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Billionaire Warren Buffett donated stock in his company worth $41.6 million to eight unnamed charities during the second half of 2011.
Buffett revealed the donations Wednesday in a year-end update on his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. stock holdings.
Buffett gave away 521,292 Class B shares of Berkshire stock between July and the end of December. These gifts are […]

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The Federal Reserve will pay $76.9 billion to the U.S. Treasury as part of an annual dividend it remits after covering its own expenses from interest on its ballooning bond portfolio and other gains.
Total assets on the Fed

As with fast payday loans, this recently used to be the case, but competitive lenders and higher demand has taken this loan type to mainstay levels.

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 […]

Heads of iceberg lettuce are being removed from grocery store shelves in at least seven states after salmonella was found in an Arizona field adjacent to the grower’s property.
None of the lettuce in the markets has tested positive for salmonella but the grower alerted retailers of the test results and sought a withdrawal of the […]

The chief executive of St. Louis University Hospital says that his health system is seeking the assistance of a third-party mediator to break an impasse in contract talks with a national health insurer.
SLU Hospital Chief Executive Phillip Sowa said the hospital’s parent company, Tenet HealthCare Corp. of Dallas, faxed a letter Friday to Anthem Blue Cross and […]

The investigation into a bullet train crash in China last summer that killed 40 people has come and gone with scarcely any fresh information released about what led to the disaster.
The secrecy surrounding the investigator’s report, originally due in September and reportedly extended until late November, is typical of the sensitivities shown toward wider troubles […]

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A maker of coal-mining equipment says it is investing more than $13 million to expand a southern Illinois plant, creating or retaining 150 jobs.
Magnum Steel Works Inc. said Friday the investment will be made over four years to nearly quadruple the size of the Mount Vernon factory to 128,000 square feet.
The company says 52 of […]

The European economy has stalled, and is likely to start shrinking soon, just when eurozone countries need help the most.
Growth slowed nearly to a stop this summer, and a recession afflicting small countries like Greece and Portugal threatens to spread to some of Europe’s stronger economies as financial market uncertainty erodes confidence among businesses and […]

A U.S.-backed plan to forge a Pacific free trade bloc got a big boost Sunday when leaders of Canada and Mexico joined Japan in expressing support for a deal that has received a cool reception from China, the region’s rising power.
The news was a coup for President Barack Obama, who made progress on the pact […]