AP - Wall Street managed a moderate gain in the final session of a dismal first quarter Monday, but stock prices and the major indexes still ended the first three months of 2008 with massive losses, the casualties of the still continuing credit crisis. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, the benchmark for many widely held investments such as mutual funds, suffered a loss for the quarter of nearly 10 percent.

Reuters - Dell Inc said on Monday
it would close its Austin, Texas desktop computer plant with
900 workers, as part of a plan to cut expenses by $3 billion
annually in 3 years’ time.

Reuters - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc ,
an investment bank beset by rumors of not having enough
funding, said it plans to raise $3 billion of capital to quash
questions about its stability.

Reuters - Sales incentives offered on new
vehicles in the U.S. market were up 4 percent in March from a
year earlier as automakers struggled with sagging demand,
according to a report on Monday.

AP - Gas prices at the pump surged to a new record over the weekend, while crude oil accelerated its slide Monday amid a broad-based commodities sell-off.

Reuters - A group of six banks, sued over the
buyout of Clear Channel Communications Inc , asked a New
York state court on Monday to hear their request to dismiss the
claims against them.

AP - Britain and the United States are planning a joint panel to examine new ways of tackling the global credit crunch and to improve the monitoring and regulation of world financial markets, officials said Monday.

Reuters - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
revealed sweeping plans on Monday for streamlining a hodgepodge
of regulations that are blamed for allowing the U.S. mortgage
crisis to balloon into a full-blown economic threat.

AP - While Wall Street faces the biggest overhaul of its regulatory structure since the Great Depression, analysts are already wondering if the plan to be announced by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday would help prevent the kind of risky investments that led to the near-collapse of Bear Stearns Cos.

Reuters - Turkey’s top court agreed on Monday to
hear a case to shut down the ruling AK party and bar the prime
minister from office, sharply escalating a long and
destabilizing dispute over the role of Islam in secular Turkey.