News In Brief

Personal income in the US rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent in February, following a 0.6 percent gain in January, the Commerce Department said. Meanwhile, consumer spending jumped 0.7 percent in February, sending the nation's savings rate into negative territory again. That rate - savings as a percent of after-tax income - was minus 0.2 percent in February, the fifth month in the past six to be at or below zero.

Yahoo! Inc's expected purchase of Broadcast.com was confirmed by the companies - and at a higher price than first reported. The stock deal, estimated at $4.1 billion last week, will be worth $5.7 billion. Broadcast.com is perhaps best known for its Web broadcasts of John Glenn's second launch into space and the Victoria's Secret fashion show.

Shares in the second-largest US online brokerage will be offered for sale later this spring, its parent company announced. Toronto-Dominion Bank, which bought Waterhouse Investor Services for $525 million in 1996, said it will sell 10 percent of its investment to the public - a move that analysts predicted would raise the brokerage's overall worth to at least $7 billion. That would put Waterhouse on an equal footing with its publicly traded rival, E+Trade. Waterhouse has 1.6 million active accounts with an asset value of about $75 billion, double that of a year ago.