A recently released Minnesota Management and Budget report indicates that more than 1,000 state employees accepted an early retirement offer in 2010, which will save the state an estimated $46.7 million over three years.

Just two weeks after it announced plans to acquire T-Mobile USA, AT&T said it will expand its 4G network in Minnesota as part of a $19 billion companywide investment.

The company cut 40 jobs at an ammunition plant in Missouri; it also received a $35 million military contract for the development of new technologies at its facility in Plymouth.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, HealthPartners, Medica, and UCare have agreed to place a 1 percent cap on 2011 profits from state health care contracts.

The cable network, which scooped up the controversial miniseries after the History channel dropped it, has seen increased interest since it began marketing the program and achieved record viewers during its Sunday debut.

More than half of the organizations and individuals targeted in clawback lawsuits seeking to recover money from Tom Petters' fraud scheme have asked to have the suits thrown out.

Following the airing of a parody song about the Hmong community, HealthPartners and AT&T pulled their ads from the radio station-which contends that the song was aired on a comedy show and was not intended to offend listeners.

The Minneapolis-based water systems manufacturer expects the deal to close during the second quarter.

According to the Minneapolis newspaper, the redesigned Web site is faster and delivers a better reader experience.

TCF Financial Corporation's lawsuit against the Federal Reserve board wasn't thrown out as the Fed had requested-but the company was dealt a blow when a federal judge refused to issue a preliminary injunction to stop debit-card interchange limits from being enforced.

The bank is seeing results from a program it initiated three years ago that requires branch managers to spend nearly half of their time working on small-business lending.

San Jose, California-based Cypress Semiconductor-which has a manufacturing facility in Bloomington-claims that GSI Technology's products infringe on five patents that Cypress holds.

David Beulke was sentenced to more than four years in prison and three years of supervised release for bilking $5.6 million from 3M Company through the creation of fake shell companies.

The Minneapolis City Council voted 9 to 4 to award a $1.73 million contract to Life Time Fitness despite the fact that the Chanhassen-based company doesn't meet a city requirement to offer domestic partner benefits to its employees.

E-mail marketing vendor Epsilon on Friday informed its customers-which range from retailers like Best Buy to financial institutions like U.S. Bank-that someone gained unauthorized access to its database of e-mail addresses.

U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson ruled Wednesday that two of Medtronic's implantable defibrillators do not infringe on patents licensed to Boston Scientific.