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Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Tuesday announced one-way fares as low as $25. The discount carrier says fares are $25 for travel up to 375 miles, $50 for travel of 375 to 549 miles, $75 for flights of 550 to 999 miles, and $100 for a one-way flight of more than 1,000 miles. The fares are available through Thursday, for travel between Dec. 2 and Dec. 16, or between Jan. 5 and Feb. 10.

J.P. Morgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, said Tuesday that his bank won't try to lure top performers away from Citigroup and Bank of America, days after government "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg last week slashed pay for the biggest earners at J.P. Morgan's troubled rivals. "I morally have an issue with people going against these companies that are hamstrung and making it worse," Dimon told a conference of financial professionals in New York. The pay caps affect seven companies that have received billions of dollars in taxpayer money -- but not J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which repaid its $25 billion in bailout funds earlier this year.

Continental Airlines has changed teams in the battle among large alliances of global airlines. Its frequent fliers will get a new roster of international airlines on which to earn and spend miles. Houston-based Continental officially switched Tuesday from SkyTeam, which is led by Delta and Air France-KLM, to the Star Alliance, which includes United, US Airways and Lufthansa. The move was set in motion last year when Delta bought Northwest.

Asian automakers still build the most reliable cars and trucks, with eight of the top 10 brands from Japanese and Korean companies, according to an annual survey by Consumer Reports. But several models from Ford Motor Co. are consistently scoring above perennial leaders Honda and Toyota. While Toyota's youth-oriented Scion brand finished first for the second year in a row, several Ford models, including the midsize Ford Fusion and its cousin, the Mercury Milan, consistently have been at or near the top of their classes, a trend that led Consumer Reports editors to declare that Ford is now making some vehicles with world-class reliability. After Scion, Honda, Toyota, Infiniti and Acura rounded out the top five brands in reliability based on surveys taken in March of subscribers who own or lease 1.4 million vehicles.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn offered Tuesday to buy certain classes of debt from CIT Group Inc. bondholders as he tries to thwart the commercial lender's restructuring plan. Icahn said in a letter that he will pay bondholders 60 cents on the dollar for their bonds if they agree to reject CIT's debt restructuring plan. New York-based CIT, one of the nation's largest lenders to small and midsized businesses, is trying to get bondholders to swap existing debt for new debt that matures later and stock. CIT is trying to reduce its near-term debt maturities by $5.7 billion.

Japanese electronics giants Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi said Tuesday that their optical disc drive operations are under investigation by U.S. authorities for possible antitrust violations. Optical disc drives are used in computers and in CD and Blu-ray disc players.

ASSOCIATED PRESS