Pucker up!
Is that Lead in Your Lipstick? FDA Tests Reveal Raised Lead Levels in U.S. Lipsticks -- In 2007, largely in response to a report released by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, the FDA began testing various lipsticks sold in the United States. After testing some 400 brands, FDA scientists concluded that none of them contained unsafe levels of lead. Many of them did contain lead, but all were below the 5 parts-per-million recommended as safe by the state of California (known to have the most conservative law on the use of lead in consumer products), and far below the 10ppm considered to be the maximum safe limit by Health Canada, which has drafted guidelines on impurities in cosmetics, such as lead. At the time, those weighing in with the most lead contained about 3 parts per million. The FDA said there was no cause for consumer concern, especially given how little lipstick is actually ingested.

Oh good.
Airbus to inspect all A380 superjumbos for wing cracks -- Aircraft maker Airbus has been ordered to check all A380 superjumbo planes currently in service after cracks were found in wing components. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has ordered all 68 Airbus A380 superjumbo planes currently in operation to be checked. It extends an earlier check of 20 A380 jets, whose wings are made in North Wales, ordered by the EASA last month.

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Join Jason and Hubwoo for a webinar next week.
How to Better Leverage Your ERP Investment with a Supplier Network -- Hear insights from Jason Busch on how organizations today use third-party supplier networks to optimize their ERP procurement technology. Learn how CONSOL Energy drove $44M in cost savings leveraging an ERP-integrated supplier network to bring two company consolidations under its fold quickly and seamlessly while reallocating headcount.

Chocolate CSR.
How Big Chocolate plans to save its cocoa supply -- A Hershey's Kiss is more complicated than it looks. Most of the cocoa in it and other chocolate candies comes from West Africa, and it makes its way through a long supply chain to get to U.S. factories. Now more than ever, Fortune 500 companies such as Hershey (HSY) have to take responsibility for every link in that chain. On January 30, Hershey announced plans to put $10 million towards solving child labor problems on West African cocoa farms by 2017. The money should also help farmers access educational programs and improve their cocoa yield.

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"Can't keep increasing the ad budget forever."
P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It's Free To Advertise On Facebook -- Reality appears to have finally arrived at Procter & Gamble, the world's largest marketer, whose $10 billion annual ad budget has hurt the company's margins. P&G said it would lay off 1,600 staffers, including marketers, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. More interestingly, CEO Robert McDonald finally seems to have woken up to the fact that he cannot keep increasing P&G's ad budget forever, regardless of what happens to its sales.

When your graphic image suppliers are inmates with a sense of humor...
Vermont Inmates Slip Pig Image Into Police Decal -- Inmates working at a Vermont correctional unit's print shop managed to sneak a prank image of a pig into a state police crest. The image is emblazoned on police cars, and 30 cruisers sported the design for the last year. The official crest depicts a spotted cow against a background of snowy mountains. But the inmates' version featured one of the cow's spots shaped like a pig in an apparent reference to the pejorative word for police.

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They may have lost Dear Leader, but North Koreans still have a-ha.
(via The Daily What)

Getting your vitamins.
The Cost of Getting in Shape: Am I Getting Enough Protein/Iron/Zinc/Vitamin E??? -- WELL. I had NO IDEA that my personal eating habits would raise such ire from the masses in last week's comment section. To speak to one specifically: "exercise not making you thin" brings up a good point relating to this entire series: I don't want to be "thin." Believe me, I've been thin. As a teenager I shot from 5'4 to 5'10 in two years and all the calories in the world couldn't keep up with me. Had I started smoking and kept my diet limited to diuretic teas and eating six almonds a day, perhaps today I could be trotting the runways at Fashion Week instead of writing thi...well...that's another story. One where I wouldn't have been able to pull 1:41 split times (times I haven't seen since college) last night in our 2K team relay!

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Welcome, BravoSolution!
Spend Matters and MetalMiner are pleased to welcome BravoSolution as a Bronze Level sponsor of Commodity Edge: Sourcing Intelligence for the New Normal. Click here to register, here for a full event breakdown, and here to check out our confirmed list of speakers.

P2P KPIs!
Susie West's top 10 KPIs in purchase to pay -- They are critical to identifying problems and continuously improving. But what should the KPIs monitor in order to ensure every part of your purchase-to-pay business is as tight and as healthy as it can be? Should you have four or five? Or should you have one hundred? If you have one hundred, should you remove the 'K' in KPIs? A KPI should have a definition, so you know what's included. And it should be loaded - it should be meaningful.

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Talking bout some evoluuuuttiooonnn woooaahhh....
The evolution of the supply chain business model -- With the recent revelation of a strategy for America's national supply chain, President Obama highlighted the vulnerabilities of the supply chain model. Identified threats included natural disasters, which are occurring at more frequent intervals and are likely to increase as a result of climate change, with negative implications for the global economy. However, analysis released today by CDP shows that some major companies are already ahead of the US administration in acting to reduce climate change risk and capitalise on related opportunities across their supply chains. The report, based on 49 global companies, including L'Oreal, Walmart and Philips, and over 1,800 of their suppliers, indicates that companies at the top of the supply chain are already redefining the way they operate and are making real changes to their supplier procurement models.

Up and up.
US ISM Revised Data Show Summer Slump Not As Weak -- U.S. manufacturers were slightly less busy at the end of 2011, than first thought while non-manufacturers were doing slightly better, according to revised data released Tuesday by the Institute for Supply Management. The ISM's revision, based on new seasonal factors, also show the summer slump in both sectors was not as bad as previously reported. For instance, when economic activity stalled this summer, the ISM purchasing managers' index for U.S. manufacturers had fallen to 50.6 in August, but the revisions show the low point as only 51.4 in July. The revised factory PMI now stands at 53.1 in December, down from 53.9 first reported.

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This week's thoughts from Danny Ertel...
Fee negotiations continued: You negotiate like you prepare -- The first and most important gap in what is a critical moment in the lawyer-client relationship is that the participants do not treat the fee discussion as an important negotiation. Clients often come in with little preparation, defaulting to just asking for a discount from whatever outside counsel proposes as a rate or a total fee. Law firm partners often approach fee discussions as if they are not really a negotiation, but an unavoidable awkward moment where they have to give voice to some kind of an estimate of what they expect to bill for the work, or to profess that it's "all too unpredictable" even to do that.

Political spending disclosures...
Political-Spending Disclosure Plans Could Have Hidden Costs -- What's wrong with more corporate political transparency? Nothing, in theory. But as attorney Keith Paul Bishop points out below, these proposals often come from unions and other organizations with their own agendas, and may impose unforeseen costs on companies. Bishop has some authority to speak on the topic, which is why I decided to run his thoughts here. A former California Commissioner of Corporations, he's now a partner with Allen Matkins in Orange County, Calif. Note: While Bishop says he doesn't represent any corporations facing such political disclosure measures right now, he could at any time.

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Whatever you say about the Euro, it's a great insulator...
'Billion-Euro Home': House Made From Shredded Money By Frank Buckley In Ireland -- An unemployed Irish artist has built a home from the shredded remains of 1.4 billion euros ($1.82 billion), a monument to the "madness" he says has been wrought on Ireland by the single currency, from a spectacular construction boom to a wrenching bust. Frank Buckley built the apartment in the lobby of a Dublin office building that has lain vacant since its completion four years ago at the peak of an ill-fated construction boom, using bricks of shredded euro notes he borrowed from Ireland's national mint.

The (much more complicated than you might think) science of snow removal.
Zen and the Art of Snow Plow Maintenance -- his whole exercise may be the best testament to the fact that plowing snow is a fraught enterprise. In some cities, administrations can get evicted or re-elected on their snow-removal speed. In Chicago, residents are so sensitive to the urban conspiracy that some neighborhoods get more prompt plowing than others that the city unveiled a live tracking app this winter. Roughly 65,000 people viewed it in its first week online. In attempting to corral all of this together, we wanted to capture the complex calculation cities have to make when they're balancing weather reality against city size against budget and resident expectations.

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I'm three weeks in to my fitness endeavor already!?

Here's a quick update: I signed up for Chicago's 8K Shamrock Shuffle (anyone else running it?) and am following Hal Higdon's 8K training program in addition to yoga 4-5 times per week. I had an honest discussion with myself and decided that as of now, Crossfit isn't something I want to pursue. I discovered Nike Training Club, an app akin to torture through medicine ball maneuvering (in such a good way). As far as total cost analysis, I'm finding that $120/month and 6-7 extra hours/week of workouts is well worth the time and money: my clothes fit better, I'm sleeping like the dead, and I have a noticeable boost in energy. Thing is, I haven't lost any weight. Not an ounce.

Why? I've been putting anything and everything I want to eat and drink into my mouth. Giant bowls of cheesy pasta. Giant bottles of delicious red wine. My true weakness in this world: ICE CREAM. For now, I'm ok with this: after all, one habit to form at a time, right? But as of February 1, something's gotta change with my eating habits or I'll never see the results I want. Question: how extreme do I want to go, and what will I spend getting there?

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