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Obama-era rule leads to $150M in student loan forgiveness

The U.S. Education Department said it will forgive $150 million in federal student loans as part of a 2016 rule that Secretary Betsy DeVos previously tried to block. Department officials began notifying 15,000 students on Friday that their loans will automatically be erased because they attended colleges that closed while they were still in school or shortly after they finished. About half of them attended campuses under the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain, which collapsed in 2015 amid widespread accusations of fraud. The students are eligible for loan relief under an Obama-era ...

Stocks indexes settle down, but small companies drop again

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks wobbled Thursday as the markets turned fairly quiet after a very turbulent start to the week. Small companies dropped and high-dividend stocks, which investors favor when they want to reduce risk, rose. Major stock indexes spent the day switching between small gains and losses after several days of much bigger moves. Clothing companies and other retailers fell, weighed down by weak earnings reports, and a disappointing forecast from Delta hurt airlines. Chemical and basic materials makers also sank. Investors shifted some money into high-dividend stocks ...

Business Briefs for Dec. 10

Avera Marshall opens primary care clinic at Western Mental Health Center Avera Medical Group Marshall and Western Mental Health Center in Marshall are collaborating to offer an onsite primary care clinic at WMHC. This clinic opened in early November. “We’re happy to be partnering with Avera around this service. Having a family medicine provider on site at WMHC helps ensure patients’ primary care needs are met promptly and conveniently in conjunction with their mental health care appointments at WMHC,” said Sarah Ackerman, executive director, Western Mental Health Center. ...

Stocks drop 4 percent in rocky week on trade, growth worries

Wall Street capped a turbulent week of trading Friday with the biggest weekly loss since March as traders fret over rising trade tensions between Washington and Beijing and signals of slower economic growth. The latest wave of selling erased more than 550 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, bringing its three-day loss to more than 1,400. For the week, major indexes are down more than 4 percent. Worries that the testy U.S.-China trade dispute and higher interest rates will slow the economy have made investors uneasy, leading to volatile swings in the market from one day to ...

US hiring pullback could signal mild slowdown in growth

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. job growth declined modestly in November, a move that could signal a slower but still steady pace of hiring and growth next year. The potential for a more anemic economy contributed to a sharp drop in the stock market Friday, sending the Dow Jones average down 560 points, or 2.2 percent, by market close. Yet most economists said last month’s job gain of 155,000 is more sustainable than some of the larger increases posted earlier this year. And hiring at last month’s pace would make it easier for the Federal Reserve to slow its interest rate increases, ...

US stocks claw back from an early plunge on Fed report

By Alex Veiga AP Business Writer U.S. stocks clawed most of their way back from a deep slide Thursday that at one point had wiped out the market’s gains for the year. An early plunge briefly knocked more than 700 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average as the arrest of a senior Chinese technology executive threatened to cause another flare-up in tensions between Washington and Beijing. The sell-off eased by late afternoon, however, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Reserve is considering breaking with its current approach of steady interest rate hikes, ...