IBT Staff Reporter

Ford Motor Co. is recalling nearly 15,000, 2011 models crossovers to address potential electrical shorts that could lead to fires.

NEW YORK - Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P500 and the Nasdaq 100 are flat to 0.1 percent higher, pointing to a slight rise in equities on Wall Street on Friday.

Wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, the chairman of Clearwire Corp, has decided to resign from his position effective December 31, the company said in a regulatory filing late Thursday.

The China government may slash export quotas of rare earth mineral by half in 2011, according to China Securities Journal, after Beijing raised international concern by cutting exports of the minerals next year.

A U.S. federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by 10 hedge fund groups accusing German automaker Porsche SE of cornering the market in shares of Volkswagen AG , resulting in more than $2 billion of damages.

China may not announce a second rare earths export quota in 2011, the official China Securities Journal said on Friday, after Beijing raised international concern by cutting exports of the minerals next year.

Wilmington, Delaware-based chemical manufacturer DuPont has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $3.3 million for violating the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The federal judge in the Washington District of Columbia has granted preliminary approval to a long-running and highly contentious $3.4 billion Cobell Settlement - a move that could end the class action litigation over the mismanagement of trust fund assets for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.

In the legal sector, many lawyers are leaving their law firms in search of greener pastures during the Holiday Season.

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton has scored a big win for its client News Corporation (News Corp.) in its bid to buy the remaining shares in BSkyB by securing the clearance from the European Commission (EC).

Hal Turner, a right-wing blogger and Internet radio host, has been sentenced to 33 months in federal prison for threatening to assault and murder three judges of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in response to their 2009 ruling upholding handgun bans in the city.

A California lawyer has agreed to be disbarred over a charge of stealing $117,000 from a widow after representing her in a case regarding her deceased husband's life insurance policy proceeds, according to the State Bar of California and Orange County District Attorney's (OCDA) statements.

King & Spalding has appointed Ross W. Nadel, a veteran Bay Area federal prosecutor, as a partner of its special matters and government investigations practice.

U.S. oil and gas firm Anadarko would be a good strategic fit for BHP Billiton , investors said on Friday, as fresh speculation swirled the global miner was looking at the target, but banking sources were unaware of any imminent offer.

Toyota Motor Corporation has agreed to pay $32.4 million in fines to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) over delays in reporting safety defects in its vehicles on two separate occasions.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has been sued by The New York Times (NYT) for routinely violating Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) that requires government agencies to provide information to the press and the public.

Allstate Corp., the largest publicly traded U.S. home and auto insurer, has accused Bank of America (BofA) and its lending unit, Countrywide Financial, of misrepresenting the risk associated with mortgage-backed securities it bought from them beginning 2005, and is suing them for more than $700 million.

It's going to be tougher to make money 2011. I expect the government to strike back. I don't think they're going to let commodity prices continue to soar. I'm very concerned about the repercussions of that on investors.

Paris-based telecoms equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent SA and three of its subsidiaries have agreed to pay a combined $92 million penalty to settle a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigation into the global sales practice of Alcatel S.A. prior to its 2006 merger with Lucent Technologies Inc.

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday it was converting $5.5 billion of its preferred shares in Ally Financial, the lender formerly known as GMAC, into common stock, laying the groundwork for exiting the investment.

Chrysler Group LLC, the automaker managed by Italy's Fiat SpA, recalled more than 144,000 vehicles in three separate filings to federal regulators posted on Thursday.

Cyber activists say they have brought down Zimbabwean government websites after the president's wife sued a newspaper for publishing a WikiLeaks cable linking her with illicit diamond trading.

The Treasury Department converted $5.5 billion of its preferred shares in Ally Financial, the lender once known as GMAC, into common stock, laying the groundwork for exiting the investment.

Bookseller Borders Group Inc is delaying payments to some of its vendors, a company spokeswoman said on Thursday, sending its shares down 11 percent.

Online deal site Groupon is still privately held but retail investors might soon be able to own a piece of it, judging by other startups in which mutual funds run by T Rowe Price Group have invested.

More than one in five TVs shipped this year were in some way connected.

Facebook surpassed Google for the first time as the most visited website in the United States for most of 2010.

A powerful virus targeting smart phones in China running Google Inc's Android operating system may represent the most sophisticated bug to target mobile devices to date, security researchers said on Thursday.