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The Dow Jones industrial average is closing with its biggest gain in a month after a strong retail sales report and strong earnings from Citigroup brought buyers into the market. The Dow rose 95 points to close at 13,424 Monday, its biggest gain since September 13.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up 12 points at 1,440 and the Nasdaq composite index rose 20 points to 3,064.
- Oil prices fell more than 2 percent before making a late-day surge to get back to even. Benchmark crude finished down a penny at $91.85 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
- Government health officials have broadened their warning to doctors about other medicines made by a specialty pharmacy linked to a meningitis outbreak. The Food and Drug Administration is taking the step because of reports of new illnesses that may be tied to other products made by the same Massachusetts company, the New England Compounding Center of Framingham. Health officials want doctors to contact patients who got any injection made by the company and warn them of the risk of infection.
- Abbott Laboratories says its experimental hepatitis C drug regimen cured 99 percent of patients in a midstage study with the most common and hardest-to-treat type of the disease. Patients who took a three-drug regimen and the drugs Ritonavir (rih-TAHN'-uh-veer) and ribavirin had undetectable virus levels after 12 weeks of treatment. The company says it observed a 93 percent cure rate in a group of patients who were not helped by other treatments.
- The American Civil Liberties Union is accusing Morgan Stanley of violating civil rights laws byencouraging a lender to push more expensive and risky mortgages on black neighborhoods in Detroit. The ACLU and others filed a lawsuit today on behalf of five homeowners who took out loans from New Century Mortgage Corp., a subprime lender that has since collapsed. Morgan Stanley says the allegations are "completely without merit."
