National Business

MONTREAL — Quebec will allow private sector employees to head back to the office in an effort to revitalize the struggling downtown cores of the province's largest cities.

TORONTO — Canada's main stock index rallied to its highest closing in more than four months on positive COVID-19 vaccine news that propelled companies helped by economic reopenings. The positive movement started after Moderna Inc.

TORONTO — Canadian small businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic will incur an estimated $117 billion in debt that could take more than a year to pay off, according to a new study.

WINNIPEG — The Manitoba government is extending and expanding a wage-subsidy program to spur job creation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OTTAWA — Real estate agents across the country saw home sales in June nearing or even beating pre-pandemic levels.

TORONTO — A $514-million expansion of its Island Gold mine in northern Ontario will increase production while taking the cost per ounce of producing gold to industry leading lows, says Alamos Gold Inc.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve says economic activity has picked up in most regions of the country but still remains well below pre-pandemic levels with the country facing high levels of uncertainty.

NEW YORK — Investment bank Goldman Sachs posted a massive 41% rise in revenues in the second quarter, the bank said Wednesday, helped by a blowout performance by the bank’s trading desks. The New York-based bank had second quarter revenues of $13.

BRUSSELS — A European Union court on Wednesday delivered a hammer blow to the bloc’s attempts to rein in multinationals' ability to strike special tax deals with individual EU countries when it ruled that Apple does not have to pay 13 billion euros (

LOS ANGELES — CBS Television and the NAACP have reached an agreement to develop content that tells stories of the African American experience.