New boutique opens

New boutique opens

BOARDMAN

A new boutique has officially opened its doors. Ivory & Birch, 7631 Market St., celebrated its grand opening Wednesday. The store features more than 100 brands and a wide array of merchandise.

Oilfield Expo in Dec.

CLEVELAND

The Ohio Oil and Gas Association is hosting its fourth annual Oilfield Expo and Technical Conference at Cleveland’s I-X Center, 1 I-X Center Drive, on Dec. 3-4. The conference offers training sessions, technical workshops, industry-expert panels and 50,000 square feet of trade-show floor space.

Murray adds 100M tons to coal holdings

ST. LOUIS

A leading U.S. coal company is adding roughly 100 million tons of reserves and other resources to its southern Illinois portfolio, broadening its operations months after decrying federal regulation of the industry.

Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. said Tuesday its purchases in Hamilton and Saline counties from Pennsylvania-based rival Consol Energy Inc. are strategically adjacent to the New Era mine operated by a Murray subsidiary, bringing its coal reserves nationwide to roughly 3 billion tons.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Murray said the purchase positions the New Era Mine for more than 20 additional years of continued operation in economically stressed southern Illinois, a region rich in untapped fossil fuels.

UPS: 11% increase in holiday packages

ATLANTA

UPS expects to deliver more than 34 million packages on the busiest day of the holiday season, double the amount on a normal day.

The company expects the peak delivery day to be Monday, Dec. 22. Six days are expected to top last year’s single-day record of 31 million packages.

United Parcel Service Inc. said Wednesday that it will handle 585 million packages worldwide in December, which would equal the 11 percent increase that the company predicted last week.

Rival FedEx Corp. expects a busy holiday season too, with December shipments up 8.8 percent from the same month last year.

Both companies scrambled last year, adding more seasonal workers than they had planned. After a surge in last-minute online shopping, the companies failed to deliver an estimated 2 million packages — including 1.3 million carried by UPS — as promised by Christmas Eve, according to tracking firm ShipMatrix.

Drought affects rice

WOODLAND, Calif.

California’s deepening drought is shrinking its rice harvest, and that’s bad news for farmers, migratory birds and sushi lovers.

California, the nation’s second-largest rice-growing state after Arkansas, usually produces more than 5 million pounds of rice and sells about half of it abroad.

But this year, rice farmers planted only 420,000 acres — 25 percent less than last year — because of water restrictions, according to the California Rice Commission.

Vindicator staff/wire reports