IBT Staff Reporter

Sprint Nextel Corp hopes to lure customers from rival service providers with a special $100 service credit for new subscribers who buy Palm Inc's Pre, essentially giving the device a 50 percent price cut a few months after it started selling the phone.

A United Nations special envoy to Niger who was kidnapped by al Qaeda operatives in the impoverished West African country says he was betrayed by someone who let his captors know where he would be.

Jon Gosselin spoke for the first time about his public divorce from wife and co-star of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 in an interview with ABC's Good Morning America. He said their relationship will never be fixed and accuses Kate of verbally abusing him and beating him down.

American International Group Inc is interviewing banks this week to manage a planned initial public offering of life insurance unit American Life Insurance Co, sources familiar with the matter said.

A Thai man is keeping more than 4,600 scorpions as pets to atone for the years he spent cooking the arachnids to sell as snacks.

China faces a grim situation in containing the H1N1 strain of flu, as schools start up again and the number of domestic cases, as well as clusters of cases, rises, China's Minister of Health said on Tuesday.

The Telluride Film Festival, a Labor Day holiday weekend tradition in the mountains of Colorado, wrapped Monday after showering accolades on awards hopefuls starring the likes of George Clooney and Viggo Mortensen.

Fear of H1N1 flu will stop devout Neapolitans from performing the time-honored ritual of kissing the blood of their patron Saint Gennaro when the city's annual festival begins later this month.

A virus known to cause leukemia and tumors in animals can be found in some prostate tumors and might be one cause of prostate cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

That exclamation point in The Informant! is a tipoff to what director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns have in mind.

Die-hard fans of Walt Disney Co gather this week in California for the company's first-ever fan exposition and what Disney hopes will be a show of the durability of its brands in a tough time.

School children who bully or are victims of bullying may face higher risks of anxiety, depression and other psychological disorders later in life, a new study finds.

Ethiopia is sending text messages to mobile phone users offering free HIV/AIDS tests ahead of New Year celebrations, in a drive to have more people checked in sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation.

Contrary to what some previous studies have suggested, children who enter daycare at an early age may not have a reduced risk of allergies and asthma later on, researchers reported Tuesday.

Scientists have found three new major genetic links to Alzheimer's, affecting up to 20 percent of people with the brain-wasting disease, and said on Sunday it was the most significant such discovery in 15 years.

A complete ban on alcohol advertising should be imposed and a minimum drinks price set to help deter excessive drinking in Britain, medics said on Tuesday.

Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday U.S. credit card losses declined in July, but forecast bad loans would soon resume their upward trend as thousands of Americans lose their jobs.

The European Union expressed serious concern on Tuesday about Israel's decision to approve new settler homes in the occupied West Bank, calling them an obstacle to peace and adding to international condemnation.

President Barack Obama will challenge students to set goals and to do everything you can to meet them in a back-to-school speech that critics feared would promote a political agenda.

Kraft Foods Inc shares fell about 5 percent in heavy trading on Tuesday, a day after the giant U.S. food company went public with a $16.7 billion takeover bid for Cadbury PLC, which the British candy maker rejected.

Wireless networking chipmaker Atheros Communications Inc said it agreed to acquire semiconductor company Intellon Corp for about $244 million in cash and stock, and raised its third-quarter outlook.

Sprint Nextel Corp hopes to lure customers from rival service providers with a special $100 service credit for new subscribers who buy Palm Inc's Pre, essentially giving the device a 50 percent price cut a few months after it started selling the phone.

Kraft Foods Inc is once again turning to Europe to try to boost sales and improve margins, hoping to convince Cadbury to accept a buyout that could start a new round of food industry consolidation.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission needs to make improvements in several areas, including cyber security, as it prepares to deal with national emergencies, top officials said on Tuesday.

Oil prices on Tuesday posted their biggest gain in more than a month as weakness in the U.S. dollar fired up inflation fears and triggered a rush of buying across commodities markets.

Tepid demand for mortgage refinancing slowed the early repayment of most U.S. bonds backed by home loans in August, with the spring rush having run its course and unlikely to resume without new record low mortgage rates.

Metallurgical Corp of China Ltd plans to raise as much as $5.3 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) in Shanghai and Hong Kong, making the biggest IPO in 18 months in Hong Kong and the second biggest IPO on the Chinese mainland this year.

U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday as natural resource shares gained from higher commodities while Kraft Foods Inc's offer for confectioner Cadbury raised hopes about more mergers and acquisitions.

U.S. President Barack Obama insisted on Monday it's time to act for healthcare reform as he geared up for a major address to Congress this week aimed at getting his top domestic policy priority back on track.