In the News: September 12

Skittish lenders apparently are driving a downturn in real estate deals.

The winner of the Miss Tuscola (Ill.) beauty pageant has been stripped of her crown and a $1,000 scholarship for breach of contract after pictures of her in a hookah bar were posted on the Internet.

Manager Ozzie Guillen of the Chicago White Sox — the team with the worst record in baseball — has been given a new contract extension through 2012. Rumor has the figure at over $2 million a year.

Sevilla goalkeeper Andres Palop — who is having a much better year than Ozzie Guillen — also gets a contract extension from Sevilla F.C., this one to run through 2011.

The Colorado Supreme Court has refused to review a $4 million judgment won by a sheep rancher against an Oklahoma oil company for failing to pay appropriate royalties.

Some people do make a nice, legal living off of illegal drugs — like Raytheon, which just earned a contract worth up to $15 billion to provide technology to try to stop the trade.

A Maryland appellate court has reversed a lower court ruling that Steve Belkin, majority owner of hockey’s Atlanta Thrashers and basketball’s Atlanta Hawks, had a contractual right to buy out his co-owners.

In a big privatization deal, America’s Ford Motor has acquired Romania’s state-owned Automobile Craiova for € 57 million, with a pledge to pump another € 675 million in the troubled company and a promise to buy € 1 billion in Romanian parts and supplies by 2012.  Ford had a plant in Romania until 1944, when it was confiscated by the state.

[Frank Snyder]