PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP) reported fiscal third-quarter results before markets opened this morning. The food and beverage company posted adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.21 on revenues of $16.65 billion. In the same period a year ago, the company reported EPS of $1.25 on revenues of $17.58 billion. Third-quarter results compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $1.16 and $16.9 billion in revenues.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly report on mortgage applications this morning, noting a drop of 4.2% in the group’s seasonally adjusted composite index compared with last week’s decrease of 1.2%. Unadjusted, the composite index fell by 14%.

Applications for refinancing fell 5% (seasonally adjusted), while seasonally adjusted purchase applications increased by 1% from the previous week. Unadjusted, the purchase index fell 9% compared with the previous week and rose 12% compared with the same week a year ago.

The all-clear has now been given and staffers have begun to return to the building, CNN affiliate TV4 said.

The U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, was evacuated Wednesday after the discovery of a suspicious envelope with white powder inside, Stockholm police said.

Police are moving the envelope to a secure location for examination, Stockholm police spokesman Albin Navery said.

CNN's Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this report.

U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) reported third-quarter 2012 results before markets opened this morning. The Minneapolis-based bank posted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.74 on revenues of $5.18 billion. In the same period a year ago, the company reported EPS of $0.64 on revenues of $4.74 billion. Third-quarter results also compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $0.74 and $5.14 billion in revenues.

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) has reported earnings of $0.00 per share, or $340 million in net income, after items on revenue of $20.43 billion. Thomson Reuters estimates were -$0.07 per share and $21.89 billion in revenue. We would note that there were some previously announced items that took away $0.28 in EPS and also total revenue on a debit valuation adjustment and fair value option basis was listed as $22.529 billion.

Datasift, the UK company that has access to the Twitter firehose analyzes a petabyte of tweets and ships terabytes of insights around the world. And the infrastructure needs to keep up. The company has replaced its older networking gear with Arista switches to support its analytics operation, Datasift CEO and founder Nick Halstead said in a conversation with Derrick Harris at our…

These are some of the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations we have seen from Wall St. research calls this Wednesday.

ADT Corp. (NYSE: ADT) started as Outperform with $45 target at Credit Suisse.

ADTRAN Inc. (NASDAQ: ADTN) raised to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.

Apollo Group Inc. (NASDAQ: APOL) cut to Neutral at BofA/ML.

Editor's note: Controversial American cyclist Lance Armstrong is stepping down as chairman from his Livestrong cancer charity. The announcement comes a week after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said it had uncovered overwhelming evidence of Armstrong's involvement in a sophisticated doping program. For more information read our full story here.

Lance Armstrong is about to lose another sponsorship.

The controversial cyclist will lose his contract with Anheuser-Busch, the brewer of Budweiser, at the end of the year.

Sometimes the grim reality of life in the First World is just so hard that you have to tweet about it.

“I hate when my house is so big that I need two wireless routers,” one brave Twitter user lamented.

The hashtag #FirstWorldProblems is one of the social media service's most popular memes; up to five tweets per second are sent describing (it must be said, ironically) the trials and tribulations of life in the developed world.

Two American scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work revealing protein receptors on the surface of cells that tell them what is going on in the human body. The achievements have allowed drug makers to develop medication with fewer side effects.

Over four decades of research by Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka on "G-protein-coupled receptors," have increased understanding of how cells sense chemicals in the bloodstream, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize.

The BAE merger with EADS faces more trouble from nations and shareholders. (Reuters)

The International Monetary Fund points to the eurozone crisis as the most likely cause of a worldwide slowdown. (Reuters)

The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee will continue to probe Huawei and ZTE over suspicious activity. (Reuters)

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) says his company will become more like Apple Inc.

Like nearly every other organization, economist and investor, the International Monetary Fund voiced concern about Europe in its new analysis. According to its Global Financial Stability Report:

Risks to global financial stability have increased and financial markets have been volatile as European policymakers grapple with the ongoing crisis.

The organization did not offer much in the way of helpful solutions, but it did frame the problem better than it has been done in the past.

Based on its latest earnings, Yum! Brands Inc. (NYSE: YUM) did well in the United States and China, its big growth markets. Or, China is a problem because growth has slowed there. The Yum! Brands results provide another example of why Wall St. has such difficulty dissecting how much China, the U.S. or Europe will or will not hurt corporate earnings.

Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) recalled 7.43 million vehicles worldwide today for what its said were power window switches that could cause fires. Toyota said that there had been none of these fires as far as it knows. Recalls in 2008 that included 5 million cars with floor mat problems and 2.2 million for accelerator problems probably were much worse.

Ballmer and Microsoft's Future

Much of the recent discussion about Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has centered around the cut in CEO Steve Ballmer's bonus, which to some extent was due to ongoing losses in the company's online operations. A bit less prominent in the news are Ballmer's comments in the annual report of the world's largest software company:

The office of New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli released its annual report on the state of Wall St. The focus of the report, at least according to the press, was this information:

The average salary (including bonuses) paid to securities industry employees in New York City fell sharply in 2009, but rose by 16 percent in 2010 and by another 0.5 percent in 2011 to reach $362,950.

Other than a cameo made by a certain Sesame Street character, the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama was refreshingly light on late-night comedy laugh lines and heavy on wonkish tax policy stances. But beware: the day after the next debate we might just be talking about pizza topping preferences.

That, at least, appears to be the hope of the marketing folks at Pizza Hut.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly report on mortgage applications this morning, noting a drop of 1.2% in the group’s seasonally adjusted composite index compared with last week’s increase of 16.6%. Applications for refinancing fell 2% (seasonally adjusted), while seasonally adjusted purchase applications increased by 2% from the previous week. Unadjusted, the purchase index rose 3% compared with the previous week and rose 12% compared with the same week a year ago.

I lived near London, England for nearly two years. I now live roughly as near London, Ontario (yes, such a place exists) from my haunts in southeast Michigan. Apple Maps, Cupertino's new substitute for Google Maps -- which no longer exists on the iPhone as of iOS 6 -- thinks the former is in fact the latter. Really, see for yourself…

Next week we’re off to San Jose to cover all the action from BlackBerry® Jam Americas, our headline show of the year for developers. The show starts on Tuesday September 25, so be sure to make the Inside BlackBerry Blog your home for news from the ground. Also, don’t forget to check in with our friends over at the…

Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, paid $1.94-million in federal taxes on last year's income of $13.7-million, for an effective tax rate of 14.1%, his campaign said Friday.

That's slightly above the 13.9% rate the couple paid in 2010. Most of the 2011 income was from investments.

Campaign officials said the couple filed the return Friday with the Internal Revenue Service, after receiving an extension.

Conventional wisdom has held for a while that Apple's iOS(s AAPL) platform was by far the best way to monetize apps. Sure, Android's(s GOOG) platform was big but the users who tended to pay for apps were most likely using an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. That's changing thanks to the greater diversity of app monetization strategies -- in-app purchases, driving traffic through social channels, and advertising -- a panel of app experts said during a session at…

Making mini solar panels, which can power devices like cell phones, in your own backyard -- that's the aim of Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein's new project called the Solar Pocket Factory, which recently successfully raised $77,500 on Kickstarter. The duo's idea is to make a modular machine that people can use to make microsolar panels -- the kind used for cell phone chargers -- because a big chunk of the cost of making microsolar panels is in the factory assembly of them.

From e-commerce to e-mail to politics and paperwork, startups of all kinds were on display Friday at the Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator’s Demo Day in New York. The accelerator program, which just launched last year, debuted its third class of startups, bringing its total portfolio to 30 companies.

The 10 startups ran the gamut from marketplaces for custom goods…

Square made headlines this year after its landmark deal with Starbucks (s sbux), which will put the mobile payment darling's product in stores across America. But Square’s chief operating officer Keith Rabois said Friday that the company isn't running out to hire new salespeople.

"We’re in the software business, so we produce technology that substitutes for human beings," Rabois said at…

Reporter's Note: President Obama appears to be doing very well with Hispanic voters. Which is not to say that they are all happy with him…as I note in today’s letter to the White House.

Dear Mr. President,

So I saw some of the comments you made to that gathering of Latino voters and one of them really caught my eye. I can’t quote it, but it went something along the lines of…you’ll admit that you didn’t succeed at comprehensive immigration reform, but it wasn’t for want of trying.

Educational apps and interactive textbooks may look flashy, but we still have a long way to go before we can truly leverage tech in the classroom: That was one of the key takeaways from a mobile education panel at GigaOM's Mobilize conference, where Rafter CEO Mehdi Maghsoodnia complained that most educational applications still feel like mobile apps before the iPhone, adding: “The innovation curve hasn’t hit educational content yet.”

Just like a drunk boyfriend, the web is unreliable and not always available to apps. That means that mobile app developers need to think differently about building for the mobile experience as compared to the desktop experience. And figuring out how to do that is hard for all the people out there who may want to build a mobile app without knowing how to set up Facebook authentication or manage a collection of virtual machines on Amazon Web Services.

Arturo Rodriguez believes the undocumented workers employed by America's farmers are a critical part of the agriculture industry. This profile is part of AC360's series "What Keeps You Up at Night," which focuses on election issues.

Ann Romney has a message for Republicans criticizing her husband and those attacking the candidate over his "47 percent" comments at a private fund-raiser. CNN's Randi Kaye reports.

Two former Navy SEALs who were among four Americans killed last week in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, died after rushing to the aid of their colleagues, according to sources familiar with the incident.

Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were in Benghazi as part of a security contractor force.

On September 11, they were ensconced in the safety of an annex location in another part of the city when they got word that the main consulate building was under fire and the diplomats there -- with an armed force of only nine people -- were overwhelmed by the deteriorating situation.

Arturo Rodriguez believes the undocumented workers employed by America's farmers are a critical part of the agriculture industry. This profile is part of AC360's series "What Keeps You Up at Night," which focuses on election issues.

Peter Navarro argues Chinese manufacturing is damaging the U.S. economy and will become a threat to security. This profile is part of AC360's series "What Keeps You Up at Night," which focuses on election issues.