Employers are balking at a key policy initiative from French President Nicolas Sarkozy that allows businesses to lengthen the country's workweek.

Stocks plummeted on Thursday, with the Nasdaq slumping more than 3 percent, as investors grew anxious over more signs of weakness in the U.S. labor market and sluggish growth overseas.

Two senior Federal Reserve officials differed sharply Thursday on whether the economic slowdown and the recent drop in the price of oil and other commodities would cool inflation in the months ahead and allow ...

New York gold futures dropped Thursday along with crude-oil and a near 350-point plunge in the stock market. Platinum climbed 0.7 percent, the dollar showed strength, and silver fell ever so slightly.

December silver dropped just a penny to end at $12.94 an ounce. October platinum climbed $10 to $1,402.20 an ounce. December gold fell $5 to close to $803.20 an ounce. It surged earlier in the day to a high of $819.50.

A Vermont town has struck down a law against fortune-telling, determining it violated the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

WASHINGTON : Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac sold $4 billion in debt this week at prices that show investors' fears about the company are still elevated, but lower than last month.

Toyota Canada outpaced other major carmakers last month, as sales rose 29.3 per cent compared with August 2007.

New York precious metals fell for the third consecutive trading session, as crude-oil retreated slightly and the U.S. dollar gained against the euro and British pound. Silver felt the worst of it with a fall of 1.5 percent. It was followed by platinum and gold at 0.8 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.

The Coca-Cola Co., the world's biggest beverage company, moved to expand its operations in the fast-growing Chinese market Wednesday with a $2.5 billion bid for major juicemaker China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd.

Under the deal, Coca-Cola's wholly-owned subsidiary Atlantic Industries would purchase the Chinese company's shares for 12.20 Hong Kong dollars ($1.56) each, almost triple their last closing price, the companies said in a joint statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. That would value the Beijing-based juice producer at around HK$17.9 billion ($2.3 billion).

Oil prices dipped to near $108 a barrel Wednesday as the dollar continued to strengthen and attention shifted to concerns over slowing global demand for crude after Hurricane Gustav left oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico region largely undamaged.

By midday in Europe, light, sweet crude for October delivery was down $1.46 to $108.25 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

On Tuesday, the contract settled at $109.71 a barrel, down $5.75 from the close of trading Friday, before the Labor Day weekend. U.S. floor trading was closed Monday. At one point Tuesday, it fell as low as $105.46, its lowest level since April.

President Bush to address delegates any moment; Sen. Joe Lieberman to address convention later tonight; Analysis by Heidi Przybyla of Bloomberg News

Rupert Murdoch yearns to buy the New York Times and toyed with acquiring a sizable minority stake in Bloomberg News, Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff reports in an October 2008 article.

Google Inc's new browser software is designed to work "invisibly" and will run any application that runs on Apple Inc's Safari Web browser, company officials said on Tuesday.

New York silver, gold and platinum all dropped sharply Tuesday, helped by falling crude-oil prices and a rally in the U.S. dollar. The latter was spurred along by furthering concerns over the economic picture in Europe and Asia.

The British government unveiled a package of tax cuts and spending Tuesday to try to reinvigorate a housing market suffering its worst crash since the early 1990s.

Treasury head Alistair Darling eliminated the tax that buyers are required to pay on home purchases of less than 175,000 pounds ($312,565) to encourage first-time buyers to jump on the property ladder.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown also unveiled plans to spend 1 billion pounds ($1.8 billion) to help buyers hit by a cut in bank mortgage lending in the face of the global credit crunch.