IBT Staff Reporter

Canadian car parts group Magna has reached a preliminary deal with General Motors to invest in its German unit Opel, sources close to the negotiations told Reuters on Friday.

The U.S. dollar fell to five-month lows against a basket of currencies on Friday as an advance in global equities and signs of an easing global recession drove investors to snap up higher-yielding currencies and riskier assets.

Stocks were mostly flat on Friday as rising oil prices lifted energy stocks and investors digested a mixed bag of data, including regional business activity and consumer sentiment.

Tiffany & Co posted a 62 percent drop in quarterly earnings on Friday, worse than Wall Street had expected, as jewelry sales languished in the recession.

Canadian car parts group Magna has reached a preliminary deal with General Motors to invest in its German unit Opel, sources close to the negotiations told Reuters on Friday.

The Federal Housing Administration will allow the new $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit to be applied directly toward home purchase costs when using an FHA-insured mortgage, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said on Friday.

Optimism over the U.S. government's stimulus programs to combat the recession lifted consumer confidence in May to its highest level in eight months, a survey released on Friday showed.

Time Warner Cable Inc, the second largest U.S. cable operator, said on Friday it is seeing slowing customer growth in the current quarter across all its products when compared with the first quarter.

Citigroup Funding Inc and Citibank NA, units of Citigroup Inc, on Thursday jointly sold $5 billion of FDIC-guaranteed notes in four parts, said IFR, a Thomson Reuters service. Citigroup was the sole bookrunning manager for the sale.

General Motors and Canadian auto parts group Magna International have reached an agreement in principle that could rescue ailing German carmaker Opel, sources close to the negotiations said on Friday.

Europe's drugs watchdog has recommended that restrictions on the use of UCB's drug Neupro for Parkinson's disease and restless leg syndrome should be lifted, boosting sales prospects for the medicine.

The Agricultural Bank of China is set to open in New York and London, building a round-the-clock commodity trading team and taking global Beijing's ambition to be a major force on commodity markets.

U.S. President Barack Obama is likely to hear Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah air his worries about the festering Arab-Israeli conflict and rising Iranian influence when he visits Riyadh next week.

Toronto-Dominion Bank's investment management unit said it plans to terminate three mutual funds, citing reduced investment opportunities and falling client demand due to changes to the tax-treatment of income trust securities.

Japan's biggest refiner, Nippon Oil Corp, plans to refine 4 percent less crude in June from a year ago, a company executive said on Friday, as domestic demand for oil products remains sluggish.

British drug firm GlaxoSmithKline Plc is in talks to buy a 51 percent stake in India's unlisted Shantha Biotech after prospective bidder Sanofi Aventis dropped out, the Economic Times said on Friday.

More than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final days of Sri Lanka's military operation to defeat Tamil Tigers rebels, The Times newspaper reported on Friday.

David Sokol, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc's (BRKa.N) MidAmerican Energy Holdings and a contender to succeed Warren Buffett, warned that the U.S. housing market still has a ways to go before bottoming out.

The United Auto Workers will emerge from a General Motors Corp restructuring as the second-largest stockholder in the reorganized automaker and with a more direct stake in its success, union President Ron Gettelfinger said on Thursday.

Sobbing South Koreans jammed Seoul's streets on Friday for the funeral of former President Roh Moo-hyun, whose suicide last week has turned him from failed leader to lightning rod for criticism of his successor.

The party of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi expressed grave concern on Friday for her health while she is in prison facing charges that carry a jail term of up to five years.

An Iranian official accused the United States on Friday of involvement in a mosque bombing that killed more than 20 people in volatile south-eastern Iran, two weeks before the Islamic Republic's presidential election.

North Korea test-fired another short-range missile off its east coast on Friday and said it would take more self-defense measures if the U.N. Security Council punished it for this week's nuclear test.

The United States could authorize emergency use of some currently unapproved immune system boosters called adjuvants to make a swine flu vaccine more effective, an official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare, the New York Times said on Friday.

North Korea's second nuclear test has forced the United States to grapple with the idea that Pyongyang may never give up atomic weapons, current and former U.S. officials said this week.

U.S. consumer confidence improved in May to its highest level since last September, prompted by hopes the government's economic stimulus program will bring the economy out of recession.

Linking the European Union's emissions trading scheme with a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme will be difficult and require adjustments on both sides, EU market participants said on Friday.

U.S. yellow-pages publisher R.H. Donnelley Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday and said the move would slash its debt by about $6.4 billion.