Business news in brief

The Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority hosted 226 events with 1.1 million participants in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The authority estimates that those events had a $728 million economic impact and supported 60,000 city jobs. Hotel tax revenue of $28.9 million was 6 percent higher than the prior fiscal year. - Bob Fernandez

PSEG's Salem nuclear plant in southern New Jersey returned to full power Sunday after a leaking valve that forced the plant to shut down Thursday was repaired. The plant's owner said that workers replaced the packing material in the pressurizer spray valve used in the reactor coolant system, which had failed and caused a water leak that was confined to the Unit 1 containment building. No other problems were found in similar valves at the plant, said Joe Delmar, a PSEG spokesman. The reactor was reactivated Saturday. - Andrew Maykuth

New Jersey will partner with the Obama administration for a $1 million study to make the state's rail infrastructure more resilient in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, said Gov. Christie and U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The partnership will help design an advanced "microgrid" system that will be a national model, Moniz said during a news conference at the Secaucus train station. Sandy, which struck the East Coast on Oct. 29, showed the vulnerability of New Jersey's rail system, Christie said. - Bloomberg News

Chicago's Pritzker family, owner of a controlling stake in Hyatt Hotels Corp., agreed to acquire Western Pennsylvania-based steel mill servicer TMS International Corp. for $690 million in cash. Pritzker Organization L.L.C. will pay $17.50 a share for TMS, the companies said. The price is 12 percent more than the Friday closing price for TMS, of Glassport, Pa. TMS buys and sells raw materials, transports steel products and carries out slag processing and steel surface conditioning. - Bloomberg News

A review of the effects of natural gas drilling by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project in Washington County south of Pittsburgh found that only seven of 27 cases of people who believed they were hurt by nearby natural gas activities involved water pollution. The rest involved air pollution. The numbers don't represent a full survey of the area, just cases so far with plausible exposures. The project found high levels of air pollution inside two homes about 1,000 feet from a large gas processing station. One expert not involved in the findings said more work needs to be done to confirm that residents were affected by natural gas activity and not by other factors. The drilling industry says that in general air quality has sharply improved because of natural gas since it emits far less pollution than coal-fired power plants. - AP

The U.S. Labor Department said the operator of 55 Dunkin' Donuts franchises throughout New Jersey and on New York's Staten Island will pay nearly $200,000 in back wages to 64 employees for overtime and minimum-wage violations. Federal officials say Edison, N.J.-based QSR Management wrongly claimed its store managers were exempt from overtime. Though the employees performed management duties, they did not receive a guaranteed weekly salary, entitling them to overtime pay. QSR has agreed to comply with all overtime and wage requirements.

- AP

Stock exchange operator BATS Global Markets is buying Direct Edge to create the nation's second-biggest stock exchange. The new company will account for about 21 percent of the approximately 6.5 billion shares that are traded daily on exchanges, according to BATS. It would leapfrog over the Nasdaq and rank behind the New York Stock Exchange. Both companies are privately owned. The combined company will use BATS technology and be headquartered in Kansas City, Mo. - AP

J.C. Penney Co. Inc.'s largest investor and former board member, William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, is selling his nearly 18 percent stake in the company. The move to sell 39.1 million shares of the company, announced in a regulatory filing late Monday afternoon, comes two weeks after Ackman resigned from Penney's board as part of a deal to resolve an unusually public battle between the activist investor and the struggling department store operator. The news sent its shares down nearly 3 percent to $13 per share in after hours-trading after closing down 15 cents to $13.35 in the regular session. - AP

McDonald's Corp. plans to introduce bone-in chicken wings across the United States next month as CEO Don Thompson revamps the chain's domestic menu. The Big Mac seller will start the Mighty Wings rollout Sept. 9, have the items in all U.S. stores by Sept. 24, and keep them on sale until the end of November, Ofelia Casillas, a McDonald's spokeswoman, said. The Illinois-based company tested the wings in Atlanta and Chicago. Thompson has been overhauling McDonald's menu to lure consumers and boost sales in its home market, where it has about 14,100 locations. - Bloomberg News

China's government tried to reassure companies and its public about the economy's health, saying growth is stabilizing after a lengthy decline and should hit the official target of 7.5 percent for the year. The announcement by Sheng Laiyun, the chief spokesman for the Cabinet's statistics agency, was part of official efforts to defuse unease about the country's deepest slump since the 2008 global crisis. Sheng gave no updated data but cited previously released figures. - AP