Thursday morning headlines

Stocks edge lower: Wall Street keeps lumbering along this week on tepid economic news and little movement in Europe. Dow is down about 30 points.

Jobless claims spike higher: Weekly filings jumped 24,000, to 399,000, largely because companies let so many workers go after the holiday season. That's typical in early January. (AP)

Retail sales inch up: December's increase was only 0.1 percent, though November was revised upward. (AP)

More money heading to Mexico: Remittances in 2011 are expected to increase 8 percent compared with a year earlier, thanks largely to an improving U.S. job market. From the LAT:

Remittances to Mexico soared in the early 2000s as immigrants found abundant work swinging hammers and hanging drywall during the U.S. housing boom. At the peak, 1 in 5 Latino immigrants in the U.S. was employed in the building trades, according to some estimates. But the housing bust and recession sent remittances tumbling after millions of jobs vanished. A crackdown on illegal immigrants has also take a toll. Tough new state laws aimed at undocumented residents in Alabama, Arizona and other states have forced some migrants to abandon their jobs. Others have changed their financial habits, holding on to cash in the event they're forced to relocate, experts said.

Wide divergence on foreclosures: Just 2.7 percent of all L.A. County homes filed at least one notice last year, according to RealtyTrac, but it was 5.4 percent in Stockton and 5.2 percent in Riverside. Nationally, it was 1.5 percent. (LAT)

Fox seeking minority stake in Dodgers: Broadcaster is reaching out to prospective bidders in an effort to secure TV rights. Separately, L.A. billionaire Alan Casden is the latest rich guy to enter the bidding. Casden had tried to buy the team in 2003.(LAT)

Apple stores come to Target: Actually, mini-stores - much as Apple has been doing at Best Buy. Target plans to test 25 of them this year. (NYT)

Report challenges Brown's budget numbers: The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office says that the governor is counting on taxes from investments by the wealthy that might not materialize. From the Mercury News:

"What we're concerned about is that his capital gains assumption is a little bit optimistic," Taylor said at a news conference unveiling the LAO report. "We've looked historically, we've considered what's happening in housing, which is fairly stagnant, we've looked at projections of where we think the (stock) market will be, and we do get considerably lower numbers from capital gains."

American Apparel is cleared: The SEC has wrapped up an inquiry involving the L.A.-based retailer's finances without taking any enforcement action. (NY Post)