Air France signs deal for longer-range jets
Published 9:00 pm Monday, May 14, 2001
An Air France contract for two longer-range Boeing 747-400 cargo jets makes the French company the second customer for the new model, Boeing officials said Monday. The purchase price was not disclosed. At list price, the order would be worth about $400 million, but discounts are commonly negotiated. Boeing officials also said VARIG Airlines will be the first carrier in Latin America to operate the Boeing 737-800 with winglets when it takes delivery of two of the advanced planes this fall.
A small number of people were able to download a prerelease version of Microsoft’s Windows XP, the new version of the operating system, after a tester accidentally made a login name and password available on the Internet, Microsoft said Monday. However, because of built-in security features, only a few were able to download it successfully, a spokesman said.
Four days after The Boeing Co. announced it was moving its global headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, Microsoft announced it has started construction on a technology center in the Midwestern city.
The center, the fifth such facility the software company will have in North America, will provide consulting and testing services for Microsoft’s electronic commerce products, the company said Monday.
The Treasury Department sold three-month bills at a discount rate of 3.630 percent, down from 3.660 percent last week. Six-month bills sold at a rate of 3.640 percent, up from 3.620 percent. The new discount rates understate the actual return to investors – 3.716 percent for three-month bills with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,908.20 and 3.759 percent for a six-month bill selling for $9,816.00. In a separate report, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year constant maturity Treasury bills, the most popular index for making changes in adjustable rate mortgages, fell to 3.76 percent last week.
New rules designed to prevent a repeat of the explosion aboard TWA Flight 800 appear to fall short of what’s needed, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday. While the Federal Aviation Administration issued new rules to protect fuel tanks from possible ignition sources, the agency was silent on ordering airlines to reduce the amount of air in the fuel tanks, and therefore the flammability of the fuel-air mixture, acting NTSB Chairwoman Carol Carmody said.
From Herald news services
