Reuters - Automaker General Motors Co has finalized its $5 billion credit facility and plans to file for its initial public offering on Friday, according to sources familiar with the situation.

The men came in dark suits, striped ties, white shirts. The women wore suits too -- with floppy ties and high-collared blouses, or wide-legged pants and tunic tops. Even the children dressed up. Little girls in party clothes, boys in sherbet-colored Polo shirts and khaki pants. This was 1978, when flying was still an occasion, a special grand event that took planning and care. I worked as a TWA flight attendant then. I stood in my Ralph Lauren uniform at the boarding door and smiled at the passengers through lips coated with lipstick that perfectly matched the stripe on my jacket. Mostly, the passengers smiled back.

Customers' nervousness rubs off

Wall Street might be a little disappointed but Cisco Systems' unflappable and eternally optimistic chief executive made no apologies for 27 per cent revenue growth, to $10.8bn, and net earnings of $1.94bn, up 79 per cent in the latest quarter.…

I'm no fan of Hooters, the restaurant. I've always been of the mind that strip clubs -- which sell sex appeal straight-up -- are preferable to Hooter's brand of cowardly, snickering objectification of women. All that said, I must admit to being unsettled by a feminist campaign in Wales to block the Hooters empire from expanding into the city of Cardiff. Sally Hughes, head of the Cardiff Feminist Network, frames the resistance movement like so:

AP - A 16-year-old girl died Wednesday when raging floodwaters swept three cars off a road near Des Moines, and hundreds had to evacuate their homes as widespread flooding struck Iowa after three nights of rain.