Fell

It's the holiday season and we love lists. Who's naughty. Who's nice. We love rankings too. Top 10 stories of the year. People of the year. Man of the year. Woman of the year. Who didn't go home from a holiday dinner and rank the proteins (turkey, ham, prime rib, oysters), the sides (stuffing, corn, spinach casserole, cranberries), the desserts (pumpkin pie, pecan pie, yule log, cookies)? You saw the kids in the corner dismissing action figures and embracing video games. You saw the adults in the living room hooking up the new TVs and playing with the new iPads while crumpled sweaters were stuffed back in boxes that somehow had found their way behind the tree.

This post has been updated. See below. WASHINGTON -- First-time claims for unemployment benefits fell to 350,000 last week, close to the 4 1/2-year low, the Labor Department said Thursday. The figure for the week that ended Saturday was down 12,000 from the revised reading from the previous week. It brought weekly jobless claims down to the level that economists say is consistent with moderate job growth. The less-volatile four-week average also dropped last week, by 11,250 to  356,750, as the jobs market continued its recovery from a spike in claims last month caused by Superstorm Sandy.

In the 15 years since Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won the Academy Award for their "Good Will Hunting" screenplay, Damon has worked with some of Hollywood's best directors, become a humanitarian in Africa and even parodied himself with the help of Kevin Smith and Jimmy Kimmel. What he hasn't done is write another script. Until now. In partnership with John Krasinski of "The Office," Damon, 42, has returned to the blank page, co-writing "Promised Land," a script that he initially intended to direct, about a young comer in the natural gas industry who is selling the controversial practice of "fracking" to homeowners in struggling rural communities.

Southern California schools have been shut out of a high-profile federal grant competition, according to results announced Tuesday. The one regional finalist for the latest round of Race to the Top grants was a charter school organization, Green Dot Public Schools, that could have received $30 million. But its bid fell just short. The charter's proposal included expanding student wellness centers to provide social, physical and mental health services in support of academics; purchasing new technology, including tablet computers; and instituting a system to track and support high school graduates in college.

WASHINGTON — Fueled by major improvements in California and Arizona, the percentage of homeowners nationwide who were behind on their mortgage payments dropped significantly in the third quarter from the same period last year, according to credit reporting company TransUnion. The national mortgage delinquency rate — the percentage of borrowers 60 days or more late on their payments — fell to 5.41% in the three months ended in September from 5.88%, TransUnion said Tuesday. The rate last quarter was the lowest since the first quarter of 2009, when it was 5.22%.

The gig: Morgan Margolis is the chief executive of Knitting Factory Entertainment, which has concert venues, restaurants, record labels, artist management companies and a national touring division. The swiftly diversifying Los Angeles-based company employs 300 people and has annual gross revenue of $35 million on average. Raised in a show-biz family: Margolis, 46, remembers roaming the mean streets of New York's East Village in the 1970s. His parents were actors, and money didn't come easily to the family.

After more than nine years of monthly sales increases, McDonald's Corp. finally felt the heat of competition and the sting of a difficult economy in reporting that revenue fell 1.8% last month. Sales at stores open more than a year fell 2.2% from October a year earlier in the U.S. and Europe and sank 2.4% in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions. Canada saw gains. McDonald's Chief Executive Don Thompson blamed the poor figures on "the pervasive challenges of today's global marketplace.

The Clippers were disturbed by the way they performed during a loss to the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night. It was such a maddening defeat that Clippers Coach Vinny Del Negro indicated that it may have slowed the growth of his team after only three games. "This is for us a step back," Del Negro said after the game late Saturday night, "because I was disappointed with the way we came out. " Point guard Chris Paul said it all about his team's play in the first quarter.

The theme of Season 5 of "Next Iron Chef" is "redemption. " But it might as well be "revenge. " The new season gets underway Sunday night on Food Network featuring chefs who failed, flopped and otherwise fell short during earlier incarnations of the channel's popular cooking competition. Among them: Eric Greenspan, the Los Angeles chef-owner of the Foundry on Melrose. He was unceremoniously eliminated after the very first competition (ouch!) of Season 2. Now he's back for blood.

Ford Motor Co. offset growing losses in recession-plagued Europe by increasing profit on the cars it sold in the U.S. The automaker posted a third-quarter profit of just over $1.6 billion, down $18 million from the same period a year earlier. Revenue dipped 3% to $33.1 billion. Italian automaker Fiat also reported a third-quarter profit Tuesday. Similar to Ford, the U.S. auto market was the driver behind the gain. Thanks to its controlling interest in Chrysler Group, Fiat said profit for the quarter was 286 million euros, or $370.7 million, up from 112 million euros, or $145.2 million, in the same period a year earlier.