Crude oil price drops by $1.36
Advertiser news services
|
|||
 |
|||
NEW YORK — Oil prices fell more than $1 a barrel yesterday as traders took profits from recent record highs, but worries lingered that Hurricane Katrina might disrupt supplies of refined fuels from the Gulf Coast.
Light, sweet crude for October delivery fell $1.36 to settle at $66.13 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after rising as high as $67.95. On Thursday, the contract touched $68 at one point but settled at $67.49, still the highest closing since oil began trading on Nymex in 1983.
NEW NEGOTIATOR FOR DELTA PILOTS
ATLANTA — Delta Air Lines Inc.'s pilots union elected a new chairman for its executive committee yesterday, changing leaders amid worries that the nation's third-largest carrier may file for bankruptcy protection.
Lee Moak defeated John Malone, whose two-year term ends Oct. 1. Malone, who has held key union positions since being hired by Delta in 1988, was chairman at the time the union agreed last year to $1 billion in annual concessions.
UNIONS REBUILD AFTER BREAKAWAY
WASHINGTON — Unions that broke away from the AFL-CIO hope to rebuild the tattered labor movement by targeting workers in growing industries such as healthcare, waste management and security.
"We want to identify jobs that can't be shipped overseas," Teamsters President James Hoffa said in an interview with The Associated Press yesterday.
The targeted industries, which also include food service and businesses that cater to retirees, account for 30 million to 45 million workers, said Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. He said workers in these industries, which employ a large number of immigrants and minorities who do not have college degrees, aren't paid fairly for their work.
MERCK CONSIDERS FEW SETTLEMENTS
TRENTON, N.J. — Merck & Co. will consider settling a limited number of lawsuits over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, a spokesman said yesterday. The drug's link to heart attacks and strokes has spawned thousands of lawsuits and last week's $253 million jury verdict in Texas.
As recently as Wednesday, company lawyers were still saying they planned to fight each personal-injury lawsuit. On Thursday morning, Merck said that as of Aug. 15 it faced nearly 5,000 lawsuits alleging patients were harmed by the drug — almost 600 more cases than in its prior update five weeks earlier. The total includes about 150 potential class-action suits that could include many plaintiffs.
ONLINE WORM SUSPECTS SEIZED
WASHINGTON — Authorities in Turkey and Morocco have arrested two men thought to be responsible for creating computer worms that infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide this year, including the Zotob worm that crippled several high-profile companies this month, the FBI said yesterday.
Moroccan police arrested Russian-born Farid Essebar, 18, who used the online alias "Diabl0." Authorities in Turkey arrested Atilla Ekici, 21, known as "Coder."
