The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America’s unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term ...
New York ? Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his signature “60 Minutes” commentaries about life’s large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old.Even then, he said he wasn’t retiring. Writers never retire. But his life after the end of “A Few ...
Lincoln, Neb. ? Iowa and Nebraska are withdrawing from an association of Missouri River states and tribes because of a dispute over how to manage the river, which flooded large parts of both states last summer.Representatives for Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad ...
Phoenix ? When President George H.W. Bush came to visit her in the hospital, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords could say only “Wow!” and another word she had been uttering frequently at the time, “chicken.”Months later, when she was shown photos of famous people to see if she recognized faces, ...
Honolulu ? It happens daily in supermarkets and convenience stores nationwide: digging into a bag of chips while waiting in line, sampling a couple of grapes in the produce section, opening a bottle of milk to appease a crying child.The highly-publicized story of a pregnant Honolulu mom who was ...
Hartford, Conn. ? The pressure on Connecticut Light & Power intensified Friday with the governor announcing an independent investigation of the utility’s response to last week’s winter storm outages and a local fire department claiming the company’s response has led to safety ...
Washington ? The American job market improved modestly in October, and economists looking deeper into the numbers found reasons for optimism — or at least what counts for optimism in this agonizingly slow economic recovery.The nation added 80,000 jobs. That was fewer than the 100,000 that ...
Cannes, France ? Conceding a fragile global recovery and plodding job growth back home, President Barack Obama said Friday he is confident European leaders are fixing their ominous debt crisis, which threatens to undermine the United States and his own shot at a second term.A year shy of the ...
Oakland, Calif. ? Occupy Wall Street protesters had just a few hours to celebrate what they saw as their biggest victory so far: the peaceful shutdown of the nation’s fifth-busiest port. Then the rioting began.A day after some protesters clashed with riot police, set fires and shattered ...
Washington ? The ranks of America’s poorest poor have climbed to a record high — 1 in 15 people — spread widely across metropolitan areas as the housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and shriveled jobs and income.New census data paint a stark ...
WASHINGTON — China’s high-flying economy is starting to lose altitude. The big question is whether the world’s economic superstar will descend gradually — or so fast that it harms a fragile global economy.China’s comedown is being engineered by its policymakers. They want to slow its ...
WASHINGTON — A Marine in Iraq sent home $43,000 in stolen cash by hiding it in a footlocker among American flags. A soldier shipped thousands more concealed in a toy stuffed animal. An embassy employee tricked the State Department into wiring $240,000 into his foreign bank account.As the wars ...
WASHINGTON — Key proposals from the Republican presidential candidates might make for good campaign fodder. But independent analyses raise serious questions about those plans and their ability to cure the nation’s ills in two vital areas, the economy and housing.Consider proposed cuts in ...
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Picture this: Kodak — the company that invented the first digital camera in 1975, and developed the photo technology inside most cellphones and digital devices — is in the midst of the worst crisis in its 131-year history.Now, caught between ruin and revival, Eastman ...
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — The weekend suicide bombing of a NATO convoy that killed 17 people in Kabul adds urgency to the U.S.-led coalition’s work to expand a security bubble around the Afghan capital.With most of the attacks in Kabul blamed on the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, the latest ...
WASHINGTON — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller ...
Nashvile, Tenn. ? Occupy Wall Street protesters and state officials in Tennessee squared off for a third consecutive night Saturday, even though a local judge has consistently refused to jail the demonstrators.The protesters have been galvanized by the friction between state officials and the ...
Montgomery, Ala. ? The epicenter of the fight over the nation’s patchwork of immigration laws is not Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico and became a common site for boycotts. Nor was it any of the four states that were next to pass their own crackdowns.No, the case that’s likely to ...
Kansas City, Mo. ? Nearly a decade ago, a suburban Kansas City man desperately searching for his teenage daughter’s killer divined an idea: Place a “wanted” poster with the suspect’s picture on a billboard.A year later, Leawood, Kan., resident Roger Kemp got his wish, and investigators ...
Monterey, Calif. ? A shark attacked a surfer Saturday off a California beach, biting him in the neck and arm and sending him to a hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries.Eric Tarantino of Monterey was attacked around 7 a.m., just minutes after he and a friend entered the water at Marina ...