UNITED STATES

Prudential Financial Inc, one of the largest U.S. life insurers, and India's most valuable real estate firm, DLF, are to set up an asset management joint venture, the two firms said in a statement.

EBay Inc and Yahoo Japan will link up their auction sites to make cross-border bidding easier, in a deal that gives U.S. auction titan eBay another chance to woo lucrative Japanese consumers.

Singapore's Temasek, Asia's pioneer sovereign wealth fund with stakes in Barclays and Standard Chartered, looks to be calling the top of the China stock boom and is scouting for cheaper targets in the West.

Jitters about the U.S. economy and the credit crisis kept investors away from riskier assets on Tuesday, sending stocks sharply lower and boosting the Japanese yen against higher-yielding currencies.

Oil fell more than $1 to stand near $88 a barrel on Tuesday, awaiting a clear signal from OPEC as a chorus of opinion within the exporting group spoke against an output increase.

The yen gained against the dollar and higher-yielding currencies for a second day on Tuesday as escalating concerns about credit turmoil prompted investors to cut back on risky positions.

Hollywood star Will Smith had the producer of his latest film holding his head in anguish on Tuesday after the actor gave away the ending of I Am Legend.

Consolidation for the U.S. Airline Industry should happen before the end of the Bush administration, UAL Corp's CFO says.

Merck & Co on Tuesday forecast earnings would rise in 2008 as sales of new medicines offset the loss of exclusive U.S. rights to its Fosamax osteoporosis drug.

Dow Chemical Co said on Tuesday it would shut down a number of plants and eliminate about 1,000 jobs to cut costs and direct capital toward businesses with better growth prospects. The largest U.S. chemical maker said it would incur a related charge of $500 million to $600 million, which includes severance costs and asset write-downs.

OPEC's big Gulf producers are leaving open the option of an oil supply increase that could influence whether crude prices head back towards $100 a barrel or not.

U.S. intelligence agencies have showed independence from the Bush administration with a skeptical assessment of Iran's nuclear capabilities that is far from the slam dunk case against Iraq before the war.

Aerospace and defence company EADS has indicated that for the first time, part of the manufacturing of Airbus will take place outside of Europe and will make its way to the US.

U.S. media conglomerate, Viacom Inc plans to ship 1.3 million copies of its MTV-based video game Rock band in the fourth quarter, the company said Monday.

Apple and AT&T was sued on Monday over patents that cover the voice mail feature on the iPhone.

World's two fastest growing economies, China and India, have earned the dubious distinction of being home to some of the biggest polluting firms across the globe, according to a list published by Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA), a product of the Confronting Climate Change Initiative at the Center for Global Development, an independent think-tank located in Washington, DC.

Blogging and social networking company LiveJournal was sold to a Russian media company on Monday.

Oil plumbed five-week lows below $88 a barrel on Monday as concerns about the health of the U.S. economy extended losses that have cut 10 percent from prices over the past two weeks.

Crude oil rose on Monday ahead on an OPEC meeting tomorrow to decide whether to boost production.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) on Monday posted a 0.4 percent increase in U.S. sales in November, up for the first time in 12 months, driven by sales to commercial fleet and government customers. The embattled U.S. automaker said it sold 182,951 vehicles in the United States last month, compared with 182,259 vehicles a year earlier.

Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure but is continuing to enrich uranium, which means it may still be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015, senior intelligence officials said Monday.