Word: quartered
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...seem happy to keep shelling out for chocolate. Last year, as the global recession was gaining ground, Swiss chocolate makers bucked the trend with record sales - nearly 185,000 tons, an increase of 2% over 2007, sold domestically and in 140 export markets. And while figures for the first quarter of this year are not available yet, "so far we have heard positive and optimistic reports from chocolate companies," says Franz Schmid, managing director of Chocosuisse, an umbrella organization for Switzerland's chocolate industry. (Read a TIME story about nude hiking in Switzerland...
...Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Chang's and head to either cheaper fast-food joints or the comfort of home. "For Denny's, the core consumers are blue-collar families," says Anton Brenner, restaurant analyst at Roth Capital Partners. "They've been squeezed very hard." In the fourth quarter of 2008, same-store sales dropped 6.1%. Sales fell 3.7% for the year, and the company's stock price, at $2.14 a share, has dropped 30.5% over the past 12 months. "It wasn't a good year for us," Marchioli admits...
About five million people, or a quarter of the population of Mexico City's urban sprawl, woke up Thursday with dry taps. The drought was caused by the biggest stoppage in the city's main reservoir system in recent years to ration its depleting supplies. Government officials hope this and four other stoppages will keep water flowing until the summer rainy season fills the basins back up. But they warn that the Mexican capital needs to seriously overhaul its water system to stop an unfathomable disaster in the future. (See pictures of the world water crisis...
...Boeing announced that its first quarter numbers would be poor. According to Reuters, "Because of the drastic dip in demand, Boeing said production of its 777 minijumbo will fall to five from seven per month beginning in June 2010." In other words, earnings from Boeing are going to be weak for a long time...
Independent experts, however, caution against such nationalistic one-upmanship. Already one-quarter of hospital beds are taken up by people suffering from weight-related ailments such as heart attacks, back surgeries and hip and joint replacements, says Luiz Vicente Berti, president of the Brazilian Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Unless preventive action is taken to educate people, he warns, Brazil faces a sick and expensive future. "If we don't teach people how to eat properly and exercise, then in 10 years no one will have the money to pay the hospital bills that will arise," Berti says, adding...