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Starbucks Corp. is planning to triple the number of its coffee shops in China during the next four years.

Starbucks Asia Pacific President Jinlong Wang told reporters Tuesday in Singapore that the world’s largest coffee retailer plans to operate 1,500 outlets in China by 2015 from a current 470.

Wang said the company also expects to open 700 coffee shops in South Korea by 2016, up from 370 now.

He said Starbucks is preparing to open its first outlets in India next year and in Vietnam in 2013.

Starbucks said in July that revenue from its international business rose 20 percent in the April-June quarter from a year earlier and accounted for 23 percent of overall sales of $2.93 billion.

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Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets nationwide on Saturday to protest rising housing prices in the largest turnout since the grass-roots demonstrations began two weeks ago.

The protests over housing costs have tapped into wider discontent among Israelis over the high cost of living and the growing gaps between rich and poor. Other protests include doctors striking over working conditions and pay, parents demonstrating against expensive child rearing costs and similar outpourings over increasing gas prices.

Thousands thronged the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other major cities and chanted, “The people demand social justice.” Protesters waved Israeli flags and placards that read: “work 3 jobs but don’t make ends meet,” “killing ourselves to live” and “social gaps are killing us.”

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said more than 100,000 people protested in 10 cities across the country from Beersheba in the south to Kiryat Shmoneh at the northern tip of the country Saturday night. Police closed major streets for the protesters to march.

The demonstrations began two weeks ago in Tel Aviv, where young activists set up a small tent encampment in a central neighborhood to draw attention to the country’s housing crunch. The protests, inspired in part by unrest in neighboring Arab countries, have continued to gain steam and show no signs of slowing.

“This is a great success; people are marching in the streets and living in the streets for the past two weeks,” Stav Shafir, one of the protest leaders, told Channel 2 TV. “Finally people are choosing to determine how they want to live. We want affordable housing, health, education and welfare.”

The weeks of popular demonstrations are becoming a headache for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with polls showing a sharp drop in his approval ratings and strong support for the protesters. Netanyahu announced a package of reforms meant to lower housing prices last week but it did little to defuse the anger.

In Jerusalem, thousands marched through the city center to the prime minister’s house.

Protesters held up signs reading, “Netanyahu go home.” The protests have brought together people from diverse background and a wide range of political views. Recent demonstrations have included marches against the prices of gasoline, boycotts of expensive cottage cheese that forced manufacturers to lower prices and lengthy strikes by social workers and doctors over pay and working conditions.

The average Israeli salary stands at about $2,500 per month, with key professions like teachers, civil servants and social workers typically earning less than $2,000 a month.

Home prices jumped some 35 percent between December 2007 and August 2010 and rental rates have also risen steadily. Rent on a modest three-bedroom apartment in central Jerusalem can cost more than $1,000 per month and costs even more in Tel Aviv.

A standard, 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) apartment can easily top $600,000 in metropolitan centers like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and $200,000 to $300,000 in second-tier areas.

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Strong second-quarter earnings from McDonald’s, General Electric and Caterpillar on Friday are just the latest proof that booming profits have allowed Corporate America to leave the Great Recession far behind.

But millions of ordinary Americans are stranded in a labor market that looks like it’s still in recession. Unemployment is stuck at 9.2 percent, two years into what economists call a recovery. Job growth has been slow and wages stagnant.

“I’ve never seen labor markets this weak in 35 years of research,” says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

Wages and salaries accounted for just 1 percent of economic growth in the first 18 months after economists declared that the recession had ended in June 2009, according to Sum and other Northeastern researchers.

In the same period after the 2001 recession, wages and salaries accounted for 15 percent. They were 50 percent after the 1991-92 recession and 25 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

Corporate profits, by contrast, accounted for an unprecedented 88 percent of economic growth during those first 18 months. That’s compared with 53 percent after the 2001 recession, nothing after the 1991-92 recession and 28 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

What’s behind the disconnect between strong corporate profits and a weak labor market? Several factors:

_ U.S. corporations are expanding overseas, not so much at home. McDonalds and Caterpillar said overseas sales growth outperformed the U.S. in the April-June quarter. U.S.-based multinational companies have been focused overseas for years: In the 2000s, they added 2.4 million jobs in foreign countries and cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States, according to the Commerce Department.

_ Back in the U.S., companies are squeezing more productivity out of staffs thinned by layoffs during the Great Recession. They don’t need to hire. And they don’t need to be generous with pay raises; they know their employees have nowhere else to go.

_ Companies remain reluctant to spend the $1.9 trillion in cash they’ve accumulated, especially in the United States, which would create jobs faxless payday advance. They’re unconvinced that consumers are ready to spend again with the vigor they showed before the recession, and they are worried about uncertainty in U.S. government policies.

“Lack of clarity on a U.S. deficit-reduction plan, trade policy, regulation, much needed tax reform and the absence of a long-term plan to improve the country’s deteriorating infrastructure do not create an environment that provides our customers with the confidence to invest,” Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman said.

Caterpillar said second-quarter earnings shot up 44 percent to $1 billion_ though that still disappointed Wall Street. General Electric’s second-quarter earnings were up 21 percent to $3.8 billion. And McDonald’s quarterly earnings increased 15 percent to $1.4 billion.

Still, the U.S. economy is missing the engines that usually drive it out of a recession.

Carl Van Horn, director of the Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, says the housing market would normally revive in the early stages of an economic recovery, driving demand for building materials, furnishings and appliances _ creating jobs. But that isn’t happening this time.

And policymakers in Washington have chosen to focus on cutting federal spending to reduce huge federal deficits instead of spending money on programs to create jobs: “If we want the recovery to strengthen, we can’t be doing that,” says Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research group that focuses on how government programs affect the poor and middle class.

For now, corporations aren’t eager to hire or hand out decent raises until they see consumers spending again. And consumers, still paying down the debts they ran up before the recession, can’t spend freely until they’re comfortable with their paychecks and secure in their jobs.

Said Van Horn: “I don’t think there’s an easy way out.”

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Rising fees have chased millions of people away from banks and into prepaid debit cards.

In just a handful of years, prepaid cards have become the fastest growing payment method in the U.S. Just this week, American Express became the first mainstream financial company to offer a prepaid card.

But the cards have problems of their own. Complex fee schedules. Few of the protections afforded to bank and credit card customers. No ability to build credit history.

Consumer advocates are raising concerns and demanding more oversight, and at least one state is investigating prepaid card issuers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to step up oversight of the industry when it launches in July free credit report and score.

“People are using prepaid cards as checking accounts and the government ought to regulate it similarly,” says Suzanne Martindale, staff attorney for Consumers Union, a nonprofit advocacy group that is concerned about unfair prepaid card fees.

Even so, Americans spent $140 billion using prepaid cards in 2009, according to the latest data available from the Federal Reserve. That’s a 21.5 percent increase each year over four years. The amount of money loaded onto the cards is expected to reach $552 billion in 2012 from $330 million three years ago, according to the Mercator Advisory Group, a research firm.

Prepaid cards have gone mainstream by catering to the ranks of the unbanked

Government forces and tribal fighters exchanged gun and artillery fire in Yemen’s capital early Wednesday, sending the crackle of gunfire and resounding booms over the city in fresh fighting that killed at least 41 people. The fighting spread to new areas, with tribesmen from the powerful Hasid confederation seizing buildings in neighborhoods in the city’s south and northwest.

The urban battles over the last week have posed a new threat to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule. For nearly four months, thousands of Yemenis have filled the streets daily, calling for democratic reforms and Saleh’s ouster. The mostly peaceful protests gave way last week to violence between Saleh’s security forces and fighters loyal to Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar, head of the country’s largest tribal coalition.

Saleh’s often violent attempts to quash the protests have led the U.S. to turn away from its one-time ally, once considered a necessary partner in fighting Yemen’s active al-Qaida branch.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday called Saleh’s refusal to step down “a source of great conflict” that has caused violence.

“We cannot expect this conflict to end unless President Saleh and his government move out of the way to permit the opposition and civil society to begin a transition to political and economic reform,” she told reporters in Washington.

Fighting in Sanaa raged until 5 a.m. then continued in bursts throughout the day. Witnesses said units of the elite Presidential Guard, commanded by one of Saleh’s sons, shelled the headquarters of an army brigade responsible for guarding sensitive government institutions. Army officers who have defected to the opposition said the government suspected the brigade commander was about to join forces with the movement to oust Saleh.

Opposition army officers, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with army rules, said the armored brigade commander, Brigadier-General Mohammed Khalil, was neutral and without political affiliation but had apparently angered Saleh free business cards.

A resident who lives close to the fighting and would only give his first name, Zaher, said columns of smoke and fire billowed from Khalil’s brigade headquarters and explosions could be heard.

The 41 dead included combatants from both sides of the conflict, said the medical officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The fighting has engulfed the northern Hassaba neighborhood, where tribal fighters have seized a number of government ministries and buildings. Government artillery fire has heavily damaged the house of al-Ahmar, the tribal leader, and the government has cut the area’s electricity and water supplies.

The units, led by one of Saleh’s sons, and special forces wearing uniforms of government security troops attacked but failed to recapture the Hassaba administrative building from tribal gunmen.

Fighting spread to other areas of the city Wednesday, with al-Ahmar fighters seizing the office of the General Prosecutor in the city’s northwest. They were accompanied by two armored vehicles from the 1st Armored Division, whose powerful commander abandoned the president two months ago. So far, however, his troops have not participated in battles against Saleh’s security forces.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that tribesmen had also taken over a five-story building in the Hadda neighborhood in the city’s south after clashing with the army. The area is a stronghold of Saleh supporters.

Yemen’s official news agency SABA called the tribal fighters “armed gangs,” saying that they looted supplies, furniture, documents and other things from the buildings they seized.

The fighting has caused a number of countries to close or scale back their diplomatic missions. Kuwait, Italy and Qatar have withdrawn their diplomats, and the United States has advised American civilians to leave the country.

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the selection of the next chief of the International Monetary Fund should be done through an open process that leads to a speedy succession.

Separately, John Lipsky, the IMF’s acting managing director, said Thursday that he deeply regrets the circumstances that temporarily placed him in the top position.

Lipsky took over this week after former chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. Strauss-Kahn, who is has denied the charges, resigned late Wednesday. That set up a scramble to choose his successor.

Traditionally, the head of the IMF has been a European while an American has run the World Bank. Developing countries have long chafed at that arrangement and are pushing for officials from their countries to be considered this time.

The United States will play a critical role in the selection. The U.S. has the most votes among any individual country, although collectively Europe carries the most weight.

Geithner’s statement was ambiguous and leaves open the possibility that the U.S. could support a candidate from either group. Some analysts said the U.S. government will make its preference clearer behind the scenes while keeping a more impartial stance in public.

The IMF is heavily involved in delicate negotiations over financial assistance to troubled European countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland. The European governments are coalescing behind French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde.

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The first foreign leader to tour Japan’s tsunami-ravaged coast, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard expressed shock and sorrow at the devastation and visited evacuees at a shelter Saturday, giving toy koalas and kangaroos to excited children.

Walking through a fishing village where hundreds of people are dead and missing, she said Minamisanriku looked as if it had been “bombed into oblivion.”

Mayor Jin Sato showed her the red skeleton of the disaster management building where he was standing when the mammoth wave ripped off its shell March 11. Exterior stairwells were ripped from the walls. A small shrine of flowers had been created on a mound of rubble.

“It’s a scene of incredible tragedy and incredible sorrow,” Gillard said on the last day of a four-day trip here.

More than 27,000 people are dead or missing from the earthquake and tsunami. Tens of thousands are living in shelters after an estimated 90,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.

Recovery efforts have been complicated by the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where the tsunami wiped out power and cooling systems. Workers have struggled to stop radiation leaks, and the utility says bringing the plant fully under control may take all year.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday that 30 workers at the plant had exceeded the former limit of radiation exposure. That limit, 100 millisieverts a year, was raised amid the crisis to 250 millisieverts. None of the workers had yet reached that limit, the company said.

Leaks from the plant reactors have stabilized somewhat since the early days of the crisis, but some interior spaces in the quake- and tsunami-damaged buildings still have such high radiation levels the workers are not able to enter them no faxing 1 hour payday loans.

A few hundred workers have toiled in rotating shifts at the plant since the disaster started, most of them middle-age men employed by TEPCO or affiliated companies. TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said managers have been instructed to closely watch employees who are nearing radiation limits; measures that might be taken include moving workers from the riskiest tasks, such as clearing radioactive debris, to jobs indoors, such as clerical duties.

Workers in the U.S. nuclear industry are allowed an upper limit of 50 millisieverts per year. A typical individual might absorb 6 millisieverts a year from natural and manmade sources such as X-rays.

Radiation specialists say cumulative doses of 500 millisieverts have been shown to raise risks of future cancers. Evidence is less clear on smaller amounts, but in theory, any increased radiation exposure raises cancer risks.

Radiation sickness, which develops from acute exposure, sets in at 1,000 millisieverts. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting and hair loss.

The workers also face health problems due to fatigue and stress of working in the harsh environment, a doctor who spoke to them said this week. He said the workers have insomnia, dehydration and high blood pressure and are at risk of developing depression or heart trouble.

Meanwhile, Japan’s railway company announced that bullet train service from Tokyo to the Sendai, the biggest city in the quake zone, would resume on Monday. Parts of the route had been restored earlier, but Monday is the first day the route is fully operational.

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The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday she erred in allowing a former agency official who benefited financially from Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to play a key role crafting policy on how Madoffs’ victims should be compensated.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro told a House hearing she should have gone beyond the agency’s ethics requirements in her handling of David Becker, the agency’s former general counsel. She said she now wishes Becker had stayed away from the policy. Earlier this week, she told lawmakers in a letter that she didn’t see a conflict in Becker having inherited a Madoff account from his mother.

In hindsight, it would have been “appropriate” for Becker to be excluded from any SEC work on the Madoff policy, Schapiro said in testimony to two panels of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Republican lawmakers said the incident erodes the public’s trust in an agency already battered from its failure to detect Madoff’s scheme.

The Becker affair “could be the greatest challenge to the SEC” since the Madoff scandal, said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the full oversight committee. “We’re not willing to accept that this can ever happen again.”

The SEC inspector general is investigating the agency’s handling of Becker, who is being sued because a federal court-appointed trustee says he inherited money his mother made from Madoff’s scheme. Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 after conducting a multibillion-dollar investment fraud scheme.

“From where I sit now … I wish that Mr. Becker had recused himself, absolutely,” Schapiro said

Republicans are questioning Schapiro’s judgment at a time when the SEC is seeking more money from Congress to implement new financial regulatory rules. Many GOP lawmakers voted against the sweeping financial overhaul law and now say the SEC has been rushing out the rules.

Schapiro said the agency needs the $1.4 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 to hire new staff and to invest in new technology to police sprawling markets.

Schapiro said the agency is making a “top-to-bottom” review of its conflict-of-interest and other ethics policies.

“We will learn from this experience and we will take all actions necessary to earn the trust the public places in us,” she said.

Becker, who was appointed by Schapiro in February 2009, left the SEC last month. His tie to Madoff became public late last month, when the court-appointed trustee sued Becker and his brothers, saying they earned more than $1.5 million in profits from their deceased mother’s investments with Madoff.

Schapiro says she left it to Becker to get a judgment from the agency’s ethics officer on whether he had a potential conflict of interest.

Becker did that. The ethics officer told him that “a reasonable person with knowledge of all of these facts would not question (his) impartiality.”

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First-time claims for jobless benefits probably rose last week from an almost three-year low, a pause in the improvement in the U.S. labor market, economists said before a report today.

Initial applications for unemployment insurance climbed by 8,000 to 376,000 in the period ended March 5, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The gain would be the second in the past eight weeks. It would follow the previous week’s level of 368,000 claims, which were the fewest since May 2008. Separate figures may show a wider trade deficit in January on costlier imported oil.

The rebound in the world’s largest economy has limited firings, paving the way for employers such as Boeing Co. (BA) and Home Depot Inc. (HD) to add jobs and spur household spending. While American companies ship more goods abroad, stronger domestic demand and surging energy prices point to a bigger import bill, curbing the contribution to growth from trade.

Still, the labor market “has improved only slowly,” and it may take “several years” for the unemployment rate to reach a “more normal level,” he said guaranteed high risk personal loans.

While stocks have gained this year amid signs employment is picking up along with the economy, they’ve been restrained by surging oil prices. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is down 0.5 percent so far this month.

The tax compromise reached by President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans in December has resulted in bigger paychecks that are helping support demand even as fuel costs rise. Costlier oil, which this week reached a 29-month high in New York, also will lead to higher imports. At the same time, exports of American-made goods, aided by a weaker dollar and expansion in developing economies like China, may help limit growth in the trade deficit.

Bloomberg Survey ============================================================== Trade Initial Cont. Federal Balance Claims Claims Budget $ Blns ,000’s ,000’s $ Blns ============================================================== Date of Release 03/10 03/10 03/10 03/10 Observation Period Jan. 5-Mar 26-Feb Feb. ————————————————————– Median -41.5 376 3750 -225.2 Average -41.4 377 3759 -225.3 High Forecast -39.0 410 3820 -190.0 Low Forecast -46.0 355 3700 -243.6 Number of Participants 74 49 16 26 Previous -40.6 368 3774 -220.9 ————————————————————– 4CAST Ltd. -42.2 383 — -223.0 ABN Amro -41.5 355 — — Action Economics -41.0 390 3820 -223.0 Aletti Gestielle -42.0 380 — — Ameriprise Financial -41.0 370 3720 — Banesto -41.1 — — — Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi -41.7 381 — -225.0 Barclays Capital -42.0 380 — -225.0 BBVA -41.0 370 3740 -227.5 BMO Capital Markets -41.7 380 3765 -232.5 BNP Paribas -41.8 380 — -240.5 BofA Merrill Lynch -41.5 375 — -235.0 Briefing.com -41.5 370 3750 -223.0 Capital Economics -41.0 — — — CIBC World Markets -41.0 — — — Citi -41.5 375 3810 -220.0 ClearView Economics -42.0 — — — Commerzbank AG -42.0 360 — — Credit Agricole CIB -41.0 — — — Credit Suisse -41.0 400 — — Daiwa Securities America -42.0 — — -190.0 DekaBank -40.5 — — — Desjardins Group -41.9 385 — — Deutsche Bank Securities -41.0 — — — Deutsche Postbank AG -39.0 — — — First Trust Advisors -42.2 372 — — FTN Financial -42.0 — — — Goldman, Sachs & Co. -41.5 — — -235.0 Helaba -41.5 375 — — Horizon Investments -40.0 — — — HSBC Markets -40.7 370 — — Hugh Johnson Advisors -39.0 — — — Ibersecurities -41.8 — — — IDEAglobal -41.0 380 — -235.0 IHS Global Insight -40.1 — — — Informa Global Markets -41.5 375 3785 -223.0 ING Financial Markets -42.0 365 3700 -243.6 Insight Economics -42.0 395 3750 — J.P. Morgan Chase -42.0 375 — -226.0 Janney Montgomery Scott -41.9 — — — Jefferies & Co. -41.0 375 — -225.0 Landesbank Berlin -46.0 — — — Landesbank BW -41.4 378 — — Manulife Asset Management -41.5 372 3725 — Maria Fiorini Ramirez — 365 — — MF Global -41.5 380 — -230.0 Mizuho Securities -42.0 410 — — Moody’s Analytics -42.4 385 3780 — Morgan Keegan & Co. -41.3 — — — Morgan Stanley & Co. -42.5 370 — -220.0 National Bank Financial -40.5 — — — Natixis -42.2 — — — Nomura Securities Intl. -39.9 — — -192.0 Nord/LB -41.5 370 — — Parthenon Group -40.7 378 — — Pierpont Securities -42.0 373 — -220.0 PineBridge Investments -42.0 388 — — PNC Bank -42.0 — — — Raiffeisenbank International -40.8 — — — Raymond James -41.2 378 — — RBC Capital Markets -41.7 380 — — RBS Securities -40.6 380 — — Scotia Capital -42.0 390 3800 — Societe Generale -39.7 360 — — Standard Chartered -41.5 — — — State Street Global Markets -41.8 376 3756 -225.4 Stone & McCarthy Research -39.7 390 — -230.0 TD Securities -41.5 365 3750 — Thomson Reuters/IFR -41.0 370 3740 -229.0 UBS -42.0 370 — -225.0 University of Maryland -40.9 375 — -235.0 Wells Fargo & Co. -39.4 — — — WestLB AG -41.0 — — — Westpac Banking Co. -41.5 380 — — Wrightson ICAP -41.5 385 3750 — ==============================================================

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“So the battle going on in Wisconsin is part of a larger war. It is about Republicans across the country trying to use voter anger at the economy to institute out-of-the-mainstream, far-right policies by pretending they are related to jobs or deficits (like the insane argument that tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans will somehow translate to significant job growth) free credit report and score.”