Business news in brief

Adolor Corp. said yesterday that federal regulators had extended the review of Entereg, the experimental bowel treatment being jointly developed with GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. The Food and Drug Administration will take an additional three months, until May 10. Adolor said it also had submitted a revised risk-management plan for the drug. In January, an FDA advisory panel voted 9-6 that the benefits of Entereg outweighed potential risks, including heart attacks, bone fractures and tumors observed in one longer-term study. But the FDA advisers also said Adolor's proposed risk-management plan to monitor the drug was inadequate, and they expressed concern about long-term cardiovascular risk.

- Linda Loyd

GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C.'s Kinrix booster vaccine to prevent four childhood diseases - diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and polio - was delayed by U.S. regulators. Glaxo, based in London and with a U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, received a complete-response letter from the Food and Drug Administration for Kinrix, Glaxo spokeswoman Alice Hunt said. A complete-response letter is issued when the FDA reviews a product and wants more information, agency spokeswoman Karen Riley said. Glaxo is seeking new sources of revenue as sales of its top-selling products slow or face competition from generic copies.

- Bloomberg News

Pennsylvania's attorney general charged two Philadelphia residents with the operation of an illegal insurance-adjustment scheme involving more than $100,000 in false claims in the Harrisburg and Philadelphia areas. The defendants, Clarence Jackson, 40, and Jacqueline Cooper, 40, acted as intermediaries between property owners and insurance companies, allegedly enhancing property damage to inflate insurance claims and then forging signatures to pocket insurance payments. A grand jury heard testimony from 16 property owners whose claims resulted in unauthorized payments to Jackson and Cooper, the attorney general said. Jackson and Cooper surrendered in Harrisburg and were released on bail. They could not be reached for comment.

- Harold Brubaker

Corporate-recruiting consultant Kenexa Corp., Wayne, said fourth-quarter profit rose 15 percent to $6 million, or 24 cents per share, on revenue of $47.7 million. In the year-ago quarter, the company earned $5.2 million, or 24 cents per share, on revenue of $36.4 million. Kenexa repurchased 1.5 million shares during the quarter that ended Dec. 31. For all of 2007, profit was $23.5 million, or 93 cents per share, on revenue of $181.9 million, compared with 2006 net income of $15.9 million, or 78 cents per share, on revenue of $112.1 million. The results were released after markets closed Thursday. Shares closed up $1.08, or 6.3 percent, at $18.19 in Nasdaq trading.

- Reid Kanaley

Beneficial Mutual Bancorp Inc., Philadelphia, reported a net loss of $168,000, or zero cents per share, in the fourth quarter, compared with a $3.4 million profit, or 8 cents per share, in the same period of 2006. The loss included a $3.9 million charge for severance paid to 40 employees who were terminated after the July merger with FMS Financial Corp., a $2.2 million increase in the bank's provision for loan losses, and an impairment charge of $1.2 million on the bank's holdings of shares in financial-services companies. Those losses were partly offset by an income-tax benefit of $4.4 million, compared with an income-tax expense in the fourth quarter of 2006. Beneficial bought FMS, Burlington, for $182.5 million, giving the combined company 72 branches. The company's shares closed unchanged at $9.61 in Nasdaq trading.

- Harold Brubaker

Weyerhaeuser Co. said it had swung to a fourth-quarter loss as the deteriorating U.S. housing market cut into demand for lumber - a downturn the paper and wood-products company expects will continue through 2008. Its shares closed down more than 3 percent, at $62.34. Weyerhaeuser reported a loss of $63 million, or 30 cents per share, compared with a profit of $507 million, or $2.12 per share, a year earlier. Excluding write-downs from housing-related business, restructuring costs and other special items, Weyerhaeuser would have earned $90 million, or 42 cents per share, in the latest period. Revenue fell 18 percent, to $3.94 billion from $4.8 billion.

- AP

CSX Corp., one of three major railroads serving Philadelphia, launched an Internet tool that it says accurately calculates rail versus truck carbon dioxide emissions of specific shipments. The carbon-counter tool is under the Customers tab at

» READ MORE: www.csx.com

. Enter the distance and shipment weight, and it the gives tons of pollutants for each mode.

- Henry J. Holcomb

Franco-American telecommunications-equipment-maker Alcatel-Lucent posted a loss of about $3.8 billion for the fourth quarter, said it would scrap its 2007 dividend, and predicted a rocky 2008. Alcatel-Lucent reported a net loss of 2.58 billion euros in the quarter ending Dec. 31, as it booked 2.52 billion euros ($3.71 billion) in write-downs related to the reduced value of assets inherited from Lucent Technologies Inc. Excluding the noncash write-downs, Alcatel-Lucent posted an adjusted fourth-quarter loss of 48 million euros ($69.9 million) compared with a loss of 618 million euros a year earlier. Revenues for the quarter rose to 5.23 billion euros ($7.61 billion), up 18 percent from 4.42 billion euros in the same period in 2006, the company said in a statement. That was above the 4.92 billion euros forecast by analysts.

- AP

Polaroid Corp. is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs. Polaroid is closing factories in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands and cutting 450 jobs as the brand synonymous with instant images focuses on ventures such as a portable printer for images from cell phones and Polaroid-branded digital cameras, televisions and DVD players. This year's closures will leave Polaroid with 150 employees at its Concord headquarters and a site in the nearby Boston suburb of Waltham, down from peak global employment of nearly 21,000 in 1978.

- AP