IBT Staff Reporter

Tata Motors Ltd, India's biggest vehicle maker, expects sales and operating margins to improve in the second half of the fiscal year, but is wary of a weaker dollar and growing competition, a top official said.

Progress has been made towards answering suspicions North Korea tried to enrich uranium for atom bombs but the issue is by no means solved, the chief U.S. negotiator on Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament said on Wednesday.

While Asahi Green does not expect to break even until 2011, it hopes the Japanese technology will help farmers improve efficiency, food safety and income as well as repair soil damaged by years of heavy chemicals use.

President George W. Bush on Tuesday vetoed a measure to fund education, job training and health programs, marking the sixth veto of his presidency and the latest salvo in a fight with congressional Democrats over domestic spending.

Qantas Airways Ltd, Australia's largest airline, on Wednesday agreed to buy up to 188 new narrow-body planes worth more than $12 billion at list prices to defend its domestic routes and expand into Asia.

Yahoo Inc has settled a lawsuit alleging it aided China's prosecution of several dissidents, in a case that prompted criticism of the company for cooperating with an authoritarian government.

Sony Corp. and Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors said on Wednesday they will set up a joint venture to promote the use of mobile phones as a virtual wallet for paying for store purchases and train tickets.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc, Japan's second-largest bank, posted a 17 percent drop in its first-half profit and cut its full-year forecast on Wednesday, after the subprime-market turmoil sparked losses at its brokerage unit and increased credit costs.

A Dutch court dismissed Nokia's patent-licensing case against mobile technology provider Qualcomm Inc on Wednesday, saying its jurisdiction was limited and that Nokia's complaint was too broad to give a reasoned decision.

UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank, said on Wednesday third-quarter net profit rose an underlying 19 percent to 1.122 billion euros ($1.6 billion), although its investment banking profits were hit by the credit markets crisis.

Citigroup Inc and Japanese brokerage Nikko Cordial said on Wednesday they have altered clauses in a stock-swap deal to make Nikko a wholly-owned unit in the wake of a recent slide in Citigroup's share price.

Apple Inc's(NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone is unlikely to hit Chinese shelves soon because of technical and fee issues, industry executives said on Wednesday, a day after shares in the U.S. company shot up on hopes of a deal with China Mobile.

Ford Motor Co. is preparing for the risk that higher oil prices and a slowing U.S. economy crimp demand and will cut production as needed to avoid building costly inventories, senior executives said on Tuesday.

Japanese electronics group NEC Corp posted a smaller first-half loss on Wednesday as sales of its IT systems outweighed scaled-back overseas operations, and it stuck to its full-year forecast.

Cities in California, Florida and Ohio dominated the 25 U.S. metro areas with the highest home foreclosure rates, though rates jumped in most of the top regions during the third quarter, RealtyTrac said on Wednesday.

Oil moved higher on Wednesday, after falling sharply for the past two days, supported by expectations of a further fall in U.S. crude oil supplies and as OPEC brushed off U.S. calls to raise output.

Bear Stearns Cos Inc expects to write down $1.2 billion of assets linked to mortgages in the fourth quarter, resulting in an overall loss, the Wall Street bank's chief financial officer said on Wednesday. Investors were relieved the write-down was not bigger, and sent Bear Stearns shares up 6.6 percent in pre-market trading.

Retail sales rose a sluggish 0.2 percent in October, matching economists' expectations, as a housing downturn and steep oil prices constrained consumer spending, Commerce Department data on Wednesday showed.

Telekom Austria posted a 5-percent drop in third-quarter core earnings on Wednesday as domestic competition and price cuts ate into earnings, but it promised that a new asset in Belarus would help raise revenues.

Infineon expects flat revenue and a fall in operating profit in its financial first quarter, but a good performance at the chipmaker's core businesses in the fourth quarter lifted its shares on Wednesday.

Maverick book publisher Judith Regan, fired by HarperCollins last year after her O.J. Simpson book was scrapped, filed a $100 million lawsuit on Tuesday against her former employers accusing them of defamation.

Prime ministers from the two Koreas met on Wednesday for the first time in 15 years to discuss details of a massive aid package to help rebuild the impoverished North's infrastructure.

HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank, said its third-quarter profits were ahead of last year's and revenue growth across the group offset a jump in its charge for bad debts in the United States. The trading update on Wednesday reassured investors that HSBC was not further exposed to big debts in mortgage-related financial products and was benefiting from its broad spread, and its shares jumped over 4 percent.

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto hopes to forge an alliance with Islamists and other opposition parties to launch a campaign to force military president Pervez Musharraf from power.

Intel's Paul Otellini outlined a number of developments taking place behind the walls of the chip-maker's research center on Tuesday, including an advancement promising lower costs in datacenters and high-end workstations.

Today, at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference, executives introduced Oracle’s latest 10g application server.

Dell Inc. has continued to reveal its commitment to serving and supporting its customers through its dell lounge experimental website that broadcast artists’ concerts and albums to the online community.

DigitalGlobe, provider of high resolution imagery and geospatial information products, unveiled its new web-based application program, early Tuesday, during an exhibition in the ongoing Openworld event in San Francisco.

Oil prices slumped more than 3.5 percent Tuesday after the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for world oil demand growth, saying that the recent surge in crude prices had already hurt consumption.