Importers

Importers who use the Port of Philadelphia are facing higher costs because of changes in the way the U.S. Customs Service inspects cargoes. The U.S. Customs Service in Philadelphia, following a process already used in some other ports, is requiring importers to haul shipping containers to three centralized inspection stations, two of which are not on the waterfront. The new customs procedures mean that many customers of the port will pay transportation charges they had not incurred before, when customs inspectors came dockside to check cargoes.

Representatives of Chilean fruit importers, who recently threatened to leave the Port of Philadelphia for another East Coast port, have formed a joint venture that could keep fruit cargoes coming here for the next 18 years. The joint venture - between Transreefer Inc., for the Chilean importers, and Lavino Shipping Co. - creates a new company, Seagate Inc., to lease Piers 82 and 84 on the Delaware River. The docks contain storage areas and a $2 million refrigerated warehouse. The piers, which had been leased to a Lavino subsidiary, Delaware Operating Co. (DOC)

When Ray Farber's daughter telephoned from California to ask what she should do with the grapes in her refrigerator, Farber didn't hesitate. " 'Throw 'em out,' I told her," he recalled. Never one to follow his own advice, however, Farber continues to eat grapes. When a television crew came to visit the other day, "I just picked up a handful and ate them all . . . and I'm still here," he boasted. Farber is in a position to know. As general manager of the fresh food terminal at the Food Distribution Center in South Philadelphia, he is at the epicenter of the storm over the suspected cyanide poisoning of Chilean fruit.

The Philadelphia area, the nation's largest center for the import of frozen meat from Australia and New Zealand, may lose substantial amounts of that lucrative trade, importers say. A decision by three major steamship lines to stop "subsidizing" inland transportation costs, and new labor agreements in New Orleans and Charleston, S.C., have so altered Philadelphia's economic advantage for handling meat cargoes that Southern ports are now becoming...

A coalition of Chilean growers and American fruit distributors yesterday filed a lawsuit in federal court here seeking to stop the U.S. Department of Agriculture from restricting the importation of grapes from Chile. The group contends that a proposed regulation imposing tough quality standards on the grapes would halt the sale of nearly 40 million pounds of South American grapes in this country. Virtually all of the Chilean grapes are imported through the Port of Philadelphia, a factor that has prompted intense lobbying against the department's proposed regulation by local, state and federal politicians and by representatives of the Philadelphia maritime community.

The Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that it would not permit table grapes to be shipped or imported in 1988 if they contain detectable residues of sulfite compounds. The compounds, which help prevent spoilage, can cause deadly allergic reactions in some people. EPA spokesman Dave Cohen said the new rule, which goes into effect Friday, requires growers to test their grapes and certify that the amount of sulfites on them is less than 10 parts per million. Although that is considered the level of detectability, no safe level has been found for the compounds, according to an officer of a consumer group that has fought the EPA for 18 months over the sulfite rules for grapes.

Chu Wing-chiu, a manager of the Power Garment Factory Ltd., said his factory can earn $1.20 by selling a dozen flannel shirts. Or it can earn $40 just by selling a license it holds for exporting a dozen shirts to the United States. Power Garment, needless to say, ends up selling some of its export licenses each year - not all them, but enough to add a nice sum to its income. Power Garment is just one of the many Hong Kong companies profiting from U.S. quotas. Those quotas are a multimillion-dollar business here and getting even bigger as a result of tightening U.S. restrictions on Hong Kong clothing exports.

Animals, too, get their 15 minutes of fame. Now it's the turn of African elephants. Wildlife protection groups - from the Humane Society of the United States to the World Wildlife Fund - have seen years of lonely advocacy on behalf of elephants suddenly become a bursting of public concern about the decimation of the world's largest land mammal. As a result, the United States has banned all ivory imports, as have several European governments. This is Save the Elephants summer. In the past, we have saved the whales, saved the dolphins, saved Canadian seal pups, saved bald eagles.

In the days just before the longshoremen's strike began yesterday, Frances Sherman and her colleagues at Davies Turner & Co. Inc. scurried to unload ships at the Philadelphia port and get cargo cleared through customs. "We had tried very hard to remove all the cargo from the piers for the last week," said Sherman, whose employer is a foreign freight broker. "We were fortunate enough to remove our freight. None of my accounts were stuck on the docks. " Other importers along the East Coast were not so lucky, however.

Hundreds of thousands of skirts imported from India, popular because of their retro look and their breezy comfort, are being pulled off store shelves across the nation because they are fire hazards. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced yesterday that rayon and rayon-cotton blend skirts sold at many department stores, import shops and street-vendor stands can burn "faster than newspaper" if exposed to a heat source. The garments - known as broom skirts - are long, summer and fall fashions with elastic waistbands that may also have a drawstring.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A year to the day after kicking off his victorious reelection campaign on this college campus, President Obama returned to Ohio State University and told graduates that only through vigorous participation in their democracy can they right an ill-functioning government and break through relentless cynicism about the nation's future. "I dare you, Class of 2013, to do better. I dare you to do better," Obama said. In a sunbaked stadium filled with more than 57,000 students, friends, and relatives, Obama lamented an American political system that gets consumed by "small things" and works for the benefit of society's elite.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - US Airways Group reiterated Wednesday the importance of Philadelphia as a hub airport in the coming merger with American Airlines. Speaking at its 13th annual media day, where executives mingled with reporters to talk about the merger and put a best foot forward on what will be the world's biggest airline, US Airways president Scott Kirby said New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, from which American does a lot of international flying, "is a great point-to-point market" for local fliers traveling between New York and destinations such as London's Heathrow Airport.

PENNSYLVANIA Sen. Pat Toomey, who deserves praise for bringing the background-check gun legislation to the Senate, had this to say when it was defeated Wednesday, in a vote that fell six short of the 60 needed: "The Senate has spoken on the subject, and it's time to move on. We have a lot of other very important issues to deal with . . . " Oh, no, it isn't time to move on. And no, we don't have anything more important than keeping this issue alive....

THE QUESTION has been answered, officially: There will be no playoffs for the 76ers this season. Saturday's 106-87 loss at Miami, combined with Milwaukee's home win over Toronto, sealed the deal. Now coming to the forefront: Questions about where this organization will go during the offseason. Do you seriously consider trying to re-sign Andrew Bynum? Where will you fall in the lottery and whom do you target for the June 27 draft? Who on this current roster is worthy of staying? Is there tweaking to the current roster or a massive overhaul?

By Max Boot It is a common conceit of age to imagine that giants roamed the Earth in one's youth while today the political scene is populated by pygmies. But I still cling to that view, for my formative years occurred while Ronald Reagan was president and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. Naturally, as an American, I was more focused on Reagan. But Thatcher, whose exploits were covered in the newspapers and magazines that I read (the Los Angeles Times, National Review, Newsweek)

While I'm away, readers give the advice. On getting through to your teenager without harping: One thing my father did all throughout my teen years was take a walk with me after dinner. He said he needed to get some more exercise and was more likely to get it if he had company. I enjoyed having 45 minutes of his time every night. I knew I would have a chance to talk to my dad every evening. More to the point, I knew that time was important to him. I was important to him. On all those evil mothers-in-law: Admittedly, I was not close to my husband's (weird and difficult)

LAKELAND, Fla. - Less than 50 feet away from the spot where Torii Hunter called the pitcher's stuff "filthy" 5 weeks earlier, Charlie Manuel was asked about the ominous cloud hovering over his team entering the final day of camp. Roy Halladay will make his final spring start in the Grapefruit League finale Thursday afternoon at Bright House Field in Clearwater. It will be his first time on that mound since leaving a start more than 2 weeks ago with a stomach illness that sapped him of almost 10 pounds.

Sometimes you just don't see a significant piece coming. The composer was relatively untried, worked in an oddball genre, and explored an unexpected subject - a German pastor and theologian who battled Nazism and died for it. Nonetheless, Thomas Lloyd's choral theater piece Bonhoeffer , premiered by The Crossing choir on Sunday at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, was a fully realized 70-minute work and a breakthrough for all concerned....

CHICAGO - President Obama's support for gun control has its roots in a hometown plagued by deadly shootings - a city, he said Friday, where as many children die from guns every four months as were slaughtered at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut. Obama told a Chicago audience that high-profile mass shootings were one part of a national tragedy created not just by guns, but by communities where there was too little hope. As a result, he said, "too many of our children are being taking away from us. " It was an emotional return to a city whose recent shooting victims have included Hadiya Pendleton, 15, a drum majorette gunned down a mile from Obama's Chicago home just days after she performed at the president's inauguration in Washington.

IT WAS A PLAY Thaddeus Young has made countless times throughout his 6-year career. A loose ball was available near the 76ers' bench Monday, and Young went after it the way he always does, like a hungry dog going after a discarded piece of meat. With no regard for anything but the prize at hand, Young flung his body toward the ball and, after getting tangled with Orlando's Gustavo Ayon, writhed on the floor in obvious pain. He rolled onto his stomach and grabbed for his left hamstring, while pounding his right fist on the floor.