NEW YORK (AP) — Walgreens is buying rival Rite Aid for about $9.41 billion in cash, creating a drugstore giant with nearly 18,000 stores around the world.

The deal combines the largest and third-largest U.S. drugstore chains, based on store counts. And it makes one of the world's largest pharmaceutical buyers even bigger at a time when other key health care players like insurers and drugmakers also are expanding through multi-billion dollar deals.

Walgreens said it will pay $9 for each share of Rite Aid Corp. That's a 48 percent premium to Rite Aid's closing price of $6.08 Monday. Shares of both companies jumped Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal first reported the deal.

The companies said the deal is worth $17.2 billion, when debt is included.

The suit says supervisor referred to the Gresham Station security kiosk as a “church,” posted Bible verses on the walls, and held daily “prayer circles” with two other guards.
Four former security guards are suing G4S Secure Solutions for $3.5 million, claiming the international security company's kiosk in a Gresham shopping center was run by a devoutly Christian supervisor who told employees their gay family members were going to hell, played videos about the Illuminati and warned that the security kiosk could be attacked by demons.

The religious discrimination lawsuit, filed Oct. 5 in Multnomah County Circuit Court, says when the four guards complained to upper management about supervisor Sarah Houser, they were fired.

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Florida-based G4S is one of the largest security contractors in the U.S. The company runs security teams for the UK Foreign Commonwealth Office in Afghanistan, but stateside it's mostly a staffing agency for private security guards. Its Oregon contracts include Google's data center in The Dalles and wafer manufacturer Siltronic in Portland.

Jeb Bush, once a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is implementing an across-the-board pay cut for his struggling campaign, removing some senior staff from the payroll, and canceling some fundraisers as the former Florida governor attempts a mid-campaign course correction 100 days out from the party’s first nominating contest.

The campaign is parting ways with some consultants and downsizing its staff at their Miami headquarters in moves that will save more than $1 million per month and cut payroll by 40 percent this week, according to Bush campaign officials who requested anonymity to speak about internal changes.

The campaign is also cutting back 45 percent of its budget, except for dollars earmarked for TV advertising and spending for voter contacts, such as phone calls and mailers. Some senior-level staff and consultants will continue to work with the campaign on a volunteer basis, while other junior-level consultants, primarily in finance but including other areas, will be let go, the officials said. The officials declined to say who would be removed from the payroll or provide an exact dollar figure for the savings.

Analysts and rival campaigns will view the changes as a desperate act, perhaps the last one, of a man whose campaign has dropped in the polls in recent months and has remained mired in the middle of a crowded field despite a month-long blitz of friendly television ads. None of the changes deal directly with what even many of Bush's supporters say is his main challenge: The burden of trying to convince voters hungry for change to choose a man whose father and brother both served as president.

SunTrust Banks in Atlanta is laying off about 100 IT employees as it moves work offshore. But this layoff is unusual for what the employer is asking of its soon-to-be displaced workers: SunTrust's severance agreement requires terminated employees to remain available for two years to provide help if needed, including in-person assistance, and to do so without compensation.

Many of the affected IT employees, who are now training their replacements, have years of experience and provide the highest levels of technical support. The proof of their ability may be in the severance requirement, which gives the bank a way to tap their expertise long after their departure.

This assistance can be by telephone or in-person meetings, and it may be provided without "additional consideration or compensation of any kind," the clause says.

After boxes of snow from Boston's brutal winter sold for $89 last winter, it seems pretty much anything can be sold on the internet for profit.

ShipSnowYo's Founder Kyle Waring proved this yet again with his latest venture: Shipfoliage.com.

The New England native launched his new Foliage-as-a-Service (FaaS) business last Tuesday and has already taken roughly 250 orders worth $19.99 each.

The company sells only one product, a 3-leaf foliage bundle, which includes "Grade A" hand-selected leaves from the wilderness of New England.

Despite making thousands shipping Boston's abundant snow last winter, Waring says this product's success is "definitely a surprise."