National News

It’s about 8 o’clock on a Thursday night and this Nairobi supermarket called Uchumi is packed with evening shoppers. Engineer Dee Kerubo has come to buy toiletries and whatever else catches her eye. “I got a Kit-Kat too,” Kerubo laughs.

At the cash register, she pulls out a bright red plastic card -- her Uchumi loyalty card. The cashier swipes it and it makes a loud “BEEP!”

That “BEEP!” is the sound of data, going from Kerubo’s card to a huge computer room in the back of the store.

Uchumi’s information manager, Charles Thuku, explains that “we got our cables over here going all the way to the tills, so as the cashiers are selling we are able to get hold of that information, have it saved in the server.”

With 21 million customers a year, the Uchumi chain makes up about a quarter of Kenya’s supermarket sector. But Thuku thinks Uchumi could be more competitive if it could just dig deeper into customers’ information.

“We interested to know the basket size of a customer,” Thuku says, “their frequency, how often they come in our stores to shop. What are the items they normally get when they come to do the shopping?  So that’s the information that we are quite interested in.”

That’s where data analyst Karibu Nyaggah comes in. Nyaggah runs Caytree Partners, a Kenyan analytics firm he founded last year.

Nyaggah says data analytics can open up consumer information not just in retail, but in the financial sector as well. He says Kenya’s banks especially could use more data.

“For example, every credit card company in the U.S. shares with the credit bureau who their account holders are -- everyone knows that you’ve had these set of accounts and how you’ve handled them. In Kenya there’s no such sharing and so when you come into my bank to open an account, you may seem like a perfectly decent guy, but you might also be a really big fraudster,” Nyaggah says.

Nyaggah hopes that if Kenyan banks can have more data transparency and make a credit score system, then they can sort out the credit worthy from the crooks.

“And it’s quite exciting,” he says, “because the net result of that effort is more folks have access to credit, which is a huge enabling factor in growing the economy.”

The problem is data analytics is expensive, and many Kenyan companies aren’t ready to make the investment yet. But luckily for supermarket Uchumi, someone else might be willing to pay. Multinational Unilever has expressed interest in paying Uchumi to have easier access to its customers’ information.

Because even if Kenya’s companies don’t yet see the value of the country’s consumer data, the global marketplace does.

Cliburn achieved worldwide recognition when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow as a 23-year-old. What's more, he did so in 1958, at the height of the Cold War.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Despite Germany's long association with beer, it looks like its citizens are imbibing less of their celebrated beverage now than they did a generation ago. Some cite the economy as a factor; others, the rise of health consciousness.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Despite Germany's long association with beer, it looks like its citizens are imbibing less of their celebrated beverage now than they did a generation ago. Some cite the economy as a factor; others, the rise of health consciousness.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Nearly all economists in a recent poll believe growth is "likely to be negatively affected" by the automatic federal spending cuts set to go into effect starting Friday. The $85 billion in cuts could have wide-ranging impacts, from military spending to consumer confidence.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The medal, along with other items that belonged to the late Francis Crick, will be auctioned on April 10-11 in New York.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The beverage giant Anheuser Busch InBev is at loggerheads with customers in California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They've filed lawsuits saying the company's beer is watered down.

It's not complicated to measure the alcohol in beer, says Peter Reid, publisher of Modern Brewery Age. All you need is this ancient glass tool called a hydrometer. "This is a very old piece of technology. It dates back to the Greeks," he says.

Mega brewers, like InBev, now also use sophisticated computers and robots to check alcohol levels. It's doubtful they ever get it wrong. Yet that is the basis of the lawsuits, that the "5 percent alcohol by volume" label on Budweiser and other InBev U.S. beers is false. They say the beer has been watered down.

Reid says lawsuits over alcohol levels are common, but usually in the opposite direction. "Often times, beverages are pilloried for being too strong," he says. "You have products like Four Loko or malt liquors."

Beverage industry consultant Tom Pirko says the lawsuit is about more than technicalities. "It's probably really about confidence and trust. Are we really getting what we paid for?"

He says U.S. customers are already kind of suspicious of the big brewers. InBev, based in Belgium, has a reputation for cutting costs and watering down other brands it has bought. But InBev wouldn't save very much money by watering down Budweiser in the way the lawsuits claim, says beverage analyst Thomas Mullarkey at Morningstar.

"Shareholders are only rewarded if customers keep buying the beer," he says.

The risk to Budweiser's reputation would be much greater than the $5 million in damages sought by the lawsuits.

Students at Cooperstown Central School recently voted to stop calling their sport teams the Redskins. In turn, an Indian tribe offered to pay for new team uniforms. Host Michel Martin talks about the gesture with Ray Halbritter, of the Oneida Nation.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

When it comes to immigration reform, politicians on both sides of the aisle talk about sending undocumented immigrants to the 'back of the line.' But for many people seeking legal entry, it's not as simple as getting in line. Host Michel Martin talks with Matt Cameron, immigration lawyer and creator of thereisnoline.com.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health created a unique poll to gauge what children across the country are eating, drinking and doing as far as physical activity goes. Here's why.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The idea of slashing federal spending for most Americans is a lot like losing weight or eating more vegetables — sounds great as an abstract aspiration, but not so easy when it gets down to the details.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The defining experience when using a smartphone is the diverse set of apps, the little programs, you load on it to make the phone do things. Increasingly, there's a choice of operating system, too. Sure there's Apple iOS, Google Android, Windows Mobile -- but at a big conference on mobile technology in Barcelona, Spain, a Samsung phone using a strange operating system was announced.

Samsung's new OS is called Tizen, and there are other rivals coming soon, including one from the browser maker, Firefox.

Sarah Rotman Epps, senior analyst at Forrester Research, joins Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to discuss where Tizen will be used and why Samsung is launching the new alternative system.

"March madness" is around the corner. So is the selection of a new pope. Religion News Service is bringing the two together.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The restaurant chain hopes a new system for analyzing big data sets will help it spot patterns of complaints across its more than 170 outlets in a matter of hours, not weeks. The goal: to spot problems small and big (soggy pickles? foodborne illness?) before they balloon.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Apple has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit brought by angry parents who said their kids racked up big bills on iTunes purchases. They're called "in-app" purchases and they usually let players of a free game buy extra weapons or to get to a new level or get a whole bunch of virtual goldfish.

That's what happend to Mike Betrand of Boca Raton, Fla. A couple of years ago, his three young children got very into a free iPad game called Tap Fish. "It’s a little virtual aquarium," he explains. "If you want to buy different tanks or you want to buy little castles or little fish, you have to use what appears to be play money."

Thing is, it's not play money. Bertrand discovered this when he happend to notice an Apple iTunes receipt in his email for $149.

"I started going through some other receipts that were trapped in my spam folder and found out that, over the course of about a week, my kids tallied about $1,500 on the game."

Bertrand says his kids had no idea what they'd done. "The kids were very surprised to learn that they were spending real money and really confused about it."

In the proposed settlement, Apple will compensate 23 million angry parents who say the company didn't have proper parental controls in place for in-app purchases. Apple will dole out $5 iTunes gift cards to many parents. Those whose charges topped $30 will get a seperate reimbursement.

Colby Zintl of advocacy group Common Sense Media applauds the ruling, a notes that Apple has since put in place an option that will allow parents to block those purchases. Still, Zintl says, these supposedly free games need standard protections.

"In the case of a game like Smurfs, these kids aren’t even reading," she says. "The ability to press a button and you’re charging your parents’ credit card, you have to question what the business practices are." 

Rene Ritchie, editor in chief of tech news site iMore. says those business practices grew out of Apple's app marketplace. He points out early app games charged as much as $10. But nobody wanted to pay that much, "and this model emerged called 'fremium,'" he says.

That’s when the game itself is free, but things inside the game cost money. "Instead of having to earn something in a game, you just buy it," Ritchie says. "Instead of having to wait for your car to get more power or your solider to get more life back, you can buy it immediately. People lose patience and spend money on the game."

Betting on impatience works. Ritchie says all of the top grossing games right now are free...ish.

And they're going to stay free if Mike Bertrand has anything to say about it. "My kids don't know my iTunes password anymore," he laughs.

After a somewhat stormy debate in the Senate over his confirmation, former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) has taken over the top job at the Pentagon.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

SAT:College ::

A.) beaver:mercedes

B.) quickly:galaxy

C.) mitochondria:zooxanthellae

D.) marmelade:Harrison Ford

The answer is obvious, of course, and you should feel deeply, deeply ashamed if it's not. Just close your web browser or phone now, and leave. Otherwise, read on.

The SAT is about to undergo some major changes. According to a letter from David Coleman, the president of the College Board, the main purpose is to "increase the value of the SAT." For students, that means, "focusing on a core set of knowledge and skills that are essential to college and career success." For admissions officers, it means being a better predictor of college success, and for K-12 educators, it means making the test more reflective of what's taught in classes.

From a business perspective, there may be another reason: market share. Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, says many people suspect “the reason the SAT is changing is that the ACT last year overtook the SAT by a very small margin.”

The ACT is the other big admissions test, and the number of students who take it grew 50 percent in the past decade -- 1,666,017 students took the ACT at least once in 2012, versus 1,664,479 who took the SAT.

The ACT used to be primarily a mid-west phenomenon, but it has expanded its range. It's become a required high school exit exam in some states, and it's sometimes viewed as more closely connected to a high school curriculum. The ACT may also just be another exam for people who didn't like how they did on the SAT.

But fighting over market share aside, both ACT and SAT are facing a certain amount of criticism. Wake Forest University, for example, is "test-optional" -- you don't have to take the SAT or the ACT.

“So are 38 percent of all four-year degree granting institutions in the united states," says Joseph Soares, professor of sociology at Wake Forest University and author of "SAT Wars." "It conveys no additional useful information over and above what the high school transcript tells us,” he argues -- and even does so at a cost.

Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, says standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, "reinforce racial and socioeconomic inequality."

But he also says selective schools will still be interested in the exams for their predictive power. "The SAT provides a way of comparing between high schools," he says. Comparing different high schools can sometimes be like comparing apples and oranges, but Kahlenberg says, "It does have predictive value in the first year of school. Which is not irrelevant, because you don’t want to admit students who are likely to fail."

Either way, many schools still value the ACT and SAT and require at least one. Plus, more than a million and a half students each year continue to take one or both standardized tests, whether their favorite school cares or not. According to Scott Jaschik with InsideHigherEd, most colleges that go test-optional still accept SAT and ACT scores, and two-thirds of applicants continue to submit them.

In other words, students will never pass up an opportunity to prove themselves.

Representatives for Iran and the world powers say they are encouraged, but there's still a long way to go before any agreement is possible.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Australian billionaire Clive Palmer announced last year that he would build a replica of the famous passenger ship. Now the new ship's designer has released images of what the ship is due to look like. Would you want to sail on it?

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Among those watching the papal transition closely are survivors of clergy sexual abuse, including a handful who were selected to secretly meet with Pope Benedict five years ago. They left the meeting hoping the pope would help the church handle past and current cases. Do they think he did help?

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us