J.J. McGrath

With the crucial Republican presidential primary in South Carolina just hours away, longtime front-runner Mitt Romney is acknowledging what some opinion polls are suggesting: He could lose Saturday.

U.S. stocks posted their best week since Christmas, even with a mixed finish on Friday after comparatively strong earnings reports from tech bellwethers IBM and Intel Corp. contrasted with a relatively weak report from Google Inc.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, under increasing pressure to release his tax returns now, continued to resist that timetable on Tuesday and said he probably would not make them public until April.

A South Korean honeymoon couple and an injured crew member were plucked from the partially submerged Costa Concordia shipwreck on Sunday, more than a day after the cruise ship met its doom close to Italy's Isola del Giglio, as rescue workers struggled to find any others still trapped on board.

The five-year slide in U.S. home prices will stop this year, followed by the start of a weak recovery next year, according to a Reuters poll that also showed economists split on whether the government would make new efforts to support the market.

Iran's effort to recover some $1.75 billion frozen in a U.S. bank faces a new obstacle due to a law President Barack Obama signed last month, potentially further squeezing Tehran's economy and exacerbating tensions between the two countries.

The United Nations chief told Bashar al-Assad on Sunday to stop killing your people, and the Syrian leader offered an amnesty for so-called crimes committed during a 10-month-old revolt against him.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Myanmar's foreign minister and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a call on Saturday the United States is committed to walking down the path of reform with the Southeast Asian nation.

Tom Brady dealt a serious blow to Tebowmania by tossing six touchdowns in a record-smashing performance as the New England Patriots demolished the Denver Broncos, 45-10, on Saturday to storm into the American Football Conference championship game to be played Jan 22.

Phobos-Grunt -- a stranded Russian science satellite loaded with enough rocket fuel for a round-trip mission to Mars -- is expected to plunge back to Earth either Sunday or Monday, but officials don't know when or where it, or its remnants, will hit.

The Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. has purchased private studio Summit Entertainment, producer of the successful Twilight film series, for $412.5 million in cash and stock.

Iran warned its Arab neighbors on Sunday not to raise crude output to replace Iranian oil in the event of an embargo by the European Union, Tehran's governor for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was quoted as saying.

PepsiCo Inc. said company tests of its Tropicana orange juice showed low levels of a potentially dangerous fungicide, but that these levels did not pose a health risk.

A truncated quotation carved into a Washington memorial to slain civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. that drew criticism for not reflecting the spirit of his full remarks will be corrected, the U.S. Interior Department said on Friday.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pressed Saudi Arabia to open its huge oil and gas resources to expanded Chinese investment, media reports said on Sunday against a backdrop of growing tension centered on Iran and worries over its crude exports to the Asian power.

Mitt Romney is being maligned as a vulture capitalist who enjoyed firing workers -- while amassing his own huge fortune -- but rivals' attacks on the former private-equity player's business record may be one of the best things that ever happened to his presidential campaign.

Mohamed ElBaradei pulled out of the race for the Egyptian presidency on Saturday, with the Nobel Peace Prize winner saying the previous regime was still running the country, which has been governed by army generals since Hosni Mubarak was deposed last year.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. could lose as much as $5 billion due to its exposure to sickly Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, CEO Jamie Dimon said in an interview with Class CNBC, which was carried in the Italian newspaper Milano Finanza on Saturday.

Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou was re-elected on Saturday as official tallies showed he held a near-unassailable lead in the vote count and the opposition conceded defeat.

Iran has not stored oil on tankers in the Persian Gulf, and its crude exports have not been disrupted due to mounting international pressure over its disputed nuclear program, an oil official told the semiofficial Mehr news agency on Saturday.

The U.S. Marine Corps took a first, formal step on Friday toward possible charges against four service members who, in a video widely circulated on television and the Internet, appear to be urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters.

President Barack Obama asked Congress on Friday for broad powers to overhaul the U.S. government and untangle what he called an outdated bureaucratic maze that makes it hard for U.S. businesses to sell their goods abroad.

Taiwan's incumbent Nationalist president had a tiny edge on Saturday in early vote counts from an election that is being closely monitored by China and the United States as they look for stability in the region at a time of political transition.

The top credit rating of Europe's bailout fund depends on additional financial backing from Germany and the other three remaining AAA-rated Eurozone countries, Standard & Poor's said on Friday.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Saturday that France's credit downgrade puts the focus on Japan to get its own fiscal house in order. Europe's debt crisis is not just a disaster on the other shore, Noda said in a televised interview with TV Tokyo.

A federal judge on Friday rejected a request by a trade group representing major U.S. airlines to block a $3.4 billion loan-guarantee package to help Air India buy dozens of planes from the Boeing Co.

Taiwanese voted on Saturday for their next president and parliament, an election being closely monitored by China and the United States as they look for stability in the region at a time of political transition for both superpowers.

A Japanese banker who is a key figure in the Olympus Corp. accounting fraud came into public view for the first time since the scandal broke, appearing on Friday at his divorce hearing in a Florida court.

Republican presidential candidates stepped up their attacks on rival Mitt Romney in a televised debate on Sunday morning -- a mere two days before primary-election voters in New Hampshire head to the polls -- and the front-runner mostly weathered the attacks.