Back on the drawing board: After years of delays and legal wrangling with environmental groups and residents of the Lower 9th Ward, the Army Corps of Engineers is once again considering replacing a historic navigation lock inside New Orleans to help speed up barge and maritime traffic moving through the city. Under a court order, the Army Corps is doing an environmental study of a controversial 1956 project to replace the Industrial Canal lock in the Lower 9th Ward with a new lock. The agency is holding a public meeting on the issue this evening. The Associated Press has the full story.
Back on the slide: Oil prices are sliding, ending a four-day rally, as the U.S. government reports that crude inventories surged last week. The Associated Press reports the 6.3 million- barrel increase in oil supplies was far more than analysts expected. The price of U.S. crude slumped by $4.32, or 8.1%, to $48.73 a barrel as of this afternoon. Traders had pushed prices higher over the past four trading days on signs that major energy companies were starting to cut back on exploration. The price of oil reached its highest point of the year so far on Tuesday, raising hopes that a long-running collapse was abating. The price has been falling sharply since last June, when it peaked at $107 a barrel.
All together now: Staples Inc., America’s top office supplies retailer, has agreed to buy its biggest competitor, Office Depot Inc., in a $6.3 billion deal designed to help it better compete against the likes of Walmart and online rivals such as Amazon. The U.S. government’s antitrust watchdog, the Federal Trade Commission, is likely to approve the deal, experts tell Reuters. They agree with the companies’ claims that the rise of online retailers and mega stores has changed the competitive landscape since 1997, when the FTC stopped the companies from merging. The FTC noted the proliferation of competitors in the market for basic office supplies when it signed off on Office Depot’s purchase of No. 3 OfficeMax in 2013. Read the full story.
