Boeing's largest union rejected an eight-year contract that would have guaranteed the plane maker's updated long-range 777X jetliner and its wings are built in unionized facilities in the Pacific Northwest.
The rejection brings fresh uncertainty to the process of finding a manufacturing home for the 777X. Boeing threatened earlier to look outside its traditional Puget Sound base should the contract vote fail.If Boeing moves out-of-state, the union is counting on NLRB to come to its aid. Don't count on it. With ObamaCare, things have changed.
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The nation's railroads are asking safety regulators to require that all existing tank cars that carry crude oil, ethanol and other flammable liquids be modified or upgraded to better withstand accidents or be "aggressively" phased out of service.
They are stopping short of recommending a deadline for the changes to the U.S. tank-car fleet or estimating the cost of the retrofits, which would be needed on 78,000 older tank cars and modifications to some of the 14,000 newer cars that don't already comply with its suggested changes.
The groups said they would leave those deadline and cost details to the Pipeline Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration, the federal agency responsible for regulating tank-car safety, which is beginning to craft new rules on tank cars.
Trade groups representing the railroads—the Association of American Railroads and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association—plan to make their request Thursday. Two troubling crude-by-rail accidents—the catastrophic accident in Quebec that killed 47 people last July in an inferno and another in Alabama last week—have shaken the rail industry at a time when crude oil shipments on the major freight railroads have ballooned to a projected 400,000 carloads this year from 4,700 carloads in 2006, according to the AAR.
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Active rigs: 183
RBN Energy: update on Marcellus productivity
The second release of the EIA’s new monthly Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) for November came out on Tuesday (November 12, 2013) showing December natural gas production is expected to increase in four of the six regions covered. But one region alone – the Marcellus – accounts for 76 percent of natural gas production growth. In fact if the Marcellus were a country it would rank 5th in world gas production – ahead of Qatar. The DPR provides a breakdown of rig productivity and production from new and legacy wells and includes access to historical data back to 2007. Today we continue our review of the latest Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) report.This was a feature story in the StarTribune about a week ago on military veterans returning from wars overseas finding jobs in the Bakken oil patch.
The Wall Street Journal
Obama "open" to health-law change. This will be a huge mess as they try to patch work this back to "something."
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Hmmm....I always love a mystery. Business owners throughout the US used-smartphone market are reporting they suddenly cannot unlock old iPhones. None of them know exactly what changed, but AT&T seems to be at the center of it.
The market is gone," Mr. Ashner said, who said he was on track for $1 million in revenue this year.
"We are closing up." Business owners throughout the U.S. used-smartphone market are reporting the same problem, and like Mr. Ashner none of them knows exactly what went wrong.
Whatever changed, AT&T appears to be at the center of it.
The carrier accounts for 48% of the iPhones now operating in the U.S., according to comScore, and the technology it uses is compatible with most of the world's networks. That gives its phones the widest resale market. Wholesalers had long been able to get AT&T's iPhones unlocked on a mass scale by specialized services, many working out of Asia, for relatively little cost.
That changed about a month ago, when people in the industry say AT&T suddenly made it harder to unlock phones on its network.
"AT&T was very lax for a long time in regards to mobile phone unlocking. If they said no, a third-party unlocker would be happy to unlock any AT&T iPhone or other device for a very decent price," said Will Strafach, who runs a Connecticut-based unlocking company called ChronicUnlocks.
"AT&T is really taking action and coming down hard."
In mid-October, AT&T did stop accepting unlocking requests over the phone and now requires that they be made online, a person familiar with the matter said. The process is only open to current and former customers, who must enter their email addresses and last four digits of their social security numbers, among other information, according to AT&T's website.
The mystery underscores how shadowy the used-phone market remains even as it enjoys explosive growth. Apple Inc., AT&T and others have leapt into the business this year as a way to help their customers trade up to newer models more quickly.
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Under the revised rule, the average workweek has been shortened to 70 hours from 82. They must take one 30-minute break during the first eight hours of driving. And the required 34-hour break between workweeks now must extend over two nights, including the hours between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.
Those changes are proving more disruptive because they are added on to existing requirements that limit drivers to driving 11 hours a day and require them to rest a consecutive 10 hours.
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