Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment compensation dropped to 421,000 for the week ending Dec. 4, a decrease of 17,000 claims from the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Not all jobless workers are insured by the unemployment compensation program. The advance seasonally adjusted rate of insured unemployed workers was 3.2 percent for the week ending Nov. 27, which was a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.4 percent, the DOL said in a statement.

The DOL also released the figures for the week ending Nov. 27 for the advance number of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, which was 4,086,000. That was a decrease of 191,000 from the preceding week’s revised number of 4,277,000 insured unemployed.

Advance unadjusted figures for the week ending Nov. 27 showed the percentage of unemployed workers eligible for unemployment compensation was 3.3 percent. However, the unemployment rate during that week was 9.6 percent.

Figures for the number of unemployed Americans claiming benefits under all unemployment compensation programs was from a week earlier, or the week ending Nov. 13 was 8,297,938.

Extended unemployment compensation benefits, for jobless Americans who are covered by that insurance program, were available in 35 states and the District of Columbia for the week ending Nov. 20.

Those states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Air Force has completed a 7-month flight test for what is believed to be a futuristic space fighter plane after the unmanned spacecraft left its orbit and landed at a California airbase on Friday.

The spacecraft dubbed X-37B or Orbital Test Vehicle was monitored by the Air Force Space Command Headquarters while it was in orbit. An inspection of the spacecraft was conducted after landing at the Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The X-37B was launched on April 22 by an Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft is 29 feet long, had a wingspan of 15 feet and weighs about 5 tons.

The plane manufacturer Boeing Co. built the X-37B for the U.S. space agency NASA in 1999.

NASA turned over the spacecraft to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2004. The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office later took over the orbiter.

Another test flight for the X-37B is planned for spring.

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California, United States (AHN) – After helping people around the world search and learn about anything under the sun, popular search engine Google has come up with an online fashion store, which it calls “Boutiques.com.”

This store would allow the users to “create and edit” their own boutiques through computer vision and machine learning technology.

The technology used in this application would help the users to “visually analyse your taste and match it to items you would like,” according to Google Product Management Director Munjal Shah.

Besides establishing their own creative style, the users of boutiques.com will also be able to follow the fashion designers, stylists and celebrities on the website and follow their trends.

Boutiques.com is currently being used by actresses like Ginniger Goodwin, Mary and Ashley Olsen and Carey Mulligan.

Fashion designers who have turned their attention to boutiques.com even before its formal launch, include Tory Burch, Oscar de la Renta and Isaac Mizrahi.

Shah says that the celebrities will not only guide other users in terms of style and taste, but will also curate items that they love themselves. Shah said, “Our machine learning algorithms use this information to enable you to shop all of the inventory in the style of that taste-maker, on top of the 50 items they’ve hand curated.”

Although the website is currently available to users based in America only, Google plans to expand its horizons beyond American borders.

The new attempt by Google at changing fashion commerce is expected to result in significant changes in how fashion is sold in the virtual world.

The boutiques.com site is not just a source of inspiration for the users, but also a place where anybody can show off their fashion sense. For instance, if one doesn’t know how to wear the leopard print pumps, all one has to do is go to the street-style photo panel and check out the visualizations.

The technology used on this website was developed by Like.com, acquired for USD 100 million by Google last year. One of the salient features of this website is that you can download stuff very fast, despite a large number of results shown for your search.

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Seattle, WA, United States (AHN) – U.S. third quarter home values fell for the 17th consecutive quarter. Home values are now on average 25 percent below their June 2006 peak.

Rising from 22.5 percent in the second quarter, 23.2 percent of single-family homeowners with mortgages were underwater on their mortgage in the third quarter.

In some markets, as many as four out of five single-family homeowners with mortgages were underwater on their mortgages in the third quarter. Las Vegas had the highest percentage, with 80.2 percent in negative equity, followed by Phoenix with 68.4 percent.

“While not unexpected, the unceasing declines in home values signal that we’re in for a long, bleak winter of continued troubles for the housing market,” said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries. “The length and depth of the current housing recession is rivaling the Great Depression’s real estate downturn, and, with encouraging signs fading, will easily eclipse it in the coming months.

In five California metro area markets- Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Ventura – home values began to fall again after five consecutive quarters of increases. Other markets such as Boston and Denver showed signs of stabilization in previous quarters but are now faltering by showing signs of flattening or becoming negative.

“The high percentage of homeowners in negative equity continues to be troubling, in that it represents a huge number of people who are not only more vulnerable to foreclosure, but who are essentially trapped in their current homes and are prevented from selling and buying a new home.”

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Most CEOs got a nasty reality check toward the end of 2008 when it became crystal clear that consumers were spending less and customers frequently bailed out of big contracts at the last minute. “We were 15 minutes away from a $100,000 purchase order and we got a call saying ‘the boss said don’t sign anything,’” recalls Seth Earley of Earley & Associates, an IT consulting firm in Stowe, Massachusetts.

Can you really plan for a scenario like that? It’s tough. But the good news is that a number of smart CEOs we spoke to have taken what they’ve learned over the past three years and come up with some pretty solid ways to forecast revenue. What they all seem to have in common: a more conservative approach to forecasting; more frequent adjustments to those forecasts; and a cautiously optimistic outlook for 2011. Here are some of the forecasting strategies they’re using:

Sales Forecasting: Update Constantly

At the beginning of each fiscal year, the leadership team at T3, a $35 million Austin-based advertising agency, takes a stab at forecasting sales for the entire year, but then adjusts those numbers every month based on input from eight to 10 account directors.

“We go to each of them every month and ask them to give us a 12-month projection,” says COO Lee Gaddis. “We ask everyone to be conservative.”

At the end of every month, Charles Kiley, the firm’s CFO, sits down with the account directors to compare invoices to the forecast, plots a trend line, and reports back to senior management, including chief executive Gay Gaddis. At that point, the team makes a “buy, hold, or sell” decision on hiring and expenses. “We think forecasting is one of the most critical things we do,” says Lee Gaddis. “Employees are our single biggest expense, so we need to know what we have in the pipeline.”

Forecast for 2011 : “We’re thinking the economy may ease a bit in 2011 but it’s still going to be tough. In times like these you have to make your own good luck.”

Dig Deeper: How to Manage a Sales Pipeline

Sales Forecasting: Plan for the Best, Average and Worst

Orb Audio CEO Ethan Siegel makes three different spreadsheets for his high-end speaker manufacturing business.

“We try to walk the fine line of making sure we are profitable if the worst case comes true, but also have enough product and staff to support the best case predictions,” says Siegel, whose company is based in New York City.

This year, the company grew by 30 percent, with growth fueled largely by foreign sales driven by a weak dollar. “We never would have guessed that we’d grow that much,” says Siegel. “But because we also planned for best case and built up inventory, we weren’t caught with our pants down.”

In the short term, Siegel looks carefully at the month-to-month growth rate in the previous year to predict revenue in the coming months. “It’s been very accurate for us since speaker sales do tend to follow a seasonal pattern,” he says. “People are more likely to spend their money on indoor entertainment in cold months.”

Forecast for 2011 : “Although we expect 2011 to have some challenging months, we also anticipate annual sales growth greater than 20 percent due to new product releases and strong international sales momentum.”

Dig Deeper: 7 Common Sales Mistakes

Sales Forecasting: Manage Variables Creatively

Every business deals with uncontrollable variables that can wreak havoc on sales forecasts. For Terry McBride, CEO of Burns & McBride Home Comfort, a $25-million heating oil distributor in Wilmington, Delaware, those variables include the weather and the price of oil.

“Our forecasts were usually 7 to 8 percent off because we were overly optimistic,” says McBride. “And we’d always blame it on the weather.”

To narrow such misses, McBride partnered with grad students at Marquette University to create proprietary software that measures the consumption of individual customers and plots it against the weather. The result: more accurate predictions on oil usage, lower delivery costs, and happier customers who are less likely to run out of oil unexpectedly. That all added up to sales forecasts that were off by as little as 1 or 2 percent.

Forecast for 2011 : “We expect flat gross revenue sales and customer growth when compared to the prior year. The bright spot, however, is in HVAC retrofit sales area (replacement of existing residential heating and A/C systems) where we project a significant lift (20 percent) from last year’s levels.”

Dig Deeper: How to Manage Seasonal Fluctuations in Sales

Sales Forecasting: Measure Customer and Employee Satisfaction

This tip might feel a little easier said than done and possibly a headscratcher for the purposes of sales. But not for Spencer Brown, the CEO of RentAGreenBox in Costa Mesa, California. Brown, whose company makes moving boxes from recycled material and is on track to gross more than $3 million a year, doesn’t believe in annual forecasting.

“Looking at past sales to determine future sales is a flawed model,” he says.

Instead, he forecasts quarterly sales using his own formula, based on six years of experience. Ninety percent of his projection is equally based on the company’s quality of customer service, which he measures through social media interaction, including Yelp ratings (the company has a five-star rating); the enthusiasm level of his employees and how efficiently they’re serving customers; and the company’s ability to stock enough inventory to meet every customer’s needs. Lastly, he layers in a 10 percent “unknown factor” based on his personal experience in the marketplace – conversations with shop owners, mechanics, plumbers, and farmers market vendors. If the first three factors are all on track, Brown forecasts 13 percent growth the next quarter, but he adjusts that up or down based on how those conversations go. “We’re accurate within 1 percent every quarter,” he says.

Forecast for 2011: “We’re going national in 2011 and our growth will be phenomenal!”

Dig Deeper: How to Improve Your Customer Service

Sales Forecasting: Pick a Number, any Number .

Jason Loeb, chief executive of Sudsies, a multi-million dollar dry cleaning company in Miami, is adamant about “not letting the numbers drive my business.” Other people’s numbers, that is. When the recession hit, revenues in the dry cleaning industry plummeted. But Loeb had his own ideas about where he wanted his own revenues to go.

“I made a forecast, then came up with a way to fulfill it,” he says. When the economy started tanking and others were panicking, he added new services, such as environmentally friendly and couture cleaning, and forked over the marketing dollars to promote them.

“People who spend $7,000 on a suit need someone who knows how to take care of it,” he reasoned. The result: his sales were up 9 percent in 2009 and are on track for a 40 percent increase this year.

Forecast for 2011 : “We are planning for a 40 percent growth in 2011. We are finding new innovative ways to improve the customer experience which will continue to help attract new clients and retain our existing ones.”

Dig Deeper: Business Forecasting in a Crazy, Mixed-up World

Sales Forecasting: Final Thoughts

Forecasting involves a little art, a little science, and would definitely be a lot easier with a very large crystal ball. How you forecast depends a lot on what industry you’re in, your company culture, and the number of variables that are just beyond your control. The good news: solid experience with forecasting sales in good times and bad should help everyone make more accurate predictions in the coming years.

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San Diego, California, United States (AHN) – U.S. law enforcement agencies are using satellite equipment to monitor phone calls by drug cartel leaders deep inside Mexico even as concern grows among Mexican politicians about interference in their domestic affairs.

The FBI wiretaps were revealed in a recent 86-page federal racketeering indictment being used to prosecute Mexican criminal suspects.

The Mexican government was not involved in the investigation.

In another law enforcement effort, the international police agency Interpol announced this week that it coordinated the arrest of 20 people – some from Mexico – for charges that included murder. Police from 15 countries participated in the operation.

The wiretaps and arrests show how Mexico’s four-year-old drug war is enlisting efforts by other countries as violence and lawlessness continue, sometimes with corruption accusations against police and politicians.

More than 28,000 people have been killed in the struggle against the cartels.

Last month, after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested a greater U.S. role in Mexico’s drug war, members of the Mexican Congress reacted with outrage.

A deputy to Mexican President Felipe Calderon said, “The Mexican people must reject any interventionist attitude of the United States government.”

Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa said that she does “not share” Clinton’s opinion.

U.S. officials defend their actions by saying they have been able stop murders and drug cartel smuggling that the Mexicans never would have prevented alone.

Their surveillance with global positioning satellites monitored 50,000 calls in six months, some of which gathered evidence on 43 drug cartel suspects.

Thirty-five of the suspects are in jail in the United States.

Their activities included trying to set up a drug trafficking ring in San Diego that they called the Fernando Sanchez Organization, according to law enforcement officials.

The federal indictment says the drug traffickers used what they called their San Diego “office” to plot kidnappings, murders and to hire teenaged girls to smuggle drugs across the border for them for $100.

One tapped phone call recorded a conversation between a cartel leader, a former Tijuana homicide detective and a Mexican state judicial police officer discussing the possibility of setting up a death squad.

The biggest catch for the wiretap operation was the arrest of Jesus Quinones Marquez, an advisor to Mexican Attorney General Rommel Moreno, the head prosecutor in Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

Not only did Quinones work as a liaison with U.S. law enforcement agencies, he also passed information to cartel leaders and directed Mexican police against their rivals.

U.S. law enforcement agents asked Quinones to meet with them about an investigation at the San Diego Police Department on July 22. Instead of a meeting, Quinones was thrown in jail, where he awaits trial.

In a separate law enforcement action, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced this week that it arrested 20 criminal suspects as part of its first joint effort with Interpol.

The operation sought to find criminals who commit crimes in one country but hide in other countries, such as the United States and Mexico.

Eight of the people arrested were wanted for murder. One of them was wanted in the murder of a Honduran government official and another one was a reputed Salvadoran gang member.

“This operation has been so successful, with the help of our Interpol partners, that we have decided to extend it,” Jim Chaparro, director of ICE’s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, said in a statement.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The Justice Department has asked an appeals court to block an injunction on the law prohibiting gays from serving openly in the military, even as the Pentagon said it would abide by the ruling.

Government lawyers requested the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issue an emergency stay so “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may continue in force. U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips earlier this week ordered all investigations and pending discharges halted in response to a lawsuit from a gay advocacy group, the Log Cabin Republicans.

The Obama administration has made clear its opposition to DADT but is duty-bound to defend the policy. It has been working with Congress to repeal the law, and with the Defense Department on the effects of such a repeal to military readiness.

The Log Cabin Republicans said it expected the administration to continue to defend the ban but that such efforts merely postponed the inevitable.

“If this stay is granted, justice will be delayed, but it will not be denied,” Christian Berle, the group’s deputy executive director, said in a statement.

The nation’s largest advocacy group for LGBT equality, Human Rights Campaign, renewed its push for passage of legislation repealing the law.

“There is one simple way to put the endless legal wrangling behind us and do what the President and the American people want to strengthen our military: the administration and Congress need to finish the legislative work,” said HRC president Joe Solmonese.

Both groups have urged service members not to publicly disclose their sexual orientation since the lawsuit is still ongoing.

The Pentagon, however, assured personnel on Thursday that it had stopped all investigations and proceedings under DADT. The Defense Department “will abide by the terms in the court’s ruling, effective as of the time and date of the ruling,” spokesman Marine Col. Dave Lapan said in a statement.

The suit from the Log Cabin Republicans was filed in 2004 in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and is the only one that directly challenges the policy, which the Obama administration has called discriminatory.

A month before issuing her injunction, Phillips declared DADT unconstitutional. She struck it down for violating First Amendment rights to free speech and Fifth Amendment rights to due process, just as the Log Cabin Republicans had argued.

The Pentagon is currently reviewing the effects of a repeal of DADT on morale and military readiness. The White House has been working with Democratic lawmakers to pass a bill that would only begin the repeal process after the review.

The bill is part of a defense authorization legislation, and requires certifications prior to implementation from President Barack Obama, Defense Sec. Robert Gates and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The certifications will ensure the repeal process can be achieved according to military effectiveness, unit cohesion, recruiting and retention.

The bill was passed in the House earlier this year, but it failed last month in the Senate, where Republicans filibustered the larger defense authorization measure to which it was attached. Democrats are expected to resume their efforts to pass the bill after the November elections.

Despite all the wrangling in the courts and in Congress, the White House confidently sounded the death knell for the law on Thursday.

“The courts have demonstrated that the time for ‘Don.t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is coming to an end,” spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a briefing. “There is a legal road map that shows the courts are ruling on behalf of plaintiffs and against this law. I think the time for the end of this policy has come, and that it will end quite soon.”

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United States (AHN) – Environmental awareness celebrations are planned worldwide Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010, or 10/10/10.

The events are organized by the group, 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben, who is an environmental author. The name of the group refers to getting carbon levels down to 350 parts per million, the level he says will stop global catastrophe due to climate change, which used to be called global warming. Current levels of carbon dioxide are 392 ppm, according to the Environmental News Service.

More than 7,000 events are scheduled to happen in 188 countries on Oct. 10, ENS reports. McKibben is referring to these events as “Global Work Parties.”

These include the installation of solar panels of the roof of the presidential residence in the Maldives Islands.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn also pledged to install solar panels on that state’s governor’s mansion.

California appears to have the most events planned for 10/10/10, according to a 350.org press release.

The group says thousands of people are expected to take part in “Cilclavia,” a pedestrian and bicycling event.

In Oakland, solar panels will be installed on the city’s Green Youth and Media Center. In San Francisco, hundreds of students are expected to work at Alemany Farm, “the city’s largest urban food-source.”

In Pasadena, local churches organized rallies at Valero gas stations to protest the oil company’s funding of the repeal of California’s global warning legislation. Opponents to that law say it will devastate the state’s already crippled economy.

Events are also scheduled in Iraq, Afghanistan China, India and the Congo.

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