Hot finance topics

Gabriel’s Liquor and Silver Eagle Distributors are participating in Anheuser-Busch’s We I.D. program aimed at curbing underage drinking.

As part of the program, the San Antonio-based beer, wine and spirits chain will display posters and signage in its 46 locations to let patrons know that each store will be asking for valid identification whenever they purchase alcohol.

In addition, complimentary copies of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch’s Great Party Guide and Family Talk About Drinking brochures will be on display for Gabriel’s Liquor customers during key holidays, including Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day.

The We I.D. program is Anheuser-Busch’s ongoing effort that provides retailers with driver’s license guides to help employees verify identifications, training DVDs for employees and digital clocks that display the date of the legal age required to purchase alcohol beverages.

Houston-based Silver Eagle Distributors is the local Anheuser-Busch distributor in San Antonio.

Source

At Upper St. Clair High School, the status quo is never good enough.

“We are dissatisfied at where we are at,” said Principal Michael Ghilani. “We are always trying to do better. No matter what awards we win, what we achieve, I think we are always trying to get better.”

It’s this attitude that has helped to drive the school’s academic success: Upper St. Clair High School’s 11th grade class has ranked first for the past six years — since the Business Times began ranking schools — and has held onto the top spot longer than any other school. The school's district, Upper St. Clair School District, also ranked as the top district statewide this year.

North Allegheny Senior High School, in the North Allegheny School District, ranked second on the high school list, followed by Hampton High School, located in the Hampton Township School District.

For an in-depth look at the complete rankings, visit the Guide to Western Pennsylvania Schools homepage.

To continually strive for success, Upper St. Clair constantly evaluates curriculum. As one example, the school is considering whether to eliminate the book “Great Expectations” from the curriculum and replace it with Ismael Beah’s “A Long Way Gone.” In order to get approved, the suggestion will face scrutiny from the school board, a community curriculum committee, the principal and teachers.

The school is taking a look at its entire curriculum and reformatting it so it’s more usable, Ghilani said low fee pay day loans. In addition, Upper St. Clair has converted PSSA remediation into a class format for students who don’t score proficient on the exam.

“We have an aggressive and up-to-date curriculum process,” Ghilani said.

For more: Exchange programs prepare Upper St. Clair High School students for world beyond SWPA

Source

The Tuesday primary set the field for this fall’s elections, with Ohio’s senate, congressional and county races shaping up – while voters approved the two state bond issues on the ballot.

In one of the most-watched races, the 2nd Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Jean Schmidt will face Surya Yalamanchili, a former Procter & Gamble executive who beat out David Krikorian and Jim Parker for the Democratic nomination with 55 percent of the vote. Krikorian won 31 percent and Parker, 14 percent.

In the 1st Congressional District Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus beat out Eric Wilson 83 percent to 17 percent. Driehaus likely will be challenged by Steve Chabot, whose seat Driehaus won two years ago.

House Minority Leader John Boehner easily defeated challengers Thomas McMasters and Manfred Schreyer, winning 85 percent to take the Republican nomination in the 8th Congressional District.

In the Hamilton County commission race, former Cincinnati councilman Jim Tarbell won 46 percent of the Democratic vote, beating Councilman Cecil Thomas (40 percent) and Whitewater Township Trustee Hubert Brown (14 percent) for the seat being vacated by David Pepper (Pepper is running for the Ohio auditor’s job). The Republican race for the seat pitted two more City Council members – Leslie Ghiz and Chris Monzel – against each other. Monzel won 56.5 percent to 43.5 percent, and will take on Tarbell in November.

Statewide, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher defeated Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, 55 percent to 45 percent, for the Democratic Senate nomination. Fisher’s likely challenger is former congressman and Cincinnati native Rob Portman.

Ohio voters approved a ballot issue to renew funding for the Third Frontier program, 62 percent to 38 percent. A ballot issue to relocate the planned casino in Columbus – which required a statewide vote – won 68 percent to 32 percent.

Source

Multnomah County commissioners have signed off on building a new courthouse that will serve the board’s easternmost residents.

The board approved a $19.6 million structure at Southeast 185th Avenue and Stark Street, in Gresham’s Rockwood neighborhood. The county will sell at least $15 million worth of bonds for the project.

The building will contain three courts. A final design of the project, which will contain either two or three stories, will be presented by the end of the year.

Gresham officials have long griped about the shoddy condition of the current east county court building, at 150 W. Powell Blvd.

The county has explored building a new facility since 2003. The current east county courthouse was built in 1953.

Source

One more review and the latest expansion phase for the Buffalo Transportation/Pierce-Arrow Museum can finally begin.

The Buffalo Planning Board, Tuesday morning, will be meeting with museum founder James Sandoro to go over his proposed construction of a 21,244-square-foot, single story atrium. Board approval is central to his larger plan of a 60-foot-tall and 60,000-square-foot atrium that will ultimately house a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed filling station.

The station is expected to increase the museum’s attendance. The museum attracts approximately 10,000 visitors annually, but that number could swell to more than 50,000 because of the lure of the Wright-designed station and other exhibits.

Sandoro hopes to start work on the $4.5 million project this summer and have it ready by September 2011 when Buffalo hosts the annual meeting of the National Trust of Historic Preservation.

The filling station will sit in the middle of the atrium and be its centerpiece.

Wright designed the station in the early 1920s for a local businessman, but it was never constructed. The station was supposed to go along Michigan Avenue near Cherry Street, where portions of the Kensington Expressway now sit.

Sandoro originally wanted to build the station outside of the museum, but with its 40-foot tall twin-copper towers, he said it would be safer and more of a draw if it were enclosed.

R&P Oak Hill was been retained as the construction manager.

Sandoro is also fund raising the next expansion phase that will include more exhibits and movie theater. That phase carries a $3 million development price tag.

Source

Boston Scientific Corp. said Thursday it will begin shipping two types of implantable defibrillators, after shipments were halted in March when it was discovered that two manufacturing processes used in the production of the devices had not been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The Natick, Mass., company is reporting that the FDA has cleared the manufacturing changes in question. The medical device maker said that it can meet customer demand for two of its product lines, Cognis and Teligen, within 24 hours.

However, the company reported that five other brands of defibrillators will continue to be recalled.

A company statement released Thursday read, in part, “Solely on its own initiative, the company has conducted an internal review of manufacturing and other changes for these products as well as the associated regulatory submissions. The review found a few additional instances where the company did not submit the appropriate documentation for validated manufacturing changes faxless pay day loans… The company has now submitted this documentation and is working closely with the FDA” to ship its entire line of defibrillators.

Early analyst predictions said the production freeze and recall could cost the company $470 million in sales.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal said the company was being investigated by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, which raised questions over the recall.

Officials said they would update financial guidance with the impact of the ship hold and recall with their first quarter results, which are expected April 27.

Boston Scientific booked $8.2 billion in sales last year. The company’s CRM division, which manufactures the defibrillators affected in the recall, booked $1.7 billion in sales in 2009.

Source

MIAMI — Toyota has routinely engaged in questionable, evasive and deceptive legal tactics when sued, claiming it does not have information it is required to turn over and sometimes even ignoring court orders to produce key documents, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In a review of lawsuits filed around the country involving a wide range of complaints — not just the sudden acceleration problems that have led to the recall of millions of Toyotas — the automaker has hidden the existence of tests that would be harmful to its legal position and claimed key material was difficult to get at its headquarters in Japan. It has withheld potentially damaging documents and refused to release data stored electronically in its vehicles.

For example, in a Colorado product liability lawsuit filed by a man whose young daughter was killed in a 4Runner rollover crash, Toyota withheld documents about internal roof strength tests despite a federal judge’s order that such information be produced, according to court records. The attorneys for Jon Kurylowicz now say such documents might have changed the outcome of the case, which ended in a 2005 jury verdict for Toyota.

"Mr. Kurylowicz went to trial without having been given all the relevant evidence and all the evidence the court ordered Toyota to produce," attorney Stuart Ollanik wrote in a new federal lawsuit accusing Toyota of fraud in the earlier case. "The Kurylowicz trial was not a fair trial."

In another case involving a Texas woman killed when her Toyota Land Cruiser lurched backward, the Japanese automaker told lawyers for the woman’s family it was unaware of any similar cases. Yet less than a year earlier, Toyota had settled a nearly identical lawsuit in the same state involving a Baptist minister who was severely injured after he said his Land Cruiser abruptly rolled backward over him. Under court discovery rules, Toyota had an obligation to inform the woman’s attorneys about the case when formally asked.

"Automobile manufacturers, in my practice, have been the toughest to deal with when it comes to sharing information, but Toyota has no peer," said attorney Ernest Cannon, who represented the woman’s family.

The AP reviewed numerous cases around the country in which Toyota’s actions were evasive, and sometimes even deceptive, in providing answers to questions posed by plaintiffs. Court rules generally allow a person or company who is sued to object to turning over requested information; it’s permitted and even expected that defense attorneys play hardball, but it’s a violation to claim evidence does not exist when it does.

Similar claims have been lodged by Dimitrios Biller, a former Toyota attorney who sued the company in August, contending it withheld evidence in considerably older rollover cases.

Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has subpoenaed some of Biller’s still-undisclosed records, says they show potential violations of discovery orders.

Source

Consumer borrowing fell again in February, reflecting weakness in credit cards and auto loans.

Analysts said the sharp reduction showed that the weak economy was still making consumers hesitant to take on more debt.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that borrowing declined by $11.5 billion in February, surprisingly weaker than the small $500 million gain that economists had expected.

Source

1942 — Founded by Victor Hermelin and Bob Keith, both of St. Louis.

1947 — KV and its co-founders charged with shipping vitamin capsules that had less than the required amount of vitamins.

1950 — KV charged in a criminal complaint with shipping 51,000 vitamins whose ingredients were deficient.

1975 — Victor’s son, Marc Hermelin, becomes chief executive.

1982 — An explosion and fire in KV’s testing room causes widespread damage to an industrial building in Brentwood.

1990 — Forms its generic drug subsidiary, Ethex Corp.

1992 — Food and Drug Administration identifies manufacturing problems at Ethex.

1993 — FDA raids KV facilities, seizing drugs and ingredients. KV signs consent decree agreeing to improve its manufacturing practices.

1995 — KV pleads guilty to federal misdemeanor charges of misbranding a children’s antibiotic and agrees to pay $600,000 in fines and costs.

May 2008 — KV ordered to stop making some cough, cold and gastrointestinal drugs. California and Canadian pharmacists discover oversize morphine sulfate tablets.

June 2008 — KV initiates first of a series of recalls of its products.

July 2008 — The FDA searches KV facilities and seizes about $24 million in drugs that were not approved by regulators.

December 2008 — Board of directors fires Marc Hermelin and names David Van Vliet as interim chief executive.

January 2009 — KV stops manufacturing and shipping all of its products and recalls most of its drugs.

March 2009 — KV signs a consent decree with the Department of Justice, agreeing not to make any drugs until FDA approval.

March 2010 — KV pleads guilty to two felony counts of failing to inform the FDA of oversize drugs on the market and agrees to pay $27.6 million in fines and restitution. CVS Pharmacies sues KV for allegedly breaking supply contract.

Source

Private-sector employers continued to cut jobs in March, highlighting the challenges still facing the nation’s job market, according to a report released Wednesday.

Automatic Data Processing, which processes paychecks for one in every six U.S. employees, said private-sector employers cut payrolls by 23,000 jobs in March, marking the smallest monthly decline since February 2008.

The decline surprised many economists. A consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a gain of 40,000 jobs in the month.

The number of job cuts in February was revised to a loss of 24,000 jobs from the previously reported 20,000.

"American businesses are on the cusp of recovery, yet this report shows that they remain hesitant to increase their payrolls," Gary Butler, chief executive of ADP, said in a statement.

The service sector reported an increase of 28,000 jobs in March, marking the second consecutive monthly increase and the highest job growth since March of 2008.

However, that growth was offset by a loss of 51,000 jobs in the goods-producing sector and a drop of 9,000 manufacturing jobs.

Large businesses, those with 500 or more workers, saw employment decline by 7,000 jobs, while small-size businesses with fewer than 50 workers had a drop of 12,000 workers.

Employment among medium-size businesses, defined as those with between 50 and 499 workers, declined by 4,000.

Many economists view the ADP report as a proxy for the government’s monthly jobs report, which comes out Friday.

That report is expected to show a gain of 190,000 jobs in March, compared to a loss of 36,000 jobs in February. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 9.7%. Some economists may revise their estimates in light of Wednesday’s report.

However, the ADP report was not impacted in February by the effects of severe winter weather, while the government report was, according to Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers.

That means Wednesday’s report does not incorporate a weather-related rebound that could show up in Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report, Prakken said.

At the same time, the ADP report does not include any federal hiring in March for the 2010 Census, which some economists believe could add over 1 million temporary jobs to the economy.

"For both these reasons, it is reasonable to expect that Friday’s employment figure from the BLS will be stronger than today’s estimate," Prakken said. 

Source