2010 | featured news

This may go down as the year that social networking trumped searching as America's favorite online pastime. In 2010, Facebook pushed past Google to become the most popular site on the Internet for the first time, according to two Web tracking firms. The title caps a year of rapid ascent for Facebook in which the social network hit 500 million users and founder Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year. It also marks another milestone in the ongoing shift in the way Americans spend their time online, a social change that profoundly alters how people get news and interact with one another - and even the definition of the word "friend."

Top 10 stories of 2010: WikiLeaks, Afghanistan war, EU financial crisis, Haiti earthquake, World Cup, North Korea.

Domestic box-office revenues for 2010 won't quite hit last year's record-setting haul, but they'll be awfully close. Total movie-ticket sales will reach $10.556 billion, the tracking agency Hollywood.com said Tuesday. That's a slight decrease from the $10.6 billion total from 2009, but it's also only the second time that the annual box office has crossed the $10 billion mark.

Cluster killings of more than one officer helped make 2010 a particularly dangerous year for law enforcement. Deaths in the line of duty jumped 37 percent to about 160 from 117 the year before, according to a nonprofit that tracks police deaths.

U.S. single-family home prices fell for a fourth straight month in October pressured by a supply glut, home foreclosures and high unemployment, data from a closely watched survey showed on Tuesday.

New single-family home sales rose in November but to a lower- than- expected rate , a government report showed on Thursday, highlighting the weakness in the housing market even as the broader economic recovery gains momentum.

Here's what made us want to hide the kids, hide the wife ... and hide our husbands, too, in 2010.

Skywatchers got an early holiday present this year: A total eclipse of the moon. Hanging high in the sky, the moon slowly turned from bright silver into a red disk early Tuesday. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth casts its shadow on the full moon, blocking the sun's rays that otherwise reflect off the moon's surface. Some indirect sunlight still pierces through to give the moon its eerie hue.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2010.

Retail sales were solidly higher in November, the government reported Tuesday, fueled in part by deep discounting on holiday merchandise.