IBT Staff Reporter

The retail sector is in contraction, fueled by the recession, mounting job losses and a sharp drop in consumer spending. Retail businesses are scaling back operations, closing stores and trimming demand for space.

Russia and the United States will start talks on a new deal to cut nuclear warheads before the end of the month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Saturday.

French investment manager Meeschaert said on Saturday it had applied for the seizure of a yacht owned by a Bernard Madoff company as part of a battle to claw back client losses from the jailed fraudster.

Poor weather and planning may have forced North Korea to delay the launch of a long-range rocket Saturday, officials in Seoul said, after Pyongyang reported preparations were complete and lift-off would take place soon.

President Barack Obama won NATO backing on Saturday for his new approach to Afghanistan but his European allies stopped short of offering long-term troop deployments for the war effort.

The table above shows the relationship between personal consumption and net worth in the United States as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Federal Reserve.

Anti-NATO protesters torched buildings, ransacked shops and hurled petrol bombs at police on Saturday in a violent rampage on the fringes of a summit of the military alliance's leaders.

Ninety-three percent of home buyers reported that they financed their home purchase with a mortgage.

NATO named Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as its next leader on Saturday, averting a damaging split with Turkey at a summit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the military alliance.

The sale of new homes is associated with a direct contribution to GDP, based on the value of construction put in place.

In 2008, 70 percent of home buyers indicated that they purchased a home to use as their primary residence, an increase from 67 percent in 2007 and up significantly from 60 percent in 2005.

For IBM, buying Sun Microsystems Inc makes a lot of good business sense: It removes a competitor, strengthens IBM against rival Hewlett-Packard and picks up on the cheap the intellectual property of one of Silicon Valley's most respected companies.

The purchase of a vacation home or a residential investment property is influenced by many factors that are often different than the motivations for the purchase of a primary residence. Especially during a period of weak home sales and considerable uncertainty about the economy, it is important to gauge how the economic environment is affecting each segment.

With the economy still struggling through the prolonged economic recession, with consumers concerned about employment and the prospects for recovery, the multi-family sector is displaying softening, but positive fundamentals.

Fabrizio Gallo, Morgan Stanley's global head of equities, is leaving the Wall Street firm, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Overall, 21 percent of sellers indicated that what they wanted most from their agent was help pricing their home competitively.

There are many reasons that drive the decision of home buyers to make a purchase at a particular time.

Metropolitan areas in the South in general are among the fastest growing immigrant destinations.

Affordability has been a major concern as home prices in some markets more than doubled earlier in the decade. After a period in the 1990s of great affordability when mortgage costs were between 20 and 35 percent of household income for most U.S. markets

Switzerland will start negotiations with the United States over its existing double-taxation treaty at the end of April, the Swiss ambassador to the United States told Swiss television late on Friday.

Several major banks face exposure to automaker Chrysler LLC, which may need to file for bankruptcy if it doesn’t come through with a plan that will convince the U.S. government to lend it additional funds to stay afloat.

A pair professors expressed concern that it would not be proper for banks who have received government bailout funds to buy the same type of toxic assets which have caused them problems previously as part of a government public-private investment program.

The New York Times Co has threatened to shut The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions quickly agree to $20 million in concessions, the Globe reported on Friday, quoting union leaders.

The U.S. and Mexico are launching a new program to monitoring vehicles between borders of the two countries. They are also creating a cross-border group to develop strategies for stopping the smuggled guns and drugs, officials said Thursday.

U.S. banks that received billions of dollars of taxpayer money to bolster their capital could place bets on the same toxic assets that got them into trouble in the first place -- and with government support.

U.S. automaker General Motors Corp will move quickly into bankruptcy if necessary, chief executive Fritz Henderson said in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper published on Friday.

Feb Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday the central bank's strategy to ease the financial crisis is working and he also acknowledged that the Fed was “extremely uncomfortable” about last year's bailouts for big financial companies.

Mexico's economy, already in recession, is being dragged even lower by a brutal drug war that is frightening off some investors and hurting the Mexican currency.

Chrysler LLC's lenders are in talks with the U.S. government to reduce the automaker's debt by swapping some of it out for equity, new debt or a lesser amount in cash, sources familiar with the talks said on Friday.