Walmart offers everything - even love
They came for the low prices and stayed for the
lifetime commitment.
A couple that met in a North Carolina Walmart returned to the same store to hold their wedding ceremony.
Wayne Brandenburg said he would casually browse through the store a few times a week and that was where he met his future wife, Susan, who was working there as a cashier.
“I’d ask her how she was that day and tell her she looked very nice,” he said.
He was a widower and Susan was working at the store after her divorce.
Wayne built up the courage to ask her on a date and began taking Susan’s favourite lunch to Walmart each day.
“He was very much a gentleman and I looked forward to seeing him,” she said.
A year later, Wayne proposed.
Susan accepted but the couple was not officially married until six years later.
When they were trying to decide where to hold the reception, Wayne came up with the idea of getting married in the same store where they had met.
The wedding cake even came from the store’s bakery and the couple was reportedly joined by family, friends and even some store customers who stopped in to observe the ceremony.
While the story may sound a bit unusual, it’s actually somewhat common, according to one study.
In fact, Psychology Today says Walmart is the most popular place for Americans to fall in love at first sight.
A couple that met in a North Carolina Walmart returned to the same store to hold their wedding ceremony.
Wayne Brandenburg said he would casually browse through the store a few times a week and that was where he met his future wife, Susan, who was working there as a cashier.
“I’d ask her how she was that day and tell her she looked very nice,” he said.
He was a widower and Susan was working at the store after her divorce.
Wayne built up the courage to ask her on a date and began taking Susan’s favourite lunch to Walmart each day.
“He was very much a gentleman and I looked forward to seeing him,” she said.
A year later, Wayne proposed.
Susan accepted but the couple was not officially married until six years later.
When they were trying to decide where to hold the reception, Wayne came up with the idea of getting married in the same store where they had met.
The wedding cake even came from the store’s bakery and the couple was reportedly joined by family, friends and even some store customers who stopped in to observe the ceremony.
While the story may sound a bit unusual, it’s actually somewhat common, according to one study.
In fact, Psychology Today says Walmart is the most popular place for Americans to fall in love at first sight.
Greek March unemployment rises
Greece's jobless rate rose
again in March, reflecting the pain of a crippling recession after years of
austerity under the country's international bailout.
Record joblessness is a major angst for Greece's coalition government as it scrambles to hit fiscal targets and show there is light at the end of the tunnel after years of unpopular tax rises and cuts to wages and pensions.
Unemployment rose to 26.8% from a downwardly revised 26.7% in February, according to statistics service data released on Thursday and is more than twice the average rate in the euro zone which hit 12.2% in April.
"It's long-term unemployment that is the most worrisome as the percentage is higher than 60%," said economist Angelos Tsakanikas at think tank IOBE, adding that the proportion of jobless people out of work for more than a year had been around 45% in 2008.
Those aged between 15 and 24 remain the hardest-hit, even though the jobless rate for that age group eased to 58.3% in March from 64.2% in February.
As the economy shrinks for a sixth straight year and with 1.3 million people officially without jobs - more than the population of neighbouring Cyprus - the pain is felt across the board.
Borrowers have fallen behind on loans and fewer workers are paying into pension funds.
Since the crisis erupted in 2009, Greece's jobless rate has tripled as hundreds of thousands lost their jobs or businesses and about 700 to 1 000 Greeks have been losing their jobs daily, according to estimates.
Once rare in a country where family ties are strong, rising numbers of homeless people, some of them old and sick, have also become a common sight across Athens.
Six out of 10 people on the street lost their home in the past two years and 47% of those have children, according to a study by Klimaka, a nongovernmental organisation.
In the capital's most rundown areas, ordinary Greeks who lost their jobs as a result of the country's economic crisis sleep outdoors side by side with Aids patients, drug addicts and others on the fringes of society.
Scrambling for ways to ease the pain for Greeks, Athens wants to tap about €170m of EU regional development funds to launch job programmes and has asked the European Commission to approve the move.
A turnaround will take time to be felt in the labour market even if recovery sets in next year as authorities predict.
The central bank projects unemployment will peak at 28% before it starts to decline in 2015.
Record joblessness is a major angst for Greece's coalition government as it scrambles to hit fiscal targets and show there is light at the end of the tunnel after years of unpopular tax rises and cuts to wages and pensions.
Unemployment rose to 26.8% from a downwardly revised 26.7% in February, according to statistics service data released on Thursday and is more than twice the average rate in the euro zone which hit 12.2% in April.
"It's long-term unemployment that is the most worrisome as the percentage is higher than 60%," said economist Angelos Tsakanikas at think tank IOBE, adding that the proportion of jobless people out of work for more than a year had been around 45% in 2008.
Those aged between 15 and 24 remain the hardest-hit, even though the jobless rate for that age group eased to 58.3% in March from 64.2% in February.
As the economy shrinks for a sixth straight year and with 1.3 million people officially without jobs - more than the population of neighbouring Cyprus - the pain is felt across the board.
Borrowers have fallen behind on loans and fewer workers are paying into pension funds.
Since the crisis erupted in 2009, Greece's jobless rate has tripled as hundreds of thousands lost their jobs or businesses and about 700 to 1 000 Greeks have been losing their jobs daily, according to estimates.
Once rare in a country where family ties are strong, rising numbers of homeless people, some of them old and sick, have also become a common sight across Athens.
Six out of 10 people on the street lost their home in the past two years and 47% of those have children, according to a study by Klimaka, a nongovernmental organisation.
In the capital's most rundown areas, ordinary Greeks who lost their jobs as a result of the country's economic crisis sleep outdoors side by side with Aids patients, drug addicts and others on the fringes of society.
Scrambling for ways to ease the pain for Greeks, Athens wants to tap about €170m of EU regional development funds to launch job programmes and has asked the European Commission to approve the move.
A turnaround will take time to be felt in the labour market even if recovery sets in next year as authorities predict.
The central bank projects unemployment will peak at 28% before it starts to decline in 2015.
India hikes gold duty to stem demand
India, the world's top gold consumer, on Wednesday hiked import duty on the precious metal to stem surging demand and reduce the country's ballooning current account deficit.
Gold purchases are one of the biggest contributors to India's current account deficit - the broadest measure of trade - which widened to just under five percent from 4.2% the previous year as imports outpaced exports.
The import duty on gold had been raised from six percent to eight percent, Revenue Secretary Sumit Bose told the Press Trust of India news agency.
The import duty hike was the second since the start of the year. Last year the government doubled the duty on gold to four percent.
Indians bought 162 tonnes of gold last month, twice the customary amount, as they sought to exploit a slide in global prices.
The hike is part of a wider set of measures to improve the finances of Asia's third-largest economy, which faces stubbornly high inflation, a sharp slowdown in growth as well as the hefty current and fiscal account deficits.
Ratings agencies have threatened to downgrade India's sovereign investment rating to junk status unless the government takes steps to clean up the nation's finances.
India has long been the world's biggest buyer of gold with purchases strongest during the religious festival and wedding seasons.
Last year's rise in the import duty on gold dampened demand temporarily but purchases soon picked up again.
Many Indians - especially in rural areas where there are few banks - buy gold in the form of jewellery, bars and coins as a hedge against inflation.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that gold imports must be curtailed, leading the Reserve Bank of India to take separate steps to curb imports.
Gold has fallen 16% since the start of the year as investors bet that the US Federal Reserve may soon start unwinding its financial stimulus as the US economy shows signs of recovery.
China to cut coal use amid protests
China is considering plans to cut coal consumption in some major industrial regions, people familiar with the policy said, as part of measures to reduce air pollution - an issue that has triggered a surge in public protests.
In a plan to be released this month, China may set a target to reduce coal use in a heavily polluted region in the north spanning Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin by a combined 100 million tonnes a year by 2015, said a person who has been involved in the policy discussions.
That region consumed an estimated 375 million tonnes of coal last year, around a tenth of the national total, with Hebei province, China's main steel producer, alone responsible for about 300 million tonnes.
Tackling a dependence on coal a major cause of smog and acid rain though, will test China's resolve to clean up its air, water and soil after decades of rapid industrial growth.
Previous attempts by Beijing to rein in its industrial polluters have not always succeeded, with growth-obsessed local governments often turning a blind eye to violations. Fierce lobbying by powerful state-owned utilities also appears to have put paid to a recent plan to raise national coal standards and ban low-grade imports.
Jiang Kejun, a senior researcher at the Energy Research Institute, a think-tank run by the National Development and Reform Commission, said precise targets were still being debated, but a decision was expected soon.
"These targets should be included in the plan, but we are actually still in the process of setting the precise numbers it isn't a particularly easy thing to do," said Jiang, who is involved in drawing up the policies.
China was previously committed to slowing the rate of coal consumption growth, but recent pollution scares appear to have increased its resolve to tackle problems caused by excessive coal combustion.
In January, thick, hazardous smog shrouded Beijing and other industrialised northern Chinese cities for more than a week, with many blaming excessive coal-burning by power plants, steel mills and other industrial facilities.
Steel capacity curbs
The new pollution plan is also expected to ban capacity expansions in steel and other polluting industries in major cities, and force firms to run emissions control equipment. Companies that fail to comply face higher power prices and the threat of having their power and water supplies cut off, officials familiar with the policy told Reuters last week.
China has sought to use the growing public clamour against air pollution to get tough on high-polluting, high-energy consuming industries like steel, cement and aluminium, which have been sapped by crippling levels of overcapacity.
Local industry is responsible for 49% of Beijing's pollutant emissions, vehicles 22 percent, and drift from surrounding provinces, including Hebei, 24.5%, according to a 2011 study. Coal-burning makes up more than 90 percent of sulphur dioxide emissions.
National Targets
China is also looking to reduce coal consumption in the big manufacturing regions of the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas by 50 million tonnes each though analysts say those figures are unlikely to be enough to change China's overall energy consumption patterns.
"Those are relatively small numbers in the grand scheme of things," said Bill Durbin, analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie in Beijing.
"We're looking at total coal consumption of nearly 4 billion tonnes and expect to see that rise, simply because there is a lack of alternatives for baseload power generation, particularly as you move to the central and western regions."
Last October, in its 5-year plan on air pollution, China identified the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Pearl and Yangtze river deltas as "pilot zones" to control coal consumption.
It also said China would seek to reduce the share of coal in the national energy mix by promoting renewables and building new gas storage facilities in key cities. Around half of China's total energy comes from coal, far more than anywhere else in the world.
China has already said it aims to keep national coal production capacity to within 4.1 billion tonnes by 2015, up from 3.24 billion tonnes in 2010.
According to the China Coal Industry Association, China's total consumption is still likely to hit 5 billion tonnes by 2020. Wood Mackenzie, in a report published on Tuesday, said China's coal demand would double to 7 billion tonnes by 2030.
"If they cap coal consumption then they will have to raise investment in natural gas, but we're not seeing enough investment that would allow gas to displace coal," said Durbin.
The lack of reliable data is likely to make coal cuts difficult. In Hebei, unregulated private steel mills with a history of underreporting output use large amounts of coal. Monitoring nationally will be an even bigger challenge.
Last year's 5-year plan said special emissions restrictions would be imposed in 47 big cities, banning capacity growth in thermal power, steel, construction materials, coking, non-ferrous metals and chemicals.
US companies add more jobs
Hiring by US firms was sluggish in May while a
sharp rise in mortgage interest rates last week weighed on what had been a
buoyant housing market, adding to signs the economy had lost some momentum in
the second quarter.
A separate report from the Federal Reserve characterised the pace of the economic expansion as "modest to moderate" since mid-April as hiring remained relatively subdued.
The Fed's Beige Book of economic conditions is prepared as research for policymakers to use at their next meeting on June 18-19, a meeting that will be watched for any indications as to when the Fed may pull back on its stimulus programme.
Private employers added 135 000 jobs in May, the ADP national employment report showed, an acceleration from April but missing forecasts for a gain of 165 000.
April's private payrolls were revised to an increase of 113 000 from the previously reported 119 000 gains.
"The number was weak," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, which jointly developed the report.
"The data is suggesting that instead of job growth stepping up, it's actually stepping down as we move into the summer months," Zandi told reporters.
"It's not like we're falling off a cliff...it just feels like we're throttling back a little bit."
The ADP report showed manufacturers had shed payrolls in May and a separate report indicated jobs growth in the vast services sector was weak last month, with a gauge of employment at services firms falling to its lowest in close to a year.
Expansion
Economic growth is expected to cool in the current quarter from the 2.4% rate in the first three months of the year, partly due to fiscal belt-tightening in Washington.
Economists still largely expect the recovery should regain traction in the second half of the year.
The goods producing sector cut 3 000 jobs in May, with a drop of 6 000 positions at manufacturing firms, which could be partially due to defence spending cutbacks, Zandi said.
Wall Street was down over 1% by mid-afternoon, while the weak data helped push Treasury debt prices higher.
The dollar was weaker against a basket of currencies.
Activity in the US services sector picked up slightly in May, with the institute for supply management's services index edging up to 53.7 last month from 53.1 in April and that topped economists' expectations for 53.5.
A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector.
The May figure was still off this year's peak of 56.0, which was hit in February.
The forward-looking new orders component rose, but the employment measure slipped to the lowest level since last July at 50.1 from 52.0.
Even with the lacklustre growth, the services industry held up better than its manufacturing counterpart, which contracted in May, according to data from ISM released earlier in the week.
Data on Wednesday added to signs of a slowdown in manufacturing as new orders for factory goods rose in April but not enough to reverse the prior month's plunge.
In a busy day for economic releases, yet another report showed unit labour costs fell in the first quarter by 4.3%, the most in four years, although the reading appeared to be distorted by a shift in employee compensation at the end of last year to avoid a tax hike.
Nervousness the Fed may taper bond purchases sooner than had been expected, sent fixed 30-year mortgage rates up 17 basis points to average 4.07% in the week ended May 31, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.
Last week's interest rate was the highest since April 2012 and the first time rates have been above 4% since early May last year.
Demand for refinancing was hit hardest by the acceleration in rates, with applications slumping 15.0%.
The gauge of loan requests for home purchases - a leading indicator of home sales - held up relatively better, falling just 1.6%.
A separate report from the Federal Reserve characterised the pace of the economic expansion as "modest to moderate" since mid-April as hiring remained relatively subdued.
The Fed's Beige Book of economic conditions is prepared as research for policymakers to use at their next meeting on June 18-19, a meeting that will be watched for any indications as to when the Fed may pull back on its stimulus programme.
Private employers added 135 000 jobs in May, the ADP national employment report showed, an acceleration from April but missing forecasts for a gain of 165 000.
April's private payrolls were revised to an increase of 113 000 from the previously reported 119 000 gains.
"The number was weak," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, which jointly developed the report.
"The data is suggesting that instead of job growth stepping up, it's actually stepping down as we move into the summer months," Zandi told reporters.
"It's not like we're falling off a cliff...it just feels like we're throttling back a little bit."
The ADP report showed manufacturers had shed payrolls in May and a separate report indicated jobs growth in the vast services sector was weak last month, with a gauge of employment at services firms falling to its lowest in close to a year.
Expansion
Economic growth is expected to cool in the current quarter from the 2.4% rate in the first three months of the year, partly due to fiscal belt-tightening in Washington.
Economists still largely expect the recovery should regain traction in the second half of the year.
The goods producing sector cut 3 000 jobs in May, with a drop of 6 000 positions at manufacturing firms, which could be partially due to defence spending cutbacks, Zandi said.
Wall Street was down over 1% by mid-afternoon, while the weak data helped push Treasury debt prices higher.
The dollar was weaker against a basket of currencies.
Activity in the US services sector picked up slightly in May, with the institute for supply management's services index edging up to 53.7 last month from 53.1 in April and that topped economists' expectations for 53.5.
A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector.
The May figure was still off this year's peak of 56.0, which was hit in February.
The forward-looking new orders component rose, but the employment measure slipped to the lowest level since last July at 50.1 from 52.0.
Even with the lacklustre growth, the services industry held up better than its manufacturing counterpart, which contracted in May, according to data from ISM released earlier in the week.
Data on Wednesday added to signs of a slowdown in manufacturing as new orders for factory goods rose in April but not enough to reverse the prior month's plunge.
In a busy day for economic releases, yet another report showed unit labour costs fell in the first quarter by 4.3%, the most in four years, although the reading appeared to be distorted by a shift in employee compensation at the end of last year to avoid a tax hike.
Nervousness the Fed may taper bond purchases sooner than had been expected, sent fixed 30-year mortgage rates up 17 basis points to average 4.07% in the week ended May 31, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.
Last week's interest rate was the highest since April 2012 and the first time rates have been above 4% since early May last year.
Demand for refinancing was hit hardest by the acceleration in rates, with applications slumping 15.0%.
The gauge of loan requests for home purchases - a leading indicator of home sales - held up relatively better, falling just 1.6%.
$200m credit card hacking ring busted
Eleven people in the United States, the UK and Vietnam have been arrested and accused of running a $200m worldwide credit card fraud ring, US and UK law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors in New Jersey said they had filed charges against a 23-year-old man from Vietnam.
They said in a statement that authorities in Vietnam had arrested Duy Hai Truong on May 29 in an effort to break up a ring he is accused of running with co-conspirators, who were not named in the statement.
"One of the world's major facilitation networks for online card fraud has been dismantled by this operation, and those engaged in this type of crime should know that they are neither anonymous, nor beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies," Andy Archibald, interim deputy director of the National Cyber Crime Unit, said in a statement on the British government's Serious Organized Crime Agency website.
The arrests were coordinated by the three countries, the statement said.
The arrests come as law enforcement officials around the world are cracking down on Internet-related heists.
Two weeks ago, authorities raided Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rica-based company that provided a virtual currency system used frequently by criminals to move money around the world without using the traditional banking system.
Earlier last month, authorities arrested seven people involved in a $45m heist in which hackers removed limits on prepaid debit cards and used ATM withdrawals to drain cash from two Middle Eastern banks.
"It's rare that you find actual human beings behind these things," said Mark Rasch, a former cyber crimes prosecutor and now a lawyer in private practice in Bethesda, Maryland. "Usually you can tie them to organizations or hacker handles, but it's harder to find individual people."
Rebekah Carmichael, a spokeswoman for New Jersey US Attorney Paul Fishman, said the charges were filed in New Jersey's federal court because some of the victims of the scheme are residents of the state.
Prosecutors claim Truong and accomplices stole information related to more than a million credit cards and resold it to criminal customers through the websites www.matteuter.biz and www.mattfeuter.com, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in New Jersey.
According to the complaint, Truong hacked into websites that sold goods and services over the Internet and collected personal credit card information from the sites' customers. "The victims' credit cards incurred, cumulatively, more than $200m in fraudulent charges," the complaint said. The scheme began in 2007.
"Like many 'carder' cases, this is an international conspiracy," Rasch said, adding that a recently passed computer crime law in Vietnam had made it possible for Vietnamese authorities to participate in the multinational sting.
Although Truong has been charged in the United States, he does not have a US-based lawyer because he is being held in Vietnam, Carmichael said.
