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Stocks rallied Friday at the end of a strong week, with the Dow and S&P 500 hitting their highest levels in over a year as investors extended a seven-month rally.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) rose 78 points, or 0.8%. The S&P 500 (SPX) index gained 6 points, or 0.6% and the Nasdaq composite […]

Latvia will seek to strike a last- minute agreement on budget cuts today to satisfy bailout terms in the latest round of brinkmanship that has tested the patience of the country’s international loan donors.
Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis has signaled his Cabinet will agree on an additional 175 million lati ($362 million) in cuts […]

As thousands of jobless Americans lose their weekly unemployment checks every day, Congress is still debating who should qualify for a benefits extension.
Two weeks after the House passed an extension, Senate Democrats Thursday introduced a bill to lengthen unemployment insurance by up to 14 weeks in all states. Those living in states with unemployment […]

Boeing expects to take a $1 billion pre-tax charge against its the third quarter results due to higher production costs and tough market conditions related to its 747-8 program, the company said in a statement released Tuesday.
The airplane maker said about $640 million of the charge reflects higher-than-expected production costs for the 747-8 cargo […]

Employers cut more jobs from their payrolls in September and the unemployment rate hit another 26-year high, as the long-battered U.S. labor market took an unexpected turn for the worse, according to a government report Friday.
The Labor Department said there was a net loss of 263,000 jobs in the month, up from a revised […]

The cost of entry onto crowded Manhattan island, one of the most expensive real estate markets in the nation, may have gotten a little steeper in the past three months. Or not.
Reports released Friday by four of the city’s biggest real estate agencies showed very different results. By one calculation, the median price […]

A member of the Cadbury family has described Kraft’s takeover bid for the British confectionery group as a “horror story.”
In comments to the Sunday Telegraph, Felicity Loudon, whose grandfather Egbert Cadbury was managing director of Cadbury Brothers, said she believed it was worth fighting to keep Cadbury out of the hands of North America’s […]

It was part of the corporate lore at Bank of America: Whenever legendary boss Hugh McColl would buy a bank in Florida, Texas, or Georgia in the 1980s and early 1990s, he’d call his trusted lieutenant Ken Lewis to his Charlotte office and order Lewis to fix the new acquisition to fit his revolutionary […]

The number of U.S. metropolitan areas with jobless rates above 10% decreased in August, according to government figures released Wednesday.
The Labor Department said 129 of 372 metropolitan areas surveyed suffered unemployment rates of at least 10% last month. That was down from 139 metro areas in July.
The number of urban centers with unemployment […]

With Wall Street continuing to recover, so are the prospects for this year’s bonus season.
As early as June, experts were speculating that incentive payments for U.S. banks and securities firms could rebound sharply given the resurgence in certain parts of their business.
Now with analysts predicting impressive third-quarter numbers from some of the nation’s largest […]