IBT Staff Reporter

Michaele Salahi, star of The Real Housewives of DC told investigators that she was with a good friend and hasn't been kidnapped, according to authorities.

Japanese manufacturing confidence improved for a fifth straight month in September but the pace of recovery slowed to a crawl, with a strong yen and faltering global growth starting to take a toll on the world's No.3 economy, a Reuters poll showed.

Asian stocks bounced on Thursday after tentative steps by euro zone policymakers to tackle a crippling debt crisis, but investors remained wary that obstacles the bloc's leaders face could weigh on the euro and Asian currencies in the medium term.

Asian stocks bounced on Thursday after tentative steps by euro zone policymakers to tackle a crippling debt crisis, but investors remained wary that obstacles the bloc's leaders face could weigh on the euro and Asian currencies in the medium term.

Japanese manufacturing confidence improved for a fifth straight month in September but the pace of recovery slowed to a crawl, with a strong yen and faltering global growth starting to take a toll on the world's No.3 economy, a Reuters poll showed.

A rising tide of investor agitation over Microsoft Corp's static share price and bulging cash hoard made no mark at the software company's annual meeting with Wall Street analysts and fund managers on Wednesday.

Chrysler Group LLC and the United Auto Workers union failed to reach a deal on a new contract by the expiration of the current pact on Wednesday and Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said he was willing to extend the terms of the expiring contract for a week.

Groupon seeks to go public in October or November, people familiar with the matter told the New York Times on Wednesday, a week after the daily deals website put its IPO on hold for a few weeks as it waited to ride out global market turmoil.

Joe McGinniss' book titled The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, alleges that the former republican Vice Presidential candidate had an affair with then-University of Michigan star basketball player, Glen Rice, in the 1980s, snorted cocaine, had an affair with her husband's business partner for six months and smoked pot in college with a professor, according to a report in the National Enquirer.

For the top of corporate America, times could not be better. A look at the top 10 highest paid CEOs in the United States.

Casey Anthony's father believes his granddaughter, Caylee Anthony, was drugged, he said in a Dr. Phil interview that aired Wednesday.

The United States and Australia will take the rare step on Thursday of declaring the cyber realm as part of a mutual defense treaty, meaning that a cyber attack on one could lead to a response by both nations.

Katinka Domotorffy, the head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc's quantitative investment strategies group, will leave the bank at the end of the year, according to an internal memo, as one of its biggest hedge funds continues to suffer from weak performance.

Tang Jianhui is a patient bank customer, though he won't stick it out if he has to wait more than an hour, as he sometimes does.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Wednesday the world had entered a new economic danger zone and Europe, Japan and the United States all needed to make hard decisions to avoid dragging down the global economy.

A West Texas teenager who said she was dying of leukemia and collected $17,000 in donations may now face felony charges for theft by deception.

An SAP AG subsidiary pleaded guilty to 12 criminal counts and will pay a $20 million fine for unauthorized downloads from software rival Oracle Corp.

The stubbornly bad jobs and housing markets in the United States coupled with Europe's debt crisis have created fear that the advertising market could be headed for a major pullback next year.

U.S. broadband start-up LightSquared said it had debunked criticism that high-precision global positioning system devices cannot coexist alongside its planned cellular network.

United Parcel Service is launching a new service in time for the peak holiday shipping season that gives residential consumers -- a growing portion of its business -- more control over when and how their packages are delivered.

The initial public offering of Facebook has been pushed back to next year, according to people familiar with the situation.

The Italian parliament gave final approval on Wednesday to a much-altered austerity plan aimed at stemming a debt crisis engulfing the euro zone's third largest economy.

Yahoo Inc shareholder Daniel Loeb appealed to the company's co-founder Jerry Yang to fire Chairman Roy Bostock and several other directors to revive the Internet media company after years of poor performance.

From squishy garbage-themed collectibles The Trash Pack to remote-controlled flying fish Air Swimmers, Toys R Us is carrying a larger assortment of exclusive toys to win holiday shoppers from the likes of Amazon.com and Wal-Mart Stores .

Facebook will delay its initial public offering until the end of next year so employees can focus on developing products for the No. 1 social networking website, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Hollywood executive John Calley, who held high-level positions at three studios and later produced The Da Vinci Code movie among many others, died on Tuesday at age 81, his representatives said.

The greatest Blu-Ray discs of all time, according to the Broadcast Film Critics Assn., are Apocalypse Now, Avatar, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Planet of the Apes box set, The Wizard of Oz and the complete Lord of the Rings set.

Steve Burke, the longtime Comcast exec now in charge of the content side that he once tussled with about fees, sang the monetization tune on Wednesday.

Just as the Iranian director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb was detained at the Tehran airport Wednesday, Palisades Tartan acquired U.S. and U.K. rights to his documentary This is Not a Film.