Total Wine & More to open in November

The first Spokane Total Wine & More retail store will open Nov. 2, the Maryland-based company announced.

The business will move into the 25,000-square-foot building at 9980 N. Newport Highway last used by Borders Books, which closed in 2010.

Since Washington voters approved an initiative allowing private liquor sales, Total Wine and other large beverage retailers have opened stores in the state’s biggest metropolitan areas.

Another national liquor retailer, BevMo, has also said it is considering opening a Spokane location.

The NorthPointe Total Wine will be open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Maker of batteries for electric cars fails

DETROIT – After years of struggling in the nascent market for electric cars, battery maker A123 Systems Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday.

The filing drew criticism from Republicans who claim the Obama administration has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on alternative energy companies like A123.

The company received a $249 million Department of Energy grant three years ago with high hopes that it would help foster a U.S. battery industry. At the time, the country was far behind the world leaders, Korea and China.

But the technology offered by the Waltham, Mass.-based A123 Systems turned out to be ahead of its time. Americans continue to shun costly electric cars in favor of gas-powered ones.

“Sometimes when you push the edge of technology, you fall over that edge,” said Aaron Bragman, an automotive industry analyst at IHS Automotive near Detroit.

Smaller iPad expected at coming Apple event

Apple has sent out a media invitation to a Tuesday event expected to be the introduction of a new, smaller iPad to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7.

The invitation, brightly colored with the top of an Apple logo, simply says, “We’ve got a little more to show you.”

The event will be held in downtown San Jose, Calif., at the historic California Theatre, a departure from recent events, mostly held in San Francisco or at the tech titan’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. Apple last introduced a new product at the California Theatre in 2005, when late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs showed off the company’s video iPod; the iPod U2 Special Edition was also introduced there in 2004.

University of Phoenix closing 115 locations

Apollo Group Inc. said Tuesday that its fiscal fourth-quarter net income tumbled 60 percent, hurt by higher costs and declining enrollment at the University of Phoenix. To cope, the for-profit education company plans to close 115 of the university’s locations, a move that will affect 13,000 students.

Shares in the Phoenix-based company tumbled nearly 8 percent in after-hours trading.

The closings include 25 main campuses and 90 smaller satellite learning centers. At least one location in 30 states is slated to be shuttered.

The roughly 4 percent of Apollo students affected by the closures will be given the option of transferring to online programs or moving their course work to other sites, said University of Phoenix President Bill Pepicello.