Today's Business Headlines
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Progress toward tighter U.S. financial regulation faltered in the U.S. Congress on Thursday as a House committee postponed a pivotal vote and Republicans on a Senate committee aired stubborn opposition.
The setbacks came as lawmakers streamed out of town for a Thanksgiving ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday defended the costly bailout of insurer AIG and urged swift regulatory reform to safeguard the economy from the failure of big financial firms.
Before Congress' Joint Economic Committee, Geithner faced fierce criticism of ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Any tax imposed on financial transactions would have to take effect internationally to keep Wall Street jobs and related business from moving overseas, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.
"It would have to be an international rule, not ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The data collection and reporting from those who received money from the $787 billion U.S. stimulus plan is riddled with errors and inaccuracies, according to a federal audit of the report released on Thursday.
Since the report on where stimulus funding went and how many ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prosecutors in California will not oppose a request by Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam to make public the criminal record of Roomy Khan, one of several people cooperating with the U.S. government's probe of its biggest hedge fund insider trading case.
A document filed on ...
PHOENIX (Reuters) - Some U.S. Democrats see momentum building for an overhaul of immigration laws that would legalize millions of undocumented workers, but analysts say a crowded agenda and struggling economy may once again sink hopes for reform next year.
Representative Luis Gutierrez says he ...
Sixty percent of employees polled "intend to leave" their jobs and 21 percent said "Maybe, so I'm networking," according to the survey by Right Management, a talent and career management consulting firm.
Just 13 percent said they planned to stay in their current jobs, it found. ...
BETHESDA, Maryland (Reuters) - More safety data would be needed before a new type of influenza vaccine made in insect cells should get approval, federal advisers said on Thursday.
A divided committee advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the new Protein Sciences Corp FluBlok vaccine ...
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Major League Baseball still faces an uncertain U.S. economy that led to lower attendance and financial losses at some clubs this year, the commissioner of the U.S. sports league said on Thursday.
"I've said this all year and I'll say it again, we're living in the most ...
The struggling Web pioneer, which is now focused primarily on advertising-supported content, said on Thursday that it would start with a volunteer buyout program and move on to involuntary layoffs if enough workers do not step up.
AOL said the layoffs would result in restructuring charges of up to ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Advanced Cell Technology, a small Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, said on Thursday it has asked for approval to test human embryonic stem cells in treating a rare cause of blindness.
The company said it filed an IND, an investigational new drug application, with ...
With the stock market having gained more than 75 percent this year and the economy growing at nearly 7 percent, the number of billionaires jumped to 52 in 2009 from 27 in the previous year, just two short of the record in 2007, according to the ranking.
Mukesh Ambani, chief of Reliance Industries, ...
China's Ministry of Culture said in a circular that game operators must re-examine their game offerings for obscene and violent content and limit the number of virtual marriages and player-versus-player combat.
The changes will affect companies such as Shanda Games, NetEase.com and Tencent ...
The company listed assets in the range of $10 million to $50 million and liabilities of between $100 million to $500 million.
The company, whose unit Taylor-Wharton was founded in 1742 and is the oldest metal working company in continuous operation in the U.S., said it had secured $20 million in ...
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. health officials distanced themselves Wednesday from controversial new breast cancer screening guidelines that recommend against routine mammograms for healthy women in their 40s and said federal policy on screening mammograms had not changed.
In a move likely to reassure ...
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California regulators gave final approval on Wednesday to the first mandatory U.S. energy curbs on television sets, a growing but often overlooked power drain that accounts for 10 percent of home electric bills in the state.
When fully implemented, California's standards ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress edged closer on Wednesday to creating new government powers to break up giant financial firms, which Europe is already doing, while a U.S. derivatives market crackdown got more complicated.
More than a year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and massive ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and German labor leaders announced a transatlantic alliance on Wednesday aimed at persuading Germany's giant Deutsche Telekom AG to allow collective bargaining at its subsidiary, T-Mobile USA.
Under the agreement, which U.S. labor officials called unprecedented, German ...
"We believe the Doha round should be declared dead," Representative Michael Michaud, the chairman of a working group of U.S. lawmakers on trade issues, said at a news conference.
The group is deeply skeptical of the free trade agenda that has dominated U.S. policy in recent years, saying ...
Petters' now-bankrupt empire, Petters Group Worldwide, once included companies such as Polaroid and Sun Country Airlines.
It crashed a year ago in a 20-count federal indictment accusing Petters of fraud, money laundering and other charges.
The game, a "first-person-shooter" that lets gamers portray elite soldiers hunting down targets in locations ranging from South America to Afghanistan, beat last year's blockbuster "Grand Theft Auto IV" from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc which sold more than $500 million in ...
South African police fired rubber bullets Tuesday to disperse a mob who attacked shacks belonging to hundreds of migrants following several days of tension.
The attacks in De Doorns, a town 150 km (90 miles) from Cape Town, was reminiscent of 2008 riots in which foreigners were targeted. At least ...
Police had said they planned to use the so-called long range acoustic device (LRAD) as a public address system to communicate with large crowds, and not as a weapon. But they will now disable its "tone" capability.
The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association had said police could ...
The annual index by Transparency International ranked 180 countries on a scale of zero to 10 according to 13 independent surveys, with zero being perceived as highly corrupt and 10 as having low levels of corruption.
New Zealand topped the table with a score of 9.4 after coming second last year. ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key U.S. congressional panel moved toward toughening a plan for dealing with "too big to fail" financial firms on Tuesday, while rejecting a Republican alternative that is expected to reappear later.
The House Financial Services Committee, locked for weeks in ...
"It's a long way from being ready to go forward on any bipartisan basis," McConnell told reporters after Senate Republicans were briefed on the massive measure drafted by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd.
McConnell denounced the Dodd bill, saying like pending healthcare ...
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Alabama should use a sales tax for schools in troubled Jefferson County to start paying off the county's massive debt, local business leaders said on Tuesday.
The intervention of the leaders represents a rare organized response by citizens of Jefferson County, which ...
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Las Vegas has cleaned up since its days as a magnet for ill-gotten mobster gains, but a Canadian insider trading scam has exposed the smaller-scale money laundering still going on in the desert city's casinos.
Canadian Stanko Grmovsek admitted in a Toronto court earlier ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States lags far behind other nations in offering paid sick days, paid parental leave and other workplace benefits that proponents consider vital to public health and workers rights, according to research released on Tuesday.
The eight-year study found the most ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some 14,700 rich Americans, worried about a stepped-up U.S. crackdown on offshore tax cheats, have turned themselves in under the government's amnesty program.
The Internal Revenue Service amnesty program, which ended in October, offered reduced penalties for voluntarily ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iceland's Decode Genetics Inc, a pioneer in genetic research, has filed for bankruptcy protection, weighed down by debts after 13 years of failing to make a profit.
Shares in the group plunged around 83 percent on Tuesday as the Reykjavik-based company warned any recovery ...
BERLIN (Reuters Life!) - Burberry is planning to stick to its knitting in terms of branding but it is looking to expand leather goods, children's wear and sportswear, the creative head of the British fashion group said on Tuesday.
Christopher Bailey, 38, who was elevated last week to the post of ...
Azure, which provides an online platform for software developers to create their own programs, and space for customers to store data, was rolled out for experimentation a year ago.
The service will go fully live at the beginning of next year, Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie told the ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Frank DiPascali, swindler Bernard Madoff's right-hand man who admitted helping his boss run a decades-long multibillion dollar fraud, was moved from a New York jail to another north of the city five days ago, officials said on Tuesday.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons website ...
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Celebrities beware: YouTube is making it even easier for anyone with a camera phone to turn your behavior -- be it mundane or sensational -- into news.
The world's top purveyor of Internet video has launched YouTube Direct, whereby TV and online news editors can ...
Last month, the world's largest online retailer rolled out the Kindle internationally, but at the time Canada was excluded from its global launch.
Amazon -- which regards the Kindle as a pivotal growth driver -- said more than 300,000 books from a host of publishers as well as more than 90 ...
The drug, mipomersen, succeeded in attaining the main goal of the trial, cutting "bad" LDL cholesterol by 25 percent compared with just a 3 percent reduction from placebo in patients with a very rare condition known as homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia.
Genzyme, which will market ...
KUWAIT (Reuters) - A Kuwaiti firm supplying food to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait, denied allegations of fraud on Tuesday after a U.S. grand jury accused it of overcharging.
Agility Agility was indicted on Monday, under its previous name, Public Warehousing Company, K.S.C. (PWC). The firm is ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The criminal prosecution of Sergey Aleynikov, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc programer charged this past summer with stealing some of the computer code for the firm's high-frequency trading program, appears headed to a rather anti-climatic conclusion.
In a court filing on ...
"The more stringent safety margins recommended by the committee may require a clinical trial with a larger number of patients than had been proposed," Chief Executive Claes Glassell said.
It will take at least 12 months to complete the trial preparations and partnering arrangements ...
BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - China has ratcheted up pressure for imperial treasures to be repatriated, condemning overseas auctions of its relics and demanding they come home.
China is particularly eager to get back a series of bronze animal heads looted in 1860 by British and French soldiers when ...
"These individuals bring a depth of experience to their respective roles, and I am confident they will serve my administration and the American people well," Obama said in a statement.
Brill became the senior deputy attorney general and chief of consumer protection and antitrust for the ...
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Some of alleged swindler Allen Stanford's investors, including baseball star Johnny Damon, will see their funds returned after a U.S. appeals court ruled the receiver in the fraud case may not sue them.
Ralph Janvey, the receiver in the Stanford civil fraud case, had filed a ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged four individuals and two companies with running a $30 million Ponzi scheme that targeted elderly investors and people nearing retirement who were seeking environmentally friendly investments.
In a civil lawsuit filed Monday ...
The Prevnar 13 vaccine is designed to protect against 13 forms of a bacterium called streptococcus pneumoniae, or pneumococcus, that can cause an array of diseases ranging from ear infections to pneumonia and meningitis.
For three of the types, "the non-inferiority criterion was not met" ...
Two protestors dressed as vampires and standing on stilts braved rainy weather to hold up a sign that read: "First lesson for today: Lehman losers need repay."
They were referring to the demise of Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers last year, an event that plunged markets into turmoil as ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Keeping workers healthy, happy and at work through so-called wellness programs remains a priority for many companies despite financial pressures from the global economic downturn, a survey found on Monday.
Globally, most employers offer at least one program -- ranging from a ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable ...
Bain has been widely expected to buy Bellsystem24 after securing exclusive negotiation rights earlier this month.
Sources had told Reuters last week that Bain was close to finalizing a roughly 100 billion yen deal for the company, marking the largest buyout by a foreign private equity firm in ...
Cloud computing allows companies to run software and store information in remote, large-scale data centers that can be accessed over the Internet. That means users can cut back on hardware, as well as space and electricity.
International Business Machines Corp said it was launching a service ...
According to a draft of the plan to be formally unveiled in coming weeks, the Transportation Department would either enforce safety regulations itself or grant states the option to do so under its guidance and financial assistance.
No cost estimate was provided and Congress would have to approve ...
That legislation could create a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States, David Axelrod, senior advisory to President Barak Obama, told CNN's State of the Union with John King.
"I think some good work is being done on both sides of the ...
A team of senior Ford executives, national UAW leaders and leaders from UAW Local 249 reached agreement late Friday to resolve the concerns raised by local members and the matter has been closed, Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans said.
About 3,500 workers at Ford's Kansas City assembly plant, which ...
World Radio Switzerland, a Geneva-based English language station, quoted U.S. ambassador to Switzerland Donald Beyer as saying more than 9,000 Americans had been persuaded to talk about their Swiss bank accounts under a U.S. tax amnesty.
"In the case of UBS we actually got a good compromise, ...
