Free Republic

The three hooded and masked men broke into a West 36th Street jewelry wholesaler at 12:01 a.m. Sunday in what appears to be an inside job — while 7,000 cops were distracted protecting Times Square revelers just a few blocks away. The source said the thieves “100 percent” planned the heist to coincide with the ball drop. They made off with around $6 million in gems and are still at large, police sources said.

According to the BLS, embalmers earn $43,680 a year. The top 10% bring in $62,230, on average. Embalming is one of the oldest-known professions, and entails getting bodies ready for interment based on legal requirements. Elsewhere in the industry, funeral service managers make $79,930 a year, on average. Top earners in this line of work are paid $140,740 a year for planning, directing, or coordinating the services or resources of funeral homes. Another unusual job that pays fairly well: Genetic counselors. According to BLS data, there are only 2,000 of these professionals in the U.S. right now. What do they...

A jury sentenced a Lakeview man to 10 years in prison for growing nearly 7,500 marijuana plants. Andrew Stever, 40, was sentenced on Monday after a three-day trial in the Federal District Court in Medford.Ten years is the mandatory minimum sentence for anyone convicted of growing 1,000 or more pot plants. In July 2007, officers from several local, state and federal agencies found 7,459 plants growing on Stever's Lakeview property, which bordered Forest Service land. Two men fled the scene, leaving behind personal property and three firearms, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Portland. Physical evidence and testimony linked...

(Hershey, Pa. 02/16/07)Recently elected Democrat US Sen. Bob Casey Jr. has already caused the loss of 1500 quality high-paying jobs at chocolate giant Hershey Co., analysts confirmed today. Hershey made the announcement along with a statement saying they would instead launch plans to build a new factory in Mexico. (per AP writer Peter Jackson)

8,000 Applicants For 350 Jobs At N.J. Wal-Mart BY DAVID LOMBINO - Staff Reporter of the Sun June 13, 2006 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/34316 Wal-Mart tomorrow will open its newest store just more than seven miles from Manhattan, in Kearny, N.J., part of its strategy to ring the city with stores in order to hasten their arrival here. The store received more than 8,000 applications for 350 jobs, a Wal-Mart executive said. Although Wal-Mart is the nation's largest retailer, boasting more than 4,000 stores nationwide, it has no outlets in the five boroughs, and in the last 16 months, two attempts at...

Welcome, Wal-Mart Wal-Mart (has) grown from a single shop in a small Arkansas town into a world-wide colossus with 4,000 stores, 1.3 million employees, $245 billion in annual sales and 100 million customers each week. The company's success isn't built on exploiting. It's built on providing. Wal-Mart can't force anybody to work at its stores, nor can it force anybody to shop there. Through relentless cost-cutting and technological innovation, the company offers low-cost goods to consumers, jobs for willing employees and solid returns for shareholders. Yet Chicago...The City Council killed the prospect of a Supercenter in Chicago's South Side Chatham...

Eighteen months after the Chicago City Council torpedoed a South Side Wal-Mart, 24,500 Chicagoans applied for 325 jobs at a Wal-Mart opening Friday in south suburban Evergreen Park, one block outside the city limits. The new Wal-Mart at 2500 W. 95th is one block west of Western Avenue, the city boundary. Of 25,000 job applicants, all but 500 listed Chicago addresses... "we saw a little bit of everything -- people who hadn't worked for a long time, people who saw an opportunity to do something with themselves. That's the information I got from applicants."

The new Wal-Mart Stores Inc. location opening Friday in suburban Evergreen Park received a record 25,000 applications for 325 positions, the highest for any one location in the retailer’s history... The only other site that’s come close to the number of applications is a store in Oakland, California that received 11,000 applications for about the same number of positions last year. Wal-Mart's Chicago-area manager Chad Donath said generally stores receive between 3,000 and 4,000 applications for about 300 to 450 positions. He says Wal-Mart has been participating in job fairs and advertising the positions as it does in other communities...

<p>A new report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-wing, union-oriented Washington think tank, is designed to put heat on the Bush administration but in reality sheds a disturbing light on the group's own political agenda.</p> <p>"In 48 of the 50 states, jobs in higher-paying industries have given way to jobs in lower-paying industries since the recession ended in ... 2001," according to the report. "Nationwide, industries that are gaining jobs relative to industries that are losing jobs pay 21 percent less annually." In California, newly created jobs pay 40 percent less than the jobs that are leaving.</p>