Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • B5

BUSINESS DIGEST wall ST EET Dow rises 118 points as reports boost optimism about economy NEW YORK Encouraging economic reports lifted stocks Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 118 points after falling in the nal two trading days of last week. Energy stocks led the market higher following a strong earnings report from Exxon Mobil Corp. Gains in manufacturing and personal incomes helped shore up the sentiment after three straight losing weeks that left stocks with a loss for January. Investors were already becoming more optimistic thanks to news on Friday that the economy grew at the fastest pace in six years during the nal three months of 2009.

av I a TI American Eagle parent faces penalty over weight of baggage DALLAS Federal regulators are proposing a penalty of nearly $2.5 million against a sister carrier of American Airlines for not making sure crews had accurate information about the weight of baggage on dozens of flights. The Federal Aviation Administration announced the penalty Monday against AMR American Eagle. The FAA charges that Eagle operated at least 39 ights after being told of the problem. On at least two ights, the FAA charges, Eagle planes should not have taken off because they were too heavy. pharmac EUTI cal FDA says HIV drug Videx poses risk of rare liver disorder WASHINGTON Federal health officials said Monday that patients taking a Bristol-Myers Squibb drug for HIV are at risk for a rare but potentially fatal liver disorder.

The Food and Drug Administration said it has received 42 reports of the disorder since Videx was approved in 1991. Four patients died from bleeding or liver failure after developing the problem, known as noncirrhotic portal hypertension. The problem involves dangerously slow blood flow though the liver, which can cause veins in the esophagus to swell. These veins are thin and can burst, causing potentially deadly bleeding. IN EST ENTS Short-term Treasury bill rates increase during weekly auction WASHINGTON Interest rates on short- term Treasury bills rose in auction to their highest rates in a month.

The Treasury Department auctioned $23 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.095 percent, up from 0.055 percent last week. Another $26 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.165 percent, up from 0.135 percent last week. The three-month rate was the highest since these bills averaged 0.11 percent on Dec. 28. The six-month rate was the highest since it reached 0.18 percent on Jan.

4. Separately, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills was 0.31 percent last week, unchanged from the previous week. Compiled for wire reports By Brian Gaar AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Work has nally started on a Walmart at the former Northcross Mall, more than three years after the company announced plans to build a store there. The store at West Anderson Lane and Burnet Road is expected to open in the fall, said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Kellie Duhr.

It will have one story and be less than half the size of the two-story superstore that Walmart proposed in 2006, setting off a citywide controversy over big-box retailing. Part of the reason the new Walmart will be smaller is because the company now builds more efficient stores, Duhr said. just trending to be smaller she said. The new Walmart also be open 24 hours a day, an early concern of neighbors, who said that an always-open store would lead to increased crime. Instead, it will close between 1 and 5 a.m., See RETAIL Company representatives attended an Allandale Neighborhood Association meeting last week to answer questions and show renderings of the store being built at the former Northcross Mall.

Some area residents protested after plans for a bigger, 24-hour store were proposed in 2006. A l- MART RES I NC IMA ES Scaled-back version of controversial project is expected to open this fall Northcross Walmart store nally under construction retail developme By Justin Hyde Detroit Free Press WASHINGTON Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that it would start shipping parts to dealers for repairing accelerator pedals in 2.3 million cars and trucks this week, vowing to move as quickly as possible while admitting the problem is an embarrassment. The Japanese automaker said it had quickly designed a steel reinforcement bar for the pedals to keep them from sticking in certain situations and that the repair would take about 30 minutes per vehicle. Toyota had already planned to shut down or curtail production at six North American assembly plants this week and said its supplier was shipping a revised design to its factories.

Once they receive the parts, dealerships will stay open late to accommodate customers, Toyota said. is more important to us than the safety and reliability of the vehicles our customers said Jim Lentz, president and chief operating of cer of Company offers apology to customers, says dealers will stay open for repairs Toyota: Gas pedal is on the way Au om A kers Safety See CARS Recall details, B6 By Kirk Ladendorf Americ A n-St A te A St A ff Within hours of disastrous Jan. 12 earthquake, a group of researchers at the University of Texas employed cutting-edge computer technology, an informal network of geology experts and satellite imagery to start the work of creating accurate damage assessment maps of the Caribbean nation. Scientists at the Center for Space Research at UT compiled and corrected some of the rst damage assessment maps within two days after the quake and made them available to those in charge of planning the response to the disaster. For Gordon Wells, the program manager in charge of the impromptu Haiti project, the work was similar to other computerized damage forecasts and assessments the center had done following earlier disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008.

Wells said his team had experience with disaster work, had informal ties to researchers who had done work in and near Haiti, and could tap in to a new computer resource at the University of Texas that could quickly organize the massive ow of data coming in from satellite and airplane flyovers of the area. Getting that accurate information was important to planning a coordinated response, Wells said. order to get any grasp of disaster recovery, you need a framework of information that tells you the dimension of what has he said. you have that, you know how much help you need and where it needs to Wells and his team have been using supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in North Austin for years. This job call for one of the supercomputers, but it was very well-suited for Corral, a huge data storage system that the computing center put into operation last spring.

Corral has massive data storage capability and could easily accommodate the combined les, with trillions of bytes of data, that team was getting from satellite and airplane yovers. Because satellite photography is almost always taken at an angle, satellite images need to be corrected to be more useful to workers UT tech tools help gather data for Haiti relief orts AUstin Da a orage sys ems See STORAGE Gordon Wells led University of Texas- based data-collection project to assess and map damage to Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake. By Maria Halkias the DALLAS MORNING WS If you hate keeping up with coupons, you may soon come to love them. Retailers and product manufacturers are quickly embracing digital coupons often sent as text messages to cell phones.

Dallas-based 7-Eleven Inc. just completed a test in San Diego where shoppers received digital coupons for a free Slurpee, Big Gulp or coffee by texting a ve-digit number from their cell phones. Next month, Plano-based J.C. Penney Co. is rolling out mobile coupons to all its stores after testing it at 16 Houston locations last fall.

Supermarket chains Kroger and Tom Thumb have offered mobile coupons through Cell re Inc. since 2008 and 2009. Fast-food chain Taco Bueno, based in Farmers Branch, also sends out digital coupons through San Jose, based Cellfire. Companies are responding to the explo 7- leven, others are sending vouchers via text messages Companies hail digital coupons for cell phones ile devices shopping See COUPONS BUSINESS PERSONAL FINANCE NASDAQ DOW statesman.com austin360.com ST WC Tuesday, February 2, 2010 5 10,185.53 2,171.20 1,089.19 Info on the go: Got an iPhone? Want local business and tech news on the Download the free app at statesman.com/business By Chris Kahn ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK Exxon Mobil earnings fell by more than half to $19.3 billion in 2009, the lowest total in seven years, as company re neries struggled with a plunge in global fuel consumption. But Exxon remains the pro champion among U.S.

public companies. The largest publicly traded oil company nished the year with a 23 percent decline in fourth-quarter income. Exxon now has posted lower pro ts for ve straight quarters after setting a record of $14.83 billion in the third quarter of 2008. As with rivals ConocoPhillips and Chevron business of exploring for and producing oil bene ted from an increase in crude prices at the end of 2009. But weak demand for gasoline, heating oil and other products severely depressed earnings at the major oil refineries.

results have swung with the price of oil and the effect of the global recession. When oil spiked above $147 a barrel in mid- 2008, Exxon set ever-higher marks for earnings by a U.S. company. Then oil prices plummeted, and Exxon suffered a yearlong hangover that Exxon Mobil posts its lowest annual profit since 2002 energy arnings See PROFIT.