Business Briefs

Comair has been operating under bankruptcy protection for nearly a year and has been battling with its flight attendants over pay cuts. Last week its parent, Delta Air Lines Inc., put some of its regional jet service out to bid -- a move that could weaken Comair. Sunday's crash that killed 49 people puts Comair in an even more precarious position.

Pete Janhunen, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents Comair's pilots, said many people saw the cost cuts coming, but no one expected the crash on top of that.

Neither Comair nor Delta would talk about Comair's future on Monday, though Comair spokeswoman Kate Marx said "we will be answering those restructuring questions at some point."

Postal carrier gets

three years in jail for stealing credit cards

SACRAMENTO -- A postal carrier who stole credit cards from the people on her route was sentenced Monday to more than three years in prison and ordered to repay nearly $140,000.

Viengkeo "Vicky" Pathammavong, 34, of Sacramento pleaded guilty on May 8 in U.S. District Court to stealing more than 200 debit and credit cards in 2005.

No individuals lost money in the scheme, but Pathammavong was ordered to repay the banks. They included Golden 1 Credit Union, Wells Fargo Bank, River City Bank, Sacramento Credit Union, Schools Financial Credit Union, Safe Credit Union, U.S. Bank, Washington Mutual Bank and several others.

Pathammavong filled in on various Sacramento-area routes. The 28 fraud counts in her federal indictment accused her of making purchases ranging from $1,000 to more than $16,000 on the stolen cards.

PC makers to discuss standards for

notebook batteries

DALLAS -- Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., which recalled nearly 6 million notebook batteries between them this month, are among PC makers planning to meet next month to discuss setting design and safety standards for lithium-ion batteries used in portable electronic devices.

The batteries were blamed in rare fires that prompted this month's recalls, the largest electronic recalls involving federal product-safety officials.

Dell and Apple belong to an electronics-industry trade group that sets standards for many electronics components.

The group's critical-parts committee will meet Sept. 13 in San Jose, Calif. Sony Corp., which made the recalled batteries, has not indicated whether it will attend.

Kim Sterling, a spokeswoman for the trade group IPC, said Monday that the meeting had been scheduled before Dell's Aug. 14 recall of 4.1 million notebook batteries and Apple's recall 10 days later of 1.8 million batteries.

A Dell executive, John Grosso, leads the IPC's critical-components committee.

"Without a doubt, standardization can and will address the issue of operation and safety called into question by the use of lithium ion batteries," Grosso said in a statement issued by the organization. "While the committee had identified lithium ion batteries as the next product for standardization, we are going to accelerate our activities now."

During production of the Sony batteries, made by a unit in Japan, tiny metal shards got into cells and under some circumstances caused the batteries to short-circuit and even catch fire.<