Business news in brief

Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol will stop delivering babies as early as Dec. 31, the hospital said. The move follows years of weak financial performance in the unit and the recent departure of Lower Bucks' busiest obstetrical practice, the Center for Women's Health in Langhorne, for Capital Health's new hospital in Hopewell Township, Mercer County. "It is with great regret that we have to end such a wonderful and long-standing service," said Peter Adamo, regional chief executive for Prime Health Care Services Inc., a for-profit company based in California that owns Lower Bucks and Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia. - Harold Brubaker

US Airways Group Inc. flight attendants have voted 94 percent in favor of a strike authorization, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA said Tuesday. The 6,700 members are working under contract terms from before the 2005 merger of US Airways and America West Airline. Flight attendants called on management to finish the US Airways-American West merger by negotiating a single unified contract for all US Airways flight attendants. The issue is disparity in pay and seniority between flight crews that work in the "east" and "west" United States. - Linda Loyd

UGI Corp., the Valley Forge energy company, has acquired another European distributor of liquefied petroleum gas. The company announced Tuesday that its subsidiary, Flaga GmbH, has reached an agreement to acquire the LPG distribution business of BP in Poland, which distributed 150 million gallons of bottled fuel to residential, commercial and wholesale customers last year. Terms were not disclosed. Flaga acquired BP's Denmark LPG business in 2010. - Andrew Maykuth

The Atlantic City Alliance, the nonprofit group charged with rebranding the Shore resort as a destination for more than just gambling, launched new ads on Tuesday to remind visitors Atlantic City was open for business post-Hurricane Sandy. A $6 million fall component of the "Do Anything, Do Everything, Do AC" campaign was interrupted by the hurricane, but was relaunched with new TV, radio and print ads in major newspapers. Besides welcoming visitors back for holiday shopping and hotel deals, the ads try to counter misconceptions about the resort. A recent national poll conducted for the Alliance found that more than 40 percent of the American public thinks the famed Boardwalk was destroyed by Sandy. - Suzette Parmley

Bankers Life & Casualty Co. will pay a penalty of $3.2 million to Pennsylvania and four other states for noncompliance with regulations covering annuities, long-term care and life insurance policies. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department said the multi-state settlement agreement followed the re-examination of the Chicago-based insurer, which last faced a regulatory review in 2007. "Our re-examination determined that Bankers failed to comply with a number of recommendations from a prior exam report," said Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Michael Consedine. - Inquirer staff

Central European Distribution Corp., of Mount Laurel, faces bankruptcy unless it changes its board of directors and restructures debt, according to Mark Kaufman, a major shareholder. "We need a solution which should include, first of all, a full balance sheet restructuring, probably with some discount," said Kaufman in a phone interview from Moscow. Russian billionaire Roustam Tariko, the largest CEDC shareholder, is "no longer obligated" to complete a deal with the company to help pay back its debt after the vodka distiller revised its financial results for 2010 and 2011, Tariko said in a letter last week. CEDC shares closed at $1.85, down 1 cent. - Bloomberg News

The University of Pennsylvania Health System and two affiliated groups have agreed to pay $282,159 to resolve claims by the federal government that the health-care providers did not document their contractual relationships with Cardiology Group P.A. The Justice Department said that Penn, Clinical Health Care Associates of New Jersey, and Presbyterian Medical Center had voluntarily disclosed their failure to have written documents, as required by the Stark Act and Anti-Kickback Act. - Inquirer staff

A rogue trader who lost $2.2 billion in bad deals at Swiss bank UBS was sentenced to seven years in prison Tuesday after being convicted in what prosecutors called the biggest fraud case in U.K. banking history. Ghanaian-born Kweku Adoboli, 32, exceeded his trading limits and failed to cover his losses, allegedly faking records to hide his tracks at the bank's London office. "There is a strong streak of the gambler in you," Judge Brian Keith told Adoboli. "You were arrogant to think the bank's rules for traders did not apply to you." - AP

A former hedge fund portfolio manager was arrested Tuesday in what prosecutors are calling perhaps the most lucrative insider trading scheme of all time - an arrangement to obtain confidential, advance results of tests on an experimental Alzheimer's drug that helped investment firms make more than $276 million. Mathew Martoma, 38, was charged in U.S. District Court in Manhattan with using the information to advise a hedge fund owner to buy shares in the companies developing the drug, then later to dump those investments and place financial bets against the companies when the tests returned disappointing results. - AP

Moody's Investors Service stripped France, Europe's No. 2 economy, of its prized AAA credit rating late Monday on concerns that its rigid labor market and exposure to Europe's financial crisis were threatening its prospects for economic growth. It was the second ratings downgrade for France this year: Standard & Poor's agency lowered its score in January. Finance minister Pierre Moscovici insisted that France's credibility remains strong and that the government's plan to reduce unemployment and restore growth would bear fruit. - AP