The economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, bringing the total for 2008 to 2.6 million, and a rapidly deteriorating economy promised more in the months ahead.
Economists say it is unclear whether President-elect Barack Obama?s stimulus package is big enough and whether it would provide the most bang for the buck.
Bernard Madoff remained free on bail as questions arose about when he told his brother Peter B. Madoff, the firm?s chief compliance officer, of his Ponzi scheme.
AP - Pushed by fellow Democrats, President-elect Barack Obama agreed to modest changes in his proposed tax cuts on Friday after inviting lawmakers to "just show me" ideas for fixing an economy shedding jobs at an alarming rate. Democratic congressional officials said that Obama aides came under pressure in closed-door talks to jettison or significantly alter a proposed tax credit for creating jobs.
AP - Israeli jets and ground troops hammered at Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip and Islamic militants fired barrages of rockets at southern Israeli cities Friday, ignoring a U.N. resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire after two weeks of combat.
AP - Officials at the embattled banks Citigroup and Morgan Stanley will negotiate over the weekend about possibly combining their wealth management businesses, a deal mostly aimed at bolstering Citi with much-needed cash.
Gu Gu, a panda at the Beijing Zoo, has tasted the flesh of an unwitting intruder to his pen for the third time. Zhang Jiao, 28, told CNN he fell into the panda pen Wednesday while trying to catch a small toy thrown by his young son.
President-elect Barack Obama's January 17 train trip from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington is intended to make the inauguration the most open and accessible in history. But it is also presenting the U.S. Secret Service with security problems -- miles and miles and miles of them.
Slavery may seem like a quaint notion in a 21st century world, but that distinction is lost on up to 40,000 Brazilians who find themselves toiling for no real wages and can't leave the distant work camps where they live.