The Bush administration predicted Thursday that a record number of taxpayers can expect refunds this year, and that the average tax refund check will be $300 bigger than last year. The Treasury Department credited the most recent round of tax cuts, passed in May, with fattening this year’s refunds. As a result of the cuts, the department expects the government to mail $195 billion in tax refunds this spring, a $37 billion increase over last year.
Nordstrom Inc.’s fourth-quarter income surged 74 percent on strong sales and improved cost controls. The Seattle-based upscale retailer late Thursday reported income of $104.3 million, or 74 cents a share, for the quarter ended Jan. 31, up from $60 million, or 44 cents a share, in the same period last year. Results handily topped the average analyst estimate of 66 cents a share, according to Thomson First Call.
Evidence continues to build that the U.S. economy is strengthening – including on the jobs front. The Conference Board said Thursday that its Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose 0.5 percent in January to 115.0 following gains of 0.2 percent in December and 0.3 percent in November. The index is closely watched because it forecasts trends in the economy in the next three to six months. In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, the Labor Department reported that the number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week. That offered hope that companies may be feeling better about business conditions and are less inclined to hand out pink slips.
An MIT graduate student won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize and $30,000 on Thursday for inventing a device that makes low-cost eyeglass lenses within 10 minutes. Saul Griffith, a 30-year-old doctoral candidate, also created electronic goggles that diagnose vision problems. Griffith, who grew up in Sydney, Australia, said that as a child he took apart anything he could – from Christmas toys to his mother’s camera – to see how they worked. He tried a number of what he called “fairly crazy schemes” before coming up with a device like a desktop printer that uses liquid-filled molds to produce low-cost lenses quickly and cheaply. Griffith became interested in the project after a Kenyan official told him that an eyeglass scarcity was one of that country’s biggest problems. Mass-produced lenses are fairly cheap, but an inventory of thousands of lenses must be kept on hand to meet various vision problems. That’s too expensive in some parts of the world.
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