Bloomberg News reports that U.S. lumber producers may suffer a decline in earnings during the next year because of a reduction in new home construction, ratings company Standard & Poor’s said.

Weyerhaeuser Co., the world’s biggest lumber producer, has been shutting mills and cutting jobs to offset higher costs and a slump in lumber and wood products as U.S. housing construction slows.

“Earnings for wood product manufacturers are likely to be weak this year,” S&P said, without saying which companies are vulnerable. “A longer, deeper downturn in housing than we now expect could put pressure on credit quality of those producers whose credit measures are just adequate for their ratings.”

Weyerhaeuser, which split off its paper assets in a merger with Montreal-based Domtar Inc., forecast “significant losses” in the first quarter for wood products and real estate. Domtar changed its name to Domtar Corp. after the merger.

Shares of Federal Way-based Weyerhaeuser rose $3.08 to $79.10 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
The shares have risen 6.9 percent in the past year, trailing a 14 percent rise in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

East Pierce columnist Chanel Studebaker will report in her Tuesday column that DeCaterina’s Market Grill and Bar has opened in the former From the Bayou location in downtown Puyallup.

The restaurant is located in the Pioneer Park Pavilion. It is co-owned by Peter DeCaterina, former owner of DeCaterina’s Jewelry in downtown Puyallup, and Patricia Podrasky, former co-owner of Valley Orthopedic. DeCaterina also worked at the old E.R. Rogers restaurant in Steilacoom.

Read more in tomorrow's paper.

The Internal Revenue Service said today it learned late Friday of a new tax scam that lures taxpayers into filing tax information on an Internet site masquerading as a member of the Free File Alliance.

The only place to access the Free File program is through the agency’s Web site, IRS.gov.

The IRS is working with the Treasury Inspector General investigating allegations that the bogus Web sites accepted tax information from taxpayers, changed the taxpayers’ bank account numbers to their own and then filed the return through a legitimate Free File partner.

Taxpayers can avoid this problem by using the official Free File site on IRS.gov. Seventy percent of the nation’s taxpayers are eligible to use the free electronic filing system. To qualify for the program, taxpayers need to have an adjusted gross income of $52,000 or less.

The Associated Press reports that Seattle’s two daily newspapers have agreed to settle a legal dispute that threatened to close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, lifting a cloud that has hung over the city’s journalism industry for four years.

The Seattle Times Co. and Hearst Corp., which publishes the P-I, announced the settlement in separate statements. The two had been headed for binding, closed-door arbitration to settle disagreements over their joint operating agreement, which The Times contended was no longer financially viable.

“It’s a new beginning for the P-I,” said Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer.

Under the agreement, which took effect in 1983 to save the P-I, The Times handles printing, circulation and advertising for both papers, and keeps 60 percent of their joint profits.

Hearst will pay The Times $25 million in exchange for not seeking to end the agreement before 2016. The Times, meanwhile, will pay Hearst $49 million to settle the litigation and buy Hearst’s right to collect 32 percent of their joint profits through 2083 if the P-I closes.

“Now no one can argue that Hearst might have a financial interest in seeing the P-I fold,” Luthringer said.

The new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Bonney Lake will open Wednesday.

The 207,338-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter store is 59,192 square feet larger than the former Wal-Mart discount store in the city.

The store had received more than 1,200 applications as of March 29, for the 250 new positions that will be available at the expanded store, Store Manager Chad Smith said. The store plans to employ a total of 450.

The grand opening ceremony is scheduled for 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, and the store will open for business immediately following the event.

Additional Wal-Mart Supercenters in Puyallup and Federal Way opened in January.

April 15 has come and gone. The 16th is winding down.

And this year, you’ve still got time to file your taxes with the IRS.

Precisely, you’ve got until midnight tomorrow. If you’re going to wait that long – and you’re in the Tacoma area – there’s a place where you can drop your mail.

Blue drop boxes will be collected through midnight, April 17, at the Evergreen Station, 4001 So. Pine St., according to Michelle Brooks, supervisor of customer service at the downtown branch.

Airbus' order book for its A350XWB, the European manufacturer's rival to Boeing's hyper-successful 787 widebody jet is likely to score a few substantial orders in the next few months.

Look for many of those orders to be announced at the Paris Air Show in June. The show gives aircraft makers a world stage on which to release their good news.

The most likely airlines to order the A350XWB are the airlines that had ordered its now-canceled predecessor, the A350, and airlines that had ordered the woefully-behind-schedule A380 superjumbo jet. Among those airlines are several Middle Eastern carriers and such early A380 customers as Singapore Airlines.

=> Read more!