IBT Staff Reporter

Stock index futures rose on Thursday as higher profit from JPMorgan offset concern about the U.S. budget deficit talks and Europe's sovereign debt crisis.

JPMorgan Chase & Co posted higher-than-expected quarterly profit as it wrote off fewer bad mortgages and credit card loans.

Indian government has asked Google Inc, Skype and other social networking sites to comply with the security agencies requirement—to allow their user to services to guard against terrorism and other crimes, a minister said on Wednesday.

A study commissioned by Samsung Electronics rejected assertions that employees may have been exposed to carcinogenic chemicals at its plants, as several cancer-stricken former employees of the world's top memory chipmaker seek compensation for their illnesses.

Join us here for live streaming updates of the Tour de France. The race moves into Stage 12, which is also D-Day for the General Classification contenders in the peloton.

British police said on Thursday they had arrested another suspect as part of their investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World newspaper, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

After launching its own Android Appstore and cloud-based music locker, Cloud Drive, Amazon is ready to shake Apple's core iPad market as it prepares to launch a 9-inch Android tablet.

Apple Inc's Korean unit has paid compensation to a user of its popular iPhone after collecting location data without consent, lawyers and court officials said, the first payout by the company over these complaints.

China posted a fiscal surplus of 1.25 trillion yuan ($193.3 billion) in the first half of the year as steady economic growth and rising prices lifted government revenues, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday.

Climate scientists have turned to the United States and Australian navies to deploy robotic measuring devices in the Indian Ocean where pirates have made the area too dangerous for researchers.

Stock index futures were little changed on Thursday ahead of earnings from JPMorgan, the first big bank to report its quarterly scorecard as investors look for signs of weakness after a slowdown in the economy.

Swedish regulators have raided leading local bourse operator Nasdaq OMX Group in a competition probe sparked by a complaint from a small local rival, officials said on Thursday.

R.E.M.’s front man Michael Stipe delivered a snippet of the band’s ‘Man on the Moon’ for the crew of Space Shuttle ‘Atlantis’ on Thursday morning to mark the closure of the space shuttle program.

The Pyrenees battle begins for the GC contenders in the Tour de France. GC favorites Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank), Andy Schleck (Leopard-Trek), and Cadel Evans (BMC) will vie for supremacy on the Col de Tourmalet and the final climb to Luz-Ardiden.

Its Japanese developers call it the Futuristic Circular Flying Object and it's designed to go where humans can't.

Porn mogul James Jim Lloyd Mitchell’s son James Raphael Mitchell has been convicted of first degree murder of his ex-girlfriend in California.

The last movie in the franchise has lived up to expectations and is one of the best of the series.

Australia's government may review media laws in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's British paper the News of the World, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on Thursday, as an influential party demanded a probe into media ownership and regulation.

UBS is set to cut around 5,000 jobs to save 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.20 billion) while rival Credit Suisse is planning to axe about 1,000 staff, Swiss newspapers reported on Thursday.

The Netflix price hike has seen an outpouring of outrage by irate users complaining about the 60 percent price rise in video service, but Forbes reports how it’s a boon to the subscribers.

Hugh Hefner Death rumors have proven that 2011 is the year of the hoax. Playboy giant Hugh Hefner's Twitter account was hacked into yesterday, with pranksters reporting that he had died of a heart attack.

Sony plans to launch a new line of upgraded digital book readers in the U.S. next month

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Egypt making Cairo's Tahrir Square their home until their demands of the thrown out of President Hosni Mubarak and removal of the military rules is met. There is high rage among protester over the merciless killing of those protesters who ousted Housni Mubarak.

On July 13th, dozens of arrests were made in Minsk during the latest round of silent protests against authorities in Belarus.The flash-mob-style demonstrations have already become regular events in Belarus, called by Revolution Through the Social Networks, a grass-roots movements that claims thousands of supporters nationwide.

Oprah Winfrey will take over as the new CEO of OWN, the cable channel announced on Wednesday.

South American giants Brazil got their Copa America campaign on track after sealing an entertaining 4-2 victory over Ecuador to progress to the quarterfinals as group winners.

A new variant of the Zeus Trojan spyware application,Zitmo,that targets Andoid smartphones has been detected.

President Barack Obama clashed with Republican lawmakers on Wednesday in a fierce White House meeting on deficit reduction that left a deal in question as the clock ticked toward a debt default.

The extreme heat wave isn't just an American thing.Here is a world tour of heat waves.