Business and Finance news

Amgen Inc. is laying off about 380 employees in research and development as it restructures its R&D operations.
The biotech company, based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., says the layoffs are targeted to enable the company to better allocate its research and development resources.
Company spokeswoman Christine Regan says the affected employees were notified Wednesday. They work at […]

MONTREAL

While Research In Motion Ltd. struggles to contain a service outage that’s affecting tens of million of BlackBerry users around the world, its co-chief executives are most conspicuous by their absence.
Neither Jim Balsillie, who was in Dubai Monday at an industry conference when the outage began, nor Mike Lazaridis, the dual CEOs and co-chairmen who […]

Beleaguered music and movie retailer HMV Canada says sales are up since it changed its pricing structure.
It’s looking at launching the country’s first subscription-based digital music service next year.
And it’s considering a move into movie rentals as a way to boost future revenues.
There’s a hole in market since video rental retailer Blockbuster Canada filed for […]

Stocks are closing sharply higher for a third straight day after U.S. retailers reported stronger September sales and the European Central Bank moved to support that region’s lenders.
Target, Nordstrom, Macy’s and other retailers reported sales that beat Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts said the results suggested the U.S. was not in another recession.
In Europe, investors cheered […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is reiterating that Congress should not cut spending sharply while the economy is weak.
Bernanke tells the Joint Economic Committee that lawmakers face a delicate challenge: They must avoid making deep spending cuts that could impede the recovery. But he says they must also eventually cut spending more deeply than the […]

As Hurricane Ophelia moves north, forecasters have lifted a tropical storm watch for Bermuda but added one for the entire Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami says the tropical storm watch for Bermuda was lifted early Saturday evening.
At 5 p.m. Saturday, Ophelia had maximum sustained winds near 120 mph (193 kph) and […]

Most personal finance commentators say you need an emergency fund to cushion you from unexpected events, such as losing your job or facing a big unforeseen expense.
For many years I resisted. As the father of two young children, and with a huge mortgage, I didn’t have much spare cash. It always made more sense to […]

ST. LOUIS

Congress gave President Barack Obama’s drive to promote jobs growth a boost Thursday by presenting him with a major overhaul of the patent system that the president has sought as a means to spur innovation and put more people back to work.
The Senate voted 89-9 to pass the patent bill and send it to Obama […]