WASHINGTON -- Home-mortgage rates drifted up this week, with adjustable-rate mortgages climbing the most, Freddie Mac reported Thursday.

While fixed-rate mortgages changed little leading up to the Federal Reserve policy committee meeting, "ARM rates, which are typically tied to short-term instruments, rose slightly due to market uncertainty over how the Fed might respond," said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist.

WASHINGTON -- The White House's new point man on housing said Wednesday he was "very optimistic" the Bush administration and lawmakers could reach an agreement on a huge package to backstop the flailing mortgage market.

Angelo Mozilo, slated to step down as chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corp. on Tuesday, is departing with a devalued reputation partly because he stayed too long and at times ran the publicly traded mortgage lender as if it were his own company.

Bank of America Corp. plans to complete its acquisition of Countrywide on Tuesday, and the 69-year-old Mr. Mozilo will retire. Bank of America will become the nation's biggest home-mortgage lender, using Countrywide's loan-processing technology and nationwide presence -- but not its brand, which is scheduled to vanish after a transition period.

Buyout rumors have swirled around Post Properties Inc. for years, but when the Atlanta-based apartment-building operator finally opened itself to offers, it got none.

Post's stock fell much further than the overall market Thursday after announcing late Wednesday that "all potential bidders" had withdrawn from its five-month sale process. Shares were down $2.17, or 6.7%, to $30.39 in 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, nearly a 52-week low.

TOKYO -- Demand for office space in Japan, which has been strong for years, is showing signs of softness. And that's likely to weigh on shares of the country's biggest real-estate developers.

In late 2003, Japan's commercial-real-estate market began a prolonged upswing. As the economy recovered from a long slump and continued to expand, companies started to add staff and to need more space. Global financial firms, in particular, aggressively expanded their businesses and moved into bigger, pricier offices.

Tennis's seven-time Grand Slam singles winner Mats Wilander has listed his home in the Idaho resort area of Sun Valley for $8.5 million.

The Swedish-born Mr. Wilander and his wife, Sonya, a former model, bought the roughly 80-acre parcel in the 1990s and built their main residence there in 1999. It's about a 20-minute drive southeast of Ketchum.

Lenders are cutting off more home-equity lines of credit, crimping homeowners' plans for honed-stone tiles, copper roofs and other costly improvements.

Peter Ferguson

Borrowing against home equity has been a major source of funds fueling the renovation boom of recent years. But big lenders, including Bank of America, Citibank, Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual Bank and USAA, collectively have told hundreds of thousands of customers this year that their home-equity lines have been frozen. Lenders typically include language in their agreements that allows them to cap or cut off a credit line if home values decline, or if a borrower fails to make payments on time.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and securities regulators in California and Pennsylvania are probing a Philadelphia-based loan broker over allegations that more than 100 prospective borrowers lost millions of dollars through a practice in which the firm collected upfront fees for real-estate development but didn't find any funding.

Authorities say they are trying to determine whether Remington Financial Group Inc. and a related firm, BlueStone Real Estate Capital, accepted fees without seriously trying to obtain financing for clients.

The legal and financial pressures on Countrywide Financial Corp. mounted Wednesday as officials in three states filed separate legal actions against the mortgage lender.

The actions, by the attorneys general of California and Illinois, and the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, came on the same day that Countrywide shareholders voted to approve the sale of the company to Bank of America Corp. The all-stock transaction was valued at $4 billion when Bank of America agreed to buy Countrywide in January. But Bank of America shares have since slipped, and the value has fallen to about $2.8 billion. The transaction is scheduled to close on July 1.

Stocks of real-estate investment trusts had a dreadful 2007, down more than 20% as a group. But executives and board members of those companies didn't see a corresponding hit to their wallets, according to a new analysis.

Regulators are increasingly worried about a lending practice that allows real-estate developers to delay paying construction-loan interest but can mask problems at the banks that made the loans.

Small banks, which are more exposed relative to bigger banks, have $280 billion of outstanding construction loans overall, mostly to condominium developers and home builders. When the loans were made, the banks calculated the interest that would be paid and put that money aside in "interest reserves." In essence, the banks pay themselves until the loan becomes due or the property generates cash flow.

Home-price declines continued to get steeper in April, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller indexes and the Ofheo home price index, which showed at least three years of gains erased.

Separately, consumer confidence dropped like a stone in June, and expectations hit an all-time low, according to the latest survey from the Conference Board.

Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities have dropped a record 15.3% in the past year and are now back to where they were in 2004, according to the Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's. In a separate report, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said U.S. home prices fell to December 2005 levels during April as the housing downturn continued to affect states at the heart of the real estate boom.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has been the home to the National Football League's Rams and Raiders, baseball's Dodgers, college football's USC Trojans and the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics.

Getty Images The group that operates Los Angeles Veterans Memorial Coliseum -- the home field for USC football -- plans to sell naming rights for the stadium.

Months after Congress moved to lower borrowing costs for homeowners in a number of high-priced housing markets, interest rates are finally becoming more attractive on certain types of so-called jumbo mortgages.

The shift could provide a boost to home sales, particularly in some markets on the East and West coasts. But the number of borrowers benefiting from the program is likely to be limited.

CONFORMING LIMITS • See a sortable chart of the new conforming loan limits, by county.

The investors being counted on to revive the mortgage market are getting off to a difficult start.

In recent months, a number of hedge funds have been dabbling in down-and-out securities linked to the fate of U.S. homeowners, including bonds backed by risky subprime mortgages. These distressed investors, as they are known, buy assets that others are afraid to touch in the hopes that prices will rise eventually. Economists and policy makers are watching their moves closely, because by putting a floor on prices, they can play a crucial role in ending the turmoil that has gripped the financial markets.

Even as the slow economy and credit crunch push many developers to the sidelines, health-care real-estate investment trusts are providing one of the few bright spots as they expand their development pipelines.

Some of the biggest health-care REITs by stock-market value -- HCP Inc., Ventas Inc., Healthcare Realty Trust Inc., Nationwide Health Properties Inc. and Health Care REIT Inc. -- are expected to build $675.9 million of properties by year's end, up from $236.5 million in 2007, according to stock-research firm Stifel Nicolaus.

In a kitchen at Manhattan's International Culinary Center, chef André Soltner and two cookware junkies seem bent on destroying a collection of brand-new pots and pans.

"This is very thin," says John Doherty, executive chef of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, as he taps the side of a stainless-steel frying pan. He holds the pan against his stomach, and then pushes in the sides like an accordion. "Oh my God," he says. "I just bent it."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah," says the 75-year-old Mr. Soltner, the former owner of Manhattan's Lutèce restaurant, giving it a try himself.

After a decade of easy lending, the dreaded personal guarantee is making a comeback in the real-estate industry, bringing back the kind of tough terms that borrowers hoped not to see again.

As loans for commercial projects have become difficult to come by in this credit crunch, borrowers are being forced to consider loans that would give the lenders "recourse" to the borrowers' personal fortunes -- terms that led many a developer, including Donald Trump and William Zeckendorf Jr., to near ruin in the real-estate crash of the early '90s. More recently, New York developer Harry Macklowe found himself in a bind after he signed a personal guarantee on a $1.2 billion loan.

Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, said the Senate Ethics Committee will look into mortgage loans he received from Countrywide Financial Corp.

Sen. Conrad is among numerous politicians and other prominent people who received home loans, sometimes on preferential terms, from Countrywide on orders from the company's chairman and chief executive, Angelo Mozilo. Those loans were known internally as being for "Friends of Angelo," or FOA.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A recent awards luncheon for this city's business and civic establishment had all the spiritual fervor of a megachurch sermon, featuring more than 700 people, the owner of the Carolina Panthers football franchise and retired Bank of America Corp. legend Hugh McColl Jr. dining on $75-a-plate tequila-marinated chicken and apple tarts.

Civic leaders crowed of the town's status as one of the South's most vibrant cities.

An investment company linked to a little-known Russian fertilizer billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, has agreed to pay $100 million to Donald Trump for a Palm Beach, Fla., mansion called Maison de l'Amitié.

The National Association of Home Builders is playing nice with Congress again.

The trade group, representing thousands of home builders, has switched its lobbying tactics and its political action committee has resumed doling out political donations, after halting them in February to protest what the group said was policy makers' failure to help the housing industry and overall economy.

The association had been pressing for a tax break that would have allowed builders to apply losses to taxes paid four years ago, instead of the current two-year carry-back. But the group has backed off that effort and is focusing now on a proposed tax credit for home buyers to stimulate demand.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate is poised to vote as early as this week on a package of housing initiatives that would mark lawmakers' most comprehensive effort yet to deal with record numbers of foreclosures and a housing slump that is weighing on the economy.

Big Russian housing developer Pik Group has been on a growth tear ever since it raised $1.9 billion in the biggest real-estate initial public offering of last year.

But Pik's stock has been volatile, buffeted by uncertainties about global property stocks as well as the economic climate in Russia. Earlier this month, the company's founders, Kirill Pisarev and Yuri Zhukov, who are both 39 years old, canceled a plan to sell $500 million of stock because they couldn't hit their minimum price.

Two more home builders have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the face of declining home sales and troubled credit markets.

Oakridge Homes LLC in California and M.W. Johnson Construction Inc., which builds homes in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Florida, both sought Chapter 11 protection Friday. The companies are two of many home builders in bankruptcy proceedings, including Levitt and Sons LLC and Tousa Inc.

M.W. Johnson blamed its bankruptcy on the "troubled credit markets and overbuilding" that have caused sales of new homes to decline. The home builder said that not only have these economic conditions forced it into bankruptcy, but they have drained the company of cash. M.W. Johnson is seeking court approval of a $1 million bankruptcy loan to help it liquidate its assets.

LONDON -- Property investor Amjad Raja surveyed the rows of empty seats on the second day of what was billed as the United Kingdom's biggest-ever residential-property auction.

"There's hardly anybody here," he said.

In one of his first major steps since being named chief executive of struggling Maguire Properties Inc., Nelson Rising will try to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling Park Place, a 105-acre office park and development site in Orange County, Calif., that had been a pet project of founder and former Chief Executive Robert Maguire III.

Maguire Properties, a large owner of California office buildings, also will raise $100 million to $110 million of much needed cash by adding debt to its Plaza Las Fuentes, a mixed-use property, and Westin Pasadena Hotel, both in Pasadena.

WASHINGTON -- Top mortgage lenders and servicers, under pressure to do more to help prevent record numbers of foreclosures, have reached a major agreement on new guidelines to improve and speed up the industry's voluntary efforts to help struggling homeowners.

The agreement among the firms in the Treasury Department-backed Hope Now alliance, which is scheduled to be announced Tuesday, comes as U.S. Senate lawmakers prepare to begin debate this week on a massive housing package aimed at slowing the record pace of foreclosures that continues to roil the economy. That legislation, which includes a program to refinance up to $300 billion in troubled mortgages, could be voted on by the Senate this week, sources said.

Next month, Michelle Augustine plans to walk away from her four-bedroom house in a Sacramento, Calif., subdivision and let the property fall into foreclosure. But before doing so, she hopes to lock in the purchase of another home nearby.

"I can find the same exact house as what I live in right now for half the price," says Ms. Augustine, 44 years old, who runs a child-care service out of her home. She says she soon will be unable to afford her monthly payments, which will jump to $4,000 from $3,300 in August, and she doesn't want to continue to own a home that is now worth $200,000 less than what she paid for it two years ago.

Chrysler LLC is crafting an unconventional pact to lease part of an Indiana transmission plant and some of its employees to a Canadian company that would build parts for the auto maker and other customers, including some outside the car industry.

The tentative deal is expected to be sealed this summer and is small in value -- just $60 million -- but it illustrates the different ideas that Chrysler is experimenting with to try to wring value out of under-used plants.

New York developer Harry Macklowe brought himself to the edge of financial ruin by overloading on Manhattan office buildings.

Now, investors are wondering whether Mortimer Zuckerman's Boston Properties Inc. also is making a risky bet on Manhattan by snapping up Mr. Macklowe's prized General Motors building and three other properties for about $1.47 billion plus $2.47 billion in debt. The purchase enabled Mr. Macklowe to fend off his creditors.

The longtime ski retreat of singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg, after three years on and off the market, is in contract.

Joshua & Co. The Colorado retreat of the late Dan Fogelberg.

Mr. Fogelberg, who died in December at age 56 after a prolonged bout with prostate cancer, first listed the 610-acre ranch in 2005 for $17.5 million. Its most recent asking price was $15 million. The planned purchase price couldn't be learned. Mr. Fogelberg, who rose to fame during the 1970s, custom-built the estate, in Pagosa Springs, Colo., near the Wolf Creek Ski area.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Christopher Dodd, a top figure in Democrats' response to the housing crisis, defended through a spokesman two mortgages he reportedly received under a special Countrywide Financial Corp. program that awarded preferential interest rates to people referred to as "friends" of the company's chairman and chief executive, Angelo Mozilo.

"The Dodds received a competitive rate on their loans," said Bryan DeAngelis, Sen. Dodd's press secretary. "They did not seek or anticipate any special treatment, and they were not aware of any." He declined further comment.

WASHINGTON -- The number of U.S. homeowners swept up in the housing crisis rose further last month, with foreclosure filings up nearly 50% from a year earlier, a foreclosure listing company said Friday.

Across the U.S., 261,255 homes received at least one foreclosure-related filing in May, up 48% from 176,137 a year earlier and up 7% from April, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

One in every 483 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in May, the highest number since RealtyTrac started the report in 2005 and the second-straight monthly record. RealtyTrac monitors default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions.

NEW YORK -- The rebuilding of the World Trade Center is encountering headwinds as New York's governor called for a major review of the closely watched project on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

New York Gov. David Paterson said in a statement that it "has become clear that the overall project faces likely delays and cost overruns." He called on the agency that owns the site to create a "comprehensive assessment to determine whether the current schedules and cost estimates for reconstruction are reliable and achievable."

In hindsight, Donald Trump might have been wiser not to have flown into Scotland in his own private Boeing 727 with the word "Trump" painted on its side in gold.

For, as The Donald is beginning to realize, it's not his plans for a world-class golf course near Aberdeen that have incensed so many Scots -- it's him. They despise his comb-over hair, his billion-dollar lifestyle and his New York braggadocio. But there is also a sense that what irks Mr. Trump's detractors the most is the prospect of one of Scotland's flashiest sons buying his way back into the heart of his homeland.

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Edward S. Lampert is placing new bets on a U.S. housing recovery, buying stakes in beaten-up home builders, mortgage lenders and a home-improvement retailer.

Mr. Lampert's ESL Investments Inc., which owns half of department-store giant Sears Holdings Corp. and 40% of car retailer AutoNation Inc., has previously focused with mixed success on retail and bank stocks.

Soaring property values in recent years swelled the coffers of counties and municipalities, raising calls for property-tax cuts. Now, even as foreclosures and dwindling home sales shrink local tax bases, a number of state governments are slashing or capping property-tax rates.

New York Gov. David Paterson last week launched a bid to make New York the latest state to roll back property taxes. Already this year, statehouses in Indiana and Florida have passed new property-tax curbs.

A leading gauge of U.S. home sales showed surprising strength, as falling prices began to entice buyers back into the market, but other signs of economic weakness persist.

April pending home sales -- meaning signed sales contracts -- rose 6.3% from March to a level of 88.2, the highest in six months, the National Association of Realtors said. A reading of 100 is equal to the average level of sales activity in 2001.

Raleigh, N.C.

It might be the most politically correct housing development on the planet.

In Raleigh, where hundreds of old houses have been torn down to make way for bigger, fancier new ones, one neighborhood stands out. Called Barrington Village, it comprises 24 homes that were saved from demolition by a nonprofit group and moved to the wooded, six-acre property. The houses, dating from the 1940s to 1960s, were placed on new foundations and fitted with identical front porches.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Property developers in this Persian Gulf sheikdom, famous for its grandiose projects, are increasingly turning to American and European celebrities to help sell the properties to wealthy consumers.

FRANKFURT -- A key measure of estimating the value of subprime mortgage-backed securities may be overstating potential losses of triple-A securities by more than 60%, according to the Bank for International Settlements, which puts its own estimate of such losses at $73 billion.

The BIS, often called the central bankers' central bank, has few formal banking duties but is a hub for economic and monetary research as well as for global policy makers. Its most recent quarterly report adds to growing criticism of a key measure of the subprime-mortgage market called the ABX.

VIENNA, Va. – As clouds scudded across the sky and the wind screamed I heard a snap.

The main trunk of a 100-foot ash tree in my backyard split in two and crashed to the ground, crushing a portion of my pool fence -- but, thankfully, missing the deck and house.

It only takes a few seconds of weather drama to create a major mess. In this case, it will also be an expensive one. Brad Dodd, an estimator for Tyson's Tree Service in Merrifield, Va. quoted a price of $1,000 to remove the doomed and broken tree.

Famous for its deft avoidance of one Wall Street crisis after another, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. hasn't been so lucky with its future headquarters.

Now under construction, the 43-story building in lower Manhattan, designed with six gigantic, state-of-the-art trading floors, was supposed to be the envy of Wall Street.

PHILADELPHIA -- Sheriff John Green has spent 37 years in law enforcement. But these days he's best known around town for the law he won't enforce.

With the economy soft and thousands of Philadelphians delinquent on their mortgages, Sheriff Green this spring refused to hold a court-ordered foreclosure auction. His move raised eyebrows on the bench and dropped jaws among lenders and their attorneys, who accuse him of shirking his duty to enforce legal contracts.

The supply of homes available for sale in major metropolitan areas declined slightly in May.

Total listings of homes in 29 metro areas at the end of May edged down 0.3% from a month earlier, according to figures compiled by ZipRealty Inc., a real-estate brokerage firm based in Emeryville, Calif. The data cover listings of single-family homes, condos and town houses on local multiple-listing services in those areas, where Zip operates. (See complete data.)

HIRAFU, Japan -- Simon Robinson punctuated a Japanese ski holiday five years ago by taking photographs of land plots in this town in the rural north. The Canberra native bought one of them and then built some vacation condominiums on it.

Federal regulators warned Thursday that banking-industry turmoil would continue as financial institutions come to terms with piles of bad loans they made to finance the construction of homes and condominiums.

Until now, most of the damage to banks from the housing crisis has come from homeowners defaulting on their mortgages. But amid a dismal spring sales season for new homes, loans to home and condo builders are looking increasingly shaky. Banks have begun to dump them at what will likely be steep discounts, setting the stage for billions of dollars in fresh losses.

In a European property market marked by a sharp decline in deal activity, there is one group of players taking advantage of falling prices and the squeamishness of many buyers: German open-ended real-estate funds.

The cash-rich German funds, which target primarily individual investors, have been making purchases in places such as London, Paris and Moscow. Deka-ImmobilienGlobal, one of Frankfurt-based DekaBank Group's five such funds, recently bought an office building in the City of London, 50 Finsbury Square, for €113 million ($175.6 million). TMW Immobilien Weltfonds, another fund, plans to close on a prime office building in the City for £80 million ($157.3 million) in June.

During the housing boom, local banks and thrifts struggled to compete for mortgage business with aggressive brokers and national lenders. Now, some community banks are regaining market share as those rivals scale back or go out of business.

Hispanics who provided the bulk of the construction work force during the housing boom are suffering as many of those jobs evaporate, according to a new study.

However, there are no signs Hispanics are quitting the U.S. labor market, a strong indication that immigrants are choosing to bear down and hustle for jobs in the U.S. rather than return to their countries of origin.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate among Hispanics reached 6.5% in the first quarter of 2008, when the unemployment rate for all non-Hispanics was 4.7%, according to the report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization. The report is based on Pew's analysis of the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, which include both immigrant and native-born Hispanics.

Ed McMahon, the longtime sidekick to television star Johnny Carson, faces the possible loss of his Beverly Hills home to a foreclosure action initiated by a unit of Countrywide Financial Corp.

Howard Bragman, a spokesman for Mr. McMahon, said late Tuesday that his client is having "very fruitful discussions" with the lender and hopes to find a resolution. It isn't clear whether that would allow the 85-year-old Mr. McMahon and his wife, Pamela, to remain in the six-bedroom home.

The homeowners: April Reed, 35, a real estate agent, and Eric Reed, 38, an electrician.

The home: In October 2005, the Reeds bought a house for $294,000 in Chester, Calif., a small mountain community east of Chico, Calif., and west of Reno, Nev. The three-bedroom, one-bathroom 1950s ranch home offers 2,050 square feet of space, room for their family of five.

The mortgage: The Reeds financed 80% of the home with an adjustable rate mortgage, which started at 6.6% for the first two years and reset to 8.5%. The couple got a piggyback loan for the remaining 20%, at a rate of 10%. Their mortgage payment was initially $2,050 a month but reset to $2,350 in September 2007.

GILROY, Calif. -- Californians normally are treated to a kaleidoscope of colors this time of year as spring rains give rise to wildflowers and verdant hillsides. But following one of the driest March-May periods on record, the predominant color in the Golden State's wildlands is brown -- and that is fueling an unusually early start to the state's fire season.

Already, firefighters have been deployed to more than a dozen wildfires, including a massive conflagration in the rugged Santa Cruz Mountains above here that broke out on May 22 and scorched more than 4,000 acres and 31 homes before being declared under control Wednesday. State officials are so concerned about the potential for fire damage this year that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order mobilizing California's firefighting resources in early May. Normally, the fire season begins in June, but doesn't really get going until late summer.

The number of foreclosed homes owned by lenders continues to rise despite signs that they are increasingly willing to slash prices to sell those properties.

Lenders and investors in mortgages owned about 660,000 foreclosed homes in April, up from 493,000 in January and 231,000 in January 2007, according to First American CoreLogic, a research firm based in Santa Ana, Calif., that collects data from lenders and county clerks. The April total works out to about one in seven previously occupied homes available for sale nationwide.

Jude Albanese doesn't pay a landscaper or run lots of sprinklers to maintain his lawn. He has retired his mower, and he doesn't use fertilizer. Yet the grass in front of his New Jersey home looks so lush that some passersby feel the need to bend down and touch it.

The reason is simple: The grass is fake.

"You want to enjoy your yard, but it was always work and upkeep," says the Nutley, N.J., homeowner, who had JM Synthetic Grass Surfacing install his faux lawn last month. "Now it's much cleaner and neater. I should have done this years ago."

A new crop of gardening books is appearing in stores:

Gardening at the Dragon's Gate by Wendy Johnson (Bantam, 2008). This book enchants from the first chapter, where the author recounts her first time in the garden intently planting a row of corn -- only to look up and find that a blue jay had eaten every seed.

One of the founders of the organic farm and garden program at Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin County, Calif., Ms. Johnson is currently at the forefront of the local foods movement, and she obviously believes the relationship between gardeners and their land should be nontoxic and deep-rooted.

While most commercial-real-estate owners and developers are singing the blues these days, investors like Bruce Hellman are whistling a brighter tune.

Mr. Hellman is president of Cincinnati-based Berkshire Realty Group LLC, an owner and operator of rental-apartment buildings. With 5,500 units in Ohio and Kentucky and a healthy appetite to buy more, Berkshire and regional operators like it have found one of the few sweet spots in the market right now.

New York's second fatal crane collapse in three months rattled the city's construction industry and cast the spotlight on a sector that has struggled nationally to maintain safety as the credit crunch and a slowing economy have squeezed developers' profits.

At about 8 a.m. Friday, the upper part of a crane being used to build a high-rise apartment tower on 91st Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side snapped at its hinge and fell against a 23-story apartment building across the street. The crane sheared off balconies on the apartment building before collapsing on to the street below. The crane operator and another construction worker were killed; a third worker was seriously injured.