Print |
E-mail to a friend
BUSINESS
News in brief: CAMC to pay $11.5M to settle legal fight
CHARLESTON -- A four-year battle between Charleston Area Medical Center and a surgeon over malpractice insurance is over.
CAMC's trustees agreed Wednesday to pay $11.5 million to Dr. R.E. Hamrick Jr. Hamrick agreed to end his legal case against the hospital.
Hamrick sued CAMC after his hospital privileges were pulled in 2004 after he established a $1 million self-funded malpractice program instead of obtaining commercial coverage.
In February, a Kanawha County jury awarded $25 million to Hamrick. A special judge later reduced the damages to $10 million.
CAMC said it will drop plans to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court.
Freezer sales climb as food prices soar
CHICAGO -- Once relegated to the dank corners of the basement, freezers are being embraced again by shoppers who are stashing bulk-sized purchases of meats, fruits and vegetables there as they work to combat rising food prices.
Across the country, shoppers bought more than 1.1 million freezers during the first six months of the year -- up more than 7 percent from the same period last year, according to research firm NPD Group.
That rings up to nearly $400 million in freezer sales -- a staggering figure compared to the rest of the home appliance sector, where industry data shows shipments are down nearly 8 percent.
And, experts said, it's a trend that's expected to continue at least through much of next year as penny-pinching shoppers buy in bulk to take advantage of deals or bundle grocery shopping trips to conserve gas.
Dell profit drops 17 percent, stock plunges
Computer maker Dell Inc. said Thursday its fiscal second-quarter profit fell 17 percent, hurt in part by lower prices and restructuring charges. The earnings were short of Wall Street estimates, and Dell shares plunged.
For the three-month period that ended Aug. 1, Dell's earnings dropped to $616 million, or 31 cents per share, from $746 million, or 32 cents per share in the same period last year.
Excluding amortization and business realignment charges, Dell said it would have earned 33 cents per share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast a profit of 36 cents per share.
Investors sent Dell shares down $2.54, or 10 percent, to $22.67 in after-hours trading. Earlier, the stock dropped 42 cents to close at $25.21.
Dell said lower PC prices cut into earnings. In a conference call, Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said Dell made "strategic pricing" changes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to speed up growth. The company also deferred some profits from that region to a later quarter.
Gladden also indicated that as Dell's presence in retail stores grows, the company is taking aim at back-to-school shoppers with lower prices.
Dell said that operating expenses fell to their lowest point in six quarters, and that the company would reach its goal of 8,900 jobs cut in the current third quarter. Since the target was set last year, Dell has already cut more than 8,500 workers.
Sales rose 11 percent to $16.4 billion, ahead of Wall Street's view for $15.9 billion in sales.
Salmonella outbreak appears to be over
WASHINGTON -- The government said Thursday that the salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 1,440 people appears to be over, but its ultimate source may never be known, partly because of shortcomings in the nation's food safety system.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said they found strong evidence to implicate jalapeno and serrano peppers, and a farm in Mexico, in the largest outbreak of foodborne illness in a decade. Investigators were unable to clear domestic and imported tomatoes, however, although the evidence against tomatoes is weaker.
The FDA also lifted its warning that consumers avoid eating jalapeno and serrano peppers from Mexico. But officials pointedly said that doesn't guarantee another such outbreak can be prevented.
"None of us can provide a cast-iron guarantee that salmonella Saintpaul will not re-emerge," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's food safety chief. "We have not identified the total source of this."
FDA and CDC officials said a number of steps are needed to improve the safety of fresh produce, even as the government and the medical community are urging consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables for better nutrition.
Among those measures: Standard procedures and more funding to allow state laboratories to test samples of suspected pathogens more rapidly. Congressional action to give the FDA authority to impose produce safety regulations. And industry action to develop a faster system for tracing back to the farm any produce items suspected in an outbreak.
The CDC said the outbreak began in late April, and that by early August the number of new cases had fallen to levels that would be considered normal. Most victims got sick during May and June. And there have been no new restaurant clusters of cases since early July. That "is an important indication that this particular outbreak is over," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of CDC's foodborne illness branch.
Texas was the hardest-hit state, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the all confirmed cases. People were sickened in 43 states and Washington, D.C.
The joint investigation by CDC and the FDA found strong evidence that jalapeno peppers were a major carrier of the outbreak bacteria, and that serrano peppers were also a carrier. It was the first time that jalapenos were implicated in such an outbreak.
The salmonella strain was traced back to a jalapeno pepper at a produce distribution center in Texas that received peppers from Mexico. But FDA investigators struck out when they performed tests at the farm in Mexico where they believed the pepper had been grown.
Instead, they found the bacteria on another Mexican farm about 100 miles away from the first. The outbreak strain was isolated from water in a pond used for irrigation and from a sample of serrano peppers. Acheson said it is not completely clear that the second farm was the source of the outbreak.
Both farms provided produce to a common packing facility in Mexico, which shipped to the United States. That raises the possibility that contamination could have occurred during packing and shipping.
Consumers around the country first heard about the problem June 7, when the FDA issued a broad warning against eating various kinds of tomatoes.
Yet the extensive probe found not a single contaminated tomato. Still, investigators said they cannot rule tomatoes out as a carrier, particularly early in the outbreak. Interviews with patients who got sick suggested a strong link to tomatoes, which had been implicated in previous salmonella outbreaks.
"We continue to believe that association could reflect real contamination early on," said CDC's Tauxe. But he acknowledged the evidence is weaker when it comes to tomatoes.
"It is information that is more restricted in time and does not have confirmatory laboratory findings behind it," he said.
As the focus shifted to peppers, the U.S. tomato industry complained that the government had unfairly singled it out based on flimsy evidence, leading to an estimated $250 million in losses.
