Profit

Often film sequels are slam dunks at the box office, a seamless continuation from where a previous hit left off. But as the new installment of the 15-year-old franchise "Men in Black" proves, getting to the big screen isn't always a cakewalk. One of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood memory, Sony Pictures' latest movie in the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi-comedy franchise encountered multiple script rewrites, a discontented star and a three-month production shutdown as writers and studio executives scrambled to fix a project that nearly fell apart . By the time it was over, the studio had run up a tab of nearly $250 million - making "Men in Black 3" one of the most expensive releases of the summer.

MIAMI - The Carnival Destiny cruise ship hasn't even left port, and half the ship's guests are already wasted. Passengers pack the lobby bar, balancing luggage with buckets of ice-soaked beer bottles, and flashing room keys that double as charge cards to keep the drinks flowing. When it's time for a mandatory safety drill, the life-saving instructions playing over the vessel's intercom can barely be heard over sounds of drunken guests stumbling over one another, spewing obscenities, cheering, slapping high-fives and yelling chants like "Ain't no party like a … Kid Rock party.

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

CADIZ, Calif. - Three decades ago a group of businessmen pored over NASA satellite imagery as part of a worldwide hunt for large groundwater reserves they could tap to grow desert crops. They found the signs they were looking for here in the sun-blasted mountain ranges and creosote-freckled valleys of the Mojave Desert, 200 miles east of Los Angeles. The group, which founded Cadiz Inc., bought old railroad land, drilled wells and planted neat grids of citrus trees and grapevines, irrigating them with water that bubbled out of the desert depths at the rate of 2,000 gallons a minute.

Ford Motor Co. will offer about 90,000 U.S. salaried retirees and former employees vested in its pension plan a lump-sum payment to buy them out of monthly benefits. Ford, which also reported lower first-quarter earnings Friday because of losses in Europe and Asia, said the plan was an innovative strategy to reduce its pension obligations. The automaker won't put up any operating cash but rather will make the one-time payments from existing pension plan assets. "We believe this is the first time a program of this type and magnitude has been done in an ongoing pension plan," said Bob Shanks, Ford's chief financial officer.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

If you give millions of seriously underwater homeowners a new equity position in their properties by reducing their principal mortgage debt, will they keep paying on their loans and avoid foreclosure? Call it a pipe dream or a significant model for other lenders and investors, but one company says it has found an important combination: Modify underwater borrowers' loans so that their payments are reduced to a manageable amount and cut their principal debt over time, but make the deal dependent on their scrupulous on-time monthly payments of the new amount plus sharing of a portion of any future profit they make on the house sale.

Watching Alzheimer's disease steal away the memory, talents and very selves of its victims is hard enough for the people who love them. Now, a new pill formulated by a respected pharmaceutical company and approved by the Food and Drug Administration will do little to help most patients and will bring misery to some, say two medical investigators. The drug, Aricept 23 mg, is no more effective on the whole than the disappointing ones already on the market - but is more likely to cause gastrointestinal problems, wrote Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical College in an article published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ. The new formulation was devised to serve commercial objectives, they say, and was approved despite a poor showing in company-sponsored tests.

If you are a teacher in debt, there's good news and bad news. There are literally dozens of programs that could potentially help wipe out your student loans. But most of them have narrow requirements that may lock you out. Just ask Troy Dale, a high school counselor from Ellis, Kan. He and his wife have $23,000 in student loans that they've been paying down for nearly a decade. At their current rate, they'll still be paying off their student debts when their oldest child enrolls in college.

There wasn't much to like about Facebook's first day as a public company. The social media giant's stock rose by mere pennies in its initial public offering. The shares closed at $38.23, barely above the $38 IPO price. The performance fell far short of the grandiose expectations of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and raised questions about whether the company's stock will be the sure bet many had counted on. "There was all this pressure and hype and attention with all eyes on Facebook — and the starlet tripped on the red carpet," said Max Wolff, an analyst at GreenCrest Capital Management in New York.

In another move to beef up its mobile offering, Facebook has hired the entire staff of Lightbox, a tiny start-up known for its popular photo sharing app for Android smartphones. The hiring of the seven-person team at Lightbox comes as the social network nears what is expected to be the largest ever Internet initial public offering. Investors have been weighing the value of Facebook and have questioned how well it will be able to generate ad revenue from mobile devices. Facebook made more than $3 billion off of ads seen on its laptop and desktop website in 2011 but has not yet figured out how to monetize its 500 million mobile app users.

Continuing its uncanny ability to surf from one blockbuster hit to another, Activision Blizzard Inc. posted first-quarter revenue and profit that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, thanks in large part to the success of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, a popular children's game with a suite of collectible physical toys. Still, the Santa Monica games giant's net income for the quarter that ended March 31 dropped 23.7% to $384 million, or 33 cents a share, from $503 million, or 42 cents a share a year earlier.

After dealing with floods, earthquakes and a super-strong yen, Toyota Motor Corp. is following a fourth quarter in which income quadrupled with a similarly optimistic forecast for 2013. The Japanese car company, which last year relinquished the title of world's largest automaker to General Motors Co., said it earned 121 billion yen, or $1.52 billion, in the quarter ended March 31. That's compared with the 25.4-billion yen profit recorded during the same quarter a year earlier.

WASHINGTON - In a potential turning point for one of the biggest financial crisis bailouts, Fannie Mae reported a first-quarter profit and - for the first time since the government seized it in 2008 - does not need a quarterly infusion of taxpayer money. The $2.7-billion profit that the giant housing finance company posted Wednesday was its largest since the housing bubble burst in 2007 and is another signal that the real estate market finally might have hit bottom. "It's always hard to call a turn until everything is in the rear-view mirror," said Susan McFarland, Fannie Mae's chief financial officer.

A newly streamlined government plan to reward homeowners who diligently pay their underwater mortgages is proving a bonanza for banks, which by one estimate may pocket $12 billion in extra revenue by refinancing loans. The revisions to the Obama administration's 3-year-old Home Affordable Refinance Program have yielded mixed results for homeowners, analysts and mortgage professionals say. Some responsible homeowners are indeed getting lower-interest loans despite owing far more than their homes are worth.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government could end up pocketing a $15.1-billion profit from the bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc., according to a new estimate by the Government Accountability Office. The report came as the Treasury Department this week continued to wind down its stake in AIG, which the government rescued from collapse in late 2008 with a multi-step infusion of $125 billion in taxpayer money to stabilize the company. The Treasury Department said this week that it agreed to sell $5.75 billion worth of shares to reduce the government's ownership stake to 61% from 70%. The sale, which could be final as early as this week, includes about $750 million from underwriters that exercised their option to buy additional shares.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co., still struggling to adapt to the rigors of a deregulated world, said Thursday that it will cut up to 27,400 jobs over the next year and write off $3.2 billion in the fourth quarter. The cutbacks mean that AT&T--for decades a haven of job security for American workers--will have eliminated 80,000 jobs, or a fifth or its work force, since it was severed from the 22 Bell System telephone operating companies in January, 1984.

Costco Wholesale Corp., the largest U.S. warehouse-club chain, increased membership fees 10 percent after rising costs hurt profit margins in the fourth quarter. Costco will boost annual membership fees to $55 from $50 effective Nov. 1 for U.S. Goldstar or individual members, as well as business and Canada Business members, the retailer said today in a statement. U.S. and Canada executive fees will rise to $110 from $100. The increases will affect about 22 million members, half of them in the executive program, Costco said.

Overcoming its disastrous film flop "John Carter," Walt Disney Co. reported strong quarterly earnings, helped by robust television and theme park income, and forecast a rosy future with plans for a sequel to its current hit, "The Avengers. " Disney posted quarterly net income of $1.14 billion, or 63 cents a share, a 21% increase from a profit of $942 million, or 49 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 6% to $9.6 billion for the second quarter ended March 31 compared with the same quarter last year.

Despite a vexing ratings slump at its children's network Nickelodeon, Viacom Inc.'s second-quarter profit soared 56%. The strong earnings were produced by higher fees from pay-television operators and lower expenses at the media company's Paramount Pictures movie studio. For the quarter ended March 31, Viacom earned $585 million, or $1.07 a share, up from $376 million, or 63 cents, a year earlier. Revenue grew 2% to $3.33 billion. "Across our divisions we sharpened our focus on execution and efficiency while continuing to invest in programming," Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman told analysts in a Thursday morning conference call.