The U.S. trade deficit rose in March at the fastest rate in 10 months. A rise in consumer goods lifted imports to a record level, outpacing a solid gain in U.S. exports.
The Commerce Department says the trade deficit widened to $51.8 billion in March, up from $45.4 billion in February. Imports rose 5.2 percent to a record $238.6 billion, reflecting more foreign oil, autos, cell phones and clothes.
Exports increased 2.9 percent to $186 instant payday loan.8 billion. Sales to Europe reached an all-time high despite the region’s debt crisis.
Economists caution that export growth, a bright spot for the U.S. economy, could slow in coming months if more European countries fall into recession.
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Ralcorp Holdings will restate its full-year 2011 and first quarter 2012 earnings related to an impairment charge from the spin-off of its Post brand cereal business that was understated.
St. Louis-based Ralcorp said today that a previously disclosed $364.8 million non-cash goodwill impairment charge related to the Post spin-off was understated by about $54 million that should have been reflected in its fourth quarter 2011 earnings report. The Post cereal business was spun off as a separate company effective Feb. 3.
Ralcorp said it is delaying the release of its second quarter 2012 earnings, which was set for May 8 payday loans in one hour. The company’s second quarter results will be released instead on May 15, and the company will hold a conference call on May 16 to discuss the results.
Ralcorp’s private label foods include cereal, pasta, crackers, cookies, frozen biscuits and other frozen bread products.
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Time Warner Inc. said Wednesday that its first-quarter earnings fell 11 percent, but adjusted income beat Wall Street’s expectations on the strengths of the company’s television and movie studio businesses.
Time Warner had net income of $583 million in the first three months of the year, compared with $653 million a year earlier. Both translated to 59 cents a share because the company now has fewer shares outstanding.
Excluding one-time factors, including charges related to a decision to shut down a TV network in India, Time Warner had adjusted income of 67 cents a share. That’s better than the 64 cents expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet. The New York-based company’s adjusted income a year ago was 58 cents.
Revenue grew 4 percent to $7 billion, ahead of expectations of $6.82 billion.
Time Warner’s cable TV networks, which include CNN, TBS, TNT and HBO, saw revenue grow 3 percent to $3.6 billion. The company benefited from strong ad rates, better timing of the March Madness basketball games and higher fees collected from U cheap credit report.S. cable and satellite TV distributors to carry the channels. That was offset partly by a decrease in content revenue; last year’s quarter got a boost from licensing HBO’s “Sex and the City” to other cable outlets in the U.S.
At the Warner Bros. movie studio, a stronger slate at the box office contributed to a 7 percent revenue increase to $2.8 billion. Big performers included “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” and “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.” The division also benefited from higher licensing revenue of TV shows and the video-on-demand availability of a television series, but revenue from DVDs and other home entertainment sales fell.
Revenue at the Time Inc. magazine division fell 3 percent to $773 million. Advertising and subscription revenue both declined. Weak sales at newsstands worldwide were offset partly by higher sales of U.S. subscriptions.
The U.S. economy expanded less than forecast in the first quarter as a smaller contribution from inventories overshadowed the biggest gain in consumer spending in more than a year.
Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at a 2.2 percent annual rate after a 3 percent pace, Commerce Department figures showed yesterday in Washington. The median projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 2.5 percent gain. Government spending fell for a sixth straight quarter.
Job creation and income gains propelled sales at car dealerships and retailers like Target Corp. (TGT), helping cushion the U.S. economy from weakness overseas. Further gains in consumer spending will depend on progress in reducing a jobless rate that has hovered above 8 percent since early 2009.
Shares of H&R Block tumbled 16% in premarket trading Thursday after the tax prep company announced significant staff cuts and office closings, and projected weaker-than-expected earnings.
The company also announced a series of changes in its top executive ranks in its after-hours statement Wednesday, including that it is looking for a new chief financial officer, and that the president of its retail tax services is leaving the company effective April 30.
Shares tumbled $2.74 to $14 ahead of the market open.
The company said it will cut about 350 full-time positions throughout its Kansas City headquarters and nationwide field organization, and close about 200 company-owned offices, which will result in a drop in seasonal temporary employment Payday Loan for Bad Credit.
The moves are expected to save the company of $85 million to $100 million a year. It will take a $30 million charge in the quarter associated with the staff reductions.
H&R Block () also expects full-year earnings of $1.09 to $1.15 a share, well below the forecasted earnings of $1.39 a share.
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McDonald’s ever-evolving mix of old menu standbys and new items like Chicken McBites lured in more diners who helped boost its first-quarter profit.
The world’s biggest hamburger chain said Friday that its net income rose 5 percent in the first quarter, in line with Wall Street expectations.
McDonald’s Corp. said global sales rose 7.3 percent at stores open at least 13 months, driven by gains from all regions. The metric is key because it excludes the impact of newly opened stores.
A big part of the McDonald’s success story in recent years has been the chain’s rollout of popular menu items such as coffee frappes and fruit smoothies, which have high profit margins and bring in customers throughout the day. Customers also love them because it’s a way to have a treat for a couple of bucks.
Other recent introductions by the fast-food chain include oatmeal and Chicken McBites, which the company said helped boost sales in the U.S. in the first quarter.
For the first three months of the year, McDonald’s reported a profit of $1.27 billion, or $1.23 per share. That compares with a profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.15 per share, in the year-ago period.
In the U.S., sales at restaurants open at least 13 months rose 8.9 percent, as new menu items like Chicken McBites, updated restaurants and warm weather drew customers. The results also benefitted from an extra day in the Leap Year.
McDonald’s said sales in Europe, its biggest market, rose 5 percent despite economic turmoil and severe weather in many parts of the region. Sales rose 5.5 percent in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa region, where the company is focusing its expansion efforts in the coming years.
Although McDonald’s has consistently outperformed its peers in the fast-food industry, the company is facing the pressures of increasing costs for ingredients. The company’s is also seeing costs for labor and rent increase in some overseas markets.
The higher expenses are particularly problematic for a chain like McDonald’s, which risks driving away customers if those costs are passed on.
Still, the fast-food chain last year raised prices three times for a total price increase of 3 percent. The company has said it expects commodity costs to increase an additional 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent this year, which would be roughly in line with last year’s increases.
Because of its size, the way McDonald’s handles price increases can set the tone for the rest of the fast-food industry.
Shares of McDonald’s, based in Oak Brook, Ill., rose $1.72, or nearly 2 percent, to $95.28 in premarket trading.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said she has received pledges worth about $320 billion so far in her campaign for a bigger reserve to combat threats to global growth.
Egypt’s election commission disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief and fundamentalist Islamists, from running Saturday in a surprise decision that left a field of moderates in the race for the country’s first post-revolutionary leader.
The elimination of the three most powerful and controversial candidates could go in two directions with just weeks to go before the vote, observers said. It could plunge the Arab world’s most populous nation into a new political crisis, or just the opposite, defuse it.
Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission that was appointed by Egypt’s military rulers to oversee the vote, said that those barred from the contest included Mubarak-era strongman Omar Suleiman, Muslim Brotherhood chief strategist Khairat el-Shater and hard-line Islamist Hazem Abu Ismail. He did not give reasons.
Disqualified candidates have 48 hours to appeal the decision, according to election rules. The final list of candidates will be announced on April 26.
The announcement came as a shock to many Egyptians as three of the 10 excluded were considered among the front-runners in a highly polarized campaign that has left the nation divided behind two strong camps: Islamists and former regime insiders who are allegedly supported by the ruling generals.
Thirteen others had their candidacy approved, including former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh and former prime minister and Mubarak-era minister Ahmed Shafiq, according to Sultan.
If upheld, the decision would reshape the electoral landscape by removing the most powerful and controversial candidates and leaving moderates such as Abolfotoh, an ex-Muslim Brotherhood leader who has been trying to project crossover appeal for both religious conservatives and liberals, and Moussa, who was a member of the old regime but is popular among middle class Egyptians and who is not so closely associated with it.
The presidential election is due on May 23-24, with a possible runoff on June 16-17. The winner will be announced on June 21, less than two weeks before the July 1 deadline promised by the military rulers who took over after Mubarak to hand over power.
Abu Ismail, a lawyer-turned-preacher whose eligibility had come under scrutiny in recent weeks over the question of whether his late mother had dual Egyptian-U.S. citizenship, accused the military rulers who assumed power after Mubarak’s ouster of trying to manipulate the race from behind the scenes and warned his followers would not stay silent.
“You will drown, God willing, because you are in showdown with the people, because you are playing with fire,” he said in an interview with the Islamist TV network Al-Hakma.
Abu Ismail has led the most aggressive campaign so far. On the eve of the announcement, hundreds of his supporters surrounded the election commission’s headquarters in Cairo, forcing Sultan and his employees to evacuate under the military protection.
A new election law passed after Mubarak’s ouster bars an individual from running if the candidate, the candidate’s spouse or parents hold any citizenship other than Egyptian, and the commission had ordered the Interior Ministry to provide evidence showing whether Abu Ismail’s mother was officially documented in Egypt as having dual U.S. -Egyptian citizenship.
A spokesman for el-Shater’s campaign, Murad Mohammed Ali, also called the decision “very dangerous” and said it gives a message that “there was no revolution in Egypt no checking account payday advance.”
The Muslim Brotherhood fielded the head of its political arm Mohammed Morsi as a back-up candidate last week, fearing that el-Shater would be disqualified on the grounds that his records were not entirely cleared after serving time in prison in connection with his banned political activity under Mubarak. His lawyers say the ruling generals had dropped the charges. Morsi was not disqualified.
Despite the fiery rhetoric and promises from those disqualified to appeal, some Egyptians welcomed the news.
“This is much better,” said Ahmed Khalil, a spokesman of the liberal Free Egyptians party, which was not fielding a candidate. “These three candidates were holding extremist ideologies or holding an intelligence agenda.”
The announcement was the latest twist in an already convulated political scene as the nation struggles to redefine itself and navigate a difficult transition to civilian rule.
In the last two weeks, a court suspended the work of an Islamist-dominated, 100-member panel tasked with drafting a new constitution on the grounds its makeup violated the spirit of the interim charter that governed its formation.
Islamists as well as the largely liberal and secular activists who spearheaded the protests that led to Mubarak’s ouster had hoped to have a new constitution in place before the election in order to curtail the powers of the president after nearly three decades of autocratic rule.
The Muslim Brotherhood _ which along with hard-line ultraconservative Salafis captured more than 70 percent of the parliament seats in the first post-revolutionary elections _ announced on March 31 that el-Shater would run for president.
That reversed an earlier pledge not to seek the office and came after weeks of complaints by the Brotherhood that the parliament they control is toothless and that the ruling military was preventing it from forming a government.
In what was seen as a countermove backed by the generals, Suleiman made an unexpected announcement a week later that he was entering the race for the presidential elections. Suleiman said he had decided to run to block Islamist rule and provide stability after more than a year of turmoil.
A judge close to the commission, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to disclose the information, said that Suleiman has not presented the proper number of endorsements. Each candidate needed at least 30,000 endorsements, including at least 1,000 from each of the country’s 15 provinces, to join the race.
His campaign spokesman Mohammed Mishal promised to present extra endorsements that have not been used, giving him a gateway to re-enter the race.
Another campaign spokeswoman Reem Mamdouh said in an interview with the local CBC television network that they had not been officially notified about the decisions but would definite appeal.
“Suleiman will never withdraw and let down the hopes of the large constituency of Egyptians who supported him. This is not happening,” she said.
Ayman Nour, a liberal presidential hopeful, said the commission told him he was disqualified because of his imprisonment as a dissident under Mubarak’s regime and because his name was not listed among registered voters.
He also promised to appeal, saying the decision was “politicized as the whole race is deeply politicized.”
Searchers on Thursday found three more bodies in the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that capsized off the Italian coast, an official said, raising the number discovered to 28 and leaving four still missing.
Civil Protection agency chief Franco Gabrielli did not give details on the sex or ages of the victims, and it was not immediately clear where the bodies were spotted. The remaining missing are presumed dead.
The ship hit a rocky reef, took on water and turned over just outside the port of the tiny island of Giglio off Tuscany on Jan. 13. Divers and searchers have been combing the half-submerged ship, from passenger cabins to elevators to the decks where many of the 4,200 passengers and crew gathered during the delayed and frantic evacuation.
Even before the latest bodies were found, eight discovered in recent weeks were awaiting official identification. Weeks in the water badly decomposed the remains, and forensic authorities have used DNA sampling to try to identify them.
Among those listed missing or unidentified are a crew member from India and several passengers, including an elderly U.S. couple and others from Italy and Germany.
The Concordia capsized in a protected sea sanctuary, and salvage teams have been removing fuel since Feb. 12 in hopes of sparing the pristine waters from pollution. Costa Crociere SpA., the Italian cruise company, and Italian officials said fuel removal was expected to be completed by Friday evening.
Occasional bad weather and choppy seas have at times forced suspension of both the search for bodies and the fuel removal.
The operation to remove the wrecked Concordia itself could take as long as 12 months. Bids for the job are being evaluated.
The Concordia’s Italian captain is under house arrest near Naples. Capt. Francesco Schettino is under investigation for alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship during the evacuation. Schettino has denied wrongdoing and claimed that the reef wasn’t marked on charts.
Investigators are probing allegations that Schettino deliberately came too close to the island as part of a publicity stunt for the cruise line. Costa Crociere officials have distanced themselves from Schettino.
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