Money managers are wondering whether soft earnings will justify more stock gains, given the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 26.5% rise last year. That helps explain why the Dow is down 118 points to start the year.

hey are far from most extremes of 2000, however. So while many investors are turning cautious, few are pulling back wholesale.

Goldman SachsGS +0.63% investment strategist David Kostin startled investors a week ago by warning that prices are high compared to analysts’ forecasts. The chances are two out of three that the S&P will fall at least 10% sometime this year, before finishing with an overall yearly gain of around 3%, he said.

The separate remarks, made on Sunday morning news programs, came before a video was released online showing two young men who said they were behind suicide bombings in the central Russian city Volgograd last month that claimed 34 lives. In the video, the men threaten to carry out more attacks. In a statement posted with the video on its website, the militant group Vilayat Dagestan claimed responsibility for the Volgograd bombings, The Associated Press reported.

“They’re not giving us the full story about, what are the threat streams, who do we need to worry about, are those groups — the terrorist groups who have had some success — are they still plotting?”

“If necessary, all those tools will be activated.” He added that if foreign athletes wanted to provide their own additional security, “there is nothing wrong with that,” as long as they coordinated with the Russian authorities.

nvestors were expecting volatility in 2014, but this is ridiculous.While the overall stock market remains somewhat tranquil, beneath the quiet surface, some individual stocks are already giving their owners a sickening ride. Thursday was the latest day in a week full of some head-turning big drops in stocks, including consumer electronics seller Best Buy and skin treatment maker Nu Skin.

Thursday closed down a bruising $10.74, or 29%, to $26.83, while Nu Skin, a seller of skin care products, was down $30.43, or 26%, to $84.80.

Evidence of investors' low tolerance for disappointment. Best Buy's stock woes were triggered by reports of holiday sales that fell short of what analysts had predicted. The consumer electronics seller reported that sales at stores open at least a year fell 0.8% during the nine-week period ending Jan. 4. Investors were already turning negative on retailers following disappointing news from other retailers and consumer products sellers. Shares of at-home soda maker equipment maker, SodaStream and video game seller GameStop have seen their shares fall 22% and 19% this week on disappointing results.

“to both defend our nation and uphold our civil liberties,” announced carefully calculated changes to surveillance policies on Friday, saying he would restrict the ability of intelligence agencies to gain access to telephone data, and would ultimately move that data out of the hands of the government.

and left the implementation of many of his changes up to Congress and the intelligence agencies themselves.

America’s capabilities are unique,” Mr. Obama said. “And the power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do.”

Russia’s central bank forecast that net capital outflows would shrink in line with the country’s current account surplus. But the bank now says a net sum of $63 billion flowed out of the country last year, even as the surplus—money from trade, money transactions and investment revenues—more than halved.

Analysts say it was because state oil firm OAO Rosneft’s acquisition of TNK-BP for some $60 billion boosted the number, although it’s not clear what part of the complex deal was counted as outflows.

The Economy Ministry has forecast that net capital outflows will fall this year to $30 billion.

The Assad government, for its part, capitalizing on recent insurgent infighting to make advances on the outskirts of the northern city of Aleppo, is eager to portray itself as offering mercy from a position of strength.

But up to now, rebels and civilians say, the picture is far different. The government rains aerial attacks on areas that refuse cease-fire offers. People in places that accept can find themselves facing new demands: to turn over wanted men, give up their light weapons and accept a military governor. Food is delivered piecemeal to retain the government’s leverage.

more like surrender.”

The southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro, one of the busiest in Europe, will be the transfer point for hundreds of tons of the most deadly Syrian chemical weapon compounds en route to their neutralization at sea, the organization responsible for helping oversee the destruction of the arsenal announced on Thursday.

The first load of the most dangerous weapons was placed aboard a Danish vessel in the Syrian port of Latakia last week. Related Coverage U.N. Says Executions in Syria By Rebels May Be War Crimes JAN. 16, 2014 Donors Offer $2.4 Billion to Aid Syrian Civilians, but U.N. Says More Is NeededJAN. 15, 2014 video Video Feature: Watching Syria's War: Bombardment on a Damascus Suburb

Syria agreed to renounce their use and sign the global treaty that bans them last September after an international uproar over an Aug. 21 sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of people in a Damascus suburb. The Syrian government and the insurgents seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad accused each other of responsibility.

The legislative committee sent subpoenas to 17 individuals and three institutions. None was immediately named.

A New Jersey Senate committee is also investigating whether Christie's top advisers orchestrated or covered up lane closures near the bridge for political purposes.Two Christie appointees to the Port Authority, which operates the bridge and other bi-state transportation entities, have already resigned in the wake of the uproar over the abrupt reduction from three access lanes to one onto the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 9.

Christie, who said he had no prior knowledge of the lane closures, said last week that he would cooperate "with all appropriate inquiries to ensure this breach of trust does not happen again."David Wildstein and Bill Baroni, who claimed the closure was part of a traffic study, have already resigned from the Port Authority.

Nine months into his papacy, Francis has sought to shift the tone of the church, with a special focus on helping the poor. On Sunday, he named cardinals from small, poor countries like Haiti, Burkina Faso, Nicaragua and Ivory Coast. He also named a second cardinal for the Philippines, a heavily Catholic nation struggling to recover from a devastating typh

But Francis’s appointments to the college are also part of his larger plans for the church, which include overhauling the Roman Curia, the bureaucracy that runs the Vatican, and opening a broad debate on the theme of family that could touch on delicate issues like homosexuality and divorce. The cardinals are expected to meet on Feb. 22 at the Vatican for a consistory, a formal meeting, to begin discussions. New cardinals will be formally appointed at that meeting.

Ms. Merkel herself angrily demanded assurances from President Obama that her cellphone was not the target of an American intelligence tap

“If that is true, what we hear, then that would be really bad,” Mr. de Maizière told ARD, Germany’s leading state television channel. America is Germany’s best friend, he noted, adding: “It really can’t work like this.” He suggested that there would be consequences. “We can’t simply go back to business as usual,” he said. Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the leader of the Greens, shared the indignation, noting that America is a close ally but that normal business could not be conducted “if we go about suspecting one another.” Her consternation was mixed with an element of “we told you so.” The Greens had argued since the first disclosures last summer of mass American surveillance that Ms. Merkel needed to be more vigorous and not simply accept American assurances that no German laws had been broken.

So far, he’s gone virtually unchallenged. He has said the 2008 financial crisis “was the first time ever that markets were broken and could not fix themselves” (ever hear of the Depression?), and that he “could have caught a number of different crises” during his tenure at the Fed (which begs the question of why he didn’t). Journalists have asked such penetrating questions as, "You were knighted. Does that come with a title or anything?" Even the tough-minded Binyamin Applebaum called Greenspan "one of the nation’s most astute economic observers." Overall, the media has presented Greenspan's book as part of a soul-searching quest for why he missed the greatest economic collapse in decades—a frame that is needlessly obsequious and suggests he was a bystander to the disaster, not a central actor.