A Hoke County preschooler was fed chicken nuggets for lunch because a state worker felt that her homemade lunch did not have enough nutritional value, according to a report by the Carolina Journal.

The West Hoke Elementary School student was in her More at Four classroom when a U.S. Department of Agriculture agent who was inspecting lunch boxes decided that her packed lunch — which consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips — “did not meet USDA guidelines,” the Journal reports.

The decision was made under consideration of a regulation put in place by the the Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services, which requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs to meet USDA guidelines.

“When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones,” the Journal reports.

The student’s mother told the Journal she received a note from the school about the incident and was charged $1.25 for the cafeteria tray, from which her daughter only ate three chicken nuggets.

The note explained how students who did not bring “healthy lunches” would be offered the missing portions and that parents could be charged for the cost of the cafeteria food, the Journal reports.

The mother, who was not identified in the report, expressed concern about school officials telling her daughter that she wasn’t “packing her lunch box properly.”

President Obama wants to give raises to people collecting federal paychecks. Federal employees and union leaders expressed tepid support for the pay raise Monday, noting as they often do that lower pay levels could deter potential applicants from seeking federal employment or encourage current workers to look for jobs in the private sector.

In addition, making workers pay more out of pocket for retirement “will have a serious impact on the retirement security [that] federal employees were promised,” National Federation of Federal Employees President William R. Dougan said in an e-mail to reporters.

US filmmaker Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam on Tuesday in Iran, where he is making a documentary, he told AFP.

"The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with. It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets," he said in a brief telephone call from the central Iranian city of Isfahan, where he underwent the ceremony.

Sean Stone's famous father is Jewish, while his mother is Christian.

The 27-year-old filmmaker did not say why he converted.

According to Iran's Fars news agency, Sean Stone had become a Shiite and had chosen to be known by the Muslim first name Ali.

Sean/Ali Stone has acted in minor roles in several of his father's films, and has directed a handful of documentaries.

In the latest setback for the solar energy industry, Auburn Hills-based Energy Conversion Devices said today that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and intends to sell its assets, including its main subsidiary United Solar Ovonic.

“We firmly believe there is a strong and sustainable commercial market for Uni-Solar products,” Julian Hawkins, ECD’s CEO and president, said in a statement. “However our current capital structure and legacy costs are preventing USO from making the investments necessary for the future of the business without restructuring through the bankruptcy process.”

The maker of solar roofing materials, which will continue to operate, employs 750 workers, 60% of them in Michigan. They will remain active employees during the sales process though some have been furloughed, said company spokesman Michael Schostak.

ECD also said it has sold its Ovonic Battery Co. to BASF Corp. for $58 million in cash before transaction fees and other factors. The battery subsidiary’s 35 employees have been hired by BASF.

ECD has retained the investment banking firm Quarton Partners to manage the sale of its assets, which is expected to be completed in 90 days. It has $145 million in cash and short-term investments to enable it to operate through the bankruptcy proceedings and will not need debtor-in-possession financing.

The bankruptcy follows an unsuccessful effort by ECD to find additional capital. In November, the money-losing company suspended manufacturing to cope with high inventory levels and announced the layoffs of 500 employees. Its sales have suffered from cutbacks in solar energy incentives in Europe and a worldwide glut of solar panels. Analysts also said the company’s technology was no longer competitive.

The solar panel industry is currently going through a consolidation that has already claimed several weaker players, such as Solyndra.

The bankruptcy filing means ECD shareholders will take a hit. The company said it “does not expect to generate proceeds sufficient to satisfy all of the company’s pre-existing obligations to its creditors.” It expects that no distributions will be made to holders of its common stock unless it realizes a greater-than-expected value from the sale of its assets. Its common stock will be extinguished once its bankruptcy plan has received court approval.

Long before it turned its focus to solar energy, ECD had pioneered nickel-metal-hydride batteries. The company was founded in Detroit by Stanford Ovshinsky, a famous local scientist and inventor, 51 years ago. In 1990, ECD established United Solar Ovonic, which eventually became a leading producer of thin-film solar laminates for industrial and commercial buildings around the world.

Uni-Solar, as the subsidiary was called, became so successful that it opened four Michigan plants, two in Auburn Hills and two in Greenville. But since 2009, the company has struggled amid increasing competition. It built a plant in Battle Creek but ultimately never utilized it. ECD has lost more than $765 million during the last two years.
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Female passengers say they are being targeted by TSA screeners for sexual harassment, with one Texas woman being forced to pass through a naked body scanner three times so chuckling male TSA workers in a back room could get a good look at her “cute” figure.

The incident occurred at DFW International Airport earlier this month. Wife and mother Ellen Terrell was asked by a female TSA screener “Do you play tennis?” When Terrell asked why, the screener responded, “You just have such a cute figure.”

Terrell was then told to go through the naked body scanner not once but a second time. She then heard the TSA screener talking into her microphone saying, “Come on guys, alright, alright, one more time.”

After Terrell was forced to undergo a third blast of radiation from the body scanner, the male TSA agents in the back room who were obviously enjoying the show tried to send her through yet again to see more images of her naked body.

“Guys, it is not blurry, I’m letting her go. Come on out,” the female TSA screener said, finally ending the ordeal.

“I feel like I was totally exposed,” Terrell told CBS 11. “They wanted a nice good look.”

An investigation by CBS 11 News has prompted New York Senator Charles Schumer to introduce legislation that will mandate the TSA provide “passenger advocates” who will be on duty at all times to respond to complaints at every airport in the country.

The investigation found that female travelers are victims of a “peep show” by TSA workers who are using naked body scanners to target attractive women.

“CBS 11 News dug through more than 500 records of TSA complaints and found a pattern of women who believe that there was nothing random about the way they were selected for extra screening,” states the report, which lists numerous examples of men forcing women to pass through the scanners in a clear pattern of sexual harassment.

President Obama greeted the Chinese heir apparent in the Oval Office on Tuesday morning, a venue where the U.S. president usually receives only the nation's closest friends.

But even as the two countries eye one another warily, the Obama administration wants to keep its options open with Vice President Xi Jinping as he prepares to take his place as president next year.

In a joint appearance before their meeting, Obama told reporters that the U.S. relationship with China is based on "mutual interest and mutual respect," and that such a relationship is in the interests of the rest of the world, too.

The United States welcomes China's "peaceful rise," Obama said, which he said has the power to "help to bring stability and prosperity to the world."

Xi said that he and Vice President Joe Biden had reached a "new consensus" during their talks, though he didn't say what that was, and that his goal is to "move forward the U.S.-China relationship."

President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing.

According to the White House’s own figures (see table S-1 here for 2011 to 2013, and table S-1 here for 2010), the actual or projected deficit tallies for the four years in which Obama has submitted budgets are as follows: $1.293 trillion in 2010, $1.300 trillion in 2011, $1.327 trillion in 2012, and $901 billion in 2013. In addition, Obama is responsible for the estimated $200 billion (the Congressional Budget Office’s figure) that his economic “stimulus” added to the deficit in 2009. Moreover, he shouldn’t get credit for the $149 billion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) repayments made in 2010 and 2011 to cover most of the $154 billion in bank loans that remained unpaid at the end of the 2009 fiscal year — loans that count against President Bush’s 2009 deficit tally.

Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obama’s four years in the White House (based on his own figures) will be an estimated $5.170 trillion — or $5,170,000,000,000.00.

To help put that colossal sum of money into perspective, if you take our deficit spending under Obama and divide it evenly among the roughly 300 million American citizens, that works out to just over $17,000 per person — or about $70,000 for a family of four.

The Powerball lottery that provided a lucky Rhode Island ticket holder $336.4 million could soon produce jackpots of $500 million or more.

$1 billion? Not as crazy as it sounds.

Saturday's winner, who purchased a ticket at a Newport Stop & Shop, has yet to be identified. But the sixth-largest lottery ticket in U.S. history -- worth about $210 million as a lump-sum payment -- could eventually seem like chump change.

Had no one picked Saturday's six-number winning combination, the Powerball ticket would have jumped to a record $415 million this week.

"Could we see even bigger numbers? Anything's possible," says Tennessee Lottery Director Rebecca Paul Hargrove, head of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). "When a jackpot hits $200 million, it becomes water cooler talk and the increase in play is dramatic."

Tennessee, which has offered Powerball since 2004, had record ticket sales last week. Like other states, Tennessee receives at least 30% of Powerball revenue, which issued for education and other programs, says Hargrove, who has overseen lotteries in Illinois, Georgia and Florida.

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners will cut between 150 and 200 of the firm’s almost 700-person workers, a source tells us, following a note to employees yesterday in which founder Jeff Goodby said he would be "adjusting the size of our staff."

He told AgencySpy yesterday:

"Today, we at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners have begun adjusting the size of our staff in the wake of losing Sprint and parting ways with Hewlett-Packard. We don’t divulge the number of people or the percentage of our staff affected, but it’s commensurate with the numbers you’d have for accounts this size."

UPDATE: When contacted this afternoon, Goodby did not want to discuss numbers, but pointed to his letter, which “really says it all.” He added that, as a whole, the agency really cares about their employees and will do as much as anybody to help them land on their feet.

More than 24 million voter-registration records in the United States— about one in eight — are inaccurate, out-of-date or duplicates. Nearly 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states, and perhaps 1.8 million registered voters are dead.

Those estimates, from a report published today by the non-partisan Pew Center on the States, portray a largely paper-based system that is outmoded, expensive and error-prone.

"We have a ramshackle registration system in the U.S. It's a mess. It's expensive. There isn't central control over the process," said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

The winning ticket in Saturday's $336.4 million Powerball jackpot was sold at a Stop & Shop supermarket in Newport, but no one has come forward yet to claim the prize, Rhode Island lottery officials said Monday.

“We're very excited to find out who it is, we don't know who, but I would really like to see who it is,” said Duane Maitland, the manager of Stop and Shop.

The lottery’s Powerball is played in 42 states and when the jackpot rose Wednesday, people across the country rushed to get their hands on tickets. But Saturday’s drawing had only one jackpot winter.

“This is the largest jackpot that we’ve ever had. It’s the largest cash payout for Powerball in the history of Powerball,” said the Director of the Rhode Island Lottery, Gerald Aubin. “If they choose to take the cash payout, which is the trend today, it’ll be $210 million dollars in cash.”

Stop and Shop says the ticket was purchased around 6 p.m. Saturday.

“We know it was a $9 purchase. We know it was three quick picks,” said Aubin.

Customers at the Stop and Shop wish they had bought the lucky ticket.

The new director of Arkansas' lottery said Monday that he wants to focus on boosting ticket sales and that he does not plan to hire vice presidents for the commission.

Bishop Woosley, who was hired by the commission Saturday, said he will rely on the games' directors and left open the possibility of eventually hiring a chief operating officer for the organization.

"We want to increase sales. We want to increase the amounts for scholarships," Woosley told The Associated Press. "That's our sole objective, that's our entire mission and that's why we're there."

Voters approved the lottery in 2008 to raise money for college scholarships, with the first tickets being sold in 2009.

Woosley, who had been the lottery's chief legal counsel, says his primary goal is to improve lottery ticket sales — particularly in draw games such as Powerball and Mega Millions, rather than scratch-off tickets. He said he also wants to find new ways to promote the games through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Woosley said he will look at ways the lottery can save money and cut expenses, particularly with the claims centers the lottery has set up around the state for winners to cash in their prizes.

The lottery's interim director in December told the lottery commission the games were on track to raise $89 million for scholarships this fiscal year, which is roughly $5 million less than was raised the previous year.

He will take over for Ernie Passailaigue who resigned in September after criticism over his management of the games and his $324,000 annual salary. Woosley will be paid $165,000 annually.

"I'm going to be very involved from a personal standpoint with my directors," Woosley said. "My directors are going to report directly to me in the short term. I've advised (the commission) that if I ever need that COO position, I'll come back to them. For now, it's going to be me and my directors and staff."

State law sets the lottery director's maximum salary at $141,603, but the director can be paid up to $354,000 if approved by a legislative committee. The Lottery Commission last week capped the director's salary at $175,000 in response to the criticism over Passailaigue's pay.

Sen. Johnny Key, who co-chairs the lottery's legislative oversight committee, praised Woosley's hiring.

"I think it shortens the learning curve considerably since he's been there really since the inception," said Key, R-Mountain Home. "It should be a smooth transition."

Woosley said part of the reason for not hiring new vice presidents was the criticism the lottery received over the pay he and his two deputies received. The lottery's two vice presidents were paid about $225,000 a year.

"Obviously that goes into it, but one of the things I'm interested in is being deeply involved with every division and learning," he said. "We have a great staff and great directors who are very knowledgeable and I can learn from them just as much as they can learn from me."

An Iranian man has blown off his own legs and wounded at least four other people in grenade attacks in Bangkok, according to the police.

It remains unclear what the man's targets were, but the blasts come just a day after two bomb attacks aimed at Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia.

Israel on Monday blamed Iran for the bombings in India and Georgia, a claim denounced in Tehran as "sheer lies".

Thai security forces found more explosives in the suspect's rented house in the capital, said Police General Pansiri Prapawat.

Police said the explosions happened on Soi Sukhumvit 71, a street running off a busy road that bisects the capital.

A photo posted on Twitter showed a wounded man lying on a pavement outside a school, his legs apparently blown off by an explosion. The pavement was strewn with broken glass.

Several Thai television stations reported that the man had been carrying explosives. They said an identification card found in a nearby satchel indicated he may have been of Iranian descent.

American motorists have seen the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rise above $3.50 a gallon on just three occasions, but it has never happened this early in the year. Analysts say it's likely a sign that pain at the pump will rise to some of the highest levels ever seen later this year.

In 2008, average gasoline prices had hit inflation-adjusted records nationally by the summer, but they didn't climb above $3.50 a gallon across the U.S. that year until April 21, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. It happened again last year, but not until March 6.

But $3.50 a gallon gasoline is already here in 2012, weeks before refineries typically shut down for springtime maintenance, and weeks before the states switch from their less expensive winter blends of gasoline to more complicated and pricier summer blends.

"This definitely sets the stage, potentially, for much higher prices later this year," said Brian L. Milne, refined fuels editor for Telvent DTN, a commodity information services firm. "There's a chance that the U.S. average tops $4 a gallon by June, with some parts of the country approaching $5 a gallon."

An investor is suing troubled hybrid-electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. of Anaheim in Orange County Superior Court, alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in the sale of company stock.

Fisker has laid off 71 employees in Orange County and Delaware in recent weeks. It closed the Delaware plant to preserve operating capital.

This week, the U.S. Department of Energy confirmed that it froze $336 million of a $529 million loan last May after the company failed to meet undisclosed “milestones.”

The investor suing the privately held company, Daniel Wray, bought about $210,000 in unregistered Fisker preferred stock between October 2009 and April 2011.

Wray alleges that on Jan. 18 Fisker sent him a letter saying that “due to Fisker’s urgent need for equity capital, the financing now contains a ‘pay to play’ provision.” Bottom line: Fisker wanted him to invest an additional $83,922.32 by Jan. 27.

If he didn’t pay, the letter allegedly warned, Wray would lose rights he got when he first purchased the stock, including a discounted price if the company goes public, protection against dilution of his shares by later purchasers and preference in a bankruptcy.

The lawsuit alleges that Fisker and the broker who sold the securities, Advanced Equities Inc., knew their promises to him were false all along. The suit seeks restitution, compensatory and punitive damages from Fisker and Advanced Equities.

Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher said he was unaware of the lawsuit.

Frontier Airlines will cut 446 Milwaukee employees - nearly half of them flight crew members based at Mitchell International Airport - as a result of a major service reduction here.

Those job cuts will occur in April, according to information Frontier filed Monday with the state Department of Workforce Development under the state's layoff notice law.

Frontier said 446 employees will be affected by the cuts, to occur between April 15 and April 30. About 230 employees are flight crew members who will be reassigned to bases outside Milwaukee, the company said in its filing.

Denver-based Frontier has about 1,000 employees based in Milwaukee.

The standoff between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church intensified Monday, as a leading clergyman freshly urged Catholics and worshippers in other religions to protest a federal policy that the White House indicated it is not inclined to revise further.

"People need to speak up," Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, said during an appearance Monday on the Fox News program "America’s Newsroom."

"There's one thing in the heart of this nation that we're counting on, and that's the basic fairness of the American people."

At issue is a ruling last month by the Department of Health and Human Services mandating that all employers provide free access to contraception for female workers. Devout Catholics oppose the use of contraception and objected to the rule as an attack on religious liberty, arguing the federal government was forcing Catholic-affiliated charities, hospitals and schools to violate deeply held doctrine.

Gene Sperling, director of the White House's national economic council, said today at an official meeting that "we need a global minimum tax": http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/white-house-economic-adviser-we-need-global-minimum-tax_626749.html

“He supports corporate tax reform that would reduce expenditures and loopholes, lower rates for people investing and creating jobs in the U.S., due so further for manufacturing, and that we need to, as we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidized and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens," Sperling said.

The White House adviser then said that more details would be forthcoming, though "not in gory detail."

"But we will say more, perhaps not in gory detail, but in more detail, before the end of the month. And in terms of the revenues, the president is looking for shared sacrifice. This budget is a Democratic budget that has savings in Medicaid, it has savings from new beneficiaries, Medicare in 2017, it has agriculture civilian retirement savings. It has a lot of very tough choices."

The White House rolled out its new $3.8 trillion budget Monday, promising major investments to spur a manufacturing revival in the U.S. while walking a fine line between the August debt accords and President Barack Obama’s fear that too much austerity now will spell trouble for the economy—and his own reelection chances in November.

From Justice to Defense and Homeland Security, as many as six cabinet level departments or agencies will see their budget shrink in compliance with the new appropriations caps. But Obama would also go outside the box by creating new mandatory spending initiatives costing tens of billions of dollars and for the first time, openly tap war savings to fund his domestic agenda.

In the case of taxes, the budget never spells out Obama’s much-talked-about “Buffett rule”—-that all of the most wealthy must pay an effective tax rate of at least 30 percent. But his long-term deficit reduction plan rests very much on achieving $1.43 trillion in 10-year revenue increases at the households with income over $250,000. And the avid presidential golfer even throws in an additional $593 million proposal to do away with tax deductions for conservation easements on golf courses.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72792_Page2.html

The White House announced plans on Monday to help "Arab Spring" countries swept by revolutions with more than $800 million in economic aid, while maintaining U.S. military aid to Egypt.

In his annual budget message to Congress, President Barack Obama asked that military aid to Egypt be kept at the level of recent years -- $1.3 billion -- despite a crisis triggered by an Egyptian probe targeting American democracy activists.

The proposals are part of Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2013, which begins October 1. His requests need the approval of Congress, where some lawmakers want to cut overseas spending to address U.S. budget shortfalls and are particularly angry at Egypt.

Obama proposed $51.6 billion in funding for the U.S. State Department and foreign aid overall, when $8.2 billion in assistance to war zones is included. The "core budget" for the category would increase by 1.6 percent, officials said.

Most of the economic aid for the Arab Spring countries -- $770 million -- would go to establish a new "Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund," the president said in his budget plan.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-usa-budget-foreign-idUSTRE81C1C920120213

Apple said Monday that an independent group, the Fair Labor Association, has started inspecting working conditions in the Chinese factories where its iPads and iPhones are assembled.

Amid growing criticism over labor and environmental practices _especially in China_ Apple, last month, disclosed a list of suppliers for its popular gadgets for the first time.

The FLA team began the inspections Monday morning at Foxconn City in Shenzhen, China, Apple said Monday. The complex employs and houses hundreds of thousands of workers.

Airbus CEO Tom Enders said the company will fix problems in the wings of the A380 superjumbo, after cracks were detected last month, and said he hoped the issue won't hurt sales of the aircraft in its target markets of Asia and the Middle East.

“We will fix it (wing problem) as quickly as possible. This is unfortunate, this is us. We screwed that up. Whatever the cost, we will fix it,” Enders said on the sidelines of the Singapore Airshow Aviation Leadership Summit.

He added that it was too early at this point to say how much it would cost to fix the cracks in the wings, but according to some media reports it could be around 100 million euros ($132 million).

Enders said he was very hopeful that more customers would place orders for the A380 in Asia in the coming years as the aircraft was “built for Asia and the Middle East.”

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/46363909

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping is meeting U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House on Feb 14, Valentine’s Day. Their talks are likely to turn on Tibet and trade. But China’s veep isn’t expected to deliver a box of chocolates to the American president. China’s enormous trade advantage, now the largest nation-on-nation trade deficit in the history of the world, has put it in the enviable negotiating position of being able to say “bu” — that is, “no” — to most American demands.

The U.S trade deficit with China today is 28 times larger than it was during the Reagan era, according to new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau. That daunting deficit has grown by 18 percent per year since China first entered the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Census figures now show $103.8 billion in U.S. exports to China during 2011, and $399.3 million in imports, a stunning $295.5 billion difference.

The FDA has won its two-year fight to shut down an Amish farmer who was selling fresh, raw milk to eager consumers in the Washington region, after a judge this month banned Daniel Allgyer from selling his milk across state lines, and he told his customers he’ll shut his farm down altogether.

The decision has enraged Mr. Allgyer’s supporters, some of whom have been buying from him for six years and who say the government is interfering with their parental rights to feed their children. But the Food and Drug Administration, which launched a full investigation complete with a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and a straw-purchase sting operation against Mr. Allgyer’s Rainbow Acres Farm, near Lancaster, said unpasteurized milk is unsafe and said it was exercising its due authority to stop its sale from one state to another.

Adding to Mr. Allgyer’s troubles, Judge Lawrence F. Stengel said if he is found to violate the law again he will have to pay the FDA’s costs for investigating and prosecuting him.

His customers are wary of talking publicly, fearing the FDA will come after them.

“I can’t believe in 2012 the federal government is raiding Amish farmers at gunpoint all over a basic human right to eat natural food,” said one, who asked not to be named but who got weekly shipments of eggs, milk, honey and butter from Rainbow Acres. “In Maryland, they force taxpayers to pay for abortions, but God forbid we want the same milk our grandparents drank.”

The FDA, though, said the judge made the right call in halting Mr. Allgyer’s cross-border sales.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/13/feds-shut-down-amish-farm-selling-fresh-milk/

Whitney Houston's family was told by L.A. County Coroner officials ... the singer did not die from drowning, but rather from what appears to be a combination of Xanax and other prescription drugs mixed with alcohol ... this according to family sources.

We're told Coroner's officials informed the family there was not enough water in Whitney's lungs to lead to the conclusion that she drowned.

Bank Leumi Le Israel said Sunday it plans to cut 800 jobs over the next three years, as part of a streamlining plan that will save the company up to 1.2 billion shekels ($324 million).

The bank said about 300 jobs will go this year as part of the new streamlining plan.

The bank expects that the ILS400 million it will save each year will boost its capital adequacy ratio by 1% in 2015.

Many of the job cuts will be due to employees retiring and a slowdown in hiring, rather than the lay off of large numbers of people, the bank said. The bank currently has about 9,700 employees. The bank will also reduce its number of branches and transfer about 1,000 employees to different positions within the bank as part of the plan.

Gannett Co. Inc. — the parent company of the Arizona Republic, USA Today and KPNX-TV Channel 12 in Phoenix — is offering buyouts to 665 newspaper veterans throughout the media company.

Jim Hopkins’ Gannett Blog has published a memo sent out by Gannett executives to newspaper employees throughout the Virginia-based chain.

The buyouts are being offered to Republic and other Gannett newspaper employees who are age 56 or older and have at least 20 years of service with their paper or the chain.

The deal also includes severance and a short-term continuation of medical insurance and benefits.

The 665 employees offered the buyouts have 45 days to accept the offer.

McLean, Va.-based Gannett owns 82 newspaper and 23 television stations.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., the third-largest bank in Australia, plans to eliminate about 1,000 jobs and reiterated a pay freeze for most senior executives as it combats a slump in lending growth.

The domestic cuts will be made by Sept. 30 and will primarily involve middle-management, back-office and support staff, the Melbourne-based bank said in an e-mailed statement today. ANZ Bank currently employs 49,000 people globally, including about 24,000 in Australia, it said.

Mike Trang likes to use his iPhone 4 as a GPS device, helping him get around in his job. Now and then, his younger cousins get ahold of it, and play some YouTube videos and games.

But in the past few weeks, there has been none of that, because AT&T put a virtual wheel clamp on his phone. Web pages wouldn't load and maps wouldn't render. Forget about YouTube videos — Trang's data speeds were reduced to dial-up levels.

"It basically makes my phone useless," said Trang, an Orange County, Calif. property manager.

The reason: AT&T considers Trang to be among the top 5 percent of the heaviest cellular data users in his area. Under a new policy, AT&T has started cutting their data speeds as part of an attempt to manage data usage on its network.

So last month, AT&T "throttled" Trang's iPhone, slowing downloads by roughly 99 percent. That means a Web page that would normally take a second to load instead took almost two minutes.

AT&T has some 17 million customers with "unlimited data" plans that can be subject to throttling, representing just under half of its smartphone users. It stopped signing up new customers for those plans in 2010, and warned last year that it would start slowing speeds for people who consume the most data.

What's surprising people like Trang is how little data use it takes to reach that level — sometimes less that AT&T gives people on its "limited" plans.

Assailants targeted Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia in near-simultaneous strikes Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed on archenemy Iran, and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

The bombing of an Israeli diplomat's car in New Delhi by an attacker apparently on a motorcycle wounded four people, officials said. Israel said an attempted car bombing in Georgia was thwarted.

"Today we witnessed two attempts of terrorism against innocent civilians," Netanyahu told a gathering of lawmakers from his Likud Party. "Iran is behind these attacks and it is the largest terror exporter in the world," he said.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks. But Netanyahu also said Israel had thwarted similar attacks in recent months in Azerbaijan and Thailand.

"In all those cases, the elements behind these attacks were Iran and its protege, Hezbollah," he said, vowing to "act with a strong hand against international terror."

Mail-order distributor Hanover Direct is laying off 189 employees from its Roanoke County distribution center, according to the Virginia Workforce Center website, which lists closures and layoffs.

The layoffs at the 750,000-square-foot center on Hollins Road are effective April 27, according to the website.

Hanover Direct's brands include The Company Store, Domestications, UnderGear, Scandia Home and Silhouettes.

A spokeswoman at the company's Wisconsin headquarters did not return several calls seeking information about the layoffs. It's unclear how many people the Roanoke County warehouse employs.

Roanoke County's acting economic development director, Jill Loope, said the county is saddened by the job losses.

"We are working with Hanover Direct on these developments," Loope said. "We'll continue to help the company and their employees through this transition."

U.S. retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories fell 34 percent in January from a year earlier to $751 million due to the lack of new game titles, according to market researcher NPD Group.

NPD analyst Liam Callahan said the dearth of new games likely resulted in fewer people going to stores and buying other recent releases on impulse.

"Shoppers were not drawn to stores due to new launch activity," he said.

Callahan said sales of titles released before the holidays were down 31 percent in January compared to a year ago.

Sales of console and portable software — the video games themselves — fell 38 percent to $356 million.

That's a bigger decline than the 12 percent drop forecast by Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter.

Activision's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" was the top seller for the third-consecutive month following its early November release.

Hardware sales fell 38 percent to $200 million, while accessories sales were down 18 percent at $195 million. Sales were down because of the success of Microsoft's Kinect motion controller a year ago.

Even as the $26 billion mortgage settlement helps hundreds of thousands of troubled homeowners, it will bring a wave of new foreclosures.

Many lenders held off on reposessing homes during the complex negotiations between 49 state attorneys general, and federal officials.

That's left a backlog of troubled loans, many of which won't be helped by measures in the deal that will let homeowners refinance or reduce the amount of their mortgage.

"The bottom line is that 2012 will see a lot of foreclosures that should have taken place in 2011 and didn't," said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for Carrington Holdings, a real estate finance firm.

Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac, online marketer of foreclosed properties, agrees that much of last year's 34% drop in foreclosure filings was likely due to the uncertainty involved in the negotiations. He estimates that new filings will climb from 1.9 million in 2011 to between 2.2 million and 2.5 million this year.

"We think what we saw in 2011 was artificially low foreclosure numbers," he said. He added that banks took longer to file foreclosure notices last year, and longer to finish the foreclosure process.

Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday night, Fox News confirms. She was 48.

The Beverly Hills Police Department responded to an emergency call at the Beverly Hilton hotel Saturday, Lt. Mark Rosen, of the Beverly Hills Police Department said.

In November 2011, in an interview with Access Hollywood Whitney Houston said, “I’m older, I’m matured.”

Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice was ravaged by drug use and her regal image was ruined by erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48.

Arthur Livingston, of Prosperity, S.C., may be alive, but his credit report says, "File not scored because subject is deceased."

That's because Livingston's bank, Bank of America, has been reporting him as deceased to the three major credit agencies since May 2009, he claims.

Bank of America has still not resolved the issue, even after media attention, causing headaches for Livingston, 39, and his family in South Carolina.

A regional manager of a chemical company, Livingston discovered the dilemma when he tried to obtain a loan from a mortgage company in October. The problem may have begun when Livingston, who said he has been a Bank of America customer for 14 years, sold his home in May 2009.

Five months since he discovered the problem, Bank of America still does not have a solution, and his mortgage company has not been able to obtain his credit score to give him a loan for his new home. He also fears the inactivity on his credit will negatively affect his credit score.

A spokeswoman for Bank of America told ABC News on Thursday the company is working with Livingston directly to "resolve this issue as quickly as possible."

Livingston said he regularly pays off his credit card bill in full, including $2,000 to $4,000 in travel expenses for work. But none of that, he fears, is being recorded on his credit record.

"[Bank of America] is well aware that the account is very active on a daily basis," he said.

That has been "frustrating" for Livingston and his family's plan for their new home, which was supposed to begin construction in mid-December. He was hoping the home would be half finished by now.

"It's been a complete waste of time," he said of the "inexcusable" mistake.

He along with his wife, son and daughter, 8 and 5, respectively, have been living in a rental home while they wait. Construction of the home is estimated to take four to six months, weather permitting. The Livingstons had hoped to move into their new home by April.

"Obviously, that's not going to be remotely possible," he said.

Read more: http://www.670kboi.com/rssItem.asp?feedid=114&itemid=29798100

In an effort to cut their losses, banks are paying some struggling homeowners as much as $35,000 to sell their homes before they end up in foreclosure.

The deals are aimed at incentivizing homeowners who owe more on their home than it is worth and who are seriously delinquent on their payments to sell their homes in a short sale.

In short sales, homes are sold for less than what is owed and the bank forgives the excess debt. Banks have been reluctant to approve such deals in the past -- since they take a loss on the home -- but in certain cases, it's become a much better proposition than letting the homeowner fall into foreclosure.

This new approach by the banks has startled plenty of homeowners, according to Elizabeth Weintraub, a Sacramento-area real estate agent who specializes in short sales.

"Initially, the homeowners are skeptical," she said. "The bank may have already turned down their request for a modification. Then, one day, they call and say, 'Let us give you some cash.'"

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/10/real_estate/short_sale_incentives/index.htm

Rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded 34 Italian banks on Friday, including heavyweights UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, citing a reduced ability to roll over their wholesale debt and expected weak profitability.

The move follows S&P's downgrade of Italy's sovereign rating last month to BBB+, part of a mass downgrade of nine euro zone countries.

In a statement, S&P said its so-called Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment had worsened to group 4 from group 3 -- out of 10 groups -- reflecting its more negative view on Italy's banking system.

"Italy's vulnerability to external financing risks has increased, given its high external public debt, resulting in Italian banks' significantly diminished ability to roll over their wholesale debt," it said.

"We anticipate persistently weak profitability for Italian banks in the next few years, and a risk-adjusted return on core banking products that may not be sufficient for banks to meet their cost of capital.

We believe this may be negative for the Italian banking industry's stability."

Iran will soon unveil "big new" nuclear achievements, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday while reiterating Tehran's readiness to revive talks with the West over the country's controversial nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad spoke at a rally in Tehran as tens of thousands of Iranians marked the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that toppled the pro-Western monarchy and brought Islamic clerics to power.

Ahmadinejad did not elaborate on the upcoming announcement but insisted Iran would never give up its uranium enrichment, a process that makes material for reactors as well as weapons.

The West suspects Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing atomic weapons, a charge Tehran denies, insisting it's geared for peaceful purposes only, such as energy production.

Four rounds of U.N. sanctions and recent tough financial penalties by the U.S. and the European Union have failed to get Iran to halt aspects of its atomic work that could provide a possible pathway to weapons production.

A rash of teenage suicides in Russia has set off alarm bells and experts are urging the government to take immediate action.

Russia has the world's third-highest rate of suicide among teenagers aged 15 to 19, with about 1,500 taking their own lives every year, according to UNICEF. The rate is higher only in the neighboring former Soviet republics of Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Boris Polozhy of the Serbsky psychiatric center in Moscow said Friday that "until the highest authorities see suicide as a problem, our joint efforts will be unlikely to yield any results."

Two 14-year-old girls in a town outside Moscow killed themselves this week by jumping off of the roof of a 14-story building while holding hands. Several other teen suicides have been reported elsewhere in Russia.

Bank of America has disclosed plans to eliminate 450 jobs in Concord as part of a shutdown of one of the banking giant's units in that city.

The affected employees are in the bank's consumer service and operations units. That organization includes a customer service contact center and fraud and claims units, said Colleen Haggerty, a spokeswoman for Bank of America.

"We will be closing those units in late May 2012," Haggerty said.

The 450 affected employees were notified Wednesday that their jobs would be lost. All the employees involved can apply for other available bank jobs or may be eligible for severance, she said.

"This action is designed to consolidate our operations, reduce cost and increase efficiency," Haggerty said.

By the end of March, roughly 200 people will be out of work at the Idaho National Laboratory.

The cuts will be site wide and Director of Human Resources Mark Holubar says most of the layoffs will be in administrative support positions. Employees were notified Thursday morning and the site is asking for voluntary resignations starting immediately. And once those totals are in, the involuntary terminations will begin.

Employees will be offered a severance package of two weeks pay for every year spent at the site, with a maximum of 16 weeks.

Holubar says he would like to thank everyone for their dedicated service to the INL and the cuts were the last in a long line of cost cutting measures.

“We do at the same time have escalating costs, fuel, commodities, that we use at the laboratory,” said Holubar. “It's really a matter of striking a balance between these rising costs, a bit of a drop in business volume for the laboratory and the need to bring all that in balance that we have to finally get to this position.”

Today's cuts also come after a round of voluntary layoffs in September when 92 were let go.

Chiquita Brands filed a notice in Ohio this week, laying out plans to eliminate about 200 employees as the company moves its headquarters to Charlotte this year.

The notice is required when a company plans to do mass job cuts. Chiquita said the cuts are expected to begin on April 6 in Cincinnati.

The cuts are expected to be a combination of jobs being eliminated and employees who decline the company's offer to move to Charlotte. The number could change if more employees decide not to move, Chiquita said.

The $25 billion settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses may result in a wave of home seizures, inflicting short-term pain on delinquent U.S. borrowers while making a long-term housing recovery more likely.

Lenders slowed the pace of foreclosures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. With yesterday’s agreement, banks are likely to resume property seizures.

“The best thing about the settlement, frankly, is that it will be done,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Seattle-based Zillow Inc. (Z), a provider of home-sales data. “The shadow of the settlement hung over the market for a year now.”

The backlog of foreclosures has trapped homeowners in properties they can no longer afford, depressed neighborhood prices by increasing the number of abandoned homes and led banks to tighten mortgage credit standards because of uncertainty about the cost of their potential obligations. Foreclosure starts fell 46 percent in December from October 2010, when the investigation into the so-called robo-signing of mortgage documentation began, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc.

The agreement will direct $17 billion to writing down debt to buffer about 1 million homeowners from foreclosure through mortgage forgiveness, forbearance or loan modification programs, according to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. About 750,000 borrowers may get direct payments of as much as $2,000 to compensate them for servicing errors.

The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world and KCAL9 got an exclusive tour inside from Chief Charlie Beck.

“We are targets on our own soil,” says Beck. “We have to be ready.”

What began as a grass roots idea following the 9/11 terrorist attacks is now a state-of-the-art real-time analysis critical response center. It’s called RACR, and it’s located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

“This is a system that cuts through the red tape, that gets information to the people that need it,” says Chief Beck. He calls it “the brains of the department, twenty-four/seven.”

Police in the activity center monitor live feeds of city and traffic cameras, counter-terrorism information, and real-time crime mapping, with cutting edge software.

“If we didn’t have that we would be operating blind,” says Capt. Sean Malinowski, the Commanding Officer at RACR. “Essentially we’re always activated here.”

RACR is a critical crime-fighting tool at the center of every high profile incident in the City of Los Angeles.

Read more: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/02/08/lapd-pioneers-high-tech-crime-fighting-war-room/

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) recently obtained close to 300 pages of documents, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, detailing the federal agency’s “intelligence gathering” practices on the web.

Among the documents were guidelines from DHS instructing outside contractors to monitor the web for media reports and comments that “reflect adversely” on the agency or the federal government.

As Reuters reported last month, in early 2010 contractors were asked to spend 24 hours monitoring news media coverage on popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks, as well as news sites including the Huffington Post and The Drudge Report.

The contractors were required to provide the DHS with feedback on any potential “threats and hazards”, as well as “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) ability to prevent, protect and respond, to recovery efforts or activities related to any crisis or events which impact National Planning Scenarios.”

The documents also state that the program should highlight “both positive and negative reports on FEMA, C.I.A., C.B.P., ICE, etc., as well as organizations outside of D.H.S.”

Read more: http://www.infowars.com/group-forces-congressional-hearing-on-big-sis-twitter-drudge-spying/

Danske Bank A/S (DANSKE) will bring forward the 2,000 job cuts it’s planning as Denmark’s biggest lender steps up efforts to stay competitive with European rivals, Chief Financial Officer Henrik Ramlau-Hansen said.

“The program will be a little bit frontloaded so we’ll take the major things in 2012 and 2013,” Ramlau-Hansen said in an interview in Copenhagen today. “That will take us a long way to be competitive on the cost side.” There will “not necessarily be pay cuts but we expect a rather limited development in underlying pay,” he said.

The cuts are needed to help Danske reduce costs by about 2 billion kroner ($358 million), or 10 percent of its underlying cost base, Ramlau-Hansen said. In November, the bank gave itself three years to complete the job reduction plan. Danske is struggling to stay competitive as it grapples with the fallout of a burst housing bubble and regional banking crisis at home, while loan losses at its Irish business show scant sign of abating.

“The Irish operation is our current pain,” Ramlau-Hansen said. “We have high impairments there and we also expect impairments to continue at a high level for some time.”

PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) plans to cut 8,700 jobs and boost marketing spending for its brands by as much as $600 million as Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi works to turn around the world’s largest snack-food maker.

The job cuts, which represent about 3 percent of PepsiCo’s global workforce, and other measures may save about $1.5 billion by 2014, the Purchase, New York-based company said today in a statement.

Nooyi is working to boost U.S. beverage sales and regain market share from Coca-Cola Co. (KO), the world’s largest soft-drink maker. Profit this year will decline about 5 percent on a constant-currency basis and then increase at a high single-digit percentage rate starting in 2013, PepsiCo said.

The “cost savings projections are encouraging, although 2012 will be a negative EPS growth year, which isn’t what investors like to hear typically,” Ali Dibadj, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Co. in New York, said today in an e-mail.

PepsiCo fell 4.3 percent to $63.87 at 9:57 a.m. in New York. The shares rose 1.6 percent last year, while Coca-Cola gained 6.4 percent.

Alcatel-Lucent, France’s largest telecommunications-equipment supplier, plans to eliminate as many as 1,800 positions in Europe through firings and relocation, a top union official said.

Almost 500 positions in Italy, or 20 percent of the total in the country, will probably go, Philippe Saint-Aubin, a representative of the European workers’ council for the Paris- based company, said in an interview today. Also affected will be more than 10 percent of the workforce in Belgium, and 5 percent in France, where Alcatel employs 9,000 workers, he said.

Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don't qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone.

Last summer, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story shed some light on a government program that relatively few Americans knew existed. (Read more about it here.) The Lifeline program provides low-income Americans with free cell phones (basic ones such as those made by Tracfone, not smartphones) and covers up to 250 free minutes each month. As many as 5.5 million residents in Pennsylvania alone could qualify for the program, which is funded primarily by the Universal Service Fund fee added to the bills of land-line and wireless customers.

The program came to be after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, and the FCC created the Universal Service Fund to help "to promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates," among other things. All telecommunications carriers must pay into the fund, and many do so by tacking on a fee to each of their customers' bills. It's probably added into your monthly wireless bill and your landline bill, if you still have one.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/washington-footing-cell-phone-bill-millions-low-income-202500656.html

The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that its quarterly loss widened to $3.3 billion amid declining mail volume and mounting costs for future retiree health benefits as it struggles to stave off bankruptcy.

From October through December 2011, losses were $3 billion more than the same period a year ago, even though that quarter is typically the strongest due to increased holiday shipping. The mail agency said that at this rate, it will run out of money by October.

The Postal Service is seeking new leeway from Congress to eliminate Saturday mail delivery, raise stamp prices and reduce health and other labor costs.

Also at stake are roughly 100,000 jobs, part of a postal cost-cutting plan to save up to $6.5 billion a year by closing 252 mail processing centers and up to 3,700 post offices. At the request of Congress, the cash-strapped agency agreed to wait until mid-May to begin closures so lawmakers would have time to stabilize its finances first.

Obama’s attempt to force Catholic employees to provide contraception coverage in employee healthcare plans has united the entire Church establishment – Left and Right – against him. And this is the establishment that garlanded him with honours three years ago at Notre Dame University, despite his aggressive support for abortion.

Bishops, conservative and liberal, are now a single voice in their disgust with the administration’s move. The scale of Left-wing outrage is astonishing. Even the columnist EJ Dionne – the Polly Toynbee of American Catholics – complained that “progressive” Catholics who had put their reputations on the line to support Obamacare had been “thrown under the bus.” Obama took 54 percent of the Catholic vote in 2008. He will struggle to do that well again.

Why is the Church so agitated, the liberal press asks? Read more: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100136144/obamas-war-on-the-catholic-church-isnt-just-insensitive-its-un-american/

Fast running out of money, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC last summer sold off nearly $60 million worth of inventory for less than $20 million in cash to a newly formed corporate entity closely tied to the company’s biggest investors, records show.

Backed by $535 million in federal loan guarantees but burning through the little cash it had left, Solyndra made its first sale in late July to a corporate entity that had been formed just a day earlier. Three more transactions followed over the next few weeks with the same buyer, Solyndra Solar II.

By the time the last sale took place on Aug. 29 — two days before the company announced plans to file for bankruptcy — Solyndra had sold off a total of $58.1 million worth of inventory for $17.5 million, according to documents Solyndra attorneys filed last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

The sales began at a time when Solyndra officials were trying hard to assure lawmakers and the public of the company’s prospects amid increasing questions about the company’s financial health. Inside the company, the sales transactions show, officials were moving fast to raise cash and buy Solyndra more time.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/8/solyndra-sold-assets-cheap-for-fast-cash/

A consumer watchdog has escalated its efforts to block Google from rolling out a controversial new privacy policy that would allow the Internet search giant to harvest more information about its users.

But the Electronic Privacy Information Center is not suing Google. Instead, it filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the Federal Trade Commission, the agency charged with protecting consumers' privacy on the Web.

In an unusual end run around the FTC, the watchdog group is asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to compel federal regulators to enforce a settlement they reached with Google last year and protect consumers who will be "left without recourse if the commission fails to enforce its order."

Google settled charges last year that it violated privacy laws by exposing Gmail users' personal information when rolling out its now-defunct Google Buzz social networking service. The breach prompted an angry backlash from consumers and privacy advocates who say the Mountain View, Calif., company disclosed personal information without their knowledge or consent.

The 20-year settlement put Google on notice that it had to build privacy protection into its products and could not misrepresent how it handles users' information.

Last month, Google began alerting users around the globe that beginning March 1 it will share data it collects from users across its dozens of services. Google says that only users who are logged into Google will be affected. Google already shared what it knew about its users across most of its services but now it will also include YouTube and Google search history.

Google says its new privacy policy does not violate the settlement it reached with the FTC.

Chinese internet video posted Jan. 25 showing sea trials for China’s first aircraft carrier, the refurbished Russian aircraft carrier Varyag. The carrier is undergoing sea trials prior to deployment expected later this year. The warship is China’s first major power project vessel that analysts say likely will be used in areas of the South China Sea, where tensions have been heightened over Chinese claims to large areas of resource-rich international waters.

Watch video: http://freebeacon.com/china-tests-first-aircraft-carrier/

Squeezed by a tight job market, young Americans are especially struggling. They have suffered bigger income losses than other age groups and are less likely to be employed than at any time since World War II.

An analysis by the Pew Research Center, released Thursday, details the impact of the recent recession on the attitudes of a generation of mostly 20- and 30-somethings.

With government data showing record gaps in employment between young and old, a Pew survey found that 41 percent of Americans believe that younger adults have been hit harder than any other group, compared with 29 percent who say middle-aged Americans and 24 percent who point to seniors 65 and older. A wide majority of the public — at least 69 percent — also said it's more difficult for today's young adults than their parents' generation to pay for college, find a job, buy a home or save for the future.

Number of the day: 88 million.

That's how many working-age Americans don't have a job and aren't trying to find one. The increase in people dropping out of the labor market altogether skews the otherwise-positive unemployment numbers released last week. While the jobless rate fell to 8.3 percent in January - a three-year low - it doesn't account for this army of nonworking Americans. The percentage of people participating in the labor market dropped to 63.7 percent last month, the lowest level since May 1983.

U.S. stock futures slipped on Thursday as investors monitored Greece’s debt saga and awaited a monetary-policy decision from the European Central Bank.

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJ2H -0.10% slipped 20 points to 12,823 and those on the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index SP2H -0.12% fell 3.50 points to 1,343.5.

Nasdaq 100 futures ND2H -0.22% dropped 5.50 points to 2,539.2.

Competition in the diabetic supply business led AmMed Direct LLC to give layoff notices to its 223 employees on Tuesday as it prepares to sell assets to a Florida-based competitor and then stop operating.

The deal with Arriva Medical of Coral Springs, Fla., is part of a consolidation trend in the mail-order diabetic supply business as regulatory changes create uncertainty.

Medicare, for instance, is rolling out a new competitive bidding system to determine which companies would continue to provide supplies to its beneficiaries and at what price -- perhaps lower rates.

“Several companies are trying to get bigger because they know there’s going to be fewer companies, and they want to be one of the survivors,” said industry consultant Tom Milam, who expects the number of vendors nationally to fall from as many as 500 to as few as 20 companies.

American Airlines, which wants to eliminate 13,000 jobs under a bankruptcy reorganization, separately plans to cut additional 500 flight attendants this spring because it's flying less than it did a year ago.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the union that represents the workers, said Wednesday that those at the bottom of the seniority ladder could be out of work by April 1.

American Airlines spokeswoman Missy Cousino said capacity cuts scheduled in 2012 mean "We have more flight attendants than necessary."

There's been a lot of talk recently about home prices reaching a bottom. Most notably, Bill McBride at Calculated Risk — perhaps the most respected housing market analysts in the blogosphere — says housing starts already bottomed and housing prices are likely to bottom in March.

But not everyone is convinced. Keith Jurow argues that home prices are nowhere near the bottom. In fact, he thinks that one particular market — New York City — is close to collapsing.

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/46310822

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains

When you head down to the beach for a little fun this summer, county officials want you to leave the pigskin at home.

The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County.

In passing the 37-page ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public.

The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll” any object other than a beach ball or volleyball “upon or over any beach” between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Exceptions allow for ball-throwing in predesignated areas, when a person obtains a permit, or playing water polo “in or over the Pacific Ocean”.

Making the situation more bleak for opponents of Obama, independent voters are apparently quite put off with the Republican nomination fight. While polls last fall showed them leaning Republican by roughly a two-to-one margin, they are now either split evenly or favoring Obama.

“What must be particularly alarming to every Republican campaign regarding this nasty fight is that, even among those who say they think the nation is heading in the wrong direction, Obama still wins at least 20 percent support in head-to-head match-ups against the four remaining Republicans, and among those who said they were unsure about the overall direction of the nation, Obama wins by overwhelming percentages,” observes Wenzel.

Obama also has made tremendous inroads on enemy territory against each of the four Republicans, winning roughly 20 percent support among conservatives and even those who consider themselves to be very conservative. And, even against Mitt Romney, considered by many to be the most moderate of the GOP bunch, Obama defeats him by a large margin among moderate voters.

The public’s contempt for the U.S. Congress continues to grow.

The Gallup Poll’s latest gauge of public sentiment for the job Congress is doing sank to a record low, with 10 percent of Americans registering approval. That’s down from 13 percent in January and a previous low of 11 percent in December.

Of those surveyed, 86 percent disapproved of the job Congress is doing. That ties with a record disapproval rating set in December.

The approval rating was lower even though there have been modest improvements in the public’s mood toward President Barack Obama and the state of the economy, said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll.

“This is not a case of a lowering tide lowering all boats,” Newport said in an interview. Other measures are improving and “the Congress boat is sinking,” he said.

Gary Busey -- who's starred in more than 70 movies -- has less than $50,000 to his name ... and more than $500,000 in various debts ... this according to official documents obtained by TMZ.

67-year-old Busey filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in California yesterday. Busey checked the box showing he has less than $50,000 in assets ... and somewhere between $500,000 and $1,000,000 in various debts.

In the docs, Busey indicates he might owe money to everyone from the IRS ... to various lawyers ... UCLA Medical Center ... Wells Fargo ... L.A. County Waterworks Districts ... and a storage company.

He also notes that he might owe money to a woman named Carla Loeffler, who sued Busey for allegedly attacking her at a Tulsa airport back in May.

The push for a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes for Iraq veterans is gaining new traction after New York City hosted its blow-out celebration for the New York Giants -- a festival that raised immediate questions about why the country is not extending the same honor to returning soldiers.

Lawmakers representing New York, and at least one national veterans group, are renewing their call for a parade -- though the pushback appears to be coming not from New York but from Washington.

"We think the mayor is actually somewhat on board -- and we think the stumbling block might be the White House and the Pentagon," Joseph Borelli, chief of staff to New York Councilman Vincent Ignizio, told FoxNews.com.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the Pentagon is uneasy about a parade, as long as U.S. troops are still in harm's way.

Ignizio told MyFoxNY.com on Wednesday that Bloomberg wants a parade, "but he's saying the Pentagon and the Obama administration is saying that they don't want to do it until after the Afghanistan war, which doesn't make sense."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/08/lawmakers-revive-call-for-iraq-vets-parade-in-nyc-despite-pentagon-pushback

Federal employees can take unscheduled leave or telework from home on Wednesday in anticipation of snow expected to fall across the D.C. metro area.

The Office of Personnel Management made the announcement by email just after 10 a.m. Wednesday, at the same time as the National Weather Service's winter weather advisory began to take affect for many area counties.

As of 12 p.m., no flakes had fallen in D.C.

Precipitation of up to 3 inches in some parts of the region will start mid-day and it could affect the evening commute. The D.C. area should get up to an inch in grassy areas.

Ahead of the snow, Fauquier County Public Schools closed for the day. WTOP's Closings and Delays page will be continually updated through the day.

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.

The conservative think tank's annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were "traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families."

The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show.

The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an expansion in Medicaid and changes to the welfare system, along with a sharp rise in food stamps, the study found.

Read more: http://news.investors.com/Article/600452/201202080802/government-dependence-jumps-under-president-obama.htm

The Washington Post announced a new round of layoffs on Wednesday, the latest in a series of staff reductions that have decreased the size of its newsroom by more than 200 people over the last three years.

Marcus W. Brauchli, who became executive editor in 2008, informed staff members of the buyouts in an e-mail that said the cutbacks were necessary to help keep The Post competitive in such a difficult economic climate for newspapers. The memo said the buyouts would be voluntary, and did not specify the number of reductions the paper was seeking. But one person familiar with the process said an internal target of 20 people was set.

“Any measure like this is difficult,” Mr. Brauhcli wrote. “But we believe this approach is a sensible and effective way of addressing the economic forces affecting our industry. We constantly rethink how we do certain things in order to become more efficient, agile and competitive; this will require more such thinking.”

Read more: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/washington-post-will-further-reduce-staff/

It has been a tough few days for medical device manufacturer Smith & Nephew, and particularly for its Memphis, TN-based division.

The company has already eliminated 220 of the 800 positions to be cut. Olivier Bohuon (photo), CEO of the London-based medical device company, did not give details, but said much of the restructuring would come from consolidating back office work.

The Daily News has already reported 80 positions were lost in Memphis, TN, where S&N employs about 2,000. The cuts were part of a restructuring when S&N's Memphis-based orthopedic reconstruction and trauma division was merged with its Andover, MA-based endoscopy division to form the advanced surgical devices division.

While Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) has said it expects spending on orthopedics to grow this year, S&N does not. Bohuon said the company would make acquisitions and invest savings in emerging markets like India, Brazil and Russia. The company on Jan. 30 reported its purchase of Aderma Dermal Pads Products from Focus Product Development to expand its wound-care business.

A Delaware-based solar power company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

New Castle-based Suntricity Power listed estimated assets of between half a million and a million dollars, and estimated liabilities of between $100,000 and $500,000 in its filing Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington.

Suntricity, founded in 2007, designs, sells and installs solar energy systems for residential and commercial customers.

A corporate ownership statement included with the bankruptcy filing lists Maria Romero and Mark Hald as the sole stockholders.

An attorney representing the company in its bankruptcy case did not immediately return a telephone message Tuesday.

Nokia, the biggest maker of cellphones by volume, said Wednesday that it would cut 4,000 manufacturing jobs, or 7 percent of its global workforce, as it moved to streamline and save money from its production of smartphones.

The company said the cuts would be made at three Nokia factories — in Komarom, Hungary; Reynosa, Mexico; and Salo, Finland — as it transferred the assembly of smartphones to factories in Asia, which are closer to component makers.

“Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market,” said Niklas Savander, the Nokia executive vice president responsible for smart phones. “By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive.”

Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, said it planned to cut 2,300 of 4,400 jobs at its Hungarian factory, 700 of 1,000 in Mexico and 1,000 of 1,700 in Salo, its largest production facility in Finland.

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well.

“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is “concerned about the implications for surveillance by government agencies,” said attorney Jennifer Lynch.

The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-a-sky-near-you/

In celebration of her "Let's Move!" campaign to curb childhood obesity First Lady Michelle Obama engaged in a "fitness challenge" with "Late Night" host Jimmy Fallon. In the White House. In an official photo provided by the White House Michelle Obama is seen competing in a tug of war with Fallon in the Diplomatic Reception Room.

The two also hula hoop, do push-ups and run around the White House.

Last week, the First Lady visited the set of the "Tonight Show" and made Jay Leno eat exclusive healthy food from the White House. Michelle Obama also competed in a push-up contest with Ellen DeGeneres during the Los Angeles leg of her trip.

Two members of the creative team that produced the two-minute minute spot for ad agency Wieden+Kennedy donated their personal time in 2008 to make pro-Obama art.

This year’s most discussed Super Bowl ad—a two-minute spot for Chrysler narrated by Clint Eastwood—continues to generate controversy in conservative political circles, where a host of questions have been raised about the automaker’s alleged motives for commissioning the advertisement.
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In the days ahead, similar politically charged queries also are likely to be raised about the highly regarded Portland Oregon-based ad agency that produced the spot—Wieden+Kennedy, some of whose key creative professionals privately supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

Read more: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/clint-eastwood-chrysler-super-bowl-commercial-287778

The Obama administration is willing to work with Catholic universities, hospitals and other church-affiliated employers to implement a new policy that requires health insurers to offer birth control coverage, a top adviser to the president's re-election campaign said on Tuesday.

David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser to President Barack Obama, said the administration had heard the Church's concerns and never intended to "abridge anyone's religious freedom."

But he gave no sign that the administration would reverse course under intensifying pressure from Church leaders and political heat from Republican presidential candidates.

"This is an important issue. It's important for millions of women across this country. We want to resolve it in an appropriate way, and we're going to do that," he said in remarks on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.

White House spokesman Jay Carney also sought to diffuse criticism from Church leaders, telling reporters later on Tuesday that the administration would work with religious organizations "to see if the implementation of the policy can be done in a way that allays some of those concerns."

For some people, the end of the world as we know it is upon us, and there is no better time than now to start preparing.

Such is the concept of National Geographic Channel's new reality show Doomsday Preppers, which profiles Americans who have taken extreme measures to plan for a forthcoming apocalypse — whether natural disaster, nuclear war or economic crisis. The show premieres tonight with back-to-back episodes at 9 and 10 ET/PT.

The channel commissioned an online survey of 1,007 adults in the USA, and found that 61% of Americans believe the country will experience a major catastrophic event within the next 20 years, but only 15% feel they are fully prepared for it.

"I think between the survey and the show, people will get to examine their own beliefs, compare them to the survey, see how people in the show are spending their lives and learn to prepare themselves," says Brad Dancer, senior vice president of research and digital media at the channel.

Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) announced 990 job cuts on Tuesday, which the part-nationalised British bank said formed part of last year's broader plans to axe 15,000 jobs across the company.

Lloyds, which is 40 percent owned by the government after a state bailout during the 2008 credit crisis, said the latest cuts would take place within its group operations, executive functions, risk, wholesale and insurance divisions.

It added it would seek to redeploy staff where possible and that compulsory redundancies would be a last resort.

Supervalu Inc. said Tuesday it is eliminating 800 jobs from its corporate and regional offices nationwide as part of its yearlong effort to cut costs and offer more competitive grocery prices.

Supervalu said in a news release the cuts include layoffs of current employees and open jobs that won't be filled. The grocer expects most of the cuts to be done by Feb. 25, the end of the company's fiscal year.