UNITED STATES

The Republican presidential candidates are debating once again Thursday night, this time in Orlando, Fla. The participants are Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. Stay on this page for live updates.

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) told the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell that the mainstream media coddles President Obama because they want the country's first black president to be successful.

Two significant speeches from senior Reserve Bank officials in the past day or so have added to the arguments and view the central bank has about the current state and direction of the Australian economy, which appeared in this week's minutes of the September 6 RBA board meeting.

Clearwire Corp is in talks with U.S. wireless operators, including AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, about selling network capacity while it also eyes raising new funding through equity, debt and vendor financing, according to top company executives.

The Obama Administration is offering states ways to circumvent provisions of the No Child Lew Behind Law, saying that certain provisions of the law have done more harm than good in improving schools.

Amazon's cloud computing unit has taken steps to avoid a repeat of the outage of its cloud services platform earlier this year and customer interest has only grown since, a top company executive said.

The U.S. futures regulator has yielded on several contentious parts of a plan to crack down on commodity speculation, marking a modest victory for banks and traders who have lobbied to limit increased market oversight.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice decided on Thursday to eliminate the last-meal practice, in which death-row inmates were allowed to order a special meal before being taken to the execution chamber.

Protectionism and populist policies in the developing world could rise as countries face increasing head winds from a growing European sovereign debt crisis and a weakening economic recovery in the United States, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Thursday.

Reporters with Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid repeatedly hacked into the voice mail of a minister in the former Labor government, sources close to the matter say.

“Back to Work” will be released in November.

Harvard University's endowment is the main investor in a venture that could buy more than $1 billion of triple-net leased property, a form of investment that offers higher yields and relative stability at a time of financial market volatility, a source familiar with the deal said.

Primatene Mist, the only asthma inhaler sold over the counter in the U.S., will be phased out by the end of 2011 because it contains chlorofluorocarbons that harm the Earth's ozone layer, the FDA said on Thursday.

Study shows that teenagers who have frequent dinners with family less likely to do drugs.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's United Nations speech on Thursday angered a number of world leaders, especially the delegates from the United States, who walked out of the General Assembly while Ahmadinejad soliloquized.

Hedge fund industry veteran Barton Biggs warned of a global double-dip recession and a 20 percent market drop if the governments do not fix the problem.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday he was sure Europe would boost the firepower of its bailout fund to contain the debt crisis as pressure on Europe grew to act decisively to calm markets.

Commodity investors fled for the exits on Thursday in a panic over raw materials demand, unconvinced that Federal Reserve action will stem a global economic slowdown that shows signs of infecting China and Germany.

McDonald's Corp said on Thursday its board of directors raised the world's biggest hamburger chain's quarterly cash dividend almost 15 percent to 70 cents per share.

Lawyers for the only Goldman Sachs employee charged over the Abacus subprime mortgage transaction have asked a judge for permission to appeal one of the legal claims U.S. securities regulators brought against him.

The Dow has lost 6.74 percent over the past four days.