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How Two Bitter Adversaries Hatched A Plan To Change The Egg Business

Gene Gregory and Wayne Pacelle are the odd couple of American agriculture. “We were adversaries. Some might say, bitter adversaries,” says Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States. Pacelle’s organization says it wants to end factory farming. So Gene Gregory, president of the United Egg Producers, which represents most of the country’s [...]

A Comparison Of Candidates’ Tax Plans

From a flat tax to a “millionaires’ tax,” presidential candidates have put forth a variety of ideas for better steering the economy through changes to tax policies. Overview The Occupy Wall Street encampments have all but disappeared, but the issues raised by the movement’s rallying cry against inequality continue to have an impact on political [...]

Protesters At Apple Stores Demand ‘Ethical’ Products

In an effort to protest the working conditions in the Chinese factories that make Apple products, demonstrators delivered a petition to six different Apple stores in four different countries. The petition, which asks the country to make “ethical” products, included about 250,000 signatures. Organizers said they were delivering them to Apple stores in Bangalore, London, [...]

PepsiCo Says It Will Cut 8,700 Jobs Worldwide

PepsiCo, the maker of Pepsi soda and Doritos chips, said it will cut 8,700 jobs worldwide. That represents about 3 percent of its 300,000 person global work workforce. The announcement also comes just after the company announced better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings. The Financial Times reports that net income for the company rose 3 percent to $1.4 [...]

Foreclosure Deal May Mean More Foreclosures This Year

That big, $25 billion mortgage settlement that we’ve been hearing about forever is finally done. The deal involves five big banks and grew out of the robo-signing scandal, where bank employees signed off on thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them. The biggest chunk of the settlement will go toward reducing what underwater borrowers owe [...]

House Passes Bill That Would Ban Insider Trading By Lawmakers

The House on Thursday passed a bill that would ban congressional insider trading. The STOCK Act passed overwhelmingly, 417-2, despite some partisan disagreements over its scope. With congressional approval at all-time lows, the bill was widely seen by lawmakers as a small step in restoring public confidence. But differences remain to be worked out with [...]

Greek Government Reaches Austerity Deal That’s Key To Bailout Payment

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi says he’s been told by GreekPrime Minister Lucas Papademos that a deal has been reached on new austerity measures that Eurozone finance ministers have been seeking from Greece before it gets a crucial $173 billion bailout, The Financial Times is reporting. The Associated Press reports that “a spokeswoman for [...]

Settlement Reached With Banks On Relief For Some Homeowners

“After negotiating through the night,” NPR’s Yuki Noguchi reports, states attorneys general, federal officials and five major banks have agreed on a plan that will provide about $26 billion in mortgage relief and aid to homeowners who got crushed when the housing bubble burst. The Justice Department, NPR’s Carrie Johnson tells us, just announced that [...]

What Do The Dow’s Daily Swings Mean? Not Much.

Turn on the news on any given day, and you’re likely to hear about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It is the most frequently checked, and cited, proxy of U.S. economic health. But a lot of people–maybe most–don’t even know what it is. It’s just the stock prices of 30 big companies, summed up and [...]

For Election News, Voters Still Turn To Old Media

The twists and turns of the Republican presidential campaign have been practically made for — and watched on — live television. And despite predictions of new media tools like Twitter and Facebook dominating election coverage, Americans are continuing to rely on an old standby: cable TV. After coming in second in the Nevada caucuses, Newt [...]