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The Tampa Port Authority gave the green light Tuesday to sign a contract with the British company at the center of the controversy over its sale to a business based in the United Arab Emirates based on concerns it may threaten U.S. homeland security. Amid growing criticism of a deal to give a United Arab Emirates company a major presence in U.S. ports, Tampa Port Authority commissioners took a different tack Tuesday. They authorized port director Richard Wainio to sign a contract to bring the British company at the center of the controversy to Tampa to run cargo handing at...

As Rush just noted, one of the large global seaport opertions companies is Mersk (18% of world market), from Denmark. So, let's give our port contracts to the Danish, and stick it to the Mullahs over the cartoons at the same time.

(snip)....Under a three-year contract that went into place Feb. 1, state agencies are directed to buy all their office supplies from Atlanta-based Office Depot. In the past, agencies had been allowed to choose from several companies, including several North Carolina suppliers. "The small businesses are the ones who pay the most taxes back to the state," said Christopher Sharpe, vice president of Piedmont Office Suppliers in Greensboro. "It won't put us out of business, but it will definitely hurt the bottom line." He estimated the contract will cost six independent suppliers in the state more than 100 jobs and $24.5...

MADISON, WI (AP) -- Employees of at least seven companies donated to Gov. Jim Doyle's re-election campaign around the same time the state picked their firms for no-bid contracts totaling more than $36.1 million, according to an Associated Press review.They include two IBM salesmen who gave Doyle more than $11,000 over a three-year period as the business won more than a dozen contracts worth more than $6 million. Also, three Oracle Corp. employees gave Doyle $3,250 within days of the company winning a contract that could be worth up to $29 million to provide software and technical support to the...

Marines award contract for IED jammers WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- The Marine Corps has awarded a $289 million contract to General Dynamics for a system to foil roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices. Known by the acronym IED, such bombs have vexed U.S. troops in Iraq and have accounted for the lion's share of U.S. casualties. The contract awarded by the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico calls for the design production and installation of General Dynamic's Remote Controlled Explosive Improvised Device (RCEID) Electronic Counter Measure systems, a technology that will basically jam the signals used to trigger...

Karen Durham-Aguilera takes a “hands-on” approach to inspecting a reconstruction site in Iraq last year. Last week she explained how she helped women-owned firms in Iraq win more than $250 million in reconstruction contracts. • Printer-friendly version • E-mail this article • Army helping Iraqi businesswomen win contractsBy Lt. Col. Stan Heath February 7, 2006 WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Feb. 7, 2006) -- About 250 reconstruction contracts worth more than $250 million have been awarded to women-owned businesses in Iraq over the past eight months. Opportunities for Iraqi businesswomen are increasing, with help of the U.S. Army Corps of...

After three years of losing money, Halliburton reported a hefty profit for 2005 and announced that all six of its divisions posted record results. "The year 2005 was the best in our 86-year history," Dave Lesar, Halliburton's chairman, said Thursday. The company posted a year-end profit of $2.4 billion, or $4.54 per share, on revenue of $21 billion. That compares with a $1 billion loss in 2004 when Halliburton finally settled scores of asbestos and silica lawsuits. For the fourth quarter, Halliburton booked a profit of $1.1 billion on revenue of $5.8 billion. Lesar attributed the fourth-quarter comeback primarily to...

IT'S enough to make the hippies and peaceniks of Byron Bay choke on their organic muesli. Byron Bay Shire Council has awarded a contract to a subsidiary of Halliburton, the multinational formerly headed by US Vice-President Dick Cheney and condemned by anti-war activists as a major profiteer in the Iraq war. The hip northern NSW beach town, long a haven for anti-war activists, made history in 2004 by becoming the first place in NSW to elect a Green mayor, Jan Barham. But Ms Barham, one of three Green councillors who voted in favour of awarding a contract for a sewage...

HOUSTON -- Civil rights groups representing Katrina refugees complained Monday that New Orleans residents and the black community are being left out of the city's rebuilding process, excluding them from jobs and building contracts. Malcolm Suber, a Katrina refugee from New Orleans now living in Houston and a member of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, said rebuilding committees have "no respect for the black population of New Orleans." "We are coming back home," Suber said. "This is our city and we are going to have a say so in its future." During a news conference outside a Federal Emergency Management...

We hear a lot about the government largesse flowing toward Halliburton, Bechtel and a handful of other favored firms chosen to rebuild Iraq. Less often do we consider the possibility that the administration's bellicosity has been a major business blunder.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The uncle and father of a Louisiana lawmaker have won three no-bid contracts worth $108 million to provide temporary housing for Hurricane Katrina evacuees even though their motorcycle shop didn't have a license to sell new trailers until after the first deal was signed. Recreational vehicle dealers in Louisiana are angry, saying they've been shut out of what they call a sweetheart deal. One is threatening to sue the motorcycle shop's owners for violating the dealer's franchise rights to sell RVs. No-bid contracts awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for temporary housing in trailers and...

New Orleans Levee Repairs: Contracts, but No Work By Angelle Bergeron Katrina’s surge swept barges into St. Bernard Parish floodwall (Photo by Andrew G. Wright for ENR) Critical levee repairs in New Orleans are on hold because parishes can't come up with money needed to match the federal contribution, local sources tell ENR. On October 12, the Corps of Engineers awarded the third contract under Task Force Guardian, whose mission is to restore the federal levee system to pre-Katrina level performance by June 1, 2006. But the contractor, Manson Gulf LLC of Houma, still hasn't received the notice to proceed...

Most of the signs are handwritten and simply worded, such as "Workers Wanted" or "Need 50 Laborers Now!" Word has gotten out and each morning day laborers — who come from Central America and Mexico by way of California, Texas and Arizona — gather on street corners in the Kenner and Metairie neighborhoods on the western edge of the city. Lured by jobs paying $15 to $17 an hour, the Spanish-speaking day laborers have flooded into New Orleans to haul out debris, clear downed trees, put in drywall and perform other tasks as rebuilding takes hold in the city. Specialized...

The Mississippi Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal aims for no less than an "economic renaissance for coastal Mississippi," said its chairman Jim Barksdale, a former president and CEO of Netscape. To help create a physical plan, state officials invited New Urbanist Andres Duany, FAIA, to lead a charrette last month in Biloxi, one of Hurricane Rita's hard-hit targets. Joining him were 100 members of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), including transportation planners, environmentalists, code writers, sociologists, and representatives of such large AE firms as SOM, HOK, HDR, and UDA. General teams will deal with regional issues,...

Paul Mullinaux will deposit the $20,000 check he received from the federal government. But he just doesn't feel right about it. Not after hauling ice in a zigzag motion for two weeks, from New York to Missouri to Alabama to Massachusetts. Not after living for more than a week on the Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base flight line. And not after learning how much the federal government paid for what's been deemed Hurricane Katrina's frozen water fiasco. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded an emergency ice contract with IAP Worldwide Services of Cape Canaveral, Fla., paying more for truckers to...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government's tab for hurricane relief and rebuilding efforts is likely to cost less than $150 billion, Congress' top budget analyst said Thursday, an amount significantly less than original guesstimates tossed about in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin told the House Budget Committee that his agency now estimates damage to homes, government buildings, oil refineries and businesses will total between $70 billion and $130 billion. Of that, at least $40 billion is covered by private insurance, he said. Those figures don't include the immediate relief and rescue efforts, which...

The US Army has asked companies to bid for contracts to produce large quantities of anthrax and equipment to produce other unnamed biological agents, according to New Scientist, but has not said what it needs the facilities for. [snip] One contract specifies: "The company must have the ability and be willing to grow Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain at 1500-litre quantities." Others call for a 3,000-litre production capacity for unnamed biological agents and sheep carcasses to investigate incineration of infected animals. The non-virulent Sterne strain of the bacterium is the only one specified in any of the documents. It is not...

Pentagon Defends Its Growing Reliance On Foreign Contractors [International Herald Tribune, September 23, 2005, Pg. 15] The Pentagon's latest weapons-buying list has a distinctly foreign flavor. From the military's point of view, the U.S. no longer has a lock on research and technology and has no choice but to look abroad for various piece parts.

On Wednesday the official death toll from Katrina jumped to 474. More than 400 of those bodies are now being held for autopsy at two locations in the Baton Rouge area. All those bodies are now producing a brand new public relations nightmare for state officials. This time, it involves the hiring of the world's largest funeral corporation to handle the job of recovering the dead. But it's a company we've learned has a tainted history of legal troubles. According to the Department of Health and Hospitals, Kenyon International has been in charge of recovering and handling Hurricane Katrina's dead...

As the death toll across the Gulf Coast rises, one of the largest reconstruction efforts in American history begins. An estimated 400,000 jobs have been lost, and 1 million Americans have been displaced from their homes. Workers who have found the courage to return to their devastated communities suffered another blow last week when President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act. Davis-Bacon ensures that workers who perform similar jobs for government contractors are paid the local prevailing wage. In New Orleans, where a quarter of the residents lived in poverty before Hurricane Katrina, that wage was $8.49 an hour for service...