J.J. McGrath

Stephen Schwarzman, the boss of Blackstone, the world's biggest private-equity firm, made his fortune by buying, restructuring and selling companies -- delivering outsized returns for investors. These days, he is getting huge rewards for being the largest shareholder in what is more like an asset manager on steroids.

African Union Chairman Thomas Boni Yayi will visit some of the continent's conflict areas -- including Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, and Libya -- for direct talks, an aide said on Saturday.

Struggling to retain his status as the Republican favorite for the White House, Mitt Romney attempted on Saturday to return to his glory days as CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic organizing committee -- and the crowds at two tribute ceremonies in Salt Lake showed their appreciation.

In the latest in a string of asset sales, Canada's Encana Corp. will sell a 40 percent stake in British Columbia natural-gas assets to Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. in a C$2.9 billion ($2.9 billion) deal that will help the energy company strengthen a balance sheet weakened by low gas prices.

The captain of the cruise ship that ran aground off the Italian coast last month has tested negative for drug and alcohol abuse, his attorneys and a consumers' body said -- although the consumer group representing passengers said the findings were unreliable.

BP PLC idled production at its Cherry Point refinery in Washington state on Saturday, a day after a large fire broke out near the core crude oil unit of the third-largest plant on the West Coast. The idling of the plant near Ferndale, Wash., could drive fuel prices higher next week.

Iceland's Financial Surveillance Authority (FME) said on Saturday it had sacked director Gunnar Andersen following a report into his time as an executive at failed bank Landsbanki. Daily Morgunbladid quoted Andersen as saying he would forcefully fight for his job and denying any wrongdoing.

Algerian security forces have found a large cache of weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles, which they believe were smuggled in from neighboring Libya, a security source briefed on the discovery told Reuters on Saturday.

The government of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is emerging as a rare supplier of diesel to Syria, potentially helping the government of the Middle Eastern country's Bashar al-Assad fuel its military in the midst of a bloody crackdown on civilian protests and undermining Western sanctions.

The People's Bank of China -- the country's central bank -- cut the amount of cash that commercial lenders must hold as reserves on Saturday for the second time in about three months, the latest step to bolster the nation's slowing economy.

If the coming earnings from U.S. retailers are as unimpressive as the rest of the profit season has been, Wall Street could face a tough time justifying a stock market at nine-month highs. All things considered, strategists believe the market could face resistance in a push higher.

Maryland's House of Delegates on Friday approved by a razor-thin margin a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry, putting it on the road to joining six other states where gay and lesbian nuptials are legal. The Maryland vote came shortly after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a similar measure.

U.S. job creation will accelerate a bit this year as a moderate economic recovery continues, the White House said on Friday, but it faces a key risk from the debt crisis in Europe -- and President Barack Obama's annual economic report warned that the road ahead could still be bumpy.

Masters of the Eurozone are considering tweaks to Greek debt restructuring in terms of its private-sector involvement among several options to further cut Greek debt toward the target of 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2020, officials said.

A prominent former soccer boss and a referees director were handed long jail terms for bribery and match-fixing in China on Saturday as part of a massive anti-graft drive aimed at cleaning up the corruption-blighted local game.

Iran is clearly trying to develop nuclear-weapons capability -- and if it succeeds, then it will set off a dangerous round of nuclear proliferation across the Middle East -- British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in an interview published on Saturday.

Syrian government forces, disregarding U.N. condemnation, renewed their bombardment of the opposition stronghold of Homs on Saturday as a Chinese minister prepared for talks with embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

Winning The Future. Greater Together. We Don't Quit. They may not be official, but those are all phrases that could in one form or another be candidates to become President Barack Obama's re-election slogan. Currently, his campaign posters simply say, Obama 2012.

Defense lawyers made a case for Allen Stanford's innocence on Friday in a courtroom filled with people who claim he stole millions of dollars of their savings. Some two dozen investors were at the federal courthouse in Houston to mark the third anniversary of the closure of the Stanford Financial Group in February 2009.

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's struggles in Michigan are fueling speculation that Republicans might have to resort to a doomsday scenario and launch a frantic search for a 2012 savior at their nominating convention in late August.

Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in an online video recording posted on Sunday, urged Syrians not to rely on the West or Arab governments in their revolt to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.S.-Israeli consortium developing the Tamar natural-gas field off Israel's coast said on Sunday it had signed a 15-year deal to supply an Israeli power-plant operator with an estimated $680 million worth of gas.

The Pentagon's fiscal 2013 budget plan calls for the spending of $178.8 billion to develop and buy new warships, fighter jets, and other major weapons, a 7.5 percent drop from the level initially projected for the coming year.

Greek lawmakers looked set to agree to a deeply unpopular bailout deal on Sunday to avert what Prime Minister Lucas Papademos warned would be economic chaos, and Germany demanded Athens dramatically change its ways to stay in the euro.

Global airlines on Sunday called for a deal brokered by a United Nations agency to avoid an impasse between China and the European Union over jet pollution spilling into a trade war. Airlines are being squeezed between conflicting laws, the head of the International Air Transport Association said.

Greek promises on austerity measures are no longer good enough because so many vows have been broken and the country that has been a bottomless pit has to dramatically change its ways, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in remarks published on Sunday.

Japanese Emperor Akihito will undergo heart bypass surgery on Feb. 18, after a detailed examination found a heart problem had worsened, the Imperial Household Agency was quoted as saying on Sunday.

U.S. Catholic Church leaders said they will fight President Barack Obama's controversial birth-control insurance-coverage policy despite his compromise that religious employers would not have to offer free contraceptives for workers, shifting the responsibility to insurers.

Turkmenistan votes on Sunday in a one-sided election certain to extend the rule of President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov over a Central Asian country holding 4 percent of global natural-gas reserves, which rights groups rank among the world's most repressive.