IBT Staff Reporter

Yahoo Inc is testing an experimental social network service called Mash that makes it easy for Yahoo users to share tidbits of their lives with friends and family online, the company said on Sunday.

Tokyo must keep a thaw in ties with China on track, the frontrunner to be Japan's next prime minister said on Sunday, while urging Beijing to better explain its ballooning military spending.

The toll from a severe earthquake on Indonesia's Sumatra island last week has risen to 23 dead and 88 injured, an official said on Sunday, and the area is likely to experience further significant aftershocks.

One-Two-Go, the budget airline whose jet crashed on the Thai resort isle of Phuket on Sunday, killing 88 people, was one of the first low-cost operators to spring up in the southeast Asian tourist haven.

Standing next to piles of exquisitely hand-woven Persian carpets, Hossein Ghaseminia is confident his rugs, which cost up to $50,000, can see off cheaper Asian rivals and ride out threatened U.S. sanctions.

Nestle, the world's largest food company, is most likely to name Chief Financial Officer Paul Polman as its new chief executive, replacing Peter Brabeck, Swiss Sunday newspapers reported.

Business Objects, a French-American business intelligence software maker, is looking for a buyer and has appointed Goldman Sachs to find an investor, Le Figaro newspaper said.

Shares of Nokia are likely to extend gains as the world's leading cell phone maker expands its share of the growing global market, financial newspaper Barron's reported in its September 17 edition.

Even though credit market turmoil appears to be abating, the elevated level of the U.S. federal funds rate shows that the short-term lending market is not yet out of the woods.

Leap Wireless International Inc. said on Sunday its board of directors had unanimously rejected an unsolicited bid worth more than $5 billion from larger rival MetroPCS Communications Inc.

Altria's planned split into separate U.S. and international tobacco companies will lift the company's stock even though investors' reaction has been only lukewarm, financial newspaper Barron's said in its September 17 edition.

A Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium will most likely buy ABN AMRO as Barclays' rival offer for the Dutch bank has little chance of matching the consortium's bid financially, ABN's chief executive told Dutch TV on Sunday.

Contract talks between General Motors Corp and the United Auto Workers union resumed on Sunday, a day before tens of thousands of GM factory workers were due to return to work at the No. 1 U.S. automaker in the absence of a new contract.

A long period of stasis in Federal Reserve monetary policy looks certain to end on Tuesday with a U.S. interest-rate cut, leaving the question of how much further rates may drop and how fast.

The U.S. Senate panel responsible for housing finance will vote on Wednesday on a measure that could help troubled homeowners refinance into a new loan, the panel's chief said on Friday.

Asian stocks took a breather on Monday after four straight weeks of gains, with expectations of a U.S. interest rate cut this week helping to offset renewed worries about a global credit squeeze.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday rejected former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's statement that the Iraq war "is largely about oil."

Negotiators from General Motors Corp and the United Auto Workers were making significant progress on Saturday on a new labor contract, but major issues remained unresolved, a person close to the talks said.

The teddy in a duffle coat who loves marmalade sandwiches and has impeccable manners is coming to the big screen.

Japan's Sony Corp is in talks to sell its production facilities for advanced microchips used in its PlayStation 3 game console to Toshiba Corp, sources close to the matter said.

A nonprofit group that plans to produce low-cost computers for poor children has raised the laptops' price, a spokesman for the foundation said on Friday.

Intel Corp said on Friday it would buy Havok Inc, a provider of software and services to the games and movie industries, as the world's top chipmaker seeks to beef up its visual computing and graphics efforts.

Portable navigation devices are poised to take off this holiday shopping season as market leaders Garmin and TomTom race each other to make deeper inroads into the mass market by pushing out cheaper models.

Wall Street reports earnings next week but outsiders don't really have a clue what they'll be.

Japanese electronics firm Toshiba Corp. said it had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Department of Justice about its flash memory business in the key U.S. market.

HSBC's private banking business has been little hit by the ongoing credit crisis, the head of the bank's private banking business, Chris Meares, told a Swiss newspaper.

European Union finance ministers and central bankers agreed on Saturday to step up co-operation among themselves to improve their handling of cross-border financial crises.

Three years after mutual funds first started disclosing how they vote on proposals at company meetings, investors are still struggling to get a clear picture on where their funds stand on key corporate issues.

At a time when a CEO of a large U.S. company is likely to earn in one day what the average worker does in a year, an investment adviser takes the income-disparity controversy a few steps further in Are the Rich Necessary?