WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve yesterday maintained short-term interest rates at near zero and offered no indication of any imminent change in that policy, even as the central bank gave a more upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy.

Since its previous monetary policy meeting in mid-August, "economic activity has picked up following its severe downturn," the Fed said in a statement. Moreover, the panel noted, activity in the long-struggling housing sector has increased.

However, Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues on the 12-member group said that consumer spending, while apparently stabilizing, continued to be constrained by job losses and sluggish income growth.

FORD'S INDIA-MADE FIGO TARGETS ASIAN LOW-COST CAR MARKET

NEW DELHI — Ford Motor Co. unveiled a made-in-India compact car and flagged expanded production in China as it seeks to boost sales in Asia, a region the U.S. automaker has hardly dented but is counting on to drive growth.

The four-door Figo, which is Italian slang for cool, will go on sale in India during the first quarter of next year, Ford executives told a press conference yesterday. There are also plans to export the low-cost car to other Asian countries.

The Figo represents a change of gear for U.S. automakers, which have been slow to penetrate India's small but fast-growing car market but are now increasingly chasing growth in Asia.

AMERICAN AIRLINES FLEXES FINANCIAL MUSCLE IN JAL BID

DALLAS — AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, one of two U.S. carriers vying for a stake in Japan Airlines Corp., may be trying to signal financial strength by raising cash and refinancing debt.

"The capital raising not only provides potential funds for a strategic transaction with JAL, but the equity, convertible and debt-related financing announcements in their entirety may be an effort to better display AMR's financial resiliency as an alliance partner," said Douglas Runte, managing director at Piper Jaffray & Co. in New York.

American is in talks with JAL about options ranging from a joint business relationship to "possible capital or financing arrangements," according to a U.S. regulatory filing. Delta Air Lines Inc. also is in discussions with Tokyo-based Japan Airlines about a stake, a Japanese government official has said.

AMR's private offering of $450 million in senior secured notes announced yesterday builds on sales of stock and debt and new jet financing unveiled in the past week.

RESERVE PRIMARY FUND TO MAKE FIFTH PAYOUT TO INVESTORS

BOSTON — A money-market mutual fund that held more than $60 billion before it notoriously "broke the buck" a year ago said yesterday it will hand out $1 billion in a fifth distribution to investors from the fund's remaining assets.

The $1 billion distribution, the smallest of five partial payouts since the Reserve Primary Fund's collapse, will be made to shareholders on Oct. 2, said New York-based Reserve Management Co., which ran the fund.

After that payout, the fund will hold about $3.5 billion. The final distribution and its timing is tied up in a pending civil fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Reserve Management and its two top executives.