Business Briefs

nation

Executive pay cuts ordered

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to order companies that received huge government bailouts last year to sharply cut the compensation of their highest paid executives. A person familiar with the decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says the seven companies that received the most aid will have to cut the annual salaries of their 25 highest-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent.

Microsoft wins Twitter access

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft has a new weapon in its Internet search duel with Google — full access to Twitter’s communications hotbed. In a deal announced Wednesday at a technology conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Corp.’s search engine, Bing, will become a new way to find out what people are saying in their Twitter messages — also known as tweets. A Microsoft executive declined to disclosed the financial details of the partnership.

First-class means profits

DALLAS — Airlines value premium travelers above other customers, letting them board first, eat a meal and order a cocktail without whipping out a credit card. Many of them are business travelers who fly frequently and often pay higher last-minute fares. Anyone who questions why airlines treat business travelers nicely only needs to look at the carriers’ third-quarter financial reports. On Wednesday, American Airlines parent AMR Corp. reported that it lost $359 million in the third quarter, and Continental Airlines Inc. posted an $18 million loss. Those results followed losses in the last few days reported by Southwest Airlines Co. and United parent UAL Corp.

Networking hits the lab

ITHACA, N.Y. — Social networking is coming to the science lab. Cornell University and six other institutions will use a $12.2 million federal stimulus grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a Facebook-style professional networking system to link biomedical researchers across the country. The new network will be called VIVOweb.

Court to hear energy case

OMAHA, Neb. — The Nebraska Supreme Court is being asked to review a $3.8 million verdict in a dispute over whether two men disclosed proprietary information belonging to an energy finance agency. Last year, Lancaster County District Judge Steven Burns ruled in favor of Falls City and the American Public Energy Agency. The latter buys natural gas in bulk to save money for utilities in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma. The agency and Falls City sued J. Gary Stauffer and Evan Ward. Falls City also sued John Harms and the Nebraska Municipal Power Pool, a nonprofit that provided services to the agency. The court is set to hear arguments Nov. 4.

Medicare scam nets arrests

LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities have charged 18 people, including clinic owners and patient recruiters, in a scam they say fraudulently billed Medicare about $25 million. Arrests were made Wednesday in the Los Angeles area after seven suspects were taken into custody last week, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

World

Embargo hurts rum distillery

HAVANA — Cuba is ready to ship 1 million cases of rum to America if Washington eases its 47-year-old embargo, but would hold off exporting its flagship Havana Club brand because of U.S. trademark battles, one of the island’s top rum executives said Wednesday. U.S. trade sanctions have cost Cuba’s rum industry $95 million annually in lost sales and additional spending to import production materials including glass bottles and machinery from Europe instead of from the U.S., said Juan Gonzalez, vice president of Cuba Ron SA, the communist state’s rum production monopoly. FROM WIRE REPORTS