IBT Staff Reporter

Efforts by private equity firms to sell stakes in portfolio companies through initial public offerings continued late this week as two North American companies took steps toward coming to market.

A community watchdog group expressed outrage and Wells Fargo said it was launching an investigation after a newspaper reported that a senior exec threw lavish parties at a beachfront Malibu house owned by the bank.

British singer Elton John, visiting Ukraine with his AIDS charity foundation, said on Saturday he wanted to adopt a 14-month-old boy from an orphanage in the east of the country.

It is the action hero dream team. Sylvester Stallone will shoot a scene with Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger soon for his upcoming adventure The Expendables, due to hit theatres in 2010.

It may be hard to imagine actor Woody Harrelson, known for his work to legalize marijuana among other causes, as Hollywood's next superhero, so don't.

Cynicism and sentiment have melded magically in movies by some of the best American directors, from Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder to Alexander Payne.

Hard-hitting Israeli war movie Lebanon won the Golden Lion for best picture at the Venice film festival on Saturday.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said on Saturday he is ready to veto a bipartisan budget plan proposed by lawmakers to end a 10-week deadlock because it is out of balance and contains cuts to education and healthcare spending.

Supermodel Gisele Bündchen, 28 will give birth to her first child on December, her husband New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady told ESPN in an interview.

Mickey Mouse's house and his Toon Town world will make way next year for a vastly larger Fantasyland, in the biggest-ever expansion of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, Walt Disney Co said on Saturday.

The parent company of American Airlines is in talks to set up a broad venture with Japan Airlines Corp in a deal that could see the U.S. carrier investing hundreds of millions of dollars in JAL, The Wall Street Journal cited sources as saying on Saturday.

Financier Danny Pang, who was accused by U.S. securities regulators of perpetrating a massive Ponzi scheme on mainly Taiwanese investors, has died, a family spokesman said on Saturday.

French Labour Minister Xavier Darcos has called for a meeting with the head of France Telecom to discuss a wave of suicides at the former state monopoly that unions blame on restructuring and work pressure.

French Labour Minister Xavier Darcos has called for a meeting with the head of France Telecom to discuss a wave of suicides at the former state monopoly that unions blame on restructuring and work pressure.

British carmaker Bentley, owned by Volkswagen, is seeing some signs of revival in the super luxury vehicle segment and expects sales of premium cars to improve next year, one of its top executives said on Friday.

A Canadian-Russian consortium's plan to buy automaker Opel from General Motors faced more hurdles as scrutiny of German state aid intensified and labor leaders demanded a veto over job cuts.

Belgian PVC window frame maker Deceuninck said on Saturday it had sealed final deals as part of a restructuring of its credit arrangements, paving the way for a rights issue of up to 85 million euros.

The German government plans to support the planned construction of the Airbus A350 wide body plane with a state guarantee worth 1.1 billion euros ($1.61 billion), a magazine reported on Saturday. Focus magazine said the government would secure a loan from state-owned bank KfW, citing a confidential memorandum from Germany's finance and economy ministries to the parliamentary budget committee.

At the premiere of her latest film Jennifer's Body actress Megan Fox wowed fans with her own body - and says she's enjoying her sex symbol status.

Vietnamese police released blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh on Saturday after more than a week in detention under investigation on state security grounds, her mother said by telephone from the beach town of Nha Trang.

Cadbury turned up the heat in its defence against a takeover from Kraft as its Chairman Roger Carr said it was an unappealing prospect being absorbed into Kraft's low growth conglomerate business model.

Web TV firm Joost, owned by the Scandinavian founders of Skype, has fired its chairman Mike Volpi, The Times reported on its online edition on Saturday.

U.S. environmental regulators said on Friday they will scrutinize 79 applications for mountaintop coal-mine permits in Appalachia to guard against damage to water supplies.

The global economic crisis will continue and countries must do more to adopt financial market regulations, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a German magazine on Saturday.

President Robert Mugabe welcomed the first top-level European Union delegation to visit Zimbabwe in seven years with open arms on Saturday and said talks on implementing a power-sharing deal went well.

Iran said on Saturday it would not back down in its nuclear row with the West, a day after the United States said it would accept Tehran's offer of wide-ranging talks with six world powers.

Rebel fighters killed 20 civilians in southern Afghanistan and 17 security police and security guards, officials said on Saturday, as the country awaited results from last month's disputed election.

U.S. regulators seized Corus Bank on Friday in the fourth-largest bank failure this year and sold its deposits to MB Financial Bank.