In brief

Penn Traffic loses $5.6M

Pressured by the slowing economy, The Penn Traffic Co. lost $5.6 million in the third quarter and has now lost $21.4 million through the first nine months of its fiscal year.

The Syracuse-based regional grocery chain also reported its quarterly revenues were $287.3 million for the three months that ended Nov. 1, down from $298.7 million in the same period a year ago. The company said revenues reflected a reduction in corporate-owned grocery stores from 104 to 93.

Penn Traffic operates or supplies more than 210 supermarkets in New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Its stores do business under the P&C, Quality and BiLo names.

Va. food plant to unionize

Organized labor got a big boost in the country’s least unionized state when workers at the world’s largest hog processing plant voted to unionize.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union and Smithfield, Va.-based Smithfield Foods Inc. had tussled ever since the Smithfield Packing Co. plant in rural North Carolina opened in 1992.

The 2,041-1,879 vote in favor of the UFCW will be certified next Friday unless Smithfield objects. The company said it planned to talk with the union following the holidays on a timetable for negotiations.

Ecuador to default on loan

President Rafael Correa announced Ecuador will not meet a debt payment next week, making good on threats to default on debts his government considers illegitimate.

Correa told a news conference Friday in the city of Guayaquil that Ecuador will not make a $30.6 million interest payment due Monday on $510 million in bonds due in 2012. Ecuador will offer a restructuring plan to creditors in hopes of avoiding a drawn-out legal battle, he said.

Correa and his government have spent heavily on social programs like monthly payments for single mothers, seeds for farmers and building materials for new homeowners.

Hepatitis C treatment OK’d

The first high-tech, long-acting treatment for hepatitis C in children, a two-drug combination from Schering-Plough Corp., has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Schering-Plough said Friday that FDA had approved sales of a treatment combining its antiviral pill, Rebetol, with its PEG-Intron, an advanced, genetically engineered version of the immune system protein interferon, for children age 3 to 17 infected with the hepatitis C virus.

An estimated 130,000 American children are infected with hepatitis C. Many adults and even some children don’t know they are infected because hepatitis C can display no obvious symptoms for years, but it often is spotted when a patient has blood testing for something else.