National News

Money to fight HIV and tuberculosis worldwide went through a huge growth in the early 2000s. But donations have plateaued in the past few years, economists say, as governments tighten their budgets. The U.S. is still the biggest contributor to global health, giving about $10 billion in 2010.

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The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that American Airlines and US Airways are in the final stages of a putting together a merger which could be announced as soon as next week. The combined airline would be the largest in the world.

The government reported this morning that worker productivity fell at the end of last year at the fastest pace in two years -- about 2 percent. Analysts say companies are hiring more and therefore don't have to lean so hard on their current workers.

A new report from the United Nations finds corruption is on the rise in Afghanistan and it's costing the country billions of dollars. The report says fully half of all Afghans are paying bribes.

The world's largest online retailer, Amazon.com, announced this week it will make its own virtual currency: Amazon coins.

And finally, to a job opening in Scotland. They're looking for someone to live on an uninhabited island for six months of the year according to the Daily Mail. They'll pay you about $35,000. Although the only store on the island is a gift shop...so bring your own food and drinking water. The internet connection is also said to be spotty.

The gunman is believed to be a former officer who is angry about his dismissal from the city's force. He allegedly killed two people last weekend and shot three police officers today. One of those officers has died.

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The pace of claims for unemployment insurance changed little. That could be a sign that employers are hiring and firing at about the same rate as they did in 2012.

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In northeastern Minnesota, moose are dying at an alarming rate. State officials are having difficulty determining why. And though hunters are not part of the problem, the state announced Wednesday that there will be no moose hunting season this coming fall. Disease? Predators? Climate change?

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Amazon is known for selling just about everything, from unicorn meat to uranium ore. This week, the retailing giant said it will soon offer its own currency, called the Amazon Coin. Customers can buy the coins and then use them to purchase apps for the Kindle Fire.

“I think there’s a potential for a win-win-win here,” says University of South Carolina retailing professor Karen Edwards.

App developers win because Amazon Coins can be spent within apps, offering them a new revenue stream. Amazon wins because it stands to attract the most talented app developers. And consumers win because Amazon is giving away tens of millions of dollars worth of the currency.

Amazon might be the biggest online company to toy with the idea of virtual money, but it’s not the only one. Facebook developed its own coinage to pay for online games, but saw limited success. Last year, Facebook axed the idea.

Analysts say Amazon is in a better position, because there’s a huge market for the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s mobile device. If Amazon Coins are successful, there’s a potential snowball effect -- that’s what happened for BitPay. Business boomed after a giant blogging portal began taking its virtual money.

“Once WordPress decided to accept BitCoins, a lot of companies came on board following their lead,” says Tony Gillippi, the company’s founder.

Expect to see the Amazon Coin released this May.

American Airlines and US Airways could announce a merger as early as next week, according to the Wall Street Journal and several Dallas-area news outlets.   

If the two combine, it would create the world’s largest airline, joining United, Delta and Southwest as the nation’s remaining major carriers. 

“One reason airlines merge, like companies in any industry, is to control a little more market power,” says Seth Kaplan of Airline Weekly. 

Since American and US Airways only compete directly on a handful of routes, Kaplan says it’s possible airfares overall could remain steady.

But will any of the airlines’ current hub cities go away, as Memphis did in the Northwest/Delta merger?

“We’re talking about cutbacks in the range of maybe 3-5 percent,” says FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney.  “I don’t think there [are] any cities that they both wouldn’t like to have in their portfolio.”   

The combined carrier would likely keep the American Airlines brand, sport its sharp new livery, and keep its headquarters in Ft. Worth.  

Also: A look at Winston Churchill's poetic side; Twitter buzzes over Tim Geithner's book plans; and Philip Roth is the object of a takedown.

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The cost of corruption in Afghanistan has spiralled, with 50 percent of Afghans admitting they have bribed public officials in return for favors and services.

According to a new UN report, Afghans paid nearly $4 billion in bribes in the last year, a rise of 40 percent compared to 2009. That’s twice as much as the country’s total tax revenue.

The BBC’s Bilal Sarwary says Afghan president Hamid Karzai has pointed the finger at foreign contractors, but admits that corruption is a major problem within the government.

If anything, already ominous-sounding forecasts are getting even more serious. By the the time it's all over this weekend, some parts of Massachusetts and surrounding states could have two feet of new snow on the ground.

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UPDATE (1:15 pm EST): Productivity fell at the end of last year at the fastest pace in two years -- about 2 percent. Analysts say companies are hiring more and therefore don't have to lean so hard on their current workers.

Economists had expected a drop in productivity of anywhere from 1 percent to 2 percent to cap off a year in which productivity increased -- but at a mediocre pace.

Patrick Newport, U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, predicted productivity to rise by 1 percent for all of 2012. That compares to 0.7 percent in 2011. Productivity rose more strongly immediately after the recession, in 2009 and 2010. The 50-year average of productivity rise since World War II is approximately 2 percent per year.

These days, you can see improved productivity everywhere -- including at this reporter’s local latte bar, Jola Café, in Portland, Oregon.

As the barista calls out for "a hemp latte and a chai" to his co-worker at the espresso machine, he touches out the order on an iPad mounted on the counter. Then he swipes the customer’s credit card. Tia Ribary, a business consultant here for a morning meeting, signs with her finger. There’s no need print, tear, sign, or store the receipt. 

“They email it to me,” says Ribary. “It makes it easier to send the receipt to my bookkeeper. I don’t have to scan it, I just forward the email.”

Using smart machines to do more work with less human labor -- that productivity engine keeps humming along at a steady pace in the U.S.

But economist Patrick Newport says overall productivity gains have slowed in the past two years. And here’s why: Companies massively downsized during the recession, then made the workers who were left on the job do more. Productivity initially rose as the recovery took hold, but only temporarily.

“Companies were working their existing workforce to the bone and getting more work out of them,” says Newport. “But that strategy no longer works, because workers are tired. And on top of that, we’re seeing an increase in hiring.”

Companies are finally adding new workers to spell their overworked legacy employees. But economic growth has all but stalled: we’re not making a lot more widgets, or lattes. So productivity is falling right now. What's more, new employees require training from more experienced workers. Newport says the time spent on training and ramp-up also supresses productivity gains, at least in the short term.   

The Chinese New Year starts this weekend. It's the biggest celebration in China's calendar and a bit like Thanksgiving in the U.S., the entire country shuts down for a long weekend of food, fireworks and family time. Millions of single people have to endure endless questioning from their family as to why they're not yet hitched.

In a basement canteen of an office tower in downtown Beijing, I meet some of them. Groups of young women huddled over large bowls of noodles who look depressed when I ask them about the impending Chinese New Year holiday. Like Ding Na who is almost 30-years-old and comes from China's northeast.

"I'm under lots of pressure," she tells me. "My sisters and my relatives all ask me why I'm still single. When they call me, I'm scared to pick up the phone."

It's a common story across China where twenty-somethings, especially young women, face a strict societal deadline to marry by their early thirties. In the offices of Baihe.com, one of China's biggest dating agencies, I meet consultant Zhou Xiaopeng. She describes to me just how unbearable it can be for single women at this time of year by asking me to picture a scene where people sit around a table:

"Chinese people love to get together for dinner" she explains. "On New Years Eve, everybody is sitting in pairs, your brother with sister-in-law, your sister with brother-in-law, and so on. If you're the only one left behind, you can imagine the pressure and frustration."

But while many will face another year of uncomfortable questions, others have come up with a quick-fix solution. Singletons are going online to hire fake partners to take home for the holidays.

I did a quick search on Taobao, China's most popular online shopping website, and when I typed in 'renting a fake boyfriend for Chinese new year' dozens of ads popped up. There was one from a man offering his services for 52 RMB an hour, about $8 an hour, to spend time with a single women's relatives. For 500 RMB, he would spend the night if he gets his own bed and for 600 RMB, he would be willing to sleep on the couch. But lower down in the ad he makes it very clear that sex is not an option.

I was intrigued to find out what sorts of people were willing to hire themselves out, so I phoned one of the men offering to work as a fake boyfriend over the Chinese New Year. I spoke to Li Le, a 24 year old man businessman from China's central Hebei province. He sounded a little embarrassed and told me it was the first year he had attempted to work as a fake boyfriend. But he insists he is not doing it for the money.

"It's an exciting thing to do," he told me. "I might find people who share my interests and it would make both of us happy."

Thirty women have contacted Li so far, but he says it's tough to find someone who trusts him enough to invite him home for Chinese New Year.

President Obama is meeting with House Democrats today to rally support for several items on his agenda, including immigration reform.

Lawmakers are still trying to work through some disagreements on the issue, such as whether a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants should be contingent on tighter border security. One industry that is closely following the negotiations is the U.S. agriculture sector.

"The agriculture industry has been a big proponent of immigration reform," says Stephen Keppel, economics editor for Univsion News. According to Keppel, 75 percent of all farm workers in America were born in Mexico and 53 percent of those are undocumented.

If Congress takes the path of mass deportations, it would be a crushing blow to the farming industry and the economy at large, Keppel adds:

"There are some estimates that it would cost maybe $285 billion to deport all undocumented immigrants. It could cost the economy $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years," he says.

This final note today, in which we learn once again that timing truly is everything.

A German man -- Phllip Lupke, by name -- has won a 10,000 Euro gift card from Apple. Seems he's the guy who bought the 25 billionth song on iTunes. Twenty-five billion times 99 cents or so is a pretty good business model.

It's also created something of a problem for Apple. It's been sued by the hedge fund manager David Einhorn, who's upset with how long its taking the company to give some of the $45 billion in cash it's sitting on back to investors.

This week, we're asking folks in the tech world about a great shift, from an Internet of webpages toward an Internet of interconnected objects: the Internet of Things.

A D.C. area company called SmartThings sells kits that let you rig all sorts of stuff around the house up to smartphones and tablet computers -- sump pumps, jewelry drawers, you name it. SmartThing's CEO Alex Hawkinson says the inspiration came from a rustic mountain cabin, a deep freeze, and burst pipes.

"Everything thawed out and started rotting and we didn't discover it until quite a time later, and it drove us crazy that we didn't know that that had happened. So we started the company on the basis of, you know, how do we take the available bandwidth that's in the air -- your iPhone's connected, your Kindle's connected -- and make it possible for simple sensors to connect up so you could see an event like that from anywhere," says Hawkinson.

Hawkinson says the hook-up allows you to make everyday, "dumb" objects suddenly intelligent. And what happens when more and more objects get connected? Imagine a sprinkler that doesn't go off when it rains, a water pump that monitors its own leaks, a car that "talks" to the road.

"We think this is the third epoch of the web, we call it the 'physical graph'," says Hawkinson. "It crosses all the parts of our life. The implications range from security, to efficiency -- we think 30+ percent of the energy use in the world is wasted based on lack of intelligence."

To hear about other ways the Internet of connected things could change your everyday life, click on the audio player above.

iPad home videos -- what's worth recording, where, and how? Janell Burley Hofmann, a Cape Cod mother-of-five with strong opinions about how to behave with technology, says it's all about the small moments:

"I'm in my daughter's first grade classroom and they are doing a presentation on holidays around the world, and the teacher has pre-recorded them on video. A dad takes out his iPad and starts video-ing the video of his son. This memory that he's capturing here is of his child on a screen. So, I'm really thinking, what are we trying to capture here? I look back at my kid's videos when they were babies -- it's not those formal things that I like to look at, it's those one or two minutes of life, of them wrestling on the couch cushions or playing out in the yard with the dog. Those are the things that I think really capture life. I really feel like that's what we're missing," says Burley Hoffman.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in a comment below.

iPad home videos -- what's worth recording, where, and how? Janell Burley Hofmann, a Cape Cod mother-of-five with strong opinions about how to behave with technology, says it's all about the small moments:

"I'm in my daughter's first grade classroom and they are doing a presentation on holidays around the world, and the teacher has pre-recorded them on video. A dad takes out his iPad and starts video-ing the video of his son. This memory that he's capturing here is of his child on a screen. So, I'm really thinking, what are we trying to capture here? I look back at my kid's videos when they were babies -- it's not those formal things that I like to look at, it's those one or two minutes of life, of them wrestling on the couch cushions or playing out in the yard with the dog. Those are the things that I think really capture life. I really feel like that's what we're missing," says Burley Hoffman.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in a comment below.

Federal regulators may want Wi-Fi Internet connections to get more widespread and powerful, but the government is not giving the service away for free. A Washington Post article has sparked debate this week over what exactly the government is trying to do.

It's true the Federal Communications Commission wants some sections of the radio frequency spectrum to be left up for grabs -- free for companies to provide service, but not necessarily free to consumers. Wireless Internet was first developed on open spectrum just like this.

"We're making a mass migration as a country away from using spectrum for broadcast TV to using it for wireless data because we're all using smartphones," says Susan Crawford, a Roosevelt Institute fellow and author of Captive Audience, a book about telecom policy. "The FCC is going to carry out for spectrum and there will be spaces left between the TV stations that get left behind and some data uses for those frequencies. Those spaces are called "white spaces" and they can be used opportunistically for Wi-Fi, and that's what the FCC is hoping for."

A company called FreedomPop already offers free wireless connections through cell phone and some Wi-Fi technology. Free, that is, until you use more than half a gigabyte of data a month.

The sweeping fire sale is a requirement for multibillion-euro bailouts. And the Chinese, Russian and Arab companies lining up to take advantage of the steep discounts are making Greeks and other Europeans nervous.

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The sweeping fire sale is a requirement for multibillion-euro bailouts. And the Chinese, Russian and Arab companies lining up to take advantage of the steep discounts are making Greeks and other Europeans nervous.

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