MID-DAY UPDATE: OPEC considers cranking up production, NBC Universal buying rest of Universal Orlando theme park
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MID-DAY UPDATE: OPEC considers cranking up production, NBC Universal buying rest of Universal Orlando theme park
Here are today’s top headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and from around the web.
Tomorrow the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — or OPEC — is meeting in Vienna to consider an urgent request to crank up production so prices can come down.
Well, after a string of recent cyber attacks on the likes of Sony and Google there’s some corporate fallout this morning. A data storage company called EMC is offering to replace millions of electronic keys known as SecurIDs after a breach at defense contractor Lockheed Martin last month. Turns out those SecurID’s weren’t so secure after all.
A report out this morning from the real estate data firm CoreLogic says almost 40 percent of homeowners who took out a second mortgage on their house are underwater.
President Barack Obama is welcoming German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House for a visit that combines both pomp and policy.
Agriculture ministers from across Europe are holding an urgent meeting today. And the European Union’s health chief is warning Germany against making premature conclusions about the source of contaminated food that’s already killed 22 people, and cost farmers billions in exports.
NBC Universal is buying the rest of the Universal Orlando theme park from the private equity firm Blackstone for a billion dollars. Blackstone has owned a 50 percent stake in Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure for the last 11 years.
The city of Boston prides itself on the vintage gas lamps that started adorning its winding streets back in the early 1800s. Apparently it’s taken all this time for technology to catch up with itself. Seems Boston officials have just figured out they can save around $140,000 a year by not keeping the lanterns burning all day long. So they’re going to install automatic igniters that will spark the gas lamps to life just at nightfall. In keeping with the conservation theme, these devices are even solar-powered.
To the U.K. where a guy named Mark Wilkinson took his new boat — Titanic Two — out the other day for its maiden voyage. And wouldn’t you know it, the boat sank. Wilkinson made it out OK, though he says he’s a little annoyed with all the people asking him if he hit an iceberg. One eye witness to the sinking says Titanic Two was so small, an ice cube could have sunk it.
You can read the rest of today’s stories from the Marketplace Morning Report here.
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