SOCIETY

One useful barometer to gauge stock market valuation is the S&P 500 price-per-earnings (P/E) ratio, compared to its historical averages, both the mean and median.

Minka Disbrow, 100, recently reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption 77 years ago.

The family of Holly Piirainen learned of a new lead that links a dead man from Springfield to the 1993 murder of their 10-year-old daughter. The man, David Pouliot, is linked to the crime scene, but is not yet a suspect.

An unauthorized action figure of late Apple founder Steve Jobs has hit the Internet, courtesy of Chinese company In Icons. The miniature replica of the tech legend will be available in February unless Apple pulls the plug, but tech geeks are more excited about how unbelievably realistic the Jobs doll is. Check out photos of the action figure here.

Los Angeles Police arrested Harry Burkhart, 24, as the arsonist in connection to the 55 fires that have been set around Hollywood over the last four days.

The FDA decision ignores intensifying scientific evidence suggesting the overuse of antibiotics in feed given to animals intended for human consumption can lead to the development of potentially fatal antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

A video obtained by the Utica Phoenix raises the possibility that Utica Police officers planted evidence on a black couple during a traffic stop early in 2011.

Barrera, 29, Austin's first homicide victim of 2012, was a teaching assistant for children with special needs and a die-hard music lover who worked at Waterloo Records and as a camp counselor at Girls Rock Austin. Police believe a suspect in two New Year's attacks may be the same man who killed Barrera, and are investigating leads while friends and family mourn Barrera's passing.

Benjamin Colton Barnes, who was found dead in Mt. Rainier National Park, is believed to be the shooter in the death of park ranger Margaret Anderson. Barnes died from freezing as he tried to escape police.

A Coronado shooting that occurred about two hours into the New Year near San Diego has left four people dead, two of whom are believed to be military personnel. Police said the victims included three men and a woman.

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.

Within 48 hours of joining Twitter, Rupert Murdoch drew some ire because of his rude comment on Britons.

Police arrested a Hollywood man believed to be a German citizen on Monday in connection with a wave of 53 arson fires across Los Angeles that terrorized neighborhoods over the holiday weekend.

The police has identified a 24-year-old man, arrested in connection with the Los Angeles blazes, as Harry Burkhart, German citizen. Burkhart was arrested on Monday, as he resembled a person of interest in a surveillance video released by the authorities, according to police sources.

Hundreds of herring fish, about 20 tons, washed up dead on a beach at Kvennes in Nordreisa, northern Norway.

In something out of a horror movie, 100 dead birds fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas, on Dec. 31 New Year's Eve, mere hours before the clock struck 2012.

A love inscription found on a ceramic mouthpiece of a smoking pipe discovered during an ongoing archaeological excavation in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem suggests that the pipe was probably given as a gift to a lover.

The 2,000-year-old clay seal was found at a site known as the City of David and has written accounts of ritual practices in Temple Mount, a religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Micro-blogging site Twitter went out of order for more than an hour after it was overloaded with New Year greetings yesterday. The site crashed at midnight in Britain after recording a stream of over 16,000 tweets per second.

Although some believe the world will come to an end in 2012, there are still many other important dates and events to take note of this year.

The Seaford pharmacy's alleged robber, whose crime led to the death of an off-duty law officer, has been identified by Nassau Country police as 43-year-old James McGoey, a resident of Long Island, according to an AP report.

Police say Michael Anthony Fuller, a 53-year-old North Carolina man, tried to use a million-dollar note to buy $476 worth of items at a Walmart.

So 2012 is finally here. It sure helps to hear something funny and inspiring every once in a while. So we have put together a list of some of the best New Year quotes that will either inspire you or have you at the edge of your seats.

A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 shook Japan off the country's coast on Sunday, the first day of the new year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS said the earthquake struck 495 kilometers (307 miles) south-southwest of Tokyo.

A new Web site called my4oneone.com launched on Sunday, Jan.1, adding another dimension to the social networking scenario. The new service is a platform that allows users to store and access a wide variety of personal information, said a PR Newswire release.

Throngs of revelers in and around New York's Times Square gave a boisterous welcome to 2012 on Sunday amid tight security, sending off a year marked by the grim 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the city.

Firefighters in Los Angeles were steeling themselves for a busy New Year's Eve on Saturday, following a rash of arson fires that saw more than 30 cars torched in recent days.

Auld Lang Syne, originally a poem by the Scottish bard Robert Burns, is what people traditionally recite or sing at the stroke of midnight to welcome the New Year. It is amusing that most people do not understand all its words or know its history.

Earlier this week, Experian Hitwise released its annual list of the most-visited Web sites of 2011; unsurprisingly Facebook topped the list, surpassing Google. Just a few days after that Nielsen Research came out with its own analysis and released its own list of the 10 most-visited Web sites, putting Google on top.