Watch VIDEO -- Bank Transfer Day (Nov. 05): 650,000 Americans Transfer Money from Big Banks to Local Credit Unions

NEW YORK (Nov. 05) – Today (Saturday, Nov. 05) is Bank Transfer Day and thousands of dejected customers pull their money en masse from large corporate institutions and banks to dump it into credit unions.

Bank Transfer Day is also dubbed as Bank Occupation Day and Move Your Money Day, but whatever it is called, the purpose of each has been a call for customers of major banks to close their accounts and move their money to more localized credit unions and institutions.

This movement has already encouraged about 650,000 Americans to transfer their money from corrupt and just-for-profit banks to smaller, non-profit credit unions or community-owned banks and institutions.

Small banks and institutions are licking their lips foreseeing big bucks coming to them and some of them have already announced bonus programs to attract Big Banks’ dejected customers like First Tennessee Bank has offered, but only for today, an up to $300 bonus when you open a checking and saving account.

Watch video below Russia Today talks to freelance writer Kimberly Thorpe on the consequences of Bank Tranfer Day:

Bank of America Cancels Plans to Charge $5 Debit Card Fee

NEW YORK (Nov. 01) – At last Bank of America shows its intentions to drop the debit card fee of $5, proposed to be started from next year.

Bank of America Cancels Plans to Charge $5 Debit Card Fee

Bank of America with its final decision to drop the fee will follow other main banks, including Chase and Wells Fargo, which declared last week that they were withdrawing tests of similar charges.

This U-turn by the banking industry comes in the middle of rising public fury over higher fees and charges. A movement to get customers to switch to credit unions and community banks had marked this Saturday as "Bank Transfer Day."

Lower Rates On the Way for National Grid's Rhode Island Natural Gas Customers

With the first blasts of winter’s biting winds just around the corner, there’s good news for Rhode Islanders who heat their homes and businesses with natural gas. The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission has approved new rates for National Grid natural gas customers, which means net savings of 8.2 percent or more than $113 over the next twelve months.

While most of the rate reduction is the result of lower commodity costs, National Grid is also lowering some of the charges related to the operation of the distribution system.

The net reduction of eight percent applies to a typical residential natural gas heating customer in Rhode Island using 922 therms of natural gas per year. Annual costs will be reduced to $1,265 from $1,379. The new rates will take effect on November 1.

“This is more good news for our local customers and it’s right on time for the winter heating season,” said Timothy F. Horan, president of National Grid in Rhode Island. “It’s the second significant natural gas rate reduction for the community in as many years.” Last year the company reduced natural gas rates by 9.3 percent.

Record reserves and new supplies of natural gas coming on line caused natural gas costs to decline over the past few years. National Grid purchases natural gas for its customers and passes the cost of the commodity directly to the customer with no increase.

Rhode Islanders can find even more ways to save on their energy bills by going to powerofaction.com/ri.

Social networking giant set to introduce 'Facebook Marketing Solutions' for small businesses

Small businesses are ready to get big support from social networking giant. Facebook has reportedly working on a plan, dubbed as Facebook Marketing Solutions, to provide small businesses $10 million in free advertising.

Social network giant set to introduce 'Facebook Marketing Solutions'

In early 2012, under this plan, Facebook will give at least $50 of free advertising on Facebook to each small business qualified. The small businesses to be benefited by this program will be chosen by the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the next few months.

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Happy Birthday! Google Turns 13 -- Celebrated by Google Doodle

Search engine giant Google is celebrating its 13th birthday today (Sept. 27, 2011). The logo, transformed for one day only, in accordance with the Google marking the day of anniversaries of births, deaths, inventions and public holidays. 

Google Doodle Celebrated 13th Birthday

Its own birthday is no different; surrounded by multi-colored balloons and streamers; its logo is adorned with party hats and sits behind a table heaped with wrapped presents and a large white birthday cake with 13 candles.

Although Google officially celebrates its birthday on September 27; but they formally applied for incorporation on September 04, 1998 and got registered the domain ‘google.com’ on September 15

Before a formal incorporation they emerged as BackRub in 1996 when Yahoo! or AOL was extensively used. Finally, its name substitute was inspired by a play called googol, meaning "followed by a hundred zeroes". The name itself indicates their main endeavor to provide with outsized quantities of information for populace, and this is what they are known for today.

Rana Arif Tauseef and Shahzad Sidddique Elected as Chairman and Vice-chairman of Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA)

FAISALABAD, Pakistan (Sept. 16) – In the recent elections of Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) Rana Arif Tauseef is elected as Chairman for the term of 2011-12; while Shahzad Sidddique is elected as vice-chairman of the Association.

Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) Elections 2011-12

Rana Arif Tauseef is a well-known industrialist and brother of Rana Zahid Tauseef, former District Nazim Faisalabad and Rana Asif Tauseef, Minister of State for Privatization, and heads a group of most modern textile mills.

This is second term for Rana Arif Tauseef as Chairman of PTEA while in the past he has served the Association in various other capacities. His first term as Chairman of the Association was in the year 2005-06. He is also serving on boards of many charitable, health and educational institutions, contributing to society.

Presently textile industry is deep in trouble due to many factors mainly high-utility cost, trade deficit, additional levies as well as law and order situation emerging out of the war against terror and other barrier directly affecting the cost of running-business, which is hampered exports of the country.

Yahoo Comes Up with a Critical Decision, CEO Carol Bartz Departs

Yahoo's Chairman Roy Bostock Fired CEO Carol Bartz on Phone

Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo Inc, was fired by chairman Roy Bostock over phone on Tuesday due to ongoing conflicts with Chinese partner Alibaba and overall negative growth of the company during turbulent tenure spread over more than two and half years. 

Yahoo Comes Up with a Critical Decision, CEO Carol Bartz Departs

 Chief financial officer Tim Morse is expected to act as interim CEO until company finds someone to replace Bartz permanently and lead the company to restore its share in online advertising and content with rivals Google Inc and Facebook.

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Britain Tries for a Second Industrial Revolution

Cameron wants to boost manufacturing from 10 percent of British GDP, but weak export markets, complex regulation, and the supplier network are impediments

Mark Stein, manager of General Motors’ (GM) Vauxhall van plant in Luton, 29 miles north of London, starts presentations with an aerial photo of the site in 1965. It shows a vast complex of buildings that employed more than 35,000 workers. He points to a small red circle in the picture. That’s where GM’s current factory is. It employs 1,500.

Making stuff has dwindled from nearly 40 percent of Britain’s gross domestic product in the late 1950s to not much more than 10 percent now. What remains survives for a reason. GM’s Luton factory this year will produce 70,000 Vauxhall Vivaro vans and other vehicles, more than 60 percent for export. Manufacturing productivity grew 4.4 percent in the first quarter.

Prime Minister David Cameron has latched on to manufacturing as a cure for Britain’s economic hangover and its 7.9 percent jobless rate. “If you’re trying to make the economy grow long term on a sustainable basis, manufacturing is where we need to be,’’ says Vince Cable, U.K. Business Secretary. “One of the main growth sectors of the economy in recent years has been banking. For reasons that are blindingly obvious, that’s not going to be so important in future.’’

Starting a new Industrial Revolution will be hard. Government efforts to cut red tape produce plenty of their own. “If you were to write on a board how many agencies and support schemes there are, you would be amazed,” says Bill Parfitt, GM U.K.’s chairman.

Economists and some manufacturing executives also say that boosting manufacturing may be unwise. British manufacturing as a share of GDP is smaller than Germany’s 20 percent, yet it is similar to the U.S. and France, which have big service sectors. Britain may have reached an equilibrium between the two sectors. “I don’t think any economist believes that growth in the next five to 20 years will be driven by manufacturing,” says Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

British manufacturing lacks Germany’s advantages. Germany has long had industrial apprenticeships for young adults: Cable is trying to launch an apprenticeship program in Britain as well. In Germany, robust midsize companies supply big companies and export on their own. In contrast, consider the state of GM’s supply chain in Britain. Only 10 percent of the value of parts used at its main U.K. plant at Ellesmere Port are made domestically. The pound’s 25 percent drop since 2007 against a basket of currencies drives up the cost of imported parts even as it makes exports cheaper.

U.K. producers do excel at making goods where technology counts for more than the cost of labor, says Lee Hopley, chief economist at the Engineering Employers’ Federation. Revenue for Vitec, a high-tech maker of gear for the broadcast, military, and photographic markets, grew in the first half to $282 million from $250 million. “We do make some products in China,’’ says Chief Executive Officer Stephen Bird. “But my intention is that we will continue to manufacture in both the U.K. and Italy because we have great engineers.” A secret to survival is “not competing with cheap Chinese goods,” says Mark Henderson, CEO of MSE UK, which makes blood centrifuges.

Yet after a promising post-recession start, U.K. manufacturing shrank 0.5 percent in the quarter ended in June. The trade gap in June for goods was £8.9 billion ($14.5 billion). Business Secretary Cable says the weaker pound will help the U.K. gain share even in markets where growth is slow, and commercial diplomacy will sell more goods to developing countries. “The problem always has been that our export markets, particularly the euro zone and the U.S., are facing challenges of their own,” says Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics in London. “The idea that we were going to get a helpfully timed export boom was always a bit optimistic.”

Source : http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/britain-tries-for-a-second-industrial-revolution-09012011.html

U.S. Authorities Refused to Allow Sale of Italian Supercar in America

U.S. authorities have refused to allow the sale of Italian supercar ‘Huayra’, twin-turbocharged 12-cylinder carbon-titanium car, due to less-than-required safety standards followed by Pagani, the manufacturer of Huayra.

Italian automaker Pagani had plans to start selling $1 million, 700 horsepower Huayra supercar in the U.S. later this year but federal safety regulators have said "Not so fast."

At about 3,000 pounds, Pagani boasts that the Huayra is the lightest car in its class, enabling it to go from a zero to 60 miles per hour in about 3.5 seconds.

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Obama to Announce Fuel Standards for Big Vehicles

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fire trucks and concrete mixers, semis, heavy-duty pickups and all trucks in between will, for the first time, have to trim fuel consumption and emissions of heat-trapping gases under new efficiency standards being announced Tuesday by President Barack Obama.

The White House says the standards the president was announcing will save businesses billions of dollars in fuel costs, help reduce oil consumption and cut air pollution. The standards apply to vehicle model years 2014 to 2018.

Senior administration officials said the new targets affect three categories of vehicles.

Big rigs or semis will have to slash fuel consumption and production of heat-trapping gases by up to 23 percent. Gasoline-powered heavy-duty pickups and vans will have to cut consumption by 10 percent, or by 15 percent if the vehicles run on diesel fuel.

The standards also prescribe a 9 percent reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for work trucks, which include everything from fire trucks and concrete mixers to garbage trucks and buses, according to the officials, who requested anonymity to speak before the formal announcement. Obama was unveiling the standards at a trucking business in Virginia, a state crucial to his re-election hopes.

The officials projected savings of 530 million barrels of oil and $50 billion in fuel costs over the expected lives of the vehicles covered by the new standards, along with improved air quality and public health.

The administration released no miles-per-gallon equivalent for the new standards, saying that doing so would be confusing given the different categories of vehicles, the different types of vehicles in each category and the varying payloads that each one carries.

Officials did stress that the costs of making the trucks more fuel-efficient — ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars per vehicle — will be recouped through reduced fuel costs over the lifetime of the vehicles.

It's the second round of fuel efficiency standards in the past month.

Last month, Obama announced a deal with automakers to double overall fuel economy to 54.5 mpg by 2025, starting in model year 2017. Cars and light trucks now on the road average 27 mpg.

That followed a 2009 deal committing cars and trucks to averaging 35.5 mpg by model year 2016.

Obama won Virginia in the 2008 presidential election, dealing a blow to the GOP in what had been a solidly Republican South. He was the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to win Virginia in a presidential race.

The state again will be a critical battleground in the 2012 presidential race.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/obama-announce-fuel-standards-big-vehicles-070156059.html

AP sources: Obama seeks tax credits to aid vets

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve new initiatives to help some of America's 1 million unemployed military veterans find work, including tax credits for companies that hire out-of-work vets.

The proposal Obama is to outline Friday is part of the president's efforts to return to a focus on jobs after spending weeks mired in the contentious debt-limit debate that consumed the White House for much of the summer.
His announcement was to come shortly after the Labor Department releases a new round of nationwide unemployment data.

Last month's jobs report was dismal, with the country's unemployment rate ticking up to 9.2 percent and job growth slowing nearly to a halt.

The White House says the sluggish economy creates additional challenges for veterans looking to enter the civilian labor market. About 1 million veterans are unemployed, according the administration, including former 260,000 service members who joined the military after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The administration says the unemployment rate for the post-Sept. 11 service members is 13.3 percent.

The main features of Obama's proposal, according to administration officials, are two tax credits for companies that hire unemployed veterans:

— A "Returning Heroes" tax credit for 2012-2013. Companies that hire unemployed veterans would receive a $2,400 tax credit. That tax credit would increase to $4,800 if the veteran has been unemployed for six months or more.

— A two-year extension of the "Wounded Warriors" tax credit, which gives companies that hire veterans with service-related disabilities a $4,800 credit. If the veteran has been unemployed for six months of more, the tax credit increases to $9,600.


The tax credits would require congressional approval. Administration officials said the White House would start working with lawmakers on the proposal after Congress returns from its recess in September.

One official said the administration estimates the cost of the tax credits at $120 million.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the initiatives ahead of the president's announcement at the Washington Navy Yard.

During his remarks Friday, Obama also will challenge private companies to hire or train 100,000 veterans by the end of 2013. He is expected to name some companies that already have committed to taking part in that effort.


The president also will announce a joint initiative between the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments to come up with a "reverse boot camp" program that would help train service members for the civilian workforce as they wind down their time in the military.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/ap-sources-obama-seeks-tax-credits-aid-vets-072850449

All Pakistan Textile Processing Mills Association (APTPMA) Reacted to 3-day Gas Closure Notification

APTPMA Reacted to 3-day Gas Closure Notification

FAISALABAD, Pakistan (June 15) – Government has announced again a 3-day gas closure to industrial units in Faisalabad on Tuesday (June 14). In response to the gas closure notification; the general body of the All Pakistan Textile Processing Mills Association (APTPMA) has decided to challenge the 3-day gas outage this week. 

APTPMA arranged an urgent meeting to discuss the issue and decide the collective reaction to the latest gas closure notification. The meeting was presided over by Muhammad Saeed Sheikh, APTPMA chairman, and it was decided firmly that the workers will control the gas meters installed in their factories and would not let anybody to cut off the gas supply or reduce pressure as their income was directly related to the operation of their industrial units.

After deciding not to close their factories from Wednesday to Friday; APTPMA issued a statement, “If the SNGPL reduced pressure on Wednesday they would immediately convene a meeting to finalise a protest programme,” they maintained.

Petrol Shortage in Punjab - - Long Queues on the Petrol Pumps in Faisalabad

FAISALABAD, Pakistan (June 10) - - The shortage of petrol in different parts of Punjab and Sindh continued for the fifth consecutive day on Friday, affecting routine life and disturbing commercial activities.

Long Queues on the Petrol Pumps in Faisalabad

Many petrol pumps in different cities of the two provinces remained closed as fuel supplies couldn’t be restored by oil companies and Faisalabad is no exception.

Most of the petrol pumps in Faisalabad are closed for the fifth day and long queues can be seen on those petrol pumps which are still operative; but the people have complained about the low quality of petrol available. The shortage of the fuel has already added the problems of the residents of the cities. 

People are facing huge problems to continue routine life and commercial activities. Getting petrol after waiting long hours in the queues has become headache for the residents; even then the quality of the petrol is still a big question.