US stocks are mixed following two days of losses

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks were drifting between small gains and losses on Wednesday following two days of losses. Worries over the timing of a U.S. rate increase and economic weakness in China kept trading subdued.

KEEPING SCORE: The Dow Jones industrial average edged up 15 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,029 as of 12:21 p.m. Eastern time. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose a point to 1,989. The Nasdaq composite was up 12 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,564.

DOUGHNUT DOLDRUMS: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts fell 98 cents, or 5.6 percent, to $16.63 after reporting earnings that fell short of analysts' forecasts.

EBAY FALLS AGAIN: EBay fell sharply for a second day following Apple's announcement on Tuesday that it is introducing a new mobile-pay system for shoppers. The stock fell $1.60, or 3 percent, to $51.13. Investors see Apple's payment system as a direct competitor to eBay's PayPal division.

GARMIN REBOUNDS: GPS device maker Garmin rose $1.40 to $53.11, a gain of 2.7 percent. That was the biggest increase in the S&P 500 index. The stock fell 3.5 percent on Tuesday after Apple announced it also would begin selling a smartwatch next year. Garmin has heavily invested in watches used by athletes to track their performance.

SECURITY STOCK SURGE: Palo Alto Networks rose $7.40, or 8 percent, to $96.68 after the security-software maker forecast an increase in revenue in its fiscal first quarter higher than analysts had expected.

THE FED: Investors are questioning whether the U.S. Federal Reserve might raise its benchmark interest rate earlier than many expect. In a paper this week, two San Francisco Fed economists said the public appears to expect a "more accommodative policy" than Fed board members do. Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities, says he expects many investors to change their forecasts for the first Fed increase to early next year from next summer.

The Fed meets next week to discuss possible changes to its monetary policy.

THE QUOTE: "The market is betting that the Fed won't be overly accommodative," says Ricchiuto. "The worst things for stocks would be the Fed to raise rates sooner rather than later."

EUROPEAN STOCKS FLAT: Germany's DAX fell 0.1 percent. France's CAC-40 and Britain's FTSE 100 were flat.

CHINA'S STRUGGLE: Investors are keeping an eye on China amid signs of slumping economic growth there. Manufacturing growth slowed in August and imports unexpectedly shrank by 2.4 percent.

ENERGY AND BONDS: Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell $1.37, or 1.5 percent, to $91.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Traders are expecting ample supplies and weak demand for oil. Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.53 percent from 2.50 percent on Tuesday.

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Feds raid fashion hub in money laundering probe

LOS ANGELES — Federal agents raided dozens of businesses in the fashion district of Los Angeles early Wednesday as part of an investigation into suspected money laundering done for Mexican drug cartels.

Several arrests have been made, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.

The agency declined to provide further details before a press conference with federal prosecutors that was set for later in the day.

Hundreds of federal and local law enforcement agents fanned out across downtown Los Angeles in the sweep targeting about 70 locations.

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Conn. wins $8.2 million to upgrade freight rail

HARTFORD, Conn. — Eastern Connecticut will receive an $8.2 million federal grant to upgrade freight rail that officials say will spur economic development and drive more traffic through the port of New London.

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., called the grant announced on Tuesday a big win that resulted from a "broad base of community support and advocacy." Elected officials, backed by regional business owners and Genesee & Wyoming Inc., owner of New England Central Railroad, lobbied federal transportation officials for the money.

New England Central is contributing $2 million to the work.

The region's rail system is "badly outdated," Murphy said.

"Frankly, this state of disrepair has been holding the region back for too long," he said.

The upgrade calls for installing more than 15,000 ties and 15,000 tons of ballast in the towns along the route from New London to Stafford Springs. Following the upgrade, the rail line will meet new freight standards, including increased weight capacity.

The state will upgrade 19 miles of outdated rail through Franklin, Norwich, Stafford and Willimantic.

The town of Palmer, Massachusetts, is backing the rail upgrade in eastern Connecticut to promote a regional north-south freight rail line. Palmer is home to businesses that distribute products delivered by rail and would benefit from an upgraded freight line, town officials have said.

Vermont's segment of the line also has been upgraded, extending the rail line from Massachusetts to St. Albans. A grant will replace a freight rail line from St. Albans nearly to Canada.

The rail corridor extends from the port of New London, Connecticut's easternmost outlet to Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean, to the Vermont-Canadian border. The line connects businesses with shipping options for raw materials and finished products.

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'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' star Terry Crews to voice Waze navigation app

Popular navigation application Waze has added its second celebrity voice option in the United States, tapping "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" actor Terry Crews as a guide.

The partnership leads up to the Fox comedy's season two premiere on September 28. Crews stars as Sgt. Terry Jeffords on the series, opposite Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher.

To ride along with Crews, Waze users can update the app on their mobile phone, select Settings, Sound, and "English (US) - Terry Crews" as their voice language for the GPS navigation. Waze previously partnered with Universal Pictures to add Kevin Hart to its navigation service ahead of last year's "Ride Along" premiere.

Waze boasts more than 50 million worldwide users and is available in more than 30 languages on iOS and Android platform.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Toronto: Paramount Pictures acquires 'Top Five' for worldwide distribution

Paramount Pictures announced on Wednesday that it had acquired worldwide distribution of the Chris Rock comedy "Top Five," which premiered at Toronto to rave reviews over the weekend.

The deal, according to sources, was said to close at a whopping $12.5 million, which will likely make it the biggest out of the festival. The studio has agreed to spend another $20 million on P&A, Variety has learned.

Rock directed and starred in the film about a comedian-movie star which is told over the course of a single day. Scott Rudin and Barry Diller financed the picture, which had a budget of more than $10 million.

"Chris and I go back decades, both personally and professionally, and so I am particularly proud to have watched his career grow to its highest heights over many decades," Paramount CEO Brad Grey said in a statement.

The deal was negotiated by UTA and Paramount's Eben Davidson and Rona Cosgrove.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Casino developers respond to plan critiques

Mohegan Sun and Wynn Resorts have pushed back at critiques of their casino plans by state gaming commissioners, with Mohegan insisting its plan is on sounder financial footing than a gaming panel analysis concluded and Wynn saying it has Sullivan Square traffic impacts under control.

The applicants for the lone Boston-area casino license, who are proposing $1 billion-plus casinos in Everett and Revere, submitted letters to the commission today countering several conclusions commissioners drew in their review of the plans' finances, mitigation, and designs.

The commission will weigh the feedback today in crafting a final set of license conditions they will ask each applicant to agree to if it is awarded the license, a decision that could come as early as Friday.

Most of the push back came from Mohegan in response to Commissioner Enrique Zuniga's review of its plan to finance 60 percent of its project with money from private equity firm Brigade Capital. Zuniga concluded Mohegan needs to obtain $100 million more in equity to have sufficient funds to aggressively proceed with construction, saying it will only have $45 million to work with out of the box compared to Wynn's $478 million.

"(Mohegan Sun Massachusetts') application includes a binding financing commitment letter and two highly confident letters from some of the most respected financial institutions that participate actively in the financing of the gaming market sector," Mohegan wrote in its letter. "(T)he notion that MSM only has $45 million available to initiate development is not true. We will have several months to get the financing in place and will have the $732 million in financing quickly, which we can then deploy."

Despite the response, Zuniga determined his working group made no material errors in deeming Wynn's financing plan superior and less risky than Mohegan's.

Wynn disputed that its traffic plan lacked solutions for intersections in Charlestown that would be impacted by the casino, saying its plan won't add any cars to to the Rutherford Avenue or Main Street approaches to Sullivan Square.

"The proposed improvements at the intersection of Cambridge Street/Maffa Way/Alford Street will mitigate the impacts of Wynn Everett's traffic," the company said.

Commissioner James McHugh said a detailed traffic solution will have to be reached collaboratively with the City of Boston, which has had chilly relations with Wynn and cut a mitigation deal with Mohegan, giving them the edge in that category.

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Comcast: Still on track to close Time Warner Cable deal by 'early 2015′

Comcast Corp. is on track to close its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable by "early 2015," the company's senior vice president of investor relations told investors Wednesday, reiterating the Philadelphia company's most recent guidance concerning the progress of the closely watched deal.

"At one point, we had said late 2014. It has obviously moved back a little bit,' said Jason Armstrong, the investor-relations executive. He explained that Comcast's efforts to spin-off some of its systems in an effort to appease regulators and gain approval for the mega-purchase, which has been valued at $45 billion, was a partial cause of the timeline. Comcast announced earlier this year that the merger would likely not take place until 2015.

Armstrong made his comments during an investor conference organized by Goldman Sachs.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Apple watch: This is not the media device you're looking for

Anyone who expected the Apple Watch -- or any of the current crop of smartwatches -- to yield a tiny new canvas for mobile TV, streaming video or Dick Tracy two-way "wrist TV" is bound to be disappointed.

The Apple Watch, launched with the Cuptertino magic factory's usual fanfare, reps its first new product category in four years. The devices feature the company's Retina high-resolution displays -- but don't include video-playback capabilities. Moreover, the smartwatches' screens are just 1.5 or 1.7 inches (38 or 42 millimeters) high: hardly suitable for viewing even short-form video.

Meanwhile, for Internet access the Apple Watches require an iPhone anyway. Clearly, the biggest-screen hypothesis that people will always consume video on the largest display available will win the day. If you're carrying an iPhone, particularly one of the bigger-screen iPhone 6 models, even if the Apple Watch could stream a YouTube video or Netflix show you would obviously choose to view it on the better display.

The Apple Watch is essentially a smartphone companion that's also a fashion accessory (there will be an 18-karat gold version), and a pricey one at that: The devices, slated to ship in early 2015, will start at $349. Perhaps more than anything, it marks Apple's foray into the luxury-watch space.

Other smartwatches have the same set of challenges. Samsung's main Galaxy Gear watch is marketed as a "personal assistant right on your wrist"; the line includes a model that functions as a standalone music player but not one for video. Galaxy Gear smartwatches include a camera for recording video but can't access streaming video.

Google's Android Wear platform, adopted by Samsung, Motorola and LG, is designed to provide "useful information when you need it most" with apps including those for Facebook Messenger, Uber and Runtastic for tracking workouts -- but not Google's own YouTube. And the Pebble, among the first smartwatches on the market, has a nice brilliant display but also lacks video.

The key issue: CE makers want to make the watches as thin and light as possible, as well as to have excellent battery life. Stuffing in video features would make them bulkier, even more expensive and drain power resources. (Even so, the Apple Watch has an estimated battery life of just 24 hours.) And again, users hold in their hands a great video device -- the smartphone -- or a tablet, which is even better for TV or movie consumption.

It's worth noting that watchmakers have tried to bring TV to people's wrists before. In fact, Seiko launched a TV watch in the U.S. in 1983, with a 1.2-inch LCD screen. But the category never took off, given they were expensive and bulky.

The Apple Watch does include the ability to play music (disconnected from an iPhone) and has some peripheral media features. It can act as a remote control for Apple TV set-tops and control music on iPhones. But it's mainly a sidekick to the flagship smartphone line, designed for alerts, quick access to info and apps and -- don't forget -- informing you of the time. The closest thing to a video feature in the Apple Watch is that it can act as a remote for the iPhone's iSight camera to display a preview of what your iPhone sees.

In its big reveal Tuesday, Apple remained silent on an area of keen interest to Hollywood: CEO Tim Cook, who said the watch was one of the "amazing" new products he's been alluding to, didn't mention Apple TV. Nor did the company unleash a much-speculated-about integrated HDTV -- which, at this point, is officially the moldiest rumor in the world.

Ultimately, the Next Big Thing in wearable tech may hold only marginal interest for the entertainment biz. With smartwatches, Silicon Valley may have hit the limit on how far it can shrink screens and still make them viable as entertainment platforms.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Chiquita to talk with potential buyers

NEW YORK — Not even a month after flatly rejecting a takeover bid by two Brazilian companies, Chiquita will open its books to them.

Should Chiquita eventually see eye-to-eye with the investment firm Safra Group and Cutrale Group, a juice company, it could scuttle a proposed tie up with the Irish fruit company Fyffes, a merger that is far along in the process.

Chiquita did not elaborate Wednesday on why it had decided to talk with the Brazilian group and sign a confidentiality agreement. It said that it would "allow Cutrale / Safra to conduct due diligence, including access to a data room and its management team."

But Chiquita has been pressured to do so by two proxy advisory firms, and company shares have been depressed.

There has also been pushback on a national level against the type of deal Chiquita is trying to engineer with Fyffes.

The new company, called ChiquitaFyffes PLC, with a new headquarters in Ireland, would allow Chiquita to lower its U.S. tax rate.

Treasury Secretary Jacob said this week that the Obama administration would decide "in the very near future" what it could do to make it less profitable for U.S. companies to shift their legal addresses to other countries, a maneuver called an "inversion."

Political leaders like Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, have lashed out at inversions, saying that they increase the tax burden on everyone else.

Another major U.S. corporation, Walgreen Co., ditched an inversion plan last month under rising political heat.

Safra and Cutrale offered $611 million for Chiquita. The proposed merger with Fyffes is an all-stock deal that would move Chiquita's company headquarters from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Dublin, where Fyffes is based.

Shares of Chiquita Brands International Inc. rose 12 cents to $13.93 in midday trading.

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U.K. broadcaster ITV invests in Believe Entertainment

Believe Entertainment, which produces digital series like the animated "The LeBrons" and Jay Mohr's game show "Money Where Your Mouth Is," has secured financing from U.K. television broadcaster and producer ITV.

Specific financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but ITV will join Believe's board of directors and work to expand the company's slate of projects with its production expertise, international distribution and talent relationships.

"ITV will offer numerous opportunities for us to grow our efforts in multiple formats, channels and globally to the benefit of both our talent and brand partners," Believe co-founders Dan Goodman and William Masterson III said.

ITV is one of the largest independent producer of unscripted shows in the U.S., with series like "Hell's Kitchen," "Kitchen Nightmares" and "Rich Kids of Beverly Hills."

New York-based Believe recently started producing "@EpicEDM," an original series featuring top electronic dance music artists, festivals and clubs designed for Twitter.

Its shows also include "In the Booth," a YouTube series about DJ Tiesto; and "Inspired by Sabrina," a women's lifestyle show hosted by HGTV star Sabrina Soto, available on AOL.

"The LeBrons," featuring NBA star LeBron James, launched on YouTube, and is syndicated to Xbox Live.

The company paired up with Paramount Digital Entertainment, in 2010, to co-produce the digital series "The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers," created by director Jon M. Chu ("G.I. Joe: Retaliation," the "Step Up" franchise).

Believe's co-founders previously produced Seth MacFarlane's "Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" and shorts that helped promote Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno."

"Believe Entertainment Group's expertise has generated hundreds of millions of views in just under five years," said Paul Buccieri, chairman of ITV Studios U.S. Group and ITV Studios Global Entertainment. "This added to Dan and Bill's combined 35 years in advertising, digital, media and entertainment, makes them a compelling strategic partner for ITV."

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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