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The Canadian company that is the main equipment and technology suppliers for bike-sharing systems across the U.S. has filed for bankruptcy.

Public Bike System Co., (PBSC) which owns the widely used BIXI bike-sharing system, announced the bankruptcy Monday, citing almost $50 million in debt, as first reported by the Montreal Gazette. Its bikes and technology are used in 16 areas around the world, including major cities such as Chicago, New York, London, Montreal, and Washington, D.C.

After the bankruptcy was announced, Alta, a company that operates several BIXI bike-share systems in the U.S., said in a statement that its customers won't have their service interrupted. Alta says it plans to expand current systems and launch new ones this year.

PBSC's bankruptcy doesn't jeopardize bike-sharing, says Elly Blue, author of Bikenomics, a book analyzing the economics of cycling.

"I don't see this as being a very big bump in the road for bike share," Blue says. "I just see this as a chance for cities to learn — we can't run our transportation systems like a business, it doesn't really work that way because then we run the risk of not serving the people that need to be served."

PBSC attributes the bankruptcy partly to cities that have not paid it, including around $5.1 million from New York and Chicago. It is also in a lawsuit with the company that makes its bike-share analysis software.

The bankruptcy doesn't surprise John Pucher, who studies bicycling as a professor of urban planning at Rutgers University and who recently published a book about the cycling boom in cities.

"Looking at the operating data of the cost and revenues of the [bike-sharing] systems that I've seen, they vary from one system to another, but I'm just not convinced overall that it's a profitable venture," Pucher says. "It's not a big money maker the way they've set it up."

He points out that although some systems have come close to breaking even, whatever money the bike-sharing systems get from customers will not cover the cost of installing the system and getting bikes in the first place.

The fees can almost cover the operating cost — the money needed to repair bikes, move them around to meet demand and hire staff — but the systems need sponsors. Citibank paid for the system in New York City, the advertising company JCDecaux paid for the system in Paris, and City of Minneapolis provided start-up funding to the system there.

But Pucher says this doesn't mean the bike-share system doesn't work. In fact, it's booming.

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Thailand's government declared a state of emergency on Tuesday in Bangkok and surrounding areas amid massive protests that have rocked the country since last November.

The Bangkok Post reports that the "invocation of the law was widely expected." Indeed, as NPR's Eyder Peralta reported, 28 people were injured by a blast during an anti-government rally in Bangkok on Sunday. And a grenade attack on a march last Friday killed one person.

Labor Minister Chalerm Yubumrung said the emergency measures, which go into effect Wednesday, will last for 60 days. Anti-government protesters are trying to stop elections, scheduled for Feb. 2.

Reporter Michael Sullivan tells NPR's All Things Considered that the protesters "know they would lose those elections to the government currently in power." He adds:

"The people who are on the streets in Bangkok now represent a minority of the Thai population. They represent the royalists, the traditional elite here, the middle class, the upper middle class. And the majority of the people in Thailand actually live somewhere else. And they live either outside, in the rural areas of Thailand, or [are] the urban poor who work for the people who are demonstrating."

If you've ever shopped at Whole Foods, you've probably noticed that some of the foods it sells claim all kinds of health and environmental virtues. From its lengthy list of unacceptable ingredients for food to its strict rules for how seafood is caught and meat is raised, the company sets a pretty high bar for what is permitted on its coveted shelves.

Now, Whole Foods is dictating what kind of fertilizer the farmers that grow its produce can use. Specifically, the company recently confirmed that the produce rating system it's launching in September will prohibit produce farmed using sludge.

Sludge? This doesn't exactly sound like something you'd want near your food. Also known as biosolids, it's a type of fertilizer made from treated municipal waste and derived, in part, from poop. And though many farmers gladly accept sludge to enrich their soil, it's a product with a pretty big PR problem.

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The holiday season data breach at Target that hit more than 70 million consumers was part of a wide and highly skilled international hacking campaign that's "almost certainly" based in Russia. That's according to a report prepared for federal and private investigators by Dallas-based cybersecurity firm iSight Partners.

And the fraudsters are so skilled that sources say at least a handful of other retailers have been compromised.

"The intrusion operators displayed innovation and a high degree of skill," the iSight report says.

The report doesn't say specifically how Target's network was breached but says that a virus was injected into the retail giant's credit card swiping machines, and that malware allowed hackers to collect data from the magnetic stripes on payment cards. The problem for the security companies hired to protect retailers is, according to iSight, that the malware the bad guys are using can't be detected by anti-virus software.

Who are these guys? Well, it's all part of an underground market that's been running for years — Planet Money featured this dark credit card underworld in 2011 — and the hackers writing data-stealing code are getting more sophisticated than ever.

"There's already a lot of breaches related to the Target breach that aren't being disclosed," says Avivah Litan, a retail industry analyst for Gartner. "The chances that we'll see another big breach like this are probably 80 percent."

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