Rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Monday downgraded both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from AAA to AA+. U.S. stocks and world major markets tumble on first day after credit cut.

Dow Jones Industrial Average
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Following the fake iPhone, iPad and MacBook, China has a new work: fake Apple Store.

BirdAbroad, an American living in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in China’s remote southwest corner, came across a fake Apple shop.

“They looked like Apple products.  It looked like an Apple store.  It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. It also has false Genius Bar, as well as pictures downloaded from the Apple website and made ​​posters.  The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks,” writes the blogger.
It is said there are at least three similar stores in Kunming.   It is funny that some of the staff appeared to believe they were really working for Apple.

Gold prices topped $1,600 one ounce Monday as debt problems flared in the usa and Europe.

Gold for August delivery settled up $12.30 at $1,602.40 per ounce. The price became a record in dollar terms but below the peak reached in the 1980s after accounting for inflation. Silver, platinum and palladium also rose while other commodities mostly fell.

The price of gold has been rising since July 1 on concerns about Europe’s financial issues, including Greece’s debt crisis and also the prospect that they could spread to countries like Italy and Spain.

Greece might be announced in default by credit rating agencies if banks are involved in a 2nd bailout of this debt-ridden country. European leaders will hold an urgent situation meeting Thursday to discuss the terms of the Greece deal.

In Washington, President Barack Obama and congressional members are debatingmethods to enhance the U.S. government debt limit before an Aug. 2 deadline.

Questions regarding how the issues are going to be resolved have prompted investors to purchase more gold and silver, which might be considered relatively stable stores of value, particularly during uncertain times and when other financial markets are volatile.

Edward Meir, a senior commodities analyst at MF Global, said where the price of gold is headed will depend largely on what happens with the debt negotiations on both continents.

Silver rose $1.46 to $40.53 an ounce.

George Gero, metals strategist at RBC Capital Markets, explained that silver is being lifted along with gold’s rising tide and also by increased demand from Japan as the country recovers from its earthquake disaster and seeks to restore assembly lines for glass and computers for automobiles. “Silver is the bridge between investment demand and industrial demand,” he said.

“Should there be some serious progress in the eurozone and in the U.S., that will affect silver and gold,” added Gero.

The Boeing Co.’s 747-8 Freighter is scheduled to make its first flight Monday, following what the company says was a successful taxi test on Saturday.

“The airplane performed well,” said Mo Yahyavi, 747 program vice president and general manager, in a release. “Based on early indications, the airplane is ready to fly.”

The flight is scheduled for 10 a.m. PST in Everett, Wash.

Boeing (NYSE: BA) will be showing the flight online at 747-8firstflight.com.

Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems Inc. (NYSE:SPR) builds the nacelles that house the engines and the struts that hold them to the wing on the 747-8.

Graco Stroller Recall: 1.5 Million Strollers Could Amputate Baby’s Fingertips
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – More than a million strollers and hundreds of thousands of cribs are being recalled on Wednesday over safety fears. The recalls affect some of the most expensive products available for children.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in cooperation with Graco and Dorel Asia SRL are voluntarily recalling the hazardous products.

About 1.5 million Graco strollers are affected in the recall. It specifically includes the Graco Passage, Alano and Spree Strollers and Travel Systems The hinges on the stroller’s canopy pose a fingertip amputation and laceration hazard to the child when the consumer is opening or closing the canopy. Graco has received seven reports of children placing their fingers in the stroller’s canopy hinge mechanism while the canopy was being opened or closed, resulting in five fingertip amputations and two fingertip lacerations.

The Dorel Asia manufactured crib is being recalled to replace drop side and non-drop side cribs that pose suffocation and strangulation hazards to infants and toddlers. Over 635,000 of the cribs have been sold.

According to the CPSCP the drop side hardware can fail causing the drop side to detach from the crib. When the drop side detaches it creates a space in which an infant or toddler can become entrapped and suffocate or strangle. In addition, the recalled cribs can pose a serious entrapment and strangulation hazard when a slat is damaged.

Consumers are urged to stop using the recalled cribs until replacement kits are obtained and installed.

CPSC and Dorel Asia SRL received a report of the death of 6-month old child from Cedar Rapids, Iowa who became entrapped and strangled in a crib after the drop side hardware broke. Aside from the one death numerous reports of injuries have also been reported.

Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7017574168#ixzz0dBXbuCuF

MYFOXNY.COM – The Web site for SparkFun was crashing Thursday as customers swamped the site for “Free Day” where it gives away up to $100,000 of electronic items.

The Boulder, Colorado based site touts itself as an electronic enabler. It manufactures and sells microcontroller development boards and breakout boards used by hobbiests.

Wikipedia says SparkFun Electronics was founded in 2003 by Nathan Seidle.

It is sometimes known by its abbreviation SFE.

Its Twitter page was updating sales. The company says it had more than 100,000 customers for the day.

Chattem, Manufactures and sells health and beauty products, toiletries, proprietary drugs , fragrances and dietary supplements, is bought by Drug maker Sanofi-Aventis S.A for about $1.9 billion in cash in a deal it said would create the world’s fifth-largest consumer health-care company.

Sanofi-Aventis said that it will attempt to convert is popular antihistamine Allegra to an OTC product, which Chattem would then distribute. Sanofi-Aventis shares were mostly flat in premarket trading Monday.

“The acquisition of Chattem will be a significant milestone in Sanofi-Aventis’ transformation strategy and will provide us with the ideal platform in the U.S. consumer healthcare market, which represents 25 percent of the current worldwide opportunity,” the Sanofi chief executive Christopher A. Viehbacher said in a statement.

Black Friday 2009 is around the corner. Black Friday 2009 deals at Wal-Mart and Best Buy are important for Black Friday deal hunters. This year, Black Friday is more important than ever because job losses and uncertainty of the future makes many consumers hesitant to spend.

I know I will be keeping a better eye on Black Friday deals this year. I have to do more with less. Many retailers such as Sears, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy are offering stellar deals in the weeks leading up to 2009 Black Friday.

During the week of November 7, you can get an HP Notebook computer for $298, a Sharp 42 inch TV for 498, an Xbox 360 Arcade for $199 plus a $100 Wal-Mart e-gift certificate, a Sony BluRay player for $148 and $20 turkey dinners for 8.

Yes, you heard me right. Now through Thanksgiving, you can get the following meal items at Wal-Mart for $20 total:

One 12-pound Grade A turkey.

Three 11 to 15.5-ounce cans Green Giant vegetables.

Two 14-ounce cans Ocean Spray cranberry sauce.

Three 6-ounce boxes of Stove Top stuffing.

One 5-pound bag of red potatoes.

One 12-count package of Sara Lee dinner rolls.

One 22-ounce pumpkin roll cake.

Of course, Wal-Mart isn’t the only retailer offering early sales. Best Buy offered a 42″ TV for $498.99, only .99 more than Wal-Marts similar model. In addition, Best Buy is hosting their annual VIP Black Friday sale. Winners in each of their 25 markets will receive a $1,000 Best Buy giftcard and limo service to their nearby Best Buy location. In addition, the winners get to go in the store first and pick out all of their favorite deals. This would be the ultimate Black Friday deal of them all.

Expect to see a lot of discounts on electronics, gaming systems, computers – especially notebooks and smaller netbooks, TVs, Blu-ray players, DVD players, and much, much more. This may be the year you can afford to purchase your kids a computer AND an mp3 player, PLUS a variety of clothing.

It’s not your phone, it’s T-Mobile, and they say they’re working on it.

If you’ve been having problems with your T-Mobile USA phone today, don’t worry, you didn’t forget to pay your bill. Well, maybe you did, but that’s not the issue. The Bellevue-based company tonight acknowledged that it has been hit by an outage, without specifying the cause.

“Some T-Mobile customers may be experiencing intermittent service disruptions impacting voice and some data services,” the company said in a statement issued this evening. “Our rapid response teams have been mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible. We will provide updates as more information is available.”

We first encountered the problem this afternoon when trying to call a family member with a T-Mobile account. First the system informed us that the number we were calling was no longer valid. Subsequent attempts to call the same number returned a busy signal. Later this evening, however, it started working again.

In terms of customer service, this isn’t exactly what T-Mobile needs right now, after all the problems caused by Microsoft subsidiary Danger for T-Mobile Sidekick users. We’ll update this post as the company issues more information. In the meantime, if you’re a T-Mobile customer, let us know your status in the comments below.

Zappos, an electronic commerce company specializing in footwear, close the deals with Amazon. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh said his board of directors has been “switched out,” and that the deal, worth about 10 million shares of Amazon stock, is valued at $1.2 billion, based on Friday’s closing price.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote in a public letter:

We’ve been spending the past few months obtaining all the proper government approvals, and I’m happy to say that we officially closed the deal at the split second between Halloween (10/31/09) and All Saints’ Day (11/1/09). From a practical point of view, we’ve switched out our previous board of directors with a new management committee that is composed of people from Zappos as well as Amazon.

Our investors and other shareholders exchanged their Zappos.com shares for approximately 10 million Amazon.com shares. Given the closing price on Friday, 10/30/09, for Amazon stock, those shares were valued at approximately $1.2 billion at the time of close.