An Indiana House committee has dealt a serious blow to local government reorganization efforts. The Democrat-controlled Government and Regulatory Reform committee voted today to fold several local government provisions proposed by Gov. Mitch Daniels into a single bill. The panel then voted to reject the bill, with one Republican joining six Democrats in voting against […]
Help wanted: pharmacists, engineers and nurses. Believe it or not, even some banks are hiring, at least for their technology teams. While the recession has claimed 4.4 million jobs, the economy has created others, many of them for highly trained and specialized professionals. More than 2 million jobs openings now exist across a range of […]
Indiana was praised yesterday as a national leader in new methods of teaching and learning in high schools. The Cincinnati-based KnowledgeWorks Foundation joined Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels in announcing that it is giving $10 million to the New Technology Foundation (New Tech), based in Napa, Calif. Both organizations promote so-called high-tech high schools. Lecture time […]
Eli Lilly and Co. asked a judge today to block Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. from selling a cheaper generic copy of Lilly’s osteoporosis drug Evista, Bloomberg News reported. Indianapolis-based Lilly made the request before U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker, who didn’t make a ruling today, the first day of a patent-infringement trial between the […]
A new French Lick Airport terminal designed to serve a growing number of travelers to southern Indiana’s Springs Valley will be nearly five times the size of the current facility built more than 40 years ago. “It kind of had fallen on bad times and is not the image we like to project as we […]
U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner said yesterday he doesn’t support handing over more federal money to keep General Motors Corp. afloat unless the automaker develops a viable and long-term business model and can pay back government loans. “Anything short of that is just throwing good money after bad,” Boehner said on CBS’s “Face the […]
Merck & Co. plans to acquire Schering-Plough Corp. for $41.1 billion in a deal that gives the companies more firepower to compete in a drug industry facing slumping sales, tough generic competition and intense cost pressures. The two New Jersey pharmaceutical companies are rivals of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. The latest proposed combination comes […]
Imagine racking up nearly $3 million in debt every day. That’s more than $100,000 an hour, or about $2,000 a minute. Indiana is diving deeper into debt as it struggles to pay jobless benefits from its bankrupt unemployment insurance fund, which is paying out hundreds of millions more than it collects in taxes from employers. […]
Connersville officials are pitching the closed Visteon plant as the headquarters and production facility for a company that plans to build police cars. Connersville Mayor Leonard Urban is leading a delegation today to the Atlanta headquarters of Carbon Motors Corp. to urge the company to move to the vacant 1.6 million-square-foot factory. Company officials say […]
State officials had high hopes for an investment pool created last year to give Indiana’s school districts and local governments a safe, short-term place to deposit taxpayer money and earn interest. Then the economy tanked. The account’s daily interest rate fell from 3.23 percent last February to just 0.53 percent today. Its balance dwindled from […]
A leading state senator wants to rely on money from the federal stimulus package to give a slight spending increase to Indiana’s public schools. Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley (R-Noblesville) said yesterday that he is still developing his proposal. But he wants to use $683 million in stimulus money in hopes of increasing basic funding […]
A leading state senator wants to rely on money from the federal stimulus package to give a slight spending increase to Indiana’s public schools. Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley (R-Noblesville) said yesterday that he is still developing his proposal. But he wants to use $683 million in stimulus money in hopes of increasing basic funding […]
State officials had high hopes for an investment pool created last year to give Indiana’s school districts and local governments a safe, short-term place to deposit taxpayer money and earn interest. Then the economy tanked. The account’s daily interest rate fell from 3.23 percent last February to just 0.53 percent today. Its balance dwindled from […]
About 600 people turned out at a job fair in southern Indiana to submit applications for about 200 coal mining jobs. The job fair in Sullivan yesterday was the second in less than two weeks. Mine company officials say a job fair in Vincennes last week drew more than 1,100 applicants. Black Panther Mining and […]
A top state senator is developing a proposal for fixing Indiana’s bankrupt unemployment insurance fund that he said yesterday is likely to include higher taxes on employers and cutting benefits paid out to the jobless. Republican Sen. Dennis Kruse of Auburn, chairman of the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee, is taking the lead on the […]
Major automakers’ U.S. sales continued their deep slump in February, putting the industry on track for its worst sales month in more than 27 years as huge rebates and low-interest financing failed to spur fearful consumers to make a major purchase. General Motors’ sales tumbled 53 percent from a year earlier, while Ford’s U.S. sales […]
The Federal Reserve today rolled out a much-awaited program aimed at boosting the availability of credit to consumers and small businesses. The Fed will lend up to $200 billion to spur consumer lending – for autos, education, credit cards and other consumer debt. The money will be used to provide financing to investors to buy […]
Ford Motor Co. said today its U.S. sales fell 48 percent in February, proof that huge rebates and low-interest financing haven’t been enough to entice fearful consumers to make a major purchase. The Dearborn, Mich., automaker sold 99,060 vehicles last month, compared with 192,248 the same month in 2008. In January, industry-wide U.S. sales dropped […]
Fort Wayne Foundry Corp. plans to close its production plant in Fort Wayne in June, eliminating 157 hourly positions. The company said today that it also would conduct a “mass layoff” in June at its Fort Wayne machining division, which had about 150 employees in mid-2007. The company, however, did not say how many jobs […]
The struggling economy is sending more people to libraries to check out books and DVDs for free and avoid costly rentals or purchases, library officials say. Last year, the number of items checked out at the Kokomo-Howard County Public Library rose 6 percent, boosting its annual borrowing to more than 1.1 million items for the […]
