Firms

Pierre Joseph "Pete" Marcolina, 82, a masonry contractor whose stonework can be seen on venerable buildings throughout the Philadelphia area, died Saturday, March 9, of cancer at a hospice in Vero Beach, Fla. Mr. Marcolina retired in 2000 after more than 50 years in the family business, Marcolina Bros. Inc., formerly on Mermaid Lane in Chestnut Hill. He became president after his father, Pietro, retired in the mid-1950s. The Marcolina Bros. property included a quarry off Waverly Road from which Wissahickon schist was taken to be used on the exteriors of buildings in Philadelphia and the Main Line.

Claiming they were cheated out of pay, 145 current and former school bus drivers have sued First Student Management L.L.C., a contractor that operates routes for many local districts, including Cherry Hill and the Camden County Educational Services Commission. The suit was filed in federal court in Camden on Thursday. Tim Stokes, a spokesman for Ohio-based First Student Inc., declined to comment. The lawsuit says First Student requires each driver to report to the bus yard at a certain time, but does not begin paying the driver until after the employee's badge is swiped at the bus. At the end of their trips, drivers swipe their badges again, but must continue to work "off the clock," the lawsuit says, inspecting the bus, cleaning it, reporting problems, and checking to make sure there are no children asleep on it. According to the lawsuit, when First Student lands a contract, it creates an "estimated route time.

The Philly Fed's survey this month of the region's manufacturers shows slight increases in business activity - a swing from a negative reading in February. The closely watched Business Outlook Survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia for March showed notable increases for general business activity and new orders, the bank said. The survey's broadest measure of manufacturing conditions increased from a reading of minus 12.5 in February to 2.0 this month. A reading above zero indicates growth.

Osage Partners of Philadelphia, Greycroft Partners of Los Angeles, and MissionOG of Devon, say they have invested $3.2 million in Center City-based PeopleLinx , a firm that helps companies give their workers' LinkedIn accounts a standard corporate look and uses LinkedIn data to boost sales. PeopleLinx, which counts FMC Corp. , Firstrust Bank and Prudential among its clients, was set up by LinkedIn veterans Nathan Egan and Patrick Baynes . It will use the new cash to add to its staff of 13 full-time employees and about 25 contractors, says Egan, a Cornell grad and onetime specialty chemical salesman.

There is no debate that Karen Bartlett had a horrible reaction in 2004 to the drug sulindac, a generic painkiller made by Philadelphia's Mutual Pharmaceuticals Inc. About 60 percent of the New Hampshire woman's skin peeled away - necessitating months in a medically induced coma in a hospital burn unit - and she is mostly blind after 13 eye operations. There will be a debate Tuesday in the U.S. Supreme Court over whether federal regulations on generic drugs trump Bartlett's ability to sue for compensation in state court.

The prosecutor who sent Jerry Sandusky to jail is leaving the Attorney General's Office to enter private practice. Joe McGettigan will join the McAndrews Law Offices in Berwyn, working mainly in cases involving crime victims in organizational settings such as youth or religious groups, and in suits involving the abuse or bullying of children, the disabled, or the elderly, the firm announced Monday. Sandusky was convicted in June of molesting 10 boys on or near the Pennsylvania State University campus, where he was an assistant football coach.

The corridor between the Delaware River and the Amtrak rail lines should be the focus of Delaware County's development efforts in the next 10 years, officials of a county-retained planning firm told County Council members Wednesday. Council Chairman Thomas McGarrigle agreed, noting the recent loss of oil-refinery jobs in that corridor. Theresa K. Sparacino, vice president of the Delta Development Group of Mechanicsburg, Pa., speaking to council members and an audience of civic leaders, went further, offering a menu of the county's promising demographics.

Though it employs nearly 600 people, Newtown-based BioClinica Inc. plays a largely anonymous role in the pharmaceutical industry. On Thursday, it will become bigger yet more hidden when it goes into private hands as part of a merger with CoreLab Partners Inc. BioClinica handles medical imaging and data collection for clinical trials by drug and device manufacturers. That behind-the-scenes role is likely to grow because BioClinica and its competitors hope to benefit from the recent troubles major drug companies have had with expiring patents and their quest for new revenue around the globe.

The widow and children of Robert C. Daniels, a former Pennsylvania Superior Court judge and chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, have sued prominent lawyer Sherrie R. Savett and a Philadelphia catering company, charging negligence in his death. The suit, filed Tuesday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, says Daniels was attending a party at Savett's Bryn Mawr home to celebrate the engagement of her daughter when he fell down a flight of stairs to the basement and cracked his head.

TRIBUNE WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - The Obama administration reacted with new sanctions and blunt warnings Monday to a North Korean declaration that it had "completely scrapped" the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. Sharpening tensions on the peninsula, the North Korean regime declared in the party newspaper Rodong Sinmun that the 60-year-old truce was over and that "the time for final showdown has arrived. " It severed a hotline that had been used to prevent an unintended confrontation between North Korea and South Korea and angrily condemned a 13,000-troop U.S.-South Korean military exercise that began Monday.