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Truliant Federal Credit Union has partnered with identity theft protection firm LifeLock to provide services to its members and will host a stop on the company's "Defeat Identity Theft Now" tour next week, according to an announcement.

LifeLock is a private company based in Arizona that claims to help consumers render their personal information useless to thieves, offering a $1 million service guarantee.

LifeLock, which says it has more than 600,000 members, will offer its services at a discount to Truliant's 180,000 credit union members, the announcement said.

Truliant CEO Marc Schaefer said identity theft costs Americans more than $50 billion in 2007.

"We wanted to offer the very best identity theft service to our members to help ensure that they do not fall victim to identify theft and all the problems associated with it," Schaefer said.

The LifeLock promotional tour includes stops in 10 cities, with the aim of collecting 20,000 signatures for a petition urging Congress to pass more stringent consumer protection laws related to identity theft. The stop at Truliant's Winston-Salem headquarters will take place March 3.

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Online auction house eBay Inc. on Monday named Josh Silverman chief executive of Internet telephony service Skype.

Silverman, currently CEO of Shopping.com, another unit of San Jose-based eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), has more than nine years of experience in running global consumer Internet companies, eBay said.

Michael van Swaaij, who was appointed interim CEO in October 2007, will stay "actively involved with Skype," eBay said.

Prior to joining Shopping.com, he held a variety of leadership roles at eBay, including general manager for Marktplaats.nl. He was also responsible for helping to build eBay’s classifieds businesses in Europe. Before joining eBay in 2003, Silverman was co-founder and CEO of Evite.

Succeeding Silverman as Shopping.com CEO is another eBay veteran, Andre Haddad. Haddad joined the company in 2001 when eBay acquired iBazar, a European online marketplace he co-founded and ran in Paris.

Most recently, Haddad was senior vice president of product at eBay.

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Southern Methodist University will disclose on Friday the planned details of the George W. Bush presidential library.

According to published reports, the university will announce a 99-year-lease, with available extensions for up to 246 years. Other reports say the library will cost between $200 to $500 million to build. All of the money will come from private donations.

The site selected for the library is near the intersection of Central Expresway and SMU Boulevard.

Final approval for the project, which is expected to take up to five years to complete, must be given from the Methodist Church, which owns the land.

More than 11,500 individuals have signed an online petition urging the church to deny land rights for the library. The petition was launched by a collection of Methodist ministers and church officials.

According to recent findings by American Research Group Inc., a national polling firm, President George W. Bush has an approval rating of 19 percent — the lowest in recorded American history.

Still, the library is expected to become a significant tourist attraction for the Dallas area; various projections put the economic impact of the library at several hundred million.

SMU officials involved in negotiations with the Bush Foundation regarding the library were not immediately available to comment on Friday.

President Bush's wife, First Lady Laura Bush, is an SMU alum.

Web sites: www.smu.edu, www.protectsmu.org

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The majority owner of the nation's largest nuclear power plant Thursday announced it will build what it says will be the world's largest solar power plant. When finished, it will be able to power more than 70,000 homes a year.

Arizona Public Service Co. is moving forward with plans to build a 280-magawatt concentrating solar power plant near Gila Bend, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix.

The plant will be named the Solana Generating Station and is expected to be fully operational by 2011. It will be built by Abengoa Solar Inc., a Spanish solar plant company created in 1984.

APS will pay for the entire project, which will only serve APS customers. APS, a subsidiary of Phoenix-based Pinnacle West Capital Corp. (NYSE: PNW), would not disclose the cost to build the solar plant, but said it would be more than $1 billion.

The project is more than two-years in the making and will be the first of many in the state, said Don Brandt, APS president. Brandt will take over as CEO of the state's largest utility on March 1.

"This won't be the last solar plant we build in Arizona," he said. "Up until this point in time … funding for a project this size would not be possible."

The plant will be built on 3 square miles and will be filled with 2,700 parabolic mirrors that will track sunlight. The reflective sunlight will reach temperatures of more than 735 degrees Fahrenheit, which will power conventional steam generators.

More than 1,500 people will be involved in the construction of the plant. More than 85 technicians will work at the site once complete.

APS estimates the plant will bring in more than $1 billion in economic benefits over the next 30 years. The energy produced will equal about $4 billion during that time, Brandt said.

The plant also will help APS reach its Arizona Corporation Commission-mandated 15 percent renewable energy requirement by 2025. Matched with the utility's other renewable energy plants, now at about 131 megawatts, APS will be able to power more than 100,000 homes purely on renewable energy.

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North American Airlines said Tuesday it is ending four weekly flights from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, citing rising fuel costs.

North American operated three flights a week out of BWI to Lagos, Nigeria, and one to Accra, Ghana, said Steve Forsyth, an airline spokesman, in an interview Tuesday.

The suspended flights will also include North American’s African flights from New York’s Kennedy Airport. The move by the airline, effective May 20, is another blow to BWI’s efforts to grow its base of international carriers. The bulk of the airline’s business is through military and commercial chartered flights, Forsyth said.

"What now makes these markets untenable is the rising cost of fuel," said Rob Binns, chief commercial and planning officer, in a news release. "We have seen our jet fuel costs increase 60 percent since we entered the Africa markets in 2005."

Customers booked on a flight after May 20 will receive a refund for their reservation.

The airline is a unit of Peachtree City, Ga.-based Global Aero Logistics.

BWI’s limited number of direct international flights is a hindrance as it competes with other airports, air travel industry experts say, because foreign tourists and domestic business travelers going overseas have been the customer segments seeing the largest growth.

The airport’s top international flights include British Airways service to London Heathrow Airport and USA3000 service to the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) and AirTran (NYSE: AAI) have boosted domestic passenger numbers at BWI.

Timothy Campbell, executive director of the Maryland Aviation Administration, has said that a lack of connections to international destinations has been a problem, even as the airport has caught up with its passenger level seen before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

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The Austin Museum of Art may soon be a step closer to realizing its decade-old dream of a new home.

Sources say AMOA is close to inking a deal with Hines Interests LP of Houston to develop the downtown block south of Republic Square Park owned by the museum.

The towering project would likely feature about 400,000 square feet of office space, with about 40,000 square feet of that set aside for the museum’s new digs. It’s unclear whether or not the project would include a residential component as a previous incarnation did. But, if realized, it would be the first new office property in downtown Austin in four years since the opening of the Frost Bank Tower.

AMOA, which has a total of 35 employees, has been housed on the ground floor of 823 Congress since 1995.

Museum officials declined to comment on any pending deals with a developer and say the museum is still exploring all options. Sources say the deal with Hines could be announced as soon as early next week.

A spokesperson for Hines says the company "has nothing to announce at this time."

Hines has developed more than 215 million square feet of space over its 50-year history, and re-entered the Austin market last June with the purchase of the 301 Congress building downtown. The company has built properties internationally in a number of arenas, from office to education. According to Hines’ Web site, one of the firm’s specialties is arts and cultural facilities; the company has fielded projects as diverse as the Wortham Theater Center in Houston and the renovation of Postal Square in Washington, D.C., which now includes the National Postal Museum and nearly 1 million square feet of office space.

In August 2006, AMOA said it was planning to partner with local developer Tom Stacy on the creation of condo tower and new museum on the site south of Republic Square bounded by Third, Guadalupe, San Antonio and Fourth streets. But that deal never materialized. The museum has sought a new home since the late 1990s, going so far as to launch a $65 million fundraising campaign for a new home off Fifth Street about eight years ago. The museum ultimately had to taper its wishes — and even cut staff — when the economy went south after the dot-com bubble burst.

If Hines and AMOA do partner on the project, sources say it would likely be more than a year before site planning, permitting and other steps were completed, paving the way for construction to begin.

Approximately 290,000 people visited AMOA last year at its downtown location and its Laguna Gloria facility on Lake Austin. The museum reports a $4.1 million operating budget for fiscal year 2008. AMOA anticipates spending 41 percent of that budget on programs, with another 41 percent going to administration and the remaining 17 percent to fundraising.

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Carrizo Oil & Gas Inc. has priced a public offering of about 2.3 million shares at $54.50 per share.

The per share price is 1 percent lower than the Houston-based energy company's Feb. 13 closing price of $55.14. The company's stock opened Thursday at $54.95 per share.

Underwriters have the option of purchasing up to 337,500 additional shares to cover over-allotments.

If all of the shares sell, proceeds will total $1.2 billion.

Carrizo (NASDAQ: CRZO) said proceeds from the sale will be used to fund its leasing and drilling program as well as to pay down debt.

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The New Mexico Community Foundation made a record $5.8 million in grants for 2007. Its previous record was $4.01 million.

The Santa Fe nonprofit made more than 700 grants for the year in four areas: providing opportunity, promoting culture, protecting environment and pursuing equity.

Grants in the providing opportunity category included organizations promoting student organic gardens and food distribution to needy households.

Under promoting culture, the foundation made grants supporting indigenous culture and the arts.

In the protecting environment category, grants went to organizations working on maintaining habitats and offering environmental education programs.

And among the recipients under the pursuing equity section were voter education groups and civil rights organizations.

The New Mexico Community Foundation emphasizes "growing our future together," said Nelsy Dominguez, the foundation's program director. That involves seeking out what the foundation says are the most innovative and effective community-based organizations in the state.

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A day after Senate leaders threw their weight behind a regional tax to combat congestion in metro Atlanta, their counterparts in the House said they would prefer a statewide approach.

Under legislation filed Friday by House Transportation Chairman Vance Smith (R-Pine Mountain), the entire state would vote in November on a penny sales tax for transportation.

If it passes, Smith's proposal would guarantee that 90 percent of the revenue collected in a given region — such as the 10-county metro Atlanta area — would be spent on projects within that region.

The remaining 10 percent could be used elsewhere in the state on everything from highways to local roads.

The Georgia Department of Transportation would control all funding and would work with individual regions to decide which projects to fund.

However, voters would not necessarily know which specific projects the money would be spent on before being asked to approve the tax, which would begin in 2009 and sunset after seven years.

"There are projects on a list right now that have never been accomplished," Smith said. "That's how we got into this mess. But we'll make sure people will know where their dollars will be spent."

The Senate plan introduced Thursday by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle to the cheers of business leaders outlined a regional penny sales tax that Atlanta residents could vote on without involving the rest of Georgia — although 20 percent of the money collected would go to the state.

The two concepts — statewide and regional — dueled it out over the summer as lawmakers tried to figure out how to take the edge off a multibillion-dollar shortfall in the state road budget that has helped make Atlanta's traffic the second-worst in the nation.

But neither plan emerged supreme.

Now, with the Senate formally behind the regional approach and the House supporting the statewide option — and either version needing a two-thirds majority in both chambers to pass — the two may have to find common ground.

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Battered by more than two years of losses, Hawaiian Telcom has replaced Mike Ruley as its CEO and replaced him with an expert on fixing broken companies.

The telephone company announced late Monday that Stephen Cooper, chairman of a New York-based advisory and management firm, will serve as CEO. Cooper and his firm, Kroll Zolfo Cooper, are known for cleaning up bankrupt companies and Cooper was appointed as CEO of Enron in 2002 after the Texas energy company imploded.

"Steve Cooper brings tremendous leadership skills and a well established track record of operational excellence," said Hawaiian Telcom board member James Attwood Jr., who also heads a subsidiary of The Carlyle Group, parent company of Hawaiian Telcom.

"We are grateful to Mike for his dedication, leadership and service to Hawaiian Telcom during its transition to a stand-alone company."

Ruley was brought on board in 2004 when Carlyle bought Verizon Hawaii for $1.6 billion.

Cooper previously was a financial consulting partner of Touche Ross, now Deloitee & Touche. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Occidental College and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

"The team at Hawaiian Telcom has been working hard to improve service and responsiveness to customers, but we recognize that there is more work to be done," Cooper said in a statement.

In addition to Enron, Cooper and his company have been paid millions to clean up Polaroid, Krispy Kreme and Laidlaw. His hourly rate at Krispy Kreme was $760, according to a January 2005 story in The New York Times.

"Turnaround artist Stephen Cooper commands top dollar for trying to bring failed companies back to life," U.S. News and World Report said in a 2003 profile.

The company also named Stephen Gray vice chairman of the board.

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