Some Connecticut victims of the Bernard Madoff financial scandal urged state lawmakers Friday to enact stronger state standards for investment managers, including a required test, to help prevent future illegal schemes. While Congress is focusing on tougher…

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Conn. Madoff victims turn to lawmakers for reform

Internal AstraZeneca reports and e-mails written by company officials show they knew a decade ago that their psychiatric drug Seroquel caused diabetes and major weight gain, plaintiffs’ lawyers said Friday after releasing dozens of the previously sealed…

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Documents on Seroquel show drugmaker knew of risks

A Michigan county has agreed to pay $900,000 to settle a lawsuit over the death of a suspected drug dealer who was shot by three sheriff’s officers in 2003. St. Clair County Board Chairman Wally Evans said Friday the lawsuit filed by the family of Thomas…

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Mich. county to pay $900K in man’s shooting death

Federal prosecutors will appeal a judge’s decision to exclude evidence of three positive drug tests from Barry Bonds’ perjury trial, likely delaying its start for several months. Prosecutors notified the judge of their intention to appeal a couple of hours…

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Feds to appeal Bonds evidence ruling

Last year’s oil price run-up made it a good time to be an oil company CEO with a fistful of stock options, and Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum made the most of it, cashing in $184.4 million worth. Those options covered some 3 million shares, of which Irani…

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Occidental CEO’s 2008 options haul: $184.4M

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Laura Pendergest-Holt, the first person arrested in the $8 billion Allen Stanford fraud investigation, can walk free once she posts $300,000 bond, a Houston judge ruled on Friday.

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Stanford exec to walk free after posting bail

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street is unlikely to get a reprieve next week as relentless worries about U.S. banks and the economy could embolden bears to drive the market below the 12-year lows hit on Friday.

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Banks and economy to keep bears’ grip on stocks

NEW YORK (Reuters) – American Express Co revised upward its fourth quarter profit by almost 40 percent to $240 million, due to a hedge accounting error, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.

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American Express revises fourth quarter profit upward

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s new chief executive, Dirk Meyer, pulled down a pay package valued at $5.3 million in his first year at the helm of the struggling chip maker, a big piece of which came in the form of stock and options tied to his promotion last…

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AMD’s new CEO got $5.3 million pay package in ’08

The chief investment officer of troubled Stanford Financial Group was expected to be released on $300,000 bond Friday after a court hearing in which she was painted alternately as the scapegoat for a massive fraud and as one of the few people who knows where…

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Stanford investment officer to be released on bond

California cities and investor-owned utilities should get refunds on electricity costs now that an appeals court has determined that power generators unfairly backdated increases from 2006 to 2007. In 2005, a group of wholesale electricity generators filed a…

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Calif. cities to get refunds from power generators

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced Friday that he won’t run for re-election this year, saying “enough is enough” after five decades that made him one of the nation’s most high-profile prosecutors. “Some people are slow to learn. It took…

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Manhattan DA stepping down after 35 years on job

Wall Street ended another unforgiving month with a steep loss _ one that left the Dow Jones industrial average at less than half its record high. The day’s news unsettled investors. Citigroup Inc. agreed to turn over a big piece of itself to the government, a…

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Wall Street slides after Citigroup-government deal

For the first time since the Great Depression, General Electric Co. is cutting its quarterly dividend, a move that allows the struggling conglomerate to save $9 billion a year as it braces for a tough 2009. GE, one of the nation’s largest companies, said…

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GE cuts quarterly dividend to 10 cents a share

Lawyers have reached a tentative settlement in a music piracy lawsuit filed by the recording industry against the children of one of its best-known opponents. If the settlement is finalized, it would end a long battle between the industry and the family of…

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Tentative settlement reached in NY piracy suit