Word: falling
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...National Retail Federation, the average family with K-12 students will spend $548.72 on school merchandise, a 7.7% decline from 2008. Britt Beemer, founder and chairman of America's Research Group, a retail consulting firm, predicts spending will drop from 8.5% to 12.5% this year, compared with a 5% fall last year. "In my 30 years of tracking this, we've never seen two straight year of declines," says Beemer. "It's pretty...
Apparel isn't the only thing that will take a hit. Back-to-school shoppers plan to buy less of the basic stuff that students really need. The National Retail Federation forecasts that spending on notebooks, folders, backpacks and lunch boxes will fall 16% this year. Analysts predict that electronic items like personal computers will also see a sales decline. "We expect that it's going to be a disappointing season," says Ashok Kumar, tech analyst at Collins Stewart, an advisory firm. Kumar points out that life cycles of desktop computers are stretching from four years to as much...
...will compare with the 250,000-500,000 people who die around the world each year from seasonal flu. But ever since the first case of H1N1 flu was reported in Mexico last March, health officials from Washington to Beijing have been girding for a difficult fall and winter. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that anywhere from 15% to 45% of the world's population - 1 billion to 3 billion people - will catch the illness. "We know that influenza usually takes off in the winter months," says Alan Hay, director of WHO's World Influenza Center in London...
...global experience this fall mirrors what happened at Camp Modin, the virus may go down in history as a case study in preparedness. But with a once-in-a-generation bug on the loose and schools opening in the coming weeks, the drama known as H1N1 may just be starting. With reporting by Elizabeth Dias and Sophia Yan / Washington, and Austin Ramzy / Beijing...
...easy for the Taliban. Under his charismatic and fearsome leadership, at least 13 separate and disparate groups were able to forge a fractious but powerful alliance. If Mehsud is gone, that alliance is likely to fracture. His replacement will determine the new direction of the Pakistani Taliban: it may fall under the greater influence of al-Qaeda, concentrate on fighting in Afghanistan, continue fighting chiefly in Pakistan or break up into small, rival groups. (Read a story about the attack on Baitullah Mehsud...