Thfire.com – iNews

Its been a good month for the people in US who are the worst hit developed nation thanking the recession. The good part is that US members are beginning to buy new home as reported in BBC.

When compared the rate of new houses purchase this july with last july,  sales accounts of last year shows that there was 46 % drop in purchase of new home.The  Construction of building new house in US rose to 4.6  from may to june, official reports to BBC.

The number of single family homes being built jumped 14.4% in June, the biggest jump in over four years.

William O’Donnell, head treasury strategist at RBS Securities, argued that: “This is another piece of data for those seeing the recession ending soon.”

“But housing starts are still within the range of the past six months and the completion rate is still down,” he said.

The US retailers were already reeling from the new consumer frugality but in June, incessant rain and raising unemployment further dampened sales. Stores that had made strides in recent months reverted to double-digit declines.

Overall, the industry posted  a 6.7% decline in sales for the month, in contrast  to a 309% increase a year ago, according to  the Goldman Sachs retail composite Index. Wal-Mart, which has been a bright spot in the  retailing world and helped lift the overall industry number, is no longer  reporting Monthly sales. Retailers are also facing Challenging  year-over-years sales comparisons because this June  there were no tax rebate checks to help  bolster shopping.

Apparel  and department stores  were hurt most as chilly, soggy weather on the East Coast  did nothing to inspire summer clothes shopping. Sales fell at mall stores open at least a year, a measure of retail health, including Abercrombie and Fitch (down  32% compared with the period a year ago), Zumiez (down 19.3%), Children’s place and Limited Brands( both down 12%), Wet Seal (Down 11.1%), American Eagle Outfitters (down 11%) ,Gap (down 11%), and Hot topic (down 7.9%).

All the Various department Stores posted declines. In the specialty retail stores segment of Neiman Marcus, which includes Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores, sales fell 20.8 percent. Sales at Nordstorni declined 10%. Saks fared better than its high end competitors, posting a 4.4% decline that was in part the result of shifting a designer sale into June.

Tony Buccina, vice chairman and president for merchandising at Bon-Ton, said in a statement that while June started off robust, “the unusually cooler and rainy weather impacted sales of  our summer merchandise across all apparel categories”.

The most notable exceptions to the retail malaise were, as expected, Buckle and Aeropostale, the affordably priced niche teenage apparel chains. Aerospostale said it enjoyed record June sales , posting a 12% increase. Buckle’s sales rose to 9.6%. Yet these days even discount chains are struggling.

At-Costco, which was hurt by lower gasoline prices and foreign exchange rates, sales fell 6.5. BJ’s Wholesale club, also hurt by lower fuel prices, reported a 7.5% decline. Sales at Target fell 6.2%

Credit goes to NYT  NEWS Services

The anticipation and wait for Nokia N series is over. Cause here comes Nokia N97 with a bang and full of best features and upgrades.The latest buzz of Nokia N 97  is awesome supporting 48 GB of storage with 32 GB of on-board memory. The additional 16 GB is the microSD Card which expands  for best use of music, media and more.

The official price of the phone is about Rs.36,119. The best part in this phone is the support it provides for Ovi applications.The N97 is the flagship N-Series handset from the Finnish manufacturer and packs in a lot of features.

Now here is the main part for fun lovers, you can play music continuously for 1.5 days without break. Chee, this is interesting and tempting. The camera is also upgraded with 5-Megapixel camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics,16:9 and DVD quality video capture. In additional image sharing is possible through WLAN and HSDPA.

The sale is available in major cities near you and has been expanded to other parts of the country.

The dead of their hero ‘the pop star Michael Jackson‘ has stunned everyone. Right from the US president Obama to every person in entertainment industry throughout the world showing their condolence to MJ’s family.

Whats surprising is MJ’s fan activity. Millions of fans on one side regret the loss of their idol saying  ‘its an unbearable pain‘. Where on the other end the sales of the Michael Jackson Album seems to be on record high. One of the shop keeper named Adithya reports from Mumbai that the sale of MJ Album is very high on their shop lately after Michael Jackson death.Not only in Mumbai, from all other major cities throughout India,USA,UK,Europe,Russia,Canada, Australia reports the same increase in sales of Michael Jackson music.

MJ fan showing their pain by listening to music which Michael composed. It sure will take months and possibly years for few that follow Michael throughout their life as a role model.