IBT Staff Reporter

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits dipped last week and the U.S. trade deficit narrowed slightly in August, signs that point to a slight strengthening in growth.

Cerberus Capital Management and Chatham Lodging Trust have reached a tentative agreement to buy bankrupt Innkeepers USA Trust at a lower price than in an earlier deal that fell apart, a source close to the talks said.

Tokyo Electric Power Co <9501.T> will ask lenders to maintain their 2 trillion yen ($26.03 billion) in financing for 10 years as it restructures and pays compensation related to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown, the Nikkei said.

Taiwan's Foxconn confirmed it will start producing iPads in Brazil in December but is still negotiating a multibillion-dollar expansion plan in the country, senior company and government officials said on Thursday.

Two polls released on Thursday show different pictures of the race between former CEO Herman Cain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- but in both polls, President Barack Obama leads no matter who the Republican nominee is.

Gap Inc is looking to simplify its clothing offerings, dab in more color, and de-clutter its North American namesake stores to help boost sluggish sales at the chain.

Katherine Heigl might be coming back to the small screen -- as a producer.

A big year in bird-watching circles -- call them birders, please -- is an unofficial annual competition in which amateur ornithophiles (or, perhaps, ornithomaniacs) compete to see the biggest number of separate species in a particular region over the course of one year. There's no prize and not much glory, but it's a quest that sends the most dedicated to travel widely for 12 months in order to claim victory.

The Dow and S&P 500 slipped on Thursday as JPMorgan's earnings and China's soft economic data increased worries about the impact of slower growth on third-quarter profits.

The Lone Ranger is officially back on.

Did we need a new version of Footloose? Probably not. But not needing a second piece of birthday cake doesn't make it any less delicious.

Ray Aghayan, who won the first Emmy awarded for costume design and was a three-time Oscar nominee, died Tuesday at age 83.

A gunman opened fire at a busy hair salon in the Southern California coastal town of Seal Beach on Wednesday in a shooting rampage that left eight people dead and another critically wounded, police said.

Slovakia's parliament ratified a plan to bolster the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund on Thursday, after voting to hold an early election as demanded by the opposition.

Research In Motion has fixed the root cause of a global disruption of BlackBerry services and is still working to clear a backlog of delayed messages, its co-CEOs said on Thursday, hoping to control the damage to RIM four days after the outage began.

It's a watershed season for funny girls on TV, with female comedy talent dominating the airwaves in front of and behind the camera.

Double Oscar winner Hilary Swank said on Thursday that she deeply regrets attending a birthday celebration last week in Chechnya for a leader accused of orchestrating torture and other human rights violations.

Handsome leading man Antonio Banderas has starred in major Hollywood films such as Shrek and Zorro, but the Spanish actor's most enduring collaborations have been with fellow countryman Pedro Almodovar.

Wealth managers prefer using Apple products for business rather than Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices, a survey by Aite Group showed on Thursday.

Slovakia's parliament voted on Thursday to hold an early election in March next year, meeting an opposition demand and opening the path for ratification of a plan to bolster the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund.

Rays of light will cover historical landmarks, including the Berlin Wall during the seventh annual Festival of Lights.

Slovakia's parliament backed a plan to bolster the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund on Thursday after political parties agreed to hold an early election, concluding the ratification process in all euro zone countries.

Jon Huntsman is threatening to boycott the Nevada caucus if officials there do not push the date back to accommodate New Hampshire, as the battle over the 2012 Republican primary schedule rages on.

Apple Inc's fifth-generation iPhone uses a wireless chipset from Qualcomm Inc as well as silicon from smaller chipmakers, according to repair and parts specialist iFixit, which cracked the device open on Thursday.

The prospect of a hefty Greek government debt restructuring and writeoff has sent the bonds into a twilight zone that's attracting specialist distressed-debt traders more used to dealing with defaulted emerging sovereigns like Argentina.

Stagnation is probably the best many of the world's biggest developed economies can hope for over the next year, with several facing a significant chance of recession, Reuters polls of around 350 economists showed on Thursday.

Slovakia's parliament ratified a plan to bolster the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund on Thursday, after voting to hold an early election as demanded by the opposition.

A sharp sell-off in commodity markets in the past few weeks is wreaking havoc with the track records of some of the biggest-name funds in the sector, many of which now languish near the bottom of the $2 trillion industry's performance tables.

U.S. stocks fell on Thursday after three days of gains as earnings from JPMorgan and soft economic data from China reinforced worries about a slowing global economy.