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Posted by Katharine Crnko

For Marketplace Morning Report, Tuesday March 22, 2011

Here are some of the headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and around the web.

• Germany is calling for the European Union to impose a full oil and gas embargo this week on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.
• The head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says no changes are needed in American nuclear policy, for now, and that all reactors in this country are safe. Here‘s Marketplace’s coverage.
• The Financial Times is reporting today that Muammar Gaddafi is selling off Libya’s gold supply to fund his military campaign. According to the report, Libya could have between 144 and 150 tons of gold, worth almost $7 billion at current prices. Here‘s Marketplace’s report.
• The earthquake and tsunami that pulverized coastal Japan crippled a bank’s security mechanisms and left a vault wide open. That allowed someone to walk off with $500,000.
• Tokyo shares jumped more than 4 percent, after the Oracle of Omaha — Warren Buffett — said that now is a good time to buy Japanese stocks.
• The leader of Portugal’s main opposition party says the minority government’s downfall is “inevitable” after it failed to win political support for its latest plan to cut the country’s huge debt burden.
• Drugstore chain Walgreens said this morning that its profits rose almost 10 percent last quarter. t says 20 percent of all U.S. prescriptions are now filled at Walgreens. That’s the chain’s highest market share ever.
• Carnival Cruise Lines says its first-quarter net income fell 13 percent, pinched by higher-than-expected fuel prices.
• Research In Motion’s long-awaited tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, will go on sale in the United States and Canada on April 19 at a base price of $499.
• Oil is back above $102 a barrel. And it’s rising oil prices that are to blame for another airline fare hike. This one from United/Continental. Fares will jump $10 per roundtrip.
• The Group of Seven countries may have sold a total of around $6.5 billion on Friday as they intervened in foreign exchange markets to weaken the currency, data from the Bank of Japan showed on Tuesday.
• The United Auto Workers starts a three-day meeting in Detroit today, just months before its contracts expire.Here‘s Marketplace’s coverage.
• Word this morning that supplies of some seafood from Japan including farmed scallops could be cut off for a year or more because of the tsunami.
• High end jeweler Tiffany and Company reported profit rose by nearly a third in the last three months of 2010. But Tiffany reduced its earnings forecast for the first quarter of this year — because the quake and tsunami in Japan. 18 percent of company sales came from Japan last year.
• To Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where Daniel Rahynes was caught after robbing a bank. How do we know the name of this bank robber? Because right before he robbed the bank he gave the teller two forms of ID. Because he was trying to open a new account.
• German automaker Porsche says it would like to contribute to cleaning up the environment. The new 918 sports car will reduce carbon emissions and empty the wallets of millionaires everywhere. The plug-in hybrid comes in 2013 at a cost of $845,000. It’ll jet from zero to 60 in an incredible 3.2 seconds. Wow. But you won’t jet for long in electric-only mode with a range of 16 miles between plug-ins.

You can see the rest of the headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report here.

Here are the songs we played:

• The Only One — The Black KeysBuy
• World in My Eyes — Depeche ModeBuy
• Rain on Me — AshantiBuy
• The Interlocutor — Squirrel Nut ZippersBuy
• Brother Down — Sam RobertsBuy
• Vanilla Minus — Gold PandaBuy