IBT Staff Reporter

U.S. mortgage applications surged last week to their highest since mid-May as consumers sought to take advantage of the lowest interest rates in months, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.

Oil prices rose for the third straight day on Wednesday, to about $71 a barrel, after an industry report showed a drawdown in U.S. crude inventories and gave support to the view that demand was recovering.

Toshiba Corp said on Wednesday it would appeal against a ruling by the European Commission that the Japanese electronics maker had participated in a power transformer cartel.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz on Tuesday questioned the trustworthiness of a key European Union government test to measure the health of the banking industry.

Family Dollar Stores Inc reported a 13 percent rise in quarterly profit on Wednesday, topping Wall Street estimates, as frugal shoppers scoured its stores for low prices.

News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch has held talks with Japanese and South Korean firms, possibly sounding out potential partners to rival Amazon.com Inc's Kindle electronic reader, sources said.

Family Dollar Stores Inc and Costco Wholesale Corp both reported better-than-expected quarterly profits on Wednesday and said sales improved in September from preceding months, boosting investor confidence in the discount retail sector.

British author Hilary Mantel is working on a sequel to Wolf Hall, her 650-page novel about Henry VIII's adviser Thomas Cromwell which won the coveted Man Booker Prize for fiction late Tuesday.

The David Letterman extortion affair and sex scandal is proving a late night ratings bonanza for TV network CBS.

In a patriotic costume of red and white stripes, former Republican congressman turned TV celebrity Tom DeLay bowed out of hit U.S. television contest Dancing With the Stars Tuesday night, suffering from stress fractures in both feet.

HSBC Holdings Plc is in advanced discussions to acquire the banking assets of Royal Bank of Scotland in three Asian countries, the Wall Street Journal online reported on Wednesday.

Family Dollar Stores Inc reported a 13 percent rise in quarterly profit on Wednesday, topping Wall Street estimates, as frugal shoppers scoured its stores for low prices.

Stocks were set to open lower on Wednesday after two days of strong gains, as investors await the unofficial beginning of the earnings season.

Financial institutions borrowed $25 billion for 70-days from the Federal Reserve this week as groups continue to advantage of a program to ease credit worries by injecting money into the economy.

Gold's run to a record $1,048.20 per ounce on Wednesday was greeted cautiously by consumers in Asia and the Middle East, with some cashing in gains while the majority were hanging on for further rises.

Exelon Corp's 867-megawatt Unit 3 at the Dresden nuclear power station in Illinois started to exit an outage and ramped up to 15 percent power by early Wednesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report.

Microsoft's release of its new Windows 7 operating system is expected to increase demand for personal computers only slightly, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told journalists in Munich on Wednesday.

Stock futures turned negative ahead of the open on Wednesday after a two-day run-up , as investors paused before the start of the quarterly earnings season.

Auto sales in Vietnam surged 104 percent in September from a year earlier to 11,071 units after a 31 percent increase in August, an industry report said on Wednesday.

French car maker Renault (RENA.PA) is looking to replace its Indian partner Mahindra & Mahindra (MAHM.BO) in their struggling Logan joint venture, the Economic Times said on Wednesday, a report refuted by the French firm.

U.S. auto parts maker Delphi ended four years in bankruptcy on Tuesday, emerging from Chapter 11 as a private company and removing a major uncertainty for former parent General Motors Co [GM.UL].

Europe has launched a campaign to triple funding for energy research to 8 billion euros ($11.7 billion) a year in a technology race with China, Japan and the United States, but said industry would have to pay the bulk.

Costco Wholesale Corp beat analyst expectations after posting a lower fourth-quarter profit on Wednesday, suggesting an improvement in the weak U.S. retail environment.

U.S. government-controlled mortgage finance companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are working on a program to help independent mortgage banks get access to short-term credit needed to make home loans, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Canada's Nortel Networks said on Wednesday it plans to sell its optical networking and carrier ethernet businesses to U.S.-based Ciena in a stalking horse agreement worth $521 million.

The United States came under pressure to show leadership in U.N. climate talks on Wednesday with Mexico saying its neighbor is a stumbling block in efforts to try to craft a tough global climate agreement by December.

The U.S. office vacancy rate reached a five-year high in the third quarter, pushed up by extra unused space that just about wiped out all the gains made during the commercial real estate boom, according to real estate research firm Reis Inc.

(Corrects paragraph 3 to clarify membership fees rose 3 percent to $490 million, not fell 3 percent to $474 million. Also, corrects source in paragraph 7 to Thomson Reuters data, from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S)

A U.S. Federal Reserve report found that banks in the country are slow to take losses on their commercial real estate loans that have been hit by slumping property values and rental payments, the Wall Street Journal said. Citing a Sept 29 presentation made by Fed analyst K.C. Conway to banking regulators, the paper said the report's remarks suggested that regulators were preparing for a rerun of h...