IBT Staff Reporter

A privately owned company put a spacecraft into orbit and brought it back on Wednesday in a groundbreaking test flight NASA hopes will lead to cargo runs to the International Space Station after the space shuttles are retired next year.

Salesforce.com Inc agreed to buy Heroku, a privately held cloud-platform company, for $212 million in cash, to expand into the fast growing social media and mobile space.

With the end of the 111th Congress fast approaching and both the Senate and the House of Representatives scrambling to get major legislation passed before Dec. 31, many industries and organizations are pressuring lawmakers not to forget their needs.

The Federal Reserve is expected to unveil a proposed rule next week that would limit the transaction fees that banks can charge retailers when a customer uses a debit card, according to two industry sources familiar with the matter.

Failure by the Congress to pass a tax cut deal soon would materially increase the risk of the economy stalling and a double dip recession, White House economic adviser Larry Summers said on Wednesday.

Intel Corp said it is making headway getting its chips into tablet computers and that smartphones using its processors will go on sale late next year as it rushes to catch up in the fast-growing mobile market.

The bond market's horrific two-month stretch is teaching U.S. investors who poured some $700 billion into fixed income mutual funds in recent years a harsh lesson about risk.

PepsiCo Inc has increased its investment by an undisclosed sum in coconut water maker O.N.E, the two companies said on Wednesday.

ATLANTA, December 8 - The explosion of blogging, tweeting and other online diversions has reached into U.S. jury boxes, in many cases raising serious questions about juror impartiality and the ability of judges to control their courtrooms. A Reuters Legal analysis found that jurors' forays on the Internet have resulted in dozens of mistrials, appeals and overturned verdicts in the last two years...

Major U.S. airlines said revenues were still improving, but discount carrier JetBlue Airways pointed to weaker-than-expected holiday revenue, sending its shares down more than 6 percent on Wednesday.

The shares of two Chinese companies considered that nation's YouTube and Amazon.com soared in their U.S. debuts on Wednesday as investors bet they could become leaders in a still-nascent market.

Discount carrier JetBlue Airways cut its revenue outlook for the fourth-quarter holiday period, saying sales of higher-priced tickets had not materialized as planned, and its shares fell 4 percent.

U.S. online holiday sales are up 12 percent to more than $17.5 billion till date this year, with more than half of that making use of free shipping, according to research firm comScore Inc.

Nintendo faces a tough battle to boost growth as rivals snatch the lead in motion-controlled gaming from the long-time world-beater, just as competition from smartphones and tablets batters the handheld market.

Financial literacy has become a huge catchphrase -- the one idea upon which consumer advocates and bankers, borrowers and lenders, even Republicans and Democrats all agree.

U.S. stocks edged higher on Wednesday as gains in financial and technology stocks offset declines caused by a recent surge in bond yields.

A privately owned company put a spacecraft into orbit and brought it back on Wednesday in a groundbreaking test flight NASA hopes will lead to cargo runs to the International Space Station after the space shuttles are retired next year.

Major U.S. airlines on Wednesday said revenues were still improving, but discount carrier JetBlue Airways pointed to weaker-than-expected holiday sales, sending its shares down more than 8 percent.

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Stocks were little changed on Wednesday, with investors staying cautious on a strong dollar and higher bond yields, but analysts didn't rule out a year-end rally.

Salesforce is on the roll as the enterprise cloud-computing company announced that it has acquired Heroku, a company that offers Ruby platform-as-a-service (PaaS), for $212 million cash, just a day after releasing Database.com, the first cloud-based enterprise database.

Stocks were little changed on Wednesday, with investors staying cautious on a strong dollar and higher bond yields, but analysts didn't rule out a year-end rally.

Yum Brands Inc said China would surpass the United States as the fast-food restaurant operator's top profit generator this year, and the Chinese market's potential is still largely untapped.

Fortune Brands Inc announced plans to spin off or sell its golf and home products units, paving the way for an eventual sale of its most profitable business of alcoholic drinks.

Credit card giant MasterCard and the Swedish prosecutor's office came under cyber attack on Wednesday as WikiLeaks supporters vowed to retaliate for moves against Julian Assange after the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that angered and embarrassed Washington.

From keeping the WikiLeaks site alive to helping British anti-austerity protesters outmaneuver riot police, Twitter is entering the Western political mainstream as a powerful tool for dissent.

The House of Representatives, early this morning, introduced a continuing resolution budget proposal that wraps all the major spending bills Congress has yet to pass into one, while freezing Fiscal Year 2011 discretionary spending at Fiscal Year 2010 levels.

Intel Corp has resumed share buybacks after a pause of more than a year and its chips have been chosen for 35 tablet computers as well as some smartphones, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

A project billed as the first micro-philanthropy website dedicated to U.S. filmmakers, writers, musicians and visual artists was launched on Tuesday, aimed at attracting small public donations to bring artistic projects to life.