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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

filming "Priest," what Dresser calls a post-Apocalyptic vampire Western.

filming "Priest," what Dresser calls a post-Apocalyptic vampire Western.

The report indicated economic outlooks do not look good and Bockman and Sirotnik agreed based on the reactions of purchasing managers.

The report indicated economic outlooks do not look good and Bockman and Sirotnik agreed based on the reactions of purchasing managers.

IN MICHIGAN -If your earnings from work are equal to or less than your weekly umemployment entitlement, your benefits are reduced by 50 cents on every dollar earned -If your earnings surpass your weekly unemployment benefit but are less than 1.5x times your benefit amount, then your total earnings are subtracted from 1.5x times your weekly benefit amount -Your weekly benefit combined with your weekly earnings cannot exceed 1.5x your unemployment benefit amount. This would suggest that in Michigan you could possibly work part-time starting your own business while claiming unemployment insurance as long as you don't make wages from your business in excess of the above and are willing and able to take the new job that you are actively looking for.

HELENDALE * Investigators believe the murder of an elderly Helendale man last December is linked to cockfighting and gambling, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department officials said. While Homicide detectives would not say Jesus Rocha, 68, was holding illegal cockfights on his 10-acre property, authorities do believe he is involved in the criminal sport in some way. "It's gambling and sometimes people lose large amounts of money and that creates problems between individuals and groups of people," Cindy Beavers, spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Department, said. "In this case someone lost their life."

Avoiding Speeding Tickets Trapster is essentially a cell-phone social network that allows motorists to hook up with one another for the purpose of issuing real-time alerts about the location of speed traps. Over the last year, Trapster has significantly broadened its functionality, adding several new applications, carriers and formats. When we spoke with Trapster.com founder and CEO Pete Tenereillo in mid-August, the big news at the time was that Trapster.com had just released its first Android version, which means it's now available on the T-Mobile G1 phone, which significantly increases its penetration, making it accessible to many more users. "Before, if a user had a phone that used the Android system, they didn't much care if it was available on the iPhone," Tenereillo said. Trapster works like this: Go to the Web site, and sign up for a free membership. Then download the Trapster software to your cell phone or PDA. Tenereillo said that most current-generation cell phones, Blackberries and other PDA's can accommodate the Trapster software. Then, you're ready to hit the road. And once you're tooling down the highway, if you spot a state trooper or city cop lying in wait with a radar gun or laser unit, you just need to punch in "pound one" on your cell phone -- or dial a toll-free number. Other users are then alerted on their cell phones or PDA when they approach the same speed trap. "One great thing about that is that it's hands-free," says Tenereillo. "You don't have to be looking at the phone or even be holding it to be notified of the speed trap -- which, of course, is safer, because you don't have to take your eyes off the road to be notified of the trap."

More than 60 percent of the cartels' revenue -- $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 -- came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Now, to stay competitive, Mexican traffickers are changing their business model to improve their product and streamline delivery. Well-organized Mexican cartels have also moved to increasingly cultivate marijuana on public lands in the United States, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center and local authorities. This strategy gives the Mexicans direct access to U.S. markets, avoids the risk of seizure at the border and reduces transportation costs. Unlike cocaine, which the traffickers must buy and transport from South America, driving up costs, marijuana has been especially lucrative for the cartels because they control the business all the way from clandestine fields in the Mexican mountains to the wholesale dealers in U.S. cities such as Washington. "It's pure profit," said Jorge Chabat, an expert on the drug trade at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City.

The Gulf cartel has recently hung banners in Nuevo Laredo accusing Calderon's administration of protecting the less-openly bloody Sinaloa cartel, while cracking down on extremely violent rival drug gangs. While Sinaloa hit men have carried out massacres in the past, the Gulf and La Familia cartels frequently use the grizzliest methods imaginable to eliminate rivals and attack police and army patrols.

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

Sohn said the Central Valley and Inland Empire, which have suffered some of the worst foreclosure rates in the nation, are dragging down the rest of the state. Coastal California is rebounding well, he said, and the comeback in Asia's economy is helping California's major ports.

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

The funeral procession for Tahnee Whiting - the woman whose vehicle was found at the bottom of the California Aqueduct earlier in the month - was traveling east on Main Street when for unknown reasons the tractor trailer heading north on Highway 395 ran through the intersection striking the white SUV directly behind Whiting's hearse, according to Whiting's mother, Kim Isom. About six people were in the overturned vehicle, but only three were transported to Desert Valley Hospital with minor injuries.

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

The tuition was daunting - about $41,000 for a 14-month program - but he said the admissions recruiter portrayed it as the entrance price to a stable life. "The recruiter said, 'The way the economy is, with the recession, you need to have a safe way to be sure you will always have income,' " Mr. Newburg said. " 'In today's market, chefs will always have a job, because people will always have to eat.' " According to Mr. Newburg, the recruiter promised the school would help him find a good job, most likely as a line cook, paying as much as $38,000 a year. Last summer, halfway through his program and already carrying debts of about $10,000, Mr. Newburg was alarmed to see many graduates taking jobs paying as little as $8 an hour washing dishes and busing tables, he said. He dropped out to avoid more debt.

The real Tuscany, as locals have been telling me over the years, is found in the dead of winter, when the crowds are thinner and the rooms, flights and restaurants are pleasantly cheaper.

The jobless rate in Riverside County was 15.1 percent in January, up from 14.3 percent the previous month, new figures show. About 137,600 people are unemployed in Riverside County, according to the California Employment Development Department. Riverside County's jobless figure was in line with the 15 percent unemployment rate that the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan statistical area reported, state officials said. San Bernardino County's unemployment rate was 14.8 percent in January, up from 13.6 percent in December, the monthly labor report showed. In the Coachella Valley, unemployment rates for cities ranged from a low of 5.4 percent in Indian Wells to 29 percent in Mecca. In January, California's unemployment rate was 13.2 percent, compared with 10.6 percent for the nation, EDD reported. Read more tomorrow in The Desert Sun.

HESPERIA * Authorities said a frightening e-mail warning Hesperia residents of a rapist on the loose is a hoax. The e-mail includes an imbedded picture of convicted 9/11 terrorist Zacharias Moussaoui who is currently in federal prison in Colorado.

""It could be an organized crime group who was looking for an opposing group," said Alejandro Garza, the top prosecutor in the state of Nuevo León. Investigators said the gunmen entered the Holiday Inn with a man who was handcuffed and who told them to go to the fifth floor of the 17-story hotel. Once there, they barged into many rooms. They took one guest's laptop computer. Other guests reported that the gunmen looked inside and left. In Room 501, the gunmen took Luis Miguel González, a businessman from Mexico City. In Room 502, they abducted Ángel Ernesto Montes de Oca Sánchez, also from Mexico City. Down the hall, they removed Manuel Juárez, also from Mexico City, from Room 511. Nearby, in Room 512, Araceli Hernández, from Reynosa, who registered as a businesswoman, was also taken. David Salas, the hotel's receptionist, was also taken, along with computer equipment that contained the hotel's guest registry and security tapes, the authorities said. Later, armed men also took the receptionist from a hotel across the street. Initial reports that an American was among the abductees were inaccurate, American officials said. The affiliation of the gunmen was unknown, although some officials and experts on Mexico's drug gangs suggested that initial evidence pointed to the Zetas, a paramilitary group that engages in drug trafficking and other illegal activities and has been linked to violence in Monterrey. Before storming the hotels, the attackers stole trucks and other vehicles and used them to block access to the area, the authorities said. "It's absolutely unprecedented," said George W. Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and the author of "Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?" "You now have gunmen blocking off streets so that even if you had competent police, and you don't in Monterrey, they can't get to the place of operation," he said. Every day, Mexico's drug traffickers see

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

In Google's case, the intruders seemed to have precise intelligence about the names of the Gaia software developers, and they first tried to access their work computers and then used a set of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the repositories where the source code for the program was stored. They then transferred the stolen software to computers owned by Rackspace, a Texas company. Rackspace, which had no knowledge of the transaction, offers Web-hosting services. It is not known where the software was sent from there. The intruders had access to an internal Google corporate directory known as Moma, which holds information about the work activities of each Google employee, and they may have used it to find specific employees. A version of this article appeared in print on April 20, 2010, o