Flaring up: Baton Rouge specialty chemical maker Albemarle Corp. announced today it’s increasing prices on a flame retardant known as SAYTEX HP by 20% to its customers across the globe, or as contracts allow. The increase is effective immediately. “This increase is necessary to address the impact of price increases of CDT (cyclododecatriene) and to ensure we can continue to meet the needs of the growing customer base for HP-900,” says Brian Carter, Albemarle’s vice president of brominated flame retardants, in a news release. The pricing increase comes a day after Albemarle announced plans to close a pair of flame retardant–producing plants in China and the U.K. You can read more about that decision in a Daily Report story here.
Flight risk? A former BP engineer charged with deleting text messages about the company’s response to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is asking for a federal judge’s permission to travel freely throughout the United States while he is free on bond. Earlier this month, a magistrate in New Orleans ordered 50-year-old Kurt Mix, of Katy, Texas, to limit his travel to Louisiana, Texas, Massachusetts and New York after a prosecutor claimed he had intended to leave the country for a job in Australia and wouldn’t return. But in a court filing late Thursday, Mix’s attorneys argue the travel restrictions aren’t warranted because prosecutors haven’t shown he poses a flight risk. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. didn’t immediately rule on Mix’s request.
Talk, talk, talk: Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist stirred up the Republican veepstakes with a commentary published in Politico that says presumptive nominee Mitt Romney’s best bet for a running mate is Gov. Bobby Jindal. “Romney would do well to have a wing man who can astutely explain the flaws in President Barack Obama’s policies and lay out the GOP’s innovative, pro-growth alternatives,” Norquist writes. “There are many attractive prospects out there, but Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal can do not just all that, he has already implemented the sort of bold reforms at the state level that are now desperately needed at the federal level.” Read Norquist’s complete column here; and get editorial reactions from The Washington Post, The Daily Beast and more in a story from The Week here.
Today’s poll question: Will you be glad if Gov. Bobby Jindal is offered and accepts an invitation by Mitt Romney to be his running mate in this fall’s presidential election?
