Drops in business inventories and jobless claims, along with a small rise in import prices, offered new evidence Thursday that the U.S. may be pulling out of recession, news services reported.

Leaving out sales figures for automobiles, U.S. retail sales jumped 1.2%, the largest increase in nearly two years, a government report released Wednesday said.

Officials from the United States and Canada are preparing for a meeting at the end of February to resolve issues relating to the bottlenecks created by increased security along the world’s longest undefended border.

U.S. wholesale inventories fell 0.6% in December, bringing stockpiles of U.S. goods to $288.2 billion -- the lowest point since January 2000 -- a government report released Friday showed.

Orders for transportation equipment drove new orders placed with U.S. factories, as measured by the Commerce Department, to a 1.2% increase in December, with analysts predicting more increases in the months to come, Bloomberg reported.

President Bush sent Congress his fiscal 2003 budget on Monday, heavy on defense and homeland security, but with his tax cuts meant to spark the U.S. economy still in place.

The nation’s passenger railroad has threatened to discontinue all long-distance service in October, unless Congress gives it $1.2 billion in the fiscal 2003 budget, news services reported.

In a weekend that will see two of the largest, most visible events since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, security officials are clamping down on the cities of New Orleans and New York.

In his first State of the Union address Tuesday evening, President Bush called for a near-doubling of funding for homeland security, focused on four key areas: bioterrorism, emergency response, airport and border security and improved intelligence.

President Bush said Friday that he will propose spending an additional $2.1 billion next year in the effort to secure the nation’s borders without slowing down the millions of people, trucks and railroad cars that cross them each day, the Associated Press reported.