Business in Brief

After three months of increases, gasoline prices will drop at midnight tonight by 4 agorot per liter, or about 0.6%. The price of 95-octane will be NIS 6.50 per liter for self-service, with full service costing 13 agorot more per liter. Various taxes will make up 54.8% of the price. The change in price comes from changes in exchange rates and world oil prices. The National Infrastructures Ministry reminded consumers that these are maximum prices, and you can shop around for better prices. Cooking gas prices recently rose 9%. (Avi Bar-Eli)

National Insurance Institute employees have started labor sanctions, with the approval of the Histadrut labor federation. Three weeks ago, 3,500 NII workers declared an official work dispute, and today they will decide whether to start closing down branches and other services to the public, now that the waiting period is over and a temporary court injunction against the sanctions has ended. For now, they have been refusing to use new computer programs designed to improve service. The workers say that the raises promised two months ago are not being paid, and that new regulations will violate citizens' medical privacy rights. (Haim Bior)

Shahar chocolate spread is returning to the shelves of the Super-Sol supermarket chain, the country's largest, after a two-month hiatus. The spat between was over the fees the chain demanded for distributing the product - and both sides refused to say who gave in. Shahar Haole, the chocolate manufacturer, said thousands of customers had been demanding its products. In addition, Super-Sol is now under antitrust scrutiny over claims it violated terms of its merger with Clubmarket, as well as complaints by both its suppliers and competitors of monopolistic practices - and it may have wanted to end the chocolate dispute quickly. (Adi Dovrat-Meseritz)

The police have given out more than 10,000 tickets in the past three weeks to drivers using public transport lanes, the Transportation Ministry said yesterday. The police have been conducting an enforcement campaign for the past three weeks. The tickets cost drivers NIS 250 each, bringing the treasury more than NIS 2.5 million. About a third of the tickets were given out in Tel Aviv, mostly on Namir Boulevard and Ben Yehuda, Levi Eshkol, Allenby and Jabotinsky streets. A quarter were ticketed elsewhere in the center of the country, while the rest were given out in the Haifa and Jerusalem areas. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said at the start of the campaign that the law on public lanes had barely been enforced for years, which seriously reduced the advantages of public transportation. (Avi Bar-Eli)