BUSINESS BRIEFS
Hilton planning 55 new hotels
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Hilton Hotels Corp. confirmed yesterday that it had reached agreements to develop about 55 hotel properties in Russia, Britain and Central America with a group of partners.
Hilton, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., is expected to announce today that it will partner with London & Regional Properties Inc. to develop hotels in Russia. It will partner with Shiva Hotels Ltd to expand in Britain and Ireland.
It will ally with Caribbean Property Group to develop hotels in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad, the company confirmed. The partners are expected to invest $1.7 billion in construction.
APPLE'S IPHONE ARRIVES JUNE 29
NEW YORK — Apple Inc.'s highly anticipated iPhone will be available June 29, according to TV commercials broadcast last night and posted on the company's Web site.
The combination cell phone, media player and wireless Web-surfing device will retail for $499 and $599, depending on configuration.
The iPhone, which sports no keypad but has a touch-sensitive screen, was unveiled with fanfare in early January by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He said it would appear in stores in June but gave no date.
DIGENE BEING SOLD FOR $1.6B
Digene Corp., a Gaithersburg, Md., firm that sells a screening test for a virus that causes cervical cancer, announced a deal yesterday to sell itself to a Dutch company for approximately $1.6 billion in cash and stock.
The deal with Qiagen NV, a global player in molecular diagnostics technology, comes as Digene has been seeking international growth. The company also is facing a competitive threat from diagnostics giant Roche AG, which wants to sell its own test in the United States to detect human papillomavirus, or HPV.
