Starbucks to use high-tech sensors to fight tampering

Pacific Northwest

Starbucks announced Wednesday that it will install high-tech sensors to detect tampering with its cargo containers filled with coffee beans shipped from Guatemala to Europe or the United States.

Seattle-based Starbucks, the world's leading coffee retailer, had participated in an ongoing study by the Homeland Security Department that warned such containers can be opened secretly during shipment to add or remove items without alerting authorities.

The $75 million, three-year study, called "Operation Safe Commerce," said such risks could allow terrorists to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States. The study is considered "sensitive security information," but The Associated Press reported its findings earlier this week.

Part of the U.S. study tracked shipments of coffee beans from Guatemala's Palin Dry Mill to Starbucks' Kent plant and found serious security problems.

The sensors will detect whether anyone opened cargo containers during shipment.

"We are taking a proactive approach in securing our supply chain to ensure the safety of our customers, partners, employees, communities and countries of origins," said Dorothy Kim, executive vice president of Starbucks' supply chain operations.

Flight-attendants contract reached

Alaska Airlines and representatives of its flight attendants union agreed on a four-year contract that the union said includes pay increases for all its members.

That is the easy part. Now the accord must be voted on by the 2,480 Alaska employees represented by the Association of Flight Attendants. A previous agreement was rejected by the union's rank-and-file last July.

"We got across-the-board pay raises" after resisting company efforts to cut wages, union spokeswoman Veda Shook said.

The previous tentative agreement was rejected partly because the highest-paid attendants didn't get raises, Shook said in an interview.

$16.3 million grant from government

The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), a world center for computer-assisted research into human biology and disease, has received a $16.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The five-year grant, announced late Wednesday, will fund a new center within ISB's building on Lake Union to teach outside researchers the "systems" approach to biology — a way of studying complex relationships among multiple components of an organism. ISB's annual budget is more than $25 million.

This will be one of six similar centers at institutions including Harvard, Princeton and the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories.

Pacific Northwest

Company beefs up compliance team

Under pressure to improve technical materials it was ordered to share under its 2001 U.S. antitrust settlement, Microsoft last month shifted 50 workers from the Windows Vista and Longhorn Server teams to work on compliance efforts.

The workers supplemented a team of 17 that was already working on documentation of communications protocols. A federal judge last month directed the company to step up its efforts, and Microsoft on Wednesday filed a progress report detailing its efforts.

So far, the editors, technical writers and managers moved onto the project have proposed fixes for 80 percent of the high-priority bugs in the documentation. They'll rotate back to their teams in a few weeks. No product delays should result from their temporary reassignment, said Mary Snapp, Microsoft deputy general counsel.

Bothell firm finds another partner

Jilted earlier this month by one major drug company, Nastech Pharmaceutical is back on the dance floor with another.

The Bothell company, which develops nasal drugs, said Wednesday that it has inked a "multicompound feasibility study agreement" with international pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, headquartered in Denmark. The agreement covers unspecified "Novo Nordisk therapeutic compounds."

But unlike a recently ended partnership with Merck, whose potential value to Nastech was announced as more than $340 million, the Novo Nordisk deal's financial terms were not disclosed.

CEO Steven Quay said, "Nastech is honored to be working with Novo Nordisk, a world-leader in therapies for metabolic disease."

Less than two weeks ago, Nastech announced that Merck abandoned a partnership to develop an obesity drug. As a result Nastech shares fell more than 37 percent on March 2 to $14.43. On Wednesday, Nastech shares closed up 17 cents, or 1.1 percent, at $15.71.

aQuantive

New CFO held post at Western Wireless

Seattle online marketing agency aQuantive said Wednesday that it appointed Wayne Wisehart as the company's new chief financial officer, effective March 27.

Wisehart, former CFO of Bellevue-based Western Wireless, a wireless carrier acquired by Alltel last year, replaces Michael Vernon, who announced in November his plan to retire after serving as CFO for more than five years. Vernon will stay on board during a transition period.

Nation and World

Profit doubles despite poor sales

Sears Holdings overcame a steep sales drop-off at its Sears department stores to more than double its fourth-quarter profit to $648 million Wednesday, benefiting from continued cost-cutting and the addition of Sears' results to Kmart's.

The better-than-expected results propelled the retail company's shares to their biggest single-day gain since it was formed a year ago when Kmart bought Sears, Roebuck. Sears Holdings' stock jumped $15.02, or 13 percent, to close at $132.29.

New bid considered for financing arm

General Motors is considering a bid of $12.5 billion to $13 billion for a majority stake in its financing arm from a group led by New York private-equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts (KKR) and some banks, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The newspaper said the nonbinding bid for the stake in General Motors Acceptance Corp. gives the automaker another option to what had been considered the leading bid from Cerberus Capital Management, a private-equity and hedge-fund group.

But the Journal, citing unidentified people familiar with the offers, said GM is cool to the new proposal from the KKR group due to some of its fine details, and could decide against selling to either group.

Compiled from Seattle Times staff, Bloomberg News and The Associated Press