Hot finance topics

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to testify Monday against a campaign consultant charged with scamming him out of more than $1 million, according to two people familiar with a trial that’s giving jurors a behind-the-scenes look at the billionaire politician’s last re-election bid.
The mayor would be prosecutors’ star witness against John Haggerty, who is accused […]

TORONTO

Dan Chan, with a B-plus average and only a few volunteering credentials, wasn’t optimistic when he applied for a $20,000 scholarship at Ryerson University. But he took the time to fill out a submission, highlighting his achievements, and received one of the awards for the 2010 year.
Nobody was more surprised than the recent MBA graduate, […]

China’s bullet train builders have conducted a test run of their showcase Beijing-to-Shanghai line amid controversy over the system’s high cost.
A train carrying railway ministry officials, managers of the companies that built the line and hundreds of reporters left Beijing on Monday morning for a five-hour trip. That is about half as long as conventional […]

Toyota says its profit for the fiscal year through March 2012 will fall 31 percent to 280 billion yen ($3.5 billion) in an outlook that underlines a robust recovery in the latter half of the fiscal year from the damage of an earthquake and tsunami.
Toyota Motor Corp. made the announcement Friday. It had not given […]

Canadians are brimming with optimism about the state of the economy but they

Asked for a single-word response to sum up their state of mind, a significant number said they feel “lost.”
Others assessed themselves as “unsuccessful.” All were mired in futility.
No wonder: It has been at least a year since the 16 people who turned up at a Friday “boot camp” for the long-term unemployed last reported to […]

France’s foreign ministry says the government has ordered 14 diplomats loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to leave the country within 48 hours.
A foreign ministry spokesman says the fourteen “ex-diplomats” worked for Libya’s embassy before it was shut about a month ago. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the official protocol.
The […]

Reliance Bancshares named Patrick Gideon non-executive chairman of its board of directors, replacing longtime chairman and founder Jerry Von Rohr.
Reliance said Gideon’s appointment was confirmed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis this week. Reliance is the holding company for Reliance Bank, which has 20 local branches.
Von Rohr, a former chief executive of Reliance, founded the […]

Making his case to a young audience at Facebook headquarters, President Barack Obama says trimming $4 trillion from the nation’s deficits over the next 12 years sounds like a lot but can be done.
Obama was in Palo Alto, Calif., on Wednesday answering questions in person and online during a town hall at the home base […]