UNITED STATES

EBay Inc. Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman on Thursday promised investors that faster growth and market share gains lay ahead, but left the company's near-term outlook unchanged as international sales growth slows and it steps up investments in new businesses.

Five companies received more than $1 billion in contracts to develop new and better influenza vaccines, and to make them on U.S. territory, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said on Thursday.

Microsoft Corp.on Thursday said it struck a deal to enable its Windows Mobile operating system to work with Qualcomm Inc.'s mobile phone chips, a move seen helping it gain more headway in the wireless business.

Eye care company Bausch & Lomb Inc. , under pressure after government reports that its lens care products may be linked to a rare eye infection, could face a cash crunch because of a large debt buyback announced late Wednesday, a research analyst said on Thursday.

The world's attention is firmly turned toward Asia when it comes to widening imbalances in global trade and investment, soaring foreign-exchange reserves and the dollar's structural weakness.

Ethanol stocks have soared, but an Archer Daniels Midland options strategy offers a hedge against a possible correction.

Connoisseurs have nothing but praise for Panama's tiny annual crop of gourmet coffee but they warn that farms where the best beans are grown could vanish as landowners sell to wealthy foreign retirees.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates told a ballroom full of U.S. newspaper editors he's developing onscreen reader software that will make reading news digitally a lot more like flipping through a paper.

South Korea has issued a warrant to arrest Chung Mong-koo, the chairman of Hyundai Motor group, on charges of misusing company funds, a senior prosecutor said on Friday.

After serving a rise in lending rates as an unexpected appetizer, will China dish up a speedier climb in the yuan as the main course of its monetary tightening?

From mighty meatpacking plants to tiny taco stands, U.S. businesses are making plans to deal with Monday's nationwide pro-immigration boycott, which could keep millions of people away from their jobs.

U.S. stocks rose on Thursday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed may pause in its 22-month campaign of raising borrowing costs, lifting shares of interest-rate sensitive companies such as banks and utilities.

A federal prosecutor accused former Enron Corp. chief Kenneth Lay on Thursday of withholding key financial data from analysts and hiding his sales of millions of dollars of company stock in the months before Enron collapsed.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday said for the first time the central bank could at some point pause its 22-month interest-rate rising campaign to allow time to divine the economy's path.

World sugar prices are likely to defy gravity in the next 12 months as key producing countries churn out ethanol as an alternative fuel after oil prices spiked to stratospheric highs.

U.S. stock futures fell Thursday as China's central bank lifted interest rates and on caution ahead of testimony from the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Oil fell below $72 on Thursday, deepening losses from the previous session, as worries over U.S. gasoline supplies eased slightly ahead of the summer driving season.

Sales of new U.S. homes rose a much larger-than-expected 13.8 percent in March, the biggest one-month gain since April 1993, but prices fell sharply, a government report showed on Wednesday.

Emirates, a small but increasingly influential airline, has jet maker Boeing Co. jockeying with rival Airbus SAS for a multibillion-dollar deal.

U.S. stock futures extended gains on Tuesday as quarterly results from companies including chemical manufacturer DuPont Co. fueled optimism about corporate profit growth despite near-record oil prices.

Former Enron Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lay took the witness stand at his corporate fraud trial on Monday and steadfastly denied he knew of any crimes at the energy company he headed for more than 15 years.