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The addition of 7,600 jobs in January notwithstanding, the Missouri unemployment rate remained at 9.6 percent in the first month of the year.
Displaced workers who have stopped applying for benefits, and therefore do not show up in the employment data base, account for a jobless rate that was unchanged from December.
Still, the numbers are generally […]

A notorious youth leader, under United Nations sanctions for inciting hatred, called Friday on citizens of Ivory Coast to barricade their neighborhoods and chase out foreigners.
Charles Ble Goude, recently named youth minister by sitting president Laurent Gbagbo, said the political crisis was coming to a head, and now was the time for “real” Ivorians to […]

U.S. oil prices briefly hit the $100-a-barrel for the first time in over two years Wednesday, as reports of Libyan oil production shutdowns swirled.
Italian oil giant Eni said Wednesday that it had partially shut down its 150,000-barrel-per-day production in the North African country.
Andrew Lebow, an oil broker at MF Global in New […]

Libya is the first oil exporting nation to be engulfed in the political upheaval spreading across North Africa and the Middle East, and investors are worried that further chaos in the region will drive crude prices even higher.
U.S. oil prices soared more than 7% early Tuesday, coming within $2 of $100 a barrel. That’s […]

The world’s dominant economies on Saturday struck a watered down deal on how to smooth out trade and currency imbalances many say exacerbated the financial crisis, but the difficulty in getting vastly different economies like China and the United States on the same page doesn’t bode well for the Group of 20 rich and developing […]

China led resistance to making bulging foreign-exchange reserves a measure of economic imbalances as Group of 20 finance officials struggled for consensus on realigning the skewed world economy.
Sparring over early warning indicators reflected the split among fast-growing emerging countries and debt-laden advanced economies over how to prevent a repeat of the harshest recession […]

Existing home sales for the first half of February were down by 13 per cent
Larilyn Bennett is looking for a condo in the competitive Toronto market. But she’s in no hurry.
"I’m going to take my time. I think there is a lot of choice out there," says Bennett, 32.
When she purchased her […]

It doesn’t come as a shock that Republicans aren’t thrilled with President Obama’s budget proposal. But Democrats aren’t exactly jumping for joy either.
Obama’s budget targets community block grants, a program that helps low-income people pay their energy bills, and the popular Pell grant program to aid college students. All are part of the social […]

Less than two years after getting a U.S. government bailout, General Motors is handing out bonuses that, in some cases, could exceed 50% of workers’ salaries.
"To give GM’s 26,000 salaried employees a stake in the overall performance of the company, their compensation is based in part on the performance of the company and on […]

If Albert Pujols gets what he reportedly wants in a new contract, he will earn a notable distinction.
At $27 million to $30 million a year, the 31-year-old first baseman would not only make more money than any other Cardinal and any other Major League ballplayer. He would likely earn more than any of the 1.3 […]