IBT Staff Reporter

President Barack Obama will say that the challenges the U.S. faces are bigger than party and politics, according excerpts from Tuesday night's State of the Union Address.

Irish drugmaker Elan Corp has quietly laid off 130 people, or about 10 percent of its workforce.

Bank of America Corp's Countrywide mortgage unit has been sued by investors claiming they were victimized in a massive fraud when they bought mortgage-backed securities.

The U.S. Federal Reserve began a two-day meeting on Tuesday that is expected to end with a nod to an improved economic outlook but no change in course on its $600 billion bond-buying plan.

Brazilian beef processor JBS has made a verbal buyout offer for Sara Lee Corp and is expected to submit a written proposal in the next 24 hours, two sources familiar with the situation said.

The gold naysayers are using rising rates as a way to dismiss gold. Let me explain why this belief is not only false but also utterly dangerous. First and foremost, the parameters have changed in just a few short years. Government debt has increased substantially in the last few years.

The rising cost of commodities ranging from oil to food is emerging as the main threat to an earnings recovery that has helped push U.S. stocks to their highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis.

The Gold reserves of the Russian central bank grew by 280 tons over the last 2 years. And the bank will continue with a similar speed by buying at least 100 tons every year, deputy chairman Georgy Luntovsky told reporters now.

Corrects paragraph 5 to show newspaper online advertising represents 11 percent not 9 percent

Egyptians say the Twitter Web site is blocked on all Internet Service Providers in their country, a representative of Harvard University's Herdict Web monitoring service told Reuters on Tuesday.

The government's plan to drive derivatives through transparent trading venues could sap investor confidence and hurt liquidity, some of the world's biggest swaps market participants said on Tuesday.

Disappointing earnings reports from blue chips Johnson and Johnson and 3Com cast a pall on U.S. stocks

Yahoo Inc's net revenue declined 4 percent in the fourth quarter, but was slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations.

(corrects figure in Jan. 23 story, 14th paragraph, to $22 trillion from $22 billion)

U.S. stocks erased losses in a late flurry of buying to end little changed on Tuesday as overall optimism about earnings offset disappointing results from blue chips 3M and Johnson & Johnson.

Sales of automobile paint and plastics helped DuPont post a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit, though higher raw material costs raised concern about margin pressure this year.

President Barack Obama will propose that Congress adopt a 5-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending, extending a previous call for a 3-year freeze, senior administration officials said, according to reports.

Yahoo Inc's quarterly net revenue slid 4 percent and it forecast a further slide this quarter as it struggles to revive growth in the face of intense competition from Google and Facebook.

Firm's big bet on Citigroup pays off with a $1 billion gain.

Verizon Communications expects revenue to rise as much as 8 percent this year as customers rush to buy more smartphones, particularly Apple Inc's iPhone.

Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor has signed with Spanish side Real Madrid on loan till the end of the season, with an option to make the move permanent.

Verizon Communications sees revenue and earnings rising as much as 8 percent this year even as it kicks off sales of Apple Inc's iPhone, which tends to come with costly subsidies.

NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite has captured an image of a star that is flying through space faster than a rocket launches from the pad.

Yahoo Inc is planning its second round of layoffs in six weeks, while rival Google Inc is preparing its biggest-ever year for hiring, underscoring the divergent paths of two of the Internet's biggest names.

Billionaire investor John Paulson's bet that the economy will rebound paid off handsomely last year when his hedge fund clients earned about $1 billion on his Citigroup Inc stake.

Sales of automobile paint and plastics helped DuPont post a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit, though higher raw material costs raised concern about margin pressure this year.

(Corrects references to reflect 2011 EPS growth target of 5-8 percent forecasts overall growth, including items other than iPhone, in headline, second bullet point, paragraphs three, seven, eight and nine)

The company continues expanding its cloud computing services in Asia with plans to build a center in Langfang City.

The agency joins the ranks of the TSA, FBI, and the Department of Energy - all of which offer smartphone applications.