Briefs: GM, Asian rivals report good sales

DETROIT -- General Motors and its Asian rivals posted U.S. sales increases in October, according to results released Thursday. Chrysler saw sales drop 9 percent compared to last October, and Ford's sales fell 9.3 percent. Toyota's sales rose 4.5 percent, and GM's sales were up 3 percent. Nissan increased 13 percent and Honda increased 4 percent.

United offers new London route

CHICAGO -- United Airlines said Thursday it will launch nonstop passenger and cargo service between Denver and London Heathrow on March 30.

Fifth Third to open grocery branches

CHICAGO -- Cincinnati, Ohio-based Fifth Third Bank Chicago said Thursday it intends to open branches in eight Ultra Foods and two Strack & Van Til stores in the Chicago area and northern Indiana in the coming months. This includes Ultra stores in Downers Grove, Lombard and Hanover Park.

Motorola launches new Moto Q

SCHAUMBURG -- AT&T and Motorola said Thursday they are releasing the Moto Q Global, a wireless personal digital assistant capable of phone and e-mail service among other things. It will be available exclusively to AT&T customers nationwide starting today.

Argonne gets new computers

DARIEN-AREA -- IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory announced Thursday the completion of a contract for a 445-teraflops Blue Gene/P system for the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. The Blue Gene/P can carry out 445 million, million calculations per second (445 followed by 12 zeroes). If all six billion people on Earth were participating in a science computation, they each would need to do 70,000 additions or multiplications per second to keep up with it, according to Argonne.