IBT Staff Reporter

Several state and local education officials are rebelling against the No Child Left Behind Law, and demanding reforms from student testing mandates, but Congress is yet to take a stand.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' <7011.T> president said his company has no plans to start merger talks with Hitachi <6501.T>, the Mainichi daily reported on Monday, in the first public denial by its top executive.

ABC on Sunday said it is ending "Desperate Housewives" when the current, eighth season wraps up in 2012, sending the popular ladies of Wisteria Lane packing into TV history.

The next Apple iPhone rendition, the iPhone 5, will sport speech-recognition feature courtesy of Nuance Technologies.

A weekend contest at the world's largest hacking convention in Las Vegas showed one reason why big corporations seem to be such easy prey for cyber criminals: their workers are poorly trained in security.

Italy and Spain's borrowing costs fell on Monday as reports filtered in that the European Central Bank was buying their bonds, lifting European shares and partly overcoming jitters about a rating downgrade for U.S. debt.

The government and the RBI will step in to contain the impact of an uncertain global economic situation, if needed, Chief Economic Adviser to Finance Ministry Kaushik Basu said on Monday.

Bullion roared to a record on Monday above $1,700 an ounce as an unprecedented downgrade to the U.S. credit rating sent investors scrambling out of riskier assets, hammering equity markets and the dollar.

India is in a better position than other countries to manage the impact of an uncertain global economic situation following the developments in the United States and the euro zone, the finance minister said on Monday.

Ratings agency Moody's repeated a warning on Monday it could downgrade the United States before 2013 if the fiscal or economic outlook weakens significantly, but said it saw the potential for a new debt agreement in Washington to cut the budget deficit before then.

Chinese editorials flaying Washington for fiscal recklessness over its debt dramatics and downgrade mask a growing unease in Beijing: a fear that China's own economic policies are shifting too slowly.

Ratings agency Moody's repeated a warning on Monday it could downgrade the United States before 2013 if the fiscal or economic outlook weakens significantly, but said it saw the potential for a new debt agreement in Washington to cut the budget deficit before then.

On a recent trip to Japan's devastated northeast coast, venture capitalist Yoshihito Hori chanced upon a group of fishermen outside an evacuation center collecting wood from the debris where homes once stood. They were pulling out the nails and cutting it up to sell as firewood for 500 yen ($6.37) a bundle.

Japan on Monday signaled it was ready to continue intervening in the currency market in the wake of a G7 agreement to counter excessive exchange-rate moves, but Moody's Investors Service warned that Tokyo's efforts to weaken the yen were ineffective and negative for its sovereign ratings.

BlackRock, the world's largest money manager, is looking for opportunities to buy U.S. mortgage agency debt in the wake of Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. sovereign rating, said Rick Rieder, the firm's chief investment officer of fixed income, fundamental portfolios.

Mariah Carey is all set to star in the reality show X Factor.

Fear gripped Asian markets on Monday as the fallout from the historic downgrade of the U.S. debt rating drowned out pledges of assistance from Europe's central bank and soothing words from the Group of Seven.

Shares tumbled on Monday despite efforts by global policymakers to stem a collapse in investor confidence after S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating, but the euro firmed on hopes the ECB will act to stop Europe's debt crisis from engulfing Italy and Spain.

Manchester United capped a remarkable comeback with an injury time winner at Wembley, giving themselves a 3-2 victory in a thriller against Manchester City in the FA Community Shield.

Baidu Inc, China's largest search engine, said on Monday it has signed an agreement with BMW to provide its search services in some of the German automaker's vehicles.

Secret tapes recorded by Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis reveal that she believed that vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson and Texas businessmen killed her husband President John F Kennedy.

The United States and Europe must summon the political courage to defuse their debt woes or global economic recovery will be threatened, Chinese official media said on Monday, reflecting the pressures on Beijing with its big stash of dollar assets.

The European Central Bank waved its big fire hose at blazing bond markets, then turned on a puny sprinkler.

U.S. insurance giant American International Group is planning to sue Bank of America to recover more than $10 billion in losses on $28 billion of investment in mortgage-backed securities, the New York Times said citing three people with knowledge of the complaint.

A new global financial crisis would hit Asia harder than the last one, especially nations heavily exposed to offshore markets or still repairing budgets from the 2008-2009 crisis, credit ratings agency Standard and Poor's said on Monday.

The U.S. securities regulator has sent subpoenas to high-frequency trading firms in relation to last year's flash crash probe, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Former Governor of New York, Hugh Carey who successfully tackled New York's financial crisis in the 1970's died on Sunday. He was 92.

U.S. assets fell sharply in early electronic trading on Sunday in response to a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's, while the euro rose on expectations of further bond purchases by the European Central Bank to deal with the euro zone's debt crisis.

A downgrade of United States' top-tier credit rating has Wall Street scrambling to figure out the knock-on effects for the financial system, from mortgages to banks to markets that rely on U.S. Treasuries for collateral.