Across the Nation

NEW YORK — JetBlue Airways Corp. said Wednesday it expects a wider first-quarter loss and lower full-year profit, as it absorbs the effect of more than 1,000 cancellations caused by last week’s winter blast in the Northeast.

But shares of the low-cost carrier, which has battled withering criticism since operations melted down at its New York hub, still rose after Merrill Lynch said the stock had been oversold and recommended buying it.

JetBlue said it’s now looking for first-quarter pretax margins of between negative 8 percent and negative 10 percent. It previously predicted pretax margins of negative 2 percent to negative 4 percent.

The revision equates to about a $37 million reduction in first-quarter results, Prudential Equity analyst Bob McAdoo wrote in a research report. A day earlier, JetBlue said the winter woes mean it will have to hand out as much as $30 million in refunds, credits, worker overtime and other expenses.

McAdoo said the guidance change seems extreme and wrote that JetBlue may be trying to lower expectations "in hopes of buoying reactions to future earnings releases.”

He cut his first-quarter estimate to a loss of 12 cents from a loss of 4 cents. Analysts overall, on average, look for a first-quarter loss of 9 cents, according to a Thomson Financial survey.

Calyon Securities analyst Ray Neidl said in an interview that the updated guidance is in line with his expectations, after he trimmed his first-quarter outlook to a loss of 14 cents per share from a loss of 3 cents.

Ohio woman found guilty of murder in death of her 3-year-old foster son

BATAVIA, Ohio — A jury on Wednesday convicted a woman of murder for causing the death of a 3-year-old foster son by leaving him bound in a cocoon of blankets and tape while she went away to a weekend family reunion. Liz Carroll, 30, was convicted on seven counts, including involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and three counts of child endangerment by the Clermont County jury. She faces from 15 years to life in prison when sentencing begins Thursday.

Carroll grimaced and dropped her head as the verdict was read. Carroll’s defense attorney, Gregory Cohen, said he would appeal.

"They don’t even know my daughter! None of you even care!” her mother, Audrey Sims, shouted after the verdict. Prosecutors said they charged Carroll with murder because she caused the death of her developmentally disabled son, Marcus Fiesel, by binding him and leaving him in a closet. They acknowledged, however, it was unintentional.

Parents of one of world’s tiniest preemies get to take her home from hospital

Parents of one of the world’s smallest premature babies got to take her home Wednesday for the first time since she was delivered last fall. Amillia Sonja Taylor has known only an incubator for a bed at Baptist Children’s Hospital since she was delivered in October after less than 22 weeks in the womb.

"The baby is healthy and thriving and left Baptist Children’s Hospital today after four months in our neonatal intensive care unit,” hospital spokeswoman Liz Latta said.

Amillia, who was just 9 1/2 inches at birth and weighed less than 10 ounces, will still require oxygen at home and a developmental specialist will follow up with her and her parents to track her neurological development.

The infant now weighs about 4 1/2 pounds and is just over 15 1/2 inches long.

Amillia’s parents, Eddie and Sonja Taylor of Homestead declined to speak with reporters Wednesday.

Doctors had hoped to release Amillia from the hospital Tuesday but kept her an extra day to monitor a low white blood cell count that could have indicated a vulnerability to infection.

Full-term births come after 37 to 40 weeks, and few babies born before 22 weeks survive.

Amillia suffered respiratory and digestive problems, as well as a mild brain hemorrhage, but doctors believe those problems will not have major long-term effects.

Amillia was conceived in vitro and was delivered by Caesarean section after an infection caused her mother to go into premature labor, doctors said.