At a McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD) test kitchen in an unmarked Illinois warehouse, next year’s menu plan for the U.K. has hit a snag. When the visiting British team adds wrap sandwiches, service slows.

The unemployment rate in the U.S. jumped to 10.2 percent in October, the highest level since 1983, casting a pall over the prospects for a sustained recovery and risking further erosion of President Barack Obama's popularity.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hedge fund and private equity firm The Blackstone Group LP on Friday posted a narrower loss for the third quarter, as its private equity holdings gained value while its real estate investments stabilized.

LONDON (AP) -- David Beckham earned nearly 10 million pounds ($16.5 million) from personal sponsorship deals during his first full season with the Los Angeles Galaxy.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama signed a $24 billion economic stimulus bill into law Friday, giving tax incentives to prospective homebuyers and additional jobless benefits to those idled by the business slump.

HAVANA (AP) -- Cuba has cut two staple foods from the monthly ration books that most islanders depend on, edging closer to a risky full elimination of the decades-old subsidies.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The housing bust left homebuilders with plenty of red ink on their books as they walked away from swaths of land they no longer needed.

LEBANON, Tenn. (AP) -- Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. said Friday that lenders have agreed to give the company more time to pay back a revolving credit facility and certain term loans, giving the restaurant chain operator greater flexibility for inventory management and cash flow.

NEW YORK (AP) -- STR Holdings Inc. climbed Friday after the solar products company launched its initial public offering, but shares priced below expectations on the New York Stock Exchange.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democrats acknowledged they don't yet have the votes to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system, and signaled they may push back the vote until Sunday or early next week.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama still expects to have a health care overhaul bill to sign by year's end and plans to personally lobby for it in a visit to Capitol Hill on Saturday, the White House said.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it has warned several companies to stop selling banned flavored cigarettes to U.S. consumers online.

NEW YORK (AP) -- This holiday season's biggest entertainment blockbuster likely will be a sequel to a popular franchise, with jarring depictions of war and an intricate story of good versus evil. It could easily rake in more than last year's record $155 million opening weekend for "The Dark Knight."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A former top NASA official was sentenced Friday to three years probation, six months of electronic monitoring and a $2,500 fine for steering contract money to a private client.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Alternative asset manager Fortress Investment Group LLC said Friday its third-quarter loss deepened as it cut expenses and recorded a big gain on affiliate investments.

TORONTO (AP) -- Canada's unemployment rate rose to 8.6 percent in October from 8.4 percent a month earlier as the economy shed a net total of 43,200 jobs, the government said Friday.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers charged with lying to investors always were honest about the risks of investing in securities linked to the volatile subprime mortgage market, a defense lawyer told a jury on Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- EBay Inc. says a group of investors who are buying the majority of its telecommunications service, Skype, agreed to settle a legal skirmish with Skype's founders.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- A Florida yacht broker who admitted filing a false U.S. tax return and concealing millions of dollars in a secret account at Swiss bank UBS AG was sentenced Friday to two months in prison.

NEW YORK (AP) -- AIG said Friday it was profitable for the second straight quarter as its core insurance operations continue to stabilize after the company's bailout by the government last year.

FRANKFURT (AP) -- German reinsurance company Hannover Re AG reported net income of euro159 million ($235 million) in the third quarter from a loss a year ago, as a result of an increase in premiums and a one-off profit related to a recent acquisition.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- State agriculture experts say soggy weather that drenched Arkansas during much of the harvest season will cut farm receipts statewide by nearly $225 million.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The unemployment rate has hit double digits for the first time since 1983 -- and is likely to go higher.

LeBron James is employed by the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association. James, a wannabe billionaire, picked the wrong sport. And it's going to cost him. Plenty.

“It's kind of heavy, isn’t it?”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama said new figures released Friday showing national unemployment has hit the double-digit mark are a sobering reminder of the challenges still facing the U.S. economy.

There's something about President Barack Obama that makes people want to rush to judgment. The premature award of the Nobel Peace Prize was just one example. A more negative assessment ran last week on the Huffington Post Web site: “The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing.”

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) -- The world's top financial officials on Friday sought a blueprint for securing future global growth and worked to break a deadlock over who bears the cost of fighting climate change.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices tumbled Friday after the government said the U.S. unemployment rate topped 10 percent for the first time since 1983.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Investors added to the week's strong gains in the stock market after finding some positives in a surprisingly weak jobs report.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) -- After two years of tough U.N. climate talks often pitting the world's rich against the poor, negotiators said Friday a new global agreement now rides on industrial nations pledging profound emissions cuts next month in Copenhagen.

CINCINNATI (AP) -- Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. said Friday its third-quarter profit climbed 37 percent, boosted by strong revenue at its Food Network and HGTV networks.

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Medical-device company NuVasive Inc. said Friday that it named Michael Lambert as its chief financial officer, succeeding Kevin O'Boyle.

DETROIT (AP) -- Carl-Peter Forster, the chief executive of General Motors Europe who runs its struggling Opel unit, will leave the company, GM said Friday.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- A Mississippi woman has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison for hiding more than $255,000 from a bankruptcy trustee.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- North Carolina's highest court says three cigarette companies can stop making payments to tobacco farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania through a decade-old settlement.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators have shut small banks in Georgia and Michigan, bringing the number of bank failures this year to 117 amid the struggling economy and a cascade of defaults on loans.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Its TV and print ads poke fun at the bait-and-switch tactics of other banks. Its interest rates on CDs have been the most generous in the industry.

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) -- Texas billionaire and two-time presidential candidate Ross Perot has pledged $6.1 million to a private foundation to pay for programs at the Army's Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

CHICAGO (AP) -- The clock is ticking on a Monday deadline for Kraft Foods Inc. to make a formal offer for British candy maker Cadbury PLC.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Victims and the families of those killed in the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007 agreed Friday to settle their lawsuits against a construction company that was resurfacing the span at the time.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Businesses cut inventories at the wholesale level for a record 13th consecutive month in September, but sales rose for a sixth straight time.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks gained, overcoming the first unemployment rate exceeding 10 percent since 1983, as analyst upgrades of General Electric Co. and Macyís Inc. helped spur optimism that the economy is recovering. Gold reached a record above $1,100 an ounce.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Walt Disney Co.ís newest castle may rise from the Shanghai fields where retired farmer Jin Xinmei and her husband grow Chinese cabbage, potatoes and strawberries to supplement their $103 monthly pension.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The unemployment rate in the U.S. soared to a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October and employers cut more jobs than forecast, underscoring why Federal Reserve policy makers say interest rates will remain near zero.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The founders of Skype agreed to join the investor group buying the Internet-calling service from EBay Inc. and to drop litigation that had threatened to shut down the company.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Brian Moynihan, a contender to succeed Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis, agreed to testify before Congress about his role in the Merrill Lynch & Co. takeover, people familiar with the matter said.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Starbucks Corp. Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz is shifting the coffee sellerís focus from cost cutting to growth by promoting new products, including Via instant coffee and its Seattle’s Best Coffee brand.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc.ís managers may deliver more cost cuts to Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett after the billionaire replaced Richard Santulli as the head of a money-losing plane-leasing unit.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co. plans to replace Carl-Peter Forster as head of European operations with another German executive after deciding to keep the Adam Opel GmbH division, a person familiar with the situation said.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. must limit the amount of time they keep Internet- search records after failing to justify keeping the information beyond six months, European Union officials probing possible breaches of EU privacy laws said.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Wall Street firms that sold mortgage- backed securities to a $30 billion pool run by the state of Florida for local governments are under investigation for fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- STR Holdings Inc., the solar company that Credit Suisse Group AGís private-equity unit DLJ Merchant Banking Partners took public, gained on the first day of trading after its underwriters cut the share price of its initial public offering twice to attract investors.

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Google Flu Trends, the influenza- monitoring service of Google Inc.ís philanthropic arm, tracked swine flu almost as well as the surveillance systems maintained by health-care workers, scientists in New Zealand found.