in brief

Golden Gaming will open two new PT-branded pubs in August

Golden Gaming will open two new taverns under the PT's brand in August, the company announced Tuesday.

PT's Pub will open Aug. 19 in the old Triple Bar Bar Bar location at Craig Road and Decatur Boulevard. A newly built PT's Gold is scheduled to open Aug. 31 on South Buffalo Drive north of the Las Vegas Beltway.

Golden Gaming will hold job fairs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. July 26 and Aug. 2 and from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Aug. 9 at the Sierra Gold at 6515 S. Jones Blvd.

The company said it plans to hire a total of 25 to 35 employees to staff both locations. Golden Gaming will also look to fill open positions at its other taverns in Clark County.

Once the pubs open, Golden Gaming will own 42 taverns under the PT's and Sierra Gold brands in Nevada.

SEATTLE

As iPad sales nearly match Mac sales, Apple profits surge

Apple Inc. blew past expectations when reporting results for its latest quarter on Tuesday, selling almost as many of its new iPad tablets as it sold Mac computers.

Apple said net income rose 78 percent to $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per share, for the April-to-June period, from $1.8 billion, or $2.01 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose 61 percent from last year to $15.7 billion, making it the company's highest quarterly revenue ever, even beating the latest holiday season.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast net income of $3.11 per share on $14.7 billion in revenue.

Apple sold 8.4 million iPhones, up 61 percent from last year. Apple also said it sold about 3.3 million iPads in the gadget's first three months.

Apple shares rose $6.31, or 2.57 percent, Tuesday to close at $251.89 on the Nasdaq National Market.

Medicine recalls dampen profits for Johnson & Johnson

Repeated recalls of popular Johnson & Johnson nonprescription medicines kept second-quarter revenue flat and forced J&J to cut its profit forecast, but a big drop in its tax rate enabled the health care giant to pull off a 7.5 percent increase in net income.

New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J said its net income for the quarter was $3.45 billion, or $1.23 per share. That's up from $3.21 billion, or $1.15 per share, a year earlier. The improvement was due to a $284 million drop in taxes paid for the quarter.

Excluding a one-time litigation gain of $67 million, earnings were $3.38 billion, or $1.21 per share.

That just matched the forecast of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who were expecting $1.21 a share, excluding one-time items.

NEW YORK

BP selling assets for $7 billion to help pay for spill cleanup

BP PLC said Tuesday it is selling assets in the United States, Canada and Egypt to Apache Corp. for $7 billion to help pay the costs from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Some or all of the proceeds will go toward a $20 billion fund that BP agreed to last month under pressure from the Obama administration. The fund will help pay cleanup costs and damages from the spill.

As the spill escalated in the weeks after the explosion of the BP-operated rig Deepwater Horizon, BP realized it needed to bolster its available cash. The company suspended dividend payments of about $10.6 billion for this year. And it said it would speed up plans to sell $10 billion in assets. Apache eventually emerged as a potential buyer.

BP has spent about $4 billion so far on containing and cleaning up the oil, as well as on damage claims from Gulf businesses

NEW YORK

Goldman Sachs' earnings drop 83 percent in second quarter

Goldman Sachs had an 83 percent drop in second-quarter net income as trading revenue slumped during a dismal spring for the financial markets.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Tuesday its earnings fell to $453 million.

The bank also booked a $550 million charge for its settlement of civil fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission and took a $600 million charge because of a new tax on employee bonuses in Britain.

Despite the results, Goldman's stock rose $2.23, or 2.22 percent, to $148.91 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Excluding one-time costs, net income after payment of dividends on preferred stock came to $2.75 per share, easily topping the $2.08 analysts forecast. Analysts typically exclude one-time charges from their estimates.

Revenue fell 36 percent to $8.84 billion, short of the $8.94 billion predicted by analysts.

NEW YORK

Stabilizing motorcycle sales boost Harley-Davidson profits

A profit at its motorcycle financing unit and stabilizing bike sales sent Harley-Davidson Inc.'s net income soaring in the second quarter.

Harley's net income in the three months ended June 27 totaled $71.2 million, or 30 cents per share, up from net income of $19.8 million, or 8 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding discontinued operations, income was 59 cents per share. On that basis, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a smaller profit of 41 cents per share, on average.

Revenue from motorcycles and related products was flat at $1.14 billion. Analysts were calling for $1.13 billion

BUFFALO, N.Y.

Facebook aims to get court
to throw out ownership claim

Facebook will try to get a New York man's claim for majority ownership of the website thrown out of court, attorneys for the social networking site said Tuesday.

A complaint by Paul Ceglia of Wellsville claims that a 7-year-old contract he signed with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for software development entitles him to 84 percent of the company.

"No one's ever said it's not his signature or it's a fake contract," Ceglia attorney Terrence Connors said during a federal court hearing in Buffalo.

Connors said the two met when Zuckerberg, then a Harvard University freshman, responded to an online ad Ceglia had posted looking for someone to develop software for a street-mapping database he was creating.

Zuckerberg offered to take on Ceglia's project for $1,000, Connors said, and then told Ceglia about a project of his own, a kind of online yearbook for Harvard students that he wanted to expand.