Airline offering a free beer on Thanksgiving flights

JetBlue Airways is offering a bonus to fliers on Thanksgiving Day -- a free beer to accompany football games on its seat-back satellite TVs. The National Football League's Miami Dolphins-Detroit Lions and Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Dallas Cowboys games will be among the programming on 36 channels of DirecTV that JetBlue offers for free. (Peter J. Howe)

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said a Massachusetts judge had granted its motion to decertify a class action lawsuit accusing the world's largest retailer of denying employees breaks. A Middlesex County Superior court judge Monday unsealed the full text of his Nov. 7 decision, Wal-Mart said. The lawsuit, certified as a class action on Dec. 30, 2004, consisted of more than 51,000 current and former hourly workers at Massachusetts Wal-Mart and Sam's Clubs stores. (Reuters)

Gethuman.com, a website that rates companies on how well they process calls, flunked most of them. The site grew out of Arlington resident Paul English's frustration with automated voice-response systems. The grading standards are heavily oriented toward human interaction, rewarding companies that allow callers to dial "0" or say "operator" to reach a person. Failing grades went to American Express, Apple, Bank of America, Comcast, and Liberty Mutual Insurance, among others. Southwest Airlines, which handles all calls with operators, was graded B; Hertz, Lands' End, and Walt Disney World got A's. (Bruce Mohl)

Investment-management firm Eaton Vance Corp. said fiscal fourth-quarter profit edged up 2 percent on increased sales. Net income for the period ending Oct. 31 rose to $38.5 million, or 29 cents per share, from $37.7 million, or 27 cents per share, during the same period a year ago. Current results were hurt by 6 cents per share for expenses associated with the early retirement of long-term debt. Revenue gained 15 percent to $227.3 million versus $198.1 million last year. Assets under management on Oct. 31. totaled $128.9 billion, a 19 percent increase over the same time last year. (AP)

GateHouse Media Inc., owner of more than 400 community publications in 18 states, agreed to buy Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York from Canandaigua Messenger Inc. GateHouse will buy the Daily Messenger in Canandaigua, N.Y., and 10 weekly papers in the suburbs of Rochester, GateHouse said. Terms weren't disclosed. A big part of Gate House's current portfolio -- four dailies and 93 weeklies and other papers -- was acquired this year from Community Newspapers Co., which was owned by Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell. Most of those papers ring Boston from the suburbs. (Bloomberg)

Dell Inc. posted third-quarter profit that beat analysts' estimates and said better customer service helped stem defections to rival personal-computer makers. Net income was $677 million, or 30 cents a share, based on preliminary figures, Dell said. Profit exceeded a 24-cent estimate by J.P. Morgan Securities analyst Bill Shope. Sales in the quarter ended Nov. 3 were $14.4 billion. Dell, whose accounting is under investigation by regulators, didn't provide comparable year-earlier figures after delaying results last week. (Bloomberg)

Oil prices climbed above $60 a barrel amid temporary trouble with an Alaskan pipeline and a couple of US refinery outages. Energy traders were also buying ahead of the weekly US oil inventory report, which is released on Wednesdays. Analysts are expecting it to show that US supply of gasoline and distillates -- which include heating oil and diesel fuel -- dropped last week. Light sweet crude for January delivery rose $1.37 to settle at $60.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. (AP)