Geneva-based banks and investment funds have lost more than 5 billion Swiss francs in the alleged $50 billion fraud by former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff, Swiss newspaper Le Temps reported on Saturday.

Even amid the festive atmosphere of a downtown ice skating rink, it's impossible to escape the worries the Motor City faces as the U.S. auto industry waits to see whether it will get a lifeline from the federal government.

Investors who put their fortunes in the hands of arrested New York money manager Bernard Madoff are waiting to hear how much of their stake is left.

The White House weighed its options Saturday for preventing a collapse of the troubled auto industry, once the backbone of the U.S. economy. So far, the only thing certain is that the Bush administration wants to avoid the possibility of a disorderly bankruptcy of any of the Big Three.

Drilling in North Dakota's oil patch is expected to be slashed by at least a third next year, industry officials say, citing slipping crude prices and a slumping U.S. economy.

GMAC Financial Services late Friday extended and sweetened its offer to exchange $38 billion of its debt, saying that it had reached a tentative deal with representatives for a "substantial portion" of the debt.

The White House was studying on Saturday how best to rescue collapsing U.S. automakers, a day after picking up the pieces of a failed congressional bailout plan.

Canada's federal government and the province of Ontario agreed Friday to provide $3.5 billion Canadian dollars for the Canadian auto industry.

Baidu.com Inc., China's leading search engine, is cutting its projected revenue by up to 15 percent after it dropped some advertisers because of a scandal over unlicensed companies selling medical products.

A former hospital executive admitted Friday he paid a man to recruit homeless people for unnecessary medical treatment in a scheme to bilk government health programs out of millions of dollars.

Wall Street put on another impressive show of resilience Friday, rebounding from an early sell-off to end higher after the government said it would assist troubled U.S. automakers.

A faction of the Screen Actors Guild on Friday called for the union to suspend an upcoming vote to authorize a strike amid stalled negotiations with Hollywood producers.

The stunning fraud Wall Street pillar Bernard Madoff is accused of has raised questions about whether federal regulators were lax in failing to scrutinize his operations and respond to alarms raised about them.

Wall Street's recovery push from 11-year lows could hit major speed bumps next week as investors fret about the U.S. automakers' fate and the Federal Reserve holds its last scheduled policy meeting of 2008.

Regulators on Friday closed Haven Trust Bank in Georgia and Sanderson State Bank in Texas, bringing to 25 the number of U.S. bank failures this year.

Festering animosity between the United Auto Workers and Southern senators who torpedoed the auto industry bailout bill erupted into full-fledged name calling Friday as union officials accused the lawmakers of trying to break the union on behalf of foreign automakers.

After a slow start, the major market indexes managed to climb higher over the course of the trading day on Friday with the Dow closing higher by 64 points.

After a two-day pullback, technology ETFs were among those moving higher on Friday. Some of the more widely traded technology exchange-traded funds include the Semiconductor HOLDRS and the Technology Select Sector SPDRS.

NEW YORK, Dec. 11, 2008 -- With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games now completed, Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced the renaming of the Dow Jones 2008 Summer Games Index to the Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index.

Will the 10th time be the charm for Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve?