Mid-day Update

PODCAST: Smelly bus stations and a sauerkraut highway

Mary Dooe Feb 8, 2012
HTML EMBED:
COPY
A woman manipulates potatoes before their transformation in French fries on October 18, 2011 at the McCain factory in Harnes, northern France. Bus stations in the U.K. are now featuring a new McCain ad campaign, complete with baked potato scent. FRANCOIS LO PRESTI/AFP/Getty Images
Mid-day Update

PODCAST: Smelly bus stations and a sauerkraut highway

Mary Dooe Feb 8, 2012
A woman manipulates potatoes before their transformation in French fries on October 18, 2011 at the McCain factory in Harnes, northern France. Bus stations in the U.K. are now featuring a new McCain ad campaign, complete with baked potato scent. FRANCOIS LO PRESTI/AFP/Getty Images
HTML EMBED:
COPY

There’s a piece in the Wall Street Journal today suggesting Europe’s central bank is getting more flexible when it comes to helping Greece with its government debt nightmare. Still no agreement today among senior Greek politicians about more painful budget cutting that would pave the way for a European bailout package to avert default.

The Republican-led House is trying to give President Barack Obama the line-item veto, a power over the purse that has been sought by both Republican and Democratic presidents.

The iPhone helped Sprint gain customers in the latest quarter, but also forced the carrier to post its largest loss in three years because of the high cost of the phone a network upgrade.

Time Warner says its fourth-quarter earnings grew slightly as revenue jumped 5 percent on strong performance at its Warner Bros. movie studio and its cable television networks.

Nokia says it’s cutting another 4,000 jobs, bringing its layoff total to 14,000 in the last year.

Visits to Disney theme parks were up 3 percent at the end of last year.

McDonald’s says a key revenue figure climbed 6.7 percent in January as U.S. customers spent more on breakfast items, beverages and its new Chicken McBites.

We’ve heard about trucks crashing and spilling ice cream or olive oil, or pumpkins at Halloween. Well in Germany yesterday morning, a truck spilled what only a German truck could: sauerkraut — all over the highway. And since it’s below freezing there, the sauerkraut froze to the road causing a major traffic jam. The pickled cabbage had to be scraped off before cars could pass.

Put an aroma in a bus shelter and you will get coverage.  In  London and other U.K. cities you can now press a button waiting for the bus and  the smell of “McCain Ready-Baked” baked potatoes wafts out.  When the” Got Milk!” people tried this with cloying cookie smell in San Francisco a while back, it was met with outrage. The city’s transit agency quickly ordered the system removed prompting a famous email from an advertising guy who wrote that San Francisco quote “had made herself safe for bus shelters that smell like…”  and then he named two nasty smells more common to city bus shelters.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.