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Acknowledging the impact of higher gas prices on businesses and individuals, the Internal Revenue Service this week said it will raise its automobile mileage deduction rate for the second half of 2008.

The agency will boost the optional standard rate, used to compute deductible operating costs for vehicles, to 58.5 cents a mile, beginning July 1, up from 50.5 cents, the rate used since January.

The IRS normally updates the mileage rates once a year in the fall, but it has come under pressure to adjust rates sooner.

Regular gasoline prices on Tuesday averaged $4.07 a gallon nationwide, according to information from AAA no fax payday loans http://abc-cashadvance.com. In Fort Lauderdale, it averaged $4.13; in Miami, it was $4.12; and in West Palm Beach/Boca Raton, it was $4.14.

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The Green Bay Packers recorded net income of $23.3 million in its 2008 fiscal year, a 5.9 percent increase from 2007, but it was not as much as team officials had hoped for.

In fact, the team saw its profits from operations fall to $21.4 million in 2008, a drop of 37 percent from $34.2 million in 2007, mostly due to rising player costs. Total operating expenses jumped from $184 million to $220 million during the past fiscal year, which ended March 31.

With the team going 13-3 and hosting two playoff games, including the NFC Championship Game, at Lambeau Field, team officials had hoped for better financial results.

"We had a good year, but not as strong as you might have anticipated," said Mark Murphy, Packers president. "There are some trends that are really concerning us."

Most notably, player costs rose from $110 million in 2007 to $124 million in 2008, which Murphy said was caused by bonus payments paid to veteran players.

Revenue increased 10 percent to $241 million, with national revenue making up $135 million of that total. Included in that figure is $87.5 million from the National Football League’s national television contract, which is split among the 32 teams.

Packers vice president of finance Vicki Vannieuwenhoven said the team ranked 11th among NFL teams in local revenue last season, and expects to remain in the same range when the league calculates new rankings later this year. In 2006, the Packers ranked seventh in team revenue.

Larry Weyers, Packers treasurer, said local revenue totaled $105 million. About $50 million in revenue came from a record year in the Packers Pro Shop, marketing and other corporate sponsorships.

Weyers said the $295 million renovation of Lambeau Field, which was completed in 2004, was still paying off for the Packers. With national revenue being evenly divided among the teams, local revenue is very important, he said payday loan credit reports.

"In order to be successful in this league, you have to depend on local revenue," he said "That is a way to gain an advantage."

NFL owners voted in May to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement with the players union. The current agreement remains in effect through the 2010 season, but owners are hoping to negotiate a new deal that would allow them to keep a bigger share of the money the league and teams make.

Murphy said a new collective bargaining agreement was very important to the Packers, who play in the smallest market in the NFL.

"It is extremely important that we protect the mechanisms the NFL has in place today," he said. "The salary cap is very important and it allows us to compete against team in much larger markets. The system does need to be tweaked a bit and that is what we are working on."

Weyers said the team was able to add $2 million to the Packers Preservation Fund, putting the total in the corporate reserve that was set up in 2005 at $127.5 million.

In addition, the team purchased 15 acres around Lambeau Field this past year. The Packers have not determined how the land will be used, but Murphy said they are talking to municipalities about development possibilities, including retail, entertainment or a mixed-use project.

"We’re looking at ways to generate additional revenue," he said. "We knew (buying the land) would be a good investment as we look to the future."

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The state Department of Housing and Community Development on Friday released its recommendation for the first round of funding under the $850 million Proposition 1C grant program that targets funds for infill projects.

Although the city of Sacramento placed another project as its first priority for these funds, the department is recommending that The Railyards receive the full $30 million it has requested under this program.

Thomas Enterprises Inc., which is trying to redevelop the downtown railyard, applied for the funds on its own behalf.

The competing project, Township 9, a mixed-use project that sits between Richards Bouelvard and the River, is recommended to receive $19.1 million funding only if the Legislature increases the amount of money awarded under this program. A bill to that effect goes before the state Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday.

Also recommended for funding: West Sacramento's Triangle development area, which staff is suggesting should receive $16.7 million under the current funding level and $23 million if the programs is augmented by legislative action cheap payday loans pay day loans.

Three other area projects that applied have not been recommended for funding, but Broadway Lofts, a multi-story condo plan at Broadway and 19th Street, could receive funding under the augmentation scenario.

Those not recommended for funding are:

• The Butterfield Station transit-oriented development, which would replace an existing light rail park-and-ride lot in Rancho Cordova with 90 housing units built over a parking structure with 15,000 square feet of retail and 30,000 square feet of commercial.
• City Center Lofts in Woodland, a mixed-use development.
• An affordable housing project in Davis called New Harmony.

In all, 117 projects were in contention for the funds after staff weeded out those projects that did not qualify. Micha

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Janitors that clean some of Sacramento's largest buildings are poised for a strike vote Saturday to protest stalled contract negotiations with local building maintenance companies.

Service Employees International Union Local 1877 has also organized a rally at noon Thursday at Cesar Chavez Park to attract support for local janitors who earn $8.50 an hour cleaning big office buildings on Capitol Mall and elsewhere in the region.

Contract negotiations for about 2,000 janitors employed by 13 unionized janitorial firms that do business in Sacramento kicked off in March. Their contract expired May 31, but both sides approved a two-week extension that ends Saturday.

There's been general agreement on non-economic issues, leaving the big items — wages and benefits — on the table, a union spokesman said.

Local 1877 represents more than 20,000 janitors in the state whose contracts expired this spring. The union has already reached agreement with employers in the Bay Area, Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego payday loans bad credit payday advance. Bay Area janitors won a $2.40 per hour wage increase over four years.

Many Bay Area janitors earn $17 an hour, twice as much as a their counterparts in Sacramento.

"Our negotiating team is focused on the economic issues that make the difference between janitors providing for their families and merely surviving," said Mike Garcia, president of SEIU Local 1877. "We are fighting to improve janitors' wages and securing health care for more of their family members. There is no doubt we can reach a fair deal here, just as we have in the Bay Area and Southern California, with many of these very same companies."

A representative for the unionized building maintenance companies could not be reached for comment.

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U.K. home values fell for an eighth month in May and will probably drop further, Hometrack Ltd. said.

The average cost of a residential property in England and Wales slipped 0.5 percent to 172,200 pounds ($341,000), the London-based research company said today in a statement. Prices fell 1.9 percent from a year earlier, the biggest decline since November 2005.

“The `buyers' strike' continues,'' said Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, in a statement. “Pricing looks set to remain under downward pressure over the coming months.''

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King predicted this month that property values are “likely to fall further'' and said there is a risk that the U.K. economy may contract. The construction industry dragged down economic growth to the slowest pace since 2005 in the first quarter and homebuilders are cutting tens of thousands of jobs.

The percentage of sellers' asking prices being achieved slipped to 92.3 percent this month, the lowest since the survey began in 2001, Hometrack said today. Average time on the market increased to 9.8 weeks from 5.8 weeks a year ago.

“The fall in buyer confidence over the last six months has certainly impacted on transaction volumes but we do not believe this is a precursor to a major rise in forced sales and large prices falls,'' Donnell said first cash advance payday loans online.

End of the Boom

HBOS Plc, the U.K.'s biggest mortgage lender, said on May 2 that home values based on agreed transactions fell 0.9 percent from a year earlier, the first drop in more than a decade.

U.K. homebuilders will shrink their workforce as the 19 billion-pound industry grapples with the housing slump, Stewart Baseley, chairman of the Home Builders Federation, said in an interview last week. The rate of economic growth slipped to 0.4 percent in the first quarter from 0.6 percent in the last three months of 2007.

Home buyers are paying more for mortgages after the global credit squeeze prompted lenders to curb lending. U.K. banks increased the cost of home loans with a 5 percent down payment to the highest in more than eight years in April, failing to pass on the Bank of England's three interest-rate cuts since December.

The central bank kept its main rate at 5 percent in May, citing concern about inflation amid record oil prices. Britons should expect “quite a significant slowdown'' in economic growth this year, policy maker Andrew Sentance said on May 22.

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MultiCare Health System has reached an agreement with Rite Aid Corp. to build and staff clinics with certified nurse practitioners in Rite Aid drug stores in Tacoma and Lakewood.

MultiCare, a three-hospital system based in Tacoma, evidently is the first hospital in the state to venture into the retail market.

"I don’t know of any other hospital opening clinics in drug stores," said Cassie Sauer, public relations director with the Washington State Hospital Association.

Seattle-based Virginia Mason Medical Center, for instance, has made no step in this direction nor plans to. "We have looked at opening retail clinics but have chosen a different strategy," said Marnee Iseman, VM’s vice president, clinic operations. Virginia Mason, she said, aims to give its patients convenient and same-day access to their VM doctors.

MultiCare sees its retail clinics — branded "MultiCare Express Clinics" — as another entry point for patients into its system of hospitals and physicians. MultiCare Medical Group employs 86 doctors across 13 clinics, in the Tacoma area, South King County, Auburn and Kent.

If the Rite Aid clinics succeed, MultiCare says it figures to open more of them faxless payday loan fast cash advance.

MultiCare is making its move at a time when retail-based health clinics in this region are apparently not faring all that well, according to an account published May 26 in the Puget Sound Business Journal.

"The concept has proved much more popular in other parts of the country," the Business Journal reported.

MultiCare, though, believes it’s crafted a different and more workable approach to the market. What distinguishes its project is that MultiCare’s retail clinics will link "seamlessly" to the system’s physician group and hospitals, said Dr. Andrew Baron, Primary Care Medical Director for the MultiCare Medical Group.

"We have an integrated system," Baron said. If a patient needs a level of care higher than offered in the planned Rite Aid clinics, the certified nurse practitioners staffing them can refer patients to MultiCare’s hospital emergency rooms or to its physicians, all of which are linked by an electronic health-record system.

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Yahoo Inc. stock surged more than 8 percent Friday after media reports that talks aimed at an amicable deal with Microsoft Corp. are ramping up.

The Wall Street Journal reported that negotiations are taking place between Sunnyvale-based Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and that Microsoft may be willing to offer as much as $33 a share.

On Thursday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told employees that the company might be willing to negotiate a higher price than its earlier offer of $31 a share credit report no fax payday loans.

Yahoo rejected the earlier $44.6 billion offer, saying it undervalues the company.

Yahoo stock went as high as $29.73 Friday before closing the day at $28.67.

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Nearly three weeks after voting against moving the Sauvie Island Bridge to the Pearl District, Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman said today he backs a follow-up relocation proposal.

Saltzman and Commissioner Sam Adams have devised a new plan that would require all funding to be in place before issuing contracts for the project. The proposal would also require formal bids for the project's construction and guarantee a maximum price for services related to the bridge's relocation.

Portland's City Council had voted against relocating the bridge south from Sauvie Island to Northwest Flanders Street, where it would provide a pedestrian and bike span across Interstate 405. Saltzman had opposed the measure because it didn't call for competitive bidding. The contract would have gone to the company that currently owns the bridge payday advance.

"We are a city of bridges and this proposal is consistent with that heritage. I look forward to seeing this bridge become Portland's next landmark," said Saltzman in a statement.

Saltzman said before the vote that he supported the notion in concept.

"This project is a great reuse of a historic bridge that will provide enhanced safety for bicyclists and pedestrians," he said. "But I was not comfortable with approving the largest no-bid contract in the city's history without examining the options to lower the price through a competitive bidding process."

Mayor Tom Potter also opposed the measure, which, because of its emergency status, required a unanimous vote.

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The Hawaii Tourism Authority announced Tuesday it has added more flights for displaced travelers.

Passengers scheduled to travel from April 2 through April 10 can call United Airlines for a flight from San Francisco to Kahului at 8 a.m. Wednesday; and a flight from Kahului to Honolulu at 11:15 a.m payday advance low fees. and Honolulu to San Francisco at 1 p.m.

HTA has been underwriting flights following the shutdown of Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines that has left travelers stranded.

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Confidence among Japanese manufacturers fell to the lowest level in at least four years, adding to evidence that the economy's longest postwar expansion is faltering.

Sentiment among manufacturers with more than 1 billion yen ($10 million) in capital was minus 12.9 points this quarter compared with 5.2 three months earlier, a government survey showed today. That's the lowest since the report began in 2004.

Today's result may indicate the state of business sentiment before the April 1 release of the Bank of Japan's Tankan survey, the nation's most closely watched gauge of corporate confidence. That index will probably fall for a second quarter, marking the biggest drop in more than six years, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

“Manufacturers have a lot to worry about: the U.S. slowdown, the very strong yen, higher input costs,'' said Tomoko Fujii, head of economics and strategy at Bank of America Corp. in Tokyo. “The Tankan's got to be pretty weak.''

The yen traded at 99.84 per dollar at 11:57 a.m. in Tokyo from 99.52 before the report was published.

Large manufacturers plan to cut spending on factories and equipment by 6.1 percent in the year starting April 1, according to today's survey, which was jointly conducted by the Cabinet Office and Finance Ministry. They expect capital investment to rise 2.6 percent in the year ending March 31.

Pessimistic Companies

Confidence among all big companies also deteriorated, falling to minus 9.3 points from 0.5. A negative number means pessimists outnumber optimists http://us-fast-cash-now.com.

The government lowered its assessment of the economy, the world's second largest, for the second consecutive month last week as production and corporate earnings slowed.

Profits fell the most in the fourth quarter since the economy emerged from a recession in 2002, a separate report from the Finance Ministry this month showed.

The yen, which has gained 12 percent against the dollar this year, surged to a 12-year high last week on concern that the world's largest economy is headed for a recession. A stronger currency erodes the value of exporters' overseas profits when they are repatriated into yen.

The central bank's Tankan index of large manufacturer sentiment will slump to 13 points from 19 in December, according to the median estimate of 20 economists. That would be the sharpest decline since September 2001.

Unlike the Tankan, today's survey examines the degree of change in confidence from the previous quarter.

The Bank of Japan is surveying companies through the end of this month, making the Tankan Japan's most current gauge of business confidence. The government gathered most of its responses for today's report at the end of February, before the yen surged to the highest against the dollar since 1995.

That indicates the effect of the currency's gains may be more pronounced in the Tankan, said Kiichi Murashima, chief economist at Nikko Citigroup Ltd. in Tokyo.

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