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NEW YORK – Stocks slipped Wednesday as investors awaited the Labor Department’s jobs report and reacted to Yahoo Inc. (YHOO)’s announcement of its biggest management shakeup in more than five years. After two straight days of gains, investors pulled back to position themselves ahead of the government’s November payroll report …

WASHINGTON – The cremated remains of a convicted murderer must be removed from Arlington National Cemetery under a new federal law. The provision ordering the removal of Russell Wayne Wagner’s remains was included in a veterans’ health care and benefits bill that President Bush signed into law on Friday. Wagner, …

LOS ANGELES – Research firm Gartner Inc. (IT) turned soothsayer on Wednesday by predicting that Windows Vista will be the last big release of Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows operating system. The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end and Microsoft will participate in the trend toward …

ST. LOUIS – People with wheat allergies who have stayed away from beer now have a new option. Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. (BUD) on Wednesday introduced Redbridge, which the company called the first nationally available sorghum beer. Starting Wednesday, Redbridge is available in restaurants and stores carrying organic products. Sorghum is …

WASHINGTON – The White House is going out of its way not to dispute a grim assessment on Iraq from President Bush’s first-term secretary of state. Press Secretary Tony Snow called Colin Powell’s comments “thoughtful” and “practical.” Interviewed on CBS over the weekend, Powell said America is “losing” in Iraq. …

YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Cameroon became the fourth African country to be struck by the deadly bird flu virus, as the government announced its first confirmed avian case on Sunday. The H5N1 strain was detected in a duck on a farm outside the northern town of Maroua, near the border with …

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan man facing a possible death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity may be mentally unfit to stand trial, a state prosecutor said Wednesday. Abdul Rahman, 41, has been charged with rejecting Islam, a crime under this country’s Islamic laws. His trial started last week …

NEW YORK – Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow and John Updike were among the finalists Friday for the National Book Critics Circle awards. Didion was a nominee for her memoir, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” in which she writes of the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the illness …

BOSTON – What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Yes, Americans who delay retirement for just one year will not only help themselves but they also help their country — big time. Click here to visit FOXBusiness.com’s Retirement page. To wit: Americans, or at least those who …

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Lionel Tate pleaded guilty Wednesday to the armed robbery of a pizza delivery man last spring, which could net him up to 30 years in prison but spare him a possible life sentence for violating probation in the 1999 killing of a young girl. Tate, once …