Peanut Butter News

Full Story at msnbc.msn.com

WASHINGTON — The number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. has dropped for the first time in two decades — decreasing by 8 percent as the sour economy dried up jobs and increased enforcement made it harder to sneak across the border with Mexico, a new study finds.

Much of the decline comes from a sharp drop-off in illegal immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America attempting to cross the southern border of the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, which based its report on an analysis of 2009 census data.

Full Story at CNN.com

(CNN) — The Utah Department of Workforce Services has moved to fire two employees believed to have created and distributed a list containing personal information of 1,300 purported illegal immigrants, officials said Tuesday.

The agency terminated a temporary worker and issued an “intent to terminate employment” notice to the other, spokesman Dave Lewis said. The latter career employee is on paid administrative leave pending a hearing, he said.

Information from a completed internal review of the data leak will be given to the state’s attorney general Wednesday for possible legal action, the department said.

Full Story atnews.blogs.cnn.com

This company had valves that cut the gas off.  Why did BP not have the same. What did they want for oil prices to go up again and out of reach for the poor people. This company sounds like the know what they are doing.

Venezuelan government officials said Thursday they are investigating why a natural gas rig sank off the nation’s coast in the early morning hours, the state-run energy company said.

All 95 workers on board were rescued and no gas leaks were detected because safety valves cut off the flow, said the company, Petroleos de Venezuela, also known as PDVSA.

Full Story at CNN.com

London, England (CNN) — European countries extended their airspace restrictions on Saturday, choking international air travel and stranding thousands of passengers, as an Icelandic volcano continued to spew ash into the atmosphere.

Airspace over the United Kingdom and Belgium will be closed until Saturday night, according to the British air traffic control provider NATS and the Brussels Airport.

British Airways canceled all flights to and from London for all of Saturday. Several flights from North America due to arrive at British destinations Friday night were headed to Scotland instead, the airline said.

Full Story atCNN.com

Washington (CNN) — The unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars reached 14.7 percent in March, according to the latest government statistics.

The number of unemployed veterans increased to more than 250,000, up about 40,000 over the previous month’s figures, according to the Department of Labor Statistics.

Veterans groups say the figures are unacceptable.

Full Story at msnbc.com

WASHINGTON – Afghan President Hamid Karzai called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday after the Obama administration expressed dismay at his assertion a day earlier that the international community was to blame for the controversy over last year’s disputed Afghan election.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Karzai used the 25-minute call to clarify his remarks.

Full Story at CNN.com

CNN) — A man apparently angry over a poor performance evaluation entered an Ohio State University maintenance building early Tuesday and opened fire, killing a manager before turning the gun on himself, police said.

Larry Wallington, 48, a building services manager at the OSU Maintenance Building, was pronounced dead at the scene of the 3:30 a.m. ET shooting, Ohio State University Police Chief Paul Denton said. Wallington was a 10-year university employee, he said.

Full Story at NYTimes.com

JOSH SMITH is a large man with a shaved head, a goatee and a look in his eyes that can only be described as stoked. And he is never more stoked than when he talks about his job, one of the strangest at the General Motors Proving Grounds, here in this suburb 45 miles northwest of Detroit.

All day, he breaks G.M. parts.

Not just any parts. Mr. Smith is a member of Red X, a team of 33 engineers who study auto parts that are malfunctioning for reasons that have everyone stumped. The work is a little bit “CSI” and a little bit “MythBusters.” Red X takes working parts and methodically torments them in controlled experiments, hoping to re-enact the demise of ones that failed.

Full Story at ABCNews.go.com

Appearing on “Good Morning America” today Feinberg also responded to a senior Republican congressman who claimed that AIG has “taxpayers over a barrel.”

In a statement released Tuesday night Sen. Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said “the Obama administration has been outmaneuvered. And the closed-door negotiations just add to the skepticism that the taxpayers will ever get the upper hand.”

Feinberg insisted he had not been “outmaneuvered” by the insurance giant.

Full Story at CNN.com

(CareerBuilder.com) — Higher education isn’t for everyone, and people have a variety of paths to choose from once they graduate from high school. They might know from the start that they want to go straight to the professional world.

Other new graduates often decide to try college for a semester to see how it goes and then realize it’s not for them.

While the decision to pursue a degree or to enter the work force is fraught with pros and cons, earning a lot of money isn’t. Not that money means everything, but wouldn’t we all like to see some bigger numbers on our next paycheck?

Full Story at NYTimes.com

The bill, introduced by Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, was seen as the opening volley in what Democrats and Republicans expect to be a hard-fought battle. President Obama has pledged to take up the issue early next year; efforts to overhaul the laws during George W. Bush’s presidency failed despite the backing of Mr. Bush and some Republicans.

Full Story at news.Yahoo.com

CHICAGO – Henry Ford would have hated 2009, and not just because it’s been a tough year to sell cars.

Ford, as the story goes, refused to do business on Friday the 13th, and this week marks the third time this year that the 13th will fall on a Friday — the most times it can happen in one year.

It’s a day when people rearrange travel plans, delay surgery or just pull up the covers and stay in bed until Friday the 13th turns into Saturday the 14th, convinced that even stepping out of the house would cause bad luck to find them the way an anvil finds the head of Wile E. Coyote.

“They’re afraid something tragic or ominous would happen,” said Donald Dossey, a North Carolina behavioral scientist and author who said he named the fear — paraskavedekatriaphobia — proof that he does not suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, the fear of long words.