UNITED STATES

It was the year of Mila Kunis.

The U.S. Transportation Department to Airlines: advertise your taxes.

BP has opened 2012 with a new legal move in its battle to force contractor Halliburton to help pay the costs and expenses it incurred to clean up the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which the oil major previously put at around $42 billion.

U.S. semiconductor stocks are in for a volatile 2012 as inventory correction extends into the first quarter, and an industry recovery due only in the second half, Barclays Capital said and downgraded five stocks, including Intel Corp.

There are only hours left for Iowans to choose their Republican presidential nominee. The top two candidates seem set for a dead heat finish, while a third is trying to make the best use of a last minute and surprising surge forward in polls.

Forget those decade-old racist newsletters that he did not write or even read. Black (and Hispanic) America needs to support Ron Paul's 2012 campaign.

During a segment of why Iowa matters in coverage of the upcoming caucus, NBC news correspondent Andrea Mitchell called the state too white.

French champagne sales managed to weather the economic crisis in 2011, expecting to show 3.5 percent growth thanks to exports to the United States and emerging countries, but a slowdown is in sight, the champagne trade association said on Monday.

Stock index futures rose sharply on Tuesday as upbeat Chinese and German data boosted optimism about the global economy after the S&P 500 index ended flat in 2011.

Food prices may ease in 2012 due to a slowing global economy, though no drastic drop from high levels is expected, the new director-general of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Tuesday.

Stock index futures rose on Tuesday as investors returned to the market optimistic about the global economy after Wall Street ended flat in 2011.

ICE February Brent crude futures rose $2.97 to $110.35 a barrel in trading, while U.S. crude futures were up $2.70 to $101.53 a barrel. U.S. crude futures were up as much as $101.68 in the trading day.

Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500, Dow Jones futures and Nasdaq 100 futures up 1.1 to 1.9 percent at 6 a.m. EST.

Paris-based Louvre Museum has reinstated its position as the most-visited art museum in the world with a record 8.8 million visitors last year.

A toy company has launched figurines, capturing, in quite some detail, the appearance of Steve Jobs, the now legendary Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Apple Inc., complete with his signature black turtle neck, blue jeans and rimless circular glasses.

BMW expects the global premium car market to grow more than twice as fast as the overall auto market this year, the German carmaker's finance chief told a German newspaper.

A new study has linked physical activity to academic performance in children, a finding that could trigger action in the right direction, given the decline in physical activities in most schools.

Humanity survived the hype and dread of the Judgment Day of 1844, the deadly Halley's Comet which almost hit the planet in 1910 with its toxic tail, and the cataclysmic digital failure popularly known as Y2K in 2000. However, for some mysterious reasons, people seem to crave for fresh doomsday predictions as the older episodes and dates are forgotten.

Apple iPhone 5 rumors have been continuously circulating on the Internet, with the most recent one, from Barclays Capital, stating the iPhone is Apple's largest and most profitable product line.

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note - a device that is neither a phone nor a tablet but a happy combination of both - in October.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has rung in the New Year with a new Twitter account that includes praise for Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum and opinions on President Barack Obama's policies and the Steve Jobs biography.