National News

Not happy with your career? It might be time to look at who your friends are, according to the new book, Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are.

According to author Carlin Flora, it all starts with the friends we make as teenagers. "If you are from a lower socio-economic status and you befriend people in a higher socio-economic status, it sort of opens up vistas for you. You see other people's parents and their careers and it helps you envision yourself in those careers," she says.

As we get older, we may experience something akin to career peer pressure -- adapting to the high or low career standards of our friends.

"In a more tangible sense, if you are hanging around friends who are doing well, they are going to give you more opportunities to say, invest in venture or they are going to give you tips," says Flora.

To hear more about how friendships can affect your career choices, click on the audio player above.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned home to Venezuela early Monday after more than two months of medical treatment in Cuba following cancer surgery.

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Tens of thousands of protesters turned out on the National Mall Sunday to encourage President Obama to make good on his commitment to act on climate change. The pipeline would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

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To buy software, Apple users turn to the Apple app store, and Android users sign into Google Play.

But there are some new privacy questions for Android users. A software developer in Australia, the maker of an app which generates phrases poking fun at former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, raised the red flag. The developer discovered that when you buy something from Google Play, the app makers collect quite a bit of information about you.

"There are some valid concerns for people about how far and wide their information is being shared," says Chester Wisniewski at the computer security firm Sophos.

According to Wisniewski, users may think of digital storefronts or online payment tools as a way to limit personal data exposure. Buyers share their information centrally with an organization they trust, such as Google, Amazon or PayPal, rather than random software or app vendors. But it appears not all digital storefronts operate in the same way.

"Apple is literally an Apple storefront...It's almost like they've got a warehouse full of apps and you buy the thing directly from Apple as if you walked into an Apple store," says Wisniewski. "In the case of Google, what they are doing is they are more the payment broker -- I think that is the philosophical difference."

Since you are reading the news here, we're betting you're curious about the future of how we'll get information. A startup called Thirst has just launched an app for iPhone-iPads that is trying to re-invent the way we get news online.

"We're trying to change the way people consume information on the web, and so we've built a newspaper that is personalized for each person and allows people to discover, share, and discuss content easily," says Thirst CEO Anuj Verma.

To make your newspaper, you set up an account through Facebook or Twitter and to tell it what you like -- the always fascinating sport of curling or the politics of Madagascar. It pulls data from your social media friends, too.

There are already so-called "social reading" apps such as Flipboard. But Verma says his is different. Thirst is organized by topic, and its algorithm learns what you like. Verma says we should be going through a revolution and his company is a start.

"People are now reading on their phone but the technology underneath the hood hasn't really changed at all. People shouldn't be reading the same thing even if they go to the same platform. Having a personalized experience with what you are reading, is, I think, the future of consumption," says Verma.

And this final note, the longtime owner of the L.A. Lakers died today after battling cancer. Jerry Buss was the man who brought the razzle dazzle of Hollywood to the NBA.

He not only led the  Lakers to 10 league championships, but he was one of the most innovative businessmen in sports.  Court-side seating,  the Laker Girls,  marquee line-ups with stars like Shaq, Magic and Kobe.  

Forbes recently listed the Lakers' worth at a billion dollars. Buss paid about $67 million for the team back in 1979.

And this final note, the longtime owner of the L.A. Lakers died today after battling cancer. Jerry Buss was the man who brought the razzle dazzle of Hollywood to the NBA.

He not only led the  Lakers to 10 league championships, but he was one of the most innovative businessmen in sports.  Court-side seating,  the Laker Girls,  marquee line-ups with stars like Shaq, Magic and Kobe.  

Forbes recently listed the Lakers' worth at a billion dollars. Buss paid about $67 million for the team back in 1979.

On its surface, the case is about whether farmers can use seeds derived from patented crops. But the bigger question is, how much control does a company have over its patented products once they're in the hands of consumers?

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The dreaded federal budget axe known as the sequester is scheduled to fall on March 1. Congress and the president can only avoid the across-the-board cuts by coming up with a deficit reduction deal. The sequester standoff is causing widespread uncertainty and stress -- and not just for the more than four million federal workers. The cuts would be felt across the country in places that might surprise you, like a science lab in Baltimore. 

Jennifer Elisseeff doesn’t work anywhere near the marble halls of Congress. She’s much more at home among tangles of test tubes and microscopes.  

She teaches biomedical engineering. She’s gave me a tour of her labs at the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus in Baltimore, where she showed me tissue samples under the microscope.

The tissue that Elisseeff peered at is supposed to resemble knee cartilage. Her research focuses on re-growing body parts. She starts with cells she grows in the lab -- they’re attached to a sort of scaffolding that can be inserted into the body. 

“Just like you put scaffolding -- construction workers put scaffolding as a building is being built and then they take the scaffolding down after it’s finished,” she explained.

Elisseeff’s scaffolding is designed to biodegrade when the body is finished with it.  This is all pretty whiz bang stuff and it doesn’t come cheap. About 75 percent of Elisseeff’s  funding comes from the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department. And those grants could be chopped as part of the across-the-board sequester cuts. Elisseeff says the uncertainty of the sequester is wearing on the scientists in her lab.

"When there is that stress and the uncertainty, it does affect people’s energy and excitement for building something,” she says.

Elisseeff contemplated the cuts’ consequences: Reductions in her staff of 25, slower, scaled–down research. She’s frustrated and suffering from sequester stress. One way she copes? Reassuring herself that Congress and the president would never let this happen.

“Part of me sees it as a political game," she says. "And so I’m not fully certain how much of it will be executed. But I think it’s a terrible game to play that will affect people’s lives.”

And could drive top scientists to other countries that would gladly fund their research. Elisseeff says it’s tempting. In fact, she’s going to take a temporary break from Johns Hopkins for a short sabbatical in Switzerland. 

Housing is on the economic stat agenda this week.

We get new-home starts and building permits on Wednesday. That’s a good indicator of where homebuilding and new-home sales are heading. Then on Thursday, existing-home sales are reported. That’s a barometer of how much consumers are starting to jump back into the market to buy a first-home or trade up, or move to a place where the sun shines a little brighter and there are more jobs.

To see how things are going on the ground, this reporter dropped in to see a model home in the Harris Ranch subdivision of Boise, Idaho, about five miles from downtown.

Salesman Travis Hunter of Boise Hunter Homes was showing a $299,000 two-story home in a fresh-platted section of the development that was just weeds and lonely streetlights for years after the housing bust of 2006-07.

“Downstairs in this house is the formal dining room,” Hunter crowed. “Appliances in the kitchen are all stainless steel, they come with hickory cabinets. . . .”

Other selling points included a two-head walk-in shower, master-bedroom suite with a huge closet for the woman of the house, and hardwood floors.

Hunter says he’s selling one of these homes every week or so now, and more are being built on adjacent streets by his firm and several other local homebuilders. The construction site is swarming with subcontractors: Roofers, floor-installers, and debris-haulers -- few of whom were able to land steady construction work as little as one year ago.

Economist Yelena Shulyatyeva at BNP Paribas in New York says the moderate upturn in housing is adding as much as 0.5 percent to annual GDP at this stage in the economic recovery.

“The housing sector was a bright spot last year,” she says, “and we will see housing starts grow this year,” says Shulyatyeva.

Shulyatyeva and other economists predict housing starts dipped in January. But that’s largely payback for a surge in home-starts in December, which was unseasonably warm, causing homebuilders to jump the gun and break ground early. She predicts new-home starts and building permits will rebound to a steadier pace of growth by mid-spring.

And, she says, multi-family apartment construction will continue to be stronger than single-family homebuilding this year. That’s because, with credit standards still tight, potential first-time homebuyers are excluded from the market or find it too difficult to navigate. Shulyatyeva says some continue to hesitate to invest in real estate -- even as prices begin to rise and interest rates remain low -- because they want to have the flexibility to move cities for new jobs.

But there are still a lot of cheap foreclosed homes for sale -- and more dribbling on to the market every day. This constitutes a considerable ‘shadow-inventory’ of existing homes for sale. So why build so many new ones?

“While there are many buyers -- often investors -- at the low-end of the market looking at foreclosures,” explains Nicolas Retsinas at the Harvard Business School, “for people in the middle of that market, and those in the upper middle of the market, buying a foreclosed property is still a stigma.”

It can also be considerably more confusing than buying a new home, or an existing home with a clean paper trail. Dealing with banks, courts, and ‘as-is’ sale conditions can be daunting, especially for first-time home-buyers.

So far this month there have been several big buyouts -- US Airways merged with American Airlines, Warren Buffet paid $23 billion to purchase Heinz and Dell went private for $24 billion. Banks are lending again, the stock market is rising and companies have a lot of cash lying around. That means the return of the mega deal. But do these mergers and buyouts make companies stronger and more profitable?

John Steele Gordon is a business historian with deep ties to the financial world. Both his grandfathers held seats on the New York Stock Exchange. Business history, he says, "is littered with the corpses of really bad mergers."

It took him a minute to come up with an example of a successful merger.

"I think maybe the successful ones are the ones you don't hear about subsequently," Gordon says.

George Anders wrote Merchants of Debt -- a book about the private equity firm KKR, which was responsible for the RJR Nabisco merger. Anders figures that for every deal that's a success, "you've probably got two that aren't."

If adjusted for inflation, the Nabisco deal is the biggest buyout in history, which did not go so well. Anders says it should be a cautionary tale:

"Spend more money than anyone else, get more problems than anyone else."

Despite the one in three odds, most companies think they can pull off the big deal.

"It's totally a case of yes it's a problem for everyone else but my deal is special," Anders says.

There's always an optimist who is convinced they will beat the odds.

So far this month there have been several big buyouts -- US Airways merged with American Airlines, Warren Buffet paid $23 billion to purchase Heinz and Dell went private for $24 billion. Banks are lending again, the stock market is rising and companies have a lot of cash lying around. That means the return of the mega deal. But do these mergers and buyouts make companies stronger and more profitable?

John Steele Gordon is a business historian with deep ties to the financial world. Both his grandfathers held seats on the New York Stock Exchange. Business history, he says, "is littered with the corpses of really bad mergers."

It took him a minute to come up with an example of a successful merger.

"I think maybe the successful ones are the ones you don't hear about subsequently," Gordon says.

George Anders wrote Merchants of Debt -- a book about the private equity firm KKR, which was responsible for the RJR Nabisco merger. Anders figures that for every deal that's a success, "you've probably got two that aren't."

If adjusted for inflation, the Nabisco deal is the biggest buyout in history, which did not go so well. Anders says it should be a cautionary tale:

"Spend more money than anyone else, get more problems than anyone else."

Despite the one in three odds, most companies think they can pull off the big deal.

"It's totally a case of yes it's a problem for everyone else but my deal is special," Anders says.

There's always an optimist who is convinced they will beat the odds.

A pretrial hearing in the Sept. 11 case was suspended briefly last week to investigate allegations of eavesdropping. The commissions' chief prosecutor launched an investigation, and said no one was "listening, monitoring, recording" the proceedings. Defense attorneys seemed to take his word, which given the history of the commissions, is a baby step toward progress.

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A famous doctor is on trial in Spain, accused of masterminding one of the world's largest sports doping rings. Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes' client list is believed to include at least one former teammate of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong. The doctor says he treated athletes from other sports, as well.

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Cancer patients often have to deal with side effects from their treatments. They may need speech therapy or help rebuilding their strength. The STAR program is helping break down the barriers to rehabilitation services.

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Thanks to drugs recently approved by the FDA, patients with the blood cell cancer multiple myeloma are living longer and without the pain. Don Wright was diagnosed 10 years ago and is currently training for his training for his 71st marathon.

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Carefully developed breeds are overpowering Eastern filbert blight, which had threatened to crush the U.S. hazelnut industry.

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The federal government once considered whistle-blowers a nuisance, or worse. But over the past few years, that attitude has slowly started to change. More agencies have been reaching out for tips about fraud and abuse, even if digging through the stacks of complaints can present a challenge.

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Patrick won the Daytona 500 pole Sunday, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any race in NASCAR's premier circuit. It's by far the biggest achievement of her stock-car career.

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Mindy McCready, who hit the top of the country charts before personal problems sidetracked her career, died Sunday in Arkansas in an apparent suicide. She was 37. An autopsy is pending.

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