Walmart opens 1st rapid distributor
Walmart Inc. opened the first of four fulfillment centers Wednesday that it says will use a patent-pending process to speed packing and shipping times for online orders.
Besides the new 1 million-square-foot facility in Joliet, Ill., the company said in June that it will build three more of these "next-generation" facilities over the next three years. When they're all completed, they could provide next-day or two-day shipping to 75% of the U.S. population, the company said.
Working with tech firm Knapp, Walmart developed an automated, high-density storage system that streamlines what was a 12-step process into five.
Walmart tested the system at a fulfillment center in Pennsylvania and found the benefits included doubling both the center's storage capacity and the number of orders it can fulfill in a day.
The fulfillment centers will move not only the millions of items on Walmart.com but also the Marketplace items shipped through Walmart Fulfillment Services.
-- Serenah McKay
Madoff victims due an additional $372M
Victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme will soon get another $372 million from a government entity that has paid out more than $4 billion in forfeited funds since the collapse of Madoff's funds in 2008.
The eighth payment so far from the U.S. Justice Department's Madoff Victim Fund will go out to about 40,000 victims worldwide, bringing the total recovery from all sources of compensation to just over 88% of their losses, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan said Wednesday in a statement.
The money was raised through government settlements with Madoff's bank, JPMorgan Chase, as well as some of his oldest customers, according to the statement. Madoff died last year in prison, where he was serving a 150-year prison term.
The U.S. fund is separate from the repayment process being overseen by a trustee, Irving Picard, in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan. His litigation against customers who profited from the scam has so far recovered more than $14.5 billion, most of which as already been returned to victims.
-- Bloomberg News WPNS
Index jumps 18.34, wraps up at 738.33
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, closed Thursday at 738.33, up 18.34.
"After six consecutive days of losses the S&P 500 Index rallied Wednesday following an intervention by the Bank of England to support their long-dated government bond market which helped ease investor fears of rising U.S. Treasury yields as the energy and communication services sectors outperformed," said Leon Lants, managing director at Stephens Inc.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.