National News

For years, federal programs for seniors and those that help kids have been on a collision course. Now, the moment for real competition may have arrived with the sequestration's automatic spending cuts. While Social Security and Medicare will be largely untouched, programs helping kids could lose billions.

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For years, federal programs for seniors and those that help kids have been on a collision course. Now, the moment for real competition may have arrived with the sequestration's automatic spending cuts. While Social Security and Medicare will be largely untouched, programs helping kids could lose billions.

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The suspects are accused of stealing the boat from a marina in Sausalito, Calif., and running it aground 20 miles south in Pacifica.

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What does it take to get hired in this economy? For recent graduates, it's strong internship experience on their resume and better written and oral communications skills.

That's according to the results of a survey conducted by Marketplace and The Chronicle of Higher Education asking employers to weigh in on what they look for in today's recent grads. Marketplace's education correspondent Amy Scott explored that data in a sort of mock interview setting yesterday, and reported on the importance of internships on the Morning Report.

Do you have questions about the survey and its results?

Amy will be available for a live chat on Twitter on Wednesday, March 6 at 2 p.m. EST. Get your questions in early, either by commenting on this page -- or by tweeting @AmyReports or @MarketplaceAPM with the hashtag #HowToGetAJob, and Amy will answer them tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here is the survey report, in full:

The Role of Higher Education in Career Development: Employer Perceptions by

People don't mind new laws telling them how to eat, as long as they feel like they're not being coerced. That's the finding of a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health, which took the unusual step of asking people what they thought about government efforts to encourage healthy eating.

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Days after angering cyclists with his contention that people who ride bikes don't help pay for roads — and stating that "the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider," Washington State Rep. Ed Orcutt has apologized for his words.

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The company says the plug-in, diesel hybrid gets 261 miles per gallon. The futuristic two-seater is not in production, yet, but VW says it plans to use "handcrafting-like production methods" for the car.

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Andy Gabel, a former Olympian and previous president of U.S. Speedskating, has admitted he had an "inappropriate relationship with a female teammate" when she was 15 and he was 33.

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There is no shortage of athletics on television. There’s ESPN, the new-ish NBC Sports network, and various and sundry teams that have their own cable channels.

Today, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation announced it’s getting in on the game. The company is already in movies, publishing and cable news, but it’s still not satisfied.

"News Corp. looks at sports and says, ‘Look, that’s a market that we can exploit,’” Michael McCann says. He heads the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire School of Law.

Sports is a pretty safe bet. We can TiVo sitcoms. We can watch a whole season of “Homeland” in one weekend. But the game? According to David Berri, a sports economist at Southern Utah University, most of us want to watch it live.

“You will sit there, and you will sit there through all the advertisements,” he says.

A sports network needs sports, of course. Gabe Feldman directs the Tulane Law School Sports Law program, and he says that, when it comes to broadcast rights, FOX is in pretty good shape. Better shape than, say, NBC Sports. FOX already owns expensive rights to broadcast baseball, NASCAR, soccer and football.

According to Feldman, the next time a new TV contract comes up for renewal, the bidding war will be even fiercer.

“ESPN is in the middle of paying $1.9 billion a year for Monday Night Football,” he notes. “They now have another potential competitor there.”

Cable providers pay more to carry ESPN than any other channel, and if broadcast rights go up, odds are your cable bill will too.

Sports economist David Berri says News Corp. has ambitious plans, and it recognizes something important: You can’t just air games 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“People also seem to like, and I don’t quite understand this part...they do seem to like the whole sports discussion thing.”

ESPN has SportsCenter. Fox Sports 1 will have one of Notre Dame’s biggest fans. Regis Philbin will host “Rush Hour,” a sports talk show that will air every day.

Fewer Americans are having babies. Instead, many are putting their careers or savings accounts first. But experts say the country's low birthrate could be disastrous for the economy. Host Michel Martin examines the trend with her parenting roundtable.

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If Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has his way, Detroit will become the sixth and largest city there to come under state control. But steering a city out of crisis can be a tricky task. Host Michel Martin speaks with Jerome Vaughn, of WDET, and Robert Bobb, a former emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, about the situation.

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Researchers simulate changes in sea ice and determine that regular ocean passages will be possible by mid-century.

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Are you a "mega-commuter"? That's a term used by the U.S. Census Bureau to describe those who commute at least 90 minutes and 50 miles to work. And nearly 600,000 Americans do. View an interactive map to see how your commute compares.

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What it's going to feel like once our budget cuts really kick in?

We might be able to find a few clues from Europe.

The Europeans call it austerity, and -- yes -- it's more severe than what the United States is about to experience, but there may be a few object lessons to be learned from the European Union.

Take Ireland. That country has been subject to strong austerity measures since 2008. One problem, according to Dublin-based journalist Louise Williams, is that it takes quite a while to get a grasp on the true amount of pain the country's headed towards.

"Quite radical cuts are announced and then very intense lobbying takes place, then what we shift into is a process of negotiations and deliberations and then kind of a gentle chopping away of services."

Williams says that uncertainy makes a recovery more difficult.

"This shifting sands makes it very difficult for us, even as a nation, to know what's next."  

Spain has faced steep budget cuts more recently. Some of its citizens have reacted angrily and protested in the streets. Miguel-Anxo Murado, a journalist in Madrid, says that austerity affects more than peoples' pocketbooks.

"The fact that it is the government, the state that is affecting this austerity agenda, has caused many people to lose confidence in the government, in the state."

And those big, national mood shifts might be around to stay. Even after 5 years of austerity in Ireland, Williams says that things are still grim.

"I know we're moving into spring time [...] but you don't feel it here, you really don't. There's a paring back of public services and there's a sense that it'll never end."

But, Murado continues, the U.S. may be in a better position than these European countries.

"We don't have that autonomy in deciding our own economy, because we're part of the European Union. And in Spain even when the politicians of a country --  the elected representatives --  don't want something to happen, it happens anyway. That's quite a different sort of problem."

In states that don't go along with an expansion of Medicaid under the health overhaul law, many low-income adults will be caught in the gap between federal and state standards for eligibility.

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What's for dinner? We asked, you answered. And now we share some of our readers' savvy, time-saving tips for making dinnertime less of a mad scramble and more of a meal to relish.

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The aircraft was reportedly about 1,500 feet above ground and 5 miles west of the airport. It isn't known who was controlling it. The FAA and other agencies are investigating.

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After a Monday concert at O2 Arena that reportedly started two hours late, the 19-year-old pop star apologized for upsetting disappointed young concertgoers and their angry parents.

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Researchers report that the U.S. ranks among the top countries at treating cancers of the brain, colon and breast. But it still lags behind most of Western Europe when it comes to drug abuse, heart disease and kidney problems.

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As impacts of the sequester start to take effect around the country, no state is expected to take a bigger economic hit than Virginia. Home of the Pentagon and much of the defense industry, Virginia is bracing for Department of Defense cutbacks that could furlough almost 90,000 employees and reduce work hours by about 20 percent. Those in Virginia's large military population might be physically farther away, many in Iraq or Afghanistan, but they're expected to feel the reverberations of the sequestration as well. Governor of Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell, spoke with Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson about the months ahead and how his state is preparing.

The Dow gained nearly 100 points this morning, topping 14,225 and breaking into record territory. While most economic stories these days lament the sequestration and tepid GDP growth, the markets appear mostly unfazed.

This weekend, New York subway and bus riders were hit with their fourth fare hike in five years. That money is collected with every swipe of a Metrocard -- a piece of technology that was introduced 20-years-ago and becomes more obsolete by the day. Despite the cards slow slide into obsolescence, riders must now pay a dollar surcharge if they lose or discard their card.