IBT Staff Reporter

Labor disputes have wrought what just a few months ago was unthinkable in contemporary New York: slowing the city's hard-charging entertainment industry.

Tom Cruise's Lambs got slaughtered at the worldwide box office.

British-based mobile phone giant Vodafone Group Plc raised full-year profit and sales forecasts on Tuesday after a strong set of half-year results topped consensus expectations, sending its shares climbing.

Europe's biggest bank HSBC Holdings is expected to report another big hit from its exposure to the U.S. mortgage crisis on Wednesday, when it will also release a group trading update.

Intel Corp, the world's top PC microchip maker, said on Tuesday it is seeing strong orders from its Taiwan manufacturing clients, despite expectations among some analysts that a slowdown is looming.

Yahoo Inc is offering consumers in Latin America's three largest markets a set of mobile Internet search services, paving the way for network carrier partners to offer Yahoo services of their own.

Citigroup Inc, the largest U.S. bank, on Tuesday overhauled the structure of its investment bank, combining equity and debt capital markets activities.

An agreement on how to divide the world's radio-frequencies among satellite operators, mobile phone companies and broadcasters is close, industry and diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

Ericsson, the world's biggest maker of mobile networks equipment, expects its China sales growth to exceed 10 percent per year in 2007 and 2008 amid robust demand in the world's fastest-growing major economy.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and the DAISY digital talking books consortium are to work together on a tool for the blind and otherwise print-disabled that translates Microsoft Word documents into a digital audio standard.

The European Commission will propose a shake-up of European telecoms rules on Tuesday that would give both Brussels and national regulators greater powers over the sector.

Yahoo Inc has struck new deals to offer mobile phone Web services through nine network operators across Asia, bolstering its increasing lead in the fastest growing regional market for mobile services by users.

Merrill Lynch is resorting to its trademark bull logo to convince the world it is in good shape, despite taking its biggest quarterly loss ever.

Countrywide Financial Corp, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, on Tuesday said it funded 48 percent fewer mortgages in October than a year earlier, and significantly reduced some of the riskier home loans that prompted its recent financial troubles.

Top home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc posted a 27 percent drop in quarterly profit and forecast a steeper fall in full-year earnings on Tuesday as the slumping U.S. housing market cut into sales.

Sanctions are not the way to resolve the deepening international confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions, China said on Tuesday, while also urging Tehran to be more compromising.

Gold bounced back to trade above $800 an ounce on Tuesday after falling overnight to a one-week low, as bargain-hunters resurfaced and a weaker dollar supported the market, analysts said.

Nervous investors sold stocks and generally deserted the dollar on Tuesday, still gripped by lingering worries over the global financial impact of the slumping U.S. housing market.

Oil fell more than $1 on Tuesday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) cut its forecast for world oil demand growth, saying that the recent surge in oil prices had already hurt consumption.

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday he expected a parliamentary election on December 2 to give him a moral right to influence Russian politics after he steps down from his Kremlin post next year.

Detained Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto called on Tuesday for military leader Pervez Musharraf to step down as president, isolating him in the run-up to a general election.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Tuesday reported higher-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by stronger sales in its international division, tighter control on expenses and efforts to draw customers into its U.S. stores earlier than ever for holiday shopping. The world's biggest retailer said net income rose to $2.86 billion, or 70 cents per share, in the third quarter that ended October 31, from $2.65 billion, or 63 cents per share, a year earlier.

Oracle marked its 30th year of existence with a Service Leadership Award awarded by the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA) for its tremendous contribution to innovation in the technology services industry.

Early Monday Oracle revealed a new enterprise based software in-front of over 40,000 people attending the Oracle Openworld 2007 event in San Francisco this Monday.

Goldman Sachs has 6.9 percent, or $72 billion of its $1.05 trillion in assets in hard-to-value Level 3 assets, according to securities filings.

Former US vice president Al Gore is taking on a new role as he joins forces with a Silicon Valley venture capital firm to invest in green business and eco-friendly technology.

Unsold goods are piling up in warehouses as the housing meltdown and soaring oil prices strain consumers, raising fears that already glum fourth-quarter growth prospects may tip toward recession. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned last week that economic growth would slow from the third quarter's surprisingly strong 3.9 percent annual rate. But recent data on inventories suggests the slowdown may be even more severe than the central bank has anticipated.

Lincoln Financial Group (NYSE: LNC) said on Monday it will sell three Southern television stations including its three Charlotte radio stations for a total of $683 million.

E*Trade Financial shares lost more than half their value on Monday after Citigroup downgraded the company’s shares from ‘hold’ to ‘sell’ and indicated that there is a 15 percent chance that the firm could file for bankruptcy.