United losses pile up

United Airlines’ parent company reported a $1.3 billion loss Friday for its first full quarter in bankruptcy, its 11th straight quarterly loss and its second-worst ever.

UAL Corp. blamed the loss, the largest by any carrier for the first three months of the year, on the sluggish economy, the war in Iraq, SARS and consumer concerns about United’s future.

The rocky results pushed the total of first-quarter losses for major U.S. airlines to $3.56 billion, on pace to exceed the industry’s deficit in the previous quarter.

But airline stocks still soared Friday, with several recording double-digit gains, after Merrill Lynch said in a note to investors that the worst might be over for the struggling industry.

Search: Chamber to name leader

The Lawrence Chamber of Commerce will announce its new president and CEO at an event Monday morning.

Sources close to the situation confirmed that the chamber has reached an agreement with one of its two finalists and will introduce him at a press conference at 10:30 a.m. Monday at the Lawrence Visitors Center, 402 N. Second St. Chamber officials would not reveal the name of their selection.

The two finalists, chosen from a field of 100 applicants, are both men from the Midwest, with one having extensive chamber of commerce experience and the other having extensive economic development experience, search committee members have said.

Agriculture: Wheat tariffs proposed

The government issued a preliminary decision Friday that would impose penalty tariffs on two types of wheat from Canada, ruling that America’s biggest trading partner has been dumping wheat on the U.S. market.

The Commerce Department said it planned to impose tariffs of 8.15 percent on durum wheat, which is used to make pasta, and 6.12 percent on hard red spring wheat in a case brought last September by American wheat farmers.

The Commerce Department said it would issue a final ruling in both the subsidy and dumping cases on July 15.