Wall Street Week Ahead: Bears hibernate as stocks near record highs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks have been on a tear in January, moving major indexes within striking distance of all-time highs. The bearish case is a difficult one to make right now. Earnings have exceeded expectations, the housing and labor markets have strengthened, lawmakers in Washington no longer seem to be the roadblock that they were for most of 2012, and money has returned to stock...

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IHT Rendezvous: Gallery Stroll: Istanbul

ISTANBUL — Unpredictable weather means winter isn’t the most popular season for visiting Istanbul, but it is a great time for gallery-hopping: Many of the best museums and art spaces in the Beyoglu district have just opened compelling new exhibitions.At Arter, the curator Emre Baykal has gathered mostly new works by Turkish artists to create the second installment of “Envy, Enmity, Embarrassment.”...

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Facebook Profile May Expose Mental Illness

A person’s Facebook profile may reveal signs of mental illness that might not necessarily emerge in a session with a psychiatrist, a new study suggests.“The beauty of social media activity as a tool in psychological diagnosis is that it removes some of the problems associated with patients’ self-reporting,” said study researcher Elizabeth Martin, a psychology doctoral student at the University of...

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Waiter Michael Garcia Refuses to Serve Man Who Insulted Boy with Down Syndrome

By Dahvi Shira 01/26/2013 at 09:00 AM EST Waiter Michael Garcia made his regular customer Kim Castillo feel like family last week at the Houston restaurant Laurenzo's Prime Rib.Castillo was eating there with her husband and their 5-year-old son Milo when several waiters came by their table to chat. Milo, who...

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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West

New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very...

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Stock futures up, S&P 500 poised to rally for an eighth day

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures gained on Friday and the S&P 500 looked set to extend its best winning streak in more than six years, as rosy earnings from Procter & Gamble came amid a broader backdrop of healthy corporate results. The strong start to the year for the equities market has also been attributed to agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing...

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Clashes Turn Deadly After Iraqi Forces Open Fire on Protesters

BAGHDAD – At least four protesters and two soldiers were shot dead on Friday in clashes that started after Iraqi Army forces opened fire on demonstrators who had pelted them with rocks on the outskirts of Falluja. It was the first time that one of the anti-government protests that have been seething in Iraq for more than a month have led to deadly confrontation between the protesters, who are mostly...

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Nokia CEO closes the door on a potential Android smartphone

Nokia (NOK) CEO Stephen Elop on Thursday shot down rumors that his company might be interested in developing Android-based smartphones. During Nokia’s fourth-quarter earnings call, the executive reiterated his support for the company’s Asha phones and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone platform, while shutting the door on earlier Android rumors. [More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will...

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Matt Damon Takes Over Jimmy Kimmel Live

TV Watch By Stephen M. Silverman 01/25/2013 at 08:00 AM EST Matt Damon (foreground) and Jimmy Kimmel Matt Damon more than made up for his decade of being bumped from Jimmy Kimmel Live. Declaring "I am in command of this ship," Damon not only hijacked the show...

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Penalty could keep smokers out of health overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.The Affordable Care Act — "Obamacare" to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies...

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Stock futures drop as Apple revenue miss to halt stocks rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were set to fall Thursday as Apple slid nearly 10 percent following a revenue miss, and analysts said equities may be due for a pullback after a six-day rally. Apple Inc missed Wall Street's revenue forecast for a third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears its dominance of consumer electronics...

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India Ink: India Rape Trial Starts With Renewed Ban on Media Coverage

The trial of five men accused in the gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in New Delhi is being watched closely as a symbol of India’s commitment to justice for women, but information about the ongoing court proceedings may be scarce.As court proceedings began Thursday, the presiding judge said  there would be a blanket ban on reporting on the trial. The judge, Yogesh Khanna,  also...

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Adrienne Maloof: Why I'm 'Casually Dating' Rod Stewart's Son

TV Watch By Raha Lewis 01/24/2013 at 08:00 AM EST Adrienne Maloof and Sean Stewart Splash News Online Adrienne Maloof wants to make one thing clear about Sean Stewart: "We are not living together. He has his own place. He has a nice place."Otherwise, she tells...

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AP Interview: UN wants better family planning

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — The U.N.'s top population official wants governments to do more to ensure that women have access to family planning.The U.N. says the world will add a billion people to its current population of some 7 billion within a decade, further straining the planet's resources.Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, says more than 220 million women in...

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Stock futures flat, but techs rally in premarket

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were flat on Wednesday, with investors reluctant to make big bets following a five-day rally that took major averages to levels not seen since December 2007. Tech shares will be in focus with earnings due from tech heavyweight Apple and following strong results from both IBM and Google, which rallied in premarket trading and continued the string...

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IHT Rendezvous: Taiwan's Diverse Literature and History on Show in Two New Museums

TAINAN — Two new museums in Tainan, a city in Taiwan’s south, say much about how the island’s people have worked in recent years to build an unusually inclusive cultural identity, a model for Chinese-speaking societies, as I write in my Letter from Taiwan this week.At the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, founded in 2003, exhibits explore the writing, film and music of indigenous cultures such...

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First “Firefox OS” Phones Previewed, to Launch in February

Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind the popular Firefox web browser, has been promoting its Firefox OS project (once known as “Boot to Gecko”) for some time now. A hardware partnership with Telefonica, the international telecom giant, had been announced, but no phones had yet been unveiled.But in an announcement today on its blog, Mozilla announced the impending launch of its first “developer...

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Melissa Rycroft Tricks Her Daughter at the Dinner Table

Mom & Babies Celebrity Baby Blog 01/22/2013 at 09:00 AM ET FameFlynet She triumphed with her fancy footwork on the dance floor, but Melissa Rycroft may have finally met her match.Although completely head over heels in love with daughter Ava Grace, 2 next month, the first-time mom admits her little...

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Foes of NYC soda size limit doubt racial fairness

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents of the city's limit on the size of sugary drinks are raising questions of racial fairness alongside other complaints as the novel restriction faces a court test.The NAACP's New York state branch and the Hispanic Federation have joined beverage makers and sellers in trying to stop the rule from taking effect March 12. With a hearing set Wednesday, critics are attacking what...

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Stock futures flat at five-year highs, investors await earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were flat on Tuesday as investors held back from making large bets ahead of an onslaught of corporate earnings and after recently notching five-year highs. Both the Dow and S&P 500 closed at their highest levels the earnings season. U.S. markets were closed on Monday for a public holiday. Despite stronger-than-expected earnings...

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IHT Rendezvous: Oscar Anticipation in the Subtitle Category

PARIS—With the multiple nominations for “Lincoln,” “Django Unchained” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” Europeans may see this year’s Academy Award field as something of a celebration of American history, in the age of Obama.Still, “Amour,” Michael Haneke’s Austrian film shot in France and in French, made it into the best picture category, confirmation that the Academy thinks subtitled films can hold their...

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I Might Be Too Old for Facebook Graph Search

On Sunday, I turned 30.That’s not too old, I tell myself, yet the signs of aging are creeping in. Teenagers listen to music that I either haven’t heard of or believe to be mostly terrible. They use slang I don’t recognize, and I imagine my slang would sound to them like “groovy” or “far out” sound to me.But for the purposes of our tech blog, the most notable sign is how much more active teens...

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The Biggest Loser's Alison Sweeney Blogs: The Entire Family Needs Fight Childhood Obesity Together

TV Watch By Alison Sweeney 01/22/2013 at 08:30 AM EST Alison Sweeney hosts NBC's The Biggest Loser and is the award-winning star of Days of Our Lives, in addition to being an author, director, producer, wife and mom. Like she has for the past two seasons, Alison will blog each week about the latest episode of...

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home...

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European shares test two-year highs, yen volatile before BOJ

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares inched towards two-year highs and German Bund futures dipped on Monday, as a political attempt to break a budget impasse in the United States revived appetite for shares and dented demand for safe-haven assets. U.S. House Republican leaders said on Friday they would seek to pass a three-month extension of federal borrowing authority in the coming days...

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