points."
Specialty apparel chains, however
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"Going through the mall on Friday, the stores that had not been doing as well -- AnnTaylor, Limited
interesting blog , Gap -- were very aggressively promoting," said Jeff Edelman, director of retail and consumer advisory at RSM McGladrey.
Edelman expects holiday sales to be flat this year, but he said he expected profits for most retailers to be higher.
The NRF said shoppers' destination of choice appeared to be department stores, with nearly half of holiday shoppers visiting at least one. A little more than 43 percent of shoppers said they went to a discount retailer this weekend.
(Additional reporting by Jessica Wohl in Chicago, Emily Kaiser in Washington and Phil Wahba in New York; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Matthew Lewis and Maureen Bavdek)
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A "silent pandemic" of chronic disease is creeping up on poor countries and will force pharmaceutical firms to take a more tiered approach to pricing some of their most lucrative medicines.
Drugs for diseases which were previously dominant only in the rich, well-fed world
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But the price of many of these medicines and their unsuitability for emerging markets are high barriers to access.
And yet unless those hurdles are overcome, experts say
interesting blog , chronic diseases could swamp developing health systems and kill many millions -- and the hopes of drugmakers like GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis of supplying vast new markets in emerging economies will struggle to come to fruition.
Discounting prices for poorer countries, a move already made by some big drug firms, is a start. But pharmaceutical bosses will also be under pressure to join patent pools to promote downward price pressure on drugs for major chronic diseases by increasing the number of