Tool and equipment hire group Speedy Hire has turned a corner after overturning annual losses of £27m.

Speedy posted pre-tax profits of £3.2m for the year to March 31, with all of its UK operations in the black.

Earnings accelerated in the second half of the year to £7.6m against £4.8m in the first half.

Underlying group revenues – excluding those from its loss making accommodation hire operation, which was sold last year, and an expired Network Rail contract – were £326.4m, up from £313m in the previous 12 months.

The group reduced its net debt by £36.7m to £76.3m.

Speedy, which is based at Newton-le-Willows, operates from 300 depots and superstores and on-site facilities at client locations across Britain, Ireland and in the Middle East.

Adjusted profits before tax after exceptional items and amortisation costs, were £12.4m, up from a loss of £700,000.

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– U.S.

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Yes. If you operate a home-based business, you may qualify for the business-use-of-home tax deduction, which is calculated by determining how much of your home you actually use for your home-based business. (See Calculating The Home Business Tax Deduction for an explanation of how to calculate this tax deduction.)

You can also deduct a portion of all your house expenses that directly relate to operating your home-based business as a tax deduction, such as your utilities, telephone, ISP fees and cleaning materials.

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Buy-and-build telecoms and IT business Communicate Better has secured its largest contract to date, worth over £550,000.

The five-year deal with car dealership Hatfields, part of the McLean & Appleton group, will see it  provide a unified network to run phone, email, video conferencing, file transfer and data-sharing systems.

The new network has been designed to allow staff to access it while on the move.

Communicate Better, which is based in Swinton, Greater Manchester, and has 27 staff, generated revenues of £1.7m in the year to last March and pre-tax profits of £470,000.

It expects to take revenues past the £3m mark this financial year following the acquisition late last year of Green House Telecom in Hebden Bridge.

The firm has also recently secured contracts with Balfour Beatty, The National Football Museum and Guomain Thistle Hotel Group.

Chief executive Wayne Cartwright said: “We are experiencing a high level of growth so far in 2012 and are on target to hit all of our forecasts this financial year.

“We have secured some fantastic clients and know that working on integrated solutions for our clients is key to our success”

– Investors representing $500 billion in assets are pushing energy companies in the shale oil rush in North Dakota and other states to disclose the amount of natural gas they burn – a practice they see as a wasteful financial risk.

Litvack is one of 36 investors who sent a letter to 21 oil drillers including Continental Resources Inc , Exxon Mobil , and Chesapeake Energy Corp asking them to disclose the amount of natural gas they are burning off, or flaring, at shale oil operations in North Dakota, Texas, Colorado and Ohio.

While shale oil drilling has helped reverse a decades old decline in U.S. crude output, the lightening pace of new development may also have an environmental dark side.

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Two years ago, it became a law in New Jersey for chain restaurants to list calorie counts on menus. In two more years, that law could become a reality.

“I feel weve lost four years of getting ahead of the game and informing people of the calories and letting them make their choices for food,” said Assemblywoman Connie Wagner (D-Bergen), who sponsored the bill that passed in 2010 and was scheduled to go into effect more than a year ago.

Instead, in January 2011, officials in the Christie administration said they wanted to wait until at least March for a federal Food and Drug Administration proposal on chain calorie counts.

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