National News

Believe it or not, it's possible to have to the flu and never feel it, as a new study finds three quarters of people who have seasonal and pandemic flu don't exhibit any symptoms. Researchers at University College London in the UK, led by Dr. Andrew Hayward, published their study's results in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. According to the study, recent outbreaks of seasonal flu and the H1N1 influenza pandemic infected one in five people from the general population. Yet, only 23% of these infections actually caused symptoms, and only 17% of those people were actually unwell enough to visit their respective physicians. The research team says that their findings show that influenza rates across all winter seasons was around 22 times higher than the Royal College of General Practitioner...

Every year, consumers from around the world spend a staggering $100 million on bottled water. Not only does that hurt wallets -- spending just a couple bucks a day can really add up -- but plastic water bottles contribute to pollution and harm the environment. In the first week of March, San Francisco took a major stride to help solve both those problems. New proposed legislation would ban the sale of plastic water bottles on city property and make the city the first major municipality to take such action. “There are incredible, enormous environmental costs of plastic water bottles," said Supervisor David Chiu, who introduced the idea. "It takes 1,000 years for a typical plastic water bottle to biodegrade." The production and transportation of the bottles also adds to dependence on fossil...

The small business audit rate decreased in 2013, according to new documentation released by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The decline -- "from 0.71% in 2012 to 0.61% in 2013," according to Small Business Trends -- is not necessarily cause for celebration. When compared with small business audit rates over time, the current percentage is alarmingly high -- or 0.61% compared to 0.36% in 2004. The small decrease over the past year, moreover, is unlikely to repeat itself. "Given the tax agency's belief that small business owners are responsible for a sizeable portion of the tax gap –- the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid -– the IRS seems unlikely to cut the small business audit rate considerably this year," Small Business Trends explains. USA Today confirms the IRS is, if...

Facebook is no stranger to marketing small businesses. Since the social media giant launched in 2004, it has made leaps and bounds to become the number one social media platform in the world. Most recent estimates put its users at 1.3 billion people. Recognizing Facebook's potential for getting brands in front of web users, countless businesses have flocked to the site. Subsequently, Facebook is estimated to earn $2 billion per quarter. It isn't just huge, well-known companies taking advantage of the platform's marketing effectiveness. There are now 25 million small business pages on Facebook. If recent events have proven anything, it's that the SMB market is just as important to Facebook as Facebook is to the SMB market. A Meeting of the Minds The Small and Medium Business Council, mad...