The stuff blogs are made of

PORTLAND, Ore. — Cyber Monday. Green Tuesday. Black Friday. Magenta Saturday.

Chances are you won”t find any of these holidays on your calendar. Yet retailers are coming up with names for just about every day of the week during the holiday shopping season.

During T-Mobile”s “Magenta Saturday,” the event named for the company”s pinkish-purple logo earlier this month offered shoppers the chance to buy cellphones and some tablets on a layaway plan. Mattel lured customers in with discounts of 60 percent off toys for girls and boys on “Pink Friday and “Blue Friday.” And outdoor retailer Gander Mountain is giving shoppers deals on camouflage and other gear every Thursday through December during “Camo Thursdays.”

“There are hundreds of promotions going on this time of year,” says Steve Uline, head of marketing for Gander. “We needed to do something a little bit different.”

It”s difficult to get Americans to spend money when many are struggling with job losses, underwater mortgages or dwindling retirement savings. But merchants are hoping some creative marketing will generate excitement among shoppers during the last two months of the year, a time when many of them make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. And they know that a catchy name can make a huge difference.

“The more special you make it sound, the more you might be able to get people,” says Alan Adamson, a managing director at brand consulting firm Landor Associates. “It”s tricky to come up with something simple and sticky.”

Retailers have done it before.

“Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, in the 1960s became known as the point when merchants turn a profit or operate “in the black.” Later, retailers began marketing it as the start of the holiday shopping season with earlier store hours and deep discounts of up to 70 percent off.

It”s since become the busiest shopping day of the year. This past weekend, “Black Friday” sales were $11.4 billion, up 7 percent, or nearly $1 billion from the same day last year, according to a report by ShopperTrak, which gathers data from 25,000 outlets across the country. It was the largest amount ever spent on that day.

U.S. retailers racked up a record $52.4 billion in sales over the Thanksgiving weekend, a 16.4 percent jump from a year ago, the National Retail Federation said Sunday. It also forecast a 2.8 percent increase in sales for the November-to-December holiday season, down from the 5.2 percent increase in the same period last year.

Victim of its own success”
But “Black Friday” has been a blessing and a curse: In recent years, it”s become so popular that it”s known for its big crowds, long lines, and even disorder and violence among some shoppers.

“Black Friday has become a victim of its own success,” says Adamson, the branding expert. “It has been successful to the point where it has created the opportunity that if you don”t want to deal with the madness, come out on Tuesday or some other day.”

“Cyber Monday” was coined in 2005 when a retail trade group noticed a spike in online sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving when people returned to their work computers and shopped. While more people now have Internet access at home, retailers still offer discounts and other online promotions for the day started by Shop.org, part of The National Retail Federation.

The day has grown increasingly popular. Last year, it was the busiest online shopping day ever, with sales of more than $1 billion, according to research firm ComScore Inc.

During this week”s “Cyber Monday,” the NRF says nearly 80 percent of retailers plan to offer special promotions. And a record 122.9 million of Americans are expected to shop on the day, up from 106.9 million who shopped on “Cyber Monday” last year, according to a survey conducted for Shop.org.

Marketers are hoping to strike gold again. Many are doing so by appealing to Americans who”ve become disenchanted with big business and commercialism.

Nonprofit Green America is launching “Green Tuesday” this week to encourage people to buy gifts with the environment and local communities in mind. The group is planning to push the event every Tuesday through December.

Green America, which says it aims to support society and the environment through economic programs, plans to showcase deals on its website, including jewelry made from recycled nuclear bomb equipment from online retailer Fromwartopeace.com and a self-watering system for plants by Dri Water.

“Mass culture encourages people to run out of their house, now at midnight, and go shopping,” says Todd Larsen, director of corporate responsibility for Green America, which vetted the businesses it”s highlighting on its website to ensure they meet certain environmental and ethical standards. “Why not wait another day or more and buy something that helps others?”

Last year, American Express named the Saturday after Thanksgiving “Small Business Saturday” to encourage Americans to shop at mom-and-pop shops. This year, it offered a $25 credit to cardholders who register on social media website Facebook and shop at participating stores.

The company launched a campaign to promote the day — including TV ads and marketing materials for small businesses to display in stores.

The effort has worked. Small retailers that accept Amex had a 28 percent increase in revenue during the daylong event last year, compared with a 9 percent rise for all retailers, according to card activity measured by American Express. The company did not disclose the dollar amount spent that day.

Crazed weekend launches crucial retail season

It”s not clear yet how small businesses fared during the event this past Saturday, but a company survey before “Small Business Saturday” showed that 89 million consumers had planned to “shop small” on the day.

“People get it; they are behind it 100 percent,” says Yabette Alfaro, owner of Swankity Swank, a San Francisco home furnishings and accessories shop that participates in “Small Business Saturday.” “Our customers don”t want to participate in Black Friday. Most of them think anyone making a stand is great.”

Lizbeth Turq, a 26-year old in Deerfield, Ill., this past weekend shopped at several local shops during “Small Business Saturday.” She ended up buying some gifts for the holidays, including one for her mother at a home décor store. Most of the items she found were 20 percent off, she says.

“It”s really not an issue of having a sale or not,” Turq says, “It”s an issue of supporting the community I live in and creating jobs, particularly in the economy we are in.”

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

ESPN.com November 16, 2011

The NBA formally notified teams Tuesday that it has canceled games through Dec. 15, erasing a total of 324 games or 26 percent of the season as the lockout lingers into its fifth month with no end in sight.

The news came only hours before the locked-out players, including stars Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant, filed class-action antitrust lawsuits against the league on Tuesday in at least two states, moving pro basketball”s labor dispute from the negotiating table to federal court.

Attorney David Boies, who represented the NFL during that sport”s work stoppage and now has been brought aboard by basketball”s players, said the NBA lockout violates antitrust laws by refusing to allow players to work.

Boies added that Stern”s ultimatum to the now-disbanded union to accept the owners” last economic model or face a harsher proposal “turned out to be a mistake” that strengthens the players” case because it proves that the collective bargaining process had ended.

“If you”re in a poker game, and you run a bluff, and the bluff works, you”re a hero. If someone calls your bluff, you lose. I think the owners overplayed their hand,” Boies said at the players” association headquarters. “They did a terrific job of taking a very hard line and pushing the players to make concession after concession after concession, but greed is not only a terrible thing — it”s a dangerous thing.”

Dangerous enough to cost the league billions of dollars in damages if the players win.

The players are seeking “treble damages” — meaning triple the amount of the more than $2 billion they would have made under a full 2011-12 season — for what they argue is irreparable harm by preventing them from playing in their “very short” NBA careers.

“We haven”t seen Mr. Boies” complaint yet, but it”s a shame that the players have chosen to litigate instead of negotiate,” NBA spokesman Tim Frank said in a statement. “They warned us from the early days of these negotiations that they would sue us if we didn”t satisfy them at the bargaining table, and they appear to have followed through on their threats.”

Boies acknowledged that the case could take months, but hoped there would be a settlement before too long.

“Nobody can tell you how long it”s going to take. We all know it”s possible to delay lawsuits for a while, but I think it is in everybody”s interest to try to resolve this promptly,” said Boies, speaking on behalf of the California filing. “The longer it goes on, the greater the damages that the teams will face, the greater the damages that the players will suffer, and perhaps most important of all, the longer basketball fans will be deprived of basketball. So we hope that this will move quickly.”

He insisted the players have shown their willingness to negotiate throughout.

“You can”t negotiate by yourself,” he said. “You can only negotiate if you”ve got somebody who”s willing to sit down and negotiate with you.”

The two suits — one filed in conjunction with the players” association in the Northern District of California and another filed in Minnesota — likely were filed with a favorable venue in mind.

The Minnesota district court has been favorable to the NFLPA during litigation dating to the 1980s. The federal court in San Francisco is under the jurisdiction of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the most liberal of the 13 circuit courts.

The NBA already has filed a pre-emptive lawsuit in New York seeking to prove the lockout is legal and likely would push for cases to be moved there to gain the legal home court.

Though Stern has ridiculed the players” “losing” strategy, Boies said he believes NBA players have a stronger case than NFL players did. Their decertification, he said, could have been argued as a sham because they walked out on the bargaining process before it was technically over and brought litigation. He said Stern”s actions left NBA players without options beyond seeking legal relief.

“Here you had an ultimatum from the owners that made absolutely clear that the collective bargaining process was over,” he said, adding that Stern”s threat is quoted in the lawsuit. “That”s not collective bargaining, and so you have a very distinct set of facts here.”

The California filing says that in 2007, Stern met with union negotiators and demanded the players reduce their revenue share from 57 percent to no more than 50 percent and “insisted on a much more restrictive salary cap, which would restrict the market for player services.”

Stern threatened at that meeting, according to the lawsuit, that the league was “prepared to lock out the players for two years to get everything” that the NBA owners sought and that “the deal would only get worse after the lockout.”

The league locked out its players on July 1. Tuesday marked the 138th day of the lockout and the players” first missed paycheck. The season was scheduled to start Nov. 1.

The league”s latest proposal, which was rejected by the players on Monday, called for a reduced 72-game season to start Dec. 15.

Although the NFL was able to get its recent labor dispute resolved quickly enough to lose only one preseason game, the NHL lost the entire 2004-05 season, and the NBA”s last work stoppage led to a 50-game season in 1998-99.

Boies said players will not seek a preliminary injunction to lift the lockout. Because the lockout “arguably grew out of prior collective bargaining discussions,” Boies said he believes it would be very difficult to get a court to immediately halt the lockout and such a path would delay the case.

Anthony and Chauncey Billups of the Knicks, NBA scoring leader Durant, rookie Kawhi Leonard and Grizzlies forward Leon Powe were listed as plaintiffs in the complaint filed in conjunction with the players” association in the Northern District of California against the NBA and the owners of its 30 teams. That case has been assigned for now to U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu in Oakland, Calif.

Timberwolves forward Anthony Tolliver, Pistons guard Ben Gordon, free agent forward Caron Butler and Derrick Williams — the second overall draft pick by Minnesota in June who has yet to sign a rookie contract because of the lockout — were listed as plaintiffs in another lawsuit filed against the league and owners in Minneapolis, where NFL players had some level of success in a similar court proceeding this summer.

Boies said there might be other, similar cases to those filed on behalf of NBA players in California and Minnesota. The ideal scenario, he said, would be to bring them all together in the Northern District of California.

The plaintiffs represent various types of players affected by lockout — those under contract, free agents and rookies.

They argue in the Minnesota filing that the lockout “constitutes an illegal group boycott, price-fixing agreement, and/or restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Act” and that the owners” final offer for a new CBA would have “wiped out the competitive market for most NBA players.”

Boies said the lawsuit was an attempt to restore competitive free-market conditions

Players made numerous economic concessions and were willing to meet the owners” demands of a 50-50 split of basketball-related income — a transfer of about $280 million annually from their feeling the league”s desires to improve competitive balance would hurt their guaranteed 57 percent under the old deal — but only if the owners met them on their system wishes.

Owners wanted to keep more of the league”s nearly $4 billion in basketball revenues. And they sought a system where even the smallest-market clubs could compete, believing the current system would always favor the teams who could spend the most.

And Boies said it was those owners who put the league in this position.

“If it were up to the players, there would be games being played right now,” he said. “There is one reason and one reason only that the season is in jeopardy and that is because the owners have locked the players out and have maintained that lockout for several months.

“If there”s not a basketball season, responsibility for that lies in one place and one place only, and that is the NBA and the NBA owners because they”re the ones who are keeping the players from playing.”

Information from ESPN.com”s Marc Stein and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Government website lists rates of surgical complications, infections and other problems

By Jordan Rau

Medicare has begun publishing patient safety ratings for thousands of hospitals as the first step toward paying less to institutions with high rates of surgical complications, infections, mishaps and potentially avoidable deaths.

The new data, available on Medicare’s Hospital Compare website, evaluate hospitals on how often their patients suffer complications such as a collapsed lung, a blood clot after surgery or an accidental cut or tear during treatment. The measures also include specific death rates for patients who had breathing problems after surgery, had an operation to repair a weakness in the abdominal aorta or had a treatable complication after an operation.

In addition, Hospital Compare is evaluating rates of some specific medical errors, such as giving patients the wrong type of blood, leaving surgical implements in patients’ bodies during surgery and falls that occur during their stay.

The evaluations are part of Medicare’s broad move from paying hospitals a set amount for each procedure. That change was directed by last year’s health care law, which set up new “value-based purchasing program” that will begin in October 2012. Over time, hospitals with the lowest quality—as judged by a variety of metrics, not just the new patient safety measures—will be at risk to lose up to 2 percent of their regular Medicare reimbursements under the health law.

The new data on patient safety moves Medicare further along toward its ultimate goal, which is to base payments on the actual medical outcomes for patients. To rate hospitals, Medicare is comparing them to the national rates for medical complications and hospital acquired conditions. For instance, on average, 2.1 out of every 1,000 patients discharged suffered an accidental cut and tear from medical treatment. Out of 100 patients, 4.4 on average died after surgery to repair a weakness in their abdominal aorta.

By looking at how a hospital compares to the national average on this and other complication statistics, Medicare has come up with overall evaluations of how good hospitals are at avoiding complications and hospital-acquired conditions. Medicare is aiming to incorporate the new patient safety data into payments in the second year of the program.

Making this information public has been long favored by patient safety advocates. “This is pulling the curtain back on preventable health care harm to older Americans,” said Rosemary Gibson, co-author of “The Treatment Trap” and editor of a series of articles on overtreatment in the Archives of Internal Medicine. “These are really good things to know. We are really getting into the meat of what can happen to patients in hospitals.”

But the latest data is intensifying objections from the hospital industry and some academic researchers that Medicare is using dubious and unfair measurements in ways that will hurt some hospitals, particularly those with sicker patients. The data is based on billing claims that hospitals submit to the government, not clinical medical records. One concern held by hospitals and researchers is that hospitals categorize the same things differently when billing Medicare, skewing comparisons.

“Medicare claims data is the thing a lot of people judge from, but it’s a large database and frankly I’ve always wondered if apples and oranges are being mixed,” said Dr. Gerald Healy, a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Massachusetts nonprofit, and past president of the American College of Surgeons.

Hospital officials said their initial review of the new data has exacerbated their concerns that Medicare’s calculations do not fully take into account the fact that some hospitals do more surgeries or treat sicker patients.

“We believe the data is fairly seriously flawed in the way it’s calculated,” said Nancy Foster, a vice president at the American Hospital Association. “When inaccurate data is out there, it both misleads the public and generates a lot of activity that is unproductive in the hospital.”

Atul Grover, head of advocacy for the Association of American Medical Colleges that represents teaching hospitals, said some of Medicare’s measures also make teaching hospitals look worse. “If you’re not appropriately risk-adjusting on this, you’re already selecting a patient population that’s more likely to die,” he said. “That’s why they come to us, because other people are reluctant to operate on those complex cases.”

Officials at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which designed many of the measures, referred questions to Medicare. Officials there were not immediately available to discuss the new measures. Dr. Patrick Romano, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine who helped the government design the measures, said the measures do take the sickness levels of patients into account, although not as thoroughly as Hospital Compare’s existing evaluations of readmissions and hospital-wide mortality rates.

Still, he said the measures were a good addition to the overall view of how well hospitals are doing. “We’re trying to understand a large animal like an elephant or a whale,” he said. “To do that, we take pictures from a variety of perspectives, with different cameras and different techniques.”

Hospital Compare was originally designed to be a helpful consumer tool, but to date it has not been widely used by patients choosing hospitals. Experts caution about drawing dire conclusions from the raw rates of hospitals, as some of the measures are complex and differences not statistically significant. For some of the measures, Hospital Compare categorizes most hospitals simply as “average,” “above” or “below” the national norm, which experts say is a better way for consumers to know whether a hospital is an outlier.

Medicare last week announced 18 more measures it is considering for inclusion in the value-based purchasing program. Many of these measures look at how hospitals handle stroke patients and what steps they take to protect patients from blood clots. Others are intended to address two bacterial infections that can spread through hospitals: Clostridium difficile and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

© 2011 This information was reprinted with permission from KHN. KHN is an editorially independent news service and a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy organization that isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

updated 9/22/2011 12:32:55 PM ET

WASHINGTON — Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government”s latest attempt to protect the Earth”s atmosphere.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.

The FDA finalized plans to phase out the products in 2008 and currently only Armstrong Pharmaceutical”s Primatene mist is available in the U.S. Other manufacturers have switched to an environmentally-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane. Both types of inhalers offer quick-relief to symptoms like shortness of breath and chest tightness, but the environmentally-friendly inhalers are only available via prescription.

“If you rely on an over-the-counter inhaler to relieve your asthma symptoms, it is important that you contact a health care professional to talk about switching to a different medicine to treat your asthma,” said Badrul Chowdhury, FDA”s director of pulmonary drug division.

Chowdhury told reporters and doctors via teleconference that “in the worst case scenario we are looking at 1 to 2 million people using” Primatene, adding that most of those patients likely use multiple medications to treat their asthma.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

updated 9/12/2011 1:33:38 AM ET

Poor SpongeBob.

Back in 2005 he caught flak from a Christian evangelical group because its leader thought he was gay. Now a small new study suggests he could be turning preschoolers” minds to mush.

The study, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics, found watching a snippet of a SpongeBob cartoon negatively affected 4-year-olds’ attention spans. Watching a more realistic PBS cartoon did not.

These days, kids typically start watching television at 4 months of age, and they watch lots of it, Dr. Dimitri Christakis writes in a commentary accompanying the study.

Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids under age 2 not watch any television, the group says a limited amount is OK for older children as long as it”s no more than one to two hours a day of educational programs.

The quality of what children watch is just as important as the quantity, Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital, said in an interview.

“Most parents worry too much about how much TV their children watch and not enough about what they watch,” he says. “It’s not about turning the TV off. It’s about changing the channel.”

In the new study, it’s about changing the channel from Nickelodeon to PBS.

University of Virginia researchers recruited 60 mostly white and middle- or upper-middle-class 4-year-olds and randomly divided them into three groups. One group watched a 9-minute clip of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” a second watched a 9-minute clip of “Caillou,” a realistic PBS cartoon about a preschool boy, and the third drew pictures for 9 minutes instead of watching television.

Immediately afterward, the researchers tested what psychologists call “executive function” in the children. “What executive function basically measures is your ability to stay on task, to not be distracted and to persist on task,” Christakis explains.

Turns out the PBS and picture-drawing groups performed equally well on the tests; the SpongeBob group scored significantly worse. Watching a full half-hour fast-paced cartoon show could be even more detrimental, the study authors write.

They speculate that the SpongeBob show’s more rapid pace and fantastic characters, such as that talking, pants-wearing kitchen sponge who lives under the sea, might be too much for preschoolers’ brains to take in.

“It confirms something that parents have observed for some time,” Christakis says of the study. “They put their kids in front of television, particularly fast-paced programming, to quiet them down, but when the TV goes off, the kids are more amped up than they were before.”

Don’t blame Mr. SquarePants for messing with preschoolers’ brains, Nickelodeon spokesman David Bittler says. “SpongeBob is produced for 6- to 11-year-olds. Four-year-olds are clearly not the intended demographic for this show.”

True, SpongeBob is not listed among the shows for preschoolers on nickjr.com. Probably the best-known of those is “Dora the Explorer,” and, Bittler says, many adults complain that show is too slow.

SpongeBob might not have the same negative effect on attention in older children, the authors acknowledge. And, they write, they don’t know how long the negative effects last or what the long-term effects of regularly viewing SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward and the gang might be.

“Maybe the next step is really to try and figure out how long-lasting these effects are,” says Georgetown University psychologist Rachel Barr.

Barr’s research also has found that watching shows not specifically aimed at preschoolers—and that would include SpongeBob—adversely impacted 4-year-olds’ executive functioning. On the other hand, Barr speculates, educational, age-appropriate programming might have a positive effect.

By Terrie Morgan-Besecker tmorgan@timesleader.com
Law & Order Reporter

Skyrocketing tuition and cuts in aid for higher education have made affording college today more difficult than decades ago, but there are options that ease the burden on students and their families, officials with several organizations that track college costs and financial aid say.

There also are programs available for students who have already graduated and find themselves drowning in student loan debt. Those depend largely upon what type of loans – federal or private – the student took, however.

Experts in higher education financing agree that students should always seek as much money as possible from federal grants, which do not have to be repaid, and federal loan programs before tapping private lenders.

Private loans have higher interest rates and offer fewer consumer protections for borrowers who get into financial trouble, said Isaac Bowers, an attorney with Equal Justice Works, a non-profit organization that advocates for student loan reform.

In addition to lower interest rates, federal loans, such as the Stafford and Perkins loans, provide more flexible repayment plans, Bowers said.

There also are several programs, including income-based repayment plans and public service loan forgiveness, which are not available for private-loan borrowers.

The income-based repayment plan is a valuable resource to assist eligible borrowers who are having trouble making payments, Bowers said.

The plan limits the monthly payment to a maximum 15 percent of the borrowers’ disposable income. Eligibility is based on a person’s standing in relation to the poverty level for the person’s family size.

Under the public service loan forgiveness program, graduates can get a portion of their loan balance forgiven by the federal government if they take a job in the public service sector, including with government and nonprofit, charitable organizations.

The program requires that the participant remain with the nonprofit for a total of 10 years and to make monthly payments on his or her loans during that time. Once the participants have done that, the balance of the loan will be forgiven.

The program is made even more attractive because the borrower can utilize it in conjunction with the income-based repayment plan, Bowers said. That’s been particularly helpful for students who graduate in fields that typically have high educational costs, such as attorneys and doctors.

While federal loans offer attractive advantages, borrowers should note they also have drawbacks, said Deanne Loonin, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

“Government loans have a lot more options for flexible repayment and deferment rights. But if you get into trouble with a loan, the government can come after you much more aggressively,” she said.

Debt doesn’t disappear

Loonin said one factor students should consider is that, should they default, the government can seek repayment from them any time, even decades later.

“Student loans don’t go away. There is no time limit on when they can come after you. I have clients in their 80s and 90s that they’ve taken a portion of their Social Security,” she said.

Filing for bankruptcy isn’t likely to help with federal or private student loans, which are considered an exception to discharge under bankruptcy laws, she said.

There are instances where student loans can be discharged, but that requires the borrower to prove that repayment of the loans is causing an undue hardship. That standard has not been clearly defined in the law, Loonin said, which leaves the decision up to the individual judge’s discretion.

Given the lifelong consequences, it’s critical that students and their families make informed decisions when deciding what school to attend, Loonin and Bowers said.

“Educational debt has a huge burden on peoples’ life choices – what kind of job they take, whether they can afford to have kids or buy a house,” Bowers said.

‘Net price’ consideration

One of the most important things to consider is the “net price” of attending a particular school, said Matt Reed, program director for the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit research organization that advocates to make college more affordable.

The net price is a calculation that takes into consideration the cost of tuition, fees, living expenses, books, supplies and transportation, minus grants and other gifts that do not need to be repaid. Beginning in October, all colleges will be required to post net cost calculators on their websites, Reed said.

“Right now you don’t know what a particular college is going to cost you until you get a financial aid award letter. Often that comes late in the process when you have to make a decision,” Reed said. “It’s important to do research ahead of time to get the net cost.”

For some, the result may mean attending a college that may not be their first choice academically.

“If you are looking at a school and believe you will have to turn to private loans, you might want to consider a less expensive option,” Reed said.

(Forbes) Think a tough economy automatically means more street crime? Think again.

“We’ve been trying to pull that theory back a little bit,” says Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau. “There is no empirical data to make that kind of broad statement.”

If preliminary stats from the FBI crime division hold true, last year will have seen the fewest vehicle thefts since 1967. The most recent FBI crime statistics predict a 7.2-percent reduction in theft since 2009—the lowest rate in more than 40 years.

Of course a lower theft rate doesn’t exactly mean all is well, especially if you drive a Honda Accord. Along with the 1995 Honda Civic and 1991 Toyota Camry, the 1994 Accord topped our list of the most stolen cars in the country.

Behind the Numbers
We compiled our list of the year’s most stolen cars using data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau Hot Wheels Report, which annually identifies the most stolen vehicles in the United States based on vehicle theft data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center. The most recent findings list the vehicle make, model and model year most reported stolen in 2010.

For the first time since 2002 thieves preferred domestic makes over foreign brands. Ford took three spots, including the F-150 pickup and Explorer SUV, while both the Dodge Ram and Caravan made the list. But Honda and Toyota still hold the top three positions, which they’ve done since 2000.

Other popular contenders on the most-stolen list were Chevrolet’s Silverado and GMC’s Sierra pickups. In fact, trucks and SUVs have the most theft in proportion to their worth: According to the Highway Data Loss Institute, the value of the loss of a luxury SUV is more than six times as high as the average for all passenger vehicles. And work trucks are particularly attractive because of the extra trim lines and tools they carry.

“Thieves are after chrome, horsepower and Hemis,” says Kim Hazelbaker, vice president of the Arlington, Va.-based Highway Data Loss Institute.

All told, auto theft costs consumers and insurance companies more than $8 billion every year, according to FBI data. And of the more than 1 million vehicles stolen annually, fewer than 60% of them are recovered.

Technology Thwarts Thieves

Back to the good news: The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety reports that the frequency of theft claims for cars and SUVs has declined since 1998 even while average insurance payments per claim have increased. Frequencies have dropped the most for SUVs, from 4.9 claims per 1,000 insured vehicle years in 1998, to 2.4 in 2008.

Improved technology has helped relegate the threat. Of the nearly 52,000 Honda Accords stolen last year, more than 44,000 of them were made in the 1990s. Just 5,700 were made more recently than 2000.

“Cars themselves are just getting harder to steal,” says Terri Miller, director of the Michigan-based Help Eliminate Auto Theft program.

Common-sense tactics like removing the keys from the ignition and locking doors are always good ideas to help thwart theft, Miller says. But GPS tracking systems and immobilizers make a significant difference, too. They’ll also help authorities recover the car should it happen to be jacked.

It’s almost enough to justify buying that new ride.

(CNN) — Maybe the cash-strapped U.S. government should start selling iPads.

According to the latest statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance Wednesday of $73.8 billion. That”s still a lot of money, but it”s less than what Steve Jobs has lying around.

Tech juggernaut Apple had a whopping $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June, according to its last earnings report. Unlike the U.S. government, which is scrambling to avoid defaulting on its debt, Apple takes in more money than it spends.

This symbolic feat — the world”s most highly valued tech company surpassing the fiscal strength of the world”s most powerful nation — is just the latest pinnacle for Apple, which has been on an unprecedented roll.

Its Macs, iPhones and iPads remain hot sellers, its stock has surged past $400 a share and Apple just became the world”s largest smartphone vendor by volume.

There”s been a lot of speculation about what Apple might buy with its piles of cash — Facebook and Sony being two of the more high-profile examples — but the company doesn”t seem to be in any hurry to make a move.

“We don”t let the cash burn a hole in the pocket or make stupid acquisitions,” CEO Jobs said last fall. “We”d like to continue to keep our powder dry because we think there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future.”

Offering Uncle Sam a short-term loan is probably not one of them.

Yahoo! News

A report by the Center on Education Policy finds that about 38 percent of the country””s public schools did not meet federal benchmarks for improvement on state reading and math tests in 2010. In 2009, that number was only 33 percent.

And in many states, the picture is bleaker. Only about 14 percent of schools in Florida made adequate yearly progress last year. (SEE CORRECTION BELOW.) Twelve states in all had at least half of their schools fail to meet the goal. However, the report also notes that the variations could reflect differences in testing and state mandated goals rather than actual student performance–a worrying disconnect, as schools that don””t make adequate yearly progress as defined by the No Child Left Behind law for several years in a row face certain sanctions.

The report notes that the wide variation in performance among states may reflect “differences in test difficulty, cut scores defining proficiency on state tests, annual targets for the percentage of students scoring proficient, student demographics, and other factors.” In other words, just because one state has more schools failing to make adequate progress doesn””t mean its education system is worse than another state where a greater share of schools are meeting that goal. It may just have harder tests and higher standards.

“A state with a high percentage of schools failing to make AYP should not be assumed to have a weak educational system,” the report said.

That wide variation among states”” standardized tests also calls into question the usefulness of a federal law that tries to hold them all to the same standard. If “proficient” means different things in D.C. and Texas, what””s the point of treating all states”” school systems as if they are the same?

The No Child Behind federal education law expects every school in the country to have 100 percent of its students demonstrating proficiency in math and reading tests by 2013. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been pushing to reauthorize and alter the law so that it doesn””t label so many schools as failing. Duncan warned that more than 80 percent of schools would be labeled failing this year, though this report suggests the number will be far lower.

(Duncan: AP)

CORRECTION: This article originally stated that only 5 percent of Texas schools made adequate progress last year. In fact, only 5 percent of Texas schools failed to make adequate progress last year–95 percent did meet that benchmark.