By Lorie Hailey
Associate Editor
Tobacco setting is under way across the state, reports the Lexington Herald Leader. About 30 percent of the expected crop has been planted, but the state needs “some good rainfall,” said Andy Bailey, an extension specialist for the University of Kentucky.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects nationwide tobacco acreage to fall 2 percent year over year, to 317,950 acres in 2012. In Kentucky, it’s expected to be up 4 percent, to 80,700 acres, the paper reports.
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Facebook was supposed to soar. Instead, it plunged, according to the Associated Press.
After the social network’s stock fizzled on Friday in its long-awaited debut, its stock fell 11 percent on Monday, even as the rest of the stock market rallied.
The downward spiral has left some people sitting on big losses, and others scratching their heads, the AP says. Nothing fundamental has changed at Facebook in the last week since the much-hyped company came to the stock market — Facebook still has more than 900 million users, its 28-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg controls the company, and it is still one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public.
But investors don’t seem convinced. Facebook’s stock closed Monday at $34.03, down 11 percent from Friday’s closing price of $38.23.
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The chemical weapons destruction plant being built at the Blue Grass Army Depot is more than 51 percent complete, project officials said Monday.
The weapons destruction plant is being built to safely and efficiently destroy the 523-ton stockpile of chemical weapons — blister and nerve agent — stored at the Army depot, the Richmond Register reports.
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The fast-food drive-through is spilling into the world of designer coffee, convenience stores and fast-casual chains such as Panera Bread, reports USA TODAY.
Thanks, in part, to these new avenues, drive-through sales, which slowed during the recession, are growing. Sales were up 3 percent in 2011, and up 2 percent in 2010, after falling 1 percent in recession-fed 2009, according to a report from researcher NPD Group, to be released Tuesday. Last year, some 12.4 billion consumers visited fast-food drive-throughs, a 2 percent traffic increase over the prior year, NPD says.
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