IBT Staff Reporter

World stocks bounced back on Tuesday after hitting three-month lows a day earlier, but gains were limited ahead of key economic data and rate decisions from the European Central Bank and the Bank of England this week.

Stock index futures pointed to a lower opening on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.27 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.23 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.23 percent.

China said a possible meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama would further hurt Sino-U.S. relations, and vowed to go ahead with sanctions against U.S. companies selling arms to Taiwan.

Resource stocks lifted Asian shares off three-month lows on Tuesday after strong U.S. manufacturing data raised hopes the global economic recovery was on a firmer footing.

Toyota Motor's unprecedented recall of millions of vehicles with faulty accelerators is already taking a toll on its sales and may force it to cut 2010 sales forecasts.

President Barack Obama will travel to Indonesia with his family next month, returning to the country where he spent four years as a child, the White House said on Monday.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said on Tuesday he wanted ruling party kingpin Ichiro Ozawa, whose aides have been arrested in a funding scandal, to stay in his post for a mid-year election.

Chinese state media blasted the United States on Monday for a planned $6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan but U.S. officials said they hoped the flap would be temporary and not derail cooperation.

North and South Korea have been secretly trying to set up a summit by mid-year, news reports said on Tuesday, but the South insisted the destitute North would not be offered any payment to entice it to a meeting.

President Barack Obama asked Congress to approve a record $708 billion in defence spending for fiscal 2011, but vowed to continue his drive to eliminate unnecessary, wasteful weapons programs.

Oil pared gains on Tuesday as the dollar strengthened, with the market's attention turning to forecasts for steady U.S. crude inventories after prices topped $75 earlier on optimism about the economy.

The father of an Afghan-born airport shuttle driver accused of plotting an al Qaeda-inspired bomb attack on New York City has been charged with conspiring to alter, destroy and conceal evidence in the case.

China has launched nationwide checks for melamine-tainted milk products after the industrial compound, which killed at least six children in 2008, reappeared on shop shelves, an official newspaper said on Tuesday.

Australia's central bank kept rates steady at 3.75 percent on Tuesday, confounding expectations of a hike and hammering the local currency as investors slashed estimates for how high rates might go this year. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) surprised almost everyone by saying it wanted to judge the impact of its past three moves before lifting the cash rate further. It had already raised rates by 75 basis points since October, putting it far ahead of most developed nations in removing except...

January sales at top U.S. retail chains should rebound into positive territory from last year's decline as shoppers redeemed holiday gift cards and retailers avoided drastic clearance sales.

Toyota Motor Corp shares jumped more than 5 percent on Tuesday after it detailed plans to fix nearly 4.5 million vehicles equipped with faulty accelerators in North America and Europe.

President Barack Obama participated in a YouTube interview at 1:45 p.m. on Monday to answer questions submitted by YouTube users during and after the State of the Union.

White House adviser Paul Volcker will urge Congress to curb the risks taken by large banks to help prevent them from being treated as too big to fail, according to testimony obtained by Reuters on Monday.

Online travel companies on Monday won the first of several pending legal battles to roll back tax assessments by California cities that claim they owe tens of millions of dollars in occupancy taxes.

LOS ANGELES - The first hour of the final season of ABC's Lost has leaked online, and the reaction is not what industry insiders expected.

Oil rose for a second day on Tuesday and accelerated gains after reaching $75 on optimism that the U.S. economy has turned the corner following strong manufacturing data for January.

Small, poor nations without significant mineral deposits are unlikely candidates for investment by the world's third-largest economy.

Toyota Motor Corp on Monday began shipping parts to fix faulty accelerators in nearly 4.5 million vehicles in North America and Europe, and said it would restart North American production on February 8 after an unprecedented shutdown prompted by the problem.

After a bullish session for the U.S. stock market, broad trends mostly continued in after-hours trading.

A pricing battle lost by Amazon.com Inc to a top publisher may herald pressure from other publishers, compromising low e-book prices which could potentially hit sales volume growth for its Kindle e-reader.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc is likely to slash its chief executive's bonus from the record $67.9 million he got two years ago, but Lloyd Blankfein's pay package could still fuel criticism the bank has been tone deaf in its approach to the financial crisis.

The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

Exxon Mobil Corp reported a fourth-quarter profit on Monday that topped Wall Street expectations as natural gas projects boosted results at the largest U.S. oil company's exploration arm.