Business news in brief

Peco Energy Co.'s residential commodity charge will increase 7 percent on Oct. 1 from 10.42 cents per kilowatt hour to 11.14 cents. The increase in the generation charge, also known as the price to compare, is slightly higher than the utility projected last month. Since only the supply charge is affected, a typical customer's total monthly bill will increase 4 percent, or about $5.40 a month. Several alternative suppliers are offering discounted fixed-rate prices of up to 20 percent off Peco's fourth-quarter rate at www.papowerswitch.com. - Andrew Maykuth

Pennsylvania marked one year of having casino table games with record revenue for the month of July, the state announced. Gross table-games revenue for the state's 10 casinos was $56.18 million. The last monthly high was in March, with gross revenue from table games of $54.61 million. Parx Casino in Bensalem had the highest gross revenue for July, at $10.28 million. Pennsylvania, which collects 16 percent of gross table-games revenue, saw July tax revenue of $9.03 million, according to the state's Gaming Control Board. The state also announced that employment at the state's casinos, at 15,064, was 7 percent higher than during the first quarter of the year. - Roslyn Rudolph

Striking Verizon Communications Inc. employees will lose their health benefits if they don't return to work by the end of the month, Verizon company spokesman Rich Young said. The Communications Workers of America, which is representing most of the 45,000 workers on strike, said a special union fund would be able to help members cover some of their benefits, CWA spokeswoman Candice Johnson said. The strike began Aug. 7. - Jane M. Von Bergen

A major Marcellus Shale drilling company is challenging a southwestern Pennsylvania township's ordinance to regulate oil- and gas-well development. Range Resources-Appalachia filed the notice challenging the validity of the ordinance approved last year by South Fayette Township, a Pittsburgh suburb. The ordinance requires drillers to obtain a land operations permit for each well, and creates buffers around schools, hospitals, and certain types of businesses. Range Resources contends the ordinance is illegal because it says a state law that regulates drilling preempts and supersedes it. - AP

Federal law enforcement officials charged three New Jersey fishermen, a Delaware seafood wholesaler, and two employees with the illegal harvest and sale of oysters from the Delaware Bay. According to a 15-count indictment by a federal grand jury in Camden, Thomas Reeves and Todd Reeves, who own Reeves Bros. in Port Norris, N.J., harvested more oysters than allowed under New Jersey law from 2004 to 2007 and falsified records to cover it up. The Reeveses' wholesale customer, Harbor House Seafood in Seaford, Del., cooperated by maintaining false records on the quantity of oyster purchases from the Reeveses, the indictment alleged. No one answered the phone at Reeves Bros. An employee who answered the phone at Harbor House had no comment. - Harold Brubaker

Sunoco Inc. said it was selling its phenol manufacturing plant in Haverhill, Ohio, for $106.5 million. The buyer is Haverhill Chemicals L.L.C., an affiliate of Goradia Capital L.L.C., which is affiliated with Vinmar International Ltd. of Houston, a global polymer and petrochemical marketing and distribution company. Sunoco incurred a second-quarter pretax noncash charge of $169 million related to the write-down of Haverhill assets. The divestiture is the latest for the Philadelphia refiner, which in May sold its Frankford phenol plant to Honeywell International Inc. - Andrew Maykuth

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and two other mortgage lenders and loan servicers received approval from a New Jersey judge to resume uncontested foreclosures in the state. Citigroup Inc.'s mortgage unit and Wells Fargo & Co. also won permission in an order by Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson in Trenton. The lenders were among six whose practices came under scrutiny Dec. 20, when New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said they were implicated in "robo-signing," in which foreclosure documents were automatically signed without personal verification of the contents. - Bloomberg News

U.S. automakers rebounded in July to boost factory production by the most since the Japan crisis. But builders broke ground on fewer single-family houses, leaving home construction at depressed levels. The mixed data suggest that the economy remains fragile but is not on the cusp of another recession. Industrial production rose 0.9 percent last month, the Federal Reserve said. Factory output, the biggest component of industrial production, climbed 0.6 percent. The auto industry accounted for nearly all of the factory production gains. The Commerce Department said builders began work on a seasonally adjusted 604,000 homes last month, a 1.5 percent decrease from June. That's half the 1.2 million homes per year that economists say must be built to sustain a healthy housing market. - AP

Apple Inc. won't be able to fully enforce a sales ban against Samsung Electronics Co. over the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet device after a German court limited its own ruling to within national borders. The ruling is still fully enforceable against Samsung's German arm, and the ban on sales in Germany remains unaltered for both units, court spokesman Peter Schuetz said. Apple contends Samsung's Galaxy phones and tablet computer "slavishly copy" the iPhone and iPad. - Bloomberg News

Pilots at JetBlue Airways Corp. are choosing to go without union representation. It is the second time in three years pilots at the New York airline have tried and failed to unionize. The latest attempt was driven by Air Line Pilots Association, or ALPA, which represents thousands of employees at major airlines. JetBlue said 58 percent of just over 2,000 valid votes were cast against bringing in some form of representation. - AP

Norway's Statoil has received a huge boost to its reserves with the announcement that two previous North Sea oil discoveries are connected which may represent the biggest find in the Norwegian continental shelf in 30 years. Statoil said the Aldous and Avaldsnes oil discoveries together contain between 500 million and 1.2 billion barrels of oil - significantly more than previously thought. Statoil owns a 40 percent stake in both discoveries and operates Aldous. - AP