Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street. The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets. ...

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Baby Bones Found Scattered in Ancient Italian Village

SEATTLE — The death of an infant may not have been an occasion for mourning in ancient Italy, according to archaeologists who have found baby bones scattered on the floor of a workshop dating to the seventh century B.C.The grisly finds consist of bone fragments uncovered over years of excavation at Poggio Civitate, a settlement about 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the city of Siena in what is now Tuscany....

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Audrey Hepburn: Remembering the Private Legend

By Elizabeth McNeil 01/10/2013 at 07:35 PM EST Audrey Hepburn with her son, Luca Dotti, in 1985 Audrey Hepburn Childrens Fund She captivated the world with her doe-eyed beauty, but behind the Givenchy glamour, there was an Audrey Hepburn few people knew. She thought...

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Flu season strikes early and, in some places, hard

NEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients.Flu season in the U.S. has struck early and, in many places, hard.While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until...

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Asian shares retreat after China CPI, yen slides

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares fell on Friday as a pick-up in Chinese inflation prompted profit taking but underlying sentiment was supported by an improving outlook for global economies, while the yen slid on renewed expectations for bold monetary easing in Japan. China's annual consumer inflation rate accelerated to a seven-month high of 2.5 percent in December on rising food prices,...

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Chinese Officials Pledge to Loosen Controls Over Embattled Newspaper

GUANGZHOU, China — Propaganda officials in the southern province of Guangdong have agreed to loosen some controls over an embattled newspaper whose struggle against censorship has galvanized free-speech advocates across China, according to journalists at the newspaper. But the paper’s weekly Thursday edition went to press late partly because of internal disputes over content, one senior editor said....

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‘Liquipod’ takes smartphone waterproofing on the road

Amid a sea of Ultra-HD TVs, smart washing machines and various other gadgets, waterproofing expert Liquipel took to CES 2013 to make two announcements. The firm, which adds an interior and exterior waterproof nanocoating to cell phones, revealed a new and improved waterproofing material that is even more effective than its first-generation solution. Liquipel also unveiled its new “Liquipod,”...

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Sandra Bullock Honored at People's Choice Awards for New Orleans Support

By Alison Schwartz 01/09/2013 at 10:45 PM EST Sandra Bullock at the People's Choice Awards Jason Merritt/Getty Sandra Bullock took home big honors for her work in the Big Easy Wednesday night.The People's Choice Awards crowned the Oscar-winning actress the favorite humanitarian for her career-spanning...

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in...

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Wall Street rises after Alcoa reports earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, rebounding from two days of losses, as investors turned their focus to the first prominent results of the earnings season. Stocks had retreated at the start of the week from the S&P 500's highest point in five years, hit last Friday, on worries about possible earnings weakness. Shares of Alcoa Inc were down 0.5 percent to...

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