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Monday, April 30, 2012

Passing the grade, not passing grades

Exams watchdog plans A-level reforms to curb persistent grade inflation | Education | guardian.co.uk: "The head of the exams watchdog has signalled wide-ranging reforms to A-levels to tackle claims that examiners have been giving students "the benefit of the doubt", leading to persistent grade inflation.

Glenys Stacey, chief executive of Ofqual, said the body would consult over the summer on proposals to scrap the modular AS structure, to make certain core subjects compulsory for all under-18s, and to introduce multiple choice questions to ensure students were being tested more widely on their knowledge.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Stacey blamed examiners for year-on-year grade inflation, which she said was "impossible to justify".

"If you look at the history, we have seen persistent grade inflation for these key qualifications for at least a decade," she said. "[It] is virtually impossible to justify and it has done more than anything, in my view, to undermine confidence in the value of those qualifications."

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Not your standard Bologna...

The Bologna process has been key to European universities' success | Education | The Guardian: "Last week ministers of education from 47 European countries met in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, to agree the next steps in the long-running Bologna process, the crab-like progress towards creating a European higher education area (EHEA) spanning half the globe, from Reykjavik to Vladivostok.

The original aim of Bologna was to introduce the bachelors-master's course pattern across Europe and make degrees portable. But a lot more has been added since – for example, on lifelong learning and PhDs. The number of countries signing up to the EHEA has almost doubled, from 25 to 47.

No, don't turn the page. Europe matters. Not much happened in Bucharest, any more than it did at earlier ministerial jamborees, or even at the original meeting in 1998 in Bologna (home to the world's oldest university). The only whiff of controversy was an amendment to strengthen the "public responsibility" for (funding?) higher education.

But beneath the suffocating weight of E-acronyms, transparency instruments, action lines and the usual Euro-babble, a quiet revolution has been under way in European higher education – stimulated by the spirit of Bologna."

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Sunday, April 29, 2012

Apple- Ph.D. in Tax Avoidance, Obfuscation, Unethical Behavior, Litigation, and Evading the question

Apple has, over a long period of time, demonstrated its capabilities in business subjects in addition to engineering areas. Through filing lawsuits to exploiting Chinese workers while paying the CEOs egregious amounts and pursuing elaborate tax avoidance strategies, Apple has set high standards.


Apple’s Response on Its Tax Practices - NYTimes.com: "In response to requests for comment on the company’s tax practices, Apple provided this statement to The New York Times:


Over the past several years, we have created an incredible number of jobs in the United States. The vast majority of our global work force remains in the U.S., with more than 47,000 full-time employees in all 50 states. By focusing on innovation, we’ve created entirely new products and industries, and more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers — from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers. Apple’s international growth is creating jobs domestically since we oversee most of our operations from California. We manufacture parts in the U.S. and export them around the world, and U.S. developers create apps that we sell in over 100 countries. As a result, Apple has been among the top creators of American jobs in the past few years.

Apple also pays an enormous amount of taxes which help our local, state and federal governments. In the first half of fiscal year 2012 our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax.
We have contributed to many charitable causes but have never sought publicity for doing so. Our focus has been on doing the right thing, not getting credit for it. In 2011, we dramatically expanded the number of deserving organizations we support by initiating a matching gift program for our employees.
Apple has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards, complying with applicable laws and accounting rules. We are incredibly proud of all of Apple’s contributions. "

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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Two more data points- need for women to get educated before having children

Moms defending their children rather than taking them to the woodshed...

Student drops f-bomb on Twitter, gets expelled - Technolog on msnbc.com: "Indeed. While school Superintendent Dennis Stockdale wouldn't comment on the individual case, he did tell the Journal Gazette that "the school has never disciplined and will not discipline students for anything they tweet or put online using their own computer, on their own time, and outside the school’s network." We reached out to both Carroll and Garrett High School and will update this story when we hear back.

Surely then Carroll isn't the only kid to post something "inappropriate" on a school-issued computer. That's the opinion of Carroll's mom, who told the Journal Gazette she believes her son is being targeted for previous run-ins with school officials over noxious tweets.

“They need to go on every student and staff member’s computer and review them,” she said. "They'll find plenty of stuff." "


Digital Life - Girls expelled for Facebook 'Hit List': "All around the nation bullying is getting people shot and killed in schools," said Tim Tinsley, Courtney Tinsely's dad.
The students were expelled.
Fortier's parents said the conversation was inappropriate, but they call the punishment too harsh.
"They were just talking, just talking garbage, just teenage banter," said Tabitha Fortier.
"I didn't think it was acceptable, but it wasn't something they should get expelled over," said Bonnie Martin-Nolan."

Friday, April 27, 2012

Lehman - not for the Lay men, but for the Slime-men

Lehman elite stood to get $700 million - latimes.com: "Less than a year before the 2008 collapse of Lehman Bros. plunged the global economy into a terrifying free fall, the Wall Street firm awarded nearly $700 million to 50 of its highest-paid employees, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times.

The documents, which were among the millions of pages submitted in Lehman's bankru-ptcy, show the list of top earners each were pledged $8 million to $51 million in cash, stock and other compensation. How much, if any, of the stock was cashed in before the bankruptcy wiped out its value couldn't be determined.

Still, the rich pay packages for so many people raised eyebrows even among compensation experts and provided fresh evidence of the money-driven Wall Street culture that was blamed for triggering the financial crisis."

Jobs around the World

Economy Watch - Big US companies adding jobs ... overseas: "A Wall Street Journal analysis of 35 companies based in the United States that employ more than 50,000 people found that they collectively added 446,000 jobs between 2009 and 2011, around three quarters of which were overseas. During that period, 60 percent of their revenue growth came from overseas.
Labor economists say this presents a mixed bag for American workers. The approximately 334,000 jobs created overseas aren't coming at the expense of the domestic labor market, as in the case of offshoring. They were probably responsible for some job creation here.
"Jobs will be added both places and not at the expense of each other," said Hal Sirkin, a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. "A lot of the know-how is in the United States, so it will create domestic jobs because you'll hire people to manage" the overseas expansion, he said. "

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Groupon - missed classes on common sense

Market Day - Groupon's 'beer summit' maybe wasn't such a good idea: "At a town hall meeting attended via webcast by the Wall Street Journal, Mason talked about "not taking stupid risks" and emphasized "quality and control." Those are words that investors, rattled by the daily deal company's fourth quarter earnings restatement, would have been glad to hear, if it hadn't been accompanied by a less-reassuring statement: "Sorry, too much beer."
On Thursday, Groupon spokeswoman Julie Mossler defended the CEO and his choice of beverage. "I've never seen Andrew drunk," she told msnbc.com. "It's a really relaxed environment… It's not like him drinking a beer or not drinking a beer sends a particular message." "

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

When the Chinese don't care about the working conditions of their fellow citizens

Apple’s Profit Nearly Doubles as iPhones Sales Soar - NYTimes.com: "Mr. Cook said that Apple’s quarterly revenue from China was $7.9 billion, about 20 percent of total company revenue. Furthermore, that was triple Apple’s China sales in the same period a year ago. In contrast, Apple’s China sales during its last fiscal year were about 12 percent of total revenue. Two years ago, Apple sales in China were 2 percent.

“China has grown from a rounding error to a massive new market,” said Robert Cihra, an analyst at Evercore Partners. “Their premium price point clearly has not been any hurdle to them growing there.”

Mr. Cook said that enormous numbers of people moving into the middle class in China were creating demand for goods including the iPhone. He said Apple was “doing everything” it could to serve the market. The iPhone 4S went on sale in China on Jan. 13, near the beginning of the last quarter, and starts at nearly $800 without a wireless plan, though it is available free with a multiyear carrier contract."

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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

School Diet

Jamie Oliver in blistering attack on Michael Gove over poor school diet | Education | The Observer: "Jamie Oliver has made a blistering attack on Michael Gove over school food, claiming that some of the education secretary's flagship academies are lowering nutrition levels among pupils and profiteering from junk food vending machines because they have been allowed to ignore national standards.

The TV chef and food campaigner says the substantial progress made over recent years in improving pupils' diets risks going into reverse because Gove is allowing new waves of academy schools to ignore nutrient-based standards introduced by the last government in 2008.

"I have got nothing against him personally. He is a charming and energetic man," says Oliver, in an interview for today's Observer Food Monthly. "But the health of millions of children could be affected by this one man."

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Open Journals

Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices | Science | The Guardian: "Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University has encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls.

A memo from Harvard Library to the university's 2,100 teaching and research staff called for action after warning it could no longer afford the price hikes imposed by many large journal publishers, which bill the library around $3.5m a year.

The extraordinary move thrusts one of the world's wealthiest and most prestigious institutions into the centre of an increasingly fraught debate over access to the results of academic research, much of which is funded by the taxpayer."

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Monday, April 23, 2012

The Republican attack on Science continues...

US Sen. Brown: Whole Foods policy hurts fishermen - CBS News: " U.S. Sen. Scott Brown is asking Whole Foods Market Inc. to reconsider a decision to no longer sell seafood that it doesn't consider sustainable.

In a letter to Whole Foods co-CEOs John Mackey and Walter Robb, Brown said Monday he was concerned the decision has more to do with political correctness than sound reasoning.

The Massachusetts Republican questioned what he called "uncertain science," and said the decision will hurt Massachusetts fishermen.

Whole Foods Market announced it will stop selling fish caught from depleted waters or through ecologically damaging methods, including octopus, gray sole, skate, Atlantic halibut and Atlantic cod caught by trawls."

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Education to Employment- A bridge too far?

1 of 2 grads jobless or underemployed - Business - Stocks & economy - msnbc.com: "A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.
Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.
An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor's degrees."

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Adding and losing a large company every year

The number of additions and the number leaving at IT majors like TCS look like the number of employees at "large" tech  firms- that is like adding and losing a big company every year. An interesting way to run a business.

TCS to hire 50,000 in FY 13 - The Economic Times: "The company had successfully undertaken the largest ever hiring effort in its history by adding and integrating 70,400 professionals during 2011-12.

"With business demand continuing to be robust, we have made 43,600 offers on campuses for trainees to join us from the second quarter of this fiscal year. Our efforts to increase retention by engaging with our employees and offering them a progressive career path are paying dividends with attrition rates falling further to 12.2 per cent," Mukherjee said.

The company has maintained high utilisation rates in the fourth quarter with utilisation excluding trainees at 80.6 per cent, while utilisation including trainees was at 71.3 per cent. The overall attrition rate was lower at 12.2 percent with IT attrition at a low of 11.05 per cent and BPO attrition at 21.6 percent.

The average age of a TCS employee is 28 yrs and 62.4 percent of the workforce has more than 3 yrs experience while 31.6 percent of the workforce comprised of women."

Sunday, April 22, 2012

One more saga in the history of evil

Don’t Be Evil but Don’t Miss the Tech Train - NYTimes.com: "The executives themselves don’t know what their powerful changes mean yet, and they, like the rest of us, are dizzied by the pace of change. Sure, automobiles changed the world, but the roads, gas stations and suburbs grew over decades. Facebook was barely on the radar five years ago and now has a community of more than 800 million, doing things that no one predicted. When the builders of the technology barely understand the effect they are having, the regulators of the status quo can seem clueless."
...

Moreover, arrogance can come easily to phenomenally well-educated people who have always been at the top of the class. Success, though sometimes fickle, comes fast, and is registered in millions and billions of dollars. The world applauds, so it’s easy to see yourself as a person who can choose well for the world.
In the “people like us” haze of the rarefied realms of tech, it’s easy to forget that, well, not everyone is like us. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of sharing personal information, of living in full view on the Web. And, of course, ordinary people have more downside risk than a 26-year-old Harvard dropout billionaire.
Another hazard is also one of the great strengths of the Silicon Valley: a tolerance of failure. Failing at an interesting project is seen as an important kind of learning. In the most famous case, Steve Jobs was driven from Apple, then failed in his NeXT Computer venture and for a while floundered at Pixar. But he picked up vital skills in management and technology along the way. There are a thousand lesser such stories.
If tech is building a new culture, with new senses of the private and the shared, the failure of overstepping boundaries is also the only way to learn where those boundaries have shifted.
It is a self-serving point, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely wrong. To the outsiders, it can look a lot as if the companies are playing “catch us if you can” by continually testing, and sometimes exceeding, boundaries.

Wal-Mart, not just low prices, even lower ethical standards

NYT: Wal-Mart hushed up Mexico bribery case - World news - The New York Times - msnbc.com: "Under fire from labor critics, worried about press leaks and facing a sagging stock price, Wal-Mart’s leaders recognized that the allegations could have devastating consequences, documents and interviews show. Wal-Mart de Mexico was the company’s brightest success story, pitched to investors as a model for future growth. (Today, one in five Wal-Mart stores is in Mexico.) Confronted with evidence of corruption in Mexico, top Wal-Mart executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing."
...

In December, after learning of The Times’s reporting in Mexico, Wal-Mart informed the Justice Department that it had begun an internal investigation into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a federal law that makes it a crime for American corporations and their subsidiaries to bribe foreign officials. Wal-Mart said the company had learned of possible problems with how it obtained permits, but stressed that the issues were limited to “discrete” cases.
“We do not believe that these matters will have a material adverse effect on our business,” the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But The Times’s examination found credible evidence that bribery played a persistent and significant role in Wal-Mart’s rapid growth in Mexico, where Wal-Mart now employs 209,000 people, making it the country’s largest private employer.
A Wal-Mart spokesman confirmed that the company’s Mexico operations — and its handling of the 2005 case — were now a major focus of its inquiry.
“If these allegations are true, it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for,” the spokesman, David W. Tovar, said. “We are deeply concerned by these allegations and are working aggressively to determine what happened.”
...“The wisdom of assigning any investigative role to management of the business unit being investigated escapes me,” Maritza I. Munich, then general counsel of Wal-Mart International, wrote in an e-mail to top Wal-Mart executives.
The investigation, she urged, should be completed using “professional, independent investigative resources.”

Friday, April 20, 2012

An out-of-touch Leadership

U.S. News - Catholic nuns group 'stunned' by Vatican scolding for 'radical feminist' ideas: "A prominent U.S. Catholic nuns group said it was "stunned" that the Vatican reprimanded it for spending too much time on poverty and social justice concerns and not enough on abortion and gay marriage.
In a stinging report on Wednesday, the Vatican said the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had been "silent on the right to life" and had failed to make the "Biblical view of family life and human sexuality" a central plank in its agenda. It accused the group of promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."
It also reprimanded American nuns for expressing positions on political issues that differed, at times, from views held by American bishops. Public disagreement with the bishops -- "who are the church's authentic teachers of faith and morals" -- is unacceptable, the report said."

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Rooftop Beehives at Waldorf-Astoria

New York’s Waldorf=Astoria Installs Rooftop Beehives | Luxury Travel Advisor: "This month The Waldorf=Astoria is joining the growing ranks of green, urban hotels that are harvesting their own honey from rooftop beehives. The luxury hotel will now be home to a colony of 45,000 bees, as six beehives are being installed on a rooftop space on the 20th floor next to a chef’s garden. Honey from these hives will be used in dishes at the restaurant, focusing on locally sourced ingredients and sustainable cuisine. You can’t get much more “local” in the farm-to-table food movement!

To celebrate this new addition to The Waldorf=Astoria’s esteemed clientele, the historic hotel will be holding a “hive naming” social media contest in April. For more information, visit www.waldorfnewyork.com."

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Misleading headlines - The ET way

Today The Economic Times ran an article with this headline on the main page of the website
Attend top US colleges at no charge

Clicking the link takes the reader to the article with the following headline:

Stanford, Princeton & 3 other elite varsities to offer free online classes - The Economic Times: "Five prestigious US universities will create free online courses for students worldwide through a new, interactive education platform dubbed Coursera, the founders announced on Wednesday.

The two founders, both professors of computer science at Stanford University, also announced that they had received $16 million in financing from two Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

Coursera will offer more than three dozen college courses in the coming year through its website at coursera .org, on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to neurology , from calculus to contemporary American poetry"

***

It is clear that readers can take some courses online through the Coursera website but that is quite different than  attending top US Colleges.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Not Every day Low Price- CEO at Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart's CEO paid $18.1 million in 2011 - CBS News: "NEW YORK — Wal-Mart's CEO Mike Duke received a pay package in 2011 worth $18.1 million, a 3 percent dip from the year before.

The decline came largely because Duke's performance based-cash bonus shrunk, according to an AP analysis.

Duke 62, who has been Wal-Mart's CEO since February 2009, received a base salary of $1.3 million and stock awards worth $13.1 million. But Duke's cash-based performance bonus fell 25 percent to $2.88 million in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31 because the company's operating income fell short of goals established in the compensation plan, according to its proxy filed Monday."

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Drugs and mental illness

Bitter pills to swallow - The Irish Times - Sat, Apr 14, 2012: "Do the drugs work? The number of antidepressants and drugs being prescribed for mental health problems is increasing – but a growing movement is questioning the true value of the medication

COULD IT be possible that Ireland is experiencing a hidden epidemic of mental illness? It sounds unlikely. There have been no screaming headlines or siren voices on TV warning about it. But judging by the numbers alone, the rise in the number of people suffering from mental ill-health is chilling."

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When the "Bottom Line" is far from the Bottom Line

The Treasury department calculates that it made a profit on TARP, but that is solely due to the fact that is cost the Treasury next to nothing to print money. If one takes into account the "true" cost of borrowing money, then the Treasury's act of giving money at near zero rates to banks and other corporations has created massive losses for the country, even without the cost of the moral hazard.

Bottom Line - Taxpayers to make money on TARP, Treasury says: "The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday that the many programs that it, the Federal Reserve and banking authorities implemented during the darkest hours of the 2007-2009 financial crisis likely will end up making a profit for taxpayers.
At a background presentation for reporters, a senior Treasury official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the department wanted to get word out about the success of the financial bailout before myths developed about it."

Friday, April 13, 2012

Economics of Indian Newspapers- article on Indian schools features picture of a foreign classroom, articles on "Indian" romance feature foreign intimate pictures

One school, one class: Integrating privileged, poor is the challenge - The Economic Times: "MUMBAI: This is probably the last year when a classroom in a school can be a described as a homogeneous club: students walking in from homes that are alike, parents raising them are similarly educated and when kids open their almost identical school bags, the stationery that spills out is so indistinguishable , it could be just anybody's .

In a radical overhaul, the RTE clause to admit 25% students from impoverished background will transform the Indian class to a mixed world, whether in equilibrium or out-of-balance , only time shall tell, for the questions on integration are far too many..."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Child-Free Zones versus Child Friendly Zones

TODAY Travel - Malaysia Airlines offers child-free zone on new Airbus A380: "When the airline’s first Airbus A380-800 takes to the skies on July 1, flying the Kuala Lumpur–London route, families with children won’t be welcome in the airplane’s upper deck, which will have 70 economy and 66 business class seats.
Instead, those passengers will be asked to book in the 350-seat economy class zone on the main deck, which the airline has designated as its child-friendly zone."

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Monday, April 09, 2012

Facebook- billion dollars for image app

Market Day - Facebook to buy Instagram for $1 billion: "If a picture is worth a thousand words, a website with a boatload of pictures is now worth $1 billion.
That is the price Facebook agreed to pay for Instagram, a less-than two-year-old company that makes a wildly popular mobile photography application.
"I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook," Facebook's head honcho Mark Zuckerberg said in a posting on Facebook (where else?) Monday.
Facebook, which is busy planning an initial public offering that could value the social networking at more than $100 billion, will pay a combination of cash and stock for Instagram, Reuters reported. Based in San Francisco, Instagram has about a dozen employees. The deal is expected to close by June 30."

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Sunday, April 08, 2012

Cook's red-hot pay: No incentive to build more humane supply chains

Market Day - Apple's Cook is highest paid CEO according to NYT: "Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook was awarded $378 million in compensation last year, making him by far the top-paid CEO among big public companies in a study published Sunday in the New York Times.
Cook’s pay package included a salary of $900,000, a bonus of $900,000 and a one-time award of Apple stock that initially was valued at $376.2 million but has soared along with Apple’s stock price to $634 million, according to the Times.
The pay package, which vests over 10 years, was worth more than the pay awards granted to the next nine highest-paid CEOs combined, according to the Times, which enlisted the consulting firm Equilar to analyze CEO pay."

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Saturday, April 07, 2012

Security for NATO Summit crushes Big Belly Solar Trash Bins

Solar trash cans yanked for NATO meeting - chicagotribune.com: "Expensive, state-of-the-art solar-powered garbage receptacles are being pulled from around downtown Chicago before next month’s NATO summit in favor of old-fashioned wire trash cans that police can more easily check for anything dangerous.

The BigBelly garbage and recycling barrels with trash compactors were touted by then-Mayor Richard Daley's administration as a way to save costs on pick-ups and potentially generate ad revenue while fitting with the former mayor’s oft-spoken commitment to environmental issues."

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Friday, April 06, 2012

Job cuts in Plano, reported by writer in B'lore- the great Globalization

J.C. Penney cuts 1000 jobs at headquarters, Pittsburgh - Yahoo! Finance: "(Reuters) - J.C. Penney Co Inc (NYS:JCP - News) laid off about 1000 employees at its headquarters in Plano, Texas and Pittsburgh customer call center, as part of its previously announced cost cutting measures, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
The retailer said it will take a pre-tax cash charge of $30 million to $38 million, most of which will be recognized in its first quarter ending April 28, primarily for one-time termination costs.
On Thursday, the company outlined plans to cut about 900 jobs, including roughly 600 at its headquarters, as it trims costs and tries to start running its 110-year-old business more like a nimble start-up.
(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Viraj Nair)"

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Data: facts or fiction?

Economy Watch - Disappointing jobs report may be skewed by data quirks: "Friday's report showing a sharp hiring slowdown in March lends weight to suspicions that a string of positive monthly reports may have been too good to be true.
But the disappointing numbers for March may not be as bad as they seem. The problem, say economists, is that unusual weather and seasonal adjustments may have thrown this winter's data out of whack."

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Thursday, April 05, 2012

Hard to digest this Burger News

Burger King Returns to the Market: Flip, Rinse, Repeat - Businessweek: "Burger King’s recent history of new ownership, sale, new ownership, sale has that patty-flipping metaphor stamped all over it. Now, merely 18 months after the venerable Home of the Whopper was sold to buyout shop 3G Capital, it is again returning to a stock market listing by taking over the ticker of Justice Holdings, a special purpose acquisition company owned by famed activist investor William Ackman.

Financed by a gaggle of Brazilian billionaires, 3G will get $1.4 billion in cash to transfer Burger King to Ackman’s Justice Holdings, which will own 29 percent of the chain. Burger King’s entire equity value will be about $4.8 billion, and the buyout shop will hold on to a 71 percent stake. There are more than 12,500 Burger Kings around the planet—90 percent of which are franchised."

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Sunday, April 01, 2012

Forget customers, JC Penney treats CEOs very well- hands out nice chunks to CEOs

J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson gets $53.3M in total compensaton - Dallas Business Journal: "J.C. Penney Co. CEO Ron Johnson received $53.3 million in total compensation from the company last year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Johnson joined Plano-based J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) in November from Apple Inc.    (NASDAQ: AAPL), where he was the chief retail officer.
Johnson received base salary of $375,000 and $52.7 million in stock awards, the Journal reported, citing a regulatory filing. The Journal reported that Myron "Mike" Ullman, the former CEO, received $34.6 million in total compensation last year."

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Nice pay, not Penney Pay, for a couple of months' work

J.C. Penney Paid CEO Ron Johnson $53.3 Million in 2011 - WSJ.com: "Ronald Johnson, who joined J.C. Penney Co. as chief executive in November, received $53.3 million in total compensation from the retailer last year.

Mr. Johnson, a former Apple Inc. executive, received a base salary of $375,000 and $52.7 million in stock awards, according to a regulatory filing. Mr. Johnson's performance-based bonus was $236,000, "

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