NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are little changed in early trading on Wall Street as the market wraps up a week of solid gains. Yesterday the S&P 500 index notched an all-time high for the second day in a row. The index is on track to gain 1.2 percent for the week. In the absence of any major new U.S. economic news today, investors are looking at a few corporate quarterly earnings and developments with the conflict in Iraq.
NEW YORK (AP) — Sales continue to slide at Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Darden Restaurants Inc. says its fiscal fourth-quarter profit dropped 35 percent, dragged down by charges and costs tied to its strategic plan to reshape the restaurant company. Despite ongoing efforts to fix the marketing for the two chains, sales at Olive Garden fell 3.5 percent at locations open at least a year during the quarter. At Red Lobster, the figure fell 5.6 percent.
WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (KAHS’-kihn-ihn) says eight federal employees connected to the tea party investigation experienced hard drive crashes. But he tells the House Ways and Means Committee it’s not clear whether all eight of the hard drive crashes resulted in lost emails. In the past week the IRS acknowledged it can’t produce emails from some of the officials connected to the investigation. Among the missing are emails from former IRS executive Lois Lerner, who is at the center of the probe.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is closing a loophole that allows companies to shift their profits between different country divisions to avoid taxation. European Union finance ministers in Luxembourg agreed on the reform today after months of squabbling because some countries feared losing business from multinational firms. The ministers say the legislation will ensure that corporations can’t shift profits across borders of the EU’s 28 nations to redefine their gains as tax-deductible loans to their subsidiaries.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A pioneering female chemist at DuPont who invented the exceedingly tough fibers widely used in Kevlar body armor has died. Stephanie Kwolek was 90. She made her discovery in the mid-1960s while working on specialty textile fibers, according to DuPont’s website. She invented a liquid crystalline solution that could be spun into the exceptionally strong fibers now used worldwide in police and military protective equipment.
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