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The Environmental Protection Agency said it will expand a program to provide lower-cost loans for the purchase of cleaner-burning trucks to drivers in the Norfolk, Va., area.

The Department of Defense should not have awarded its largest-ever third-party logistics contract to Menlo Worldwide Government Services because one of Menlo’s subcontractors plans to use a freight management technology that was untested “in a customer environment,” according to a formal protest filed by Ryder Integrated Logistics.

The national average price of retail diesel cracked $3 for the first time in nearly 13 months with a 6.8-cent-a-gallon price hike last week, the fourth straight weekly increase.

Manufacturing activity in the Chicago region rose in September, the National Association of Purchasing Management said Friday.

Canadian National Railway Co. has agreed to buy most of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Co. from U.S. Steel Corp. for $300 million to add capacity and bypass Chicago-area congestion, Bloomberg reported.

The United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp. reached a tentative contract early Wednesday to end the union’s two-day national strike, the Associated Press reported.

Existing homes sales fell in August to a five-year low, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday.

A United Auto Workers strike against General Motors Corp. lasting longer than a week or two could cost GM billions, and two Canadian plants have been idled as a result of the strike, news services reported Tuesday.