If you own a small business and are based in the US, you might want to have a look at Crest Capital. They offer help for small businesses including financing and business equipment leasing. Their aim is to help small companies finance equipment or software that is essential to the growth of their business. They offer a number of solutions including loans and leases, refinances and working capital. The advantage of their solutions is that they can be processed very quickly and can cut out a lot of the red tape which is often associated with getting a loan from a bank.

Waitrose has been criticised by human rights activists for selling fish from Zimbabwe. They say it is wrong to fly in food from a country that is on the brink of starvation. Waitrose say that the fish is sourced from a fair trade supplier which is majority owned by native Zimbabweans and which pays its worker substantially more than the minimum wage. Campaigners are planning protests at all Waitrose outlets which currently stock tilapia fillets, the fish at the centre of the debate.

I have been playing a lot of poker recently and came across this poker calculator. It is called the holdem calculator and it helps you to work out the poker odds. With the calculator you can open any online poker table and it will automatically detect your game and display the real time odds and game statistics. You can also use the tool simultaneously on multiple tables. The calculator is designed to help your decision making by giving you a clear idea of the odds and helping you to avoid making mistakes when playing. You can download a free trial version to see if it works for you but some of the larger casinos are currently offering free lifetime membership of the calculator for a limited time.

Peterborough council will start charging supermarkets for recovering abandoned shopping trolleys. Officials will fine the stores for any trolleys that their staff have to collect. They believe that this new scheme will encourage supermarkets to improve security for their trolleys and provide a better collection system.

I found this website the other day called Sloterix that allows you to play online slots. The website has several different casino slots including Eurogrand Slots that offers 10 different slots with prizes of up to $5 million You can bet anything from small amounts as little as 25 cents up to $100. All you need to do to get started and play slots is download and install the software. Many of the games also include a welcome bonus for first time users.

I read this article about a website that has been set up to reunite people with their lost gloves. The website was set up by Jennifer Gooch and so far has reunited four gloves with their owners. She is now working on four similar sites for other cities as well as a book which will show the gloves she has found.

I came across this website the other day that offers online backgammon. You can join for free and play backgammon for real money online. Prizes range from $5 up to $50,000. All you need to do is to download the free software and install it. The website offers live backgammon tournaments and also has a lot of useful information about how to play, including tips to help you improve your game. It is also available in seven languages.

Around 40,000 customers of Travelscope have been told that their holiday bookings can no longer be honoured after the company went into administration. All customers will get a refund but many who were due to depart in the next few weeks are angry that they have not been given time to make other arrangements.

I read this article the other day that suggests the chicken you buy from the supermarket could actually be months old. It suggests that a lot of poultry sold in supermarkets is actually imported from places like Brazil and Thailand and can often be weeks or even months old. The article also suggests that meat in products like ready meals could have been thawed and frozen several times. I find this particularly worrying as I tend to buy meat and then freeze it to use later in the month thinking it is fresh. I am starting to wonder if I am putting my health at risk through relying on the supermarkets to provide me with food that is fresh. The Food and Farming Minister is now backing a campaign to clarify the labelling rules so that customers do not buy a product made from thawed meat that they think is fresh.

It appears that there is no longer a demand for angel tree toppers with people preferring to put a star at the top of their Christmas tree. That’s according to this article which says Woolworths have stopped selling angel tree toppers this year. Ten years ago angels were the most popular tree topper but stars now outsell angels more than ten fold.

I went shopping the other day and found that nearly every store I visited offered me a store card. Whilst they advertise the fact that you would save 10% on your shopping none of the stores explained anything more about the card they were offering. Personally I know that store cards are a bad idea because they charge such extortionate interest rates which are often much higher than putting your shopping on an ordinary credit card. This article talks about store cards and claims that shoppers could actually be paying twice as much for their purchases if they put them on a store card. In some cases consumers could end up paying as much in interest as the original cost of their purchase. The article makes interesting reading but it makes it clear that store cards are a bad idea.