IBT Staff Reporter

Yahoo Inc has struck new deals to offer mobile phone Web services through nine network operators across Asia, bolstering its increasing lead in the fastest growing regional market for mobile services by users.

Merrill Lynch is resorting to its trademark bull logo to convince the world it is in good shape, despite taking its biggest quarterly loss ever.

Countrywide Financial Corp, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, on Tuesday said it funded 48 percent fewer mortgages in October than a year earlier, and significantly reduced some of the riskier home loans that prompted its recent financial troubles.

Top home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc posted a 27 percent drop in quarterly profit and forecast a steeper fall in full-year earnings on Tuesday as the slumping U.S. housing market cut into sales.

Sanctions are not the way to resolve the deepening international confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions, China said on Tuesday, while also urging Tehran to be more compromising.

Gold bounced back to trade above $800 an ounce on Tuesday after falling overnight to a one-week low, as bargain-hunters resurfaced and a weaker dollar supported the market, analysts said.

Nervous investors sold stocks and generally deserted the dollar on Tuesday, still gripped by lingering worries over the global financial impact of the slumping U.S. housing market.

Oil fell more than $1 on Tuesday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) cut its forecast for world oil demand growth, saying that the recent surge in oil prices had already hurt consumption.

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday he expected a parliamentary election on December 2 to give him a moral right to influence Russian politics after he steps down from his Kremlin post next year.

Detained Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto called on Tuesday for military leader Pervez Musharraf to step down as president, isolating him in the run-up to a general election.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Tuesday reported higher-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by stronger sales in its international division, tighter control on expenses and efforts to draw customers into its U.S. stores earlier than ever for holiday shopping. The world's biggest retailer said net income rose to $2.86 billion, or 70 cents per share, in the third quarter that ended October 31, from $2.65 billion, or 63 cents per share, a year earlier.

Oracle marked its 30th year of existence with a Service Leadership Award awarded by the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA) for its tremendous contribution to innovation in the technology services industry.

Early Monday Oracle revealed a new enterprise based software in-front of over 40,000 people attending the Oracle Openworld 2007 event in San Francisco this Monday.

Goldman Sachs has 6.9 percent, or $72 billion of its $1.05 trillion in assets in hard-to-value Level 3 assets, according to securities filings.

Former US vice president Al Gore is taking on a new role as he joins forces with a Silicon Valley venture capital firm to invest in green business and eco-friendly technology.

Unsold goods are piling up in warehouses as the housing meltdown and soaring oil prices strain consumers, raising fears that already glum fourth-quarter growth prospects may tip toward recession. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned last week that economic growth would slow from the third quarter's surprisingly strong 3.9 percent annual rate. But recent data on inventories suggests the slowdown may be even more severe than the central bank has anticipated.

Lincoln Financial Group (NYSE: LNC) said on Monday it will sell three Southern television stations including its three Charlotte radio stations for a total of $683 million.

E*Trade Financial shares lost more than half their value on Monday after Citigroup downgraded the company’s shares from ‘hold’ to ‘sell’ and indicated that there is a 15 percent chance that the firm could file for bankruptcy.

It's been a little more than four years since MySpace launched another cyberspace revolution.

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe cannot imagine what it was like to live amid the stench of death in the trenches of World War One -- but he says his generation should never be allowed to forget.

Last Monday morning, production on Fox's multigenerational family drama pilot The Oaks began in Pasadena.

Stocks rose on Monday, rebounding from last week's heavy losses as investors hunted for bargains in financial services and other sectors.

A Tokyo court rejected UK asset manager Silchester International Investors' request to block a bond issue by auto goods retailer Autobacs Seven in the latest rebuff of shareholder activists in Japan.

The government said on Monday it had decided to auction to commercial operators a prime range of radio wave spectrum for mobile Internet services.

Diageo is in talks to buy 10-13 percent of India's United Spirits for $500-$600 million (240-288 million pounds), the Economic Times reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

France's Carrefour, the world's second-biggest retailer, plans to set up a wholesale business in India on it own after failing to get local partners, the Economic Times said on Monday, quoting unidentified sources.

Consumers would vote with their feet and switch current accounts if their bank started to charge for its services, research shows.

The former head of UK bank Abbey and veteran troubleshooter Luqman Arnold is preparing a move for Northern Rock which could avoid a sale or breakup, sending shares in the battered lender up as much as 11 percent.

E*Trade Financial Corp told customers on Monday it can absorb a writedown of as much as $1 billion and it is well capitalized, after a Citigroup analyst said credit woes put the online brokerage is at risk of bankruptcy.