SPEEA critics elected to board

Pacific Northwest

Two members of Boeing's white-collar engineering and technical union who are critical of longtime executive director Charles Bofferding were elected to the executive board, according to election results released Wednesday evening.

The vote by the 24,000-member union gives critics of Bofferding four seats on the seven-member board. Bofferding has led the union since 1991.

Incumbent Jill Ritchey will keep her place on the board of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) and Michael Dunn has been voted in.

Both are pushing change among the leadership of the union, according to their campaign platforms.

Also elected were Tom McCarty from the Northwest division and Bill Hartig from the Midwest.

Nation / World

H&R Block

Lending woes add to quarterly loss

H&R Block said Wednesday it was boosting its third-quarter loss on subprime lending woes.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, H&R Block said a $29.2 million pretax cut in the carrying value of its mortgage business deepened its quarterly loss by $15.5 million to $60.3 million, or 18 cents per share.

H&R Block reported a third-quarter loss of $44.7 million, or 14 cents per share, on Feb. 22.

The company also said its Option One mortgage subsidiary likely would not be able to meet minimum profit levels at the end of April that are required by eight banks providing funding.

H&R Block said it missed the "minimum net income" covenants for Option One on Jan. 24 but received waivers until April 27.

Without further waivers, those lenders could pull the plug on further financing.

A slew of banks and firms that lend to subprime borrowers have run into trouble as rising interest rates and falling home prices have increased the number of loan delinquencies and foreclosures.

Nuclear Energy Institute

Orders for reactors may be within year

Energy companies could be as close as a year away from ordering the first new nuclear reactors to be built in the U.S. since the 1970s, industry officials said Wednesday.

Adrian Heymer, senior director of new plant deployment at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group, said that power companies such as Progress Energy, Duke Energy, Southern, Dominion Resources, Entergy and NRG Energy are among the companies that could be first to order a reactor — at an estimated cost of $3.5 billion to $5 billion.

Heymer said the first orders could come in 12 to 18 months.

Still, due to the lengthy approval process and construction schedule, combined with potential political opposition, any new reactor in the U.S. is not likely to start producing power until 2015 at the earliest, industry experts say.

Compiled from Seattle Times staff, The Associated Press and Reuters