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Alberici Corp. said today it has bought a Topeka, Kan.-based company that specializes in building water treatment facilities using the design-build method.

Terms of Alberici’s deal to buy CAS Construction LLC were not released. Mike Burke, executive vice president of Alberici, said in a statement the acquisition provides Alberici with additional design-build capabilities and the ability to reach new customers and markets.

Alberici and CAS began working together three years ago, when they teamed with engineering firm Burns & McDonnell on the $73 million aquifer recharge system for the city of Wichita, Kan.

Mike Hafling, president of CAS, and other senior managers will remain with the company, which has been renamed CAS Constructors. LLC. Charles A. Stryker founded the company in 1985 and managed the business until his death in 2006.

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Complicated faxing techniques were always a source of worry as most loan types need an identity proof. But now with the advent of bad credit loans with no faxing, you can apply for payday loans online without much hassle on your part.

The number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes in December held near a 19-month high, showing the stabilization in the market that began in late 2011 will extend into the new year.

The index of pending home sales decreased 3.5 percent last month after jumping a combined 18 percent in October and November, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. It was the best back-to-back reading since a buyer tax credit boosted demand in early 2010.

Wall Street opened higher Wednesday following reports that the International Monetary Fund could get more cash to help countries struggling to manage their debt.

The Dow Jones industrial average is up 43 points at 12,483 after the first half-hour of trading. That’s an increase of 0.4 percent. Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are the Dow’s leading stocks. BofA rose 2.6 percent, JPMorgan 2 percent.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. jumped 3.5 percent after the investment bank reported earnings that trumped analysts’ expectations. Profit still sank 58 percent in the last three months of 2011, a result of sinking interest rates and volatile financial markets.

Other financial stocks were sharply lower. State Street Corp. dropped 6.5 percent.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, said Tuesday that the fund was looking at ways to increase the amount it can lend to countries, partly to deal with Europe’s debt crisis.

The S&P 500 index is up 5 points to 1,298. The Nasdaq is up 16 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,744.

Yahoo Inc. rose 2 no credit check payday loans.5 percent on news that co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling Internet company. The departure clears the way for newly hired CEO Scott Thompson to take more radical action to shake up the company.

The Federal Reserve said manufacturing rose 0.9 percent in December, the biggest increase since December 2010. Output surged as companies bought more machines and materials.

Among other stocks making large moves Wednesday:

_ Amphenol Corp. soared 10 percent, the largest gain in the S&P 500. The manufacturer of fiber optic cables reported earnings that beat analysts’ expectations.

_ Linear Technology Corp. jumped 8.3 percent. The Milpitas, Calif.-based circuit maker said it expects revenue to rise between 4 and 8 percent in its third quarter following strong order increases in December and January. It also raised its dividend by a penny to 25 cents per share.

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WORKING OUT: After 15 years in Chicago, Sarah Dorsey Tourville is back in her hometown to open the 34th franchise of The Dailey Method, a national network of fitness studios.

Tourville’s studio, in the Village at Schneithorst at 1560 South Lindbergh Boulevard, will officially open tomorrow but is the location for a private cocktail reception tonight.

Tourville, who is former KTRS (AM 550) honcho Tim Dorsey’s eldest daughter, has been the head of ESPN’s ad sales for the Midwest the past 10 years.

She’ll be giving up that job at the end of the year to permanently relocate in St payday loans for self employed. Louis with her two children, Lilly, 4, and Ben, 2 ½. Her ex-husband is also moving here to be close to their children, Tourville said.

Tourville is offering special discounts and packages - such as six weeks of free classes for $100 — over the weekend to celebrate the opening of the studio. She added that proceeds from the opening events will go to St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

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Europe failed to get the leaders of the world’s wealthiest economies to help out with its debt troubles, but everyone left a G-20 summit Friday relieved that at least they forced the Greek prime minister not to hold the world hostage with a bailout vote.

It took a public berating of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, and Greece’s politics are in upheaval as a result, but the shaky bailout plan appears back on track for now.

Investors had been hoping the Group of 20 nations would lend the struggling eurozone a helping hand _ but the G-20 leaders said Europe needs to help itself first. They said the International Monetary Fund could be beefed up to help more, but not for at least three more months.

The debt crisis that rocked the 17-nation currency union for the past two years has reached a new high and now threatens to push the world economy into a second recession.

Despite the political firepower at the summit _ which included the leaders of Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, India and the United States, among others _ meeting was overshadowed by political turmoil in Greece and worries about Italy, which accepted IMF supervision of its reform efforts.

The IMF move was an highly unusual intervention into the affairs of one of the world’s leading economies.

Europe’s own rescue efforts, cobbled together at several crisis meetings last week, left open many important questions, making cash-rich countries like China, Russia or Brazil reluctant to commit more than just words.

“It’s important that the IMF sees its resources reinforced,” Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told reporters. However, any decisions on how to reinforce the IMF were left until February.

The lack of detail disappointed markets, with stocks, bonds and the euro falling. Italy’s borrowing rates, in particular, hit worrying new highs.

With their own finances already stretched from bailing out Greece, Ireland and Portugal _ and traditional allies like the United States wrestling with their own problems _ eurozone countries were looking to the IMF to use its financial reserves and rescue experience to help prevent the debt crisis from spreading to its larger economies, such as Italy and Spain.

The most likely way the eurozone could still get additional financing is through a special account under the auspices of the IMF, into which individual countries could make payments. Those investments in turn could then be used to boost the currency union’s own bailout fund, the euro440 billion ($606 billion) European Financial Stability Facility.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF chief Christine Lagarde both said that at the two-day meeting not a single country made a firm commitment that it would participate payday loans with no fax.

The broader increase of the IMF’s resources, which also remained vague, is designed to help countries around the world, not just the eurozone.

Barroso said several countries had indicated they would provide bilateral loans to the IMF _ which would give it more funds without collecting money from reluctant members like the U.S.

The G-20 final statement also said the IMF should somehow issue more special drawing rights, or SDRs, the fund’s own reserve currency that can be exchanged for cash with central banks around the world. SDRs can just be created and do not require new commitments from IMF member states.

Finance ministers will now have to work out the details of these measures. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the G-20 would next deal with the topic in February.

The lack of progress on the debt crisis troubled some countries that would be hard hit by another recession in the eurozone.

“Every day that the eurozone crisis continues, every day it isn’t resolved, is a day that has a chilling effect on the rest of the world economy,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron. “We are ready to do our part to help stabilize the world economy. … But you can’t ask the IMF or other countries to substitute for the action that needs to be taken within the eurozone itself.”

The G-20 announcements show how dramatically the powers have shifted within the IMF.

Until two years ago, the IMF _ dominated by the traditional powers in Europe and the U.S. _ mostly applied its painful financial adjustment programs to poor and emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Now, it’s growing powers like China, Brazil and South Africa that have to decide whether helping Europe is a worthy investment.

In an effort to do just that, Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy with a debt load of 120 percent of gross domestic product, asked the IMF for help monitoring promised budgetary and structural reforms on a quarterly basis.

The country’s borrowing rates have risen sharply this week _ and jumped further on Friday _ on fears that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi does not have the political strength to implement the reforms.

Lagarde said the IMF hopes to start checking whether Italian measures promised to the eurozone are actually implemented by the end of November, to target “a lack of credibility.”

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Unemployment rates fell in about three-quarters of large U.S. cities in September, a sign that the nation’s modest job gains that month occurred across most of the country.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that unemployment rates fell in 280 large metro areas from August to September. They rose in 61 and were unchanged in 31. That’s the largest number of cities to see a decline since April.

Nationwide, employers added a net 103,000 jobs in September. And the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent for the third straight month. The job gains were only about enough to keep up with population growth. The economy needs to generate at least twice September’s total to reduce the unemployment rate.

Unlike national and state data, metro unemployment figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal changes. Many of the areas with the sharpest drops in unemployment were cities with large universities. They likely added jobs at the start of the academic year.

State College, Penn., home to Penn State University, reported the biggest drop in unemployment in September. Its rate fell to 5.1 percent from 6.5 percent in August. Grand Forks, N.D., site of the University of North Dakota, reported the next-largest drop, to 4.1 percent from 5 percent.

Meanwhile, many of the cities with the biggest increases in unemployment were coastal cities, where many summer employees likely lost jobs Business Card Holders.

Unemployment in Ocean City, N.J., rose to 9 percent in September, from 7.9 percent the previous month. The second-biggest rise was in Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss., on the Gulf of Mexico, where the rate jumped to 9.8 percent from 8.7 percent.

Other cities with big increases included Myrtle Beach, S.C., a popular beach resort, and Barnstable Town, Mass., part of the Cape Cod area.

Bismarck, N.D., registered the lowest unemployment rate at 2.5 percent. The next-lowest were Fargo, N.D., at 3.3 percent and Lincoln, Neb., at 3.5 percent.

Among cities with 1 million or more residents, Oklahoma City had the lowest rate, 5.5 percent. Oklahoma has benefited from its oil and gas production and high prices for grains and other agricultural communities.

El Centro, Calif., reported the highest rate, at 29.6 percent, followed by Yuma, Ariz., at 27 percent. They are adjacent counties with heavy farm economies and large contingents of migrant labor.

Las Vegas had the highest unemployment rate among cities with populations of 1 million or more: 13.6 percent.

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The leaders of Germany and France, the eurozone’s two biggest economies, said Sunday they have reached an agreement about how to strengthen Europe’s shaky banking sector amid the region’s debt crisis.

“We are determined to do the necessary to ensure the recapitalization of Europe’s banks,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel following talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin.

A “comprehensive response” to the eurozone’s debt crisis will be finalized by month’s end, including a detailed plan on recapitalizing the banks, Sarkozy said at Berlin’s chancellery.

“The economy needs secure financing to ensure growth. There is no prospering economy without stable banks,” he said. “That is what is at stake.”

However, both leaders declined to name a price tag for the new measures or elaborate further, saying the proposal must first be discussed with other European leaders.

Analysts have urged the eurozone to identify all the banks in the region that need to replenish their capital reserves, then decide whether to compel them to raise that money on the open markets and to provide government financing to the ones that can’t.

Many experts say the capital cushions of many European banks must be strengthened in order to withstand a possible government bond default by Greece. Some analysts fear that a Greek default could cause a severe credit squeeze that would even threaten banks not exposed directly to Greece’s debt because banks could be afraid to lend to each other.

The credit freeze following the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 choked off lending to the wider economy and caused a deep recession.

Merkel did not provide details Sunday about how the recapitalization would work, saying only that all banks across the eurozone would be measured by the same criteria in coordination with, among others, the European Banking Authority and the International Monetary Fund.

Any solution must be “sustainable,” Merkel added.

Sarkozy said the French-German accord on the proposal “is total.”

Germany and France will now submit their proposal to shore up Europe’s shaky banking sector to other European Union governments ahead of an Oct. 17-18 summit of the bloc’s 27 leaders in Brussels, they said.

Both leaders expressed confidence that a comprehensive European response to the crisis will be finalized before a summit of the G-20 most developed nations in France Nov. 3-4.

“The global economy needs this summit to become a success, and the European Union will do its part” to ensure a positive outcome, Merkel said.

The IMF has said banks across the continent might need up to euro200 billion ($267 billion) in new capital. The EU disputes the IMF’s estimate, but has warned that lending between banks and from banks to businesses is threatening to freeze up.

Earlier this week, Merkel said that banks must first seek to raise new capital on the market before turning to their government, insisting that the eurozone’s newly strengthened euro440 billion ($590 billion) bailout fund would then only serve as a backstop if a member state can’t cope with shoring up its banks’ capital.

France, however, was reported to favor turning to the fund’s resources right away instead of relying on a national facility to re-capitalize its banks _ who are among the biggest holders of Greek bonds.

But Sarkozy sought on Sunday to dispel the notion of different approaches regarding the European Financial Stability Facility, saying “there are no disagreements.”

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and his French counterpart, Francois Baroin, also took part in the two leaders’ discussions.

Merkel and Sarkozy were set to have a working dinner following the news conference they gave at the chancellery.

Germany and France, which together represent about half of the 17-nation currency zone’s economic output, regularly hold talks before EU summits to chart out joint positions.

The implosion of Belgian lender Dexia following its sizable exposure to Greek and other eurozone sovereign debt, meanwhile, added a sense of urgency to the talks.

France, Belgium and Luxembourg announced Sunday they had approved a plan for the future of the embattled bank, but they offered no details. France and Belgium became part owners of the bank during a euro6 billion ($7.8 billion) 2008 bailout.

While an all-out Greek default appears unlikely, bondholders might still face severe losses, with some analysts maintaining that Greece’s debt must be cut by about 50 percent or more to attain a sustainable level.

Private bondholders agreed in July to take about a 20 percent cut on their holdings of Greek bonds as their participation in a second international euro109 billion bailout for the country.

But Finance Minister Schaeuble on Sunday joined Merkel and other eurozone officials in hinting that the agreement might have to be renegotiated.

“It is possible that we have so far assumed an insufficient percentage of debt reduction,” he told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Such a move will be discussed after the so-called troika of Greece’s international creditors _ European Central Bank, European Commission and IMF _ submits its next progress report later this month, Schaeuble was quoted as saying.

Greece is currently struggling to meet budget and reform targets, but it needs an over all positive progress assessment by the troika to qualify for the next euro8 billion ($11 billion) installment of its euro110 billion package of international bailout loans to avoid bankruptcy.

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