Investors sent shares near their 2006 highs on Friday after benign inflation data and low oil prices boosted confidence that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates unchanged at its meeting next week.

Stocks finished the week broadly higher in its strongest winning streak in more than a month, putting the Dow Jones industrial average 162 points away from its all-time closing high. Wall Street remained upbeat heading into next Wednesday's Fed meeting, where central bankers are expected to keep rates unchanged.

, increasingly desperate to stem billion-dollar losses, accelerated job cuts and plant closings and projected its North American auto business would remain unprofitable until at least 2009.

Ford also suspended its quarterly dividend for the first time since 1982. The shares posted their biggest drop in almost four years in their highest trading volume ever. .

Oil prices lost more than 4 percent for the week, and analysts said there has been a definite shift in energy-market psychology, as traders focus on the relatively comfortable balance between supply and demand as opposed to hypothetical supply threats.

A federal judge who blocked a strike by flight attendants last month reaffirmed that decision Friday and said a bankruptcy judge was wrong not to do the same.

Northwest applauded the decision and called for talks with the flight attendants. But the union promised an appeal and said it won't negotiate unless it has the right to strike.

, the second biggest insurance brokerage in the world, said Friday it would cut 750 jobs, consolidate some locations and revamp its information technology structure to cut costs.

The company will incur charges of about $225 million. Roughly 15 percent of the charges will be recorded this year, about 55 percent in 2007 and 30 percent in 2008.

will stop selling its discount clothing brand in Europe next year, the latest sign of the U.S. jeans maker's diminishing cachet in that part of the world.

The decision announced Friday means Levi's Signature brand will disappear from European store shelves after 2007's spring shopping season. The Signature brand will continue to be sold in Asia and North America. Levi's exported the Signature concept to Europe in 2004 only to find the demand of the new brand wasn't what management anticipated.

The bankruptcy court hearings to determine whether can reject its labor agreements and certain supply contracts with General Motors Corp. have been postponed, the company said on Friday.

Delphi, which was part of GM until it was spun off in 1999, said the court had granted further adjournments in both cases. It has scheduled a Sept. 28 status conference with the judge presiding over its bankruptcy case.

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