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Friday, Jul 30, 2010 |
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Weather Forecast |
| Cities / State |
°C |
°F |
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Atlanta
(Georgia) |
24.7 |
76.4 |
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Charleston
(South Carolina) |
27.5 |
81.5 |
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Charlotte
(North Carolina) |
24.5 |
76.1 |
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Columbia
(South Carolina) |
26.4 |
79.5 |
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Dallas
(Texas) |
26.3 |
79.3 |
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Miami
(Florida) |
27.4 |
81.3 |
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Nashville
(Tennessee) |
24.3 |
75.7 |
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News » Home
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| Dump Your Landline, but Keep Your Home Phone |
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Date: 29-07-2010
Ask anyone under 30 for their home phone number and they may look at you funny. The landline business is in permanent decline. After peaking at about 141 million in 2000, the number of U.S. home phones fell to 78 million by the end of 2008, according to the Federal Communications Commission. While most of this erosion was the result of people going wireless, the FCC says some 19 million households replaced landlines with Internet phones.
For the last month I've been testing the latest Internet calling device, Ooma Telo, which offers people who might otherwise go all-wireless the security blanket of a landline-like phone.
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| Mortgage brokers to be fingerprinted and registered |
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Date: 29-07-2010
Mortgage loan originators will have to be fingerprinted and sign up to a central registry to do business in future, according to final rules issued on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.
The rules are part of the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008, also called the S.A.F.E. Act.
They were issued by the Fed, Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Office of Thrift Supervision, Farm Credit Administration and National Credit Union Administration.
Mortgage brokers came under tough scrutiny in the wake of the 2007-09 financial crisis, with some lawmakers and regulators sharply critical of underwriting standards and practices that were seen as so loose they helped foster a housing price bubble.
The S.A.F.E. Act specifies that mortgage brokers who are employees of agency-regulated institutions must register with the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry,
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| Mushrooms Turned into Green Packaging |
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Date: 29-07-2010
In addition to tomatoes and peppers, your next garden could grow packaging materials.
A new product made out of agricultural waste and mushroom roots is now showing up in shipped products across the country. The composite material, called Mycobond™, requires just one-eighth the energy to produce and generates one-tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material.
Now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergraduates Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer are developing a new, less energy-intensive method to sterilize the agricultural waste, killing spores that could otherwise compete with the mushrooms.
Instead of steam heat, the new sterilization method will involve cinnamon-bark oil, thyme oil, oregano oil and lemongrass oil.
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| Fewer parents to cut back-to-school budget |
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Date: 27-07-2010
Fewer parents plan to cut their back-to-school budgets, but they will count on smartphones and social networking to find the best bargains during the second biggest shopping season of the year, according to a Deloitte survey released on Tuesday.
"Retailers may be encouraged that fewer consumers are planning to pare back this year, although they may find that shoppers continue to be deliberate in their purchases," said Alison Paul, Deloitte's retail sector leader in the United States.
In the online survey, 28 percent of 1,050 parents of school-age children said they were planning to spend more this year on back-to-school clothing and supplies, while 17 percent said they would spend less.
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| New home sales up, but sales remain slow |
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Date: 27-07-2010
Sales of new homes jumped last month, but it was the second-weakest month on record. The lackluster economy has made potential buyers skittish about shopping for homes.
New home sales rose nearly 24 percent in June from a month earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 330,000, the Commerce Department said Monday. May's number was revised downward to a rate of 267,000, the slowest pace on records dating back to 1963. Sales for April and March were also revised downward.
High unemployment, slow job growth, and tight credit have kept people from buying homes. The industry received a boost this spring when the government offered tax credits to homebuyers. But since they expired in April, the number of people looking to buy has dropped, even with the lowest mortgage rates in decades available.
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| Obama calls on Senate to pass campaign money bill |
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Date: 27-07-2010
President Barack Obama is imploring Republican senators to allow a vote on new campaign finance disclosure requirements, warning them not to resort to political delaying tactics that would block the legislation.
Speaking in the Rose Garden on Monday, Obama said that by standing in the way of the bill, Republicans would be giving special interest groups increased sway in Washington.
"Corporate lobbyists will be able to tell members of Congress, if they don't vote the right way, they will face an onslaught of negative ads in their next campaign," Obama said. "And all too often, no one will actually know who's behind those ads."
The bill would impose new donor and contribution disclosure requirements on nearly all organizations that air political ads independently of candidates or the political parties. The legislation would require the sponsor of the ad to appear in it and take responsibility for it. Obama argued that the bill would also reduce foreign influence over American elections.
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| Target Corp. spending company money on candidates |
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Date: 27-07-2010
Here's something Target Corp. isn't advertising in its Sunday circular: The discount retailer is now a major donor to a group backing the Republican candidate for Minnesota governor.
And that's not sitting well with every Target shopper.
Under new laws allowing corporations to spend company money on election campaigns, the Minneapolis-based chain gave $150,000 to a Republican-friendly political fund staffed by insiders from departing GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty's administration. The group, MN Forward, is running TV ads supporting state legislator Tom Emmer, the presumptive GOP nominee.
The corporate money is flowing since the U.S. Supreme Court threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that prohibited companies and unions from donating to campaigns for or against candidates. The decision, which came earlier this year, changed rules in about half the states. But the change is so new that experts don't have a good handle on the likely impact nationally.
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| No new recession, let tax cuts die: Geithner |
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Date: 26-07-2010
The economy is not likely to slip back into recession but letting tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire is necessary to show commitment to cutting budget deficits, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Sunday.
In appearances on several Sunday talk shows, Geithner said only 2 to 3 percent of Americans -- those making $250,000 or more a year -- will be affected when tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush end on schedule this year.
Republicans want to extend the tax cuts and Democrats are divided but Geithner said reductions for top earners should end.
"We think that's the responsible thing to do because we need to make sure we can show the world that (we're) willing as a country now to start to make some progress bringing down our long-term deficits," he said on ABC's "This Week" program.
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