Business - Investor's Business Daily

Investors greeted the official return of AOL to Wall Street with all of the excitement of a neighborhood yard sale. Full Story »

1 Days after declaring he'll dispatch 30,000 more troops to fight in Afghanistan, Pres. Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, defending war as key to securing peace. "To say that force is sometimes necessary ... is a recognition of history," he said. Obama, who won the honor barely 8 months into his presidency, also noted "my accomplishments are slight" vs. previous winners. Full Story »

As gold has stormed to new highs, a well-endowed class of buyers has joined the stampede. Full Story »

Men have been hit especially hard in this recession as jobs in the male-dominated construction and manufacturing fields have evaporated, many of them for good. Full Story »

Green jobs in Calif. are growing at a faster pace than jobs overall in the nation's most populous state, but they still account for only a tiny fraction of the economy, says a study conducted by Collaborative Economics for the public policy group Next 10. Calif., with the most aggressive climate change regulation in the nation, had 159,000 green jobs out of an economy with more than 18 mil jobs at the start of '08. Next 10 said that's fewer jobs than it expected, but added that its figures are conservative because researchers only counted firms that engaged in clearly green activities. Full Story »

U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth, concluding 3 days of meetings in Pyongyang, called the discussions "candid and businesslike," but acknowledged that he failed to get N. Korea to agree to resume 6-nation nuclear-disarmament talks. N. Korea walked away from the negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, S. Korea and the U.S. a year ago. Five months later it detonated a nuclear device, its second such test, resulting in tightened U.N. sanctions. Full Story »

Federal health officials said that the swine flu has sickened about 50 mil Americans, or about 1 in 6 U.S. residents, and killed about 10,000. The estimates cover the first 7 months of the pandemic, from April through mid-November. The figures are up significantly from the CDC's previous report, which had estimated that the swine flu had sickened 22 mil and killed about 4,000 through mid-Oct. Full Story »

Foreclosures fell almost 8% in Nov., the 4th straight drop from July's record high, RealtyTrac said. "Loan modifications and other foreclosure prevention efforts, along with the recently extended and expanded homebuyer tax credit, are keeping a lid on" foreclosures, said RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio. But default notices, scheduled foreclosure auctions and bank repossessions rose 18% vs. a year ago to 306,627. California, Florida, Illinois and Michigan accounted for 52% of filings. Full Story »

Economy: In a follow-on to the president's jobs summit, Congress is cooking up a jobs bill for a vote next week. It's the same tired recipe to expand government at the expense of the private sector. Call it a jobs kill. Full Story »

Law: American heroes are arraigned for allegedly punching a terrorist in wartime. What happens to Tiger Woods isn't vital to our country's future. What happens to Matthew McCabe, Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe is. Full Story »