NEW YORK – Stocks climbed Thursday as strong April retail sales and a steep drop in oil prices alleviated investors’ worries about a greater-than-forecast jump in labor costs. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 38.58, or 0.34 percent, to 11,438.86, its best close since reaching 11,489.59 on Jan. 19, 2000. …

Sat., May 6 at 10 p.m. ET Hosted by Newt Gingrich Americans have heard about the deadly bird flu virus and they’ve watched it start to move from Southeast Asia halfway across the world. Scores of people have already died and scientists fear is that the virus will mutate until …

NEW YORK – A growing number of parents, teachers and city lawmakers are demanding that the New York City school system reverse its longtime ban on students’ cell phones inside school buildings. So far, the mayor and the schools chancellor aren’t heeding the calls. On Friday, a handful of City …

NEW YORK – U.S. stocks barely budged on Monday as caution before the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy meeting on Wednesday offset a pullback in crude oil prices and fresh merger activity. The Dow climbed to its highest close since January 2000 and passed the 11,600 threshold in intraday trading. …

LOS ANGELES – Undercover detectives watched the blind man climb into the suspect’s car and start writing on document after document. They worried he was signing his life away. As 74-year-old Josif Gabor would later tell it, he was walking to the bank when a woman he had met briefly …

ATLANTA – Ted Turner was uncharacteristically understated Friday as he departed Time Warner Inc. (TWX), the media conglomerate that swallowed his cable network company and slowly sidelined him as a mover and shaker in the businesses that he helped to create. The CNN founder told Time Warner shareholders at their …

MUNICH, Germany – German police arrested on Wednesday two people suspected of membership in an Iraqi terror network following raids in the states of Bavaria and Lower Saxony, security authorities said. One of the men arrested, a 48-year-old Iraqi who had applied for asylum in Germany, was being held on …

NEW YORK – Julia Louis-Dreyfus will return this weekend to “Saturday Night Live,” where she began her career over two decades ago. “It’s exactly the same schedule and pattern as it was 21 years ago — except more fun,” Louis-Dreyfus told The Associated Press on Wednesday, shortly before the show’s …

WASHINGTON – Still more errors have turned up in Fannie Mae’s (FNM) government-ordered review of its accounting, the mortgage giant disclosed Tuesday. It also said it doesn’t expect the review to be finished before the second half of the year. The government-sponsored company, which finances one of every five home …

VIENNA, Austria – Key European nations are tentatively considering offering Iran a light-water nuclear reactor if as part of incentives meant to persuade Tehran to give up its uranium enrichment program, diplomats and officials said Tuesday. A U.S. official said Washington would likely oppose the plan. A senior diplomat familiar …