IBT Staff Reporter

U.S. consumer prices were unchanged last month and industrial output declined at a slower pace, reports showed on Friday, providing more evidence that the worst phase of the recession may be over.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. today reported a net loss of $26.8 million in its unaudited first quarter results.

Europe sank to what may have been the recession's low point in the first quarter of this year as tumbling German exports and investment plus further sharp drops in output elsewhere hastened the pace of a year-old contraction.

Corrects penultimate paragraph to say France's performance was notably stronger than that of Germany, Italy or Spain, not that it was France's worst quarter in six years

KKR Private Equity Investors LP reported Friday that its net asset value rose slightly for the quarter which ended March 31.

General Motors Corp is expected to slash up to 1,200 dealers as it struggles to dramatically pare down its operations and eliminate billions of dollars of costs ahead of an anticipated bankruptcy filing by the end of this month.

General Motors Corp plans to eliminate up to 1,200 U.S. dealerships, which are expected to begin receiving notices from the embattled automaker as soon as Friday, a person familiar with the plan said.

Prices of U.S. commercial property sold by institutional investors fell 5.8 percent in the first quarter, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly decline, according to an index published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

If Federal Reserve officials think U.S. homeowners are having a tough time selling into a depressed market, just wait until they try to offload the mother of all jumbo mortgages: a $366 billion portfolio of real estate bonds that continues to grow.

The Obama administration on Thursday tweaked its housing rescue plan by increasing incentives for mortgage lenders to slash the payments for homeowners in the worst-hit markets.

Commercial mortgage bondholders took some comfort after a judge overseeing General Growth Properties' bankruptcy stopped short of a move that they say would have undermined the structures of their securities.

Bayer's cancer drug hopeful Nexavar showed promise as a lung-cancer treatment in a Phase II study, the ASCO association of U.S. oncologists said on its Website on Friday.

Taliban fighters are shaving off their beards and trying to flee from a Pakistani army offensive in their Swat bastion, the military said on Friday, as it relaxed a curfew to allow civilians to get out.

Britons angered by their lawmakers' lavish expense claims say they will exact revenge at the ballot box next month, with ruling Labor set to be the prime target.

Europe sank to what may have been the recession's low point in the first quarter of this year as tumbling German exports and investment plus further sharp drops in output elsewhere hastened the pace of a year-old contraction.

Retailers J.C. Penney Co Inc and Abercrombie & Fitch Co posted results that showed further evidence U.S. consumers were still cutting back on non-essential items, with Penney also warning profit for the year would be worse than analysts expected.

U.S.-born journalist Roxana Saberi arrived in Austria on Friday from Iran after authorities there freed her from a Tehran prison and quashed her eight-year sentence for spying in a diplomatically fraught case.

Western critics slammed Myanmar's ruling generals on Friday for pressing trumped-up new charges against detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but the move drew only a mild rebuke from Asian neighbors.

The fate of the war in Afghanistan could be decided in the next few months in sweltering villages like this one alongside a highway that cuts through Helmand province, the heartland of the Taliban.

Memoirs of purged Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang are sure to encounter silence and censorship from the Communist Party, afraid of rekindling memories of the bloodshed around Tiananmen Square that accompanied his 1989 downfall.

Bharti Airtel, India's leading telecoms firm by subscribers, hopes to double customers to 200 million within three years, its chairman said, adding any acquisition would see it reach the target even faster.

North Korea said on Friday it was cancelling all wage, rent and tax agreements with South Korea at a joint factory park just north of their heavily armed border that has become a focus of friction between the rival states.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, the newly nominated director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is likely to take on a few public health fights.

McAfee Inc, the world's No. 2 security company, said on Friday it will buy privately held SolidCore Systems Inc, a maker of programs to protect automated bank tellers and other specialized computers.

Europe sank to what may be the recession's low point in the first quarter of the year as tumbling German exports and investment plus further sharp drops in output elsewhere sped up the pace of a year-old contraction.

The World Health Organization warned on Friday against a false sense of security from waning and apparently mild outbreaks of H1N1 flu, saying the worst may not be over.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday named Dr. Thomas Frieden, who made New York the first city in the nation to ban smoking in restaurants, as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. officials have urged Bank of America Corp to revamp its board and bring in directors with more banking experience, the Wall Street Journal said.

General Motors Corp is expected to announce details of its U.S. dealer consolidation plans on Friday, just over two weeks before the automaker's deadline to complete a sweeping restructuring that could include bankruptcy.