IBT Staff Reporter

Nissan Motor Co said on Friday that it plans to launch all electric vehicle Nissan Leaf in Japan on December 20 and in the US by month end.

European shares were little changed in early trade ahead of the release of fresh U.S. jobs data later on Friday, while the euro also paused for breath after bouncing from a 2-1/2 month low.

The dollar steadied on Friday and stocks edged higher ahead of payroll data that could show more evidence of a strengthening U.S. recovery and give investors a reason to push more money into riskier assets.

LOS ANGELES - Hollywood scribe Nikki Finke, the founder of the Deadline Hollywood news site, is in a trademark tangle with the operator of a website called Deadline Hollyweird.

Europe's reaction to the fiscal crisis and the stabilization fund set up to deal with it must be commensurate to the problems involved, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said on Friday.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 fall 0.1 to 0.3 percent, pointing to a weaker start for equities on Wall Street on Friday.

Trading activity around a number of healthcare deals is being examined by the U.S. authorities as part of investigations into suspected insider trading by certain hedge fund players, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

China will switch to a prudent monetary policy from a moderately loose stance, the Communist Party's top leaders decided on Friday, a change that could pave the way for more interest rate increases and lending controls, the state Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it has stopped hosting the website of WikiLeaks, which published sensitive classified U.S. government information, but it denied it was a result of pressure from lawmakers.

Congress on Thursday extended soon-to-expire funding for the federal government for another two weeks, giving Democrats time to craft a more lasting solution.

The European Central Bank resisted pressure on Thursday to commit to a major bond-buying program to contain the euro zone debt crisis, but traders said the ECB had been quietly buying bonds anyway.

Samsung Electronics <005930.KS> promoted its chairman's son, Jay Y. Lee, as president in a move that tightens the founding family's grip over the world's biggest memory chipmaker as it battles slower growth.

The U.S. dollar was steady on Friday ahead of payrolls data for November that could show more evidence of a strengthening recovery and give investors a reason to push benchmark U.S. Treasury yields above 3 percent and put more money in equities.

A lawyer, who did not tell his clients that he has been disbarred from practicing and committed fraud on them by forging court documents, has been jailed for criminal contempt.

Pilots of a crippled Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo struggled with more than a dozen system errors after an engine blew apart on Nov 4 and landed the plane in Singapore with barely any runway to spare, an Australian investigation showed.

The Federal Reserve's latest drive to push down borrowing costs was necessary to support a frail economic recovery, Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto said on Thursday.

The U.S. Federal Reserve's controversial $600 billion bond buying program is subject to regular review and can be adjusted if needed, top Fed officials said on Thursday.

The U.S. economy probably recorded a second month of solid job gains in November, which would bolster views the labor market is improving even though the activity is not enough yet to lower the unemployment rate.

A top official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday pushed the agency to act quickly on a long-awaited plan to limit speculative positions held by commodity traders.

A Circuit Court judge in Shelbyville, Tennessee has been reprimanded by a disciplinary court for waiting 11 years to rule on a case.

With the current round of [US quantitative easing] set to end in June 2011, and our US economics team now forecasting strong US economic growth in 2011 and 2012, we expect US real interest rates to begin to rise into 2012, says a new bullion report from former investment-bank Goldman Sachs.

The incoming head of a House of Representatives panel overseeing the Obama White House on Thursday called for pulling the plug on a widely criticized program to help struggling borrowers stay in their homes.

Amazon.com Inc is investing $175 million in online coupon company LivingSocial, a preemptive strike against Google Inc which a source has said is looking to buy Groupon, another coupon provider.

Japan's Nissan Motor Co marked a major milestone in automotive history on Friday with the launch of the zero-emission Leaf, the world's first electric car to be mass-marketed.

A report from Nielsen shows that in the smartphone market, it's a battle between Android and iPhone for many users, with Blackberry holding its own but in danger of losing its traditional dominance.

Qantas Airways is claiming damages from engine maker Rolls-Royce over faulty Airbus A380 engines and loss of business, as investigators concluded a design fault was the likely cause of a mid-air engine failure on an Airbus A380 last month.

The Senate will vote on two Democratic options to extend some Bush-era tax cuts on Saturday, its Democratic leader said, measures likely to fail but highlight deep ideological divisions between the parties.

'Do not track' legislation gains momentum with backing from the FTC and privacy advocates.

Aircraft suppliers Rockwell Collins Inc and Goodrich Corp said on Thursday they could gain new business as a result of this week's announcement that EADS unit Airbus would upgrade its A320 plane with better engines that offer 15 percent fuel savings.