IBT Staff Reporter

Amazon.com on Thursday unveiled a widely anticipated Internet service offering movies and TV shows that can be downloaded to personal computers

Cool weather, the return to school and strong demand for flat screen TVs and laptops helped to drive a 21.7 percent rise in weekly sales at John Lewis department stores

The Office of Fair Trading will look at bank charges for customers who overdraw their accounts after winding up a months long probe into penalties for the late payment of credit card bills.

Coffee farmers at Guatemala's small Chanmagua cooperative opened their land and growing methods to stiff scrutiny last year, in the hope an environment friendly seal would bring them higher prices.

Pubs operator JD Wetherspoon reported a 24 percent boost in profit on Friday for a year during which it has experimented with restricting smoking ahead of a national ban.

Philadelphia on Thursday opened a public high school where students work on wireless laptops, teachers eschew traditional subjects for real-world topics and parents can track their child's work on the Internet.

The United States has arrested a second Internet gaming executive, adding to fears it is cracking down on the lucrative industry and sparking share price falls on Thursday that wiped over $1.5 billion off the market value of the sector.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday he would quit within a year but refused to give an exact date to placate Labour Party mutineers who want a speedy change of leader to revive their fortunes.

Investments in offgrid energy generation projects are the quickest way to get electricity to the 1.6 billion people in the world without lights, a World Bank official said on Wednesday.

The pound has fallen on uncertainty about Tony Blair's remaining tenure as British prime minister but any longer-term impact on UK assets should be short-lived if finance minister Gordon Brown replaces him.

Google Inc., the world's biggest Web search engine, said on Thursday it was seeking partners to contribute contents for a video service in Japan.

Sony Corp. (6758.T) shares fell as much as 2.6 percent on Thursday, hit by another delay in the launch of its PlayStation 3 game console, but outperformed sector peers and the broader market by the end of the day as investors weigh the likely impact of the delay.

Online gaming group PartyGaming is not bidding for sports betting rival Victor Chandler and is unlikely to get into a bidding war for World Gaming plc, Chief Executive Mitch Garber said on Thursday.

Carphone Warehouse has been fined 245,000 pounds over failings in its sales of mobile insurance over the telephone.

Britain's FTSE 100 fell on Thursday with Partygaming leading the losers after Sportingbet's chairman was detained by U.S. authorities

Overseas property investors should be wary of Bulgaria as market growth collapses and rental competition hots up

The competition watchdog proposed on Thursday to ease price controls on directories firm Yell Group Plc from April 2008, saying it faced increased competition from a new rival and the Internet.

IBM will build a next-generation supercomputer for the U.S. Energy Department with the potential to achieve a sustained speed of 1,000 trillion calculations per second

A third of financial advisers are breaking City watchdog rules designed to protect consumers, a survey by consumer organisation Which? showed on Thursday.

Research In Motion Ltd, the maker of Blackberry e mail devices popular among executives, said on Thursday it is pushing into a wider consumer market with the Pearl

The FTSE 100 fell on Thursday, led by a sharp decline in the construction sector and amid lingering fears that the Bank of England may put up interest rates at noon.

Online gaming group PartyGaming reported a 47 percent increase in its first half core profit on Thursday and said it was confident for the full year.

Low cost airline easyJet reiterated that it still expected to see full year pretax profit growth of 40 to 50 percent while reporting an 8.4 percent rise in August passenger traffic on Thursday.

The investing world today may be a global marketplace, but not every country is playing by the same set of rules when it comes to shareholder activism.

Diamonds produced in a laboratory - cheaper and in a myriad of colours - should not be seen as a threat by industry giant De Beers since they will largely fill a separate niche, a group promoting the gems said.

The government is aggressively investigating the suspicious timing of stock options granted to top executives at scores of companies, federal officials said Wednesday.

PizzaExpress restaurant owner Gondola Holdings has been approached with a possible offer worth 559 million pounds

Japan's Nissan unveiled the Qashqai small four by four car for Europe on Wednesday, aiming to ride a wave of demand for off road vehicles despite high fuel costs.

Sony Corp. said on Wednesday it would delay the European launch of its PlayStation 3 (PS3) game machine