SAN FRANCISCO – Fiona Apple (search) is ending her curiously long hiatus from the business of making music. A year after 11 tracks were leaked onto the Internet, drawing praise from critics and fans, Epic Records (search) announced Monday that Apple’s “Extraordinary Machine” will be released Oct. 4. It’s been …

I’m considering rolling over my 401(k) into a variable annuity. Does this make sense? The short answer? No. We aren’t big fans of variable annuities (to see why, click here), except in very, very specific situations. This is certainly not one of them. Our general complaint with variable annuities (which …

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Coast Guard searched the Florida Straits on Monday after three Cubans rescued at sea said they had been aboard a boat that sank with 31 others aboard. The three were rescued Sunday about 30 miles north of Matanzas, Cuba (search), by a merchant ship and taken …

It has long been believed that complex genetic interactions are at play in autism, and new research offers some of the first concrete evidence that this is the case. For the first time, researchers have identified an interaction between two specific genes that increases the risk that a child will …

A 5-year-old boy with autism died last Tuesday after getting a controversial treatment. According to news reports, the boy, Abubakar Nadama, went into cardiac arrest while undergoing chelation therapy — his third such treatment — at Advanced Integrative Medicine Center in Portersville, Pa. It is not yet known whether the …

SEOUL, South Korea – A 28-year-old South Korean man died of exhaustion in an Internet cafe after playing computer games non-stop for 49 hours, South Korean police said Wednesday. Lee, a resident in the southern city of Taegu (search) who was identified only by his last name, collapsed Friday after …

WASHINGTON – The Homeland Security Department (search) will not gain authority to order shootdowns of threatening aircraft over the nation’s capital, officials said Tuesday, eliminating possible confusion between its role and the Pentagon’s during emergencies. Questions over whether Homeland Security could take down planes surfaced after a single-engine Cessna (search) …

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Federal Trade Commission is urging the Motion Picture Association of America to reconsider guidelines that allow some PG-13 movies to be marketed to young children, following a complaint by an advocacy group that the blockbuster film “Transformers” was inappropriately advertised to children as young as 2. …

JAIPUR, India – Police imposed a daylong curfew in the western Indian city of Jaipur on Wednesday to prevent any retaliatory violence after a series of blasts in crowded areas left at least 80 people dead. Authorities suspect Islamic militants were behind the blasts, and they moved quickly to stop …

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday warned Colombia not to allow a U.S. military base on its border with Venezuela, saying he would consider such an act an “aggression.” Chavez said he would not permit Colombia’s U.S.-backed government to establish an American military base in La Guajira, a …