Business - Nation / World

Air Products and Chemicals Inc. said Monday it has boosted its offer to buy rival Airgas Inc. to $65.50 per share, but said it will walk away if Airgas shareholders don't elect its board slate and approve its bylaw proposals.

The Justice Department won't say if the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from gushing from BP's undersea well into the Gulf of Mexico is on its way to shore.

The "marker" lurks inside the bank, looking for people pulling large amounts of cash from a safe deposit box or bank account. The gunmen linger outside, usually on motorcyles, waiting to make their move.

French train traffic began tapering off Monday at the start of what promises to be a major strike over unpopular conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Mozambicans found Monday they could not send text messages, after some used the technology to call for protests in this impoverished country over increases in food, water and electricity prices.

Colleges and universities are buying up chunks of land at bargain prices, sometimes without a clear idea how they'll be used.

Hallmark Cards Inc., a $4 billion empire built on a demand for printed sentimentality, enters its second century facing a weak economy and what could be an even greater challenge: a generation that has grown up posting its sentiments online.

More than 80 years ago, Germany sold tens of thousands of bonds to American investors in an effort to recover financially from World War I. Later, Adolf Hitler used some of the money raised by those bonds to build the powerful Nazi war machine that would ravage Europe during World War II.

European Union finance ministers are set to discuss the possibility of introducing a levy on banks and whether a tax on financial transactions can deal with another banking crisis, as they gather Tuesday in an atmosphere more benign than when they last met in July.

As New York Indian Nation leaders battle in courtrooms to preserve their tax-free cigarette market, tensions are rising on reservations, where the state's renewed efforts to tax sales to non-Native customers is viewed as yet another attack on Native American rights.