Business

Solar Industry Reaches Milestone

10:18am April 22, 2013

For the first time ever, all of the new electricity generation added to the nation's power grid in the month of March came from solar installations. That's according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's monthly report on new power sources.

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Boeing's 787 Dreamliners To Fly Again After FAA Approval

10:51pm April 19, 2013

Boeing's 787 will be allowed to return to passenger service soon. The Federal Aviation Administration has approved Boeing's redesign of the battery system that caused serious problems, including a fire on one plane. The batteries and their housing have been redesigned and both Boeing and the FAA are confident they are safe. Melissa Block talks with Wendy Kaufman.

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Economy

Despite Flaws, Harvard Economists Stand By Research

12:22pm April 18, 2013

by Jim Zarroli

At what point does debt start to drag down an economy? Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff have argued that a debt to GDP ratio of 90 percent is a red line of sorts. That idea is under attack with economists from the University of Massachusetts charging that Rogoff and Reinhart used selective data to make their case.

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Amazon doesn't charge sales tax in most states â but you may still be on the hook to pay the tax.

Most People Are Supposed To Pay This Tax. Almost Nobody Actually Pays It.

2:17pm April 16, 2013

by Chana Joffe-Walt

It's called a use tax. Accountants and tax lawyers are some of the only people who pay it.

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Drinks columnist David Wondrich is seen on Esquire's new Talk to Esquire app, which allows users to interact with several of the magazine's columnists through voice recognition.

Speak Up! Advertisers Want You To Talk With New Apps

10:02pm April 15, 2013

by Steve Henn

Advertisers want to hear what you have to say, and many are about to roll out new kinds of ads you can actually have a conversation with. Marketers are hoping to leverage the power of voice and the kinds of technologies that power Apple's Siri to start selling us all sorts of things.

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Economy

Taxes Without Returns: Pipe Dream Or Possibility?

3:34pm April 15, 2013

A system known as "return-free filing" would allow filers to receive a pre-filled tax return prepared by the government and make any necessary tweaks. According to a ProPublica-NPR report, this approach, which exists in some countries, has taxpayer advocates at odds with tax preparation companies.

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Savvy Investors Pumped By Cicadas' Return

2:21pm April 15, 2013

Analysis by The Wall Street Journal, going back to 1928, shows that the year the cicadas return, the stock market has grown on average by 21 percent — that's double the historical average.

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Robert Oliver, 27, dances on the corner of 28th and Crenshaw in west Los Angeles, dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume outside the offices of Liberty Income Tax.

Tax Day Is This Statue Of Liberty's Last Day Of Work

1:28pm April 15, 2013

by Nina Gregory

At the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and 28th Street in Los Angeles, you'll find Robert Oliver wearing a Statue of Liberty costume and dancing to promote Liberty Tax Service. "I'm never embarrassed to be out here," he says. "I'm proud of what I do."

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As newspapers around the country struggle with declining subscription rates and smaller staffs, passionate, long-form digital storytelling is creating new ways of delivering richly detailed reporting.

Arts

Great Long-Form Journalism, Just Clicks Away

11:12am April 15, 2013

by David Folkenflik

In the age of digital media, many newspapers have been forced to gut their staffs, leading some media analysts to sound the death knell for enterprise reporting and long-form storytelling. Not so fast, say the craft's most passionate advocates.

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United Farm Workers members were among the crowd that filled the lawn on Capitol Hill during an immigration rights rally Wednesday.

Immigration Debate Puts Farm Workers Union In Spotlight

9:58pm April 13, 2013

by Don Gonyea

The United Farm Workers seemed to be all over Washington this week — lobbying members of Congress and gathering for a big immigration rally outside the Capitol. The union has gotten "a huge injection of leverage" from its role in the immigration debate, one analyst says.

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