The Tennessee Valley Authority is cutting the fuel portion of its electricity rates again next month, saving the typical Chattanooga household an estimated $1.82 on their April power bill compared with a year ago.
TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said next month’s fuel cost adjustment is about 25 percent below the three-year average for fuel expenses for TVA since 2013. Although TVA and EPB both raised base rates slightly in the past year, the typical EPB residential customer that uses 1,461 kilowatthours of electricity will still pay 1.2 percent less for power next month ($150.30) than what he or she paid a year earlier ($152.12).
“The primary factors are milder weather and lower natural gas prices than in prior years,” Brooks said.
The lower peak demand reduces TVA’s need to buy more expensive, peak-generated power, Brooks said.
TVA raised its base rate by 1.5 percent and EPB raised its rates about 3.5 percent last year.
VW logo tileFRANKFURT, Germany – Volkswagen’s in-house bank said Tuesday that profit was likely to fall this year because the automaker’s diesel emissions scandal would increase the interest the company must pay to raise money from financial markets.
The unit, Volkswagen Financial Services, reported its financial results Tuesday, saying it had subtracted about 450 million euros, or about $500 million, from 2015 earnings after vehicles leased to customers lost more value than expected, in part because of the scandal. The unit still reported a net profit of 1.2 billion euros for last year, a 35 percent increase from the previous year.
The financial hits were a result of the turmoil that has enveloped Volkswagen since it admitted widespread cheating on emissions tests going back years. Volkswagen Financial Services has been temporarily unable to issue bonds in the United States or Europe because of its parent company’s problems, executives of the unit said Tuesday at a news conference in Frankfurt.
The emissions scandal has “intensively challenged the entire Volkswagen Group and therefore Volkswagen Financial Services as well,” said Lars Henner Santelmann, chief executive of the banking unit.
Overtime pay rule under final review
A proposal to extend overtime pay to millions more Americans took a step forward this week.
The Labor Department has submitted its overtime rule to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for a final review. Details of the final rule won’t be made public until it is published by the Labor Department, which has it on its July agenda. But that date could be moved up to ensure the rule isn’t blocked by a possible Republican president.
The proposed rule, announced last summer before undergoing a public comment period, drew heated opposition from business interest groups and many Republicans. It proposed raising to $970 a week, or $50,440 a year, the minimum salary that employees must make before they can be labeled exempt from overtime, up from the current threshold of $23,660 a year.
Federal labor law requires employers to pay workers time-and-a-half for time worked beyond 40 hours a week, but “white collar” employees can be exempt if their job duties are deemed managerial, administrative or professional.
The Labor Department said the change could affect 4.7 million people.
Bike wheel hubs recalled for risks
Nearly 57,000 high-end bicycle wheel hubs are being recalled because they can fail and possibly cause a crash.
The aluminum hubs being recalled are the Zipp 88v6, 88v7 and 88v8. They were sold at specialty bicycle stores from May 2010 to January 2015 and came with wheel sets on new bicycles. The hubs were sold for about $215. They also were sold with front wheels for as much as $1,325. Another set with a rear wheel was sold for as much as $2,950.
SRAM, the Chicago-based maker of the Zipp hubs, said it received one report of a hub failing which may have caused the wheel to collapse. No injuries have been reported.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said customers should stop using bikes with the hubs and contact SRAM or a local bike shop to get a free replacement hub.
FILE – In this Feb. 29, 2016 file photo, a Malaysia man is silhouetted as a Malaysia Airlines plane prepares for take off at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Speang, Malaysia.Malaysia Airlines is out of intensive care after it was hit by twin disasters in 2014, starting with the disappearance of Flight 370. The airline’s new chief has made sweeping cuts in a bid to restore profitability, but the carrier also faces a longer-term challenges from the wave of budget carriers in Asia. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File) A Senate panel approved an aviation policy bill Wednesday after a partisan fight over whether airlines gouge consumers with fees for basic services like checked bags, seat assignments and ticket changes.
The Senate commerce committee approved by voice vote a bill to continue the Federal Aviation Administration’s authority to operate through Oct. 1, 2017. That authority is due to expire on March 31.
The committee’s Democrats, led by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., tried to add a provision to the bill to prohibit airlines from setting unreasonable fee prices and direct the Transportation Department to establish what is reasonable. The amendment failed on a party-line tie vote.
Consumers are being “gouged” by excessive fees, but they don’t have any choice but to pay them if they want to get to their destination, Markey said.
“There is some really bad behavior going on here, particularly in those routes where there is no competition and they can get away with whatever they want to do because there is no alternative,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.
Republicans said the provision would be burdensome for airlines and that market forces should be allowed to determine fee prices.
A computer screen in Atlantic City, N.J., shows a game of online poker in progress Tuesday on the global partypoker.com site. The site’s parent company, bwin.party, is partnered with Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa and will begin offering a test of Internet gambling to New Jersey residents today. Company officials say the global site is very similar to what New Jersey residents will experience when they log onATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – The world’s largest Internet poker company is starting a trial period of operating in New Jersey.
The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement said PokerStars was permitted to begin real-money play with a pool of pre-selected guests Wednesday. If all goes well, state gambling regulators envision giving PokerStars the green light to begin full operations in New Jersey on March 21.
The trial period is designed to evaluate the company’s equipment and policies under real-world conditions and with the close scrutiny of gambling regulators. Other Internet gambling providers were required to undergo similar test periods before their full launches.
The company is partnered with Resorts Casino Hotel, and is expected to give a boost to New Jersey’s Internet gambling market.
It will mark the much anticipated re-emergence of the Internet poker giant, which stopped doing business in the United States in 2011. For now, only PokerStars customers physically located within New Jersey’s borders will be able to use its platform to gamble online in the U.S.
Home construction starts jump to 5-month high
Construction of new homes rose in February to the highest level in five months, but applications for new construction were weak for a third month.
Housing starts rose 5.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.18 million units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Construction had fallen in January in December, declines that had been blamed in part on winter weather.
Applications for building permits, a gauge of future activity, fell 3.1 percent to an annual rate of 1.17 million units after a flat reading in January and a drop in December.
The decline in building permits, unless reversed, could signal future trouble in an industry that was a bright spot for the economy last year.
But Bricklin Dwyer, an economist with BNP Paribas, said the slump in building permit applications should only translate into a brief construction slowdown given the solid fundamentals supporting housing.
“We see a resilient labor market as supportive of a continued slow and steady housing recovery and low housing inventory should continue to bolster residential construction ahead,” Dwyer said.