ECONOMY & MARKETS

The top after-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: WCA Waste, Mellanox Technologies, TIBCO Software, Salix Pharmaceuticals, and Ross Stores. The top after-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: Alaska Communications Systems Group, VIVUS, SuperMedia, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Sequenom.

The top aftermarket NYSE gainers Wednesday were: Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, Worthington Industries, Timken, Suncor Energy, Willbros Group, Quicksilver Resources, Teavana Holdings, Radioshack Corp, K12 Inc and Rentech Nitrogen Partners.

The top aftermarket NYSE losers Wednesday were: Country Style Cooking, Laredo Petroleum Holdings, United Parcel Service, Mueller Water Products, Pacific Drilling, Arch Coal, Office Depot, Ion Geophysical, Enersys and PulteGroup, Inc.

A late-day buying spree is causing shares in Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) to soar higher than its big bank peers. The rally began just after 3 p.m., shortly after news broke that the financial institution had settled a federal lawsuit regarding a subsidiary's subprime lending practices for $335 million.

ne-third of all the deaths among the homeless, the study noted, are caused by drug and alcohol abuse.

Standard and Poor's, one of the top credit rating agencies in the world, announced today it was lowering the sovereign credit ratings on the Republic of Hungary, slashing that government's debt to 'junk' debt status. The agency also assigned the nation's debt with a 'recovery rating' of 3, meaning it expects investors to be able to obtain from 50 to 70 percent of the country's bonds face value in the event of a default.

Tourism is a plague that threatens to destroy culture and society.

By mid-day the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was down 80 points, to 12,023.28, while the NASDAQ was down 2 percent, to 2,550, and the S&P 500 was off three-quarters of a percent fo 1,232.

Workers began culling 17,000 chickens at a wholesale poultry market in Hong Kong on Wednesday after a dead chicken there tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian virus, a government spokesman said.

The Arizona state economy is expected to grow but at a lower gear than that which the state was accustomed to during the housing-market-driven-growth days, as the economy is still recovering from the recession and the collapse of the housing market.

The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: Research In Motion, Polycom, and Yandex. The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Oracle, Conceptus, ARM Holdings, ASML Holding, Baidu, and Paychex.

Oracle shares plummeted on Wednesday in German trading after the large software maker missed analysts' profit expectations for the first time in a decade.

An economist at Wells Fargo Securities expects homebuilding to improve modestly in 2012, with most of the gains coming from apartment construction.

Housing starts rose much more than expected during November, as unseasonably warm weather allowed builders to begin work on more projects than they usually do in November.

The top after-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: Research In Motion, FSI International, Cintas, Suffolk Bancorp, and Westell Technologies. The top after-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: Oracle, L & L Energy, Columbia Laboratories, Epoch Investment Partners, and Autodesk.

European stocks rallied and the euro was well bid Wednesday as investors priced in an improvement in the economic outlook and looked forward to a big take up by banks of the European Central Bank's first-ever offer of three-year loans.

The top aftermarket NYSE losers Tuesday were: Jabil Circuit, SAP AG, FelCor Lodging Trust, iSoftStone Holdings, TRC Companies, PVH Corp, Sealed Air Corp, Talisman Energy, Yingli Green Energy Holding and Frontline Ltd.

The top aftermarket NYSE gainers Tuesday were: Atlantic Power, Sprint Nextel, Ultra Petroleum, Nike, Qihoo 360 Technology, Berry Petroleum, Valmont Industries, Carnival Corp and Beazer Homes USA.

Is the craze for social media waning? Is it becoming less of a draw, compared to what it used to be a few years back? Well... financial advisors in the U.S. feel it is, a recent report reveals.

Asian stocks and the euro rose on Wednesday after upbeat U.S. and German data and strong demand for Spanish debt tempered risk-aversion, with investors' focus turning to a European Central Bank tender as a gauge for euro zone funding strains.

No doubt 2011 was a major year for technology in part because it touched everyone differently. Following are some of the highlights and lowlights of the year:

Last week Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told federal lawmakers that no bailout of Europe was forthcoming and ended a monthly meeting of the central bank’s top decision-making body by pointedly rejecting a new round of quantitative easing. Data released by the Fed reveals that, at least partially, the organization spent the week engaging in exactly those actions.

At a time of daily stock-market seizures, weekly bank and sovereign debt downgrades and monthly central bank interventions, most people are seeing the glass half empty, and have forecasted bearish -- if not downright abysmal -- market conditions for next year. A look at some of the more salient predictions.

Roubini said in an article published on the Financial Times Web site that the global problems could materialize, developing into a perfect storm that would involve the U.S. economy.

U.S. housing starts increased 9.3 percent in November to the highest level of 2011, according to the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

At least in one region of the county at dinner parties, it's the question that's on the lips of prospective home buyers: will home mortgage interest rates fall more? The average fixed rate for a 30-year mortgage for borrowers with good credit has declined to 3.92 percent,

Business mogul Donald Trump has some harsh words for President Obama, China, and a whole slew of others in his book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again.

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.5 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.3 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.4 percent at 0819 GMT.

The top after-market NASDAQ stock market gainers are: Clearwire, Patterson-UTI Energy, MicroStrategy, VIVUS and Zions Bancorp. The top after-market NASDAQ stock market losers are: II-VI, SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Harmonic, Columbia Laboratories and Extreme Networks.