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☆ Retailers battle for uncertain back-to-school demand after ‘volatile’ quarter
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Katherine Masters | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

[1/2] Shopping trolley is seen in front of Walmart logo in this illustration, July 24, 2022. U.S. shoppers' spending in the summer ahead of the college and K-12 school year has grown steadily since 2015, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group. The chain is stocking Adidas' Samba and Gazelle sneakers ahead of the new school year, it said. The challenge for retailers is predicting whether parents will buy less clothing and sneakers when the cost of necessities - such as pencils, notebooks and laptops - strains many households. Retailers face a "volatile time," said Jessica Ramirez, a senior research analyst at Jane Hali & Associates.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Locker, Spencer, hasn't, Ralph Lauren, Nordstrom, Doug McMillon, John David Rainey, Jessica Ramirez, Jane Hali, Moody’s, Moody's, Maxx, Martin Waters, Fran Horowitz, Jennifer Foyle, Abercrombie’s Hollister, URBN, Katherine Masters, Siddharth Cavale, James Davey, Gerry Doyle Organizations: Walmart, REUTERS, National Retail Federation, Ulta, Adidas, U.S . Commerce Department, Associates, Target, Moody's Victoria’s, Abercrombie & Fitch, Urban Outfitters, Abercrombie, Fitch, Free People, Thomson Locations: Britain, U.S, North America, New York, Bentonville , Arkansas, London

☆ A Senior Tradition You Might Not Know About
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Christopher Barnard | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The fashion designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla bought her first pair of senior corduroy pants from a vintage-clothing seller in 2013 when she was a senior at the New School. The pants style had by then been around for more than a century. Senior cords seem to have first appeared at Purdue University in Indiana in the early 1900s, according to an archivist at the university, and evolved to become a sort of wearable yearbook for college and high school seniors in the state. The students would use corduroy clothes — typically pants and skirts in cream or yellow — as canvases that were illustrated with favorite activities, sweethearts’ initials and other personal details. Bode Aujla started her ready-to-wear brand Bode, which includes pieces made with antique materials and historical techniques like quilting, she started selling custom senior cords in an attempt to revive the tradition.

☆ The Unemployment Gap Between Black and White New Yorkers Is Widening
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Stefanos Chen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The gulf between Black and white unemployment rates in New York City is now the widest it has been this century, exceeding even the largest gap during the Great Recession, according to a new report. The overall unemployment rate among New Yorkers was 5.3 percent. The New York City figures are out of step with the national picture. The nationwide Black unemployment rate was 5.4 percent in the first quarter of the year, and the white unemployment rate was 3.2 percent. The Black and white unemployment rates in New York City have not continuously diverged for at least a year in about 25 years, and it is happening at a time when Black unemployment nationwide is approaching new lows, said James A. Parrott, a co-author of the report and the director of economic and fiscal policy at the center.

☆ Harry Belafonte, calypso star and civil rights champion, dies at 96
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Alex Johnson | Diana Dasrath | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Singer Harry Belafonte speaks during a press junket at The Bing Decision Maker Series with the Sing Your Song Cast and Filmmakers on January 22, 2011 in Park City, Utah. American singer Harry Belafonte performing in a recording studio, circa 1957. By the early 1960s, Belafonte had become a force in the civil rights movement. A crowd of over 10,000 civil rights marchers gathers in the Manhattan Garment Center as Harry Belafonte sings at spiritual at a civil rights rally. A capacity audience of civil rights advocates turned out to watch a glittering array of theater personalities perform.

☆ Why America's childcare system is crumbling and its workers are begging for help
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Childcare workers earn less than half what the average US worker earns — and many are quitting. One Montessori school has seen people quit and had to raise tuition in order to cover staff pay. Almost all of the childcare workers in this story asked to be referred to by first name only, out of fear of professional repercussions. And childcare workers specifically in child daycare services make an average of $12.40 an hour. Sinead, a 24-year-old childcare worker in West Virginia, makes even less than the national average for childcare workers, with pay of $9.50 an hour.

☆ A well-known pizza shop in New York is scrapping its $1 slice as inflation pushes up the price of cheese
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A famous New York Pizza shop is upping the price of its $1 pizza slices by 50% due to inflation. 2 Bros Pizza said the increasing price of cheese is making up over 40% of the company's food costs. 2 Bros Pizza, a New York restaurant chain, is increasing the price of its pizza slices at its East Village location – an area in lower Manhattan, local news site EV Grieve first reported. Alongside $1 pizza slices, dollar store chains like Dollar Tree and grocery store chains like Trader Joe's are making products pricier by the year. 2 Bros Pizza did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment about the price increase.

☆ Taliban Leader Faces Blowback Over Girls’ School Ban—From His Own Movement
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Saeed Shah | Photographs Elise Blanchard For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

KABUL—A year ago, the Taliban’s supreme leader revived the Taliban’s signature policy from the 1990s and banned girls from attending secondary school. Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada is discovering that it is one thing to issue a fiat, and quite another to enforce it in an Afghanistan that has changed dramatically since the Taliban last ruled. The reclusive leader is coming under intense pressure even from within his own movement to reverse it, a clash that is spilling into the open as the new school year begins this week.

When my husband died, I had to figure out my financial future, which meant finding a financial advisor. I was able to find a great financial advisor by thinking about my specific goals and needs. Having an independent financial advisor isn't cheap, but it's been well worth the cost to me. Here's the checklist I used to settle on my fantastic financial planner. The New School of Finance, founded by certified financial planner and chartered investment manager Shannon Lee Simmons, is where I landed.

☆ Why it’s impossible to find an open squat rack at the gym
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

You’ll have much better luck finding an open elliptical machine than a bench press, squat rack or 30-pound dumbbells. The pandemic led more people to take up weight training, gym owners and industry experts say. Post-pandemic, the surge in the popularity of weight training has helped the gym industry recover. Paul/Fairfax Media/Getty ImagesThe arrival of Nautilus and Universal strength training equipment in the 1970s and 1980s made weightlifting more attractive to a broader range of people. Genesis clubs have added more squat and dumbbell racks to keep up with demand for strength training and downsized cardio areas.

☆ UNC’s New School Plans, Revealed
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The ferment continues around the University of North Carolina trustees’ plan to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership. A Daily Tar Heel article on Thursday reported the news that we had the story first. We’d also like to compliment the paper on its acquisition of the list of potential course offerings at the school. The article cites former UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp as noting that our reporting confirmed the presence of a vast right-wing conspiracy. So let’s have a look at the list of scandalous potential course offerings for the new school.

☆ The University of North Carolina Fight Escalates
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The kerfuffle we reported two weeks ago over a new school for free expression at the University of North Carolina keeps getting more complicated, and not in a good way. Opponents are now suggesting that UNC’s accreditation could be in jeopardy over the board of trustees’ plan to create the new School of Civic Life and Leadership without the blessing of the faculty. At a meeting Tuesday of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina, accreditation official Belle Wheelan declared that the UNC board would be getting a letter from her agency. Ms. Wheelan is president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS), which accredits UNC, and she referred to “a news article that came out” on the plan to create a new school.

☆ The UNC Echo Chamber Fights Back
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Our editorial on Friday about the University of North Carolina’s effort to create a new school dedicated to free inquiry and open academic discourse has caused a fuss on campus that illustrates why the new school is needed. It seems that faculty grandees are outraged that the UNC board of trustees thought such a school is necessary and didn’t even seek the faculty’s permission. The Daily Tar Heel documents the angst in the Chapel Hill faculty lounge in a Jan. 30 story that is unintentionally hilarious in its ivory-tower indignation. The reporter quotes UNC law professor Eric Muller as saying, “I thought: how on Earth? How on Earth could The Wall Street Journal know this.”

☆ Why Gigi Hadid Wants Her Employees to Have Hobbies
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Lane Florsheim | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Being a morning person comes so naturally to Gigi Hadid that a couple of years ago, she stopped drinking coffee at the same time she became a mom. She has also eschewed a traditional alarm clock for a human one, in the form of her 2-year-old daughter, Khai. “Whatever time she’s waking up, I’m waking up,” says Hadid (usually between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m.). Hadid has walked countless runways, appeared on over 30 covers of Vogue worldwide and starred in campaigns for fashion houses including Fendi, Valentino and Versace. These days, she lives between New York and her farmhouse in Pennsylvania and also runs her own brand, the cashmere label Guest in Residence, which she launched in 2022.

I'm careful to track my business expenses and don't shy away from spending money on valuable things. Working with my financial advisor and accountant helped me create a structure to make tax season a breeze. Be smart about business expensesOne of my biggest takeaways from the 2021 tax season was that eligible business expenses help grow your business and shrink your tax bill. One is for my invoices and business expenses and the other is for my personal expenses, bills, and contributions to savings. In my personal expense tracker, I cross-reference my bank accounts and credit cards with my bills and auto-deposits to savings accounts and investments.

☆ On the one hill with mobile signal, Ukrainian kids build makeshift classroom
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Vitalii Hnidyi | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Vitalii HnidyiHONTARIVKA, Ukraine, Jan 24 (Reuters) - At the only place in their village where they could find a strong mobile internet signal - a windswept hill on the barren steppe - Ukrainian fifth-grader Mykola Dziuba and his friends have built makeshift tent to serve as a remote classroom. "We sit here for around two or three hours, sometimes just for an hour," said Dziuba as the wind rattled the rickety structure. He said they collected the materials - plastic sheeting, wooden poles, bricks and sand - from around their homes. In the shadow of a water tower on a low hill they discovered the mobile coverage was good enough for a stable internet connection. Repeated Russian missile strikes on critical infrastructure since last October have also plunged large parts of the country into periodic power outages.

Insider's experts choose the best products and services to help make smart decisions with your money (here’s how). Instead of stressing over a recession, I'm taking my financial advisor's advice not to panic. My research into why my grocery bill has gone up so drastically led me to a fun new term: stagflation. I'm a natural worrier (world class) and I've had to fight this instinct when it comes to managing my money. Recent upgrades I've done to my home helped shave a few dollars off my recently increased home insurance payments.

☆ The 'Secure 2.0' retirement legislation leaves a 'huge problem untouched,' labor economist warns. How these changes could help
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Lorie Konish | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Sporrer/Rupp | Image Source | Getty ImagesParticipation in workplace retirement plans may soon be expanded, thanks to new efforts from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Secure 2.0 would require certain employers with retirement plans to automatically enroll eligible workers in those plans. Create a universal retirement planFor starters, we should abandon the hope that employers will cover everyone with retirement plans, according to Ghilarducci. "A universal access plan is one in which everyone, regardless of what their employer does, is in a retirement plan," Ghilarducci said. The idea is included in the Retirement Savings for Americans Act, which would establish portable tax-advantaged retirement savings accounts for workers.

☆ A Texas superintendent ordered school librarians to remove LGBTQ books. Now the federal government is investigating.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms | Mike Hixenbaugh | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +11 min

The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books. The comments, combined with the district’s subsequent decision to remove dozens of library books pending a review, fostered a “pervasively hostile” environment for LGBTQ students, the ACLU wrote in its complaint. Last year, voters in Granbury elected a pair of school board members who campaigned against LGBTQ-affirming school curricula and library books. “These comments, combined with the book removals, really send a message to LGBTQ students in the districts that: ‘You don’t belong here. Lou Whiting, a student at Granbury High School, becomes emotional after speaking against the removal of LGBTQ books at a Granbury school board meeting in March.

☆ School Boards With New Conservative Majorities Make Changes, Including Firing Superintendents
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Ben Chapman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The new school board in Sarasota, Fla., moved to fire Superintendent Brennan Asplen during its first meeting. Conservatives who won school board elections with campaigns vowing to change what students learn about race, sex and gender—or who opposed Covid protocols—have acted swiftly since November, replacing superintendents and overhauling policies at their first public meetings. Conservative activists and organizations made a concerted effort to win control of local school boards in many parts of the U.S. during the midterm elections, citing issues such as declining academic performance, increased disciplinary problems among students, masking policies and the teaching of critical race theory and other topics that provoke debate.

☆ Morocco vs. France World Cup 2022 game highlights globalization
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Tony Karon | Tony Karon Is The Editorial Lead Of Al Jazeera'S Aj | Channel. Also An Associate Professor At The New School In New York | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

The iconic image of the 2022 World Cup may well be Morocco’s Sofiane Boufal dancing with his mum after his team’s brilliant upset victory over Portugal in the quarterfinals. Boufal and his mother — like the majority of Morocco’s players and coaches — live in European cities, part of that continent’s vast marginalized and embattled migrant underclass. Morocco’s prowess as the first African team to make the semifinals of the World Cup brings us ever closer to fulfilling soccer icon Pelé’s prophecy. Indeed, this was the first World Cup in which all five African teams were coached by African coaches, rather than by European journeymen. The team's strategy suggests its coach has rewritten the playbook that long recommended African teams play pessimistic defensive football, hoping for a lucky break.

☆ ‘Living in despair and hopelessness’: A lack of affordable housing can put people’s health at risk
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Renuka Rayasam Fred Clasen-Kelly Kaiser Health News | Renuka Rayasam | Fred Clasen-Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

She suspected the gray and brown splotches spreading through the apartment were mold and had caused her son’s illness. A nationwide affordable housing crisis has wreaked havoc on the lives of low-income families, like Joseph’s, who are close to the brink. Housing instability — such as having trouble paying rent, living in crowded conditions, or moving frequently — can have negative consequences on health, according to the federal Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. And there is no county in the country where a minimum-wage worker could afford a two-bedroom rental home, according to an August report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. A few months after leaving the apartment, Joseph and her two children moved in with her sister in Orlando, Florida, with their remaining possessions — a car and some clothes.

☆ Texas town approves plans for new building to replace school shooting site
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Tyler Clifford | Steve Gorman | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Nov 17 (Reuters) - The Uvalde school board in Texas has approved plans to replace Robb Elementary School months after the town decided to demolish the building where a teenaged gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in May. The school district did not immediately respond to a request for further details. Board members also agreed to install an interim leader of the school district's police department. In the past, he worked with Patterson at another Texas school district. Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said the response was "an abject failure," adding that officers at the scene lacked sufficient training.

Ron DeSantis, who won re-election in a landslide Tuesday, threw his political weight behind 30 school board candidates this election cycle. In Florida, because school board races are nonpartisan, if candidates capture at least 50% of the vote in the primary, they don’t need to compete in the November elections. That stands in contrast to the results for the Florida Democratic Party, which supported 30 school board candidates, only nine of whom won seats this year. Riding a wave of conservative parent anger, Republicans in several states targeted school board races, with mixed results. However, GOP candidates running against progressive ideas captured seats on the State Board of Education, which sets curriculum standards.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday confirmed a nationwide shortage of the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder medication Adderall, more than two months after some pharmacies reported difficulties filling prescriptions. The shortage affects the immediate-release form of Adderall, a stimulant that helps manage ADHD symptoms. Dougherty added that Teva expects “intermittent delays through end of year.”The supply from the other Adderall manufacturers isn’t enough to meet the need, the FDA said. The shortage has hit pharmacies differentlySome pharmacies have been having trouble filling Adderall prescriptions since the summer. In May, Walmart and CVS announced they would stop filling prescriptions for controlled substances from telehealth startups such as Cerebral and Done Health, which prescribe stimulants and gained footing during the pandemic.

☆ Uvalde school district superintendent will resign after outrage over response to school massacre
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

UVALDE, Texas — Uvalde’s school district superintendent announced Monday he plans to resign by the end of the academic year, following months of community outrage over the handling of the United States’ deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. The Uvalde school board voted unanimously Monday evening to begin the search for Harrell’s successor. The Uvalde school board did not respond to requests for a copy of Harrell’s statement. The superintendent’s announcement comes a week after school district officials suspended the entire school police force. In July, the Uvalde school board called a special meeting to hear from parents.

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