Pact

Sinclair Broadcast Group announced Thursday that it has reached a retransmission agreement in principle with the Dish Network and that it has extended the existing pact by two weeks to allow the negotiation of a final contract. The agreement had been set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Retransmission contracts set the fees that cable and satellite TV providers pay broadcast stations to include their signals in channel lineups. The agreement allows Dish, which has about 14 million customers nationwide, to carry 70 television stations that Sinclair provides service to or owns.

The union representing 14,500 East Coast and Gulf longshoremen and the representative of 43 port operators and shipping companies completed negotiations on a six-year deal, a federal mediator announced Wednesday afternoon. The terms of the Master Agreement will now go to the respective memberships of the International Longshoremen's Association and U.S. Maritime Alliance for ratification, said George Cohen, director of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. The Port of Baltimore has about 1,200 dockworkers represented by four locals.

With fierce criticism from public health officials ringing in their ears, negotiators for a comprehensive tobacco settlement reconvened in New York yesterday to iron out details on several thorny provisions, including the regulation of nicotine and the future liability of tobacco companies.Despite opposition to the deal, aired in a meeting of physicians and anti-smoking activists in Chicago Wednesday, the negotiators are determined to grind out a "term sheet" within the next 10 days that spells out details of the pact.

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette said the team was “more comfortable” signing right-hander Jair Jurrjens to a minor league deal than a major league one after closely vetting the results of a physical on his right knee. “There's some safeguards for the player in there, as well,” Duquette told reporters during Saturday's first full-squad workout, which Jurrjens participated in fully. “At least we have a chance to work together and see if we can help him be a good big league pitcher.

The recent signing of a four-part pact on Chesapeake Bay protection was an important step forward. The fact that differences remain between the approaches of Pennsylvania's and Virginia's governors on one one side and Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer and the Environmental Protection Agency's William Reilly on the other is less significant than the fact of an agreement.To be sure, neither Robert Casey nor Douglas Wilder has to deal with the outrage of Eastern Shore farmers and developers fighting any and all attempts to restrict land development moves.

Throughout its history, Finland has been a borderland in battles between the East and West. For 600 years it was part of Sweden. An 1809 Russian victory turned it into an autonomous czarist grand duchy. Independence came a century later -- only to be followed by two devastating wars against the Soviet Union. Yet Finland persisted in defending its values and sovereignty.A milestone on this historical journey was reached last week, when Russia and Finland signed a package of three treaties governing their future state and economic relations.

Baltimore firefighters and fire officers voted overwhelmingly last night to accept an agreement with the city that will save the jobs of 252 firefighters.By a margin of 967 to 400, the union agreed in essence to give up a 6 percent pay increase it won through binding arbitration earlier this year and which was to have gone into effect last July 1.In exchange, the city agreed to funnel more than $3 million it had set aside to cover the pay increase into the fire department budget, thereby avoiding the job cutbacks.

Baltimore-based Nova Pharmaceutical Corp. said yesterday that it has signed an agreement with Finland-based Orion Corp. Farmos for exclusive marketing rights in Scandinavian countries to the gliadel implant, a treatment for primary brain cancer that Nova is developing.In a news release, Nova said Orion will conduct supplemental clinical trials of the product and will seek marketing approval in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. After approval by government regulators, Nova will manufacture the product for sale by Orion.

BONN, Germany -- Germany's political leaders reached a "solidarity pact" over the weekend, seeking to resolve questions of how to divide the huge financial burden of rebuilding eastern Germany. But the agreement's most immediate effect may be to open the way for the Bundesbank to lower interest rates to try to bolster the flagging economy.Many analysts expect two important rates to be lowered Thursday at a meeting of the policy council of the Bundesbank, Germany's powerful central bank.The Bundesbank had been pressing Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government for months to come up with a comprehensive plan to pay for rebuilding the formerly Communist eastern part of the country.

LEXINGTON, Mass. - Raytheon Corp. said yesterday that its second-largest union had approved a four-year contract, ending a five-week strike by about 3,000 manufacturing workers in Massachusetts. Members of Local 1505 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers walked off the job Aug. 27 after a dispute over wages and benefits. The strikers accounted for 3.2 percent of Raytheon's work force. Raytheon, the third-largest defense contractor, gave the members of the union a 14.7 percent pay raise over the next four years and will increase its contribution to their pensions, said David Polk, a company spokesman.

For four decades, the owners of the liquefied natural gas terminal at Cove Point in Calvert County have given a pair of environmental groups a say over expansion of the sprawling complex, originally built to import fuel from abroad via the Chesapeake Bay. By all accounts, it's been a cordial, cooperative relationship. Now, though, that almost unheard-of pact between industry and its traditional adversaries is being tested, as the terminal's owner, Dominion Cove Point LNG, seeks federal approval to export liquefied natural gas through the terminal to lucrative foreign markets in Asia and elsewhere.

A settlement agreement ending health benefits for Sparrows Point workers Aug. 31 was approved Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The agreement, struck by mill owner RG Steel and the United Steelworkers union last week, also retroactively ended supplemental unemployment pay as of Aug. 10. Judge Kevin J. Carey, who is overseeing RG Steel's bankruptcy case, wrote in Thursday's court order that the deal appeared to be "in the best...

Sinclair Broadcast Group announced Thursday that it has reached a retransmission agreement in principle with the Dish Network and that it has extended the existing pact by two weeks to allow the negotiation of a final contract. The agreement had been set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Retransmission contracts set the fees that cable and satellite TV providers pay broadcast stations to include their signals in channel lineups. The agreement allows Dish, which has about 14 million customers nationwide, to carry 70 television stations that Sinclair provides service to or owns.

Baltimore County school employees have reached a tentative agreement with the school system that would raise the contributions employees make to their health care plans over the next five years in exchange for guarantees that there will be no layoffs or furloughs for three years. Over the next five years, the county's contribution to their health care premiums would drop to 80 percent from 90 percent, which would bring school employees in line with other county workers. School employees who elect to join an HMO would pay less than those who choose the other plans.

The Baltimore Ravens and Hearst Broadcasting announced a new deal Sunday night that will keep the team on WBAL radio and television for the next five years. Given the incredibly strong media performanance of all things Ravens locally and nationally, this is big news for WBAL -- news that is sure to keep the Hearst-owned radio, TV and online properties at or near the top of Baltimore sports media. Here's the announcement: Hearst Broadcasting and the Baltimore Ravens signed a new five year extension of their partnership today.

By Maryland law, for the merger of Exelon and Constellation Energy to be permissible, it must be shown to cause no harm, and to benefit Baltimore Gas & Electric ratepayers and the public interest. Because, to date, Exelon has yet to offer a proposal that sufficiently meets these three thresholds, my administration cannot support the merger at this time. While the state of Maryland stands to lose 600 jobs post-merger, Constellation executives stand to make $34 million off the transaction.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration released what it called a final text of the North American free-trade pact yesterday, but the document failed to end bickering in the presidential campaign about the agreement.Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, accused President Bush of irresponsibly politicizing the pact in the campaign, thus threatening Democratic support for it in Congress.Senator Bentsen charged at a hearing that the text still has important holes in it and that it was unfair for Mr. Bush to demand that Democratic opponent Bill Clinton say whether he will oppose it. Mr. Bentsen cited newspaper reports that said hard bargaining continued after the agreement was announced on Aug. 12."

Contract bargainers representing about 2,500 dockworkers and their employers at the Port of Baltimore plan to meet throughout the weekend to try to reach agreement on a new pact in time for a ratification vote Tuesday.John Bowers, president of the New York-based International Longshoremen's Association, ordered the vote on the agreement reached late last month governing ILA members from Maine to Texas.The vote comes 10 days before the expiration of the current contract, raising the possibility of eliminating strike threats earlier that usual.

Your editorial on pending trade agreements ("The benefits of trade," Oct. 6) reports projected benefits to the depressed U.S. economy from the proposed trade deals with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama of $12 billion in exports and tens of thousands of jobs. Though smaller than the 200,000 jobs and untold billions in exports to Canada and Mexico that NAFTA was expected to provide, the new projections are equally bogus. In fact, America's trade deficit with Canada (which averaged a modest $8.1 billion in the four years preceding NAFTA)

With little more than an hour remaining before the deadline to accomplish one of their top priorities, the Ravens on Tuesday reached agreement on a five-year, $61 million deal with Haloti Ngata, ensuring that one of the game's most dominant interior linemen will be a fixture on their defense for the foreseeable future. Ngata's deal runs through 2015 and includes $40 million over the first two years that is essentially guaranteed. The pact makes Ngata one of the highest-paid defensive linemen in the NFL and shares some similarities with the five-year, $68 million ($40 million guaranteed)