Business

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Financial regulators in New York said yesterday they may bar a British bank from doing business in the state. They said that because the bank allegedly laundered some $250 billion in Iranian money through its branch in Manhattan. The bank is Standard Chartered Bank. It does much of its business in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. But like any global bank, it wants to have a foothold in the U.S. markets, and that foothold is now in danger. For more, we turn to NPR's Jim Zarroli in New York.

Jim, Good morning.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with your happiness.

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MONTAGNE: That's the indicator Fed Chief Ben Bernanke wants to see. Bernanke told a conference of economists last night that despite data pointing to a recovery, many people still feel stressed. He said the economic well-being of Americans is the Fed's ultimate objective - that is, the sense that things are going well.

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Best Buy's founder and former chairman is not happy about the way things are going. That's why Richard Schulze said, yesterday, he wants to buy back the shares he does not already own and take the electronics retailer private. Schulze said he decided to publicly announce this offer because the board was taking too much time with it - could be worth nearly $9 billion in cash.

But as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports, the deal is being met with some skepticism.

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As more people around the world get online using an increasing variety of devices, like smart phones and tablets, the browser wars are back and hotter than ever.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are battling to be the world's most popular browser. No matter what browser one may use, it's still the primary way through which many people still enter the Internet.

So, to browse the latest in browsers, we're joined by Rich Jaroslovsky. He's a technology columnist with Bloomberg News.

Good morning.

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And today's last word in business is a deal with some strings attached. You have no idea yet what a terrible pun that is. The final notes have been played in a criminal case federal prosecutors brought against Gibson Guitar Corporation.

The Justice Department is dropping its charges against the guitar maker for illegally buying and importing exotic wood - specifically, ebony from Madagascar and rosewood and ebony from India. The company will pay a penalty of $300,000 and give another $50,000 for conservation efforts.

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Dr. Atul Gawande spends a lot of time thinking about how to make health care better. A couple of years ago his best-selling book, "The Checklist Manifesto," demonstrated how following a simple list could prevent sometimes-deadly medical mistakes. Now he's looking at a bigger picture - the entire health-care system.

It may take some time to pinpoint the exact cause of India's massive blackouts last week, but the underlying issue for India and many other parts of the developing world is that supply is struggling to keep up with the growing demand for power — an imbalance that can affect the reliability of electric grids.

To the average consumer, car insurance can seem pretty arbitrary. What you get charged often depends more on where you drive than how you drive.

John Egan of InsuranceQuotes.com says it's very often about location, location, location. Two people, he says, can live in two different zip codes in the same city "and pay a substantially different amount of money, depending on exactly where [they] live in your community."

All Things Considered host Audie Cornish talks to NPR's Steve Henn about the World Wide Web's birthday.

"After years maintaining innocence," as Nashville Public Radio says, Gibson Guitar Corp. has agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty, donate $50,000 to a conservation fund and give up its claims to ebony and rosewood worth nearly $262,000 to avoid being criminally prosecuted for importing exotic woods.

Political and economic changes in Myanmar have fueled a wave of labor unrest in the country also known as Burma. Myanmar is in the very early stages of industrial development and has some of the lowest wages in the world. Wages are unlikely to reach levels seen elsewhere in the region anytime soon.

Death Wish is the name of a coffee roaster in upstate New York. It claims to sell the strongest coffee in the world: 200 percent more caffeine than the typical coffee shop brew, according to the company's website.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with an airline refund.

Refunds are starting to arrive in the bank accounts of Southwest Airlines' customers who were billed multiple times for promotional fares booked on Friday. Some customers paid for their discounted air travel as many as 20 times, according to the Associated Press. The company blamed the problem on a computer glitch.