Business

How much extra would you pay for local food? It's a familiar question. We face it practically every time we shop for groceries, either at the store or at the farmers market. But what about food that can save the lives of severely malnourished children?

Facebook hit a major milestone today: The biggest social network in the world now has 1 billion active users each month. That means that one in seven people in the world are Facebook users.

As you might have expected, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement on his Facebook account.

The milestone, he said, means Facebook has joined the pantheon of things that help connect humans.

There were 367,000 first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week, the Employment and Training Administration says.

The bottom line: This doesn't mark any significant change in the jobs market, especially considering the "4-week moving average was 375,000, unchanged from the previous week's revised average." That figure is a better measure of labor market trends.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And today's last word in business concerns another unlikely franchise, "Jersey Shore."

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: I love "Jersey Shore."

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I love Guido.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JERSEY SHORE")

PAUL DELVECCHIO: There's no way I'm going to Jersey without my hair jell.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

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NPR's business news starts with rough times at HP.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: Hewlett Packard was once a giant among the tech firms of Silicon Valley and now it is struggling. The company's latest CEO says profits at HP will continue to plummet.

NPR's Steve Henn reports that HP's stock now trading near its lowest price in a decade.

If you want to gain a good insight into Pakistan's economic situation, just look at a few of the country's newspaper headlines on any given day. The language says it all: prices soar, stocks plunge, budget deficit swells, foreign investment evaporates — and the list goes on.

Now, analysts are increasingly worried that the faltering economy could join Pakistan's pervasive insurgency and repeated political upheavals as another serious threat to the country's stability.

Nicole Kotovos was searching for a way to start a new life when the idea struck her: She would go to her ancestral homeland of Greece and open an American-style bakery cafe. She would bring the cupcake fad to Athens.

What she didn't figure on was the historic downturn in the Greek economy.

The former New York TV producer arrived in 2008, just as the country's debt-mired economy was falling into a deep recession it still hasn't emerged from.

If buying a local wine just isn't local enough for you, then you might consider joining the growing ranks of people making homemade wine this fall.

Some home winemakers make wine with friends for fun, some make wine with family for tradition; some make it "old school," adding nothing, and drink it by Christmas; others do it "new school," adding preservatives, and wait a year or more to bottle.