The tears begin and her voice trembles as Ruth Martinez remembers the first few days of her new world. She would leave work, pick up her son Jacob at school and drive aimlessly, sometimes sneaking back to the office, "to watch TV there without my boss knowing." Her husband had lost his job, and the stress drove them apart. Then Martinez was evicted. Suddenly, her car was her home. And she was afraid to ask for help. "We just prayed," ...

Wall Street's number crunchers are happy. Stock technicians, who use mathematical formulas as well as charts and historical data to figure out where share prices are headed, believe the market's rally that started in early March, and has pushed stocks up 36% in less than two months, is here to stay. They say stocks will rise another 10%, before the market stalls. That would leave the Dow Jones Industrial Average at around 9,200, or about where it was in early October, just after the initial $700 ...

Like a patient suffering from a particularly tenacious case of, well, the flu, the H1N1 virus seemed to gain ground and lose it over the weekend, leaving health officials still cautious, but hopeful that the disease might be on the wane. The number of confirmed infections continues to rise, with the World Health Organization reporting 898 infections in 18 countries as of May 3, and the Centers for Disease Control tallying 226 confirmed cases in 30 states. The ...

The French Navy said they seized 11 pirates Sunday after they apparently mistook a French military vessel for a commercial ship and made a run at it. Two pirate assault boats approached the Nivose "at great speed," Capt. Christophe Prazuck said, but a French helicopter intervened before the attackers had time to fire at the French Navy ship. The helicopter fired warning shots, he said. The pirates, who had a mother ship as well as the two assault ...

At least five bomb attacks in Iraq in the past 48 hours have left some 140 people dead, wounded dozens more and raised fears that the country may be returning to the sectarian violence from which it has only just emerged. On Thursday three bombs in central Baghdad and areas northeast of the capital killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 100. On Friday, a double suicide bombing at the most important Shi'ite shrine in Baghdad killed another ...

Russia's leaders are getting used to cutting budgets this year. As the country sinks deeper into recession — unemployment, according to some estimates, is as high as 12% and the economy is predicted to shrink by about 4.5% in 2009 — the government is slashing spending at most of its ministries. The Energy Ministry's budget is down by 33%, and that of the Transport Ministry by 30%. But there is one hugely expensive project on which President Dmitri Medvedev has ...

Listen up, all ye coeds: the dress code on campus is about to kick up a notch. In the past year, a number of top financial professionals have decided to swap toxic assets and big acquisitions for academia. Greg Fleming, former president of Merrill Lynch, is probably the highest-ranking Wall Streeter to make the move so far. Earlier this year, after Merrill was acquired by Bank of America, Fleming decided to exit the newly combined firm for Yale Law School. This semester, he ...

Asian and Pacific markets tumbled on Tuesday, following a rocky day on Wall Street. The Nikkei average was down 3.4 percent at the midday break, while the All Ordinaries index in Australia had slipped 2.7 percent. In Seoul, the KOSPI slipped 1.9 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was off 3.9 percent. On Wall Street, stocks tumbled Monday as a six-week old rally lost steam on worries about financial sector earnings, despite Bank of America's better-than-expected quarterly results. The ...

A suspected leader of the Basque separatist group ETA and two alleged accomplices were arrested Saturday in a city near the southern coast of France, a CNN partner station reported, citing police sources. The key suspect arrested in the joint French-Spanish operation in Perpignan was identified as Jurdan Martitegui Lizaso, CNN+ said. Martitegui, who is in his late 20s, is wanted for various ETA attacks in Spain. State security forces believe Martitegui was ETA's "No.1," CNN+ said. Spain's ruling Socialist ...

For gauging the economic health of China, Guangdong province is a canary in a coal mine. Double-digit growth rates in China are now a thing of the past. The nation's first quarter gross domestic product grew 6.1 percent, the government announced Thursday -- down from 10.6 percent a year ago. Nowhere is the slide more acute than in Guangdong, the southeastern Chinese coastal region across the border from Hong Kong. If China is one of the most important countries in ...