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http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/03/05/business/20100306_CHARTS_GRAPHIC.html?ref=economy March 5, 2010 After Jerky Swings, the Economy Begins to Look Nice and Boring By FLOYD NORRIS A DEEP recession and the credit crisis led to extraordinary falls in the American economy and perhaps even greater disruptions in financial markets. Now, both economic and market indicators have returned to what Warren G. Harding called "normalcy" when he was elected president in 1920, after the end of World War I and a subsequent recession. A lot of worry about the economy remains, and some economists are forecasting a double-dip recession, as occurred in the early 1980s, or a very slow recovery, as happened after the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions. But as the accompanying charts show, three disparate indicators - covering unemployment, corporate financial distress and stock market volatility - have gone from very high to a little below historical averages. Abby Joseph Cohen, the Goldman Sachs strategist, told a conference sponsored by George Washington University this week that lessened market volatility was one of the reassuring signs she saw. She was referring to the VIX index, which uses index options prices to show how much volatility traders expect. Another way to measure volatility is to look at the range of share prices. The chart here shows the differences between the highs and lows of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index during three-month periods. There have been some sharp movements on a few days, but the high from December through February was just 10 percent higher than the low, the smallest range since the summer of 2007. Similarly, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm, said that only 42,900 firings were announced in February, the lowest for any month since 2006. The chart shows three-month totals, which are down almost three-quarters from the highest levels last year. The data "offers more support to the notion that U.S. employers ha

"Americans, whether they are rich or poor, are much more in favor of high-skilled immigrants," said Jens Hainmueller, a political scientist at M.I.T. and co-author of a survey of attitudes toward immigration with Michael J. Hiscox, professor of government at Harvard. The survey of 1,600 adults, which examined the reasons for anti-immigration sentiment in the United States, was published in February in American Political Science Review, a peer-reviewed journal. Americans are inclined to welcome upper-tier immigrants - like Ms. Kollman-Moore - believing they contribute to economic growth without burdening public services, the study found. More than 60 percent of Americans are opposed to allowing more low-skilled foreign laborers, regarding them as more likely to be a drag on the economy. Those kinds of views, in turn, have informed recent efforts by Congress to remake the immigration system. A measure unveiled last month by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, aims to reshape the legal system to give priority to high-skilled, high-earning immigrants, offering narrower channels for low-wage workers. (A bill in 2007 by the Bush administration tilted even more sharply toward upper-tier immigrants; it failed in Congress.) "

As some companies begin to rebuild stocks, the impact could wash through the economy for a few more months, adding jobs and moderating the overall decline. Then the underlying weakness of the economy will probably reassert itself, say experts. After years of borrowing against homes and cashing in stock to spend in excess of their incomes, many Americans are tapped out. Austerity and saving have replaced spending and investment in many households, constraining the economy. As many Americans transition from living on home equity loans to sustaining themselves on paychecks, weekly pay continues to effectively shrink: Over the last year, average hourly earnings for rank-and-file workers - some 80 percent of the labor force - have increased by 2.5 percent. But average weekly earnings have expanded by only 0.7 percent, less than the increase in the cost of living, because employers have slashed working hours. In September, the average workweek edged down by one-tenth of an hour, to 33 hours. For those out of work, the job market looks harsher now than at any point in the recession. The number of people who have been jobless for more than six months increased in September by 450,000, reaching 5.4 million. "We have a truly massive crisis of long-term unemployment," said Christine L. Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project in a statement, adding that nearly 400,000 jobless people had exhausted their unemployment benefits by the end of September. "Today's employment report is a marching order for Congress to pass unemployment benefit extensions to all states, quickly." The first signs of improvement are likely to be seen among temporary workers, say experts, as companies now hunkering down in the face of uncertain prospects take tentative steps to expand. But temporary help services lost 1,700 jobs in September. "Companies are extremely cautious," said Roy G. Krause, chief executive of Spherion, a recruiting and staffing comp

As some companies begin to rebuild stocks, the impact could wash through the economy for a few more months, adding jobs and moderating the overall decline. Then the underlying weakness of the economy will probably reassert itself, say experts. After years of borrowing against homes and cashing in stock to spend in excess of their incomes, many Americans are tapped out. Austerity and saving have replaced spending and investment in many households, constraining the economy. As many Americans transition from living on home equity loans to sustaining themselves on paychecks, weekly pay continues to effectively shrink: Over the last year, average hourly earnings for rank-and-file workers - some 80 percent of the labor force - have increased by 2.5 percent. But average weekly earnings have expanded by only 0.7 percent, less than the increase in the cost of living, because employers have slashed working hours. In September, the average workweek edged down by one-tenth of an hour, to 33 hours. For those out of work, the job market looks harsher now than at any point in the recession. The number of people who have been jobless for more than six months increased in September by 450,000, reaching 5.4 million. "We have a truly massive crisis of long-term unemployment," said Christine L. Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project in a statement, adding that nearly 400,000 jobless people had exhausted their unemployment benefits by the end of September. "Today's employment report is a marching order for Congress to pass unemployment benefit extensions to all states, quickly." The first signs of improvement are likely to be seen among temporary workers, say experts, as companies now hunkering down in the face of uncertain prospects take tentative steps to expand. But temporary help services lost 1,700 jobs in September. "Companies are extremely cautious," said Roy G. Krause, chief executive of Spherion, a recruiting and staffing comp

These two scumbags made the big-time national news when this happened. Machnick and her husband were tried for felony child abuse in 2002. Jury deadlocked. In 2005, facing re-trial, Machnick pled "nolo contendere" (equivalent to guilty) to misdemeanor child abuse in a plea bargain and received 120 days community service. Their child was in junior high, and Machnick was a public school principal in Walnut. When this broke, she got promoted to "administration" so she would have "no contact with children"...  top aide on leave after child abuse allegations surface Comments 11 | Recommend 2 March 20, 2010 11:32 AM Natasha Lindstrom VICTORVILLE * The Victor Valley Union High School District has placed the superintendent's top aide on paid leave after officials discovered she was charged with abusing her teenage stepson 10 years ago, including taking nude photographs of him and forcing him to carry dog feces in his backpack. Deborah Machnick, 54, joined the district in September 2007 as director of curriculum and instruction and was appointed special assistant to the superintendent six months ago. Machnick was placed on leave March 11 after a district employee tipped off officials about prior child-abuse charges, Superintendent Marilou Ryder confirmed. "To be clear now, during her employment there's been absolutely no complaints or any proof of misconduct at all, but we have certain information that we were obligated to investigate," Ryder said. Prosecutors alleged Machnick and her husband, Grady Machnick, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff's sergeant, emotionally and physically abused their then-14-year-old son at their residence in Yorba Linda, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2002. To discipline the unruly boy, the couple allegedly forced him to sleep outside on a dog mat, prevented him from using the bathroom at night and poured water on him as he slept, the Times reported. The boy was forced to "earn" clean clothes, according to the Time

Esmeralda's partially clothed body was found in the cotton field's irrigation ditch eight days later, along with those of the two other women. Her pants removed and blouse and bra pulled up to her neck, Esmeralda was lying face up in the ditch, hands tied behind her back. Part of Esmeralda's right breast had been hacked away, the nipple of the other sliced off. The body was badly decomposed. The Inter-American Court found that Esmeralda and the two other girls had disappeared separately and had been held in captivity before being murdered. All three likely were raped and tortured by their captors for an unknown number of days, the court said. "The treatment they experienced during the time they remained kidnapped before their death caused them, at the very least, severe mental suffering," the court stated in its ruling, adding that Mexican officials deprived Esmeralda and the others of "the rights to life, personal integrity and personal liberty." Encouraged not to view Esmeralda's body, Monreal identified her daughter by the clothes police said she was wearing, including her socks. But even as she buried her daughter, positive identification had not been conclusive - not until four years later - when an Argentine forensics crew confirmed the murdered girl's identity with DNA testing. More bodies, same field The body of Laura Berenice Ramos, 17, a third-year high school student, also was found that day; she hadn't been heard from since calling a friend to say she was heading to a Saturday night party. Her breast also was mutilated and skin had been torn from her body. The third woman was Claudia Ivette Gonzalez, 20, who on the day she vanished had been sent home from her factory job after arriving two minutes late. She, too, had been tortured, one of her arms severed. Soon after, searchers recovered the remains of five more women in another corner of the field. They had been dead much longer; the killing had been going on for some time. Within three days

Symptoms include high fever, headache, eye pain, shortness of breath and extreme fatigue with rapid progression of symptoms to severe respiratory distress in about five days, the Canadian agency said. A "high proportion" of cases require mechanical respiration, it said. The four males and three females in San Diego County and Imperial County, California, and in San Antonio, Texas, diagnosed with swine flu had mild flu-like symptoms. The patients, 9 to 54 years old, included a father-daughter pair and two boys attending the same Texas school. Human-to-Human Spread The virus is contagious and spreading from human to human, the CDC said in a statement on its Web site. The patients began feeling sick from March 28 to April 19.

emember how Republican Scott P. Brown's victory in January's Senate race in Massachusetts was supposed to represent a mortal blow to health-care reform? "Probably back to the drawing board," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) declared the next day. "Might be dead," Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) surmised. "We're back to where we were maybe even years ago," concluded Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). But rather than dooming the effort, Brown's win appears to have helped Democrats refocus the legislation and their strategy for selling it. Once on track to produce a bill that Republicans were prepared to depict as partisan and laden with special-interest perks, Democrats now expect to unveil legislation that costs less and more aggressively tackles health-care inflation -- a package they say could leave them less vulnerable in November. It drops the "Cornhusker Kickback" that so infuriated voters, and includes a few Republican ideas tacked on by President Obama. "There's no government takeover of health care; there's an expansion of the private market, subsidies, more choice -- I mean, it's so much of what many of us had hoped for from the very beginning," said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a moderate and reluctant supporter of the original Senate bill. The House and Senate will launch the final legislative phase this week, with the aim of holding votes before the end of the month. The action will come in two phases. First the House will vote on the bill the Senate approved on Christmas Eve. Then each chamber is expected to consider a package of "fixes" offered under a budget rule known as reconciliation that will protect it from a GOP filibuster in the Senate. Democrats could still fail to pass the overhaul for any number of reasons, and Republicans are vowing an epic showdown on the Senate floor to derail the reconciliation package. Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, which holds jurisdiction over reconciliation bills, has called the

ABOUT 30 PERCENT OF ARRANGEMENTS on the site involve the daddy paying an "allowance," usually a thousand or two a month, though the site claims some reach $10,000. The rest provide the baby with incidental cash, shopping sprees, gifts, travel or the fleeting illusion that theirs is a high-end, easy life. "I get flown to whatever city I want," wrote a North Carolina college student, who goes by the name gurlnextdoor on the site's blog, a mix between an online support group and a kaffeeklatsch. "He pays for it, takes me shopping, we talk, laugh, go out to eat and do whatever we want to do for our days together. . . . I don't bring up mundane problems about my home life, and he does the same. . . . If I wanted someone to talk to about my life problems, I'd get a boyfriend or a therapist."

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killings in the Tijuana area fell to about 130 in the first three months of this year. That number is still high, but it's significantly lower than the total for the last three months of 2008, when there were 447 slayings. The number of ransom kidnappings, which provided gangs with large revenue streams, also has declined sharply, say Mexican authorities and victims rights groups. Since then, the general's soldiers have killed or captured several of Garcia's gunmen and lieutenants, among them Jacome Gamboa, a 29-year-old former soldier believed responsible for a reign of terror in Rosarito Beach, where the violence has all but destroyed the crucial tourism industry.

So get ready to enjoy Mexico again.

A typical lob wedge might have a loft of 60 degrees (some pros also carry "X-wedges" with lofts even greater). As its name implies, a lob wedge allows a player to "lob" the ball high into the air, from where it will drop steeply down onto the green, with little or no roll. With pitching wedges typically lofted from 45 to 48 degrees, the gap wedge is so-called because it closes the "gap" in loft between the pitching wedge and sand wedge. A typical gap wedge might might be lofted from 50-54 degrees.

Bua hit a submerged boulder feet-first, according to his grandmother, Cheryl Rollins of Hesperia . The impact was so powerful that some people said they could hear bones break. Bua broke his right femur in 17 places and sustained fractures of the tailbone, pelvis, left tibia and fibula. He also cracked his L1 and shattered his right heel.

Bua hit a submerged boulder feet-first, according to his grandmother, Cheryl Rollins of Hesperia . The impact was so powerful that some people said they could hear bones break. Bua broke his right femur in 17 places and sustained fractures of the tailbone, pelvis, left tibia and fibula. He also cracked his L1 and shattered his right heel.