The Virginia Retirement System’s portfolio, held by more than 600,000 people, includes assets in the recently bailed-out insurer American International Group Inc. and the bankrupt Lehman Brothers Inc.

NEW YORK (AP) - The Federal Reserve, working with central banks in Europe, Canada and Asia, pumped as much as $180 billion into money markets on Thursday.

High gas prices and worsening economic conditions are slowing new car sales in the Lynchburg area.

SHIJIAZHUANG, China (AP) - Police arrested 12 more people Thursday as China expanded a crackdown in a scandal involving tainted milk powder as a fourth death was announced and more than 6,200 other babies were sick from the powder.

It was the second time this month the feds put taxpayer money on the hook to rescue a private financial company, saying its failure would further disrupt markets and threaten the already fragile economy.

Mars Petcare U.S. announced a voluntary recall of dog food manufactured at its Everson, Pennsylvania facility.

Most signs point to the U.S. economy heading toward a recession—if it isn’t in one already, a research economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond said.

The wage gap remains high among Virginia workers, with many earning far less than the average worker’s contribution to the economy, according to a study by The Commonwealth Institute.

NEW YORK (AP) - The upheaval in the American financial system sent shock waves through the stock market Monday, producing the worst day on Wall Street in seven years.

NEW YORK (AP) - When Wall Street woke up Monday morning, two more of its storied firms had fallen.

WARREN, Mich. (AP) - Chrysler LLC said Friday it will make another round of early retirement and buyout offers to factory workers in the Detroit area to reduce the number who are on indefinite layoff due to slumping sales.

NAPA, California (AP) - Sultry weather can be hard on any traveler, and for wine it can be disastrous.

As the ripples from Tuesday’s major job cuts spread at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., analysts say that the company’s restructuring strategy still leaves questions about its future unanswered.

Heads up, credit-card holders. Card issuers facing economic pressures are decreasing people’s credit limits, at times without telling them, a national consumer group warned.

VIENNA, Austria (AP)  - OPEC oil ministers agreed Wednesday to trim overall output by more than 500,000 barrels a day in a compromise meant to avoid new turmoil in crude markets while seeking to bolster falling prices.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs took the wraps off a revamped line of iPods on Tuesday and trumpeted a truce with NBC Universal that means the TV network will begin selling programs again on iTunes.

The U.S. government’s takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac marks a sharp change in the world’s long-standing view of the United States as a low-risk investment, according to several former foreign finance ministers Monday at a global economic summit at the University of Virginia.

In two months, Chuck Hoover Jr. is heading to Vietnam. His Southwest Virginia company, Hoover Color Corp., blends pigments to create furniture stains and paint colors. It has distributors in China, but several clients are opening furniture factories in Vietnam. Furniture is Hoover Color’s biggest market.

Colonel Harland Sanders’ handwritten recipe of 11 herbs and spices was to be removed Tuesday from safekeeping at KFC’s corporate offices for the first time in decades.

Some local companies are trying to insulate themselves from a recession by thinking outside the box — and outside borders.

NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street finally got what it’s been angling for: a bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Job No. 1 for the next president? In the minds of an overwhelming number of Americans, it’s fixing what ails the sick economy. What the voters will have to sort out are very different approaches offered by Barack Obama and John McCain.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) _ When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on Sept. 7, 1998, they had little more than their ingenuity, four computers and an investor’s $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world.

The current economic downturn will have longer-lasting effects than previous recessions, an economist said Thursday in Richmond.

NEW YORK (AP) _ Conventional wisdom had long held that some industries would collapse if oil topped $100 a barrel.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia regulators say they’ve received about 2,000 comments on Appalachian Power’s request to raise electrical rates in Western Virginia.

Chesapeake Regional Medical Center and Chesapeake Public Schools will begin an experiment this fall that turns the typical employee health insurance model on its head.

“Everything must go” for $8.98 or less, the signs say. That’s the price tag the company put on all its merchandise last year during a Christmas-season sale.

NEW YORK (AP) - For the nation’s lumber companies, automakers, home builders and other manufacturers, the final half of 2008 may be as sluggish as the first.

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Kids may be worried about homework, teachers and that pesky bully this school year. But parents? They’re leery about lunches.