The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers’ health plans as the law ripples through the real world.

Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for “mini-med” plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans.

Sa, 31, sits with her palms pressed together in prayer as the Buddhist monks chant in unison.

They are performing the nightly ceremony for her mother and father, whose pictures stand by their elaborately decorated coffins, surrounded by flowers.

Sa cremated her grandparents earlier that afternoon. All four of her family members were shot by militants, their homes burned down.

In a sign of the new “get tough” policy on fiscal deficits, euro zone sources said finance ministers of the single currency area would grill Portugal on its 2011 budget plans on Thursday and press for more radical measures to address market concerns.

Measures of the budget include a planned reduction of more than 30,000 government workers with no replacements; the removal of certain tax breaks worth 10-billion euros.

However, no new taxes were introduced.

“The strategy excludes any notion of a generalized tax rise, as this would penalize economic growth,” said a presidential statement.

The budget also assumed an economic growth rate of 1.5 per cent this year, 2 per cent in 2011 and by 2.5 per cent in 2012 – which many economists believe are overly optimistic.

The government is predicting the deficit will reach a record of 7.7 percent of GDP this year, 6 percent in 2011, but then hopes it to fall to the EU-mandated 3 percent level by 2013; then to 2 percent by 2014.

Madagascar on Wednesday became the only country not to address this year’s U.N. General Assembly gathering, electing not to speak to avoid a dispute with other African nations over the government’s legitimacy.

The decision followed an incident a year ago when African states blocked Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina from addressing the assembly, saying his rise to power through a military coup made him illegitimate.

Madagascar’s U.N. mission circulated other missions at the weekend, saying that although Foreign Minister Hippolyte Rarison Ramaroson had come to New York he would not address the assembly to “avoid unnecessary and unproductive discussions.”

Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lene Espersen hosted a meeting with ambassadors of 17 Islamic nations in a bid to avoid tensions before the fifth anniversary of publication of controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. A Danish newspaper first published the caricatures on September 30, 2005, sparking an outrage among Muslims worldwide.

Meanwhile, Norwegian and Danish police claimed that one of three suspects, who had been arrested in July in Norway for plotting cartoon attacks, had confessed his crime. Talking to reporters at a press conference, they said that the three might have planned to attack the Jyllands-Posten newspaper or people linked to the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

Dollars, euros, and yen are all just currencies you can price any asset in. Everything is cheap or expensive relative to the currency you hold.

Thus if gold is truly a world currency, then the S&P 500 index of U.S. stocks is dirt cheap when priced in it. For every ounce of gold, you can now buy more than five times the amount of stocks you could have ten years ago, as shown below.

House Democrats on Wednesday barely won a 210-209 vote to adjourn the House without extending the Bush tax cuts.

Thirty-nine House Democrats voted against adjournment after Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged opposition to the motion in a floor speech that said it would be irresponsible for Congress to leave without providing certainty on the tax issue. Dozens of Democrats in tough races voted against adjourning.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Colorado shows Buck with 51% support, while Bennet earns 43% of the vote with leaners included. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) remain undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

These findings move the race from a Toss-Up to Leans GOP in the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Senate Balance of Power rankings. Two weeks ago, Buck held a 49% to 45% lead when leaners were part of the totals.

...On Jan. 3, 2007 the Dow Jones closed at 12,621.77

The gross domestic product for the previous quarter was 3.5 percent.

The unemployment rate was 4.6 percent.

George Bush’s economic policies set a record of 52 straight months of job creation! And all of this after Mr. Bush gave tax cuts to the wealthy, so maybe some of it did trickle down! The top 2 percent of the “wealthiest taxpayers” pay 78 percent of all income taxes, contribute millions to charities and foundations and are responsible for millions of our jobs.

Jan. 3, 2007, was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee. The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy? Banking and financial services!

Thank Congress for taking us from 13,000 Dow, 3.5 GDP, 4.6 percent unemployment to this crisis of dumping 5-6 trillion dollars of toxic loans on the economy from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiascos. George Bush asked Congress 17 times to stop Fannie and Freddie – starting in 2001, because it was financially risky for the U.S. economy – but no one was listening.

And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? Obama and the Democratic Congress. In fact they coerced banks to make their sub-prime loans, so that “all Americans could be homeowners” whether they could afford the mortgage and even whether they had a job?

And who took the third highest pay-off from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Obama.

Congress must preserve some form of U.S. guarantee on mortgages to attract private capital to the housing-finance system and stabilize a market recovering from the credit crisis, industry executives told lawmakers.

Private capital must play a bigger role in housing finance as policy makers replace the current system, which is dependent on guarantees from government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the executives said today in testimony prepared for a House Financial Services Committee hearing. U.S. support will still be needed to keep loans flowing to borrowers and preserve products such as 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages, they said.