Blackberry Outage Spreads to U.S.

Research In Motion Limited(WATERLOO, Ontario) -- Does your BlackBerry work today? Research In Motion, whose BlackBerry service has had reported outages in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia already this week, acknowledged problems Wednesday with its North American services as well.

On Wednesday morning there were widespread complaints of outages in the U.S. The Canadian-based company confirmed that the problems here are similar to what it had seen in other parts of the world.

“BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning,” RIM said in a statement. “We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available.”

BlackBerry has had transmission problems on other continents for three days now. It said a critical part of its communication system was down, and a backup system wasn’t working either.

“Message delays were caused by a core switch failure in RIM’s infrastructure,” the company said on Twitter late Tuesday. “Now being resolved. Sorry for inconvenience.”

Among the snarky replies: “Dear Blackberry, I think it’s nice that you’re honoring Steve Jobs’ death with a 3 day silence.”

The timing could't have been worse for the company. It still has the dominant smartphone operating system worldwide, but has slipped to No. 3 in the U.S. and is quickly losing market share to Google’s Android and to Apple's iPhone, according to the market research firm ComScore statistics.

In the U.S., Android had 44 percent of the U.S. market as of August, up 5 points since the beginning of May. Apple rose 1 percent to the No. 2 position, with 27 percent. RIM dropped 5 percent, to 25 percent.

For investors, RIM stock has dropped from $70.54 per share in February to under $24 this morning. There’s a shareholder group, led by the firm Jaguar Financial, calling for a change in management.

All of which gains steam when this joke is being retweeted on Twitter:

“What did one BlackBerry user say to the other BlackBerry user?

“Nothing.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Stock Market Recovers Losses for the Year

H-Gall/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Stocks are set to recover back to even for the year on Wednesday, just a week after Europe’s debt crisis sent U.S. markets down nearly 9 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 163 points, or 1.4 percent, to 11,579 at 1:55 p.m. The Standard & Poor’s 500 increased 1.7 percent to 1,216. Stocks have posted solid gains since touching bottom Oct. 3., rallying more than 1,000 points on the Dow.

Adding to the optimism, the European Union released a blueprint today of how it will recapitalize banks to stem the region’s debt crisis.

In addition, a Slovakian opposition party leader said that country’s political parties have agreed to approve a deal to strengthen Europe’s financial rescue program. Slovakia’s parliament blocked the deal Tuesday, setting back efforts to free up more funds for indebted European countries and banks. All 16 of the other countries that use the euro have approved the measure.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

US Stock Futures Higher as Third Quarter Earnings Season Starts

Comstock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Wall Street is looking at a higher opening Wednesday with stock futures up as the earnings season officially kicked off.

Aluminum producer Alcoa was the first to report its third quarter earnings, which proved to be disappointing and lower than expected.  As other companies unveil their profits, stocks may benefit; positive earnings from big corporations could lift markets, as seen in previous quarters.

Overseas, European markets are trading higher on Wednesday, while Asian ones closed mixed partly due to news that Slovakia's government has voted against the proposed bailout fund for Greece and other indebted European nations.  All 17 members of the euro zone must agree before the proposal can go ahead.  A new vote is expected this week and European officials are confident Slovakia will approve the bailout.

In response, Japan’s Nikkei index dropped 0.40 percent on Wednesday and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.55 percent.

Chinese stocks rose, however, with the Shanghai Composite and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng adding 3.04 percent and 1.04 percent, respectively.  South Korea’s Kospi also gained, climbing 0.81 percent.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Occupy Wall Street’s Bank Account Is Swelling

Brand X Pictures/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- For a group of people who are allegedly angry at the distribution of wealth, the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York City’s Zuccotti Park are starting to bank a lot of dough.

The movement, which has been described as “organized anarchy” with no presiding leader, now has its very own finance team to handle an influx of donations, which totaled more than $50,000 on Tuesday.  The money for the group -- which rails against banks publicly -- is now being kept in a credit union account at the Amalgamated Bank.

“[It's a sign] we’re growing very fast,” said Bre Lembitz, a senior economics major at Clark University who is spending this semester working with Occupy Wall Street after her internship fell through.

Lembitz said the move to a bank has made it easier for the group to accept larger donations.

The money was previously kept in pots, which were used to collect money from passersby sympathetic to the cause.

Currently, any expenditure of $100 or more is voted on at the General Assembly, a daily meeting for everyone in the park to learn the latest Occupy Wall Street news.  Anyone who shows up has a vote.

But there are plans to streamline things this week.

“We’re actually launching a website on Thursday for members of our working groups so we can better coordinate how to spend all of the money that’s coming in,” Lembitz said.  That includes the media team, the medical unit, the sanitation team and even an archivist, to name a few.

So with big names visiting the protesters in Zuccotti Park, is any of that dough coming from Russell Simmons, Kanye West or Susan Sarandon?

“We’ve received a few anonymous donations, but we honestly don’t know,” Lembitz said.  “Most of our donations come in small amounts from people who want to help in any way that they can.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Hedge Fund Manager to Occupy Wall Street: Don't Vilify Businesses

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, whose home was on the visiting list for Occupy Wall Street's "Millionaires March" Tuesday afternoon, said that "instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City."

Protesters took to New York City's Upper East Side Tuesday and marched past the homes of several of the city's richest residents, including News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch, real estate developer Howard Milstein, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dixon.

According to the Wall Street Journal, demonstrators skipped Paulson's home because it was too far from the chosen route.

But Paulson, nevertheless, addressed the issue Tuesday through a written statement by his hedge fund, Paulson & Co.

"The top 1 percent of New Yorkers pay over 40 percent of all income taxes, providing huge benefits to everyone in our city and state," said the written statement.  "Paulson and Co. and its employees have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in New York City and New York state taxes in recent years and have created over 100 high paying jobs in New York City since its formation."

It continued, "New York currently has the highest income taxes of any state in the country and thousands of businesses have fled New York to states with no income taxes such as Florida, Texas and Nevada, or moved offshore."

According to an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, about 2,000 protesters took part in the march, which started close to 1 p.m. and made its way up Park Avenue.

The demonstration called for an extension of the state's so-called "millionaires tax," the highest income-tax rate on taxpayers with incomes of more than $500,000.  The tax is set to expire in December.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Banks Deleting Debit Card Rewards Plans

Ryan McVay/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The love affair Americans have had with their debit cards for years may be screeching to a halt.

First came the news from Bank of America that it would begin charging some customers $5 a month for purchases made using debit cards.  The company said the surcharge was necessary because of new regulations imposed by Congress to reduce their charges to merchants for processing debit cards.

Now, banks are giving the same reason for doing away with one of its most popular perks: money-back for using debt cards.

This rewards program is based on revenue sharing.  Since the banks will be getting less money from merchants, there will be less revenue to share with customers.

In just the past year alone, there's been a 30 percent drop in the availability of debit rewards programs.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Railroads Adding 15,000 New US Jobs

COmstock/Thinkstock(GARY, Ind.) -- Lonnetta Smith recently lined up looking for a job—along with hundreds of others—at a career fair in Gary, Ind., a crumbling old steel town along Lake Michigan. But at least one of the employers here offered a genuine whiff of hope for real jobs in a field as old as the American frontier: working on the railroad.

“Look at me,” the stocky Smith told ABC News, “I’m built for the railroad.”

CN (formerly Canadian National Railways) is moving 250 jobs to its northern Indiana operations, reflecting a little-noticed industry trend: Railroads are posting “help wanted” signs all across the country.

“In 2011, we’re looking to hire 15,000 people,” says Ed Hamberger, who heads the Association of American Railroads. ”My prediction is 2012 will be at least 15,000 more.”

Railroads are finally chugging out of the recession tunnel. After steep drops in freight shipments during the worst of the financial crisis, the AAR reports that railroads operating in the U.S. are running at 90 percent of their peak before the recession. In spite of a wobbly national economy, 2011 is on track to be the industry’s strongest year since 2008, when American rails moved nearly 21 million carloads.

What’s driving the railroads to recovery? High gasoline and diesel prices, for one thing. They have helped railroads take business from the trucking industry, in some cases, and work with it more effectively in others. United Parcel Service, for example, is now the biggest rider of American rails.

Not only is demand for railroads rising. The workforce is aging: Nearly 30 percent of its workers are eligible for retirement over the next five years.

The employees who replace such veteran railroaders will get good wages and benefits, according to Hamberger, along with some rare job security. “These are jobs that are not going to be outsourced and shipped overseas. These are American jobs. They pay well.”

In fact, he says, salaries average around $100,000 after a few years on the job. Most railroad jobs require only a high school diploma, not a college degree.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Human Blunder Loses Occupy Wall Street $144,000

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Occupy Wall Street is anxiously waiting to find out if it will recoup $144,000 in credit card donations that were rejected over three days when the group’s online account, which is handled by an external fiscal agent, was temporarily frozen due to human error.

The Alliance for Global Justice first blamed one of the entities Occupy Wall Street is protesting -- Authorize.net, owned by Visa -- for the rejected donations and the freezing of another $40,000.

“I can’t help but believe that politics must be involved somewhere,” said Kathy Hoyt, a founding member of AFGJ, in a statement posted online that has since been removed, after the group realized it was its own blunder.

Chuck Kaufman, a national coordinator at AFGJ who is working hand-in-hand with the movement’s finance team, told ABC News Tuesday that his organization simply wasn’t used to processing so many donations.

“Our group normally processes a dozen donations a week, so all of a sudden Occupy Wall Street took off and it was 400 per day,” Kaufman said. “We just didn’t understand the banking architecture. We’ve never done anything on this scale before. I guess we should have communicated this to E-Onlinedata in the beginning.”

The sudden surge of activity acted as a red flag to E-Onlinedata, the company that acts as an intermediary between the cardholders and the banks. Kaufman said the company rejected $144,000 in donations and froze $40,000 that had already been donated but not yet pocketed by the group.

“I don’t blame the credit card companies for wondering what was going on,” he said. “Essentially they’re liable for any donations they process, so I understand where they’re coming from.”

E-Onlinedata did not return ABC News' request for comment by the end of their business day.

Kaufman’s group receives 7 percent of the Occupy Wall Street donations that it processes. Out of that, he estimated that 4 percent went to E-Onlinedata, leaving the Alliance for Global Justice with a total of 3 percent.

He stressed it’s not a profit, though.

“When Occupy Wall Street is gone in two years and the IRS comes knocking, we’re the ones who will provide the accounting,” he said.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

European Financial Woes Continue to Impact US Markets

Ben Hider/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- American markets were unsteady Tuesday as investors worried that one nation could block the latest plan to fix Europe's financial problems.
 
The Dow closed down 17 points, the Nasdaq gained 17, and the S&P rose a fraction of a point on Tuesday.
 
Sixteen countries that use the Euro approved a bill that would strengthen a European rescue fund, but just after the markets closed, Slovakia voted down the deal.  The measure would free up large amounts of money for banks and struggling governments hoping to avoid a full blown crisis.
 
Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Occupy Wall Street's 'Millionaires March' Through NYC

Spencer Platt/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Elizabeth Owens carried an oversized check as she participated in Tuesday’s Occupy Wall Street "Millionaires March" that took protesters through New York City's Upper East Side and past the homes of some of the city's richest residents.

"I want the millionaires to know that we won't stand for this. I pay more than they do in taxes," said Owens, a New York resident.

According to an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, about 2,000 protesters took part in the march, which started around 1 p.m. and made its way up Park Avenue toward the apartment buildings of billionaire David Koch, real estate developer Howard Milstein, hedge fund manager John Paulson and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

Protesters called for an extension of the state's so-called "millionaires tax," the highest income-tax rate on taxpayers with incomes of more than $500,000. The tax is due to expire in December.

"[The] tour will visit homes of some of the most well-known millionaires in New York City specially chosen for their willingness to hoard wealth at the expense of the 99 percent," organizers told CapitalNewYork.com.

Richard Bey of New York said Wall Street needs regulation and oversight.

"Half of the country is making less than $49,000 a year. Should you be taxed the same as a millionaire?" Bey said.

Upper West Side resident Joanna Cole, who said she was wealthy, carried a sign that read "Tax Me."

"I think I should pay more taxes," she told ABC News on Tuesday. "We are at a point in this country where we are seeing the greatest inequality in wealth in 125 years."

Meredith Balk, a retired Delta Air Lines worker, said that the working class used to have a secure lifestyle.

"Unfortunately, we bought into the perception and goals of the rich," she said. "This march is an excellent idea that will gain a lot of attention. We're going straight to the people who make these decisions."

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio