More people submitted new claims for unemployment insurance last week as laid-off workers who were prevented from filing because of Hurricane Isabel applied for benefits. For the workweek ending Sept. 27, new applications for jobless benefits rose by a seasonally adjusted 13,000 to a two-week high of 399,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. New claims hit a high this year of 459,000 in the middle of April.
A former broker with the Millennium Partners hedge fund pleaded guilty Thursday to a felony charge of illegal late trading of mutual fund shares, part of a quickly broadening investigation that has touched many of the best-known names in the business. Steven Markovitz, 41, admitted that he and other traders “intentionally engaged in fraud, deception (and) concealment” to buy and sell mutual fund shares at the closing price after the New York market closed. His plea requires him to cooperate with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s investigation of the mutual fund industry, which has cast a shadow over a main investment vehicle for many Americans.
Federal regulators approved a potential $50 million settlement Thursday with Reliant Resources Inc. over allegations the energy trader and producer manipulated Western electricity markets in 2000 by withholding power. The agreement, in which Houston-based Reliant will pay $25 million in civil penalties and possibly a like amount in proceeds from auctioning off electricity, was formally approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Reliant did not admit to any violations in the agreement, but company chairman Joel Staff said in a statement, “Reliant must assume responsibility for its actions.”
Ford Motor Co. will close plants in Ohio and Michigan by year’s end and another in New Jersey in the first quarter of next year as part of its new four-year agreement with the United Auto Workers, the company said Thursday. Another factory in Ohio will end production during the next four years. Ford, which has announced more than 7,700 job cuts worldwide this week, is under pressure to meet profit forecasts this year while engaging in a costly U.S. pricing war with General Motors Corp., DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group and others.
Housing Hope was one of three Snohomish County agencies to receive donations from the Boeing Co. recently. The organization, which received $35,000, was misidentified in an Oct. 1 article on Page A11.
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