Blog Posts by Rebecca Stropoli

Less than a year after media magnate Rupert Murdoch received a shaving cream pie smackdown while testifying at a parliamentary hearing on the phone-hacking scandal that has plagued News Corp. (NWS), he and his son James are getting grilled again.

Murdoch the senior slipped into the hot seat Wednesday following the son's Tuesday testimony before London's Leveson inquiry, which is heading a months-long investigation into the ethics of the British press, particularly its relationship with political figures.

Rupert was on the defensive during his first day of testimony (he returns to the stand tomorrow), poo-pooing speculation that he has used his enormous influence for News Corp's own gain. The questioning spanned decades, touching on everything from whether he discussed News Corp's potential British Sky Broadcasting (BSY.L) deal with British Prime Minister David Cameron to whether he attempted to woo Margaret Thatcher to smooth his bid for the Times newspapers back in 1981.

"I never

Read More »from The Murdochs Get Another Grilling

Mickey, Donald and Goofy will now be able to sate their Starbucks (SBUX) cravings as the Seattle coffee behemoth makes itself at home in each of the six U.S. Disney (DIS) properties located in California and Florida. The company announced on April 23 that it would be moving into its first Mouse House  -- Disney's Anaheim, Calif., Adventure Park -- in June, following suit in the five other locations  in the months to come.

This is the first time Starbucks will be available in a U.S. Disney park, although Parisians have been sipping SBUX concoctions in France's Disney Village since June 2009.

The Adventure Park Starbucks will be folded into its Fiddle, Fifer & Practical Cafe, which has a roaring '20s theme; the baristas will forgo the traditional green-aproned look for historically correct attire.

The expansion into the Disney empire isn't the first for Starbucks in 2012; in February, it announced a new partnership with Alaska Airlines. Starbucks also got a big boost

Although Disney is

Read More »from Starbucks With a Shot of Disney: Today in Food Finance

The first quarter of 2012 is now a memory, but it is leaving a distinct impression:

Wall Street saw its best start to the year in more than a decade, and the S&P 500 logged  its most impressive quarter since 3Q 2009. But what of the global picture? Stories from across the ocean continued to impact U.S. markets in Q1, sometimes negatively (the seemingly interminable Greek bailout drama helped hand Wall Street its worst day of 2012 so far).  But U.S. investors who traveled to foreign investing lands were rewarded overall: Every international mutual fund category saw healthy gains, and foreign ETFs were also up for the quarter.

Here's how some major international markets fared in the first quarter — and what investors will be looking toward in the second.

Europe: Bailout Fund Boosted, Dark Clouds Remain

On the final trading day of Q1, euro zone ministers agreed to boost the emergency rescue fund (the European Financial Stability Facility) by €200 billion in an effort to contain

Read More »from Global Markets: Some Upside Surprises in the First Quarter

Following the phone-hacking scandal that has led to several humiliating headlines in the past year for News Corp. (NWS), bad timing has now led to a minor stumble for the Rupert Murdoch empire. The $60 million Fox movie 'Neighborhood Watch' is accelerating the switch up for its initial marketing campaign in response to a news event that has horrified -- and polarized -- the nation.

Slated for a July release, 'Neighborhood Watch' is a comedy starring Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn and Billy Crudup as a quartet of volunteer watchmen who engage in hilarious hijinks as they cruise their suburban neighborhood seeking out troublemakers. Along the way they uncover a conspiracy that involves aliens. But they also take time to nab such "dangerous" figures as adolescent boys involved in egg-throwing incidents.The initial teaser trailer includes a bit in which the watchmen furiously grill the young egg bandit. (Watch it here.)  Therein lay the comedy -- and the timing snafu.

[Related:

Read More »from Trayvon Martin Shooting Is Trouble for Fox’s ‘Neighborhood Watch’

How does one 85-year-old North Dakota woman cause pasta discourse to go viral? By writing about – and highly praising – the Olive Garden, the Italian chain restaurant that many Americans seem to love to diss.

When Marilyn Hagerty, columnist and food critic for the local Grand Forks Herald paper, visited the city’s new Olive Garden restaurant (a place she hadn’t been to since dining at the location in Fargo a few years ago), she apparently enjoyed good service and a very satisfying eating experience. “After a lengthy wait for Olive Garden to open in Grand Forks, the lines were long in February,” she wrote. “The novelty is slowly wearing off, but the steady following attests the warm welcome.” (This also highlights the probability that this city of 50,000 does not have quite the variety of restaurants that larger cities boast; however, the state  of North Dakota does count buffalo jerky as a delicacy -- and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.) And from the pleasant

Read More »from Restaurant Review of The Olive Garden Goes Viral

Cutting Off the Juice?: On Tuesday, Feb. 29, President Obama told attendees at a United Autoworkers Conference in Washington that he planned to buy a Chevy Volt as soon as he exited the White House (joking that the Secret Service wouldn’t let him drive one now). Just three days later, GM (GM) announced that it would be halting production of the hybrid plug-in car for five weeks (March 19-April 24), due to low demand and sales -- it sold only 7,700 Volts last year, well below its 10,000 target. The company also said it planned to lay off around 1,300 workers from its Hamtrick, Mich., factory over the next few months.

Amid the recent rush of good news surrounding the auto industry, including the remarkable GM turnaround since the company went bankrupt and subsequently secured its highly controversial $50 billion government bailout (taxpayers still own more than 20% of the company), this is a negative for the automaker and possibly for the Obama administration’s goal of seeing 1 million Read More »from Story Stocks: GM Volt Jolt, Pier 1 Impresses and Zynga Gets a Cut

P Is for Pain: Pandora is feeling some (P)ain in early trading after its earnings came in short of expectations despite solid revenue growth and a boost in its “listener hours.” What investors are really focusing on is the company’s weak guidance; Pandora gave next-year projections for the first time, predicting a loss of 11 cents to 16 cents, while analyst consensus had called for earnings of a penny per share. Ironically, building a strong user base can actually hurt in this case, as song licensing fees are soaring.

The stock plunged as much as 24% in early trade. Citi and JPMorgan have both cut their price targets on the stock to $17 (from $25 and $22, respectively), and Citi has downgraded the stock from “buy” to “neutral.”

Pandora went public in June 2011 as part of the largest swell of Internet IPOs since those hazy, crazy dot-com boom days of yore. Formed as part of the Music Genome Project in the early 2000s, the service uses detailed algorithms to allow its

Read More »from Pain at Pandora, Netflix Cozies Up to Cable, and Dunkin' Plans a Dividend

The Good Part of Y2K: Qualcomm (QCOM) is in a giving mood with its shareholders, saying Tuesday that it plans to raise its dividend and keep buying back stock. The dividend component of the move will see the wireless technology  company's quarterly payout rise to 25 cents a share from 21.5 cents, a nice 16% increase. The share repurchase is a new $4 billion program that will replace the old buyback, which had $948 million left to go.

That's not all investors in Qualcomm have to be grateful for. The stock closed Monday just above $62, meaning it has nearly doubled from the $32 range in July 2010. Not a bad advance in a little more than a year and a half. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that Qualcomm is revisiting territory it hasn't been to since the year 2000. Right, the days when anything tech screamed higher almost daily.

Despite the shareholder-friendly nature of its announcement, Qualcomm is down slightly today. However, so

Read More »from Story Stocks: Qualcomm's Back, MSG's Lin-ergized and Amazon's a Bit Cooler