A Blair County based convenience store chain continues to grow and this country's biggest retailer plans to get even bigger. Details are in the Business Page.

 There's new place to stop in the Altoona area for that quick drink or sandwich. A new Sheetz convenience store is open in the Altoona area. The news store is on Old Sixth Avenue in the East End of Altoona near the Eighth Street Bridge to Juniata. The new store features the full line of Sheetz foods and services including a self service car wash. With the opening of the new store, Sheetz is closing down two older stores in the city. Both the Fourth Avenue location in the Juniata section of the city and the East Sixth Avenue Sheetz at First Street are being eliminated. Both of the stores being closed have been open for almost forty years and were cramped for space. Because the new Sixth Avenue location is bigger than that stores that are closing, company officials say no jobs have been eliminated. All workers from the stores that are closing are being relocated to other locations including the newest Sheetz store.
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Despite problems with the national economy, the county's largest retailer has some big expansion plans. Walmart says it will be creating more than twenty two thousand jobs during the current year by building new stores or expanding existing ones across the United States. About one hundred and fifty stores will be built or expanded during two thousand and nine. Walmart currently has more than seventy nine hundred stores in fifteen countries.
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Governor Ed Rendell has extended the the deadline for taking part in a Pennsylvania Tax Rebate program. Older adults and residents with disabilities now have until December 31 to sign up for the program. The old deadline was June 30'th. The program uses state gaming revenue to reduce the property taxes paid by older residents who choose to stay in their homes. The rebate program benefits Pennsylvanians who are 65 and older; widows and widowers 50 and older; and people with disabilities over 18.

This turned out to be a pretty good day for most of those on Wall Street. The markets finished up on the session.