Business news in brief

Endo Pharmaceuticals, the Chadds Ford drug company, and Penwest Pharmaceuticals said they had granted Barr Laboratories Inc. a license to sell a generic version of the pain medication Opana ER. The agreement lets Barr, a division of Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., sell the extended-release Opana generic after Sept. 15, 2012, or earlier under certain circumstances, Endo and Penwest said. Penwest is headquartered in Danbury, Conn. The settlement gives Endo and Penwest more time to sell their branded drug without generic competition, and Barr gets to sell its generic version before patents on the drug expire, the Associated Press reported. - Reid Kanaley

Two Philadelphia cancer researchers are among 21 scientists sharing $4.5 million in grants from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the California-based foundation said Tuesday. Robert Den, of Thomas Jefferson University's Kimmel Cancer Center, won a three-year $225,000 grant - to be matched by Jefferson. Den's work is aimed at establishing a biomarker for radiation sensitivity that would allow physicians to better select prostate cancer patients with a higher likelihood of being cured by radiation treatment. Neha Vapiwala, of the University of Pennsylvania, won a similar $225,000, three-year grant, also to be matched by Penn. Vapiwala's research is aimed at discovering biomarkers for resistance or positive response to radiation therapy. - Reid Kanaley

Met-Pro Corp. said it received a $550,000 order from a Canadian university for nine industrial fans. The Harleysville manufacturer said the fans would provide efficient laboratory fume hood exhaust. The fans will be mounted on energy recovery units that will capture energy being exhausted from the building so it can be reused to heat the facility. - Paul Schweizer

The former CEO of Washington Mutual, the biggest U.S. bank ever to fail, on Tuesday defended the bank's actions to reduce risks from the looming housing bust. Kerry Killinger, who led the thrift, also argued that WaMu had adequate capital and shouldn't have been seized by the government and sold for a "bargain" price of $1.9 billion in September 2008. The bank "should have been given a chance to work its way through the crisis," Killinger testified at a hearing by a Senate panel. The panel's 18-month investigation had found that WaMu's lending operations were rife with fraud and that management failed to stem the deception despite internal probes. The 119-year-old savings-and-loan, with $307 billion in assets, failed in September 2008. - AP

The U.S. trade deficit widened more than expected in February as a small gain in exports to the highest level in 16 months was offset by a bigger jump in imports, reflecting increased demand for consumer goods. The wider deficit was a sign of a rebounding U.S. economy. The Commerce Department reported that the deficit for February increased 7.4 percent to $39.7 billion. That was larger than the $38.5 billion deficit economists had expected. Exports edged up 0.2 percent while imports jumped 1.7 percent. - AP

Intel Corp. said its net income in the first quarter nearly quadrupled over last year and reflected an overall bump in technology spending by companies. Intel said after the market closed that it earned $2.4 billion, or 43 cents per share, in the first three months of 2010. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting profit of 38 cents per share. In the same period last year, Intel earned $629 million, or 11 cents per share - figures that were depressed by a big charge Intel took to write down the value of an investment. Intel's revenue in the latest period jumped 44 percent to $10.3 billion, ahead of analysts' forecast for $9.8 billion. - AP

Small businesses are still waiting for the economic rebound that has enabled larger companies to obtain low-interest credit and to boost exports and production in recent months. Smaller companies aren't much more optimistic than they were in the depths of the recession, according to a survey released by the National Federation of Independent Business. That pessimism is slowing job creation and likely weakening the recovery, economists say. The NFIB's small-business optimism index fell 1.2 points to 86.8 in March, the lowest level since July 2009. - AP

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposed changes to the way it determines how much it charges big banks to insure their deposits, with the aim of having large, higher-risk institutions pay bigger premiums. Large financial institutions "pose unique and concentrated risks" to the deposit insurance fund, something that came to the fore during the financial crisis, the agency said. The board also voted Tuesday to extend through year's end an unlimited guarantee for special deposit accounts used by businesses. It was scheduled to expire on June 30. - AP

Twitter announced it was introducing advertising by allowing companies to pay to have their messages show up first in searches on its site. The debut of "Promoted Tweets" comes as Twitter faces questions about how it can turn its wide use into profits. The ads apparently won't bring in much money during the experimental phase. Virgin America, one of the advertisers that Twitter invited to test the concept, isn't paying for its first burst of promotional messages, according to Porter Gail, the airline's vice president of marketing. - AP

Toyota says it will temporarily stop selling the Lexus GX460 after Consumer Reports said the SUV carried an unusually high risk of a rollover accident during certain types of turns. The automaker says it will suspend sales of the SUV while it conducts its own testing. Consumer Reports says in handling tests the SUV slid until it was nearly sideways before the electronic stability control system regained control. It gave the GX460 a rare "Don't Buy: Safety Risk" label until the problem is fixed. - AP