Toyota Motor recalled nearly 2.2 million vehicles, citing a defect that could cause gas pedals to stick, in an extension of the safety crisis that has hounded the world’s top automaker for more than a year.
The surprise action on Thursday extended a damaging string of recalls covering 19 million Toyota vehicles worldwide since 2009, mainly over complaints of unintended acceleration linked to defective floormats and gas pedals. Get the full story »
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday that there is substantial capacity across major world economies in strategic oil reserves in the event of a supply disruption. Get the full story »
Regional cell phone company U.S. Cellular Corp. on Thursday said its fourth-quarter net income and revenue were flat with a year ago, as it continued to lose subscribers.
The company’s net income came to $6.8 million, or 8 cents per share, compared with $6.6 million, or 8 cents per share, a year earlier. Get the full story »
President Barack Obama said Thursday he’s confident that markets will be able to ride out the situation in Libya and the price of oil will stabilize.
Obama made the brief comments during a discussion with a new council of business and labor leaders he’s appointed to work on economic competitiveness. He said that energy costs are generally a source of uncertainty for businesses. But as for the spike in oil prices, the president said: “We think we’ll be able to ride out the situation in Libya and it will stabilize.”
Oil prices rose again Thursday as the rebellion in Libya appeared to have shut down even more crude production than previously estimated. At the pump, gas prices rose more than 2 cents to a new national average of about $3.23 per gallon. Get the full story »
Elizabeth Warren, the point person creating an agency to protect consumers of financial products, said she was surprised there are efforts afoot in Congress to kill or disable the agency before it’s born.
Warren, in Chicago for a speech at Northwestern University, told the Tribune in an interview Thursday that it’s crucial the agency is created and that its funding remain independent from the political process. She also held an olive branch to community banks and credit unions wary of more regulation. Get the full story »
U.S. consumers could see food costs spiking to levels seen during the food crisis of 2008 on higher commodity and energy prices, the Agriculture Department said on Thursday.
Food prices are forecast to rise 3.5 percent this year — nearly double the overall inflation rate. The lion’s share of the increase is expected in the second half of 2011, when the recent uptick for commodities, such as corn and soybeans, makes its way through the food system. Just last month, USDA forecast an increase of 2.5 percent in 2011. Get the full story »
Avon Products Inc. is splitting itself into two units, focusing on developed and developing markets and shaking up its management weeks after the world’s largest direct seller of cosmetics took the blame for problems in markets such as Brazil.
Avon said it would move its six commercial business units into two major business groups. Get the full story »
Mortgage rates declined in the latest week, with the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages landing at 4.95 percent, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey.
Rates slumped through most of last year as yields on Treasurys declined amid economic uncertainty. But yields have been on the rise recently, pushing mortgage rates back up earlier this month to the highest level since last April. The rates track the yields, which move inversely to Treasury prices. Get the full story »
A Chicago woman has been accused by the U.S. of preparing fraudulent tax returns by faking donations to charities and inflating rental losses from real estate properties.
The federal government says Rita J. Augustus, owner of Windy City Insurance Agency Inc. and Windy City Tax Service, prepared 4,283 tax returns from 2005 to 2009 with an “unusually high refund rate of over 94 percent,” according to court records. The government estimates it lost about $20 million in revenue as a result. Get the full story »
E*Trade Corp.’s largest stakeholder, hedge fund Citadel, is moving to sell nearly 24 million shares in the U.S. online brokerage, sending E*Trade shares down 5.9 percent on Thursday.
A Citadel Investment Group affiliate launched an underwritten offering, set to close March 1, that would reduce the Chicago-based fund’s stake to about 18 percent of E*Trade, from about 27 percent currently, according to a regulatory filing late on Wednesday. Get the full story »
The new paint scheme. (Image via United)
United Airlines released the first pictures Thursday of its largest jet, the Boeing 747-400, repainted with the new logo and color scheme adopted by the Chicago-based carrier as part of its 2010 merger with Continental Airlines.
With the makeover of the 374-seat jumbo jet, United has now painted one of each of its mainline aircraft types in its new livery, which combines the United brand in a new sans serif font across the fuselage with Continental’s familiar globe on the tail.
The world’s largest airline said it has repainted 309 mainline and regional aircraft, more than 20 percent of its total fleet, since the Oct. 1 tie-up of the two carriers. Get the full story »
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois health plan members are facing higher out-of-pocket costs if they see a physician not in the health plan’s network under a new doctor payment system being rolled out by its parent company.
Chicago-based Health Care Service Corp., the nation’s fourth-largest health plan, has begun basing its doctor fee schedules on the lower rates paid by the Medicare health insurance plan for the elderly. Exactly how much more a patient will pay for out-of-network will vary. But the AMA said Medicare rates are often 20 percent below the cost of providing medical-care. Get the full story »
The U.S. Air Force prepared on Thursday to announce the winner of an epic $35 billion procurement battle between Boeing and Airbus over 179 aerial refueling planes, its third attempt to start replacing a fleet of planes built before humans first landed on the moon.
Less than a dozen top Air Force and Pentagon officials know the outcome of a price shootout that saw both companies submit very aggressive offers, but which analysts increasingly expect Airbus parent EADS to win. Get the full story »
Illinois’ largest health insurance company will pay $25 million to settle allegations that it denied coverage to sick children in need of nursing care by “fraudulently” shifting their claims to Illinois’ Medicaid program, state and federal prosecutors said this morning.
The settlement, reached by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, follows several years of complaints from patients and their families. The patients reached out to Madigan’s office after their claims were denied by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois.
The cost of the medical care, which included so-called private-duty nurses for sick children and other ill patients, should have been covered by Illinois Blue Cross, but instead was shifted to Medicaid at a cost of nearly $12 million, prosecutors said. The claims were denied based on “internal, undisclosed guidelines that were more restrictive than the language provided to patients in plan policy materials,” Madigan’s office said. Get the full story »
Dominick’s Finer Foods parent Safeway Inc. reported a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street’s view as sales trends at its grocery stores improved.
The company, which also operates Safeway and Vons grocery stores, fourth-quarter net profit of $229.6 million, or 62 cents per share, topping analysts’ average call for a profit of 57 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Get the full story »
