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Consumer confidence rose more than expected in December, hitting an eight-month high, as Americans grew more upbeat about the labor market and their financial situation.

The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer sentiment increased to 64.5 from a downwardly revised 55.2 in November.

Economists had expected a reading of 58.3 from a previously reported 56.0 in November.

The rise in sentiment offered hope for a pick-up in consumer spending after a tepid performance in November.

Labor market conditions have improved in recent months, with the unemployment rate falling to a 2-1/2 year low in November and applications for first time jobless benefits at the lowest since April 2008.

The survey’s present situation index rose to 46.7 this month — the highest since September 2008 — from 38.3 in November. The expectations index surged to 76.4 from 66.4 in November.

“Consumers are more optimistic that business conditions, employment prospects and their financial situations will get better,” the Conference Board said in a statement.

“While consumers are ending the year in a somewhat more upbeat mood, it is too soon to tell if this is a rebound from earlier declines or a sustainable shift in attitudes.”

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Workers used white tarps Friday to cover the exterior signs of Shula’s 347 Grill, which abruptly closed last week at the Roberts Tower, the stylish but empty condo building in downtown St. Louis.

Taped to the front door was a sign that read, “We are closed to make exciting changes!”

How the street-level space will change could not be immediately determined, but Shula’s will not return. Robert Zarco, the lawyer for Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Shula Steak Houses, said Friday that the company pulled its St. Louis franchise, which he said was held by a firm controlled by businessmen brothers Mike and Steve Roberts.

Zarco said Shula’s main concern in St. Louis was that employees of the local restaurant were not getting paid.

“The tension was between the employees and the franchisee arising from the employees’ claiming they were not paid their wages and salaries,” he said. “In our view it impairs the brand and corporate good will of our company when employees are not paid.”

Efforts to reach Roberts company officials were unsuccessful.

Zarco said the Roberts company did not fight the loss of its Shula 347 Grill franchise. The restaurant, on the ground floor of the Roberts Tower, opened last spring.

About 30 Shula restaurants in a chain begun by retired Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula operate in more than a dozen states.

The sleek glass-and-concrete Roberts Tower, at 411 North 8th Street, is a Roberts development that has no residents two years past what had been its expected opening.

The 25-story tower adjoins the Roberts Mayfair Hotel, where some hourly workers have said they sometimes do not get paid on time.

Pending against another Roberts entity, Roberts Hospitality Services II, are liens for unpaid state sales and use taxes. The largest is for nearly $1.3 million. Nearly all of that amount is for what the lien document describes as “addition to tax” to the $25,412 in taxes owed for June 2011.

Ted Farnen, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Revenue, said Friday that the lien would be ’significantly” altered but would not say whether the amount would be revised up or down.

Also owed by Roberts Hospitality Services are payments to vendors. Among them is a $19,294 judgment obtained by Middendorf Meat Co. Its lawyer, Vincent D. Vogler, said Middendorf sued to collect for food sold to the Mayfair and what had been the Roberts’ Indigo Hotel on Lindell Boulevard. The Indigo is now operated as a Comfort Inn.

In October, yet another Roberts company

National home sales figures will be lowered dating back to 2007 after the private trade group that collects them said the numbers were too high.

The National Association of Realtors said Monday it will release the downward revisions for previously occupied homes on Dec. 21.

Among the reasons for the inflated figures, the Realtors group says: changes in the way the Census Bureau collects data, population shifts and some sales being counted twice. Last year’s total sales figure of 4.91 million was the worst in 13 years.

The Realtors consulted with several government and private housing market experts, including the Federal Reserve, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and CoreLogic, the California-based data firm that first raised doubts about the annual numbers earlier this year.

CoreLogic estimated that the Realtors group overstated sales in 2010 by at least 15 percent.

The changing numbers could impact how economists view data from the trade group. It could also affect companies who use the figures for hiring and expansion plans.

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The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service said Monday it is seeking to move quickly to close 252 mail processing centers and slow first-class delivery next spring, citing steadily declining mail volume.

The cuts are part of $3 billion in reductions aimed at helping the agency avert bankruptcy next year. It would virtually eliminate the chance for stamped letters to arrive the next day, a change in first-class delivery standards that have been in place since 1971.

The plant closures are expected to result in the elimination of roughly 28,000 jobs nationwide.

At a news briefing, postal vice president David Williams stressed the move was necessary to cut costs as more people turn to the Internet for email communications and bill payment. After reaching a peak of 98 million in 2006, first-class mail volume is now at 78 million. It is projected to drop by roughly half by 2020.

“Are we writing off first class mail? No,” Williams said. “Customers are making their choices, and what we are doing is responding to the current market conditions and placing the postal service on a path to allow us to respond to future changes.”

The cuts, now being finalized, would close 252 out of 461 mail processing centers across the country starting next April. Because the consolidations typically would lengthen the distance mail travels from post office to processing center, the agency also would lower delivery standards.

Currently, first-class mail is supposed to be delivered to homes and businesses within the continental U.S. in one day to three days. That will lengthen to two days to three days, meaning mailers no longer could expect next-day delivery in surrounding communities. Periodicals could take between two days and nine days.

Williams said in certain narrow situations first-class mail might be delivered the next day _ if, for example, newspapers, magazines or other bulk mailers are able to meet new tighter deadlines and drop off shipments directly at the processing centers that remain open.

But in the vast majority of cases, everyday users of first-class mail will see delays of one or two days, including those who pay bills by check, send birthday cards, write letters, or receive prescription drugs or Netflix DVDs by mail no faxing 1 hour payday loans.

After five years in the red, the post office faces imminent default this month on a $5.5 billion annual payment to the Treasury for retiree health benefits. It is projected to have a record loss of $14.1 billion next year. The Postal Service has said the agency must make cuts of $20 billion by 2015 to be profitable.

It already has announced a 1-cent increase in first-class mail to 45 cents beginning Jan. 22.

Separate bills that have passed House and Senate committees would give the Postal Service more authority and liquidity to stave off immediate bankruptcy. But prospects are somewhat dim for final congressional action on those bills anytime soon, especially if the measures are seen in an election year as promoting layoffs and cuts to neighborhood post offices.

On Monday, the Postal Service said it welcomed congressional changes that would give it more authority to reduce delivery to five days a week, raise stamp prices and reduce health care and other labor costs. But the Postal Service said it was opposed to provisions in both the House and Senate measures that would require additional layers of review before it could close post offices and processing centers.

“Speed is very important to the Postal Service in our ability to capture savings,” Williams said.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate committee that oversees the post office, believes the agency is taking the wrong approach. She says service cuts will only push more consumers to online bill payment or private carriers such as UPS or FedEx, leading to lower revenue in the future.

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Online: List of facilities to be closed: http://about.usps.com/news/electronic-press-kits/our-future-network/study-list-110915.pdf

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The plan central banks announced Wednesday could ease financial strains that threaten Europe’s common currency and may tip the global economy into recession.

The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the central banks of Canada, Japan and Switzerland said they’d make it easier for banks to get the dollars they need to lend.

The move was a powerful confidence-booster, a signal that central banks are prepared to act in concert to encourage lending.

Stocks rocketed in response.

“The coordination was a big thing,” said Michael Hanson, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “It had a psychological effect.”

Still, the plan isn’t a permanent fix. It doesn’t address the root of Europe’s crisis: Debt burdens are overwhelming Spain, Italy and some other nations and spreading fears that they’ll default. A default by one or more governments could topple the entire continent’s economy. Skittish banks that hold much of these countries’ bonds have been reluctant to lend to each other.

On Tuesday, the finance ministers of the 17 countries that use the euro failed to reach an agreement on resolving the crisis. Their failure raised the stakes for the leaders of the 27 countries in the European Union who will hold their own meeting next week. Investors will be looking to the leaders to show progress toward a longer-term solution.

Analysts say the eurozone nations ultimately must approve closer coordination of their spending policies so fiscal discipline can be imposed on individual countries.

Here are some questions and answers about the move and the European crisis.

Q. What did the Fed and other central banks do Wednesday?

A. They agreed to make it easier for banks to obtain U.S. dollars to fund loans all over the world. This should lead banks to loosen credit, which had tightened because of Europe’s financial crisis. Many banks lend in dollars because so much trade and investment is denominated in the U.S. currency. The Fed, the ECB and the other central banks agreed to lower the interest rate on dollar loans.

Q. How would this help?

A. The Fed has provided dollars to all five central banks since May 2010. But the interest rates were too high for many banks. The Fed and the other central banks are easing those rates. And the ECB will reduce the collateral banks must provide to get dollar loans. All this should lead more European banks to borrow dollars from the ECB. That’s important because those banks have had less access to dollars through other means, such as American money market funds. The money funds have reduced lending to European banks for fear the banks have too much debt from troubled countries. If those countries defaulted, banks in Europe could collapse.

Q. Does this mean the Fed is “bailing out” European banks?

A. No. Here’s how it works: The Fed provides dollars to the ECB. In exchange, it gets an equal amount of euros. The ECB then lends the dollars to banks. If the banks don’t pay back the loans, the ECB absorbs the loss. The ECB returns the dollars to the Fed at the same exchange rate as the initial swap.

Q. How will we know if this plan works?

A. One sign will be what happens when the ECB offers dollar loans on Wednesday. Most analysts expect many more banks to take advantage of the dollar loans now that the terms have eased.

Q. Will this do anything for governments like Greece and Italy that are on the verge of default?

A. Not really. It might help calm investors’ nervousness about the overall crisis. It could slightly lower rates that those countries pay. But it won’t reduce their debt burdens. It does buy European leaders time by keeping credit flowing. But investors will soon turn attention to the European leaders’ meeting next Friday. Geoffrey Yu, a strategist at UBS, said markets could plummet if that meeting doesn’t produce results.

Q: How did Europe get into this mess?

A: The euro made it easier to do business across Europe and made the continent a potent economic bloc. Yet the experiment was flawed. Countries were harnessed to one another despite different economies and cultures. Banks lent at low rates even to weaker countries like Greece. The euro meant lenders didn’t have to worry that individual countries would run up inflation that would reduce the value of the loans. Governments overspent for years and got away with it because they could borrow at low rates. But once the Great Recession struck, their debts became devastating.

Q: Why is a solution so hard?

A: The ECB and Germany have resisted aggressive action. Many economists want the central bank to buy the debt of Italy and other struggling countries. That would push down interest rates and ease those countries’ borrowing costs. The ECB has bought Italian and Spanish bonds. But it’s loath to do so in a big way. The ECB says it must control inflation, not be a lender of last resort to governments. And it doesn’t want to set a precedent for bailing out financially ailing nations. Germany opposes one idea _ creating joint bonds backed by the whole eurozone _ because it fears its own borrowing costs would surge if it had to borrow jointly with weaker countries.

Q: What options are European officials considering?

A: Things that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago. One option is to have countries cede control of their budgets to a central authority. That authority would stop countries from spending beyond their means. There has also been talk of forming an elite group of euro nations to guarantee each other’s loans. It would require fiscal discipline from any country that wants to join. Once that happens, the ECB might be more willing to buy government bonds aggressively, thereby pushing down interest rates and easing governments’ debt burdens. Analysts say that some progress toward such a solution at the summit next Friday is crucial.

Q: Can Europe’s leaders solve this mess?

A: The coordinated move the central banks announced Wednesday is expected to ease pressure on the financial system in the short run. But a lasting resolution requires persuading up to 17 countries and the ECB to agree to a solution to both ease government debt loads and impose budgetary discipline. “This is not just a crisis of Greece or this or that country,” says Nicolas Veron, senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. “It’s a crisis of European institutions.”

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The parents of murdered teen Milly Dowler say that phone hacking on behalf of a British tabloid made them think that she was still alive.

Sally Dowler told the inquiry investigating Britain’s media ethics that her 13-year-old daughter’s phone had been cleared of some messages shortly after she disappeared in early 2002, suggesting that she was checking her voicemail.

In fact Milly was dead and the person clearing the messages worked for the News of the World tabloid.

The Dowler parents have previously made similar statements, but Monday was the first time the pair spoke out on national television.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

LONDON (AP) _ Celebrities and crime victims whose personal lives have been exposed in Britain’s press will testify at an inquiry into media ethics payday advance low fees.

The Leveson inquiry is run by a judicial body that could recommend sweeping changes to the way Britons get their news.

Britain’s media ethics probe was set up in the wake of the scandal over phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, which was shut in July after it became clear that the tabloid had systematically broken the law. Most horrific was the news that the tabloid had broken into the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in its search for scoops.

Actor Hugh Grant and the Dowler family will be some of the first to give evidence Monday.

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Economist Mario Monti formed a new Italian government without a single politician Wednesday, drawing from the ranks of bankers, diplomats and business executives to make sure Italy escapes looming financial disaster.

The 68-year-old former European Union competition commissioner told reporters he will serve as Italy’s economy minister as well as premier for now as he seeks to implement “sacrifices” to heal the country’s finances and set the economy growing again.

Monti and his new cabinet ministers will be sworn later Wednesday, formally ending Silvio Berlusconi’s 3 1/2-year-old government as well as his 17-year-long run of political dominance.

Monti said he would lay out his emergency anti-crisis policies in the Senate on Thursday, ahead of a confidence vote. A second vote, in the lower Chamber of Deputies, will follow, likely on Friday. He stressed that Italy’s economic growth is a top priority.

Hopes for Italy’s new administration won it some respite in financial markets Wednesday. The yield on its ten-year bonds dropped 0.16 percentage point to 6.77 percent. In the last week, that borrowing rate had flirted over 7 percent _ the level that forced fellow eurozone members Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek international bailouts.

Up until summer, Italy had mostly avoided the European debt turmoil despite having a jaw-dropping amount of debt: euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion), or is nearly 120 percent of its GDP. But after frequent delays and backtracking on austerity measures, markets lost faith that any Berlusconi government could fix Italy’s economic issues.

Restoring confidence in Italy’s financial future is crucial because, as the third-largest economy in the eurozone, it is too big for Europe to rescue. A debt default by Italy would threaten the euro itself and shake the global economy.

Monti gave few hints about his political program Wednesday, sidestepping a question about whether the government would dip into citizens’ bank accounts as it did decades ago during another debt crisis.

“You may ask,” he replied, but went no further.

Explaining why his Cabinet contained no one from Italy’s fractious political parties, Monti said that his talks with party leaders led him to the conclusion “that the non-presence of politicians in the government would help it.”

His ministers include Corrado Passera, CEO of Italy’s second-largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, to head Development and Infrastructure; Piero Gnudi, a longtime chairman of Enel utility company, as Tourism and Sport minister in a country heavily dependent on tourist revenues; and the current Italian ambassador to Washington, Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, to be foreign minister.

A historian of the Catholic church with close ties to the Vatican, Andrea Riccardi, was named minister of international and domestic cooperation, a choice that seemed to reward pro-Vatican lawmakers in Parliament.

A Monti government is “an historic and significant turn of events,” said Francesco Rutelli of the pro-Vatican centrists payday loans lenders.

Still, his choices raised some eyebrows.

“This government, ties to banks, to business, to the Vatican, to private universities _ to the usual names _ is the opposite of what this country needs,” said Paolo Ferrero, leader of Rifondazione Comunista, a tiny, far-left party.

Passera also sits on the board of directors of Milan’s Bocconi University, which forms Italy’s business elite. Monti is currently the head of the Bocconi.

But analysts gave Monti’s selections a top mark, insisting the Cabinet ministers were independent.

“I think the quality of the people is very high,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political science professor at Rome’s LUISS University. “All these people are very high-caliber, and highly respected, independent.”

Italy’s economy is hampered by high wage costs, low productivity, fat government payrolls, excessive taxes, choking bureaucracy and low numbers of college graduates. But Monti says Italy can beat the crisis if its largely polarized citizenry _ often bitterly divided over Berlusconi’s long tenure _ can pull together. He has also met with union leaders and business representatives.

“I hope that, governing well, we can make a contribution to the calming and the cohesion of the political forces,” Monti told reporters.

The head of Italy’s largest union confederation, Susanna Camusso, backed Monti but hoped he “won’t put his priority on pensions.”

Parliament on Saturday voted to raise the retirement age as part of an austerity package to 67 by 2026 and 70 by 2050, but critics say those reforms are meaningless because they are so far in the future. The new changes also call for the sale of state property and privatizing some services but contain no painful labor reforms. They also offer tax incentives to companies that hire young workers to fight Italy’s 25 percent unemployment rate for people ages 15 to 24.

The shift in power away from career politicians had caused bickering within Berlusconi’s conservative People of Freedom Party, which eventually endorsed Monti. But Berlusconi’s main coalition ally, the Northern League, has announced it will stay in the opposition during Monti’s government.

Rutelli predicted on Sky TG24 TV that Monti’s government would win the confidence votes and last until the end of the legislature in spring 2013, to the dismay of many of Berlusconi’s allies, who want elections in a few months.

“The economic crisis won’t be solved in a brief time,” he noted.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about an unelected, technocratic government.

“When governments of technocrats are needed, it means democracy and politics are considered useless, so it’s something negative that has to be for a limited period of time,” said skeptic Giuseppe Drago on the streets of Rome.

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Fast-expanding Gulf carrier Qatar Airways says talks with Airbus over an expected large plane order are now stalled.

The company’s CEO, Akbar al-Baker, said the negotiations were at an impasse Tuesday. He added that he is “pessimistic” about an accord before the end of this week’s Dubai Airshow.

Doha-based Qatar Airways’ fleet of 101 aircraft is dominated by Airbus planes, though it does have orders or options for nearly 90 Boeing jets.

On Tuesday, Qatar Airways announced plans to buy two Boeing 777 cargo planes.

Qatar Airways is increasingly challenging Dubai-based Emirates in the race for long-haul customers that use the Gulf as a transit hub.

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Merck & Co. said Thursday it has revamped its research operations to make them more productive, has started a new four-pronged business strategy to increase revenue and profit and has some exciting drugs on the horizon.

The drugmaker also boosted its quarterly dividend by 4 cents to 42 cents per share this quarter _ the first increase since 2004. That was just before Merck pulled painkiller Vioxx from the market because it increased heart attack and stroke risk. Merck’s shares rose sharply.

Merck’s pipeline of experimental drugs includes what could be several important new medicines for patients and shareholders, company executives told analysts during a daylong business briefing at Merck headquarters in Whitehouse Station, N.J. And Merck, the world’s No. 3 drugmaker by revenue, has eight new products for which it will seek U.S. approval in 2012 or 2013.

That’s just in the nick of time. Merck already has been hurt by competition from generic versions of blockbuster osteoporosis, blood pressure and cholesterol drugs, like its rivals. Next August, its current top seller, $5 billion-a-year allergy and asthma drug Singulair, gets hit by U.S. generic competition.

CEO Kenneth Frazier said the company hopes to keep 2012 revenue about the same as this year’s. In this year’s first nine months, it has increased sales by 5 percent, or nearly $2 billion, to about $35.8 billion.

Merck has gotten five new drugs approved this year, including breakthrough hepatitis C drug Victrelis and the first combination pill for people with both diabetes and high cholesterol, Juvisync. It also has applied to regulators for five more approvals. Those include a long-acting diabetes pill and a combination cholesterol drug.

Merck plans in 2012 and 2013 to seek U.S. approval for eight more medicines, including drugs for chronic insomnia, hardening of the arteries, osteoporosis and reversal of anesthesia, plus two allergy medicines and an improved version of its blockbuster cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil. Altogether, it has 19 medicines in late-stage testing.

Many of those came from Merck’s November 2009 acquisition of Schering-Plough Corp no fax pay day loan. Frazier said the integration has enabled the combined company to reduce costs by $2.8 billion. Merck has done that partly by eliminating 16,000 jobs out of the combined 106,000 the two companies had right before the deal.

Frazier outlined the company’s new business strategy, which includes growing medicine sales in emerging and other key markets, expanding its consumer and animal health businesses, launching new drugs and boosting sales of existing ones, and managing spending tightly.

Merck also has trimmed the number of diseases for which it does research, developed computer models and other ways to decide much earlier whether to scrap or continue testing of experimental drugs, and made other changes to address one of the industry’s biggest challenges _ getting more bang for the billions companies pour into trying to create new drugs.

“The new research strategy and operating model that we’ve been implementing over the past few years is now in place,” research head Peter Kim told about 130 analysts. “These changes position us for long-term growth with a sustainable return on investment.”

He said Merck has two experimental drugs that could transform patient care. One, called anacetrapib, is in final-stage testing for hardening of the arteries.

The other, known only as MK-8931, is in early testing for Alzheimer’s disease. Kim told reporters that while it’s still just a hypothesis that it will work, if it pans out “it’s going to have a dramatic impact on medicine.”

Merck also is developing more combination diabetes drugs, just five years after launching its first, Januvia, now the best-selling pill for Type 2 diabetes.

Merck shares rose $1.18, or 3.5 percent, to close at $34.97, outpacing the 1 percent gain in the Dow Jones industrial average.

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