Merrill Lynch gets hit with $13.5 million fine

NEW YORK -- Merrill Lynch & Co. was fined $13.5 million by the states of New Jersey and Connecticut and the New York Stock Exchange, after a group of the company's brokers engaged in improper market-timing of mutual funds, regulators announced Tuesday. The NYSE said it determined that a group of brokers in Fort Lee, N.J., made more than 3,700 short-term mutual fund transactions from January through April 2002. The brokers used multiple accounts, all of which were held for a single hedge fund client, the NYSE said, and the accounts were transferred outside the firm and back in later that year.

Yum, farm workers reach pay agreement

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Taco Bell will pay an extra penny for each pound of tomatoes it buys under an agreement with a group of farm workers that had been protesting the fast food chain for three years. The agreement also brings to an end the periodic protests by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group of mostly Latino laborers from the tomato-growing region around Immokalee, Fla. The coalition ran a three-year campaign asking people to stay away from Taco Bell and restaurants run by its Louisville-based parent, Yum! Brands Inc., until the company pressured tomato growers to provide better wages and living conditions for farm workers.

Jury still out on ex-WorldCom chief

NEW YORK -- Jurors reviewed testimony from former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers for the first time Tuesday but failed to reach a verdict in their third day of deliberations at his fraud trial. The jury of seven women and five men asked in an afternoon note to see transcripts of testimony from Ebbers, 63, who is accused of engineering the $11 billion fraud at WorldCom. On the stand last week, Ebbers claimed he was never made aware that accountants were falsifying books at the company. The defense claims former chief financial officer Scott Sullivan masterminded the fraud.