DOWN

U.S. stocks dipped on Wednesday as the euro zone's debt problems curbed market enthusiasm that fueled a rally in the previous session.

Automakers ended the year with strong U.S. sales but forecast lower growth in 2012, as a sluggish economic recovery is expected to continue.

David Beckham stripped down to just his boxer-briefs for the new ad campaign for his underwear collection with H&M.

Skiers flew off the ski jump, overlooking the hills and the audience, during the second event of the 60th Four Hills Ski Jumping Tournament, in Garmisch Partenkirchen, Germany, over the weekend.

Business software maker Progress Software Corp forecast first-quarter earnings below analyst expectations, as some of its customers continue to delay investments amid macroeconomic uncertainties, sending its shares down as much as 9 percent in trading after the bell.

Twitter, one of the world's most popular social networks, is ringing in the New Year with mass outages, as the site goes down, comes back up, and then crashes again. Here, find out why the site is likely crashing, and how to try exchanging tweets without the main site, which Twitter engineers are working to fix as we speak.

Tom Adams, chief financial officer of cigarette-maker RAI Inc , will be keenly focused on the stock market on Friday, not with his company's share price in mind, but rather with the fate of his pension plan's portfolio.

Anonymous-affiliated hacktivist group TeaMp0isoN said Wednesday evening that it had taken down four Colombian government websites, all of which are now shuttered and bear the words TeaMp0ison, a YouTube clip and a short message on a black background.

Gold fell more than 1 percent in choppy trade on Wednesday, on track for its biggest one-day decline in two weeks, as a stronger dollar and risk-averse selling across the board also sent equities lower.

The Humane Society is facing heat for euthanizing the cat of a reformed heroin addict after it had been brought in for medical treatment and was put down because the owner could not pay upfront.

Hackers who have shut down websites by overwhelming them with Web traffic could use the same approach to shut down the computers that control train switching systems, a security expert said at a hacking conference in Berlin.

Gold exchanges in China outside of two in Shanghai are to be banned, authorities said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Precious metals drifted lower Tuesday, with the biggest decline coming from palladium, which was down in early trading nearly 2 percent.

Congress approved a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, after a prolonged partisan battle on Capitol Hill. The stop-gap measure buys Congress and the White House more time to negotiate a longer-term extension.

There will be no holiday cheer for hedge fund manager John Paulson this month, as his dismal performance in 2011 is capped off by another miserable performance so far in December.

When Bonobos customers logged on to the men's apparel retailer's website late on Cyber Monday, all they saw was a photo of feet with a pair of pants drooped around them.

Walgreen Co posted a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday as the largest U.S. drugstore chain's margins were hurt by lower reimbursement rates for prescriptions, fewer flu shots and its spat with pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc .

Walgreen Co posted a lower quarterly profit as the largest U.S. drugstore chain's margins were hurt by lower reimbursement rates for the prescriptions it fills, fewer flu shots and its spat with pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc .

Shares of Cablevision Systems Corp fell more than 15 percent in early trading on Friday as investors sold off on uncertainty surrounding the sudden departure of the New York cable operator's well-regarded chief operating officer.

Suzanne Hart, a 41-year-old advertising executive at Young & Rubicam, on Wednesday became the latest person to die in an elevator accident, this time on Madison Avenue in New York City. Here is a list of other similar elevator accidents -- some fatal, others scary -- that has happened throughout history.

China's economic growth could be slowing further as data on Thursday showed the first year-on-year drop in foreign direct investment in 28 months and a fresh fall in new orders signaled a further contraction in factory activity.