IBT Staff Reporter

S&P 500 Index gained 3.00 points, or 0.24 percent, to trade at 1,246.91 at 09:50 a.m. EST. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 7.11 points, or 0.06 percent, to trade at 11,499.02. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.20 percent to trade at 2,648.31.

As U.S. regulators race to write rules that will put Wall Street reform legislation into action, some industry groups are trying to apply the brakes, latching onto linguistic loopholes in the law to bolster their case.

LOS ANGELES - When it comes to the convergence of video games and Hollywood, Tron was the first example of Hollywood getting it right. And in many ways, Hollywood hasn't learned from this perfect marriage of game and film. At least, most of Hollywood.

A Russian billionaire set the terms on Monday for a merger of Russia's top two producers of potash, Uralkali and Silvinit to create the world's No. 2 player.

Vimpelcom's $6.6 billion bid for telecoms assets owned by Weather Investments was hanging by a thread after Norwegian shareholder Telenor said on Monday it would not back the deal.

Groupon has brought in a former Amazon.com Inc executive as its new chief financial officer, the discount coupon provider said.

Japan's Sharp Corp. plans to expand its smartphone LCD panel production capacity spurred by Apple's plan to buy a major chunk of the LCD screens for its iPhone.

Sony Corp's LCD TV sales will likely fall slightly short of a targeted 60 percent rise in unit terms this financial year, a senior executive said, with new 3D TVs unable to resuscitate soft sales in mature markets.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of social networking site Facebook on Monday toured the offices of China's top search engine Baidu sparking off speculation that he is looking for opportunities in the world’s most populous country and the largest Internet market.

Global banking regulators proposed on Monday that banks should only have to set aside small amounts of capital when dealing with supervised central counterparties, in a consultative paper aimed at further stabilizing the financial system.

International observers slammed the Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, alleging that fraud and violence were widespread in Sunday's polls. They maintained that the results were 'seriously flawed' and at least six of the nine presidential candidates were arrested and reportedly beaten up by the police.

Exxon Mobil said on Monday it had restarted 15,000 barrels per day of Nigerian Oso condensate production, which was shut in following a militant raid on an offshore platform on November 14.

Heavy snow and ice grounded air travel across Europe for a third day on Monday leaving thousands of passengers stranded even as airports struggled to clear a backlog of flights cancelled or delayed by snowfalls.

Telecom bellwether AT&T announced its acquisition of wireless spectrum from chipmaker Qualcomm for $1.925 billion to strengthen its advanced 4G mobile broadband offering.

U.S. bank JPMorgan has bought two major office properties in London, including the former Lehman Brothers building, holding off on plans to build a skyscraper as its main European headquarters.

A key cooperating witness in the U.S. government's probe of insider trading was a technology analyst named Karl Motey who made dozens of calls to gather evidence for the government, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing a person familiar with the case.

When Hal Scott testified on financial reform before the Senate last February, he identified himself simply as a Harvard Law School professor and director of an independent research group.

Prosecutors in New York are set to file civil fraud charges against accounting firm Ernst & Young LLC over the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

U.S. online sales are up 12 percent to $27.5 billion so far this holiday shopping season compared with a year ago, according to research firm comScore.

After being crowned Time Person of the Year Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in China and is reported to have visited China's top search engine, Baidu's office.

Barclays Capital raised profit estimates of Research In Motion Ltd., saying Playbook tablet and QNX phone visibility is improving, and continued international strength appeared sustainable

Since losing her job last April, Laurianne Dobbins has known one thing: she wasn't going to let her skills get rusty.

Stocks drifted on Monday as investors were reluctant to push stocks higher after briefly touching another high for the year.

The first round of cuts in government funding to universities is likely to cost £300-400m in grant money to universities this year.

Google Inc., the company known for innovation, has stumbled in what was to be its main offering this holiday season. It has asked several of its partners to delay their rollouts of Google TV so that the company can further refine it.

South Africa wrapped up proceedings early on the final day to win the first test against India and take the series lead 1-0 at The Centurion, Pretoria.

Five focus areas that every aspirant of an Executive MBA should spend some time on before arriving at a final decision and choice of destination

Bluewater Productions has come out with a comic book on Britney Spears’ life.

The European Union agreed on Monday to ban Cote d'Ivoire's incumbent President, Laurent Gbagbo and his aides, the BBC reported. The Gbagbo regime is likely to be slapped with harsh sanctions from the West. The sanction could also include freezing the personal overseas assets of the president and his men and issuing visa bans.