In Brief

WASHINGTON

Casinos granted exemption from new finance overhaul bill

Casinos won an exemption Wednesday from credit rules in the Wall Street overhaul bill being debated in the Senate.

An amendment carves out an exception for entities that offer no-interest loans, which essentially is what a casino does when it issues markers to high rollers, according to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the amendment sponsor.

Ensign said that without the exemption, which sharpened the definition of "credit" in the bill, casinos would be subject to regulation by a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"This huge bureaucracy would be getting into the casino business, which is the last thing we want," Ensign said. "Casinos didn't have anything to do with the financial collapse in the country so we were trying to make sure they would not be affected by the bill."

The amendment was passed by voice vote after Ensign and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., got sign-offs from Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Republican leaders.

Ensign said the senators moved forward with a fix after casino owner Steve Wynn had his lawyers look at the bill over the weekend, "and they said absolutely it was a problem."

WASHINGTON

Consumer prices slip in April; first drop in more than a year

Consumer prices fell in April for the first time in more than a year. The figures released Wednesday were welcome news for people who qualify for loans and want to take on more debt. But low rates hurt savers, especially those on fixed incomes.

The Fed now appears more likely to keep rates at record-low levels well into next year, economists say. Some had thought it would start increasing rates at the end of this year.

Declining gasoline prices pulled overall prices down 0.1 percent last month. Gasoline prices are predicted to sink lower still this summer.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was flat in April. Over the past 12 months, it has risen just 0.9 percent -- the smallest increase in 44 years.

Economists had expected overall prices and core prices to rise 0.1 percent in April. The drop in overall prices was the first decline since a similar dip in March 2009.

Energy prices fell 1.4 percent, the biggest one-month decline since March 2009. Gasoline prices dropped 2.4 percent.

Food costs rose 0.2 percent in April, the same modest increase posted in March. Economists had expected a bigger increase because of a winter freeze on Florida vegetable and citrus crops.

WASHINGTON

More homeowners missing mortgage payments, data show

The mortgage crisis is dragging on the economic recovery as more homeowners fall behind on their payments.

More than 10 percent of homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday. That's a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago.

A big jump in the number of borrowers who have missed three months of mortgage payments drove the increase.

One encouraging sign is the number of homeowners just starting to show trouble is trending downward. As of March, nearly 3.5 percent of borrowers had missed one month of mortgage payments, down from about 3.8 percent a year earlier. Around 4.3 million homeowners, or about 8 percent of all Americans with a mortgage, are at risk of losing their homes, the group's top economist estimates.

SAN FRANCISCO

Symantec paying $1.28 billion to buy division of VeriSign

Symantec Corp. is paying $1.28 billion in cash to buy a division of VeriSign Inc. that sells security technology to websites.

The deal, announced Wednesday, represents VeriSign's most aggressive move yet to slim down and concentrate on its core business: managing traffic to websites with addresses ending in ".com" and ".net," and collecting fees for registering those domain names.

VeriSign has been purging divisions for the past three years, after realizing it was spread too thin following a buying binge designed to insulate it from the kinds of problems it had after the dot-com collapse a decade ago.

Before Wednesday's deal with Symantec, VeriSign had sold more than a dozen businesses since 2007 for a total of nearly $1 billion.

NEW YORK

Sales of clothing, indulgences help boost earnings for Target

Target Corp. reported a 29 percent increase in first-quarter net income, as its customers, feeling better about their finances, treated themselves to small indulgences like clothing that carried fat profit margins.

Rising sales also provided a sign that the retail chain is winning customers from competitors such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which reported its fourth straight quarter of declines in a key revenue measure Tuesday. Improvement in Target's credit card business also boosted profits.

Target's net income rose to $671 million, or 90 cents a share, for the three months ended May 1, from $522 million, or 69 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose 5.5 percent to $15.16 billion.

Company shares slipped 19 cents, or 0.35 percent, to close at $54.03 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.