UNITED STATES

The Agricultural Bank of China is set to open in New York and London, building a round-the-clock commodity trading team and taking global Beijing's ambition to be a major force on commodity markets.

U.S. President Barack Obama is likely to hear Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah air his worries about the festering Arab-Israeli conflict and rising Iranian influence when he visits Riyadh next week.

David Sokol, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc's (BRKa.N) MidAmerican Energy Holdings and a contender to succeed Warren Buffett, warned that the U.S. housing market still has a ways to go before bottoming out.

The United Auto Workers will emerge from a General Motors Corp restructuring as the second-largest stockholder in the reorganized automaker and with a more direct stake in its success, union President Ron Gettelfinger said on Thursday.

An Iranian official accused the United States on Friday of involvement in a mosque bombing that killed more than 20 people in volatile south-eastern Iran, two weeks before the Islamic Republic's presidential election.

North Korea test-fired another short-range missile off its east coast on Friday and said it would take more self-defense measures if the U.N. Security Council punished it for this week's nuclear test.

The United States could authorize emergency use of some currently unapproved immune system boosters called adjuvants to make a swine flu vaccine more effective, an official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare, the New York Times said on Friday.

North Korea's second nuclear test has forced the United States to grapple with the idea that Pyongyang may never give up atomic weapons, current and former U.S. officials said this week.

U.S. consumer confidence improved in May to its highest level since last September, prompted by hopes the government's economic stimulus program will bring the economy out of recession.

Linking the European Union's emissions trading scheme with a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme will be difficult and require adjustments on both sides, EU market participants said on Friday.

U.S. yellow-pages publisher R.H. Donnelley Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday and said the move would slash its debt by about $6.4 billion.

Stocks were poised for a higher open on Friday after government data hinted the recession may be abating, putting the S&P 500 on pace for its third straight monthly gain, its longest streak since late 2007.

U.S. automaker Chrysler hopes to end a third day of bankruptcy court hearings on Friday with approval to sell most of its operations to a group led by Italy's Fiat, although opponents are likely file immediate appeals.

The U.S. economy contracted slightly less than initially estimated in the first quarter, while corporate profits rebounded, according to a government report on Friday that hinted the recession was moderating.

The U.S. economy contracted slightly less than initially estimated in the first quarter, while corporate profits rebounded, according to a Commerce Department report on Friday that hinted that the recession was moderating.

Spanish wind turbine maker Gamesa sees a sector recovery in 2011, but net profit will decline in 2009 on weaker-than-expected sales, according to embargoed comments from Chairman Guillermo Ulacia to reporters on Thursday.

Lee Iacocca, the car executive credited with saving Chrysler from bankruptcy in the 1980s, is to lose a big chunk of his pension and a guaranteed life-long company car due to the U.S. automaker's bankruptcy filing two decades later.

The dollar hit five-month lows against a basket of currencies on Friday and the yen also dropped as investors sought higher-yielding and riskier assets, believing the worst of the global recession may have passed.

A local Swedish court on Friday granted General Motors' loss-making unit Saab a further extension to its protection from creditors, giving it more time to restructure.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 share indexes rose 0.3-0.5 percent on Friday, pointing to a higher start on Wall Street.