AP - Worried about their jobs and warned that the cost of failure could be a depression, hundreds of leaders of the United Auto Workers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to make concessions to the struggling Detroit Three, including all but ending a much-derided program that let laid-off workers collect up to 95 percent of their salaries.

Reuters - A federal judge in California on Wednesday ordered MGA Entertainment Inc to stop selling its popular Bratz dolls and banned it from using the Bratz name, finding that "hundreds" of Bratz products infringe on copyrights owned by rival toymaker Mattel Inc .

AP - Ninety-three countries signed a treaty banning cluster bombs Thursday, as diplomats accepted the wishes of victims who begged them to bar the weapons that kill and maim civilians long after the conflicts end.

AP - It's official. The U.S. economy has been in a recession for the past year.

AP - The United Auto Workers said Wednesday it is willing to change its contracts with U.S. automakers and accept delayed payments of billions of dollars to a union-run health care trust to do its part to help the struggling companies secure $34 billion in government loans.

AP - Ford Motor Co. will tell Congress that it plans to return to a pretax profit or break even in 2011 when the Detroit Three automakers' CEOs appear before lawmakers this week to request $25 billion in government loans. Ford CEO Alan Mulally said he'll work for $1 per year if the company has to take any government loan money.

AP - Skittish employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years, catapulting the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, dramatic proof the country is careening deeper into recession.

AP - Pressured by the economic turmoil and the mounting loss of traditional phone customers, AT&T Inc. is cutting 12,000 jobs, about 4 percent of its work force.

AP - If a solar-powered car can drive 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers) around the globe without using a drop of oil, perhaps it can be forgiven for not having a coffee cup holder.

AP - Oil prices plummeted Friday as the already battered market reacted to unexpectedly high U.S. unemployment figures — the latest dramatic evidence of recession in the world's largest market for crude.

AP - News of a rapidly weakening job sent stocks falling Friday as investors feared that the recession will be deeper and more prolonged than many have expected. The major indexes were all down more than 2 percent and the Dow Jones industrials fell more than 200 points.

AP - Barack Obama will be the first American president in nearly 50 years to have a relatively free hand in deciding whether to ease punitive Cold War-era policies toward communist Cuba, and the foreign policy team he announced this week seems predisposed to make it happen.

AP - Retailers who suffered through a miserable November — despite a surge in sales the day after Thanksgiving — are worried that the usual lull between the holiday weekend and the final days before Christmas could be dangerously quiet this year.

AP - JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Monday it will cut a total of 9,200 jobs at Washington Mutual, which it acquired Sept. 25 after Washington Mutual became the nation's largest bank to fail amid the ongoing credit crisis.

AP - Iran's hard-line president has acknowledged publicly for the first time that his country's economy is taking a severe beating from tumbling oil prices, a damaging admission by a leader whose popularity is eroding ahead of a tough re-election battle next year.

Reuters - The U.S. auto industry's drive for a $34 billion emergency taxpayer bailout was stuck in neutral on Friday as the chief executives of Detroit's Big Three began a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill.

Reuters - Oil fell toward $42 a barrel on Friday, sinking to its lowest level since January 2005, after a U.S. government report showed more than half a million Americans lost their jobs last month.

AP - Stock intended to eventually earn taxpayers a profit as part of the Bush administration's massive bank bailout has lost a third of its value — about $9 billion — in barely one month, according to an Associated Press analysis. Shares in virtually every bank that received federal money have remained below the prices the government negotiated.