Briefs: Singing the St. Louis blues

●● The National Football League voted to allow the St. Louis Rams to return to Los Angeles for the fall 2016 season and eventually settle into a new $1.9 billion stadium in Inglewood. The move gives the league a presence in the city for the first time in more than two decades. Team owner Stan Kroenke will pay the NFL $650 million in relocation fees over the next 10 years. ●●$ General Electric plans to eliminate about 6,500 jobs in Europe, including 765 in France and 1,700 in Germany. The cuts, part of a restructuring designed to achieve $3 billion in savings, follow GE’S $9.2 billion purchase of the energy business of French multinational Alstom. As part of the deal, GE said it would create 1,000 new jobs in France. ●●g Samsung Electronics plans to establish an independent committee to inspect its Korean chip factories, after hundreds of workers developed rare cancers and other illnesses. Samsung already has set up an $83 million fund to compensate victims and fund preventive measures. ●● Al Jazeera America will cease operations on April 30. The cable news channel, which premiered in 2013 after buying Al Gore’s Current TV for $ 500 million, struggled to build an audience and faced internal strife. In a memo to the staff, CEO Al Anstey didn’t address how many jobs would be lost. ●● After a four-year absence, Unilever will return to Cuba in a $35 million joint venture with the island nation’s state- owned detergent company, Intersuchel. The Anglo-dutch company will take a 60 percent stake in the business.

$28 Amount of venture capital raised in 2015, a 10 percent drop from the $31.1 billion raised in 2014.

billion