UNITED STATES

Asian stocks nudged higher and the euro clung to overnight gains Friday, the last trading day of 2011, as positive data from the United States helped allay concerns on the global economy, while year-end short covering lifted crude prices.

Basketball legend Michael Jordan is engaged to his long-time girlfriend Yvette Prieto, his spokeswoman said on Thursday.

When you rent a car, there's a chance the vehicle has been recalled and, if it has been, that it hasn't yet been repaired. That's at the heart of a battle over whether the rental car industry should be required to fix cars before sending them out with customers.

Meryl Streep looks set for an unprecedented 17th Oscar nomination after earning glowing reviews for her performance as Britain's Margaret Thatcher in the movie The Iron Lady.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission got a fresh dressing-down from the judge who rejected its $285 million settlement with Citigroup Inc, as he said the regulator kept him out of the loop on its efforts to salvage the case.

Verizon may be the largest U.S. mobile broadband supplier, but a series of network outages throughout December have plenty of customers on edge, and it's the kind of thing many customers won't forget. After all, it was just this kind of coverage issue that drove so many people from AT&T over to Verizon a year ago as AT&T slipped to the number two spot among U.S. teleco's.

Turkish warplanes killed 35 civilian smugglers in northern Iraq after mistaking them for Kurdish militants, Ankara's ruling party said on Thursday, promising not to allow a cover-up of an incident that threatens to wreck relations with minority Kurds.

Mosaic, a leading North American fertilizer producer, may have won the battle to arrest a plunge in phosphate prices ahead the region's spring planting season, but it still risks losing the war as overseas capacity surges in the coming years.

U.S. 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates averaged 3.95 percent in the week ending Dec. 29, according to Freddie Mac.

Celestica Inc was ordered by a U.S. appeals court to face a shareholder lawsuit accusing the Canadian electronics company of securities fraud for misleading investors about its financial health and restructuring costs.

Michael Buble continued his Christmas reign at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday for the fifth consecutive week, keeping Adele and rapper Young Jeezy from the No. 1 position.

The surviving relatives of four family members killed when a Marine fighter jet crashed into their San Diego home in 2008 were awarded $17.8 million by a federal judge on Wednesday.

Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill and his wife, Victoria's Secret model Lily Aldridge, said on Thursday they are expecting their first child, ending a rollercoaster year for the rock band.

The Canadian dollar was little changed against the U.S. dollar on Thursday morning but that meant it outperformed other major currencies as the greenback consolidated the sharp safe-haven gains it made in thin year-end trade in the previous session.

For John Salemme, the mention of Egypt brings to my mind one thing: a lonely, tearful train ride on New Year’s Eve.

The head of the Canadian Auto Workers union is looking for a green light from members to potentially strike Caterpillar over a contract dispute in London, Ontario.

Paul Christoforo and his Ocean Marketing firm were dumped by N-Control Wednesday after a rude exchange with a customer went public. In an exclusive interview with the IBTimes, Christoforo discusses the incident, hate mail, and his future.

Egyptian prosecutors and police raided offices of 17 pro-democracy and human rights groups Thursday - including several funded by the United States - in what rights defenders described as a campaign against them by the military rulers.

German phone company Deutsche Telekom AG and a Hungarian unit will pay more than $95 million to settle U.S. criminal and civil probes into the bribery of government officials in Macedonia and Montenegro.

Despite more than $100 billion in disaster losses around the world this year, insurers are not yet experiencing a broad and sustained increase in pricing power, defying predictions from a year ago that even half those losses would be enough to turn the industry around.

A U.S. appeals panel on Thursday upheld immunity for telecom companies that assist the U.S. government in conducting surveillance of American citizens.