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* Black & Decker Corp., for the first time in its 90 years, is without a Decker. Former Chairman and Chief Executive Alonzo G. Decker Jr., son of the co-founder and a director for 60 years, retired, the company said. Decker, who turns 93 on Jan. 18, started working at the world’s biggest power-tool maker at 14. He started his full-time job in 1930 after earning an electrical-engineering degree from Cornell University. He is credited with creating power tools for home use and designed the first cordless drill in the 1960s, the company said. Decker was named director in 1940. Ryder System Inc. Chairman M. Anthony Burns, 58, will take his seat on the board.

* Alcoa President and Chief Executive Alain Belda was officially named chairman of the aluminum company. Belda, 57, succeeds Paul O’Neill, who was tapped last month as President-elect Bush’s Treasury secretary.

* The Food and Drug Administration is recommending millers test for StarLink genetically engineered corn, which isn’t approved for human consumption, to avoid more food recalls. In a letter sent to trade associations representing hundreds of companies, the FDA encouraged testing genetic material in corn and provided guidelines in an attempt to keep StarLink from becoming further mingled in the food supply. StarLink, which is genetically altered to resist pests, isn’t approved for human consumption because a protein in the corn may cause allergic reactions.

* Brazil ended 2000 with a trade deficit for the sixth year running due to high oil prices, low export prices for commodities and surging imports on the back of strong economic growth, the government said. The trade deficit for 2000 was $691 million--compared with the once lofty government forecast of a $4-billion surplus and compared with a deficit of $1.25 billion in 1999.

* MediaNews Group Inc., publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram and Denver Post, completed its acquisition of Kearns-Tribune, the holding company of the Salt Lake City Tribune, from AT&T; Corp. for $200 million in cash.

* Newell Rubbermaid Inc., which makes office products including Berol pens, said it paid about $525 million for Gillette Co.’s Paper Mate, Parker and Waterman pens business. The price wasn’t disclosed when Gillette and Newell announced plans for the transaction in August.

* Nacco Industries Inc., which makes Proctor-Silex irons and toasters and Yale brand forklifts, said its Nacco Materials Handling Group unit will close its Danville, Ill., lift-truck assembly plant, cutting about 5% of its work force to reduce costs. Most of the plant’s 680 workers will lose their jobs.