The Roanoke Times from Roanoke, Virginia • 24

Roanoke Tunes World News PAGE B8 BUSINESS THURSDAY OCT 7 1993 IN BUSINESS Apco safety record goes to the dog Not since a meter reader was bitten by a dog last summer has a Roanoke division employee of Appalachian Power Co suffered a disabling injury the utility said Wednesday On Sept 22 division employees reached a milestone: They had worked a million work hours without any of them missing work because of an injury setting a record for that Apco division Wednesday morning the record had stretched to 1030000 hours The meter reader who was bitten on June 12 1992 lost one day of work because of an allergic reaction to medication Al though some workers have had minor injuries on the job since none has had to miss work Staff report raders in waiting Major indexes DOW (Industrials) AMEX NASDAQ NYSE DOW 76477 250 NYSE 25626 014 inancial 48p NEW YORK Stocks ended mixed on Wednesday as many cautious investors stayed away from the market ahead of third quarter corporate earn ings reports and a new reading on the economy Higher stocks abroad set an early firm tone to the mar ket with share prices in Lon don setting a record high But caution set in as bonds wa vered trading in narrow ranges before finally settling on a higher course Mostly however waiting for a better fix on third quarter said Bill Allyn managing direc tor at Jefferies Co Many technology stocks recovered from downturn While AMD fell 1 to 21 after SG Warburg down graded the stock other com puter issues ended firmer Na tional Semiconductor rose to 19 on the NYSE Among other actively trad ed NYSE issues Union Texas Petroleum Holdings lost 3 to 2 1 after saying it would take a third quarter $25 million write off for oil property National Medical Enter prises rose 1 to IP2 Salo mon Brothers raised a ratine on the stock saying the worst is behind the company after last settlement of two major lawsuits Utilities d24 UUVYN 10 Composite MidCap downo09 Industrials Total volume: 348315080 1992 average volume: 202300000 Standard Poor's indexes t4s: Advances: 1121 Hi9h Declines: 876 362079 Unchanged: 646 Low Total issues: 2643 357021 Associated Press Paper for Asians to expand in Virginia NEWPORT NEWS A free monthly newspaper aimed at Asians living in Tidewater will expand its distribution to central Virginia Chinese journalist Jizeng Chen began publishing the English language Asian or tune in January from his New port News home His target was the 70000 to 80000 peo ple from Asia and the Pacific islands living in Tidewater Asian ortune is distribut ed at Oriental food shops and restaurants Chen said it has been so well received that he plans to begin circulation in the Richmond area with 3500 to 4000 copies next week Chen 42 is a former re porter for the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing and the US Information Agency in Wash ington He studied journalism at the University of Hawaii and earned a degree in urban affairs at Virginia Tech Associated Press NationsBank merger to cost 1200 jobs BALTIMORE About 1200 jobs will be eliminated when NationsBank Corp merges with MNC inancial Inc over the next 18 months bank officials said Half of the cuts will result from the closing of its opera tion center in Hyattsville Md those functions will be split be tween Baltimore and Rich mond The cuts 1 0 percent to 1 2 percent of the jobs in the re gion are all the reductions ex pected from the acquisition NationsBank officials said Daniel inney a Na tionsBank spokesman said all the affected employees were notified this week The elimi nations are expected to begin in eight to nine months Associated Press Grand Piano hires new ad agency Grand Piano urniture Co has retained a Greensboro NC firm to handle its adver tising ending its relationship with The Packett Group of Roanoke Trone Advertising Inc won the account Trone said Grand plans to increase dra matically its use of television and to a lesser extent radio advertising The agency which visited all of the stores to prepare its presentation to Grand said it will develop im age and product focused broadcast campaigns that will start in early November in re gional markets Trone created the original 75th Camel anniversary cam paign featuring for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co and is agency for Sa lem brand Other agency cli ents include Jefferson Pilot Life Insurance Co of Greens boro and Bassett urniture Co of Bassett Staff report Briefly BAvis Construction Inc of Roanoke has a $17 million contract to build an 87400 square foot manufacturing and warehouse addition for Tetra Second Nature Co in Blacks burg Construction will begin in October and is expected to be completed in the spring said Jack Avis vice president of Avis Construction Tetra which makes aquarium and terrarium products is a subsid iary of Warner Lambert which last month acquired Willinger Bros Inc maker of aquarium electrical products When the addition is complete the Blacksburg facility will become the distribution center for both companies About 1500 telephone customers in the Garden City section of Roanoke will get new phone numbers next year The Chesapeake and Potomac Tele phone Co customers now served by a switch on Luck Av enue will be changed to a new switch at Garden City because of growth in business The changeover should occur in late March said Don Reid Roanoke manager CINDY PINKSTONStaff Researcher Mark Messina and his wife a dietitian sample a veggie roll up now 17 1 Tf A 1 tu Lax rl Vegetarians throw own party at the food show By ALMENA HUGHES STA WRITER Sights smells samples and the sub ject of food were served in generous quantities Wednesday as the Roanoke Civic Center housed both an industry foods show and a local observance of World Vegetarian Day In one area institutional food buy ers and guests queued up to hear spiels taste test and order products from about 200 vendors represented at Salem based food distributor PYA third annual food show Peter Jacob vice presi dent of marketing and procurement said the company expected 700 to 800 of its 1200 customers to attend the show dur ing its two day run It anticipated sales of about $3 million from the show The company has annual sales of about $60 PLEASE SEE OODB7 Retraining program under fire unds used for benefits instead study shows Associated Press WASHINGTON A program intended to retrain workers who lose jobs because of increased imports instead has been used largely for unemployment bene fits a Labor Department study said Wednesday The study was released amid intense debate over the North American ree Trade Agreement would eliminate trade barriers among the United States Mexico and Canada Organized labor and oth ers oppose the treaty fearing it would result in the loss of thousands of US jobs to cheaper labor in Mexico If that proved true the Trade Adjustment Assis tance program would be used to help prepare those displaced workers for other jobs But Assistant Inspector General Gerald Peterson said in a memo accompanying the study that the 19 year old program has fallen short of meeting the re employment or training goals evidence collected shows that the program I was managed as an entitlement compensation program rather than a training he concluded Rep Collin Peterson Minn chairman of the House Government Operations employ ment housing and aviation subcommittee said he plans to conduct a hearing soon on the program the North American Trade Agreement were to pass additional thousands of US workers would be thrown out of work and dependent on a totally inade quate government he said in a statement The report said while six out of 1 0 workers in fiscal 1991 and 1992 found new jobs after participating in the program fewer than four found jobs that paid or had the potential to pay wages 80 percent or more of former pay It found that two in 10 found training related jobs Retraining grant to help at arsenal Virginia has been granted $730774 under the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance pro gram to help workers who have been laid off due to increased imports The money will go primarily to workers laid off by Hercules Inc at the arsenal it operates for the Army in Radford the Labor Department said Wednesday The program administered in Virginia by the state Employment Commission provides training job search assistance relocation bene fits and weekly trade adjustment allowances Moin9 a new look By McLANIt HA 1 1 EH last month STA WRITER ox Broadcasting Co affiliate WJPRWVT is get ting a face lift a new kind of said its new vice president and gen eral manager Stan MarinofT citing Portsmouth station oft the ca ble in payment dispute B7 the new slogan The station was purchased this year by Milt Grant of Grant Com munications of ort Lauderdale la from Tampa based Roanoke Lynchburg TV Acquisition Corp New management took over late Grant owns two other ox af filiates in Davenport Iowa and Huntsville Ala WJPRWVT said in ebruary that Roanoke Lynchburg TV Ac quisition owners Thomas Carney and Henry Ash had decided to split their interests because of profes sional and personal differences Marinoff joined the new staff riday replacing Robb Gray who was fired in September job is to clean the station up and get it running in the right Marinoff said Promotions Manager Glenda Owens said the biggest problem was the broadcast signal WJPRWVT had frequently gone off the air because of transmitter problems The new owner has bought a new transmitter and plans to buy a backup generator to keep tne station run ning when prob lems arise The changes are new com mitment to our giv ing them what they want Owens said Marinoff said Grant has been in broad casting for 40 years a professional broadcaster and what makes the Marinoff was a vice president of programming and operations in Augusta Ga The Roanoke station has not done well in the ratings partly be cause of its weak signal Television Market Report in May gave the ox station a 3 rating meaning the percentage of all TV households turned to its signal and a 6 share or the percentage of households watching TV at 6 pm are not a news and infor mation Marinoff said an entertainment alterna tive News is important but there are other places to get WJPRWVT is rearranging its programming to include movies that run back to back on weekends programs will continue to be an important element Marinoff in irst Union gears up for computer switch Bank to import 400 experts for Va conversion By MAG PO STA WRITER SCC extends its investigation of GTE service RICHMOND After hearing GTE Virginia offi cials explain the reasons for a rash of service problems utility regulators agreed to extend their investigation of the state's second largest telephone company The extension was recommended Tuesday by the State Corporation Commission staff and accepted by the three member commission commission is not interested in chastising the SCC member Preston Shannon said want to ensure that GTE maintains significant presence in Virginia and provides the best and most reliable service The SCC began its probe in August citing an of outages slow response to custom er calls and other service problems including a six hour disruption of 91 1 service in Hanover County GTE which serves about 430000 access lines in 42 counties and the cities of Virginia Beach and Chesa peake blamed many of the problems on rapidly chang ing technology and the 1992 merger of the GTE and Contel systems in which GTE absorbed tech nical and administrative systems Associated Press irst Union Corp will send 400 employ ees from other states into Virginia next week as the banking company switches its Virginia operations to a new computer system ormer Dominion Bank operations will be switched next Thursday to the software system irst Union calls Emerald irst Virginia banks will close at 2 pm for the conversion When they open for business on Oct 1 5 they will carry the irst Union name for the first time irst Union Corp bought Dominion Bankshares Corp in March and has been converting the systems to coordinate with those of the Char lotte NC based company Warner Dalhouse chairman of irst Union National Bank of Virginia said at least one person familiar with Emerald will be assigned to every branch in the state Some offices will have two or three people to ease the transition Dominion employees have been trained in the new computer system Dalhouse said but irst Union wants to have people present with a lot of experience The 400 employees will come from North Carolina South Carolina Georgia and' lorida Dalhouse said they are not computer experts but people who have operated the system They will answer questions from cus tomers as well as from employees i Dalhouse said the employees will fly into several Virginia cities Maryland and Wash ington DC After the Dominion banks convert to Emerald customers will be able to check their balances and cash checks at any branch in irst multistate system However federal law prohibits banks from taking de posits across state lines tDAILYJVIARKETlREPORT 3.