IBT Staff Reporter

Thousands arrived in busloads to pray outside a Bangkok hospital on Friday for the swift recovery of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej, a day after concerns about his health sparked the biggest slide in a year in Thai stock prices.

Researchers looking for ways to turn stem cells into the types of heart cells they want said on Thursday they had found the key to making one important type in mice.

Indoor smoking bans lower the risk of heart attack, even among nonsmokers, by reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, a panel of U.S. health experts confirmed in a report on Thursday.

A U.N.-backed fraud watchdog said Friday it was close to a verdict in its probe of Afghanistan's presidential election, which could force incumbent Hamid Karzai into a run-off against his main rival.

U.S. President Barack Obama hit back at the health insurance industry on Thursday, accusing it of trying to deceive Americans about healthcare reform and vowing to overhaul the industry in Congress.

H1N1 pandemic influenza remains a cause for concern because of its unpredictable nature, even though it has killed fewer than 5,000 people so far this year, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

U.S. consumer sentiment fell unexpectedly this month on persistent worries that the dismal state of personal finances would not recover quickly from the worst recession in decades, a report showed on Friday.

Garth Brooks, the best-selling solo musician in U.S. history, ended his semi-retirement on Thursday and announced 15 concert dates at Wynn Resorts Ltd's Encore theater in Las Vegas.

A man has been charged with assault and detained for psychiatric assessment after an attack on British singer Leona Lewis in a London bookshop, police said on Thursday.

Three British tabloid newspapers discussed buying confidential medical information about actor Hugh Grant, director Guy Ritchie and other celebrities in a hoax set up by a documentary film maker.

Halliburton Co posted a 61 percent drop in quarterly profit on Friday, hurt by weak North American natural gas activity, but the figures topped Wall Street forecasts.

Madonna, U2 and AC/DC are among the finalists for the 2009 Billboard Touring Awards, which are based on global box-office numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore from October 1, 2008, through September 30, 2009.

Bank of America Corp posted its second quarterly loss in less than a year as it suffered from consumer credit losses.

U.S. industrial production rose in September for a third consecutive month, Federal Reserve data showed on Friday, suggesting the economy closed out the third quarter with surprisingly strong growth.

Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz Cars premium auto division expects year-on-year sales growth to resume soon, the division's chief operating officer told Reuters on Friday.

The world's largest fish farmer, Marine Harvest Group, said on Friday it may pay a dividend based on good 2009 results, and that it expected the market to improve in 2010.

Halliburton Co , the world's second-largest oilfield services company, reported a 61 percent drop in quarterly net profit on Friday as a slump in natural gas prices kept many North American drillers on the sidelines.

FirstEnergy Corp shut the 1,231-megawatt Perry nuclear power station in Ohio on Oct. 16 after it exited an outage begun on Oct. 15, the company told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a couple of reports.

Halliburton Co posted a 61 percent drop in quarterly profit on Friday, hurt by weak North American natural gas activity, but better-than-expected results in the rest of the world helped it top Wall Street forecasts.

Indian Oil Corp, the country's biggest petroleum products retailer, is unlikely to be affected by the surge in global oil prices as the average price of Indian imports was still around $63 to $64 a barrel, its chairman said on Friday.

Norwegian oil group DNO International and Australian exploration company Audax signed a letter of intent (LOI) on the Chorbane Exploration Permit in Tunisia, they said on Friday.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc said on Saturday it expected some flaring at its Scotford facility in Alberta, Canada, due to the restart of units after planned work, according to a notice filed on a community information line.

Countries must adopt a much more sophisticated approach to developing biofuels as a green energy option if they are to benefit the economy, the environment and society as a whole, the United Nations said Friday.

Wall Street was set to drop at the open on Friday after disappointing quarterly results from Dow components General Electric Co and Bank of America Corp dragged stock futures lower.

I confess, my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, the latest version of Microsoft's Windows franchise, was just that: a copy.

Bank of America Corp posted a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss as improvement in its Merrill Lynch investment banking unit failed to offset consumer credit woes, sending its shares down 4.5 percent .

Toymaker Mattel Inc reported a smaller-than-expected decline in quarterly revenue, helped by gains in its Hot Wheels and American Girl brands as it heads into the crucial holiday shopping season.

Citigroup Inc is considering listing its Brazilian or Latin American units to raise cash for expansion, Valor Economico newspaper said on Friday.

Yang Rong, a Chinese automobile tycoon who fled the country after being accused of economic crimes, said he plans three multi-billion-dollar U.S. plants to make 3 million clean-technology vehicles per year by 2017.