glencore and southcom said a couple minutes ago that they have reached an agreement. it says eskom has now withdrawn its objections to the glencore/xstrata merger meeting. glencore and eskom have agreed on a framework that would guide future coal agreements. this comes on the heels of this morning's announcement by glencore and xstrata that they have once again moved the deadline for that $77 million merger. they have moved it back by six weeks. this is actually the first time that the completion of the merger has been pushed back. this is all about regulatory approval. the sticking point was the regulatory approval from south africa and from china. now, the south african part of the equation, that seems to have been solved with the agreement between eskom and glencore, but they're still waiting for the chinese approval and talks about that probably won't be kicking off until after the chinese new year. but, again, just to remind you that glencore is used to showing a little bit of patience with regard to chinese approvals, because last year when glencore announced th

host: glencore go on to brandon in dover, delaware, on our independent line. caller: how are you?ice show as usual. in delaware in my area we are having no problem with school closings. they are building more schools and bigger high schools and things of that nature. so we're having no problem here. do awaythink you should with the public schools. i have seen it being a problem because i used to travel a long way to school and i used to see houses out in the country. i used to think, sooner or later, that will be a problem. i went to a good public school, polytechnic. it was a vocational school. if any thing, the government needs to have more vocational high school is so people can have a trade and go to college at the same time. in delaware, elementary schools, schools, and so forth, it's not a problem. host: here's what "the huffington post" says about the meeting that took place yesterday in washington. our next caller is from north carolina on the democratic line. good morning. caller: how are you? school or public private school or charter or anything else. the systemic struc

glencore up over 7% and the financial sector is also doing well today.on this side of the atlantic and you see it in europe as well. what's interesting is it's the periphery of europe that is really rallying those. you see spanish financials doing particularly well today. led by the asset manager up over 18.5%. and the italian financials, that other critical market also doing well. the insurance giant up over 4%, so it is a big, broad rally in europe today on good volume in the wake of that deal done to avert the fiscal cliff here in the united states. back to you. >> time now to check the moves within the energy and metals market. check in with sharon especiallier son. >> we're looking at u.s. oil prices, the wti contract was at the highest levels since september. above $93 a barrel and it's broken through key technical levels. the same is true for brent crude. the next level to get to in terms of resistant above $113 a barrel. we're also seeing gains even in the gasoline futures and that comes on a year that saw the highest retail gasoline prices on av