HAWAII

Cyanotech moves to Nasdaq SmallCap

Cyanotech Corp., unable to meet the qualifications for trading on the Nasdaq National Market, said yesterday its application has been accepted for trading on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market.

The Kona company, which makes nutritional products Spirulina and BioAstin out of microalgae as well as the animal feed NatuRose, was delisted from the more-prestigious Nasdaq National Market after it was unable to get its stock price to $1 or higher after receiving a 90-day warning from Nasdaq. The stock, which will continue to trade under the ticker symbol CYAN, closed unchanged yesterday at 55 cents. The move to the Nasdaq SmallCap Market will be effective Monday.

As of July 31, there were 3,040 companies listed on the Nasdaq National Market and 803 on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market.

JAPAN

Japan banks to shed &YEN10 trillion in loans

Tokyo >> Mizuho Holdings Inc. and six of Japan's other biggest banks will dispose of 60 percent more bad loans in the year to March 31 than a year earlier, according to Minister for Financial Services Hakuo Yanagisawa.

Japan's seven biggest lenders will remove &YEN10 trillion in bad loans off their balance sheets, Yanagisawa told the Symposium on Building the Financial system of the 21st Century via a video link. The figure compares with ¥6.2 trillion of bad loans the lenders disposed of a year before through sales, write-offs and other means, according to a Bloomberg News report.

MAINLAND

U.S. to end airport gate screenings

Washington >> The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will end secondary passenger screenings at airplane gates in an effort to reduce the hassle factor for travelers.

The secondary screenings won't be needed because primary checkpoints will be sufficiently staffed with trained U.S. workers, said Heather Rosenker, an agency spokeswoman. James Loy, the undersecretary who heads the agency, disclosed the change planned for next year's first quarter at a news conference in Providence, R.I., she said.

Security officials have said the random checks before passengers board planes were an added layer of protection in case terrorists circumvent other defenses. Passengers and airline executives including Continental Airlines Chief Executive Officer Gordon Bethune have called the checks redundant and intrusive.

Directors counter sue CleanFlicks chain

LOS ANGELES >> The Directors Guild of America yesterday fired back against a lawsuit by a Denver video franchise which sued 16 high-profile movie directors as part of its effort to get a legal ruling on its practice of editing popular movies.

The lawsuit, filed this month by CleanFlicks of Colorado LLC and Robert Huntsman, an Idaho lawyer seeking to patent on electronic home-editing technology, asks the court for an opinion on the legality of its practice of cutting out sex, violence and profanity.

In a counterclaim filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, the DGA and its director plaintiffs are asking the court to grant a permanent injunction to stop CleanFlicks and similar companies from distributing "unauthorized" versions of feature films.

"What these companies are doing is wrong, plain and simple," said DGA President Martha Coolidge. "It is wrong to cut scenes from a film -- just as it is to rip pages from a book -- simply because we don't like the way something was portrayed or said, then resell it with the original title and creator's name still on it."