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The Canadian utility Fortis Inc. says it will purchase smaller electricity distributer Central Vermont Public Service Corp. for about $470 million.

Fortis, which will pay $35.10 per share in cash for CVPS, said in a statement on Monday it is also assuming $230 million of debt.

CVPS shareholders and regulatory agencies still have to approve the deal.

CVPS provides electricity to two-thirds of the cities and towns in Vermont. Fortis says it is expanding into the U.S.

“The acquisition of CVPS represents the initial entry by Fortis into the U.S. regulated electric utility marketplace,” Stan Marshall, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fortis, said.

Fortis provides gas and electricity to roughly 2.1 million customers in Canada.

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When it planned the Callaway nuclear plant in the mid-1970s, Union Electric Co. had a straightforward, if wishful, strategy for managing the still-radioactive used fuel: Cool it in water for a few years, then haul it away for reprocessing or permanent storage.

But the permanent solution never materialized, as the federal government failed on its promise to build a geologic repository. Almost 27 years later, the tens of thousands of uranium-filled fuel rods removed from Callaway’s reactor core are still steeping in the same 40-foot-deep stainless steel-lined pool

Pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc. said Friday it entered into two accelerated share repurchase deals with Morgan Stanley for a total of about $1.7 billion.

The north St. Louis County-based company said it will receive about 29.4 million shares initially. It then will be required to deliver shares of its stock or the cash value to Morgan Stanley or will receive more shares from Morgan Stanley, depending on the daily volume-weighted average prices per share of the stock after a valuation period.

The accelerated stock repurchases are expected to end in the fourth quarter. Shares will be bought pursuant to a share repurchase program previously announced by Express Scripts.

Shares of Express Scripts fell 60 cents to $58.93 in morning trading Friday.

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BEIJING

PARIS

A congressional agreement to increase the U.S. debt limit and reduce federal spending may take until August, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee said.

“I think there will be a deal. It will probably take a while,” Representative Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We have to August.”

The U.S. Treasury Department has said Congress must raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by Aug. 2 to avoid the government defaulting on its loans.

“Nobody wants default to happen, but at the same time we don’t want to rubber stamp just a debt-limit increase that shows we’re not getting our situation under control,” Ryan said.

Ryan defended a Republican budget plan that would cut spending by more than $6 trillion over a decade and privatize Medicare. The proposal would replace the traditional Medicare health-care system for the elderly with subsidies to buy private insurance starting with people who turn 65 in 2022.

“You cannot deal with this debt crisis unless you’re serious about entitlement reform,” Ryan said.

The plan passed the House of Representatives on April 15 on a 235-193 vote.

Gingrich Remark

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, running for the Republican presidential nomination, said last week on the NBC “Meet the Press” program that Ryan’s Medicare plan represented “radical change,” a remark he then apologized for after receiving criticism within his party.

“His quote was deeply inaccurate,” Ryan said today of Gingrich’s comment. Ryan also said his proposal “is as sensible and gradual as it gets.”

Gingrich said today that he used “unfortunate language” in characterizing the budget plan, and that he would have voted for it as part of a process to overhaul Medicare.

“My point was really a larger one that neither party should impose on the American people something that they are deeply opposed to,” Gingrich said on the CBS “Face the Nation” program.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said today he won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling without a plan in place to curb the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor.

Act Now

“We gotta act and we gotta act now,” McConnell said on the “Fox News Sunday” program. “The time to do it is in connection with the debt ceiling.”

McConnell gave few details on what he believed an agreement on the debt-limit issue that cuts spending should look like. It’s unlikely to be any several plans being considered in the Senate or Ryan’s proposal, he said.

Instead, McConnell said, a final plan will have to emerge from current deficit discussions among lawmakers and President Barack Obama’s administration that are being led by Vice President Joe Biden.

“None of these budgets are going to become law,” McConnell said. “The real action is down at the White House.”

The Obama administration is trying to eliminate Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy families and is seeking an additional $1 trillion in tax revenues from high-income families. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has said tax increases should be off the table.

Negotiations

Biden is negotiating with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, while a separate group in the Senate is seeking a budget compromise. That group, known as the “Gang of Six,” was reduced to five after Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, left the talks last week, citing an impasse over cuts to entitlement programs.

An agreement eventually will hinge on the coalescence of a swath of lawmakers from both parties, and not on negotiations by smaller groups of lawmakers, Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and Gang of Six member, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“This is ultimately going to be a debate on the floor of some of the most important economic issues of our time,” Durbin said.

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European Central Bank Governing Council member Jens Weidmann said the central bank may no longer be able to accept Greek sovereign debt as collateral in its refinancing operations if bond maturities are extended.

“A prolongation of Greek government bonds in an environment of prevailing strong doubts about the sustainability of public finances would make it impossible to accept them as collateral for refinancing operations under the existing rules,” Weidmann, who heads the Bundesbank, said at a conference in Hamburg today. “Consequently large parts of the Greek financial sector would be cut off from funding.”

Weidmann’s comments add to signs of a division between ECB policy makers and political leaders, who this week floated the idea of extending Greece’s debt repayment schedule as the nation struggles to meet the terms of last year’s 110 billion euro ($157 billion) rescue. Weidmann’s colleagues Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi and Juergen Stark have also ruled out any restructuring of Greek debt, saying it won’t solve the crisis.

Weidmann said such a move “would do nothing to improve other factors that determine the sustainability of the current debt level” such as economic growth prospects.

“In addition, the risks for contagion to other countries would significantly rise,” he said.

The euro dropped after the remarks, and traded at $1.4169 as of 5:15 p.m. in Frankfurt. It was at $1.4309 yesterday.

‘Insufficient Collateral’

“The ECB is clearly against this and trying to fight hard with almost everything it has to make sure the debate goes in the direction it wants to,” said Nick Kounis, chief European economist at ABN Amro NV in Amsterdam.

Proposals to extend debt maturities “seem to assume implicitly that the Eurosystem would provide financial means against insufficient collateral,” Weidmann said paydayloans. “But such a monetization of public debt cannot be tolerated.”

Fitch Ratings downgraded Greece’s credit rating to B+ from BB+ today and said a reprofiling of Greek debt would “trigger a credit event and default rating.”

The ECB last year suspended the minimum credit-rating threshold for Greek bonds after the country’s banks were shut out of credit markets for funding. Banks can borrow as much money as they need for up to three months against collateral.

‘Blurring’

ECB policy makers have called on governments to toughen austerity measures and step up efforts to restore investor confidence in the 17-member currency union. The central bank has provided banks with unlimited liquidity over three months and also purchased government bonds to fight the debt crisis.

“Instead of blurring the responsibilities of monetary and fiscal policy even further, fiscal policy must take up its responsibility in fighting the sovereign-debt crisis in the respective countries and at the European level,” Weidmann said.

Weidmann also signaled he’s in favor of scaling back non- conventional measures set up during the crisis.

“Sticking to non-standard policy measures for too long will not only change the perception of risk in financial markets in an undesired manner but will also preserve inefficient banking structures,” he said. “The question is not whether an exit from non-standard monetary policy is necessary, but when it will take place.”

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Moammar Gadhafi’s forces rocketed rebel fighters Thursday in the formidable strongholds and training camps they have built up in the strategic mountain heights southwest of the Libyan capital, rebels said.

The two sides appeared to be fighting for control of the two highways to the north and south of the Nafusa mountain range, which slices across the desert south of Tripoli to the western border with Tunisia. Rebels, in particular, have used the road, bringing in supplies for camps to train fighters for what they hope will be a future push on the capital.

As the fighting intensified this week, the rebel leadership in the east of the country said Thursday it was getting graphic reports of hospitals overwhelmed with casualties and of wounded having to be loaded onto donkeys and smuggled past government blockades to get treatment elsewhere.

The situation in the Nafusa mountains “remains dire, really dire,” said Jalal al-Gallal, a spokesman for the rebel governing council, based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The mountain range has been one of the few zones of opposition in western Libya since the early days of the uprising against Gadhafi’s four-decade rule in mid-February. Most of the rebel forces are concentrated in the east.

The long highways on either side of the mountain range are key to both sides. The government needs easy passage without harassment from the ridgeline above if it wants to keep control of a huge swath of the west.

The rebels run supplies from the border. Also, they have used the passageway to smuggle back fighters who had fled battles in other parts of the country and ended up in Tunisia, said Omar Hussein, a spokesman for the Nafusa mountain rebels.

Their position on the roads from the mountains to the former rebel stronghold of Zawiya on the north coast and Tripoli beyond made them a target, he said.

“Gadhafi knows that the rebels’ plan is to come down from the mountains, then head to Zawiya, and from there to Tripoli. He is trying to delay this march,” Hussein said.

Much of Thursday’s fighting focused on the city of Zintan, the rebel command center for the mountain range. Rebels fought to hold back government troops rocketing their positions to the east and southeast of Zintan, said resident and activist Hamed Enbayah. The shelling killed at least one rebel fighter and wounded three others, he said.

Points along the entire mountain range have been under intensified attack since early this week. Residents of some areas said the fighting had trapped them inside their homes and cut off food and medical supplies.

Hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties and running out of supplies, and fighters sleep in trenches, the rebels said. Many of the wounded from one village, Kiklah, were being smuggled out on donkeys because government forces were blocking evacuations, the rebel council said.

It has appealed for help in establishing a safe corridor to deliver humanitarian aid and allow the wounded to be evacuated.

“It is abundantly clear that Gadhafi forces continue to target innocent civilians,” said the council’s vice chairman, Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga. “The blocking of food, water and medical supplies is unacceptable.”

Hussein, the spokesman for the Nafusa rebels, claimed that a government soldier killed in fighting near the town of Nalut, closer to the border with Tunisia, was found chained to his destroyed vehicle, apparently to prevent him from fleeing.

Elsewhere in the west, along the Mediterranean coast, a resident of the city of Ajaylat reached by telephone from Benghazi said Gadhafi forces stormed in Wednesday and kidnapped hundreds of people, most of them young men and boys. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Ajaylat is known as a haven for smugglers taking Libya’s cheap fuel across the border to Tunisia, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, and bringing back other goods.

The kidnapping claim could not be independently confirmed, but Amnesty International has made similar allegations of abductions in Misrata, saying scores of young men were “subjected to enforced disappearance.”

In Libya’s capital, meanwhile, hundreds of Gadhafi’s loyalists staged an overnight show of support, proclaiming that the rebel insurgency was nearing an end. Young men carrying assault rifles fired into the air and set off fireworks.

Britain’s defense secretary, Liam Fox, told lawmakers on Thursday that U.K. fighter jets have fired at least 240 missiles in about 440 sorties over Libya since NATO’s campaign of airstrikes began. Fox outlined the figures in a written statement and said they were accurate up to May 8.

Also Thursday, four foreign journalists who had been held by Libyan authorities arrived in Tunisia, according to Hungarian diplomats who negotiated their release.

Late on Wednesday, Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, denied rumors that Gadhafi’s wife and daughter had fled to Tunisia. “They are in Tripoli; they are safe,” he said. He also denied that Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem defected, saying he was in Vienna on business.

An official in Tunisia’s Interior Ministry denied Thursday that Gadhafi’s family members are in Tunisia. “No member of the Gadhafi family has come to Tunisia. We will not authorize their entry into Tunisian territory, because that would be in violation of U.N. decisions that we respect,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Ghanem crossed into neighboring Tunisia by road on Monday and defected, according to a Tunisian security official and Abdel Moneim al-Houni, a former Libyan Arab League representative who was among the first wave of Libyan diplomats to defect.

A person who answered a cell phone listed for Ghanem in Austria and identified herself as his daughter said the family had had no contact with him since Friday and did not know his whereabouts. The woman’s identity could not be verified.

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The chief executive of United Technologies Corp. said Tuesday that rising commodity prices and supply chain disruptions in Japan are causing some concerns, but orders are rising and the weak dollar is boosting the conglomerate’s exports.

Louis Chenevert, CEO of the parent company of Sikorsky Aircraft, Otis elevator and other businesses, said at an investor analyst conference Tuesday that higher gas prices and inflation worries will likely crimp consumer spending. It’s also expected to affect subsidiary Carrier’s air conditioning sales and airline customers of aviation subsidiaries Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Sundstrand.

However, he said the problems, which include supply interruptions in Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, are “well manageable within the UTC scope.”

He also said the weaker dollar “will have some benefits,” because they make the company’s goods cheaper abroad.

About 60 percent of United Technologies’ $54.3 billion in revenue last year was from sales outside the United States.

Chenevert said the Hartford-based company also benefits from continued strength in orders “across the board.” He singled out gains at Carrier, which has benefited from its improving transport refrigeration business and restructuring by United Technologies.

“The bottom line is that Carrier is very well positioned to capitalize on market recovery and growth,” Chenevert said.

United Technologies raised its 2011 profit guidance last month to between $5.25 and $5.40 per share from $5.20 to $5.35 per share. Chenevert backed the guidance, saying he’s “highly confident” in the outlook.

Chenevert said sales in emerging markets in Brazil, China, India and Russia accounted for 20 percent of total sales, the first time sales from those markets outpaced military sales, which accounted for 18 percent of total revenue.

In China, he said the fastest growth is in central and western provinces. At Otis, 20 percent of new equipment sales in China were from central and western provinces six years ago, Chenevert said. That’s expected to jump to 40 percent in the next two years, he said.

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NEW YORK