From Bloomberg News | Continental Airlines and AMR Corp.’s American Eagle regional carrier face a combined $605,000 in possible fines for maintenance flaws, the FAA said.
Starbucks plans to cut ties with Kraft Jan. 29
In the ongoing legal spat between Kraft Foods Inc. and Starbucks Corp., Kraft said Starbucks plans to sever a 12-year coffee-distribution deal on Jan. 29, although Kraft is scrambling to block the plan.
“By the week of Feb. 13, Kraft would be out of stock of many products, thereby causing harm to its retail customers in the form of lost sales,” Kraft said in a court filing dated Dec. 17. Get the full story »
Oil jumps to 2-yr high on stockpile drop, cold
Oil prices jumped above $90 a barrel Wednesday to settle at that level for the first time in 26 months as a third straight weekly drop in U.S. crude inventories and cold weather on both sides of the Atlantic spurred pre-holiday buying. Get the full story »
Playboy shares rise on upgrade
From The Street | Playboy Enterprises shares were up 1.5 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday after Caris analyst David Miller upgraded the company to above average from average, and raised his price target to $6.50 from $5 on his belief that founder Hugh Hefner has the means to take the company private. Get the full story>>
Half a million to insure ‘12 days’ items?
Everyone knows it would be prohibitively expensive to actually gift someone the treasures from the “12 Days of Christmas,” but it turns out to be even more pricey to insure — nearly 20 times the cost of buying the presents from the famed holiday carol in the first place.
A recipient of turtle doves, partridges and leaping lords would end up paying nearly half a million dollars in insurance premiums, according to a study from insurance brokerage Lockton and trade magazine Insurance Journal released on Wednesday. Get the full story »
More falling from foreclosure relief program
More troubled homeowners are dropping out of the Obama administration’s main foreclosure-relief program, which has been widely criticized for failing to help more people keep their homes.
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that about 774,000 homeowners have dropped out as of last month. That’s about 54 percent of the more than 1.4 million people who applied. And it’s up from October, when approximately 756,000 had fallen out. Get the full story »
Number of mass layoffs falls in November
The number of mass layoffs decreased slightly in November to roughly 1,500, affecting more than more than 5,000 workers in Illinois, according to the statistics released today by the Bureau of Labor statistics. Get the full story »
Angelica Huston confronts CareerBuilder over apes
A CareerBuilder.com Super Bowl 2006 ad. (Chicago Tribune)
CareerBuilder’s 2011 Super Bowl ad is already drawing attention from PETA activists.
PETA said it learned earlier this month that the company was planning on using chimpanzees in the ad, which prompted actress Angelica Huston to write a letter to Matt Ferguson, the company’s CEO, urging him to watch her 2008 video on the abuse of ape actors.
Huston said chimpanzees are often physically and emotionally abused during training, and that when they grow too strong to handle, they are kept in small cages at roadside zoos or “warehoused in horrifying conditions on training compounds.” Get the full story »
Walgreen Co. shares soar on earnings news
Shares of Walgreen Co. surged more than 7 percent in midday trade after the company reported record quarterly earnings and sales for the first quarter of fiscal year 2011. Get the full story »
Apple tosses out WikiLeaks application
Apple joined a growing number of U.S. corporations that have cut ties with WikiLeaks, removing an application from its online store that gave users access to the controversial website’s content and Twitter feed because it violated guidelines. Get the full story »
Motorola Mobility scoops up California tech firm
Motorola Mobility, the soon-to-be-independent division of Motorola Inc. that makes mobile devices, has acquired a California technology start-up that specializes in delivering music and video on demand.
Terms of the deal with Burlingame, Calif.-based Zecter Inc. were not disclosed. Motorola Inc. is separating into two companies on Jan. 4, becoming Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. Motorola Mobility encompasses mobile devices and cable TV set-top boxes, while Motorola Solutions comprises communications equipment for government, public safety and industrial users. Each company will be publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Get the full story »
JetBlue extends CEO’s job pact by 2 years
Discount carrier JetBlue Airways said Wednesday that it extended the employment agreement of President and Chief Executive Dave Barger by two years to 2015. Get the full story »
Chicago-area home sales plunge in November
Sales of existing homes in the Chicago area plunged more than 30 percent in November, hurt by difficult comparisons as buyers last year sought to capitalize on federal homebuyer tax cut programs. Get the full story »
Littelfuse buys Cole Hersee
Chicago-based Littelfuse Inc. has bought Cole Hersee Co. for $50 million. Get the full story »
Verizon to sell Motorola 4G phone
Verizon Wireless will distribute a smartphone made by Motorola Inc. to run on its new 4G network, the carrier’s chief operating officer, John Stratton, said in an interview Tuesday. The comments mark the first time the carrier has identified a handset maker for the closely watched launch and represent an important vote of confidence in Motorola. Get the full story »
