Family Dollar has completed a 10-day renovation of its store at 5000 Brainerd Road and will conduct a grand re-opening next Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The renovated store now includes $1 Dollar Tree merchandise, additional freezers and coolers and an expanded selection of food, beauty and essentials, household products, and seasonal items.
Saturday’s celebration of the revamped Family Dollar will feature gift basket raffles, giveaways and free samples. The first 50 customers on Saturday will receive a gift card and reusable shopping bag.
“The refreshed store will provide even greater values and convenience to our shoppers,” said Jim Van Slyke, Family Dollar spokesperson.
Family Dollar operates about 8,000 stores in 46 states and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dollar Tree, Inc., headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Drugmaker settles 2 opioid lawsuits
One of the largest makers of generic opioids has settled a lawsuit with two Ohio counties, removing the company from the first federal trial over the toll of the opioid crisis.
United Kingdom-based Mallinckrodt announced the deal with Cuyahoga and Summit counties on Friday. Under the settlement, the company would pay a total of $24 million and donate products, including some used to treat addiction, worth another $6 million.
The company’s general counsel said in a statement that resolving the first cases gives it time to work toward a “global resolution” of opioid lawsuits. Nearly every state in the U.S. and more than 2,000 local governments are suing drug companies over the crisis. Mallinckrodt remains a defendant in hundreds of those cases.
The deal makes Mallinckrodt the third company in recent weeks to announce a deal with the two counties ahead of the trial, scheduled to begin Oct. 21 in U.S. District Court in Cleveland. Allergan agreed to pay $5 million and Endo Pharmaceuticals $10 million.
Perhaps the best-known manufacturer of prescription opioids, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, is negotiating in an attempt to settle all the claims against it. One settlement proposal calls for Purdue to pay between $10 billion and $12 billion and requires that the controlling Sackler family give up ownership.
American mechanic faces sabotage charge
An American Airlines mechanic appeared in court Friday on charges of sabotaging a flight over stalled union contract negotiations.
Federal officials say Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani admitted to tampering with a part that provides vital flight information to pilots because he was upset about stalled contract negotiations and wanted to earn overtime fixing the plane.
Pilots aborted the July 17 flight before takeoff in Miami. Alani was arrested Thursday and charged with willfully damaging or disabling an aircraft. The 60-year-old had worked for American since 1988 but was suspended after his arrest.
Nothing in the criminal complaint against Alani suggests any link to terrorism, and prosecutors did not indicate that any such charges are pending.
When interviewed Thursday by investigators, “Alani stated that his intention was not to cause harm to the aircraft or its passengers,” according to the affidavit by Jose A. Ruiz, a federal air marshal who serves on an FBI terrorism task force.
H&M stops buying leather from Brazil
Low-cost fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz AB says it is suspending leather purchases from Brazil in response to the Amazon fires.
The Stockholm-based group says “a temporary ban on leather from Brazil” was linked to “the severe fires in the Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest and the connections to cattle production.”
H&M said Friday that the ban will remain in place “until there are credible assurances … that the leather does not contribute to environmental harm in the Amazon.”
The group added that “the vast majority” of its leather comes from Europe, and only a small part originates from Brazil.
Last week, the owner of Timberland, Vans and several other shoe and clothing brands said it has stopped buying leather from Brazil because of the rainforest fires.
China injects money into slowing economy
BEIJING – China’s central bank moved on Friday to give the country’s slowing economy a jolt, saying it would essentially inject $126 billion into the financial system as Beijing fights an escalating trade war with the United States and contends with a dangerous addiction to debt at home.
The move signaled China’s willingness to ease up on a campaign to curb the borrowing that has weighed on growth in the country’s economy, the world’s second-largest, and potentially to open up its lending machine even further if the trade dispute begins to take an even greater toll.
The People’s Bank of China said that it would cut its reserve requirement ratio – the amount of cash from deposits that lenders must keep in their coffers – by 0.5 percentage points on Sept. 16, which would add about 900 billion renminbi to the financial system.
Some banks will see their reserve ratio cut by 1 percentage point to promote lending to small businesses and private enterprises. Senior officials also indicated this week that they planned to loosen restrictions on local governments related to raising money for infrastructure projects.