TRADE

TRADE DEFICIT SURGES TO A RECORD IN AUGUST

WASHINGTON – The nation’s oil bill surged to a record in August and so did goods imported from China, pushing the U.S. trade deficit to the third-highest level ever. And it is bound to get worse because hurricane-related increases for oil are still ahead. The deficit rose to $59 billion, about $1.1 billion more than the previous month, the Commerce Department said yesterday. There was a big increase in export sales of commercial jetliners, but that was swamped by foreign oil imports. The number of people put out of work by hurricanes Katrina and Rita climbed by 75,000 last week, the Labor Department reported. The six-week tally since Katrina slammed ashore stands at 438,000 hurricane-related claims. In an encouraging sign, jobless claims outside of the region affected by the hurricanes have stayed low.Total jobless claims last week fell by 2,000 to 389,000.

– Associated Press

WTO CLOSE TO BREAKTHROUGH ON CUTTING AGRICULTURE SUBSIDIES

The World Trade Organization is positioned to negotiate a breakthrough agreement cutting agriculture subsidies now that America has proposed lowering aid to its farmers, the WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, said. America and the European Union put forward offers to trim their payments to farmers and cut import duties on agricultural goods this week in efforts to prepare for a mid-December WTO summit. Farm-exporting nations, looking for more outlets for their products before committing themselves to opening their borders to more foreign machinery or investment, labeled the moves insufficient. The American offer was “an important contribution to advance the negotiations, not least because it was politically sensitive,” Mr. Lamy told reporters in Geneva yesterday. Talks to scale back farmers’ payments and end export subsidies that distort commodity prices “are now in negotiating shape,” though more work to cut commodity duties is still needed, he said.

– Bloomberg News

ELECTRONICS

SAMSUNG TO PAY $300M, SECOND-LARGEST ANTITRUST FINE IN HISTORY

South Korean chip manufacturer Samsung Electronics will pay a $300 million criminal fine for its role in a global conspiracy to fix prices in the computer memory chip market, the Justice Department said yesterday. The fine is the second-largest criminal antitrust fine in American history and the largest criminal fine since 1999.

“Today’s guilty plea is evidence of the department’s ongoing commitment to protect consumers from corporations that engage in illegal conduct,” Attorney General Gonzales said in a statement.

Chris Goodhart, Samsung’s marketing director, said in a statement, “Achieving the final resolution of this matter has been paramount to Samsung.”

“The settlement will in no way affect Samsung’s day-to-day operations or its ability to meet existing or future obligations,” she added.

The Department of Justice noted that three companies have now agreed to pay fines totaling more than $646 million in the department’s ongoing investigation into price-fixing in the dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, market. DRAM is used in computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, and other electronic devices. – Dow Jones Newswires

PATENTS

AT LEAST 20% OF HUMAN GENES ARE PATENTED

At least 20% of human genes are claimed by U.S. patents, say researchers who have produced the first comprehensive map of the patent landscape for the genome.

The work will pave the way for a more informed debate over the consequences of patenting genetic sequences, experts say. The topic of gene ownership has been controversial: Proponents argue that gene patenting promotes development drugs and diagnostic tests because companies will have an incentive to carry the work, but critics contend the practice stifles innovation at the basic research level.

– Dow Jones Newswires

IN BRIEF

Jan Krug, branch manager for Merrill Lynch’s Los Angeles office, has left the firm. Krug retired on Tuesday after 20 years of service at Merrill, where she was only one of a handful of women among the firm’s more than 100 branch managers … NetJets, a private air charter service that caters to companies and business executives, reached a tentative agreement with its pilots to end a four-year labor dispute … The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Wood River Capital Management and its founder, John Whittier, claiming that two of the firm’s hedge funds had invested a majority of their assets in one stock while promising clients diversified investments … New hedge funds quadrupled in Asia this year as American firms, led by Citadel Investment Group and Tremont Capital Management, took a bigger share of the region’s $85 billion market.

– Bloomberg News and Associated Press