Business News

NEW YORK - A weaker dollar and better-than-expected data on the housing market sent investors moving back into stocks Monday after a three-day losing streak.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Monday, with the S&P on track to break a three-day sell-off, after data showed existing home sales rose to their highest level in 2-1/2 years and investors were reassured by a Fed official's comments.

LONDON - World markets rose sharply Monday amid further hopeful signs about the economic recovery. Commodity stocks led the charge, particularly in London, after gold hit another record high.

MILWAUKEE - Tyson Foods Inc. said Monday a hefty impairment charge in its beef business left it with a loss for the fourth quarter, but said its sales rose and its chicken business was profitable for the second straight quarter.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Campbell Soup Co reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Monday, helped by price increases and easing costs for ingredients including grains and tomatoes that offset a drop in sales.

CAMDEN, N.J. - Campbell Soup Co., the world's largest soup maker, said Monday its first-quarter earnings rose 17 percent as lower costs and more efficient supply chain offset the impact of a decline in soup sales.

DETROIT - A top industry analyst says the U.S. auto industry will recover only a little next year because of a weak economy.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - General Motors will present a plan to European governments to save struggling carmaker Opel within days, a rescue set to cost 3.3 billion euros ($4.9 billion), those involved in talks said on Monday.

NOVATO, Calif. - Raptor Pharmaceutical Corp. said Monday its developing treatment for the genetic disorder nephropathic cystinosis met key goals in a midstage study.

It's been a hard year to work at General Electric . Salary freezes have hit its famously performance-driven employees, with some managers taking pay cuts. The price of GE stock, which once made millionaires out of even hourly workers, has gone nowhere as the rest of the market has risen. A 68% dividend cut -- the first in 71 years -- has stung execs who rely on a heavy dose of restricted shares.

About a year ago, observers of the UK commercial property market would not have been shocked to see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding around the corner.

I am not your typical MBA student. I chuckle thinking about the havoc I will wreak on the incoming class pie charts that the admissions office will prepare at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business (McDonough Full-Time MBA School Profile), where I will start this fall. How will they categorize a gay Bosnian Muslim refugee, a former chemist who writes about sexuality in Islam while counseling college students?

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Leading Indian outsourcers such as Tata Consultancy , Infosys and Wipro stand to gain contracts worth about $1 billion in the next one or two years as U.S. banks emerge from the troubled asset relief program, the Economic Times reported on Monday.

WASHINGTON - As if small businesses needed another reason not to hire, consider their latest financial burden: The cost of rising unemployment itself.

WASHINGTON - A leading Senate Democrat said Monday his party is determined to push through a health care overhaul bill with or without Republican support because the "system is broken."