In the News, June 21 , 2008

Martha Stewart denied a Visa from the UK- The same country that has given community service to the problematic Naomi Campbell.

photo courtesy of marthastewart.com

Martha Stewart has not been to the United Kingdom since her 2004 conviction,but, she hopes to return to the United Kingdom as soon as a reported travel ban stemming from her criminal history is "resolved,".

The statement was released after British newspapers, led by the Telegraph, reported that she had been refused a visa to enter Great Britain because of her criminal convictions four years ago.

Stewart was scheduled to meet at the Royal Academy with several figures in the fashion and leisure industry, the Telegraph reported. The newspaper attributed the rejection of her visa to a blanket policy banning people with criminal convictions.

A representative of the British Borders Agency would not comment on Stewart, saying only that "we continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good or where they have been found guilty of serious criminal offenses abroad."

Stewart was convicted on four counts of obstructing justice in 2004 for lying to investigators about her sale of ImClone Systems Inc. stock at the end of 2001.

Martha posted in her blog;

Because I cannot yet go to England because of my visa situation, I am leaving Warsaw to go to Prague for a bit of sight-seeing, exploring, and research. We are hoping that the visa situation will be cleared up in time for me to fulfill my business obligations in England next week. We will keep you posted. Lots of pictures are coming, so stay tuned!

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She was born with 8 limbs.

Lakshmi Tatma's family and neighbors believed that with eight limbs, the baby was the embodiment of a goddess.

Twirling in a wheeled plastic disc is unremarkable for most 2-year-olds but a big achievement for Lakshmi, a child born with eight limbs who her rural villagers believed was a goddess, not a girl, and who underwent a surgery last fall unlike any her doctors had ever performed.

When the girl was born during the Festival of Lakshmi and the new mom saw that she had eight limbs, just like the goddess Lakshmi, Poonan and others were convinced that she was the goddess incarnate.

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Court overturns father's grounding of 12-year-old


A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet . The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.

According to court documents, the girl's Internet transgression was just the latest in a string of broken house rules. Even so, Justice Suzanne Tessier found her punishment too severe.



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Dumped and now up for auction.

For one week, Ian Usher's life is up for sale on eBay with the package including his $420,000 (US$397,000) three-bedroom house in Perth, Western Australia, a trial for his job at a rug store, his car, motorbike, clothes and even friends.Usher's partner of 12 years left him broken-hearted, he decided the best way to move forward was to auction his whole life, in one job lot.

Oh No....Noogie Suspension

Downsizing Products=Price Increase

If you have noticed that a product that you purchase regularly has a new package, be wary. It could mean that the price has increased and you didn't even notice. That's because of product downsizing.

Product downsizing means just that. Downsizing the amount of product while still charging the same price. For many products, it's better to reduce quantity than raise prices, conclude Harvard Business School marketing professor John Gourville and University of Texas professor Jonathan Koehler.


Have you noticed?
Dairy products went up in price a couple of years ago for various reasons. So products got downsized. Ice cream has shrunk their standard containers to 1.5 quarts from 1.75 quarts, about 1 cup less. The industry downsized from the traditional half-gallon (2 quarts) five years ago. In both cases, only the package shrank, not the price.

"Downsizing is nothing but a sneaky price increase," says Edgar Dworsky, former Massachusetts assistant attorney general in the Consumer Protection Division, now editor of Mouseprint.org, a consumer website. "I'm waiting to open a carton of eggs and see only 11."

Why the downsizing?
Yes, to make it less obvious to you, the consumer, that prices have risen. The cost for food production has gone up as well. Egg prices rose 44.9% from April 2007 through April 2008, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Corn costs rose 69.5%. And wheat rose 96.9%. Energy prices also are up. So are packaging costs.

According to Mouseprint.org,

•Less crunch. Since January, Frito-Lay has cut the number of chips in bags across all brands from Lay's to Doritos, though not all product sizes, spokeswoman Aurora Gonzalez says. The biggest cut was to some 12-ounce bags of chips, which are now 10. Some Frito-Lay offerings got higher prices.

"These are common practices," says Gonzalez, who faulted rising costs of commodities, energy, production and distribution. "We determined the best actions based on the products."

•Hold the mayo. A jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise that was 32 ounces is now 30. "The price of our ingredients has gone up dramatically," says Dean Mastrojohn, a Unilever spokesman. "Manufacturing and transportation costs also have increased significantly."

•Spread thinner. Shedd's Spread Country Crock was shrunk from 48 ounces to 45, due to higher commodity and energy costs, Unilever's Mastrojohn says.

•Grain shortage. The price of grains has been rising for a while, in part due to increased demand for corn to produce ethanol. Kellogg downsized Frosted Flakes, Rice Krispies and Mini-Wheats in 2006. Boxes shrank from 24.3 ounces to 24 and from 19 ounces to 18. "I am not aware of consumer issues surrounding this downsizing," spokeswoman Susanne Norwitz says.

General Mills began downsizing cereals last June. Some boxes of Cheerios and Wheaties shrank as much as 1.5 ounces. "Prior to the change, our package sizes were larger, in many cases, than competitors'," spokeswoman Heidi Geller says.



•Slippery soap. Early this year, Henkel of America downsized its Dial soap bath bar from 4.5 ounces to 4, says Scott Moffitt, Dial's Personal Care senior vice president.

The decision was primarily due to the skyrocketing cost of tallow, the natural fat from cattle that's a key ingredient in the soap.

•Less bountiful. This spring, Bounty cut the number of towels on a roll from 60 to 52. Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Celeste Kuta says the reduction was because the sheets are now "improved" and thicker.

What can you do?
Bring your calculator with you when you shop.
Calculate price per unit/use/serving and then compare that to the other products. You may have to convert units of measure (yet, another tactic to stupid us up).

Companies are banking on consumers to not notice or to be too busy with other things to speak up. Complaining to the company may do you some good if there are other irate consumers doing the same.


As the cost of goods increase, manufacturers routinely pass these costs on to consumers through higher prices. A less obvious strategy is to maintain price, but to reduce the size of the product. In many ways, this downsizing should mirror a straight price increase when it comes to consumer behavior. Marketplace and experimental data show this is not the case and that consumers are more sensitive to changes in price than to changes in quantity.There's a science to downsizing products, and few have studied it as closely as John Gourville, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School. He studied purchasing patterns for 157 ready-to-eat cereals in 2004 and concluded that consumers are far more sensitive to higher prices than to less product. "People are generally unaware they're getting less," he says. Most of those who are aware say they'd rather get less than pay more.

Several well-known products have gotten smaller recently
Then Now
Hellmann's mayonnaise 32 oz. 30 oz.
Some Frito-Lay chips 12 oz. 10 oz.
Shedd's Spread Country Crock 48 oz. 45 oz.
Dial soap bath bar 4.5 oz. 4 oz.
Bounty towel roll 60 towels 52 towels
HBS Home

In the News; June 20, 2008

The Wrath of the Rain

The Mississippi River took over more farmland overnight north of St. Louis, Missouri, as officials warned that the swollen river could breach four or five more levees Thursday around the Gateway City .About 11 levees have been breached in the St. Louis area since the flooding began, said Officer Alan Dooly of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-St. Louis District. Floodwaters have compromised more than 20 levees from Iowa to Missouri, according to the Corps of Engineers.

The floods in six states have killed two dozen people, injured 148 and forced at least 35,000 out of their homes, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency Director David Paulison .......................................

Pregnacy Pact Among Teens.

A pact made by a group of teens to get pregnant and raise their babies together is at least partly behind a sudden spike in pregnancies at Gloucester High School, school officials said.

Principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine in a story published Wednesday that the girls confessed to making the pact after the school began investigating a rise in pregnancies that has left 17 girls at the school carrying a child. Normally, there are about four pregnancies a year at the school.

Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.

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Did you get your rebate check?

The IRS says it's still trying to reach some 5 million Americans -- primarily seniors and veterans -- who have not filed the tax returns needed to qualify for their stimulus checks.
The IRS is trying to reach people who do not normally file tax returns so they can apply for stimulus checks.

In all, the IRS has sent out more than 76 million stimulus checks, in amounts up to $600 for individuals, $1,200 for married couples and $300 per child for families.

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A woman who police said assaulted a 7 foot tall sex offender with a baseball bat said," I'd do it again if I had to," reported KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.


"She grabbed a bat, picked it up and started beating the crap out of me. She started beating me the way a man would with a bat", said the sex offender of the incident. "I've never even seen her before and she just comes over and accuses me of molesting her children and attacks me with a bat."

"I can't believe that he was allowed in our neighborhood", said the lady.

She often saw the 7 feet 3 inches tall offender talking with her 10-year-old daughter.

"Last year, on the Fourth of July, he was talking to my daughter. I got the flyer in the mail and I snapped. I went nuts," The offender had been convicted on two counts of first-degree child molestation in 1999 as well as other offenses.

On one occasion he had lured a 5-year-old girl into a doghouse in his backyard and sexually assaulted her. That crime was committed while he was on parole for another sexual assault in which he forced a different 5- year-old girl into a sex act with him.