IBT Staff Reporter

Wall Street eased on Thursday after the Dow posted its best run in nearly three years, but hopes Friday's key jobs report would underscore signs of strength in U.S. economy kept investors engaged.

Hopes of an imminent reunion of veteran American rock band Van Halen with original lead singer David Lee Roth were dashed on Wednesday when a Grammy nominations concert came and went without an expected announcement.

Police in riot gear and biohazard suits removed anti-Wall Street activists from their camp at Los Angeles City Hall Wednesday, arresting nearly 300 people and fencing off the area.

Apple Inc's newest board member, Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger, bought about $1 million worth of the iPhone maker's shares earlier this week, a symbolic gesture of confidence in the prospects of the company.

U.S. auto sales rose sharply in November as more confident American consumers spent more on the average showroom purchase, extending a recovery trend for the industry to a sixth month.

Barnes & Noble Inc's expensive investments to keep its Nook e-reader competitive with Amazon's Kindle led to an unexpected quarterly loss for the bookseller, sending its shares down as much as 24 percent on Thursday.

The company notes the store will offer customers access to over 900,000 book titles in English and other languages, including 22,000 Spanish-language books.

Research In Motion does not install nor authorize its carrier partners to install Carrier IQ monitoring software on its BlackBerry smartphones, the company said on Thursday.

The EU's antitrust chief said on Thursday he would meet Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt next week, adding he would not be discussing the regulator's investigation into the Internet search engine's business practices.

The EU's antitrust chief said on Thursday he would meet Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt next week, adding he would not be discussing the regulator's investigation into the Internet search engine's business practices.

U.S. stocks are expected to end next year with modest gains, despite the threat of a global downturn brought on by the euro zone debt crisis and a tepid domestic economy that may still need more stimulus, a Reuters poll found.

Electronics retailer Best Buy Co Inc is recalling about 32,000 Rocketfish battery cases for iPhones because of a fire hazard, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada said.

Nissan Motor Co and Volkswagen AG posted double-digit percentage gains in November U.S. sales, a strong showing for a month analysts were expecting to set a more than two-year record overall.

Retailers that stuck with their same old holiday season strategies were dealt a blow in November, while earlier hours and bigger promotions were the keys to success for other chains.

At Best Buy, the Fire is the most popular tablet, as noted on a list ranking the top 40 most popular tablets. Apple's Black iPad 2 with 16GB of memory is the second most popular and other models of the iPad 2 are rounding up the top 5 most popular tablets.

New claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week, popping above 400,000 for the first time in just over a month and reinforcing the view that the battered labor market was healing only slowly.

New claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week, popping above 400,000 for the first time in just over a month and reinforcing the view that the battered labor market was healing only slowly.

Apple's iPhone edged past major news events, celebrities and pop stars as the top searched term on the Web in 2011, according to Yahoo!

Stocks were little changed in choppy trade on Thursday after manufacturing data came in stronger than forecast, but gains were capped as investors took a breather from the previous session's powerful rally.

U.S. senators plan to press regulators on Thursday on whether they were asleep at the switch as now-bankrupt MF Global took on massive risky bets, and why hundreds millions of dollars in customer funds are still missing.

Kroger Co , the biggest U.S. supermarket chain, raised its forecast for 2011 earnings, helped by strong sales increases at established stores.

Ranbaxy Laboratories said on Thursday it has launched the first generic version of the cholesterol-lowering Lipitor in the U.S., the largest selling drug of all time, sending its shares surging over 11 percent.

Rapper Kanye West led the field of Grammy contenders on Wednesday with seven nominations, including for his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and his joint venture with Jay-Z Watch The Throne.

Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are preparing a bid for all of Yahoo Inc with Asian partners in a deal that could value the Internet company at about $25 billion, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Kyle Brodziak finally broke the deadlock with the game-clinching goal in a six-round shootout as the Minnesota Wild outlasted the Edmonton Oilers in a 3-2 thriller on Wednesday.

Woodford, who blew the whistle on accounting tricks at Olympus after he was sacked in October, said he was putting together a team of candidates for a new board and talking to shareholders about replacing the current leadership, hopefully by February.

Wireless service provider Sprint Nextel plans to pay up to $1.6 billion to Clearwire Corp over the next four years, potentially easing concerns about a liquidity crisis at Clearwire.

A year after four hedge funds were raided as part of a sweeping probe into insider trading, agents are ready to arrest as many as three people who worked at the raided funds, sources familiar with the investigation said.

The business, which includes pipelines and processing stations that remove valuable crude-like liquids from gas, owns or has rights to about 4,000 kilometers of pipeline systems and 21 million barrels of storage capacity.