Campbell Soup cuts 770 jobs, closes Russian plant

The Campbell Soup Co. said it’s eliminating 770 jobs around the world and shutting down its soup-selling operation in Russia.

The major announcements come just a month before Denise Morrison takes over from Douglas Conant as president and CEO of the world’s largest soup maker.

The job cuts will include layoffs, most of which will come in July.

About 130 of the 1,200 positions at its headquarters in Camden, N.J., will be eliminated.

The company also plans to close its manufacturing plant in Marshall, Mich., among other changes

Campbell has about 18,400 workers around the world.

Sony chief tries to reassure shareholders after breach

Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer credited “very loyal” PlayStation Network gamers for flocking back to the service in big numbers, as he sought Tuesday to reassure shareholders following a series of embarrassing hacker attacks.

Stringer apologized for the breach in April, which compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming and entertainment accounts. Sony was subsequently criticized for lax security and acting too slowly to inform customers as it grappled with one of the largest-ever security thefts.

Stringer said at an annual shareholders meeting held at a Tokyo hotel that as many as 90 percent of subscribers have come back since the Japanese company began restoring service last month.

Madoff says he’s surprised his penalty wasn’t stoning

Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff said he believes the judge who sentenced him to 150 years in prison for his epic fraud was so beholden to mob psychology he’s surprised his penalty wasn’t a public stoning.

The 73-year-old Madoff told The New York Times that federal Judge Denny Chin gave him a virtual death sentence two years ago.

He said he’s surprised the judge didn’t suggest stoning in the public square as proper punishment for a multi-decade fraud that cost thousands of people billions of dollars.

The judge told the newspaper he considered whether a sentence of 20 to 25 years might be acceptable. But he concluded that would’ve been “way too low.”

Lockheed Martin Corp. gets $184.3 million Army contract

Lockheed Martin Corp. said Tuesday it recently received a contract worth about $184.3 million from the U.S. Army to produce 29 additional persistent threat detection systems for use by coalition forces in Afghanistan.

In 2010, Lockheed Martin delivered 28 of the systems, bringing the total number of systems provided to the Army to 37.

The systems, used by the Army since 2004, use a combination of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications to protect soldiers from improvised explosive devices and other threats, the defense contractor said.

Study: Credit card firms lax in finding, preventing fraud

Credit card companies could make customers’ accounts and identities more secure with a few simple steps.

That’s what consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research said in a study looking at the policies banks use to protect customer data.

Javelin gave Bank of America its highest score for safety among the top U.S. card issuers. It’s the third largest U.S. card issuer.

The biggest card issuer, American Express, was ranked seventh for safety.

Javelin said card companies do a good job resolving fraud problems once they occur, but fall short on prevention and detection. The easiest way to improve those areas is to involve the customer more, by creating things like alerts that help card users notice false charges before they go through.

Account fraud totals about $37 billion annually.