National News

Gambling kept Rose out of baseball's Hall of Fame, and years later, the fallout continues. Topps baseball cards has quietly removed his name from the backs of cards that note major achievements. But is it time to re-evaluate Rose's singular status as a Major League Baseball pariah?

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Poutine, at its simplest, is french fries, cheese curds and gravy. In Chicago, 11 restaurants recently pitted their own variations on the Canadian late-night dish against one another.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Manning pleaded guilty to 10 smaller charges. He is still expected to be tried for the charge of aiding the enemy. During the hearing, the Army private also provided the first detailed explanation of why he perpetrated the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

For Coca-Cola, it was both a PR move and a social experiment. The company set up an ATM that gave out 100 euros ($131) and asked only that recipients share the money. A video of the campaign has gone viral.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

This may not come as a huge surprise to most of you, but a study out of Oxford University last month found that vegetarians are 32 percent less likely to be hospitalized, or die, from heart disease than are meat-eaters.

In fact, Americans are eating less beef, chicken and pork than in the past. Some of it might be the rising cost of meat, but it's also likely that news of the downsides to a carnivorous diet are getting to us. We are realizing that veggies and grains are better for you.

Thus the relatively quick success of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based fast food chain Veggie Grill. It serves up what the industry calls a plant-based diet. That means no animal fat -- no butter, no milk, no eggs. Its burgers and chicken sandwiches are made from soy, and the flavor is catching on.

There are 16 outlets on the West Coast, including a handful in Oregon and Washington. Greg Dollarhyde is the CEO and, buoyed by healthy sales and $20 million in financing, he plans to double the number of restaurants in the next 18 months.

"The plan is to go up and down the West Coast because it's the same time zone and easy to get to," said Dollarhyde. "But we get all sorts of emails of 'When are you coming to New York? When are you coming to Boston? When are you coming to Dallas?'"

But how do take a plant-based diet to, say, Chicago -- home of the deep dish pizza and the Union Stock Yards? Dollarhyde has one word: taste. As long as the food tastes good and familiar, people will come.

But he will make sure not to grow too fast. "The biggest concern is when you change time zones," Dollarhyde explained. "If you are on the West Coast and you go to the East Coast, you are just getting up and they are at lunch. Then when you are at lunch, they can't find you. And if something goes wrong, that is a long plane ride to fix it."

That said, however, he does hope to have a Veggie Grill in New York sometime next year.

The former NBA star known as "The Worm" is in the Stalinist state to be part of an HBO series exploring cultures around the world.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The European Union is moving to place an iron leash on bank pay. New rules approved Thursday would put strict caps on bankers’ bonuses. That’s Europe’s latest response to widespread anger at financial firms in the wake of the economic crisis.

Americans are pretty angry at bankers too, but there’s practically no chance of something like this happening here. Like diesel cars, techno music and soccer, capping bank bonuses is one of those things Europe loves that just don’t fare quite as well in America.

“We have not in the States, at least so far, really gone down a path of capping pay,” says Stanford professor Dave Larcker, who studies corporate pay. “I’d be very surprised if you sort of see hard caps come out in the States.”

Wall Street loves the ability to reward or punish with bonuses. A trading blunder cost JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon half his bonus year. Still, the $10 million bonus he received was nearly seven times his salary. The EU rule would limit bonuses to no more than double base pay.

Nothing as extensive as the European proposal has moved forward in the U.S. But some things have changed on Wall Street since the financial meltdown. All-cash bonuses are largely a relic of the past.

“A few years ago, if I said your bonus was $100, you got $100,” explains Joe Sorrentino, managing director at Steven Hall & Partners, which advises Wall Street firms and others on compensation. “Now if I say your bonus is $100, well, you may get $25 or $50 now in cash and the rest is gonna be deferred in either stock or cash. And you may not see that for three years from now.”

That shift is to prevent bankers from doing crazy things that drive big bonuses in the short term, but hurt their company, or perhaps humanity, in the long term.

There’s also a problem with capping bonuses. It’s kind of pointless.

“Human ingenuity is boundless,” says Georgetown finance professor Sandeep Dahiya. “The minute the rules are written, you can expect everyone to pore over them and find any loophole.”

For example, if bonuses are capped, firms can just juice up salaries. But that would mean guaranteeing pay before getting results. And that's something Wall Street hates.

So does the City. Banks in London's financial district are complaining about the planned EU restrictions. If the rules go through, they would create a compensation gap that could drive talented and rationally greedy European bankers to competitors in the U.S. and Asia.

Kai Ryssdal: The European Union's decided to do something -- to try to do something, anyway -- about how much bankers get paid. There were some new rules approved today to put strict caps on bonuses.

We've tried to limit executive compensation over here, too. But it's turning out that no matter where you are, it's hard to do. Marketplace's Mark Garrison explains.

Mark Garrison: Diesel cars, techno music, soccer. Some things Europe loves just don’t fare as well in America. Add to that list capping bank bonuses. Stanford professor Dave Larcker specializes in corporate pay.

Dave Larcker: I’d be very surprised if you sort of see hard caps come out in the States.

Wall Street loves the ability to reward or punish with bonuses. A big trading blunder cost JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon half his bonus last year. Still, Dimon’s $10 million bonus is nearly seven times his salary. The EU rule would limit bonuses to no more than double base pay. Now, it’s not that nothing’s changed in America.

Joe Sorrentino: A few years ago, if I said your bonus was $100, you got $100.

Joe Sorrentino is with Steven Hall & Partners, which advises Wall Street firms and others on compensation.

Sorrentino: Now if I say your bonus is $100, well, you may get $25 or $50 now in cash and the rest is gonna be deferred in either stock or cash. And you may not see that for three years from now.

That shift is to prevent bankers from doing crazy things that drive big bonuses in the short term, but hurt their company, or perhaps humanity in the long term. There’s also a problem with capping bonuses. It’s kinda pointless.

Sandeep Dahiya: Human ingenuity is boundless.

Georgetown finance professor Sandeep Dahiya.

Dahiya: The minute the rules are written, you can expect everyone to pore over them and, you know, find any loophole and any way.

If bonuses are capped, firms will just juice up salaries. And that means guaranteeing pay before getting results. And that’s something Wall Street hates. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

A chicken's close inspection of a transformer caused a power outage and brief delays at Maui's Kahului Airport this week. After the incident in the airport's rental car area, security screenings were performed manually and passengers had to use mobile stairways on the tarmac.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Jack Lew was sworn in as new Treasury Secretary today. He probably had a rough first day on the job. There's a lot on his plate -- with those big federal spending cuts looming tomorrow. Which got us to thinking: How can you avoid pitfalls your first day on a new job? We asked the experts -- people with first-day horror stories you won’t believe.

We came across Marvin Address at a food truck in downtown Washington. He owns an insurance company now, but his first job  was in the Air Force working as an air traffic controller. He was nervous on his first day -- so jittery, he lined up two planes to take off. Facing each other.

“And I got a call in the tower," he says. "And the pilot said, 'Tower, am I looking at another airplane that’s coming my way?'”

Luckily, Address was able to re-route the planes and no one was hurt. But he learned an important lesson that day: Keep your eyes open -- literally.

Another lesson might be "know thyself." Victoria Hernandez got a job at a chocolate bar factory a few years ago -- not knowing she was pregnant and suffering from morning sickness. She says, “I guess the aroma got to me so bad."

Yeah, you know what happened next.

“I threw up all over the conveyor belt," she says. "And all over the chocolate bars and everything. They had to shut down the whole left side of the building because of me."

Kathy Caprino is a career coach. She says if you screw up, or throw up, the first day on the job, admit your mistake. If it’s not too serious, try to laugh it off. But she says it’s best to try to prevent first-day slip ups in the first place.

“Get hip to your own trip,"she says. "What are the things that could trip you up? Look at those and protect against those."

And here’s some advice that could help our new Treasury Secretary. If you’re a new manager, you embody the hopes and fears of your workplace. Or, in Jack Lew’s case, your country. Just do your best. Don’t take anything personally. And have a thick skin. We asked our Facebook fans for their own first day horror stories. Here's what you told us.

[View the story "Worst first days on the job" on Storify]

Google, Apple, Facebook and other big names are wading into the same-sex-marriage debate, which will come before the Supreme Court next month. They argue the federal government's ban on recognizing gay unions causes "unnecessary cost and administrative complexity."

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The Congressional Budget Office has a new report saying the forced budget cuts coming tomorrow are actually smaller than the number used by the White House.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Much has been made of politicians' unwillingness to negotiate in these last hours leading up to the possible budget sequestration. But not negotiating happens all the time in the business world, says Ed Brodow, a negotiation expert who helps a variety of people and institutions. In business, a tough stance simply means deal or no deal. Will we make money, or lose money?

"In the business world they're much more pragmatic about this," he says. "There's no excuse for not getting the job done because you have to be responsible to your shareholders."

But politicians have a much different relationship with constituents. Looking tough can take precedence over practical matters.

"So they'll go out and make all kinds of outlandish statements," he says. "We're not going to do this and we're going to do that, and then they get into a closed room and they make a deal."

Which is what will eventually happen, he says. But we may have to go over the edge first. Thomas Kockan at the MIT Sloan School of Management says that happens in labor negotiations. The sequester situation reminds him of an air traffic control strike in 1981. The industry and the union were each too beholden to their constituents.

"Both parties allowed themselves to get backed into those corners, and the result was a disaster for everyone," he says.

Lots of jobs and money were lost, and an entire industry had to be rebuilt. He says after the sequester takes effect, negotiation will be more likely, but also more difficult. Making deals once the parties are fully in crisis mode makes everything more tense, he says.

John Siegel is a mediator in the Washington, D.C., area who works with families. He says all the nasty language being thrown around shows that, despite their griping and grousing, politicians are still not really in crisis mode. Because if they were, they'd act and speak very differently.

"When the moment of crisis comes they don't say things to deliberately upset the other people," he says, "because they need the other people for a solution."

Listen for that change in language in the next week or two, he says, as reality of the budget sequestration hits home.

Sturm, Ruger, the publicly traded gun maker, reported a 50 percent increase in sales for 2012. Most of that increase came before the school massacre in Connecticut in December. Sturm, Ruger's CEO, Mike Fifer, told analysts the surge resulted in part from the "current political environment" beginning with President Obama's re-election campaign.

Fifer told analysts today he wishes the Connecticut-based company had amassed a bigger inventory. "We would have sold all of it and then more. But we didn't. And so, all we could sell is what we could make each week."

Fifer says Sturm, Ruger won't be able to build up that inventory for a while now, at least until demand slows down. By the end of last year, it had a backlog a million and a half guns long.

Rommel Dionisio is a firearms analyst with Wedbush Securities. He says that, when it comes to growth, gun makers are very cautious. "One of the real hesitations on the part of the manufacturers to build capacity is the realization that the surge is not going to be that sustainable," he said.

It's also hard for suppliers to keep up with new demand. Gun sales spiked when Bill Clinton was elected, and when Barack Obama became president. Dionisio says that, in both those cases, gun sales came to a halt one year later. By then, everyone had all the guns they wanted.

Marco McMillian's sexual orientation never came up during the campaign, but many believe he was the first viable and openly gay political candidate in the state.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The company plans to expand work at transmission plants.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Want to be a better surgeon? Get your game face on. A study finds that surgical residents who played video games for an hour a day performed better at simulated keyhole surgeries than colleagues who refrained.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Barely a week after a major report outlining likely Chinese hacking on American companies, Beijing officials say the U.S. is doing the same thing.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The United States  expends a lot of energy trying to keep illicit stuff from entering this country: guns, drugs, even illegal immigrants. But Peter Andreas points out that smuggling and piracy were a financial foundation of colonial American society.

Andreas is a political scientist at Brown University, and has a new book out called "Smuggler Nation." He says that, before the Revolution, smuggling was de rigeur.

"You were ripping off the Crown. You could be considered kind of a patriotic smuggler," Andreas says.

That all changed once the U.S. became an independent nation. The newly formed government needed revenue.

"One of the founding pillars was in fact the [United States] Customs Service," says Andreas. "It was really important to re-socialize merchants to a stop smuggling, and it was very hard to do. These people had grown up smuggling, celebrated smuggling, and suddenly it was unpatriotic to smuggle."

Andreas says that smuggling and illicit trade still make up a significant portion of the modern economy, and they always will.  But but it's impossible to calculate exactly how much. "Anyone who tells you differently is lying."

But Andreas says not to freak out, and he discourages "alarmist, hyperbolic rhetoric to suggest that somehow we're dealing with an unprecedented fundamentally, new threat to the country and the world."

The Illinois-based Titan tire company was weighing the purchase of an ailing factory in France. But in a leaked letter, Titan's CEO said the deal was off because the workers were unproductive and the unions "crazy." A war of words has ensued.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The Illinois-based Titan tire company was weighing the purchase of an ailing factory in France. But in a leaked letter, Titan's CEO said the deal was off because the workers were unproductive and the unions "crazy." A war of words has ensued.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us