Business news
UN takes aim at spam senders
Geneva
The United Nations is aiming to bring a “modern day epidemic” of junk e-mail under control within two years by standardizing legislation to make it easier to prosecute offenders, a leading expert said Tuesday.
“(We have) an epidemic on our hands that we need to learn how to control,” Robert Horton, the acting chief of the Australian communications authority, told reporters. “International cooperation is the ultimate goal.”
The International Telecommunications Union is hosting a meeting on spam in Geneva this week that brings together regulators from 60 countries as well as various international organizations, including the Council of Europe and the World Trade Organization.
The U.N. agency said it would put forward examples of anti-spam legislation which countries can adopt to make cross-border cooperation easier. Many states currently have no anti-spamming laws in place, making it difficult to prosecute the international phenomenon.
As much as 85 percent of all e-mail may be categorized as spam, the ITU said, compared to an estimated 35 percent just one year ago. The vast majority is generated by a few hundred people, but authorities are not able to prosecute many of them under current legislation.
Sprint, MCI raising prices on some plans
New York Sprint Corp. and MCI Inc. are raising prices on a handful of wireline calling plans, saying rates are increasing across the industry.
Both companies say the increases are not the result of recent regulatory decisions that could raise the wholesale rates they pay regional Bell companies.
Sprint’s new $3.95 monthly fee on its Sprint Sense Domestic and Sprint Sense Day Domestic plans will affect about 4 to 5 percent of the company’s customers, said Scott Stoffel, a company spokesman. Sprint Sense is a family of plans that charges per-minute rates that vary by time of day and state.
“Industrywide, you’re seeing a rebalancing of rates and fees,” Stoffel said.
The increase will not affect Sprint’s Complete Sense plan, he said.
At MCI, monthly fees for the company’s Nationwide plan will increase from $2.95 to $4.95. The plan offers 5-cent anytime state-to-state calling.
Connection fees for another flat-rate plan, called Anytime Calling plan will increase by 14 cents a call, going from 35 cents to 49 cents. Anytime Calling plan subscribers will see the per-minute rate for state-to-state long-distance and local toll calls increase 2 cents. What they pay will depend on where they live; rates will range from 7 cents a minute to 9 cents a minute.
Nigeria oil shutdown sends prices higher
Lagos, Nigeria Energy giant Total’s subsidiary has shut down oil and gas production in Nigeria in the face of a threatened strike that raised management fears for the “safety of life and property,” a company spokesman said Tuesday.
Elf Nigeria, subsidiary of Franco-Belgian-owned Total, halted production of the 235,000 barrels of oil and 187 million cubic feet of natural gas it normally produces each day, a company spokesman told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity from the capital of Abuja.
The shutdown accounts for roughly 10 percent of Nigeria’s total production of 2.5 million barrels a day.
Total spokeswoman Patricia Marie said the company had informed clients that it was unable to meet obligations for deliveries of oil and gas exports from Nigeria.
Nigeria is the world’s seventh-largest exporter and the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports. It is Africa’s largest oil exporter.
Production cuts in Iraq and Nigeria and feared shutdowns in Russia forced light crude for August delivery up 87 cents to $39.26 a barrel during Tuesday morning trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Southwest Airlines to cut its prices
Dallas Southwest Airlines announced Tuesday plans to slash fares starting with August travel, increasing the revenue pressure on its money-losing rivals.
“They are trying to make a statement that they are still the industry’s low-fare leader,” says industry analyst Henry Harteveldt at Forrester Research.
The discount-airline king began offering one-way sale prices of $39 to $99 on 14-day advance purchases systemwide, except flights involving Orange County, Calif., and George Bush Intercontinental Airport. In most cases, the fare sale applies to travel between Aug. 16 and Oct. 29. Savings range from 20 percent to more than 65 percent off its previous 14-day advance fares.
Analysts said rivals must match the sale prices of the USA’s No. 5 carrier to remain competitive. But that could rob several financially ailing major carriers of cash they need. By mid-afternoon Tuesday, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and US Airways had already matched the sale fares in markets served by Southwest.
“It’s time to put the coffee down and to start buying,” says low-fares guru Tom Parsons, editor and publisher of Bestfares.com.
Harteveldt says consumers will benefit from the big savings, but the cash-starved network airlines will be hurt. Even profitable Southwest, he said, “is leaving money on the table.”
Gasoline prices continue to drop
Washington
Gasoline prices continued their decline, falling to a national average of just over $1.89 a gallon for regular grade last week, the Energy Department reported Tuesday.
The 2.6 cents a gallon decrease marked the sixth week that gasoline prices have dropped nationwide after reaching $2.06 a gallon in the week ending May 22.
While prices have dropped nearly 17 cents a gallon over the last six weeks, motorists still are paying an average of almost 47 cents a gallon more this year than at the same time a year ago, according to the DOE’s Energy Information Administration.
The EIA survey is based on prices sampled at 900 retail gasoline outlets nationwide.
The most expensive gasoline continued to be on the West Coast, where the average was $2.13 a gallon, including $2.20 a gallon in California. The cheapest gasoline was found in the Gulf Coast region where the average price was just over $1.78 a gallon.