National / International News

Swansea, Carmarthenshire and Neath Port Talbot are putting in a joint bid to become the UK City of Culture in 2017.

The Dow posted another record high this morning. The surge came on the heels of a new report from the payroll processing company ADP, which showed that private employers added 198,000 jobs in February. Tomorrow, the Labor Department releases its February jobs report.

In Venezuela, some are mourning, and some are not, for Hugo Chavez, the country’s polarizing president, who died yesterday. Supporters see him as a champion of the poor. Critics say he ruined the country’s economy. Chavez’s economic legacy is a mix of both.

BNSF, a freight railway, hauls things like grain and oil from North Dakota. Now, ironically, its trains may use natural gas to haul that oil. The reason? Gas is cheap, but how cheap?

BNSF, a freight railway, hauls things like grain and oil from North Dakota. Now, ironically, its trains may use natural gas to haul that oil. The reason? Gas is cheap, but how cheap?

“The natural gas, when converted to a liquid would be substantially cheaper,” says Lou Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. “I would say probably less than half.  But that is not the whole cost.”

What Pugliaresi means is BNSF will have to shell out some cash to retrofit its locomotives to run on gas. It will need natural special tanker cars and fuel depots.

But David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors says it will be worth the investment. He expects natural gas prices to be low for decades. In fact, he says truckers will be tempted to try natural gas -- especially if the railway’s experiment goes well.

“Start with rail,” he says, "add an engine. Change a train. Change a system. The next one looks at you and says, I’m going to do that too.”

Kotok says the trucking business faces more hurdles. For starters, there aren’t natural gas pumps at many truck stops, but Kotok says that will eventually change.  

A winner of the BBC's The Apprentice claims she was warned not to raise any issues Lord Sugar would not be happy about.

Serita Shone prepares for her competitive bobsleigh return, 18 months after being told she may never walk again.

Now 73, the actress tells People magazine that she doesn't think about dying. She thinks about "being here now." Doctors have told her she has about three months to live, Harper says.

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The U.S. secretary of state announced last week that Washington will provide $60 million in nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition.

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Sam Mendes, director of the latest Bond film Skyfall, reveals that he won't be directing the next in the series.

The job market remains "sturdy," according to the latest ADP National Employment Report. Much more will be known about the labor picture when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its figures on Friday.

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Tributes are paid to a mother of two who was killed in a suspected "road rage" incident in Barnet, north London.

The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn't track how many free gun locks it gives out or whether they're even effective. Rather, the devices are viewed as a stalling technique in the event a veteran picks up a gun in a moment of crisis.

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The Dow posted another record high this morning. The surge came on the heels of a new report from the payroll processing company ADP, which showed that private employers added 198,000 jobs in February. Tomorrow, the Labor Department releases its February jobs report.

David Kelly, chief global strategist with JP Morgan Funds, joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to share his predictions on what's ahead for the Dow and the labor market.

 

 

There was outrage when T-shirts went on sale with offensive variations of the Keep Calm and Carry On slogan. Is the joke over?

Two men are found guilty of plying teenage girls with drink and drugs in West Yorkshire, before raping them.

A proposal to ban the international trade in polar bear parts is proving hugely divisive at the Cites meeting in Bangkok

A man who beat his heavily pregnant former fiancee to death, causing the death of their unborn child, is jailed for life.

News Corp's education arm unveils a tablet targeted at US schools, reopening the debate about the best way to use technology in the classroom.

With a hand-picked vice president now controlling the purse strings and opponents looking weak, NPR's Juan Forero says the controversial and charismatic leader's policies are likely to survive for at least a while. Chávez died Tuesday.

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The ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli jails is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised", a UN report says.

Remember the MiniDisc? Way better than a cassette. In the 1990s, Sony once hyped its format with ads starring supermodel Claudia Shiffer.

Video of Claudia Schiffer in a bar: Jon Lovitz prank

 

The MiniDisc is a little optical disc in a cartridge the size of a thin pad of Post-it Notes. Sony has announced it is killing off the format this month.

"I think I was actually pretty close to the target, I was about 13 at the time," says Seth Fiegerman, writer for the website Mashable, who bought into the MiniDisc craze as an impressionable youth.  

According to Michael Bierylo, Chair of the Electronics Production and Design Department at the Berklee College of Music, the MiniDisc was engineered to make imperfect copies in an effort to curb music piracy.

But the loss of the format makes life tough for musicians.

"A lot of the things I did in the 90s on a computer, the software that was used to make the production, the companies are no longer in business and modern computers won't run the software," says Bierylo.

Bierylo, who has boxes of old floppy disks from the 90s, says he jokes with his wife that he'd like to mount a exhibit of obsolete formats, like the consumer electronics version of the Island of Misfit Toys.

To hear more about the origin of the MiniDisc, click on the audio player above.