Grieving parents drowning in $200,000 student loan debt receive relief

Lisa Mason (left) passed away 5 years ago, and her parents got hit with her six-figure student loan debt.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

After a CNNMoney story about the family's situation ran Tuesday, hundreds of readers reached out to offer words of encouragement -- and financial support -- to the family.

So far, people have donated more than $8,000 through the Masons' GoFundMe page.

"We've been totally blown away," said Mason. "It's so encouraging to realize there's a lot of good people out there."

His fund raising goal is set at $200,000, the amount he now owes the private student lenders. Mason says he was so desperate to help his daughter Lisa get a nursing degree that he co-signed the $100,000 in loans she took out -- never could he imagine that his daughter would pass away before the debts were paid off.

Related: Grieving parents hit with $200,000 in student loans

When Lisa died of liver failure at the age 27 all of her student loan bills were immediately sent to the Masons. On a pastor's salary, Mason couldn't afford to care for his daughter's three children and keep up with the payments. Now, as a result of interest and late penalties, the loans have since doubled to $200,000.

While federal loans are typically forgiven in situations like this, it's up to the private lenders to decide whether to offer relief to a struggling borrower.

One of Mason's lenders, Navient Corp., reached out to Mason after being contacted by CNNMoney and lowered the interest rate to 0% on three of his four loans and reduced the total amount owed to $27,000 from nearly $35,000.

Even better, Mason said a debt collection firm that had been trying to collect on another loan called him Wednesday to say they had seen the CNNMoney story and would like to forgive the entire loan balance of $15,000.

Earlier this year, Mason had considered filing for bankruptcy. But it is very difficult -- often impossible -- to get private student loan debt discharged in bankruptcy, and Mason's lawyer told him he had such a slim chance of being approved that the legal costs would only add to his debt load.

Mason has also started a petition on Change.org, urging President Obama to make it possible to discharge all types of student loan debt in bankruptcy. His petition has received more than 2,000 signatures so far.

Related: 1 in 3 U.S. adults have debt in collections

Other families who have lost a child and then become responsible for huge student loans have also created petitions on Change.org -- often aimed at getting their particular lender to offer some relief.

Angela Smith, a mother from Chesapeake, Va., filed a petition on Change.org several years ago asking private loan provider First Marblehead Corp. to forgive the $40,000 in student loans that her husband had co-signed for their son Donte, who was shot to death in 2008. The petition received more than 150,000 signatures from sympathizers but there was no action from the lenders.

There's been one other success story so far, however, where the brother of a deceased borrower petitioned a bank to stop going after his grieving father for payments, and the loan was forgiven.

For Mason, the rush of support he has received after getting his story out there is beginning to change his whole outlook.

"For the first time since our daughter's death, we have a little bit of hope," said Mason.

First Published: July 30, 2014: 7:25 PM ET

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Kim Kardashian's game makes $700,000 a day

Hitting the hottest clubs with the virtual Kim Kardashian will make you a Hollywood A-lister in no time.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

"Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" from Glu Mobil lets you create an avatar that can work to achieve virtual A-list status. Your mission: Hob-nobbing with celebrities, going to a photo shoot and wearing expensive clothes.

The game is free to download, but players spend real money on things like virtual clothes, virtual hairstyles and energy boosts for their avatars. The more your avatar does, the faster you can move up the ranks from the E List to the A List -- the objective of the game.

If sales continue at their current rate, the game will gross $200 million in its first year, according to Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen and Company. That would put "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" in the big leagues with smash-hit mobile games like Candy Crush.

Related: The 13 most WTF gadgets

Creutz estimates there are only about seven other apps in the world that are pulling in more money right now. And Kardashian's is one of the top five most downloaded apps in Apple's store.

"I don't even know what genre to call it, but people are taken with it," he said.

Shares of game maker Glu Mobil (GLUU) have soared more than 30% since the app launched in late June. Glu reported a 51% jump in sales for the second quarter late Wednesday, thanks to the Kardashian game as well as other hits such as Dino Hunter: Deadly Shores.

It's impossible to know if "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" will maintain its current growth, Creutz said. Adding new characters and levels to the game -- hello Kourtney and Khloe! -- could keep more people playing longer.

The mobile game market is expanding rapidly. The trick is to get more people comfortable with spending money on purchases within games that they downloaded for free. Right now, less than 3% of gamers do so.

First Published: July 30, 2014: 5:17 PM ET

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BofA hit with $1.3 billion mortgage penalty

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Bank of America (BAC) has been ordered to pay a nearly $1.3 billion penalty for mortgage fraud committed by Countrywide. The fraud happened years before BofA bought the struggling lender amid the financial crisis, saving it from collapsing under the weight of risky mortgages it had made.

The loans were made through a lending program it called the "High Speed Swim Lane." Some inside the company called it "The Hustle." It involved little, if any, income verification.

Countrywide then sold the mortgages to the government-backed lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

A lawsuit brought by the government claimed the program was "intentionally designed to process loans at high speed and without quality checkpoints, and generated thousands of fraudulent and otherwise defective residential mortgage loans."

A jury last fall found Countrywide and former executive Rebecca Mairone liable. Mairone has been ordered to pay a $1 million penalty. Her attorney, Marc Mukasey, said in response that she is innocent and will "will fight on to clear her name."

Related: I've achieved the American Dream

The program was "a brazen fraud by the defendants, driven by a hunger for profits and oblivious to the harms thereby visited, not just on the immediate victims but on the financial system as a whole," wrote Judge Jed. S. Rakoff.

The penalties aren't intended to compensate victims but rather serve as a deterrent for wrongdoing, the judge said. He noted the whistleblower who alerted the government to the program may be eligible to receive a portion of the penalty. The case was the first tried under the whistleblower law. The office of U.S. Attorney Preet Baharara, which prosecuted the case, could not say if a payout would be made.

Baharara said in a statement the case demonstrated "that mortgage fraud cannot be viewed as simply another cost of doing business in the financial world."

Bank of America objected to the size of the penalty. Spokesman Lawrence Grayson said the company was reviewing a possible appeal.

Related: What economic rebound? 'I got left behind'

CNNMoney's James O'Toole and Ben Rooney contributed to this report.

First Published: July 30, 2014: 5:36 PM ET

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BuzzFeed fires viral politics editor for plagiarizing

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith said he and his colleagues had identified "41 instances of sentences or phrases copied, word for word, from other sites, many of them inappropriate sources in the first place," during a review of about 500 posts by Johnson.

"This pattern is not a minor slip," Smith wrote in a memorandum to BuzzFeed staff on Friday night. "This is a breach of faith with our readers; a violation of a basic rule of writing; and the reflection of an unserious attitude to our work that is wildly out of line with both our standards and our ambition."

Smith also published an editors' note that apologized to readers. He said corrections had been made to each of the 41 posts where plagiarism and attribution issues were found.

Many of the posts consisted of creative lists ("The 17 Best Swag Gifts Obama Has Received From Foreign Leaders") and regurgitated content from other sources ("FDR Had The Greatest Childhood Ever"). One image-heavy post, "The Story Of Egypt's Revolution In 'Jurassic Park' Gifs," plagiarized wording from Wikipedia; another, "7 Things Democrats Would Have Freaked Out About If Bush Had Done Them," copied phrasing from The Hill newspaper.

On Saturday morning, Johnson wrote on Twitter, "To the writers who were not properly attributed and anyone who ever read my byline, I am sincerely sorry." He then shared a link to Smith's editors note.

As websites grow up, their standards go up. And Smith, who was hired at the end of 2011 to turn the viral site into a bonafide news source, acknowledged as much in his editors' note.

"BuzzFeed started seven years ago as a laboratory for content," Smith wrote. "Our writers didn't have journalistic backgrounds and weren't held to traditional journalistic standards, because we weren't doing journalism. But that started changing a long time ago."

He cited the "high standards" of BuzzFeed's journalists and the "increasingly careful attribution" practices of "the people who produce our immensely popular entertainment."

For years, BuzzFeed has been scrutinized for its attribution practices, since some of its most popular material originates on Reddit and other social networks.

Partly thanks to its aggressive aggregation techniques, the venture capital-backed website has grown incredibly quickly; it now has 150 million unique visitors a month around the world. A story that emerges on Reddit one day can be picked up by BuzzFeed the next day and make it onto a network morning show or CNN the next.

Nowadays, though, BuzzFeed also breaks news stories on its own, and those exclusives live right alongside sponsored posts from advertisers and lists like "29 Essentials For Throwing The Perfect 'Harry Potter' Party."

The decision to dismiss Johnson is likely to trigger more scrutiny of the site's practices.

Accusations of plagiarism by Johnson first surfaced online on Wednesday. When Gawker wrote about several examples of copied language on Thursday, Smith called them "serious failures," but also expressed support for Johnson, calling him "one of the web's deeply original writers, as is clear from his body of work."

After Friday's more thorough review of Johnson's work by BuzzFeed editors, however, Smith said, "We had no choice other than letting him go."

Matthew Ingram, a GigaOm senior writer who closely follows digital journalism, commented on Twitter that BuzzFeed's apology felt "like a stake in the ground, showing they are serious about getting serious."

In Smith's more detailed memo to his staff on Friday night (which was provided by a BuzzFeed spokeswoman), he said BuzzFeed would change its orientation procedures for new employees to "make sure that the high standards of training that come with our fellowship program extend to everyone who arrives at BuzzFeed -- and particularly to those without a background in traditional journalism."

He concluded his memo by saying, "We have more responsibility now than ever now to keep raising our standards and our ambitions, and to continue getting better."

First Published: July 26, 2014: 1:02 PM ET

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There's no place like the economy

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The curtain is about to be pulled back to reveal some key economic data. Here's what you need to know.

It's the economy, stupid: Investors will have to wait until Friday for the main event of the week: the all-important July jobs report.

The key thing to watch is whether robust jobs growth is continuing into the second half of the year. In June, the government said 288,000 jobs were added, bringing the total number of jobs added in the first six months of 2014 to 1.4 million. That was the strongest six months for job growth since 2006.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rates stands at 6.1%, which isn't far off from what many economists consider full employment.

But before the jobs report, Wall Street will get a first read on second quarter gross domestic product (GDP) Wednesday morning. GDP is the most comprehensive gauge of how the economy is doing, and a majority of GDP comes from consumer spending.

Analysts mostly believe that the first quarter's 2.9% contraction was a blip due primarily to unusually harsh weather, but this week's GDP report should provide more clarity on how the economy is faring.

Related: Global economy still limping along — and you can blame the U.S.

Then there's the Federal Reserve. The central bank will release a statement outlining its latest monetary policies on Wednesday afternoon.

It's widely believed that the Fed will announce another $10 billion pullback in monthly bond purchases, but investors will be scrutinizing every word of the statement for clues as to when the Fed plans to raise interest rates.

Summertime earnings vibes: A slew of corporate earnings reports may also provide some hints about how the economy is doing.

Investors will pay close attention to earnings from UPS (UPS) on Tuesday. The shipping giant and FedEx (FDX) rival blamed its poor first quarter performance on that nasty winter weather, but market strategists are expecting the company's earnings picked up steam last quarter along with the economy.

Procter & Gamble (PG) earnings, also considered a good gauge of economic health because it owns big consumer brands like Tide, Gillette, Crest and Pampers, will come out Friday.

Related: Smart people buy generic brands

Momentum stocks will also be in focus when Linkedin (LNKD, Tech30) and Tesla (TSLA) report results after the closing bell on Thursday.

Tesla's stock is up 50% this year as investors continue to be excited about Elon Musk's electric car company.

Linkedin is a more complicated story. Shares of the social career network are down almost 20% in 2014, but jumped over 10% this week on news that it acquired ad marketing platform Bizo for $175 million. Strong earnings from Facebook (FB, Tech30)also helped.

Big oil earnings are also in the pipeline. Chevron (CVX) and Exxon (XOM) release earnings Thursday and Friday, respectively. While it's probably still too early to tell what, if any, effects the geopolitical turmoil in Ukraine and the Middle East are having on their finances, investors will be looking for guidance about their profits and oil prices.

First Published: July 27, 2014: 9:22 AM ET

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Scandal-ridden food processor issues recall

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Husi did not specify how much food it will recall but promised an internal investigation and new management of the Shanghai plant. The Saturday announcement also pledged cooperation with authorities, who ordered the facility closed and detained five people as part of their own inquires, state media reported.

The scandal began when Chinese television showed workers at Husi Shanghai handling expired and tainted meat with their bare hands. Workers could be seen processing meat that had fallen on the floor, for example.

It widened as the extent of the company's distribution came to light. Many well-known fast food chains use the plant to supply their Asian operations.

Related: China's incredible high-speed rail system

Most have ended their relationship with the company or stopped selling its products. Among them are Yum Brands (YUM) (owner of KFC and Pizza Hut), Burger King (BKW), Papa John's (PZZA) and Starbucks (SBUX).

McDonald's (MCD) said it will no longer do business with the Shanghai plant but will continue to buy Husi products from other facilities. The scandal forced McDonald's to pull food from its restaurants in China, Japan and Hong Kong.

--CNNMoney's Sophia Yan contributed to this report

First Published: July 27, 2014: 1:01 PM ET

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Mary Poppins won't work for minimum wage

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

But in a parody from Funny or Die, the Disney character (played by Kristin Bell) is quitting her job because that's all the Banks family will pay her.

She struggles to make ends meet while making $7.25, the federal minimum wage, pleading for a $3 raise.

"In every job that must be done, you must be paid in more than fun," she sings, a play on an original Mary Poppins song.

Related: LA hotel workers could get highest minimum wage in the U.S.

Plenty of people in the real world agree. 71% of people surveyed by CNNMoney favor an unspecified hike in the federal minimum wage. Meanwhile, 36% said it should be increased to $10.10 an hour, which is what Senate Democrats and President Obama have proposed.

A number of states and major cities aren't waiting for Congress to act and are passing minimum wage increases on their own. This year, five states and Washington D.C. passed legislation to gradually increase their wages to $10.10 or higher; other states passed smaller increases. In June, the Seattle city council approved an eventual increase to $15 an hour, making it the nation's highest so far.

But critics contend that a higher minimum wage will hurt jobs and consumers. A report released by the Congressional Budget Office in April said that a federal hike to $10.10 would lift 900,000 people out of poverty, but also cut 500,000 jobs.

First Published: July 25, 2014: 4:32 PM ET

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Lyft gets the green light in New York City

Rideshare app Lyft, known for the pink mustaches on car grills, will launch in New York on Friday

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

After two weeks of sparring with New York City taxi regulators, rideshare app Lyft can start serving the five boroughs -- provided its drivers go through city licensing.

Lyft, known for the fuzzy pink mustaches on drivers' car grills, connects users with drivers, many of whom drive their own cars rather than a dispatcher's taxi. (The company said it will use smaller, dashboard mustaches in New York, as opposed to a big 'stache mounted on the front bumper.)

New York City's taxi regulator, the Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC), has said it has the right to regulate so-called rideshare apps like Lyft. The commission sought a temporary restraining order against the app as recently as July 11, when Lyft planned to launch in Brooklyn, because it had not secured licenses.

Related story: 24 hours with Lyft CEO Logan Green

Today's agreement suggests that the commission might be accepting technology with the potential to upend how it does business.

As part of the new agreement, Lyft drivers will meet a host of requirements. They'll submit to annual drug testing, attend a state-certified driving course every three years and get fingerprinted.

Around the country, regulators have shown skepticism -- and outright hostility -- to transportation apps like Uber and Lyft, which help users get taxis using their smartphones. They have laid down fines and court orders. Friday's agreement seemed to signal recognition in the highly regulated New York market that the apps are here to stay.

Commission chair Meera Joshi said in a statement that working with Lyft has helped regulators gain insight into the apps and how they serve passengers.

"As long as we ensure that public safety and consumer protection is at the forefront of these efforts, the city will benefit," said Joshi.

That's a far cry from the battle that Lyft's competitor Uber fought. It launched in New York in May 2011, according to its website, but it wrangled with the commission for two years before it was officially recognized.

First Published: July 25, 2014: 5:02 PM ET

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Would-be giant in online house hunting has brokers scared

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The rumored deal -- the companies won't confirm it -- sent the companies' stocks soaring Friday as the chatter gathered steam.

The companies don't charge for publishing these listings of homes for sale, but they do charge real estate agents fees to appear on their listing pages.

Should the two sites merge, they could have the leverage to charge more, said Steve Murray, editor at Real Trends a real estate communications and consulting company.

Already, some agent teams spend $20,000 a month with Zillow, Trulia, or both, said Murray.

For now, the agents are generally satisfied with the fees because the exposure generates so much business. Zillow and Trulia together attract 130 million visitors a month.

The ultimate fear: Zillow and Trulia could make brokers irrelevant.

Zillow, for instance, has its own home value algorithm called Zestimates. Trulia offers extensive rankings on crime, public transit and schools.

"Combined, [Zillow and Trulia] could further erode the leadership of the National Association of Realtors," said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a New York based appraisal firm.

Related: 10 mansions for under $1 million

Related: Best places for vacation home deals

First Published: July 25, 2014: 6:31 PM ET

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Amazon plunges 10% on big loss

Amazon's non-shipping efforts, like its first smartphone, aren't cheap.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Shares plunged 10% in extended trading Thursday after the tech giant reported a larger than expected loss. While sales rose 23%, the company recorded a loss of $126 million, which was even more than analysts had expected. It lost $7 million during the same quarter last year.

It's easy to see where Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) has been spending. It rolled out a number of new products and services this year, including Sunday delivery, its Fire TV media streaming device, and its first smartphone, the Fire Phone. It also recently announced an unlimited e-book subscription service for $9.99 per month.

Related: Amazon's innovative gadgets

While CEO Jeff Bezos has always been more concerned about the long-term growth than immediate profit, investors have supported his ways. The share price rose by 40% in 2012 and by more than 50% in 2013.

But Amazon stock was already down 10% this year before the company posted second-quarter earnings after Thursday's closing bell. It also landed in the middle of a heated fight with Hachette, taking criticism for delaying the delivery of some of the publisher's books.

It expects the same routine next quarter: a rise in sales but further losses.

First Published: July 24, 2014: 8:43 PM ET

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For sale: Town of Alladin, Wyo., for $1.5 million

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Located 80 miles northwest of Rapid City, SD, this 30-acre hamlet features a 126-year-old general store and post office, a bar and homes for the town's 15 full-time residents.

And the whole town can be yours for the bargain basement price of just $1.5 million.

At its peak, Aladdin was home to 200 people, most of whom worked at a nearby coal mine. In the years since the mine closed, the population has dwindled to just over a dozen people.

Related: Mansions for under $1 million

The town's owner, Judy Brengle, came into possession of the town 28 years ago when her husband bought it for her as a gift, says the couple's granddaughter Laramie Noyce.

Noyce has fond memories of her childhood in Aladdin and hopes if the town is sold, the new owners will keep it as is. "We grew up here. We don't want it to change."

Brengle said she's selling the town so she can focus on other pursuits."There are things we need to do on the ranch that we haven't," she told affiliate KEVN. "We have another store in South Dakota and we're busy going back and forth and we'd like more time to travel."

But she decided to forego investors' meetings, escrow, or an expensive real estate listing and advertise the sale in a much more low-key fashion...with a sign that hangs on the door of the century-old landmark general store.

Related: Million-dollar ranches for sale

The store opened in 1896 and served as a commissary for coal workers. In the years since it has also become the town's primary retailer post office, serving the full-time residents of Aladdin, as well as dozens of others who live nearby.

The post office and general store, as well a bar, the Brengle family's four-bedroom home and the property under the town's trailer park are all included in the $1.5 million price. And since there is no indoor plumbing or sewage system, an outhouse is also being thrown into the deal.

Brengle says she hasn't gotten any offers to buy the town yet, but when she does, she says she's not going anywhere. She plans to live in Aladdin as long as she can. "It's so quiet and a great place to raise kids. It's a wonderful place to live," she said.

First Published: July 24, 2014: 7:32 PM ET

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3 things that will drive your life insurance premiums through the roof

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

But just how much does your age, gender or smoking habit cost you? InsuranceQuotes.com evaluated life insurance premiums for the top 25 carriers in the nation to find out.

Men pay an average of 38% more than women for the same coverage.

Here's one area where women have a financial edge. Men are at a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, various cancers and accidental injuries and that makes them more risky to insurers. The average life expectancy of an American man is also five years younger than a woman's, meaning an insurer is more likely to pay out on a man's policy than a woman's.

Smokers pay more than three times as much as non-smokers for the same policy.

Insurers can charge smokers three times as much as non-smokers, insuranceQuotes.com found.

Related: Stressful jobs that pay badly

A non-smoking 45-year-old woman, for example, pays $45 a month for a $500,000 term life policy. If she smokes, however, the premium shoots up to $167 a month. That's $1,462 more a year.

If you can kick the habit, however, you can save big. Tell your insurer that you've been smoke-free for two years and they will usually lower your premium to the rate for non-smokers, said Laura Adams, an analyst for insuranceQuotes.com.

"That's pretty generous," said Adams. "It's almost like you never smoked."

Related: Why you don't need to buy extra rental car insurance

But don't tell your insurer that if it's not true. If you do die of a smoking-related cause and your insurer finds out you never quit, they can deny the benefit entirely.

Get coverage young and save -- but only if you need it

Most people don't feel the need to buy life insurance until they have a child. And in general, that's a pretty good rule of thumb.

If you have children in your 20s or early 30s you could save significantly on premiums by opening a policy while you're young.

Premiums for 35 year olds cost about 27% more than those for a 25 year old.

"Term life [policies are] popular because they're relatively inexpensive and people don't need policies for their entire life," said Adams. Many parents buy 20-year term policies to see their children through their college years.

First Published: July 24, 2014: 7:58 PM ET

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Gun maker relocates fearing stricter state laws

The gun manufacturer said that is "very worried" about keeping a factory in Maryland.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The gun manufacturer said Tuesday that it is "very worried" about keeping a factory in Maryland.

While proposed gun laws that would have closed most of Beretta's operations failed to pass the state's legislature last year, the company is worried that even tougher legislation could be successfully pushed through in the future, said spokesman Jeff Reh.

Beretta makes approximately 1,500 weapons each day. The company produces a wide range of firearms from hunting rifles to pistols.

While it will keep administrative offices in its facility in Accokeek, Md., all manufacturing capabilities will be relocated to a new plant in Gallatin, Tenn. in 2015. The move leaves 90 jobs in Maryland, but shifts 160 jobs to the new facility, Reh said. The new plant will hire around 300 people in the next five years.

Related: AK-47s become hot commodity after U.S. sanctions

Originally, Beretta intended to use the new Tennessee location to only manufacture new products.

"We have decided that it is more prudent from the point of view of our future welfare to move the Maryland production lines in their entirety to the new Tennessee facility," said general manager Jeff Cooper in a statement.

Fear that new legislation could make it more difficult to purchase guns has driven up overall sales in recent years, as shooters stockpile weapons. But enthusiasts seem less worried in 2014. Sales have dropped 7.6% through the end of June, according to CRT Research.

A spokesman for Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat and proponent of the tighter laws, said he is "disappointed with this decision" but stands by the legislation.

First Published: July 22, 2014: 7:39 PM ET

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Get ready for craft beer with a Latin twist

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Among them is Juan Camilo, a 28 year old Dominican-American entrepreneur who two years ago turned his beer brewing hobby into a full-fledged business. He quit his job on Wall Street and, with a home-made recipe and a passion for beer, opened the Dyckman Beer Company, hailed as New York City's first Latino-owned brewery.

Camilo, who was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic but grew up in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, plans to produce a line of beer that captures the essence, culture and flavors of New York's Latino neighborhoods.

"I just started experimenting with and adding different fruits and food that I grew up drinking and eating," Camillo said.

Related: Cold beer battle heats up in Indiana

His first creation is a sweet honey and spicy citrus pilsner style lager that he calls "Dyckman Brew," named after a popular street bordering the now-trendy upper Manhattan neighborhoods of Inwood and Washington Heights.

Related: A sampling of beers being made with traditional Latin flavors

Other fruit-infused variations will follow in the coming months. A Belgian style ale will have hints of cherry and a passion fruit flavored Saison -- a pale ale - will debut in the fall.

"There's not too many beers out there in the country or even the world that incorporate those fruits but they are ingredients that really resonate with Latinos, especially from the Caribbean," he said. "That's our biggest differentiator from other beer companies."

Camilo is not alone. There is a small but growing trend of Latinos entering the beer brewing business designing recipes that incorporate traditional elements of Latin food and drink.

In 2011, the first Latin craft brewery opened in Chicago, and recently a group of Latino brewers have had a significant impact on the artisanal beer scene of southern California. At Pacific Plate Brewing Company, partners Stephen Kooshian, Jonathan Parada and Steven Cardenas use ingredients such as Mexican cinnamon, Madagascar bourbon vanilla and Ecuadorian cocoa.

Pacific Plate Brewing Company partners Stephen Kooshian, Jonathan Parada and Steven Cardenas infuse their craft beers with traditional Latin flavors.

And consumers have responded. Pacific Plate opened its taproom in 2013 and is already turning a profit. According to the Brewers Association, sales of craft beer were up 17% last year and Hispanics were a significant part of that uptick. About 38% of Hispanics told market research firm Mintel that they drink craft beer often.

"Good beer appeals to a large segment of the population, which of course includes Latinos," says Jason Gardea-Stinnett, co-founder of beersinparadise.com and co-owner of Oakland's Hopscotch Restaurant. "Given recent demographic shifts, Latinos aren't just one of the fastest growing segments on the consumer side, we've become an active and rapidly growing part of the business side as well."

And the brewers feel there's still room to grow. "The potential is huge," says Camilo, "We have huge buying power. We're growing in numbers year over year."

Related: Is craft beer really a good business bet?

Camilo's Dyckman Beer Company now supplies nearly 100 stores, bars and restaurants around New York City, and although he currently operates at a loss, he expects the company to grow 200% over the next year.

"Once you educate the consumer on craft beer, you know, where the beer comes from, the ingredients, the raw materials, they really, really enjoy it and are really, really loyal to it," he says.

Camilo's unique brews are bottled with a unique slogan: "Una vaina bien." It's an ode to his Dominican roots and to the people of uptown Manhattan.

"It means something delicious. Something amazing. Something that you want to taste and you know, it's a phrase that really resonates with people here," He said. "Everybody else might as well start learning it too."

First Published: July 22, 2014: 5:16 PM ET

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Dark Mail: Email that hides from the NSA

Ladar Levison, the guy behind Lavabit, is launching Dark Mail to encrypt emails so the NSA doesn't even know who's talking.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

But there's one tool that could make it much more difficult for the NSA to spy on you. Meet Dark Mail, your personal black box for email.

Like Google's (GOOGL, Tech30) Gmail and other email services with robust security tools, Dark Mail encrypts email content, shielding it from government spies.

But Dark Mail takes the extra step of cloaking your email's metadata, which includes the subject line and the 'To' and 'From' fields. That way, spies can't easily identify who's sending emails.

Why is that important? Even if the NSA can't read the body of your message, knowing who you email can trigger extra government scrutiny.

The NSA uses email metadata collected on millions of Americans to select specific people for closer surveillance of emails and phone calls. To appreciate how quickly this can balloon, consider that for every one target, nine of their connections get spied on too.

The NSA's bulk collection of metadata reminds Dark Mail co-creator Ladar Levison of the guilt-by-association of the 1950's Communist-hunting McCarthy era.

"I think we lost the freedom of association, and we didn't realize it," Levison said. "The fear now is that if I email you, and you're under surveillance... I will, in turn, place myself under surveillance."

Related story: Snowden asks hackers to protect whistleblowers

Dark Mail is not NSA-proof. The government can still target a person and follow each email's trail. But to do that, the government would have to trace every stop along an email's path -- device, server, server and device.

Using Dark Mail is like mailing an envelope that, on the outside, is only addressed to and from post offices. Finding the actual sender and recipient is not an unsolvable mystery, but it creates some drag for the dragnet.

"Done right, this should make it technologically impossible to conduct mass surveillance," Levison said.

This isn't Levison's first attempt at building a highly private communication tool. He created a similar email service called Lavabit, but he closed it last year when FBI agents demanded he silently give up information about one particular Lavabit user: Edward Snowden.

Levison refused to give up the encryption keys that would let the feds secretly monitor Lavabit, choosing instead to shut it down. For fighting the FBI demand, he's now saddled with federal fines.

Dark Mail and Lavabit have one important difference: Unlike Lavabit, Levison doesn't hold the keys to Dark Mail -- each individual user does. Emails are encrypted on users' devices, protected by their passwords. That means even he can't read Dark Mail users' emails, and he would have nothing to turn over to the feds should they come asking.

Cybersecurity: How safe are you? -- a custom Flipboard magazine

Dark Mail won't be available for another six months. Levison is still developing it with Stephen Watt, a former Wall Street coder (now a convicted hacker who served time in prison). Levison said Dark Mail could work as an add-on with all major email services -- as long as they make slight tweaks to their code. Levison is trying to get Google, Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30) and other email providers on board.

If users want to use Dark Mail as its own email sending program, Levison is developing an email client called "Volcano." From initial sketches Levison showed CNNMoney, Volcano won't look or feel too different from every other email service we use.

First Published: July 22, 2014: 7:31 PM ET

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Netflix passes 50 million subscribers

Netflix recently premiered the second season of its hit series Orange Is The New Black.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The streaming video service said Monday that it now boasts over 50 million members in 40 countries, including 36 million in the United States. That compares with 56 million U.S. households that had premium cable subscriptions of some kind as of July, according to Nielsen.

Netflix (NFLX, Tech30) growth slowed a bit in the second quarter, with the company adding just 570,000 U.S. streaming subscribers. That compares with 630,000 in the same quarter a year ago and 2.25 million in the first quarter.

In May, Netflix raised subscription prices for new members by $1, though the company said this change had "minimal impact on membership growth."

Netflix is continuing its push into original programming with shows like Orange Is The New Black, which launched its second season in early June, and Hemlock Grove, which premiered earlier this month. The fourth and final season of The Killing is due August 1. Netflix shows garnered 31 Emmy nominations this past year.

The company said it currently has a number of new shows in production, including Marvel's Daredevil, a partnership with Marvel Television. There's also Sense8, a new show from Matrix directors the Wachowski brothers, and an unnamed thriller from the creators of Damages featuring Kyle Chandler and Sissy Spacek.

Netflix turned heads last month with its announcement that it will produce a talk show featuring comedienne Chelsea Handler, a departure from the less topical, scripted content on which the company has focused so far. Speaking to analysts Monday afternoon, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos this decision was driven in part by a change in viewing habits among talk show fans.

"They're not watching them at 11:30 -- they're watching them days, weeks, sometimes months later online," Sarandos said. "What we're hoping to do with Chelsea and her team is create a show that's built closer to the way people are going to watch it."

Related: Netflix partner says Verizon slows traffic

Netflix's revenue has been growing steadily in recent quarters, cracking $1 billion for the first time last year and hitting $1.3 billion in the second quarter. That was in line with analyst estimates, and the stock rose slightly in after-hours trading Monday.

Moving forward, Netflix is looking to strengthen its European presence, launching this September in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

"There's nothing really different about our international businesses [such] that we can't achieve U.S.-like margins or better," Netflix chief financial officer David Wells said.

And for those of you who prefer doing your movie-watching online and but your shopping in person, Netflix announced that it will begin selling gift cards in retail stores later this year.

First Published: July 21, 2014: 4:49 PM ET

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$24 billion tobacco verdict: One down, 5,130 to go

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (RAI) -- maker of the Camel, Kool and Pall Mall brands -- still has about 5,130 cases to fight. They're the remnants of a Florida class action lawsuit from the 1990s that was dismantled but allowed to move forward as individual cases.

Plaintiff Cynthia Robinson argued that Reynolds failed to warn her husband, Michael Johnson, of the risks of smoking when he began at age 13. He died of lung cancer at age 36 in 1996.

Related: The lucrative business of cigarette smuggling

Nearly seventy such cases against the company have been tried, according to documents the company filed this spring with federal regulators. Reynolds has been ordered to pay victims $232 million, but most cases are tied up in appeal, so the company has only paid about $83 million so far.

The $23.6 billion award due to Robinson consists entirely of punitive damages, which are designed to punish companies for gross misbehavior. The jury also awarded Robinson $16 million in standard damages, such as lost wages and healthcare costs.

Reynolds has said it will appeal the multi-billion decision and believes it unconstitutional. At the very least, a judge could sharply reduce the dollar amount of the award.

Even if other verdicts against Reynolds aren't quite so humongous, the amounts could start to add up quickly. The company also faces lawsuits unrelated to that Florida class action.

Related: States call on pharmacies to stop selling tobacco

Juries in the remaining cases will likely continue to award damages for lost wages and similar costs, said Celene Humphries, a partner at Brannock & Humphries who was not involved in the Robinson case but has represented other alleged victims. But she said it's unlikely that any will award such outsized punitive damages.

About half of the tobacco cases that have gone to trial have resulted a significant award for the victim. The other half found the tobacco manufacturers were not at fault, ended in a mistrial or an award of less than $50,000.

First Published: July 21, 2014: 5:52 PM ET

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Israeli tech talent tapped to fight in Gaza

Vaknin (center) with his army unit in 2009; Vaknin with Ido Aharoni, Consul General of Israel in New York

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Lior Vaknin, 27, is no exception. He served as a special forces paratrooper in the Israeli army from 2006 to 2009, and then ran a startup in Israel. But seven months ago, he moved to New York and launched Israeli Startups NYC, a Meetup initiative designed to unite the Israeli and New York startup communities.

Those from his squad, now reservists in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), await notice that they might soon join the fight in Gaza. Vaknin said many are "upset" they haven't been notified. Though far away, Vaknin has never felt more like a soldier.

On Monday, Vaknin learned that an active member of his old unit had been killed.

"Its difficult to be outside of Israel, to see what's going on and not be there," said Vaknin.

To date, 65,000 IDF reservists have been called up to serve in the ground offensive in Gaza.

But Israeli techies who've launched businesses in the U.S. don't feel lucky they aren't in Israel -- they feel a sense of remorse.

Related: Israeli startups flock to New York

"There's almost guilt that you're actually here and not there," said Eyal Bino.

Bino formerly served as part of Israel's esteemed Unit 8200, the technology intelligence unit of the IDF, akin to the NSA. He moved to New York twelve years ago and runs Worldwide Investor Network, an accelerator platform that helps foreign tech startups find mentors and funding in New York.

Guy Katsovich is the program manager of 8200 Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support, a startup accelerator in Tel Aviv for Israeli army alumni.

He said "a lot Israeli entrepreneurs" have been called by the Israeli army to serve.

CNNMoney contacted several tech entrepreneurs who are part of the 65,000 reservists; they declined to talk due to security concerns.

According to Katsovich, for many, the latest call to service is just business as usual.

"Israelis are used to [living] their life in a reality of environmental uncertainty," said Katsovich. "It makes the challenges of dealing with uncertainty while leading a startup much more easy to deal with."

Lior Prosor, who runs Elevator Fund, a VC fund for early-stage Israeli startups, agrees.

"People do [return on reserve] and also run a business. It's not something they can't handle," said Prosor.

In fact, Elevator Fund partnered with Tel Aviv-based startup Zoliro to launch ISupportIsrael.org just two days ago, even though several of Zoliro's employees have been drafted to Gaza.

The crowdfunding site collects money for basic grocery packages to support Israeli families who have been impacted by the rockets from Gaza. It's collected more than $17,000 in the last two days.

Bino said that if the war continues, the Israeli startup community could take a financial hit.

"If it's going to be an extended war, it could potentially impact investors investing in Israeli startups [who are] afraid of investing in companies where there's a warzone," said Bino.

First Published: July 21, 2014: 7:19 PM ET

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Wall Street reform law only half done

Percentage of the 398 required rules that have been finalized.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

While regulators have sped up the pace of finalizing the complex batch of regulations required by Dodd-Frank, there's clearly a lot more work ahead.

According to law firm Davis Polk, 208 (52%) of the 398 total rulemaking requirements have been met so far. It's an improvement from 2012, when just 31% of the Dodd-Frank rules were in force, but still lacking.

Missed deadlines: "Progress will ultimately be measured based on whether we have implemented rules that create a strong and effective regulatory framework and stand the test of time under intense scrutiny in rapidly changing financial markets," SEC chair Mary Jo White said in a statement last week.

In the past year, regulators have made progress in a number of areas, including limiting in-house trading activities through the Volcker Rule, reforming the market for complex financial instruments called swaps, cutting back on the reliance for credit ratings firms and creating new rules for municipal advisers.

But it's clear regulators are not exactly moving at lightning speed, at least compared with the timeline set forth by Congress when Dodd-Frank was ushered into law in 2010.

Related: Banks won't lend? Use these guys instead

Out of 280 rulemaking deadlines that have passed, 127 (45%) of them have been missed by regulators, Davis Polk said. That's probably not a track record that your boss would appreciate.

Regulators have fallen behind in a number of key areas that were at the heart of the financial crisis, including asset-backed securities, credit ratings firms, derivatives and mortgage reforms. America is also still awaiting rules tied to consumer protection and the orderly wind-down of financial institutions (think: what to do in case of another Lehman Brothers).

What's the holdup? It's difficult to overhaul the world's largest financial system. That task was made even more complicated by the fact that Congress left many of the tough decisions up to the regulators, since they have more knowledge.

"The burdens that Congress put on regulators through Dodd-Frank are incredibly complex. It's really the largest change to the financial sector's regulation since the Great Depression. So it's going to take a long time," said Gabriel Rosenberg, an associate in Davis Polk's financial institutions group.

Related: 6 events that spooked the markets in 2014

After writing the rules, regulators must give the public a chance to comment on the proposals. Those comments, often from lobbyists representing the financial industry, may result in changes to the proposed rules, which sometimes get watered down.

According to OpenSecrets.org, securities and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) spent $98 million on lobbying in 2013.

Related: Obama wants more financial reform

"I'd rather the agencies take more time, get more comment and get it right than get it done fast," said Ernie Patrikis, former general counsel at the New York Fed and now a banking partner at White & Case.

"What's the rush? Banks are healing. The economy is healing. We're not going to face a crisis, touch wood, for a little while," he said.

While there has been talk that Dodd-Frank creates extra regulatory uncertainty for the big banks at the center of the new rules, Patrikis doesn't think so.

"If things come in a more orderly way, it's easier to implement," he said.

First Published: July 20, 2014: 6:16 PM ET

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What really happened with NBC and Ayman Mohyeldin

Journalist Ayman Mohyeldin.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

His exit from Gaza had caused an uproar among his fans and fellow correspondents, some of whom wondered if Mohyeldin, the network's only Arab-American correspondent in the region, was being censored by the network. Ultimately, the public backlash played a role in the network's decision to reinstate him, according to interviews with NBC News employees.

Until now, little has been reported about the circumstances of Mohyeldin's exit from Gaza. Among some NBC employees, concerns still linger about whether Mohyeldin was singled out for his empathetic stories about Palestinians in Gaza. But the interviews strongly suggest that this was a situation caused by network news infighting and bureaucracy.

Said one of the employees, "Everyone's looking for a conspiracy and missing the real story, which is a news division making mistakes through ratings nervousness."

The employees spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing they'd face disciplinary action if they were named. They spoke independently and had similar accounts of what happened in Gaza, in London (where NBC's international coverage is organized) and New York (where the news division is headquartered).

Mohyeldin had already been in Gaza for about two weeks when, on Wednesday, July 16, Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel arrived in nearby Tel Aviv. Engel, the network's biggest overseas star, became the lead reporter in the region -- a common television news practice.

Related: Fear returns to the stock market

Mohyeldin understood that the "NBC Nightly News" might only make time for one report from the region on Wednesday night, and that it would likely be Engel's. But then he witnessed an Israeli strike on a Gaza City beach. Four children were killed in full view of reporters. Mohyeldin and his crew began filming, and he alerted his bosses to the potential for a "Nightly News" story about what he'd just seen.

In New York on Wednesday afternoon, NBC News President Deborah Turness became personally involved: wanting "Nightly News" to consider using Mohyeldin that night, she asked him to send in a script and prepare a TV package.

When she screened the package, however, the sources said Turness was disappointed in his "tracking," the television term for a reporter's narration of a package. Instead of asking him to narrate it again, or appear live on "Nightly News" to tell the story in his own words, Turness said the script would be given to Engel instead.

NBC poached Mohyeldin in 2011 from Al Jazeera English, where he'd been widely praised for his live reports from the Middle East. "But network news is all about scripting and storytelling," one of the employees said, and some managers had doubts about Mohyeldin's skills.

According to another employee, though, a story had never before been taken away from Mohyeldin for "tracking" reasons, so it raised eyebrows.

Hours later, Engel read parts of Mohyeldin's script on "Nightly News." One of the employees called it "completely unethical" to "take a story that somebody reported and give it to another reporter who's not even on the ground."

Other employees said there wasn't time for a major re-write.

Related: Amazon's latest -- (nearly) unlimited reading for $9.99

Did this decision demonstrate unfairness on the part of NBC, or more mundane internal politicking? Engel is one of NBC's most recognizable correspondents, after all, and "Nightly News" is locked in a battle with ABC's "World News" for No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings.

"The producers are so paranoid about the ratings, they'll do anything to stick with the faces viewers know and trust -- so that would be Richard over Ayman," said one of the employees. "Plus, there is no tolerance if a story is fed in and doesn't live up to expectations."

Mohyeldin repeatedly appeared on NBC's cable news channel, MSNBC, to share what he'd witnessed along the beach. After those reports and "Nightly News," he was told that Engel was coming to Gaza, so he had to leave. This was the biggest head-scratcher of all, and a big part of the reason for the subsequent uproar.

Mohyeldin knew the Gaza story better than any other correspondent -- so why not keep him there while adding Engel? That's what Mohyeldin proposed to the executive in charge of international newsgathering, David Verdi -- but Verdi cited unspecified security reasons. "The decision is final," Verdi told him, according to a person told of the conversation immediately afterward.

Mohyeldin departed for Tel Aviv on Thursday morning. His absence from Wednesday's "Nightly News" was noticed by colleagues and was written up by the industry blog TVNewser. Soon "let Ayman report" and "free Ayman" hashtags were showing up on Twitter and NBC was being accused of pro-Israel bias by sidelining Mohyeldin.

NBC declined to comment throughout Thursday and Friday, which fed the speculation about what had happened. To date there is no evidence that Turness's bosses at NBC or its parent company, Comcast (CCV), intervened in Mohyeldin's reporting or singled him out because of his background.

Behind the scenes, the network tried to convince Mohyeldin to sign off on a statement that, he thought, whitewashed the situation. Later on Friday, NBC management directly apologized to him and reassigned him to Gaza.

In a statement on Friday night, NBC credited Mohyeldin for "extraordinary reporting throughout the escalation of the conflict in Gaza."

"As with any news team in conflict zones, deployments are constantly reassessed," the network said. "We've carefully considered our deployment decisions and we will be sending Ayman back to Gaza over the weekend. We look forward to his contributions in the coming days."

The network did not explain the reversal, but the statement came close to acknowledging that it had made a mistake by pulling him out of Gaza.

"Thank you to everyone's support over the past few days," Mohyeldin wrote on Facebook. He called himself "proud of NBC's continued commitment to cover the Palestinian side of the story."

NBC's critics weren't fully satisfied. "So basically NBC is saying 'We thought we'd get away with this but we realized we were wrong,'" Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of The Palestine Center, wrote on Twitter. "Just shows you the power of social media."

First Published: July 20, 2014: 3:24 PM ET

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Millennials say no to marriage

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Today's young adults are on track have the lowest rates of marriage by age 40 compared to any previous generation. If the current pace continues, more than 30% of Millennial women will remain unmarried by age 40, nearly twice the share of their Gen X counterparts, according to a recent Urban Institute report.

And that could have serious economic repercussions for both the Millennials and the nation as a whole.

There are several reasons behind the plunge. The importance of marriage has been diminishing for years. More Americans are living together without getting married, and some are raising families ... just without the gold bands, said Neil Howe, an economist and author of several books about Millennials.

Also, marriage used to be the starting point for young adults. They got hitched early and built a life together, Howe said. Now, many people feel they have to be more established, especially financially, before they walk down the aisle.

"The shift is the shift in the role of marriage in one's life," he said.

Related: Enough with Millennials. Here's what Gen X thinks

Marriage rates fell even more drastically during the Great Recession, when young adults had a tough time landing their first jobs and other Americans found themselves collecting unemployment checks.

Just how many Millennials tie the knot by the time they hit 40 depends on whether marriage rates return to their pre-recession levels or not. Only 69.3% of women will marry if the post-recession rate continues, while 76.8% will if the rate returns to pre-downturn levels. For men, the rates come in at 65% and 72.6%, respectively.

Regardless, it will be fewer than Gen Xers. Some 82% of Gen X women and 76.6% of Gen X men were married by 40.

Underlying these numbers, however, are major divisions by race and educational attainment. Hispanic and black Millennials, as well as those without college degrees, are expected to see greater declines in their marriage rates.

White Millennials will see a small drop.

College grads could remain steady if rates return or decline slightly if they don't. That runs contrary to the current narrative that Millennials are putting off marriage because of high student loan debts and unemployment rates, as well as the increased propensity to live with their parents, said Steven Martin, senior research associate at the Urban Institute and the report's co-author.

He found, however, that college graduates marry later so they are better able to ride out poor economic times just after they finish school. And staying single while young gives them more opportunity to establish a financial base since they can focus on their careers.

But the explosion in singles has its downsides. Married couples are often better off financially, which means they can spend more.

"The evidence shows that getting married increases wealth and income," said Pamela Smock, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan.

Single Americans may be less likely to buy homes or trade up to accommodate growing families, while single parents may be more likely to qualify for government safety net programs.

And the growing schism in marriage rates could exacerbate income inequality in this country, dividing society into still mostly married "haves" and increasingly single "have nots."

First Published: July 20, 2014: 6:46 PM ET

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Can Malaysia Airlines survive latest tragedy?

Four months after a Malaysia Airlines plane goes missing, another one of its passenger jets is shot out of the sky.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The tragic events have taken the lives of 537 people in all, and brought devastation to their families.

It has also left many pondering the future of the airline and its ability to weather the latest storm.

If customers flee, it could really put a dent in its bottom line, said Justin Green, a military trained pilot and aviation attorney.

Malaysia Airlines was already a struggling company before these latest tragedies.

Related: Malaysia Air's troubled year

Even before Flight 370 disappeared, a difficult business climate forced the airline into the red for the three years in a row, leading to a loss of about 4.2 billion ringgit ($1.3 billion) over that period.

"But the situation has become much graver," said Daniel Tsang, an aviation analyst at Aspire Aviation. "Bankruptcy is unquestionably a possibility."

According to international law, Malaysia Airlines is responsible for making initial payments of about $150,000 to the families of each deceased passenger in both flights.

There will also be lawsuits to fight. Even thought it appears Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile last week over Ukraine, there's a chance the airline could be found negligible for flying in the disputed airspace where Ukraine rebels are operating, Green said. While the flight's route was approved by Eurocontrol, other carriers were avoiding the airspace.

Those additional payments still wouldn't break the bank, Green said. Many of Malaysia Airlines' expenses will be covered by the maze of insurance policies that cover a plane and its passengers.

Very few airlines went bankrupt immediately after previous tragedies, Green said.

The now defunct Pan Am was in financial trouble long before the terrorist bombing of its Flight 103 over Scotland, but the attack did help push the airline toward its ultimate bankruptcy, the airline's former CEO Tom Plaskett told CNN.

The airline survived for two more years after the attack, until it filed for bankruptcy in 1991.

Related Passengers' families could collect millions

So far, Malaysia Airlines customers have proved quite loyal.

After Flight 370 went missing on March 8, Malaysia Airlines did not see an immediate decline in passengers, according to its April traffic report. But the number of passengers dropped 4% in May compared to the same month last year.

The airline is also waiving fees and refunding tickets until the end of December for anyone who wants to cancel or postpone their travel plans.

Overall, the company experienced a 13% uptick in the number of passengers for the year to date.

Another factor that will play in its favor is that Malaysia Airlines has state-backing. The government's investment firm owns nearly 70% of the company, which just might help it survive these tough times.

First Published: July 19, 2014: 2:09 PM ET

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Can this British designer save Coach?

Coach has hired Stuart Vevers to try to revive a brand that has been around since 1941.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The British designer was hired last year to revive the Coach brand, a comeback that may be even harder to pull off than Martha Stewart's.

Coach (COH) stock is down almost 40% this year. The bad weather that kept many American shoppers out of stores this winter only exacerbated the company's problems. The brand is stale.

Known for its leather handbags, Coach doesn't have a clear identity anymore.

The company, founded in 1941, really hit its stride in the 1990s under the dynamic duo of CEO Lew Frankfort and head designer Reed Krakoff. They popularized the concept of "luxury for the masses."

They found the sweet spot in the retail market where customers wanted a bit of brand cache but at a cost that was a lot less than Prada (PRDSF) and Gucci had to offer.

The company went public in 2000 (as a spin-off of food company Sara Lee no less) and the stock rose steadily for a few years with the introduction of products like the "Hampton bag." Wall Street pushed for growth, and Coach responded by opening a lot of outlet stores, which diluted the luxury brand notion.

It also didn't help that competition increased from Michael Kors (KORS), Kate Spade (KATE)and Tory Burch, among others.

Coach's turnaround plan: Enter Vevers. The company is aiming for the higher-end consumer again now that Vevers is Executive Creative Director.

He has the track record. He was named Accessory Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council several years ago and has worked at other brands trying to reinvent themselves -- such as Calvin Klein and Mulberry.

Thanks to Vevers, Coach held its first New York Fashion Week show earlier this year, garnering largely positive reviews.

But Wall Street is not convinced that the runway success will lead to higher sales just yet.

Related: Coach is going out of fashion among investors

"Some of his designs will be in full-price stores in the fall. You're not going to see it in the outlet channel until probably 2015, which is the majority of sales" says Evan Staples, a senior analyst at Nuveen Asset Management. He argues any turnaround will be a long time coming.

"Only if you're a very risky value investor would you be stepping in here," he says.

It's also not clear if this is even the right direction for Coach.

"Can Stuart Vevers put good product on the floor? I don't know," says Paul Lejuez, who covers retail stocks for Wells Fargo Securities. "The more important question is even if the product looks good, does it matter? Will people buy it?"

Coach is in the process of closing some stores. After the latest round, it will have about 250 full-price stores and 200 outlet stores in North America, Lejuez says. That makes it difficult to re-cast the brand as a more up-scale "luxury-lifestyle" brand when its discount stores are still everywhere.

Related: The 1% is spending: Luxury stocks soar

Buying opportunity? Robert Drbul, an analyst who covers the retail sector for Nomura, is more bullish. He has a "buy" rating on the stock, which currently trades around $34, a big drop from 2012 when it traded around $75. Drbul has a target price of $45.

"The company has a track record of brand re-invention and a strong team," Drbul says. "Coach clearly remains committed to their dividend, so from the investor standpoint, they are paid to wait and hold their shares." Coach's dividend yields nearly 4%.

Drbul also points out that many luxury and pseudo-luxury brands are fighting for traction in Europe and Asia. Bringing on a British designer with many European ties could also give Coach an edge internationally.

But the biggest "buying opportunity" may be for consumers. Many retailers are increasing discounts as they try to clear inventory after a slow winter and spring. Coach is also motivated to make room on its shelves for Vevers' designs.

So even if you aren't interested in the stock, Coach's current predicament is a good chance to pick up a nice handbag or pair of shoes at a cheap price.

First Published: July 19, 2014: 9:19 AM ET

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Snowden asks hackers to protect whistleblowers

Ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia, speaks via video connection to a crowd of hackers in New York City.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Daniel Ellsberg, who famously released the Pentagon Papers, and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden spoke to a packed crowd of computer experts on Saturday at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City.

It was a call to digital arms: Create easy-to-use software that lets insiders spill secrets of corporate or government malfeasance to journalists or politicians without getting caught.

"A lot of blood has flowed because people bit their tongues, swallowed their whistles and didn't speak out," Ellsberg said. "You people need to do what you can ... to make it possible for people to do this without spending their life in prison."

Related story: FBI sends agents to Holocaust museum for history lesson

A clampdown on government whistleblowers began during the Bush administration -- and has only intensified. The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leaked to journalists more than all previous U.S. presidents combined.

"You are the people who can make it possible for democracy to survive that attack on whistleblowers," Ellsberg told the crowd of hackers.

Snowden, in exile in Russia and speaking via a video connection, urged professionals to develop computer programs that hinder mass surveillance by encrypting all communication, thus making it private.

It's a technological answer to a civil rights problem, he explained.

"You have the means and the capability to build a better future by encoding our rights into the programs and protocol we use everyday," Snowden said.

First Published: July 19, 2014: 5:58 PM ET

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Murdoch says he can't buy Tribune but mum on Time Warner

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

"Sorry can't buy Trib group or LA Times -- cross-ownership laws from another age still in place," Murdoch tweeted late Thursday night.

Murdoch was referring to Federal Communications Commission rules that limit how many newspapers and broadcast television stations a single company can own.

But the Twitter message confirms that Murdoch has thought about pursuing Tribune, and particularly the Los Angeles Times.

Last year, when Tribune (TRBAA) was actively considering a sale, The New York Times reported that Murdoch was "weighing whether a bid would be worth the headache and regulatory battles."

Tribune later decided not to sell its eight papers immediately, but to spin them off into a new company, Tribune Publishing, instead. The split is expected to take effect in August.

After that point, a buyer might be able to acquire the new company -- which also owns the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun.

The journalism institute Poynter said earlier this month that a new rumor about Murdoch's interest in Tribune was making the rounds, and that "various circumstances would make such a deal logical for both buyer and seller."

Anything can happen down the road, of course, and Murdoch's tweet might have been a way to blow off some steam about government regulation.

Of Murdoch's two companies, News Corp (NWSA). would be the one interested in more newspapers. It already owns Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones and the New York Post.

21st Century Fox (FOXA), the home to Murdoch's movie studio and cable and TV programming networks, is the one that made a bid for Time Warner (TWX).

There have been no new reports about overtures from Fox to Time Warner since Wednesday's confirmation from both companies that Time Warner had rejected the bid Fox proposed in June.

Related: Why Murdoch wants Time Warner

The original bid was worth about $86 per share. Time Warner indicated in a statement on Wednesday that Fox could never pull together a compelling offer (both in terms of value and the right mix of cash and stock), but that has not stopped Wall Street from speculating on a magic number that could rekindle talks.

Janney Capital Markets analyst Tony Wible, who wrote about a potential tie-up of Fox and Time Warner last month, said Thursday that he expects a $100 per share offer from Murdoch.

"Simply put, Fox has the capacity to pay more but would likely target a mix of stock and cash," he wrote in a report.

And even though Murdoch did not tweet directly about Time Warner, he did seem to hint that the deal may have been a reason why he hadn't tweeted since July 8 before writing a trio of tweets from Australia yesterday.

"Sorry, I have been busy lately with many preoccupations!" he wrote.

CNN's Cristina Alesci contributed to this report.

First Published: July 18, 2014: 4:01 PM ET

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Retirement accounts hold record balances

Fidelity says the stock market helped lift retirement balances to a record high.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The average balance in a Fidelity Individual Retirement Account (IRA) rose 15% on an annual basis in the second quarter to $92,600 -- an all-time high.

In the same period, the average balance in a Fidelity 401(k) account also set a record, up nearly 13% annually to $91,000.

The mutual fund giant credited 77% of the gains to a surging stock market, and 23% to employee and employer contributions.

Fidelity said the balance for employees who have been in a workplace 401(k) for 10 years rose 15% a year over the past decade to $246,200.

But even that balance is probably not enough to retire on. Fidelity recommends saving eight times your yearly salary.

Even more sobering, a 2013 study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that nearly half of all workers had less than $10,000 saved.

First Published: July 18, 2014: 3:22 PM ET

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Facebook says: If you Like it, Buy it.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The social media giant announced Thursday that it's testing a new Buy button feature with "a few" small and medium-sized businesses across the country.

The button is available on the mobile and desktop version of Facebook and lets customers purchase products directly from businesses. Businesses partnering with Facebook on this test can embed the button on their Page posts or in Facebook ads.

Just how few are we talking? Right now, very. A Facebook spokesman said the exact number can be counted using one hand. They declined to identify the specific businesses but the picture included in the announcement showed that one is a watch company, Modify Watches, in San Francisco.

Though the test is small for now, if successful, it could be a major win for small businesses.

Facebook launched my startup

Facebook said there are 30 million active small business pages worldwide.

"This represents a tremendous opportunity for savvy small businesses to generate sales in real time," said Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group. "This is an opportunity for innovation."

It's not the first time Facebook has tested ecommerce ideas. In 2012, the company tried out Facebook Gifts, which ended less than a year later.

This particular trial comes after conversations with business owners and marketers about their business challenges. A lot of small businesses are sharp when it comes to mobile and digital (almost 19 million small business owners manage their page via mobile, according to Facebook) but many don't have the ecommerce platform to sell their products. This option is specifically designed to solve that problem.

When a customer clicks the Buy button, they'll be prompted to make a transaction, all without leaving the page. Processing is handled by a third party, so information isn't shared directly with Facebook (unless a user chooses to store their credentials on the site) or with the merchant. The third party will only share information pertinent to fulfillment (i.e. shipping address).

Yes, Americans want bacon with that

Right now, the feature is completely free for businesses, and Facebook has no plans to monetize it at the moment. The intention is twofold: See how people react to seeing it on the social media site, and how successful retailers are in driving ecommerce business.

"This could be so incredibly successful if businesses think about it as a new opportunity," said Solis.

First Published: July 18, 2014: 4:02 PM ET

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Google's money machine is going strong

Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Google (GOOGL, Tech30) reported another quarter of surging sales growth Thursday, with revenue rising 22% versus last year. The news sent the stock rising 1.6% in after-hours trading.

The challenge for Google in the past few quarters has been convincing marketers to pay as much for mobile ads as they do for desktop ads, a task that's become increasingly pressing as Web usage shifts to smartphones.

Part of the way Google is addressing this issue is through the "enhanced campaign" strategy it introduced last year, which requires advertisers to buy across multiple platforms.

Google said marketers paid 6% less per ad in the second quarter compared with last year, but ad viewing rose 25%, giving the company strong revenue growth. Google held a whopping 68% share of the U.S. search market as of May, according to comScore.

Related: Google's plan to fight cyberattacks

Overall, the company reported sales of nearly $16 billion, beating analyst expectations. Earnings came in at $4.2 billion, a bit below Wall Street's forecasts.

Google, like rival Facebook (FB, Tech30), has been spending big on emerging technologies recently as it works to expand outside its core search business. The California-based company has invested billions of dollars in driverless cars, wearable gadgets, military robots and, through its $3.2 billion purchase of Nest earlier this year, connected home devices.

Google also announced Thursday that Nikesh Arora, its chief business officer, is leaving to become vice chairman of Sprint (S) parent SoftBank and CEO of its SoftBank Internet and Media division.

First Published: July 17, 2014: 4:43 PM ET

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FedEx indicted for shipping drugs sold online

Prosecutors say FedEx knowingly shipped prescription drugs from illegal online pharmacies to addicts and dealers.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The shipping giant, however, said it is innocent and will plead not guilty.

While some Internet pharmacies are managed by well-known chains and follow proper protocol, others fail to require a prescription before filling orders. Instead, they only require a person to complete an online questionnaire, without meeting with a physician.

"The advent of Internet pharmacies allowed the cheap and easy distribution of massive amounts of illegal prescription drugs to every corner of the United States, while allowing perpetrators to conceal their identities through the anonymity the Internet provides," said U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.

She added: "This indictment highlights the importance of holding corporations that knowingly enable illegal activity responsible for their role in aiding criminal behavior."

Related: Top 10 counterfeit goods

It also revealed the aggressive behavior of some recipients, who would jump on trucks, threaten drivers and demand their shipments immediately. In response, FedEx would hold packages from problematic shippers at area pick-up stations rather than deliver to recipients' addresses.

The prosecution was the result of a nine-year investigation into shipments from two pharmacies between 2000 and 2010. A spokeswoman for prosecutors would not comment on whether other shippers would face charges, too.

Related: Shipping the Internet's random stuff

A conviction could mean up to $1.6 billion in fines and penalties, according to prosecutors.

FedEx (FDX), which ships 10 million packages a day, said it has provided assistance to federal authorities combating rogue Internet pharmacies.

"We continue to stand ready and willing to support and assist law enforcement," said spokesman Patrick Fitzgerald. "We cannot, however, do the job of law enforcement ourselves."

The company will appear in federal court in San Francisco on July 29.

First Published: July 17, 2014: 8:13 PM ET

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Asian stocks decline after plane crash

HONG KONG (CNNMoney)

Japan's Nikkei tumbled by 1.4%, followed by a 0.7% drop on Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index.

Markets in Malaysia fell 0.4%, with aviation stocks taking a hit after a Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in a rebel-controlled part of Ukraine on Thursday, just four months after Flight 370 disappeared. Malaysia Airlines slipped over 13% in morning trading, and Malaysia Airports dipped nearly 5%.

The Boeing 777 was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Jittery investors are keeping an eye on unfolding details about the plane and Israel's new ground assault in Gaza.

Related: Malaysia Airlines may need a government rescue

U.S. stocks had a rocky Thursday -- the Dow closed down almost 1%, the S&P 500 declined about 1.2%, and the Nasdaq slid 1.4%. It was the biggest drop for the Dow in two months, and the S&P's fall was the steepest in three months.

Market anxiety was also reflected in gold prices, which edged 1.5% higher and silver by 2%. The VIX index, a key measure of market volatility that's sometimes dubbed the "Fear Gauge," spiked nearly 36%.

First Published: July 17, 2014: 10:48 PM ET

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How the working class networks

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

In the social media--hungry world, it's never long after someone identifies a gap in the market that an entrepreneur comes up with a whiz-bang way to fill it. Consider social networking, for example. One group in particular has historically been left out in the digital cold: blue-collar workers. There's a gap worth filling, and the answer is taking shape in the form of WorkHands, a kind of LinkedIn for skilled-trade workers.

When co-founder James Dunbar launched WorkHands this past September, he received plenty of weird questions. "There was a lot of education that had to happen," the 29-year-old Long Island native says diplomatically. People asked, "Do these guys know how to use the Internet?" "Do they have smartphones?" Given that smartphones are used by 56 percent of American adults — and by 80 percent of men in the U.S. between ages 18 and 29 — they needn't worry. And that's so far proved to be true among the company's (albeit small) initial several-thousand-person user base.

WorkHands appeals mostly to 18- to 30-year-olds who work in the building, manufacturing, automotive and other skilled industrial trades. That demographic indeed has smartphones — and could easily use them to network and move beyond relying so heavily on word-of-mouth job references. Especially for those who are just starting out, making connections is tough — when you don't know a guy who knows a guy who's looking for someone just like you.

More from Ozy: Nonprofit companies are breeding future entrepreneurs

Some have been quick to compare Dunbar's company to TaskRabbit and Shiftgig (which connect handypersons, plumbers and service-industry workers to potential jobs). But WorkHands is about linking up skilled-trade workers who possess heavy-duty industrial skills. Not the person who can retile a bathroom; rather, someone who can help Shell build its next rig.

Helping people make connections is lovely and all, but how will the new venture make money? On their way to matching LinkedIn's $25 billion valuation, the plan is to charge for job postings (they're free for now). And Dunbar sees a huge upside when they're able to connect city contract workers, unions and the big companies who get the contracts.

Like LinkedIn, WorkHands will need to think big, especially to expand their user base and think creatively about what to do with it. Job listings alone may not be the silver bullet — fewer than a quarter of LinkedIn users actually use the site for job finding, and the company's value (which some have questioned) rests on an active user base of 259 million. So far, WorkHands' main attraction — like any good social networking site — has been giving its users a place to show off their clean lines and well-soldered pieces (and to see what their peers are up to). And companies that are looking to hire can focus more on the quality of a prospective employee's work — which is a lot more telling than an awkward suit-and-tie close-up.

First Published: July 16, 2014: 5:37 PM ET

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Reimagining labor: Saket Soni is fighting for the future of work

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Some begin with a dial-in, some with the tchwap of butcher paper tearing — a fresh sheet for a group strategy session. Others are free-form, like when Soni counseled a woman struggling to organize construction workers. They walked together, did breathing exercises. The ocean sounds in Soni's iTunes library provided backdrop for guided meditation.

"When you're an organizer, nothing is too small," he says.

Conference calls can be memorable, too. The labor organizer has conducted them in church stairwells, outside labor camps, inside ICE detention centers. On Easter weekend six years back, Soni joined a conference call while marching with dozens of Indian welders from Montgomery, Alabama, to Atlanta, Georgia. Like many of the people who find their way to Soni, the welders had been screwed. Recruiters had convinced them to pay $20,000 for a green card and the chance to help rebuild post-Katrina New Orleans. Forced labor and squalid trailers awaited them.

The organization Soni directs, the National Guestworker Alliance, focuses on immigrants with temporary work visas. Hundreds of thousands come to the United States each year. Despite their numbers, they're difficult to organize: transient, for starters; vulnerable and risk averse, besides. Guest workers don't come here to make trouble. Because their visas bind them to one employer, quitting means deportation, or worse.

Soni has led guest workers to some of the ballsiest collective actions in recent history — the welders, for instance, ended up marching all the way to Washington, D.C., going on a hunger strike and catalyzing an uproar in India and the White House. A strike by Mexican crawfish-peelers — who'd been forced to work 16- to 24-hour shifts and threatened with bodily harm — changed corporate policy at Wal-Mart. Striking student guest workers at a Hershey packing plant led the State Department to rewrite certain visa policies.

More remarkable than all this, maybe, is what Soni thinks the guest workers represent: you.

"The guest workers and low-wage workers that I organize hold a crystal ball into the changing nature of work," he argues. It's part of a theory about the future of work that he's elucidated in lectures at Harvard Law School, Soros-funded forums, on television and, soon probably, in a book. "What's happening to low-wage workers is not just happening to low-wage workers," he says .

What's happening is the rise of contingent labor — temporary, part-time, gig-to-gig — and the lengthening of labor supply chains, like independent contractors and sub-subcontractors. In their wake, even American-born professionals have lost leverage. At universities, adjunct professors are paid per class, hired per semester. Lawyers who used to work at firms now contract for them. Sixty-four thousand Silicon Valley engineers just won a settlement against four tech giants who'd agreed not to solicit one another's employees. To Soni, their plights all resemble guest workers'.

Stories about abused guest workers once elicited sympathy, Soni says. Now they elicit recognition. "There's a real national panic about work that has not been named in our society," he says. "It's a United States of Anxiety."

Of course, it's in Soni's strategic interest to describe a common plight. Many Americans would resist the notion that they share a boat with guest workers; they're more likely to think about guest workers as threats to their own jobs. That's if they think about guest workers at all. Guest workers are just slightly less invisible and marginalized than when Soni started his work.

But within the labor movement, the idea that we are all guest workers now has force.

"Saket could well be one of the architects of the next labor movement in the United States," says George Goehl, no organizing slouch himself. Soni's "future of work" analysis packs as much disruptive punch as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, Goehl says, though for years the packaging wasn't fancy. ("There was something charming about seeing him show up at meetings and take that butcher paper out of his backpack," says Goehl.) It's fancier now, enough to sway hundreds of skeptical organizers around the country, including those who work with Goehl.

Despite the seriousness of his work and his immersion in it — even his partner, Marielena Hincapié, is a prominent immigrant advocate — Soni seems boyish: baby face, sweep of dark hair, open demeanor, short stature. Without his goatee and glasses, he'd look younger than his 36 years.

He spent his childhood in Delhi, and his parents, though not particularly political, sent him to a school where Soni felt he was "in a swirl of social forces: You were writing a school play and it was about Nelson Mandela; then you were going out to protest [against] the Indian cricket team going to South Africa; and then you were meeting with Nelson Mandela because he was free.

"And we were told it happened only because of us — and because we were kids, we believed it."

With a sense of protagonism and possibility, Soni went to the University of Chicago on a full scholarship. He studied theater and, after college, worked at a theater company whose scripts were based on the immigrant experience. Rent came from sweeping floors and washing dishes and cars. He overstayed his student visa just in time for the post-9/11 crackdown on foreigners.

That period was a crucible, he says, "being undocumented and entering into a period of low-wage work, and in the meantime trying to continue to work in the arts, and eventually defending more and more people from deportation."

On the other end of it, Soni emerged an organizer. "Just because the political climate was really bad, I would not give in and self-deport," Soni says he told himself. "I would stay and be part of a rebuilding of democracy in this country." That immigrant idealism about America stayed with Soni through the horrors he said he saw in the years after Hurricane Katrina and during his work at the National Guestworkers Alliance.

He retains a sense of the dramatic, too. For Soni, strikes, demonstrations and marches are all forms of public theater — except the stakes are real and high. On the eve of a Mexican strawberry picker walkout in Louisiana, Soni met with the workers and a few others in their trailers, rehearsing and gathering courage. The boss had abused them and confiscated their passports. Everyone was frightened. The workers wrote one word, "Dignidad," on placards.

The next day, at the appointed hour, the workers rose from the strawberry fields, pulled the placards from under their shirts, and began to march toward the boss. They'd eventually get their passports back, but what stays with Soni is the beauty of it: "To see these workers walking toward us, holding these signs — what a gorgeous image," he says.

First Published: July 16, 2014: 5:31 PM ET

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NFL Sunday Ticket coming to smartphones

Score one for mobile devices.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

DirecTV is offering NFL fans the chance to stream every out-of-market game of the upcoming regular season on a computer, smartphone or tablet, even if they don't have a satellite TV account.

That's a first for mobile users. Verizon (VZ, Tech30) customers have been able to stream NFL games on mobile devices for the past few years, though that deal relates only local-market feeds and the playoffs.

DirecTV's streaming packages start at $200 for the year, and will only be available to people in selected cities -- you can check the website to see if you're eligible.

DirecTV (DTV) already has exclusive rights to carry non-local pro football games on TV through its "NFL Sunday Ticket" package, though that deal expires at the end of this upcoming season.

Related: What AT&T-DirecTV deal means for consumers

"Sunday Ticket" is critically important for the company, so much so that AT&T worked language into the companies' pending merger agreement that would allow it to walk away from the deal if DirecTV loses its NFL rights.

Both companies have said they expect to finalize a deal with the NFL before the end of the year -- and before the merger takes place.

Should the AT&T-DirecTV deal be approved by regulators, the combined company could include NFL streaming access as part of a package with wireless, cable, landline telephone and Internet service.

First Published: July 16, 2014: 5:35 PM ET

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