IBT Staff Reporter

Michael Jackson was named this year's top-earning dead celebrity on Tuesday in a list compiled by financial website Forbes.com, earning the title for the second year in a row following his death in 2009.

A grand bargain to stop the euro zone debt crisis from spreading would cheer global markets but may not ease the dollar squeeze faced by Europe's banks.

Boeing Co is comfortable with the production targets for its 787 Dreamliner, Scott Francher, a Boeing VP and head of the 787 program, said on Wednesday at Tokyo's Narita airport ahead of the plane's first flight for paying passengers.

When Glenn Close sees a good part she goes after it -- even if it takes decades.

Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt looted $190 million from the bankrupt team to fund his lavish lifestyle, which includes eight homes, according to court documents filed on Tuesday by Major League Baseball.

Employees of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles were advised to stay indoors on Tuesday after a 200-pound bear was spotted roaming the campus.

A nurse said on Tuesday that Michael Jackson sought her help to get the anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid, but she could not persuade the pop star to avoid the drug that ultimately led to his death in 2009.

Tom Waits has been called a lot of things, but rockabilly cat was probably never among them. That's just one of many guises the veteran eccentric takes on in Bad as Me, his first all-new release in eight years and a leading album-of-the-year contender.

Hitachi Ltd lifted its first-half profit forecast by 70 percent on improvements in its infrastructure-related businesses but kept its annual forecast intact citing unstable conditions in the global economy.

The Bank of Japan will likely debate easing monetary policy further on Thursday given the yen's renewed spike to record highs and growing doubts that European leaders will calm markets with a clear plan to rein in the region's debt crisis.

After months of dire predictions for the economy, including warnings of a new recession, forecasters are singing a different tune.

Japan's Tokyo Electric Power Co <9501.T>, operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is likely to announce its earnings for April-September on November 14, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Network equipment maker F5 Networks Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly results as product sales jumped 20 percent, and forecast a strong fiscal 2012 revenue, sending its shares up 8 percent in after-hours trading.

A damages expert asserted Trust Company of the West is owed $81.7 million in royalties due to trade secret theft as the high-profile civil case pitting the asset mangement firm against its former chief investment officer Jeffrey Gundlach resumed on Tuesday.

Wall Street is losing confidence that Netflix Inc can quickly reverse subscriber defections and cover mounting costs with growth in streaming, pushing its shares to their largest one-day decline since 2004.

Hotel operator Marriott International Inc on Tuesday said its board has approved the spin-off of its time share business, Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp, to shareholders.

Medtronic Inc has asked software security experts to investigate the safety of its insulin pumps, as a new claim surfaced that at least one of its devices could be hacked to dose diabetes patients with potentially lethal amounts of insulin.

Unusually beautiful northern lights, or aurora borealis, were seen unusually far south over the skies of the United States on Monday night, thanks to a solar wind from the sun that sent the stunning light show for sky watchers.

Broadcom Corp warned revenue could fall as much as 13 percent this quarter due to broad- based weakness in demand, even in wireless, where it supplies chips for Apple Inc products such as the iPhone.

AT&T Inc has settled a nationwide lawsuit by an agency accusing it of age discrimination for refusing to rehire tens of thousands of workers who had retired from the largest U.S. telephone company.

Regulators are considering easing a proposed rule so that fewer hedge fund advisers would have to hand over troves of confidential data to the government, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

Groupon Inc is seeking an initial public offering valuation of about five times its projected 2012 sales, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

Aluminum maker Alcoa Inc filed a request with a court on Tuesday to seek to have a lawsuit related to its shipments to Aluminum Bahrain dismissed.

Regulators are considering easing a proposed rule so that fewer hedge fund advisers would have to hand over troves of confidential data to the government, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano will hand over the reins to global sales chief Virginia Rometty from 2012, ending a near-decade-long reign during which he helped transform Big Blue from a PC hardware company into a global services behemoth.

Wall Street may have become more anxious about the prospects of a solution to the euro zone debt crisis, but investors are not betting on disaster at Wednesday's European summit.

The world's largest cellphone maker Nokia will unveil its first phones using Microsoft software on Wednesday, hoping they will kick-start a rescue of its ailing smartphone business.

As Groupon pitches its initial public offering plans to investors, analysts continue to give tepid views on the stock's prospects.

Boeing Co opened a new cyber security center on Tuesday, saying it expected high single-digit or low double-digit growth in the sector in coming years despite major cuts in defense spending.