Thousands of flights canceled as storm descends on the East

More than 5,000 flights in and out of East Coast airports have been canceled as a major snowstorm packing up to three feet of snow barrels down on the region.

United Airlines canceled all flights in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. JetBlue, whose flights are largely in the Northeast, has already canceled about a third of its entire schedule.

About half of all flights out of New York's LaGuardia Airport were called off Monday, and about 60 percent of flights heading into the airport were scratched.

In all, Airlines canceled more than 2,680 flights, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. More than 2,900 flights have been scrapped for Tuesday.

Problems in the Northeast are rippling outward across the country.

In West Palm Beach, Florida, where temperatures are expected to be in the 70s Monday, about 30 percent of all flights have been canceled. Fort Lauderdale and Orlando are also reporting major cancellations.

Most major airlines are allowing customers whose flights are canceled in the next few days to book new flights without paying a penalty. Customers ticketed on flights to dozens of Eastern airports are generally eligible for the allowance, though specific terms vary by airline.

The National Weather Service predicts 2 to 3 feet of snow for a 250-mile stretch of the Northeast, including the New York and Boston areas. Philadelphia should get 14 to 18 inches.

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France: 10 go on trial in L'Oreal heiress fraud case

PARIS — The trial of ten people accused of swindling France's richest woman of artworks and cash worth hundreds of millions of euros began Monday with the shock revelation that one of the accused had attempted suicide hours before the soap opera-like case began.

The "Bettencourt Affair," as the case surrounding 92-year-old L'Oreal cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettencourt has been dubbed in France, is a politico-financial scandal that has wound its way through French courts and newspapers for years, and is only now coming to trial.

A lawyer for Bettencourt — the world's third richest woman with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $39 billion — said the trial began with the announcement that one of the accused, Bettencourt's nurse Alain Thurin, had tried to hang himself a day earlier.

Speaking on French TV, the lawyer Benoit Ducos-Ader said that shortly after news of the attempted suicide, the hearing was suspended until Tuesday so that lawyers could argue a procedural question.

The case stems from a 2007 complaint filed by Bettencourt's daughter accusing one of her mother's closest friends, the photographer Francois-Marie Banier, of swindling the wealthy heiress of artwork, cash and other favors worth hundreds of millions of euros.

The case eventually widened to the nine others on trial, including some of Bettencourt's closest advisers and staff who are also accused of taking advantage of the elderly widow.

Bettencourt was placed under the guardianship of one of her grandsons four years ago, after she was diagnosed with dementia.

The complex saga also ensnared former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but he was cleared in 2013 of preliminary charges that he had taken advantage of Bettencourt's condition by accepting tens of thousands of euros in illegal campaign contributions on the way to his 2007 election victory.

Sarkozy's then-campaign treasurer Eric Woerth is among the 10 people going on trial in Bordeaux Monday.

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Follow Greg Keller on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greg_Keller

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Up Move doesn’t look good, but you will

Jawbone Up Move ($49.99, various retailers)

This entry-level fitness tracker by the folks that brought us the popular Jawbone Up tracks steps, activities and light and deep sleep. It's a thumb-size nub that can be placed into a clip that easily attaches to belts and clothes, or a wristband.

The good: For just $50, the price is right. This sensor-laden device syncs wirelessly with excellent companion apps for Android and iOS, reports well on your sleep and helps you quantify your daily activity level.

The bad: This isn't waterproof, so you'll have to remove before showering. And it's not exactly the most attractive when worn on your wrist.

The bottom line: This is a great device for someone who wants to try their hand at fitness tracking and doesn't mind having something that looks weird on their wrist.

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Microsoft’s nifty HoloLens kicks Glass

Google Glass — may it rest in peace — has nothing on Microsoft's HoloLens, a game-changing pair of goggles with a see-through screen that projects holograms that the user can manipulate and control.

Unlike Google Glass, the HoloLens isn't meant to go with you everywhere, and it's not reliant on a smartphone. It exists on its own, when you need it — like a "Star Trek" holodeck worn on your head, smacking right up against the laws of physics. Another difference between Glass and HoloLens: This isn't a concept, it's existing technology, developed by Microsoft in secret for years. It's expected to come to market within the next year, and developers will receive a kit allowing them to design apps for it in a matter of months, according to the software giant based in Redmond, Wash.

The HoloLens looks like a pair of ski goggles, and it's meant for a work or home setting. You are not supposed to venture outside wearing one. In short, it projects a virtual, interactive experience onto the world around you. You can watch television on a virtual holographic screen, launch and interact with a virtual PC, and much more. Or it can virtually put other people in your world, as needed.

Let's say I need help fixing my car. I put on HoloLens and patch in a mechanic. The mechanic can see what I see on his iPad via a compatible app. He can draw on my visual space, labeling all the puzzling parts of my car under the hood. I can virtually tap a part, triggering the screen to virtually spill out all components that are inside that part so I can see how it works without having to disassemble it.

Any task that requires an on-site expert can now be reimagined via the HoloLens. Besides remote mechanics, electricians and plumbers, the HoloLens could change the face of job training and education. Forget about digital classrooms, which are often isolating in my opinion. Having an instructor who can see with your eyes? That's mind-blowing. Being able to mark up and label that visual space? Well, that actually makes you closer to instructors than if you were sitting right next to them.

We still don't know the price of HoloLens. Anything below the $500 mark guarantees mainstream adoption. It makes Apple's upcoming iWatch seem almost petty by comparison.

An irony of this technology is that all of its underpinnings are projects that Wall Street analysts and talking heads had been urging Microsoft to abandon for years — such as Bing, the search engine that gave way to the artificial intelligence for this device, and Xbox, which spawned the motion-sensing Kinect, a technological backbone for HoloLens.

Another irony: HoloLens, in a sense, is a stepping stone to something universal and portable, like Google Glass was meant to be. If 50 million people have a HoloLens, all of a sudden it doesn't feel as idiotic to be wearing one in public.

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Fidelity increasing in private tech companies

Fidelity Investments is looking into more privately owned tech companies to get a leg up on investments as large, successful companies are staying private longer, according to a top investor with Fidelity.

"There are companies that are exciting, innovative, and of a size that are appropriate for our investment but are staying public," said Andrew Boyd, head of global equity capital markets for Fidelity. "We're finding a lot of attractive investments in private companies, particularly in tech."

Fidelity led a $1.2 billion investment in Uber Technologies last summer, and took part in a $1 billion investment in SpaceX announced last week. Fidelity has also invested in Pinterest, Airbnb and several other private tech companies, according to the company's mutual fund data.

"We come across private companies that we think are very interesting and can be a great investment for our shareholders," Boyd said.

Still, Boyd and Fidelity are not working off of any master plan to invest in more private companies.

"It's not that we are coming down the evolutionary scale or the growth scale of companies. These are companies that we would have invested in had they existed 10 years ago, but they would have gone public 10 years ago," Boyd said.

He said Fidelity has more investments in private companies than 10 years ago, but they are still a very small percentage of Fidelity's investment portfolio.

Matthew Wong, a research analyst at venture capital tracking firm CB Insights, said Fidelity is not the only mutual fund company investing more in private companies.

"A lot of the big funding that went to venture funding in 2014 was not from venture capital, we're definitely seeing that trend more now," Wong said.

According to CB Insights data, mutual fund companies Fidelity, BlackRock, T. Rowe Price and Janus made 29 investments in private tech companies in 2014, after making only 16 in 2013 and nine in 2012.

He said the stock market success of companies such as Facebook has encouraged mutual funds.

"Mutual funds and other firms are seeing that and thinking that a better strategy might be instead of investing in these companies when they're public, get in pre-IPO," Wong said.

Boyd said Fidelity is also able to prepare the companies for the expectations that come with being publicly traded and subject to analysts' scrutiny.

"We treat them like a public company, and they need to answer questions from our analysts, and they're probing questions, and this is what they need to get used to for earnings calls," Boyd said.

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Medical pot only OK for sick kids failed by other drugs: MDs

CHICAGO — With virtually no hard proof that medical marijuana benefits sick children, and evidence that it may harm developing brains, the drug should only be used for severely ill kids who have no other treatment option, the nation's most influential pediatricians group says in a new policy.

Some parents insist that medical marijuana has cured their kids' troublesome seizures or led to other improvements, but the American Academy of Pediatrics' new policy says rigorous research is needed to verify those claims.

To make it easier to study and develop marijuana-based treatments, the group recommends removing marijuana from the government's most restrictive drug category, which includes heroin, LSD and other narcotics with no accepted medical use, and switching it to the category which includes methadone and oxycodone.

The recommended switch "could help make a big difference in promoting more research," said Dr. Seth Ammerman, the policy's lead author and a professor of pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Stanford University.

The academy's qualified support may lead more pediatricians to prescribe medical marijuana, but the group says pediatric use should only be considered "for children with life-limiting or severely debilitating conditions and for whom current therapies are inadequate."

The academy also repeated its previous advice against legalizing marijuana for recreational use by adults, suggesting that may enable easier access for kids. It does not address medical marijuana use in adults.

Studies have linked recreational marijuana use in kids with ill effects on health and brain development, including problems with memory, concentration, attention, judgment and reaction time, the group's policy emphasizes.

The policy was published online Monday in Pediatrics. It updates and expands the group's 2004 policy.

Since then, the marijuana movement has grown substantially. Recreational and medical marijuana use is legal for adults in four states — Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Nineteen other states and Washington D.C., have laws allowing medical marijuana use only and most allow children to qualify, according to Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project, a national group that advocates marijuana policy reform and tracks state laws.

"The cart is so far ahead of the horse related to this drug," said Dr. Angus Wilfong, of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Marijuana has dozens of chemical components that need to be studied just like any drug to determine safety, proper doses and potential side effects, he said.

Wilfong was involved in a recently completed international study involving 30 children with severe epilepsy. About half got an experimental drug made with a marijuana compound that doesn't make users high; the others received dummy medicine. Study results are being analyzed. Wilfong said five children from his hospital were involved and while he doesn't know if any of them got the marijuana drug, none suffered any serious side effects.

Wilfong said he has a young seizure patient in a different, less rigorous study who has shown dramatic improvement after several months on the marijuana-based treatment, "but that doesn't prove it was due to the" experimental drug," he said.

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Online: American Academy of Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org

Medical marijuana: http://tinyurl.com/axxzhrj

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Norfolk Southern 4Q profit flat as coal revenue falls 15 pct

OMAHA, Neb. — Norfolk Southern Corp. reported its profit was little changed in the fourth quarter from a year ago because the railroad's coal revenue fell 15 percent on weak demand from utilities and export markets.

The Norfolk, Virginia, based company said Monday that total volume increased 4 percent but that wasn't enough to offset the coal weakness.

The railroad reported it earned $511 million, or $1.64 per share, slightly below last year's earnings of $513 million, or $1.64 per share.

Norfolk Southern said its revenue also dipped to $2.87 billion from last year's $2.88 billion.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected the railroad to report earnings per share of $1.63 on revenue of $2.94 billion. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $1.64 per share on revenue of $2.93 billion.

Norfolk Southern shares slipped $1.28 to $103.50 in premarket trading Monday about 45 minutes before the market open.

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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on NSC at http://www.zacks.com/ap/NSC

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Keywords: Norfolk Southern, Earnings Report

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Reinsurers Axis Capital, PartnerRe combining

NEW YORK — Reinsurers Axis Capital Holdings Ltd. and PartnerRe are combining in an $11 billion deal.

PartnerRe Ltd. shareholders will receive 2.18 shares of the combined company's stock for each share of PartnerRe that they own. Axis Capital shareholders will receive one share of the new company's stock for each share of Axis Capital that they own.

PartnerRe shareholders will own about 51.6 percent of the new company once the deal closes. Axis Capital shareholders will own about 48.4 percent.

Axis Capital CEO Albert A. Benchimol will serve as CEO of the new company.

PartnerRe CEO Costas Miranthis is stepping down from his post and as a PartnerRe director. PartnerRe board member David Zwiener will serve as interim CEO until the deal closes.

PartnerRe Chairman Jean-Paul L. Montupet will serve as non-executive chairman, while current Axis Capital Chairman Michael A. Butt will serve as Chairman Emeritus.

The 14-member board will include seven directors from both PartnerRe and Axis Capital.

The deal is expected to achieve at least $200 million in annual cost savings in the first 18 months of operations and to add to earnings per share.

The new company will be based in Bermuda, which is where Axis Capital and PartnerRe have headquarters.

Both companies' boards have unanimously approved the transaction, which is expected to close in the second half of the year. It still needs approval from shareholders of both companies.

Shares of Axis Capital gained more than 3 percent in Monday premarket trading.

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Survey: Firms optimistic on hiring, wages in 1Q

WASHINGTON — Rising sales helped boost hiring at U.S. businesses in the last three months of 2014, and companies are optimistic that continued improvement in business conditions will bring increased employment and wages in the current quarter, a new survey shows.

And many businesses expect the steep drop in oil prices in recent months to have a positive impact on them this year, according to the survey released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics.

Fifty-four percent of the 93 respondents to the quarterly survey said sales at their companies increased in the October-December period. That was up from 49 percent in the third quarter. As sales picked up, so did hiring. Thirty-four percent of companies responding said they hired more workers during the fourth quarter, about the same as in the second and third quarters.

Businesses said the outlook for the January-March period is strong. Fifty-one percent of respondents said they expect wages and salaries to increase at their companies — up sharply from 34 percent in the fourth-quarter survey. Thirty-six percent said they expect their companies to hire more workers, up from 31 percent previously.

Finance, insurance and real estate companies were most likely to say they expect employment increases, at 52 percent; transportation, utilities and communications firms were the least likely, at 15 percent. Only 7 percent of respondents expect employment declines at their companies in the first quarter.

"Business conditions continued to improve in the fourth quarter of 2014," NABE President John Silvia, the chief economist for Wells Fargo Securities, said in a statement. "There are strong expectations for the first quarter, especially for jobs and wages. ... Moreover, price and cost pressures appear to be subdued."

There was a sharp decline in the number of companies reporting they raised prices in the October-December period, to 16 percent from 25 percent in both the second and third quarters. Higher prices were reported most frequently by respondents from the transportation, utilities and communications sector, at 25 percent. Nearly two-thirds of respondents — 65 percent — expect no change in the prices their companies will charge in the first quarter, close to 66 percent in the fourth-quarter survey.

The drop in oil prices was the financial shocker of 2014. In the first half of the year, the oil market looked just as it had the year before — and the two years before that. Crude oil was more than $100 a barrel and drivers in the U.S. were paying around $3.50 a gallon for gasoline. Now oil is around $45 a barrel and the average gas price is $2.07 a gallon.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents in the NABE survey indicated that tumbling oil prices would be positive to some extent for their businesses this year, while only 18 percent said they could have a negative impact. The decline is expected to benefit the manufacturing sector to a larger extent than others.

The survey, in this case conducted between Dec. 15 and Jan. 8, is intended to gauge business conditions at NABE members' companies or industries. Forty-three percent of the respondents were from companies with more than 1,000 employees.

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WikiLeaks slams Google over delay in revealing US warrants

BERLIN — The secrets-spilling group WikiLeaks has criticized Google for failing to inform it about U.S. search warrants issued against three of its staff.

The warrants issued in March 2012 required Google to hand over the phone numbers, IP addresses, credit card details, contents of all emails and other information for Sarah Harrison, Kristinn Hrafnsson and Joseph Faerrell.

They were disclosed to WikiLeaks in December.

In a letter to Google dated Monday, a lawyer for WikiLeaks says the group is "astonished and disturbed that Google waited over two and a half years to notify its subscribers that a search warrant was issued for their records." The letter adds that Twitter took legal action so it could alert WikiLeaks of a similar warrant in 2011.

Google didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

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