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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Bad winter weather, especially in midmonth, weighed on payrolls. Job growth is expected to improve with warmer temperatures.”

Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Article, 1D

Irish group protests Wal-Mart T-shirts

The Ancient Order of Hibernians has taken offense to some St. Patrick’s Day T-shirts being sold at Wal-Mart stores. The group said the retailer’s “defaming” merchandise targeted Americans of Irish ancestry.

The T-shirts in question bear the phrases “I May Not Be Irish, But I Can Drink Like One” and “Blame the Irish for My Behavior.” The group is asking that Wal-Mart stop selling the shirts and apologize to Irish Americans on its website.

“These items are an outrage to those whose Irish Heritage traces to hard working Irish immigrants, not to a beer bottle, and seek in March, which is Irish American Heritage Month, to see their culture celebrated, not used as an excuse for aberrant behavior,” the group’s National Anti-Defamation Chairman Neil Cosgrove said in a Saturday statement on its website. Cosgrove said the Ancient Order of Hibernians has 40,000 members.

When asked whether the shirts were still for sale in Wal-Mart stores, Wal-Mart spokesman Danit Marquardt would not comment outside a prepared statement: “With more than 140 million people shopping our stores each week, we inevitably encounter a wide variety of viewpoints with respect to the merchandise we sell.

“We take our customers’ feedback seriously and regularly incorporate it into our product selection,” she said.

Facebook to stop illegal-gun sales posts

ALBANY, N.Y. - Under pressure from gun-control advocates, Facebook has agreed to delete posts from users selling illegal guns or offering weapons for sale without background checks.

The social networking site said a similar policy will apply to Instagram, its photo-sharing platform.

The policies announced Wednesday will be implemented over the next few weeks.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and gun-control groups have been talking to Facebook to get restrictions.

The state requires a federal background check for private gun sales and prohibits the sale of some popular firearms, such as the AR-15 rifle.

Facebook said it will remove posts regarding buying or selling guns that indicate an attempt to evade the law, including interstate sales without a licensed firearm dealer involved.

U.S. agency demands GM recall data

DETROIT - A U.S. safety agency is demanding that General Motors turn over documents showing what the company knew about a dangerous ignition problem in older compact cars and how it responded.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating GM’s handling of the problem, which has been linked to 13 traffic deaths and prompted a global recall of 1.6 million cars. GM has acknowledged it was aware of the problem a decade ago but didn’t recall the cars until last month.

GM spokesman Alan Adler said the company received an order for the information Tuesday. He said GM is cooperating and welcomes the chance to help the government fully understand the facts.

If the agency determines GM was slow to recall the cars or withheld information, it can fine it $35 million.

  • The Associated Press

Deal delays IBM cuts, employees say

ALBANY, N.Y. - An IBM workers group believes that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s deal with the company has stopped - at least temporarily - the hundreds of layoffs expected within the company’s Hudson Valley operations.

IBM employs 7,000 people in the Hudson Valley, most of them in East Fishkill and Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County. However, another critical component of those operations is IBM’s computer chip research and development operation at the State University of New York College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany. The company has hundreds of scientists and technicians working at the NanoCollege on programs worth billions of dollars to the high-tech economy in the state and region.

A week ago, Cuomo announced a deal to save 3,100 IBM jobs in the Hudson Valley, including 750 semiconductor research jobs at IBM labs in Albany, East Fishkill and down in Yorktown Heights.

The deal was struck just days before IBM was expected to undertake hundreds of layoffs in the state as part of a $1 billion worldwide cost-cutting program.

But neither Cuomo nor IBM have offered any details about how their new agreement - which lasts through 2016 - would affect job cuts in the Hudson Valley.

So far, the state has refused to share copies of the agreement with the media.

  • The Associated Press

Canada tomato law saves Heinz plant

Canada’s insistence that tomato juice be extracted from “sound, ripe, whole” tomatoes instead of paste - a higher standard than in the U.S. - has partially saved an H.J. Heinz Co. plant marked for closing by Warren Buffett’s private-equity partner.

A group of Ontario investors announced last week they plan to run the century-old plant and take over producing and distributing tomato juice for Heinz in the Canadian market. The move spared 250 of the 740 workers set to lose their jobs in Leamington, Ontario, widely known as the tomato capital of Canada.

Under the Canadian Agricultural Products Act, tomato juice must be made from whole tomatoes and not from concentrated paste as it is at Heinz plants in the U.S.

“It would never work out if the law wasn’t there because then you could locate yourself anywhere,” said Pradeep Sood, a former chairman of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and one of the investors who formed Highbury Canco Corp. to take over the Heinz plant.

While good for the workers in Leamington, the differing standards point to a failure by the U.S. and Canadian governments to deliver on repeated commitments to harmonize food regulations. The two countries announced in 2011 the Beyond the Border agreement, pledging to eliminate the inefficiencies of competing regulations and smooth cross-border travel, burdened by security requirements required after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Business, Pages 26 on 03/06/2014

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