Word: summer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Kids won't be the only miserable people during these waning days of summer, when the first day of school lurks like a dour detention officer. The retailers selling students back-to-school clothing, supplies and gadgets will be pretty sad souls too. According the National Retail Federation, the average family with K-12 students will spend $548.72 on school merchandise, a 7.7% decline from 2008. Britt Beemer, founder and chairman of America's Research Group, a retail consulting firm, predicts spending will drop from 8.5% to 12.5% this year, compared with a 5% fall last year...
Back to school is the second most important season for retailers, behind the December holidays. According to a survey conducted by Beemer, more than half of American parents are trying to get their children to recycle the clothing they wore last year, summer growth spurts not withstanding. More parents are also controlling the purse strings and moving down-market for pants and shoes. Nearly 45% more consumers say they will shop at Wal-Mart for back-to-school items this year, according to Beemer's survey, and Sears picked up 33.3% more shoppers. "A lot of moms and dads...
...single day. By the end of the first full week, dozens of kids were sleeping on state-issued cots in a specially quarantined cabin, waiting out a pandemic flu virus that is barnstorming its way across the globe. Camp Modin was not alone; so far this summer, at least 80 camps in 40 American states, including a full quarter of Maine's residential summer camps, have reportedly been hit by the bug known worldwide as H1N1. Across the Atlantic, Britain's National Health Service spent most of July recording 100,000 new cases a week. Health officials in both countries...
Even without any significant mutations, H1N1 has so far behaved in confounding ways. The virus spread widely in Britain during the summer, but not in other European countries. No one knows why. Mexico reported a sharp increase in cases in late July after health officials there suspected that the virus had begun petering out with the onset of the hot summer months. And then there is emerging evidence that some patients present without fever, making diagnosing H1N1 harder...
...closures could ease the burden on hospitals by reducing the number of cases at the peak of the pandemic. They cited a previous study in France that predicted that up to 18% more people would become ill with seasonal flu every year if schools never broke up for the summer...