Compiled from wire reports

Music award will be $12.60 per applicant

PORTLAND, Maine - Music buyers who applied for a share of a price-fixing settlement involving major U.S. record distributors and retailers will receive about $12.60 apiece if a judge signs off on the deal in May. Roughly 3.5 million U.S. music buyers registered for claims by last Wednesday's deadline.

The deadline was pushed back two days because a last-minute barrage of online applications crashed the Web site.

Standard & Poor's removing AMR listing

DALLAS - AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines, will be removed from the Standard & Poor's 500 index after trading ends today as the company's stock price and market value continue their long slide. Investors sent shares in the company down another 11.3 percent on Wednesday.

S&P will replace it with Apartment Investment Management Co., a Denver-based real estate firm. The move forces mutual funds modeled on the index to shed the stock.

Newport's Shire has new chief executive

LONDON - Britain's Shire Pharmaceuticals Plc, whose U.S. headquarters is in Newport, said Wednesday that it selected Matthew Emmens, a former sales and marketing executive at Merck & Co, as chief executive.

Emmens, 51, will succeed Rolf Stahel, 58, a Swiss national. People familiar with the situation said Shire's nonexecutive directors, egged on by some of the company's major U.S. shareholders, forced Stahel to quit in October because they wanted a "more global CEO."

Intel puts chips into wireless venture

NEW YORK - Wielding $300 million in advertising cash and a new trio of computer components it calls Centrino, chipmaker Intel Corp. on Wednesday launched a huge effort to introduce the world to high-speed wireless Internet.

PC makers unwrapped scores of new laptops, most of which use Intel's new wireless, or WiFi, chips.

The Centrino design bundles Intel's energy-efficient Pentium M processor with a high-speed wireless receiver and a set of other laptop-friendly chips.