INDIANAPOLIS

Conseco bankruptcy filing third-largest in U.S. history

In the third-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, Conseco Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection after four months of talks with creditors to restructure the insurance and finance company’s $6.5 billion in debt.

Although the filing was not surprising given Conseco’s recent woes, it marked a dramatic downfall for a company whose stock was once a Wall Street darling.

From 1988 to 1998, the company’s stock averaged a total return of 47 percent per year and Conseco shares traded as high as $58. Today, the stock trades at less than a nickel per share.

Venezuela

Strike worsens oil situation

Thousands marched Tuesday to demand President Hugo Chavez’s ouster as Venezuela’s opposition insisted its 16-day-old general strike was choking gasoline supplies and oil income in the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter.

The threat to domestic transportation and the loss of $50 million daily in export income posed the strike’s biggest dangers for Chavez, who has sent soldiers to striking oil facilities to little effect.

“The overall sentiment among workers is strike until he leaves,” said Gonzalo Feijoo, a planning adviser for Venezuela’s state-owned oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., where top management is in open rebellion.

Congo

Deal to end civil war signed

Congo’s government, rebels and political opposition signed a power-sharing agreement Tuesday, pledging to lead their nation into democracy after four years of war and 2.5 million lives lost.

The accord follows Congo’s signing of deals with Rwanda and Uganda, neighbors that supported rebel forces, and the withdrawal of tens of thousands of foreign fighters from what had been a six-nation conflict known as Africa’s First World War.

Under the deal, Congo’s two Rwandan- and Ugandan-backed rebel movements will join a transitional government to be led by President Joseph Kabila.

A U.N. peacekeeping force of 5,537 troops already in Congo will grow to 8,700 to help oversee the deal.