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The newspaper coverage was troubling: London’s huge international showcase was beset by planning problems, local opposition and labor woes _ and the transport was a mess.

It sounds like the 2012 Olympics, but this was the Great Exhibition of 1851 generating stories of late trains, unscrupulous landlords and dangerous overcrowding.

Coverage of the event is found in 4 million pages of newspapers from the 18th and 19th centuries being made available online Tuesday by the British Library, in what head of newspapers Ed King calls “a digital Aladdin’s Cave” for researchers.

The online archive is a partnership between the library and digital publishing firm Brightsolid, which has been scanning 8,000 pages a day from the library’s vast periodical archive for the past year and plans to digitize 40 million pages over the next decade.

A glance at the stories of crime and scandal shows some things haven’t changed _ including grumbling letter-writers complaining about disruption caused by the 1851 exhibition, held inside a specially built Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park.

“People were saying, ‘This isn’t good, I can’t ride my horse in Hyde Park,’” said King. One regional newspaper editor complained that the “celebrated p.m. fast train service to London” arrived two hours late and warned visitors “not to trust themselves to the tender mercies of the numerous private housekeepers” renting out rooms at exorbitant prices.

The library hopes the searchable online trove will be a major resource for academics and researchers. The vast majority of the British Library’s 750 million pages of newspapers _ the largest collection in the world _ are currently available only on microfilm or bound in bulky volumes at a newspaper archive in north London, where the yellowing journals cover 20 miles (32 kilometers) of shelves.

“We’ve got 200 years of newspapers locked away,” King said. “We’re trying to open it up to a wider audience.”

There will be a cost to download articles online, though they can be accessed for free at the library’s London reading rooms.

Most of the first batch of 4 million pages are from the 19th century, and include stories about huge international events, freak accidents and local crimes, as well as articles about Victorian celebrities such as Florence Nightingale, whose nursing of troops in the Crimean War made her famous.

There are stories of war and famine, crime and punishment, alongside birth and death notices, family announcements and advertisements for soap, cocoa, marmalade, miracle cures and treatments for baldness.

Crime columns provide a glimpse at rough 19th-century justice. Newspapers printed lists of people transported to Australia for stealing money, silver, cloth, hay and, in one case, “seven cups and five saucers.”

The archive includes national and regional newspapers from Britain and Ireland, as well as more specialized publications. The Cheltenham Looker-On reported on society, fashions and gossip in the genteel English spa town. The Poor Law Unions’ Gazette contained vivid accounts of workhouse life, and descriptions of inmates who had absconded.

King said the library hopes the archive will also help amateur genealogists find information about their ancestors.

Library staff have already highlighted a few links to the famous, including an 1852 appearance in insolvency court by Simon Cowell’s great-great-great grandfather, Michael Gashion, and a local newspaper item about the great-great grandfather of actress Kate Winslet, who was “embedded in a mass of bricks and timber” when a hotel facade fell on him in 1903.

Bob Satchwell of press trade group the Society of Editors welcomed the archive _ some good news for newspapers amid all the negative press from Britain’s ongoing phone hacking scandal.

He said the website “opens up a magical new window on a magnificent treasure trove of real history, recording the lives of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in vibrant communities, rather than merely the cold facts of politics and pestilence.”

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Tropical Storm Kenneth is strengthening in the eastern Pacific Ocean, with forecasters calling it a rare late-season tropical storm.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Sunday that Kenneth had maximum sustained winds near 50 mph (85 kph). The storm was centered about 505 miles (810 kilometers) south of Manzanillo, Mexico, but was moving away from the coast.

Projections show Kenneth moving west out to sea, away from land, over the next several days.

The eastern Pacific hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

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From coast to coast and North to South, the Occupy Wall Street protest against corporate greed that started out with a few young people in a lower Manhattan park grew to vocal thousands with weekend rallies in about two dozen states and supporters joining in from Canada and overseas.

Tens of thousands nicknamed “the indignant” marched in cities across Europe on Saturday. Violence broke out in Rome and dozens were injured.

Marches in the United States remained largely nonconfrontational, although dozens of people were arrested in New York when police moved to contain overflowing crowds or keep them off private property. Two police officers in New York City were injured and had to be hospitalized.

In Times Square, thousands of demonstrators mixed with gawkers, Broadway showgoers, tourists and police to create a chaotic scene in the midst of Manhattan.

“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” protesters chanted from within police barricades. Police, some in riot gear and mounted on horses, tried to push them out of the square and onto the sidewalks in an attempt to funnel the crowds away.

Sandra Fox, 69, of Baton Rouge, La., stood, confused, on 46th Street with a ticket for “Anything Goes” in her hand as riot police pushed a knot of about 200 shouting protesters toward her.

“I think it’s horrible what they’re doing,” she said of the protesters. “These people need to go get jobs.”

The Times Square rally lasted several hours before the crowd dispersed. Over the course of what was billed as “a global day of protest,” city police arrested more than 80 people in demonstrations at Times Square, Washington Square Park and a nearby Citibank bank branch. Police cited violations such as wearing masks, criminal trespass, and refusing to leave the park at midnight when police warned them it was closed.

Police spokesman Paul Browne said one of the police officers hospitalized suffered a head injury, the other a foot injury. Two dozen were arrested when demonstrators entered the Citibank bank branch and refused to leave, police said.

Citibank said in a statement that police asked the branch to close until the protesters could be taken away. “One person asked to close an account and was accommodated,” Citibank said.

Earlier in the day, as many as 1,000 demonstrators paraded to a Chase bank branch, banging drums, blowing horns and carrying signs decrying corporate greed. A few protesters went inside the bank to close their accounts, but the group didn’t stop other customers from getting inside or seek to blockade the business.

Lily Paulina of Brooklyn said she was taking her money out because she was upset that JPMorgan Chase was making billions, while its customers struggled with bank fees and home foreclosures.

“Chase bank is making tons of money off of everyone … while people in the working class are fighting just to keep a living wage in their neighborhood,” the 29-year-old United Auto Workers organizer said.

Police told the marchers to stay on the sidewalk, and the demonstration seemed fairly orderly as it wound through downtown streets.

Sergio Jimenez, 25, said he quit his job in Texas to come to New York to protest. He participated in an anti-war march to mark the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan War.

“These wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were all based on lies,” Jimenez said. “And if we’re such an intelligent country, we should figure out other ways to respond to terror, instead of with terror.”

Throughout the country _ from about 50 people in Jackson, Miss., to some 2,000 in Pittsburgh _ the protest gained momentum.

Nearly 1,500 protesters gathered for a march past banks in downtown Orlando, Fla. Hundreds marched on a Key Bank branch in Anchorage, and declared it be foreclosed. In Colorado, about 1,000 people rallied in downtown Denver to support Occupy Wall Street. Nearly 200 people spent a cold night in tents in Grand Circus Park in Detroit, donning gloves, scarves and heavy coats to keep warm. Helen Stockton, a 34-year-old certified midwife from Ypsilanti, said they planned to remain there “as long as it takes to effect change.”

“It’s easy to ignore us,” Stockton said. Then she referred to the financial institutions, saying, “But we are not going to ignore them. Every shiver in our bones reminds us of why we are here.”

Hundreds more converged near the Michigan’s Capitol in Lansing with the same message, the Lansing State Journal reported.

Rallies drew young and old, laborers and retirees. In Pittsburgh, marchers included parents with children in strollers. The peaceful crowd stretched for two or three blocks.

“I see our members losing jobs. People are angry,” said Janet Hill, 49, who works for the United Steelworkers, which she said hosted a sign-making event before the march.

Retired teacher Albert Siemsen said at a demonstration in Milwaukee that he’d grown angry watching school funding get cut at the same time banks and corporations gained more influence in government. The 81-year-old wants to see tighter Wall Street regulation.

Around him, protesters held signs reading: “Keep your corporate hands off my government,” and “Mr. Obama, Tear Down That Wall Street.”

In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick visited protesters in Boston’s Dewey Square for the first time. He said after walking through the camp that he better understands the range of views and was sympathetic to concerns about unemployment, health care and the influence of money in politics.

The Rev. Al Sharpton led a march in Washington that was not affiliated with the Occupy movement but shared similar goals. His rally was aimed at drumming up support for President Barack Obama’s jobs plan. Thousands of demonstrators packed the lawn in the shadow of the Washington Monument to hear labor, education and civil rights leaders speak.

Hundreds protested in the heart of Toronto’s financial district. Some announced plans to camp out indefinitely in St. James Park. Protests were also held in other cities across Canada from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Vancouver, British Columbia.

Overseas, tens of thousands nicknamed “the indignant” marched in cities across Europe, as the protests that began in New York linked up with long-running demonstrations against government cost-cutting and failed financial policies in Europe. Protesters also turned out in Australia and Asia.

In the violence that broke out in Rome, police fired tear gas and water cannons at the protesters who broke away from the main demonstration, smashing shop and bank windows, torching cars and hurling bottles.

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The Iraqi army was supposed to pull out of the nation’s cities by the end of this year but is delaying the pullback over security concerns, the Iraqi military spokesman said Saturday.

The delay is an acknowledgment that even after four years of declining violence, Iraq’s police force is not capable of maintaining security on its own. The other worry is that violence will increase when American troops complete their own withdrawal from the country at year’s end.

The government’s plan remains to eventually hand over security to the police and pull Iraqi troops back to bases outside the cities. But the spokesman for the Baghdad military operations command, Qassim al-Moussawi, said Saturday that the military is worried that the police will not be able to handle security in all areas of the country.

“We started to hand over gradually in some areas. But other areas we can’t hand over to the police because still the Interior Ministry needs the support of the Iraqi army. It is not capable now nor by the end of 2011.”

The Iraqi army’s presence can be felt all over Iraq’s quasi-militarized cities, where soldiers in helmets and flak vests and carrying AK-47’s man checkpoints and drive around in Humvees. The army has received the bulk of the training and support from the U.S. military and is generally seen as more competent than the police.

The police, since they tend to work and live in the same areas, have had problems with infiltration by various militant factions and are perceived as less willing to go after lawbreakers.

“We are monitoring the situation to see when police have the capability to maintain the security in order to hand over the responsibility to them,” al-Moussawi said.

Al-Moussawi said there were concerns that if the Iraqi army pulled out of the cities, violence would return.

According to the 2008 agreement signed between the U.S. and Iraq, all American troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of this year. The American government will still keep a sizable presence in Iraq where it has its largest embassy in the world plus offices in Irbil, Kirkuk and Basra.

Iraqi political leaders have said they would like to have American military training help, but negotiations between the two sides are stuck on what type of legal protection to give any American troops who remain behind.

Even if a contingent of American forces were to stay behind, they would likely have a very limited role that would not extend much to combat operations, meaning the job of protecting the country against both Sunni and Shiite militias would rest solely with the Iraqis.

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Thousands of dehumidifiers are being recalled for a second time after being blamed for more house fires.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says LG Electronics Tianjin Appliance Co. is again announcing a recall of Goldstar and Comfort-Aire dehumidifiers because they can pose a fire and burn hazard. The CPSC says they are believed to be responsible for more than $1 million in property damage.

About 98,000 dehumidifiers are being recalled. The power connector for the machine’s compressor can short-circuit paydayloans.

The dehumidifiers were first recalled in December 2009 following four significant fires. Since then, the company has received 16 additional incident reports of arcing, smoke and fire associated with the dehumidifiers, including nine significant fires. No injuries have been reported.

Consumers can call 877-220-0479 for more information.

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Stocks are rising after Tropical Storm Irene wound up being less severe than many analysts had anticipated.

The storm ripped through the East Coast and caused widespread flooding. Millions were still without power. However, a consulting firm predicted that insured damages would range between $2 billion and $3 billion, lower than initially estimated.

The New York Stock Exchange and other major U.S. exchanges opened for trading as usual Monday.

Shortly after the opening bell, the Dow Jones industrial average is up 170 points, or 1.5 percent, at 11,455. The S&P 500 is up 20, or 1.6 percent, at 1,197. The Nasdaq is up 42, or 1.7 percent, at 2,521.

Greek stocks jumped 15 percent after two major banks agreed to merge to better withstand that nation’s debt crisis.

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London police have arrested a 61-year old man in connection with the ongoing investigation into electronic eavesdropping of voicemail messages.

The man is the 12th person arrested in the scandal tied to the defunct British tabloid, the News of the World.

Detectives have been investigating claims the newspaper illegally eavesdropped on the phone messages of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims payday loan.

Those arrested in past include Murdoch’s former British newspaper chief Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, an ex-News of the World editor who went on to be Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications chief.

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GE Healthcare, a maker of diagnostic imaging equipment, said Monday it is moving its X-ray global headquarters from the United States to Beijing as it seeks to tap China and other emerging markets.

The General Electric Co. unit is the first business of the industrial and financial giant to relocate to China.

Anne LeGrand, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare Global X-Ray, told a news conference that the decision to move from Waukesha, Wisconsin, was made two years ago and will be completed by early fall.

She said “there is certainly the opportunity” to move other GE Healthcare units to China, but that is “something that we will continue to evaluate.”

The move involves LeGrand and a handful of her top managers. In an interview, she said they will add other people to the team as they expand in China, but no jobs will be lost.

The move follows an announcement last year that GE plans to invest $2 billion in China, including $500 million in six research centers, one of which GE X-ray is developing in Chengdu in central China. The company has already hired “close to 100 engineers” for the center in Chengdu, LeGrand said.

Rachel Duan, president and CEO of GE Healthcare China, said they plan to launch more than 20 new products in China over the next two years. Some 70 percent of those will be aimed at general medical professionals who make up the primary healthcare sector.

Duan said they will be developed for customers in China, “but we see a potential down the road for exporting to some of the other emerging markets.”

LeGrand said some of the products they had developed in China were now being sold elsewhere, such as the Ling Long digital X-ray, now being sold in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. She said emerging markets represented “double digit growth” for GE’s X-ray business.

Over the past two decades, GE Healthcare China has focused on the high-end market in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou and selling to large hospitals. Now they also intend to focus on the primary care sector in poorer parts of the country, including rural areas, Duan said.

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Dietician Maisie Vanriel won Moneyville’s blogging contest and will begin writing twice a week beginning in early July exploring smart food shopping, and things the food industry doesn’t want you to know. She will also be taking part in a 12-week challenge to reduce her family grocery spending.

Canadians can reduce their grocery bill and eat healthier food and they do not need coupons and special deals to do it. As a dietitian, I often teach healthier eating by teaching smarter shopping, because supermarkets have perfected separating you from your money and not always in the healthiest way.

Here are 5 things you may not know about grocery stores:

1. Why produce is misted.

The first thing you see when you enter many grocery stores is a colourful wall of fresh produce, sometimes being misted gently. It screams healthy. That wholesome look has been proven to result in $5 to $8 more in sales per visit.

So next time you go into a grocery store save the produce area for last. Start by walking past the cash registers and the rows of chips, candy and treats. I guarantee you will buy less. Nothing kills spending faster than the thought that the last thing your waistline needs is $5 worth of treats.

2. Why milk is at the back.

Most quick trips to the grocery store are for bread, milk and eggs, so marketers place these items at the back of the store hoping you will walk down an aisle and make an impulse buy. Avoid the temptation — just walk around the perimeter, pick up your bread, milk and eggs and leave.

3. Always try lower shelves.

If you must walk down an aisle it is easy to buy healthier foods and save money by choosing the foods you have to bend down or stretch up to reach. The shelf space at eye level is aimed at the average Canadian woman who is 5-foot-5. Since women do most of the grocery shopping manufacturers will pay thousands of dollars per store to own that space.

Take the cracker aisle; the least healthy, most expensive crackers are generally on the eye-level shelves. Choose healthier and less expensive crackers by just bending down or stretching up to reach them.

4. Featured specials aren’t so special.

Be wary of items that are “on special” or “featured” at the front of an aisle. Notice they don’t always say “on sale,” because often times they are not. A “featured” cereal may be exactly the same price as it is in the aisle, just placed in a more prominent spot to increase sales.

5. Watch for “me too” items.

The front of the aisle is also a favourite spot for what I call “me too” items. A more expensive cereal is “accidentally” placed next to the featured cereal, and only when you get to the checkout do you find out it is more expensive. Most shoppers just keep it rather than go back to change it. Next time avoid those featured areas.

It may not seem like much but remember, “look after your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” It is often the mundane day-to-day activities like grocery shopping where people are most easily parted from their money.

Also read:

New blogger to cut food spending 15%

Maisie Vanriel is a nutritionist with the Region of Peel in the Toronto area. She has a degree in Nutritrion and Food Science and has been a cook since the age of six.

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Ads that are clever and actually help sell the product? What a novel idea.

This weekend at the Oscars of advertising, a festival in Cannes, France, judges for the first time will give an award for effectiveness _ evaluating ads for whether they sell more computers or deodorant, not just whether they make people laugh, cry or cringe.

The award, to be handed out Saturday at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, signals a shift toward accountability, and comes at a time when advertising agencies are fighting for every dollar they can get.

Corporate marketing budgets were slashed by 8 percent during the Great Recession, and that spending still hasn’t come back, according to Zenith Optimedia, a research division of communications giant Publicis Groupe.

“You have to prove you got someone to pay attention and act, particularly in this economy,” said Chris Kempczinski, Kraft Foods’ senior vice president of marketing, who helped judge the category.

Cannes told agencies making submissions that to win in the effectiveness category, an ad had to show a proven impact on “consumer behavior, brand equity, sales, and where identifiable, profit.” Judges combed through more than 150 nomination forms audited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

The 10 finalists, announced Friday, include four campaigns from the United States and three from the United Kingdom.

Some were obvious picks, like Apple’s Mac-versus-PC campaign, in which two men, one uptight and the other hip, role-play as the equipment. Others had subtler impact, such as one for Hasbro’s online game “Monopoly City Streets,” where players built virtual properties on Google Maps, then collected rent.

Industry insiders say the front-runner is a campaign for Old Spice men’s body wash called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The commercials, made by the Portland office of agency Wieden+Kennedy, feature a muscular man _ shirtless more often than not _ who repeatedly tells female viewers to look over at her man _ then at him.

“Sadly, he isn’t me,” he says in the spot, “but if he stopped using lady-scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me.”

The ad created buzz for Procter & Gamble, which makes Old Spice. The first commercial in this campaign got 40 million YouTube views in a week. The spot was parodied dozens of times, including by Grover on “Sesame Street.” The star, Isaiah Mustafa, made the talk show rounds and appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Ellen.”

A response campaign consisting of more than 180 YouTube videos in which Mustafa addresses viewers’ comments directly got 5 payday loans.9 million YouTube views in its first 24 hours, more than President Barack Obama got for his election-night victory speech, Wieden+Kennedy says.

“It was a magic moment kind of thing,” says Mark Fitzloff, an executive creative director at the Portland agency.

But that won’t be enough by itself to convince the Cannes judges, who are more concerned with business results. The Old Spice spot will have to be deemed more effective than ads for Snickers and Axe shower gel, among others.

“Who cares about brand buzz?” says judge Tim Broadbent, Global Effectiveness Director at Ogilvy & Mather. “We wanted to know, could you prove to a skeptical finance director that it worked?”

Marc Pritchard, who oversees P&G’s $8.6 billion marketing budget, says yes. Before the campaign, the brand was facing huge challenges, he says. Old Spice was seen as, well, old. And most men were perfectly content to clean themselves with soap.

But that’s changed. Old Spice body wash sales grew 27 percent in the six months after the campaign launched, making it the top seller in the category.

The weeklong festival honors the most creative work from around the world in film, radio, print and outdoor advertising. Twelve of the 13 main categories will still be about presentation _ how funny, shocking or quirky the ads are.

In years past, when that was all the judges had to worry about, winners included Bud Light’s 2004 “Real Men of Genius” campaign, mocking men who commit faux pas like wearing too much cologne.

For traditional ad firms facing challenges from scrappy digital upstarts, it’s important to be able to demonstrate to clients like P&G that a full-fledged multimedia campaign featuring highly produced television commercials is a better investment than a viral video shot on a handheld camera.

After all, it can cost $2 million to produce a 30-second television commercial and an additional $10 million to buy the ad time for a national campaign in the U.S., Kraft’s Kempczinski says. Companies expect to get their money’s worth, especially because budgets are still tight.

“I think the idea that creatives should be shielded from commercial reality is insane,” Broadbent says. “Cannes is growing up.”

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