The Securities & Exchange Commission , concerned about the exponential growth of hyper-frequency trading, announced on Tuesday, Aug. 4, that it was considering a ban on one form of this activity, known as flash trading. But it has said nothing about an even bigger element of high-frequency trading, known as co-location, even as the New York Stock Exchange is building two new facilities to house such traders. High-frequency trading is a catchall description of several ...

Seated on a jetliner, Dr. Mary Gallagher and her husband, Don Dietrich, were about to take off for an anniversary vacation in Puerto Rico. But a glance at her husband of five years set off an alarm -- he was gasping for breath. Gallagher, an anesthesiologist, knew the signs: Dietrich was in cardiac arrest. Gallagher ran to tell the pilot; someone called 911 from a cell phone; another passenger started CPR. Paramedics appeared and then Gallagher made a crucial decision: ...

Six months into the Obama Administration, a clear pattern of legislative pragmatism has emerged: focus on winning the big votes and don't fret too much about losing some of the details. Working at a furious pace, Obama's team has racked up by almost any measure one of the most successful early records in modern memory, especially if you focus on big scoreboard numbers and not the detailed stats. But each of his team's major accomplishments — ...

Divorce causes more than bitterness and broken hearts. The trauma of a split can leave long-lasting effects on mental and physical health that remarriage might not repair, according to research released this week. "People who lose a marriage take such damage to their health," said Linda Waite, a sociologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Waite and co-author Mary Elizabeth Hughes, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that divorced or widowed people have 20 percent more ...

Canadian beauty Jillian Harris finally found what she was looking for a lover and a best friend when she giddily accepted a proposal from Chicago computer software consultant Ed Swiderski on the season finale of "The Bachelorette" Monday night. After Harris had assured him that he was indeed the one ("There's no doubt in my mind that I'm madly in love with you," she enthused), 30-year-old Swiderski got down on one knee and placed a $60,000 Neil Lane platinum ...

A clerk's quick flip of a switch foiled a robbery Friday at an Office Depot store in downtown Chicago.

In Washington there are bailouts to be had for banks and car companies, but what about Portland's Oregon Ballet Theatre? OBT's 20th anniversary season is around the corner, but its budget has dropped 28%. It's hard to celebrate in style when faced with a "very serious cash crunch," says executive director Jon Ulsh. And it's forcing arts groups to be ever more creative about where and how they look for support. President Barack Obama has asked the ...

Entering the Ben M'Sik caves on the outskirts of Casablanca, a visitor goes through a hole in a crumbling concrete wall and down a flight of stairs covered in a slippery layer of mold. At the bottom lies a dimly lit room that houses roughly 100 people. The walls are splintered, the floor damp, and thick blue tarpaulins, pregnant with leaking water, hang from the ceiling. Every morning, the people who call this place home stuff their mattresses into ...

President Obama commended the progress of African-Americans in a speech on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, but said there was still much work to be done. Speaking at the organization's annual convention in New York, the city where the organization was founded, Obama evoked symbols of the civil rights movement to describe the NAACP's influence on race relations in the United States. "What we celebrate tonight is not simply the journey the NAACP has traveled, but the journey that ...

Sears Tower is history. As of Thursday, the iconic Chicago, Illinois, skyscraper is now named Willis Tower. At least that's what the owners of the 110-story skyscraper now call it after its new main tenant, the London, England-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings. However, there are plenty of people who refuse to call it that. More than 90,000 people have joined the group "People Against the Sears Tower Name Change," on the social networking Web site Facebook. "This name change ...