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The maker of Robert Mondavi wine and Svedka vodka says its second-quarter profit jumped 78 percent on lower costs and improved wine and spirits sales in North America.

Constellation Brands Inc.’s earnings beat Wall Street estimates. Its shares rose 4 percent to $19.49 in premarket trading.

The Victor, N.Y.-based company reported net income climbed to $162.7 million, or 76 cents per share, in the June-to-August quarter. That’s up from $91.3 million, or 43 cents, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, the Victor, N business card design.Y., company earned 77 cents per share. Wall Street expected 65 cents per share.

Its revenue fell 20 percent to $690.2 million largely because it sold the bulk of its Australian and British wine business in January.

Its wine and spirits sales in North America rose 5 percent to $690.2 million.

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News Corp. on Friday said long-time independent board member and venture capitalist Thomas Perkins is leaving its board of directors.

The media conglomerate has been struggling with a phone hacking scandal at one of its British papers.

Perkins resigned from Hewlett-Packard Co.’s board in 2006 after learning that the company had hired private detectives to obtain his phone records. News Corp. didn’t say why he was leaving.

A message seeking from from Perkins was not immediately returned on Friday morning. He is one of the founders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm that has funded many Silicon Valley companies.

Also leaving News Corp fast cash loans.’s board is Kenneth Cowley, a former News Corp. executive.

Cowley and Perkins will leave after News Corp.’s Oct. 21 annual meeting, the company said.

Standing for election at the meeting will be James Breyer, another venture capitalist and nominee to the board. He is a partner of Accel Partners and serves on the board of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Dell Inc.

News Corp.’s independent directors, including Perkins, expressed their support for the company’s senior management in a July statement.

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Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner by capacity, said first-half profit rose 12 percent as higher oil, gas and chemicals revenues helped offset a loss in its refining business.

The company, also known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., said Sunday that its net profit in January-June was 41.2 billion yuan ($6.4 billion), or 0.475 yuan (7 U.S. cents) per share, based on international financial reporting standards.

The results were better than analysts had forecast. Profit a year earlier was 36.8 billion yuan.

The company attributed the improvement to higher oil and chemicals prices and better integration of its upstream and downstream businesses. But it said the outlook for coming months was uncertain.

“We are and we will be facing a complicated macro-environment,” said Sinopec’s chairman Fu Chengyu, noting the impact of the economic problems in the United States and Europe on the global recovery.

The 44 percent increase in global crude oil prices in the first half of the year was both a help and a hindrance. While Sinopec’s revenue surged 31.7 percent in January-June to 1.2 trillion yuan ($187.5 billion), buoyed by strong sales of oil, gas and chemicals, higher costs for imported crude oil pulled its refining business into loss no fax cash advance.

China’s controls on fuel prices have left refiners constantly battling losses as global prices have fluctuated.

The company’s refining unit posted a 12.2 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) loss in the first half, compared with profit of 5.7 billion yuan in the same period a year earlier.

With crude oil prices now in retreat, Sinopec’s refineries could see improved results later in the year, Citi analyst Graham Cunningham said in a report Monday.

“We believe there is a strong possibility the government could move ahead with a more liberal pricing mechanism for gasoline and diesel if oil prices moderate and domestic inflation begins to come down,” he said.

Sinopec said its crude oil output fell 5.4 percent to 156.3 million barrels, as maintenance of machinery in its oil fields in Angola forced a sharp cutback in production. Its natural gas output rose 27 percent to 253.88 billion cubic feet (7.19 billion cubic meters).

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BHP Billiton Ltd. announced Friday that it completed its takeover of U.S.-based Petrohawk Energy Corp.

BHP Billiton said the $12.1 billion acquisition follows the previously announced completion of the tender offer.

BHP Billiton petroleum chief executive Michael Yeager said the Petrohawk takeover adds high-quality growth to the company.

“With the completion of this transaction, BHP Billiton Petroleum is on track to deliver compound annual growth in production volumes of 10 percent for the remainder of the decade,” he said.

“We are excited that Petrohawk’s sizable U.S. work force is joining our talented group of professionals and we are ready to grow this business over the long-term,” he added payday loan online.

BHP Billiton announced in July it would buy Petrohawk for $12.1 billion in cash, giving it greater access to U.S. shale gas assets.

The acquisition gives BHP Billiton assets covering about 1 million acres in Texas and Louisiana, with an estimated 2011 production of 158,000 barrels of oil equivalent each day.

“Petrohawk has requested the New York Stock Exchange to take the necessary steps with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to delist Petrohawk’s common stock from the NYSE,” BHP Billiton’s statement said.

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Tropical Storm Harvey has gained strength in the Atlantic Ocean and is threatening to bring high winds and several inches of rain to parts of Central America.

Tropical storm warnings have been issued for the Bay Islands of Honduras, the coast of Belize and parts of the southeastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Watches are in effect for coastal Honduras and Guatemala.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Friday evening that Harvey’s maximum sustained winds are near 50 mph (80 kph). The storm was centered about 130 miles (209 kilometers) east of Isla Roatan, Honduras. It was moving west at 9 mph (14 kph).

Meanwhile, far out in the Pacific, Greg has weakened to a tropical storm and is expected to dissipate in the coming days.

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A sell-off is erasing all of the year’s gains in the stock market.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 2.6 percent Tuesday as investors grew increasingly concerned about the economy. The benchmark index is now at its lowest point of the year.

A report that consumers cut their spending in June for the first time in two years added to a series of weak economic indicators have pushed stocks lower for seven straight days.

The S&P is closing down 33 points to 1,254 payday loans. The Dow Jones industrial average is down 266, or 2.2 percent, to 11,867. The Nasdaq is down 75, or 2.8 percent, to 2,669.

Four stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was higher than average at 5.3 billion shares.

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Wind Capital Group has agreed to sell 150 megawatts of electricity from a wind farm being developed in Oklahoma to Springfield-based Associated Electric Cooperative Inc.

The wind farm, owned and operated by St. Louis-based Wind Capital, is located about an hour northwest of Tulsa, the company said. Construction is expected to begin this fall and be complete in June.

Wind Capital, founded by Tom Carnahan in 2005, operates 5 wind farms in Missouri with a combined generating capacity of 311 megawatts absolutely free credit score. The company is also developing a $250 million, 150-megawatt wind project in South Florida, and a wind farm in central Kansas.

Associated Electric sells wholesale power to 57 electric cooperatives in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma. Terms of the agreement with Wind Capital weren’t disclosed.

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Rupert Murdoch and his son James first refused, then agreed Thursday to appear before U.K. lawmakers investigating phone hacking and police bribery, while in the U.S., the FBI opened an investigation into allegations the Murdoch media empire sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims.

Those two developments _ and the arrest of another former editor of a Murdoch tabloid _ deepened the crisis for News Corp., which has seen its stock price sink as investors ask whether the scandal could drag down the whole company.

Murdoch defended News Corp.’s handling of the scandal, saying it will recover from any damage caused by the phone-hacking and police bribery allegations. The 80-year-old told The Wall Street Journal _ which is owned by News Corp. _ that he is “just getting annoyed” at all the recent negative press.

He also dismissed reports he would sell his U.K. newspapers to stem the scandal, calling the suggestion “total rubbish.”

A law enforcement official in New York said the FBI was investigating allegations that employees of News Corp. tried to hack into the telephones of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The FBI’s New York office hasn’t commented, and there was no immediate response Thursday from News Corp. or the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. News Corp. stock fell more than 3 percent on the news.

News Corp. executives could be at risk of being found criminally or civilly liable under federal wiretapping and state privacy laws if investigators find that American citizens were targeted, analysts said. The company could also face sanctions in the U.S. for phone hacking that originated in Britain under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Still, experts said they doubt such actions could jeopardize News Corp.’s U.S. newspaper holdings such as The Wall Street Journal or result in the revocation of the license it needs to own Fox TV stations in America.

“I think we’re a long way from that,” said Philip Raible, a partner at New York law firm Rayner Rowe LLP, which specializes in corporate law affecting media companies.

News Corp. has been in crisis mode in the U.K. since a rival newspaper reported last week that its News of the World tabloid hacked into the phone of teenage murder victim Milly Dowler in 2002 and may have impeded a police investigation into the 13-year-old’s disappearance.

The company closed the 168-year-old News of the World and abandoned a bid for control of the lucrative British Sky Broadcasting network in a so far fruitless attempt to halt the crisis.

U.S.-based media industry analyst Richard MacDonald said the scandal was undermining Murdoch’s 30-year bid to convince investors that News Corp. was “a blue chip diversified media company.”

“Without question, the revelations and subsequent penalties either criminal, civil or strategic will impair earnings performance, earnings multiples and asset value for who knows how long,” he said.

British lawmakers took the dramatic step Thursday of issuing a summons to the once all-powerful Murdochs after the father and son said they would not appear before Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday.

Within hours, the Murdochs made room in their schedules after all. It was another victory for politicians over the Murdochs _ something that would have been all but unthinkable just two weeks ago.

It is highly unusual for witnesses to refuse to appear before parliamentary committees, which quiz everyone from business leaders to prime ministers on a wide range of issues.

Rebekah Brooks, who heads the company’s British newspaper division, did agree to testify. She was editor of the News of the World at the time of some of the hacking, but says she knew nothing about it.

Murdoch began his media career in Australia in 1952 after inheriting The News newspaper after the death of his father, and has built News Corp. into one of the world’s biggest media groups, with market capitalization of $46 billion. Assets include Fox News, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and three newspapers in Britain _ down from four with the death of the News of the World quick cash.

Murdoch controls 40 percent of News Corp.’s voting stock, mostly through a family trust.

For decades, British lawmakers lived in fear of the influence of Murdoch’s media empire. With the revelation of widespread criminal hacking, and the public revulsion that followed, Parliament has been liberated, flexing its muscles in a display of freedom some are calling the “British Spring.”

Business Secretary Vince Cable said Thursday the fast-moving events were “a bit like the end of a dictatorship.”

James Murdoch initially told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee he would be willing to appear Aug. 10 or 11, without explaining why he was not free on Tuesday.

Rupert Murdoch said he would not appear at all, offering instead to speak before a separate inquiry initiated by Prime Minister David Cameron and led by a judge.

Defiance of a parliamentary summons is illegal, and can in theory be punished with a fine or jail time. In practice, such measures have been all but unknown in modern times; the House of Commons last punished a nonmember in 1957. And it was not immediately clear whether Parliament could enforce its summons on Rupert Murdoch, a U.S. citizen.

Committee chairman James Whittingdale said he especially wanted to question James Murdoch, who said last week in announcing the closure of News of the World that Parliament had been misled by people in his employment, without his knowledge.

“We felt that to wait until August was unjustifiable,” Whittingdale said.

News Corp. faced more pressure Thursday with the arrest of former News of the World executive editor Neil Wallis _ the ninth person involved with the News of the World to be detained by police probing phone hacking.

Police said Wallis, 60, was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications.

He was News of the World deputy editor between 2003 and 2007 under Andy Coulson, who resigned from the paper when a reporter and a private detective were jailed in January 2007 for hacking into the phones of royal aides.

Wallis was executive editor until 2009; Coulson was Cameron’s communications director from 2007 until January, when he quit as the hacking scandal resurfaced. He was arrested on July 8.

In another sign of what Cameron has called the overly cozy relationship between politicians, the media and the police, the Metropolitan Police confirmed that Wallis had been employed as a part-time consultant to the force.

Wallis’ firm was employed to provide “strategic communication advice” for two days a month while its own staffer was on medical leave, the Metropolitan Police said. The contract ended in September.

The way Murdoch runs his empire has come under renewed criticism.

“Rupert Murdoch is finally on the wrong side of the tipping point, make that the ‘tipping over’ point, and it’s his own fault,” Nell Minow of Governance Metrics International said in a blog post this week. “Not for allowing the violations of law, ethics, and privacy at his newspapers, but for setting up a governance structure so ineffective that major failures were inevitable.”

Media analyst Claire Enders said News Corp. might be tempted to sell its other British newspapers _ The Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times.

That is an outcome favored by some analysts and shareholders, who see the papers as financially inconsequential and reputationally burdensome _ as well as by many British politicians.

“The politicians want the Murdochs’ role in public life to be greatly diminished,” Enders said. “They would like them to move to New York and stay there.

“Since the papers have no political value any more, then their economic value must be questioned as well.”

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Tom Hays in New York, Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

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John Russo’s chemical lab in North Kingstown has been growing in recent years, even despite a deflated economy, and he expects to add another 15 to 20 positions to his 49 employees over the next year.

But the president of Ultra Scientific Analytical Solutions has found himself in a vexing spot, struggling to fill openings that require specialized training in a state where the jobless rate is close to 11 percent, the third-highest in the nation.

“It’s very difficult to find the right person, and there’s all walks of life trying to find jobs. I honestly think there’s a large swath of unemployable,” said Russo, whose firm manufactures and supplies analytical standards. “They don’t have any skills at all.”

He’s talking about the so-called skills gap, a national problem that has left businesses without a crucial pipeline of the skilled workers they need in a rapidly changing economy.

States from Rhode Island to Washington are taking steps to address the gulf. Michigan launched a “No Worker Left Behind” initiative, allowing unemployed or low-wage workers to get up to $10,000 in free tuition for community college study or other training. Several legislatures passed bills creating “lifelong learning accounts,” which, like a 401(k), help workers save for education, training or apprenticeships. The Aspen Institute is spearheading a national campaign that aims to do something that hasn’t happened nearly enough: get community colleges and employers talking.

The need for such efforts, experts say, is enormous.

In a major report in February, Harvard University highlighted what it called the “forgotten half” of young adults who are unprepared to enter the work force. Some drop out of high school. Some who finish can’t afford college. And some who can afford it find that what they’ve learned in college or vocational programs doesn’t match employers’ demands.

“Our system for preparing young adults is broken,” said William Symonds, director of the Pathways to Prosperity Project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. “We’re not saying that the system is failing everybody, but it is leaving a lot of young people behind.”

Educators and business leaders say that a “college for all” mentality is no longer realistic, if ever it was. Many positions _ known as “middle-skill” jobs _ don’t require a degree from a four-year institution. The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce estimates there will be 47 million job openings in the decade ending in 2018. Nearly half will require only an associate’s degree.

Career and technical education programs, once derided as being for those who couldn’t cut it academically, offer one path. But growing those programs has not been a national priority and their quality is inconsistent at best. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called career and technical education the “neglected stepchild” of education reform.

U.S. Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., who co-chairs the bipartisan Career and Technical Education Caucus in Congress, wants to change that. He has pushed to expand federal funding for such programs so they can access state-of-the-art technology and equipment. He notes that Perkins Act funding has remained stagnant over the last decade even though demand for career and technical education programs has increased. The funding was cut in the current fiscal year.

The caucus co-chairman, U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., points to the story of Tricia Reich, 18, who graduated this month from the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology. The school trains students in everything from heavy equipment operation and dental assisting to building construction and landscape design Online payday loans.

In the automotive technology program, Reich learned everything there is to know about how a car works. She spent her third and final year not in the classroom but working at an auto dealership, at first earning $8 an hour as a service writer. She’s now employed at another dealership that sells and services Mercedes, Volvos and Audis, saving money in hopes of attending community college.

Reich said programs like hers give students “a leg up” once they get in the real world. “It’s definitely a big plus,” she said.

Rhode Island has been hit harder by the recession than many states, undergoing a difficult transition from an economy historically made up of low-tech, low-skill manufacturing and service jobs to a “knowledge” economy centered on IT, bioscience and health care and other such fields.

Take the old Jewelry District in downtown Providence. It’s been rebranded the Knowledge District, envisioned as a life sciences hub. But fulfilling that vision is years off.

Keith Stokes, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp., notes that the 19-acre parcel is a stone’s throw from south Providence, home to the kind of lower-income, minority population that’s been disproportionately affected by the skills gap. But it might as well be “on the other side of the Grand Canyon,” Stokes said.

“We held on too long to these low-wage, low-skill industries, and we didn’t make the strategic long-term investments in education,” he said. “We’re playing a bit of catch-up. It’s critical for us to be able to catch up and accelerate.”

Part of the problem is the dropout rate. In Rhode Island, for every 100 students who start high school, only 73 will graduate, according to Ray DiPasquale, president of the Community College of Rhode Island. That puts the state slightly above the national average of about 72 percent.

But of those 73 who graduate in Rhode Island, 40 will enter college. And of that number, just 21 earn a degree.

At CCRI, the on-time graduation rate is only 9.8 percent, in part because the vast majority of its nearly 18,000 students require remedial coursework. The national rate is 15 percent.

The skills gap is already taking an economic toll. Some businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars to “skill up” new employees. Leaving positions unfilled is hardly better. Understaffed firms, particularly small ones, can’t deliver goods as fast as they need to or take on new customers.

The problem is likely to become even more acute as the economy picks up.

“If we don’t address this skills problem, American businesses will lack the world-class work force needed to compete at a global level, and many Americans will remain out of work, instead of accessing the high quality jobs of today and tomorrow,” said Penny Pritzker, a Chicago business executive who is advisory board chair of the Aspen Institute’s skills gap campaign.

It took Ultra Scientific’s Russo more than half a year to fill one of those jobs. Until recently, he couldn’t find anyone to operate a specialized piece of equipment that performs high-pressure liquid chromatography, a technique that separates compounds in a solution.

But his firm’s gain represents an economic loss to the state: The Ph.D. Russo is hiring is coming from Thermo Fisher Scientific, which is shuttering its manufacturing facility in east Providence.

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