down

The crush of downloaders led to incredibly slow download times however, and many users were unable to download the album at all. Leading Amazon to release the following statement; "Amazon is experiencing high volume and downloads

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) ran an amazing promo yesterday, offering Lady Gaga's new CD "Born This Way" for just $0.99, as well as giving away an upgrade to 20 gigabytes of cloud music storage if the buyer is already subscribed to Am

The move will come in the second or third quarter in an effort to judge the potential of discovering natural gas in the area.

ConocoPhillips shares are down 0.76%, or $0.54, to $70.89.

Shares of ConocoPhillips (COP) are down on a Bloomberg report that the oil giant plans to begin drilling in the Browse Basin off Australia's northwest coast.

Target Corp. (TGT) opened lower and sank to an early low of $50.16, after suing a California gay marriage group in an attempt to end picketing at a San Diego store. The company said the protests are driving away customers. Target

The firm expects Intel (INTC) to issue second quarter guidance below Street estimates given weak PC demand. Nomura also believes enterprise PC and server demand will moderate in the second half of 2011.

The price target is lowered to $22 from $27.

Shares of Intel (INTC) are down 3.07% to $20.20 in pre-market trading after Nomura downgraded the company to Neutral from Buy.

The Labor Department report released Thursday showed that employee output per hour increase at a 2.6% unrevised annual rate following a 2.3% rise in the previous quarter. Economists had projected increases ranging from 1.8-2.8%.

Bloomberg reports that the increased demand may boost hiring at companies that are looking to raise efficiency above current levels.

The report also showed labor expenses fell for a second straight year.

U.S. worker productivity increased at a faster-than-expected pace in the fourth quarter of 2010 as companies looked to cut costs while retaining profits.

Jeff Stevens, Western's President and CEO, said, "Throughout 2010, we took a number of steps to improve our financial and operating performance. We believe the actions we took, position Western well for 2011.

Western Refining (NYSE:WNR) reported a Q4 loss of $0.04 per share, missing consensus estimates of a $0.06 per share profit. Revenues for the quarter were down 4.8% year-over-year to $1.86 billion, missing consensus estimates of $1

Northwest Natural Gas Co. (NWN) is down 1.45% to $44.86 in mid-day trade, after reporting that its 2010 Q4 net income fell 6%, on warmer winter which led to less demand for heating. The natural gas company posted net income of $29

The cleaning services company posted earnings of $131.3 million, or 56 cents per share, up 13% from $115.8 million, or 48 cents per share, same quarter a year earlier. Ex-items Ecolab earned 60 cents a share, a penny below analyst

Sales rose 1% to $1.58 billion, also slightly below Wall Street forecasts.

Ecolab Inc. (ECL) is down 3.68% to $47.91, hit by 2010 Q4 results that missed expectations. It also plans to cut about 900 jobs in Europe to streamline its operations.

Separately, the WSJ reports that Rodman & Renshaw doesn't expect Afrezza to get another shot at approval for two years and estimates MNKD will need $150-200 million to get there.

"MannKind (MNKD) is down after it said it is eliminating 41 percent of its staff, 179 employees, following notification from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it would not approve the company's experimental inhaled insuli