News Today - Apr 28

* General Motors announced plans to cut 23,000 U.S. jobs by 2011, drop its storied Pontiac brand and slash 40% of its dealer network in its latest bid to stay out of bankruptcy. full story

* Japanese retail sales drop 3.9% in March as consumers cut down on spending, though the fall was not as bad as expected.

* President Obama says swine-flu outbreak is cause for alert, but not alarm.

* China has reported that it has been secretly increasing its gold reserves.It was able to keep it secret by buying domestically produced metal, almost doubling the amount of gold it holds to more than 1,000 tons.

* The United Auto Workers union announced Sunday it had reached an agreement with Chrysler, Fiat and the U.S. government that meets the requirements of the Treasury Department for loans to the auto giant.

* Regulators have told BofA and Citigroup that they may need to raise more capital, based on early results of the government's stress tests.

* Lawmakers should create a new federal authority to help unwind large-scale institutions important to the nation's financial system, should that become necessary, a key bank regulator said Monday. "We need a new resolution regime for large financial institutions," said Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in a speech before the Economics Club of New York.