-hour rampage. Shahrukh, a 17-year-old survivor of Tuesday’s attack in Peshawar, said many students were assem- bled in the school auditorium when the gunmen burst in and started spraying bullets. He was shot in both legs and fell to the ground. “I saw them set one of our teachers on fire in front of me,” he said. The scale and level of brutal- ity in the massacre marked a grim milestone in Pakistan’s seven-year battle against Isla- mist insurgents. Of the 141 killed, 132 were schoolchildren. Fifteen bodies of students were burned so badly they couldn’t be imme- diately identified when they were brought to the city’s Com- bined Military Hospital, security officials said. Amir Ameen, 18 years old, said he and 11 other students were taking an exam when two gunmen entered their classroom. They shot students one by one, mostly in the head, he said from his bed at Peshawar’s Lady Read- ing Hospital. The attackers shouted “Allahu akbar” or “God is great” over and over as they shot each stu- dent, Mr. Ameen said. The gunmen shot the teacher in his classroom and her 2-year- old daughter, who she was cra- dling in her arms, Mr. Ameen said. “I am the only survivor from my class. I was hit in the stom- ach. I just played dead when they checked on me,” he said. For the U.S., the attack fueled concerns about violence and ter- rorists finding safe havens along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the attack was to avenge a major Pakistani military operation this year to clear Taliban strongholds in the North Waziristan tribal area along the Afghan border. All seven at- tackers, who wore suicide vests packed with explosives, were killed, the military said. The assault began when a squad of gunmen entered the Army Public School on Warsak Road in Peshawar, capital of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, around 11 a.m. and took control of buildings, according to secu- rity officials. Army and police personnel surrounded the school building shortly after the attack began. “There were trails of bullet Please turn to page A10 By Qasim Nauman and Safdar Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Saeed Shah in Islamabad, Pakistan Taliban Massacre Students At Least 141 Killed in Rampage Group Said Was to Avenge Pakistan Military Operation Zohra Bensemra/Reuters JOLIET, Ill.—When Sears Holdings Corp. opened a test store in 2009 called Mygofer in this working class city 45 miles southwest of Chicago, it billed it as a revolutionary combination, one that would meld the convenience of the Internet with the in- stant gratification of a bricks-and-mortar store. The company gutted an 80,000-square-foot Kmart—but enticing rows of clothes and electronics wasn’t part of the plan. The idea of Mygofer was to have shoppers place their orders at computers at the front of the store, then pick up their goods at a delivery bay out back. Sears Chief Executive Edward Lampert, who was chairman at the time, hoped to roll out hundreds of the stores if the experiment succeeded. But in the four years it was open, Mygofer notched an unusual distinction: On some days, more people returned goods than bought them. Shoppers were thrown by the format. “You BY SUZANNE KAPNER ATTENTION SHOPPERS Sears Bets Big on Technology At Expense of Stores The late comedian George Car- lin drew up a list of seven words you can never say on broadcast television. No one has ever tried to enumerate the combinations of letters and numbers that can’t be printed on a government-issued vanity license plate. Policing that seven-letter me- dium falls to a group of state mo- tor vehicle employees who have a knack for solving word puzzles, a Mencken-like command of mod- ern slang, and the disposition of a barroom bouncer. Phonetically arranged charac- ters that sound like four-letter words are the easiest to weed out. Vanity reviewers know to flag certain colors, area codes and other numbers associated with street gangs and Adolf Hitler. Other submissions require a trained eye—or the help of on- line slang references—to un- scramble. Take, for example, the term U EJIT. A DMV reviewer in Califor- nia recently rejected it saying it sounds too much like the word that an Irish driver might blurt out to a motorist who cut him off (“You eejit,” meaning, “you idiot”). A221X got a thumbs down in California. The number 221 is a police code for a “person with a gun” and X refers to a woman. Putting that together, the plate says: A woman with a gun. Gun references in the state are purged as “terms of hostil- ity.” So are words related to ex- plosions, a restriction that doomed one request from a football fan who wanted his plate to say LGN BOOM in honor of the Seattle Seahawks. (“Legion of Boom” is a nick- name for the team’s defensive backs.) Some California rejections were released in response to a freedom of information request by MuckRock, an investigative Please turn to page A14 BY JACOB GERSHMAN Policing Vanity License Plates Is No Job for an EJIT i i i It Takes a Trained Eye, a Wide Vocabulary and a Dirty Mind couldn’t see and touch things,” recalls Joyce Honk- isz, a retiree who visited the store once but didn’t buy anything. Internal projections had called for Mygofer to build over four years so that it would eventually generate $8 million in annual sales—on par with a typical Kmart, according to people who worked on the project. Annual sales struggled to top $1 million, these people said. During an interview, Mr. Lampert acknowledged that “going to a store where there were no products may have been weird for shoppers.” He said that the idea was ahead of its time. Shuttered in 2013, Mygofer might be written off as just another failed retail experiment. But its de- mise helps illustrate the strategic misdirection that continues to dog the combined Sears/Kmart opera- tions. The ill-fated project, meanwhile, has only fueled Mr. Lampert’s desire to ramp up new technol- ogies—even as he curtails some of the mundane in- Please turn to page A14 Sony Frees Theaters to Skip Movie Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection Relatives mourn Mohammed Ali Khan, 15 years old, who was killed during an attack by Taliban gunmen on his school in Peshawar, Pakistan. BAD REVIEW: Amid terror threats, Sony Pictures is letting theater operators decide whether to play its forthcoming comedy film ‘The Interview,’ starring Seth Rogen, center, James Franco and Diana Bang. B1 Jeb Bush, the son and brother of past presidents, kick-started the 2016 presidential race Tues- day by announcing plans to “ac- tively explore” a presidential campaign, an unexpectedly early declaration that ramps up pres- sure on potential rivals and re- shuffles the policy debate. The move by the 61-year-old former Florida governor essen- tially marks the beginning of the presidential sweepstakes. With a national profile, access to big donors and iconic status in the nation’s largest swing state, Mr. Bush’s move puts instant pres- sure on a sprawling field of as many as two dozen other Repub- licans weighing 2016 bids. His online announcement amounts to a pre-emptive strike against efforts by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and allies of the 2012 GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, to lock in major donors or at least keep them on the sidelines. Mr. Bush’s step toward a cam- paign also threatens to under- mine the aspirations of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, his onetime protégé, who shares the same home state and an overlapping political network there. “I think Jeb is trying to clear the field,” said Bobbie Kilberg, a prominent Republican donor Please turn to page A4 BY BETH REINHARD AND PATRICK OCONNOR Bush Nears a 2016 Run, Pressuring GOP Rivals West weighs new sanctions... A12 Ukraine cuts budget ................. A12 Russian bonds trip up fund..... C1 Bush’s conservative record..... A4 Economic gloom lifts in poll.. A4 C M Y K Composite Composite MAGENTA CYAN BLACK P2JW351000-6-A00100-1--------XA CL,CN,CX,DL,DM,DX,EE,EU,FL,HO,KC,MW,NC,NE,NY,PH,PN,RM,SA,SC,SL,SW,TU,WB,WE BG,BM,BP,CC,CH,CK,CP,CT,DN,DR,FW,HL,HW,KS,LA,LG,LK,MI,ML,NM,PA,PI,PV,TD,TS,UT,WO P2JW351000-6-A00100-1--------XA

Transcript of 2014 12 17 cmyk NA 04 - The Wall Street...

Page 1: 2014 12 17 cmyk NA 04 - The Wall Street Journalonline.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/PageOne121714.pdf · street gangsand Adolf Hitler. Other submissions requirea trained eye—or

YELLOW

* * * * * * WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2014 ~ VOL. CCLXIV NO. 143 WSJ.com HHHH $3 .00

DJIA 17068.87 g 111.97 0.7% NASDAQ 4547.83 g 1.2% NIKKEI 16755.32 g 2.0% STOXX600 328.88 À 1.7% 10-YR. TREAS. À 13/32 , yield 2.070% OIL $55.93 À $0.02 GOLD $1,193.90 g $13.30 EURO $1.2512 YEN 116.41

Getty

Images

TODAY IN PERSONAL JOURNAL

The Holiday Cooking Gold RushPLUS A Guide to Picking Your Battles at Work

CONTENTSArts in Review.......... D5Corporate News.... B2,3Global Finance............ C3Heard on Street...... C12Home & Digital .... D1-3In the Markets.......... C4

Opinion.................. A15-17Property Report .. C6-8Sports.............................. D6Careers........................ B6,7U.S. News................. A2-8Weather Watch........ B8World News....... A10-13

s Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company.All Rights Reserved

>

What’sNews

i i i

World-Widen Taliban gunmen stormeda military-run school innorthwestern Pakistan andkilled at least 141 people,mainly children. A1n Jeb Bush announcedplans to “actively explore” apresidential campaign, kick-starting the 2016 race. A1nAmerica’s pessimism on theeconomy is waning, but viewson race relations have turnedmore dour, a poll found.A4n The Senate voted to extenda raft of temporary tax breaksthrough year’s end, ending aprotracted struggle. A6n Congress ended the yearwithout extending a terror-ism insurance program thatis slated to expire. A6n Turkish soccer fans whoparticipated in antigovernmentprotests went on trial, chargedwith plotting a coup. A10n Australians paid tribute totwo people who died in Mon-day’s hostage crisis. Ques-tions remained about thestandoff’s final moments. A13n Ukraine plans fresh bud-get cuts and economic over-hauls in a bid to secure addi-tional international aid. A12n U.S. teenagers are morelikely to use electronic ciga-rettes than traditional ones,a survey showed. A8n The FDA urged consum-ers to avoid using pure caf-feine powder, which hasbeen linked to two deaths. A8n A Pennsylvania man sus-pected of murdering his ex-wife and five of her relativeswas found dead. A8

i i i

The Russian ruble contin-ued its slide, fueling a

selloff in emerging-marketcurrencies and stocks. The Dowshed 0.7% after a volatile ses-sion and the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to its lowestlevel since May 2013. A1, C1, C4 U.S. oil prices broke afour-session losing streak, butBrent crude, a global pricegauge, settled down 2%. C4 A Pimco emerging-marketfund has stumbled over alarge bet on bonds issued byRussian corporations. C1n Sony Pictures executiveswill let theater operators de-cide whether or not to play“The Interview” after threatsof physical attacks surfaced. B1n U.S. prosecutors are closeto a deal with Alstom thatwould require the French com-pany to pay about $700millionto settle a bribery probe. B1n U.S. banks relaxed loan-underwriting standards forthe third straight year, a reg-ulator’s report said. C1n A November dip in homebuilding in the U.S. didn’tdent overall optimism in thebroader housing market. A2n Apple didn’t suppresscompetition for its iPod mu-sic players, a jury in a class-action suit ruled. B4n Spain’s Repsol sealed adeal to acquire Canada’s Tal-isman for $8.3 billion. B2n American Apparel termi-nated the employment ofCEO Dov Charney. B2n Puma said it would launcha multiyear partnership withpop star Rihanna. B6

Business&Finance

MOSCOW—As Russian Presi-dent Vladimir Putin has ratch-eted up the conflict with theWest for most of the year, theeconomic fallout on ordinaryRussians has been limited.

Suddenly, though, the plung-ing ruble is reawakening fears ofrising prices and the kind of fi-nancial crisis Mr. Putin hassought to put behind his coun-try. As the ruble hit a recordlow, falling as much as 20%against the dollar Tuesday, Mos-cow residents rushed to buyelectronics and other big-ticketitems and drained rubles fromATMs to swap them for dollarsand euros—signaling a new feel-ing of vulnerability among Rus-sians and a fresh challenge totheir leader.

From St. Petersburg to Sibe-ria, money changers ran out offoreign currency and were rais-ing exchange rates. Sberbank,Russia’s state savings bank, andAlfa Bank, Russia’s largest pri-vate lender, said they were expe-riencing a rush for dollars andeuros.

“The demand is enormous.People are bringing piles, hugepiles of cash. It is madness,” saidKamila Asmalova, a manager ata Moscow branch of Sberbank.The branch ran out of foreigncurrency by 2 p.m., she said.

Lanta Bank, a midsize Mos-cow lender, said its foreigncounterparts would be unable tosend foreign currency Wednes-

PleaseturntopageA12

By James Marson,Olga Razumovskaya

and Alexander Kolyandr

Russia’sEconomicStrugglesTest Putin

Taliban gunmen stormed amilitary-run school in northwest-ern Pakistan and killed at least141 people, methodically shoot-ing schoolchildren in the headand setting fire to some victimsin a horrifying 9-hour rampage.

Shahrukh, a 17-year-old survivorof Tuesday’s attack in Peshawar,said many students were assem-bled in the school auditoriumwhenthe gunmen burst in and startedspraying bullets. He was shot inboth legs and fell to the ground.

“I saw them set one of ourteachers on fire in front of me,”he said.

The scale and level of brutal-ity in the massacre marked agrim milestone in Pakistan’sseven-year battle against Isla-

mist insurgents. Of the 141 killed,132 were schoolchildren. Fifteenbodies of students were burnedso badly they couldn’t be imme-diately identified when theywere brought to the city’s Com-bined Military Hospital, securityofficials said.

Amir Ameen, 18 years old,said he and 11 other studentswere taking an exam when twogunmen entered their classroom.They shot students one by one,mostly in the head, he said from

his bed at Peshawar’s Lady Read-ing Hospital.

The attackers shouted “Allahuakbar” or “God is great” overand over as they shot each stu-dent, Mr. Ameen said.

The gunmen shot the teacherin his classroom and her 2-year-old daughter, who she was cra-dling in her arms, Mr. Ameensaid.

“I am the only survivor frommy class. I was hit in the stom-ach. I just played dead when theychecked on me,” he said.

For the U.S., the attack fueledconcerns about violence and ter-rorists finding safe havens alongthe Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The Pakistani Taliban claimedresponsibility, saying the attack

was to avenge a major Pakistanimilitary operation this year toclear Taliban strongholds in theNorthWaziristan tribal area alongthe Afghan border. All seven at-tackers, who wore suicide vestspacked with explosives, werekilled, the military said.

The assault began when asquad of gunmen entered theArmy Public School on WarsakRoad in Peshawar, capital of theKhyber-Pakhtunkhwa province,around 11 a.m. and took controlof buildings, according to secu-rity officials.

Army and police personnelsurrounded the school buildingshortly after the attack began.

“There were trails of bulletPleaseturntopageA10

By Qasim Nauman andSafdar Dawar in

Peshawar, Pakistan, andSaeed Shah in

Islamabad, Pakistan

Taliban Massacre StudentsAtLeast 141Killed inRampageGroup SaidWas toAvenge PakistanMilitaryOperation

ZohraBe

nsem

ra/R

euters

JOLIET, Ill.—When Sears Holdings Corp. openeda test store in 2009 called Mygofer in this workingclass city 45 miles southwest of Chicago, it billed itas a revolutionary combination, one that wouldmeld the convenience of the Internet with the in-stant gratification of a bricks-and-mortar store.

The company gutted an 80,000-square-footKmart—but enticing rows of clothes and electronicswasn’t part of the plan. The idea of Mygofer was tohave shoppers place their orders at computers atthe front of the store, then pick up their goods at adelivery bay out back.

Sears Chief Executive Edward Lampert, who waschairman at the time, hoped to roll out hundreds ofthe stores if the experiment succeeded.

But in the four years it was open, Mygofernotched an unusual distinction: On some days, morepeople returned goods than bought them.

Shoppers were thrown by the format. “You

BY SUZANNE KAPNER

ATTENTION SHOPPERS

Sears Bets Big on TechnologyAt Expense of Stores

The late comedian George Car-lin drew up a list of seven wordsyou can never say on broadcasttelevision. No one has ever triedto enumerate the combinations ofletters and numbers that can’t beprinted on a government-issuedvanity license plate.

Policing that seven-letter me-dium falls to a group of state mo-tor vehicle employees who have aknack for solving word puzzles, a

Mencken-like command of mod-ern slang, and the disposition ofa barroom bouncer.

Phonetically arranged charac-ters that sound like four-letterwords are the easiest to weedout. Vanity reviewers know toflag certain colors, area codes andother numbers associated withstreet gangs and Adolf Hitler.

Other submissions require atrained eye—or the help of on-line slang references—to un-scramble.

Take, for example, the term UEJIT. A DMV reviewer in Califor-nia recently rejected it saying itsounds too much like the wordthat an Irish driver might blurtout to a motorist who cut himoff (“You eejit,” meaning, “youidiot”).

A221X got a thumbs down inCalifornia. The number 221 is apolice code for a “person with agun” and X refers to a woman.Putting that together, the platesays: A woman with a gun.

Gun references in the stateare purged as “terms of hostil-ity.” So are words related to ex-plosions, a restriction thatdoomed one request from afootball fan who wanted hisplate to say LGN BOOM inhonor of the Seattle Seahawks.(“Legion of Boom” is a nick-name for the team’s defensivebacks.)

Some California rejectionswere released in response to afreedom of information requestby MuckRock, an investigative

PleaseturntopageA14

BY JACOB GERSHMAN

Policing Vanity License Plates Is No Job for an EJITi i i

It Takes a Trained Eye, a Wide Vocabulary and a Dirty Mind

couldn’t see and touch things,” recalls Joyce Honk-isz, a retiree who visited the store once but didn’tbuy anything.

Internal projections had called for Mygofer tobuild over four years so that it would eventuallygenerate $8 million in annual sales—on par with atypical Kmart, according to people who worked onthe project. Annual sales struggled to top $1 million,these people said.

During an interview, Mr. Lampert acknowledgedthat “going to a store where there were no productsmay have been weird for shoppers.” He said that theidea was ahead of its time.

Shuttered in 2013, Mygofer might be written offas just another failed retail experiment. But its de-mise helps illustrate the strategic misdirection thatcontinues to dog the combined Sears/Kmart opera-tions. The ill-fated project, meanwhile, has onlyfueled Mr. Lampert’s desire to ramp up new technol-ogies—even as he curtails some of the mundane in-

PleaseturntopageA14

Sony Frees Theaters to Skip Movie

ColumbiaPictures/Everett

Collection

Relatives mourn Mohammed Ali Khan, 15 years old, who was killed during an attack by Taliban gunmen on his school in Peshawar, Pakistan.

BAD REVIEW: Amid terror threats, Sony Pictures is letting theateroperators decide whether to play its forthcoming comedy film ‘TheInterview,’ starring Seth Rogen, center, James Franco and Diana Bang. B1

Jeb Bush, the son and brotherof past presidents, kick-startedthe 2016 presidential race Tues-day by announcing plans to “ac-tively explore” a presidentialcampaign, an unexpectedly earlydeclaration that ramps up pres-sure on potential rivals and re-shuffles the policy debate.

The move by the 61-year-oldformer Florida governor essen-tially marks the beginning of thepresidential sweepstakes. With anational profile, access to bigdonors and iconic status in thenation’s largest swing state, Mr.Bush’s move puts instant pres-sure on a sprawling field of asmany as two dozen other Repub-

licans weighing 2016 bids. Hisonline announcement amountsto a pre-emptive strike againstefforts by New Jersey Gov. ChrisChristie and allies of the 2012GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, tolock in major donors or at leastkeep them on the sidelines.

Mr. Bush’s step toward a cam-paign also threatens to under-mine the aspirations of FloridaSen. Marco Rubio, his onetimeprotégé, who shares the samehome state and an overlappingpolitical network there.

“I think Jeb is trying to clearthe field,” said Bobbie Kilberg, aprominent Republican donor

PleaseturntopageA4

BY BETH REINHARDAND PATRICK O’CONNOR

Bush Nears a 2016 Run,Pressuring GOP Rivals

West weighs new sanctions... A12 Ukraine cuts budget................. A12 Russian bonds trip up fund..... C1

Bush’s conservative record..... A4 Economic gloom lifts in poll .. A4

CM Y K CompositeCompositeMAGENTA CYAN BLACK

P2JW351000-6-A00100-1--------XA CL,CN,CX,DL,DM,DX,EE,EU,FL,HO,KC,MW,NC,NE,NY,PH,PN,RM,SA,SC,SL,SW,TU,WB,WEBG,BM,BP,CC,CH,CK,CP,CT,DN,DR,FW,HL,HW,KS,LA,LG,LK,MI,ML,NM,PA,PI,PV,TD,TS,UT,WO

P2JW351000-6-A00100-1--------XA