Popular women’s clothier Beverly’s Fine Fashions is closing its doors.

“There comes a time when you have to make a tough decision. It’s heartbreaking,” owner Beverly Bates said today of the boutique located in the Hilltop North Shopping Center in Virginia Beach.

Bates said she wasn’t going to blame her decision on any one thing.

CHESAPEAKE On the verge of a three week trial, a Chesapeake entrepreneur agreed in circuit court to pay $47 million to the state and hundreds of customers nationwide bilked by his company’s computer-purchase scheme.

The Virginia Employment Commission is expected today to release unemployment figures for October, the Associated Press is reporting.

In September, the rate of unemployment in Hampton Roads edged up to 6.7 percent from 6.6 percent, according to the agency announced last month.

NORFOLK More than two weeks after it was scheduled to start, the trial of Financing Alternatives Inc. and its founder is set to begin this morning in Chesapeake Circuit Court.

By Jaedda Armstrong NORFOLK At 5:05 Wednesday evening, 17-year-old Tiffani Walker stood outside MacArthur Center waiting for her mother to pick her up. She'd rather have still been inside shopping, but she would have been asked to leave and been escorted out by the downtown mall's security guards. The guards now stood at every entrance scanning each passing face for a hint of adolescence.

CHESAPEAKE The parent of Monarch Bank said it hopes to raise as much as $17.3 million from a stock offering and may use part of the proceeds to repay capital taken last year from the Treasury Department.

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HHGregg Inc., a big-box electronics and appliances retailer, has leased two spaces vacated by out-of-business companies to open its first stores in Hampton Roads.

NORFOLK Members of the International Longshoremen's Association from Maine to Texas have ratified a two-year extension of the union's contract with United States Maritime Alliance Ltd. The alliance represents all employers of the union's labor such as shipping lines, terminals and stevedoring firms. The vote Tuesday extends the contract through Sept. 30, 2012.

Alcoa Howmet, blaming a collapse in demand for industrial gas turbines, said Wednesday that it cut the work force at its Hampton plant by 250 jobs this week.