Business news in brief

The value of residential construction in metropolitan Philadelphia in the first seven months of the year was 34 percent higher than in the same period in 2011, McGraw Hill reported. Residential building from January to July totaled $781.4 million, compared with $583.1 million in the first seven months of 2011. Nonresidential construction was 4 percent lower, while the total of the two was 6 percent above last year. - Alan J. Heavens

Prompted by an Inquirer article Sunday on the mounting billions in debt at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, State Rep. Peter J. Daley of Fayette and Washington Counties is calling for the resignation of the commission's top two executives, chief executive officer Roger E. Nutt and chief operating officer Craig Shuey, in a letter dated Aug. 29. Daley, a Democrat, said in the letter that the commission is "destined to become the biggest boondoggle in the history of the state." A spokesman said the Turnpike Commission had not received the letter and could not comment. - Bob Fernandez

Specialty metals maker Carpenter Technology Corp., of Wyomissing, intends to sell two distribution businesses that, it said, are not part of its "core focus of manufacturing and selling specialty materials for the aerospace, energy, and other high-growth markets." The businesses are Latrobe Specialty Steel Distribution, which had $113 million in sales in fiscal 2012, and Mexico-based Aceros Fortuna, with $42 million in annual sales. Carpenter, which had about $2 billion in annual sales, did not say what prices it would ask for the businesses. - Inquirer staff

The daily newspaper in Pennsylvania's capital city and a sister paper in Syracuse, N.Y., are switching to a three-days-a-week publication schedule in January. John Kirkpatrick, publisher of the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, says the change will be accompanied by an expansion of around-the-clock news coverage online. The paper will continue to publish on Sundays, while the two other days have not been determined. At the Post-Standard of Syracuse, editor and publisher Stephen Rogers told employees that newspapers' economic model has become unviable. The Post-Standard will publish on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Both newspapers are owned by Advance Publications Inc. The Patriot-News won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its coverage of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. Four other Advance newspapers said in June that they were switching to three-times-a-week publication. - AP

New York officials are investigating marketing and health claims made by several energy drink makers. A person familiar with the inquiry, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't yet been made public, says New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued subpoenas this summer to the makers of 5-Hour Energy, AMP and Monster energy drinks. Earlier this month, Monster Beverage Corp. disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that a state attorney general had sent it a subpoena. The firm didn't disclose which state it was, but the person familiar with the inquiry said it was New York. - AP

U.S. bank earnings rose 21 percent in the April-June quarter and lending to consumers increased. That adds to evidence that the industry is strengthening four years after the financial crisis. The number of troubled banks fell for the fifth straight quarter, to 732 from 772 in the January-March period. About 63 percent of U.S. banks reported better earnings in the second quarter as they were able to set aside less for losses on loans. Bank loans to consumers increased in most categories, including credit card loans and home mortgages. That reversed a first-quarter decline. - AP

There were 58,000 completed foreclosures in the United States in July, compared with 69,000 in the same month in 2011, CoreLogic, the real estate data provider reported. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, there have been 3.8 million completed foreclosures nationally. Completed foreclosures indicate the total number of houses lost to foreclosure. About 1.3 million homes, or 3.2 percent of all homes with a mortgage, were in the national foreclosure inventory as of July, compared with 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent, in July 2011, CoreLogic reported. - Alan J. Heavens

European Central Bank head Mario Draghi called off his trip to an annual Jackson Hole conference of central bankers this week as the bank works on a plan to help lower borrowing costs for struggling governments. The ECB will hold a key meeting Sept. 6, when plans to intervene in bond markets will be discussed. A bank representative said Draghi will not go to the Wyoming meeting to be held at the end of this week "because of the heavy workload foreseen in the next few days." - AP

Low fixed interest rates and a decline in distressed housing for sale combined to boost the Case-Shiller home price indexes year over year for the first time since the summer of 2010. Case-Shiller's 10-city and 20-city composite indexes were up 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent in June from the same month in 2011, while the national measure of prices rose 1.2 percent in the same period. Seasonally adjusted prices were up in 18 of 20 cities in June from May. - Alan J. Heavens

The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against the man behind the "Your Baby Can Read" program, Robert Titzer. The FTC accuses him of false and deceptive advertising for promoting his program as a tool to teach infants as young as 9 months to read. The "Your Baby Can Read" program used a combination of videos, flash cards and pop-up books and was advertised extensively on television, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. It cost about $200 and was sold nationwide at retails stores, including Walmart and Babies R Us. The company said it was closing. - AP

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the National Community Pharmacists Association and independent pharmacies said they had yet to determine a next step after a judge on Monday dismissed most of their legal claims in challenging Express Scripts Inc.'s $29.1 billion acquisition of Medco Health Solutions Inc. The groups sued Express Scripts and Medco in March, claiming the pharmacy-benefit managers' merger would reduce competition and make fewer services available to retail customers. - Bloomberg News