The Federal Aviation Administration said it has "proposed" a $24.2 million civil penalty for American Airlines’ failure to properly inspect wire bundles in the wheel wells of its MD-80 aircraft. The incident snarled thousands of flights in 2008.

The airline, owned by AMR Corp., (AMR, Fortune 500) did not follow the guidelines in the so-called 2006 Airworthiness Directive, which was intended to prevent wires from shorting, which could cause a loss of power and possibly a fire, the FAA said.

The airline’s stock price is down 1.7%.

The FAA inspections resulted in the grounding of about 1,000 American Airlines flights in early April, 2008, after the FAA found that the airline did not properly inspect two of its airplanes.

As part of that inspection, the FAA determined that the airline operated 286 of its MD-80s on a total of 14,278 flights "while the aircraft were not in compliance with federal regulations cheap business cards."

FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the fine is considered a proposal as a legal formality, because the airline has 30 days to respond and has the option of negotiating a smaller fine.

"There was never a flight safety issue," American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith told CNNMoney.com in an email.

"These events happened more than two years ago and we believe this action is unwarranted," he said. "We will challenge any proposed civil penalty. We are confident we have a strong case and the facts will bear this out."

Lunsford said that Southwest Airlines (LUV, Fortune 500) had previously been the recipient of the biggest FAA fine — of $10.2 million — which it was able to negotiate down to $7.5 million. 

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Net sales for the 13 weeks ended July 31 were $585.8 million, up nearly 15 percent from $511.6 million a year earlier.

Chairman and Chief Executive Ron Fromm said the company expects strong back-to-school sales, saying that one in 10 American families shop at Famous Footwear during this time.

"We plan to drive increased market share gains with a powerful assortment of brands and traffic-generating TV, print and digital-marketing campaigns," he said in Wednesday's earnings release easy to get unsecured personal loans. "Our portfolio of wholesale brands is equally poised for growth, as evidenced by our strong backlog for fall and holiday shipments."

St. Louis-based Brown Shoe Co. Inc. (NYSE: BWS) owns and markets shoes under the Naturalizer, LifeStride, Connie, Buster Brown and other brands; and operates the Famous Footwear and Naturalizer retail stores. Brown Shoe reported sales of $2.2 billion in 2009.

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Company officials said the former construction company has moved into a space in Tempe that is three times the size of its former offices.

The new space, at 1849 W instant payday loans. Drake Drive, in Tempe, will have an open house from 4 to 8 p.m. Aug. 25.

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But, compensation experts say local city officials are not being overpaid.

In Dayton, for example, City Manager Tim Riordan is the highest-paid employee, earning about $145,000 annually. Among all city of Dayton's 1,300 full-time workers, only 20 earn more than $100,000 a year including Riordan; Stanley Early, the deputy city manager; Cheryl Garrett, finance director; Shelly Dickstein, assistant city manager-strategic development; and police chief Richard Biehl.

The national average salary for city managers salaries runs about $106,000. But, in cities with a population between 100,000 and 250,000 - Dayton has 153,000 - the average city manager makes more than $183,000, according to the International City/County Management Association. The average salary for full-time employees at the city of Dayton is about $55,000. Then average person in the Dayton area made $35,344 last year, according to federal statistics.

Click here for database of Dayton city employees that can be searched by name or salary range.

Click here for database of Springfield city employees that can be searched by name or salary range.

Michele Frisby, a spokesperson for the association, said the California case has forced city leaders across the U.S. to defend, or at least explain, their salaries.

"The ridiculous salary that was being paid to the Bell (Calif.) city manager is so unusual; most salaries are in-line with standards for the profession and are certainly not that competitive to private sector or they don't surpass private sector salaries."

When asked about Riordan's salary, Frisby said "he's certainly not getting overpaid."

Riordan - who volunteered to take a 3 percent pay cut shortly before the California issue surfaced during the first week of August - said that situation was a rare example of abuse; that pay for top city officials around the country was not out of whack.

"That is an extreme anomaly," Riordan said. "How the heck did they get that passed?"

As for Dayton city employee salaries, Riordan said "good people cost money," and the city needs good people at a difficult time that includes shrinking tax revenue. Attracting and retaining good people, he said, means paying market-rate for employees, something that applies to any organization, including the city. To bolster his point that Dayton salaries are reasonable, Riordan pointed to local companies where he said executive salaries compared to the lowest-paid workers typically run at a 20-to-1 ratio or greater. At the city, he said that ratio is about 5-to-1.

"Look around at some of the private organizations in this community and tell me that anybody else could match us," he said.

Riordan was appointed to serve as interim city manager in October last year, filling the void left by Rashad Young who took the same job in Greensboro, N.C. Since then, Riordan - who worked for the city from 1972 to 1998, including as interim city manager in 1994 - has since been named the city manager. Young started in Greensboro with a salary of $179,500.

In the city of Springfield, which has about 62,000 residents, Jim Bodenmiller makes about $112,000 annually as city manager. Among the city's 300 employees, only three earn more than $100,000 a year including the city's law director, Jerome Strozdas, and deputy law director, Andrew Burkholder.

Bodenmiller said pay city leader positions in the region is not out of line. However, the trick for Springfield and other cities is maintaining the balance of paying well for talent while being a good steward of public funds.

"Like it or not, governments are like large businesses in many respects and there's a lot of responsibility in those positions," he said.

As union contracts expired in Springfield - both in this year and last year - workers have taken zero pay increases for one- or two-year periods and nonunion workers got no bump in pay this year or last year. Bodenmiller said the city also scaled back or modified benefits, whenever possible, to save money.

"We realize we're no different than any other business, we're struggling to make ends meet," he said.

Dayton city salaries, in general, Riordan said, have been flat for several years as employees have taken a combination of cuts, zero increases and days without pay. And during the past decade, the city has cut about 600 jobs.

"Everybody has done something," he said. "You've got to be real sensitive to (the issue of city salaries) … because this community has been hit hard."

Do you think local city officials are overpaid? Click here to vote now.

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The Labor Department on Friday reported a net loss of 131,000 jobs in July, an improvement from the revised loss of 221,000 jobs in June.

The loss was due mostly to the end of 143,000 temporary census jobs in the month, but hiring by businesses was also weak, as those employers added only 71,000 jobs in July.

"The job market has lost steam and remains lethargic," said Sung Won Sohn, economics professor at Cal State University Channel Islands.

Businesses have now added jobs in every month so far this year, a total of 630,000 positions. But that works out to an anemic 90,000 a month. There needs to be an overall gain of about 150,000 jobs per month just to keep pace with population growth.

And private sector job growth seems to be losing ground. The modest gain of 71,000 jobs in business hiring was up from even weaker revised readings for May and June, but was still well below the nearly 200,000 monthly gains in March and April, when the labor market appeared set to turn the corner.

"The private sector is just not strong enough," said Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America, a unit of the world’s largest employment staffing firm. "Companies are still cautious on the hiring front. They’re taking a long time to make decisions. All of that suggests continued uncertainty and slow improvement."

The overall number was worse than the loss of 87,000 jobs that economists surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted.

More pain ahead

The job losses from census jobs ending are likely to abate in the coming months. There are only 196,000 temporary census workers still on the job and they’ll be phased out mostly over the next two months.

But the outlook for private sector hiring remains weak. A restocking in inventories that helped lift hiring earlier this year has mostly come to an end and retailers are likely to keep shelves and staff lean going into an uncertain holiday shopping period.

Temporary workers, often taken as a leading indicator of future hiring by businesses who use them ahead of expanding their permanent staff, has been trending down for the last nine months and fell to a loss of 5,600 jobs this month, the first decline in that reading since September payday loans.

Public sector job losses weren’t limited to temporary jobs, as government jobs outside of census fell by 59,000 in the month, most being cut from state and local governments facing budget problems.

The Obama administration said the loss of state and local government jobs, and the weak private sector hiring, show that more needs to be done.

"We have made substantial progress from the days when employment was declining by 750,000 a month," said a statement from Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer. "But, today’s employment report emphasizes just how important the additional jobs measures before Congress are."

But Republicans claim the weak employment report showed that the economic policies of the Obama administration have failed.

"For all of the effort being expended to convince Americans that their policies have ‘funded’ or ‘created and saved’ new jobs, the sobering reality is 18 months after the stimulus was signed into law, our economy is still hemorrhaging jobs," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Unemployment persists

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5% in June. Economists had expected the jobless rate to edge up to 9.6%. But that was mostly because of 381,000 workers who stopped looking for work in recent weeks, and were therefore no longer counted as part of the labor force.

That jump in discouraged workers may have been partly due to the loss of extended unemployment benefits for many jobless during the month. Without the incentive of having to look for work to collect benefits, many workers simply gave up looking.

The percentage of the population with jobs fell for the third straight month to 58.4% and is now approaching the 26-year low in that reading reached in December.

There was some good news buried in the report, at least for those with jobs. The average hourly work week increased 0.1 hours to 33.5, suggesting that workers who had their hours reduced were being called back to work full time. The number of part-time workers who would prefer to work full time fell by 98,000 to 8.5 million. 

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The company opened a new site at 3301 Coors Blvd. NW in the Ladera Shopping Center. The company hired seven new employees from the former Richard’s Automotive to staff the site.

Owner Scott Chazdon, said exceptional service has helped the business grow, even in a down economy.

“We look forward to implementing the same customer-oriented practices there as in the original facility at 135 Wyoming NE,” he said.

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The indie film label is being bought by Filmyard Holdings, which is backed by construction mogul Ron Tutor and Colony Capital, the private equity firm headed by Tom Barrack.

The deal includes the rights to Miramax’s library of more than 700 film titles, as well as some books, projects and the the Miramax brand.

Started by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the art house label’s movies include Oscar winners "Shakespeare in Love," "Chicago" and "No Country for Old Men."

"Although we are very proud of Miramax’s many accomplishments, our current strategy for Walt Disney Studios is to focus on the development of great motion pictures under the Disney, Pixar and Marvel brands," Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) CEO Robert Iger said in a prepared statement.

The sale of Miramax is expected to be completed by the end of the year, Disney said. 

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For the quarter ended June 30, the company reported that its revenue rose 26 percent to $230.19 million compared to nearly $183.2 million in last year’s quarter. The increase primarily was driven by 38.8 percent growth in its Energy and Mining segment, the company said.

Joe Burgess, president and CEO, said in a statement that the acquisitions of the Bayou Cos. and Corrpro Cos. were more than 20 percent accretion to Insituform’s earnings per share this quarter, and slightly accretive for the last 12 months. Insituform bought the Bayou Cos. for $125 million in February 2009 and Corrpro Cos. Inc. for $92 million in March 2009 Faxless payday loans.

“Each of our business segments are poised to make even more progress in the second half of 2010, with market conditions continuing to improve on a global basis, coupled with our strong backlog position and order prospects,” Burgess said.

Insituform’s total contract backlog was $475.2 million as of June 30, representing a 2.5 percent increase from Dec. 31, 2009, and a 2.8 percent increase from June 30, 2009.

The Chesterfield, Mo.-based company (Nasdaq: INSU), led by President and Chief Executive Joe Burgess, rehabilitates sewer and water pipes. The company landed $86 million worth of stimulus work last year and expects to tap into another $86 million of stimulus work this year.

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International traffic is posting the biggest declines. The number of international passengers moving through PDX was down 5.7 percent in June and is off 19.1 percent for the year. Much of that can be attributed to Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s decision to ground its six-year-old Portland-to-Frankfurt nonstop service last September. Domestic traffic was down just .4 percent for June and is off 2.1 percent year-to-date.

Of PDX’s big three, only Alaska Airlines saw increased traffic from a year ago, with 179,280 passengers in June compared to 151,175 last year no faxing payday loan. Seattle-based Horizon Air, PDX’s busiest carrier, reported a 6.6 percent decline in year-over-year monthly traffic, while traffic on Southwest Airlines of Dallas dropped 4.1 percent.

Freight moved by PDX carriers was up 5 percent from a year ago to 16,204 in June, though for the year to date the number dropped 6.1 percent to 204,485.

Nationally, U.S. carriers are faring well. The Air Transport Association of America reports that passenger revenue was up 25 percent in June over a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month of revenue growth.

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The Williamsville-based energy company (NYSE: NFG) will celebrate 55 years as a listed company by ringing out the day’s trading at 4 p.m.

“The NYSE has long been a home to many of the world’s leading publicly traded companies and we are pleased to celebrate 55 years along side many of these respected businesses with a history as long as ours,” said a statement from CEO David Smith, who will lead the senior management team.

National Fuel was incorporated in 1902.

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