After the St. Louis County grand jury declined to charge a officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing teenage Michael Brown, two social media campaigns began to take shape: “Donate to Ferguson’s Public Library” and #BoycottBlackFriday. Both have financial implications, but how much? If you look at multipliers, which measure how much money spent and invested stays local, giving money to local government (think: funding for the public library) leads to a sales multiplier of 2.17. Spending money at stores typically frequented on Black Friday (such as big department stores) has a lower sales multiplier of 1.97.
At least that many major Canadian newspapers put the grand jury decision in Ferguson and the protests that followed on their front page Thursday. Quartz has a roundup of reaction abroad to the protests, from heavy coverage in Britain and Canada to thinly veiled criticism in China and Russia.
That’s how many children died during last flu season due to complications. Yet the Centers for Disease Controls estimates that fewer than half of Americans get a flu shot. The reason? Some say it’s because we don’t think of the flu as being all that scary.
That’s the amount of budget shortfall projected for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District over the next five years. One proposed solution involves a toll for pedestrians and bikers to cross the Golden Gate Bridge.
The number of potential Twitter acquisitions identified by Re/Code after CFO accidentally tweeted a private message about buying another company. The most likely contender is Shots, a selfie-sharing app backed by Justin Bieber and used by many high-profile users of the Twitter-owned video app Vine.
That’s where Uber’s valuation could top out after a new round of funding, sources told Bloomberg. The ride-sharing app would not only double its current valuation, but exceed Twitter’s capitalization, putting Uber in the same neighborhood as Delta and Kraft Foods.
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