The Danville metropolitan area ranked first in nonagricultural job growth for areas with fewer than 1 million workers from December 2006 to December 2007, posting a 6.9 percent gain, according to the Blue Chip Job Growth Update from Arizona State University

Struggling parts supplier Plastech Engineered Products Inc. has agreed to resume sending parts to Chrysler, temporarily halting a financial dispute that had closed four of the automaker’s assembly plants.

Microsoft showed off a handful of early-stage advertising projects at its headquarters Tuesday that may or may not turn up as part of Microsoft’s Web advertising platform.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, U.S. online ad spending grew about 25 percent through the first three quarters of last year, compared with the same period in 2006. Growth is steady in terms of dollars, though the growth rate is slowing as the size of the pie gets larger.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, said the administration has been closely watching capital markets since a severe credit crisis hit in August, roiling markets around the globe.

Lingering hopes that the U.S. economy might avert a recession withered Tuesday after the nation’s service sector - its banks, travel companies, contractors and stores, among others - shrank for the first time in five years.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond says additional interest rate cuts may not be warranted unless the economy slumps more than expected this year.

Philip Morris USA’s parent company might try to buy the nation’s largest smokeless-tobacco company to add a growth market to its U.S. business, one analyst said yesterday.

Plastech supplies Chrysler with about 500 plastic interior, exterior and powertrain components for nearly all of its vehicles, according to a lawsuit Chrysler filed Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit.

Oil giant BP PLC formally entered a guilty plea Monday as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors for its criminal conduct in a deadly explosion at its Texas City refinery in 2005.

Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell in Monday’s auction to their lowest levels since late 2004.

Microsoft Corp.‘s proposed $42 billion purchase of Yahoo Inc. would establish the world’s largest software maker as a “strong No. 2 competitor” against online search leader Google Inc., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

The latest payroll figures, released Friday by the Department of Labor, look immediately depressing, but there’s disagreement about what they show - and whether they’ll change drastically when they’re revised later this month.

New on Amazon’s shelves: storage, data crunching for startup

Stocks mostly higher

Gannett Co., the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, said Friday that falling revenue from broadcast and newspaper ad sales combined with an impairment charge drove fourth quarter earnings down 31 percent.

Exxon Mobil Corp. posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company - $40.6 billion - on Friday as the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company benefited from historic crude prices at the end of the year.

Your child is sitting on $100 in holiday gift money and you’re looking for a place to stash it.  Somehow the idea of parking it in a savings account earning 2 cents a month in interest seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

Microsoft is offering $31 a share per share for Yahoo, or a total of $44.6 billion, representing a 62 percent premium to Yahoo’s closing stock price Thursday.

By the close, the key averages failed to sustain their best levels of the day after the Fed cut short-term rates by a-half point

The 5.2% increase in orders was a surprise finish for the manufacturing sector at year’s end, a segment of the economy considered to have had a poor year.

Cable television upstart Current Media Inc. plans to go public later this year, giving investors a chance to assess the entrepreneurial skills of its co-founder, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Under Chrysler’s current offer, employees who are on temporary or indefinite layoff or have at least one year of service can get up to $100,000 and six months of health benefits if they agree to cut ties with the company.

If insurers didn’t get help, municipal projects might increase in cost

Amid the turbulence of the plunging stock market, there’s a great opportunity for small-business owners.  If they set up retirement plans now, they’ll position themselves and their employees for big gains when Wall Street finally recovers

The Treasury Department auctioned $23 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 2.335 percent, down from 2.370 percent last week. Another $21 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 2.310 percent, down from 2.400 percent last week.

The board of New York-based Altria Group approved the spinoff last August but said it would finalize its decision and give the exact timing of the spinoff at its board meeting on January 30th.

The company reported seeing no real effect of a possible economic slowdown, beyond a marginal increase in nonpaying wireless subscribers.

Sales of new homes plunged by a record amount in 2007 while prices posted the weakest showing in 16 years, demonstrating the troubles builders are facing with a huge backlog of unsold homes.

GM conceded Wednesday that Toyota Motor Corp. pulled even last year, each of them selling about 9.37 million vehicles, in another sign that the balance of corporate power is shifting from West to East.