AAMI shuts down all its branches nationwide

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3 June 2011
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All 24 branches of insurance firm AAMI will close within two months, potentially axing dozens of jobs nationwide as it moves to a phone and net-based service.

AAMI corporate affairs manager Reuben Atchison said the corporation was keen to redeploy as many of the 102 affected staff as possible within AAMI and its parent company Suncorp — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Masters of the universe come crashing back to Earth

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3 June 2011
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Collecting international awards and boasting they sold properties across five continents, Michael Marquette and Simon Turner were ranked among the world’s most influential people in luxury property.

The pair behind the Marquette Turner Luxury Homes business ragged that their operation was the No. 1 visited luxury real estate website in Australia in each of the last three years.

But the young guns have now been banned from trading after the NSW Department of Fair Trading found money put into client trust accounts had been used without authorisation — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Against Learned Helplessness

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31 May 2011
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Unemployment is a terrible scourge across much of the Western world. Almost 14 million Americans are jobless, and millions more are stuck with part-time work or jobs that fail to use their skills. Some European countries have it even worse: 21 percent of Spanish workers are unemployed.

Nor is the situation showing rapid improvement. This is a continuing tragedy, and in a rational world bringing an end to this tragedy would be our top economic priority.

Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.

So someone needs to say the obvious: inventing reasons not to put the unemployed back to work is neither wise nor responsible. It is, instead, a grotesque abdication of responsibility — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Choice accuses retailers of gouging customers

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27 May 2011
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Consumer group Choice is challenging retailers’ claims that internet sales are cutting into profits.

It says some companies use technological barriers to stop customers buying cheaper goods online.

Choice says the technological barriers include region coding, bans on international IP addresses, and pushing consumers to local websites where it says prices are higher than overseas — via redwolf.newsvine.com

PayPal Co-Founder Hands Out $100,000 Fellowships To NOT Go To College

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27 May 2011
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The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that [PayPal co-founder and one of the first investors in Facebook, Peter] Thiel thinks ideas can develop in a start-up environment much faster than at a university. And the project is also intended to question the idea of higher education. Thiel told TechCrunch in April that the United Sates was in a higher education bubble.

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he told Techcrunch. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education adds Thiel is doing just that:

Students today are taking on more debt, and recently tightened bankruptcy laws make it more difficult to shake that debt, he argues, and those factors make higher education a risky investment. If you get this wrong, it’s actually a mistake that’s hard to undo for the rest of your life, he said.

Critics contend that even so, Thiel’s advice to leave school and develop a business is applicable only to a tiny fraction of students and that Thiel’s own success, aided by business relationships forged during his days at Stanford, argues against leaving school.

But Thiel is convinced that the social pressure for students to pursue lower-risk trajectories in their career choices will lead to less innovation in the future — via carloz.newsvine.com

Misuse of 3-D digital lens leaves 2-D movies in the dark

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23 May 2011
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As if rising ticket prices and chatterbox patrons weren’t enough, moviegoers in the Boston area are being left in the dark thanks to the regular misuse of the lenses on new digital projection equipment at many of the region’s major theater chains. But almost no one at the theaters or their corporate headquarters is willing to talk about it — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Caught! Packer buys into daily deals site

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23 May 2011
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After almost a month of speculation, James Packer, along with a prominent hedge fund, has moved to invest in daily deals sites Catch of the Day and Scoopon.

Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings and New York-based Tiger Global Management teamed up with Andrew Bassat, co-founder of Seek, and Glenn Poswell of Gannet Capital in a consortium bid to pick up a massive stake in the daily deals sites.

The consortium is set to control 40 per cent of the deals business, owned by Gabby and Hezi Leibovich, with the investment pegged at $80 million — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Church expanding coffee network

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12 May 2011
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Australian coffee mega-franchise Gloria Jeans, a company chaired by the millionaire elder of a popular corporate Christian church in the country, Nabi Saleh, has eyes on Vilnius, searching for prospective franchisees to open stores and begin servicing Lithuanian customers. Representatives for Gloria Jeans were in Vilnius for the Brand 4 Baltic conference at the end of April, which brought together a selection of foreign companies looking to the future to invest in the Baltic region — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Sony admits a third data breach

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9 May 2011
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Sony has suffered a third data breach with revelations of details of customers who entered a product sweepstake being discovered on the internet.

And in a blog post on the company’s website, Sony’s Senior Director, Corporate Communications and Social Media, Patrick Seybold said its online entertainment arm had been unaware of the extent of the hacking of its site, first revealed a week ago — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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