Business News

A materials company is encouraging southern farmers to grow kenaf, a fast-growing fibrous plant that it says can be turned into a new type of environmentally friendly lumber that termites won't touch.

Nearly 200 former Enron Corp. workers have united to demand severance pay from the bankrupt energy giant that abruptly laid them off last month.

Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, whose words are difficult to interpret in the best of times, may have come across as too pessimistic about the economy's chances for recovery in a recent speech.

Cindy Elder wants to sell more mobile homes, and the customers who walk onto her lot sure want to buy them.

Both companies declined to comment Saturday on a published report that AOL Time Warner Inc. is negotiating to buy the Linux distributor Red Hat Inc.

Clearly, in the pinched language of damage control, ``mistakes were made.'' Now comes the time for Enron's executives and the accounting firm that allowed its creative bookkeeping to explain sudden bankruptcy.

An auto loan company has been accused of overcharging minorities for interest on their cars in two federal lawsuits filed in four states and the District of Columbia.

None of the tickets sold for Friday's $7 million drawing matched all five lotto numbers and the Big Money Ball. The next drawing will be Tuesday.

3M, which announced a 13 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings, said Friday it will cut 1,000 more jobs this year than had been previously announced.

Automobile industry experts call it ``the holy grail'' - a new type of fuel that would make gasoline obsolete and replace car fumes with a harmless mist.