Business briefing: Telecom companies lead way to small stock market gains

Stocks posted slight gains on Tuesday, sending the Dow Jones industrial average to another record, helped by shares of telecommunications companies such as Verizon, Sprint and AT&T. Small companies and bank stocks also rose as investors continued to speculate that U.S. economic growth will pick up under the incoming Trump administration. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 35.54 points, or 0.2 percent, to 19,251.78, a record-high close. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 7.52 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,212.23 and the Nasdaq composite rose 24.11 points, or 0.5 percent, to 5,333. Benchmark U.S. crude oil closed down 86 cents to $50.93 in New York. Brent crude, the international standard, shed $1.01 to $53.93 a barrel in London.

A national job-placement company systematically discriminated against blacks in favor of Latino workers to comply with racially based criteria of some clients looking for employees, according to allegations in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday on behalf of several black workers. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, alleges that Personnel Staffing Group LLC used code words to distinguish races and to disguise racially guided decisions, including by using the Spanish word for "bilinguals" to refer to Latinos. Personnel Staffing Group LLC, which also goes by MVP and MVP Staffing, has more than 60 offices in nearly 40 states.

Alaska Airlines has won government approval to buy rival Virgin America after agreeing to reduce its flight-selling partnership with American Airlines. Parent company Alaska Air Group Inc. said Tuesday that it expects to close the $2.6 billion deal soon. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit and settlement agreement in federal district court in Washington. Seattle-based Alaska agreed to scale back a deal in which it and American sell seats on some of each other's flights and split the revenue. Alaska is the nation's sixth-biggest airline, and California-based Virgin is eighth.