Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check

Anniversaries:

Happy birthday to F-W WOOLWORTH's! Remember the 5-and-10-cent store? Now there's the Dollar Store and Five Below, thanks to inflation. But back on this date in 1879, ol' F-W opened his first 5 and 10 cent store in Lancaster, PA. The problem was a simple one: location, location, location. When he tried to sell items for less than a dime in Utica, NY, he went broke. So he moved the store to a better location and made a ton of money --it turned out to be a million dollar baby.
   More than 100 years later, in 1997, after several mergers and acquisitions, the company decided to focus on sporting goods, and by the turn of the century, in 2001, changed its name to Foot Locker Inc. So when you pass Foot Locker at the mall, that's what became of F-W Woolworth's.
   Woolworth sidebar: By the way, back when he was making money hand-over-fist, Ol' F-W moved the center of his operations to New York City and built a skyscraper for cash! In fact, the Woolworth Building was the tallest building in the world from the time it was finished in 1913 until 1930. It was sold by the company's successor, the Venator Group, in 1998.

I'm a Poll, Man:

A new survey from The Pew Research Center shows that PRESIDENT OBAMA is much more popular abroad than he is in the U-S, but that's actually good for the U-S because it's benefiting America's global image.
   For its latest Global Attitudes Survey, the center sampled attitudes from 22 countries on Obama and the United States. Results show that 90 percent of Germans, 87 percent of French, and 84 percent of the British have confidence that Obama will do the right thing in world affairs. That compares to 65 percent in the U-S. (Maiman)

BP oil spill - Day 63:

The NY Times questions whether the BP oil rig explosion really qualifies as "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced."
   That's how everyone has referred to it, and the Deepwater Horizon leak may be pretty awful, but scholars point out that the most recent catastrophes always appear to dwarf those that are already past. As disasters go, the Dust Bowl, say many environmental historians, is still pretty tough to beat.

Auto World /Gas Guzzlin' Update:

In a rare piece of good news for Detroit, J-D Power and Associates announced Friday that, for the first time in decades, American cars are performing better than foreign ones.
   J-D Power's annual car quality survey found that "owners of vehicles made by Detroit automakers reported fewer problems on average during the first 90 days of ownership than those built by companies based overseas." It's the first time in the 24 years that J-D Power has been doing the survey that American companies did better than their foreign competitors, and a "marked difference" from just 10 years ago, "when import brands had far fewer initial problems."
   Luxury brands performed the best, with Porsche, Acura and Mercedes-Benz taking the gold, silver, and bronze, respectively. Land Rover performed the worst. Ford did the best of the non-luxury manufacturers. Toyota saw its ranking tumble precipitously down to No. 21, after being ranked sixth last year. (Maiman)

Grace notes:

OZZY OSBOURNE is writing a health column for a British newspaper. "Dr. Ozzy" runs every weekend in the Sunday Times, but the singer told Billboard.com that it's obviously a joke. People send in questions, and Ozzy does his best to answer them, though he admits he's the last person anyone should ask about how to stay healthy. (Marino)

Vuvuzelas:

If you're tired of listening to the hum of the vuvuzela horns while you're watching the World's Cup matches, you're not alone. TV networks which are broadcasting the Cup say if you have surround sound, you can get rid of some of it by cancelling the right and left channels, where broadcasters put the crowd noise, and only using the center channel, where the announcers are mixed.
   One network, Sky Deutschland in Germany, says it's already offering a two-channel filter for the same reason and the BBC, which has been receiving complaints from its audience, says it may also filter out the noise as well.