Business news in brief

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against the federal government, alleging that Affordable Care Act requirements that group health insurance plans offer contraception violated its religious and other rights. The 26-page complaint said that the archdiocese and its affiliates, if they do not get relief in federal court, face debilitating fines totaling $160,000 per day. The archdiocese specifically objected to the government's "accommodation," which allows a religious organization to turn over the administration of contraceptive products to a third-party administrator. The suit said that the archdiocese and its affiliates can't do that and "adhere to their sincerely held Catholic beliefs on the dignity and sanctity of human life." - Harold Brubaker

Lourdes Health System, which has hospitals in Camden and Willingboro, is participating in a partnership with Walgreen Co. to ensure that patients obtain, understand, and take the medications that are prescribed when they leave the hospital. Under one aspect of the program, a national partnership between Walgreens and Lourdes' parent, CHE Trinity Health, a Walgreens pharmacy technician visits patients at bedside on their day of discharge to see if they want to get their medications delivered to their home within two hours of discharge. After the initial delivery, the patient can then switch back to his regular pharmacy. The Walgreens bedside visits have been happening for about a month. Additional components of the partnership are in the implementation phase. - Harold Brubaker

Generic drug maker Lannett Co. Inc., of Philadelphia, said its stock was added to the S&P SmallCap 600 Index, a development that CEO Arthur Bedrosian said would bode well for the company's continued growth. Lannett, which saw net sales more than double - to $80 million - in the latest quarter, compared with a year earlier, has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion. Shares rose 38 cents to close at $42.16. - Reid Kanaley

Troubled WPCS International Inc., which was threatened with delisting by Nasdaq a month ago because it hadn't scheduled an annual meeting, said it failed to reach a quorum at the meeting it finally held Friday. The Exton company issued a request for stockholders to vote their shares in time for the special meeting that was adjourned to June 11. WPCS shares fell one cent, to 59 cents. The communications engineering company is developing a bitcoin trading platform. - Reid Kanaley

The European Central Bank could be going negative soon. Among the more unusual steps the central bank is considering this week to boost the eurozone's recovery is cutting to below zero the interest rate it pays on money that banks deposit with it. That effectively means banks would have to pay to park money with the ECB - an unorthodox move that has had some success in neighboring Denmark but hasn't been attempted in the much larger eurozone. The goal: Push banks to lend that money to companies and consumers to get the economy moving. - AP

U.S. construction spending rose 0.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $953.5 billion, the strongest performance since March 2009, the Commerce Department said. The April increase was lower than economists had expected. But the government revised March activity higher to a 0.6 percent gain, up from an initial estimate of a 0.2 percent increase. The small April improvement, combined with the strong gain in March, suggest that the construction industry is recovering from the harsh winter and will provide a boost to growth in the months ahead. - AP

More than 77,000 foreign banks, investment funds, and other financial institutions have agreed to share information about U.S. account holders with the Internal Revenue Service as part of a crackdown on offshore tax evasion, the Treasury Department announced Monday. The list includes 515 Russian financial institutions. Russian banks had to apply directly to the IRS because the U.S. broke off negotiations with the Russian government over an information-sharing agreement because of Russia's actions in Ukraine. - AP

Warren Buffett's annual charity auction drew an offer of more than $355,000 as bidders vie for a chance to have lunch and a conversation with the billionaire investor. The event kicked off Sunday with a starting price of $25,000, according to a page on EBay Inc.'s website. The top bid was $355,100 as of 6 p.m. Monday. The event is scheduled to end Friday evening. - Bloomberg News