IBT Staff Reporter

The U.S. unemployment rate soared to 8.5 percent last month, a 25-year high, as employers slashed jobs and cut workers' hours to the lowest level on record, the government said on Friday.

Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public utility company in the U.S., agreed Thursday to buy up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2011.

Top Federal Reserve officials pledged on Friday to use all the tools at their disposal to spur lending and a U.S. economic recovery, but warned a rebound could be slow in coming.

Oil prices settled above $52 a barrel on Friday, slightly lower on the day after a report that U.S. unemployment in March soared to a 25-year high.

Capital One Financial Corps rating was downgraded on Friday.

Microsoft's Virtual Earth has released the Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control community technology preview (CTP) which supports video, animation, and vector graphics.

Ritz Camera Centers Inc has announced that it will close over 300 stores or 40% of its total stores in a court-supervised bankruptcy reorganization.

On Wednesday, internet traffic in Sweden dipped by around 40% percent as the country's new anti-file sharing measures came into force.

Nintendo is rolling out the next generation of its popular handheld gaming console in the United States on Sunday, pitching the product as more of an all-purpose social and entertainment device.

For chronic Facebook addicts, help is at hand. INQ Mobile, the handset arm of Hutchison Whampoa, promises to deliver status update messages from the popular social network site right to its phones' home screens.

The Federal Reserve’s programs to boost credit and liquidity in financial markets have more than doubled the size of the central bank’s balance sheet and it is set to grow much larger, Fed chief Ben Bernanke said today.

Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, is in New York on Friday to meet with hedge funds, private equity funds and pension groups to promote the government's plan to cleanse banks' balance sheets of toxic assets, a source familiar with the meeting said on Friday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will unveil his budget recommendations for fiscal year 2010 on Monday in a proposal likely to call for major changes in priorities, a defense official said on Friday.

Oil prices hovered above $52 a barrel on Friday, slightly lower on the day after a report that U.S. unemployment in March soared to a 25-year high.

Strong results from Research in Motion lifted technology shares on Friday, helping nudge U.S. stocks into positive territory despite grim employment and service sector data.

President Barack Obama called on Friday for a rebalancing of global capital flows and said nations had to work together to resolve the financial crisis or risk collective failure.

Ongoing bonuses paid to employees at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are offensive since taxpayers are helping keep the mortgage-finance companies afloat, a leading Senate Republican said on Friday.

The House and Senate Thursday approved President Obama' ambitious and expensive budget blueprints and endorsed a $3.5 trillion spending plan that would trim Obama's spending proposals for the fiscal year that begins in October.

Switzerland's National Bank said Friday that UBS has completed its final installment of toxic assets to a specially-created investment fund of $38.7 billion.

The combination of global titans IBM and Sun could be the most expensive ever acquisition in tech history, but according one analyst, this could also be the messiest.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife gave the Queen of England a personalized iPod during his visit to the UK this week for the G-20 summit.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday said the Fed will use all tools to stabilize markets and set the stage for an economic recovery but provided no time frame for when a recovery will occur.

President Barack Obama told Europe on Friday it must do more to help the United States win the war in Afghanistan, looking to leverage his huge popularity here to wring concessions from NATO allies.

The U.S. unemployment rate soared to 8.5 percent last month, a fresh 25-year high, as employers slashed 663,000 jobs and cut workers' hours to the lowest level on record, the government said on Friday.

The Hotelicopter – the world’s first flying hotel made from a huge Soviet-made Mil V-12 helicopter.

If a deep global recession has eroded consumer confidence, you wouldn't know it by looking at the millions of people who are snapping up flashy BlackBerry smartphones made by Research In Motion.

Oil prices slipped on Friday, hovering above $52 a barrel as a report that unemployment in March soared to a 25-year high weighed on prices.

Credit rating firm Standard & Poor's cut its outlook on Sprint Nextel Corp to negative from stable, saying the wireless carrier's financial health could deteriorate further this year as it loses more subscribers.

The Dow industrials declined on Friday, as bleak jobs data and a sharper contraction in the services sector overshadowed reassuring results from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion .