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It’s the best start for stocks in 15 years.
In what was mostly a slow and steady climb, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 3.4 percent in January and the Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 4.4 percent, the best performances for both indexes to open a year since 1997.
Investors were encouraged by modest but welcome improvement […]

Boeing plans to close its defense operations in Wichita, Ks., a move that will result in about 2,000 people losing their jobs, according to Bloomberg News.
Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg said the announcement will be made to Wichita employees at a 10:30 a.m. meeting today
Boeing said in November it was studying the Wichita plant’s future, including […]

An international arbitration body has awarded Exxon Mobil Corp. nearly $908 million in a dispute with Venezuela over compensation for the nationalization of its assets, the company said Sunday.
Exxon Mobil sought arbitration after President Hugo Chavez’s government nationalized an oil project in the country in 2007.
The decision by the International Chamber of Commerce confirmed that […]

Carl Icahn said Monday that he wants to buy Commercial Metals Co. for about $1.73 billion and combine parts of it with metals recycling businesses that he already owns.
The billionaire investor, who already owns almost 10 percent of Commercial Metals, said he also plans to nominate three of his associates to be directors on its […]

Centrue Financial Corp., the holding company for Centrue Bank, reported a net loss of $4.7 million in the third quarter, or 87 cents a share, compared to a net loss of $16.4 million, or $2.79 a share, a year earlier.
The bank’s nonperforming loans declined 49.5 percent to $3.9 million in the third quarter that ended […]

Attacks aimed at Iraqi police, including two in which assailants slammed explosives-packed cars into police stations, killed 25 people Wednesday and maimed dozens in the worst violence in the capital since August.
Less than three months before American troops are to leave Iraq, the blasts were a brutal example of the challenges Iraqi security forces will […]

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, […]

ST. LOUIS

ConocoPhillips says it has collected 99 percent of the offshore spills in China’s Bohai Bay and expects to meet a deadline to finish its cleanup by Tuesday.
China’s State Oceanic Administration, meanwhile, criticized the oil company’s handling of the spills which began in June and said it would work with those affected, reportedly including scallops growers […]

Cleveland has apparently grown weary of the rotting homes dotting its dying neighborhoods and decided to bring in the bulldozers – and send the tab to banks, NPR reported this morning.
It’s the first I’ve heard of what seems an increasingly reasonable, if extreme, response to our seemingly endless housing crisis: Cut our losses, share the pain – and move on. 
Cleveland has […]