Business news for Mon, 31 Dec 2007 & with word city. 17 news.

A behind-the-scenes look at the cost of throwing New York City's annual New Year's Eve bash.

Houston never has been a leading convention city. But Greg Ortale hopes to change that by playing on the city's strengths to draw more medical conferences, energy meetings and international visitors.

They call it the city that never stops, but one thing evidently has: the ability to increase apartment rental prices in Tel Aviv. ...

Diane Grezenski grew up a city girl, but now she and her husband run a dairy farm where she has taken on more and more of the work over the years.

Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills.

The value of fines handed out by the City watchdog has fallen to its lowest level in six years.

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is moving closer to a run for president, as he schedules bipartisan meetings with major U.S. political figures and his aides study how to mount independent campaigns in the 50 states, The New York Times reported. The mayor has suggested that he might be a viable candidate if, for example, the Democratic and Republican nominees come from the furthest poles of their respective parties, the Times reported. And Bloomberg has developed his own domestic platform on gun control, the environment and other issues while being briefed on foreign policy by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and by Nancy Soderberg, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Clinton administration, the Times reported.

REAL ESTATE FOR commercial real es tate, the good times seen in the beginning of 2007 proved to be too good to last. At the end of 2006, we warned, "The city's commercial real estate market is in the middle of such a perfect Zen balance that...

Air of Arctic origin swirls into Chicago Monday night and Tuesday, and the resultant temperature crash sends the city's readings from the lower 30s today to near zero, at least in the suburbs, 24 to 36 hours later.

A city agency and a developer will pay an estimated $1.5 million after canceling a steel order for an 80-unit luxury condominium project that was scrapped amid slow sales.

NEW YORK -- In a city of skyrocketing rents, where tenant advocates charge that landlords are increasingly trying to move tenants out of rent-regulated apartments in order to significantly raise the rents, the landlord-tenant wars are becoming ferocious.

Panden Rota, a Nepalese producer of fine rugs, is about to become a Manhattanite, the owner of a sumptuous apartment in the luxurious downtown neighborhood of Battery Park City.

According to the Chinese calendar, 2007 was the year of the pig. South Florida's corporate fraudsters followed suit by having one of their most gluttonous years ever. Some of them even winded up in the pen - and we don't mean the pigpen. (PDX)

Promising to fight for an "end to stasis" in the city's development and planning process, city hall veteran Michael Cohen will take over Mayor Gavin Newom's workforce and economic development department.

Several nations have opened or revived consulates in Denver in recent years -- one sign of Colorado's growing stature in the world economy.

Chinese leaders set a timetable for directly electing Hong Kong's leader, but reaching consensus among the city's political camps on the next steps will likely prove a challenge.

As City types took some time off to celebrate Christmas and usher in the new year, there was little small talk around. The peace and quiet gave us time to reflect on the year gone by, and we looked to AIM (the alternative investment market) for inspiration. Unfortunately, there was little forthcoming.