The Home Depot is closing 15 of its namesake stores, affecting 1,300 employees. It is the first time the home improvement retailer has ever closed a flagship store for performance reasons.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said Thursday record crude prices helped its first-quarter profit climb 17 percent to $10.9 billion - the second biggest U.S. quarterly corporate profit ever.

Wall Street shot higher Thursday as investors, while anticipatinganother dismal jobs report Friday, viewed the rising dollar and fallingoil prices as promising signs for the economy. The Dow Jones industrialaverage soared nearly 190 points to close above 13,000 for the

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday urged troops to get psychiatric counseling for wartime mental health problems, saying it's "not going to count against them" if they apply for national security clearances for sensitive jobs.

A city outside California has for the first time been named the sootiest in the nation, one of the categories the American Lung Association uses to determine the most polluted cities in the country.

Companies would no longer be able to use genetic information like a person's predisposition for breast cancer, sickle cell or diabetes to make insurance or job decisions under a bill passed by Congress on Thursday.