The News Tribune today announced week-long unpaid furloughs for its workforce.

The furloughs are part of an expense-reduction plan drawn up early this year to cope with the recession-related advertising revenue shortfalls at the Tacoma paper, said News Tribune Publisher David Zeeck.

Employees will schedule the unpaid time off during this year’s second half.

Looks like the “Urban Garage Sale” at Ledger Square last Saturday was such a success – they’re doing it all again.

Last Saturday the organizers raised $6,400. This Saturday they’ll go from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. (at the confluence of St. Helens and Market Street near the Municipal Building downtown) and they hope to raise that much or more.

All proceeds go toward finishing a 6-foot-by-28-foot tile mural that depicts a bygone day at the site The News Tribune called home for several decades.

Blaine Johnson, Tacoma developer and president of the Theater District Association, said this week he hopes to raise $30,00 for the ceramic-panoramic-photographic mural showing a crowd that gathered on Oct. 10, 1926 to view real-time results of a World Series game between the New York Yankees (who lost) and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Among the items up for sale this weekend are old costume jewelry, artwork and household items. A French jazz pianist is offering lessons and a two-hour recital, and Tacoma architect Lynne Martin offers two hours of professional consultation. Expect gift certificates, collectibles, tickets to the Grand Cinema and Tacoma Symphony, glass, plants, clothes, ephemera and more.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport rose to 17th among United States airports in passenger traffic last year according to a new report by Airports Council International.

The airport handled 32,196,528 passengers last year, a 2.9 percent increase over 2007, according to the Geneva-based airport organization.

The airport had been the 18th largest U.S. Airport in 2007 with 31,296,628 passengers.

Sea-Tac moved up a spot as Philadelphia moved into 18th place.

At the top of the list was Atlanta with 90,039,280 passengers followed by Chicago's O'Hare Airport with 69,353,876 passengers.

Completing the top five were Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver.

Seattle's passenger traffic exceeded that of Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.'s Dulles Airport, New York LaGuardia, Baltimore, Honolulu and Salt Lake City, to name a few.

Tacoma's Click! Cable TV is offering free workshops for its customers on how to use its video-on-demand system.

The workshop entitled "Cable 101: Even More Ins and Outs of Video-on-Demand" is set for Tuesday at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the Public Utilities Auditorium, 3628 South 35th St.

"There are thousands of hours of free programs available to most cable customers," said Click! Network marketing manager Mitch Robinson. "Unfortunately, some people don't know how to find them."

Besides the free on-demand programming from the History Channel, National Geographic and PBS, Click! also offers extra cost shows on-demand.

Reservations are required for the workshops. Those reservations are available by calling 253-502-8900.

The wires and the Internet are alive with hints that Boeing could soon announce a location for a second 787 Dreamliner assembly line -- and it won't be in the Puget Sound area.

All of the reports we've heard involve a fair amount of reading between the lines and extrapolation from what Boeing is saying officially.

Here's how the logic goes:

Boeing is nearly two years behind with its 787 Dreamliner program. Its orderbook for the Dreamliner, despite a few defections, still is more than 850 aircraft.

If Boeing is going to make up any ground in filling its orders, it will have to fairly quickly ramp up its assembly process. Only now is the first "production" 787 entering the far end of the assembly line in Everett behind the six test aircraft.

The notion that Boeing will be able to carry through with its original goal of just bolting together a Dreamliner in three days at its Everett plant from big preassembled sections is still a fantasy.

Boeing now says its major partners are performing better work on those subassemblies, but Boeing may find itself doing more work at the assembly plant than it had hoped. Translation: don't expect the parts to enter the back door on Monday and emerge as a whole airliner on Thursday morning.

Thus the need for a second assembly line.

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With the Paris Airshow concluding its third day today, Boeing finally tallied an order.

The order for two 737-800 single-aisle jets comes from MC Aviation Partners, a leasing company owned by Japanese industrial giant Mitsubishi Corp.

The two 737-800s are valued at $153 million at list prices. Boeing customers often negotiate discounts from those prices especially when sales are slow as they are now.

The two aircraft will be leased to Skymark Airlines of Japan.

The first orders for Boeing came after its rival, Airbus, had announced orders from several Mideast and Asian airlines.

While Airbus is far outdistancing Boeing in the airshow order race, neither is doing well by standards of previous years when hundreds of orders were announced.