Business news in brief

National Penn Bancshares Inc. will move its headquarters and 275 managers and staff to Allentown from its longtime home in Boyertown, Berks County. National Penn will also open a new back office on Broadcasting Road in Reading to employ 125, while an additional 150 workers will stay in Boyertown. The bank holding company, with 120 branches, picked Allentown for its headquarters because it is now second-largest bank in the Lehigh Valley, said Scott V. Fainor, its chief executive. - Joseph N. DiStefano

A new Atlantic City television station, WACP, will be added to Comcast Corp.'s Philadelphia-area cable-TV lineup. WACP will appear as Channel 4 on Comcast in most areas. Launched in June, the new channel was created after the transition to broadcast-TV industry's switch to digital signals in 2009. Kevin O'Kane, a broad- casting veteran and representative of the new owners of the station, Western Pacific Broadcast L.L.C., said the Atlantic City station would initially televise infomercials and children's programming. Comcast is required to carry WACP under federal "must-carry" regulations. - Bob Fernandez

Federal regulators are letting cable companies scramble all their TV signals, closing a loophole that lets many households watch basic cable channels for free. The Federal Communications Commission voted Friday to lift a ban on encryption of basic cable signals, saying it will reduce the number of visits by cable technicians to disconnect service and reduce cable theft. The change will also affect households that pay for TV but have some sets hooked up directly to cable, without set-top boxes. They will need to get boxes for those sets. Comcast and Time Warner Cable Inc. could not say when they will start encrypting basic signals. - AP

PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s net income rose solidly in the third quarter, boosted by a onetime $137 million pretax gain from a sale of Visa shares and higher fees from corporate clients. The Pittsburgh-based bank's income from interest on loans increased, bucking an industry-wide trend, because PNC acquired RBC Bank (USA) since last year's third quarter. PNC said that its net income available to common shareholders rose to $876 million, or $1.64 per share, in the quarter ended Sept. 30 from $826 million, or $1.55 per share, in the same period a year earlier. - AP

The ratings agency Standard & Poor's is downgrading Pennsylvania State University's long-term bond rating to AA, citing litigation against the school over the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. S&P announced the new rating Monday, saying expenses related to the Sandusky matter have also contributed to financial uncertainty. Although the university has diverse sources of revenue and a good financial track record, S&P noted that Penn State has limited flexibility on tuition and faces a "constrained" state funding picture. - AP

The Marriott hotel chain says it will check out of New Jersey's capital city once its contract ends in June. Trenton's only hotel has struggled financially for years. And the managers of the city-owned hotel say things have only gotten worse. The occupancy rate stands at just 50 percent. The City of Trenton is still spending $1.4 million a year to pay off the costs of building the hotel a decade ago. - AP

Amtrak on Tuesday named Michael J. DeCataldo Jr. to the newly created post of general manager, Northeast Corridor Services. Based in New York City, DeCataldo will be responsible for safety, customer satisfaction, ridership, on-time performance, and financial results for rail operations on the Washington-to-Boston corridor. DeCataldo currently is Amtrak general superintendent, Northeast Division, responsible for the New York area. - Paul Nussbaum

TiVo Inc. said it may be entitled to billions of dollars in damages should it win its patent-infringement lawsuit against Google Inc.'s Motorola Mobility unit over digital-video recording technology. "Motorola's massive production of infringing DVRs dwarfs the numbers of accused products at issue in TiVo's previous cases," TiVo said in a filing Monday in federal court in Marshall, Texas. TiVo said it also will seek an order to force Motorola Mobility, which has a major operation in Horsham, to stop selling products that infringe TiVo patents. - Bloomberg News

Apple Inc. is sending out invites to reporters for an event next Tuesday, where it's expected to announce the release of a smaller iPad tablet device. The invite to the venue in San Jose, Calif., doesn't hint at what will be disclosed, but the media and analysts have said for months that Apple has an "iPad mini" in the works. The tablet is thought to be about half the size of the regular iPad and to start at $249 or $299. - AP

Microsoft Corp. said its first tablet computer, the Surface, will start at $499 when it goes on sale Oct. 26. The price matches that of Apple's iPad, but the base model of the Surface has twice as much storage memory: 32 gigabytes. The signature hardware feature of the Surface tablet, a cover that doubles as a keyboard, will cost an additional $100. - AP

Foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities rose to a record level in August, further evidence that most nations see U.S. debt as a safe investment. The Treasury Department said total foreign holdings rose to a record $5.43 trillion in August. That's up 1.5 percent from the July level. - AP

Rebekah Brooks, the former head of News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper operations, was given a payout package worth about 7 million pounds ($11.3 million) after she stepped down amid the unit's phone-hacking scandal, according to a person familiar with the matter. The package included legal fees, cash and a chauffeur-driven car, the person said, declining to be identified because information about the payment is not public. Daisy Dunlop, a spokeswoman for News Corp.'s News International unit, declined to comment. Brooks, who stepped down in July 2011, and 13 other people will face the first criminal trial next year over their roles in the phone-hacking scandal. - Bloomberg News

For-profit education company Apollo Group Inc. announced that it is closing 115 University of Phoenix locations due to shrinking enrollment and higher interest by students in taking courses online. - AP