Archive for the 'Economy' Category
JCPenney to Eliminate Check-Out Clerks
July 22nd, 2012Via: CBS: But the store is getting a makeover – specialized boutiques within the store like a denim bar – and more. The CEO of JCPenney is the former retail chief of Apple, and he wants to shake things up to restore the company to profitability. But one of his ideas – replacing clerks with […]
Portugal: Number of Drug Addicts Halved a Decade After Drug Decriminalization
July 20th, 2012Via: Global Post: On July 1, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin. Some thought Lisbon would become a drug tourist haven, others predicted usage rates among youths to surge. Eleven years later, it turns out they were both wrong. Over a decade has passed since Portugal changed its philosophy […]
Facebook, Wal-Mart Chiefs Meet to ‘Deepen’ Relationship
July 20th, 2012The mind boggles. Via: Reuters: Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is about to add the biggest retail players to his list of friends. Zuckerberg and his senior management team will spend two days at Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Bentonville, Arkansas home office this week, meeting with executives of the world’s largest retailer and discussing ways […]
Italian Investigators Looking Into Possible Vatican Money Laundering for Mafia Godfather
July 19th, 2012Via: Telegraph: Anti Mafia prosecutors have asked the secretive Vatican Bank to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation, it emerged on Sunday. The official request was made more than a month ago but so far the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for […]
Japan to Probe Active Faults Under Nuclear Plants
July 19th, 2012Via: AFP: Japan’s nuclear safety watchdog on Wednesday ordered a probe into claims the country’s only working nuclear power station sits on an active tectonic fault. The order came as Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) readied to refire a second reactor at the Oi plant, western Japan, just weeks after the first unit was restarted, […]
Adult Fiction Ebooks Outsold Hardcovers in 2011
July 19th, 2012Via: Reuters: Electronic books more than doubled in popularity in 2011, with ebooks outselling hardcover books in adult fiction for the first time, according to a survey released on Wednesday. Net sales of e-books jumped to 15 percent of the market in 2011 from 6 percent in 2010, according to a report by the Association […]
Hard Times: Lost on Long Island
July 18th, 2012Via: Daily Ticker: In the new HBO documentary, “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island,” award-winning producer and director Marc Levin takes a deeper look at how many average middle class Americans are still struggling from the fallout of the Great Recession. The film puts a human face on the ongoing U.S. unemployment problem, which has […]
Michigan Governor Finalizing Plan to Raze Detroit Empty Homes
July 18th, 2012Via: Reuters: As the next step in an April deal between financially strapped Detroit and the state of Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder is finalizing a plan to tear down thousands of abandoned houses in a bid to make the city safer. Detroit has been hard-hit over the past four decades by a steep drop in […]
USDA Prepares To Greenlight Gnarliest GMO Soy Yet
July 18th, 2012Via: Mother Jones: In early July, on the sleepy Friday after Independence Day, the USDA quietly signaled its intention to greenlight a new genetically engineered soybean seed from Dow AgroSciences. The product is designed to produce soy plants that withstand 2,4-D, a highly toxic herbicide (and, famously, the less toxic component in the notorious Vietnam […]
‘How Close Are We to New Great Depression?’
July 16th, 2012CNBC? Yes, CNBC. Via: CNBC: “We’re in a very unfortunate position to be here,” Richard Duncan, author of The New Depression, warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday. “When we broke the link between money and gold, this removed all constraints on credit creation. This explosion of credit created the world we live in, but […]
