NEW YORK

Labor Day 2012 is finally here, marking the end of summer and bringing in the autumn season. The national holiday is a time for a lazy break from work, a final summer barbeque and major retail sales.

Samsung Electronics (005930) appears to be taking stock of things after the California jury ordered the South Korean giant to pay $1.05 billion in damages to Apple (AAPL) for violating patents pertaining to iPhone and iPad.

Crude oil prices declined in Asia Monday as sentiment was dampened after reports indicated a sharp slowdown in the Chinese manufacturing activity in August.

Kate Hudson allegedly found Lea Michele to be a "total diva" on the set of the popular Fox television dramedy "Glee." It's not the first time Michele has faced an accusation of behaving like a diva, but it is somewhat shocking this time around because it was made by the famously laid-back Hudson.

The NFC East is up for grabs, but all three teams face difficult schedules.

The country's largest private equity firms are being investigated on suspicion of finagling themselves out of paying taxes by turning fees into fund investments.

Rapper 50 Cent is alive despite persistent rumors to the contrary on Twitter and throughout the Internet. The incorrect news that he had passed away came about in the wake of the death of his manager Chris Lighty.

You don’t have to be a genius to determine that in a world of petabytes of data, projected 2012 sales of 367.2 million PCs, 107.4 million tablets and 650 million smartphones, a few smart companies are going to prosper: HP (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) and EMC.(NYSE: EMC).

Iran and North Korea announced expansion of bilateral ties Saturday after reaching a scientific and technological cooperation agreement which, according to Iran's Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, has brought the two countries with "common enemies" closer.

Heidi Klum, who rose to fame as the host of "Project Runway," is reportedly dating Martin Kristen, her bodyguard, before her divorce with Seal is finalized. Seal told TMZ he wouldn't have expected Klum to "fornicate with the help."

Ever since President Barack Obama revealed that he commissioned the White House kitchen to create a homebrewed beer for the White House, beer enthusiasts have been going nuts wondering what the recipe is, even going as far as setting up an online petition. Now, the White House has responded and released its recipe for presidential Honey Ale and Honey Porter beer.

Though Republican Party vice president nominee U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan claimed in a radio interview that he once ran a marathon in under three hours, he was caught in his lie. His real best time is just over four hours. This inaccuracy comes on the heels of his speech at the Republican National Convention, which was riddled with falsehoods.

The hockey season may not start on time due to a possible lockout.

New York will be opening the world's largest ultraviolet, or UV, drinking-water disinfection plant in a couple of months, Scientific American reported Friday.

Justin Bieber is apparently having some fun on the set of Selena Gomez's latest movie, "Feed the Dog." The pop star appeared there Thursday night and took several photogragphs of himself brandishing a prop gun in wildly unsafe manners, seemingly pretending to look tough.

Rumors that Miley Cyrus was gay ignited on Twitter after actress Evan Rachel Wood made a joke about her hairdo that wasn't well received by the mini-blogosphere, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton wrote.

Newsweek set off a firestorm earlier this month when it published a divisive cover story by Niall Ferguson entitled "Hit the Road, Barack," in which the author claims that the Romney/Ryan ticket is our nation's only hope for prosperity.

The 2007 suicides of Duncan and Blake posthumously captured the imaginations of countless people who had never heard of the couple but were haunted by images published in news stories and on the Web. Five years later, questions remain about the media coverage of their deaths,

In one of the less surprising developments of the week, it turns out Al Gore is not a big fan of the U.S. electoral college.

Eastwooding is the latest meme to hit the Internet, with the web being deluged of photos of people pointing at empty chairs at a nod to the peculiar shtick used by actor Clint Eastwood last night at the 2012 Republican National Convention.

American Airlines could go from being bankrupt to being part of the world's largest airline if a merger with US Airways, the fifth-largest domestic airline, goes through.