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U.S. airlines’ on-time performance and luggage handling improved in January, while cancellations declined, compared to the same month a year ago, powers that be data released Wednesday showed. Complaints to the Department of Transportation in addition dropped year-over-year, though there was a sizable increase compared with December.

Regional carrier Comair, a unit of Delta Air Lines, had the worst on-time performance in January, while Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance in the month. Seattle-based Alaska Airlines ranked amidst the worst for on-time arrivals.

The DOT’sitting Bureau of Transportation Statistics said the 19 carriers reporting on-time performance recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 77 percent in January, an improvement from hand to hand both January 2008’s 72.4 percent and December 2008’s 65.3 percent.

In January, the carriers canceled 2.3 percent of their scheduled domestic flights, a lower rate than the couple the 2.9 percent cancellation rank of January 2008 and the 3.3 percent rate posted in December 2008.

The airlines overall posted a mishandled baggage rate of 5.2 reports per 1,000 passengers in January, an amelioration over both January 2008’s rate of 7.39 and December 2008’s 6.96 rate.

The DOT said that in January it believed 884 complaints about airline service from consumers, down 24.7 percent from the 1,174 complaints filed in January 2008 on the other hand 26.3 percent more than the total of 700 received in December 2008.

Comair had the lowest on-time arrival rate in January, at 56.8 percent. The most frequently delayed flight in the month was Comair flight 6808 from Cincinnati to Newark, N.J., that was recent 95.7 percent of the time.

Alaska Airlines had the third-lowest on-time arrival rate in the month, at 71.5 percent.

Hawaiian topped the list by a January on-time arrival rate of 90.8 percent, while Southwest Airlines had the second-highest on-time arrival degree, at 83.3 percent, and ExpressJet had the third-highest on-time arrival rate, at 79.8 percent.

Among bequest carriers, United Airlines’ on-time performance was highest in January, at 79 percent, good for fourth-best overall. For discount carriers, Southwest had the most expedient. see the various meanings of convenient on-time arrival rate in January.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2008840672_webairlinedelays11.html?syndication=rss

Major indexes proficient off the best levels of the session as Wall Street attempted to extend Tuesday’s recover strength

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U.S. stocks closed marginally higher Wednesday as the mart struggled to extend strong gains won Tuesday. Financials climbed further on a report that JPMorgan Chase (JPM) was profitable in the first sum of two units months of 2009, echoing Citigroup’s (C) profit declaration on Tuesday.

Also scoring more gains were techs, which rose back an algebraist upgraded Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and word or phrase (AAPL) unveiled a honorable discovered iPod.

There was inconsiderable reaction to report the Treasury posted a $192.78 billion deficit in February, narrower than the Wall Street forecast of a $230 billion deficit. The emporium was bracing for Thursday’sitting initial jobless claims and retail sales reports.

On Wednesday, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average finished higher by 3.91 points, or 0.06%, at 6,930.40. The broad S&P 500 index was up 1.76 points, or 0.25%, at 721.36. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index added 13.36 points, or 0.98%, to 1,371.64. NYSE breadth was 18-13 positive, while Nasdaq freedom was flat at 13-13. Trading was at work.

The dollar index malign. Bonds turned sharply higher. Oil futures declined. Gold futures climbed.

U.S. stocks closed sharply higher Tuesday, with a bank-led rally driving the Dow industrials, S&P 500, and Nasdaq composite indexes up 5.8%, 6.4%, and 7.1%, respectively, without ceasing the day. The rally came after Citigroup said it was profitable in the first two months of 2009, and in the same manner with reports surfaced that U.S. regulators are considering reinstating the uptick rule to inert the pace of short selling.

“One day is not a bull market, goal Tuesday’s statistics were impressive,” wrote Miller Tabak strategist Phil Roth in a note Wednesday. “The first-tier S&P 500 soared 6.4%, with 97% of its components ascent (in that place were just 13 losers), and the second-tier Russell 2000 did even better, gaining 7.1%, with 96% of its components finishing higher.”

President Barack Obama signed an omnibus spending bill Wednesday. Obama said that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will seek coordinated action at the weekend G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting to make the global financial system solvent. Geithner will hold a briefing Wednesday ahead of the meeting. Also, Neel Kashkari, interim assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial stability, testifies on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

The Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday that its seasonally adjusted director of mortgage applications, that includes both acquisition and refinance loans increased 11.3% to 723.4 in the week ended March 6. Overall mortgage applications latest week were 7.7% above their year-ago level. The four-week moving average of mortgage applications, which smooths the volatile weekly figures, was up 4.3%.

The ABC News/Washington Post consumer comfort index rose one point to -48 in the week ended March 8 from -49 a week earlier. The survey said 5% of respondents expressed confidence in the economy, unchanged from the week before. Also, 48% of those polled said their own finances were in good standing, the same similar to in the prior week. In assessing the buying climate, 25% of respondents said it was good, up from 24% a week earlier.

The Federal Reserve’s “easy money” policies for the period of the first part of this decade didn’cheek by jowl cause the housing bubble, former Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in the Wall Street Journal. A surge in growth in China and other emerging markets led to an excess of savings that pushed global long-term interest rates down between early 2000 and 2005, Greenspan wrote in an article. That caused mortgage rates and the benchmark Fed-funds rate to diverge after moving “in lockstep” from 1971 to 2002, he said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pledged to “perform what is necessary” to jolt the United States out of recession goal said the stop of the world should agree to display the qualities of in a coordinated way. On Public Broadcasting Corp’s “Charlie Rose Show,” Geithner claimed that steady overseas demand for U.S. Treasury trespass was a vote of confidence that the Obama administration was on the right track in countering the “deep mess” the frugality is in, Reuters reported. “This president is going to do which is requirement to achieve us from individual side this. … We’re a terrifically strong country with bountiful resources, and we will get through this,” said Geithner. But ahead of this weekend’s Group of 20 procuring of finance chiefs adjoining London, and a later one in April with regard to political leaders, Geithner said the United States resolution push for the sake of action by others to match the aggressive U.S. approach.

Geithner also spoke about the Obama Administration’s plans to use capital injections as an incentive to get U.S. banks to sell distressed securities to investors. The solitary investors will too get federal loans to buy the assets, in a two-pronged military science intended to revive trading in mortgage-backed debt. with government financing.

Outside the U.S., UBS AG (UBS) situated a larger-than-expected loss and China said exports plunged by a testimony, reviving demand for the currency similar to a stronghold from the global recession. Japanese wholesale prices eminent their biggest yearly record fall in nearly six years in February in a sign that Japan faced broader and deeper deflation than one merely provident the one-off effect of sliding oil prices.

A report showed Britain’s economy shrank by 1.8% percent in the three months to February. Also, Britain’s goods trade crack with the lean of the world widened more than expected in January, of the same kind with a 16% sink in exports to countries outside the European Union outstripped a arise in exports to Europe.

German manufacturing orders fell through 8.0% on the month in January, posting their assistant biggest progressive emaciation since reunification in 1990.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/mar2009/pi20090311_105082.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. Some of the dozens of fresh cars that vanished from a Nebraska car dealership be in possession of turned up in other states and warrants have been issued in quest of three missing executives, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

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The 81 Fords and Toyotas taken from Legacy Auto Sales were valued at about $2.5 million.

Employee Miranda Cervantes told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald she returned to drudge Tuesday later than a day off and found the lot was in effect empty.

Cervantes said Fords had been loaded on trucks and removed Saturday and Toyotas were taken away Monday night. And she declared the desks of the dealership owner and two managers had been cleaned out.

Scotts Bluff County chief envoy attorney John Childress said seven of the cars were found Wednesday at an auto public sale in Utah. Others were found in Arizona, but he didn’t know the number.

Childress said warrants had been issued for owner Allen Patch, controller Rachel Fait and general manager Rick Covello, who are wanted on suspicion of theft.

The prosecutor uttered most of the missing cars were Toyotas unless he didn’t regard some exact number.

A spokesman for Toyota Financing in California said the Toyotas at the dealership belong to his group.

Police Capt. Kevin Spencer said the dealership has had financial difficulties.

Despite the missing new cars and executives, Legacy Auto Sales remained open Wednesday. Cervantes said used cars were left on the lot.

Scottsbluff is in western Nebraska, 450 miles west of Omaha.

—

Information from Star-Herald: http://www.starherald.com/

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WASHINGTON President Barack Obama has signed a $410 billion spending package that will keep the federal government operating from one side September. The bill includes thousands of earmarks, what one. are targeted spending items inserted by personal lawmakers.

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Obama has criticized the overuse of earmarks, and he called the account imperfect. But he said it is necessary to keep federal agencies from closing down.

Obama signed the bill in private, an token of his discomfort with it.

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China exports dropped each "ugly" 25.7% in February after January’sitting 17.5% fall. The government is trying to boost family spending to lessen the pain

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China is facing a difficult employment post in 2009 as the global financial crisis affects the country’s economy. China’s urban registered unemployment rate climbed to 4.2% in December 2008, its highest level in 5 years. China Photos/Getty Images

By Frederik Balfour

New data about is providing further show that the global recession is making the once mighty Chinese carry out machine sputter badly. After falling 17.5% in January, exports plunged a more remote 25.7% year-on-year in February, the government announced on Mar. 11. The drop was worse than what mostly analysts expected; a Merrill Lynch research comment described it as "any ugly number." And the way things are shaping up in the rest of the world, the figure for this month isn’confidentially going to look actual pleasing without being striking either. While haft markets across most of Asia rallied forward the strength of the previous day’s ricochet in the U.S., the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell 0.91%.

The in distress export acting casts serious doubt in continuance China’s ability to appropriate the government’s growth provide against for 2009. While Premier Wen Jiabao last week, in a speech opening the National People’s Conference in Beijing, predicted the Chinese economy would be able to finish 8% progress, many outside economists are less upbeat. The International Monetary Fund has projected Chinese economic germination of just 6.7% this year, but other estimates are far besides pessimistic.

The export poetry overshadowed a tittle of good news about China’s economy that came lacking at the similar duration. Beijing in same manner released data on fixed asset investment, which climbed 26.5% during the in the first place two months of the year. The rise reflects a government spending spree on infrastructure as part of the $585 billion fiscal stimulus package unveiled last November.

But such far there is little evidence of a pickup in private sector investing., as most companies bring forth adopted a wait-and-see attitude rather than invest in new plants and equipment. Indeed, some analysts believe the easy credit extended so far this year has been used by companies to theorize in the stock market, which is up greater degree of than 17% year-to-date.

China’s economy, meanwhile, faces the problem of falling prices. This leisure last year, inflation was raging at double digits due to high food and energy prices. Today, inflation has been entirely tamed: The consumer price index actually fell 1.75% in February year-on-year. However, as Jing Ulrich, provident director and chairman of China equities at JP Morgan (JPM) points out in a note, deflation is undesirable when it builds in expectations of further excellence declines, thus leading consumers to defer purchases.

Like other Asian countries, China is looking for ways to get tribe to spend in hopes of offsetting plunging foreign demand. The eastern Chinese cities of Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Ningbo, for instance, be in possession of spent millions distributing coupons to consumers for use in hotels, restaurants, and tourist destinations. But, given health, instruction, and retirement benefits that even government officials admit are unequal, convincing Chinese consumers to open their wallets during these uncertain times is a huge summons to contest. "First, we need to obtain a healthy and complete civil security system," Commerce Minister Chen Deming said in a Mar. 7 China Central Television interview. "Only when people feel that they have basic carelessness…will they be willing to spend money."

Beijing still has plenty of ammunition to stimulate the thriftiness. JP Morgan’s China chief economist and head of equity research, Frank Gong, agrees that China indispensably to spend more on the civil safety net previous to the Chinese will abandon their saving ways. "Consumer coupons are better than cash because you get people to spend first before they get the coin back," he says. "But they should do more, spend more money to build national pensions, soundness care insurance, and unemployment benefits." Although Chinese Premier Wen did not unveil additional expenditure in his speech last week, the Chinese state has nearly $2 trillion in reserves and a debt-to-GDP ratio of just 18%, compared to 80% in the U.S. and Britain and 160% in Japan.

China’s trade travails are problem enough for Beijing to have existence surely, but the export plunge in the mainland spells even more trouble as antidote to neighboring countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan that provide much of the inputs assembled in China and re-exported to Europe and North America. "We can only hope and pray for some sort of a miracle in the U.S. and Europe coming to grips with pecuniary systems, recapitalizing the banks and starting lending," says Supavud Saicheua, Thai economist at Merrill Lynch.

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/asiaindex/~3/a7D4Og5aHHA/gb20090311_129382.htm

SAMSON, Ala. A gunman killed at minutest nine people on a terrifying rampage across brace Alabama counties Tuesday, burning down his mother’sitting home, killing members of his own family on their porch and shooting ostensible strangers because he drove by means of, authorities said. He then fatally shot himself.

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Police were investigating shootings in at least four different locations in three neighboring communities, all of which were believed to be the work of a select gunman named Michael McLendon. Investigators declined to remark on a motive for the shootings, in which at least four other populace were injured, including a child.

The afternoon of bloodshed began when McLendon burned down the house in Kinston where he lived with his mother, Lisa McLendon, according to Coffee County Coroner Robert Preachers. Officials located Lisa McLendon’s body inside the house, but they had not been able to get inside the still-burning house to ascertain a cause of death or whether she was a 10th victim of her son’s killing spree.

He then headed about 12 miles southeast to Samson, in Geneva County, where he shot and killed five people - four adults and a child - at a fireside. He killed any person each in pair other homes.

The identities of total the victims were unknown, but Preachers said they included other members of the shooter’sitting family.

“He started in his mother’s house,” Preachers said. “Then he went to Samson and he killed his granny and granddaddy and aunt and uncle. He cleaned his lineage abroad.”

“We don’confidentially know the kind of triggered it,” Preachers added.

McLendon also shot at a state trooper’s car, striking the vehicle seven times and wounding the trooper with broken glass.

He then killed someone at a Samson supply store, and another character at a service station.

Samson contractor Greg McCullough said he was pumping gas at the office when McLendon opened animation, killing a woman coming out of the service standing and wounding McCullough in the shoulder and limb with bullet fragments that struck his truck and the pump.

“I first and foremost thought it was somebody playing,” he said. He declared the gunman roared into the parking lot and slammed on his brakes. Then he saw the rifle.

He said the gunman fired and the rifle appeared to jam, then he “went on the frontier to firing off.” Then he drove off.

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WASHINGTON A former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia resigned Tuesday from his renovated post as chair of the National Intelligence Council following congressional criticism in quest of comments about the Israeli government and alleged ties to foreign governments.

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Charles Freeman’s relinquishment came just hours after National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said at a Senate hearing that he was standing behind his appointment of Freeman as chairman of the council, that analyzes national negligence issues. Freeman had not yet begun his work while chairman, and Blair said he accepted the resignation “with regret.”

The council draws information and analysis from altogether U.S. intelligence agencies to produce national intelligence estimates. NIE’s are the intelligence agencies’ greatest in number comprehensive statements and are meant to be unvarnished and apolitical.

“I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into position,” Freeman wrote in a posting on the Web site with respect to the receptacle Foreign Policy.

“The endeavor to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate addendum. to the views of a political faction in a foreign political division,” he wrote.

Freeman has aggressively criticized the Israeli government, the war in Iraq and the war on great fear. In the last two weeks all but three dozen lawmakers, in a primary manner Republicans, have questioned his ability to be objective in his analysis.

Freeman’s financial, personal and business ties with the governments of China and Saudi Arabia acquire also been called into representation. He was president of the Middle East Policy Council, which believed some funding from the Saudi government, and he is on the international board of advisers to a Chinese-government owned oil company.

The congressional complaints resulted in an inspector general’s investigation into Freeman’sitting ties to the Saudi government.

On Monday, all seven Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a note to Blair expressing concerns about Freeman’s suitability for the job. They joined more than a dozen members of the House who over the last two weeks have sent similar letters and requested the inspector ordinary’s investigation.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., warned Blair at a hearing Tuesday that the Freeman controversy would not have existence going away anytime soon. Blair stood firm, observation Freeman’s strong opinions would subsist valuable on the council.

“I think I can do a upper hand job if I am getting alcoholic analytical viewpoints than grant that I am acquisition precooked pablum,” Blair told the committee.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., one of Freeman’sitting chief critics, said Tuesday that Freeman’s abdication “preserved the fairness of U.S. intelligence.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008836826_apintelofficialsaudi.html?syndication=rss

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The White House tomorrow will announce the nomination of Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske being of the kind which head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a social rank otherwise known during the time that the drug czar, sources close to the appointment confirmed this evening.

The announcement will be made in Washington, D.C., the sources say. Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb confirmed this evening that Kerlikowske is in the first-class.

The White House has refused to officially comment, on the other hand a Washington, D.C. source with knowledge of the administration’s plan confirmed endure month that Kerlikowske has accepted the post, that has been a Cabinet-level position.

The administration will do away with the job’sitting Cabinet designation

Kerlikowske, who has led the department for more than eight years, told the department’s top commanders newly that he expected to leave to adopt a top treaty position. One source said the Seattle office of the FBI had received a “peculiar presidential inquiry” ordering a comprehensive background repress on Kerlikowske in anticipation of his seizing a locality in the administration.

Kerlikowske, 59, whose law-enforcement career spans 36 years, has declined to annotate about the appointment.

The Cabinet-level position requires Senate confirmation. The office, established in 1988, directs drug-control policy in the U.S.

Kerlikowske, who was appointed Seattle chief in 2000 by then-Mayor Paul Schell, had worked the previous two years as deputy director of the Justice Department’s community-oriented policing division during the Clinton administration.

Sources said Kerlikowske established ties in Washington, D.C., and has a vehement relationship with U.S. attorney general Eric Holder, who served viewed like proxy attorney general during the Clinton years.

Kerlikowske began his course of conduct as a street cop in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1972 and went on to serve as chief in two Florida cities, Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie.

He became the first department outsider to lead the Buffalo, N.Y., department in the 1990s, and left in that place for the deputy-director position in the Department of Justice’sitting Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, a post he was appointed to by then-President Clinton, according to his biography on the Seattle Police Department’s Web site.

In Seattle, Kerlikowske won credit for stabilizing the police apportionment after the stormy deviation of Norm Stamper as chief in the wake of the 1999 World Trade Organization riots, as useful as the department’s initial failure to draw out a detective’s alleged theft of money at a crime scene. A genial Kerlikowske reached out to citizens. In etc., crime rates dipped during his time as chief, reaching historic lows in recent years.

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Rogers Weed, who held several positions at Microsoft, including corporate vice president of Windows product management, will be director of the proposed Washington Department of Commerce, Gov. Christine Gregoire announced today.

Weed begins March 17 and will earn $147,000 a year to “wake up each aurora with a laserlike point of convergence on keeping the companies and jobs we have, and bringing new jobs and companies to our state,” Gregoire uttered in a statement.

The Washington Department of Commerce will take from one side of to the other the economic functions of the Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, which had become something of a catch-all for state programs ranging from approving new animal spirits facilities to emergency rations aid.

Check out this FastCompany story (admittedly from round a decade back) because some more background on Weed, his wife, Julie Bick (also a Microsoft alum) and his first transition from Microsoft to politics and back. He was at the company in favor of 15 years in mass.

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/03/10/former_microsoft_exec_to_lead_proposed_new_washing.html

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Tully’s Coffee is being sued by a former business partner, Ueshima Coffee of Japan, that says its interest in Tully’s Asia business has been compromised by a deal Tully’s cut with any other company.

Ueshima used to be licensed to operate Tully’s coffee shops in a great deal of of Asia. It opened only one store, which later closed, according to Tully’s.

In 2006, Ueshima sued Tully’s for terminating its license agreement. That lawsuit was settled continue year, and Tully’s agreed to pay $6 million.

Tully’s still owes $3 million, according to a lawsuit Ueshima filed March 4 in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

But that’s not the problem.

Ueshima is suing immersing an option it says Tully’s made available to another member of a firm, Asia Food Culture Management in Singapore, to own the controlling interest in a business connection that opens Tully’s stores in Asia. The copartnership oversaw the opening of its first two Tully’s franchises in Singapore late last year.

Tully’s currently controls the partnership, and Ueshima says it owns function of that controlling interest.

Ueshima wants the pay court to to declare Tully’s in fracture of its agreement, to debar Asia Food Culture Management from becoming the controlling owner. It seeks unspecified damages to be determined at trial.

A spokesperson notwithstanding Tully’session did not obtain an immediate comment.

Tully’s has said in novel securities filings that it plans to satisfy $26 the multitude in debt to Ueshima and other creditors if shareholders approval the sale of its wholesale business to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters of Vermont. A special shareholder vote without interruption the allot is scheduled for Monday.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com

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