Finance news. My opinion.

DuPont Co. has told federal officials it is willing to stop the sale of a new herbicide that is blamed for damaging trees in many parts of the country and is the subject of several lawsuits.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged DuPont’s offer to pull Imprelis from the market in a letter sent Wednesday to DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman. At the same time, the EPA said it was evaluating the validity of DuPont’s claims that studies relating to Imprelis that it has turned over to federal regulators are confidential business information and cannot be disclosed to the public.

In a separate letter, the EPA said DuPont may have misbranded the herbicide because label directions and warnings are inadequate to protect non-target plant species from being harmed by the weedkiller.

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A report says Japanese utility company executives were by far the biggest individual donors to Japan’s former ruling party during its last year in power, accounting for a whopping 72 percent of personal contributions.

The revelation is likely to add to questions surrounding connections between power companies and politicians during an ongoing crisis at an atomic power plant.

Kyodo News agency reported Friday that executives from nine utilities contributed 47 million yen ($595,000) to the Liberal Democratic Party in 2009 _ nearly three-quarters of total individual donations no fax payday advances.

Individual political donations are relatively rare in Japan, accounting for about 5 percent of the LDP funding in 2009. The utility executives’ donations were within the legal limit.

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Truck maker Volvo AB’s second-quarter profit surged 63 percent as sales returned to levels last seen before the financial crisis, the Swedish company said Friday.

Net income rose to 5.12 billion kronor ($802 million), up from 3.15 billion kronor in the same quarter last year.

Volvo’s sales increased 15 percent to 79 billion kronor, from 68.8 billion kronor in the second quarter of 2010.

“Sales are now at the same level as before the financial crisis that struck the world a few years ago, with a profitability that is now at its highest level so far, both in terms of operating margin and return on shareholders’ equity,” CEO Leif Johansson said.

Volvo shares rose 4 percent to 106.40 kronor ($16.66) in Stockholm after the report.

The company, which sold its car division in 1999, is one of the world’s biggest truck makers, with brands including Volvo, Mack, Renault and UD trucks. The company also makes buses, engines and construction equipment.

Sales in Volvo’s truck unit alone rose 20 percent to 50 billion kronor, and the company said it now controls 20 percent of the heavy-duty truck market in the U.S. and 28 percent in Europe.

“In terms of market conditions, we maintain our previous forecasts that the truck market in both Europe and North America will amount to 230,000-240,000 heavy-duty trucks in 2011,” Volvo said.

Truck sales were up 31 percent in Europe, boosted by demand in France, Germany and Poland.

In North America, Volvo more than doubled its deliveries to 10,290 trucks. Highway customers are leading the recovery there, while demand for vocational trucks such as garbage trucks is still “well below” normal levels, Volvo said.

Truck deliveries dipped by 9 percent in Asia, as a result of production disturbances for UD Trucks in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami. The disruptions cost Volvo 400 million kronor in operating income, mostly affecting its unit for construction equipment.

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Karl Ritter can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/Karl(underscore)Ritter

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The boxes in his basement filled with vintage Fitz’s Root Beer shirts, menus and recipe books were nagging reminders to Michael Alter of all that he had given up.

Alter helped revive the root beer brand two decades ago by opening Fitz’s restaurant and bottling plant in University City. After building Fitz’s into a regional soda brand sold at dozens of stores and restaurants, he sold the business in 1999. .

But Alter’s passion for the business ran deep, and when the opportunity arose to buy Fitz’s back last year, he knew he couldn’t say no.

“There was so much unfinished business when I left,” he said. “Since I’ve been back, it’s been a ton of work. But when you love what you do, I don’t count the hours. I don’t look at my watch.”

Alter, 52, has spent nearly $300,000 renovating Fitz’s restaurant and bottling plant, both at 6605 Delmar Boulevard, since buying the company from Clayton Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount in October. He also is making strides in growing the brand by increasing distribution and developing new flavors and packaging.

Expanding distribution is important for a small brand, which doesn’t have the marketing budget of larger competitors, said Harry Balzer, vice president of the NPD Group, a consumer marketing research firm in Long Island. “Nothing will increase sales like having it in new places where people can try it.”

On a recent afternoon, Alter stopped to take a break from checking on the bottling line while he kept an eye on the 200-seat restaurant at the front of the two-story building that was filled to capacity.

His two oldest children, who remembered the days when their dad had the coolest job in town, asked him frequently over the years when he would buy Fitz’s back.

There also was another deeply personal pull. Alter met his wife, Dana, at Fitz’s in 1993 shortly after the restaurant opened. He can still remember the float he served her: a Mississippi, with scoops of chocolate ice cream swimming in root beer. “I made her a float, and the rest is history,” he says now. “There’s magic in those floats.”

A wall of unobstructed glass windows separates the bottling plant from diners. The view of hundreds of glass bottles moving along the conveyer system causes young and old to stop and stare wide-eyed.

The bottling plant’s machines produce a steady hum, and the smell of hamburgers hot off the grill intermingles with the ever-present sticky sweet smell of root beer.

“It’s like coming home to a family member,” Alter says of his return. “Even when I was away, all I had to do was walk down the street and see someone holding a bottle of Fitz’s to make me smile.”

fITZ’S ROOTS

Long before Alter opened the Loop bottling plant and restaurant, Fitz’s had a loyal following in St. Louis.

Fitz’s Root Beer was first served in 1947 at Fitz’s Drive-In at Brentwood Boulevard and Clayton Road in Richmond Heights, where a Homewood Suites by Hilton now stands. Fitz’s

LUXEMBOURG

Spanish police have arrested three suspected computer hackers who allegedly belonged to a loose-knit international activist group that attacked corporate and government websites around the world, authorities said Friday.

National Police identified the three as leaders of the Spanish section of a group that calls itself “Anonymous.” All three are Spaniards aged 30 to 32, said Manuel Vazquez, chief of the police’s high-tech crime unit.

A computer server in one of their homes was used to take part in cyber attacks on targets including two major Spanish banks, the Italian energy company Enel and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand, Vazquez said.

His comments backtracked somewhat from an earlier police statement that said this server was used to actually execute the attacks. The three detainees have been released without bail but face a charge that is new in the Spanish penal code _ disrupting a computer system, Vazquez said. He gave no details on what effect these attacks had.

In Spain, acting on their own, the three detainees staged cyber attacks on the website of Spain’s central electoral commission a few days before local and regional elections on May 22, that of the regional police force in the northeast Catalonia region and a major Spanish labor union.

The night before the election, the three men tried to shut down the web pages of Spain’s two main political parties and that of the Spanish parliament but were thwarted by police, Vazquez said.

“Anonymous is a network with a common idea, but it has loads of cells around the world. Using chats they agree to stage denial-of-service attacks on any page of any company or organization anywhere in the world,” Vazquez said, referring to a cyber-bombardment-like technique used to shut down an Internet page.

Vazquez said police were still analyzing computer files and other material but have no record of the three Spaniards having obtained sensitive data Payday advance.

Vazquez said members of Anonymous use a lot methods for hiding their identity.

The statement said the only other countries to act against “Anonymous” so far are the United States and Britain. It attributed this what it called complex security measures that members use to protect their identity.

The suspects in Spain were arrested in Barcelona, the Valencia region and the southern city of Almeria.

Since October 2010, Spanish police specializing in cyber crime have analyzed more than two million lines of online chat and Internet pages until they finally zeroed in on the three suspects. Their names were not given.

In January, British police arrested five young males on suspicion of involvement in cyber attacks by Anonymous, which has backed WikiLeaks.

“Anonymous” has claimed responsibility for attacking the websites of companies such as Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, all of whom severed their links with WikiLeaks after it began publishing its massive trove of secret U.S. diplomatic memos.

“Anonymous” accused the companies of trying to stifle WikiLeaks and rallied an army of online supporters to flood their servers with traffic, periodically blocking access to their sites for hours at a time.

And in February, an Internet forum run by “Anonymous” directed participants to attack the websites of the Egyptian Ministry of Information and the ruling National Democratic Party.

In a Twitter post, the group claimed credit for taking down the ministry’s website and said the group was motivated by a desire to support Egyptian pro-democracy protesters.

– Jorge Sainz in Madrid contributed to this report.

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SASKATOON

Verizon’s latest 4G-LTE smartphone launch was delayed after the new, ultra-fast network suffered a major outage Wednesday and Thursday morning.

The Samsung Droid Charge, which was supposed to go on sale Thursday, was unavailable at stores or online. Verizon Wireless confirmed that the Droid Charge’s availability had been delayed, but it didn’t give a specific date for when it would go on sale.

The company said it would update its customers about the new smartphone’s availability soon. Meanwhile, customers can provide store representatives with their contact information, and they will be notified when the phone is available for purchase, according to Brenda Raney, spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless.

The wireless giant confirmed via Twitter at 11 a.m. ET that the network was up and running. It first acknowledged the outage Wednesday morning at 9:21 a.m., also on Twitter.

The Droid Charge will be the second phone to operate on Verizon’s 4G network, which was launched in November. The first phone, the HTC Thunderbolt, went on sale in March, and Verizon sold a quarter million of them in two weeks.

The launch will be closely watched by analysts, because the smartphone will retail at $300 with a new two-year contract — $100 more than most high-end 3G smartphones.

Most of the Droid Charge’s features are similar to other top-of-the-line Android-based smartphones, except that the new Samsung device has the ability to download data at a speed of 5 megabits to 12 megabits per second. That’s about 10 times faster than most 3G connections.

Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) has placed a big bet on its 4G-LTE network, building out an entirely new — and extremely costly — infrastructure. It’s a risky gamble, since the company is requiring users to buy more expensive devices to use the new network, and 4G is not yet available in most locations.

The new 4G network only covers 46 metropolitan areas and 110 million customers, compared to the 290 million customers that receive Verizon’s 3G coverage. Verizon doesn’t expect 4G to reach nationwide coverage until 2013, at the earliest.

AT&T (T, Fortune 500) is also expected to launch its 4G-LTE network this year, and the company said it will be able to achieve nationwide 4G coverage if it is allowed to purchase T-Mobile. Sprint (S, Fortune 500) is widely believed to be exploring an LTE option, even as it continues to promote its 4G option called WiMax, which operates on a different network standard.

Verizon said through Twitter that it had discovered the cause of its outage, but has not yet explained the reason. While the 4G network was unavailable, customers were still able to access the 3G network, and Thunderbolt customers were still able to make phone calls.  

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The yen and dollar fell versus most of their major peers on speculation the central banks in Japan and the U.S. will this week keep interest rates near zero, while policy is being tightened elsewhere.

The euro rose toward a 16-month high versus the dollar on prospects European Central Bank officials will signal that further rate increases will be necessary to contain inflation. Australia’s dollar climbed to a record as rising gold prices boosted the outlook for the nation’s resource exports, spurring demand for higher-yielding assets.

“Japan and the U.S. are the countries that can’t steer toward monetary tightening, so the yen and dollar will be weak,” said Daisaku Ueno, president of Gaitame.com Research Institute Ltd. in Tokyo, a unit of Japan’s largest currency margin company. “The yen will continue to depreciate as long as the global economy is recovering gradually.”

The yen dropped to 119.75 per euro as of 9:08 a.m. in Tokyo from 119.24 in New York last week, while declining to 82.08 per dollar from 81.88. The euro bought $1.4593 from $1.4561 after reaching $1.4649 on April 21, the highest level since December 2009. The Australian dollar, known as the Aussie, touched $1.0776, the strongest since it was freely floated in 1983.

The Dollar Index, which IntercontinentalExchange Inc. uses to track the greenback versus the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners, slid 0.2 percent to 73.972 after touching 73.735 on April 21, the lowest since August 2008.

The Federal Open Market Committee announces its policy decision on April 27 and will hold the benchmark rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent, according to all 80 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Most of the 50 analysts in a Bloomberg survey last month said they expect the Fed will keep its bond portfolio stable for some time after its $600 billion purchase program ends in June.

“What’s behind the dollar’s weakness is the difference in monetary policy in the U.S. from other major economies excluding Japan,” Gaitame.com’s Ueno said.

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Payrolls rose in 38 states in March, indicating that improvement in the labor market is broadening.

Texas, with a 37,200 increase, and Missouri, at 24,300, showed the biggest gains in employment from February, according to figures released Tuesday by the Labor Department. The jobless rate fell in 34 states, with the largest decline in New Mexico, where it fell by 0.6 percentage point to 8.1 percent.

The report is consistent with government figures released April 1 that showed the nation added 216,000 workers in March, the most since May 2010, and unemployment dropped to a two-year low of 8.8 percent. Improvement in hiring across a wider swath is helping sustain consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy.

“We’re seeing a broadening out in the jobs recovery,” said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York. “It gives us more confidence that the labor market is shifting gears.”

Florida, North Carolina and Oklahoma rounded out the top five states with the largest increases in employment last month. California, Connecticut, Louisiana and Maryland were among the states with the biggest payroll decreases.

North Dakota had the lowest unemployment in the nation, falling to 3.6 percent from 3.7 percent the prior month payday loan.

Unemployment rose in seven states, including Louisiana and Connecticut. Nevada remained the state with the highest jobless rate at 13.2 percent.

Most districts reported that labor market conditions were generally stronger than in their last reports, the Federal Reserve said in its Beige Book report released April 13.

Central bank policymakers will likely keep interest rates near zero and maintain plans to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities by June to boost the pace of growth.

Cutbacks at state and local governments will restrain the recovery. States face projected deficits totaling $112 billion in the next fiscal year because revenue hasn’t bounced back from the recession while spending on unemployment and Medicaid has swelled.

State and local employment data are derived independently from the national statistics, which are typically released on the first Friday of every month. The state figures are subject to larger sampling errors because they come from smaller surveys, making the national figures more reliable, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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