November 16, 2005

Johnson & Johnson will pay $4 billion less than originally agreed to acquire Guidant, troubled maker of implantable heart devices, under revised $21.5 billion deal; new agreement is apparent acknowledgment by Guidant of how significantly its outlook has declined because of disclosures about product problems, device recalls, investigations and lawsuits; move clears way for Johnson & Johnson to become major player in market for defibrillators and pacemakers, lucrative product area it has long sought to enter (M)

HOW hot is the pet market these days? Think dog purses, cat strollers, ''Cab-bone-net'' wine-flavored dog treats and sitters hired to watch television with Fido, and some sense of the lunatic growth becomes clear. So far, the boom has created lucrative opportunities for small-business owners, but as more big companies take note, the market could become more difficult for the niche firms that are now flourishing.

Just two decades removed from the horrors of the Civil War, throngs of sightseers stepped into the center of a gigantic painting-in-the-round to imagine what it might have felt like to be in the scrum of battle on the hallowed ground of Gettysburg. The realism of this cyclorama, the story goes, brought some veterans to tears.

Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee votes to impose $5 billion tax next year on nation's largest oil companies; measure amounts to one-year windfall profits tax, concept that most Republicans had until recently denounced as discredited idea from 1970's; measure is added to larger bill that would cut taxes by about $61 billion over next five years; bill is setback for Pres Bush because it omits one of his most cherished tax priorities: extension of his 2001 tax cuts on stock dividends and capital gains; those tax cuts expire at end of 2008 (M)

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey intends to drastically shrink its plans for an underground chiller plant at the World Trade Center site, cutting off the new commercial office towers from the central air-conditioning and water cooling system. The redesign, which is to be voted on tomorrow by the authority board, will make the chiller plant more environmentally acceptable by reducing the amount of Hudson River water -- and fish eggs and larvae -- drawn into its pipes.