The stock market will rally strongly in the second half of 2012, much like a dragon rising from the depths, according to a Hong Kong brokerage's annual astrological predictions.

CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets released its annual feng shui index on Wednesday ahead of the Lunar New Year next week that marks the start of the year of the dragon.

Defending champion Kim Clijsters and No. 1-ranked Caroline Wozniacki advanced to the third round of the Australian Open in contrasting styles on Wednesday.

Clijsters needed only 47 minutes to beat Stephanie Foretz Gacon of France 6-0, 6-1, then showed just how much support she has at Rod Laver Arena by getting the crowd to sing 'Happy Birthday' to her younger sister.

Nearly eighteen years after the death of three-time world champion Ayrton Senna in a high-speed crash, the Senna name is returning to Williams Formula One team.

Senna's 28-year-old nephew, Bruno, signed a one-year deal to partner Venezuelan driver Pastor Maldonado and give the British team an all-South American lineup going into the March 18 opener in Australia.

America's obesity epidemic is proving to be as stubborn as those maddening love handles, and shows no sign of reversing course. More than one-third of adults and almost 17 percent of children were obese in 2009-2010, echoing results since 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday.

"It's good that we didn't see increases. On the other hand, we didn't see any decreases in any group," said CDC researcher Cynthia Ogden.

Jose Mourinho defended Cristiano Ronaldo's form on the eve of Real Madrid's Copa del Rey quarterfinal against Barcelona, describing his performance against Mallorca as his best since the coach's arrival at the club.

Ronaldo has come under criticism after squandering chances in a 3-1 loss to Barcelona last month, but Mourinho said the forward's work ethic in the second half of Saturday's 2-1 win was better than all of his Madrid accomplishments before.

A motorized, seat-less unicycle, a video game you control with your eyes, and a mind-reading headset that serves as a game controller were among the more bizarre gadgets being shown off at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show.

Some 3,100 exhibitors attended the show, and although there were plenty of mainstream technologies on display, the show attracted a fair share of off-beat gadgets. Here's a roundup of some of the weirdest devices:

Google is focusing on the importance of protecting personal information in an unusual marketing campaign for a company that has been blasted for its own online privacy lapses and practices.

The educational ads will start appearing Tuesday in dozens of U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and magazines, including Time and the New Yorker. Google Inc. also will splash its message across billboards within the subways of New York and Washington, as well as various websites.

An Austrian high school principal narrowly escaped legal action after going after potential exam cheaters with a high-tech — but illegal — idea.

Gerhard Klampfer reportedly bought and mounted a jamming device strong enough to prevent graduating classes from doing Internet research on their smartphones during final exams last summer.

British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.

Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.

A Bangkok court ordered on Tuesday a Lebanese-Swedish Hizbullah suspect detained for 12 days for illegally possessing explosive materials.

Thai police charged Atris Hussein on Monday after he led them to a warehouse containing four tons of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate.