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Investor controls Old Hyde Park Village
By wire services
Published July 7, 2005
Wasserman Real Estate Capital LLC. has acquired controlling interest in Old Hyde Park Village, the south Tampa shopping center. The company, based in Providence, R.I., is family owned and specializes in retail development in urban settings. Madison Marquette, a Washington, D.C., firm sold the property but retained a stake and will continue to manage it.
Discovery channels' spinoff date July 15
John Malone's Liberty Media has set July 15 as the record date for its spinoff of four well-known cable TV channels into Discovery Holdings. Holders of Liberty shares will receive 0.10 share in Discovery for each Liberty share they hold. Discovery Holdings will be anchored by the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and the Travel Channel. Liberty owns a significant minority stake in Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns HSN Inc. in St. Petersburg.
Citizens sheds 32,000 policies
Citizens Property Insurance returned more than 32,000 homeowners' insurance policies to the private market last month, pushing its policy count down by nearly 250,000 for the year. Private insurers are given financial incentives to "take out" policies from Citizens, the state-run insurer for those who cannot find property coverage in the open market. On Wednesday, Citizens lifted a temporary hold on writing insurance policies statewide as Tropical Storm Cindy made landfall.
Chrysler joins price cutting
DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group began offering employee discounts to all consumers Wednesday, following the lead of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. Chrysler is also offering cash incentives on top of the lower prices. Under the program, which runs through Aug. 1, Chrysler is offering some Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles at the employee rate plus up to $3,500 cash back. The employee discount rate is equivalent to 4 percent to 5 percent off the dealer invoice price.
GE agrees to acquire CIT aircraft assets
GE Commercial Finance, a financial services arm of General Electric Co., said Wednesday that it agreed to acquire about $1-billion in aircraft assets from CIT Group Inc., a provider of commercial and consumer finance services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Services industry expands quickly
Growth in the U.S. services industry accelerated more than forecast in June and companies stepped up hiring. The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday that its index for nonmanufacturing companies, including financial services and retailers, increased to 62.2 last month from 58.5 in May. Figures greater than 50 show expansion.
Florida power usage sets records Tuesday
Two Florida utilities set records for electricity use this week. Florida Power and Light hit an all-time record peak usage of 21,220 megawatt hours between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday. Progress Energy, the second largest Florida electric company, set a one-hour record for summer electricity with usage of about 8,991 megawatt hours at the same time. Officials say that in addition to the heat, growing demand because of the state's population growth is at work.
Video on the cheap
CVS Corp. is introducing a $30 disposable digital camcorder, a little bigger than a deck of cards, which records 20 minutes of video.
The product is made by Pure Digital Technologies Inc. of San Francisco.
When the device's memory is full, you take it to your local CVS store, drop if off at the photo lab, and get back a DVD movie for a $13 processing fee.
The DVD can be viewed in most players. And with a computer you can send copies of the video to friends via e-mail. The video is hosted online, so you don't have to send a bulky video file.
CVS plans to have the video service in 4,500 of its 5,400 stores.
Looking for what sharks have
A San Diego technology company and two other firms are trying to duplicate the ability sharks and stingrays to detect electrical fields of other creatures in the ocean.
The effort is part of a U.S. Navy research project to find new ways to sniff out enemy submarines or mines.
RD Instruments, which develops acoustic sensors for detecting the speed of currents for marine safety, began working on the project in April, said research specialist Jerry Mullison.
"The experiment right now is still very much animal research," Mullison said. "We are assuming that the sharks are going to be better at it than we ever could be."
Americans the giving kind
Private United States citizens donated almost 15 times more to the Third World than Europeans, research reveals.
They also handed over far more aid than the U.S. government.
U.S. church collections, philanthropic donations and company giving amounted to $22-billion a year, according to a study by the Hudson Institute, easily more than the total $16.2-billion in aid sent by the U.S. government. American churches, synagogues and mosques alone gave $7.5-billion in 2003, which exceeds the government totals for France ($7.2-billion) and Britain ($6.3-billion).
[Last modified July 7, 2005, 01:00:11]
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