IBT Staff Reporter

The Federal Reserve banks paid a record $46.1 billion to the U.S. Treasury in 2009 as aggressive bond purchases and lending to fight the financial crisis swelled its net income by nearly 47 percent to a record $52.1 billion.

New home prices rose 0.4 percent in November for the fifth consecutive monthly gain, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday, adding to growing evidence that the housing market is leading Canada's economic recovery.

European carbon emissions futures dipped on Tuesday as investors sold permits to entice industrial companies into selling to drive prices lower, traders said.

The European Union should not impose border tariffs on goods from countries that fail to cut back their climate-damaging emissions, the EU's trade commissioner-designate said Tuesday.

Spain's capacity to generate hydropower and irrigate crops rather than having to import gas and grain has soared to well above average levels, according to the latest official data on Tuesday.

Fewer U.S. home sellers cut listing prices on their homes for a second straight month in December as home sellersrush to beat rising interest rates and an expiring tax credit, real estate website Trulia.com said on Tuesday.

Google Inc's new Nexus One smartphone, which retails for $529 without a service plan, is built from components that cost about $174, according to a research report.

For sale: my vote in Ukraine's election on Sunday. From 300 to 500 hryvnias ($37-$63). Can gather others who want to sell.

Stock index futures dropped on Tuesday on a subpar start to earnings season following Alcoa Inc's worse-than-expected results and Chevron Corp's warning that its income would be sharply lower.

The market rallied yesterday afternoon in anticipation of January earnings. Alcoa, the first major company to report earnings, showed disappointing results after missing analysts' estimates and reporting a loss of $0.27 per share.

Corus Entertainment Inc, Shaw Communications Inc, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd and Jim Pattison Group are considering investing in debt-laden media company Canwest Global Communications Corp, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported late on Monday.

Zimbabwe, the country with over 1,00,000 per cent inflation, has done everything to cash in on the gold boom witnessed in the world during the past year. As a result, the country's gold production has gone up by almost 35 per cent to 4.2 tonnes last year. This is a remarkable recovery fro Zimbabwe and its mining sector despite erratic power supply.

Days after the Vietnam government announced the closure of some 20 gold exchanges operating in the country, investors have abandoned the gold trading floors and turnover in the bourses has plunged. Early this month, Vietnam's central bank-the State of Bank of Vietnam-asked all the gold exchanges to shut shop by March 31. Vietnam has around 20 gold trading floors where investors could deposit a small fund and then trade 14 times the value of their initial investment.

AA Sweetens JAL Offer; Cadbury Rebuffs Kraft; China's Growing Fortunes

China's recent moves to tighten control of its online and mobile content industries have brought some uncertainty into the market but may not have a major immediate impact on the sector's biggest players.

After a tough 2009, the global technology industry will see an 8.1 percent increase in spending this year with software and computer hardware leading the charge, according to a report from Forrester Research.

Music from artists on labels owned by Warner Music Group, the world's third largest music company, will be available to U.S. subscribers of digital music service eMusic, the companies said on Tuesday.

Hackers calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army briefly hijacked the home page of China's top search engine, Baidu Inc, on Tuesday weeks after doing the same thing to Twitter.com.

Stock index futures dropped on Tuesday on a subpar start to earnings season following Alcoa Inc's worse-than-expected results and Chevron Corp's warning that its income would be sharply lower.

Stock index futures dropped on Tuesday after Alcoa posted worse-than-expected results and Chevron warned that its income would be sharply lower in a disappointing to start to earnings season.

The Federal Reserve made record profits in 2009 and will return $45 billion to the Treasury, after its efforts to prop up the economy created a windfall for the government, the Washington Post reported.

Household income in China surged in the last six years, especially for top earners, putting the country on track to eclipse the United States as the biggest consumer market in a decade, Credit Suisse said in a report on Tuesday.

Alcoa Inc posted a narrower quarterly loss on Monday, but the results fell short of expectations and the aluminum producer's stock fell more than 5 percent.

Airbus confirmed forecast-beating sales and record deliveries for 2009 on Tuesday but admitted disappointment over a fall in A380 output and pledged to speed up production of the world's largest airliner.

American Airlines and its partners in the Oneworld alliance sweetened their offer to Japan Airlines to $1.4 billion to keep the struggling national carrier from joining hands with rival Delta Air Lines .

American Airlines and its partners in the Oneworld alliance sweetened their offer to Japan Airlines to $1.4 billion to keep the struggling national carrier from joining hands with rival Delta Air Lines .

China's central bank signaled in its open market operations that it was tightening monetary conditions at a faster-than-expected pace in response to increasing concerns about the economy overheating.

Ford remains opens to talks with potential bidders for its Volvo cars unit despite a commercial agreement on a sale with China's Zhejiang Geely, a Swedish business daily reported on Tuesday.

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.5 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.5 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.6 percent.