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Superstorm Sandy Sends Jobless Claims Up Sharply

By: Mark Memmott // November 15, 2012
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There were 439,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, up by 78,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration says. Behind the big increase: Superstorm Sandy, which threw some people in the Mid-Atlantic onto the unemployment rolls and shut down state unemployment offices the week before — meaning that some claims were postponed into last week.

In other economic news, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that consumer prices barely rose last month. The bureau's consumer price index ticked up just 0.1 percent from September. A 0.6 percent drop in gasoline prices was a large factor. In the past 12 months, prices have risen 2.2 percent.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Arts & Culture

NPR

Nostalgia For Sale As Captain Kangaroo's Pals Are Auctioned Off

A giant lot of Captain Kangaroo memorabilia goes on the auction block this week in Los Angeles. Among the items up for auction are several of the Captain's signature jackets, Mr. Grean Jeans' famous jeans and the life-sized costume worn by Dancing Bear.

Food

NPR

Giant Renaissance Food People Descend Upon New York

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th-century artist who liked to play with his food, transforming it into the building blocks of many of his fantastical portraits. Artist Philip Haas has taken those portraits out of museums, reinterpreting them as colossal statues that interact with the natural environment.

Politics

NPR

Is There Really A Second-Term Curse?

Whether it's President Richard Nixon's resignation or President Bill Clinton's impeachment, presidents tend to have a tough time during the back half of an eight-year presidency.

Technology

NPR

Young Kenyans Build Mobile Apps For Local Use

College students and recent graduates crammed the top floor of a tech hub in Nairobi for a competition built around the theme "Solutions for the Next Billion Mobile Users." Africa has more than 600 million mobile phone users (approximately 11 percent of the global total) – and the number is growing.

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