IBT Staff Reporter

Four North American geothermal companies announced plans to merge on Wednesday and raise C$100 million ($90 million) to develop key projects to produce clean power.

Authorities say they've located a woman wanted for questioning in connection with the slaying of a Florida Panhandle couple during a break-in.

The Obama administration on Wednesday will send Congress legislation demanding that hedge fund managers submit to new registration and disclosure rules to boost transparency and limit any risks they pose to the financial system, a senior U.S. Treasury official said.

U.S. officials are considering giving CIT Group Inc a temporary loan as part of an aid package to help the lender avoid collapse, a source familiar with regulators' thinking said on Tuesday.

U.S. stocks racked up strong gains on Wednesday, sparked by results from bellwether Intel Corp that lifted hopes for a rebound in technology spending and improved corporate profitability.

The Federal Reserve held fire on additional asset purchases at its meeting last month because of doubts about how financial markets would react to more buying, documents on Wednesday showed.

Japanese scientists have released a report saying people who were born before the 1918 flu pandemic seem to have immunity to the current swine flu, but not to the seasonal flu.

AT&T Inc has reached a tentative labor agreement with the Communications Workers of America covering 18,500 workers in the telecom service provider's Midwest region, the parties said on Wednesday.

The end game in thorny merger talks between Porsche and Volkswagen looms on July 23 when the carmakers' supervisory boards meet separately in Porsche's home town of Stuttgart.

U.S. President Barack Obama released the following statement on Wednesday in response to the health care reform legislation passed by the Senate HELP Committee.

Sanofi-Aventis said on Wednesday a group of independent experts had concluded that studies highlighting a possible link between its Lantus diabetes drug and an increased risk of cancer were flawed.

U.S. stocks racked up strong gains on Wednesday, sparked by results from bellwether Intel Corp that lifted hopes for a rebound in technology spending and improved corporate profitability.

American Airlines parent AMR Corp on Wednesday posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss as capacity cuts and new revenue streams helped offset weak travel demand.

Boeing Co will trim staff on its missile defense program and future combat systems by about 1,000 -- about 1.4 percent -- because of U.S. Defense Department budget cuts, the company said on Wednesday.

A former Credit Suisse trader facing trial on charges of fraudulently selling $1 billion worth of mortgage-backed auction-rate securities, has been arrested after two months on the run, according to a court document made public on Wednesday.

The Senate health committee approved its version of healthcare reform on Wednesday. The following are some of the provisions in the legislation:

House Democrats unveiled a 1,000-page proposal to overhaul the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry. The ground-breaking bill includes a government-paid insurance option that would compete with private insurers, and tax increases for the wealthy.

The long-awaited bottoming of the U.S. housing market may be in sight, but a recovery could take as long as 18 months and will likely be muted, Fitch Ratings said in a report on Wednesday.

Popular technology news website TechCrunch plans to publish on Wednesday sensitive internal documents belonging to microblogging site Twitter, including financial projections, sent to them by an unidentified hacker.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he was reassured during a Gulf visit that the dollar will remain the region's main reserve currency and said he wanted to find ways to reduce oil-price volatility.

The U.S. recession might be loosening its grip, data released on Wednesday suggested, although analysts cautioned recovery was likely to be long and slow.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that he acted appropriately in warning Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis that top executives could be ousted if they walked away from a merger with Merrill Lynch.

Saying it was time to get this done, President Barack Obama pressed on Wednesday for swift congressional action on healthcare after a Senate panel approved a bill to overhaul the $2.5 trillion industry.

U.S. regulators on Wednesday filed civil charges for insider trading against 11 people, including a 26-year-old former Goldman Sachs Group Inc investment banking analyst accused of leaking confidential merger information to his brother.

The U.S. Treasury Department wants to find a responsible way to provide government aid to troubled lender CIT Group Inc, Representative Barney Frank said on Wednesday.

Google Voice Mobile App has been released for BlackBerry and Android devices, giving users the convenience of making outgoing calls from a Google Voice number.

Shares of network equipment makers Cisco Systems Inc and Juniper Networks Inc jumped on Wednesday, helped by buy ratings by Citigroup as well as solid results from smaller rival Adtran and chipmaker Intel Corp .

Stocks rose broadly on Wednesday, sparked by strong results from bellwether Intel Corp that lifted hopes for a rebound in technology spending.

China raised the death toll from the bloody riot in Urumqi on July 5 to 192, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday, citing a local official in Xinjiang.