tiffanybracelethea

tiffany necklaceEvacuation orders were lifted on Sunday over 10,000 residents of Los Alamos displaced by the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, as the blaze burns to the north away from the town. The return of residents to their homes came a day after the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, birthplace of the atomic bomb, ended a state of emergency when the threat of the fire subsided around the site in northern New Mexico. The Las Conchas blaze has consumed over 121,000 acres and is 11 percent contained as it burns toward the north away from Los Alamos, and about 2,000 firefighters are working to control its spread, according to officials. Los Alamos and its entire population of over 10,000 people was ordered evacuated on Monday, forcing residents to move to shelters and a casino that opened its doors to the displaced. "The time has finally come when we can repopulate Los Alamos, and no one could be happier than me," said Los Alamos County Police Chief Wayne Torpy. Los Alamos County Fire Chief Douglas Tucker warned residents not to approach wild animals which have been seen fleeing the fire. At least three black bears have been seen in neighborhoods of Los Alamos. Now ranked as the largest wild-lands blaze ever in New Mexico, the fire surpassed the previous record set in 2003 by the 94,000-acre Dry Lakes Fire in the Gila National Forest.

It also has destroyed 63 homes, fire officials said. Authorities were deploying firefighting resources over a dozen miles north of Los Alamos to combat the blaze's spread on the Santa Clara Reservation and to protect sites considered sacred by Pueblo Indians there, said fire information officer Rob Torres. The reservation covers 55,000 acres and the blaze has charred over 14,000 acres of that land, said Joe Baca, a spokesman for the Santa Clara Pueblo. The blaze also has spread into the Bandelier National Monument, an ancestral home of Pueblo Indians. On Saturday, two firefighters were injured in the fire, with one suffering wounds to his lower extremities and the other receiving a head injury, according to fire officials. Both firefighters were listed in stable condition. Meanwhile, Los Alamos said it planned to reopen on Wednesday. The fire forced the closure of the national lab for a week and burned dangerously close to its property. Flames were spotted at least once on nuclear lab land.

"Los Alamos National Laboratory appears to have escaped serious damage from the Las Conchas fire," Lab Director Charles McMillan said in a memo. "We are grateful for the tremendous efforts of emergency responders that helped spare the Lab and the town of Los Alamos." Laboratory personnel will check each of the more than 2,000 buildings on its 36-square-mile campus before it reopens. At one point this week, the New Mexico fire's edge was reported just 2 miles from a collection of about 20,000 metal drums containing plutonium-contaminated clothing and other waste stored on a corner of the 36-square-mile lab property. Nuclear watchdog groups and some citizens had raised concerns about the fire possibly unleashing residual ground contamination left from decades of experimental explosions and waste disposal in the area. A pullback could be on the table next week for stocks after their best weekly performance in two years, especially if a raft of data headlined by the June jobs report doesn't bolster the argument of a strengthening economy. 

Stocks rose for five straight days as the fog of the Greek debt crisis appeared to once again be lifted while better-than-anticipated economic numbers such as Friday's manufacturing data gave weight to the belief the U.S. economy was starting to recover from a soft patch. "What we are looking at is a market that is going to focus on the economic numbers," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners in New York. "We had real good gains toward the end of the quarter so it wouldn't surprise me to see a little bit of profit taking before we get those numbers out during the course of the week." Data expected for next week includes factory orders for May, the ISM services index and several indicators on the labor market, including Friday's report. "It is a little bit early to declare victory over the mid-cycle slowdown we've had," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in Bedford Hills, New York. "On Friday, you have payrolls, unemployment rate -- the big Kahuna -- and there might be some trepidation going into it, especially with the market having already rebounded sharply here over several days."

Even with the economic data on the docket for next week, volume is expected to remain light due to the market holiday on July 4th, which could exacerbate swings in the market. Aside from the additional spike in volume brought about by the final reconstitution of Russell Investments by its indexes on June 24, average weekly volume has been among the lowest of the year for several weeks. BULLS AND THE BUDGET DEFICIT The light volume may prove to be an advantage for the bulls, however, especially after the S&P 500 successfully bounced off the 200-day moving average, a key technical support level, and jumped back over the 50-day moving average, which represented a resistance point. "The mindset is an opportunistic 'risk on' trade and it is giving a lift to the market in spite of the fact that most people are scratching their heads.

But that is what happens, particularly when there is very light volume, momentum dictates trend, and that is what we find ourselves in," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital in Jersey City, New Jersey. For the week, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 5.4 percent, the S&P 500 gained 5.6 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 6.2 percent -- marking their biggest weekly percentage gains since July 2009. With Greece and the European debt crisis once again pushed to the back burner in the minds of investors, the focus has shifted to the rapidly approaching deadline for Congress to reach an agreement on the debt limit, presenting another headwind for stocks. The U.S. Treasury on Friday kept up the pressure on Congress to strike a deal to raise the debt ceiling and prevent a default, repeating that it would run out of legal room to borrow on August 2.

"The big thing on the horizon is now back to the U.S. deficit issues," said Rick Meckler, president of LibertyView Capital Management in New York. "The Greek (debt) situation was an appetizer for that, and I think you're going to see a lot of back and forth as people wonder how much brinkmanship is actually going to be played with the budget deficit." Another overhang could be evident in the preannouncement of corporate profits before earnings season begins with Alcoa Inc's earnings on July 11. The global slowdown in the second quarter may result in some disappointing outlooks. "We have had a soft patch in the economy here due to higher commodity prices, a little bit of weakness in the manufacturing side, because of Japan, Europe, China and various things. All that can really impact Q2 earnings and we may see some negative preannouncements, and that might really have a broader impact on the overall market," Ghriskey said.