Setting sail: Carnival Cruise Line announced this morning it will expand capacity on its four- and five-day short cruises from New Orleans by 34% next spring, when it replaces its Carnival Elation ship with the Carnival Triumph. The new ship will set sail on April 4, 2016, Carnival says, with four- and five-day cruises to Mexico from New Orleans. Carnival also operates its Dream ship from New Orleans. The company says the two are expected to carry 450,000 guests annually from the Crescent City. “New Orleans is one of our fastest-growing cruise markets,” notes Carnival President Christine Duffy in a prepared statement. Port of New Orleans President and CEO Gary LaGrange says “this news means roughly an additional 800 passengers sailing from New Orleans every four or five days on a ship with the latest amenities, including 500 private balconies and expanded restaurant and lounge offerings.”
At the table: The United Steelworkers union, representing 30,000 oil workers in contract talks, will resume negotiations this week with Royal Dutch Shell Plc, prolonging the biggest refinery strike in 35 years, Bloomberg reports. Shell, negotiating on behalf of employers including ExxonMobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., and the USW have agreed to meet on Wednesday, statements from both sides show. The meeting will be the first official one since Feb. 20, when talks between the two sides broke down and the union spread its strike to include the nation’s largest refinery. The stalled negotiations have drawn out a national walkout that began Feb. 1 at seven refineries and has since widened to include 12. Together, they account for almost 20% of the country’s refining capacity. Read the full story.
Booming: The last time the Nasdaq was this high, Bill Clinton was president, Microsoft dominated the tech world and the iPod, iPhone and iPad didn’t exist. Fifteen years later the Nasdaq is again near 5,000 and close to topping its record from the dot-com boom. The index has clawed back, riding a six-year bull market, and is less than 100 points from its all-time high of 5,048.62 reached March 10, 2000. But experts say this isn’t the Nasdaq of Pets.com and Webvan, when companies were valued on “cash burn rates” and “eyeballs.” “Certainly, the Nasdaq at 5,000 conjures up images of a tech bubble,” Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank, tells The Associated Press. “But we’ve had time for business profits to grow into those crazy expectations 15 years ago.” Read the full story.
