Rising sales boost Kaiser profit
Kaiser Aluminum Corp. reported a first-quarter profit of $38.4 million as it anticipates emerging from bankruptcy protection later this year.
The company said a strong aerospace sector drove demand for aluminum products.
Sales totaled $336.3 million as prices jumped 11 percent. The revenues compare with $281.4 million during the same three-month span last year.
The company operates the Trentwood rolling mill in Spokane Valley and has sales agreements in place with aircraft builders Boeing Co. and Airbus.
Newark, N.J.
Developer facing fraud charge
A real estate developer was arrested on a federal bank fraud charge Thursday, accused of cheating a bank of about $22 million by attempting to deposit two $25 million checks drawn on a closed account and then withdrawing nearly half the money.
Developer Solomon Dwek, the son of a prominent Monmouth County rabbi, was released on $10 million bond.
The FBI complaint against Dwek, 33, of Ocean Township, followed two weeks of wrangling with PNC Bank, which has sued Dwek in state Superior Court for Monmouth County.
Philadelphia
Philadelphia OKs citywide Wi-Fi
The City Council on Thursday unanimously approved a plan to blanket the city’s 135 square miles with a high-speed wireless Internet connection, a measure that the mayor is expected to sign soon.
If the system is fully deployed by the third quarter of 2007 as planned, Philadelphia would be the first large city to have its own wireless Internet network. EarthLink Inc. will build, operate and maintain the network under a 10-year contract.
“Philadelphia is a city of many firsts and this is a first as well,” said Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown. EarthLink will start building the network in June over a 15-square-mile test area that would cover parts of North and South Philadelphia. The test should take three to four months, said Clifton Roscoe, director of major projects for EarthLink.
New York
Yahoo disavows TV aspirations
Yahoo Inc. has no desire to become a major producer of television-like shows and movies because the networks already do a good job supplying such content, the Internet portal’s chief executive said.
Terry Semel’s remarks Thursday are the latest to quell speculation about the company’s ambitions nearly two years after Yahoo hired a leading television executive and began moving its media operations closer to Hollywood.
“We don’t have the ambition to do a lot” of original content, Semel said at a meeting with industry analysts, executives and reporters. “We have the ambition to help lead the way and encourage others to do it for us. … We don’t aspire to have 2,000 creative people working for Yahoo. We are an Internet company.”