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Scripps gets NIH $10.4-million grant

By wire services
Published June 17, 2005

Scripps Research Institute has been awarded a $10.4-million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a molecular screening center that will help translate basic biomedical discoveries more quickly into medical applications. Chemical compound development will take place at Scripps' La Jolla, Calif., campus while high-throughput screening of those compounds to find promising molecules will be performed at Scripps Florida's temporary labs in Jupiter. Scripps is one of 10 screening centers from the public and private sectors that will comprise the Molecular Libraries Screening Centers Network, an NIH project intended to accelerate drug discoveries. Scripps researchers will screen at least 100,000 compounds a year against 20 or more different disease targets. The project is expected to last three years and begins this month.

Bush gives tax reform panel more time

President Bush gave his advisory panel on federal tax reform an extra two months to deliver its recommendations. The committee, chaired by former Sen. Connie Mack of Florida, will have until Sept. 30 to finish its work. Since being appointed in January, the panel has held nine meetings, taken testimony from nearly 90 people and received 4,300 written comments.

Key Winn-Dixie executives will get retention bonuses totaling $12-million if they stay with the supermarket giant until it emerges from reorganization, a judge ruled Thursday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jerry Funk approved Winn-Dixie's plan to reward 290 of its key employees. The decision came after he heard testimony from objections from an attorney representing retirees and the U.S. Trustee, who called the expenditures excessive, and consultants who devised the plan.

An association of leading commercial banks and a federal agency sued New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on Thursday, saying his probe into the lending practices of national banks violates laws ensuring banks are not subject to supervision by state authorities. The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan asked the court to block Spitzer from demanding information to enforce federal and state discrimination-in-lending laws against banks belonging to the Clearing House Association.

Just a few days after several airlines failed to push above Delta Air Lines Inc.'s $499 fare cap, they tried again. On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, Continental Airlines, United Airlines, Northwest Airlines and America West added $10 to fares that had been capped at $499 to match Delta. Delta raised fares $10 on flights it codeshares with other carriers. Delta spokesman Anthony Black denied that Delta was breaking its "Simplifares" cap of $499 for one-way walk-up fares aimed at business travelers. He said Delta said it would match codeshare fares when it announced Simplifares in January.

Integrated Device Technology Inc. has agreed to buy rival chipmaker Integrated Circuit Systems Inc. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $1.7-billion. The agreement will form a company that supplies relatively obscure but essential chips to makers of communications gear, computers and other electronic devices.

The Starbucks signs are covered by bright, canary yellow fabric and plastic. So are the placards outside a soup restaurant, a jewelry shop, a bank and all other businesses on a stretch of a popular Vienna, Austria, shopping street.

The coverings are part of a two-week art project dubbed "Delete!" - created by artists Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf to spark public debate about just how much advertising society can take.

"It's an art project that tries to illustrate the state of affairs," Steinbrener said. "How much must there really be? What proportions does it have?"

City officials did not believe the artists could get business owners to agree to have their signs covered up even temporarily. But Dempf and Steinbrener succeeded, using economic arguments. They said the project would spark curiosity, attracting more shoppers to Neubaugasse, which intersects with Mariahilfe Strasse, one of Vienna's busiest shopping districts.

"Had we used just artistic arguments, we would never have succeeded," Steinbrener said.

TAX RECORD SET: The government has hit a financial milestone - taking in more money in tax revenue in a single day than ever before. The Treasury Department said Thursday it collected $61-billion on Wednesday. That surpassed the former one-day record of $56-billion set on Dec. 15, 2000.

SURFERS LIKE THE BUBBLE: According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, consumer Internet searches for the terms "real estate bubble" and "housing bubble" reached a 12-month high the week ending May 28. The market share of the terms across all major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, skyrocketed 311 percent and 174 percent respectively versus the prior week.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Carnival Corp.: The world's largest cruise operator said Thursday second-quarter earnings grew 23 percent from a year ago on higher cruise capacity and travel demand.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.: The Wall Street firm reported a sharp drop in second-quarter earnings, missing analysts' estimates, but said the outlook for the third quarter was improving. Chairman and chief executive officer Henry Paulson Jr. blamed tough market conditions for depressing revenues in investment banking and trading in the quarter ended May 27.

[Last modified June 17, 2005, 10:58:20]