BUSINESS BRIEFS
UH business competition set
Advertiser Staff and News Services
The Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship & E-Business is accepting team applications for the 2006 UH Hawai'i Business Plan Competition.
Teams must consist of at least two but not more than five members, and include at least one full-time University of Hawai'i student. More than $80,000 will be awarded to winners in the categories: traditional business, social enterprise and UH technology.
Semifinalists submit a written business plan to a panel of judges. Finalists then present their plan in front of a live audience.
Deadline to register online is Jan. 31 at www.UHBusi nessPlanCompetition .com.
MOBI ENTERING WIRELESS MARKET
Mobi PCS, a new wireless phone company, said it will begin O'ahu service Jan. 3 with three unlimited calling plans for customers.
The company will start with three rate plans, including unlimited local calls for $40 a month and unlimited local and long distance calls for about $45. It also will have a $50 monthly plan that will have more services, spokeswoman Renee Awana said.
Mobi will market its service to consumers on O'ahu through four of its own stores and a dealer network. Awana said the company is considering expansion to the Neighbor Islands and also plans to announce broadband wireless services in the future.
BASE HOUSING ON FAST TRACK
Hickam Community Housing LLC — a project company of Actus Lend Lease — will deliver eight new homes ahead of schedule tomorrow at ceremonies at Hickam Air Force Base.
The homes are the first of 194 that Hickam Community Housing is scheduled to deliver by August. In addition to the eight already finished, workers will complete 16 more by the end of January.
All 194 homes will be completed "at least two months ahead of schedule," said Ryan Mielke, deputy asset manager for Hickam Community Housing.
The first 24 homes will be in Hickam's Earhart Village with the remainder at Hickam's Hale Na Koa.
VIOXX MAKER RESTS ITS CASE
HOUSTON — Merck & Co. rested its case yesterday in the first federal trial involving the painkiller Vioxx after a pathologist testified that the drug played no role in a man's fatal heart attack.
Closing arguments were set for today in the trial stemming from a lawsuit filed by Evelyn Irvin Plunkett, whose 53-year-old husband Richard "Dicky" Irvin died in 2001 after taking Vioxx for back pain.
Irvin Plunkett says Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck failed to issue safety warnings and that Vioxx caused her husband's heart attack.
