Business news in brief

Charming Shoppes Inc., Bensalem, which operates Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug women's-wear stores, named James Fogarty chief executive officer effective immediately. Fogarty replaces Dorrit J. Bern, who left in July. Chairman Alan Rosskamm has been interim CEO. Fogarty was previously managing director of Alvarez & Marsal, a professional-services firm. While at A&M, he served as president and chief operating officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings, which collapsed amid the credit crisis late last year. Charming Shoppes has reported a loss in the last three quarters as consumers cut back on spending. It is in the midst of a turnaround plan. The stock closed up 30 cents, or 16.5 percent, at $2.12. - AP

MedQuist Inc., a Mount Laurel company that supplies medical transcription services, announced this week that a U.S. District Court in New Jersey had approved a settlement in a case involving alleged underpayment of transcriptionists and tossed out the class-action suit. Under the settlement, MedQuist will pay $1.1 million to the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity to fund programs that benefit transcriptionists and the transcription industry. An additional $400,000 will cover settlement administrative costs and plaintiff's counsel's out-of-pocket expenses. In his opinion, Judge Jerome Simandle wrote that the settlement "represents a fair and innovative approach to the settlement of a weak case." The company maintains "the allegations in the suit were completely meritless," Mark Sullivan, Medquist's general counsel, said. MedQuist said it settled to avoid "additional expense and continuing distraction." - Stacey Burling

Sun Microsystems Inc. said it would lay off 24 employees in King of Prussia as part of a nationwide staff cut of about 6,000 workers. The reductions will

include eight layoffs in Pittsburgh and four in Lemoyne, near Harrisburg.

Sun disclosed the Pennsylvania layoffs in a required notice to the state. Sun, a Santa Clara, Calif., maker of computer servers, announced its plans in November in a restructuring aimed at saving $700 million to $800 million a year. The company cited slumping sales. - Paul Schweizer

Unisys Corp. has won an indefinite-

delivery, indefinite-quantity contract

to compete for task orders to government information-technology needs. The

task orders would be generated by the U.S. General Services Administration's Alliant contracting vehicle, which will have a 10-year life span and a $50 billion limit. Unisys was one of 59 companies to get a contract with Alliant, which is replacing the Answer and Millennia contract programs. Unisys currently has a Millennia contract. - Roslyn Rudolph

Walt Disney Co. says it has cut 1,900 positions at its U.S. theme parks because of the slumping economy. About 1,200 people were laid off, and 700 open positions will be left unfilled. The cuts were part of a reorganization announced in February. - AP

Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to pay more than $210 million in bonuses through next year to give workers the incentive to stay in their jobs at the government-controlled companies. The retention awards for more than 7,600 employees were disclosed in a letter from the companies' regulator released by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. The companies paid out nearly $51 million last year, are scheduled to make $146 million in payments this year, and $13 million in 2010. "It's hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a year," Grassley said in a statement. Fannie and Freddie declined to comment. - AP

FedEx Corp. has laid off 1,000 employees to meet job cuts the package-delivery company announced were coming after third-quarter earnings dropped 75 percent. FedEx said that half the laid-off workers were employed in Memphis, where the corporation and its largest operating

unit, FedEx Express, are based. Before the cuts, FedEx Corp. had about 33,000 employees in the Memphis area and 290,000 worldwide. - AP

A private trade group's measure of

the strength of the services sector shrank for the sixth straight month in March, and at a faster pace than expected, as job losses mount. A services index from the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, fell to 40.8 last month from 41.6 in February. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected the index to edge up to 42. Any reading below 50 indicates contraction. - AP

Bernard Madoff's brother Peter gets access to $10,000 a month for living expenses under an agreement approved

in a lawsuit accusing him of swindling a college student. Peter Madoff was in a Long Island courtroom to appeal a

judge's order last week freezing his assets. That order came in a civil lawsuit filed by Andrew Ross Samuels, who contends Madoff took $478,000 of his trust fund and invested it in his brother Bernard's Ponzi scheme. New York State Supreme Court Judge Stephen Bucaria approved giving Peter Madoff access to the money. - AP