Stocks Continue to Fall

Stocks are closing lower on Wall Street following indications that little progress is being made in Washington in talks over how to narrow the U.S. government's budget deficit.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 89 points to end at 12,878 Tuesday. The Dow was little changed around midday but turned lower in mid-afternoon trading after Harry Reid, the Senate's majority leader, expressed frustration with how the talks were going.

Other indexes also closed lower after moving indecisively for much of the day.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost seven points to end at 1,399 and the Nasdaq composite fell nine points to 2,968.

Falling stocks outnumbered rising ones by a small margin on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was lower than the recent average at 3.3 billion shares.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)