| Fort Pierce Commissioners will go ahead with mediation
St. Lucie County Commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday night to begin mediation against Port St. Lucie in the fight over who will provide water and waste water in an area west of the Rangeline Road area. Commission Chairman Chris Craft, who has been negotiating with Port St. Lucie Mayor Patricia Christensen and City Manager Don Cooper for a compromise utility plan, and Commissioner Joe Smith voted against mediation. .
NWA attendants renew impasse request
Union leaders for the Northwest Airlines flight attendants said Tuesday that they have renewed their call to the National Mediation Board to declare an impasse in negotiations with Northwest.If the federal body agrees, it would have the effect of restoring the attendants' strike rights, which have been blocked by federal judges.After flight attendants voted down two tentative agreements last year, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper gave Northwest the authority to reject the attendants' contract and impose new pay rates and work rules. Those work terms, imposed July 31, achieved the $195 million in annual concessions that Northwest had sought at the bargaining table."Now, as the company returns to profitability far ahead of plan, the initial justification for those concessions has been thrown into doubt, yet they cling to the same concessionary demands," Patricia Friend, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), said in a letter to the mediation board.If the mediation board grants the attendants' request and declares an impasse, then the two sides would be offered arbitration.
Remaining Landis Tour samples to face additional scrutiny
The arbitration panel scheduled to review the doping case of Floyd Landis has ruled that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency may retest Landis's remaining B from last summer's Tour de France for the presence of exogenous testosterone. Landis allegedly tested positive for a skewed testosterone-epitestosterone ratio following his remarkable come-from-behind performance in the 17th stage of the 2006 Tour. While the panel, in a 2-1 decision, voted to allow the testing of remaining B samples, it deferred a ruling on whether the resulting evidence could be admitted in Landis's suspension hearing, now slated for May 14. Landis has maintained his innocence since news of the positive was released. Landis learned of his positive test soon after winning the Tour on July 23.
High-level talks set amid US frustration at Indian nuclear deal
Senior US and Indian officials will meet here at the end of the month to "energize" stalled negotiations on a landmark deal to give India access to US nuclear technology, a US spokesman said Friday.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon will be in Washington April 30 and May 1 and will meet with Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to discuss the negotiations, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Earlier, the department mistakenly said Menon would be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday next week.
McCormack said there was "some frustration on the part of the administration as well as Congress on the pace of these negotiations."
"We still have faith that we're going to be able to get this agreement done, but we're at a stage in these particular negotiations where we think we need to raise the level of dialogue to a political level," he said.
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