U.S. stocks rise on oil price fall
NEW YORK, July 20 (UPI) -- U.S. stocks rose Wednesday, despite disappointing earnings reports from General Motors Corp. and Intel Corp.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 45.59, or .40 percent, to 10,689.15 on a volume of 1.2 billion shares. The Nasdaq composite gained 15.39, or 0.71 percent, to 2,188.57, and the Standard & Poor's 500 increased 5.85, or 0.48 percent, to 1,235.20.
General Motors fell 4 percent after it said it lost $286 million in the second quarter, hurt by a $1 billion-plus loss at its North American automotive operations, the Wall Street Journal said. Intel's second-quarter profit margins missed expectations.
Oil, meanwhile, fell sharply to $56.72 per barrel.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury rose 4/32, or $1.25 per $1,000 invested, to yield 4.167 percent.
The dollar rose to 113.03 yen from 112.20 yen, and the euro increased to $1.2119 from $1.2043.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 climbed 24.51 or 0.2 percent to 11,789.35, and London's FTSE 100 closed at 5,202.50 after rising 1 point or 0.02 percent.
WTO steps into Boeing-Airbus fight
GENEVA, Switzerland, July 20 (UPI) -- The World Trade Organization agreed Wednesday to a U.S. request to intervene in a long-running dispute over government subsidies to Europe's Airbus jetmaker.
WTO member states meeting in Geneva accepted Washington's request to set up a panel to examine a U.S. complaint against billions of dollars given to Airbus by Britain, France, Germany and Spain, Deutsche Welle said.
Separately, the WTO also agreed to consider a European Union challenge to alleged U.S. subsidies to Boeing Co.
Washington has long held that European governments are illegally subsidizing Airbus' aircraft development costs, masked as "export subsidies," the BBC said Wednesday.
Airbus' European supporters have long responded that Boeing gets lots of subsidies from Washington masked as military contracts.
News that the WTO was opening a formal investigation of the dispute was met with yet more recriminations.
Europe "has made genuine attempts to settle the case amicably instead of pursuing the path of litigation," said trade official Raimund Raith, who represented the European Union at the last WTO meeting.
"Unfortunately the U.S. was not prepared to move an inch."
China notches 9.5% GDP in first half
BEIJING, July 20 (UPI) -- China's economy expanded 9.5 percent in the first half of the year, the state-owned Xinhua media group said Wednesday.
The National Bureau of Statistics also reported second quarter GDP was up 9.5 percent, year-on-year, following a 9.4 percent rise in the first quarter.
"This growth rate is consistent with the average rate over the past 27 years which has been around 9.4 percent," a NBS spokesman said.
Retail sales in the first half increased by 13.2 percent, while consumer prices were up 2.3 percent, far less than last year's 3.9 percent increase.
At the same time, exports continued to expand in the first half of 2005, up 32.7 percent to $342.3 billion, with China's global trade surplus widening to $39.6 billion.
Southwest, American in political dog fight
WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- Political supporters of American Airlines are pushing a bill in Congress to force Southwest Airlines to leave Dallas' Love Field and move to D/FW Airport.
Southwest, which pioneered a point-to-point routing strategy and became the most profitable U.S. airline, uses Love Field as its base. Dallas-Fort Worth is American Airlines' super-hub.
Since 1979, the Wright Amendment has restricted Southwest's flights from Love Field to eight states.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., introduced a bill Tuesday to let Southwest fly wherever its customers want to go from Love Field. A similar House bill has 28 co-sponsors.
Observers say such a measure would devastate American, a legacy carrier whose hub-and-spoke strategy has cost it millions. Supporters of American Airlines, including Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, proposed a bill to close Love Field to all commercial air traffic, forcing Southwest to use D/FW Airport.
Southwest slammed the Inhofe-Harkin bill.
"That is like Wal-Mart saying to the hardware store, 'I have a nice piece of land next to my SuperCenter. Come over and compete and get sliced to death,' " Southwest chairman Herb Kelleher said.
