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Borders has reached agreements with landlords to extend the leases on 11 stores it had previously asked bankruptcy court permission to close, according to court filings.

Last week the bookstore chain, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, asked permission to start liquidating 51 stores because of a condition for its financing. But it said at the time it was actively working to keep them open.

Now Borders Group Inc. has 40 stores remaining on last week’s closing list. However, company said in documents filed Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York that it is continuing to negotiate with landlords and that number will likely shrink.

Borders also canceled an auction to select a liquidator for those stores because it is in talks with its creditors to eliminate the financing condition that requires it to close the stores loans for people with bad credit.

A hearing on the matter will be held June 20.

Borders had 642 stores before it entered bankruptcy protection and has closed 228, leaving just more than 400 in operation.

Earlier this month the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company said it is negotiating to sell some or all of its stores and could file a plan for that process within a few weeks.

Borders, which started with a single store in 1971, helped pioneer the book superstore concept along with Barnes & Noble Inc. but was brought down by heightened competition from discounters and online book sellers.

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OPEC unexpectedly left its production levels unchanged on Wednesday, causing oil prices to jump, as senior officials said their meeting ended in disarray _ a stunning admission for an organization that places a premium on consensus decision making.

OPEC officials said that because of a policy deadlock, the group will maintain present output ceilings with the option of meeting within the next three months to consider a hike.

“We are unable to reach consensus to … raise our production,” OPEC Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri told reporters, in comments reflecting unusual tensions in the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Analysts covering OPEC for more than 20 years said they could not remember any other time that the normally closed group had admitted to such divisions in its ranks. Some even saw the abortive meeting as a harbinger of demise for the organization, which produces more than a third of the world’s petroleum.

“OPEC is … on the point of break-up,” said Marc Ostwald of Monument Securities. “A broader perspective is that the post World War II world order is fracturing in a spectacular fashion, be it the EU/Eurozone, the World Bank/IMF, (or) OPEC.”

Other experts were less outspoken but agreed Wednesday’s outcome would weaken the image of OPEC as a major regulator of oil markets.

“I think there were some tensions,” said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics. “But everyone has to do business and countries have different views on what the future of demand looks like.”

The news caught markets by surprise, sending oil prices sharply higher. Benchmark crude for July delivery was up $1.25 to $100.34 per barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading lower ahead of the OPEC meeting.

Saudi Arabia and other influential Gulf nations had pushed to increase production ceilings to calm markets and ease concerns that crude was overpriced for consumer nations struggling with their economies. Those opposed were led by Iran, the second-strongest producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

While the Saudis and the Iranians are frequently at loggerheads over pricing, past meetings normally fell in behind Saudi Arabia, which produces the lion’s share of OPEC output. But this time, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry combined with major political and economic uncertainties to lead to deadlock.

Among the biggest worries is that unrest in Libya and Yemen could destabilize larger oil-producing nations in the region. The two countries normally produce less than 4 percent of the world’s oil needs, and Saudi Arabia and others have boosted output to make up for much of the shortfall.

But while the Saudis have served notice that they are ready to further increase supplies to help compensate for the loss of the daily 1.6 million barrels normally brought to the market by Libya, other OPEC nations _ already pumping close to capacity _ cannot contribute much. This appeared to have fueled the strong opposition to an output ceiling hike.

Global economic weakness is also worrying producers and consumers.

Poor housing and employment reports from the United States added to the gloom spread by Europe’s attempts to bail out governments and Japan’s post-Fukushima slump. At its present price of around $100 a barrel, benchmark crude may be too expensive for nations struggling to make ends meet, worsening the economic picture and leading to less oil demand.

But with sputtering economies using less energy, raising output to lower prices also risks flooding the market, leading to a surplus that could drive prices below $80 a barrel. That benchmark, which is preferred by the Saudis and other moderate OPEC members, is considered too low by price hawks Iran and Venezuela.

Tuesday’s sober assessment of the U.S. economy from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke added to concerns, especially as the central banker failed to indicate that more monetary stimulus was likely.

“Despite all their efforts, the Saudis were not able to convince Iran and other countries to increase production,” said Ehsan Ul-Haq, an analyst with KBC Energy Economics. ” It means there is a huge disagreement _ but it also means that it gives the Saudis free space to do what they like.”

Going into the meeting, some OPEC nations had signaled that the ministers could opt to raise the output ceiling to actual production levels of around 26 million barrels a day. Add to that the daily 2.7 million barrels produced by Iraq, which is not bound by quotas, and OPEC would have been bringing more than 29 million barrels a day to the market.

The 11 OPEC members are already exceeding their current production quotas. Their output is an estimated 26.15 million barrels daily _ about 1.3 million barrels above the daily overall OPEC production target of 24.85 million barrels a day agreed two years ago.

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George Jahn is at http://twitter.com/georgejahn

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Toronto has become more of a destination for seasoned world travelers as fewer Americans are driving north for long-gone bargain vacations.

Following a decline over the last three years Tourism Toronto

Federal health officials have expanded approval of an artery-opening stent from Abbott Laboratories to a larger group of patients at risk for stroke caused by plaque in the neck arteries.

The Food and Drug Administration said it approved the Acculink stent for patients who are at moderate risk of complications if they underwent the alternative surgical procedure. The procedure, known as an endarterectomy, involves cutting open the neck artery and scraping out plaque formations that can block blood flow.

Previously Acculink was only approved for patients at high risk for complications if they underwent surgery.

Stents are mesh-metal tubes used to hold open arteries where plaque is beginning to form. They are threaded up into the artery with a catheter through a small incision made in the groin.

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Weariness and anxiety percolated Tuesday among people who left their homes near Japan’s radiation-shedding nuclear complex as the meticulous if urgent work to bring the overheated plant under control dragged on.

Workers, pulled from the complex Monday afternoon after smoke or steam billowed from buildings housing two damaged reactors, resumed their work Tuesday. Their goal is to finish hooking up electrical systems and check and replace damaged pumps and related machinery to power up cooling systems at plant, crippled by this month’s massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami.

Electricity was restored to one of the least troublesome of Fukushima Dai-ichi’s six nuclear reactors. Still a new concern emerged: a storage pool holding 2,000 tons of older, spent nuclear fuel is also heating up, forcing emergency teams to divert water sprayed on other reactors there.

People at Fukushima city’s main evacuation center waited in long lines for bowls of hot noodle soup. A truck delivered toilet paper and blankets. Many among the 1,400 people living in the crowded gymnasium came from communities near the nuclear plant and worry about radiation and weary of the daily routine of the displaced.

“It was an act of God,” said Yoshihiro Amano, a grocery store owner whose house is 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the reactors. “It won’t help anything to get angry. But we are worried. We don’t know if it will takes days, months or decades to go home. Maybe never. We are just starting to be able to think ahead to that.”

Public sentiment is such that Fukushima’s governor rejected a meeting offered by the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the utility that runs the nuclear plant.

“What is most important is for TEPCO to end the crisis with maximum effort. So I rejected the offer,” Gov. Yuhei Sato said on national broadcaster NHK. “Considering the anxiety, anger and exasperation being felt by people in Fukushima, there is just no way for me to accept their apology.”

The nuclear crisis has added a broader dimension to the disaster unleashed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that pulverized the northeast coast, leaving more than 9,000 dead by official count and twice that in police estimates.

Fears about radiation are reaching well beyond those living near Fukushima and the 430,000 displaced by the earthquake and tsunami to encompass large segments of Japan. Traces of radiation are being found in vegetables and raw milk from a swath of farmland, forcing a government ban on sales from those areas.

Seawater near the Fukushima plant is showing elevated levels of radioactive iodine and cesium, prompting the government to test seafood no fax cash advances.

China, Japan’s largest trading partner, has ordered testing of imports of Japanese food. The World Health Organization has urged Japan to adopt stricter measures and reassure the public.

Government officials and health experts say the doses are low and not a threat to human health unless the tainted products are consumed in abnormally excessive quantities. But the government measures to release data on radiation amounts, halt sales of some foods and test others are feeding public worries that the situation may grow more dire.

“We acknowledge this situation has caused anxiety among the general public but even if the accident hadn’t happened we would be monitoring and taking action if the government’s very conservative standards are exceeded,” the government’s spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, said at a briefing.

In the first five days after the disasters struck, the Fukushima complex saw explosions and fires in four of the plant’s six reactors, and the leaking of radioactive steam into the air. Since then, every day that passes without a major accident is a good sign, experts said.

An official of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in Washington that Units 1, 2 and 3 have all seen damage to their reactor cores, but that containment is intact. The commission’s executive director, Bill Borchardt, said that “things appear to be on the verge of stabilizing.”

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said that radiation seeping into the environment is a concern and needs to be monitored. “We are still in an accident that is still in a very serious situation,” said Graham Andrew, senior adviser to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano.

IAEA monitoring stations have detected radiation 1,600 times higher than normal levels _ but in an area about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the power station, the limit of the evacuation area declared by the government last week.

Radiation at that level, while not high for a single burst, could harm health if sustained. If projected to last three days, radiation at those levels would U.S. authorities would order an evacuation as a precaution.

The levels drop dramatically the further you go from the nuclear complex. In Tokyo, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) south of the plant, levels in recent days have been higher than normal for the city but still only a third of the global average for naturally occurring background radiation.

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As a historic bull market reaches its second birthday, everyday investors are piling back into stocks, finally ready for more risk and hoping the rally has further to go.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has almost doubled since March 9, 2009, when it hit a 12-year low after the financial crisis. And the Dow Jones industrials are back above 12,000, about 2,000 points shy of their all-time high.

Little-guy investors appear to be on board. Since the beginning of the year, investors have put $24.2 billion into U.S. stock mutual funds, according to the Investment Company Institute. They withdrew $96.7 billion in 2010.

“It didn’t feel right to be back in until now,” says Richard Dukas, who heads a public relations firm in New York City. “I still don’t want to put all my money in the market, but I believe we’ve come through the worst of it.”

After the 2008 financial meltdown, Dukas and his wife converted their 401(k) retirement accounts into cash. They had been burned during the bubble in technology stocks a decade ago, and Dukas says he has been “extremely skittish” ever since.

Now Dukas, 48, says 85 percent of his portfolio is back in mutual funds, although he maintains a small cushion of cash.

More job security, strengthening retirement account balances and improvement in the overall U.S. economy are some of the factors that have brought everyday investors back to the market. A snapshot of what’s happened:

_ The outlook of investors as measured by stock newsletters and market surveys has been extremely bullish for two or three months, says Mark Arbeter, chief technical strategist for S&P Equity Research.

_ Many workers have enjoyed seeing their 401(k) balances return to where they stood at the market’s peak because they kept contributing during the down years. Many who have maintained their 401(k) accounts for a decade or longer still have some ground to make up because of their larger starting balances.

_ Americans who still have jobs are as secure as they’ve been in 14 years. That’s because the number of planned layoffs has fallen to a low, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The combination has boosted confidence and brought investors back to a rising market. The Dow was trading Tuesday at around 12,200, up 86 percent from the 2009 low. It’s still 14 percent below its all-time high in October 2007.

While the economy is improving, it will take a lot longer to erase the abject fear that average investors have felt about owning stocks the last two years, says Jason Trennert, chief investment strategist for Strategas Research Partners in New York.

One reason to set aside their reservations: They can’t find a better place to stash their money. The bull market in bonds has ended, money-market accounts are returning 1 percent or less, and the average two-year CD earns no more than 1.5 percent.

As a result, many investors returning to the market are tiptoeing back in. They’re buying what Trennert calls “stocks that look like bonds” _ dividend-paying blue chips that they hope will hedge their risk by guaranteeing at least a dividend payout small personal loans.

For example, while stocks like Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble haven’t gone up much since 2009, their yields _ 3.5 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively _ mean investors can still pocket something.

“What swayed me is being frustrated having my money parked where it’s earning almost nothing,” says Debra Condren, a New York business consultant, who has been easing back into the market over the last four months. She still has only 30 percent of her investments in stocks, compared with 80 to 85 percent before the crash.

Besides reinvesting gradually, Condren says she’s much more vigilant about her stocks. She says she won’t hesitate to sell if she doesn’t like what she sees in the market or senses a shift based on world events.

Among professional money managers, the shift back into stocks has been more dramatic. A February survey by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch of 270 top investment managers found them more bullish about stocks than at any time in the past decade.

But history shows experts may not have better insight about what’s next. Plus, individual investors notoriously follow the crowd. So is it a worrisome sign that they’re flocking back?

“Investors have the tendency to make the wrong decisions behaviorally,” says Christopher Geczy, academic director of the Wealth Management Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

When they pile in or out of stocks, he says, it often signals that the market is about to turn in the opposite direction. For instance, investors pumped nearly $91 billion into stock funds in 2007, just as the market was reaching its all-time peak.

Yet analysts point to signs that the run could keep going for quite a while, as long as the economy cooperates. Corporations are still sitting on billions of dollars in cash that they may ultimately put to work in the market.

The S&P 500 has an average gain of 17 percent in the third year of a presidential cycle. But the market also tends to grow much more slowly in the third year of a bull run.

Stock prices are still not high by historic standards. The S&P 500 index now trades at 15.6 times the operating earnings of its stocks over the past year, well under the historical average of 19.3.

There are plenty of investors still looking for an opportunity to get back in. Kenneth Kracmer, who owns a marketing firm in Dallas, is restless after cutting his stock allocation by half, to 30 percent.

But he worries about unemployment, state governments in financial distress and a market he sees as artificially high in view of all the challenging economic news.

Other investors are clearly on edge, too. Before Tuesday, the market had fallen nearly 3 percent in two and a half weeks because of concerns about unrest in the Middle East.

“I want to play it smart until there’s a little bit of economic certainty,” Kracmer says. “I don’t want to get in just before another drop.”

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Part of a Michigan auto parts factory that was shut down by a fire last week is back in operation.

The blaze at the Magna International Inc. factory had forced General Motors and Mazda to cut production due to parts shortages.

But a Magna spokeswoman says crews were able to reopen about half of the factory and start producing parts during the weekend.

The plant makes ceilings, consoles and other plastic interior parts for at least five automakers.

GM closed its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant on Friday and Monday. But the company now says production is expected to resume on Tuesday. Work will restart at an adjoining parts plant on Monday night.

The Magna Plant in Howell Township, Michigan, northwest of Detroit also makes parts for Nissan, Chrysler and Ford.

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South Korea’s main stock exchange slapped a record fine on the local unit of Deutsche Bank AG over a sharp decline in the benchmark index late last year that resulted in sanctions by the country’s financial regulators.

The Korea Exchange said Friday in a statement that it would fine Deutsche Securities Korea a total of 1 billion won ($888,000) for trading rule violations. It was the biggest fine ever handed out to a member of the exchange, according to KRX spokesman Won Yong-joon.

The exchange, known as KRX, also demanded that Deutsche Securities Korea take disciplinary action against three employees. It called for one to be dismissed or suspended. Two other employees should either have their pay reduced or be reprimanded, it said. The KRX did not identify the employees.

Lee Chul-jae, director of the exchange’s market oversight division, told reporters that additional penalties are possible if the demands are not acted upon, according to Won. Deutsche Securities Korea has a month in which it can appeal the fine and the demands for employee punishment, Won said.

Deutsche Securities Korea said in a statement that it “deeply regrets” the action taken by the exchange, though added it “respects its decision to impose such penalties.”

The exchange’s action came after South Korea’s financial regulators said Wednesday they would ask prosecutors to investigate five Deutsche Bank employees in South Korea, Hong Kong and New York over the purported price manipulation and unfair trading.

The regulators also said that they would suspend some securities and exchange traded derivatives operations by Deutsche Securities Korea for six months from April 1. The local unit was also to be referred to prosecutors.

Regulators and the Korea Exchange had been investigating a steep fall in the Korea Composite Stock Price Index during the final minutes of trading on Nov. 11. The index, known as the Kospi, closed 2.7 percent lower on that day.

The end-of-session plunge came on a so-called triple-witching day when stock options, stock index options and stock index futures all expire. The phenomenon, which occurs four times a year, can lead to heightened volatility in share prices. The regulators said that the alleged manipulation involving spot and futures transactions resulted in illegal profits of 44.9 billion won.

Deutsche Bank said in a statement Wednesday that it was “disappointed” with the findings and expressed regret over the penalties imposed and the referral of its employees and South Korean unit to prosecutors. But it said it would continue to cooperate with South Korean authorities.

The decline came on a day that South Korea was in the international spotlight as a two-day Group of 20 summit meeting began in Seoul, the country’s capital. Coincidentally, Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank’s chairman and CEO, was in Seoul to participate in a business forum held in conjunction with the summit.

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ask the expert

Karl Zellmer, vice president of air conditioning sales at Emerson

Karl.Zellmer@emerson.com

1-937-498-3011

When is a good time for people to convert their homes to geothermal energy?

Now. Homeowners have a great opportunity to stay warm, cut energy bills and reduce their carbon footprint at the same time. The answer may lie in upgrading to geothermal heating and cooling. This technology is rapidly gaining popularity, popping up everywhere from small businesses and homes, to retail outlets, schools, nursing homes and hotels.

This is a good time to consider geothermal because of a 30 percent federal tax credit for home energy upgrades

Most Asian stock markets advanced Wednesday, with the region’s high-tech shares pushing higher after strong earnings results from Apple Inc. and IBM Corp.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average rose 0.2 percent to 10,538.93. The electronics sector, including Sony Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., posted strong gains.

Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi added 0.5 percent to 2,106.65 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.3 percent to 4,813.70. Benchmarks in New Zealand and Taiwan also rose.

In New York Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average hit its highest close since June 2008, led by Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. The two companies contributed more than half of the Dow’s 50 point rise.

The Dow rose 50.55 points, or 0.4 percent, to finish at 11,837.93. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up 1 cash advance america.78, or 0.1 percent, to close at 1,295.02. The Nasdaq rose 10.55, or 0.4 percent, to 2,765.85.

Apple had weighed on the Nasdaq after the company announced that its CEO, Steve Jobs, was taking another medical leave. Its shares fell 2.2 percent. But the company announced after the market closed that its net income soared 78 percent in the holiday quarter thanks to brisk sales of iPads and iPhones.

IBM also reported after market close that its net income in the fourth quarter rose 9 percent, topping analysts’ expectations.

In currencies, the dollar fell to 82.25 yen from 82.59 yen late Tuesday. The euro stood at $1.3423 from $1.3387.

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