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Rural/Metro Medical Services is launching a new service designed to help the homebound and seniors in case of emergency.

Many people will remember the television commercials in which an elderly woman pushes a button on a wearable monitor for help after falling. Rural/Metro’s HomeHelpLine service offers a similar service with a major difference: Calls come in to trained emergency medical dispatchers who respond using Rural/Metro’s network of local hospitals and ambulance services.

“When you call a LifeLine or other national providers, calls come through security companies or you’re really dealing with a call center that could be anywhere in the country,” says Jay Smith, public affairs manager. “Our dispatchers are medically trained EMTs and emergency dispatch. We’re local and we’re trained.”

Launched in mid-December, the service has signed up 60 customers so far with a goal of 500 by the end of Rural/Metro’s fiscal year in July. The service is currently available in Erie and Niagara counties, but plans call for extending service into all eight Western New York counties.

The company is targeting seniors and homebound individuals, as well as the children of such people who worry they can’t check in on their loved ones as often as they’d like. Smith says the company is relying on brand recognition and Rural/Metro’s reputation in the region to close the deal.

Additionally, the company is targeting individuals recovering from surgery; those with chronic conditions; and anyone who lives alone or spends several hours at home alone on a regular basis.

The service is available for $24.99 per month. That’s lower than some national services, enabled in part by Rural/Metro’s existing equipment and infrastructure that results in less overhead, Smith says.

Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., Rural/Metro Corp. (RURL) is a national provider of emergency services in 22 states.

Locally, the company has more than 550 employees, including 450 EMTs and paramedics, and a fleet of 90 emergency vehicles that responds to more than 100,000 calls every year.

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Fluke Networks said it’s purchased ClearSight Networks of Fremont, Calif., which makes computer networking analysis tools, for an undisclosed price.

Everett-based Fluke installs and certifies the testing, monitoring and analysis of copper, fiber and wireless networks.

“ClearSight’s network analysis solutions maximize network engineers’ ability to actively monitor critical links carrying high volumes of network traffic for performance bottlenecks, security anomalies and intermittent disruptions,” said Arif Kareem, president, Fluke Networks, in a statement.

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Personal income posted its largest gain in half a year in November and spending by individuals rose for a second straight month, according to government data released Wednesday.

The Commerce Department said income climbed by 0.4%, or $49.7 billion, during the month, after an upwardly revised 0.3% rise in October. That was the biggest gain since May, when it rose 1.5%. The figure was still below a consensus estimate of a 0.5% rise collected by Briefing.com.

Spending by individuals rose 0.5% last month, or $47.9 billion, below analysts’ expectations of a 0.7% hike. Personal spending was up 0 emergency payday loan.6% in October.

Personal savings totaled $521.1 billion in November, or 4.7% of disposable income, compared to $516.7 billion in October.

The report came one day after the government said that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, grew 2.2% in the third quarter.

Tuesday’s report showed that consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s economy, was weaker than previously thought. 

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Roughly 9 million U.S. households have no checking or savings account while many who do have bank accounts struggle to build credit histories, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. survey released Wednesday.

An additional 21 million households with checking accounts are considered "underbanked" because they use problematic alternatives such as payday loans or overdraft programs that provide quick cash but carry fees or triple-digit interest rates.

"In addition to paying more for basic transaction and credit financial services, these households may be more vulnerable to loss or theft and often struggle to build credit histories and achieve financial security," according to the report.

According to the survey roughly 7.7 percent of U.S. households have no bank accounts, or are "unbanked," while 17.9 percent are underbanked.

For the St. Louis metro area, the percentage was 7.5 percent and 22.4 percent, respectively.

The survey also reported that minorities were more likely to have no checking account or use problem alternative services. Approximately 21.7 percent of U.S. black households are unbanked, while 19.3 percent of Hispanic households are unbanked. Roughly 3.5 percent of Asian and white households have no checking or savings accounts payday loans.

An estimated 31 percent of black households are underbanked, while 24 percent of Hispanics are underbanked.

The disparity was greater in St. Louis: 31 percent of the area’s black households are unbanked, while 34 percent are underbanked. In contrast, the figures were 1.1 percent and 19.2 percent, respectively, for the area’s white, non-Hispanic households.

St. Louis’ unbanked percentage among black households was the highest among 20 metro areas studied by the FDIC, though seven areas didn’t report a breakdown on black households. Detroit was the second-highest at 30 percent, followed by Chicago’s 25.5 percent.

"The report shows that banks in the St. Louis region have done a poor job reaching out to African Americans," Mira Tanna, assistant director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing Opportunity Council, said in an e-mail.

"It is time for banks to offer equitable access to credit to African Americans in the St. Louis region."

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General Motors Co’s board of directors, citing a need to chart a new course, dismissed Chief Executive Fritz Henderson on Tuesday, a person with direct knowledge of the proceedings said.

GM Chairman Ed Whitacre will become interim chief executive as the automaker begins an immediate search for a replacement.

Henderson, a career GM executive, became CEO eight months ago, vowing to reform the slow-moving culture that contributed to the automaker’s collapse. The announcement of his departure came after a meeting of GM’s 13-member board in Detroit.

Henderson became CEO in March after his predecessor, Rick Wagoner, was forced out by the Obama administration as part of the U.S. government-funded restructuring of GM.

“The board decided — and Fritz agreed — that given where we are, it was time to make some changes,” GM spokesman Chris Preuss said at a hastily arranged news conference.

Whitacre, a former AT&T chief executive, became chairman of GM in July as part of a new board vetted by the U.S. Treasury and intended to safeguard the government’s $50 billion investment in the automaker.

The U.S. government has a majority stake in GM, but the Obama administration has repeatedly said that it is leaving oversight of the company to Whitacre and the board.

Preuss said the White House had been notified of Henderson’s departure, but was not part of the decision.

Whitacre appeared briefly before reporters at GM’s headquarters in Detroit but did not take questions on why the board had chosen to part ways with Henderson.

Reading from a prepared statement, Whitacre said Henderson, who helped GM through its July bankruptcy, had “done a remarkable job in leading the company through an unprecedented period of challenge and change.”

“While momentum has been building over the past several months, all involved agree that changes needed to be made,” Whitacre said.

With the appointment of Whitacre, all three U.S. automakers are now headed by outsiders to Detroit.

Ford Motor Co CEO Alan Mulallly left Boeing Co in 2006. Chrysler is now headed by Fiat SpA CEO Sergio Marchionne.

(Reporting by David Bailey, writing by Kevin Krolicki; editing by Patrick Fitzgibbons and Matthew Lewis)

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Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer’s disease. AIDS. Flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler’s diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.

Many could be on the market in five years or less.

Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the business that half the U.S. supply of flu shots was lost because of factory contamination at one of the two manufacturers left.

Vaccines are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche. Today, they’re starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in the arm.

The lure of big profit, advances in technology and growing government support has been drawing in new companies, from nascent biotechs to Johnson & Johnson. That means recent remarkable strides in overcoming dreaded diseases and annoying afflictions likely will continue.

"Even if a small portion of everything that’s going on now is successful in the next 10 years, you put that together with the last 10 years (and) it’s going to be characterized as a golden era," says Emilio Emini, Pfizer Inc.’s head of vaccine research. Pfizer has a facility in Chesterfield.

Vaccines now are viewed as a crucial path to growth, as drugmakers look for ways to bolster slowing prescription medicine sales amid intensifying generic competition and government pressure to cut down prices.

Unlike medicines that treat diseases, vaccines help prevent infections by revving up the body’s natural immune defenses against invaders. They are made from viruses, bacteria or parts of them that have been killed or weakened so they can’t cause an infection.

Investment in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has been on a tear — and accelerating since the swine flu pandemic began. Billions in government grants are bringing better, faster ways to develop and manufacture vaccines. Rising worldwide emphasis on preventive care, plus the advent of the first multibillion-dollar vaccines, have further boosted appeal.

While prescription drug sales are forecast to rise by a third in five years, vaccine sales should double, from $19 billion last year to $39 billion in 2013, according to market research firm Kalorama Information. That’s five times the $8 billion in 2004.

"What was essentially 25 years ago a rounding error now has become real money," says Robin Robinson, director of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority.

That jump is due to a couple of new blockbuster vaccines and rising use of existing ones. The government’s list of recommended vaccines for children has more than doubled since 1985 to 17. It now also calls for a half-dozen vaccines for everyone over 18, and up to four more for adults.

The last decade brought vaccines against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus — two of the world’s top killers — meningitis, cervical cancer and more.

Better technology to create and mass produce vaccines is bringing progress in preventing tropical dengue fever and new threats like superbugs MRSA and C. difficile, even ending addiction to cocaine and nicotine. Success on some vaccines in development, particularly for Alzheimer’s and AIDS, likely would bring billions a year in sales.

Just this fall and early next year, swine flu vaccines are expected to bring their makers at least a couple billion extra dollars.

But a horde of biotech companies, many using multimillion-dollar government grants, already are testing state-of-the-art technology for the next pandemic. Scientists — including some at J&J’s new vaccine partner, Holland’s Crucell — even are working to develop the holy grail: a universal flu vaccine targeting a part of the virus that doesn’t change year to year.

And some future vaccines will come in patches, pills and nasal sprays, rather than painful shots.

Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline is gunning to become the world’s top vaccine manufacturer by revenue, unseating Merck. Glaxo, which sold only one vaccine in the U.S. 13 years ago, now sells 12 here — and 30 worldwide. It has 20 more in testing, including ones for meningitis and malaria.

J&J, which previously avoided vaccines, plans to build a full vaccine portfolio, starting with universal flu and Alzheimer’s vaccines, says research head Dr. Paul Stoffels.

Even Pfizer Inc.’s $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth in October was partly about getting its vaccine expertise. Wyeth makes the most successful vaccine ever, Prevnar, which protects children from ear infections, pneumonia and blood infections. Prevnar brought in $2.7 billion in 2008 sales.

Experts call Prevnar the "game changer." It was the first vaccine to exceed $1 billion in annual sales, followed by Merck’s cervical cancer shot Gardasil, with $2.3 billion in 2008 sales.

"Vaccines are now perhaps seen to be more attractive than drugs," says Dr. Stanley Plotkin, a former University of Pennsylvania professor and industry researcher who helped develop the German measles and rotavirus vaccines.

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Kraft faces a tougher task winning over Cadbury shareholders in its bid battle after disappointing results late Tuesday cut analyst estimates of what it could afford to pay for Cadbury.

Kraft’s results, released after the market close, reinforce the view it will rubber stamp an original offer and turn the bid hostile, before using a $9 billion bridge loan to sweeten the cash element of its offer at a later date, they added.

Pablo Zuanic at broker JP Morgan said Kraft’s results were likely to cap any improvement in its offer.

“Re: the Kraft bid, we now assume a lower price on lack of competing bids, lower synergy assumptions and our growing belief Kraft could walk away… We doubt Kraft will go over 780 pence,” he added.

Kraft launched a cash-and-shares offer for the British confectionery group in early September which Cadbury promptly rejected, and by late September the UK Takeover Panel ruled that Kraft had until November 9 to make a formal binding bid for Cadbury.

The initial approach was priced at 745p a Cadbury share, or 10.2 billion pounds ($16.8 billion), but the fall in Kraft shares make it presently worth around 733p, against a current Cadbury share price of around 776p.

VALUE MAY DIP

The value of Kraft’s offer - some 60 percent in new Kraft shares - is likely to dip further when Kraft shares open later on Wednesday. Kraft shares were off 2.7 percent at 18.23 euros in early European trading.

For current values based on the latest share prices, click on.

One Cadbury top-ten investor has indicated to Reuters that a Kraft bid of 820p “certainly stacks up” and would be looked at seriously, while some brokers such as Credit Suisse still see Kraft having to pay 850p to win Cadbury.

“We believe Kraft and Cadbury are still far apart on valuation, so that offer when it comes will be hostile,” said analyst Graham Jones at broker Panmure Gordon.

He added that Kraft will be able to raise the cash level of its bid to 400p a Cadbury share from 300p after raising $9 billion of bridge finance, but its lower share price is unlikely to help its cause.

Although Kraft beat earnings expectations, it reported weaker than expected third-quarter revenue and cut its full-year 2009 sales growth forecast to about 2 percent, from 3 percent previously, pushing its shares down in after-hours trading.

Panmure’s Jones point out Kraft’s results disappointed on sales growth for the fourth quarter in a row, with underlying sales only up 0.5 percent compared to Cadbury’s impressive 7 percent third-quarter growth, as reported last month.

Other analysts said this reflected the description of Kraft by Cadbury Chairman Roger Carr as a “low growth conglomerate business model,” in a September letter to Kraft’s CEO Irene Rosenfeld emphasizing why Cadbury was rejecting Kraft approach. 

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Bank of New York Mellon Corp Chief Executive Robert Kelly was recently approached about taking the CEO job at Bank of America Corp, but he has shown no interest in the job, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal reported on Sunday that Kelly has been approached more than once about being a potential successor to Kenneth Lewis, who will retire at the end of this year.

Some Bank of America stakeholders and regulators are pushing the board’s search committee to look outside the company for the next CEO, but potential candidates have fallen short of the board’s hopes or were not interested, the paper reported on its website easy online payday loans.

The search committee could also hire an insider, and Bank of America Chief Risk Officer Gregory Curl and small-business banking head Brian Moynihan are the two top candidates in that case, sources told the Journal.

The search committee is not expected to make a decision until the end of this week at the earliest, these sources told the paper.

Spokesmen for Bank of America and BNY Mellon did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the Journal report.

(Reporting by Anupreeta Das; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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The Wall Street Journal will close its Boston bureau to save money, and shift coverage of the mutual fund industry to its money and investing reporting team, the newspaper’s editor said on Thursday.

“The economic background is painfully obvious to us all,” Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson told the paper’s employees in a memo. “That there has been truly great reporting… out of Boston over many, many years is not in doubt. But we remain in the midst of a profound downturn in advertising revenue and thus must think the unthinkable.”

News Corp, which owns the Journal, will keep sister news organizations Dow Jones Newswires and MarketWatch in Boston, the memo said. An investigative reporting operation for the Journal will remain too, Thomson said.

Nine bureau reporters at the Journal would have to apply for other jobs, the memo said.

A Journal spokesman declined to say how much money the closure will save.

There are no plans to close other U.S. or international bureaus, Thomson wrote. The Journal has 16 U.S. bureaus and 23 outside the United States.

Boston is a financial services hub, home to some of the world’s largest mutual fund firms, closely held Fidelity Investments and Sun Life Financial’s MFS Investment Management

The closing comes in the same month the Journal reported that it was one of the few U low fee payday advance.S. newspapers to report a circulation gain — of 0.6 percent — for the six-month period ending in September, compared with last year.

Additionally, the Journal said on Tuesday that it will stop selling its U.S. edition in London, and will offer a redesigned version of its European edition later this year.

Many U.S. newspapers are shedding jobs as advertising revenue falls and circulation declines as more people get their news online for free instead of paying for it in print.

The New York Times Co said earlier this month that it will cut 100 jobs through buyouts, and possibly layoffs, from its namesake newspaper’s editorial operations.

The Journal charges for access to its online edition, and News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has redoubled his international newspaper empire’s efforts to charge for news online. The Journal recently began charging for many of its articles for people who read them on mobile devices.

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan. Additional reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Bankrupt U.S. chicken producer Pilgrim’s Pride Corp reported a $56.71 million profit for the fiscal fourth quarter that ended September 26 and the company said on Wednesday that, upon exiting bankruptcy, it will be a “stronger, leaner company.”

The financial report was filed late on Tuesday as required by the bankruptcy court. It is not comparable with quarterly earnings reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission because the data may be incomplete. But it does give an indication of the company’s financial health.

The earnings of $56.71 million were on revenue of $1.63 billion.

Pilgrim’s Pride entered bankruptcy in December 2008 and did not file a fiscal 2008 fourth quarter earnings report, but at that time it had forecast a fourth quarter loss of $802 million on sales of $2.17 billion.

It filed a reorganization plan in September and expects to exit bankruptcy by the end of this year 24 hour payday loan.

As part of its reorganization plan, Pilgrim’s Pride agreed in September to sell a majority stake to Brazilian meat company JBS SA. Earlier this month, U.S. regulators approved that deal, but bankruptcy court approval is still needed.

In addition, while under bankruptcy protection, Pilgrim’s Pride has closed and sold plants and reduced production.

“Our financial position has improved significantly this year,” Pilgrim’s Pride spokesman Gary Rhodes said in an email on Wednesday. “We have returned to profitability, the quality of our asset base has improved significantly and we are gaining additional business.”

Pilgrim’s Pride shares were down 1 cent at $6.39 in midday Pink Sheet trading.

(Reporting by Bob Burgdorfer, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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