"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights. That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January. Late-stage bull markets...

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: What's in a Name, Hurricane?

LONDON — Congratulations are in order for Blær Bjarkardóttir, the 15-year-old Icelandic girl who this week won the legal right to keep her given name in defiance of the despotic-sounding Icelandic Naming Committee.Blær — its means “light breeze” in Icelandic — had sued authorities who refused to register her name because it was not on an approved list of 1,853 names that parents are allowed to give...

Read More..

3 Things That Still Worry Me About BlackBerry

BlackBerry put on a pretty good show on Wednesday when it revealed the Z10 and the Q10, its first new smartphones in a year and a half. The demos were crisp, and the new BlackBerry 10 software looked clever. At the very least, it seems that BlackBerry has finally joined the modern smartphone era.But despite my interest in BlackBerry’s new phones, I’m still worried about the future of the platform,...

Read More..

Drew Barrymore Wears Sweatpants She Finds on the Floor

Stylewatch Style News Now 01/31/2013 at 09:00 AM ET Daniel Jackson for Harper’s BAZAARIf you take away the fact that she’s a multi-talented movie star, producer, former CoverGirl and current cosmetics mogul who got married in Chanel,...

Read More..

Hedgehog Alert! Prickly pets can carry salmonella

NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Health officials on Thursday...

Read More..

Global shares gain, dollar dips as growth outlook brightens

LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar fell and world stocks gained on Friday as fresh economic data signaled that the euro zone's downturn has eased and China's growth was on track, but moves were limited as investors await a U.S. jobs report. American employers are expected to have added 160,000 new jobs to their payrolls in January, a marginal rise on December's 155,000 gain, and a stronger...

Read More..

U.N. Panel Says Israeli Settlement Policy Violates Law

GENEVA — Israel has used the expansion of Jewish settlements to pursue a creeping annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories and committed multiple violations of international law in its treatment of Palestinians, the United Nations Human Rights Council said in a report on Thursday that called for an immediate halt to all settlement activity. Presenting its findings after a nearly...

Read More..

Facebook slumps as mobile ad growth fails to impress

(Reuters) – Shares of Facebook Inc were set to open 7 percent lower on Thursday as a surge in fourth-quarter mobile advertising revenue failed to live up to Wall Street’s high expectations.Three brokerages downgraded the stock of the No. 1 social network, which has struggled to develop a full-fledged mobile advertising business.Facebook has long established itself as one of the most important websites,...

Read More..

Kendra Wilkinson Fondly Remembers Hugh Hefner's Late Secretary

By Tim Nudd 01/31/2013 at 08:30 AM EST Kendra Wilkinson and (inset) Mary O'Connor Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic; Inset: Elayne Lodge A friend, a confidante, a shoulder to cry on. Someone who brought a welcome dose of levity when things got heavy. Mary O'Connor was many...

Read More..

Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths

Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting...

Read More..