IN BRIEF

Binion workers OK new labor contract

Union workers at Binion's casino downtown have a new contract, but won't be getting as much in raises as other downtown employees.

Late Friday about 400 Culinary Union Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 voted to approve a five-year labor agreement with Terry Caudill, the new owner of the property.

The deal preserves workers' generous health care and pension benefits, but has wage concessions the union says were due to "extreme financial distress" that developed under previous owners.

"You have to deal with the reality of what has happened economically," said Pilar Weiss, speaking for the union.

In March Caudill, who owns the Four Queens, closed a deal with MTR Gaming of Chester, W. Va., to buy Binion's for $32 million.

Caudill became the third owner since 2004 when regulators swept in and locked up the cash cage to ensure then-owner Becky Binion Behnen could pay mounting debts.

SAN FRANCISCO

Best Buy to test recycling program

Under pressure to help dispose some of the electronic waste it helped create, Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a convenient way to ensure millions of obsolescent TVs, old computers and other unwanted gadgets don't poison the nation's dumps.

The trial, expected to be announced today, covers 117 Best Buy stores scattered across eight states that will collect a wide variety of electronic detritus at no charge, even if the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer didn't originally sell the merchandise.

The pilot stores are in Best Buy's Northern California, Minneapolis and Baltimore markets, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Depending on how the test goes, the nation's largest electronics retailer may expand the program to all 922 stores in the United States.

SAN JOSE, Calif.

Adobe to launch new version of Acrobat

Adobe Systems Inc. is launching a new version of its document sharing software Acrobat today, and this time it can package videos.

Acrobat allows users to package documents so they can be read across different hardware and operating systems.

Acrobat 9 comes with Adobe's video-enabling software Flash. Users can include Flash-based videos when they create and share documents with the portable document format, commonly known as PDF.

With a professional version of Acrobat 9, for example, users could package a Power Point presentation not just with images, but also with audio of the presenter's voice.

"You can now send someone a presentation that speaks on its own all through a PDF," said Adobe spokesman Kevin M. Lynch, who is not related to the company's chief technology officer with the same name.

Adobe also launched Acrobat.com, which will host Web-based software services to support document creation and sharing.

The San Jose-based software maker hasn't launched a new version of Acrobat since November 2006, almost a year after it purchased Macromedia Inc., the creator of Flash software. Users have expected to see Flash integrated into Acrobat since that purchase, Lynch said.