IBT Staff Reporter

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has called for clarification about a string of controversial payments made by Olympus, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

The International Monetary Fund said on Sunday that it was considering how better to help countries under economic strain because of financial market stress but said it was not targeting particular countries.

MF Global Holdings Ltd was in talks on Sunday with possible buyers with the aim squarely on doing a deal, though all options were on the table, a person briefed on the matter said.

Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said on Sunday it made sense for China to invest its surplus in Europe to help the region overcome its debt crisis, but this would not involve political concessions.

MF Global Holdings Ltd held talks with possible buyers on Sunday with the aim squarely on doing a deal, though all options were on the table, a person briefed on the matter said.

African gold producer Sudan has handed out 50 more licenses to 73 firms to explore gold and other minerals, state news agency SUNA said on Sunday.

Global consumer confidence remained weak in the third quarter with more than 60 percent of consumers saying it was not a good time to spend, and one-in-three North Americans saying they have no spare cash, a survey showed on Sunday.

Investors may want to avoid Groupon Inc's high-profile IPO this week because the deals and coupon website operator has an unproven earnings record and slow growth, according to Barron's newspaper.

Europe's long shadow is tempering a burst of optimism that the United States can escape recession and China achieve a soft landing.

Investors may want to avoid Groupon Inc.'s high-profile IPO this week because the deals and coupon Web site operator has an unproven earnings record and slow growth, according to Barron's newspaper.

The Dutch remain overwhelmingly pessimistic about the prospects for the euro zone and fear that Italy or Spain will be next in line for a bailout, according to a poll published on Sunday ahead of another parliamentary debate on the debt crisis.

Venture capitalist Bill Gurley has noticed something new this autumn: a big jump in the number of what he calls legitimate introductions that he receives each day to entrepreneurs who hope he might invest in their start-up companies.

California Governor Jerry Brown has declined an offer by his chief fiscal policy adviser to resign following her arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence, a spokesman said on Friday.

Is the Jane Austen-zombie craze over? Lionsgate's adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's horror and drawing room comedy mashup, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has just lost its third director in a row.

One stuntman was killed and another one seriously injured in an explosion the set of action film The Expendables 2 in Bulgaria, the movie's production company said on Friday.

Cry Baby Lane, a Nickelodeon movie about conjoined twins who are sawed apart, was deemed so scary after its one airing in October 2000 that it was banned by the network, never to be seen again.

The CW and Hulu have reached a five-year deal for the rights to stream in-season episodes of the CW's content on Hulu's subscription service Hulu Plus, the network announced Friday. The deal makes Hulu Plus the only online subscription service that will carry in-season episodes of CW shows. The shows will be available for streaming on free, ad-supported Hulu.com site shortly after they appear on the subscription site.

The Halloween will fall on next Monday. All kinds of funny, scary and sexy costumes have hit the market - have you got one for your own Halloween? People always dress up as supernatural and scary beings during Halloween. Costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as ghosts, skeletons, vampires, witches, and devils, while in recent years, they are also those of science fiction-inspired characters as aliens and superheroes.

Elizabethan scholars may dispute the version of events recounted in Anonymous, Roland Emmerich's exploration of who really wrote the plays and poems history attributes to William Shakespeare, but those of us in the cheap seats (with suitable temperament) will have to admire how the director of 2012 and Independence Day took a topic appropriate for a doctoral thesis and turned it into a melodramatic potboiler.

Ever hear of wearing your heart on your sleeve? A design project at the intersection between fashion and technology takes the idea to a new level with Intimacy 2.0, a dress constructed of e-foils that communicates the mood of the wearer.

Google TV has been out of the spotlight for quite some time, but there is finally word that the platform will be making a major upgrade to Android 3.1. Plus, Google is planning to shift focus to more content-discovery features in this upgrade.

With U.S. government closing the chapter to space exploration, commercial space companies are trying to convince lawmakers to invest in their business ventures.

Mohsen Shahinpoor, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maine, and a team at Seoul National University in South Korea led by Seung-Won Kim have both independently invented prototypes of robots that snap shut in response to stimuli and trap insects in the manner of the carnivorous Venus flytrap plant (Dionaea muscipula).

Blizzard announces official support for one of the most popular fan-made mods Defense of the Ancients.

Salma Hayek has been many things: movie star, director, producer, wife and mother. On Friday, she adds clawless and lawless to that list as the fierce, female heroine Kitty Softpaws in new animated film, Puss in Boots.

Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr was released from prison Monday after her sentence was overturned by an appeals court, Amnesty International reports. Vafamehr had been sentenced to a year in prison and 90 lashes for appearing in the 2009 Australian film My Tehran for Sale, which is banned in Iran.

With numbers from Game 6 of the World Series on Fox still pending, The Big Bang Theory holds the top ratings spot of Thursday night. NBC's comedy block suffered a series of losses, and Prime Suspect hit a series low, according to preliminary numbers.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim releases Nov. 11 with plenty of new game play mechanics and a focus on dragons.

Looks like former Sabrina, the Teenage Witch star Melissa Joan Hart might have to counsel up some legal assistance.