Page 2 — THE BERLIN DAILY SUN, Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Santas face gloomy economic times
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Tonight Low: 45 Record: -5 (1936) Sunset: 4:07 p.m.
MIDLAND, Mich. (NY Times) — Here, at the nation’s oldest, most celebrated, school for would-be Santa Clauses, much has stayed exactly the same over its nearly 75 years. A proper Claus ought to have pleasant breath, his beard curled just so and a hearty laugh. Yet this year, from the holiday parades, to the cheery carols piping from Main Street loudspeakers, to the “this way to Santa” lines at shopping centers, something more sobering has cast its shadow: the economic slump. The result is a Christmas season in which Santas — including the 115 of them in this year’s graduating class of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School — must learn to swiftly size up families’ financial circumstances, gently scale back children’s Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency — “Can you bring my parent a job?” Santas here tell of children who appear on their laps with lists that include the latest, most expensive toys and their parents, standing off to the side, stealthily but imploringly shaking their heads no. “In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything,” said Fred Honerkamp, an alumnus of the school who also lectures there.
Tomorrow High: 52 Low: 34 Sunrise: 6:59 a.m. Sunset: 4:07 p.m. Thursday High: 41 Low: 27
TODAY’SJOKE
“Most of the people who are racist to me are white, and it’s very tricky to try and be racist to white people. What am I going to be, like, ‘Oh, I’m Kumar? Well, you’re the lead in most movies that come out.’” — Kumail Nanjiani
DOW JONES 291.23 to 11,523.01 NASDAQ 85.93 to 2,527.34 S&P 33.88 to 1,192.55
records are from 1886 to present
Reports warn of rising risks from Europe’s debt PARIS (NY Times) — European leaders faced mounting pressure Monday to overcome divisions and move ahead quickly with new plans to prevent the euro zone from fracturing, as warnings multiplied that the crisis could endanger the global economy and cause credit to dry up in the banking system. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday that the euro crisis remained “a key risk to the
world economy.” The research group, which is based in Paris, sharply cut its forecasts for wealthy Western countries and cautioned that growth in Europe could come to a standstill. The warning came just hours after Moody’s Investors Service issued its own bleak report on Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. Moody’s, a leading credit rating agency, warned that the problems could
A shopping day invented for the Web comes of age
I think we have to believe in things we don’t see.” —James Caan
(NY Times) — Cyber Monday might have started as a madeup occasion to give underdog e-commerce sites jealous of Black Friday a day of their own, but it has become an undeniably real thing — surprising even the people who invented it. Last year, for the first time, the Monday after Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales, and the first day ever that online spending passed $1 billion, according to comScore. This year, with a record-breaking Black Friday — shoppers
spent $816 million online, 26 percent more than last year, in addition to spending more offline — online retailers are gearing up for Monday to once again be their best of the season. Seventy-eight percent are offering promotions, according to Shop.org, an industry group. Almost half will offer discounts, while 38 percent will run limited-time flash sales and a third will have free shipping. “It’s going to be up there again, no doubt,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore and an e-commerce expert.
CAIRO (NY Times) — Unexpectedly large crowds of voters turned out on Monday to cast their votes in Egypt’s first parliamentary election since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, a ballot that seemed to blend vindication of the democratic struggle with uncertainty over the revolution’s final outcome. By 9 a.m., voters had formed long and peaceful lines under the watchful eyes of a heavy police and army guard to cast votes in rich and poor neighborhoods across Cairo. In several places, lines stretched as long as a block along the banks of the Nile, and there were similar reports from Alexandria and Port Said. In Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt’s democracy struggle, several thousand protesters maintained their 10-day occupation to press demands for the immediate end to military rule. At several polling stations around Cairo, voters reported delays of up to four hours because ballots or voter lists or even the supervising judges had not arrived on time. A news report said soldiers fired in the air in at least one of the capital’s slums to disperse an angry crowd trying to reach a polling station.
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lead multiple countries to default on their debts or exit the euro, which would threaten the credit standing of all 17 countries in the currency union. Despite the gloomy predictions, stock indexes rose sharply in Europe and Asia, and were surging in Wall Street trading, and the euro strengthened, on hopes that European leaders were working on a new approach to resolve the crisis.
In Egypt, long lines for a vote clouded by army’s role
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TODAY’SWORD
panegyrize verb; 1. To eulogize; to deliver or write a panegyric about. 2. To indulge in panegyric; bestow praises. — courtesy dictionary.com
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