RABAT - After years of watching from the sidelines, North Africa has begun to embrace Islamic finance as banking develops and governments try to channel more Arab Gulf petrodollars into an investment-starved region.

In a credit-strapped U.S. economy, tech giants like Intel and Apple, which rely less on short-term loans to finance everyday business, find themselves in a stronger position. They're also relatively cheap. Here's how to sort out the smartest investment

EU finance ministers will propose on Saturday that the European Investment Bank boost lending to small- and mid-sized firms by half in 2008 and 2009 to 15 billion euros (21 billion dollars), according to a document seen Friday.

Learn how to teach your college-bound kids the financial facts of life and discover the new stars of the ETF world, all in today's Personal Finance section.

The U.S. government may take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if their funding problems worsen, the New York Times said on Friday, causing shares of the mortgage finance companies to plunge.