Even governments are cracking down on part-time employees

A reader sends in this notice from their local parks department:  The text:  The "Affordable Healthcare Act" a.k.a "Obamacare" dictates that beginning January 1, 2014 employers with fifty or more employees that average 30 or more hours per week for a one year period beginning on October 15, 2012 and ending October 14, 2013 and avery year thereafter must provide health insurance to those employees.  If there is a violation of just one employee than the employer must pay a fine of $2,000.

Eric Risberg/AP

At its Worldwide Developer's Conference

Time to look longingly at all your old gadgets and wish for newer, better, faster ones. At Monday's Worldwide Developer's Conference Apple unveiled its latest version of the Mac Pro, which will feature the fastest memory the company has used yet and will have the brand-new Thunderbolt 2 to allow faster data-transfer speeds. Oh, and it will be "designed and assembled" in the USA. CEO Tim Cook also announced that Google and Microsoft will work with iCloud, a huge step for the software. iCloud will be deeply embedded in iWork, the new software suite. Also unveiled was the new MacBook Air and the completely revamped iOS 7 for iPhone, iPad, and iTouch.

Read it at Gizmodo

Fulvio Zanettini/Laif/Redux

For all seven continents.

Before you pack your bags for a summer trip, check out Amazon's latest curation: "Around the World in 80 Books." The easy-to-navigate global list encompasses seven continents’ worth of place-specific literature. From a missionary's perspective on Africa in The Poisonwood Bible to following a South American family's lineage in One Hundred Years of Solitude, this reading list is a must-have for getting you in the mood to adventure before, during, and after that long-awaited respite.

Read it at Amazon.com

Monsoon rains hit Mumbai, June 10, 2013. (Rafiq Maqbool/AP)

At least 20 believed to be trapped inside.

A large apartment building collapsed in central Mumbai on Monday night, with at least 20 people believed to be trapped inside, according to officials. India’s Mumbai has been hit with a deluge of rain during the last two days, which might have led the multi-storied complex to cave in. Located near the famed Mahim shrine, the building also housed a car showroom on its ground floor. The latest disaster comes just two months after a seven-story building collapsed on the city’s outskirts, killing 74 people and underscoring unsafe construction standards in India, where the high demand for housing has led to fewer safety inspections and cost-cutting. 

Read it at Agence France-Presse

From “negative” to “stable.”

Talk about fickle. In the summer of 2011, S&P was the first credit-rating agency to downgrade America’s credit rating from “AAA” to “AA.” And with the embarrassing debt-ceiling debate as a backdrop, it projected that the outlook for America’s trillions of dollars in debt was “negative.” On Monday, after months of improvement in America’s short-term fiscal situation–a shrinking deficit, declining growth in Medicare spending—S&P has upgraded the U.S. credit outlook to “stable.” USA! USA!

Read it at CNBC

Sean Parker backs battery-powered smokes.

Is tobacco going digital? Sean Parker, the guy behind Napster and of Facebook fame, along with other Silicon Valley investors are placing a $75 million bet on Arizona based e-cigarette manufacturer NJOY Inc. At the same time, Big Tobacco is stepping up its game as Altria Group and Reynolds American are expected to begin a rollout of their own e-cigarettes.

Read it at The Wall Street Journal

Zacharie Scheurer/AP

Along with more new songs from “Yeezus.”

Some people open concerts with a “Hello, New York,” but Kanye West is not some people. The rapper opened his performance at the Governors Ball on Sunday with his new song “Black Skinheads” and then “New Slaves” (first heard on Saturday Night Live in May), flanked by attack dogs and people clad in KKK-style hoods. West also debuted “I Am a God” from his new album, Yeezus, which included the lyrics “I just talked to Jesus / And he said, ‘What’s up, Yeezus?’ / And I said, ‘Shit, I’m chillin’ / Trying to stack these millions.” West also celebrated his birthday Saturday night in New York with a star-studded party—although his pregnant girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, was not present. She tweeted a message to him on Saturday: “Happy birthday to my best friend, the love of my life, my soul!!!” 

Read it at New York Post

Jeffrey MacMillan/The Washington Post via Getty

The NSA leaker might have been a rogue Booz Allen Hamilton employee. But he made the company’s biggest client, the U.S. government, look terrible—and that can’t be good for business, says Daniel Gross.

Booz Allen Hamilton is a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of $2.5 billion, about 24,500 employees, headquarters in McLean, Va., and, as of Sunday, a huge public-relations problem.On Sunday, The Guardian reported that Edward Snowden, a Booz Allen Hamilton employee who previously worked for the CIA and NSA, was the individual who leaked information about the government’s extensive surveillance of digital communications. Now holed up in Hong Kong, Snowden claimed he had the ability to access the email and communications of pretty much anyone, even the president.

Stan Honda/AFP/Getty

The right loves to bash New York's Citi Bike system, but bike share embodies the privatized, self-reliant ideals they espouse. Daniel Gross on why conservatives should climb on board.

New York City’s bike-sharing system, Citi Bike, is only two weeks old. In the media, it has many champions, including your humble author, who has ridden it to the office, to a board meeting, to television appearances, and elsewhere. It saves money, it’s convenient, it’s the biggest new piece of transportation infrastructure in New York in years, and it offers hundreds of thousands of desk drones the ability to integrate exercise into their daily commuting routines.

AP

From an in-depth look at the success of retailer Costco to the potential new real estate bubble, The Daily Beast brings you the best in business journalism from the week of June 8, 2013.

"Costco CEO Craig Jelinek Leads the Cheapest, Happiest Company in the World"Brad Stone, Bloomberg BusinessweekAs other major retailers struggle with plummeting sales and labor strikes, Costco has become synonymous with both business success and employee satisfaction. "The Secret Science of Scalping Tickets"Adam Davidson, The New York Times MagazineThe scalping industry has long befuddled economists. While concert tickets seem far more expensive than they used to be, there is still a whole industry of scalping, which means the tickets are still far below market value.