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Delta Air Lines Inc. is boosting its flying out of New York’s LaGuardia airport, adding routes that target American Airlines and put it in a better position to compete against United.

Delta says the additions make it the biggest airline between the New York area and cities in the U.S. That should help it grab more business travelers.

The list of added cities reads like a map of the hubs of competing airlines. Delta is adding Miami and Dallas, both American Airlines hubs. It will also fly to Houston and Denver, which are both United hubs, and Charlotte, which is a hub for US Airways.

United and Continental’s merger into the world’s largest airline puts Delta in second-place by traffic. Expanding in a key business market like New York will help it compete against the larger United.

“It’s about increasing Delta’s overall appeal and utility to the high-yield business traveler,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “Delta is going for scope of service, rather than always having the largest number of flights to a smaller network of cities.”

Delta said it will spend $100 million to expand LaGuardia’s C and D terminals, to be connected by a 600-foot bridge payday loans.

Delta obtained the new flying rights in a deal with US Airways Group Inc. Delta gave up some of its flying rights at Washington’s Reagan airport, which US Airways wanted, in exchange for some of that airline’s rights at LaGuardia, which Delta wanted. The exchange of flying rights happens in two batches, on March 25 and July 11, so the new flights will begin after that.

US Airways said it will announce its plans for expanded Washington flying in January.

Delta CEO Richard Anderson said the new flying at LaGuardia is being countered by its reduced flying in Washington. Delta has said it will cut overall flying by as much as 3 percent next year.

Shares of Atlanta-based Delta rose 46 cents, or 5.3 percent, to $9.05 in midday trading. Shares of United Continental Holdings Inc. gained 74 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $21.38. US Airways Group Inc. rose 42 cents, or 7.4 percent, to $6.13. Meanwhile, the broader trading averages were up less than 1 percent.

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The United States will hold talks with North Korea in Beijing Thursday on the possibility of providing food aid to the impoverished country, the State Department said.

The Obama administration has been deliberating on the issue for months. The United Nations and U.S. charities say aid is badly needed, but it remains a controversial issue. North Korea has plowed resources into a nuclear weapons program even as its people go hungry.

Special envoy for North Korean human rights issues Robert King and senior aid official Jon Brause will meet with North Korea’s director-general for American affairs, Ri Gun. The American officials arrived Wednesday in the Chinese capital for talks that start the following day.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday the two sides would primarily discuss the need for strict and clear monitoring should the U.S. decide to give aid _ amid concerns food could be diverted to North Korea’s powerful military and Communist Party elite.

Nuland termed the possible aid as “nutritional assistance” that as well as regular foodstuffs could include vitamin supplements and high-protein biscuits for malnourished people that would be unlikely to end up “on some leader’s banquet table.”

North Korean officials “know that we were obviously deeply dissatisfied with the way this went before and that we need more discussions about it,” Nuland told a news conference.

The last U.S. food handouts ended in March 2009, when North Korea expelled U.S. charities who were monitoring the distribution. That occurred shortly before the North conducted long-range rocket and nuclear tests that drew stiff international sanctions.

U.S. aid workers who took part in the 2008-2009 program say the monitoring was in fact effective, but they were unable to oversee the distribution of 21,000 tons of food that arrived in North Korea as they were leaving the country fast cash advance. In total, the program sent 170,000 tons during 10 months.

This week’s discussions in Beijing come as expectation grows the U.S. could hold a fresh round of talks with North Korea on its nuclear program. There have been two rounds since July _ prelude to possible resumption of six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks suspended in 2009.

North Korea says it is willing to restart the six-nation talks without preconditions, but the U.S. and its allies want Pyongyang to first take concrete action to show it is sincere, such as by freezing uranium enrichment and allowing in international monitors.

Human rights envoy King visited North Korea in May, accompanied by a food assessment team from the U.S. Agency of International Development. The findings of the assessment mission were not made public.

The U.N. reported last month that North Korea had an improved harvest this year despite a harsh winter and summer floods, but malnutrition among children has increased. It said nearly 3 million people will continue to require food assistance next year.

North Korea has suffered chronic food shortages for the past two decades, through a combination of economic and agricultural mismanagement and natural disasters. It suffered a famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

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A closely-watched survey shows German investor sentiment grew in December, ending a nine-month downward trend.

However, the rise was not as big as expected as Europe’s raging debt crisis weighs heavily on the continent’s largest economy.

The ZEW investor sentiment index for December released Tuesday was up 1.4 points to minus 53.8 points overall. Analysts had forecast a bigger rise to minus 52.

ZEW says the negative reading indicates that investors expect the economic situation in Germany to weaken over the next six months, but that sentiment has now bottomed out. It adds that economic activity is not expected to plunge and that sentiment may have been helped by the decisions from an EU summit Dec. 9 meant to bolster the 17-nation eurozone.

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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 Blue Shield of Missouri as well as HealthLink Inc., proposing that an “independent third party” help move contract talks forward. Both health insurers are owned by WellPoint Inc. of Indianapolis.

SLU Hospital and Des Peres Hospital, which is also owned by Tenet, have announced that - because of a breakdown in talks - they intend to end their managed care contracts with HealthLink and Anthem as of Jan. 1. This termination does not apply to SLUCare physicians.

“We’re prepared to sit down at the table with Anthem and negotiate in good faith a reasonable offer,” Sowa said in an interview. “If it extends a bit after Jan. 1, that’s understandable. … We are prepared to entertain a third party sitting between us to help these negotiations go along.”

According to WellPoint officials, Tenet wants huge price increases for patient services. Tenet denies it, and counters that WellPoint’s reimbursement rates are as much as 25 percent less than other health insurers.

“We have seen their letter, but we have not had the opportunity to evaluate it,” said Anthem spokswoman Deb Wiethop instant payday loan. ”We have not been in intense negotiations with them, but we want to keep health care rates as affordable as we can for our members, while providing fair reimbursement for providers.”

In a Nov. 28 letter that was apparently distributed to some patients, HealthLink manager Bruce Banks wrote: While we continue to aggressively negotiate, Tenet … requested a significant rate increase.”

Sowa disputes those assertions. “We haven’t negotiated with them at all. There’s been no discussion,” he said, adding that Tenet sent contract offers to the WellPoint companies in July, but received no response.

“We’ve submitted five proposals to them with what we consider a reasonable rate increase,” he said. “It’s certainly not a double-digit increase.”

A meeting was scheduled for Sept. 12 between WellPoint and Tenet officials, he said, but it was canceled Sept. 11 by WellPoint without explanation.

He said that WellPoint recently indicated that no talks will occur unless the two hospitals rescind their notices of termination.

“They’re asking for us to give them an opportunity to negotiate forever under the same contract we negotiated five years ago,” SLU Hospital spokeswoman Laura Keller said. “If there’s no end date, the talks could go on forever.”

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The president of the European Council says a new treaty will include 17 euro states plus 6 other EU states _ but not all 27 EU members.

Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said the countries would provide up to euro200 billion ($268 billion) in extra resources to the International Monetary fund.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said early Friday he would have preferred a treaty among all the members of the EU, but he could not because of the British position. He said the new accord should be ready by March.

Sarkozy said the British proposed that they be exempted from certain financial regulation. “We could not accept this” because a lack of sufficient regulation caused the current problems, Sarkozy said.

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German authorities say a piece of mail sent to Deutsche Bank chief Josef Ackermann was a fully functional letter bomb capable of exploding.

German prosecutors and police in Hesse state said in a joint statement that a suspicious letter addressed personally to Ackermann and intercepted at the mail room of the bank’s Frankfurt headquarters on Wednesday “involved a fully functional letter bomb.”

Authorities gave no further details Thursday, citing an ongoing investigation.

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Citigroup says it is cutting 4,500 jobs over the next few quarters.

CEO Vikram Pandit said the job cuts are part of the New York bank’s efforts to reduce costs. Pandit made the remarks Tuesday at a financial services conference hosted by Goldman Sachs & Co.

Citigroup Inc.’s fourth-quarter results will include $400 million in expenses related to severance. Pandit also warned that the bank will take another $500 million hit to revenue from an accounting loss the bank will have to take for the higher cost of its debt.

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China’s attempts to deflate its property bubble come at a perilous time.

Fears that the euro might collapse, unleashing a tsunami of financial and economic disruptions around the globe, have added urgency to concerns that China’s campaign to cool overheated housing prices may go too far.

As economic growth wanes, Beijing has begun easing tight credit policies meant to cool inflation but China’s leaders are also insisting there is no leeway for loosening curbs on the housing sector.

“The decision has been made that there will be no more property bubble,” said Andy Xie, an independent economist based in Shanghai.

Measures to control the market _ such as limits on home purchases and high downpayments to qualify for mortgages _ are at a “critical period,” Vice Premier Li Keqiang said last month, stressing a need for more progress on controlling prices.

Stalled transactions and falling prices in major cities such as Shanghai have many in China wondering how long the deep-freeze will last. The impact of China’s property chill could stretch far beyond its crowded cities. With growth heavily dependent on construction and related industries, the slowdown already is sapping demand for domestic and imported products and materials and dampening Chinese investors’ interest in buying properties overseas.

Nobody is predicting a meltdown akin to those that led to the global crisis: most Chinese homeowners hold relatively modest mortgages, and demand in the long run will be sustained by demand for better, more spacious housing among increasingly affluent families.

Apart from the global risks, deflating the property bubble is a tricky gamble for the communist leadership given its reliance on rising living standards for its claim to power.

Homeowners whose life savings are in property are seeing the gains they once took for granted evaporate as developers are offering steep discounts on new apartments.

Outraged buyers who recently bought at higher prices are protesting, in one case smashing fixtures at a major developer’s offices to vent their anger. Those owners of not-yet-built apartments argue they are being cheated. The property companies say they are just abiding by market conditions.

“It is just unfair,” said a 29-year-old software developer. He would only give his last name, Li, because he was involved in some of the protests after prices were cut by 20 percent since he handed over a chunk of his and his parent’s savings for an apartment in August. He won’t even be able to move in until next year.

“Why do those of us who really need the housing have to be hurt?” Li said.

Those wanting to buy homes, meanwhile, are waiting for prices to drop still further.

Like many in China, Xu Zhengjuan has mixed feelings. The 48-year-old barber shop owner plans to buy an apartment for her son, who soon will be graduated from university.

“It could be a bargain to buy it now, since I need to buy one anyway,” said Xu. “But I am also worrying about what I’ll do if the prices keep falling after I buy it.”

“I’m still watching to see how it will go,” she said.

The market seems to have reached a turning point, at least in the biggest cities. New home prices fell in the 10 biggest Chinese cities in November, according to a monthly index compiled by the China Index Academy.

In Shanghai, the decline was 0.5 percent from the month before.

Still, prices have not fallen much overall, with the average decline only 0.3 percent in the 100 biggest cities, to 8,832 yuan ($1,400) per square meter. In the top 10 cities, average prices fell only 0.4 percent, to 15,663 yuan ($2,472) per square meter.

The curbs are just beginning to let some air out of the property bubble, the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily proclaimed in a recent commentary that warned the “time for making easy money is over.”

“It is now winter in the real estate market, and 20 percent off or even 50 percent off eventually may be seen in the big cities,” it said.

In a recent report, Barclays Capital forecast that prices could drop by 30 percent before stabilizing once the government begins to ease the curbs it used to bring the market under control as prices shot out of reach of many city dwellers.

China’s residential property market was only launched in the mid-1990s, as state-owned companies and government agencies began allowing employees to buy housing assigned to them at subsidized rates.

Thanks to those reforms, over two-thirds of urban families own their own homes, and many have bought more apartments as investments, expecting to earn much higher returns from property than from the paltry interest rates paid on bank deposits.

But many younger Chinese whose incomes have been priced out of the market as their incomes, though mostly rising, haven’t kept pace with soaring costs for housing and other necessities.

Having prices fall too far, or too fast, angers many others _ and may undermine the finances of businesses and local governments that are heavily invested in property projects.

In the meantime, real estate developers are giving up land parcels they can no longer afford to develop, and in some cases, selling out to larger property companies, or “cutting off their arms to survive” as industry insiders put it.

Some of the slack in demand left from the weakening in commercial property is being absorbed by the push to speed up construction of what the government calls “affordable” housing _ in contrast to the expensive high-end apartments and villas that most developers have concentrated on due to their relatively high returns.

The easing in property market controls, when it does come, will likely be piecemeal and low-key, as is the case for most Chinese economic policy changes, says UBS economist Jonathan Anderson.

Despite its relatively short history, China’s property market has been through several booms and busts, the most recent in 2008, before a multibillion dollar burst of recession-fighting stimulus spending set off the biggest construction spree so far.

Dai Qi, a foreign trade company employee living with his parents who owns two apartments, is taking the long-term perspective.

“I’m not worried if prices go up or down. If it goes up, that’s great because it will be more valuable. If it falls, I won’t lose money since my parents bought the apartments in 2001, when they were much cheaper,” he said.

___

Researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report.

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The unemployment rate, which has refused to budge from the 9 percent neighborhood for two and a half frustrating years, suddenly dropped in November, driven in part by small businesses that finally see reason to hope and hire.

Economists said there was a long way to go but liked what they saw.

The rate fell to 8.6 percent, the lowest since March 2009, two months after President Barack Obama took office. Unemployment passed 9 percent that spring and had stayed there or higher for all but two months since then.

The country added 120,000 jobs in November, the Labor Department said Friday. The economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs five months in a row _ the first time that has happened since April 2006, well before the Great Recession.

“Something good is stirring in the U.S. economy,” Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients.

It clinched one of the best weeks in stock market history. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 37 points and 825 for the week. The only better week was in October 2008, when stocks lurched higher and lower during the financial crisis.

The report showed that September and October were stronger months for the job market than first estimated. For four months in a row, the government has revised job growth figures higher for previous months.

Unemployment peaked at 10.1 percent in October 2009, four months after the Great Recession ended. It dipped to 8.9 percent last February and 8.8 percent last March but otherwise was at or above 9 percent.

Obama, who faces a re-election vote in less than a year and a presidential campaign that will turn on the economy, seized on the decline to argue for expanding a cut in the tax that workers pay toward Social Security.

The tax cut reaches 160 million Americans and will give most households $1,000 to $2,000 this year. It will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress acts. Republicans and Democrats have supported an extension but differ on how to pay for it.

The Senate on Thursday defeated plans from both parties. Republicans had proposed paying for the cut by freezing the pay of federal workers through 2015. Democrats wanted to raise taxes on people making $1 million or more a year.

“Now is not the time to slam the brakes on the recovery, right now it’s time to step on the gas,” Obama said Friday.

Inside the unemployment report, one of the most closely watched indicators of the economy’s health, were signs of improvement for small businesses, which account for one of every two jobs in the private sector.

The government uses a survey of mostly large companies and government agencies to determine how many jobs were added or lost each month. It uses a separate survey of households to determine the unemployment rate.

The household survey picks up hiring by companies of all sizes, including small businesses and companies just getting off the ground. It also includes farm workers and the self-employed, who aren’t included in the survey of companies.

The household survey has shown an average of 321,000 jobs created per month since July, compared with an average of 13,000 the first seven months of the year.

When the economy is improving or slipping into recession, many economists say, the household survey does the better job of picking up the shift because it is more likely to detect small business hiring.

“We might finally be seeing new business creation expand again, which is critical to the sustainability of the recovery,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, a financial services company.

The National Federation of Independent Business, a small business group, said Friday that its own survey of small companies shows that more of them are planning to add workers than at any time since September 2008, when the financial crisis struck.

LogicBoost, a Washington, D.C., software consulting firm with 19 employees, has hired a sales worker and a marketing worker in the past three months and planned to post an opening for a software engineer Friday no fax payday loan.

“Business is going gangbusters,” CEO Jonathan Cogley said. “It would be great if the economy were stronger. I think we’d be growing even faster.”

Outside Detroit, Grace Dersa opened the Frank Street Bakery this week with her husband. They took the $60,000 gamble after seeing signs that the local economy is improving. They, too, plan to add a worker soon.

“When we go to a restaurant here, there’s a 30-minute to two-hour wait. Homes are selling in this area,” Dersa said. “People are spending.”

Indeed, Americans dropped a record $52.4 billion over the Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group. A separate report from MasterCard found spending was up almost 9 percent from last year.

The unemployment report was the latest encouraging indicator for the economy. Other reports this week have shown that factories are producing more, construction is growing, and people are buying more cars.

The accelerating debt crisis in Europe has loomed over the economy for months. An economic collapse there would hammer sales of American exports. And if the crisis causes banks to stop lending money, the world economy would suffer.

But there are signs that Europe is moving toward a solution. Earlier this week, six central banks around the world made it easier for commercial banks overseas to borrow American dollars to do business. The coordinated action calmed financial markets and bought time for politicians to work something out.

The leaders of Germany and France appear to be pushing for stronger rules to make sure European governments are responsible with their budgets, an approach designed to save the euro currency from collapse.

European leaders meet next Friday for a crucial summit on the matter.

In the United States, about 13.3 million people are counted as unemployed. Private employers added 140,000 jobs in November, while governments shed 20,000. Governments at all level have cut almost a half-million jobs this year.

More than half the jobs added last month were by retailers, restaurants and bars. Professional and business services also rose. Those tend to be higher-paying jobs _ engineers, accountants and high-tech workers.

Still, more than 300,000 people stopped their job searches last month, so they were no longer officially counted as unemployed. That accounts for some of the drop in the unemployment rate.

The so-called underemployment rate, which counts people who have given up looking and people who are working part-time but want full-time jobs, did fall _ to 15.6 percent from 16.2 percent.

But even with the recent gains, the economy isn’t close to replacing the jobs lost in the recession. Employers began shedding workers in February 2008 and cut nearly 8.7 million jobs for the next 25 months. The economy has regained about 2.5 million.

And most people aren’t getting raises. Average hourly pay slipped 2 cents last month to $23.18. In the past year, wages have risen 1.8 percent, but inflation has risen twice as fast, eroding buying power.

It had appeared that Obama would face voters next fall with the highest unemployment of any sitting president seeking re-election since World War II. That was the 7.8 percent faced by Gerald Ford when he ran and lost in 1976.

Getting unemployment down to that level would take stronger and consistent job growth. It takes about 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.

Ronald Reagan faced 7.2 percent unemployment in 1984 and trounced Walter Mondale. Unemployment was 7.8 percent when Obama took office in January 2009.

The economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in July, August and September. Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, estimates growth will speed up to 2.5 percent in the last three months of the year, but slow to 1.5 percent in 2012.

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The leaders of France and Germany will meet next week and plan to push for fundamental changes to the European treaty governing the currency shared by 17 nations, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday.

Sarkozy said in a speech in the southern port city of Toulon that during their meeting in Paris on Monday he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will unveil proposals to try to lift Europe out of its debt crisis and “guarantee” its future.

“France will push with Germany for a new European treaty refounding and rethinking the organization of Europe,” Sarkozy said. “The Maastricht Treaty has revealed itself to be imperfect,” Sarkozy said, referring to the pact that led to the creation of the euro currency in 1999.

“There can be no common currency without economic convergence without which the euro will be too strong for some, too weak for others, and the eurozone will break up,” the French president said before an audience of several thousand sympathizers of his conservative party.

Changes in the treaty would have to be approved by all 27 EU members, 10 of whom don’t use the euro currency no fax pay day loan.

Sarkozy said the process of reforming the treaty “will be long and difficult” but is necessary to protect Europe’s place in the world.

Speculation is mounting that EU leaders will align their spending policies more closely to bring government debt levels under control in the future. This is seen as a necessary measure before the European Central Bank or other institutions can take more aggressive steps to help prevent the debt overload from destroying the euro and wreaking havoc in the global financial system.

Sarkozy, who is widely expected to seek a second mandate during France’s April and May presidential election, brushed aside the balloting, saying he must focus on the dire financial situation.

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