If you have no credit history at all, then you may find it difficult to apply for best credit cards. As most issuers check credit history, then they will most often deny applications from people without a lot of it. They prefer people who have purchased using credit cards prior to determining whether these consumers are worthy of a new credit card.

However, you can actually get credit cards even if you have no credit history. Read more…

Net income of $1.38 billion translated to $1.33 per share, beating the $1.29 predicted by analysts polled by FactSet.

Revenue jumped 10 percent to $6.82 billion, slightly above expectations of $6.81 billion.

CEO Jim Skinner said the Oak Brook-based company, the world’s largest burger chain, plans to open 1,300 new restaurants in the coming year, to add to the current roster of 33,100-plus locations around the world.

Skinner also said McDonald’s would continue to set aside money for renovating restaurants. The renovations have helped attract new customers but have also needled some franchisees who had to pay some of the cost.

Facebook will start requiring people to switch to a new profile format known as Timeline, making photos, links and personal musings from the past much easier to find.

Timeline is essentially a scrapbook of your whole life on Facebook. By contrast, Facebooks traditional profile page is more of a snapshot of you today.

Although some people have already voluntarily switched to Timeline, Facebook hadnt made that mandatory. Beginning Tuesday, Facebook is telling some users that they have seven days to clean up their profiles before Timeline gets automatically activated. Facebook is rolling out the requirement to others over the next few weeks.

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The baht snapped five days of gains, retreating from its strongest level in almost three weeks on speculation importers increased demand for the US dollar to take advantage of the more favourable exchange rate.

The currency advanced by 1.7% in five days as global funds bought $1.5 billion more of Thai bonds than they sold in seven days of net purchases through Monday, said the Thai Bond Market Association.

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Many famous Steve Jobs moments involve him speaking before enraptured audiences. One of my most vivid Jobs memories is of the time I saw him standing quietly at the back of one.

I was attending the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Boston in 1989, and was trapped in a throng on the show floor watching one of Pixar’s short cartoons. (The company hadn’t started making feature-length ones, and wasn’t yet a cherished icon of American entertainment.) The person next to me happened to be Jobs, who had bought George Lucas’s graphics division in 1985 and bootstrapped it into independent existence as Pixar.

I’m not sure if anyone else noticed him watching the movie and observing the crowd they were too busy being entertained.

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For a few hours Friday, it looked like the First Family might be seriously looking at purchasing the newly renovated Katharine Hepburn estate in Connecticut on the Fenwick waterfront.

At least that was the rumor reported Friday by Hearst Newspapers, picking up on an earlier report of speculation by venerable gossip columnist Liz Smith — and it was soon bouncing around Twitter.

But the White House moved swiftly to squelch the speculation with a short statement: “It’s not true.”

Democratic political consultant and author William Curry said Friday he would have been surprised if the rumor turned out to be fact. I

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When it comes to plastic, to love it or to hate it is always the question. Indeed, there is a certain level of fear and loathing we have toward the stuff, when we hear, for example, about BPA leaching out of baby bottles into babies. But you have to admit, we kind of love — and definitely rely upon — the utility and convenience of the stuff whether in the form of a Ziploc bag, Nalgene bottle, credit card … you get the picture.

Plastic is everywhere. One way to push back on plastic use is to ban it, as Whole Foods did with its ban on single use plastic bags. E

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