Also

* Hurricane Katrina will slow economic growth this year, U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said, although not as much as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. Katrina will cut growth by less than the 1 percentage point in the second half of the year estimated Wednesday by the research arm of Congress, Snow said in an interview in Houston, without offering a specific estimate.

* Saks Inc. postponed the reporting of its second-quarter earnings until at least Sept. 30 after restating results last month to strip out improperly collected vendor payments. The luxury retailer, whose accounting is under federal investigation, had most recently planned to issue the results shortly after Sept. 1. The company said in a statement that its investigations of the payments and the restatements had delayed the filing, marking the second such postponement in two months.