BARBOURSVILLE -- Picasso Salon & Day Spa and Cafe Bloom is planning a party marking its first year in business.

It will be 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 3, at 1112 Main St. in Barboursville. There will be an open house featuring food from Cafe Bloom, wine and champagne and giveaways.

For information, call co-owner Connie Nichols at 304-416-1943.

W.Va. company faces investor lawsuits

CHARLES TOWN -- American Public Education is facing a second class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of shareholders.

New York law firm Bernstein Liebhard said it sued the Charles Town-based company Monday in U.S. District Court in Martinsburg. The lawsuit is the second filed on behalf of American Public Education shareholders in August.

American Public operates online, for-profit universities primarily for military personnel.

The new lawsuit accuses the company of using improper tactics to lure students to enroll to prop up financial results, among other things. The earlier lawsuit filed by an Oklahoma law firm likewise accuses American Public of making misrepresentations to investors.

An American Public spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

HP makes $1.5B bid for 3Par, topping Dell's offer

NEW YORK -- Hewlett-Packard Co. is bidding $1.5 billion for data storage provider 3Par Inc., offering 33 percent more than what rival Dell Inc. agreed to pay for the company just a week earlier.

The tussle for control of 3Par comes as both HP and Dell have been looking to expand beyond personal computers in search of bigger profits. The company they both want to buy provides products for organizing data on corporate servers. Those tools could help either company go deeper into "cloud computing," the growing practice of offering software on a subscription basis over the Internet.

The offer announced Monday raised questions about the direction HP is taking since CEO Mark Hurd was forced to resign earlier this month. Hurd was pushed out for filing inaccurate expense reports for his dinners and other outings with a former HP marketing contractor.

Faced with questions about why HP only made an offer for 3Par after Dell jumped in last week with a bid for $1.13 billion, company executives declined to say exactly how long they have been considering the deal, or whether Hurd had been in favor of it.

Insiders can't complete newspaper chain purchase

CINCINNATI -- Brown Publishing Co. has said an insiders group cannot complete its bankruptcy auction purchase of the Ohio-based newspaper chain after the group's lender withdrew.

A federal bankruptcy judge last month ruled that the newly formed Brown Media Corp., led by current president and CEO Roy Brown, could buy the majority of the Brown Publishing chain for $22.4 million.

Brown Publishing said in a court filing that it now expects to close a sale to PNC Bank as the next-highest bidder by Sept. 3 but needs to use cash collateral to operate through then.

The sale involves assets in Ohio, New York, Texas, South Carolina, Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Wyoming.

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