Private equity, however, appears by comparison to be one of the darker arts.

FORBES: Private Equity's Public Image Issues

But what is certain is that, in a matter of weeks, Italy has become not just a more unsettled place, but a darker and scarier one.

ECONOMIST: Italian politics

The discovery would appear to resolve a longstanding mystery in planetary science: why the walnut-shaped Iapetus has a two-tone complexion, with one side of the moon significantly darker than the other.

BBC: New ring detected around Saturn

Although he was never arrested, the fallout from that scandal took a darker turn when two of its top executives, one of them its chairman, Roberto Calvi, were murdered.

BBC: Vatican Bank 'investigated over money-laundering'

The effects of masked behavior online grew darker with the rise of blogs (the first one is said to have debuted in late 1997, and a decade later some 70 million exist).

FORBES: On The Cover/Top Stories

And at one point you said to me, oh, this book is darker, you know, tonally than your previous book.

NPR: Grigsby Bates on Her New Mystery Novel

One is that the economic outlook for the euro area, as for the world economy, is darker than it has been for many years.

ECONOMIST: The European Central Bank