Wall Street edges up after Alcoa beats revenue estimates

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged higher on Wednesday after Alcoa got the earnings season under way with better-than-expected revenue and an encouraging outlook for the year. The market's rise came after two-days of declines as there were few catalysts to give direction and investors fretted about the start of earnings season after the prior quarter's lackluster performance. ...

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Chemical Weapons Showdown With Syria Led to Rare Accord

Muzaffar Salman/ReutersThe violence in Syria continued on Monday. Above, Syrians went to the aid of a man who was wounded when a missile hit the al-Mashhad district of Aleppo. WASHINGTON — In the last days of November, Israel’s top military commanders called the Pentagon to discuss troubling intelligence that was showing up on satellite imagery: Syrian troops appeared to be mixing chemicals at two...

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Target to match some rivals’ online prices year-round

(Reuters) – Target Corp said on Tuesday it will match on a year-round basis the prices found on the websites of key rivals Amazon.com Inc, Best Buy Co Inc, Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Toys R Us, its latest tactic to hold onto shoppers focused on price.The move extends an online price-matching program that Target introduced over the holiday season and which was supposed to last only from November 1 to...

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Alison Sweeney Blogs: 'Oh, Dreaded Week Two' on The Biggest Loser

TV Watch Only on People.com By Alison Sweeney 01/08/2013 at 12:00 PM EST Oh, dreaded week two! Emotions run high and numbers are typically low at the second weigh-in on The Biggest Loser. Never ones to keep things the same from season to season, it seemed like the prefect time to introduce the outdoor gyms created...

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer."There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer...

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Wall Street loses ground as earnings season starts

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday as the market consolidated from last week's rally on the "fiscal cliff" deal in Congress and investors awaited the start of the earnings season with lowered expectations. Profits in the fourth quarter are seen above the previous quarter's lackluster results, but analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October....

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With Eye on China, Japan Weighs Raising Military Spending

TOKYO — Japan’s new conservative government announced a review of national military strategy on Monday that analysts said was aimed at offsetting China’s growing military power and that may increase defense spending for the first time in a decade. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered his government to replace the nation’s five-year military spending plan and to review defense guidelines adopted...

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Kuwait sentences second man to jail for insulting emir: lawyer

DUBAI (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison on Monday for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, his lawyer said, the second to be jailed for the offence in as many days.The U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state has clamped down in recent months on political activists who have been using social media websites to criticize the government and the ruling family.Kuwait has seen a...

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Kate Falls Under Vogue's Microscope

By Stephen M. Silverman 01/07/2013 at 12:45 PM EST Duchess of Cambridge Fame; Landov (2); WireImage What's a little more scrutiny?Arguably the most-watched fashion icon – certainly the most closely followed expectant mother – in the world, the Duchess of Cambridge has been placed under the...

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Wall Street falls after five-year high, earnings in focus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Monday as banks agreed to pay billions in a settlement with U.S. regulators and investors speculated that U.S. earnings for the end of 2012 would be only modestly better than in the previous quarter. Financials declined after a group of home mortgage servicers, including major U.S. banks, agreed to pay a total of $8.5 billion to end a government-ordered,...

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