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A Russian beverage company said on Thursday that it was acquiring the Pabst Brewing Company, which makes the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer popular with barflies and hipsters alike and other brands like Colt 45 and Old Milwaukee. [snip] The buyer is Oasis Beverages, a Russian brewer and beverages distributor. Backing Oasis is TSG Consumer Partners, an American private equity firm focused on consumer goods, which will take a minority stake. “Pabst Blue Ribbon is the quintessential American brand – it represents individualism, egalitarianism and freedom of expression – all the things that make this country great,” Eugene Kashper, the chairman...

The United States charged seven Japanese executives with price-fixing Thursday in a long-running probe into illegal practices in the auto parts industry. Three executives from Mitsubishi Electric Corp were accused by a federal grand jury of conspiring to set the prices of starter motors, alternators and ignition coils sold to top US manufacturers, and U.S.-based Japanese manufacturers, from at least 2000 through 2010. Another four executives from Hitachi Automotive Systems were similarly charged over price-fixing involving a number of parts sold to US automakers including starter motors, fuel injection systems, and ignition coils. Both groups of executives were alleged to...

It's still summer, yet it has already snowed in the western United States and one of America's premier weather forecasters, Joe Bastardi at Weatherbell Analytics, is warning that for parts of the country, another bad winter is on the way. "It's going to be a major winter for much of the eastern and southern United States," he said. "We think a formidable winter, but the core of the worst cold, relative to averages, instead of being in the northern Plains and Midwest, will be further south and east." Last winter was bad, too -- historically bad. The Great Lakes weren't...

The Democrats and the institutional left have a new political tool that allows them virtually to ignore moderates yet still win elections. This tool, the Catalist database, was employed in the 2012 election. That election defied conventional wisdom: Mitt Romney sought and won independent voters overwhelmingly, but still lost. If you wondered why the conventional wisdom about independents and moderates didn’t seem so wise in 2012, the answer is Catalist. Beyond winning elections, Catalist also allows the Democrats to turn the policy narrative upside down and suffer no political consequence for implementing radical policies which appeal to their base. The...

Larry Ellison, a college dropout who built Oracle Corp. ORCL +1.00% into one of America's largest companies, is stepping down as chief executive, in one of the momentous corporate handovers in the history of Silicon Valley. Mr. Ellison, aged 70, has been the only CEO in the history of Oracle, which he founded in 1977 and turned into a dominant seller of database software with a market value of $182 billion. Oracle shares fell 2% in after-hours trading following the CEO news and the company's disappointing quarterly results. Mark Hurd, 57, and Safra Catz, 52, two of Mr. Ellison's deputies,...

PALM BEACH — No matter what his professional future holds, satellite radio star Howard Stern is planning to move to Palm Beach permanently after the $10 million-renovation of his $52 million-house is completed early next year...One of the sources added that Stern is well aware of the benefits of declaring residency in a no-income tax state like Florida and homesteading his property.

Ireland’s economy is growing at a rapid pace last experienced at the tail-end of the Celtic Tiger boom, government statisticians reported Thursday as economists declared an end to the country’s financial doldrums. The report from the Central Statistics Office said gross domestic product grew 7.7 percent from July 2013 to June 2014, the biggest annual rate of growth since early 2007. It said quarterly GDP rose 1.5 percent versus the January-March quarter. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the figures suggested that Ireland would record around 4.5 percent GDP growth this year, accelerating the country’s escape from debt woes that forced...

The overall poverty rate in the United States dropped for the first time since 2006, with Hispanics being the only racial or ethnic group that experienced the most significant change in income. The U.S. Census Bureau's annual report released Tuesday indicated that the poverty rate among Latinos in 2013 decreased by 2.1 percentage points from the previous year. In addition, income for Hispanic households increased by 3.5 percent between 2012 and 2013 to $40,963. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference that represents millions of Hispanic Evangelicals, attributed the rise in income to more Latinos...

For folks who are trying to ignite inflation, this sure isn’t working out very well. It’s been hoped by the country’s central bankers that the massive quantitative easing program along with near-zero interest rates will touch off a wave of inflation that if not exactly the same thing as boom times, will at least give the appearance of a strengthening economy. However, month after month inflation in the goods that the Fed cares about seems muted. Now this month we had the horrid news that official inflation numbers are falling not rising.

US shale oil growth covers up production drop in rest-of-world by Matt Mushalik, originally published by Crude Oil Peak  | Sep 17, 2014  We use the period starting with January 2010 when crude production had come back to 2005 levels after the exceptional year of 2009.Fig 1: US crude oil vs crude oil in rest-of-world   While US shale oil production is growing, there was a drop in crude production in the rest of world since February 2012 of almost 2 million barrels/d. How did this come about? As usual, there is decline and growth and then we have geopolitics....

The U.S. Department of Education’s latest rule, which mandates that for-profit colleges cannot saddle students with debt at an arbitrary rate, affects only for-profit colleges such as Kaplan, DeVry and University of Phoenix, representatives of Kaplan claimed during a Washington, D.C. briefing recently. kaplan university Former Dallas mayor Thomas Leppert, now the CEO of Kaplan, explained how the rule itself is not fair to for-profit colleges. Non-profit and state colleges and universities have similar debt problems for their students and yet are exempt from this rule. “A regulation should apply to any institution,” said Leppert, and noted “it only applies...

The State of California continues its war on productive activity, fining a small family-owned winery that earns $11,000 a year a whopping $115,000 for the crime of inviting volunteers to learn about wine while helping out with the harvest and the crush. That is enough to drive it out of business, and the winery is starting to lauch a going out of business sale in response.Rebecca Parr reports in the San Jose Mercury-News: A small-time vintner's use of volunteer workers has put him out of business after the state squeezed him like a late-summer grape for $115,000 in fines --...

Full headline: Blackout: Power Goes Off During House Climate Hearing with Obama Science Czar John Holdren — Lights blink on and off and stay off for almost a minute Washington D.C.- A total blackout of a House Science committee occurred during a House Hearing on Climate Change and the EPA’s power plans. The lights went out and the room was plunged into total darkness at 10:23 AM in the Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing was titled: Full Committee Hearing – “The Administration’s Climate Plan: Failure by Design” - 2318 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 | Sep 17,...

After forgiving millions of dollars in medical debt, Occupy Wall Street is tackling a new beast: student loans. Marking the third anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the group's Strike Debt initiative announced Wednesday it has abolished $3.8 million worth of private student loan debt since January. It said it has been buying the debts for pennies on the dollar from debt collectors, and then simply forgiving that money rather than trying to collect it. In total, the group spent a little more than $100,000 to purchase the $3.8 million in debt. While the group is unable to purchase...

An incredible thing happened in the recent reply-comment period regarding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal to regulate the Internet like old-fashioned monopoly telephone service: the side telling the agency not to regulate carried the day. The radical left, demanding federal regulatory control of the building blocks of Internet, brought all the usual hype and hoopla and had free-spending corporate backers in Google and Netflix, who want regulators to force you to pay the costs of their downstream bandwidth. This campaign by liberal special interests like MoveOn and the Sierra Club converted forty thousand websites into campaign advertisements urging visitors...

MADISON – Voters in the State of Wisconsin will see a referendum on whether the transportation fund should be protected in the State Constitution. However, most voter are not aware on how the referendum qualified for the November ballot. Under Wisconsin State law, a binding statewide referendum can be qualified if it’s approved by the Wisconsin Legislature by both houses for two consecutive Legislative sessions. According to Ballotpedia, Wisconsin is one of 12 states that uses the two Legislative session method to qualify statewide ballot measures. Extra: Learn More About the Transportation Fund Referendum The Transportation Fund referendum will ask...

The Middle Seat The Trouble With Keeping Commercial Flights Clean With the Ebola Crisis in the Background, Standards for Disinfecting Planes Vary Based on Time, Class Just how clean are airplanes? Do they really get scrubbed down after each flight? WSJ's Scott McCartney joins Tanya Rivero on Lunch Break with the answers. By Scott McCartney Updated Sept. 17, 2014 The Ebola crisis and heightened concerns about the risk of spreading disease during air travel have focused concern on what airlines do to keep planes clean. It's a murky area without clear regulatory standards. The Federal Aviation Administration says it doesn't...

The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week fell to the lowest level since mid-July, fuelling optimism over the strength of the labor market, official data showed on Thursday. In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending September 13 decreased by 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 280,000 from the previous week’s revised total of 316,000. Analysts had expected jobless claims to fall by 11,000 to 305,000 last week. Continuing jobless claims in the week ended September 6 fell to 2.429...

Gov. Jerry Brown signed historic groundwater legislation Tuesday, imposing new rules in the Golden State that could limit how much water commercial and residential users are allowed to pump from underground aquifers — a move decades in the works, spurred this year by California’s drought. The new laws, which take effect in January, will require local government officials to ensure use of groundwater basins is sustainable, protecting underground reserves and averting other environmental damage. The regulations could have a ripple effect on thousands of farmers and ranchers across the North Coast.

Ahead of the People’s Climate March, activists say Obama must address fracking if he wants to leave a meaningful legacy.Later this month, hundreds of delegates will gather inside the U.N. to talk about climate change. President Barack Obama plans to attend the climate summit and reportedly wants work on a deal with other world leaders to “name and shame” countries that aren’t actively pursuing serious climate action. But outside the U.N., thousands of activists will be protesting with one message: Whatever Obama accomplishes at the U.N., it won’t be enough to save his climate legacy. The Obama administration has been...