IBT Staff Reporter

(Corrects final paragraph to show Dow briefly slipped below 10,000 on Thursday, but didn't close there)

(Corrects paragraph 2 to show Dow didn't close below 10,000 on Thursday, but did slip briefly below that level)

The Nasdaq turned positive late in the session on Friday, while the Dow and the S&P pared losses to nearly flat as investors snapped up technology and materials stocks.

Social networking company FriendFinder Networks Inc indefinitely shelved its planned $220 million initial public offering on Friday, citing market conditions.

The brother, sons and niece of imprisoned epic swindler Bernard Madoff have agreed to an asset freeze in a lawsuit brought by the trustee winding down the Madoff firm, court documents filed on Friday said.

A federal appeals court reinstated on Friday a proposed class-action lawsuit against Dell Inc, alleging that the company sold defective notebook computers.

A weak job market and tight credit conditions caused consumer credit to fall $1.73 billion in December, the eleventh straight monthly decline, a report from the Federal Reserve showed on Friday.

A weak job market and tight credit conditions caused consumer credit to fall $1.73 billion in December, the eleventh straight monthly decline, a report from the Federal Reserve showed on Friday.

The unemployment rate surprisingly fell to a five-month low in January and factory payrolls grew for the first time since 2007, hinting at a labor market recovery even though the economy lost 20,000 jobs.

A wireless operator said earlier this week that it successfully embedded GPS hardware into a normal SIM chip, potentially allowing all devises to use location based services.

U.S. stocks fell on Friday, failing to recover from the previous day's brutal selloff, after U.S. jobs data pointed to a slow recovery and investors worried about the health of the euro zone's weakest economies.

Funds and property valued at about $370 million traced to accused Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford have been located, but disputes over control of the assets are holding up disbursement, liquidators for Stanford's offshore bank said on Friday.

BAE Systems Plc , Europe's biggest defense contractor, will pay around $450 million in fines to end a long-running corruption investigation on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Dow industrials and S&P 500 index fell more than 1 percent in early afternoon trading on Friday, with the energy and industrials sectors weighing on the market.

International search teams will be sent to the Atlantic later this month to try to find wreckage from an Air France airliner that crashed into the sea last year killing all 228 people aboard, French officials said on Friday.

Bipartisan efforts to tighten U.S. financial regulation ground to a halt in the Senate on Friday, leaving Democrats to proceed on their own and painting Republicans into an uncomfortable political corner.

The unemployment rate surprisingly fell to a five-month low in January and factory payrolls grew for the first time since 2007, hinting at a labor market recovery even though the economy lost 20,000 jobs.

U.S. stocks fell in choppy trade on Friday as investors struggled to interpret a mixed jobs report, while sovereign debt troubles in the euro zone roiled markets heading into the weekend.

JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N>, which reported $11.7 billion in profit in 2009, awarded Chief Executive Jamie Dimon a compensation package worth about $16 million.

“The O'Reilly Factor” host Bill O'Reilly aired the second part of his interview with “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart on Thursday.

The majority of comments to blogs and other Web 2.0 websites are spam or contain malicious code, according to a new report.

The palm-fringed Art Deco hotels and glitzy Ocean Drive familiar from the movies and fashion magazines are actually across Biscayne Bay on the island of Miami Beach, so stay at a hotel in the South Beach neighborhood where a lot of the fun is an easy walk away.

JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N> awarded Chief Executive Jamie Dimon restricted stock worth almost $8 million plus a package of 10-year stock options, according to an SEC filing on Friday.

U.S. meat producer Tyson Foods Inc reported a higher-than-expected first-quarter profit and predicted even better profit margins for its chicken business.

BTA Bank , the second-largest bank in Kazakhstan, sought bankruptcy protection in the United States to protect itself from U.S. creditors while it restructures $11.6 billion of debt at home.

U.S. stocks dropped and briefly hit session lows in late morning trading on Friday, with shares of energy companies falling as oil dropped more than $3 a barrel. An S&P index of energy stocks lost 1.8 percent.

Rap music artist, Jay-Z, on Wednesday sued an investment firm and a bank, accusing them of trying to bleed $3.7 million from him over a loan to help him build a hotel on Manhattan's west side.

The White House on Friday welcomed the Labor Department's report that the unemployment rate had fallen to a five-month low, saying it showed encouraging signs of gradual labor market healing.

He spoke at a Democratic National Committee fund-raising reception at which he sought to boost the morale of party loyalists in the wake of the Democrats' loss of a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate when Republican Scott Brown won in Massachusetts last week.