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Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

County worker charged in fraud

LANCASTER - Allegedly faking neck and back injuries landed Linda Carleen Moore in the Lancaster sheriff's station, the California Deparment of Insurance announced Thursday.

Moore, an employee of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, was charged with insurance fraud, falsifying documents and presenting false and misleading information in claim for a payment and booked on $20,000 bail.

CDI alleges the Palmdale resident received $5,415 from Aflac Insurance Co. based on altered doctor's records claiming she was unable to work after a 2004 auto accident.

After a months-long investigation by the CDI, the Los Angeles County Police Department and LACDPSS, CDI fraud investigators arrested her.

Imax Corp. may be auctioned off

TORONTO - Canadian big-screen movie company Imax Corp. is on the auction block after several unsolicited inquiries prompted its management to look at strategic alternatives, the company announced Thursday as it reported a 54 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.

Imax, since its establishment in 1967, has become a leader in giant- screen cinema installations, with 266 theaters in 38 countries.

Also Thursday, the company said its fourth-quarter profit rose to $12 million, or 29 cents per share, from $7.8 million, or 19 cents per share.

The company said revenue expanded to $49.3 million from $47.5 million. For the full year, revenue rose to $144.9 million, compared with $136 million in 2004, and net income widened to $16.6 million, 40 cents per share, from $10.2 million, or 26 cents per share.

U.S. trade deficit hits another high

WASHINGTON - Rising oil prices and Americans' seemingly insatiable appetite for foreign goods - from Chinese clothing to French wine and Japanese cars - sent the U.S. trade deficit to another record.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the deficit jumped to $68.5 billion in January, 5.3 percent more than in December. Analysts had expected the trade gap to worsen, given the surge in world oil prices, but the increase caught them by surprise.

Analysts said that unless demand for imported goods slows, the U.S. could produce a record annual deficit for the fifth year in a row, topping last year's imbalance of $723.6 billion.

Google acquires maker of Writely

MOUNTAIN VIEW - Google Inc. has bought the maker of Writely, an online word processing program that gives the online search engine leader another potential weapon in its escalating battle with Microsoft Corp.

The acquisition of Upstartle, disclosed Thursday on Google's Web site, continues the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's effort to assemble a suite of software applications that are tethered to an Internet connection instead of a single computer's hard drive.

Google didn't reveal how much it paid for Upstartle. In an analyst's presentation last week, Google said it has been aggressively buying high- tech startups to deepen its product line as well as its pool of engineering talent.