BUSINESS DIGEST || No permits issued

No permits issued

YOUNGSTOWN

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources issued no horizontal-drilling permits last week. The rig count is 24. Of the 1,868 total permits issued, there are 1,420 wells drilled with 839 producing.

Free cookie for fans

CLEVELAND

Eat’n Park Restaurants will offer a free Smiley cookie for fans wearing attire of the Cleveland Indians baseball team Friday. Any form of Indians attire is acceptable, including T-shirts, jerseys, pins and hats.

The promotion is to celebrate the start of the season with the Indians playing against the Detroit Tigers at 4:10 p.m. that day. Indians fans can visit Eat’n Park restaurants in Austintown, Boardman and Warren to receive their free cookie.

Alcoa has strong 1st-quarter profits

NEW YORK

Lightweight-metals leader Alcoa, the company that recently purchased Pittsburgh-based RTI International Inc., reported strong first-quarter 2015 profits Wednesday.

Net income was $195 million, or $0.14 per share, including $158 million in restructuring-related charges, mostly to optimize the company’s portfolio. Year-over-year, first-quarter 2015 results compare with a net loss of $178 million, or $0.16 per share.

Excluding the impact of all special items, first-quarter 2015 net income jumped to $363 million, or $0.28 per share, from $98 million, or $0.09 per share, in the year-ago period.

First-quarter 2015 revenues rose 7 percent to $5.8 billion, from $5.5 billion in the first quarter of 2014, driven by strong automotive and aerospace volume. Positive market effects in the quarter were offset by capacity reductions and portfolio changes, the company said in a news release.

Mercedes has best sales month ever

FRANKFURT, Germany

Luxury-car maker Mercedes-Benz saw its highest monthly sales ever in March.

The brand owned by Daimler AG got a boost from a recovering auto market in Europe and a big increase in China.

Mercedes-Benz sold 183,467 vehicles last month worldwide. That’s an increase of 15.7 percent from the same month a year earlier.

The sales numbers were boosted by strong growth in Asia and in Europe, still the company’s biggest market.

Bird flu hits 9th Minn. turkey farm

MINNEAPOLIS

A ninth Minnesota turkey farm has been hit by a form of bird flu that’s deadly to poultry, this time in a large Jennie-O-Turkey Store operation that has 310,000 turkeys, federal authorities and company officials said Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said tests confirmed it was the same highly pathogenic H5N2 strain of avian influenza that infected eight other farms in Minnesota, the country’s top turkey-producing state. Those farms have lost about 373,000 turkeys to the outbreaks between the disease itself and birds that were killed to prevent the disease from spreading.

Vindicator staff/wire reports