PODCAST: Bank of America shells out, Nickelodeon half-shells out and there are no clams for the junk-store Renoir
PODCAST: Bank of America shells out, Nickelodeon half-shells out and there are no clams for the junk-store Renoir
Bank of America will pay $2.4 billion to shareholders as part of a settlement announced this morning. The bank admits no wrongdoing, but the settlement is compensation for maybe not telling shareholders the whole story when BofA bought the struggling brokerage Merrill Lynch back in 2008.
And Apple takes time out of its morning to tell us “I’m sorry.” CEO Tim Cook posted an online letter to iPhone customers, saying that with its Apple Maps application the company fell short of its commitment to making best-in-class products. People who bought the new iPhone5 or upgraded the software on their old iPhones have been forced to use Apple Maps instead of Google Maps, which used to be the standard.
Cook says Apple will be working non-stop until Apple Maps is up to snuff.
That’s not the only Apple product dying on the vine — users of Apple’s neglected social network “Ping” better get on there and ping some people while they still can. After two uneventful years, Ping goes to social media heaven at midnight on Saturday. It is survived, for now, by Friendster, MySpace and Google+.
But when the world closes a door it opens a mutated, animated window: this Saturday, kids cable channel Nickelodeon reboots the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so for all you 80’s kids, time to “wax” nostalgic. 😉 Nickelodeon and its parent company Viacom are hoping the heros-in-a-half-shell can help boost sagging ratings.
Also in the news, American Airlines is threatening to take its pilots’ union to court, accusing the pilots of disrupting flights by calling in sick and calling for unnecessary maintenance. And for the second straight year, fewer students enrolled in U.S. graduate schools. According to a report this morning, overall enrollment fell almost two percent last year — though there’s a lot of nuance behind that figure.
A couple weeks ago I told you about an amazing find: a woman bought a box of junk at a West Virginia flea market for $7 and it turned out to contain a Renoir painting worth maybe a hundred grand.
Well, it was supposed to go up for auction tomorrow, but at the last minute has been removed from the block. Turns out “Landscape on the Banks of the Seine” may have been stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951.
Easy come, easy go.
And finally, Costa Rica has jungles, coral reefs, beautiful weather… Now it’s finally getting some street signs: 22,000 of them.
The capital, San Jose, has never had signs or even names for most streets — which was quaint but cost about $720 million a year in stalled or misdirected mail. Plus, taxi drivers will no longer have to take directions based on landmarks like McDonalds arches (and, evidently, a famous but long-dead fig tree).
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