'Transformers' star Megan Fox to model for Armani

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Three cheers for job skills: Durham girls get practical

Heading into the woodworking shop at Southern High School, Armani White unclasped her pearl necklace and swapped her 4-inch red stilettos for black sneakers. Soon, she was driving nails into a two-by-four, while a shop vacuum sucked up pine shavings and cordless drills whirred -- all in the manicured hands of high school cheerleaders and sorority sisters.

Former homecoming queen Lisa Pineiro, president of Technical Services Inc., a Durham-based electrical contracting firm, wanted these young women to know they could be both fierce with a hammer and feminine. She started Southern Women @ Work, an after-school training ground where the school's "girliest girls" learn how to measure wood, flick a measuring tape with confidence and use the shop's intimidating drill press.

If the popular girls thought it was cool, maybe other girls would try it, too, she thought. And that could open opportunities for them.

Frontier, Verizon to deal

Verizon Communications will sell scattered phone service areas outside its main Northeastern and Californian territories for $5.3 billion in stock to Frontier Communications.

The deal will transfer millions of Verizon customers to Frontier in more than a dozen states, including North Carolina. Once the deal closes, more than 200,000 Verizon lines in this state, including customers in Durham and Creedmoor, as well as pockets in Orange, Johnston and Wake counties, will shift to Frontier.

The company focuses on small towns and rural areas and will triple in size with the deal.

Trimeris deal hits major snag

The proposed $81 million acquisition of AIDS drug company Trimeris is in jeopardy.

The Durham-based company announced this morning that the South Korean company that wants to buy it has asked for an extension of its tender offer deadline because it currently lacks the money and financing to complete the deal. The current deadline is Monday.

Trimeris also said that if the deal isn't consummated, it is in line to receive a $12 million deal termination payment.

Companies agree to clean up PCBs

A group of companies linked to contamination of the Ward Transformer industrial site signed a tentative deal Tuesday to clean up the property that has remained polluted more than 25 years, an EPA official said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also announced it would do more testing for toxins in a drainage ditch leading from Ward Transformer, and in Lake Crabtree County Park, a popular park farther downstream, as local leaders have demanded.

Terms of the settlement, including the names of the companies, were not announced, pending approval by the U.S. Department of Justice. Progress Energy confirmed that it signed the agreement. The settlement covers cleanup of the industrial site itself, not areas downstream that are still being studied.

Treat obese kids, panel says

An influential advisory panel says school-age youngsters and teens should be screened for obesity and sent to intensive behavior treatment if they need to lose weight - a move that could transform how doctors deal with overweight children.

Treating obese kids can help them lose weight, the panel of doctors said in issuing new guidelines today. But that's only if it involves rigorous diet, activity and behavior counseling.

Just five years ago, the same panel - the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force - found few benefits from pediatric obesity programs. Since then, the task force said, studies have shown success. But that has only come with treatment that is costly, hard to find and hard to follow.