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ST. LOUIS - With two GEO Trackers, a Lexus and a pickup truck, retired coal miner Bob Woll has many ways to zip around his southern Illinois town to visit friends, the fairgrounds or the frozen custard stand. These days, he prefers his electric golf cart.

BOSTON - Eleven people, including a U.S. Secret Service informant, have been charged in connection with the hacking of nine major retailers and the theft and sale of more than 41 million credit and debit card numbers, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American International Group Inc posted its third consecutive quarterly net loss on Wednesday, hurt again by the write-down of derivatives linked to bad mortgage investments.

HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut sued Countrywide Financial Corp. on Wednesday, becoming the latest state to take the mortgage lender to court over its lending practices.

NEW YORK - Freddie Mac on Wednesday posted a second-quarter loss that was more than three-times larger than Wall Street expected as a huge number of borrowers with good credit fell behind on their exotic and risky mortgages.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Sprint Nextel Corp., the nation's third-largest wireless carrier, said Wednesday it swung to a second-quarter loss on severance and other charges but still beat Wall Street expectations and said it had slowed customer defections.

SEATTLE - About 1,500 people who bought tickets from Alaska or Horizon airlines have been notified their credit cards were misused.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, building on the previous day's big gains, as a further drop in oil prices and a reassuring outlook from Cisco Systems overshadowed persistent credit concerns.

These are uncertain times for the U.S. labor market. Companies such as Merrill Lynch , Sony and Alcatel-Lucent , which have either posted losses or greatly diminished profits, are cutting staff as financial pressures mount. And while the U.S. unemployment rate has held steady at 5.5% for the last two months, there are no guarantees that workers -- especially those between ages 50 and 60 -- will be able to avoid further cutbacks.

NEW YORK - Oil prices briefly dropped below $118 a barrel Wednesday — $30 below their record high — after a jump in U.S. crude and other fuel supplies fed beliefs that high energy prices are eating into demand.

RICHMOND, Va. - Used vehicle retailer CarMax Inc. said Wednesday it is reducing staffing levels and will temporarily slow its store growth after seeing a sharp drop in car and truck sales because of high gas prices.

(Reuters) - Morgan Stanley told thousands of clients this week that they will not be allowed to withdraw money on their home-equity credit lines, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the situation. Most of the clients had properties that have lost value, the agency reported, citing a person who declined to be identified.

LOS ANGELES - Sony Corp. said Tuesday it is buying Bertelsmann AG out of their 50-50 music venture Sony BMG for $900 million, giving it full ownership of a roster of artists including Alicia Keys and the increased ability to leverage music over an array of electronic devices.

Higher gas and fuel prices are making it harder for Americans to do something they're not too keen on anyway -- saving for the future. Even before the recent economic slowdown and spike in commodity prices squeezed household budgets, Americans were spending too much by many measures. The national savings rate has hovered just above 0% in recent years, even as a generation of baby boomers quickly approach retirement. The rate was more than 10% as recently as the 1980s.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts' $50.6 billion pension fund on Wednesday fired a Legg Mason Inc unit run by fund manager Bill Miller and four other fund firms from managing a $1.8 billion U.S. stocks portfolio due to poor performance.

LONDON (Reuters) - Acquisitive miner Xstrata unveiled a $10 billion takeover bid for the world's third-biggest platinum producer Lonmin , aiming to diversify its business from industrial metals such as copper.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Whole Foods Market , the leading U.S. natural foods grocer, posted a lower quarterly profit that missed Wall Street estimates on Tuesday and suspended its dividend as sales growth slowed, pushing down its stock 17 percent in extended trading.

RIO DE JANEIRO/LONDON (Reuters) - Robust demand for minerals and metals boosted Vale's net income to a record in the second quarter and helped its former takeover target, Xstrata, beat expectations for its first-half earnings.

Micron announced Tuesday that it will soon begin delivering 256GB solid-state drives for notebooks and servers. SSDs have quicker access times and consume less power than standard SATA or SCSI hard drives.

LOS ANGELES - Snack lovers, rejoice: Munching on potato chips just got a little healthier.