The markets were hit by a remarkable rise in the price of crude oil and a spike in the unemployment rate.

Carl Icahn said that Yahoo should offer to sell itself to Microsoft for nearly $49.5 billion and laid out his plan for the company, were he to succeed in taking control of it. Interestingly, Yahoo didn’t say the price was too low.

Starbucks new rewards program demonstrates just how hard it is, in any industry, to build a program that inspires allegiance to a particular brand.

Bleak unemployment data and the unprecedented spike in crude oil prices spurred new concerns about the economy.

Oil futures surged more than $10 a barrel, or almost 8 percent, to $138, fueling suspicions that commodities might be caught in a speculative bubble.

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a formal investigation of Intel for anticompetitive conduct, government officials and lawyers said.

Oil prices marked their biggest gain in more than three months, sending the stock market into a nose-dive and reversing Thursday’s gains.

After three tumultuous years, filled with public relations dustups and sluggish business performance, the nation’s largest retailer publicly relished a turnaround on both fronts.

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation of Intel for anticompetitive conduct, government officials and lawyers said Friday.

The jobless rate surged to 5.5 percent last month, the government said on Friday, the biggest increase in more than two decades.