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In between briefings on Libya, President Barack Obama packed golf, beach time, a stop at a seafood restaurant and a visit to a wealthy friend’s seaside compound into his Martha’s Vineyard vacation Sunday.

Meanwhile, across the globe, rebels stormed into Tripoli as Moammar Gadhafi’s hold on power seemed to crumble.

Asked about the developments as he bought seafood at Nancy’s, a popular restaurant in Oak Bluffs, Obama said: “We’re going to wait until we have full confirmation of what has happened. … I’ll make a statement when we do.”

Then Obama and his family headed to dinner at the house where White House adviser Valerie Jarrett is staying.

Earlier, Obama spent about an hour at the home of Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts after playing golf with some buddies no fax payday loan. The golf foursome included Obama’s Chicago pal Eric Whitaker, UBS America executive Robert Wolf and a White House aide. Obama spent the morning at the beach with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia.

The president began the day with a briefing on Libya, said the White House, which has been at pains to show Obama’s still fulfilling his duties as president amid international unrest, a shaky economy and high unemployment.

He is scheduled to return to Washington on Saturday.

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The Toronto stock market tumbled again Friday, a day after investors punished stocks and sparked the worst one-day decline in two years, with no comfort coming from a stronger-than-expected reading on U.S. employment.

The S&P/TSX composite index fell 216.03 points or 1.74 per cent to 12,164.1, led by sliding resource stocks as investors feel slowing economic conditions will heavily impact demand.

When Nia Lewis was looking for a car to drive to Florida to visit her in-laws, she went to the Atlanta Budget Rent a Car website as she normally does. But she stumbled upon something unusual.

There, on the site’s home page, was a big discount. The catch? The car is a moving ad.

With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon and the economy still in bad shape, Budget is hoping more deal-hungry vacationers want to rent cheaper vehicles

Here is a tale of savvy branding, chutzpah, bubbles - and a mask.

Tonight, when ABC airs a special edition of its hit show “The Bachelorette,” a surreptitious form of advertising will work its way into the program.

Jeff Medolla, the Clayton entrepreneur known to “Bachelorette” viewers as “masked Jeff” or just “the guy in the mask,” will return for the “Men Tell All” episode, during which the men kicked off the show during the regular season gather for a postmortem of sorts.

The show will give Medolla, 35, yet more air time, he hopes, to give his latest venture a bigger buzz.

Late last year, Medolla helped launch Freaky Muscato, a sparkling, bubbly wine made by Ste. Genevieve-based Crown Valley Winery. His masked-man semi-fame, which for a time became fodder for late-night talk shows and reality show blogs, has helped him get the word out.

“As soon as you get kicked off the show, no one wants to talk to you. But I had the mask. I had 15 radio stations and 20 magazines calling me,” Medolla said in a recent

interview. “I have this opportunity to go promote the wine. I’m not just any guy.”

Medolla says he conceived of the whole mask-donning concept as a way to promote Freaky. “It was a joke with a cool message,” he said. “But I also did it for business.”

Freaky, a bubbly blend of muscato grapes, appears to be the lucky beneficiary of some oddball circumstances - and not just Medolla’s notoriety. Freaky’s association with local hip-hop artists the St. Lunatics lends the brand street cred among hip-hop fans, its target audience. Also, the growing popularity of muscato (also know as moscato or muscat) is appealing to people who want to “trade down” from other sparkling wines in a less-than-sparkling economy.

“Muscatos are the hottest thing going,” said Bryan Siddle, operations manager at Crown Valley.

Freaky seems to be riding high on the trend. “I’m buying 50 cases at time,” says Jase Bennett, a wine buyer at Randall’s Wine and Spirits.

“It sells very well.”

Wine industry analysts said they know of only one other hip-hop wine venture - rapper Lil Jon’s Little Jonathan Winery - but the wine-rapper pairing might be the start of larger movement.

“I think it’s a unique idea. Just given wine and the hip-hop community, it’s not their typical choice,” said Derek Groff, of Frank, Rimerman & Co., a wine-focused accounting and consulting firm in California’s Napa Valley.

“The hip-hop community has been a trendsetter for decades now. Whether it’s clothes or drinks, they’re using their leverage with new brands. Maybe the next phase will be wine.”

The idea for Freaky was born, Medolla recalled, as he was driving down the highway listening to music - country music, oddly. But his mind, apparently, was on hip-hop.

“In all of hip-hop music they use the word

Medical device maker Boston Scientific is reporting a nearly 50 percent increase in second-quarter profit and says it will cut up to 1,400 employees to streamline operations.

The company is announcing a restructuring program to eliminate unnecessary administrative positions and automate other production work. The company expects to shed between 1,200 and 1,400 employees by the end of 2013. Boston Scientific expects the cuts to save between $225 and $275 million annually, some of which will be invested in other areas of the company.

For the second quarter, the Natick, Mass., company earned $146 million, or 10 cents per share, up from $98 million, or 6 cents per share, in the prior-year period.

Company sales grew 2 percent to $1.98 billion, which was above Wall Street estimates.

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GE Healthcare, a maker of diagnostic imaging equipment, said Monday it is moving its X-ray global headquarters from the United States to Beijing as it seeks to tap China and other emerging markets.

The General Electric Co. unit is the first business of the industrial and financial giant to relocate to China.

Anne LeGrand, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare Global X-Ray, told a news conference that the decision to move from Waukesha, Wisconsin, was made two years ago and will be completed by early fall.

She said “there is certainly the opportunity” to move other GE Healthcare units to China, but that is “something that we will continue to evaluate.”

The move involves LeGrand and a handful of her top managers. In an interview, she said they will add other people to the team as they expand in China, but no jobs will be lost.

The move follows an announcement last year that GE plans to invest $2 billion in China, including $500 million in six research centers, one of which GE X-ray is developing in Chengdu in central China. The company has already hired “close to 100 engineers” for the center in Chengdu, LeGrand said.

Rachel Duan, president and CEO of GE Healthcare China, said they plan to launch more than 20 new products in China over the next two years. Some 70 percent of those will be aimed at general medical professionals who make up the primary healthcare sector.

Duan said they will be developed for customers in China, “but we see a potential down the road for exporting to some of the other emerging markets.”

LeGrand said some of the products they had developed in China were now being sold elsewhere, such as the Ling Long digital X-ray, now being sold in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. She said emerging markets represented “double digit growth” for GE’s X-ray business.

Over the past two decades, GE Healthcare China has focused on the high-end market in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou and selling to large hospitals. Now they also intend to focus on the primary care sector in poorer parts of the country, including rural areas, Duan said.

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Marlboro maker Altria Group says its net income fell about 57 percent in the second quarter on charges related to lease transactions by one of its subsidiaries.

The owner of the nation’s biggest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA, reported Wednesday that it earned $444 million, or 21 cents per share, for the period ended June 30. That’s down from $1.04 billion, or 50 cents per share, last year.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were 53 cents per share, matching analyst estimates.

But revenue, excluding excise taxes, tumbled nearly 8 percent to $4 billion. Analysts expected revenue of $4.36 billion

The company, based in Richmond, Virginia, says it sold less than one percent fewer cigarettes than a year ago and 2 percent less smokeless tobacco like Copenhagen and Skoal.

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“Store closing” banners should soon go up outside the six remaining Borders stores in the St. Louis region.

The beleaguered bookseller announced this afternoon that it will ask a judge on Thursday to approve a sale to liquidators. Store closing sales at its remaining 399 stores could begin as soon as Friday.

At the beginning of this year, there were nine Borders in this area. Three of those locations — Chesterfield, St. Peters, and Ballwin — closed earlier this year after the company first filed for bankruptcy.

Now the six stores left in this region appear headed the way of their counterparts. The remaining stores are in Brentwood, Sunset Hills, Creve Coeur, Fairview Heights, Edwardsville, and South County cash advances pay day loan.

“Bam!” multimedia superstores have already claimed two of the vacant Borders — in Chesterfield and St. Peters. But I’m not sure if the Joplin-based company would be interested in the other Borders locations.

As I’ve mentioned before, Ross Dress for Less is reportedly looking around for other locations in the St. Louis region, so they might be interested in some of these spots. Or maybe Big Lots?

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Comments from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke set off a stock market rally early Wednesday, but it wasn’t long before another Fed official cut it short.

In testimony before Congress, Bernanke said the central bank would be open to new economic stimulus measures, but only if the economy gets much worse. The remarks were far from a promise for more Fed action, but markets reacted immediately nonetheless. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped as many as 164 points, or 1.3 percent.

Most of those gains evaporated later in the day after Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said in a speech that the Fed had already “pressed the limits of monetary policy.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 4.08, or 0.3 percent, to close at 1,318.72. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 44.73, or 0.4 percent, to 12,491.61. The Nasdaq composite rose 15.01, or 0.5 percent, to 2,796.92.

Stocks also took a hit in the afternoon when House Speaker John Boehner called into question whether lawmakers would agree to raise the government’s borrowing limit by an Aug. 2 deadline. Failure to meet the deadline could result in a U.S. debt default, which would have disastrous effects for the economy and financial markets. Boehner, a Republican, said that dealing with Democrats on the issue has been like “dealing with Jell-O.”

Bernanke spelled out specific steps the Fed might consider if the economy gets worse, including another round of bond purchases. He also detailed what the Fed would do should the economy improve.

Bernanke’s position remains that the slowdown in the U.S. economy this spring is due largely to temporary factors including high gas prices and parts shortages caused by the earthquake in Japan. He said he still expects economic growth to pick up in the second half of the year.

Energy and materials stocks rose more than the overall market as investors bought companies that would benefit most from an upturn in the economy creditreport. Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. rose 1.6 percent, the most of any of the 30 stocks in the Dow average.

The Fed’s policy of ultra-low interest rates and buying U.S. Treasury bonds on the open market has pushed stocks higher since last August. Many traders were disappointed when the Fed ended its second round of bond purchases in June.

Signs of healthy growth in China also helped push stocks higher. The Chinese government reported that the country’s economy grew at a slower but still healthy rate of 9.5 percent last quarter. China is attempting to rein in its speeding expansion and ease inflation, but a sudden drop-off in growth could hurt the U.S. economy by cutting into demand for U.S. exports.

Markets also rose because fears abated that Italy would default on its debt. The S&P 500 fell 2.9 percent over the past three days as traders worried one or more European countries would fail to pay their debts, causing a global slowdown in lending.

A successful auction of Italian government debt and a pledge by that country’s leaders to accelerate cost-cutting plans reassured markets that Europe’s third-largest economy was not on the verge of becoming the latest European country to need emergency financial support to avoid a default. Italian stocks rallied 1.8 percent on relief that Italy’s fiscal outlook was not as shaky as believed just a few days ago.

About two stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was relatively light at 3.3 billion shares.

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AP Business Writers Matthew Craft and David Randall contributed to this story.

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