Media: Company set to launch new weekly newspaper

The World Company on Thursday is launching a new weekly newspaper to serve the growing area west of Shawnee.

The newspaper, called the Shawnee West Dispatch, will be delivered free via U.S. Postal Service to about 6,900 households in the western Shawnee area of Johnson County.

Kevin Wright, editor for the new publication, said the Dispatch would focus on local government, business, education and sports news.

“In recent months, many western Shawnee residents have told us they’re in an information vacuum,” Wright said. “Those calls for more coverage of western Shawnee led to the decision to start a paper whose sole focus will be western Shawnee and the people who make that area their home.”

The World Company owns the Journal-World and publishes six other weekly newspapers in the area. They are the Baldwin City Signal, Basehor Sentinel, Bonner Springs Chieftain, DeSoto Explorer, Eudora News and The (Tonganoxie) Mirror.

Government: Embattled SEC chief turns in resignation

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt resigned under pressure Tuesday night after a series of political missteps that embarrassed the Bush White House just when it needed to shore up investors unnerved by accounting scandals.

In a letter to President Bush, Pitt said “the turmoil surrounding my chairmanship” had made it difficult to stay in the job.

The latest fumble came when Pitt failed to share with fellow commissioners information about William Webster, the newly named chairman of an accounting industry oversight board, before the agency voted last week to put the former CIA and FBI director in charge of the panel.

Wall Street: Stocks rise as investors hope for GOP sweep

Investors expecting a big Republican Election Day victory celebrated in advance with a buying spree Tuesday, giving the Dow Jones industrials a triple-digit gain and lifting technology stocks out of a slump.

The Dow and Standard & Poor’s 500 index locked in a three-day winning streak.

Analysts attributed Tuesday’s advance, which gained momentum in the last hour, to investors anticipating a GOP-controlled Congress as well as another interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve, which meets today.

The Dow ended a lightly traded session up 106.67, or 1.2 percent, at 8,678.27. In the past three sessions, the Dow has climbed 281.24.

Aviation: United reaches deal to restructure debt

United Airlines’ stock surged 30 percent Tuesday after the ailing carrier announced that it had reached an agreement with a German lender to restructure $500 million in debt a significant boost for its effort to avoid bankruptcy.

By putting off payments that would have been due in November and December, the deal with Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau removes one of the biggest immediate financial threats facing cash-crunched United.

Shares in United parent UAL Corp. finished up 97 cents at $4.15 on the New York Stock Exchange.