IBT Staff Reporter

Nestle , the world's biggest food group, reported a 3.8 percent rise in first-quarter organic sales, in line with analyst forecasts, and reiterated its outlook for 2009 despite the slowdown.

Honda Motor Co's operating profit for the last financial year will likely beat the company's estimate by a small margin thanks to a weaker yen and better-than-expected sales in China, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

New York City's pension funds are probing whether private equity fund Quadrangle intentionally misled it about placement agents used to win pension fund business, a spokesman for the city's comptroller said Tuesday.

Tupperware Brands Corp on Tuesday reported a quarterly net profit above its forecast and raised its outlook for the year, sending its shares up 11.7 percent in after-hours trade.

Yahoo Inc said it would cut 5 percent of its global workforce and reported quarterly results that showed progress toward controlling costs, sending shares higher in an after-hours relief rally.

Chrysler LLC's first-lien lenders have offered to take equity in a restructured automaker allied with Fiat SpA in exchange for writing off about 35 percent of the $7 billion they are owed, according to people with knowledge of the closed-door talks.

Honda Motor Co's operating profit for the last financial year will likely beat the company's estimate thanks to a weaker yen and better-than-expected sales in China, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Up to 50,000 civilians trapped on a tiny strip in northern Sri Lanka are enduring dire hardship, suffering from a lack of food, water and medical care, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Tuesday.

General Electric unit GE Wind, a maker of wind turbines, expects to return to double-digit growth rates in 2010, after being flat in 2009, the head of GE Wind's German business said on Tuesday.

The U.S. government’s Environmental Protection Agency is marking the celebration of Earth Day 2009 on Wednesday by promoting the use of clean energy sources.

Global recorded music sales fell by more than 8 percent in 2008 to $18.42 billion led by a sharp drop-off in sales in the United States, according to the world music trade body IFPI.

U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc on Tuesday reported a quarterly loss as it grapples with a dip in computer sales and warned it may be too early to say the technology market has hit bottom.

After one false start, weeks of speculation and roller-coaster swings in its share price, the company once synonymous with the rise of the Internet has finally landed an attractive-looking buyer.

House Energy and Commerce Committee representatives agreed on Tuesday that the U.S. must lead the world in climate change action but uncovered gaps in a proposed climate bill during the opening session of a weeklong series of hearings.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn took exception with Amylin management's statement that he wants to engineer a prompt sale of the biotechnology company to its diabetes drug partner, Eli Lilly and Co , and said he would not consider a sale below $30 per share.

U.S. Bancorp , one of the 10 largest U.S. banks, reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings on Tuesday on record revenue from mortgages, sending its shares up almost 21 percent.

Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp reported better-than-expected results and expressed cautious optimism about the current quarter, sending shares up 8 percent.

Most U.S. banks have enough capital to keep lending but a pile of bad debts is fostering doubts about their health and slowing a recovery, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday.

The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin Corp, its top supplier, discounted a Wall Street Journal report that cyber spies had stolen secrets of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft being built for the United States and nearly a dozen allies.

Lockheed Martin Corp , the top defense contractor, reported a lower first-quarter profit on Tuesday as higher pension costs offset rising sales.

President Barack Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service bill Tuesday to encourage Americans to volunteer, which also expands ways for college students to make money.

U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc on Tuesday reported a quarterly loss broadly in line with expectations and posted a sharp dip in revenue from a year ago as it grapples with a downturn in computer sales.

Capital One Financial Corp , a leading issuer of MasterCard and Visa credit cards, reported a first-quarter loss on Tuesday, hurt by growing credit losses, and higher provisions for bad loans.

Citigroup Inc Chief Executive Vikram Pandit pledged to repay every dollar the third-largest U.S. bank owes to the government, which has pumped $45 billion of capital into the bank.

White House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday she was committed to pass climate change legislation this year.

U.S. manufacturing bellwethers Caterpillar Inc and United Technologies Corp reported on Tuesday that falling global demand for their big-ticket products battered first-quarter results.

The Umbrella star Rihanna is dating a professional basketball player; she was spotted enjoying an intimate dinner with Los Angeles Lakers' star Andrew Bynum at Mastro's Steakhouse in Beverly Hills on Friday.

The Treasury Department is considering giving banks and investors billions of dollars in fresh incentives to modify troubled mortgages and save homeowners from foreclosure, sources familiar with official deliberations said.

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