The state has filed felony charges against a Tacoma plumbing and heating contractor accusing him of operating a business without a license and theft of sales tax proceeds.

The criminal charges against James Beni Jr., operator of Pacific Plumbing and Heating Inc., allege Beni continued to operate his business after his license was revoked in 2006 for non-payment of taxes. Charging documents further claimed that he collected at least $16,319 in local and state sales taxes but didn't pass those funds on to the state.

The state said it repeatedly warned Beni about operating an unlicensed business before bringing charges.

An employee at the plumbing and heating company, who declined to give her name, said she was unaware of the charges. She said she was unaware that the 66-year-old Beni, who is hospitalized battling cancer, had yet been informed of the charges filed Monday in Pierce County Superior Court.

Attorney General's office spokesman Mike Gowrylow said the charges against Beni are part of a state effort to crack down on the huge underground economy in the state that doesn't pay taxes.

"A study we did last fall," said Gowrylow, "shows the state loses more than $450 million annually to the so-called underground economy. Those people usually are competing against law-abiding companies," he said.

Collecting taxes on that under-the-table economy, he said, could help the state pay for the revenue shortfall that is forcing cutbacks in state services, he said.

Beni's arraignment on the charges is set for March 24. Conviction on the charges could result in a jail sentence of up to 10 years and a $20,000 fine plus restitution, the state said.

Alaska Air Group, the SeaTac-based parent of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, will give its shareholders a chance to voice their opinion on the airlines' executive pay.

The board of directors' initiative, announced this month, will allow shareholders to vote their approval or disapproval of the compensation for the company's five highest-paid executives.

While the vote won't bind directors to act, it will provide them with shareholder feedback valuable in setting future compensation, said the airline.

The advisory ballot will be included in the proxy materials which shareholders are scheduled to receive next month. Those materials will include information on the five executives' compensation for 2008.

The Alaska board took action after a stockholder proposal to require such a ballot won shareholder approval last year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is out today with tips to help consumers spend less, save more, protect against fraud and borrow wisely – especially during a difficult economy.

The advice – "Managing Your Money in Good Times and Bad" – was published as a special edition of the FDIC Consumer News and is available at www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnwin0809.

Among the collection of tips in the publication are articles concerning ways to begin cutting back; protecting against fraud; saving more; wise borrowing; problems with payments; and dealing with debt.

For previous issues of FDIC Consumer News, visit www.fdic.gov/consumernews.

Scandinavian Airline System (SAS) will discontinue its service from Sea-Tac Airport to Copenhagen on July 31, the airline said today.

That's months earlier than the airline had initially predicted in February when it announced cutbacks on its international service.

The airline said customers booked on flights after the end of July should contact the airline for rebooking on other flights or for a refund of their ticket purchase price.

SAS has connected Sea-Tac to Europe non-stop for 42 years, longer than any other airline.

The airline said economic conditions have forced it to refocus its system on Europe as travel continues to decline and travelers cancel trips.

Starbucks Corp. said it is not sure when it will open a center in Ethiopia to support coffee farmers due to the downturn in the global economy and delays in opening a similar center in Rwanda, The Associated Press reports today.

In a statement, the gourmet coffee company said it had originally hoped its Ethiopian Farmer Support Center would be open by now, but delays in opening the Rwanda center and "the global slowdown in the economy have made it challenging for us to move as quickly as we would like."

"We remain committed to opening a Farmer Support Center in Addis, but do not have an opening date to announce at this time," the company said in the statement.

The company first announced the two Africa support centers in 2007. The company had planned to open both of the centers in 2008. The center in Rwanda opened toward the end of the year, the company said.

Starbucks will use both centers to work with coffee farmers to improve coffee quality and help them produce more coffee that can be purchased by specialty coffee buyers.

Apple Inc. unveiled a minuscule new iPod Shuffle today that takes its "smaller is better" mantra to a whole new level, The Associated Press reports.

The third-generation Shuffle, a slim aluminum rectangle less than 2 inches long, takes up about half as much space as the previous version even as it doubles music storage space to 4 gigabytes. To achieve such a tiny form, Apple had to remove most of the buttons from the body of the $79 device and build them into the headphone cord instead.

"Smaller has tended to work very well for us," said Greg Joswiak, a marketing vice president at Apple.

The trade-off for a sub-$100 Shuffle always has been the lack of a screen to visually navigate through the music stored on the device. The first-generation Shuffle, which launched in 2005, could hold about 240 songs, arguably not enough to warrant a screen.

Now that the device can carry 1,000 songs, Apple has come up with a way for people to identify the music they're listening to or find songs they want. A new feature called VoiceOver can, at the push of a button, speak the song and artist name or rattle off the list of custom mixes - called playlists - that the owner has loaded onto the device.

Here's how it works: As you synchronize a new Shuffle using an updated version of iTunes, your PC or Mac looks at each track and playlist and creates a small file of a computerized voice speaking the title, artist for playlist name. If a song is in Spanish or Chinese, say, the software figures this out and speaks in the appropriate language. Apple says the device can handle 14 languages.

The new Shuffle, which comes in silver or black aluminum with a shiny stainless steel clip, is set to go on sale Thursday. Joswiak said Apple's own earphones will be the only option for early buyers, but that other companies plan to make compatible headphones as well as adapters for regular headphones.

Ross Rubin, an analyst for market researcher NPD Group, said there's no such thing as "too small" for gadget-happy consumers as long as Apple stays focused on ergonomics and provides a way to secure the device and keep it from getting lost.