Top Business News

AP - On shore, BP, Halliburton and Transocean are engaging in a billion-dollar blame game over the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. At sea, they're depending on each other to finally plug up the environmental disaster.

AP - Michigan voters frustrated over lost jobs, home foreclosures and budget deficits will vote in Tuesday's primary election for leaders they hope can move the state out of its economic morass.

AP - BP's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is fueling opposition to the University of California, Berkeley's research partnership with the British company, with activists on the famously liberal campus demanding a severing of ties.

AP - The helicopter passes over the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico — with surprisingly little oil visible on its surface — when out of the sea rises a skyscraper-like structure nearly 350 feet above the waves. The $600 million rig, nearly 100 miles off Louisiana's coast, has a hull larger than a football field and can drill more than 5 miles beneath the ocean floor.

AFP - A year-old program granting movie studios tax breaks for filming in California has saved jobs and should yield two billion dollars in direct spending, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said.

Reuters - BP Plc is seeking to sell its German petrol station chain Aral for around 2 billion euros ($2.6 billion), German magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported on Saturday, citing investment bankers familiar with BP's plans.

AP - ICICI Bank, India's largest private sector bank, said quarterly profit rose 17 percent as it cut costs and eliminated bad loans amid revived credit demand in India's growing economy.

AP - Officials investigating the cause of a huge oil spill along a major river in southern Michigan say it will take months to clean up the mess, and damage to wetlands and wildlife may last considerably longer.

AP - A more than 2-year-old backlog of federal oil and gas leases in Wyoming began breaking loose Friday as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced it finally will issue 145 leases sold in June 2008.

Reuters - The House of Representatives on Friday approved the toughest reforms ever to offshore energy drilling practices, as Democrats narrowly pushed through an election-year response to BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

AP - Drugmaker Merck & Co. on Friday reported a 52 percent drop in second-quarter net income, weighed down by big restructuring charges from buying Schering-Plough Corp., generic competition and other factors.

AP - BP's new boss says it's time for a "scaleback" in cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Federal officials say there is no way the crude could reach the East Coast. And fishing areas are starting to reopen.

AP - Drug developer Dynavax Technologies Corp. said Friday that higher operating expenses, weak revenue and costs linked to a stock offering drove it to a second-quarter loss, reversing a year-ago profit.

Reuters - U.S. stocks are unlikely to break above a key technical level next week unless monthly jobs data and consumer company results paint a more promising picture of the recovery.

The Christian Science Monitor - President Obama used a visit to Michigan Friday to argue the case that despite its unpopularity, his 2009 bailout of the Detroit auto industry has worked.

Reuters - U.S. economic growth slowed in the second quarter as companies invested heavily in equipment from abroad and the pace of consumer spending eased, raising concerns about the recovery in the rest of 2010.

AFP - President Barack Obama took to the wheel of a new electric car Friday on a Detroit-area tour of the revitalized auto industry, touting his economic policies but urging the need to do more.

Reuters - President Barack Obama said on Friday he welcomed news that the U.S. economy grew by 2.4 percent in the second quarter, but said more work was needed to increase that growth rate and generate jobs.

Reuters - U.S. stocks closed little changed on Friday, but Wall Street wrapped up its best month in a year after the earnings season rounded the final turn with a group of strong results that offset the impact of poor economic data.

AP - Weakening U.S. economic growth and worried comments from Federal Reserve officials drove the dollar to an 8-month low Friday against the Japanese yen.