REALTORS TRY OUT A RANGE OF PRICES.(BUSINESS)

Byline: JAMES DENN Business writer ALBANY -- Realtors are trying new ways to lure people into buying houses as they face the prospect of further dips in prices and weaker than expected sales. -

In addition to marketing houses over the Internet, a sales step that began in earnest last year, a new sales technique has been introduced to get buyers to take a look at houses for sale.

Prudential Blake Atlantic Realtors of Albany has begun a marketing technique used in other parts of the country called ``value range marketing.'' Rather than listing a house at a single price, Prudential lays out a price range. Instead of asking $110,000, for example, the seller indicates a willingness to listen to offers between $88,000 and $110,000.

Setting a so-called value range gets more people to look at the property, said Prudential Blake co-owner Jeffrey Christiana. More lookers means more offers, he says.

Once a …

Denny's shares climb after CEO departs

Shares of Denny's Corp. soared Wednesday after the struggling restaurant chain said it was replacing CEO Nelson Marchioli with board Chairwoman Debra Smithart-Oglesby on an interim basis and looking for a permanent replacement.

THE SPARK: Tuesday evening's announcement came less than a month after the end of bitter proxy fight with investors that had pushed to oust Marchioli, Smithart-Oglesby and former Chairman Robert Marks from the company's board.

THE BIG PICTURE: For weeks the Spartanburg, S.C. company and investors sparred over the company's management and direction. An investor group calling itself the Committee to Enhance Denny's tried to replace the …

City Boy Turns Logger

You can take the city out of the boy after all. We could use a few more converts like Al Falewitch, who now logs just over the Canadian border in UP michigan.

Al Falewitch was a city boy born in Chicago. He didn't grow up in the business, and nevet touched a chainsaw until he was 19 yeats old. Yet at 40 he is a successful logger in Marquette, just over the Ontario border in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP), subcontracting for J.M. Longyear LLC.

After a two-year program studying heavy equipment, maintenance and business, he started out 19 years ago working by himself with a chainsaw and pole skidder. Eventually, he hired help, but employee problems and workers' comp issues …

FItch keeps Banco Votorantim at BBB-.

(ADPnews) - Mar 23, 2010 - Fitch upheld on Monday Brazil's Banco Votorantim's (BV) long-term foreign and local currency issuer default ratings (IDRs) of BBB- with a "stable" outlook.

The agency also affirmed at F3 the lender's short-term foreign and local currency IDRs, its individual rating of C/D, the support rating of 2, the national long-term rating of AA+(bra) with a "stable" outlook and the short-term national rating of F1+(bra).

At the same time, Fitch confirmed the AA+(bra) national long-term rating of BV Leasing Arrendamento Mercantil's (BV Leasing) issuances.

The bank's IDRs and national ratings are underpinned by the support from Banco …

SPIELBERG, `SHAKESPEARE' TAKE GLOBES.(MAIN)

CAPTION(S):

CHRIS PIZELLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS DIRECTORS GEORGE LUCAS and Steven Spielberg, from left in photo above, …

German court upholds convictions in Allawi plot

A German court has upheld the conviction of three Iraqis who were sentenced last year for plotting in 2004 to kill Ayad Allawi, then Iraq's prime minister.

The Federal Court of Justice said Monday it rejected the men's appeals in a Sept. 22 ruling.

They had been convicted by the Stuttgart state court in July 2008 of attempted participation in murder and membership in the terror organization Ansar al-Islam, which is linked to al-Qaida.

Judges said they had planned to attack Allawi at a 2004 business forum in Berlin. A few weeks …

New Research on Ischemia from Yantai University Summarized.

"Ethnopharmacological relevance: Sophora alopecuroides L (the clinical usefulness of compound Kudouzi injection) has been used mainly for the treatment of fever, inflammation, edema and pain. Sophocarpine, a tetracyclic quinolizidine alkaloid, is one of the most abundant active ingredients in Sophora alopecuroides L Sophocarpine injection (called the Kangke injection) has been demonstrated to have significant antivirus effects against coxsackievirus B3 and therapeutic effects for viral myocarditis in clinical," scientists in Shandong, People's Republic of China report (see also Ischemia).

"Aim of the study: The present study was to evaluate the protective effect of …