IBT Staff Reporter

General Motors on Thursday said its China auto sales in November rose 11 percent, led by strong demand of its Buick and Chevrolet models.

U.S. employment increased far less than expected in November and the jobless rate jumped to a seven-month high of 9.8 percent, dampening hopes for a self-sustaining economic recovery.

Wall Street's largest two-day rally in three months will be tested by jobs data on Friday, with some in the market predicting a strong report that will push the S&P 500 to a fresh two-year high.

Big Lots Inc's quarterly profit missed market expectations by a penny as the close-out retailer spent more to prepare for the holiday season, and the company cut its outlook for its crucial fourth quarter.

The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School will be offering a new Executive MBA program beginning May 2011.

U.K.'s Greene King Plc, the brewer of Old Speckled Hen ale, reported a 17 percent rise in interim pretax profits, driven by strong like-for-like (LFL) sales growth at its Retail division.

India’s number one software services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has opened a business process outsourcing facility in the Philippines following the path of India-based BPO companies which have operations in that country.

Stock index futures were little changed on Friday, following Wall Street's biggest two-day rally in three months and ahead of key labor market data that will show whether the economic recovery is on track.

Whistle-blower site Wikileaks has been killed Worldwide. Servers in the United States have killed the site's domain name after they claimed mass attacks. The withdrawal of the domain name implies that the website has been shutdown across the World. A twitter message of the website posted on Friday confirms the reports.

Financial markets steadied on Friday as the European Central Bank continued to buy euro zone government bonds in moderate amounts to counter a destabilizing rise in peripheral countries' borrowing costs.

Nissan Motor Co.'s zero emission vehicle and the 100 percent electric car Nissan Leaf was awarded the title of European Car of the Year for 2011. Leaf, thus, becomes the first all-electric car to take the prestigious title.

Nissan Motor Co said on Friday that it plans to launch all electric vehicle Nissan Leaf in Japan on December 20 and in the US by month end.

European shares were little changed in early trade ahead of the release of fresh U.S. jobs data later on Friday, while the euro also paused for breath after bouncing from a 2-1/2 month low.

The dollar steadied on Friday and stocks edged higher ahead of payroll data that could show more evidence of a strengthening U.S. recovery and give investors a reason to push more money into riskier assets.

LOS ANGELES - Hollywood scribe Nikki Finke, the founder of the Deadline Hollywood news site, is in a trademark tangle with the operator of a website called Deadline Hollyweird.

Europe's reaction to the fiscal crisis and the stabilization fund set up to deal with it must be commensurate to the problems involved, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said on Friday.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 fall 0.1 to 0.3 percent, pointing to a weaker start for equities on Wall Street on Friday.

Trading activity around a number of healthcare deals is being examined by the U.S. authorities as part of investigations into suspected insider trading by certain hedge fund players, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

China will switch to a prudent monetary policy from a moderately loose stance, the Communist Party's top leaders decided on Friday, a change that could pave the way for more interest rate increases and lending controls, the state Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it has stopped hosting the website of WikiLeaks, which published sensitive classified U.S. government information, but it denied it was a result of pressure from lawmakers.

Congress on Thursday extended soon-to-expire funding for the federal government for another two weeks, giving Democrats time to craft a more lasting solution.

The European Central Bank resisted pressure on Thursday to commit to a major bond-buying program to contain the euro zone debt crisis, but traders said the ECB had been quietly buying bonds anyway.

Samsung Electronics <005930.KS> promoted its chairman's son, Jay Y. Lee, as president in a move that tightens the founding family's grip over the world's biggest memory chipmaker as it battles slower growth.

The U.S. dollar was steady on Friday ahead of payrolls data for November that could show more evidence of a strengthening recovery and give investors a reason to push benchmark U.S. Treasury yields above 3 percent and put more money in equities.

A lawyer, who did not tell his clients that he has been disbarred from practicing and committed fraud on them by forging court documents, has been jailed for criminal contempt.

Pilots of a crippled Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo struggled with more than a dozen system errors after an engine blew apart on Nov 4 and landed the plane in Singapore with barely any runway to spare, an Australian investigation showed.

The Federal Reserve's latest drive to push down borrowing costs was necessary to support a frail economic recovery, Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto said on Thursday.

The U.S. Federal Reserve's controversial $600 billion bond buying program is subject to regular review and can be adjusted if needed, top Fed officials said on Thursday.

The U.S. economy probably recorded a second month of solid job gains in November, which would bolster views the labor market is improving even though the activity is not enough yet to lower the unemployment rate.