IBT Staff Reporter

The International Monetary Fund is inserting itself more forcefully into Europe's efforts to resolve its debt crisis, hoping to stem a contagion that is spreading worldwide and threatening global growth.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has promoted 261 employees to managing director positions, according to an internal memo sent this week. It is the lowest number since 259 were promoted to similar positions in 2008.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc promoted 261 employees to managing directors this week, according to an internal memo sent this week, as the bank seeks to retain top talent amid a wave of layoffs across Wall Street.

Wells Fargo & Co plans to cut technology and operations jobs by the end of this year as the bank tries to eliminate more than $1.5 billion of quarterly operating expenses.

Merrill Lynch has agreed to pay $315 million to settle a class action filed against it on behalf of investors in 18 mortgage-backed securities trusts, according to Reuters.

United Parcel Service , the world's largest package delivery company, announced higher rates for most shipping services for 2012.

Shares of Clearwire Corp plunged as much as 31 percent after a Wall Street Journal report quoted its CEO as saying the company was considering skipping a $237 million interest payment due December 1.

Synacor Inc, partly owned by Intel Corp, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday to raise up to $75 million in an initial public offering, reviving its plans to tap the public markets after three years.

It was a telling moment at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Shares of Clearwire Corp. fell as much as 31 percent after the company said it may skip its massive debt payment on Dec.1.

Federal investigators are looking into a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility's water pump in central Illinois last week, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on an industrial system on U.S. soil.

The worst week for U.S. stocks in two months ended with traders mostly sitting it out on Friday as they waited for politicians in Europe and the United States to tackle festering debt problems.

A federal investigation into last year's cyber attack on Nasdaq OMX Group found surprisingly lax security practices that made the exchange operator an easy target for hackers, people with knowledge of the probe said. The sources did not want to be identified because the matter is classified.

Logitech, which lost tens of millions of dollars building set-top boxes for Google TV, would back the project again, but would be much more cautious, its chief executive said.

When Ray Lane took over as chairman of Hewlett-Packard Co a year ago, he was looking forward to working with longtime associate Leo Apotheker, who had just been appointed CEO to repair the damage done by the messy departure of Mark Hurd.

Chip McBreen, who leads fraud prevention and security at Members 1st Credit Union in Pennsylvania, has become a believer in facial recognition tools to stop bank fraud. He says the emerging technology has already delivered results for the institution many times.

Few companies are making plans for a break-up of the euro zone or a deeper debt crisis and many believe they could yet escape unscathed if executive views at an investor conference this week are any guide.

Thanksgiving Day is for eating turkey, watching football and, apparently, shopping at lower-end retailers.

Between next Friday and the following Monday, AT&T is selling some of its devices online for just one cent.

Hope Solo, the 30-year-old Olympic soccer star, burst into tears after she was eliminated from Dancing With the Stars on Tuesday.

Consumer prices in Morocco fell year-on-year in October, their second drop this year, due mostly to cheaper food, official data showed on Friday.

Cameroon will raise spending 8.9 percent in 2012 in an effort to stimulate the economy of the oil-producing central African state, according to a draft budget due to be delivered to parliament on Friday.

Balanced budget amendment fails to pass house

The Dow and S&P 500 gauges rose on Friday as falling European sovereign debt yields eased investors' fears the region's debt crisis, helping to keep the S&P 500 above a key technical level.

A Kardashian boycott petition called No More Kardashian has garnered 133, 499 signatures as of Thursday afternoon, according to GoPetition.com. The preamble of the petition reads “We are respectfully requesting that your network [E!] find other shows to air. ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ is just not viewing that we the public, would like to see from your network. Enough is enough.”

A Kardashian boycott petition called No More Kardashian has garnered 133, 499 signatures as of Thursday afternoon, according to GoPetition.com. The preamble of the petition reads “We are respectfully requesting that your network [E!] find other shows to air. ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ is just not viewing that we the public, would like to see from your network. Enough is enough.”

Former FrontPoint Partners hedge fund manager Dr. Joseph Chip Skowron was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday for his role in an insider trading scheme.

Amazon.com Inc almost breaks even on every Kindle Fire tablet it makes and sells, IHS iSuppli estimated on Friday, underscoring the aggressiveness with which it tried to rein in the cost of a device that spearheads its foray into the tablet market.

The Balanced Budget Amendment will see the floor of the House of Representatives today, the first step in what could be a long road to adding it to the Constitution.