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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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Under pressure to deliver shock treatment to the ailing euro, European finance ministers failed to come up with a plan for European countries to spend within their means. Such a plan is needed before Europe’s central bank and the International Monetary Fund consider stepping in to stem an escalating threat to the global economy.

The ministers delayed action on major financial issues _ such as the concept of a closer fiscal union that would guarantee more budgetary discipline _ until their bosses meet next week in Brussels.

Stock markets fell Wednesday as a top EU official conceded that the future of the euro now rests heavily on the meeting of European heads of state on Dec. 9. Stock markets had risen this week on hopes that intense bond market pressure would finally force the eurozone into quicker and more robust action.

“We are now entering the critical period of 10 days to complete and conclude the crisis response of the European Union,” EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said, adding: “There is no one single silver bullet that will get us out of this crisis.”

At a meeting Tuesday night, finance ministers for the 17 countries that use the euro handed Greece a promised euro8 billion ($10.7 billion) rescue loan to fend off its immediate cash crisis and promised to increase the firepower of a fund to help bail out ailing eurozone countries.

But they failed to increase the firepower of a European bailout fund to euro1 trillion ($1.3 trillion), as they had hoped to do.

“It will be very difficult to reach something in the region of a trillion. Maybe half of that,” said Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager.

Klaus Regling, head of the bailout fund, tried to be upbeat, saying the ministers had committed to increasing its size from its current euro440 billion ($587 billion) but refusing to give a specific size. He assured reporters it was more than big enough to deal with Europe’s immediate debt problems.

“To be clear, we do not expect investors to commit large amounts of money during the next few days or weeks,” Regling said. “Leverage is a process over time.”

The ministers did agree to use the bailout fund to offer financial protection of 20-30 percent to investors who buy new bonds from troubled eurozone nations.

“We made important progress on a number of fronts,” eurozone chief Jean-Claude Juncker insisted late Tuesday. “This shows our complete determination to do whatever it takes to safeguard the financial stability of the euro.”

Wednesday’s meeting in Brussels has brought in the 10 non-euro finance ministers from the 27-nation EU, who have been pressing hard for a swift solution for fear that their economies will suffer.

Sweden’s Anders Borg said there was no more time to waste and that the markets don’t provide “any honeymoons” for any countries that stray from fiscal austerity. He stressed that Spain and Italy need to “take out all the skeletons” from their financial closets and implement budgetary belt tightening measures payday loans.

Many economists say the 17 nations that use the euro have little choice but to back proposals for much closer coordination of their spending and budget policies.

Though such a change would reduce their ability to run budget deficits, it could potentially pave the way for much more aggressive support from the European Central Bank.

“If the eurozone is to survive, there needs to be more fiscal union,” said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University in the state of New York.

For struggling economies, this might be the necessary price of survival. With such discipline in place, the ECB could then agree to make major purchases of government bonds from Europe’s troubled countries. Doing so could help lower their borrowing costs and enable them to finance their debts.

For now, the ECB has been reluctant to take such a frontline role, arguing that it’s up to governments to sort out their fiscal mess. It’s voiced worries that a big bond-buying program could allow economically reckless countries off the hook for painful spending cuts and tax increases.

But a tighter fiscal union could reassure the ECB and lead it to act more forcefully, said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The alternative could be a default by Greece, or even Italy, and a break-up of the eurozone. That could spark chaos, forcing some or all the countries to return to their own individual currencies.

A default could also cause lending to seize up worldwide. Some European banks holding large amounts of government debt would likely collapse. As credit dried up, other banks around the world would probably hoard cash. The credit crunch could push European countries into a deep recession.

A European downturn would also slow the flow of exports to Europe from the United States and Asia and weaken their economies. U.S. stock markets would likely fall, reducing household wealth and consumer spending and further choking growth.

Many economists say the threat of default means the International Monetary Fund might end up contributing to a bailout fund. An IMF spokesman denied Tuesday that the international lending group is consulting with the Italian or Spanish governments.

But the IMF could work with institutions like the ECB, Cornell’s Prasad said. Funneling money through the IMF would be more politically palatable for the ECB than directly aiding individual countries.

Still, the IMF has only about $390 billion available to lend. That wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to rescue Italy, which has $1.2 trillion in debt.

“In the short term, there is only the ECB,” Kirkegaard said.

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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 board.

Icahn’s offer of $15 per share represents a 31 percent premium over the scrap metal processor’s closing stock price on Friday. Commercial Metals shares jumped $2.61, or 23 percent, to $14.06 in midday trading Monday.

Commercial Metals, based in Irving, Texas, manufactures, recycles and markets steel and metal products, among other materials. Its stock has taken a beating, losing about 31 percent of their value since the beginning of this year and about 70 percent since the early months of the Great Recession in 2008.

Icahn, who owns PSC Metals Inc., said he wants to combine Commercial Metals with his existing metals recycling businesses and sell off the rest of its assets, refocusing on its core North American operations. A new management team would be appointed immediately.

Icahn is known for buying and shaking up struggling companies, with mixed success.

He amassed his 9.98 percent stake in Commercial Metals this past summer after first buying up the stock August 2010. Days after his stake was revealed, the company adopted a so-called poison pill defense that would be triggered whenever any hostile acquirer gets a stake in the company exceeding 10 percent.

Icahn said the deal would not need financing and that his company is ready to meet, begin negotiations and launch a tender offer for Commercial Metals shares as soon as possible.

Commercial Metals said in a statement Monday that it would review Icahn’s overture and decide what response would be in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. It also noted that that what Icahn has presented falls short of a formal offer and said its shareholders need take no immediate action.

Citi analyst Brian Yu said Icahn’s offer could end up looking like a bargain once the still sluggish construction industry, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the company’s business, finally rebounds.

“Timing is everything and while the offer might be fair today, it undervalues Commercial Metals longer term, in our view,”

Last month, the company said it posted a loss of $120.3 billion in its fiscal fourth-quarter, pulled down by hefty restructuring charges mainly stemming from a decision to shut down some of its overseas operations. Excluding those and other charges, it earned $19.1 million for the quarter ended Aug. 31.

Icahn called the current board’s track record “dismal” and said he doesn’t think it will do what’s needed for the company to compete, such as selling businesses and replacing management. In his open letter to Commercial Metals’ board, he said he would nominate three of his associates to be board directors at the company’s 2012 shareholder’s meeting.

“Unfortunately, a below average operating performance fueled by a distracting and misguided international growth plan, combined with a disastrous investment record, has become the defining characteristic of Commercial Metals,” Icahn wrote.

Commercial Metals argued that it has made considerable progress in improving its financial performance, pointing to the restructuring of its North American operations, the sale of non-essential businesses and significant costs cuts.

It also noted the hiring of a new chief executive and chief financial officer, along with the appointments of four new board members over the past two years.

In a filing Sunday, Commercial Metals urged its shareholders to support the re-election of three of its directors at the upcoming shareholder meeting.

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Four people have been arrested in the Philippines for allegedly hacking into AT&T’s phone systems as part of a plan to funnel money to a Saudi-based terror group, according to police.

The Philippine Criminal Investigation and Detection Group said it worked with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to arrest the suspects late Thursday. The hackers, according to investigators, worked for a group that helped finance a deadly 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.

They say that the hacking cost AT&T around $2 million. A spokeswoman for AT&T said she couldn’t immediately comment Saturday.

The arrests stemmed from a complaint filed by AT&T and the FBI.

AT&T Inc., based in Dallas, said last Tuesday that hackers unsuccessfully attempted to link mobile numbers with online customer accounts. It’s unclear if that incident is linked to the arrests.

The hackers were working on commission for a terrorist group linked to Muhammad Zamir, according to the Philippine police. Zamir, a Pakistani, was arrested in Italy in 2007, where he was running a call center and allegedly buying information from Filipino hackers.

Since then, police said, Zamir’s group has been taken over by a Saudi national. Philippine police didn’t name the group, but India has blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization, for the Mumbai attacks.

Three years ago Saturday, 10 Pakistan-based gunmen laid siege to India’s financial hub, killing 166 people.

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Hungary has slammed Moody’s decision to downgrade its credit rating to junk status, describing it Friday as another unjustified financial attack against the country.

Hungary, which last week asked the International Monetary Fund and the European Union for possible financial help, is feeling the fallout from the debt crisis in the 17-country eurozone, even though it does not use the euro. Its economy has not grown as much as hoped and its debt burden remains relatively high.

Late Thursday, Moody’s, one of the three major international credit rating agencies, cut its view on Hungary’s government bonds by one notch, from Baa3 to Ba1 and maintained its negative outlook. The move to junk status could mean that Hungary will find it increasingly difficult to borrow in money markets as well as having to pay a higher premium.

The country’s finance ministry was furious at the decision.

“It has no basis because, despite all the external difficulties, in the past year and a half there has been an expressly favorable change in most areas of the Hungarian economy,” the ministry said Friday.

Illustrating its point, the ministry mentioned Hungary’s current account surplus, the falling budget deficit, a significant cut to state debt levels and economic growth, which exceeded the European Union average in the third quarter of the year.

Even without the downgrade, Hungary is going to have to confront a number of difficulties next year as many of the economies of the eurozone _ the country’s main export markets _ look headed for a recession in the wake of the crippling debt crisis and doubts persist over the effectiveness of the government’s economic policies.

The agency cited questions over the Hungarian government’s ability to meet its debt reduction targets as well as the country’s vulnerability to external shocks as reasons for the downgrade.

It also noted that foreign investors hold 64 percent of Hungary’s bonds, of which two-thirds are denominated in foreign currencies. A weaker forint, Hungary’s currency, makes it more expensive for the government to pay back its foreign-currency debts.

Moody’s, which first awarded Hungary an investment-grade rating in 1996, said a further downgrade could come if “there is a significant decline in government financial strength due to a lack of progress on structural reforms. However, it said the rating could stabilize if there were “a more consistent implementation” of planned reforms.

The downgrade did not prove much of a surprise, though yields on Hungarian debt crept upward and the forint weakened against the euro. Early Friday, the forint fell to 316.60 per euro, 1.7 percent weaker than its opening rate.

Just hours before Moody’s announcement, rival Standard and Poor’s said it would wait for developments in upcoming talks between Hungary and the IMF and the EU before making a decision on the rating. S&P also has Hungary’s rating on so-called “negative watch.”

Last week, Hungary’s government said it would seek a financial “safety net” from the IMF and the EU, but no new loans, in an effort to improve investor sentiment and protect itself against the spiraling eurozone debt crisis. In late 2008, Hungary became the first EU country to receive an IMF-led bailout, getting a euro20-billion standby loan to avoid defaulting on its debts.

The move marked a reverse in policy. Only last year, Prime Minister Viktor Orban decided to break away from the IMF, preferring instead to make Hungary finance itself. This blocked the IMF’s direct influence on Hungary’s economic policy and gave the government a free hand to experiment with unorthodox approaches.

To avoid unpopular austerity measures, the government introduced windfall taxes on the energy, banking and other sectors, nationalized some $14 billion in assets managed by private pension funds and allowed indebted households to repay mortgages in foreign currencies at exchanges rates far below market values.

“Hungary will have to accept any dictate the IMF may have, there is no room to negotiate,” said analyst Gabor Ambrus of London’s 4Cast after the Moody’s announcement. “The government will have to make another U-turn.”

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Livestock farmers are demanding a change in the nation’s ethanol policy, claiming current rules could lead to spikes in meat prices and even shortages at supermarkets if corn growers have a bad year.

The amount of corn consumed by the ethanol industry combined with continued demand from overseas has cattle and hog farmers worried that if corn production drops due to drought or another natural disaster, the cost of feed could skyrocket, leaving them little choice but to reduce the size of their herds. A smaller supply could, in turn, mean higher meat prices and less selection at the grocery store.

The ethanol industry argues such scenarios are unlikely, but farmers have the backing of food manufacturers, who also fear that a federal mandate to increase production of ethanol will protect that industry from any kind of rationing amid a corn shortage.

The subject of debate is the Renewable Fuel Standard, a 2005 law requiring the nation to produce 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2012. The standard was changed in 2007 to gradually increase the requirement to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

While a $5 billion-a-year federal ethanol subsidy is scheduled to expire this year, the production requirement will remain, unless it’s changed by Congress.

That has other corn consumers worried that if production falls and rationing is needed, ethanol companies will be exempt. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reduced its estimate of this year’s corn crop because of flooding in the Midwest and drought in the southern plains, and corn reserves are expected to fall to a 20-day supply next year. A 30-day supply is considered healthy.

At the same time, the price of corn for livestock feed has risen from an average of just over $3 a bushel in 2006-07 to an average of more than $6 this year.

“If we get a short crop, the ethanol industry does not participate in rationing and the brunt will fall on livestock and poultry,” said Steve Meyer, president of Paragon Economics, a livestock and grain marketing and economic advisory company in Adel, Iowa.

A bill introduced last month by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would partially waive the ethanol goals when corn inventories are low.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents more than 300 food and beverage makers, also has endorsed the bill.

“We’re behind livestock producers on this issue,” said Geoff Moody, the association’s director of energy and environmental policy. “We believe if there is a need to ration that ethanol will eat first because of the mandate.”

About 5.9 billion bushels of corn were used for animal feed last year; 2.4 billion were exported; and about 4.9 billion were used for ethanol, up from about 630 million bushels in 2000, according to the National Corn Growers Association cash advance today. About 1 billion bushels were eaten by humans in products such as cereal, sweeteners, and beverages.

U.S. corn farmers have steadily increased production over the years thanks to hybrid seeds and improved techniques, but Meyer said a 20 percent decline in the harvest would be enough to force corn rationing and lead to feed shortages. That would leave livestock farmers with little choice, he said.

“We can’t shut down feeding,” Meyer said. “The only way to do that is to kill the animals.”

Even if there’s no rationing, ethanol manufacturers generally have been better able to cope with high corn prices than livestock farmers because their business has bigger profit margins, said Darrel Good, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois.

Randy Spronk, who raises corn and hogs in Edgerton, Minn., said farmers don’t want to attack the ethanol industry but they want a plan in place if the corn supply should drop significantly.

“We really don’t want to attack ethanol but wise people make plans,” he said.

Matt Hartwig, chief of staff for the Renewable Fuels Association, called the effort to rewrite the fuel standard law “little more than a Trojan horse effort” to weaken or even eliminate it. He said the farmers’ complaints were overblown and most livestock producers and meatpacking companies were making good profits.

Also, the ethanol industry now produces about 1 billion gallons of ethanol more than is required and if corn supplies fall short, it could cut back, he said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the fuel standard, said in a statement that states can already ask for a waiver “under certain circumstances, including inadequate domestic supply or harm to the economy or environment of a state.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry did this in 2008, claiming rising corn prices were hurting ranchers in his state. The EPA said it denied the request because the quota for renewable fuel wasn’t causing severe economic harm to the state.

Meyer said many farmers are skeptical about a process that leaves such decisions to the EPA administrator, who “many in agriculture believe won’t consider the best interest of livestock.”

Good, the University of Illinois farm economist, said meat supplies could tighten if competing demands force corn prices higher. He said it boils down to a simple choice: “We’re going to have to reduce our rate of increase in corn consumption or we’re going to have to produce more corn.”

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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 plaguing the showcase high-speed rail program.

The accident inflamed public criticism over whether the powerful Railway Ministry was sacrificing safety in its costly quest to quickly roll out the bullet train network. Shortly after the July 23 crash, Premier Wen Jiabao called for a sweeping and transparent investigation,

Regulations on major transport accidents called for a report on the accident by Nov. 20, according to state media reports. Railway Ministry officials refused comment Tuesday.

The few slivers of information about the probe have been quickly recanted.

A railway expert and deputy director of the investigation team, Wang Mengshu, backtracked from comments published Monday in the state-run Beijing Times newspaper that quoted him as saying the accident near the eastern city of Wenzhou largely resulted from mismanagement.

State media on Tuesday carried reports of Wang claiming he was misquoted, that his comments were only his personal opinion, and that he was not authorized to speak to the media.

“I was not involved in the whole investigation. I did not have a general idea of the whole thing, and I did not know whether the conclusion had been submitted,” Wang told state-run CCTV.

Wang did not respond to calls and e-mailed requests for comment.

In comments posted on the government work safety administration’s website, Wang promised full and accurate disclosure of its findings.

The lack of transparency has left some in China skeptical that problems with the high speed rail network are being resolved, said Li Hongchang, an economics professor at Beijing Jiaotong University.

“People want not just the report but to understand how it was compiled. Openness and credibility are actually more important than the report itself,” Li said.

Shortly after the accident, authorities blamed problems with the high-tech signaling systems used to run and route the trains for the crash, which occurred after railway staff failed to notice anything amiss when a lightening strike stalled a train and the signaling system failed to turn red.

But they have since backed away from that finding. The Beijing Times report quoted Wang as saying that given the lack of problems with the same signaling systems on other lines, the crash occurred mainly because of human error.

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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 jobs will be created or retained over the next two years with its initial $4 million investment payday advance.

Magnum says it expects sales to increase by 20 percent in two years.

The state says it will provide Magnum with a tax credit and job-training grants worth $540,000 over 10 years, contingent on the company meeting its investment and job numbers.

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