Sales of new homes jumped in April, while prices climb to record high, a signal that spring selling season is underway amid signs of a more robust housing market.

Actor Morgan Freeman has dozed off during an interview with the Q13 FOX News This Morning in Los Angeles Wednesday. Freeman, however, quickly recovered from his sleepiness and attended to some questions.

Actors Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt are now proud parents to a baby girl. The couple’s representatives confirmed the baby news on Wednesday, saying the new parents are “thrilled to announce the arrival of their daughter, Gracie James Livingston.”

The number of Americans applying for new unemployment benefits dropped last week by more than expected, an indication that the labor market is slowly improving.

After officially announcing the purchase of blog content website Tumblr, Yahoo continued its shopping spree. The online giant also bought gaming arena PlayerScale.

JPMorgan Chase was fined by UK regulators on Thursday of 3.1mn pounds ($4.7mn) for its failure to fix issues in its wealth-management unit.

Japan is helping the Philippines beef up its coast guard capacity and the two countries will also strengthen strategic partnership.

India and Japan will be holding bilateral talks and high on the agenda is civil nuclear cooperation.

Edwin Oliva, a 29-year-old petty thief and drug addict, says he was a wreck as he sat in a chair in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office in winter’95. A year earlier, he’d told police a lie that helped implicate a possibly innocent man in a murder. Now, prosecutors wanted him to repeat his story in court; he wanted to take it back.

Mounds of food aid intended for Swaziland’s food insecure were recently found rotting in the government’s main storage warehouses at the Matsapha Industrial Estate, about 25km east of the capital, Mbabane.