Jewish & World News

The Competition in Israel 's children's wear market is heating up: A week after the Castro fashion chain announced the launch of a children's clothing line, the Fox Group has received the franchise for The Children's Place (TCP), the biggest brand of kids' apparel and accessories in North America. The American chain's sales totaled more than $1.8 billion in 2012 and it employs some 18,300 workers.

A new player has emerged at the forefront of mobile banking with the hopes of capturing the nation's youngest banking audience and setting the tone for what it means to bank virtually. Launched to the public on Tuesday, GoBank is the first bank designed specifically for mobile use. All functionality is available through its app, everything from opening your account to paying bills to managing your budget.

As the popularity of hummus sores in the US, Strauss Group Ltd. unit Sabra Dipping Company, which makes the chick pea paste in the US, has opened an R&D facility in Chesterfield County, Virginia, and is also expanding its adjacent hummus production facility - the world's largest. Sabra is owned equally with PepsiCo. Sabra broke ground on the next phase of its manufacturing facility, an $86 million investment to meet the continued increasing demands for hummus. The company expects the addition of capacity will create an estimated 140 jobs over the next few years. Sabra currently holds 60% of the refrigerated flavored dips category in the US.

Inspired by Strauss' success with Sabra hummus, Israeli food maker Tnuva is planning to take the United States by storm with its cottage cheese. Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that the company is working on a plan to penetrate the American market with the Israeli soft white cheese through a local dairy farm that will be trained by Tnuva as a subcontractor.

Catherine Mesner, who lives in the South End of Boston needed clothes last week for a yoga retreat. She had originally planned to shop at nearby Lord & Taylor and Lululemon but ended up elsewhere because much of the area was still closed due to the Boston Marathon bombings. She said she didn't know what was open and wasn't going to "chance walking over there."

Worried the Internal Revenue Service might target you for an audit? You probably should be if you own a small business in one of the wealthy suburbs of Los Angeles. You might also be wary if you're a small-business owner in one of dozens of communities near San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta or the District of Columbia.

Microsoft is working on designs for a touch-enabled smart watch, joining a number of other large competitors like Samsung Electronics and Apple who are said to be working on similar devices, a newspaper reported. Executives at suppliers to Microsoft told The Wall Street Journal that the company was sourcing components for the prototype of what could potentially be a "watch-style device."

The pay-TV operator Dish Network said on Monday that it had submitted a $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel. The move is an attempt to scupper the planned takeover of Sprint Nextel by the Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank, which agreed in October to acquire a 70 percent stake in the American cellphone operator in a complex deal worth about $20 billion.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said the U.S. tax code is now four times longer than the Bible. She spoke Friday at a “Countdown to Tax Day” press conference organized by Americans for Tax Reform. “I want to point out that the tax code is four times more than our Bible. And if you look at it, not only is this impossible in terms of the size of it, but look at the fine print. It’s impossible, almost, to read,” Foxx said.

As soon as Google Maps Street View was rolled out in Lithuania earlier this year, tax authorities were ready. Sitting in the comfort of their own offices, inspectors used the free Internet program for a virtual cruise around the streets of some of the Baltic country's big cities, uncovering dozens of alleged tax violations involving housing construction and property sales.

Bread prices in Israel are expected to drop in the coming days for the first time since March 2009. Economy Minister Naftali Bennett signed an order validating a decision made by the Pricing Committee, which includes representatives from the Finance Ministry and Economy Ministry (formerly the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry). The order calls for a reduction of 4.17% in the prices of government-supervised bread.

President Obama issued a declaration of “National Equal Pay Day” for Thursday, in a gesture aimed at highlighting what he described as a disparity between men and women in the workforce. In a statement issued Monday, Mr. Obama decried a statistic showing women comprise roughly half of America’s workforce but earn an average 23 percent less than men, The Daily Caller reported.

If you didn't bother filing a federal tax return for 2009, it might be a good time to rethink your tax strategy. The Internal Revenue Service says it has $917 million in unclaimed tax refunds from 2009, and time is running out to claim them. The refunds are owed to nearly 1 million people who failed to file returns for 2009. The IRS estimates that half of the refunds are more than $500.

The nation’s biggest tax preparer bungled more than 600,000 returns, delaying refunds by as much as six weeks, the IRS tells MarketWatch. Though people turn to preparers for expertise in making sense of the confusing forms, sometimes even the professionals can’t get it right. H&R Block improperly filed Form 8863, used to claim educational credits, leaving a mandatory field blank.

Airlines aren't the only companies getting stingy with loyalty programs. Changes at three major hotel chains mean that it's going to be more costly for travelers to book rooms using reward points.

Oracle's Larry Ellison is the world's richest Jew, according to Forbes magazine's annual world billionaires list for 2013. Ellison was among five Jews in the top 25 on the list released Monday. Seventeen Israelis were among the record 1,426 billionaires -- 200 more than in 2012.

Dealt some drugs? Stole some cash? There's a line on your income tax form to declare it. As ridiculous as it sounds, the federal government requires that money acquired through illegal means be reported and taxed just like legitimate income. It's right there on the official IRS tax instructions: "Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity."

There are still no buyers for the $50 million penthouse in Tel Aviv's Meier on Rothschild tower, nearly two years after the developers, Berggruen Residential Ltd. and Hagag Group Real Estate Development Ltd. put it on the market. The "Palace in the Sky" is a 1,418-square meter penthouse on the 38th and 39th floors of the 42-story building.

Just a month before Passover, prices for chicken are rising again. This week, poultry producers and marketers sent new price lists to retailers. "Globes" obtained a copy of the Milouoff Ltd. price list, which shows that the price of fresh chicken was raised by 8.2% to NIS 15.80 per kilogram, before VAT, as of Monday.

Dynacraft BSC of American Canyon, CA, is recalling about 5,200 motor scooters with Hello Kitty graphics. The scooters can accelerate suddenly while in use, causing the rider to lose control and fall. The firm has received nine reports of incidents of scooters accelerating unintentionally, including three with minor injuries that include a bloody nose and bruises.