IBT Staff Reporter

For some prospective home buyers in Southern California, the effect of the U.S. mortgage crisis has been to keep them on the sidelines of the home market, wary of stepping in for fear prices will fall further.

Greek firefighters gained the upper hand on Wednesday over widespread forest fires that have killed at least 63 people and left the government shaken by accusations of incompetence.

U.S.-based Pizza Patrón's move to take Mexican currency at its stores initially sparked a backlash in January. But business has been booming.

Gold changed course to trade higher on Wednesday, but investors remained cautious because of weaker equities and fears about the global economy.

Walk into any large office, and you will most likely hear the telltale computer bleeps of chat programs and online games, accompanied by furious mouse-clicking. Employees may seem busy, but many are wasting time on the Internet, or cyberslacking.

Japan's Sony Corp unveiled 15 new flat TVs and a new remote control for the domestic market on Wednesday, as a part of a world-wide effort to win back market share during the year-end shopping season.

Software included with high-end memory sticks sold by Sony Corp can make personal computers vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, according to researchers with two Internet security firms.

Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, unveiled on Wednesday a new online music store, new top-end handsets and a global gaming service as it takes on recent rival U.S. rival Apple.

Private equity firm Blackstone Group is in talks to buy a minority stake in Italy's No. 2 fixed-line phone operator Wind, two years after it lost out in a bid battle for the company, a person familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.

New evidence of damage wrought by the U.S. mortgage sector surfaced in the United States and Europe on Wednesday while banks demanded a record amount of cash at a euro zone money market auction.

U.S. mortgage applications fell for a second consecutive week, reflecting a drop in demand for home purchase and refinancing loans even as interest rates sank, an industry group said on Wednesday.

Oil edged higher on Wednesday as investors balanced concern over the health of the U.S. economy against the prospect of declining fuel stocks in the world's top consumer.

Prospects that U.S. equity markets would bounce back on Wednesday after two days of falls lifted European markets, suppressing fears about weakness in the U.S. economy and global financial system.

Japanese stocks hit their lowest close in a week after earlier falling by nearly 3 percent as a strong yen sparked sales of exporters such as Sony Corp after fears about the U.S. economy set off a Wall Street tumble.

Chrysler LLC has proposed shedding non-core assets in contract talks with the United Auto Workers, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition. The car maker has proposed shutting down or selling its Mopar unit, a maker of high-performance and specialty auto parts, and Chrysler Transport, which manages deliveries of supplies to Chrysler plants.

Taliban insurgents freed eight South Korean hostages in two separate batches on Wednesday, the first of 19 Christian volunteers the Taliban agreed to release.

A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc bond analyst pleaded guilty on Tuesday to helping lead a far-flung insider trading scheme involving tips about pending mergers and stolen copies of BusinessWeek magazine that netted more than $6.7 million in illicit gains.

U.S. consumer sentiment took its sharpest plunge in nearly two years during August while home prices swooned in the second quarter, according to reports that show a heavy toll from the housing crisis.

Mexico's economy, hobbled in recent months by a U.S. slowdown and less demand for exports, expanded 2.5 percent in June from the same month last year, modestly less than analysts had forecast in a Reuters poll.

Korean National Oil Company (KNOC) will buy 20 percent in Azerbaijan's undeveloped INAM oil project from Royal Dutch Shell, stepping up its push in the Caspian Sea, the Azeri energy minister said on Tuesday.

Seagate Technology, the world's largest maker of disk drives, has dashed speculation that a Chinese firm wanted to buy the firm, saying it had received no such offer and had no intention of selling.

The U.S. poverty rate fell for the first time this decade but more people are living without health insurance and the bulk of the nation's poor are children, government data released on Tuesday showed.

U.S. stock indexes tumbled more than 2 percent on Tuesday after Merrill Lynch warned that ailing credit markets will hurt bank profits, while reports showing eroding consumer confidence and falling home prices added to concerns about the economy.

Mobile phone maker Motorola Inc said on Tuesday that two of its subsidiaries had sued Aruba Networks Inc for infringement of patents involving short-range wireless network technologies.

CIT Group Inc, the consumer and commercial finance company, on Tuesday said it has closed its mortgage lending operations, the latest to abandon the sector amid difficult market conditions.

House prices suffered their worst decline since at least 1987 in the second quarter from a year earlier as the housing downturn has deepened, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index.

EarthLink Inc said on Tuesday it will cut about 900 jobs, or nearly half its staff, as part of a restructuring to reduce costs at the Internet service provider.

Wall Street should keep its eye on a little-known coterie of investment companies run by European banks called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, which are having a tough time raising short-term funding.

One week into the Federal Reserve's effort to grease the rusty wheels of the U.S. credit system, Wall Street is wondering just who needs the money because there's no line at the window.