Carmaker Volkswagen AG says net profit more than tripled in the second quarter on stronger sales in emerging markets and the United States, but warns that the outlook is difficult.
Net profit reached euro4.78 billion ($6.86 billion), far above the euro1.35 billion recorded in the same quarter a year ago.
Despite rising sales, the company fell just short of analyst estimates on some earnings figures, and chief executive Martin Winterkorn warned the months ahead would challenge the company payday loan lenders.
VW shares are trading down 6 percent.
Revenues rose 21.5 percent to euro40.3 billion. The company said Thursday that unit sales rose strongly in emerging markets such as Russia, Turkey, South Africa, China and Argentina. U.S. sales also rose.
President Barack Obama prodded Congress Tuesday to make a deal within the next two weeks on raising the nation’s borrowing limit, and he said he was summoning leaders of both parties to the White House this week to try to get it done.
Obama said he opposed any effort to “kick the can down the road” with a short-term increase, as suggested by some lawmakers _ though he stopped short of ruling that out. He reiterated his position that any deal must include not only spending cuts but also new revenue _ tax increases already ruled out by Republicans.
“We need to come together over the next two weeks to reach a deal that reduces the deficit and upholds the full faith and credit of the United States government and the credit of the American people,” Obama said at the White House.
“We’ve made progress, and I believe that greater progress is within sight, but I don’t what to fool anybody _ we still have to work through real differences,” the president said.
He said congressional leaders were being invited to meet Thursday at the White House need a personal loan with bad credit.
Obama spoke as the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the nation’s borrowing limit came closer. Experts say lawmakers must waste no time in making a deal if they are to have any chance of getting it finalized and passed through both chambers of Congress in time.
Despite the president’s optimism, it remained unclear where compromise could be found. Republicans are insisting they will note vote to raise the debt limit without major spending cuts; Democrats are refusing to sign off on cuts of such magnitude without at least some tax increases as well. Republicans say they won’t sign off on any tax hikes at all, including those Obama wants targeting the wealthiest Americans or closing loopholes to corporations.
The administration says that if the government’s borrowing limit is not increased by Aug. 2, the U.S. will face its first default ever, potentially throwing financial markets into turmoil.
A nationwide crackdown is coming for people fraudulently drawing unemployment payments _ those who were never eligible and workers who keep getting checks after they return to work _ a $17 billion benefits swindle last year alone, say federal officials.
With the poor economy lingering and the jobless rate remaining high, Rhode Island and other states are stepping up efforts to stop the fraud and improper payments.
As much as 30 percent of the wrong payments in 2010 went to people who had returned to the workforce but continued to claim benefits, according to Dale Ziegler, deputy administrator for the Office of Unemployment Insurance at the U.S. Department of Labor. Those payments came even after a 2009 executive order by President Barack Obama seeking new policies to cut payment errors, waste, fraud and abuse.
Ziegler said states will be required to submit plans by Sept. 30 to the federal government on how they plan to curb such payments, Ziegler said.
“This is a national concern,” said Raymond Filippone, assistant director of income support at the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. “States across the country are stepping up and looking at overpayments and detection.”
Since last year, Rhode Island now has four investigators assigned to ferret out double-dippers scamming the system, Filippone said and will add a fifth this year. The state has also for the first time retained a collection agency to recoup incorrectly paid payments.
Filippone said the state has paid out $33 million in overpayments since 2008. The May unemployment rate in Rhode Island is the third highest in the country at 10.9 percent.
Providence resident Jose L. Roque, 43, is among 15 people charged last month with bilking the state’s unemployment benefits system. He faces one count in state court of obtaining money under false pretenses for allegedly accepting more than $20,000 in benefits over nearly four years while working for a Warwick landscaping company, court records show.
He was released pending a pre-arraignment conference next month. Roque has yet to enter a plea. Officials say people convicted of this crime are usually ordered to pay restitution as punishment.
“I kept working and collected at the same time. I know that’s my big mistake,” Roque said in a telephone interview. “I feel real bad. I’m sorry for that. … Before I had problems. You know, now I got more problems.”
Since the economic dive began in 2008, 126 Ocean State residents have been criminally charged with defrauding the unemployment benefits system, said state police Capt. James O. Demers.
Since 2008, $8 million in overpayment shelled out by Rhode Island have been classified as fraud, officials said. Filippone said of the $33 million in overpayments paid out over that period, $16.5 million has been recovered.
Those losses are why the federal government is pressing states to keep a closer watch on the $155 billion in jobless benefits paid annually to the nation’s unemployed workers.
Five states are collaborating to address a problem known as separation errors, including payments to people who file for unemployment benefits after they’ve voluntarily resigned from their jobs. Those individuals are not eligible to collect, but some slip through the cracks because their former employers do not respond to states’ requests to verify the ex-worker’s claim, Ziegler said.
Ohio, Colorado, New Jersey, Utah and Georgia have developed a web-based system to share unemployment insurance information with states, multistate employers and others, Ziegler said.
In New Jersey, officials have also come up with a system to kick the newly employed off the jobless benefits rolls faster, Ziegler said. Whenever people show up in the national directory of new hires, they are assigned a code in the unemployment benefits system that flags them if they file for weekly benefits.
Ziegler said these efforts have reduced the average overpayment from $1,200 to $472. He added the average weekly benefit is $305, indicating most abuses are identified within a week and a half.
Still, Ziegler said officials have been working for years to come up with solutions.
“This is not a simple problem,” he said. “If someone who’s unemployed and not looking for work, how is someone going to find that out? If you’re someone who is claiming benefits and gone back to work, how quickly are they going to find that out? The idea here is prevention.”
Cranston resident Patricia A. Proulx said she’s been wrongfully caught up in the confusion.
Proulx was also charged last month in state court with defrauding the unemployment system of $18,992 from 2007 to 2010, court records show. She said she applied for partial unemployment benefits after her hours at an area hotel were cut back. Proulx has yet to enter a plea.
“If I was doing something wrong, I wasn’t told I was,” said Proulx, adding her superiors told her she was eligible to collect unemployment. “I have no idea what’s going on. When I called unemployment they didn’t want to discuss anything with me. Nobody’s letting me know what’s going on and what I owe.”
Filippone said investigators use multiple methods to identify fraud. They check wage records submitted to the state tax division, the national directory of new hires, and they compare records with state child support enforcement officials. The state also runs an anonymous fraud hotline, subpoenas employer payroll records and sometimes conducts surveillance operations.
Filippone warned scammers are going to get caught and anyone who gets more than what they’re owed must pay up.
“My message is to be honest with us,” he said. “At a later date, it could be years later … when you need the funds again, you’re not going to be able to receive them. … We never take an overpayment off the books.”
LONDON
39 Stereotaxis-17.3%
40 Build-A-Bear Workshop-17.4%
41 Insituform Technologies-17.5%
42 Reliv International-18.7%
43 MEMC Electronic Materials-30.1%
44 Isle of Capri Casinos-31.4%
45 Furniture Brands International-33 Low fee payday loans.0%
46 Brown Shoe-40.9%
47 CPI-49.2%
48 Spartech-49.8%
TMX Group Inc. says London Stock Exchange Group plc has agreed to pay a special cash dividend of $4 per share, sweetening its bid for the Canadian stock market operator by $660 million.
TMX says its shareholders will get the special payment of $4 a share in cash when the proposed merger closes.
The move sweetens the friendly merger
After two years without seeing an increase in their Social Security checks, more than 59 million retirees and other beneficiaries can expect a bump up in benefits next year.
The Social Security trustees’ annual report released last month estimates that the cost-of-living adjustment in next year’s checks will be 0.7 percent. The increase, which will be announced in October, could be higher, depending on where prices head in the coming months.
Still, experts say, retirees could see all or some of that raise eaten up by higher Medicare premiums.
News of the potential rise in benefits didn’t generate much excitement last week among seniors at the Allen Center, a Baltimore senior center, although some retirees say they would be grateful for any boost.
“If it was $5 more, I would be happy,” Frances McCready, 69, a retired cashier, said about her monthly benefit Same day payday loans. “I would dance a jig.”
The past two years have been “very bad,” said McCready, who receives $616 a month from Social Security and about $400 working for the Department of Aging.
She said she lives with her son and his wife, who help her pay her bills.
“If it wasn’t for them, no way in the world could I make it,” she said.
The Social Security trustees projected the cost-of-living adjustment using inflation assumptions from December. Since then, the price of gas has spiked and then pulled back. If fuel prices tick up again, beneficiaries could see as much as a 2 percent increase.
The actual cost-of-living increase will be based on the inflation rate in July, August and September, and how it compares with the rate during the third quarter of 2008
For nearly four decades, Jill McClelland has sold and repaired hunting rifles and handguns to customers from around the world at a tiny shop in a sparsely populated area in St. Charles County.
The recession didn’t put a dent in gun sales at the New Melle Gun Shop. The single-story building behind McClelland’s home averages between 600 and 700 gun sales annually, mostly handguns, a pace that has stayed steady even during tough economic times.
Now, though, McClelland and her two employees face the permanent closure of her business after her license to sell firearms was revoked because of record-keeping and reporting lapses spanning many years, according to federal officials.
A judge in the case affirmed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ license revocation this week. The store is among the less than one percent of more than 10,000 gun stores inspected annually in the nation to have their licenses revoked.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice notified McClelland that the store must close.
McClelland’s attorney, Lawrence Fleming, said he plans to file an appeal of the decision and will seek a stay on the revocation so the store can remain open during the appeal process.
For McClelland, keeping the store open means keeping alive the dream she and her husband embarked on in 1974 when they quit their jobs and opened their own business.
Jack, her husband of 44 years, died in September 2008 from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. McClelland admits that dealing with his death led to discrepancies in paperwork at the store.
“I’m not making excuses,” she said. “My life was in turmoil. I don’t think there ever is a worse pain than losing your mate.”
In its final notice of license revocation dated August 2010, the Department of Justice listed hundreds of violations against the gun shop dating back as far as 1981. Since 2007, the ATF alleges that in 32 instances, the store took guns on consignment without completing the proper forms or doing the required background checks on the guns’ owners, and in 33 instances, the store sold firearms without contacting the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, as required by law.
The largest number of violations
The departure of Yemen’s battle-wounded president for treatment in Saudi Arabia set off wild street celebrations Sunday in the capital, where crowds danced, sang and slaughtered cows in hopes that this spelled a victorious end to a more than three-month campaign to push their leader from power.
Behind the festive atmosphere, many feared Ali Abdullah Saleh, a masterful political survivor who has held power for nearly 33 years, will yet return _ or leave the country in ruins if he can’t. Hanging in the balance was a country that even before the latest tumult was beset by deep poverty, malnutrition, tribal conflict and violence by an active al-Qaida franchise with international reach.
Saleh, who was taken overnight to a military hospital in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, underwent successful surgery on his chest to remove jagged pieces of wood that splintered from a mosque pulpit when his compound was hit by rockets on Friday, said medical officials and a Yemeni diplomat. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to release the information.
The stunning rocket attack, which the government first blamed on tribal fighters who in recent weeks turned against the president and later on al-Qaida, killed 11 bodyguards and seriously injured five senior officials worshipping just alongside Saleh.
While Saleh is away, Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is acting as temporary head of state, said the deputy information minister, Abdu al-Janadi. The minister said the president would return to assume his duties after his treatment, though experts on Yemeni affairs questioned whether a return is possible in the face of so much opposition.
“Saleh will come back. Saleh is in good health, and he may give up the authority one day but it has to be in a constitutional way,” al-Janadi said. “Calm has returned. Coups have failed. … We are not in Libya, and Saleh is not calling for civil war.”
His sudden departure raised many questions, including whether his Saudi hosts would bless his return. The Saudis have backed Saleh and cooperated over the years in confronting al-Qaida and other threats, but they are now among those pressing him to give up power as part of a negotiated deal. Saudi Arabia has watched with concern the anti-government protests that have spread to other neighboring countries like Bahrain and is eager to contain the unrest on its doorstep.
The president’s absence raised the specter of an even more violent power struggle between the armed tribesmen who have joined the opposition and loyalist military forces under the command of Saleh’s son and other close relatives. Street battles between the sides have already pushed the political crisis to the brink of civil war.
In an attempt to cool the situation, the vice president offered through mediators to pull government forces back from the neighborhood of the capital where they’ve battled fighters loyal to Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar, who heads Yemen’s most powerful tribal confederation, the Hashid.
Al-Ahmar said in a statement he agreed to the deal, which requires his forces to leave the streets and government ministries they seized starting Monday.
In the streets of the capital, Sanaa, joyful crowds celebrated what they hoped would be Saleh’s permanent exit.
Crowds danced, sang and slaughtered a few cows in what demonstrators have dubbed Change Square, the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement since mid-February calling for Saleh to step down immediately. Some uniformed soldiers joined those dancing and singing patriotic songs and were hoisted on the shoulders of the crowd. Many in the jubilant crowd waved Yemeni flags, joyfully whistling and flashing the “V” for victory signs.
“Who would have believed that this people could have removed the tyrant?” said 30-year-old teacher Moufid al-Mutairi.
Women in black veils joined demonstrators carrying banners that hailed Saleh’s departure low interest personal loan. One read: “The oppressor is gone, but the people stay.”
But there were also fears that the president would attempt a comeback or try to transfer power to his son Ahmed, who heads the Republican Guard and remains in Yemen. Some worried Saleh and his allies could even try to leave the country in ruins if they feel there is no way to stay in power.
“Saleh is never true to his word,” said al-Mutairi, the teacher. “If the medical reports are true that his wounds are light, then he will for sure return. Our challenge now is to remove the rest of the regime.”
“If he returns, it will be a disaster.”
Yemen’s unrest began as a peaceful protest movement that the government at times used brutal force to try to suppress, killing at least 166 people, according to Human Rights Watch. It transformed in the past two weeks into armed conflict after the president’s forces attacked the home of a key tribal leader and one-time ally who threw his support behind the uprising. The fighting turned the streets of the capital into a war zone.
Other forces aligned against Saleh at the same time. There were high-level defections within his military, and Islamist fighters took over at least one town in the south in the past two weeks.
In Taiz, Yemen’s second-largest city, dozens of gunmen attacked the presidential palace on Sunday, killing four soldiers in an attempt to storm the compound, according to military officials and witnesses. They said one of the attackers was also killed in the violence. The attackers belong to a group set up recently to avenge the killing of anti-regime protesters at the hands of Saleh’s security forces.
Elsewhere in the south, gunman ambushed a military convoy, killing nine soldiers, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Saleh has been under intense pressure to step down from his powerful Gulf neighbors, who control a large share of the world’s oil resources, and from longtime ally Washington. They all fear Yemen could be headed toward a failed state that will become a fertile ground for al-Qaida’s most active franchise to operate and launch attacks abroad.
In a display of the kind of political maneuvering that has helped keep Saleh in power through numerous perils, he agreed three times to a U.S.-backed Gulf Arab proposal for ending the crisis only to back out at the last minute.
Now, Saleh’s injuries and his treatment abroad provide him with what could turn out to be a face-saving solution to exit power.
“This is exactly what needed to happen,” said Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He needed to leave in order to get past this political deadlock that has been cursing Yemen for the past few months.”
Rick Nelson, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said there is no chance of Saleh returning to Yemen and it’s unlikely anyone linked to him can maintain power and control.
“I can’t see any remnant of the saleh government staying in place after this,” Nelson said.
The fact that powerful members of Saleh’s family have remained behind in Sanaa suggests vigorous attempts to hold power will be made.
Significantly, military officials said Hadi, the vice president, met late Saturday night in Sanaa with several members of Saleh’s family, including his son and one-time heir apparent Ahmed, who commands the powerful Republican Guard. Others who attended the meeting included two of the president’s nephews and two half brothers. All four head well-equipped and highly trained units that constitute the president’s main power base in the military.
Greater Toronto Area home sales and prices increased in May, making it the second best month ever on record, according to figures released Friday.
The Toronto Real Estate Board reported (PDF) 10,046 sales, up six per cent from May of 2010.
Average prices were also up by 9 per cent to $485,520, compared with $446,593 in 2010.
Strongest price growth was for single-detached homes in the City of Toronto.
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