UNITED STATES

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf plans to quit as army chief to become a civilian leader, removing a main objection to his proposed re-election in October, a senior ruling party official said on Monday.

Nokia said on Monday it is buying U.S. cellphone screen advertising firm Enpocket as the world's top handset maker pushes into a market which is seen ballooning in coming years.

Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.'s $1.3 billion bet on subprime lending hit a sour note on Monday, when the world's largest brokerage confirmed job cuts at its First Franklin Financial Corp. unit.

Goldman Sachs on Monday forecast U.S. oil prices will surge to $85 by the end of the year, and said crude could climb as high as $90 due to tight supplies.

A U.S. delegation will begin formal negotiations with Chinese officials in Beijing this week on deals to improve food and drug safety following a series of health scares that have shaken confidence in Chinese-made goods.

Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was "essential" to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.

Sterling fell to its lowest level in a year on a trade-weighted basis and the yen strengthened on Monday as problems at Britain's Northern Rock bank heightened risk aversion and led investors to pare back carry trades.

Deutsche Telekom mobile phone division T-Mobile USA will use the purchase to expand growth and market presence.

Negotiators for the United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp agreed to a break in contract talks on Monday after a marathon 16-hour bargaining session that raised expectations the union and the top U.S. automaker were nearing an agreement.

Asian and European stocks fell on Monday while sterling hit a one-year low as concerns over financing for banks grew after UK mortgage lender Northern Rock tapped the Bank of England for an emergency loan last week.

Savers demanded their money back on Monday from the British bank hardest hit by the global credit crisis, while U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said financial market turbulence could continue for a while.

Sixteen nations signed a U.S.-initiated pact on Sunday to help meet soaring world energy demand over coming decades by developing nuclear technology less prone to diversion into atomic bomb-making.

Eating only locally produced food in the biggest U.S. city is a big challenge.

Tokyo must keep a thaw in ties with China on track, the frontrunner to be Japan's next prime minister said on Sunday, while urging Beijing to better explain its ballooning military spending.

Standing next to piles of exquisitely hand-woven Persian carpets, Hossein Ghaseminia is confident his rugs, which cost up to $50,000, can see off cheaper Asian rivals and ride out threatened U.S. sanctions.

Even though credit market turmoil appears to be abating, the elevated level of the U.S. federal funds rate shows that the short-term lending market is not yet out of the woods.

Leap Wireless International Inc. said on Sunday its board of directors had unanimously rejected an unsolicited bid worth more than $5 billion from larger rival MetroPCS Communications Inc.

Altria's planned split into separate U.S. and international tobacco companies will lift the company's stock even though investors' reaction has been only lukewarm, financial newspaper Barron's said in its September 17 edition.

A Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium will most likely buy ABN AMRO as Barclays' rival offer for the Dutch bank has little chance of matching the consortium's bid financially, ABN's chief executive told Dutch TV on Sunday.

Contract talks between General Motors Corp and the United Auto Workers union resumed on Sunday, a day before tens of thousands of GM factory workers were due to return to work at the No. 1 U.S. automaker in the absence of a new contract.

A long period of stasis in Federal Reserve monetary policy looks certain to end on Tuesday with a U.S. interest-rate cut, leaving the question of how much further rates may drop and how fast.