Oil was on Friday headed for its biggest weekly drop in the last five, erasing gains related to the eight-day shutdown of Enbridge's largest Canada-U.S. pipeline, now scheduled to restart in a matter of hours. U.S. crude for October was unchanged at $74.57 a barrel by 0214 GMT. It touched $74.11 on Thursday, the lowest

Global stock markets were on their way to a third week of gains on Friday, with emerging markets favoured, while the threat of Japanese intervention kept the yen close to its lows for the month. Japanese stocks were poised for the largest weekly gains in two months following Tokyo's aggressive yen selling on Wednesday, which

Hong Kong shares firmed on Friday morning in good volume lifting the benchmark index to a five-month high with investors riding a rally in risk assets across Asia. The Hang Seng Index was up 1.08% at 21,925.67 by the midday trading break and was higher on the year for the first time since mid-April. The

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson announced the retirement of its longtime head of consumer products on Thursday, hours after a U.S. congressional panel disclosed new potentially damaging information about J&J's recent recalls of Tylenol and other consumer medicines. The diversified healthcare company said Colleen Goggins, 56, who has headed its McNeil consumer healthcare

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. health insurers took in 7 percent more revenue from premiums from individual, group and other policies in 2009 than in the previous year, even as the number of those people with coverage fell, according to a report released on Thursday. Individual premium revenues rose 15% while group premiums, which involve

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Boeing Co plans to offer passengers the chance to fly into space on a craft it is developing for travel in low-Earth orbit, the aerospace company said on Wednesday. Boeing said it reached an agreement with Virginia-based Space Adventures to market passenger seats on commercial flights aboard Boeing's CST-100 space vehicle being

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Candy maker Mars Inc., computer company IBM Corp. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have mapped the cacao genome in an effort to improve cocoa crop quality and sustain the world's supply of the key ingredient for chocolate. The companies and the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) on Wednesday released the

PRAGUE (Reuters) – Thousands of visitors have fond memories of the medieval Czech capital Prague, with one exception: getting ripped off by a taxi driver. But a Czech firm, Et netera, said on Tuesday it had developed a weapon to eradicate the long-lasting problem, a mobile phone application using the global positioning system that measures

Minister of Finance Charilaos Stavrakis said on Thursday that possible measures to cover the 150 million EUR deficit in the state budget for 2011 were the increase of company tax, the taxation of banks, a revision of immovable property fees for large estate owners, 5% VAT on foodstuff and pharmaceuticals, taxes on tobacco and alcohol,