Bill Casper, of Dupont, has announced he will run for the Port of Tacoma commission seat being vacated by longtime commissioner Jack Fabulich.

Casper is founder and a principal with the Tacoma engineering firm Casper, Phillips & Associates, which specializes in cargo container handling equipment. Casper has 40 years of structural engineering experience, with an emphasis in crane engineering, he said.

Three others have also announced they will run for the same commissioner position. Incumbent Clare Petrich is currently running unopposed.

Sweet ride.

More than 218,000 alternative fuel cars were on Washington's roads last year, according to information released today by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

That marks a 19 percent increase from 2005. The breakdown includes:

•18,736 hybrid electric cars
•64,453 enthanol-capable cars
•135,158 clean diesel autos

This is what it must have been like in the days of Weimar, when citizens needed wheelbarrows filled with currency when they went out grocery shopping. It was best to spend the money today because you didn’t know what it would be worth tomorrow.

It’s like that with the price of gas. Fill those tanks, brothers and sisters, because tomorrow may bring another record.

Just like the one reached on Thursday.

In Tacoma, the price of a gallon of regular hit a new high, marking $3.207 – up from $3.192 on Wednesday. Vancouver and Bremerton also saw records broken on Thursday, AAA reported.

If you’re looking for the state’s cheapest gas, try Spokane, at 3.004 per gallon. And the most expensive? It's in Bellingham at $3.264 – still two cents short of the all-time record posted last May.

Olympia-based Heritage Financial Corp., parent of Heritage Bank, has posted first-quarter earnings of $2.37 million compared to $2.56 million recorded for the first quarter in 2006. Per-share earnings were 36 cents versus 40 cents a year ago.

Return on average equity slipped to 11.92 percent compared to 15.20 parent for the quarter ended March 31, 2006. Average equity for the first quarter of this year increased to $80,708,000 from $68,435,000 for the first quarter of 2006, and the bank reported that $5.7 million of the increase is due to stock issued in connection with last June’s acquisition of Western Washington Bancorp.

Brian L. Vance, Heritage president and CEO, said the earnings performance "was primarily a result of the decline in net interest margin of 37 basis points over the same period in 2006. Our margin was impacted by a continuing flat yield curve, deposit mix changes and a highly competitive loan market. We believe the yield curve is likely to continue in its present holding pattern for most of this year.”

Heritage Financial Corporation is an $860 million bank holding company that operates operates two community banks, Heritage Bank and Central Valley Bank. Heritage serves Pierce, Thurston, Mason and King counties.

Shares of Weyerhaeuser Co. recorded the biggest one-day increase Thursday since December on speculation it may sell assets to satisfy investor demands for higher profits, Bloomberg News reports.

The shares rose $3.90, or 5 percent, to $81.25 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the highest closing price since March 9.

Weyerhaeuser “will be looking at all their assets,” Craig Campbell, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in an interview with the Vancouver Sun published today.

Campbell contributed to a study on mergers and acquisitions in the forest industry, the newspaper said.

Weyerhaeuser is under pressure from shareholders to transform its investments in timber into a real estate investment trust that would be taxed at a lower rate than a standard corporation. Some analysts have suggested Weyerhaeuser may sell assets to meet U.S. government rules to become a REIT.

“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” Weyerhaeuser spokesman Frank Mendizabal said today in a telephone interview.

The state's Employment Security Department honored two local businesses this morning for their efforts to employ veterans.

Comcast and General Plastics Manufacturing Company received awards at a Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce event as part of Employment Security's Hire-A-Vet challenge.

“Our troops shouldn’t have to worry about finding a job when they return from war,” said Employment Security Commissioner Karen Lee, who presented the awards today. “Washington businesses can welcome them home by making an active effort to recruit and hire veterans.”

General Plastics Manufacturing employs 35 veterans among its 180 employees, hiring eight veterans in the past year.

Comcast has more than 900 employees in Pierce County, 50 of whom are veterans, including seven Reservists.

Fuel costs, a softer air travel demand and brisker competition kept SeaTac-based Alaska Air Group in the red in this year's first quarter, the airline holding company reported today.

Alaska Air Group, which owns Alaska Airlines and its regional sister airline, Horizon Air, reported a net loss of the $10.3 million, or 26 cents a share in the first three months of 2007. That compares with a loss of $79.1 million or $2.36 cents a share in the same three months of 2006.

Removing extraordinary items such as an impairment charge for retiring the Alaska Airlines' MD-80 fleet in last year's first quarter and other one-time charges and gains in both years, the airline would have lost $15.8 million, or 39 cents a share, in the first three months of 2007 compared with $2.8 million, or 8 cents a share, in the comparable period in 2006.

That 2007 first quarter loss was higher than the average loss forecast by Wall Street analysts, 32 cents a share, for the first quarter.

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American Airlines is buying 58 sets of winglets, and they're not from KFC.

The blended winglets are 11-foot high vertical additions to ends of wings of American's fleet of Boeing 767-300ER aircraft.

The winglets, designed and built by Seattle-based Aviation Partners Boeing, improve the aerodynamics of the 767 saving at least 290,000 gallons of fuel a year per plane, improving it's range by some 415 mile, increasing it's payload by 12,000 pounds and bolstering the planes' takeoff performance.

American is the launch customer for the 767 winglet program. Aviation Partners in recent years has seen huge successes in selling winglets for Boeing 737s and 757s. Higher fuel prices have been the driver that has propelled sales upward.

Aviation Partners' blended winglets have almost become standard equipment on new 737s and are being retrofitted on many 737s that left the factory without them. Southwest and Alaska airlines have particularly ambitious refitting programs for their 737 fleets.

American expects to have all its long-range 767s fitted with the fuel-saving appendages by 2010.

A blended winglet on a Southwest Airlines 737

The Tacoma Landmarks Preservation Commission last night granted permission for the new owners of the former Elks Temple to demolish two small additions to the historic structure and to button up the building against the weather.

The two structures, one built in 1948 and the other in 1937, contain an annex to the building's kitchen and racquetball courts.

Jim Merritt, the Tacoma architect hired by the new owners, an affiliate of Portland developer Williams & Dame, said the additions weren't architecturally critical to the structure. The two additions, on the building's north side, provided transients and vandals easy entrance points to the four-story structure.

Demolition and temporary repairs to the building's roof, gutters and windows, could begin within a few weeks after the city grants other permits.

Merritt said that although the weather had taken its toll on the building, it remains structurally sound despite more than a decade of neglect.

Plans are still being formulated for the building's reuse and the construction of a new structure adjacent to the temple on the north.

In the category of informed speculation come these two reports from the UK media:

US Airways: The Arizona-based airline will soon turn its back on Airbus which loaned it $250 million to escape bankruptcy, to order 20-30 Boeing 787s. That order could be worth up to $4.9 billion. In the process, US Airways will cancel a previous order for 20 Airbus A350s, the European manufacturer's one-time rival to the 787. Airbus has replaced the A350 with the A350XWB, an improved version of the planned twin-jet. In the process, however, Airbus has lost five years in its race with Boeing. The XWB won't fly until at least 2013. The 787 flies this summer and enters commercial service next spring. US Airways will give Airbus a consolation prize by buying more A320s from the European manufacturer. The A320 is already the bread-and-butter single-aisle jet in US Airways fleet.

Virgin Atlantic: Among the routes Virgin majority owner Sir Richard Branson is pondering is a new route between London and Seattle. Sir Richard is preparing for the European open skies agreement to take effect next year, and like a lot of other carriers on both sides of the Atlantic is looking to lay an early claim on potentially lucrative routes. British Airways, Virgin's main rival, now flies to London twice daily from Sea-Tac.