IBT Staff Reporter

The seventh and final Harry Potter book flew off the shelves on Saturday as fans the world over poured into stores or waited for the first post to discover the fate of the boy wizard.

Barclays would make a better merger candidate with ABN AMRO than a bid by a group led by Royal Bank of Scotland aimed at breaking up the Dutch bank, a Dutch newspaper quoted ABN's chief executive as saying on Saturday.

Google Inc said on Friday it would take part in a major auction of wireless spectrum airwaves, meeting a minimum required bid of $4.6 billion, if U.S. regulators added a sale condition that Google said would promote an open wireless market.

U.S. lenders facing losses are abandoning the popular but risky loans in favor of safer opportunities.

Big Pharma finds it's tough to get products past clinical trials, regulators and in wide use.

Facing complaints about soaring costs, U.S. health insurers want health reform but not less profits.

Executives at Caterpillar Inc., the U.S. heavy equipment maker whose disappointing earnings dragged Wall Street into the red on Friday, said internal company factors -- as much as broader economic headwinds -- were to blame for the company's bad quarter.

The Redstones, the family that controls Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp., have taken their private squabble public in a battle that throws into question succession plans for the global media company.

Vodafone Group Plc said on Thursday it was concerned that the current model of iPhone mobile phones -- Apple Inc's latest killer gadget -- did not operate on fast 3G networks.

Home sales and a report on economic growth may help investors decide if they want to keep riding a bull market in stocks, while a torrent of quarterly earnings reports will no doubt cause some anxious moments. A sharp drop in shares of equipment-maker Caterpillar Inc. on Friday showed just how badly a stock can be hurt when there is an earnings shortfall.

U.S. stocks tumbled on Friday, battered by disappointing results from such bellwethers as Caterpillar and Google, and more signals that fallout from the risky subprime mortgage market may spread.

A U.S. appeals court on Friday said Qualcomm Inc. was premature in appealing an order by a federal trade agency that banned imports of some cellular telephones containing Qualcomm chips.

The dollar fell to a record low against the euro on Friday and was on track for its sixth straight weekly decline, weighed down by fears that losses in risky mortgage debt would hurt consumers and slow U.S. growth.

SanDisk Corp. (Nasdaq: SNDK) reported a lower quarterly profit late Thursday, but a higher gross margin projection sent the stock up nearly 4 percent in Friday trading.

Shares of Apple Inc. rose on Friday after Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster raised his price target on the company to $205 per share from $160.

The social networking site Facebook said late Thursday that it acquired Parakey, a startup formed by the co-founders of Mozilla Firefox.

After six months of microprocessor revenue market-share losses, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) managed to stabilize its share in this year’s second quarter, while Intel Corp. dipped slightly, according to preliminary results from researcher iSuppli.

In the Vermont town of Springfield nestled in a mountain valley, a banner decorated with images of pink doughnuts is festooned across Main Street, welcoming visitors to the 'Home of the Simpsons.'

China said on Friday that it strongly opposed decisions by the United States to initiate anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations on imports of some woven sacks and steel pipes from China.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia has won over skeptical business leaders and investors during his first year in office, but angry street protests show he has failed to meet the demands of the poor.

Natural and organic food retailer Whole Foods Market Inc. on Friday extended its tender offer for Wild Oats Markets Inc. for a fourth time as it waits for a hearing that will decide if it can go ahead with the deal.

Chrysler Group Chief Executive Tom LaSorda on Friday said that the closing of a $7.4-billion deal for the acquisition of a majority interest in the automaker from German parent DaimlerChrysler AG is 'very, very close.'

The seventh and final Harry Potter book goes on sale at midnight, a publishing milestone that will end months of fevered speculation among fans over the fate of the fictional boy wizard and his wand-wielding friends.

David Daoud ran into trouble when he started using Vista, the new version of Windows that Microsoft Corp. and PC makers have spent millions of dollars advertising since it came out six months ago.

Whirlpool Corp., the world's biggest appliance maker, posted a 77 percent jump in quarterly profit on Friday as improved international results and a lower tax rate helped offset U.S. weakness, but sales missed expectations and its shares fell more than 4 percent.

Shares in handset and appliance maker LG Electronics surged as much as 7.6 percent on Friday, after the South Korean firm reported strong profits while bigger rival Motorola posted another quarterly loss.

Le Parisien has revealed the fates of four of the main protagonists in the final book.

Oil steadied on Friday near $78 a barrel, supported by concern that rising demand will strain supplies already thinned by U.S. refinery glitches and output disruptions in Africa.

The U.S. Senate voted on Friday to cut federal subsidies to college student loan firms, such as Sallie Mae, by $18.3 billion, redirect savings to student grants and ease some student loan repayment terms.