Dec. 6, 2010 at 10:21 a.m.
Filed under:
Books,
Entertainment,
Media,
TV
By Tribune newspapers
Talk queen Oprah Winfrey will announce her latest book selection on her show today, and her choice, according to the Orlando Sentinel, is actually two books: “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens.
In September, Winfrey chose Jonathan Franzen’s book “Freedom” as the first selection for the 25th and final season of her talk show. She announced that month that despite rumors, her famed book club would continue. “I will have book selections coming all season long and when I move over to OWN, my new network, the book club is coming with me,” she told her audience.
Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 10:09 a.m.
Filed under:
Food,
International,
M&A
By Associated Press
Sara Lee Corp. has completed the $1.6 billion sale of its body care and European detergent segments to Unilever NV, the food company said Monday. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 9:59 a.m.
Filed under:
Internet,
Technology
By Associated Press
The popular blogging site Tumblr is working to recover from an outage that’s left it out of service for at least 15 hours.
Tumblr says the problem is in one of its database clusters, or collection of databases. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 9:39 a.m.
Filed under:
International,
Jobs/employment
By Wailin Wong
Chicago-based digital mapping company Navteq has opened a new research and development center in Mumbai, India.
The Mumbai center will employ 150 people and is located near another Navteq facility in the same city. The company’s other R&D centers are in the U.S., Germany, the United Kingdom, Korea, Bosnia and Slovakia. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 9:11 a.m.
Filed under:
Jobs/employment,
Layoffs
By Gail MarksJarvis
Here’s a look at how unemployment is hitting people by age and education. No group of people has been spared as the nation’s unemployment rate has climbed to 9.8 percent. The hardest hit: High school drop outs, with a 15.7 percent unemployment rate.
Yet college graduates — which tend to be more immune in recessions — are facing unemployment at the highest levels on record. Unemployment among people with college degrees is 5.1 percent, and business and management positions are being hit.
Dec. 6, 2010 at 8:42 a.m.
Filed under:
Cell phones,
Telecommunications
By Associated Press
Sprint Nextel says it’s going to start phasing out the Nextel part of its network in 2013, a decision that follows near-constant subscriber losses since Sprint bought Nextel in 2005. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 8:20 a.m.
Filed under:
Retail
By Chicago Tribune
The old Marshall Field’s department store in Park Forest will soon be a pile of rubble, but small pieces will live on through a special sale of bricks from the long-shuttered landmark. The Park Forest Historical Society is selling single bricks from the two-story store, once an anchor of Park Forest Plaza and the centerpiece of one of the nation’s first regional shopping malls.
Dec. 6, 2010 at 7:28 a.m.
Filed under:
Food,
Litigation,
Packaged foods
By Emily Bryson York
Kraft is seeking a preliminary injunction against Starbucks Coffee Co., which has announced plans to sever its agreement with the Northfield-based packaged food company to manage its grocery coffee business. Starbucks plans to assume responsibility of the coffee business March 1.
“Starbucks is proceeding with flagrant indifference to the terms of the contract and customary business practices,” Marc Firestone, Kraft’s general counsel said in a statement. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 7:18 a.m.
Filed under:
Airlines,
Airplanes,
International
By Associated Press
A French court has ordered Continental Airlines Inc. to pay Air France SA more than $1.3 million in damages over the crash of a supersonic Concorde jet outside Paris a decade ago that killed 113 people. The court, in a lengthy verdict Monday, also found a Continental mechanic guilty of manslaughter.
The presiding judge confirmed that titanium debris dropped by a Continental DC-10 onto the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport before the Concorde took off was to blame for the crash. Investigators said debris gashed the Concorde’s tire, propelling bits of rubber into the fuel tanks and sparking a fire.
Dec. 6, 2010 at 6:45 a.m.
Filed under:
Internet,
Media,
TV,
Video
From Crain’s Chicago Business | After “The Oprah Winfrey Show” finishes taping its last season in May, the two studios at Winfrey’s Chicago-based Harpo Inc. may simply go dark while programs for her new OWN cable network are being filmed in Los Angeles and New York.
Currently, executives say behind-the-scenes production work will keep Harpo’s 400 Chicago-based workers busy and have hinted that a new program may eventually take place in Chicago. But early contenders, shows featuring Dr. Oz and designer Nate Berkus, are being filmed in New York. Get the full story>>
Dec. 6, 2010 at 6:24 a.m.
Filed under:
Internet,
M&A
By Reuters
AOL Inc., undergoing a radical transformation into the king of content on the Internet, is actively exploring a breakup involving a complicated series of transactions that may lead to a merger with Yahoo Inc., sources close to the plans told Reuters.
The plans are still in the exploratory stage and Yahoo has not been contacted, the sources said. The plans are also fraught with complications involving myriad moving pieces. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 6:16 a.m.
Filed under:
Internet
By Chicago Breaking News
An Internet service outage affecting Comcast customers in the Chicago area, northwest Indiana, southwest Michigan and Minnesota came to an end early Monday morning. The outage of high-speed Internet started at 7:30 p.m. Sunday and ended at 12:15 a.m. Monday, said a Comcast spokeswoman. Comcast provided updates on the outage to customers via Twitter account @comcastcares. Get the full story>>
Dec. 6, 2010 at 5:56 a.m.
Filed under:
Internet,
Media
By Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal
Facebook Inc. on Sunday unveiled a profile page redesign that lets users share more details, display photos and highlight friends if they want — tidbits the social network said are like “conversation starters” that will let people tell their story and learn more about friends.
The redesign is the latest effort by Facebook to consolidate its grip on the social-networking arena, aiming for its Web address to become people’s default destination on the Internet. The Palo Alto, Calif., company’s website, which lets users share messages, photos and other information with their friends, topped 500 million users earlier this year and has become a Silicon Valley heavyweight. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 5:49 a.m.
Filed under:
Pharmaceuticals
By Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal
Abbott Laboratories hired a Baltimore-area cardiologist as a sales consultant after he was barred from practicing at a local hospital last year for allegedly putting heart stents in hundreds of patients who didn’t need them, say Senate investigators probing the medical-device industry.
Their report, to be released Monday, shines a light on one of the most lucrative procedures for hospitals and medical-device makers, at a time of spiraling health-care costs. Medicare paid some $25.7 billion for stent surgery in the six years through 2009, according to the report. Get the full story »
Dec. 6, 2010 at 5:30 a.m.
Filed under:
Misc.: European Union and eurozone finance ministers open their regular monthly meeting
