As troubles in the US housing market ripple across the global economy, the health of banks has become one of the biggest financial uncertainties for 2008.
Countrywide Financial, the troubled lender that became a symbol of the excesses that led to the subprime mortgage crisis, is negotiating a sale to Bank of America.
Nearly 16 years ago, candidate Bill Clinton's offer of a two-for-one deal that included his wife, Hillary, fell with a thud. Now, at least among Democrats wowed by the front-running spouses, it's simply a given.
AP - Republican presidential rivals backed a blend of tax and spending cuts Thursday night to head off an election-year recession they generally agreed is avoidable. "We should reduce taxes on middle-income Americans immediately," former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in a debate in the run-up to presidential primaries in Michigan and South Carolina, two states where unemployment exceeds the national average.
AP - Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years under ambitious post-9/11 security rules to be unveiled Friday by federal officials.
AP - Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest to win renown as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, died Friday. He was 88.
The mother of a missing Marine told police she had a "firm conversation" with her daughter, telling her to give up her unborn baby because she could not care for it, a police report shows. Mary Lauterbach also said Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach was a "compulsive liar," the report said. Sheriff Ed Brown asked Lauterbach, who is set to testify about an incident at Camp Lejeune, to come forward if able.
A series of newsletters in the name of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul contain several racist remarks -- including one that says order was restored to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots when blacks went "to pick up their welfare checks." Paul told CNN's "The Situation Room" Thursday that he didn't write any of the offensive articles and has "no idea" who did.
Authorities in the Florida panhandle say a woman killed there last month was decapitated, like Georgia hiker Meredith Emerson, CNN affiliate WSB reports.
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