A UCLA forecast says California will continue to struggle with recession next year even though its high-tech industries will rebound.

U.S. industrial production rose for a second straight month in August, reinforcing views the recession had ended, while a spike in gasoline costs pushed up inflation.

The Interior Department said Wednesday it is ending a controversial program that allows companies to give the U.S. government in-kind payments instead of cash for oil and natural gas taken from federal land and waters.

A weak U.S. labor market led to bigger bank writedowns of credit card debt in August as a record-high jobless rate left consumers struggling to pay their bills.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both jumped 1 percent on Wednesday as increased industrial production and a pickup in mergers and acquisitions reinforced hopes the economy was gaining speed.

Jose Manuel de Mello, a leading Portuguese entrepreneur who lost much of his family’s banking-to-shipbuilding conglomerate in the country’s 1974 Carnation Revolution but later rebuilt his business empire, died Wednesday, his company said.

WASHINGTON—-Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, along with Vermont Governor Jim Douglas and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle today announced an initiative that will allow Medicare to join Medicaid, and private insurers in state-based efforts to improve the way health care is delivered.

The European Union will support maintaining policies that poured trillions of dollars into economies and call on a G20 meeting for progress on trade talks to help boost a recovery, a draft policy document said.

Stocks rose Wednesday as strength in industrial production gave investors new reason to wager that the economy is recovering.