Government Contracts

Prospects are brightening for Boeing Co.'s once-threatened C-17 aircraft factory in Long Beach, where 5,000 workers could find themselves employed for several more years -- if not longer. The factory is home to the last major airplane production line left in Southern California. For decades, the region was the nation's bastion of aircraft manufacturing, with plants from Burbank to San Diego rolling out planes hourly.

When Pasadena-based Avery Dennison wanted to build its road and traffic business in China a few years ago, it hired people like Lily Tang. The Beijing homemaker had an asset the company craved: political connections. Tang's husband, Chen Qi, is a senior official at the China Communications and Transportation Assn., a quasi-governmental group led by former ministers.

The Air Force is reviewing decades-old contracts to determine whether manufacturers of U.S. fighter jets bear responsibility for a defect that caused one of the planes to break apart in flight late last year, officials said Thursday. An investigation of the November crash of an F-15 showed that one of several support beams in the plane was thinner than design specifications required. That faulty part caused a failure that split the plane in two.

The competition for the Pentagon's biggest contract in years intensified Monday as European aircraft maker Airbus said it would assemble commercial jets in the U.S. if it won the $40 -billion award to build aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force. The announcement marks the latest effort by Airbus and its partner Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp. to upset rival Boeing Co. to build the planes that would be used to refuel fighters and bombers in midair.

Supreme Court justices on Tuesday heard a recounting of what lawyers called "the worst electricity market crisis in history." And they heard the story of how Enron Corp. and others helped create the spike in electricity prices in California and the West during 2000 and 2001.

About 50 stern-faced mothers who work at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power confronted the agency's board Tuesday and won the ability to keep using lactation services provided as a benefit of employment. Some members of the group, organized by their union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, lined the boardroom holding signs that read: "Mayor Villaraigosa's appointee: Nick Patsaouras is anti-women."

Shares of 3Com Corp. fell Wednesday after its buyers failed to settle national security concerns with the U.S. government, putting the $2.2-billion deal in doubt. Bain Capital and Chinese partner Huawei Technologies Co. withdrew their application to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The panel had expressed concerns about 3Com's TippingPoint unit, whose security software is used by U.S. government agencies, falling into Chinese hands.

Boeing Co. said Friday that it would seriously consider challenging a U.S. Air Force decision to give a $40-billion aerial tanker program to a team that includes its European archrival Airbus. After receiving an Air Force briefing on the victory of Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp.

In a high-stakes rivalry pitting two of the world's largest defense contractors, Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp. gambled and won. The word came down Feb. 29 from the Air Force that a $40-billion contract for aerial refueling tankers would go to Northrop and its partner, Airbus, a unit of Netherlands-based European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. Shut out was rival Boeing Co., which thought it had a winner.

Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino, a rising political star and the second most powerful official in Mexico, came under growing pressure to quit Monday over charges that he acted improperly by signing government contracts on behalf of his family's gasoline business while serving as a top energy official. The 36-year-old Mourino, a confidant of President Felipe Calderon who has been mentioned as a possible successor, denies wrongdoing.