IBT Staff Reporter

A plan by France and Germany to increase fiscal integration in Europe is promising and could help avoid a mass debt downgrade of euro zone countries by Standard & Poor's, a director with the ratings agency said on Tuesday.

The Black Keys returned to rock 'n' roll on Tuesday with their new album El Camino that earned solid critical praise and quickly reached the top spot on iTunes' album chart.

French authorities who filed charges against director Lars von Trier no longer plan to prosecute him for remarks he made about Nazis at a Cannes Film Festival press conference in May.

Rapper turned actor/producer Ice Cube might be best known for lighthearted comedy fare such as Are We There Yet? and the Friday movies these days. But at least part of his attitude is still straight outta Compton.

The 2nd Annual American Country Awards enjoyed a strong double-digit surge over last year's presentation Monday night, while ABC's new game show You Deserve It fell and CBS took a win for the night overall by scoring the top five ratings slots of the evening, according to preliminary numbers.

Actor Alec Baldwin was involved in a dispute with an American Airlines flight attendant on Tuesday and asked to disembark an airplane because he was playing a smart-phone word game before departure.

Some three years after a labor dispute resulted in picket lines outside Tyler Perry Studios, the Writers Guild of America, East announced that it has reached a collective bargaining agreement covering the company's TBS television show, House of Payne.

Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday it agreed to acquire more than 450 children's book titles in the U.S. from publisher Marshall Cavendish.

The board of Japan's scandal-ridden Olympus Corp <7733.T> is expected on Wednesday to consider legal action against former executives who cooked its books, a day after an investigative panel issued a damning report on senior management.

Canada is betraying its native peoples, who must deal with dreadful living conditions, poor health care and discrimination, the country's top aboriginal leader said in a fiery speech on Tuesday.

Canada's canola oil exports to India are expected to double in the next 4-5 years as the country's burgeoning middle class opts for healthier edible oil options, said an executive of the Canola Council of Canada.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday pushed back against reports that the Fed had lent banks $7.77 trillion or more during the financial crisis, saying they contained egregious errors and mistakes.

Chipmaker Broadcom's chief executive downplayed the risk to tech sales from Europe's debt crisis, saying expectations have already been lowered and that demand would stay strong in the long term.

Citigroup Inc is cutting 4,500 jobs worldwide, Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said on Tuesday, becoming the latest large bank to trim staff.

Lawmakers examining the collapse of MF Global skewered the top U.S. futures regulator for sitting out his agency's probe of the bankrupt brokerage, whose former chief executive, Jon Corzine, is due to face his own drubbing later this week.

Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of Chrysler Group LLC and Fiat SpA, is guardedly optimistic the European Union will take steps this week to help the euro regain its credibility.

Amazon.com Inc is known as the world's largest online retailer, but the company is aggressively expanding in online advertising, putting it on course for a clash with Google Inc, the leader in the space.

Verizon Communications Inc plans to launch a standalone service allowing customers to stream movies and television shows over the Web, in a fresh challenge to Netflix Inc and the traditional cable TV business, according to several people briefed on the plan.

The company will partner with New York-based ProPublica, the Chicago Reporter, Philadelphia-based WHYY Radio and Los Angeles-based KPCC Radio.

Santa Claus has brought an early Christmas gift to the earthlings - NASA has discovered an Earth-like planet outside our solar system whose distance from its on star makes it "habitable."

Plan a trip to the rejuvenating Dead Sea now before it shrinks!

Lehman Brothers Holdings Corp, now just the odds and ends of the global financial behemoth that collapsed in September 2008, received court approval on Tuesday to exit bankruptcy early next year.

Stocks rose on Tuesday as investors bet European leaders would take strong steps this week to end the region's debt crisis, including bolstering its financial rescue fund.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner threw his weight on Tuesday behind a Franco-German plan to tackle the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis and said the European Central Bank had to play a major role in any solution.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday pushed back against reports that the Fed had lent banks $7.77 trillion or more during the financial crisis, saying they contained egregious errors and mistakes.

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, one of the hottest gadgets this holiday season because of its low price, has some parents bristling over the simplicity at which children can order from the retail giant and the inability to stop them without crippling the device.

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he would call for legislation to strengthen penalties against Wall Street companies that break anti-fraud rules.

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, one of the hottest gadgets this holiday season because of its low price, has some parents bristling over the simplicity at which children can order from the retail giant and the inability to stop them without crippling the device.

Wireless service provider Verizon Wireless said it was not blocking Google Inc's payments app, Google Wallet, on its latest smartphone, and said it was still in talks with Google about the service.