COMPANIES

General Electric Co reported earnings that topped Wall Street expectations, as it kept costs in line despite still-sluggish demand for electric turbines and other heavy equipment.

Air America Media said on Thursday that it stopped broadcasting and will file for bankruptcy after a drop in advertising sales.

Cablevision Systems Corp and Scripps Networks Interactive Inc said on Thursday they reached a fee agreement paving the way for Food Network and HGTV channels to return to Cablevision, beginning that day.

Toyota announced on Thursday to recall its 2.3 million vehicles in the United States to fix problems with accelerator pedals.

Coca-Cola Co is considering buying a controlling stake in Russian juice maker Nidan Soki from London-based private equity group Lion Capital, sources familiar with the deal participants said on Thursday.

A shareholder sued the management of Cedar Fair LP, a theme park operator, for agreeing to sell the company too cheaply to Apollo Management and asked a judge to block the deal, according to court documents.

Airbus Industrie is sure that biofuels, the 'green' hope of the aviation sector, will work in its planes and is looking forward to testing them, a senior official for the European airliner builder said on Thursday.

California has issues with federal attempts to weaken new vehicle pollution standards, but the state backed away on Wednesday from a report that it was threatening to pull out of a deal with U.S. President Barack Obama's administration.

Blackstone Group said on Thursday it will take over management of nine leveraged loan and high yield bond funds with assets of $3.2 billion from business development company Allied Capital Corp.

Dutch luxury car maker Spyker Cars said on Thursday it is nearing an outcome in its talks to buy Saab from General Motors, although it gave no indication as to how the talks were going.

Belgian Opel workers learned the Antwerp plant will close this year, with the loss of 2,600 jobs, as U.S. car maker General Motors said it would make labor and capacity cuts at all its European sites.

Suzuki Motor Corp CEO Osamu Suzuki said on Thursday he would probably refuse any approach by German carmaker Volkswagen for a bigger stake in his company.

Global growth is set to blossom this year on the back of resurgent Asian economies and as the world's richest nations emerge from the deepest recession since the Second World War, according to a Reuters poll.

The end of the Federal Reserve's program to buy mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have a ripple effect on the market for U.S. government bonds.

The city of Baghdad asked foreign companies on Thursday to sign up for a project to design and build 75,000 apartments, the first phase of a $10 billion plan to rebuild the Iraqi capital's sprawling Sadr City slum.

A substantial number of AIG's Financial Products employees set to get some $195 million in retention payments no longer work with the bailed out insurer, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has made the winning bid to purchase the bankrupt, unfinished Fontainebleau Las Vegas Resort in a bet that the struggling Las Vegas Strip will eventually turn around.

Several Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday expressed concern that the merger of Exxon Mobil and XTO Energy would reduce competition in the oil and gas industries and increase the use of a controversial drilling technique that could pollute water supplies.

Oracle Corp will likely win European Union approval to buy Sun Microsystems Inc before the end of this week, clearing the way to close the long-delayed $7 billion deal, according to a person close to the company.

The New York Times will begin charging for articles on its website next year, marking a major effort by the newspaper to find new revenue and combat the declines in print circulation and advertising that have badly hurt the publishing industry.

U.S. home starts unexpectedly fell last month as unusually cold weather hampered construction, but a jump in building permits to a 14-month high indicated the housing market recovery was intact.

Latin American wireless carrier NII Holdings Inc plans to bid for new frequencies to bolster its coverage in Mexico as it deploys 3G technology across the region to improve services and boost client base.

Israel's largest traded defence contractor Elbit Systems said on Wednesday it had won a $15.6 million contract from the U.S. Marine Corps.

Airbus parent EADS does not have adequate systems in place to monitor costs on its troubled A400M military plane project, buyer nations have been told, putting pressure on the planemaker ahead of crucial talks on Thursday.

The homebuilding industry's biggest trade show meets this week, but most of its biggest executives will not be there.

New U.S. housing starts unexpectedly fell in December, likely the result of unusually cold weather, while producer prices rose for a third straight month.

Demand for U.S. home loans rose last week for the third straight week as mortgage rates fell to a one-month low and stoked refinancing, an industry group said on Wednesday.

New U.S. housing starts unexpectedly fell in December, pulled down by a drop in construction activity for single-family dwellings, a government report showed on Wednesday.

A largest aftershock of last week's devastating earthquake in Haiti struck this morning 35 miles west-south-west of the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince, on Wednesday.