COMPANIES

Several brokerage firms trimmed their price targets on Research in Motion shares and questioned the BlackBerry maker's ability to recover, after the company further delayed the release of its new line of smartphones.

Jermaine Huggy Hopkins, who starred as Thomas Sams in the 1989 movie Lean On Me, was arrested in Phoenix, Ariz., on charges of buying 200 pounds (91 kilograms) of marijuana from an undercover cop on Tuesday.

Already, several firms have downgraded RIM on the news. BMO Capital downgraded the company Friday morning to Market Perform from Outperform over concerns related to BlackBerry 7.0 sales and the delay for BlackBerry 10.0 devices. The price target was lowered to $15 from $26. And Citigroup lowered its price target to $12 from $15 Friday morning.

The browser wars continue with Google Chrome 15 grabbing the number one spot, replacing Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 as the most popular in the world, according to StatCounter.

Deutsche Bank AG has launched the sale of a large chunk of its global asset management business, with a price tag seen between 2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) and 3 billion, two financial sources familiar with the sale process said on Friday.

Apple iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy are likely to stand out in this holiday season's smartphone sales which will otherwise be clouded by global economic uncertainty.

Apple Inc's share of China's booming smartphone market has risen sharply in the past two years, but for now the company that sells the iconic iPhone is being outpaced by nimble rivals.

Janet Robinson will step down as chief executive of the New York Times Co. at the end of the month, as the company continues to struggle with advertising declines and a years-long slump in its share price.

Fitch Ratings, the third-biggest of the major credit rating agencies, downgraded seven global banks based in Europe and the United States, citing "increased challenges" in the financial markets.

The U.S. banking industry is undergoing its most radical structural change since the Great Depression, according to S&P's Ratings Services Thursday.

Nissan said Thursday it will unveil two concept vehicles -- an electric van and a new Nissan Pathfinder -- next month in Detroit at the 2012 North American International Auto Show.

Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC) was fined $2 million Thursday by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a regulatory group that oversees investment advisers and other finance professionals, for neglecting to discipline an investment manager who became the firm’s top salesman of a certain kind of exotic investment instrument by forcing it on unwilling, elderly clients.

Empire Co Ltd's Sobeys grocery chain is expanding its high-margin retail gasoline business in Eastern Canada, announcing plans on Thursday to buy 250 gas stations from Shell Canada.

Your life is filled with trash. Plastic wrappers, pizza boxes, Styrofoam take-out containers, soda cans, batteries and a box full of old cellphones you don't use anymore. They aren't only cluttering your measly studio apartment, they're affecting the rest of us on the pale blue dot we know as Earth.

General Motors said Thursday that a new high-performance turbocharged, four-cylinder engine that will debut in Cadillac's new 2013 ATS compact luxury sedan. GM will unveil the ATS sedan at the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit next month.

Burger King will give away its new thick-cut fries from midnight to midnight on Dec. 16.

The estate of Lehman Brothers has sought to match Sam Zell's $1.33 billion bid for a 26.5 percent stake in Archstone, sharpening the rivalry for the multifamily housing giant.

Discover Financial Services should be a stock that catches the eyes of traders and investors. Crowned as the top performer this year in the Standard & Poor's 500 Financials Index, the company closed Wednesday's session at $23.82, up about 30 percent since the start of 2011. However, Discover is trading at a lower multiple compared with its peers, Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

For every man who sits gaping at a Victoria's Secret model prancing in her colorful bra and panties, a child in Africa pays a price. Bloomberg has uncovered Victoria's real secret, exposing the use of child labor to produce cotton in Burkina Faso.

Relativity Media has entered into a joint venture with German distributor Senator Entertainment, the studio announced Wednesday.

Stocks rose on Thursday as signs of strength in the economy and higher-than-expected profit at FedEx outweighed a stark warning from the IMF about inaction over Europe's debt crisis.

Apple's dominance reached outside the bounds of the tech industry, as the company's mythological iPhone 5, deceased CEO Steve Jobs and iPad 2 took three out of the 10 spots in the Google Zeitgeist 2011.

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it is selling more than one million Kindle devices a week, an unusual disclosure from the largest Internet retailer that comes in the wake of some negative reviews of its new Kindle Fire tablet.

Although still at levels above the five-year national average, natural gas inventories shrunk in the week ending in Dec. 9 from previous weeks, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Morgan Stanley's announcement that it is slashing 1,600 jobs is only the latest in a late-year blizzard of pink slips being floated among people at the heart of American high-finance. Bonuses are also down sharply. Is the economy Grinch stealing Wall Street's Christmas?

Amazon, the No. 1 e-retailer, reported shipping more than three million Kindle Fire tablet devices, its $199 media tablet priced to compete with Apple’s iPad 2.

Overall U.S. foreclosure activity fell in November compared to the previous month, but auctions hit a nine-month high, according to RealtyTrac.

General Motors confirmed the addition of a 2013 Buick Encore on Thursday morning, a brand-new crossover addition to the Buick lineup.

At a depth of 12,461 feet, the company found more than 400 feet of natural gas roughly 180 miles offshore of Exmouth near the Carnarvon Basin in the northwest of Western Australia.