Mattel Inc suffered a loss in the first quarter as the maker of toys reported that sales had fallen, weighed down by its Barbie.

CEO Bryan Stockton said during the first quarter revenues had been consistent with expectations, while working through inventories in a retail environment that is challenging on a global level.

The toy industry of late has been challenged due to increased interest in tablets and smartphones, which has lessened the appeal of many traditional toys. Mattel has during this time generally been able to post higher sales.

Results lately have been bolstered by the doll line Monster High, which has the characters that are children of famous past monsters with names such as Draculaura. Another strong performer has been the American Girl line.

Overall, Mattel however reported it had lost $11.2 million or approximately 3 cents per share compared to last year during the same reporting period a $38.5 million profit equal to 11 cents per share.

Net sales at the toymaker were down by 5% to end the quarter at $946 million. Analysts expected the toymaker to report profits of 9 cents per share on revenue of close to $953 million.

The company’s gross margin was narrowed from 54.2% to 50.9%. Sales in North America dropped by 2%, while the top line dropped by 7% internationally.

Sales of Barbie were down by 14%, while sales of Wheels, which includes Tyco, Matchbox and Hot Wheels, were off by just 2%. Other girls’ revenue was up 4%, thanks primarily to the Ever After High and Disney Princess, which was offset partially by Monster High.

Fischer-Prices’ preschool line saw its sales slip by 6% while American Girl sales were up by over 5%.

As sales of hand held electronics such as the tablet and smartphone continue to increase, the toy industry could suffer even more going forward due to consumers deciding what is more important or cost effective for them while they continue to struggle through the slowly improving economy and jobs market.

Just in time for this year’s grilling season, beef prices have risen to their highest point in 27 years. This has taken consumer and restaurants by surprise with relief likely not to happen anytime in the near future.

As cattle herds dwindle and the export demand increases from countries such as Japan and China, the average cost of retail fresh beef has climbed to $5.28 per pound as of February. That price was nearly 25 cents higher than in January and the highest the country has seen since 1987.

Everything being produced is consumed, said one analyst and prices likely will remain high for the next few years as producers of cattle start rebuilding their herds amidst questions about whether the Midwest and Southwest will have enough rain to help pastures replenish.

At the same time, trips to the local grocery store could take longer as shoppers search out the best cuts of beef that will not break the bank.

Restaurant owners must also deal with high prices. Menu prices are being increased regularly. Since the start of February, some restaurants have increased their prices by 5% a month. Some are trying to cut other costs so they do not have to pass along the additional cost of beef to their patrons.

Some restaurants are adjusting the portions of steak they serve making them look the same size but thinner to help offset the increasing price.

Some restaurants now are serving sirloin in 6-ounce portions compared to 8 or even 10-ounce portions that were previously served.

Fast food restaurants have trimmed cost through reducing menu items and offering other types of meats, including burgers made from turkey meat. Chain restaurants contain buying in volume, which means they usually receive better prices.

For one group, the higher prices have come as welcome news. Ranchers especially in Texas have for many years struggled amidst high feed prices and drought.

Despite the recent numbers showing the cattle herds are the smallest in the nation since 1951, prices for beef have yet to decline along with the herd size, as demand remains strong.

Beef is not the only type of meat with prices that are higher. Pork has increased and largely due to a virus that is killing millions of piglets.

Japanese automaker Toyota has announced five recalls that affect over 6.4 million vehicles across the globe. The recalls involve 27 Toyota models and include the Corolla, Camry, Highlander and Matrix – the Subaru Trezia and the Pontiac Vibe. Some vehicles were made back in 2004.

Toyota is planning to inspect, replace parts if necessary, including steering column braces, seat rails, windshield wiper motors, engine starters and cable for air bags, said a statement released by the automaker.

The announcement includes 2 million vehicles across North America, which might have problems with seat rails and air bag cables.

The company announced that it is not aware of a single crash, injuries or fatalities that the conditions caused.

On Wednesday, stock at Toyota was off by nearly 5% prior to ending the day in Tokyo off by 3%. The stock has fallen this year by over 15%.

The biggest automaker in the world sold close to 10 million vehicles in 2013. This is the second major recall for Toyota globally for 2014 and the latest in a line of headaches caused by poor quality control.

Toyota this past February recalled more than 2.1 million RAV4, Tacoma, Lexus and Prius vehicles due to a problem in the software that causes a car to stop without prior notice.

Earlier in the year, Toyota also agreed it would pay a fine of $1.2 billion, the largest of its type, to settle a problem that had been criminal into the company’s conduct while it carried out its unintended acceleration recall of over 10 million vehicles just four years ago.

That particular recall was for cars from 2009 to 2010 and related to an accelerator pedal that would stick. It cost the Japanese automaker over $2 billion in lost sales and repair costs prior to paying for the legal settlements.

In 2012, Toyota issued a recall for more than 7.4 million vehicles because of a problem with the power windows that could have posed a fire risk.

The action by Toyota comes following the major recall by General Motors. GM announced it would recall 4.8 million vehicles.

A clinical drug trial conducted with the palbociclib manufactured by Pfizer showed the medication was able to delay the progression of breast cancer by almost two years.

The trial was part of a study of Phase 2 on 165 women who had breast cancer. Researchers were able to find that women treated with the drug as well as letrozole a hormone drug lived for 20.2 months prior to the cancer becoming worse. Those results were compared to just over 10 months for those patients who received only letrozole hormone drug.

Pfizer said that palbociclib was one of the pharmaceutical giant’s most important medications. Some industry analysts claim that once this drug has been received regulatory approval, it most likely will have sales in excess of $5 billion annually.

The medication is to be used for women who are post-menopausal with newly diagnosed or locally advance breast cancer, which has spread into other areas of their body.

All the women that participated in the trial had estrogen receptor and HER2-negative cancer.

Recent statistics show 60% of the cases of breast cancer that is advanced are HER2-negative and estrogen receptor positive.

Letrozole is a drug than is an estrogen blocker which Novartis AG sells under the name Femara. Women treated with Femara alone have a 33.3 month overall survival rate.

Scientists found that when Letrozole is given together with palbociclib, the survival rate overall increased by over 37 months.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted palbociclib breakthrough status. It is not certain if manufacturers of the drug will decide to seek an accelerated approval due to the trial results.

However, researchers have said that even though just 30 patients that were in each section of the trial of 165 patients had died, more time was needed to make a definition of the impact on the survival rate the drug has.

Today, the second deadliest cancer amongst women in the United States is breast cancer. The cancer affects more than 200,000 annually, killing nearly 40,000 each year.

Experts estimate that one in every eight females will at some time in their lives develop breast cancer.

While there is no known cause risk factors do include late menopause, early puberty and certain types of genes.

Citigroup saw its shares fall by nearly 5% on Thursday, after plans by the bank and another four banks to increase payments in dividends and stock buybacks, were rejected by the Federal Reserve.

The Fed announced that the management practices or the cushion in capital were not sufficiently robust to withstand an economic downturn that was severe.

The Fed announced that 25 other banks, which had also taken part in the annual “stress test” of the Fed, received green lights for their share repurchases and dividend payouts.

Goldman Sachs and Bank of America initially were short of the requirements for minimum capital but then met the standards following a reduction of their planned payments for dividends and share buybacks this past week.

Capital plans for HSBC North America holdings, Citigroup, RBS Citizens and Santander Holdings were all rebuffed due to flaws in the oversight practices in their banks or what was called by the Feds qualitative concerns.

Zions Bancorporation’s bank plan had been turned down due to it falling short of the capital required in the event of a recession.

The bank now has 90 days for addressing what the Fed identified as weakness and can resubmit their dividend and plans for their buyback of shares.

Shares of Citigroup dropped 4.7% in trading on Thursday morning. The decision by the Fed was part of its yearly checkup that it requires banks that have over $50 million in assets to go through ensuring they could endure the shocks similar to those that upended the banking system, which led to huge bailouts by the government in the financial crisis of 2008.

Citigroup received the largest bailout by the federal government during the financial crisis with $45 billion of cash infusions and many other billions in guarantees.

The Federal Reserve said rejecting Citigroup’s plans reflected the significantly heightened expectations for the most complex and largest holding companies of banks.

The Central Bank said that Citigroup had made significant progress improving risk management and its control practices over the last few years, but its plan for capital contained deficiencies.

The Fed for example questioned the ability of Citigroup to project revenues and losses for the material parts of the company’s global operations.

easyJet the budget airline based in Britain upgraded its forecast for the first half by 25% Tuesday, which sent its shares near an all-time high. This followed tight cost cutting measures and huge popularity of is seating program.

easyJet said it was expecting a loss pretax of between $91 million and $107 million, which was an improvement of a previous forecast of a loss of between $115 million and $147 million.

The airline, which, as its rivals does, traditionally has losses during the winter as fewer people fly. The airline reported a $100 million loss in 2012-13 for the same period.

The upgrade to the forecast was helped due to benign weather that meant there were fewer disruptions that were weather related, said the airline.

easyJet has in the past 12 months taken more share from rival Ryanair through the introduction of measures like allocated seating as well as allowing passengers the chance to change flights to better appeal to the business traveler.

Shares of easyJet have increased by over 60% during the past 12 months. In early premarket trading, the shares were up 4.4% putting them close to their all-time high that was reached in early March of this year.

Airline analysts said although the airline did not comment on its fiscal second half, an upgrade was likely to be the consensus for their forecasts.

Carolyn McCall the CEO at easyJet said the airline’s upgrade show the company’s structural advantage it held not just against other low cost airlines like Ryanair, but the other legacy carriers.

The former entities that were state-owned like Lufthansa in Germany are fighting against the carriers that are low-cost to keep market share across Europe in the sector of short-haul

Revenue per each seat during the six-month frame should rise by 1.5% said easyJet, which was higher than a January forecast thanks to a boost received from the allocated seating program and other airline initiatives.

The improvement forecast by easyJet for the first half comes even though it was hit by additional fuel costs compared to the same time during 2012-13.

Getty Images, the largest photo agency in the world, has made over 35 million photos free for use as it attempts to combat piracy.

Millions of different images including the world famous shots of Barack Obama and Marilyn Monroe will soon be available without any cost to social media sites and blogs.

The photos will have a frame with a code that links them back to the Getty website. Getty said it decided to make the photos available after it realized thousands of images it owns were being used with no attribution.

A business development executive for Getty said the company content already was everywhere. He said if you want an image from Getty today it can be found very easily without any watermark.

The company announced it was making as many as 35 million of its images available through the embed tool it has just started using. The images can be share on sites such as Tumblr and Twitter.

Users have a choice of different types of photos to choose from. The categories range from fashion shows to sporting events to stock images and celebrity gatherings.

There are notable exceptions however, editorial photos for example such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the Tiananmen Square shots from 1989.

Getty in the eyes of many is admitting to defeat. Getty is now saying without saying it that by offering embedded photos it cannot police effectively its own images across the vast Internet.

The code, which is able to be cut and pasted onto any type of website, is similar to the one provided by YouTube for sharing videos. Images are not able to be resized and will have a logo for Getty Images and a photographer’s credit.

Photographers are not pleased, as now some will not be paid anything for the use of their photos. They say they do not work for free and now believe they will not make anything.

The commercial use of the library of Getty images, which includes television, newspapers and advertisers, is to continue being charged.

Walmart Stores has announced it is accelerating its plan for its small store format in the United States for its current fiscal year.

The company will expand its original forecast for capital provided from last October and expects to now add as many as 300 small format stores during the current fiscal year, which would double its original forecast of up to 150 stores.

Walmart U.S. is also continuing its plan to open as many as 115 supercenters during the current year as well.

The CEO and president of Walmart U.S. Bill Simon said the customers’ expectations and needs were changing. They want to be able to shop when they want to shop, how they want to shop and the company is transforming to meet those needs.

Simon said customers like the myriad of selections at its supercenters for trips to stock up, while they also appreciated the smaller stores as fill-in trips.

By unlocking the growth opportunity and the continuance of combining the supercenters with the small store formats and unlimited choices through its ecommerce site, Walmart is providing customers with anywhere, anytime access to its brand, said Simon in a prepared statement.

The small stores have continued delivering positive sales and increases in traffic each quarter. The comp sales for their Neighborhood Market stores increased nearly 4% during the 2014 fiscal year, helped by pharmacy and fresh items.

Simon said that their Neighborhood Market was performing comparable as well as favorable to other leading grocers. The small store expansion as well as providing customers a wide variety of different products, including pharmacy, fresh foods and fuel has helped the company usher in its next generation of retail.

Walmart currently has 345 Neighborhood Markets as well as 20 Walmart Express locations. The Express stores are performing well and have been expanded beyond the pilot program of three markets.

Due to its aggressive project, Walmart U.S. will see an increase in net retail footage growth of more than 23 million square feet during this fiscal year.

To fund additional growth, Walmart U.S. had revised its expenditures in capital forecasted from as much as $6.3 billion to $6.9 billion.

If you were lucky enough to receive Valentine’s Day flowers chances are they came into the U.S. through Miami International Airport.

Over 85% of the flowers imported into the U.S. come through Miami International Airport. That includes the roses on Valentine’s Day. They arrive in many of the passenger flights for different parts of the world.

The carnations, roses, sunflowers, hydrangeas and other types are then rushed on forklifts to refrigerated warehouses, then onto trucks with refrigeration or onto other planes to be delivered to florists, grocery stores and other businesses across the U.S.

Most passengers on airlines focus on those things that are visible, like how much legroom they have and the amount of storage space in the overhead compartments. Few if any think about the cargo beneath the floor.

There are many things traveling with the passengers including luxury clothing from fashion designers in Milan, fresh salmon from Alaska and asparagus from Peru on their way to London.

Even more unusual items can be found onboard from a shipment of diamonds and gold to a live cheetah.

For many passenger airlines in the U.S., cargo might be small but it is an increasingly important sector of their business. The jets of today are built to hold more cargo and airlines have started adding new international routes that are non-stop that have become popular with shippers.

In 2013, air shippers and passenger airlines hauled over 52 million tons of cargo worldwide, representing over $6 trillion in goods. That was an increase of 1.4% from 2012. Air cargo is projected to increase by 17% over the next five years, said analysts.

Shipping cargo by air is nearly 10 times more expensive than cargo shipped by sea. Therefore, air cargo is usually restricted to high-end trendy fashion items, the latest and most popular electronics, flowers and other perishable goods.

Most of the non-perishable items like jeans, t-shirts, and even televisions are shipped by sea. Industry experts say if a product has a low price point, it can usually be found on a ship.

Rates of air cargo have fallen since the recession as more people have opted to use less expensive shipping via sea.