Mass Effect 2: Big Game Hunter

Economy Much Worse than Jobs Data Claims

Talking Cat Turf War

Stocks pull out of slump but end week lower

A battered stock market recovered from a sharp drop in late trading Friday but still posted its fourth straight weekly drop. The Dow Jones industrials, down nearly 170 points in afternoon trading, clawed their way back to finish with a gain of 10. But more stocks fell than rose on the New York Stock Exchange

Goldman CEO Blankfein gets $9M stock bonus for 09

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein is getting a $9 million stock bonus for 2009, a modest payday by Wall Street standards that appears aimed at quelling criticism of the bank’s compensation practices. Blankfein will receive more than 58,000 shares of restricted stock that can’t be cashed in for five years, the bank said

Drop in jobless rate points to modest improvement

The job market is lurching toward improvement. It just has a long way to go. The outlook for jobs became a bit less bleak Friday when the government released January’s unemployment rate showing an unexpected decline from 10 percent to 9.7 percent. It was the first drop in seven months. Still, the government now estimates

What a 9.7 percent unemployment rate means

Despite economists’ expectations that the unemployment rate would climb well into the economic recovery, the percentage of unemployed, job-seeking Americans fell 0.3 percentage point in January to 9.7 percent, its lowest point since August. The unemployment rate is calculated through a separate survey from the payroll count, which found the nation’s employers still reluctant to

FDA concerned dissolvable tobacco appeals to kids

The Food and Drug Administration is saying in letters to two tobacco companies that flavored, dissolvable tobacco products — that the agency compares with candy and says contain a lot of nicotine — could be particularly appealing to kids and young adults. The FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products wrote to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., maker

S.Korea court says automakers not to blame for asthma

A court ruled Wednesday that South Korea’s government and five main automakers are not responsible for respiratory diseases allegedly caused by air pollution. A group of 23 patients suffering from asthma or other respiratory diseases brought the rare lawsuit in February 2007, claiming 30 million won (26,000 dollars) in damages for each plaintiff. They claimed

Merck reps banned from US AIDS clinics over drug costs

The largest US HIV/AIDS health care provider on Monday accused Merck Pharmaceuticals of price-gouging its AIDS treatment Isentress and banned the drug giant’s sales reps from its clinics in protest. “We’ve banned representatives from Merck Pharmaceuticals from calling on our physicians in our clinics, which is a common marketing strategy. We are instituting this ban