Checklist

Regional

U Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA unit, of Richmond, won the reversal of a New York jury’s 2005 verdict of $20.5 million to a sick smoker who accused tobacco makers of failing to make cigarettes safer. In a 2002 lawsuit, Norma Rose claimed she developed cancer and neurological damage after smoking “negligently designed” cigarettes from the 1960s until 1993.

U Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. will meet next week with the chief executive officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and U.S. lawmakers to hash out details of legislation that would strengthen oversight of the government-chartered companies. The Bush administration called the meeting to “discuss legislation to create a stronger regulator,” a Treasury spokeswoman said.

U Fannie Mae, the largest provider of money for U.S. home loans, plans to introduce a program that will enable more delinquent homeowners to sell their houses for less than is owed on their mortgages. Fannie Mae said it avoids possibly larger losses when allowing these “short sales,” and enables borrowers to escape having foreclosures on their credit records.

U The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it won $260,000 consent order against from Forefront Investment Corp. in a case where the market regulator charged the company with being $2.3 million short of minimum capital requirements set by law. Donald and Barbara Snellgrove, of Richmond, were also charged. Forefront is a registered futures dealer.

U Radio One Inc. of Lanham, the owner of stations serving black audiences, acquired social networking company Community Connect Inc. for $38 million to diversify its business by adding an Internet property. Community Connect Inc. owns and operates sites including BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, and AsianAve.com.

U A federal judge has denied a motion to dismiss a case against Tyson Foods, of Springdale, Ark., over advertising claims about antibiotics in its chicken products. U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett in Baltimore also said he will decide in seven days on a motion sought by competing poultry producers Perdue Farms, of Salisbury, Md., and Sanderson Farms of Laurel, Miss., to stop the ads.

U Conservative groups, including the American Family Association, are asking Marriott International Inc., of the District, to stop giving guests the option of ordering pornographic pay-per-view movies, in keeping with the hotel giant’s stated goal of “promoting the well-being of children and families.” The groups want to meet with Chief Executive J.W. Marriott Jr. to discuss their concerns.

U Men’s clothing retail Jos. A. Bank, of Hampstead, Md, said it earned a record $50.2 million for its 2007 fiscal year ended Feb. 2. Net income was $43.2 million in fiscal 2006. Earnings per share for the year increased 15 percent to a record $2.72, compared with $2.36 for the year earlier.

National

U Big Wall Street firms are pulling back slightly on their borrowing from an emergency lending program created by the Federal Reserve. A central bank report said they averaged $32.6 billion in daily borrowing over the past week. That compares to $38.1 billion in the previous week and $32.9 billion before that.

U Standard and Poor’s placed the counterparty credit ratings of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago under review for a downgrade, citing the end of merger talks with the bank’s Dallas counterpart. The deal’s collapse “heightens our concerns regarding the strategic direction and financial condition” of the government-chartered cooperative, S&P said.

U Lenders are dropping out of the federally backed student loan business in droves, fleeing an environment squeezed of cash because of the credit crunch. Forty-six student lenders have stopped making federally guaranteed student loans, either temporarily or permanently, accounting for 12 percent of the federally backed student loan market, according to FinAid.org.

U Sharper Image Corp., the bankrupt seller of massage chairs and $300 shavers, said Chairman Jerry Levin will resign and might offer to buy the company. Mr. Levin told the company he’s interested in joining with other investors to purchase some or all of it, San Francisco-based Sharper Image said. The 31-year-old retailer has announced plans to shut about half of its 184 stores.

U Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to take over Yahoo Inc. has become so tortured it may help Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc. grow stronger, undermining Microsoft’s main reason for pursing the deal in the first place, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown said. “The longer this gets dragged out, the better for Google,” he said.

U Biotechnology giant Genentech Inc. is reporting a jump in first-quarter profits of 12 percent compared to last year, though sales of its top-selling cancer drug disappointed analysts. For the quarter ending March 31, the company earned $790 million (74 cents per share), compared to $706 million (66 cents) a year ago.

U The government estimated that 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology. The U.S. Geological Survey called it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed. The Bakken Formation encompasses about 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

U Exxon Mobil Corp., whose $40 billion profit last year again broke the record for a U.S. company, gave chairman and Chief Executive Rex Tillerson an 18 percent raise to $21.7 million. Mr. Tillerson, 56, received a salary of $1.8 million and a $3.4 million bonus in 2007. The company boosted Mr. Tillerson’s salary to $1.9 million on Jan. 1.

U Federal regulators fined Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., and other retailers $3.9 million combined for failing to properly label analog-only televisions, which will need to be retrofitted after the switch to digital TV next year. The Federal Communications Commission also handed down $2.7 million in fines to other companies for violating digital TV rules.

International

U Billionaire George Soros said the seizure in global credit markets caused by the subprime collapse will get worse before it gets better. Lack of oversight is partly responsible for the problems, Mr. Soros said. “This is a man-made crisis and it’s made by this false belief that markets correct their own excesses,” he said.

U Leftist lawmakers took over both chambers of Mexico’s Congress to protest President Felipe Calderon’s energy reform bill. Lawmakers of the Democratic Revolution Party stormed the podiums and forced a recess in both houses of Congress. Some donned hard hats and shouted, “The country is not for sale.”

U Delinquencies on home loans in Spain rose to the highest in more than six years in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Homeowners fell into arrears of at least 60 days on 0.85 percent of loans included in the more than $258 billion of mortgage-backed securities rated by Moody’s, up from 0.63 percent a year earlier.

U IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the organization will play a key role in confronting a global financial crisis that is punishing the world economy. Mr. Strauss-Kahn said the global financial turmoil that originated in rising defaults in the U.S. on subprime mortgages and roiled markets in August was the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

From wire dispatches and staff reports