Company News: Merck to pay millions after three spills

Pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co. Inc. will pay more than $20 million in fines for three chemical spills, one of which killed more than 1,000 fish, and forced the city of Philadelphia to temporarily shut off drinking water intakes.

The spills violated the U.S. Clean Water Act.

Merck will pay $10 million for systems to prevent future hazardous discharges at a facility 15 miles outside Philadelphia, and $9 million for other large-scale environmental protection projects, federal authorities said Thursday.

Merck also will pay $750,000 to the federal government, $750,000 to the state and $75,000 to the state Fish and Boat Commission in penalties and civil damages for the three 2006 discharges in the Wissahickon Creek, which is the source of 40 percent of Philadelphia’s drinking water.

Web browser developer Opera Software ASA asked European regulators Thursday to force Microsoft Corp. to give users a choice of Internet software with its Windows operating system.

In a complaint with the European Commission, Opera also alleged Microsoft was holding back developers from making programs that work with each other “by not following accepted Web standards.”

Opera, a small company in Oslo, Norway, has failed to gain a foothold in the browser market despite years of innovations. Its market share dipped even more as Mozilla’s Firefox emerged to rival Microsoft’s market-dominant Internet Explorer browser over the past few years. These days, Opera is stronger on making browsers for mobile devices, an area where Microsoft is not a major player.

“We will, of course, cooperate with any inquiries into these issues, but we believe the inclusion of the browser into the operating system benefits consumers, and that consumers and PC manufacturers already are free to choose any browsers they wish,” Microsoft said.

Warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale Corp. said Thursday its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 11 percent on increased sales and higher revenue from membership fees.

The results met Wall Street expectations, but the company’s shares slipped slightly because of investors’ disenchantment with Costco’s operating margins, especially in its gasoline sales.

Costco reported earnings of $262 million, or 59 cents per share, for the 12 weeks ended Nov. 25, compared with $236.9 million, or 51 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.