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More than half of U.S. retail chains posted October sales that fell short of Wall Street's heightened expectations, raising doubts about a widespread recovery for the holiday season.

More than half of U.S. retail chains posted October sales that fell short of Wall Street's heightened expectations, raising doubts about a widespread recovery for the holiday season.

U.S. retail chains reported October sales that rebounded from the lows of a year ago but many failed to surpass Wall Street's boosted expectations as consumers spend selectively headed into the holiday season.

Online job postings rose slightly in October, led by growth in health care and public companies, but the monthly employment gauge remained 20 percent below year-ago levels, a private research group said on Thursday.

Google Inc is selling a special search product to online retailers, as the Internet giant widens its hunt for new sources of revenue.

Entrepreneurs are finding the road to Internet riches in China increasingly rough, facing a thicket of regulatory issues, stiff competition and a frontier mentality that leads to frequent underhanded practices.

Britain is set to announce on Tuesday a long-awaited deal with its bailed-out banks, including a record rights issue for Lloyds Banking Group and hefty disposals for Royal Bank of Scotland to appease the EU competition regulator and boost competition.

Motorola announced Monday that its already popular Motorola Droid, which launched in the US last week, will soon hit the European and Latin markets as Motorola Milestone.

U.S. retailers are expected to post positive October sales results this week, but investors hoping for a clear signal on economic recovery could be in for disappointment, industry experts said.

Target Corp is expanding the number of items that qualify for free shipping on its website and rolling out the shipping promotion two weeks earlier than last year as it looks to win holiday sales.

Japanese banks Sumitomo Trust and Chuo Mitsui Trust Holdings are in merger talks, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, bringing together two struggling trust banks to better compete in Japan's lucrative asset management industry.

The idea that hundreds of people would line up outside anything to do with Microsoft would have been far-fetched only a few years ago -- but on Thursday that's what happened when the software giant opened its first retail store in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Microsoft Corp. formally unveiled Thursday its newest operating system, Windows 7, as the software giant hopes to breath new life into its Operating System product line. Steve Ballmer said the product was a result of an intense collaboration between Microsoft and its partners - 50,000 software, hardware, and peripheral vendors, as well as 8 million beta testers.

As Microsoft Corp. released its much-talked about Windows 7 operating system on Thursday, the software giant quietly opened its first retail store in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Microsoft Corp opened the first in a planned chain of stores on Thursday, aiming to match rival Apple Inc's successful foray into retailing.

Some store chains are hedging a major bet they made this year by slashing inventories, sometimes as much as 25 percent, to make sure they do not get stuck with a glut of merchandise for a second consecutive year.

Toys R Us is facing a U.S. antitrust probe over whether the toy retailer used its market clout to stifle discounting by retail competitors and force consumers to pay higher prices for baby products, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Microsoft Corp's first store looks ready to open in an upscale Phoenix valley city in the next few days, as the software maker takes its first step in trying to match rival Apple Inc's successful venture into retail.

U.S. clothing chain Gap Inc plans to open its first store in China next year as it seeks new international opportunities to counteract a protracted domestic sales slump at its main brand.

U.S. retail sales excluding those for autos rose for a second month in September, raising cautious optimism consumer spending could support the economy's fledgling recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s.

U.S. retail sales excluding auto purchases rose for a second month in September, raising cautious optimism consumer spending could support the economy's fledgling recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s.