Agreement

A group headed by the businessman Lewis Katz and the philanthropist H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest has entered into an exclusive agreement to negotiate for the purchase of The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, according to sources close to the process. Lenfest, in an interview Wednesday, said he was asked by former Gov. Ed Rendell to take over as chairman of a group of political and corporate leaders assembled to bid on Philadelphia Media Network Inc. (PMN). The group also now apparently includes Raymond G. Perelman, the Philadelphia philanthropist whose individual bid to buy the media outlets last month was rebuffed.

THE BRITISH government has rejected advice from its Olympic team's top doctor that athletes should not shake hands at the London Games to avoid germs that could make them sick. Government health advisers seemed perplexed by the guidelines, put forth yesterday, which Olympic hopefuls derided as "rude" and "pointless. " By the end of the day, the British Olympic Association had softened its stance. Yes, the athletes will be able to greet the 10,000 visiting Olympians and hundreds of dignitaries with handshakes.

HARRISBURG - Will the Pennsylvania primary take place as scheduled on April 24? Yes, says the top man in the state Senate. Not necessarily, say his House counterparts. With no agreement yet reached on legislative district maps for the 2012 elections, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi said Wednesday he expected the primary to occur as scheduled with the existing maps. "I don't see that changing legislatively," Pileggi (R., Delaware) said after a brief meeting of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, on which he serves.

BRUSSELS - After more than 12 hours of talks, the countries that use the euro reached an agreement early Tuesday to hand Greece $170 billion in extra bailout loans to save it from a potentially disastrous default next month, a European Union diplomat said. The euro surged as the news broke, climbing 0.7 percent to $1.328 within minutes. Though much depended on the details of the deal, a final agreement on the bailout for Greece would take some pressure off the 17-country currency union, which has been battling a debt crisis for two years.

WASHINGTON - Congress on Friday overwhelmingly approved extending a payroll-tax cut for 160 million workers through the end of the year, probably the biggest accomplishment lawmakers will be able to savor in 2012. The rare bipartisan agreement, which also provides jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed and preserves Medicare payment rates to physicians, came without the hostility that has scarred economic debates since President Obama took office in January 2009. The House voted 293-132 to approve the plan.

WASHINGTON - House-Senate talks on renewing a payroll tax cut that delivers about $20 a week to the average worker yielded a tentative agreement Tuesday, with lawmakers planning to unveil the pact Wednesday and sending the measure to President Obama as early as this week. Under the outlines of the emerging agreement, a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax would be extended through the end of the year, with the nearly $100 billion cost added to the deficit.

Just in time for the Australian Open, Verizon's FiOS TV service says it reached an agreement with the Tennis Channel. The 24-hour channel had been blacked out since early September while Verizon and Tennis Channel negotiated terms. The Tennis Channel is available to FiOS TV customers who subscribe to the the Ultimate HD and premiums sports packages.    - Bob Fernandez  

Temple University Health System and Fox Chase Cancer Center said Wednesday that they will announce a "definitive agreement" at a press conference Thursday afternoon. Their joint statement did not specify what that agreement entails, and press officers for both entities did not answer calls to their office or cell phones. The two institutions already collaborate on some services, such as doctor training and bone-marrow transplants. They have been in talks for several months.

NEWARK, N.J. - Gov. Christie issued an ultimatum to New Jersey's thoroughbred horse owners Monday, telling them they had a week to come up with a new deal to save horse racing in the state. Christie blamed the owners for causing an investor to pull out of an agreement to lease Monmouth Park. He said a recent handshake agreement with the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association was scuttled when lawyers for the group made new demands for $5 million in purse subsidies. "If they don't come to us in the next week with a deal that works and stop extorting the taxpayers for millions of dollars in subsidies to their industry, then we're not going to have a deal and we won't have a horse-racing industry in the state anymore," he said.

DURBAN, South Africa - A U.N. climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement early Sunday on a complex and far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change for the coming decades. The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime enforcing commitments to control greenhouse gases. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest. The deal also set up the bodies that will collect, govern, and distribute tens of billions of dollars a year to poor countries to help them adapt to changing climate conditions and to move toward low-carbon economic growth.