Jason Aldean's Holiday Plans: Visiting Santa with His Kids

By Eileen Finan 12/08/2012 at 06:30 PM EST Jessica Ussery and Jason Aldean Bauer-Griffin After a year of professional highs – and personal lows – Jason Aldean is looking forward to a quiet holiday with family."I'm on the road so much during the year, so what I...

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Wall Street Week Ahead: "Cliff" worries may drive tax selling

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors typically sell stocks to cut their losses at year end. But worries about the "fiscal cliff" - and the possibility of higher taxes in 2013 - may act as the greatest incentive to sell both winners and losers by December 31. The $600 billion of automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled for the beginning of next year includes higher rates for capital...

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Software guru McAfee wants to return to United States

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Software guru John McAfee, fighting deportation from Guatemala to Belize to face questions about the slaying of a neighbor, said on Saturday he wants to return to the United States.“My goal is to get back to America as soon as possible,” McAfee, 67, said in a phone call to Reuters from the immigration facility where he is being held for illegally crossing the border to Guatemala...

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Susan Powell's Father-in-Law Secretly Took 4,500 Pictures of Her

12/07/2012 at 07:30 PM EST Wrapping up a year that has brought unimaginable frustration and heartbreak, Susan Powell's family marked the three-year anniversary of her disappearance at a ceremony this week near where her two sons are buried."It's a hard time of year," Susan's father, Chuck Cox, tells PEOPLE....

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Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they...

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Dow, S&P rise on jobs, but Apple bites Nasdaq again

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and the S&P 500 advanced modestly on Friday, though another sell-off in Apple depressed technology shares and kept the Nasdaq negative, overshadowing a sharply better-than-expected jobs report. Trading was light, continuing the week's trend of slight moves and anemic volume. The S&P 500 ended up a mere 0.1 percent for the week, following several volatile...

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As Egypt’s Crisis Deepens, Morsi Turns to Muslim Brotherhood

CAIRO — Facing the most serious crisis of his presidency, Mohamed Morsi is leaning more closely than ever on his Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, betting on their political muscle to push through a decisive victory in the referendum on Egypt’s divisive draft constitution. As tens of thousands chanted for his downfall or even imprisonment in a fourth day of protests outside the presidential...

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New iPad mini orders will be delivered in time for Christmas

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Snake on a Plane - For Real - Forces Emergency Landing

People Pets By Alison Schwartz 12/06/2012 at 07:55 PM EST An Egyptian cobra, similar to the reptile pictured, made its way on-board a Kuwait-bound flight Annie Katz/Getty In a scene that played out like the plotline of a Samuel L. Jackson movie, some not-so-precious...

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans...

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Syria’s Chemical Weapons Moves Lead U.S. to Be Flexible

WASHINGTON — When President Obama first warned Syria’s leader, President Bashar al-Assad, that even making moves toward using chemical weapons would cross a “red line” that might force the United States to drop its reluctance to intervene in the country’s civil war, Mr. Obama took an expansive view of where he drew that boundary. “We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons...

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No Grammy love for Justin Bieber, One Direction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Irate fans of Justin Bieber and boy band One Direction took to social media on Thursday to voice their outrage after being snubbed by the Grammys for a chance to win the biggest honors in the music industry.Indie-pop band fun and rapper Frank Ocean led the 2013 nominations, tying with The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z and Kanye West for six nods. But The Recording Academy...

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Kate Receives Hospital Visit from Pippa and James

12/05/2012 at 07:30 PM EST James and Pippa Middleton Alpha /Landov; Inset:Allpix/ plash News Online The Duchess of Cambridge had more hospital visitors on Wednesday.Just two days after husband Prince William, 30, was photographed leaving the King Edward VII Hospital in Central London where...

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Dow, S&P rise, but Nasdaq sours with Apple in wild day

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A volatile trading session ended with U.S. stocks mostly higher on Wednesday, even as Apple, the most valuable company in the United States, suffered its worst day of losses in almost four years. In a strange occurrence, Apple accounted for the entirety of the Nasdaq 100's <.ndx> fall of 1.1 percent, while the Dow industrials - which do not include Apple as...

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For Greece, Oligarchs Are an Obstacle to Recovery

ATHENS — A dynamic entrepreneur, Lavrentis Lavrentiadis seemed to represent a promising new era for Greece. He dazzled the country’s traditionally insular business world by spinning together a multibillion-dollar empire just a few years after inheriting a small family firm at 18. Seeking acceptance in elite circles, he gave lavishly to charities and cultivated ties to the leading political parties....

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U.S. agency backs Apple in essential patent battle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google unit Motorola Mobility is not entitled to ask a court to stop the sale of Apple iPhones and iPads that it says infringe on a patent that is essential to wireless technology, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.In June, Judge Richard Posner in Chicago threw out cases that Motorola, now owned by Google, and Apple had filed against each other claiming patent...

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How Adriana Lima Got Her Body Back for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

Jennifer Graylock/JPIWith just eight weeks between the birth of daughter Sienna and the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, Adriana Lima wasted no time hitting the ring.Taking three weeks off to recover from the delivery, Lima had the five remaining weeks to prepare — and she did, following an intense workout plan designed by her trainer of six years, Michael Olajide,...

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Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require...

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Wall Street slips as investors seek cliff progress

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks finished slightly lower in a quiet session on Tuesday as the back-and-forth wrangling over the "fiscal cliff" gave investors little reason to act. Trading volume was light as legislators continue to negotiate a deal to avoid a $600 billion package of tax hikes and federal spending cuts that would begin January 1 and could push the economy into recession. ...

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Cheering U.N. Palestine Vote, New York Synagogue Tests Its Members

Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue with several thousand members on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is known for its charismatic rabbis, its energetic and highly musical worship, and its liberal stances on social causes. But on Friday, when its rabbis and lay leaders sent out an e-mail enthusiastically supporting the vote by the United Nations to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer...

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iOS users generate double the Web traffic of Android users

According to the latest numbers from Chitika Insights, iOS users generate more than twice the amount of Web traffic as Android users. The six-month study found that while the two operating systems were nearly tied when it came to smartphone Web traffic, Apple (AAPL) has a substantial lead with its iPad tablet. Despite Android’s commanding share of the overall mobile market, the...

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Jon Bon Jovi Had 'No Idea' About His Daughter's Drug Trouble

By Dahvi Shira 12/03/2012 at 07:20 PM EST Jon Bon Jovi and daughter Stephanie Dave M. Benett/Getty Jon Bon Jovi isn't just livin' on a prayer following the apparent heroin overdose that hospitalized his daughter Stephanie Rose Bongiovi last month.Speaking out...

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Fossil fuel subsidies in focus at climate talks

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Hassan al-Kubaisi considers it a gift from above that drivers in oil- and gas-rich Qatar only have to pay $1 per gallon at the pump."Thank God that our country is an oil producer and the price of gasoline is one of the lowest," al-Kubaisi said, filling up his Toyota Land Cruiser at a gas station in Doha. "God has given us a blessing."To those looking for a global response to climate...

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Fed officials laud stimulus, quibble over future plans

NEW YORK/LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - Central bankers appear satisfied with the impact of their latest monetary stimulus, though there is some disagreement over how forcefully to continue purchasing bonds, remarks by two top policymakers on Monday showed. Boston Federal Reserve Bank President Eric Rosengren, one of the most vocal proponents of Fed asset purchases, said there was...

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U.S. Warns Syria Against Using Chemical Weapons

Narciso Contreras/Associated Press A kitchen in a home in Aleppo, Syria showed signs of heavy fighting Sunday. WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Syria on Monday not to use chemical weapons against its own people, vowing to hold accountable anyone who did, even as American intelligence officials picked up signs that such arms might be deployed in the fighting there. The White House...

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