Briefcase

Forum will highlight business innovations

Area companies and their successes through innovation will be highlighted Oct. 20 in a public event hosted by LaunchPad Inland Northwest.

The sponsored event will start at 3 p.m. at the Meadowwood Technology Campus in Liberty Lake. The event will include a speaker’s panel and breakout sessions afterword, said Bill Kalivas, co-founder of the business networking website.

The evening winds down with a trade show and networking from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

Rebecca Lovell, chief business officer for GeekWire, will discuss Seattle’s globally competitive technology community.

The event is free for LaunchPad paid members, $25 for others ($5 for college students). Registration can be made at Launchpadinw.com.

Staff report

Mediator appointed in WaMu bankruptcy

DOVER, Del. – A New Jersey bankruptcy judge will serve as mediator in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of bank holding company Washington Mutual Inc.

Delaware bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath, who has twice rejected WaMu’s reorganization plans, appointed Raymond Lyons on Monday to mediate between the company and its creditors in the 3-year-old case.

The creditors include equity security holders who claim that hedge funds that supported Washington Mutual’s latest reorganization plan traded WMI debt with inside information obtained during the bankruptcy.

Walrath ordered WaMu to enter mediation before resuming its reorganization effort.

The hedge funds, supported by WaMu’s committee of unsecured creditors, had proposed former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey as mediator, but the equity holders opposed him.

Associated Press

Blackberry maker explains glitches

LONDON – Email and messaging glitches that have plagued BlackBerry users around the world for a second day were caused by a core switch failure, the smartphone’s maker said Tuesday.

Research in Motion Ltd. said the disruptions – which affected users from Europe to Latin America – were due to a failure within the company’s own infrastructure. A transition to a backup switch did not function as tested, causing a large backlog of data, RIM said.

It was the first time the company offered an explanation of the outage since problems first occurred Monday morning.

“We are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible,” the company said in a brief statement.

The disruptions affected Blackberry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina.

RIM said early Tuesday that the problems were resolved and that services were operating normally, but hours later it acknowledged that the disruptions were continuing.

Associated Press