A U.S. appeals court threw out key...

A U.S. appeals court threw out key federal rules designed to make it easier for long-distance carriers and others to offer local telephone service in competition with the regional Baby Bells. In a victory for the Bells, the St. Louis-based court said the Federal Communications Commission’s rules for opening the $100-billion local phone market do not square with the 1996 Communications Act. It was the second such defeat for the FCC. . . . Seeking to stem losses at its struggling home personal computer unit, IBM Corp. plans to restructure its PC business. The revamping will extend IBM’s recent efforts to deal with the converging areas of consumer PCs, corporate PCs and low-cost machines called network computers and is expected to involve some job cuts, analysts said. IBM officials had no comment. . . . The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule that will make it easier for U.S.-based media to gain access to overseas news conferences by foreign companies. Many of these companies exclude media with U.S. audiences from announcements of stock sales and takeover offers in deference to U.S. securities rules that seek to protect American investors from manipulation. The new rule will go into effect in November. . . . Chrysler Corp. says it no longer requires magazines in which it places ads to notify it in advance of controversial stories. Chrysler spent $270 million in magazine advertising last year, making it one of the nation’s largest magazine advertisers. It decided to rescind the advance-notification rule after the magazine industry recently complained that Chrysler was practicing a form of censorship.