Hong Kong's first property investment fund, which was nearly scuppered by a legal action from a pensioner, gains on first day of trading.

An Italian public service strike in protest at planned spending cuts is set to hit rail and air services on Friday.

Reuters - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has decided not to pursue criminal charges against former American International Group Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg in connection with the insurer's accounting scandal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

AP - Signaling a possible end to Japan's persistent deflation, the government said Thursday that the nation's core consumer price index was unchanged in October from the previous year.

Japanese consumer prices failed to fall for the first time in five months during October, new data shows.

Supermarket giant Tesco reveals group sales increased by 14% ion the past 14 weeks, driven by strong international sales.

Gordon Brown is accused of trying to scupper plans for pension reform because he thinks they are unaffordable.

UK soft drinks group Britvic sets a price of 210-250p a share for its flotation, valuing itself at some £800m.

European sugar businesses say a deal to slim down cuts in Europe's sugar subsidies is good news.

UK soft drinks group Britvic is to give each employee £750 of shares when it floats on the stock market in December.

Reuters - Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. won permission from the European Commission on Friday to buy U.S. rival Ivax Corp. for $7.4 billion to make Teva the world's top generic drugmaker.

Reuters - Nissan Motor Co. (7201.T) Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn sought to allay fears of a protracted fall in the auto maker's sales, characterizing last month's sudden, sharp slide as a short-lived reaction to the completion in September of a highly publicized sales drive.

AP - The Hong Kong government's $2.5 billion Link real estate investment trust — the territory's first and the world's largest REIT — soared in debut trade on the stock exchange Friday, gaining as much as 15.5 percent on strong institutional demand.

Japanese consumer prices failed to fall for the first time in five months during October, new data shows.

South Africa's economy should be able to sustain an annual growth rate of 6%, a top official says.

US media company CNN is selling its 50% stake in German 24-hour news channel N-TV to partner RTL.

An Italian public service strike over planned spending cuts halts transport and shuts offices.

Advertising giant WPP says it has dropped plans to bid for UK rival Aegis - ahead of a deadline set by regulators.

Gordon Brown's 'sabotage' of the Turner report on pensions has left the government in 'disarray', the Tories say.

Reuters - U.S. stock futures pointed to a flat to slightly higher opening on Friday amid expectations the big Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend will give a boost to retailers and help extend the market's rally.

USATODAY.com - Toy retailers sorely need a must-have item to emerge this year to yank them from the doldrums. Without one so far, they have resorted to big discounts to spur sales, and more cuts are likely to come in their own effort to stave off a third-consecutive year of flat sales.

Motor racing supremo Bernie Ecclestone is to sell his interest in Formula One racing to private equity firm CVC Capital.

South Africa's economy should be able to sustain an annual growth rate of 6%, a top official says.

Reuters - U.S. stocks rose on Friday amid hopes strong holiday sales will boost profits of retailers and help extend the market's rally.

Reuters - Taser International Inc. said on Friday that it had received a letter from Nasdaq indicating that its stock was subject to delisting because of the company's delay in filing a quarterly report.

Reuters - Oil major ConocoPhillips on Friday said it would buy a German refinery for cash in a move that would increase its European refining capacity by about 74 percent.

Reuters - The three main driving forces of economic growth are running smoothly in France, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Friday.

Reuters - U.S. blue-chip stocks were slightly higher on Friday as scenes of shoppers pouring into stores for holiday sales lifted investors' hopes about consumer spending and retail profits.

Reuters - General Motors Corp. , which is struggling to pull its North American automotive business out of the ditch, will sell more vehicles abroad this year than it does in the United States, according to Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner.

NBC did not interrupt its broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with the news that a balloon had crashed into a light pole, injuring two sisters.

World Trade Organization head Pascal Lamy tells the BBC that a global trade deal is unlikely to be brokered until late 2006.

New York authorities drop their criminal charges against the former boss of scandal-hit insurance giant AIG.

Reuters - U.S. stocks rose on Friday, capping a fifth straight week of gains for the Dow and S&P 500 stock gauges as the start of the holiday shopping season raised investors' optimism for robust corporate profits in the retail sector.

Reuters - The head of one of two municipal consortiums jointly seeking to acquire utility operator NorthWestern Corp. on Friday dismissed a richer competing offer from energy company Black Hills Corp. as less attractive for shareholders.

AP - Venezuela's economy will grow between 5 percent and 6 percent in 2006, compared with this year, the president of Venezuela's central bank said Friday.

Reuters - Hudson's Bay Co. urged its shareholders on Friday to reject U.S. financier Jerry Zucker's attempt to acquire the iconic Canadian retailer for C$1 billion.

Reuters - U.S. stocks rose on Friday, extending November's rally and giving the three major indexes their fifth straight week of gains, as the start of the holiday shopping period put visions of profits in investors' heads.

The post-Thanksgiving rush to US stores is underway, with more shoppers on the streets than last year, reports say.

Investor's Business Daily - There's nothing like a solid economy to keep the nation's trucking companies running in high gear.

The New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, is expected to expand a civil lawsuit against Maurice R. Greenberg as early as next week.

Thanks to wireless communications, merchants of all sizes and stripes are beginning to take credit and debit cards in odd places.

After beginning as a vehicle for anti-establishment, noncommercial writers, many Web logs have laid out welcome mats for corporate America in the last couple of years.

The Swiss drug maker said that Indonesia could make Tamiflu without its license because the medicine is not protected by a patent in the Southeast Asian nation.

Franz B. Humer, chief executive of Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, discussed the company's antiviral medicine, which is being stockpiled in case of a bird-flu pandemic.

A poor investment in the 1990's, gold did well when the stock market sagged a few years later.

The WPP Group, a London-based advertising company, said that it had decided not to bid for a rival, the Aegis Group.

Burton Smith, a longtime supercomputer designer and chief scientist at Cray, has resigned to take a position at Microsoft.

In a labor action unusual for Russia, a slowdown at the Ford Motor factory here has cut into production, as the union prepares to take a strike vote Saturday.

WE all know the feeling. It's dinnertime, or bedtime for the children, or the middle of a good television show and the phone rings. Is it your mom? Your work?.

Long considered the David to Microsoft's Goliath, Google is increasingly being thought of as a Goliath itself.

Unofficially, November seems to be 'I have an idea: Let's run some sort of business-related list' month among the nation's magazine editors.

SHARES of banks and other financial companies have enjoyed stellar returns this fall, but one investment adviser is unimpressed. Richard Bernstein, chief United States equity strategist at Merrill Lynch, warns that the sector may be heading for a bout of weakness.

Governments of the European Union agreed to a new import tariff for bananas, but the duty chosen is likely to anger Latin America.

A group of South Bronx residents will soon receive a large shipment of heating oil, courtesy of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

By Bloomberg News.

If you want to mix one part travel, one part technology and two parts gainful employment, you had better be a stickler for technical details.

By Bloomberg News.

The time has come for Eliot Spitzer to abandon his effort to force Richard Grasso to return much of the millions he walked off with when he was running the New York Stock Exchange.

Competitive early-bird shopping becomes a holiday norm.