San Francisco’s board of supervisors has voted, by a veto-proof margin, to ban most of McDonald’s Happy Meals as they are now served in the restaurants.
The measure will make San Francisco the first major city in the country to forbid restaurants from offering a free toy with meals that contain more than set levels of calories, sugar and fat. The ordinance also would require restaurants to provide fruits and vegetables with all meals for children that come with toys.
General Motors will not have to pay U.S. federal taxes on up to $50 billion of profits for as long as 20 years, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
With the standard federal corporate tax rate at 35 percent, that tax break could save GM $17.5 billion, not factoring in tax deductions, the Journal reported. Get the full story »
San Francisco’s board of supervisors has voted, by a veto-proof margin, to ban most of McDonald’s Happy Meals as they are now served in the restaurants.
The measure will make San Francisco the first major city in the country to forbid restaurants from offering a free toy with meals that contain more than set levels of calories, sugar and fat. Get the full story »
Career Education Corp. said Tuesday that it will pay about $40 million to settle lawsuits filed by students in one of its culinary schools.
The settlement was recorded as a pretax charge against the company’s third-quarter earnings. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, Career Education reported net income of $26.1 million, or 33 cents a diluted share. Operating income excluding the $40 million charge was $78.3 million.
In the year ago quarter, the company, which operates for-profit colleges, reported net income of $20.8 million, or 25 cents a diluted share. The year-ago quarter also included a special item for $18.8 million in compensation expense. Get the full story »
Hyundai Motor America, the largest automaker to report Tuesday, said its U.S. sales rose 38 percent last month to 42,656 vehicles from 31,005 the previous year.The gain was led by sales of the Sonata, which totaled 17,505. That was more than double a year ago. The automaker introduced turbo and hybrid versions of the model.
Canada insisted on Tuesday it has made no decision yet on BHP’s $39 billion offer for Potash Corp., even as two newspapers said bureaucrats were advising the government to allow the bid and rumors swirled in the markets that Ottawa would block it. Get the full story »
Toxic chemicals at levels high enough to kill sea animals extended deep underwater soon after the BP oil spill, U.S. researchers reported Tuesday.
They found evidence of the chemicals as deep as 3,300 feet
and as far away as 8 miles in May, and said the spread likely worsened as more oil spilled. Get the full story »
Top regulators from the United States and the European Union discussed reforms for futures and over-the-counter derivatives as they toured the world’s largest exchange on Tuesday and lunched with a group of Chicago futures traders and exchange executives. Get the full story »
Intercontinental Exchange Inc. is shedding some 40 employees from its U.S. environment bourse Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) by the end of the year, with further cuts in 2011, ICE’s chief financial officer said. “We had about 66 people when we bought the company. I think we’ll be closer to 25 by the end of the year. And then we’ll reduce further into the first quarter,” Scott Hill told a conference call following a company earnings update this week.
The futures exchange group reported a stronger-than-expected 15 percent rise in quarterly profit on Monday.
Industry sources told Reuters in August that ICE had started to make layoffs at CCX in July due to the lack of U.S. action on climate change. Get the full story »
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.’s mega-acquisition of Wyeth boosted its third-quarter revenue 39 percent, but hefty charges and a higher tax rate, both related to that $68 billion purchase, dragged its profit down 70 percent, the company said Tuesday.
The New York-based maker of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor and impotence pill Viagra posted net income of $866 million, or 11 cents per share. That’s down from $2.88 billion, or 43 cents per share, a year earlier. Get the full story »
Two boys play the Kinect for Xbox 360 at a Charlotte, N.C. Gamestop store, Oct. 31, 2010. (AP Photo/Nell Redmond)
Caryn Bailey, a 32-year-old blogger and mother of two, is impressed with Microsoft’s new Kinect game-control system. But she already owns the Wii from rival Nintendo, and she’s not ready to shell out hundreds of dollars to switch.
That’s the challenge Microsoft Corp. faces as it begins selling the long-awaited system on Thursday ahead of the lucrative holiday season. To succeed, Kinect will need to exude the kind of iPad-like magic that defies frugality and gets people spending to experience something new, even as they cut back elsewhere in the uncertain economy. Get the full story »
U.S. retailers are poised to report their weakest monthly sales gains in six months as as the warmest October weather in decades and a still-stumbling economic recovery crimped demand for fall merchandise.
Analysts expect same-store sales to have risen 1.6 percent in October, compared with a 1.8 percent increase last year, according to Thomson Reuters data. Get the full story »
U.S. investigators filed criminal and civil fraud charges against a French doctor they say leaked negative inside information about a Human Genome Sciences Inc. hepatitis drug trial, enabling six hedge funds to avoid $30 million of losses.
Yves Benhamou was accused by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission of tipping a portfolio manager about Human Genome’s experimental hepatitis C treatment Albuferon in late 2007 and early 2008. Get the full story »
USA Today | The National Federation of the Blind has sued United Airlines, charging that its ticketing kiosks are not accessible to blind passengers.
