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Japan’s industrial production expanded for a second straight month in December, as strengthening global demand injected companies with renewed confidence.
Factory output rose 3.1 percent from November, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Monday. Driving the gains were export-reliant industries including transport equipment, electronic devices and steel.
Monday’s figure beat Kyodo news agency’s average market […]

Somalia’s government decided on Thursday to cancel an agreement with a private security company linked to the founder of Blackwater Worldwide to train Somali forces to go after pirates and insurgents, a senior official said.
Deputy Security Minister Ibrahim Mohamed Yarow told The Associated Press that the Cabinet, meeting behind closed doors, ended the agreement with […]

A government panel’s failure to reach a firm conclusion about what caused the financial crisis shows how complex Wall Street has become and how partisan Washington has grown.
The blurriness of its report comes months after a new law already has begun tightening financial rules to prevent another crisis.
All of which raises a question: Do the […]

After a decade of multibillion-dollar losses, U.S. airlines appear likely to profit for years for a simple reason: They are flying less.
By grounding planes and eliminating flights, airlines have cut costs and pushed fares higher. As the global economy rebounds, travel demand is rising and planes are as full as they’ve been in decades.
Profit margins […]

Drugstore operator and pharmacy benefits manager CVS Caremark Corp. said Monday that Larry Merlo will succeed Thomas Ryan as CEO on March 1, about two months earlier than expected.
CVS Caremark said Merlo has been working with Ryan for months and is ready to be the company’s CEO. Merlo was president of CVS’s pharmacy operations for […]

Bank of England policy maker Adam Posen dismissed the recent burst of inflation as temporary, indicating he may keep pushing for more stimulus to aid the economic recovery.
“In terms of underlying U.K. inflation, driven by domestic forces, my position is unchanged,” Posen said in an interview in his office in London today. “Inflation will […]

German business confidence probably stayed at a record high in January as booming exports to Asia and stronger household spending bolstered growth in Europe’s largest economy.
The Ifo institute’s business climate index, based on a survey of 7,000 executives, probably held at 109.9 in January, the median of 41 forecasts in Bloomberg News survey shows. […]

President Barack Obama has told U.S. and Chinese business leaders that he wants specific ideas on how to remove trade barriers and protect intellectual property.
Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (hoo jin-tow) met with the business executives at the White House on Wednesday as part of Hu’s state visit.
Hu told the executive that China is […]

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said that while unemployment will probably stay too high for the foreseeable future, he hasn’t ruled out favoring a rate increase this year should economic growth warrant such a move.
“If economic growth in the United States continues to gain traction and the prospects begin to look […]

Blue Shield of California said Friday it was planning to go forward with scheduled health insurance rate increases for individual policyholders, despite calls from government regulators to delay the move.
The San Francisco-based insurer said that it has asked an independent actuary to review the increases and would issue refunds if problems were found with the […]