UNITED STATES

U.S. TV talk-show host David Letterman said on Thursday he was the victim of a $2 million extortion plot by a man who threatened to write a screenplay about Letterman having affairs with employees.

The head of the main U.S. securities industry regulator said on Friday the board of Bank of America Corp should make public its intentions as it searches for a new chief executive.

The United States hailed the resignation of Kenya's anti-corruption chief and said on Friday it could help drive badly needed reforms after post-election violence last year that rocked east Africa's biggest economy.

Dutch maker of photocopier and printing systems Oce NV posted a third-quarter loss and sharply declining revenues due to weak European markets, but said it saw early signs of bottoming out in some U.S. markets.

In a blow to President Barack Obama, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to prohibit his administration from transferring terrorism suspects from the Guantanamo Bay military prison to face prosecution in the United States

The United States wants to give Japan's new government time to review a contentious agreement on rejigging U.S. troops in the country, but thinks an existing deal is the best solution, U.S. ambassador John Roos said on Friday.

Oil fell to near $70 a barrel on Friday after worse-than-expected U.S. employment figures raised doubts about the strength of the economic recovery, but a slump in the dollar helped drag crude prices off their lows.

Gun shots ring sharply across a valley littered with rusting hulks of Soviet tanks as Afghan soldiers crouch down and open fire into the dusty haze.

The Philippines declared a nationwide state of calamity on Friday as a super typhoon bore down a week after flash floods killed nearly 300 people in and around Manila.

ConocoPhillips said on Friday weak North American natural gas prices would hurt its third-quarter earnings, and its total oil and gas output would fall nearly five percent from the second quarter.

American Airlines (AMR.N) and fellow Oneworld alliance partners British Airways (BAY.L) and Iberia (IBLA.MC) face fresh European Union antitrust hurdles as they look to extend their pact to include coordinated schedules and prices.

Employers cut more jobs in September than expected and the unemployment rate crept up to 9.8 percent, with economists predicting that the rate will eventually exceed 10 percent before falling in 2010.

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Friday wrapped up debate on a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system and prepared to vote on the legislation next week.

High-risk patients who took a combination of three older heart drugs -- a generic statin, a generic blood pressure pill and a low-dose aspirin -- cut their risk of a heart attack or stroke by as much as 80 percent, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Friday wrapped up debate on a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system and prepared to vote on the legislation next week.

U.S. President Barack Obama met the man heading U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, Friday, a White House spokesman said.

Chicago played its two trump cards on Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle both making impassioned speeches as they urged the IOC to choose the Windy City as host of the 2016 Olympics.

Ford Motor Co of Canada (F.N) bucked the trend in September, posting comfortably higher auto sales as the broader Canadian industry continued to slide.

Germany's new car market grew by 21 percent in September and orders fell a less-than-feared 12 percent even as a scrappage scheme for old autos ran out of money, the VDA vehicle manufacturers association said on Friday.

Wall Street was set to fall more than 1 percent at open on Friday after a weaker-than-expected labor market report cast doubt about the pace of an economic recovery.

The wall-crawling superheroes and caped vigilantes of Marvel Comics will soon overrun the streets and take to the skies in the more sedate precincts of the Magic Kingdom. That might not be a bad thing for comic books.