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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumer spending is threatening to stall out while consumer confidence, battered by soaring energy costs and falling home prices, has taken a steep nosedive....»

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Loosening the regulatory reins around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gives them the freedom to play a bigger role in trying to stabilize a worsening housing market....»

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures retreated from a new overnight record above $103 as the dollar gained strength and Turkish forces withdrew from northern Iraq....»

NEW YORK (AP) -- The days when investment banks would spend time wooing big investors over a leisurely meal, with booze and cigars afterward, may be on their way out....»

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In coming weeks, private audit companies will begin scouring mountains of medical records. Their mission: Determine if health care providers erred when billing Medicare and require them to return any overpayments to the federal government. The auditors will keep a tidy percentage»

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks fell sharply Friday after a series of depressing economic and corporate reports as well as high oil prices stoked concerns about the health of the economy. The major stock indexes fell more than 2.5 percent and the Dow Jones industrials lost 315 points....»

DETROIT (AP) -- Daimler AG is planning to roll out a hybrid version of its Mercedes-Benz flagship S-Class luxury sedan that uses a kind of battery already widely used in consumer electronics....»

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force on Friday awarded Northrop Grumman Corp. and a European partner a $35 billion contract to build airborne refueling planes, delivering a major blow to Boeing Co....»

TOKYO (AP) -- At a university lab in a Tokyo suburb, engineering students are wiring a rubbery robot face to simulate six basic expressions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust....»

CLEVELAND (AP) -- Folks on Humphrey Hill Drive were still waking up on the icy Saturday morning the shark hunters came to town. They rounded the suburban traffic circle in a pair of rented school buses after a half-hour ride from far more modest neighborhoods, rumbling to a stop at the Garmone famil»