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NEW YORK • The nation’s largest retail trade group expects a solid 3.4 percent increase in sales this year, below last year’s 4.7 percent increase as job woes weigh on shoppers.
Sales should reach $2.53 trillion this year, up from last year’s $2.45 trillion, boosted in part by higher prices across all goods, according to a […]

People infuriated by what they call a discriminatory ban on photography by one of Italian fashion label Dolce & Gabbana’s Hong Kong outlets have protested outside the store.
Several dozen people gathered outside the shop Sunday afternoon. They yelled for the company to apologize after news reports earlier this month said sales staff were preventing Hong […]

China stands to be the biggest beneficiary of U.S. and European plans for sanctions on Iran

One of the first Canadian digital-era laws was the Uniform Electronic Commerce Act, a model law created by the Uniform Law Conference of Canada in the late 1990s. The ULCC brings together officials from federal, provincial, and territorial governments to work on model laws that can be implemented in a similar manner across all Canadian […]

Think your programming skills are world class? Facebook wants you to prove it at its second annual Hacker Cup challenge.
"Hacking is core to how we build at Facebook," the company said in a blog post announcing this year’s competition. "Whether we’re building a prototype for a major product like Timeline at a Hackathon, […]

Italy auctioned 7 billion euros ($9 billion) of debt to bring the total raised this week to almost 20 billion euros, underscoring how the European Central Bank is helping the world

Of the 1,600 job cuts announced earlier this month by Morgan Stanley, 580 will be at its home base in New York.
The relentless tug of the dismal economy is hitting employees in the banking sector hard, and it’s no surprise that many of the job cuts are hitting the epicenter of the financial industry. Citigroup, […]

Despite continued worries about the economy, more Americans are expected to hit the highway this holiday season.
Travel group AAA said Wednesday it expects 91.9 million Americans — about 30% of the population — is expected to travel at least 50 miles from home during the 11-day year-end holiday season. That’s up 1.4% from a […]

The United States will hold talks with North Korea in Beijing Thursday on the possibility of providing food aid to the impoverished country, the State Department said.
The Obama administration has been deliberating on the issue for months. The United Nations and U.S. charities say aid is badly needed, but it remains a controversial issue. North […]

A closely-watched survey shows German investor sentiment grew in December, ending a nine-month downward trend.
However, the rise was not as big as expected as Europe’s raging debt crisis weighs heavily on the continent’s largest economy.
The ZEW investor sentiment index for December released Tuesday was up 1.4 points to minus 53.8 points overall. Analysts had forecast […]