LEGAL

AIRLINES

United Mistakenly Drops Fee

Passengers booking flights on United Airlines got a one-day reprieve from the carrier's fast-rising fuel surcharge due to what United says was an error. The mistake saved some customers as much as $130 per round trip on United's domestic flights.

United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said the fuel surcharge was eliminated for domestic flights due to a clerical error. She said any customer who booked a flight without the usual surcharge will not be charged for it later.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

IAC Buys Dictionary Site Operator

InterActiveCorp agreed to buy Lexico Publishing Group, owner of the Dictionary.com word-search site, to bolster its Ask.com search engine. The deal will increase users of IAC advertiser-supported sites by 11 percent, the companies said. Terms of the cash purchase were not disclosed.

Ask.com, the fifth-largest U.S. search engine, is reorganizing, and IAC will buy more companies and develop features in health-care and entertainment search, said Jim Safka, who runs the unit. IAC, led by chairman Barry Diller, is expected to split into five companies later this year. It will keep its ad-supported Web sites, whose first-quarter profit almost tripled. A new deal with Google, which sells advertising for New York-based IAC, gave the company a bigger split of revenue.

REGULATORS

White House Warns on Reforms

The Bush administration yesterday reiterated its opposition to portions of sweeping product safety reform legislation pending in Congress.

In a letter to House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), National Economic Council director Keith Hennessey said a proposed ban of phthalates, a chemical component in many plastics, from children's products, would be "short-sighted" and could lead to "the introduction of unregulated substitute chemicals that harm children's health."

He said provisions that would allow state attorneys general to enforce federal product safety laws and that would create a database of product-related injuries and complaints would promote frivolous lawsuits. And he called mandatory independent testing of certain children's products "an excessive burden" to some manufacturers.

The House and Senate passed separate product safety bills and talks are underway to reconcile them.

EARNINGS

Blockbuster said its earnings after preferred dividends totaled $42.6 million, or 20 cents per share, in the three months ended April 6. That compared with a loss of $51.8 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier. A 2.9 percent increase in same-store sales in the United States included a jump of nearly 20 percent in merchandise sales.

Nordstrom said its profit fell 24 percent in the first quarter to $119 million, or 54 cents per share, from $157 million, or 60 cents per share in the comparable three months last year. Revenue slipped 4 percent, to $1.88 billion from $1.95 billion a year ago.

Blackstone Group reported its second straight quarterly loss. The firm says it lost $251 million, or 97 cents per common unit, during the first quarter. Blackstone earned $1.13 billion a year ago. Deterioration in credit and equities markets caused Blackstone to lose $188.7 million in performance fees and post a $215.6 million loss from fund investment activities.

Beazer Homes USA reported two consecutive quarterly losses as the company wrote down the value of unsold homes and abandoned options to buy land. The loss was $229.9 million, or $5.96 a share for the quarter ended March 31. The loss was $138.2 million, or $3.59 a share for the period ended Dec. 31.

Compiled from reports by Washington Post staff writers, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News.