IBT Staff Reporter

U.S. consumer sentiment worsened sharply in early August, falling to the lowest level in more than three decades, after retail sales posted the biggest gain in four months in July.

Sprint changed its mind about providing 4G WiMax service on the Blackberry PlayBook tablet, even though it will still sell the wi-fi version. The wi-fi PlayBook version sells for $499.99 in stores and features a 7-inch touchscreen.

Sprint Nextel has scrapped its plans to sell a version of the Research In Motion PlayBook tablet for its high-speed wireless WiMax service after months of promising the device.

Estimates that Groupon Inc is worth $25 billion are very high because the largest online daily deals company is losing money, Benchmark Co analyst Fred Moran said on Friday.

ABC's award winning "Dancing with the Stars" is keeping the upcoming season's cast secret until the official list is announced Aug. 29. Kristin Cavallari has been offered a contestant contract for the show. Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi of "Jersey Shore" fame has also reportedly been offered a contract.

Beyonce's "4 Intimate Nights with Beyonce" show sold out in just 22 seconds after going on sale Wednesday. Columbia Records tweeted, "It's official @Beyonce's 4th & final show at Roseland Ballroom is SOLD OUT! That's a total of 4 sold out shows next week!" This is Beyonce's first show in the concert series, and will open at New York City's Roseland Ballroom on August 14, 16, 18, and 19.

Although they?ve largely avoided enormous layoffs, there?s no reason for Middle Eastern banks to rest on their laurels, says The Islamic Globe.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is shaking up its e-commerce structure, putting the people who run stores in developed markets such as the United States in charge of the websites in those countries, according to an internal memo obtained by Reuters on Friday.

A new normal of near-zero U.S. interest rates will limit the earnings potential of discount brokers this quarter and offset a boost in fee income as investors step up trading to keep up with wild market swings.

After one of the most volatile weeks in memory, U.S. stocks ended higher on Friday in a tentative sign that the worst of the selling may be over.

After one of the most volatile weeks in memory, U.S. stocks ended higher on Friday in a tentative sign that the worst of the selling may be over.

A former Nasdaq OMX Group Inc executive was sentenced Friday to 3-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty for making hundreds of thousands of dollars by trading on confidential information.

All you ever need to know about the Perseids Meteor Shower is right here.

IBM engineer Mark Dean ? who happens to be one of the designers of the company?s first personal computer ? used the celebration of the PC?s 30th birthday to announce that we now live in the ?post-PC era.?

As Japan rebuilds after natural disasters, a new alternative to concrete is being developed there.

The victim was bitten in Mexico but died in Louisiana.

The U.S. Postal Service is looking into cutting 120,000 jobs and other ways to get out of the red. More than 110,000 jobs already have been cut over the last four years.

Space debris orbiting the Earth is building up to a critical point, and it is threatening the environment and spacecrafts alike, says a NASA scientist.

China's massive intervention in currency markets could qualify it as the most protectionist nation in history, a leading U.S. economist said on Friday.

A mobile security expert says he has discovered serious security flaws in Google Inc's Android operating system.

Anvil Mining Ltd said it has completed construction of a new plant at its Kinsevere copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo and commercial production from the facility is set to begin in the current quarter.

Charla Nash, 57, a Connecticut woman, Thursday revealed her new face after being mauled by a chimpanzee in 2009. Brigham and Women?s Hospital, where Nash underwent a historic 20-hour face transplant in May, released the first post-surgery photograph of Charla Nash, this morning and a statement by her.

The Republic of Congo's non-crude revenues rose 25 percent to 500 billion CFA Francs in the first-half of the year, Congo's president Denis Sassou N'Guesso said on Friday, adding the economy needed to ease its reliance on an oil industry poised for decline.

Visitor arrivals to Mauritius rose by 1.3 percent between in July from a year earlier, buoyed by an increase in tourists from China and South Africa, the government said on Friday.

Nigeria distributed 616 billion naira from federal accounts to its three tiers of government for July, up by 1.6 percent from the previous month, the accountant general said on Friday.

South Africa's rand steadied against the dollar on Friday but faced further losses after a turbulent week in which it hit its weakest levels in more than a year as investors spooked by debt woes in the U.S. and Europe fled to safer havens like the yen.

Rebels on the eastern front of Libya's civil war lost 11 men in the past 24 hours fighting to capture the strategic oil terminal and refinery at Brega on the Mediterranean coast, hospital sources said.

John A. Rogers of the University of Illinois told CBS News that "We are trying to do here is to really reshape and redefine electronics...to look a lot more like the human body, in this case the surface layers of the skin."

Stocks rose on Friday as mildly encouraging retail sales overshadowed weak consumer sentiment data, with lighter volume reflecting a drop in investor anxiety.