Oil rises on strength in Germany, China

NEW YORK — Oil prices are rising slightly on a surprise expansion of German exports and signs of increased oil consumption in China.

Benchmark crude rose 22 cents to $86.15 just before 10 a.m. in New York.

The German government said Monday that exports from Europe's biggest economy rose slightly in October after losing ground the month before. They were 10.6 percent higher than October a year earlier.

And in China, the world's second-largest economy after the United States, crude imports last month were the highest in half a year. The oil demand data was released a day after another set of figures showed that China's industrial production and retail sales exceeded expectations in November.

In the U.S., pump prices are now averaging $3.34 a gallon, up 6 cents from a year ago.

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MLB, StubHub renew secondary ticket market deal

NEW YORK — Major League Baseball has agreed to a new five-year deal with StubHub as its secondary ticket market.

The original contract started in 2007 and expired after last season.

Financial terms of the agreement announced Monday were not disclosed.

MLB Advanced Media President and CEO Bob Bowman says "this renewal reflects its successes in an ever-evolving space."

StubHub is the world's largest ticket marketplace. It allows fans to buy and sell tickets to events at market-rate prices.

StubHub President Chris Tsakalakis says the company plans to use new technology to improve consumers' experiences, especially on mobile devices.

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Wayfair raises $36M for Joss & Main

Home goods online retailer Wayfair said today it has raised $36.3 million in new equity funding to speed growth of its private sale site for the home, Joss & Main.

Investors included Battery Ventures, Great Hill Partners, HarbourVest Partners and Spark Capital. A division of Boston-based Wayfair, Joss & Main is a membership-based website that offers inspirational decor at attainable prices via daily events, spotlight collections highlighting design trends and styles, and curated collections in collaboration with celebrities and notable influencers within the design community, the company said.

Members of the private sales site can explore curated collections of furniture, housewares, decor and accents through limited time sales, Wayfair added.

Joss & Main co-founder and general manager John Mulliken said the aim of Joss & Main is to "evoke a lifestyle magazine and encourage the delight of daily window shopping as well as the ease and temptation to buy every item from every story — if you act quickly enough."

Officials added Joss & Main released a mobile app earlier this year that has helped drive steady sales growth with the percentage of revenue from mobile up 50 percent this holiday season.

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Government investigating makers of cellphone apps

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration says it's investigating software companies that make cellphone apps to determine whether they are violating the privacy rights of children by quietly collecting personal information from their phones, then sharing it with advertisers and data brokers. Such spying apps downloaded to mobile devices can capture a child's physical location, phone numbers of their friends and more.

In its announcement Monday, the Federal Trade Commission did not specify which companies it is investigating. It described the marketplace for mobile applications as a digital danger zone.

The agency examined 400 applications designed for kids randomly selected from online stores operated by Apple and Google. Most failed to inform parents about data that it could gather and who could access it. Others apps contained advertising and links to social media.

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Deep divides in Dubai at UN talks on Internet

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Talks over possible new U.N. regulations for the Internet were deeply divided Monday, with Russia and others advocating for more government sway while a U.S.-led bloc warned against rules that could restrict freedoms in cyberspace.

The Dubai conference, which wraps up later this week, is not empowered to bring about any immediate changes on how the Internet operates. But the U.S. and its backers argue that sanctioning greater government roles in Internet oversight could allow governments that already heavily censor Web traffic, such as China or Iran, to justify more restrictions and monitoring.

A high-powered U.S. delegation — including representatives from tech giants such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. — has tried to block all discussions of possible Internet regulations. The effort, however, has met strong headwinds from countries such as Russia that want a greater control over Net commerce and security.

So far, the closed-door talks have failed to find much common ground at the 193-nation U.N. International Telecommunications Union, which last updated its rules in 1988 before the Internet became a global force.

"What's happened in the conference is a variety of proposals have come in from other nations that get into the Internet, that look at Internet governance," said the head of the 123-member U.S. delegation, Ambassador Terry Kramer, in a video uploaded by organizers late Sunday. "It creates an open door for review of content and potential censorship there. It will create a chilling environment for the Internet."

For several days, U.S.-led envoys fought against a proposal submitted by the host United Arab Emirates, which last month passed sweeping new Internet laws outlawing social media posts that insult rulers or call for protests.

The proposal — backed by countries such Russia, China and other Arab states — was removed from discussion Monday, conference organizers said, after an uproar from Web activists supporting the American position. Among its provisions was a call for governments to have "equal rights to manage the Internet," including its technical workings, according to a text leaked by a website, wcitleaks.org. The site claimed to have access to meeting documents not yet made public.

It's unclear, however, whether the American views have gained the upper hand as the talks move into their final days. U.S. officials say other proposals that support a greater government voice in Internet affairs are still active.

Many experts on Internet technology believe the proposals could further squeeze the Net in countries where it is closely regulated, even though it won't fundamentally alter cyberspace in places with traditions of openness.

"These proposals would break what's working —freedom of information and freedom of access," tech analyst Elise Ackerman wrote in a column for Forbes. "And they wouldn't help fix the parts of the Internet that need reinforcing, namely security and privacy."

She noted, however, the conference reflects a general push for more "international policymaking" as the U.S. dominance of the Internet weakens.

On Monday, the head of the U.N. telecoms agency, Hamadoun Toure, was scheduled to meet with civil society groups who have complained of being excluded from the talks.

Other issues at the conference also remain unresolved, including a European-led proposal to charge content providers for access to cross-border markets. The idea is strongly opposed by U.S. companies such as Google, Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and others. Supporters say the so-called "toll" could be used by developing countries to fund expansion of Internet services.

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Top Jindal aides use personal email to strategize

BATON ROUGE, La. — Top officials in Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration used personal email accounts to craft a media strategy for imposing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts — a method of communication that can make it more difficult to track under public records laws despite Jindal's pledge to bring more transparency to state government.

Emails reviewed by The Associated Press reveal that non-state government email addresses were used dozens of times by state officials to communicate last summer about a public relations offensive for making $523 million in health care cuts. Those documents weren't provided to AP in response to a public records request.

Jindal, now in his second term, has become a leading voice among Republican governors and is considered a potential presidential candidate. His administration's emails fold into a national debate over the use of personal email accounts by government officials to discuss official business.

The issue was a prominent one during the administration of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Palin's use of private email accounts as governor prompted a lawsuit in which the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that officials using private email accounts for public business need to keep documents "appropriate for preservation" under the state's records management act. In response, her successor has instructed employees to use state email for conducting state business.

The head of a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks public records issues said government officials often use private email accounts to try to sidestep disclosure laws designed to provide sunshine in government.

"Absolutely people use private accounts to hide things," said Kenneth Bunting, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, based at the University of Missouri. "If government business is conducted or information about it is sent or received on personal computers or through personal email accounts, that does not keep it from being the public's business."

The email exchanges in Louisiana took place this past summer, as the Jindal administration was planning steep reductions to programs for the poor and uninsured because of a drop in federal Medicaid funding.

Participants included Jindal's top budget adviser Kristy Nichols, health care secretary Bruce Greenstein, Greenstein's chief of staff and health policy adviser, and Jindal's communications staff. Jindal was not included in the emails, and it's unclear whether he knew his top staff used private accounts to conduct public business.

The dozens of conversations held outside the state's official email system covered subjects such as press releases, responses to news coverage of the budget cuts, preparation of an opinion column to be submitted by Greenstein to newspapers and complaints about reporters' coverage. The emails were sent mainly through accounts administered by Google and Yahoo.

In one exchange, Calder Lynch, a health policy adviser to Greenstein, directs a communications staffer to send certain types of items to Lynch's personal Gmail account, rather than to use his state government email address.

The emails were provided to AP by an administration official who participated in the discussions and who asked not to be identified because he wasn't authorized to release them.

Jindal campaigned for his first term on a platform of providing more transparency in government.

However, the emails in question weren't among more than 3,800 documents and emails provided to AP by the Department of Health and Hospitals in response to a request for information on discussions surrounding the health care cuts.

Louisiana's public records law states that all documents used in "the conduct, transaction or performance" of public business are considered public except in cases where there is a specific exemption.

Administration officials didn't respond directly to questions about whether they were using private email accounts to shield conversations about public business from disclosure.

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Obama heading to Michigan to push taxes on rich

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is pressing for public support today to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, a day after he and House Speaker John Boehner met one-on-one for the first time to discuss ways to avert the "fiscal cliff."

Neither side provided details of the weekend meeting at the White House. But with just three weeks until a flurry of tax hikes and spending cuts start taking effect, the mere fact that the meeting happened was seen as progress.

Negotiations continue to center on whether to raise tax rates for the top two percent of income earners. Obama, in a campaign-style speech to auto workers in Michigan on Monday, is expected to stress that he won't sign a deal that doesn't include higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

While Republicans have long opposed that approach, some GOP lawmakers are suggesting the party relent on taxes in order to win concessions from the president on entitlement reforms.

And business leaders, tired of Washington's partisan bickering creating uncertainty in the marketplace, are emphasizing the need to hammer out a deal before year's end.

"The millions of people that work for us, their lives are in flux. And this is incredibly critical we get this done now," said Jeffrey Immelt, GE's chief executive and head of the presidential advisory council on competitiveness.

Immelt, in remarks aired Monday on "CBS This Morning," added: "Everyone knows we need revenue," because spending cuts alone won't solve the problem.

GOP mavericks are putting increased pressure on their party's leaders to rethink how they approach negotiations with Obama in the wake of a bruising national election that left Democrats in charge of the White House and Senate.

"There is a growing group of folks looking at this and realizing that we don't have a lot of cards as it relates to the tax issue before year end," Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told "Fox News Sunday."

If Republicans agree to Obama's plan to increase rates on the top 2 percent of Americans, Corker added, "the focus then shifts to entitlements, and maybe it puts us in a place where we actually can do something that really saves the nation."

Conservative stalwart Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had already floated a similar idea. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., has said Obama and Boehner could at least agree not to raise tax rates on the majority of Americans and negotiate the rates of top earners later.

"It's not waving a white flag to recognize political reality," Cole said on CNN's "State of the Union."

But such ideas face an uphill battle. Many House Republicans say they wouldn't vote for tax rate hikes under any circumstances. And GOP leadership could lose leverage in the negotiations if it raises the rate on upper-income earners without getting anything substantial in return like entitlement reform.

Democratic leaders have suggested they are unwilling to tackle entitlement spending in the three weeks left before the fiscal cliff is triggered.

"I just don't think we can do it in a matter of days here before the end of the year," Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said of Medicare reform specifically, in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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Ariad rises on positive leukemia drug results

A new cancer drug from Cambridge-based Ariad Pharmaceuticals has helped nearly half of chronic myeloid leukemia patients in a 12-month trial achieve a "complete cytogenetic response" — meaning their bone marrow is cancer-free.

Company shares, which closed at $22.07 on Friday, rose more than 5 percent this morning to a high of $23.20.

Data from the trial of ponatinib was presented yesterday at the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Atlanta.

Ariad said it filed for regulatory approval of ponatinib this year in the United States and Europe based on clinical data from the trial.

The trial of ponatinib involved 444 patients, including 267 with chronic myeloid leukemia, who had previously been treated with other drugs. A total of 46 percent of patients in the trial achieved a complete cytogenetic response, while 56 percent achieved a "major cytogenetic response," meaning their bone marrow is nearly cancer-free.

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Report: Kodak gets patent bid from Apple, Google

NEW YORK — Apple and Google, bitter rivals in smartphone technology, have joined up to make a combined bid for a bundle of patents offered by photography pioneer Kodak, according to a published report.

Bloomberg News reported Saturday that Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have abandoned competing bids for the portfolio to offer a combined $500 million. The sum is the minimum Kodak can sell the patents for and still get an $830 million loan that's crucial to getting the company out of bankruptcy.

Apple and Google declined to comment on the report. A Kodak representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January after struggling to adapt to the world of digital photography.

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European markets shaken by Italian political woes

PARIS — European shares were shaken Monday by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's announcement he will resign by year's end, raising worries that political turmoil could derail Europe's effort to end its financial crisis.

The major stock indexes, however, recovered to close slightly higher thanks to stronger trading in the U.S.

Widely credited with restoring confidence in Italy amid a debt crisis, Monti said over the weekend that he found it impossible to lead after former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's party, Parliament's largest, dropped its support.

Analysts fear Monti's unexpected resignation could spark a new round of Italian political turmoil and slow efforts to shape up the 17-country eurozone's third largest economy.

Berlusconi resigned as premier last year amid sex scandals and legal woes, unable to convince international markets that he could balance Italy's budget and pass necessary financial reforms to save Italy from a Greek-style debt crisis. Monti, a respected economist and former European Union competition commissioner, was tapped to head a government of technocrats to guide Italy.

"This (Monti's) decision has clearly been met with anxiety in the markets, with Monti's government seen as imperative to Italy's stability," Craig Erlam, market analyst for London-based Alpari, said in a note.

Italy's main stock index, the FTSE MIB, fell 2.3 percent to 15,340. The interest rate on the Italian government's 10-year bond — an indicator of how risky investors consider a country's ability to pay down its debt — rose 0.30 precentage points to 4.52 percent.

Other European stocks also fell in early trading but regained ground after the U.S. market opened. Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.3 percent to 5,923 while Germany's DAX rose 0.2 percent to 7,532. France's CAC-40 rose 0.1 percent to 3,610.

Stocks inched higher on Wall Street after a November sales report by McDonald's boosted confidence in the consumer spending in the world's largest economy. At 1630 GMT the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2 percent at 13,187.

Investors were also slightly more upbeat in Asia, where China reported that factory output increased 10.1 percent from a year earlier in November, a sign of recovery in the world's No. 2 economy. The inflation rate rose to 2 percent, slightly below the projected 2.1 percent, the government said Sunday.

"I think China's economy has turned the corner, so that's why the market is going up," said Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 0.1 percent to close at 9,533.75. Hong Kong's Hang Seng advanced 0.4 percent to 22,276.72. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.1 percent to 4,557.90. South Korea's Kospi was nearly unchanged at 1,957.42.

The China data followed the release Friday of U.S. government figures showing that employers added 146,000 jobs in November, beating economists' estimates. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent from 7.9 percent, although that was mainly because more people gave up looking for work.

In commodity markets, the benchmark oil contract for January delivery was up 50 cents to $86.43 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 33 cents to finish at $85.93 per barrel on the Nymex on Friday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.2914 from $1.2926 in New York on Friday. The dollar fell to 82.22 yen from 82.40 yen.

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