IBT Staff Reporter

If consumer spending doesn't pick up later this year, a key retail sales forecast for the Christmas holidays may miss the mark, according to Dennis Jacobe, the chief economist at polling group Gallup.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had constructive talks Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama's envoy George Mitchell on advancing the Middle East peace process, his office said.

Swiss food group Nestle AG has launched syndication of a 4.75 billion euro ($7 billion) loan refinancing, priced at 12.5 basis points over Euribor, banking sources said on Friday.

The leaders of South Korea and Japan called on Friday for a new approach to force North Korea to give up atomic arms as Pyongyang planned to send an envoy to the United States, a trip which could revive dormant nuclear talks.

Italian fashion house Giorgio Armani presented a new 700-euro ($1,032) mobile phone on Friday, a stylish device aimed at complementing the designer's suits.

Shares of Wynn Macau, the Asia unit of U.S. casino giant Wynn Resorts, rose 9 percent in their trading debut, defying expectations, as Hong Kong feted its first IPO of a top global brand in years.

A suspected suicide car-bomber killed 49 people on Friday in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in an attack that the government said underscored the need for an all-out offensive against the Pakistani Taliban.

Canadian retailer Dollarama Inc, backed by private equity firm Bain Capital, priced its initial public offering of 17.14 million shares at C$17.50 ($16.60) a share, on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

German President Horst Koehler paid tribute Friday to 70,000 East German citizens who braved a feared crackdown by communist security police and took to the streets of Leipzig in a historic demonstration 20 years ago.

Spain's Repsol plans to list 20 percent of its Argentine unit YPF in March, 2010, daily ABC said on Friday, citing Repsol's local partner in YPF Enrique Eskenazi.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday dismissed suggestions that he should step down for the good of Italy's image, saying he was the only person qualified to lead the country now and by far the best in Italian history.

U.S. voice traffic carrier iBasis said some shareholders intended to reject Dutch telecoms group KPN's increased bid of $2.25 per share for the company.

Iran would blow up the heart of Israel if it was attacked by the Jewish state or the United States, a Revolutionary Guards official was quoted Friday as saying.

Japanese brokerage Nomura said on Friday it had hired two senior staff to co-head its fixed income business in the Americas as part of a push to expand its investment bank outside Asia.

French supermarket chains Carrefour and Casino are seen posting a small fall in third-quarter sales next week as falling food prices and consumer weakness in France outweigh growth in emerging markets.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday that the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded to U.S. President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

Stocks rose on Friday as investors snapped up technology shares following upbeat broker comments on such bellwethers as Apple, offsetting a drag from natural resource shares after the dollar's rebound.

Global financial firms, emerging from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, are looking to shed India back office operations as they focus on core operations and cost cuts.

Any change at the top of UBS's U.S. wealth management business could signal the Swiss bank is trying to rehabilitate its America franchise after a bruising tax row, ready for an eventual sale.

James Simons, a mathematics professor who became one of the best paid hedge fund managers in the world, is retiring as chief executive of his Renaissance Technologies firm on Jan 1, according to an investor letter.

Intellectual property support services provider RWS Holdings Plc expects full-year underlying profits to fall below consensus, but exceed year-ago levels, due to a drop in interest income on lower deposit rates.

South Korea's SK C&C, SK Group's technology service arm, plans to raise up to 480 billion won ($412.6 million) from its planned initial public offering, according to a term sheet obtained by Reuters on Friday.

A surprised world greeted the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama with a mixture of praise and skepticism on Friday.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to U.S. President Barack Obama had many puzzled Americans scratching their heads.

Japan's Tokyo Electron Ltd said quarterly orders for its tools to make semiconductors and flat panel displays recovered to near year-earlier levels as logic and memory chip makers start investing.

Fifteen million European buildings should have eco-friendly renovations over the next decade to cut energy use, with builders and architects re-educated to do the job, a draft EU report says.

The dollar rose from a 14-month low against a basket of currencies on Friday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank will be ready to tighten monetary policy as a recovery takes hold.

The key informant in the U.S. tax evasion case against Swiss bank UBS AG faces prison next year, but his harsher-than-expected treatment by the U.S. Justice Department will undermine efforts to expose secretive offshore tax havens, lawyers and whistle-blower advocates say.

More lucrative British incentives to produce energy from rotting and gasified waste are driving a push to biogas, following a wider European trend.