July 13 (Bloomberg) -- Oil fell from a three-day high in New York on speculation that growing U.S. supplies may signal slowing demand for fuel.
Futures reversed earlier gains as investors bet that stockpiles in the U.S. fell less than analysts predicted, after the American Petroleum Institute said yesterday crude inventories rose for the first time in six weeks. Analysts in a Bloomberg News survey had forecast supplies shrank before the Energy Department’s report today in Washington.
“Near-term direction will be down to the Energy Department statistics due out this afternoon,” Glen Ward, head of retail derivatives at London Capital Group Ltd., said in a note.
Crude for August delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange was down 51 cents, or 0.5 percent, at $96.92 a barrel at 1:45 p.m. London time. It earlier rose as much as 53 cents $97.96, the highest price since July 7.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Crude Oil Retreats From Three-Day High Before U.S. Supply Report - Businessweek
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Obama says he cannot guarantee Social Security checks will go out on August 3 - Political Hotsheet - CBS News
President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.
The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.
Google+ Users: 20 Million by the Weekend? | News & Opinion | PCMag.com
If the Google+ invites keep flowing, the search giant's social-networking site could reach 10 million users by day's end and 20 million by the end of the weekend, according to Tuesday analysis.
In an attempt to get a rough estimate of Google+ users, Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen (not to be confused with the Microsoft co-founder) has been comparing US Census Data with last names of certain Google+ members. Early estimates released over the weekend put Google+ at about 4.5 million users, but that has since exploded, Allen said.
"My surname-based analysis shows that the number of Google+ users worldwide reached 7.3 million yesterday (July 10)—up from 1.7 million users on July 4th," Allen wrote in a Google+ post. "That is a 350% increase in six days. The userbase is growing so quickly that it is challenging for me to keep up, since the number of users of any given surname (even the rare ones I am tracking) seems to be climbing every day."
More impressive, he said, is that it appears approximately 2.2 million people have joined Google+ in the last 32 to 34 hours, for a total of about 9.5 million people on Monday, Allen speculated.
As a result, he expects user numbers to grow to 10 million today and 20 million by the weekend, provided invites remain open. "As one G+ user put it, it is easy to underestimate the power of exponential growth," Allen wrote.
How exactly is Allen getting these numbers? He said he looked at US Census Bureau data about the popularly of last names in the U.S. and the compared it with the number of Google+ users who had the same last names.
Stifling heat forecast for half the U.S. | Reuters
CHICAGO (Reuters) -Excessive heat was forecast to blanket half of the continental United States on Tuesday.
The National Weather Service issued heat warnings or advisories for 24 states stretching from parts of Texas and Oklahoma to the plains, the Mississippi Valley and the east coast.
"It's going to stay hot in the central to southern plain states," said Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the weather service.
The heat on the east coast is not expected to be as intense.
"For the most part it's a one day heat wave," Vaccaro said.
But there was no reprieve from the heat in sight for Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Yesterday was the 13th consecutive day temperatures hovered at or above 100 degrees, according to the weather service. And the heat was expected to continue through next weekend.
Air quality alerts were also in effect on the east coast from Virginia to New Jersey.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Analyst: Even Dollar Stores Struggling In ‘Obama Depression’ « CBS Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — More stores across the U.S. that offer deeply-discounted products are seeing their sales decline after years of growth amid America’s “Great Recession” — and one analyst said on Monday it’s another sign of even deeper downturn.
While the demand at stores like the 99-Cent Store or Dollar Tree is still relatively high, the biggest chains in the nation have fallen short of Wall Street’s expectations for several months, a trend that may prove even more ominous for the economy at large.
“I think what’s going on in those stores is that we are in a depression for 80 percent of Americans,” top retail analyst Howard Davidowitz told KNX 1070.