Arbitration Favors Firms Over Investors. Let's say you had $50,000 in auction-rate securities that your broker said were as safe as money-market funds. The market collapsed, and you sold at an 80 percent haircut. At your arbitration hearing, one of the three panel members works at a firm that also sold auction-rates deceptively. How fair..

Three Winning Portfolios. As miserably as Standard and Poor's 500-stock index has performed recently, it still has beaten two-thirds of big-company U.S.stock funds over the past five years. And that, in a nutshell, is why simple portfolios of index mutual funds still make sound financial sense for many investors: They're a..

Make Sure Your College Student Is Covered. My son is about to start college and will be living in a dorm this year. Will my homeowners insurance cover his computer and other electronics in his room? And do I need to tell my auto insurance company if he won't be taking a car there?.

Smith & Wesson: Making a Comeback. Shares of Smith & Wesson closed at $5.82 on September 2, just about where they traded three years ago. Between then and last October, the firearms maker became a growth-stock darling, beating profit estimates and zooming to as high as $22 before stalling badly. Investors dropped the stock symbol..

Giving Cash to Children. When should kids be taught about money? Personally, I think as soon as possible. Even expectant mothers should discuss finances with their kids while they're in the womb. Hey, why not? We're told to play classical music during pregnancy. So why not turn on CNBC or the Fox business network for the..

Public School Fees Wear On Montgomery Parents. Public school is supposed to be free. But a student at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda can expect to pay $15 to take Advanced Placement biology, $40 for band class and $11 for a Spanish workbook.

Washington Area Residents Mobilize to Help Evacuees. Yesterday afternoon, Linda Mathes of the District was hunkered down in a Covington, La., school. The power was out, the winds had whipped the shutters off the windows and the rain was driving hard.

Extra School Funds Sought. The Fenty administration wants to divert $15.2 million from several District agencies to cover a series of extra expenses in D.C. schools, including unpaid bills dating back to 2005 for textbooks and custodial supplies and nearly $9 million in private school tuition for special education students..

Great Teaching, Not Buildings, Make Great Schools. As happens in many urban school systems, D.C. school and D.C. Council officials have been in a tiff over the repair and renovation of aging buildings. Nobody wants children to walk into schools with peeling paint, leaky roofs and windows that won't open. Many inner-city educators believe such..

Add It Up: Math Matters. Parents who walk into an elementary classroom might not recognize a mathematics lesson. Children are likely out of their seats, clustered in boisterous groups, flipping coins or arranging colored tiles. The exercise could be part science experiment, part history lesson, part story time.

Fla. college turns academics into business venture. TAMPA, Fla. - When Travis Watkins was asked a few years ago to devise a college engineering project that would help people with disabilities, the first person who came to mind was his father, who once cherished walks along the beach.

Middle-School Cartoonist Draws on Animal Insight. Prince William County seventh-grader Crystal Wormack owns a sliver of renown in the U.S. Copyright registry: Registration No. VAu 952-280. Title of work: "Angel the Puppy.".

Tests Show Math Skills Lagging Reading. Virginia test results released last week showed rising scores in reading and math in Fairfax County and a skewed trajectory, as students' literacy skills outpaced their computational abilities.

Early Bedtimes Work, Too, for Sleep-Deprived Teens. Dear Extra Credit: As the mother of 17- and 19-year-olds, I have much firsthand experience with sleep-deprived teenagers. In the end, after many hours and much research and discussion, I have changed my mind about the effort to start the high school day later. I have come to believe the massive d..

HP closes EDS deal, preserves leadership team. No top-level management shuffle as HP folds much of its legacy services capability into the EDS management framework Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that it has completed its $13.9 billion purchase of massive..

Insurance Industry Plunges Deep into Outsourcing - IBM Globa.. The insurance industry, which has lagged behind others in outsourcing business and technology processes abroad, is now the fastest growing offshore service sector with a CAGR of 33%. Overall, global insurance..

More mid-market firms to adopt HR outsourcing: Study. New Delhi : Increasing number of mid-market companies with about 3,000-15,000 employees, are expected to adopt Human Resources Outsourcing in the coming years in an attempt to bring down cost and reap gains..

Japan opens new window for Indian IT. Japan may be the next port of call for the Indian IT services industry, which is currently facing lot of uncertainties from its prime bread-winning market, the US.

TCS axes local staff. IT outsourcing firm Tata Consultancy Services Australia has retrenched 15 employees in its global banking service division as the worldwide financial sector heads south.

Frontier Airlines has outsourced maintenance work on one of its planes to a company in El Salvador. Frontier Airlines has outsourced maintenance work on one of its planes to a company in El Salvador as the Denver-based carrier works to emerge from bankruptcy protection.