IBT Staff Reporter

Ford Motor Co, considered the weakest of the three U.S.-based automakers, could agree on a new contract with the United Auto Workers union fairly quickly and without the strikes that marked negotiations with General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC, analysts said on Thursday.

Stocks declined on Thursday, led by losses in the Nasdaq as investors took profits after recent sharp gains.

Beijing opened a new subway line this week allowing citizens to travel around the city with greater ease, and also lowered the ticket prices across its whole system.

Eugenio Beaufrand was newly appointed as the chief operating officer of Microsoft Greater China Region(MGCR),the software giant announced earlier this week.

Nine banks have agreed to pay $180 million for a minority stake in Thomson Corp's TradeWeb bond trading platform, and will invest an additional $100 million in a bid to expand the service they sold in 2004.

Stricken British mortgage lender Northern Rock may have borrowed a further 2.3 billion pounds ($4.7 billion) from the Bank of England in the past week, according to BoE data, down from 2.9 billion the previous week.

Countrywide Financial Corp funded 44.3 percent fewer mortgage loans in September as it eliminated nearly 5,000 jobs to cope with lower lending volume and increasing delinquencies and defaults, the company said on Thursday.

Adobe Systems Inc, whose software is used by millions of people to read documents sent over the Internet, said on Wednesday some of its programs contain yet-to-be-fixed flaws that make computers vulnerable to attack.

Derrick Bulawa, who runs a small phone company in North Dakota, was getting worried as he began to lose some of his 6,000 subscribers to cable companies offering bundled TV, Internet and phone services.

When Cisco Systems decided to enter the Second Life virtual world, things didn't turn out exactly as the network equipment supplier expected.

Google Inc is bringing the worlds of online video and map-making closer together by allowing users of its Google Earth software to watch and hear YouTube videos mapped to specific locations.

The chief executive of BP Plc on Thursday outlined a plan to address industry-lagging profitability by slashing management layers, adopting consistent procedures for developing oil and gas fields and reducing unacceptably high costs.

Investors and fund managers bitten by the collapse in subprime mortgages are now looking for new opportunities to trade bonds linked to traditionally volatile commodity prices and risky emerging markets.

Whoever becomes Sprint Nextel Corp's next CEO, one thing is clear: Wall Street expects the U.S. mobile service provider to scale back its ambitious plans for a next-generation WiMax high-speed network.

Infosys Technologies Ltd, India's No 2 software services exporter, said quarterly profit rose by nearly a fifth but its shares tumbled 7 percent on market concerns over the rapidly rising rupee and the risk of a U.S. downturn.

Japan's Sanyo Electric Co Ltd said it has reached a basic agreement to sell its loss-making mobile phone business to Kyocera Corp, creating the world's seventh-largest cellphone provider.

Indians stay home as investors choose local hot stocks and lower tax domestic funds.

Royal Bank of Scotland board member Mark Fisher is nominated to replace ABN AMRO's outgoing Chief Executive, Rijkman Groenink, after the 70 billion euro ($99 billion) takeover of the Dutch bank.

Ambac Financial Group Inc, one of the world's largest bond insurers, warned on Wednesday it expects to report a third-quarter net loss after taking a $743 million write-down on its credit derivative portfolio.

Shares of Sony Financial Holdings Inc rose nearly 4 percent on their debut on Thursday, as a stock market rebound boosted demand for the financial firm that recently completed Japan's largest IPO this year.

U.S. farm officials pressed South Korea at talks in Seoul on Thursday to open its market fully to American beef and resolve a long-standing dispute between the two nations that has also threatened a separate free-trade deal.

Turkish PM to ask approval for Iraq iTurkey's prime minister will ask parliament next week to authorize a military push into north Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels amid Turkish anger on Thursday at a U.S. vote branding Ottoman Turk killings of Armenians genocide.

For a field about forecasting, economics has proved ironically to be one of the toughest awards to call -- partly because Nobel panelists historically have veered away from the fashionable economic ideas of the day.

The U.S. economy showed signs of resilience according to data released on Thursday, with exports surging to a record in August and a weekly labor market gauge showing the number of longer-term unemployed unexpectedly fell.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog head Mohamed ElBaradei met India's prime minister on Thursday in a long-scheduled trip as time started to run out for the government to press forward with a nuclear deal with the United States.

Turkey warned on Thursday that relations with its NATO ally the United States would be harmed by a U.S. House committee's approval of a resolution calling the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks genocide.

Many of the leading U.S. retailers reported dismal September sales that missed Wall Street's expectations, hurt by unusually warm weather, prompting some to cut their outlook for the entire quarter. Industry leader Wal-Mart raised its outlook for the quarter but said sales came in at the low end of expectations.

It wants to examine restrictions on the sale of U.S. films, music, books, magazines and newspapers in China for an upcoming meeting

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless aid fell a larger-than-expected 12,000 last week, the government said on Thursday, while the number of longer-term unemployed unexpectedly fell to its lowest level since June.