LI laundry service closing; other business briefs

LONG ISLAND

Laundry to close, lay off 225

Angelica Textile Services Inc., a Georgia-based commercial laundry that provides linens and other supplies to hospitals, plans to close its Hempstead Village location, which employs 225 people. The layoffs will take place in March, the company said in a state regulatory filing known as WARN. Angelica Textile cited economic reasons. It didn't return phone calls seeking comment, so it could not be learned if some of the workers will be offered jobs at other locations. The union representing employees, Workers United, Laundry Distribution and Food Service Joint Board, also didn't return phone calls. Under New York State's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, employers with at least 50 full-time employees must provide them with a written, 90-day advance notice of a planned closing or mass layoff. -- Carrie Mason-Draffen

NATION

U.S. to profit $22.7B from AIG

The Treasury Department said Tuesday it would raise $7.6 billion in the sale of its final shares of American International Group Inc., ending the controversial bailout of the insurance giant with a $22.7-billion profit. The department agreed to sell its remaining 234 million shares in AIG, which represented 15.9 percent of the company, for $32.50 each. The sale in effect closes the books on a rescue that at its height had the government on the hook for more than $182 billion and owning 92 percent of the company. Despite the bailout's profit, critics note the huge toll it took on public confidence in the financial system and the precedent it helped set for government intervention to protect companies deemed too big to fail. -- Los Angeles Times

More help-wanted ads in Oct.

U.S. employers advertised more jobs in October than September, a hopeful sign that hiring could pick up in the coming months. The Labor Department said Tuesday that job openings rose by 128,000 to 3.68 million. That's the most since June. The number of available jobs is slowly climbing back to the roughly 4 million that were advertised each month before the recession began in December 2007. With nearly 12.3 million people unemployed in October, there were 3.3 unemployed people, on average, competing for each open job. That's the lowest ratio since November 2008. In a healthy economy, the ratio is roughly 2 to 1. In one positive sign, the number of available construction jobs jumped to 130,000, from 82,000 in September. That's the most in more than four years.

Call for unisex oven heating up

Some well-known chefs are getting behind a New Jersey girl's call for Hasbro to make a gender-neutral Easy-Bake Oven. Manuel Trevino of TV's "Top Chef" and Michael Lomonaco of Porterhouse New York are featured in a YouTube video applauding McKenna Pope's online petition, which had reached about 40,000 signatures yesterday on the website Change.org. The 13-year-old from Garfield, N.J., started the petition when she went to buy an Easy-Bake Oven for her 4-year-old-brother, Gavyn Boscio, but discovered it comes only in purple and pink. She wants Pawtucket, R.I.-based Hasbro to feature boys on the box and to make it in gender-neutral colors. A spokesman for Hasbro did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Surface tablet sales expanding

Microsoft says it's increasing production of its Surface tablets and will sell them in more stores. Staples says it will start carrying them starting Wednesday. The Surface is the first tablet Microsoft Corp. is selling under its own brand, and the company is promoting it heavily after its late-October launch. But reviews have been mixed, and there have been few signs that the tablet is flying off the shelves. So far, Microsoft has been selling it online and through its own stores. -- AP