The Triangle's unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent in September.

The latest data were released today by the N.C. Employment Security Commission and adjusted for seasonal effects by Wells Fargo Securities economists in Charlotte. The News & Observer uses the revised data to provide a more statistically valid measure of local unemployment The state jobless rate, which remained flat at 10.8 percent in September, is seasonally adjusted by the Employment Security Commission.

Though the rate rose from August's level of 8.5 percent, Wells Fargo senior economist Mark Vitner said there were still some positive signs.

"What we’re seeing is that the percentage of people that were unemployed because they were laid off is not rising anymore," he said. "We’re simply not creating jobs fast enough to keep up."

The Triangle fared better than other areas of the state and remained below the U.S. unemployment rate of 9.8 percent. In Charlotte, unemployment rose from 11.5 percent to 12.2 percent.

And, Vitner said, the increases will likely continue in the next few months.

"I would like to say the unemp rate has peaked," he said. "It hasn't."

Duke Energy will join with a Chinese company to develop commercial solar power projects in the United States.

Charlotte-based Duke signed the deal today with ENN Group, which operates more than 100 subsidiaries in 80 cities in China and employs more than 24,000 people.

Under the agreement the two will concentrate on large utility-scale farms and commercial distributed generation solar projects.

"China is investing heavily in clean energy and we can make greater progress in the U.S. by joining forces and working together," Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said in a statement.

The agreement will expand Duke's existing investments in renewable energy, including wind and biopower. Duke owns and operates more than 630 megawatts of wind power projects in the United States and plans to add another 350 megawatts by the end of next year.

Dole Food dropped in its first morning of trading.

The world's largest producer of fresh fruit and vegetables slid 47 cents to $12.03 in mid-morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company raised $446 million in a scaled-back IPO Thursday night and began trading this morning.

Last night, it sold 35.7 million shares at $12.50 each, below the expected range of $13 to $15 each. That suggests that demand on Wall Street was weaker than anticipated.

The lower price may not bode well for Dole's stock in the future, David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial.com, told Bloomberg News. "It is considered in many circles damaged goods."

Dole's stock sale is the latest in a rush of recent IPOs, driven by the stock-market rebound.

Dole shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "DOLE," returning to the Big Board six years after billionaire David Murdock took the company private.

Murdock is also the man behind the massive N.C. Research Campus on the site of a former textile mill in Kannapolis.

Capital Bank, the Raleigh-based lender with 32 branches, plans to raise as much as $55 million by selling new shares.

The publicly traded bank will use the stock sale to strengthen its balance sheet and "support our strategic growth opportunities in the future," Capital Bank wrote in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing follows the bank's quarterly earnings report this week, which showed Capital Bank had a $3 million profit in the three months that ended Sept. 30.

“Given our positive core earnings trend and recent market developments, we believe that now is a favorable time to raise money in the capital markets to further strengthen our already robust capital levels for general business as well as strategic purposes,” said CEO B. Grant Yarber, in a prepared statement.

He declined further comment on the proposed stock sale, citing SEC regulations.

Capital Bank intends to hold a shareholder meeting on Dec. 4 to approve the sale of additional stock. The timing also will depend on stock market conditions.

A small Morrisville company marketing a machine to detect and prevent prescription drug errors has raised $6.1 million in venture financing.

Centice's PASS Rx system uses sensor technology developed at Duke University to verify prescriptions without opening the drug bottle. The company is selling the system to pharmacies and hospitals.

The company's investors include the Aurora Funds in Durham. In June, Aurora general partner Scott Albert was appointed Centice's president and CEO. Albert, left, has been a Centice director since the company was founded in 2004.

The latest funding also included money from a new investor, Fulcrum Financial Group in Raleigh.

Dell has agreed to repay more than $26 million in incentives from Winston-Salem and Forsyth County as it prepares to close its PC manufacturing plant.

Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines sent a letter this week confirming that Dell will pay back $15.5 million to the city within 30 days, the Associated Press reported. Dell also will repay $11 million in grants and county costs.

Dell announced this month it plans to close the plant, which opened in 2004, by the end of January. About 600 workers will be let go next month and 300 more early next year.

The company blamed the slump in PC sales amid the recession. Some of the production work will be shifted to Mexico.

Dell built the plant in North Carolina largely because state and local officials promised the company a record incentives package worth more than $280 million in tax breaks and other incentives. N.C. Commerce Department officials have said they expect Dell will repay $1.5 million to the state, but not $3.6 million the state spent on workforce training.

Piedmont Natural Gas will build an $85 million, 38-mile natural gas pipeline to supply Progress Energy's planned power plant near Goldsboro.

State regulators have approved Progress Energy's plan to build a $900 million natural-gas plant in Wayne County and shut down three coal-fired plants to reduce pollution.

The new pipeline will be ready by July 2012, Charlotte-based Piedmont announced today.

Raleigh-based Progress Energy has said it expects to open the new plant, about an hour southeast of Raleigh, by 2013.

For those of you having trouble selling your house in today's market, here's something to investigate.

Has a famous person ever lived in your house? If the answer is yes, did they do anything memorable while living there?

We bring all this up because a real estate agent in New Jersey is selling the Jersey Shore cottage where Bruce Springsteen supposedly wrote the entire Born to Run album in 1974 and 1975. You can read the listing here.

"Bruce has spoken publicly about living there," the listing notes, "... how he would sit on the porch or sit on the edge of his bed, writing Thunder Road, Born to Run, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, Backstreets, She's the One and Jungleland."

The asking price for the 828-square-foot two bedroom, one bath cottage is $299,000. The comps are in the mid-$200s, but the listing notes that surely you can't put a price on a piece of history like this.

"What's it worth?" the listing asks. "It's priceless."

It seems worth noting that said cottage seems quaint when one considers the typical stage that The Boss performs on these days.

Okay, now go ahead and find out if Clay Aiken got his start in your living room.

James W. Owens is getting ready to hand over the keys to his corner office at Caterpillar.

The North Carolina native with numerous ties to N.C. State University plans to retire next fall as CEO and chairman of the world's largest manufacturer of earth-moving equipment.

Owens, 63, will remain CEO through July 1 and chairman until Oct. 31. The Illinois company today named his successor: Douglas R. Oberhelman, 56, who joined Caterpillar in 1975.

The succession plan comes as Caterpillar is restructuring its operations to account for a global sales slump during the recession. That change is likely to include additional lost jobs locally. The company employs about 1,800 in Cary, Sanford and Clayton. Caterpillar has already laid off or furloughed hundreds of local workers as it looks to cut costs.

“Doug's expertise in all critical facets of our business, combined with his international business experience in Asia and Latin America, and his relentless focus on execution and results make him uniquely qualified to lead Caterpillar in today's global economy,” Owens said in a prepared statement.

Alas, Oberhelman doesn't have Owens' Tar Heel history. For starters, his undergraduate degree is from Milikin University in Decatur, Ill., and he serves on that school's board of trustees.

Owens is a native of Elizabeth City who is serving a four-year term on N.C. State's board of trustees. He joined Caterpillar in 1972 as a corporate economist and earned a doctorate in economics from N.C. State in 1973.

Owens also sits on the boards of IBM and Alcoa.

Gov. Beverly Perdue said this morning that she was not surprised that the N.C. Global TransPark in Kinston missed out as a site for a production facility for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.

"North Carolina has not been on the short list for this facility for several months," Perdue said during a telephone news conference from China, where she is on a trade mission. It was one of the first times an N.C. official has acknowledged that Boeing was considering a site here.

But Perdue said there still are ongoing talks with Boeing about the company building other facilities in this state, Rob Christensen reports. She said plans to meet with Boeing officials within the next two weeks.

"It ain't over til it's over," she said.

On Wednesday, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney announced that the company had narrowed its choices for a second Dreamliner assembly line to Everett, Wash., and Charleston, S.C. A decision is expected within weeks.

It was the second time this decade that Boeing has passed over the Kinston business park for an assembly factory. But state officials have made clear they're committed to attracting additional aviation and aerospace companies to the park.