Wall Street capped one of its worst weeks ever with a wild session Friday that saw the Dow Jones industrials rocket within a 1,000 point range before closing with a relatively mild loss and the Nasdaq composite index actually end with a modest advance. Investors were still agonizing over frozen credit markets, but seven days of massive losses made many stocks tempting for traders looking for bargains.
John McCain and Barack Obama outlined steps to counter the faltering economy and plummeting stock market on Friday, fresh evidence of the dominant role of pocketbook issues in their race for the White House.
A sharply divided Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Friday that gay couples have the right to get married, saying legislators did not go far enough when they approved same-sex civil unions that were identical to marriages in virtually every respect except the name.
Ukraine's prime minister said Friday there will be no early parliamentary elections, defying a presidential decree and raising the stakes in her fierce political battle with the president.
Angelina Jolie, an advocate of adoption, credits partner Brad Pitt with her decision to have biological children. In an interview with W magazine, Jolie says: "One of the life-changing things that he did, one of many, is that I was absolutely never going to get pregnant. I never felt that it was the right thing to do."
Now that Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG have broken off their troubled relationship, known as Sony BMG, the Japanese company hopes to harmonize its consumer electronics and its music, a duo that was badly out of sync.
A Minneapolis radio station said Friday it would air public service announcements on HIV/AIDS after a pair of talk hosts accused Magic Johnson of faking AIDS. KTLK's Chris Baker and Langdon Perry made the remarks during Baker's conservative talk show on Wednesday. After Johnson condemned the statements, the station said on Friday it regretted "some off-hand remarks" by the pair.
Who is running for president? In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for "Barack Osama."
When drug makers made a surprise announcement this week that they no longer recommend cough and cold remedies for youngsters under 4, they didn't let on that it was the government's idea.