ST. LOUIS -- LaBarge Inc. has been awarded a $10.7 million contract to continue to provide Northrop Grumman with electromechanical subsystems and modules for a state-of-the-art automated mail sorting system. The award continues LaBarge's production of the assemblies through May 2007.

LaBarge-built equipment is part of the Automated Flats Sorting Machine-Automated Induction (AFSM-ai) system, a fleet of machines that together can sort 26 billion pieces of flat mail per year. LaBarge began manufacturing the subsystems and modules in July 2005, under a previous contract. The equipment enhances the system's in-feed units, which the company manufactured between 1999 and 2002.

LaBarge will perform the work at its Huntsville, AK, facility.

BUENOS AIRES -- Foxconn Electronics may site a manufacturing plant in Argentina in order to work more closely with its customers in Central and Lain America, according to a China language publication.

The Apple Daily further reported that Foxconn's wholly-owned handset subsidiary Foxconn International Holdings is considering a R&D center in Japan.

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The Bromine Science and Environmental Forum today issued a statement that undercut an earlier missive from a European political group of the status of the chemical known as Deca-BDE.

According to the BSEF, a statement European Green made earlier this week regarding a nonbinding interpretation by the European Commission's DG Environment on Deca-BDE's exemption from the RoHS Directive "is incorrect and ignores the fact that the interpretation is under review. "

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