Industry

NEW YORK - Carnival Cruise Lines prices have taken a dip this spring, according to pricing data, and some industry observers blame headlines about problems on several Carnival ships. Todd Elliott, owner of Cruise Vacation Outlet, said his agents had seen a drop in price of 20 percent or more for equivalent cruises. "Rates are far lower than I have seen in a while; for example, the Carnival Dream, seven nights, Eastern Caribbean out of Port Canaveral, May 4 is $299 per person," he said.

BEAVERTON, Ore. - An Oregon mother who battled Facebook for full access to her deceased son's account has been pushing for years for something that would prevent others from losing photos, messages, and other memories - as she did. "Everybody's going to face this kind of a situation at some point in their lives," says Karen Williams, whose 22-year-old son died in a 2005 motorcycle accident. The Oregon Legislature responded and took up the cause recently with a proposal that would have made it easier for loved ones to access the "digital assets" of the deceased, only to be turned back by pressure from the tech industry, which argued that both a 1986 federal law and voluntary terms of service agreements prohibit companies from sharing a person's information - even if such a request were included in a last will and testament.

All in all, 1989 was a pretty good year in the New Jersey Legislature for the tobacco industry. A threat to raise the sales tax on cigarettes was stopped dead. So was a plan to restrict smoking in restaurants. Lawmakers did ban smoking by teachers and staff in public schools, but the industry chose not to fight that effort and let the teachers do it instead. So considering what the tobacco companies were up against, the $440,000 they paid to some of the state's top lobbyists last year was money well spent.

According to the latest survey on smoking, the percentage of smokers among people who didn't finish high school is now twice as high as among people who have graduated from college. Who says that nobody is doing anything to raise the median level of education in this country? The tobacco industry seems to be on a campaign to kill off the dropouts. I'm all for raising the education level, but you'd think that the way to reduce the rate of dropouts might be to give the people in question something like incentive programs or tutoring sessions rather than emphysema.

In an effort to win friends for a national tobacco settlement, the tobacco industry released hundreds of thousands of internal documents onto the Internet yesterday. But because the first documents cover little new ground, and will be useful mostly to professional tobacco-watchers, industry opponents were skeptical of the companies' sincerity. "It's disingenuous for the tobacco industry to claim this PR stunt proves they are coming clean with the truth," said Hubert Humphrey 3d, the attorney general of Minnesota, which is in the midst of a lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

Closed captioning is not just for the hearing-impaired anymore, and dozens of companies are popping up to prove it. A cottage industry in closed captioning is burgeoning within the entertainment world, fueled by new federal requirements mandating the devices in most televisions sold in the United States. A handful of large companies that pioneered the service - and dozens of smaller ones that appeared in the last two years - now are being relied upon by large Hollywood studios to add printed dialogue to their television programs and videos.

Irvin E. Richter's office is decorated in the ever-fashionable taste of prosperity. The walls are high and oak-paneled, the light fixtures gleaming like candelabra, the windows wide, the carpets deep and patterned, the desk expansive. Not bad for a man who set himself up in business 10 years ago, on a hunch about the potential needs of the legal marketplace. Not bad, to be head of a company that will do between $30 million and $40 million in business this year. Richter is head of Hill International Inc., which is based in Willingboro, N.J. It is a company of technical experts - and expert witnesses for the courts of the nation.

Let's hear it for good drugs. One of the few bright spots in Philadelphia's regional economy has been the pharmecutical industry. The region has one of the nation's largest concentrations of drug makers, health-service providers, and medical research and development organizations. The benefits of having such health firms in the area are the many science-related, white-collar jobs that pay good salaries and help to spur the economy through increased sales of homes, cars and consumer products.

Record industry types can't be too careful these days. Given the onslaught of illegal downloading and file-sharing, they believe they have to keep coming up with new ways to fake out those who would steal their stuff. For one thing, this means they're stingier with giving out advance CDs to the media. And those who do wangle a copy receive a "watermarked" version, with the writer's name encoded so the company can come and get you if you try to trade the music in any way. Lately, the industry has found a creative twist in this game: They're deliberately mislabeling CDs, giving artists pseudonyms and sometimes even fake song titles to throw off those who might swipe a record from a desk or mailroom and spread it over the Web. The trend began this summer.

In a late-hour addition to the tax bill that cleared Congress yesterday, lawmakers inserted a favor to the tobacco industry that could exceed $50 billion - by letting cigarette-makers keep money that was supposed to compensate victims of smoking-related diseases. The provision would undercut a settlement reached in June among the tobacco industry, state attorneys general, and lawyers for smokers and their families. The negotiated settlement required the tobacco industry to pay about $10 billion a year for 25 years into the funds for victims.

From the broken concrete of Deemer's Beach, you can see north up the Delaware River toward Philadelphia, south down Delaware Bay toward the Atlantic, and east over two miles of sun-tipped waves to hazy New Jersey to get a sense of what people lost when they turned their backs on the waterfront. "There was the tidal bathing pool, and the trolley, and the baseball ground, and the roller rink, and the dance hall, and the arcade, and the 1,500-foot-pier, and the place where the Wilson Line ships used to dock," said Harold West, owner of the property since 1987.

Forget why and how Executive Protective Services formed. The phenomenal story is that a horrific event fueled its early success, to be followed by other acts that have further fed the security firm's growth and propelled it to profitability. "Destiny played the biggest role," Stuart J. Visnov, one of EPS's founders, said last week in outlining the factors behind the Limerick company's traction. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The heinous slaughters inside a movie theater in Colorado and an elementary school in Connecticut.

SEOUL - After North Korea on Friday rejected formal talks to resolve a standoff at a jointly operated border industrial complex, South Korea said it would call home its remaining workers from the facility, formally severing the last major connection between the two countries. South Korea's decision diminishes the already slim odds of the complex's survival and widens a divide between Seoul and Pyongyang that has grown during weeks of back-and-forth threats. The Kaesong Industrial Complex had stood as the chief symbol of cooperation between the neighbors after opening in 2004 as a capitalist bubble on the northern side of the border where South Korean companies employed cheap North Korean labor.

WASHINGTON - The federal government wants automakers to put limits on the electronic devices they install in new cars and is recommending that most Internet-linked applications and video equipment be disabled unless a vehicle is standing still. "These guidelines recognize that today's drivers appreciate technology, while providing automakers with a way to balance the innovation consumers want with the safety we all need," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "Combined with good laws, good enforcement, and good education, these guidelines can save lives.

SEOUL - After North Korea on Friday rejected formal talks to resolve a standoff at a jointly operated border industrial complex, South Korea said it would call home its remaining workers from the facility, formally severing the last major connection between the two countries. South Korea's decision diminishes the already slim odds of the complex's survival and widens a divide between Seoul and Pyongyang that has grown during weeks of back-and-forth threats. The Kaesong Industrial Complex had stood as the chief symbol of cooperation between the neighbors after opening in 2004 as a capitalist bubble on the northern side of the border where South Korean companies employed cheap North Korean labor.

Kermit Gosnell has been accused of "snipping" the spinal cords of babies born alive in his Philadelphia abortion clinic. Is such behavior crazy, or does it simply follow the logic of an industry that believes the mother's choice overrides any right to protection that the baby has? Now I'm not saying Gosnell, if found guilty, shouldn't be held accountable for the eight murders he is charged with. But I am suggesting that a certain set of presumptions has been created by our public policies on abortion and the arguments made to justify these policies.

An affiliate of South Jersey Industries Inc., the Folsom energy company, is buying an $8 million fuel cell that will convert natural gas into electricity and steam for a Connecticut hospital. Hartford Steam Co., which is partly owned by South Jersey, will install the 1.4-megawatt fuel cell at Hartford Hospital. Fuel cells electrochemically convert a fuel-like natural gas into electricity and heat in a process that emits virtually no pollutants because there is no combustion. FuelCell Energy Inc., the manufacturer of the power equipment, says a unit that produces electricity and steam can achieve 90 percent efficiency by effectively recycling the waste heat.

SUPERSTARS are a dime a dozen in music and movies. But at the Lightfair International 2013 trade show, holding forth at the Pennsylvania Convention Center starting Sunday, all eyes will be on a soft-spoken octogenarian from the Lehigh Valley who'll make the rounds of exhibitor booths, taking in what's new, bright, more energy-efficient and life-enhancing in commercial and architectural lighting. Lutron Electronics founder and chief executive Joel Spira is the elder statesman of the industry, the man who evolved the light switch from a mundane, strictly utilitarian tool to a sexy mood enhancer.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Monday that it would pull out all workers from an industrial complex operated jointly with the South and examine the possibility of closing the facility permanently. The North's announcement, carried by its state-run news agency, halts the last form of inter-Korean cooperation at a time when Pyongyang has rattled the region by threatening a series of attacks and declaring a state of war with the South. Though North Korea barred South Koreans from the Kaesong plant on Wednesday, few analysts suspected that it would shutter the plant - which generates foreign currency for the authoritarian government - even temporarily.

THE TIDE WAS going out in Paulsboro, and from Gary Stevenson's kitchen table a few geese could be seen hugging the bank of Mantua Creek, just beyond the inky eddies swirling out toward the Delaware River. Stevenson's spacious, new home about 20 yards from the creek, on land his family has owned for generations, might provide the best view in town. And when a distant rumble grows closer, when vibrations rise through your shoes and a hulking form appears just beyond the back deck, the scene viewed from the kitchen becomes a perfect picture of life in Paulsboro.