Stung by sluggish sales in bars and restaurants, revenue from its branded wines fell 3 percent in the key North American market.
Beer sales in its Crown Imports wholesale business joint venture with Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo SA fell 10 percent to $499 million and operating profit dropped 26 percent to $91 million. Sales of spirits fell 2 percent, hit by the divestiture of the value spirits business.
“The company’s results were decent given consumer weakness,” said Gimme Credit analyst Kim Noland. She credited its efforts this fiscal year to lower debt by $336 million to $4.1 billion and “initiate a global cost-cutting program appropriate in the current recession.”
The new mechanism aimed to indirectly link domestic prices to global crude prices “in a controlled manner”, after domestic refiners suffered huge losses because of a gap between government-set retail prices and soaring global crude prices.
The benchmark price of gasoline currently sits at 7,100 yuan a tonne and that of diesel 6,360 yuan a tonne, after five price rises and four cuts in the past year.
Based in Victor, 20 miles southeast of Rochester, the company sells about 70 wine brands and liquors such as Paul Masson brandy and Black Velvet Canadian whiskey. It also imports beers such as Negra Modelo from Mexico, Tsingtao from China and St. Pauli Girl from Germany.
After a two-decade acquisition spree, the company sold off cheaper “value” brands to focus on the more lucrative premium end of the wine and spirits markets. Over the last year, its work force fell to 6,600 from 8,000 as it ditched wineries and product lines and consolidated its distribution network.
Excluding one-time costs, Constellation said it earned 54 cents a share, which was 2 cents a share above the average Wall Street estimates. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters also expected lower net sales of $905.3 billion.
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The suit alleges Boston-based State Street overcharged the California Public Employees Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System with fees and penalties for handling foreign currency trades.
“For years, State Street, led by a group of its internal ‘risk traders,’ raided the custodial accounts of California’s two largest public pension funds, in a total amount exceeding $56 million, by fraudulently pricing foreign currency trades State Street executed for the pension funds,” the state’s complaint alleges.
The bank denied the claims.
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Wholesale prices dropped unexpectedly in September due to lower energy costs, as inflation remains in check amid signs of a broad economic recovery.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that the Producer Price Index fell 0.6 percent last month. Wall Street economists expected a flat reading. The drop comes after a steep rise in August.
He also told her, “Your mother’s money means nothing, I have ex-police I can hire who know how to get the job done and they won’t leave any trace,” according to the affidavit.
The 44-year-old Sheen denied threatening his wife with a knife or choking her, and told officers they had slapped each other on the arms and that he had snapped two pairs of her eyeglasses in front of her, according to the affidavit. An ambulance was sent to the house in Aspen, but police say no one was taken to the hospital.
Charlie Sheen, who is listed in the affidavit as Carlos Irwin Estevez, told police he and his wife have been having marital problems and that she abuses alcohol.
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Facing more than 500 noise complaints from boardwalk neighbors over the last 20 months, the Los Angeles City Council directed city lawyers Tuesday to draft new rules, including a ban on musical instruments and amplified sound between sunset and 9 a.m. Council members also hope to grant new authority to the Los Angeles Police Department to ensure that performers who attract big crowds rotate in and out of shared spaces. The council is considering expanding an existing lottery that parcels out space to certain activists and performers, making it a year-round system rather than just in the summer and fall.
She says it’s “shortsighted” for the property owners to let the BID expire, and that come Jan. 1 she’ll seek a special detail to keep the district clean, but it will be “a full cost recovery operation,” meaning it will be paired with stepped-up code enforcement — and fines.
In other words, an answer to the Toy District’s future isn’t on the horizon. But the broader question is how to find a solution to the city’s powerlessness. “This is the system working as it should, in sort of a perverse way,” Lopez says. “It is up to that community to decide for itself where it wants to go.”
Regulations for the boardwalk, a historic performance and free-speech zone that draws visitors from around the world, have been mired in complaints and legal challenges for years. Even though an ordinance was crafted under federal court supervision and approved by the council in April 2008, city officials are still struggling with enforcement problems and fierce competition for space that sometimes has resulted in fistfights.
A group of merchants, performers and free-speech advocates told council members Tuesday that the changes do nothing to address what they consider the root of the boardwalk problems — the proliferation of illegal commercial vending on the ocean side that is crowding out longtime activists and drawing business away from merchants who operate legally on the east side.
Stephen L. Fiske, a professional musician and 35-year resident of Venice, described the 2008 law as “complicated, confusing and unenforceable.”
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The Federal Communications Commission, which maintains that all cell phones sold in the U.S. are safe, has set a standard for the “specific absorption rate” of radiofrequency energy, but it doesn’t require handset makers to divulge radiation levels.
The San Francisco proposal would require the display of the absorption rate level next to each phone in print at least as big as the price. Boland’s bill is not specific about absorption rate levels, but would require a permanent, nonremovable advisory of risk in black type, except for the word “warning,” which would be large and in red letters. It would also include a color graphic of a child’s brain next to the warning.
While there’s little agreement about the health hazards, Boland said Maine’s roughly 950,000 cell phone users among its 1.3 million residents “do not know what the risks are.”
All told, more than 270 million people subscribed to cellular telephone service last year in the United States, an increase from 110 million in 2000, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association. The industry group contends the devices are safe.
“With respect to the matter of health effects associated with wireless base stations and the use of wireless devices, CTIA and the wireless industry have always been guided by science, and the views of impartial health organizations. The peer-reviewed scientific evidence has overwhelmingly indicated that wireless devices do not pose a public health risk,” said CTIA’s John Walls.
James Keller of Lewiston, whose cell phone serves as his only phone, seemed skeptical about warning labels. He said many things may cause cancer but lack scientific evidence to support that belief. Besides, he said, people can’t live without cell phones.
“It seems a little silly to me, but it’s not going to hurt anyone to have a warning on there. If they’re really concerned about it, go ahead and put a warning on it,” he said outside a sporting good store in Topsham. “It wouldn’t deter me from buying a phone.”
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This tony enclave (population 2,500) has long been favored by the rich and famous as a quiet retreat, a haven from the glare of footlights and flashing cameras. Locals pride themselves on a studied nonchalance toward the many celebrities who make this their playground, and they want that atmosphere to prevail.
“Discreet” is everybody’s favorite adjective here, and residents see that quality as key to the town’s appeal to celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor and Roger Moore.
Roger Niklasiewicz, a jewelry maker who has lived in Gstaad for 16 years, said other places cater to those who want to be noticed. “Gstaad is very discreet. It doesn’t compare with St. Moritz, which is a showoff,” he said.
Peter Cosandey, a former prosecutor in Zurich with extensive experience of extradition cases, said use of the electronic anklet, a relatively new concept in Switzerland, was probably instrumental in winning the court’s leniency.
“The court said that the danger of flight is substantial,” Cosandey said. “But [given] a combination of a substantial bail, plus the electronic monitoring, plus his saying that he would not flee, they said, overall, this should be enough to release him on bail.”
Like Polanski, Niklasiewicz is of Polish descent. He said he was introduced to Polanski by a mutual friend and became friendly with him, running into the director often during his regular visits to the village.
“It’s such a small town. We always meet here and there,” Niklasiewicz said, adding that he was happy to know Polanski was out of jail and reunited with his family.
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These people are not investing in journalism. They are feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others. And their almost china wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not “fair use.” To be impolite, it’s theft.
Right now content creators bear all the costs, while aggregators enjoy many of the benefits. In the long term, this is untenable. We are open to different pay models. But the principle is clear: To paraphrase a famous economist, there’s no such thing as a free news story, and we are going to ensure that we get a fair but modest price for the value we provide.
Finally, a few words about government. In the last two or three decades, we have seen the emergence of new platforms and opportunities that no one could have predicted—from social networking sites and iPhones and BlackBerries, to Internet sites for newspapers, radio and television. And we are only at the beginning.
The government has a role here. Unfortunately, too many of the mechanisms government uses to regulate the news and information business in this new century are based on 20th-century assumptions and business models. If we are really concerned about the survival of newspapers and other journalistic enterprises, the best thing government can do is to get rid of the arbitrary and contradictory regulations that actually prevent people from investing in these businesses.
One example of outdated thinking is the FCC’s cross-ownership rule that prevents people from owning, say, a television station and a newspaper in the same market. Many of these rules were written when competition was limited because of the huge up-front costs. If you are a newspaper today, your competition is not necessarily the TV station in the same city. It can be a Web site on the other side of the world, or even an icon on someone’s cell phones.
The key is to give plenty of notice. Make calls or send e-mails alerting your clients that you’ll be on vacation (and provide the specific dates) a few weeks in advance. That way, they can ask you questions, get updates on projects, buy services or schedule appointments before you leave. Provide contact information of staff who will be handling operations in your absence, or a cell phone number where you can reached in case of emergency.
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