BUSINESS BRIEFS
Britain to reveal economic stimulus package today
Advertiser news services
LONDON — The British government is expected to unveil a large economic stimulus package today consisting mainly of temporary tax cuts, as it aims to reduce the blow from economic woes amid the sharp global downturn.
News reports said Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling's pre-budget report, due out today, will feature a reduction in value-added tax, or VAT, charged on most goods and services, from 17.5 percent to 15 percent — the lowest level allowed under European Union rules.
In an interview on BBC One's "The Politics Show," Prime Minister Gordon Brown refused to comment on details, but said it was crucial to take action now.
"To do nothing ... would be irresponsible," Brown said. "To take action would be to prevent things getting worse."
The cut in the VAT is likely to reduce revenues collected by the U.K. Treasury by around 12.5 billion pounds, or $18.6 billion, a year, according to the Guardian newspaper.
PUBLISHER EXPANDS E-BOOK OFFERINGS
NEW YORK — With e-book sales exploding in an otherwise sleepy market, Random House Inc. announced today that it was making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series.
Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement that "more people every day are enjoying reading in the electronic format and Random House wants to extend our reach to them with more of our books."
The publisher already has more than 8,000 books in the electronic format and will have a digital library of nearly 15,000. The new round of e-books is expected to be completed within months; excerpts can be viewed online through the publisher's Insight browsing service.
Random House's vice president for digital operations, Matt Shatz, said e-book sales have increased by triple digit percentages in 2008, thanks in part to www.Amazon.com's Kindle reader, but he declined to offer specific numbers.
E-books remain a tiny part of the overall market, widely estimated in the industry at 1 percent or less.
MICROSOFT CEO TO TESTIFY ON VISTA
SEATTLE — A federal judge has ordered Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer to testify in a class-action lawsuit challenging the company's marketing of its Windows Vista operating system.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled earlier this year that consumers could pursue a class-action suit against Microsoft for labeling some PCs as "Vista Capable," even though many were not powerful enough to run all of Vista's features.
Microsoft had opposed the motion to depose Ballmer. But Pechman wrote last week that plaintiffs had shown that Ballmer may have had unique knowledge of the "Vista Capable" program.
Ballmer must give a deposition in the next 30 days.
A Microsoft spokesman says the company will comply with the order.
PASSENGERS SEEING FEWER FLIGHT DELAYS
Thanksgiving holiday fliers will face packed planes this week, but there's one piece of good news: Flight delays have fallen sharply this fall.
Schedule reductions by financially struggling airlines combined with government efforts to ease congestion at New York's airports seem to have worked, according to industry and government officials and outside experts.
Travelers have better odds of smooth sailing than during recent Thanksgiving holidays — though weather could still gum up the works at the busiest hubs.
From Sept. 1 through Nov. 17, flights arrived more than 15 minutes late 17 percent of the time compared with 21 percent for the same period last year, according to numbers released yesterday by FlightStats, an aviation data company. The drop is steeper compared with the same period in 2006, when 26 percent of flights were late.
Improvements were more significant for longer delays. The rate of flights that were late by 45 minutes or more fell 20 percent compared with last year.
Passenger flights at the nation's 36 largest airports fell 6.4 percent this fall compared with last year, according to FlightStats.
