Retail giant Marks Spencer was fined 1 million today for failing to protect customers, staff and workers from potential exposure to asbestos during refurbishment at one of its stores. The management was found to have been more concerned about the works being unsightly and interfering with the shopping experience of customers than the cancer-causing material. [...]

WASHINGTON – The home-buying season was a bust. March through August are typically the peak buying months. But this time, Americans bought fewer new homes in that stretch than in any other six-month period since record-keeping began a half-century ago. And sales of previously occupied homes didn’t fare much better. They nearly matched 2009′s total [...]

HemCon Medical Technologies Inc., the Portland maker of shrimp-derived bleeding-control dressings, won a key appeal in a patent infringement lawsuit filed by a Massachusetts maker of a similar product. A U.S. Court of Appeals judge vacated a 2010 decision that awarded $29.4 million to Marine Polymer Technologies Inc. The company said HemCon’s product violated its [...]

11:28 PDT Los Angeles, CA – A Los Angeles County woman is behind bars for allegedly pointing a laser beam at an airliner and a sheriff’s helicopter. Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker said Sunday that 27-year-old Kimberly Rogers was arrested Friday night at a home in Compton. Officials say air traffic controllers at Los Angeles International [...]

One sad fact in our capitalistic world is that funding for many worthwhile efforts is often difficult to obtain if there is not a direct profit opportunity to be had.  Non-profit’s and local community leaders need special assistance, especially in developing countries, to gain access to appropriate resources of capital devoted to their respective purposes. [...]