UNITED STATES

Wal-Mart Stores Inc's announced a new $15 billion share repurchase plan on Friday and said market share gains it has made amid the recession are permanent as a new normal emerges in which consumers seek to save money.

U.S. President Barack Obama travels to Normandy Saturday to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings on beaches in northern France that led to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

U.S. stocks flip-flopped throughout Friday's session, with the major indexes ending split as investors paused to consider conflicting signals in monthly U.S. jobs data.

(Corrects to show Citigroup's exit from Dow occurs on Monday at start of trading and not after bell)

Mexico, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in Latin America, committed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 50 million tonnes a year by 2012, Mexico's president Felipe Calderon said today.

U.S. stocks flip-flopped throughout Friday's session, with the major indexes ending split as investors paused to consider conflicting signals in monthly U.S. jobs data.

Sprint Nextel Corp Chief Executive Dan Hesse is counting on Palm Inc's Pre smartphone to help the company move past criticism about its customer service and network quality.

The pace of U.S. job losses slowed sharply last month, the strongest sign to date that the recession is diminishing, even as the unemployment rate hit its highest in nearly 26 years.

U.S. employers last month cut the fewest jobs since September and international policy-makers said the worst of the downturn may be over as more positive corporate news popped up around the globe.

John P. McMurray made it clear to his Countrywide Financial Corp bosses that they were playing a dangerous game with risk. But they didn't listen.

Lawyers for Allen Stanford, the Texas financier charged with an $8.5 billion fraud by U.S. regulators, on Friday characterized a $20 million fee request by the case's receiver as exorbitant, according to a court filing.

A former U.S. State Department official and his wife were arrested on charges of serving as agents of Cuba for nearly 30 years and conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to the Cuban government, the Department of Justice announced on Friday.

The pace of U.S. job losses slowed sharply last month, the strongest sign to date that the recession is diminishing, even as the unemployment rate hit its highest in nearly 26 years.

The Dow industrials ended slightly higher on Friday while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dipped as investors paused to consider conflicting signals in monthly U.S. jobs data. Investors also sold some recent winners to take some profits from the spring rally.

U.S. president Barack Obama is on his second visit to Europe on Thursday in 10 weeks after previously attending a NATO summit jointly hosted by Germany and France at the beginning of April.

White House economic adviser Christina Romer on Friday said payrolls data was consistent with a trend of moderating job losses, but the unemployment rate would stay high for a while.

Global stocks edged higher and the U.S. dollar gained against the euro and yen on Friday after the pace of U.S. job losses slowed sharply in May, adding to growing sentiment that the economic slowdown may be turning.

Nearly one in four U.S. homes for sale on June 1 had their prices sliced at least once since landing on the market, data compiled by real estate website Trulia.com showed on Friday.

U.S. stocks were little changed on Friday as investors fretted about government data that gave conflicting signals about the job market, tempering some of the recent optimism about economic stabilization.

Oil fell on Friday as traders took profits from a rally to a seven-month high over $70 a barrel after U.S. employment data showed a slower pace of job losses.

Deutsche Bank's (DBKGn.DE) Chief Executive Josef Ackermann said the global economic crisis was likely to persist and that a recovery depends on an improvement in the U.S. real estate market.