IBT Staff Reporter

U.S. stocks were little changed on Tuesday as positive news from the corporate earnings season offset data pointing to weak consumer demand.

J&J beats expectations, BA seeks cash, Airline capacity more stable

Sun Microsystems Inc , the computer server maker being acquired by Oracle Corp , issued a revenue forecast that fell short of Wall Street estimates.

A painfully gradual U.S. recovery should start in the third quarter, even as the job market is still weakening, said an economist with the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.

Goldman reports soaring 2Q profits, Treasury Sec. says economy improving quicker than expected, J&J beats expectations

Bernard Madoff's prison life began on Tuesday, a far cry from his life of luxurious apartments and yachts he accrued while running Wall Street's biggest investment fraud.

Shares of small-business lender CIT Group Inc jumped Tuesday amid hopes that the company can access government aid or otherwise restructure debt to forestall a liquidity crisis.

A jump in auto and gasoline sales salvaged an otherwise lackluster June for U.S. retailers, while an inflation gauge jumped by twice as much as expected, suggesting a long-awaited economic recovery will be sluggish.

Swindler Bernard Madoff was temporarily moved to a prison in Atlanta from New York and was in transit to yet another facility on Tuesday, a U.S. official said.

President Barack Obama will unveil a $12 billion initiative on Tuesday to boost community colleges and propel the United States toward his goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, administration officials said.

The current U.S. system of consumer financial protection is designed to fail and needs replacement with a dedicated new agency that can respond more quickly to emerging problems in the financial sector, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Tuesday.

Jailed author of the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history is on his the move again. He is currently being transferred from a medium security prison in Atlanta to an undisclosed location, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Improving conditions for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank prove that a Palestinian state can be built from the bottom up while it's being negotiated from the top down, Tony Blair said Tuesday.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the banks that own Markit, a leading information supplier in the credit default swaps market, have unfair access to price information, Bloomberg reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Oil prices rose by around 1 percent to above $60 on Tuesday as renewed confidence across financial markets helped to reverse some of last week's falls.

Liberia's former President Charles Taylor, the first African ruler to stand trial for war crimes, took the stand in his own defense on Tuesday, arguing that the case against him was full of misinformation and lies.

Jailed author of the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history is on his the move again. He is currently being transferred from a medium security prison in Atlanta to an undisclosed location, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, CNN reported. Madoff arrived at the Atlanta prison on Tuesday after he was moved from his New York jail cell.

A former interrogator at the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison on Tuesday expressed no remorse for the deaths of thousands of Cambodians who he said had all committed crimes.

Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corporation announced Tuesday it will invest more than $600 million and partner with biotech firm Synthetic Genomics Inc.to develop biofuels from photosynthetic algae at a large scale.

China on Tuesday dismissed Turkey's accusation of genocide in its northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang, where rioting killed 184 people, mostly majority Han Chinese.

The European Parliament elected ex-Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as its president on Tuesday, making him the first leader from a former Soviet bloc country to hold one of the top European Union posts.

Facebook netted a $6.5 billion valuation for its common shares on Monday, further underscoring the fast-growing Internet social networking site's high rank among technology and media industry heavyweights.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday attempted to clarify her remark that has sparked controversy that her speeches and rulings show a racial bias; in her remark she said that a wise Latina woman could reach a better decision than a white male.

Johnson & Johnson posted a 5 percent drop in second-quarter earnings, but profit and revenue beat analyst forecasts helped by surprisingly resilient pharmaceutical and consumer product sales.

We feel as if we were here to watch a football match. There is a palpable electric feel in the air and expectancy is high.

Stocks fell on Tuesday, weighed by data pointing to weak consumer demand and by profit-taking in banks after a run-up in anticipation of strong results from Goldman Sachs Group .

Lenders to British care home operator Four Seasons Health Care have reached agreement on a debt resuctructuring deal, delaying plans to put the company up for sale.

Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG.N) is in talks to refinance a $1.6 billion loan to Florida East Coast Industries, in which it owns both equity and debt, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The recession has more than halved the formation of new households.