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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Can You Lead on the Environment if You Bypass Climate Change?

Climate change didn’t even match Andy Warhol’s famous-for-15-minutes standard this week at a gathering devoted to reviving conservative leadership on the environment. It got five minutes at the 1 hour, 40 minute mark of a two-hour program, and what was said about it amounted to “We will deal with that some other time, maybe.”To be fair, the Conservation Leadership Council is an admirable if risk-averse...

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Terror group fills Syria rebels' space

STORY HIGHLIGHTSU.S. declared a key opposition group in Syria a terrorist organizationNew report says it is the most effective group in the opposition, with 5,000 fightersNada Bakos: The group has ties to al Qaeda but also seeks to provide social servicesShe says the chances are slim that it could be persuaded to give up radical goalsEditor's note: Nada Bakos is a former Central Intelligence Agency...

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Exhumation of poisoned lottery winner proceeds

Cook County authorities continue to move toward exhuming the body of a Chicago man who died of cyanide poisoning weeks after...

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Venezuela's top court endorses Chavez inauguration delay

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's top court endorsed the postponement of Hugo Chavez's inauguration this week and ruled on Wednesday that the cancer-stricken president and his deputy would continue in their roles, despite a cacophony of opposition complaints. Critics had argued the 58-year-old's absence from his own swearing-in ceremony on January 10 meant a caretaker president must be...

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Wall Street slips as earnings season gets under way

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Tuesday, retreating from last week's rally on the "fiscal cliff" deal in Washington, as companies started to report results for the fourth quarter. After a 4.3 percent jump in the two sessions around the close of the fiscal cliff negotiations, the S&P has declined a bit, with investors finding few catalysts to extend the rally that took the benchmark...

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Bucks coach Scott Skiles out, Boylan to fill in

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Once again, an NBA team has parted ways with head coach Scott Skiles. Once again, veteran assistant Jim Boylan is being asked to pick up the pieces.One day after Milwaukee and Skiles agreed it was time for a change, the Bucks said Tuesday that Boylan will coach the team for the rest of the season. General manager John Hammond downplayed the notion that Skiles had lost control of the...

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Wanted: Mars Colonists to Explore Red Planet

If you think you have the right stuff to help colonize Mars, you’ll soon get your chance to prove it.The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which hopes to put the first boots on the Red Planet in 2023, released its basic astronaut requirements today (Jan. 8), setting the stage for a televised global selection process that will begin later this year.Mars One isn’t zeroing in on scientists or...

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Case of Wall Street greed gone too far

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was one of the executives whose stock award was accelerated to beat higher tax rate.STORY HIGHLIGHTSGoldman Sachs granted $65 million in stock to execs before new tax rates beganSusan Antilla says the firm's CEO had endorsed higher rates, called for entitlement cuts She says Goldman benefits from the implicit promise that U.S. will bail it outAntilla: It was unseemly...

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Medical examiner seeks to exhume body of poisoned lottery winner

Urooj Khan won the $1 million in the lottery just weeks before he died suddenly of a heart attack in his West Rogers Park...

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