In brief: West Corp. hiring 190 more workers
West Corp., an Omaha-based call center business that has operations in Spokane, will hire 190 more permanent and temporary workers here, the company said in a news release Wednesday.
Some 120 of the jobs will be full time, and the rest will be seasonal, temporary positions, the release said. The company will hold job fairs every Tuesday in October from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in West’s downtown Spokane location, at 157 S. Howard St.
West Corp. currently employs about 1,100 workers in its two Spokane facilities, said David Pleiss, vice president of investor and public relations. The company’s clients here are a wireless telecommunications company and a chain of retail stores, Pleiss said, adding that West Corp. doesn’t identify its clients by name.
For more information visit www.westemployment.com.
Tom Sowa
Air Force signs Boeing contract
CHICAGO – The U.S. Air Force has signed an eight-year contract with Boeing Co. worth $11.9 billion for upgrades to B-52 bombers.
The Defense Department says that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio is handling contract activities.
Shares of Chicago-based Boeing rose 79 cents to $66.76 in after-hours trading, after finishing regular trading up $1.45 at $65.97.
Associated Press
Google unsure of China prospects
HONG KONG – Google’s future in China is “very uncertain” after it pulled its search engine from the country in a dispute over restrictions on freedom of information, a company official said Wednesday.
Google shut down its mainland Chinese search services in March, saying it no longer wanted to screen its search results for topics the government considers politically sensitive. It now redirects users to its website based in the southern Chinese territory of Hong Kong, which enjoys freedom of speech as part of its special semiautonomous status.
Addressing students at the University of Hong Kong, Google’s head of government affairs for Asia acknowledged the company had lost market share since the pullout.
Associated Press
Briefcase
From wire reports
• Nintendo slashed its earnings forecast by more than half Wednesday after announcing that its 3DS game machine, packed with glasses-free 3-D technology, won’t be ready to go on sale for Christmas. The 3DS will go on sale in February in Japan, and March in Europe and the U.S., missing the year-end shopping season which is a critical time for all game-makers to rake in profits.
• Barry Diller, the media mogul who claimed credit for the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, will resign as chairman of the merged company after a boardroom power struggle with another media giant and director, John Malone, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
• The insurer Liberty Mutual said that it is delaying the initial public offering of a subsidiary that could have been the largest U.S. IPO of the year. Liberty Mutual Group Inc., based in Boston, cited the weak economy, volatile stock market and “undervalued” prices for stocks of property and casualty insurers for the delay. It said it has been unable to price shares of its Liberty Mutual Agency Corp. as high as it would like.