UPS will be the first national brand to take part in a national marketing platform for college athletics. The program, via IMG, will besides giving UPS advertising, make the parcel delivery company the official logistics, package-delivery and retail shipping service company for 68 schools.

This news shouldn't surprise anyone. Yes, you do want to look your best for hurricanes, but home-improvement stores selling emergency preparation products and clean-up items are likely to benefit the most from Irene, while apparel retailers and department stores selling non-essential items are likely to take a hit. Industry analysts say big-box stores, drug stores and supermarkets all experienced pre-Irene sales surges, with the biggest winners being home centers. In fact, pre-and-post storm sales may aid same-store sales at Home Depot and Lowe's each by 1% point in the third quarter, per Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. analyst David …

Sal Perisano, chairman and chief executive of iParty Corp., a Dedham, Mass.-based chain of 53 party-goods stores, said celebrity scandals help drive its Halloween business. Scandal is good for iParty, which is starting to open 11 temporary Halloween stores, Perisano said. Some will be near big campuses like the University of Massachusetts and the University of New Hampshire because college kids just to get their Sheen on. Besides the celebrity masks of shame, there will be the usual scare fare, plus costumes from movies: "Captain America," "Green Lantern," and of course "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter."

British Airways will launch an advertising campaign in the UK to get people behind the brand following union strikes and grounded planes costing £150 million. The campaign takes a heritage approach, an effort to conquest new customers and build loyalty among regular fliers. The £1.5 million effort, via Bartle Bogle Hegarty, will include a 90-second film on BA's role in British Aviation.

The Food Marketing Institute spent $610,000 lobbying federal officials during the second quarter on topics like agriculture, taxes and food safety, per a disclosure report. Besides knocking on congressional doors, the trade group lobbied the Department of Justice, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and other agencies from April through June. The group, which represents roughly 1,500 food retailers and wholesalers, spent $280,000 lobbying in the first quarter of this year and $337,000 in the second quarter last year.

Outback Steakhouse is hoping to grab market share with "The Great Aussie Steak Out," wherein the chain gave away one million free steak dinners. To get the deal, people had offer some personal details, an email address and a phone number. On the evening of Aug. 24, Outback ran a TV spot explaining that "The Great Aussie Steak Out" had begun, and that guests could pick up their coupon for a free six-ounce steak dinner at www.thegreataussiesteakout.com. The traffic was apparently so great within the first few minutes after the commercial aired that the website went down temporarily. …

Michigan has become a national hotspot for craft beer brewing, writes columnist Tom Walsh, who was told by the brewmaster for micro-brew Frankenmuth that Michigan is a great place to set up hop, I mean shop. Walsh says Hiller's and Busch's supermarkets began carrying Frankenmuth beers in metro Detroit a couple of weeks back. "Frankenmuth is a modest-sized player among nearly 100 microbreweries operating in the state," writes Walsh, adding that Michigan ranked fifth nationally last year in the number of craft breweries, behind only California, Washington, Colorado and Oregon. "All of this is happening, mind …

The latest news about Saab's financial turmoil, which in recent weeks has become a lot like the waiting-room scenario where the doctor emerges from ICU with increasingly dismal news about a patient's complications, the Swedish automaker will apparently miss yet another payroll. The company has been on life support with financial anemia keeping assembly lines in a coma and employees' paychecks flat-lined. In spite of what looked like a blip on the heart monitor when a Chinese dealership chain offered to fund the brand, suppliers are refusing to provide the parts it needs to re-open its headquarters assembly …

British Petroleum is going to have to crank up the damage-control machine again. Readers may have caught wind of a new leak in the Gulf of Mexico and BP's response that the oil isn't from BP. It appears, unfortunately, that the source is the very Deepwater Horizon site that blew out last year. Staff of the Alabama Press-Register collected samples of the oil about a mile from the sealed well site earlier this week. Chemists at Louisiana State University typecast the crude. "After examining the data, I think it's a dead ringer for the MC252 oil, as good …

In the 1970s, Congress passed several laws that strengthened the power of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the multibillion-dollar food and drug industries. Dr. Edwards led the charge. He also oversaw the introduction of nutrition labels on foods, a consumer-protection campaign that was originally voluntary, though many food processors followed the guidelines.