Bank of America’s homepage and online banking service are experiencing problems.
A message on the home page said the site was temporarily unavailable. Some visitors who tried to sign onto their accounts were greeted with the message that the site was “operating slower than usual” and that the bank was working to restore service.
A company spokeswoman said the problems began around 9:15 a unsecured personal loans.m. Friday, but that customers can still bank via text message and at ATMs. She said problems weren’t the result of hacking.
The outage came a day after the bank said it would start charging a $5 monthly fee for debit card purchases.
Toronto Councillor Adam Vaughan can tell the minute he looks at a condo building in his downtown ward if it
U.S. stocks soared to finish near the session’s highs Monday as optimism that European leaders will reach an agreement to contain the region’s debt crisis led investors to snap up beaten-down equities before the end of the September quarter.
“I don’t think there are any details, but (there are) further hopes for reaching some sort of settlement in terms of nailing down a plan” to overcome the European sovereign debt crisis, said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald. “The main thing for the market is to get this European issue behind us.”
After a choppy start to the day’s trading, stocks took off in the afternoon after The Wall Street Journal reported that the International Monetary Fund and euro-zone officials are working on a variety of options for using leverage to make the resources of the European Financial Stability Facility go much further.
All 30 of the Dow’s constituents ended higher, paced by a strong late rally in financials, after they bore the brunt of the steep sell-off last week. Pado said the day’s gains were also likely aided by funds that were keen to employ the cash on their books before the end of the September quarter and ahead of the upcoming third-quarter earnings.
At the same time, cheap valuations lured investors, other analysts said.
“I’d expect to see a little bit of rebound and some positive days, because we had such tremendous downside pressure and a lot of folks are thinking the markets are cheap,” said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Banyan Partners business card design.
The broad stock gains came on the heels of bullish cues from Europe, where banking stocks led a rally on optimism that the region’s politicians will be able to convince voters that a bigger bailout fund is required.
The market “needs some kind of concrete plan to stabilize” and it has “got to be something other than guesswork,” said Stephen Carl, head equity trader at the Williams Capital Group, referring to speculation that the European Central Bank may cut interest rates.
The market gains came even as data released by the Commerce Department showed that the sale of new homes fell 2.3 percent last month to an annual rate of 295,000, marking a decline for the fourth month in a row.
Gold prices continued to tumble after the CME Group boosted margin requirements on trading in the metals Friday. The December gold contract shed $45, or 2.7 percent, to settle at $1,594.8 an ounce, a two-month low.
Silver futures for delivery in December ended down 13 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $29.98 an ounce, the lowest since early February.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh abruptly returned home to Yemen on Friday after more than three months of being treated in Saudi Arabia for wounds from an assassination attempt, in a move apparently aimed to ensure his grip as his loyalists and opponents wage urban warfare in the capital.
Hours after his return, the fighting intensified as heavily shelling hit the strongholds of Saleh’s opponents in the capital, reinforcing fears that his return signals an escalation of fighting into an full-fledged attempt to crush his rivals.
The White House was blindsided by the sudden return. U.S. officials conceded it was a surprise and said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn’t warned of Saleh’s plans when she met Tuesday in New York with the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, which has been working with Washington and Yemen to try to arrange a transfer of power.
The return could be a significant blow to those attempts. A degree of stability in the strategic but impoverished Arab nation is a priority for the United States, which wants a partner to continue the fight against one of al-Qaida’s most active branches, based in Yemen and accused of plotting attacks in the U.S. Islamic militants have already exploited months of turmoil to seize control of cities in southern Yemen.
Abdullah Obal, an opposition leader, said he believed Saleh “returned to run the war and drive the country into an all-out civil war.”
“The cannons are now speaking. Gunfire is doing all the talking,” Obal said.
Saleh made no immediate public appearances, but his return breathed life into the camp of his supporters who turned up in the thousands for the Friday sermon that became a massive show of faith in the country’s leader for 33 years.
“We love you, Ali,” chanted thousands massed on Boulevard 70, a street near the presidential compound.
The return threatens to further break open the deep divisions that have riven Yemen since the protest movement kicked off in February demanding Saleh’s ouster and an end to his authoritarian regime. Saleh’s security forces cracked down hard on protesters, killing hundreds, which prompted members of his government, miltary and allied tribes to join the opposition.
In early June, an explosion ripped through a mosque where Saleh was praying in his Sanaa presidential compound. The blast left him severely burned over much of his body and wounded with wooden shards, and nearly a dozen of his top aides were seriously wounded. Saleh has since been in Saudi Arabia for treatment.
Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were believed to be trying to keep Saleh from leaving Saudi Arabia, and signing onto a deal proposed by Gulf Arab states, under which he would resign and hand power to his vice president to form a national unity government in return for immunity from any prosecution.
The mercurial Saleh has repeated promised to sign the agreement, then refused at the last minute.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Friday, “We urge President Saleh to initiate a full transfer of power and arrange for presidential elections to be held before the end of the year within the framework” of the agreement.
“A political solution is the best way to avoid bloodshed,” he said.
This week, the deadlock that endured even during Saleh’s absence broke down into the worst violence in months after he recently delegated his vice president to restart negotiations with opponents on the deal. It was considered another stalling tactic by Saleh. It sparked an escalation in the protests and a violent crackdown in Sanaa and other cities.
Forces loyal to the president’s son Ahmed attacked protesters in the streets and battled troops led by one of the regime’s top rivals, Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a former Saleh aide who joined the opposition early in the uprising, as well as tribal fighters who back the protesters.
Around 100 people have been killed _ mostly protesters as regime troops hit their gathering with shelling or barrages of sniper fire from rooftops. Residents have been forced to hunker down in their homes or flee the city as the two sides exchanged bombardment over Sanaa from strongholds in the surrounding hills.
Saleh slipped back into the country before dawn on Friday. In a statement on the state news agency, he called for a truce, saying “the solution won’t be through cannons and barrels, but through dialogue, understanding and ending the bloodshed.”
But his opponents dismissed the negotiations call, convinced that Saleh has no intention to step down and aims to break his rivals with military force. Sultan al-Barkani, the head of the ruling party’s bloc in parliament and a Saleh backer, told Al-Jazeera television that it was “totally unlikely” that the president will resign. “Saleh will not leave except through elections,” he said.
Obal, the opposition member, blamed the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for not exerting enough pressure on Saleh to quit. He said the opposition was hardening its position in the face of Saleh’s return and that any accord “can no longer give guarantees against prosecution amid all this killing.”
Violence continued even after Saleh’s return. Thuds of mortar rounds raged after sunset in the northern and western part of the capital where Saleh’s opponents have been based. Mortars hit the square in central Sanaa where protesters demanding Saleh’s ouster are camped out, killing two. Other mortars hit a group of anti-Saleh tribal fighters in a neighborhood where battles have raged with Saleh loyalists, killing two tribesmen.
During a brief lull in the fighting, there were mass protests by both sides.
At the opposition rally on Boulevard 60, demonstrators carried pictures of those killed in the violence as speakers urged security forces to stop killing their own people. “The people want the trial of the butcher,” the crowd chanted.
Abdel-Hadi al-Azazi, a protest leader, warned that Saleh’s return means “more divisions, more escalation and confrontations.”
“We are on the verge of a very critical escalation,” he told The Associated Press.
April Alley, a Yemen researcher with the International Crisis Group, said Saleh’s suprise return put both his supporters and opponents off balance, creating an explosive situation but one with also high stakes.
“There is greater incentive to actually come through with a deal,” she said, particularly as negotiations over ways to implement the power transfer had been ongoing until the recent violence.
Retired army general Ahmed Salem said Saleh, an astute military man who has balanced tribal and security loyalties for decades, will be driven by the battle cry.
“He will attempt to stop the advances of his adversaries, and will try to improve his situation on the ground,” Salem said. “His return will enable his supporters, lifts their spirit after a period of confusion because of lack of political management.”
The city’s board of aldermen had their first opportunity to hear a request by Ralcorp Holdings for public subsidies to help fund its headquarters expansion project.
Alderwoman Phyllis Young introduced the bill for Ralcorp’s request for the city to offer $20 million in bond financing and property tax breaks on new equipment at the St. Louis Board of Aldermen’s meeting today.
It was the bill’s first reading at the board, and no vote was taken on the measure. The request will next be heard by the board’s housing and urban development committee next month.
Ralcorp, a publicly held company that makes cereal, pasta and other foods, wants to expand its leased space downtown and spend $6.9 million on improvements.
The company has more than 400 local employees and says it expects to hire an additional 100 employees and needs to expand its office space.
Keeping the jobs downtown is the impetus behind the incentives, Young said. “It stabilizes our income stream because we keep those employees, it increases the value of the building and the real estate taxes with it, and the employees that will be added will bring revenue,” she said. ”All of those are very important.”
In a statement, Ralcorp said it conducted a regional search for its office space needs and is negotiating with its landlord to expand in the Bank of America Plaza at 800 Market Street.
Forecasters say Tropical Storm Hilary has strengthened in the eastern Pacific south of Mexico and is expected to become a hurricane sometime Thursday.
Hilary has maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph). The U.S. National Hurricane Center reported at 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday that Hilary continues to strengthen over warm waters. Hilary was centered about 95 miles (155 kilometers) south of Puerto Escondido, Mexico, and moving west-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph).
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Ophelia is moving across the Atlantic with top sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph). The hurricane center says little change in strength is expected over the next two days.
Ophelia is centered about 1,065 miles (1,715 kilometers) east of the Leeward Islands, headed west at 15 mph (24 kph).
A federal court judge has ruled that the name of Italian food truck Mangia Mobile is too close to the name of bricks-and-mortar restaurant Mangia Italiano, and the food truck’s owners are scrambling to find a new name.
U.S. District Judge Carol E. Jackson issued a preliminary injunction on Monday. Even if her order is eventually overturned, the food truck will stick with its new name, attorney Al Watkins said. “In effect, they’re changing their name for good,” he said. “My clients don’t want to be confused with Mangia Italiano any more than Mangia Italiano wants to be confused with Mangia Mobile.”
Siblings Thomas, Catherine and Alex Daake own the food truck. “I believe they are holding hands and singing Kumbaya as we speak as they are contemplating name alternatives,” Watkins said. (Actually, they were vending toasted ravioli, arancini deep-fried rice balls and a variety of sandwiches at Forest Park and Euclid avenues.)
The Daakes are asking the public to send suggestions for the name to Watkin’s law firm, Kodner, Watkins and Kloecker, at contact@kwklaw quick guaranteed personal loans.net. They’re looking for a name that, like Mangia, has six letters.
They’ll take down their existing Facebook page and website and inactivate their Twitter account within the next day or so. Because they announce the truck’s whereabouts through social media, selecting a new name is a priority. “It’s going to be a little bit of a logistical problem,” Watkins said.
In the meantime, they intend to stick to their previously announced schedule for this week. In addition to serving lunch today at BJC, they’ll be at Ninth and Locust streets on Wednesday, Eighth and Market streets on Thursday, and Broadway and Pine Street on Friday.
A strike deadline has now passed for Southern California grocery workers, but there is no word of any walkout just yet.
The three-day notice period required before calling a strike elapsed at 7:10 p.m. Pacific time Sunday, but union leaders said they intended to keep negotiating past the deadline.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 spokesman Mike Shimpock said earlier Sunday that workers will stay on the job at least until midnight and possibly longer if talks are moving ahead.
Messages left for union and grocery representatives just after the deadline were not immediately returned.
Some 62,000 grocery employees have been working without a contract since March, while in discussions with negotiators for grocery chains Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
A union representing workers at three major grocery chains in Southern California distributed picket signs Sunday, as the clock ticked toward the end of a three-day notice period required before calling a strike.
Union negotiators intend to keep talking if a resolution appears to be in sight when the period ends at 7:10 p.m. They also stressed that members could keep working beyond that time.
“Our workers will stay on the job until at least midnight, and possibly longer if negotiations are moving ahead,” said Mike Shimpock, spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, one of the unions representing the 62,000 workers seeking a new contract.
If little progress is made toward settling disagreements over health benefits, negotiators said they will tell members to walk off the job.
The grocery workers have been working without a contract since March, while in discussions with negotiators for The Vons Cos. Inc.; Ralphs Grocery Co., a subsidiary of The Kroger Co.; and Albertsons, owned by Supervalu Inc.
Representatives for the supermarket chains said last week they were disappointed that the unions had taken that step but remained committed to reaching an agreement.
Kendra Doyel, a spokeswoman for Ralphs, said Sunday the supermarkets remained hopeful a deal would be reached before the deadline.
Calls to representatives for Albertsons and Vons were not immediately returned.
A four-month strike and lockout that began in 2003 cost Ralphs and other grocery chains an estimated $2 billion.
Both sides in the current dispute announced in July that they had reached a tentative agreement on the employers’ contributions to pension benefits, but payments to the union health care trust fund remained a major sticking point.
Union members voted overwhelmingly to reject the health care proposal offered by the chains and to authorize their leaders to call a strike.
Union officials said they were responding to what they characterized as the chains’ delaying tactics when they issued the required 72-hour notice Thursday evening to cancel the contract extension under which they had been working.
The Ontario Securities Commission has partly lifted its ban on trading in controversial timber company Sino-Forest to allow the completion of several options trades.
The Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation had asked the OSC to allow the completion of almost 9,000
More homeowners are ‘underwater’
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