In a sweeping move, the government on Friday sued 17 financial firms, including the largest U.S. banks, for selling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic when the housing market collapsed.
Pro-government thugs in Syria attacked U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford in Damascus last week, and Syrian television recorded the assault in a news clip widely circulated over the Internet.
It was another day of big swings in the Dow Jones industrial average, but at least Monday ended with a modest gain.
Investors flocked to gold Friday, sending it to the latest of a series of records, as fears about recession in the world's major economies infected financial markets.
As if rising tuition costs weren't enough, many college students could soon face higher interest rates on their student loans, another potential aftershock of last week's U.S. credit downgrade by Standard & Poor's.
Shares of Nintendo Co. took a beating Friday, losing more than a fifth of their value at one point, after the Japanese video game giant announced a worldwide price cut for its new 3DS in an effort to salvage poor sales.
Alabama's largest county began laying the groundwork Tuesday for what would be the largest-ever U.S. municipal bankruptcy after three years of trying to work out a solution with Wall Street to more than $3 billion in debt linked to a massive sewer-rehabilitation project tainted by corruption.
Jefferson County faces an 80 percent chance of declaring bankruptcy, one of its commissioners said Thursday, as experts advised the county on the implications of a possible Chapter 9 filing.
Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs announced Tuesday that it had more than doubled its profits in the second quarter to $1.05 billion - but even that wasn't enough to satisfy its investors.
