http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-26-00-46-14

HONG KONG (AP) -- Asian stocks rose Thursday, tracing gains on Wall Street, where shares shrugged off a poor quarterly economic report as a blip and instead factored in rebounding growth even as policymakers maintain ultralow interest rates.

Investors were unfazed by the U.S. government's report that the world's biggest economy shrank 2.9 percent in the first quarter, the fastest rate since the global crisis five years ago.

But the downturn, due to a severe winter that closed factories, disrupted shipping and kept Americans away from malls, was seen as temporary, with growth rebounding sharply since spring. Investors may also be betting that it gives policymakers a reason not to raise rates.

"Weak U.S. data released overnight means the Fed will be in no hurry to tighten its policy stance," strategists at Credit Agricole CIB said in a report. "Firmer U.S. equities will provide a favorable backdrop for trading" in Asia.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OIL_TRAINS_EMERGENCY_ORDER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-26-03-15-36

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Dozens of mile-long trains loaded with crude are leaving western North Dakota each week, with most shipments going through the state's most populous county while en route to refineries across the country.

The U.S. Department of Transportation ordered railroads last month to give state officials specifics on oil train routes and volumes so emergency responders can better prepare for accidents. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said a pattern of fiery accidents involving trains carrying crude from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana had created an "imminent hazard" to public safety.

Most notable of those was an oil train derailment last July in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.

Railroads that fail to comply with the order are subject to a $175,000 fine per day and are prohibited from hauling oil from the Bakken region until they do so.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COMMODITIES_REVIEW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-25-16-34-24

Gold prices rose for the sixth straight day on Wednesday as violence in Iraq drew traders to the precious metal.

Gold for August delivery rose $1.30 to settle at $1,322.60 an ounce on Wednesday.

The price of gold has climbed 6 percent so far this month as an insurgent group in Iraq pushes closer to Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi officials confirmed Wednesday that Syrian warplanes bombed the militants' positions inside Iraq's border this week.

"The violence is definitely having an impact on the market," said Phil Streible, senior commodity broker at RJ O'Brien & Associates in Chicago.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OIL_PRICES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-26-01-07-24

The price of global crude dipped under $114 Thursday as fears diminished somewhat over supply disruptions from Iraq while U.S. oil extended gains on looser U.S. export controls.

Benchmark U.S. crude for August delivery rose 25 cents per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 47 cents to settle at $106.50 on Wednesday. Brent crude, used to price international oils, eased 7 cents to $113.93 a barrel in London.

U.S. crude is rising after the Obama Administration opened the door to more oil exports by permitting some light oils to be defined as petroleum products like gasoline or diesel, which aren't subject to export restrictions. Analysts said the changes could add up to 1.1 million barrels of potential exports.

Brent crude edged lower from nine-month highs reached earlier this week. While concerns linger about violence in Iraq affecting global crude supplies, oil production and exports from the giant fields clustered in the country's south remain unaffected. July exports are expected to average about 2.57 million barrels per day, Platts forecasts.

In other energy futures trading on the Nymex:

- Wholesale gasoline barely budged $3.07 a gallon.

- Natural gas rose 2.3 cents to $4.58 per 1,000 cubic feet.

- Heating oil fell 0.1 cent to $3.037 a gallon.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CENSUS_GETTING_YOUNGER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-26-02-56-46

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States is still growing older, but the trend is reversing in the Great Plains, thanks to a liberal application of oil.

The aging baby boom generation helped inch up the median age in the United States last year from 37.5 years to 37.6 years, according to data released Thursday by the Census Bureau. But a closer examination of those numbers shows that seven states - Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming - actually became younger.

Credit for the de-aging of the mainland states between 2012 and 2013 goes to the increase in oil and gas exploration in the Great Plains. The Census Bureau offered no reason for the decrease in Alaska and Hawaii.

"We're seeing the demographic impact of two booms," Census Bureau Director John Thompson said. "The population in the Great Plains energy-boom states is becoming younger and more male as workers move in seeking employment in the oil and gas industry, while the U.S. as a whole continues to age as the youngest of the baby boom generation enter their 50s."

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-barclays-shares-fall-after-new-york-lawsuit-2014-26

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Attorney General on Wednesday filed a securities fraud lawsuit against Barclays PLC for misrepresenting the safety of its U.S.-based alternative trading system, or "dark pool," to investors.

The lawsuit alleges that in order to increase business in its dark pool, Barclays has favored high-frequency traders and has actively sought to attract them by giving them systematic advantages over other investors trading in the pool.

"Barclays grew its dark pool by telling investors they were diving into safe waters," said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. "According to the lawsuit, Barclays' dark pool was full of predators - there at Barclays' invitation." 

Barclays declined to comment.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-barclays-shares-fall-after-new-york-lawsuit-2014-26#ixzz35jv5pvIV

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-minorities-seen-driving-us-household-growth-study-2014-26

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Minorities will account for more than one-third of U.S. households by 2025 and make up nearly half of first-time homebuyers, according to a study released on Thursday.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University estimated the number of households, which currently stands at slightly more than 122 million, will increase by between 11.6 million and 13.2 million over 2015-2025.

In 2025, 36 percent of households will be headed by minorities, the study said, up from about 31.6 percent in 2013.

Of those, nearly half will be in the 25-34 age bracket that dominates the first-time buyer market. The study cautioned, however, that the numbers depend importantly on mortgage availability, given the limited incomes of many minorities.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-minorities-seen-driving-us-household-growth-study-2014-26#ixzz35jxqq5bf

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-testing-us-crude-oil-export-ban-with-swaps-no-simple-matter-2014-26

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Oil producers considering swapping U.S. light crude abroad for the heavier imported oil needed by refiners to work around a decades-old ban on exporting domestic crude may find the strategy harder to execute than it looks on paper.
As U.S. production of light crude oil continues to boom, some companies and lawmakers are calling for the United States to reform its decades-old ban on most U.S. crude oil exports - a policy that followed the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

A breakthrough arguably came this week, when U.S. officials clarified that a type of ultra-light crude known as condensate could be exported after enough processing to qualify as a refined product, exports of which are allowed. Swaps would be another way to test the ban's limits.

In theory it should take just weeks for Washington to allow oil producers to execute a deal, since these swaps are allowed by law. But analysts say meeting the base requirement - that the imports be of the same quantity and quality as the exports - is easier said than done.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-testing-us-crude-oil-export-ban-with-swaps-no-simple-matter-2014-26#ixzz35k1BKLkF

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/world-growth-bouncing-as-employers-take-baton-from-central-banks.html

Companies from Ford Motor Co. to Panasonic (6752) Corp. are providing fresh fuel for the global economy as they begin to bolster employment and investment.

Stepped-up spending plans are helping reverse the surprise slowdown at the start of the year. They also signal that the next stage of international expansion will be stronger than the tepid recovery so far from 2009’s worldwide recession.

“A pickup is taking place after a significant deceleration,” said Gustavo Reis, New York-based economist at Bank of America Corp., which expects global growth to improve to 3.1 percent this year and 3.7 percent next year from 2.9 percent in 2013.

Companies are investing in plant and labor after having run up piles of cash and devoted much of what they did spend to buying back stocks or issuing dividends. In a sign animal spirits are returning, takeovers so far this year have totaled about $1.5 trillion, the most since 2007, led by Comcast Corp.’s (CMCSA) $68 billion acquisition of rival Time Warner Cable Inc.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/cracks-open-in-dark-pool-defense-with-schneiderman-barclays-suit.html

Last October, managers told an employee in Barclays (BARC) Plc’s trading unit to keep from clients a report showing the bank routed most of their dark pool orders to itself, according to the New York attorney general.

He refused, Eric Schneiderman said, and was fired the next day.

The state’s top law-enforcement official released the account, which he said he got from the former Barclays senior director, in a 30-page document that portrayed the London-based bank as bilking its own customers to expand its dark pool. Schneiderman cited a pattern of “fraud and deceit” starting in 2011 in which Barclays hoarded orders for stocks and assured investors they were protected from high-frequency firms while simultaneously aiding predatory tactics.

“The behavior described in this complaint would put a bank’s financial interest in marketing its dark pool and profiting by providing access to predatory high-speed traders ahead of the interests of investors,” Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who leads the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in a statement. “Action is needed to end conflicts of interest in the U.S. stock market.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-25/barclays-dark-pools-said-to-face-suit-from-n-y-attorney-general.html


Barclays Plc (BARC) was so bent on lifting its private trading venue to the upper ranks of Wall Street dark pools that it lied to customers and masked the role of high-frequency traders, according to New York’s attorney general.

Barclays falsified marketing materials to hide how much high-frequency traders were buying and selling, according to a complaint filed today by Eric Schneiderman. Barclays runs one of Wall Street’s largest dark pools, a private trading venue where investors can trade stocks mostly anonymously.

Schneiderman has taken a leading role in seeking to reform how equities trade in the $23 trillion U.S. stock market, examining whether exchanges and dark pools give unfair perks to high-frequency traders. His suit against Barclays says clients such as institutional investors were the losers, led to believe they were safe from predators on a trading venue where aggressive trading strategies were in fact encouraged.

“This is obviously a breach of confidence, a breach of trust,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading LLC in Chatham, New Jersey. “It’s pretty obvious at this point that the SEC needs to come in, it needs to know what’s going on actually inside these boxes. Barclays -- are they the only ones? We don’t know. I don’t know.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-25/greek-bonds-beat-lottery-as-funds-surge-on-smashed-glass.html

The woman who died in a burning Athens bank still smiles at Giorgos Mastorakos on his way to the delicatessen he owns around the corner.

The wreaths and tributes no longer cascade onto the road to mark the spot where she and her two colleagues were killed in violence in May 2010 after the country’s unsustainable debts and ensuing financial decline resulted in the first depression since World War II. At the makeshift memorial that fewer people visit on the anniversary of the deaths, the photo of the woman’s face is framed by an anarchist sign and withering bouquets.

Mastorakos, 64, and his employees helped those who escaped the burning building. “And that’s when the questions began: Did so-and-so get out? Have you seen that person?” he said.

The anger against austerity, reflected in the broken windows of hundreds of Athens storefronts, led to political turmoil in 2011, the world’s biggest debt restructuring the following year and chaos as elections forced Greeks to choose between the euro and the drachma. Now, halfway through his term, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras sees recovery and redemption after Greece came to the brink of bankruptcy and sparked a contagion that engulfed Ireland and Portugal.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/europe-index-futures-rise-after-stoxx-600-drops-four-days.html

European stocks advanced, snapping a four-day decline, amid increased mergers-and-acquisitions activity, and as investors awaited data to assess the health of the U.S. economy. U.S. index futures were little changed, while Asian shares rose.

Dialog Semiconductor Plc and AMS AG climbed more than 3 percent each after saying they are exploring a merger. London Stock Exchange Group Plc rose 7 percent after agreeing to buy Frank Russell Co. for $2.7 billion. Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Plc advanced 5.1 percent after denying a report that it is considering selling some or all of itself as part of a strategic review. Barclays Plc, which was sued in New York over its private trading venue, slipped to its lowest price since November 2012.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index gained 0.2 percent to 342.69 at 11:18 a.m. in London. The gauge had dropped 1.8 percent in the past four days, the longest losing streak in seven weeks, as investors weighed violence in Iraq, and economic data in the U.S. and euro area missed estimates. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures fell less than 0.1 percent today, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Index increased 0.8 percent.

“Any economic activity lost in the first quarter will pop up later in the year,” said William Hobbs, the London-based head of equity strategy at Barclays Plc’s wealth-management unit. “We still expect equities in continental Europe and the U.S. to be top of the class in 2014. There’s no doubt that the call on equities is getting harder. We’re further into the business cycle, valuations are no longer cheap, and interest rates will rise before too long.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-25/scandal-underwhelms-traders-burning-for-rate-cuts-poland-credit.html

Derivative traders are increasing bets that Poland will cut interest rates, downplaying prospects that the tape scandal embroiling central bankers to politicians will affect monetary policy.

Forward-rate agreements show wagers for a quarter-point rate cut within three months, the most since secretly taped recordings of central bank Governor Marek Belka and the Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz went public on June 14. Bonds and the zloty held onto gains after Prime Minister Donald Tusk asked lawmakers for a vote of confidence to bolster his government amid the crisis. Lawmakers voted 237 to 203 in favor of the cabinet late yesterday.

Belka, who has vowed not to resign, said in a Bloomberg interview two days ago that the scandal won’t knock monetary policy off track. Pressure to lower borrowing costs is intensifying after cuts this month by the European Central Bank and Hungary, according to ING Groep NV.

“Belka shut off speculation by saying he has no plans to resign and put the tapes to the background of monetary policy,” Adam Antoniak, a senior economist at UniCredit SpA’s Polish unit Bank Pekao SA, said by phone yesterday. “Tusk getting a strong mandate to govern limits speculation over the stability of the cabinet.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/china-removes-cap-on-fx-deposit-rates-in-shanghai.html

China expanded banks’ freedom to set foreign-currency deposit rates in Shanghai, a step toward easing interest-rate controls across the nation.

The People’s Bank of China said today it will remove the ceiling on foreign-currency deposit rates across the city effective tomorrow for what it described as small accounts. The trial will start with institutional accounts and individual accounts will be added later based on “market conditions,” it said in a statement.

The PBOC abolished limits on foreign-currency interest rates on March 1 for deposits of less than $3 million inside Shanghai’s free-trade zone as part of plans to give markets a greater role in setting prices. The central bank, which removed the floor on most lending rates in July 2013, will liberalize state-set deposit rates within one to two years, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said in March.

“This is a small step in deposit-rate liberalization because forex deposits are a tiny fraction of the total,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole SA in Hong Kong. “However, the removal of forex deposit caps does represent a step towards liberalization of interest rates and will increase hopes for raising the cap on yuan deposits in coming months. This in turn would lead to higher rates throughout the economy.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/china-s-top-taiwan-affairs-official-visits-island-after-protests.html

China’s top official in charge of cross-strait affairs began a four-day trip to Taiwan yesterday, two months after protests halted a trade pact between the two economies.

Zhang Zhijun, who is also a member of the Communist Party’s central committee that elects China’s elite Politburo, arrived in Taipei yesterday, the first head of the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office to visit Taiwan. His first words on arrival were in the local Minnan dialect, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The second meeting between the two governments comes as popular sentiment toward Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou’s policies fostering closer economic ties with China have chilled. Protests in March and April halted the legislative review of a cross-strait trade deal opening up service industries on both sides to markets and competition. Two-way trade reached $197.2 billion in 2013, almost double the amount five years earlier.

Expectations for the visit should not be too high, the mainland’s Global Times newspaper said in an editorial today. Zhang was greeted at the airport by people wearing T-shirts advocating independence, it said, an atmosphere not conducive to a political breakthrough.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/china-banks-join-japan-s-with-50-loan-surge-australia-credit.html


Bank of China Ltd. and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. are leading a surge in loans to Australian companies by lenders from Asia’s two biggest economies.

The amount owed to the four biggest Chinese banks in Australia by non-financial corporations jumped 50 percent in the year through April to A$11.9 billion ($11.2 billion), while the equivalent for the three largest Japanese creditors rose 18 percent to A$28.1 billion, data from the prudential regulator compiled by Bloomberg show. The Asian lenders are filling some of the void left by European peers, whose volumes in Australia have not regained levels seen since before the 2008 crisis.

China’s banks, expanding overseas to gain the experience they need to compete with global lenders in their domestic market, have boosted loans in Australia by more than 20-fold over six years. Japanese finance providers, flush with low-cost money from the Bank of Japan’s stimulus program, have helped fund companies including Sydney Airport and Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group Pty.

“Japanese and Chinese lenders will be inspired by the stable asset quality of Australian banks to deploy their funds in the country,” Brett Le Mesurier, a Sydney-based analyst at BBY Ltd., said by phone. “Clearly, the Chinese are deposit funded and want to diversify their loan book. Japanese are looking for growth.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-25/christie-wins-court-ruling-on-cuts-to-fiscal-2014-pensions.html

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie won a key budget battle when a judge ruled he had legal authority to cut payments to the state pension system because he faced a fiscal emergency.

Christie was confronted with “staggering” shortfalls in his $33 billion budget for the year ending June 30, Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson said today. Christie acted reasonably in paying $696 million to cover current employees, while deferring $887 million to help close the gap left by previous governors, the judge ruled.

“I don’t think it’s something he did lightly,” Jacobson said after a hearing in Trenton. “He was put between a rock and a hard place.”

Unions for teachers, firefighters and other public employees sued to stop Christie, seeking full payment into a pension system underfunded by $38 billion. Christie, a Republican, said an unanticipated drop in revenue forced him to trim pension payments to balance the budget, as required by law.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-25/two-more-charged-with-insider-trading-over-ibm-spss-deal.html

Two stockbrokers were charged with insider trading tied to International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)’s $1.2 billion acquisition of software company SPSS Inc., in a probe that has already yielded three guilty pleas.

Daryl Payton, 38, and Benjamin Durant III, 37, pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy and five counts of securities fraud in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court. The two men, arrested this morning in New York by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were each released on $250,000 bond set by U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Dolinger.

Payton and Durant were part of a group of friends who traded on the IBM tip, the U.S. said. When the SPSS deal was announced on July 28, 2009, the pair met with three other co-conspirators at a New York hotel to discuss a cover story, according to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

“Benjamin Durant and Daryl Payton not only acquired inside information about a corporate acquisition and made illegal profits from it, but they colluded with others to conceal their crime,” Bharara said in a statement.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/bankers-pay-seen-rising-while-rates-traders-extend-slump.html

Interest-rate traders will probably suffer Wall Street’s biggest pay cuts for a second straight year, while firms add investment bankers and boost their pay, Options Group Inc. said in a report.

Employers may dismiss interest-rate traders and pay the remaining ones in the U.S. 18 percent less on average than in 2013, the New York-based recruitment firm said in a mid-year report released yesterday. Investment bankers in the U.S. and Europe may see a 15 percent jump in total pay, and people working in equity derivatives may get an even larger boost.

Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Citigroup Inc. (C) have warned investors that low volatility and interest rates that are holding in tight ranges have limited trading activity. Daniel Pinto, head of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s corporate and investment bank, said last month that many clients bet at the start of the year that U.S. rates would rise faster than those in Europe, which didn’t pan out.

“There’s not that much movement in the rates business, so the overall environment for rates is quite bleak,” said Options Group Chief Executive Officer Michael Karp. “Couple that with banks having to reduce headcount and cut risk over the last two years in that business.”

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/06/26


United Nations experts declared Wednesday that the city of Detroit's shut-off of water to thousands of residents who are unable to pay their bills "constitutes a violation of the human right to water" and may be discriminatory against African-Americans.

“The households which suffered unjustified disconnections must be immediately reconnected,” said UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing Leilani Farha, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston, and UN Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation Catarina de Albuquerque, in a joint statement issued Wednesday.

“If these water disconnections disproportionately affect African Americans they may be discriminatory, in violation of treaties the US has ratified,” said Farha.

The statement comes in response to last week's plea from concerned organizations for the United Nations to intervene to stop Detroit from denying water to its residents.

https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/should-you-move-to-detroit-2014-06-24?siteid=YAHOOB

The mayor of Detroit, Mike Duggan, has set himself a monumental task: Sell the city to the rest of America. Not sell it, exactly, but rather convince other people to move there. He and fellow boosters say this once-bustling industrial metropolis does have a lot to offer.

Detroit has had some votes of confidence lately. On Tuesday, Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and the chairman and chief executive of Revolution LLC, a Washington-based venture-capital firm, will kick-start his “Rise of the Rest” road trip in Detroit. He will announce a $100,000 prize for the winner of his pitch competition, before awarding a $100,000 prize to a company in each of these cities: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Nashville. Last month, J.P. Morgan Chase, the country’s biggest bank, announced a $100 million investment in Detroit over the next five years. Last year, Google named Detroit a key tech hub.

Ted Serbinski, a partner at Detroit Venture Partners, moved to Detroit in 2011 from San Francisco. “My wife and I were living in downtown San Francisco, and the costs were starting to get unruly,” he says. “I was looking for somewhere that isn’t as crowded. Coming here, I found a passion for helping to rebuild the society.” He read a lot of newspaper articles about crime in Detroit but wasn't put off by them. “The surprising thing to me is how misleading all those headlines were,” he says.

“I call it the entrepreneurial gold rush and see more opportunities here than I ever did in San Francisco.”



Indeed, Detroit is the fifth most affordable city in the U.S. for real estate, according to HSH.com, a mortgage-information firm. Residents only need to earn $32,250 a year for a median-priced home — making Detroit more expensive than only Cleveland ($29,788), Pittsburgh ($30,177), St. Louis ($31,275) and Cincinnati ($31,850). (San Francisco was the least affordable; median-price-home buyers need to earn $137,129 a year there.) More than 80% of homes for sale in Detroit are within reach of the middle class, compared with only 20% in New York and Los Angeles and 14% in San Francisco, according to real-estate website Trulia.

It’s also possible to live large in Detroit. “The duplex house I lived in 35 years ago on Detroit’s east side is still a beauty,” says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and a resident of Washington, D.C. He recently revisited it: The home has two units, each with leaded-glass windows, fireplace, Florida room, walk-in pantry, two bedrooms and kitchen. It sold for less than $50,000 two years ago. The lot next door can be bought for $1,000. “Once Detroit gets through the bankruptcy, restores city services, and makes progress on job creation, it will be an amazing value,” he adds.

That might be a big ask, however. Detroit currently has the highest unemployment rate of the 50 largest cities in the U.S., at more than three times the national average for May, which was 6.3%. The unemployment rate there hovers at 23%, six percentage points ahead of the nearest on the list — Oakland City, Calif., at 16.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And Detroit was last among urban school districts of the 21 cities that participated in “The Nation’s Report Card: 2013 Mathematics and Reading Trial Urban District Assessment” for fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math.

http://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2014/06/24/Photos/MG/MW-CJ340_detroi_20140624120712_MG.


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