IBT Staff Reporter

U.S. mortgage rates dropped in the latest week, retreating sharply from a seven-month high as fears over inflation abated and Treasury yields dropped.

North Korea may be preparing to fire a long-range missile towards Japan's Okinawa Island, Guam or US's Hawaii, according to Japanese daily.

Interest rates on U.S. 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rose to 5.57 percent late Thursday after hovering around 5.47 percent on Wednesday, according to real estate Website Zillow.com.

Software giant Microsoft Corp is launching a free PC security service next week in what could be the biggest challenge to date for anti-virus companies with billions of dollars in annual revenue.

The European Union did not say today how much it would contribute to fight global warming in developing countries but identified its guiding principles for doing so during a summit in Brussels.

This year's peak home-buying season was lackluster, as buyers seeking to trade up to larger houses were absent, said the head of one of the country's largest real estate firms.

Research In Motion on Thursday offered investors an outlook that fell short of some expectations, sending the BlackBerry maker's stock sliding even as the company reported a higher quarterly profit that topped forecasts.

Jon & Kate from hit reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8 are making a major announcement on June 22.

Missouri electric utility AmerenUE on Thursday signed its first wind power deal, an agreement to purchase 102 megawatts from Horizon Wind Energy's Pioneer Prairie Wind Farm in Iowa.

He remains personally popular, but President Barack Obama is starting to see signs that some of his economic policies are causing doubts among many Americans.

A spokesman from the US bureau of the Public Debt said Wednesday that the $134 billion of U.S. bonds seized by Italy's financial police from two Japanese nationals are “clearly fakes,” all through no official word has been issued from Italy's financial police.

Former bike racing champion Melissa Giove, also known as Missy, was arrested earlier this week for possession of hundreds of pounds of marijuana and is in custody today, the Associated Press reports.

The Dow and S&P 500 gained on Thursday, breaking a three-day losing streak, as data on the job market and regional manufacturing revived hopes that the recession-hit economy is stabilizing.

Microsoft Corp is willing to invest up to 10 percent of its operating income in its Internet search business for up to five years, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday, as its Bing search engine starts to gain ground with Web surfers.

Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of BlackBerry smart phones, forecast second-quarter profit and sales that may fall short of analysts’ estimates, causing the shares to slip 6 percent in extended trading.

It’s mid-winter and you’ve had it. The snow is piled up outside, the perma-frost extends to your finger tips and you see shadowy reflections of palm trees and beaches in your rear view mirror as you sit in the traffic jam during your morning commute.

Hong Kong saw the volume of total goods exports fall 16.1% in April and the volume of goods imports drop 15.2% year on year, Census & Statistics Department said on Thursday. The volume of goods re-exports fell 15.5% while that of domestic exports fell 37.2%.

Apple’s could sell more than 500,000 new iPhones in its debut this weekend, driving Apple’s profits for the current quarter according to analysts.

NYSE Euronext and the Depositary Trust & Clearing Corp. said they will launch a joint venture to create a new clearing house for U.S. fixed income derivatives.

You should have been here in October,” the man on the Flight Deck told me. It was mid-January and he was fiddling with his camera and a lens so long and powerful that I’m surprised he ever had to leave home.

Personal income taxes, a key revenue generator for most U.S. states, plummeted 26 percent, or $28.8 billion, in the first four months of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, according to a Rockefeller Institute of Government report on Thursday.

Woo hoo! You have reached your destination! Homer Simpson, star character of U.S. cartoon show The Simpsons, is ready to take you where you want to go.

The Dow and S&P 500 gained on Thursday, breaking a three-day losing streak, as data on the job market and regional manufacturing revived hopes that the recession-hit economy is stabilizing.

A New York mother and grandmother were charged with setting a 6-year-old girl on fire during a voodoo ritual that caused life-threatening burns over 25 percent of the child's body, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Former HealthSouth Corp boss Richard Scrushy was ordered to pay $2.9 billion on Thursday after a judge found him responsible for an accounting fraud that nearly brought down the hospital chain.

A program to place 500 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels on commercial rooftops in the Southern California Edison territory was approved unanimously by the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday.

Senior U.S. lawmakers launched an assault on Thursday on the centerpiece of the Obama administration's financial reform plan -- giving the Federal Reserve new powers to police broad risks in the economy.

Apple is gearing for its widely-anticipated launch of its latest iPhone 3G S on Friday leaving analysts speculating on how the handset will perform in terms of sales.

Those green shoots that optimists keep seeing may be growing in the real estate market -- there are some indicators of healthier, more stable activity in housing.