NORFOLK Layoff notices were sent Wednesday to 11 Virginia Port Authority police employees, completing a roughly 50 percent reduction of the port's Police Department first announced in the fall. A total of 43 positions were eliminated, including the 11 layoffs - a handful of sworn officers as well as non-sworn employees.

NORFOLK Maersk Line is switching to a less polluting fuel to run its ships docked at the port of Hampton Roads. While berthed to load and unload cargo, Maersk ships will run on auxiliary engines that use low-sulfur marine gas oil, the company said in a statement. The low-sulfur fuel contains up to 95 percent less sulfur than typical marine fuel.

NORFOLK A global shipping-line service connecting Asian ports and the East Coast through the Suez Canal has reworked its lineup of port calls, making Hampton Roads its last stop out in addition to its status as an inbound destination, the Virginia Port Authority has announced.

NORFOLK December was a big month at the port of Hampton Roads. Container volume rose 11.4 percent from the same month a year earlier. "That's the best month we've seen, really, for a couple of years," Russell Held, deputy executive director/development at the Virginia Port Authority, told its Board of Commissioners on Tuesday.

NORFOLK
Norfolk Southern Corp. announced Tuesday that its fourth-quarter profit rose 19 percent from the same period a year ago.

NORFOLK A plan for a 500,000-square-foot warehouse at Portsmouth Marine Terminal that had been approved and then withdrawn is back on the table.

PORTSMOUTH
As the war in Afghanistan winds down, the Virginia Port Authority and others hope to persuade the military to use Portsmouth Marine Terminal to handle part of the required wash-down of potentially hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment returning from the war zone.
If successful, the proposal could bring as many as 300 jobs, according to one company working with port officials.

NORFOLK The Virginia Port Authority's cost-cutting reorganization of security and law enforcement at its shipping terminals has begun.

NORFOLK Norfolk Southern is commemorating a milestone at its coal transloading facility in Norfolk.

The railroad operator says it has loaded the largest volume cargo in the 50-year history of its Pier facility at Lamberts Point.

NORFOLK
The family of a port worker killed on the job can sue Virginia International Terminals, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday, overturning a Portsmouth court decision.