Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
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KANSAS CITY, Kan. • Missouri and Kansas are divided here only by the yellow stripe of State Line Road. It’s a single community, but the division is sharp when it comes to the cutthroat business of economic development.
The two states have burned through hundreds of millions of dollars to lure businesses to one side of that stripe or the other in the pursuit of jobs. Yet sometimes, those jobs merely have shifted to different buildings across the border with little real growth for the region’s economy.
Amid rising competition nationwide for “job creation,” Missouri and Kansas have committed more than $750 million in tax incentives and bonds in the last five years for nearly 200 businesses to locate or expand in the Kansas City area, according to state records obtained by The Associated Press. The crosstown battle also has drawn in millions more dollars in incentives from cities and suburbs.
The two states sacrificed revenue and incurred debt even during tough budget times that forced cuts to public school districts, universities and social services. Kansas and Missouri each had projected budget shortfalls of around $500 million last year. Calls for a truce in the business border war have been growing from local business leaders, some lawmakers and from former officials who once doled out the incentives.
“You get to a point where you have to say we are wasting taxpayer money,” said Greg Steinhoff, Missouri’s economic development chief from 2005 to 2008.
Yet a truce appears unlikely anytime soon — in part because the states are still scrambling for every job.
“Politically, it sounds good — can’t we all get along? — but competition’s competition,” said Gary Sherrer, who was Kansas lieutenant governor and commerce secretary about a decade ago.
About three-fourths of the $750 million of tax breaks and bonding approved in the last five years has come from Kansas, though Missouri has given incentives — in smaller amounts — to about twice as many businesses to keep them from leaving or to attract new firms.
In part because of the glimmer of its big-ticket projects, Kansas appears to be winning the business border battle.
The spoils of success are highly visible in the sprawling Village West district at the junction of Interstates 70 and 435. Anchoring the development is the Kansas Speedway, the NASCAR track that the state landed more than a decade ago with a $150 million package of bonds, tax breaks and infrastructure aid after Missouri’s $42 million incentive package failed in the Legislature credit report. The Kansas incentives included bonds with a 30-year repayment life.
Nearby is a new, 18,500-seat stadium for the Major League Soccer team Sporting Kansas City, built with $145 million in bonds after Kansas lured the franchise away from the Missouri side. Also in the neighborhood is a new office complex for Cerner Corp., a medical computer systems firm that employs about 5,500 people on the Missouri side and planned to expand. Missouri and Kansas offered nearly equal incentives of about $85 million for Cerner’s expansion, which is projected to employ an additional 4,000.
Kansas’ willingness to issue bonds backed by tax revenue, which Missouri couldn’t match, helped cinch the deal, said Marc Naughton, Cerner’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, was unapologetic about giving away public revenue. “You’ve got to go out to compete and hustle,” Brownback said.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, appears only slightly more open to a truce. “I’m going to compete for jobs for our state, I’m not backing up on that,” Nixon said.
In Kansas City, the most recent crosstown defection came in April, when Teva Neuroscience Inc. announced that it would move its headquarters — and 400 jobs — from Kansas City to a site about four miles away in suburban Overland Park, Kan. Records provided to the AP show that Missouri offered $11 million in incentives to try to keep Teva. Kansas did not disclose how much it offered, but the Kansas City Star reported the package totaled nearly $31 million.
Some firms have bounced back and forth across the state line. Restaurant chain Applebee’s International moved its headquarters from Kansas City to a Kansas suburb in 1993. Last year, it was lured back to Missouri ith nearly $10 million in state incentives plus additional local aid.
A few months later, movie theater operator AMC Entertainment Inc. announced it was moving to the suburb of Leawood, Kan. Missouri offered $4.2 million in incentives to keep the company, according to state records. Kansas declined to disclose its incentives, but media reports have valued the total aid at $47 million.
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South Korea added workers last month and the unemployment rate held at two-month low as demand increased for jobs in health, social welfare and education.
The rate was 3.4 percent in April, Statistics Korea said today in Gwacheon, south of Seoul, matching the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 12 economists. The number of employed people increased 1.9 percent to 24.76 million last month from a year earlier.
South Korea
The former head of Britain’s civil service says Prime Minister David Cameron’s links with the media were too cozy.
Gus O’Donnell retired in December after serving for six years as Britain’s top civil servant and chief adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron.
In evidence Monday to the country’s media ethics inquiry, he acknowledged Cameron had become too close to sections of the press.
O’Donnell told the hearing that Cameron had “felt his relationships had got too close, and I agree with that.”
The inquiry is investigating the work of Britain’s press in the wake of the tabloid phone hacking scandal.
Cameron set up the ethics inquiry amid public revulsion over the revelations that the News of the World had hacked murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone when she disappeared in 2002.
An official says remains of several victims of a jetliner crash on the slopes of an Indonesian volcano have been airlifted to the capital for identification.
Search teams who climbed the near-vertical volcano face have been struggling to retrieve the bodies of the 45 people who were aboard the Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet-100 that crashed during a demonstration flight for potential buyers.
Search and rescue agency spokesman Gagah Prakoso said a thick fog that had shrouded the slopes finally lifted Saturday, allowing helicopters to land.
Prakoso says the aircraft brought four body bags with remains to Jakarta.
There is still no sign of the black box recorder that might explain why the jetliner crashed about halfway into Wednesday’s 50-minute flight.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
MOUNT SALAK, Indonesia (AP) _ Search teams who scaled a volcano’s steep slopes found at least 12 bodies Friday near the wreckage of a Russian-made jetliner that crashed in Indonesia during a demonstration flight for potential buyers, an official said.
All 45 aboard the Sukhoi Superjet-100 that crashed Wednesday are feared dead.
“Today we have discovered 12 victims, all dead,” Rear Marshal Daryatmo, head of the national search and rescue agency, told reporters Friday.
Many of the bodies found Friday had been torn apart in the crash, said Lt. Col. Oni Junianto of the Indonesian marines, whose search team found eight corpses before returning to base camp further down the mountain.
“We see many other victims … but the ravines and steep cliffs prevent us from reaching them,” Junianto said in a statement.
Local television showed what appeared to be the plane’s tail with the blue-and-white Sukhoi logo, part of a wing and bits of twisted metal scattered along the slope like confetti.
About 85 soldiers, police and volunteers used ropes to climb up to the wreckage through jungle on the near-vertical slopes of Mount Salak, search and rescue agency spokesman Gagah Prakoso said by telephone.
Thick fog and the mountain’s jagged slopes kept helicopters from landing at the crash site, so the bodies remained there along with the search teams.
The soldiers, police and volunteers fashioned a landing area by hacking down trees, but Prakoso said the helicopters were recalled to Jakarta late Friday because the fog limited visibility to only about 5 meters (15 feet).
The jetliner slammed into the dormant volcano at nearly 800 kph (480 mph) during drizzle. Russian and French investigators have joined the investigation into the cause.
The Superjet-100 is Russia’s first new model of passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago and was intended to help resurrect its aerospace industry.
The ill-fated Superjet was carrying representatives from local airlines and journalists on what was supposed to be a 50-minute demonstration flight. Just 21 minutes after takeoff from a Jakarta airfield, the Russian pilot and co-pilot asked for permission to drop from 10,000 feet to 6,000 feet (3,000 meters to 1,800 meters). They gave no explanation, disappearing from the radar immediately afterward.
It was not clear why the crew asked to shift course, especially since they were so close to the 7,000-foot (2,200-meter) volcano, or whether they got an OK, officials have said.
Communication tapes will be reviewed as part of the investigation, but it’s unlikely they will be released to the public any time soon.
Clayton-based Furniture Brands has named Vance Johnston as its new chief financial officer.
He is currently the company’s senior vice president for growth and transformation. He will begin the new position on May 18.
He will replace Steven Rolls, who is resigning business card.
The Canadian company trying to build the disputed Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. submitted a new application for the project Friday after changing the route to avoid environmentally sensitive land in Nebraska.
TransCanada said it applied again to the State Department for permission to build the pipeline to carry oil from so-called tar sands in western Canada to a company hub in Steele City, Neb. From there, the project would link up with other pipelines operated by the company to carry oil to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.
President Barack Obama blocked the pipeline earlier this year, citing uncertainty over the Nebraska route - a decision that drew fire from Republicans and industry groups.
TransCanada had proposed a new route last month that would veer east around the groundwater-rich Sandhills region before looping back to the original route.
State Department approval is needed because the $7 billion pipeline would cross a U.S. border. The department confirmed Friday the application for the new route had been received.
The pipeline filing came on the same day as a disappointing report on U.S. job growth. The Labor Department said employers pulled back on hiring in April for the second straight month, evidence of an economy still growing only sluggishly, though the overall jobless rate slipped to 8.1 percent as more people gave up looking for work.
Obama is under pressure to support the pipeline from Republicans and business and labor leaders who argue it would create jobs; the State Department estimates it could result in up to 6,000 new jobs.
“The multi-billion dollar Keystone XL pipeline project will reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil and support job growth by putting thousands of Americans to work,” said Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer. “Keystone XL will transport U.S. crude oil from the very large Bakken supply basin in Montana and North Dakota, along with Canadian oil, to U.S. refineries.”
The pipeline’s opponents, including Democrats and environmental groups, say it would transport “dirty oil” from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, that would require huge amounts of energy to extract. They also worry about a possible spill. The pipeline would travel through Montana, South Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma, in addition to Nebraska.
In blocking the pipeline in January, Obama said there was not enough time for a fair review before a looming deadline forced on him by congressional Republicans. The action did not kill the project but put off a tough choice on the once-obscure pipeline, which has become a flashpoint in the bitter partisan political fight over jobs and the environment and a focus of the presidential campaign between Obama his likely Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. Romney has called on Obama to approve the pipeline.
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed a bill last month that allows the state to proceed with its review of the proposed pipeline through his state, regardless of what happens at the federal level.
A senior State Department official said U.S. officials would conduct a thorough review of the new application, with a final decision not expected until early next year _ well after the presidential election.
Officials will use previous studies to the extent possible, the official said, but will need to complete a new environmental assessment, especially since the route has changed since TransCanada first applied for the pipeline in 2008.
The State Department review is likely to include hiring an outside consultant, a point of contention in the original review conducted by the agency. Democratic lawmakers complained that the firm that conducted the review, Cardno Entrix, had a conflict of interest because of previous work with TransCanada.
The department’s acting inspector general found no conflict of interest or improper political influence but said the State Department could have done a better job of evaluating some concerns about the project and should improve its oversight of contractors.
Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska, a group that opposes the pipeline, said the new route still goes through an aquifer that serves eight states and should not be approved.
“The fundamental facts remain: Americans are being asked to put clean water at risk for an extreme form of energy that will add nothing to our energy security,” Kleeb said.
But Girling, the TransCanada CEO, said the company’s proposal builds on more than three years of environmental review already conducted for Keystone XL, “the most comprehensive process ever for a cross-border pipeline.”
The earlier work should allow the new proposal to be processed “expeditiously,” Girling said, with a federal decision made after a final route through Nebraska is approved by state officials.
TransCanada expects to begin construction of the pipeline next year.
Fast-growing Etihad Airways has taken a nearly 3 percent stake of Aer Lingus as part of a strategy to build closer bonds with the Irish carrier, the Abu Dhabi-based airline said Tuesday.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But it appears part of a wider Etihad effort to seek shares in smaller carriers to gain a possible edge in its rivalries with Gulf carriers Emirates and Qatar Airways.
Etihad said Tuesday the 2.987 percent stake in Aer Lingus reflects a “desire to forge a commercial partnership with the Irish national carrier.”
Etihad in recent months has bought large stakes in Air Berlin and Air Seychelles in a bid to challenge Emirates and Qatar Airways. Etihad operates 10 flights a week from its Abu Dhabi hub to Dublin.
The head of Qatar Airways, however, said the carrier is not currently looking to acquire another airline.
Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar al-Baker said the airline is focused on building its own business, and doesn’t want to take on the financial problems of restructuring a weaker carrier. Al-Baker was in Dubai for a travel expo.
State-owned Qatar Airways competes for long-haul international passengers with Dubai-based Emirates airline and Etihad Airways.
Last month, Etihad said its sales jumped 28 percent to $989 million in the first quarter of the year as it pushed ahead with its rapid expansion.
In February, Aer Lingus reported a strong growth in profits for 2011 despite the country’s economic downturn. The Dublin-based carrier says in a statement Tuesday its full-year net profit rose 66 percent to euro71.2 million ($95.6 million). Sales rose 6 percent to euro1.29 billion ($1.73 billion).
Filtration equipment manufacturer Pall Corp. says it has agreed to sell certain operations and equipment used in blood transfusions to health care company Haemonetics Corp. for $550 million.
The deal announced Sunday calls for Haemonetics to receive blood collection, filtration and processing systems and equipment, along with manufacturing facilities in California, Mexico and Italy from Pall.
Some of Pall’s assets in Puerto Rico are also included.
About 1,300 Pall employees will be transferred to Haemonetics as part of the deal payday loans guaranteed no fax.
Pall expects to record an after-tax gain of $230 million to $240 million, or $1.95 a share to $2.04 a share on the sale.
The deal is expected to close at the start of Pall’s 2013 fiscal year. The current fiscal year ends July 30.
Air Canada and its largest union, which represents 8,600 baggage handlers, ground crews and machinists, have agreed to return to the negotiating table.
The move comes amid rumblings of another possible illegal disruption on Friday afternoon by members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
But with the promise to restart talks, organizers have called off the 1 p.m. sitdown.
In an email to employees, Air Canada