GERMANY

With the Sundance Film Festival starting next Thursday and the Oscars not too far off, here's a look at some of the best film festivals across the globe.

Stocks were set to retreat from five-month highs at the open on Friday after reports that Standard & Poor's was set to downgrade the ratings on several euro zone countries.

Gold prices struggled to hold recent gains Friday as a successful Italian bond auction buoyed optimism about the direction of the Eurozone's economy.

Global investment in clean energy hit a record $260 billion in 2011, up 5 percent from the previous year as investment in solar grew by more than a third despite shrinking profit margins, some bankruptcies and flagging share prices, a report said.

Europe's markets closed mixed on Thursday after a profit warning from retail heavyweight Tesco and weak U.S. retail and labor data more than offset relief from successful Spanish and Italian debt auctions.

An asset price bubble pops, hitting bank balance sheets and tax revenues. As growth weakens and the economy flirts with deflation, the real burden of servicing debt increases.

Societies and nations are very much like people in how stubborn and resistant to change they are. Few forces are actually capable of suddenly changing the base nature of people, on either a large or small scale, and it takes a great deal of sustained effort over a long period of time for them to change their own nature.

Several big airlines are taking advantage of European carbon law by snapping up emission allowances at bargain prices, tuning out an outcry against the scheme by many non-EU airlines and shoring up demand in a market that saw prices cut in half last year.

BMW , the world's largest luxury carmaker, plans to invest nearly $900 million in its Spartanburg plant in South Carolina by 2014, boosting capacity to 350,000 vehicles in the mid-term.

At German car parts maker ixetic GmbH, Dragan Knezevic is struggling to keep up: His job as foreman is to make sure there are no hold ups in assembly of the parts needed to keep Audis, VWs, Toyotas and the like on the road.

Nobody, not the EU, the IMF nor the markets had any concerns about the Irish fiscal position prior to 2008.

The European Central Bank will take a breather this month after unleashing back-to-back interest rate cuts and a slew of other measures, pausing to assess the impact of the crisis-fighting steps it took in the final two months of 2011.

Gold prices, which already this week broke above a key resistance level, barreled on Thursday toward a one-month high.

Nicolas Steno, the 17th century Danish father of geology, was honored Wednesday with a Google Doodle commemorating what would have been the genius' 374th birthday. Steno, whose name means rock in Danish, pioneered research in both anatomy and geology helping to discover a groundbreaking theory to explain how fossils function in layers of rock.

A day after re-affirming its top sovereign credit rating on Austrian government bonds, a research arm of respected French credit rating agency Fitch has issued a report noting the rapidly deteriorating level of confidence investors in the derivatives market are displaying towards that country's debt.

Gold prices extended gains into the second day on Wednesday, rising above the closely-watched 200-day moving average. The yellow metal is trading at around its highest level in a month, supported by strong physical demand from India and China.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised Italy's new government on Wednesday for the speed with which it has launched reforms, prompting Prime Minister Mario Monti to say it was important for markets also to recognize Italian economic policy progress soon.

The European Central Bank should ramp up its buying of troubled euro zone debt to support Italy and prevent a cataclysmic collapse of the euro, David Riley, the head of sovereign ratings for Fitch, said on Wednesday.

While many Republicans have struggled to say why they support a given candidate, the Ron Paul supporters who filled a banquet hall in Manchester, N.H., on Tuesday were eager to talk in detail about his message.

A pullback in stocks was expected at the open on Wednesday, a day after the Dow and S&P 500 hit five-month highs, with pressure on the euro testing the recent view that U.S. equities were decoupling from Europe.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said on Wednesday that Europe must recognize the way in which the Italian public had agreed to painful austerity measures to cut its debt.