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Soaring gas prices lured Americans out of their cars and onto public transportation, adding up to a five percent increase in ridership in the first three months of 2012, the most significant 1st quarter increase since 1999.  According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA),  Americans took almost 125 million more rides on public transit […]

Home prices — including distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales), climbed 1.1 percent in April, according to a new report from CoreLogic.  If you don’t count distressed sales, prices rose 2.6 percent.  Prices have not risen for two consecutive months since June 2010, a time when the homebuyer tax credit was still available. Although the […]

During a spell of extremely sunny weather, – on Saturday, May 26 — the solar-energy record by sourcing nearly 50 percent of its daytime electricity needs from sunshine.  According to Germany’s Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR), solar power plants produced an unprecedented 22 gigawatts of electricity, approximately the same amount generated by 20 nuclear […]

Which American city is at the greatest financial risk from a hurricane?  If you think it’s New Orleans or Miami, you’re wrong.  According to CoreLogic, a data analysis firm, it’s New York City that is at the greatest risk, both from the number of properties impacted and the dollar value of the damage.  The area […]

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), has asked policymakers to focus their crisis support on solvent Eurozone banks.  “The ECB will continue lending to solvent banks and will keep the liquidity lines active and alive with solvent banks,” Draghi said. World stock markets have lost roughly $4 trillion as European turmoil proliferated […]

Google Chrome has overtaken Internet Explorer (IE) to become the world’s most widely used web browser.  Google Chrome was the world’s most popular web browser for a single weekend in March, but according to StatCounter, it is now more popular than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and is expected to remain in the top spot for the […]

The world’s largest banks need to raise as much as $566 billion of common equity to meet Basel III rules on capital to be implemented by 2019, cutting shareholder returns, according to analysts at Fitch Ratings.  The 29 global banks that regulators believe are too big to fail need new capital that equals nearly 23 […]

Disagreement emerged early during the latest round of international climate change talks in Bonn, with the European Union (EU) and developing countries clashing over the future of the Kyoto protocol.  Under the terms of last year’s Durban Platform, the EU had agreed to sign an extension of the Kyoto protocol before it lapses at the […]

The 17-nation Eurozone is at risk of falling into a “severe recession,” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned, as it called on governments and the European Central Bank to act quickly to keep the slowdown from becoming a drag on the global economy.  OECD Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan warned the euro-zone […]

If you want to sell a product, price it correctly. That theory at long last appears to be working in the U.S. housing market.  The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that sales of existing homes rose 3.4 percent in April when compared with March.  One reason is that asking prices were remarkably affordable.  The […]