It's Almost Halloween: Time To Shop For Christmas?
October 24, 2011
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Walmart launched the first salvo in the holiday retail wars, announcing a Christmas Price Guarantee: Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 25, if a customer buys a product and then finds it at a lower price elsewhere, Walmart will issue a gift card equal to the difference. The move continues a recent trend of retailers promoting products earlier and more aggressively to pull in frugal shoppers who are pickier in this economy.
NPR's Bob Mondello and Susan Stamberg read excerpts of two of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. They read Snowflake by Winona Wendth of Lancaster, Mass., and Geometry by Eugenie Montague of Los Angeles.
The grill "is the one and only male-dominated appliance in America," says a researcher who recently crunched the numbers. He found that men are more than twice as likely as women to be the primary grillers at home. One reason? Grilling can feel like a form of recreation.
The congressional hearings about the IRS's handling of Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status raise the question of why and how tax-exempt groups engage in politics in the first place.
The Federal Trade Commission is in the early stages of opening an antitrust probe into how Google runs its online display advertising business, according to a report by Bloomberg News, citing sources who want to remain anonymous because the FTC has not announced the probe.