Mid-day Update

PODCAST: The NBA put on hold, Wall Street looks to psychics

Mary Dooe Oct 11, 2011

Here are today’s top headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and from around the web.

The NBA is cancelling the first two weeks of the season, after players and owners failed to reach a new labor agreement, and that means fans in China (and U.S. players) might start looking elsewhere for their basketball fix.

The fate of the European Union, and perhaps the world economy, depends on the small country of Slovakia this morning. They are the last country to vote on an extension of the bailout fund.

Obama is in Pittsburgh today, again pushing for his jobs bill. He also is hoping to attract a trillion dollars of foreign investment in the coming years to help create jobs.

To Lexington Kentucky, which Men’s Health Magazine called the least active city in America. Well, apparently Lexington is also a city with a sense of humor. Over the weekend, the city held what it called a “sedentary parade.” Mayor Jim Gray was on the lead float — sitting on a couch, with his feet up on a table.

A German designer and microbiologist has come up with a fabric made from high concentrations of casein, which is found in milk. Clothes made with the fabric — which has a texture similar to silk — will be sold under the designer’s Mademoiselle Chi Chi label. Milk fabrics have been around for decades — but had to be mixed with a lot of chemicals, making them bad for the environment. The new version doesn’t use any chemicals; it takes just under 2 gallons of milk to make an entire dress. The good news: is that there’s no expiration date.

And in today’s Mid-Day Extra, we hear from one New York reporter about the influx of Wall Street brokers in psychics’ shops.

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