IBT Staff Reporter

A leaked government report which suggests companies should be allowed to sack unproductive workers would be a blueprint for nasty bosses to exploit, unions said on Wednesday.

Shops in the Thai capital began imposing emergency rationing on Wednesday as the prime minister warned parts of Bangkok could be flooded for up to a month and authorities called a special five-day holiday to give people the chance to flee.

The release date of iPhone 5 is left hanging in the air while Apple's newest iPhone, the 4S, broke AT&T's sales record on Monday as one million units were sold.

Factory orders fell at their fastest pace in a year in October and firms expected to cut output as worries about the euro zone debt crisis weighed on sentiment, the CBI's October industrial trends survey showed on Wednesday.

Rick Perry's first TV ad in Iowa is an attempt to revive his once-dominant campaign by highlighting, once again, his job-creation record as governor of Texas.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday awaited the appointment of the new heir to King Abdullah, widely anticipated to be veteran Interior Minister Prince Nayef.

Nokia unveiled two sleek new Microsoft Windows phones on Wednesday in time for Christmas, a first step in the ailing cellphone maker's fightback against Apple and Google.

WellPoint Inc posted a higher-than-expected third-quarter profit on Wednesday on strong membership gains, and the health insurer raised its full-year profit forecast.

Ford Motor Co posted a lower third-quarter profit after misjudging the threat of higher commodity prices and sustaining losses in its European and Asian operations.

Nokia Lumia 800, the first real Windows phone is shown off.

Demand for a range of long- lasting manufactured goods recorded their largest gain in six months in September, cementing views of a step-up in economic growth in the third quarter and suggesting the year's final quarter started with some momentum.

Air Canada agreed on Tuesday to withdraw its appeal against an arbitrator's ruling on pensions for new hires at the airline after the union representing its check-in and call-center staff threatened job action.

The Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner took its first paying passengers aloft on Wednesday, showing off a carbon-composite design its maker says is lighter, more economical to fly and more comfortable than its metal rivals currently plying the airways.

Rockstar Games released an enigmatic image of its upcoming Grand Theft Auto (GTA) V, promising a trailer in under a week. Though GTA IV was a critical and commercial success, it dropped a lot of features that past GTA games had.

The 10 new features in the new Ice Cream Sandwich that are sure to make Android 4.0 the stand-out mobile OS.

The Copiale Cipher could be something out of a Dan Brown novel or a 21st-century update on the Indiana Jones story arc. A yellowing 18th-century manuscript consisting of a mystifying mix of alien symbols and Greek and Roman letters, the Copiale Cipher has been confounding cryptographers since its discovery in the archives of a university in the former East Germany immediately following the Cold War.

When 74-year-old Joann Davis of Lake Elsinore contacted NASA on May 10th, she was looking for a buyer for the piece of moon rock her dead husband left her. However, she was in for a shock.

Wall Street stocks were set for a higher open on Wednesday as optimism about corporate earnings offset concerns about an upcoming meeting of European leaders to tackle the region's debt crisis.

Dubbed the Iris 9000 voice control module, the new product is an iPhone dock that lets owners use their Siri voice control app from across the room. Since you actually have to press a button to activate Siri, the module comes with a remote that lets you activate Siri from across far away. The product works from a 50-foot distance.

Biographer Walter Isaacson's book documenting Steve Jobs' life and works was published this Monday. In it, one little known fact has the tech world wondering about final project Jobs worked on before he died.

Hurricane Rina headed for Mexico's Yucatan peninsula on Wednesday with winds just shy of major hurricane strength, threatening beach resorts but steering clear of oil platforms.

Amid slipping subscription numbers Blizzard tries a number of methods to attract old World of Warcraft players back into their Popular Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game. But are the new incentives enough to get lapsed playing back into WoW, or does it just cost too much to get back into the game.

With upgrades to both OS happening recently, some are saying Android's Ice Cream Sandwich is going to copy iOS 5. Still, some think it's the other way around. Which is it?

Prospects for a comprehensive deal to resolve the euro zone debt crisis at a summit on Wednesday looked dim, with disagreements remaining on critical aspects including how to give the region's bailout fund greater firepower.

LONDON - Strong demand for events and training enabled British business media group Informa to post organic nine-month revenue growth of 4.2 percent and to confirm its full-year expectations.

BG Group will export liquefied natural gas from the United States under a landmark $8 billion deal with Cheniere Energy that will allow domestic producers to ship bountiful shale gas supplies to the world for the first time.

Global electronics firms expect supply disruption caused by flooding in Thailand to continue for several quarters and the Thai operations of Japan's Toshiba Corporation are expected to resume in January at the earliest, executives said.

The Irish electorate is likely to reject any attempt to extend the European Union's powers to deal with the region's financial crisis, a poll in The Irish Times newspaper showed on Wednesday.

At least five people were killed, including three Iraqi soldiers, and another 22 wounded when two car bombs and a roadside bomb exploded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday, hospital and police sources said.