IBT Staff Reporter

President Barack Obama told top U.S. bankers on Monday they owed it to the country to help lift the economy out of crisis by lending more money to small businesses in need and embracing financial reforms.

U.S. stocks rose on Monday, sending the Nasdaq up more than 1 percent, as the appetite for riskier assets returned, following news of Abu Dhabi's $10 billion rescue of Dubai, and Exxon Mobil Corp's planned takeover of natural gas supplier XTO Energy Inc .

Tisha Taylor Murphy, the wife of comedian and actor Charlie Murphy, passed away last night in the couple's home in New Jersey according to reports from mediatakeout.com.

A planned meeting of diplomats from major powers on Iran's nuclear program will not take place this year although discussions will continue by telephone, the State Department said on Monday.

Survivalism is big news these days, and the hottest novel on the market is Patriot. It contains extremely detailed discussions of everything a group of college students who banded together in 2000 bought for or did at their Idaho retreat to prepare for TEOTWATKI, which occurs in 2009.

The EMBA course is aimed at experienced executives who prefer not to take a career break to take a full-time MBA and typically require significant business experience to gain admission. The regular MBA course is generally taken by candidates with relatively lesser work experience...

Tiger Woods has just made life a whole lot tougher for athletes looking to score big deals to pitch a company's products or services.

U.S. stocks rose on Monday as Abu Dhabi's $10 billion in aid to help Dubai avoid default eased concerns, and a takeover deal by Exxon Mobil Corp raised optimism about mergers and acquisitions.

Google Inc will sell a version of its own-branded cellphone for a reduced price to U.S. consumers who agree to a service contract from Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile USA, a source familiar with the matter said.

A senior Chinese envoy said on Monday that developing nations' top concern at a slow-moving climate summit is securing funds from the rich to pay for carbon emissions cuts and cover the cost of adapting to a warmer world.

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co, Japan's biggest maker of construction steel, said it would cut the price of H-shaped steel, its mainstay product, to the lowest level in six years due to weak domestic demand.

Retailers looking for a big surge in customer traffic the week after Christmas may be disappointed by a new survey that shows an unusually low number of consumers plan to shop in the post-holiday week.

12-day walkout spells chaos for nearly 1m passengers British Airways' 12,500 cabin crew today voted overwhelmingly in favour of a 12-day strike over Christmas and the New Year.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday the French state would raise 35 billion euros ($51.33 billion) to fund strategic investments in the coming months, with the priority given to higher education and training.

Charles Schwab Corp expects earnings per share in the current quarter to be 2 cents to 4 cents lower than in the third quarter, due to lower interest rates and slower trading in recent weeks, sending its shares down 2.7 percent.

Westman Islands now an easy day-trip from Reykjavik. A new ferry pier on Iceland's south coast will soon provide the first high-speed link to the jewels in Iceland's volcanic crown, Vestmannaeyjar or the Westman Islands.

The town of Livingstone, Zambia, near Victoria Falls, was named after Doctor David Livingstone, the missionary born in Blantyre, Scotland, where I once lived as a child. It is illustrative of how much the world has changed, in such a relatively short time, that it was a mere 150 years since he had become

Bankrupt petrochemicals company LyondellBasell has filed an amended reorganisation plan with a U.S. court proposing a $2.8 billion rights issue as it awaits a possible bid from Indian Reliance Industries.

Chipmaker ON Semiconductor Corp said it will buy California Micro Devices Corp for about $108 million in cash, to strengthen its handset portfolio.

When you travel to a foreign land, do you notice the differences, even the small ones? The things that most people pay no mind to are things that often captivate me. It's frustrating to tell people

The United States pledged on Monday to contribute $85 million to a $350 million multinational fund aimed at speeding up renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies in poor countries.

U.S. oil demand through 2035 is not expected to return to the peak levels reached before fuel consumption fell sharply due to high petroleum prices and the recession, the head of the Energy Information Administration said on Monday.

On a recent trip to Honduras, the big news was the current political situation (the ousting of President Zelaya, a move opposed by a vocal minority), which prompted the US State Department to issue a

Egypt has begun making its national archives digitally available on the Internet in Arabic, having last month registered the world's first domain name in Arabic script.

President Barack Obama told top U.S. bankers on Monday they owed the country their help in lifting the economy out of crisis and implored them to lend more money and get behind financial reforms.

Descartes said it would offer 12.50 euros per Porthus share, a premium of 20 percent to the stock's Friday close, and pay 12.33 euros for warrants issued after April 2000 and 20.76 euros for those issued after November 2001.

Near-record supplies of cheap wind power curbed gains by Iberian spot power prices on Monday, which were driven higher by a cold snap that brought snow to much of Spain.

ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM), betting that demand for natural gas in the U.S. will grow, has struck a $31 billion all-stock deal to gain control of XTO Energy, Inc (NYSE:XTO).

Russian fixed-to-mobile regional telecoms company Sibirtelecom (STKM.MM) said nine-month net profit fell 29 percent after expenses grew twice as fast as revenues.