Hadron collider cross sections for tt~ production and di-lepton,
single-lepton and all-jet decays with up to 2 additional jets are calculated
using complete LO matrix elements with 6-, 7- and 8-particle final states. The
fixed-width, complex-mass and overall-factor schemes (FWS, CMS & OFS) are
employed and the quality of narrow-width and double-pole approximations (NWA &
DPA) is investigated for inclusive production and suppressed backgrounds to new
particle searches. NWA and DPA cross sections differ by 1% or less. The
inclusion of sub- and non-resonant amplitudes effects a cross section increase
of 5-8% at pp supercolliders, but only minor changes at the Tevatron. On-shell
tt~/Wtb backgrounds for the H --> WW decay in weak boson fusion, the hadronic
\tau decay of a heavy H^\pm and the \phi --> hh --> \tau\tau bb~ radion decay
at the LHC are updated, with corrections ranging from 3% to 30%. FWS and CMS
cross sections are uniformly consistent, but OFS cross sections are up to 6%
smaller for some backgrounds.Comment: 20 pages, 6 tables, 1 figur