PARIS (AFP) ― Fitch ratings agency issued a strong warning to the United States on Tuesday to deal with its recurrent debt-ceiling dramas in a way which strengthens the economy in the long term, saying that its top “AAA” credit rating was at stake.Fitch said it might revise downward its notation for the United States from the “AAA” level if Congress did not reach agreement on raising the ceiling for the national debt.Fitch said that failure to raise the limit in time would lead to a formal revis

Fitch ratings agency issued a strong warning to the United States on Tuesday to deal with its recurrent debt-ceiling dramas in a way which strengthens the economy in the long term, saying that its top "AAA" credit rating was at stake.Fitch said it might revise downward its notation for the United States from the "AAA" level if Congress did not reach agreement on raising the ceiling for the national debt.Fitch said that failure to raise the limit in time would lead to a formal revision by Fitch o

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new search feature that's designed to entice people to spend more time on its website and will put the social networking company more squarely in competition with Google and other rivals such as Yelp and LinkedIn.Called “graph search,” the new service unveiled Tuesday lets users quickly sift through their social connections for information about people, interests, photos and places. It'll help users who, for instance, want to scroll through all the photos

DETROIT (AP) ― Toyota has once again dethroned General Motors as the world’s top-selling automaker. The Japanese company sold 9.7 million cars and trucks worldwide in 2012, although it’s still counting. GM sold 9.29 million. Both companies saw higher sales, but Toyota’s growth was far larger as it rolled out new versions of popular models like the Camry. GM executives promised sales growth this year, especially in the U.S. Both companies say publicly that they don’t care about who wins, but conc

LONDON (AP) ― Industrial output across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro fell in November for the third straight month, official figures showed Monday, raising fears that the recession in the region has continued into the last three months of 2012. The 0.3 percent monthly decline reported by Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, was worse than expected and felt across the whole economy. The consensus in the markets was that output would increase a modest 0.1 percent during the mo

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ― Apple’s stock slipped below $500 for the first time in 11 months on Monday as investors reacted to reports signaling the company’s latest iPhone is falling further behind a slew of sleek alternatives running Google’s Android software. The latest indication that Apple, the world’s most valuable company, is seeing sluggish demand for its iPhone 5 emerged in separate stories published Monday in the Japanese newspaper Nikkei and The Wall Street Journal. Both publications cited u

Toyota has once again dethroned General Motors as the world's top-selling automaker.The Japanese company sold 9.7 million cars and trucks worldwide in 2012, although it's still counting. GM sold 9.29 million.Both companies saw higher sales, but Toyota's growth was far larger as it rolled out new versions of popular models like the Camry. GM executives promised sales growth this year, especially in the U.S. Both companies say publicly that they don't care about who wins, but concede that the crow

ATHENS (AP) ― Greece’s Parliament approved new tax legislation early Saturday aiming to boost state revenues by 2.3 billion euros ($3 billion) this year, under the bailout-dependent country’s commitments to its international creditors.The law approved with the support of all partners in the country’s three-party ruling coalition shuffles and simplifies tax scales, reforms family benefits, increases taxation of deposit interest and expands the tax base to include groups such as low-earning farmer

DETROIT (AP) ― Ford says it plans to hire 2,200 engineers, computer programmers and other white-collar workers this year as U.S. demand for new vehicles picks up. That’s in addition to the 8,100 salaried and hourly jobs Ford added in the U.S. last year as it increased production and introduced new cars. U.S. car and truck sales rose 13 percent to 14.5 million in 2012, the highest level in five years.Ford will use social media to find tech-savvy candidates. It’s also stepping up recruitment of mi