G.D. Gearino reviews last year’s news and gives his take on memorable events some folks would just as soon forget.

Work, it’s been said, saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.

At first glance, Black Mountain-based Ingles Markets Inc. seems to be sitting on top of the world.

Larry Sumney says math education in the U.S. is “a disaster,” and that has had dire consequences for the economy and his sector in particular.

The state’s newest MBA program will teach students how to balance two sets of books — one financial, the other scriptural.

For more than two years, Moyock-based Xe Services Inc. has been rattling government officials and economic developers in northeastern North Carolina.

Alcoa Inc. is learning the hard way that e-mails never go away.

It would be understandable if Hugh Holliman feels a bit like Barack Obama these days.

In mid-December, as Christmas 2010 loomed and the values of the season were on full display, The Charlotte Observer intruded upon the happy jingle of the cash register to pose a bona fide spiritual conversation starter.

In some ways, Carolina Ingredients Inc. is a petunia in an onion patch, perched in an industrial park next door to a company that distributes nuts and bolts and across the street from a plant that makes rollers for assembly lines.

Anyone with even the barest grasp of chaos theory understands that in 2010 North Carolina was the place — not uniquely but certainly prominently — where its effects played out in dramatic fashion.

Once again, the Business Handbook issue features our annual ranking of the state’s largest employers.