National News

The pictures were the first of Chávez during his 68-day absence. The Venezuelan commander is in Cuba for cancer treatment.

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Reputable economists are predicting that Baby Boomers will bankrupt Social Security and Medicare. And millennials are none too pleased by this prospect. Some have even taken to calling us parasites and leeches.

At the risk of offending my fellow Boomers, I propose that we give up our senior discounts. It seems like the least we can do. After all, every time I get an old age price break, a Gen Y-er somewhere is subsidizing me.

As a 57 year old, I qualify to purchase a host of goods and services at prices 10-20 percent lower than my under-50 friends. I've racked my lawyer brain, but can't come up with any justification for this "youngster tax." While this seems like a form of reverse-age discrimination, it's not illegal. That's because those laws only apply to employers.

These discounts have been around since the 1950s and were instigated by AARP. They now pervade almost every industry-from restaurants to hotels to clothing stores to the national parks.

Perhaps there was some justification for giving oldsters a break 60 years ago, when Social Security benefits were stingy, people retired at 65, and expired soon thereafter. But, things have changed. Today people over 65 are less likely than younger people to live below the poverty line. Not only that, they have the highest net wealth of any age group.

These discounts are now absurd. If I live to 100 I'll be entitled to a senior discount for half of my life. I, like a lot of Boomers, don't need the price break. A recent college graduate who can't get a job is more deserving.

I'm appealing to my generation -- why not be a little magnanimous and give up your senior discounts? If nothing else, it might buy you some good will with your kids.

On Monday of this week, I had 666 friends on Facebook. Today, I have none.

When I first joined Facebook, I enjoyed stumbling across the high-school math teacher who inspired me or the girl who stole my college boyfriend. I liked keeping up with the Pakistani journalist who once visited my office on a fellowship.

But over the years, Facebook lost my trust as it continuously blocked me from keeping the names of my friends private. As a journalist, I need to protect my sources. And as a human, I prefer not to have a hidden audience keeping tabs on me when I reach out to friends.

At first, I tried practicing privacy through obscurity. I accepted all friend requests (even creepy ones) in the hopes that my real relationships could hide in plain sight among the fake ones.

But I found myself sanitizing all my posts as I tried to address a wildly diverse audience that included my boss, my sources, my kids' friends' parents and strangers I had friended from Brazil. I realized that my approach had erased my ability to have a real relationship with anyone on Facebook.

Still, I wasn't ready to leave Facebook entirely. I still wanted to be able to find people and to be found by others. So this week I decided to unfriend everyone and just keep a bare-bones profile. It was hard. I felt awful when I tried unfriend a former calculus student or the page for my upcoming high-school reunion.

I ended up having to pay a real, live friend to come over to hit the "unfriend" button for me. Over and over again. It took seven hours, but I feel like a huge burden has been lifted.

To those I unfriended, I apologize. But as bizarre as it sounds, I am actually trying to protect our ability to have a real relationship, without a hidden audience watching.

On Monday of this week, I had 666 friends on Facebook. Today, I have none.

When I first joined Facebook, I enjoyed stumbling across the high-school math teacher who inspired me or the girl who stole my college boyfriend. I liked keeping up with the Pakistani journalist who once visited my office on a fellowship.

But over the years, Facebook lost my trust as it continuously blocked me from keeping the names of my friends private. As a journalist, I need to protect my sources. And as a human, I prefer not to have a hidden audience keeping tabs on me when I reach out to friends.

At first, I tried practicing privacy through obscurity. I accepted all friend requests (even creepy ones) in the hopes that my real relationships could hide in plain sight among the fake ones.

But I found myself sanitizing all my posts as I tried to address a wildly diverse audience that included my boss, my sources, my kids' friends' parents and strangers I had friended from Brazil. I realized that my approach had erased my ability to have a real relationship with anyone on Facebook.

Still, I wasn't ready to leave Facebook entirely. I still wanted to be able to find people and to be found by others. So this week I decided to unfriend everyone and just keep a bare-bones profile. It was hard. I felt awful when I tried unfriend a former calculus student or the page for my upcoming high-school reunion.

I ended up having to pay a real, live friend to come over to hit the "unfriend" button for me. Over and over again. It took seven hours, but I feel like a huge burden has been lifted.

To those I unfriended, I apologize. But as bizarre as it sounds, I am actually trying to protect our ability to have a real relationship, without a hidden audience watching.

A C+ cost her more than $1 million in potential earnings, Megan Thode claimed. But a judge has ruled that Lehigh University did not treat her unfairly.

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Have you looked at your credit report recently? Of course you have -- you're a Marketplace Money listener! And that means you also know that you can get a copy of your credit report, every year, from each of the three credit rating agencies for free. And if getting something for free isn't enough for you, here's another reason: There's a good chance that your credit report is not entirely accurate. The Federal Trade Commission released a report this week, saying more than a quarter of credit card-carrying Americans have at least one "potentially material error" in their data -- that's as many as 42 million consumers. John Ulzheimer is one of our credit go-to guys. He used to work in the credit rating business, for Equifax, and now he's president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com.

"The report is a little troubling. Having said that, the 42 million potential credit reports with errors, there's a little bit of silver lining to that -- meaning that the errors can be anything from a misspelled former address, which is really meaningless to the world of credit risk assessment, to something more serious like a collection that doesn't belong to the consumer or a late payment that didn't actually happen. So it really underscores the importance of we the consumer becoming way more engaged with our credit reports to identify things that are wrong," says Ulzheimer.

Ulzheimer says consumers should head to AnnualCreditReport.com to get their free credit report. He says the rules under the Fair Credit Reporting Act state that the credit reporting agencies have no liability until consumers identify that something's wrong in their report. But the problem is that we've done a bad job of checking our credit reports. If you do find an error, Ulzheimer says to start the dispute process, you should communicate with the credit reporting agencies. Then the agencies have certain obligations.

How to dispute an error in your credit report. Check out these links to start:

Experian

Equifax

Transunion

"They must show the item in dispute that you're challenging, which means that anybody who sees it from that point forward knows that it's in question. Second, they have to identify through the furnishing party whether or not the item is correct or incorrect. And the furnishing party is almost always going to be a financial institution or a collection agency." Ulzheimer said.

"They're basically saying, 'Hey look, John filed a dispute. He says this is wrong, you let us know. Was it right or wrong?' And then they're going to essentially pare it back to the consumer what they heard back from the furnishing party. Then you as the consumer can either live with it or if you're dissatisfied with the mistake, you can go directly to the source yourself and take your argument up with them."

Ulzheimer says the frustrating thing about this process is that "the credit reporting agencies are always going to take the word of the bank or the collection agency over the word of the consumer." Ulzheimer advises consumers to be as plugged in to the data on your credit report as you are with the charges on your credit cards. He also encourages consumers to leverage their federal rights (like getting your free credit reports and the ability to get items corrected), take their battle to the bureaus if they think something is wrong, and seek out a consumer advocate attorney if you've really been damaged by the error.

Carnival Cruise Lines has an offer for the haggard passengers who’ve soldiered through sleeping on deck, urinating in showers, and a steady diet of onion sandwiches aboard the disabled ship Triumph. As a gesture of goodwill, the company is offerering a full refund for the cruise, plus a voucher for a future trip and $500. But that's probably not going to make everyone happy. So what about those passengers who are thinking about lawyering up?

Under Armour, which was founded by a former football player and is known for its hard-core, performance sportswear, is testing a new branding strategy geared towards women.

There are a lot of things that can affect your financial behavior, like how much you make or how much debt you have. And then there are more subtle things, like language. Economist Keith Chen at Yale University has been researching the link between savings behavior and the use of the future tense.

The answer is relatively simple. To document accidents and expose scam artists, many Russians keep dashcams running when they're behind the wheel. So, when a meteor appeared in the sky today, there were many electronic eyes recording the sight.

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The college ID card ain't what it used to be. Ask Chris May, who lives in Atlanta and recently enrolled at Georgia State University. Like many students, the 29-year old relies on financial aid. In years past, we would have waited for a paper check or a refund from the school’s business office. But Chris’s student ID has all that cash pre-loaded.  It’s half ID card, half Discover debit card.

"I’ve been able to get gas with it and eat with it," he says, adding that it's been helpful and convenient. 

For Chris and about 40 percent of U.S. college students, their student IDs not only get them into the library, but also pay for dinner and a movie.  But there’s growing concern over how colleges and banks work out those co-branded agreements, prompting an inquiry by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"Are school marketing agreements with banks and credit unions letting students get a better deal," asks Rohit Chopra, student loan ombudsman at the CFPB. "Or, are they sometimes worse off?”

Chopra says colleges are required to disclose agreements they have with banks for traditional credit cards. But not so with bank cards pre-loaded with student aid. And the cards can be big business for colleges and universities. Arizona State reportedly earns $15 for each new student it links to a debit account offered by MidSouth Bank. 

At Ohio State, a deal with Huntington Bank is raking in $25 million over the next 15 years.

"We ensure there is no marketing of credit products," says Geoff Chatas, Ohio State's CFO. "We’re asking and working with the financial institution to provide financial literacy education. I think when you look at all of those things together, you see that these can be structured in a very positive way."

Chatas says the Huntington Bank/OSU deal is funding things like classroom renovations and the school’s endowment. But not all bank marketing deals are good for students, says the Public Interest Research Group.

In a recent report, PIRG found students often pay fees big and small, eating away at money that's supposed to be set aside for tuition.  A company called Higher One is one of the biggest players in the game, holding card agreements with more than 500 campuses with a combined enrollment of more than 4.3 million students. In August, Higher One settled with the FDIC over unfair and misleading practices.  It paid restitution to 60,000 students. Teresa Valerio Parrot, a spokeswoman for Higher One, says the company will not comment until after the CFPB inquiry.  

Another big player in the college debit card field is Wells Fargo, which handles college-related debit cards for some two-million students. “We want students to have a good experience so they continue to choose us," says Erin Constantine, a senior VP with the bank.

Constantine says getting young adults’ business early can lead to long-term gain for the bank.

“It starts out with a checking account, a savings account, but then they continue to bank with us as their financial needs change,” she says, adding that debit cards teach students financial responsibility.

The National Association of College and University Business Officers, or “NACUBO,” also says agreements between banks and universities can be beneficial. The deals often streamline the financial aid process for college business offices, says Liz Clark, NACUBO's Director of Congressional Affairs. 

 “At the end of the day, we don’t want to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater. We think that these programs bring a lot of benefits to students and campuses,” says Clark.

NACUBO has published a list of “best practices” to serve as a guide on how schools should handle co-branding IDs and debit cards. The organization also plans to file comments with the CFPB. Parents, students, colleges and financial institutions have until March 18th to offer input. Based on what it hears, the CFPB will decide later this year what regulation, if any, could be warranted.   

While lawmakers debate proposals, the demand for immigration attorneys is increasing as people seek information and assistance. Jose Pertierra and his staff field nearly 50 calls a day from immigrants wondering how potential changes will affect them.

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The sports apparel company Under Armour is opening a new store in Baltimore Friday to test a new, lighter strategy.

The company was founded by a former football player and is known for its hard-core, performance sportswear. An early slogan of the company was, “We must protect this house,” chanted by super sweaty football types.

That strategy’s did well by the company, which currently has a market cap of over $5 billion.

“You know you listen to these presentations by the management and it’s like they’re half time rallies,” says Sean McGowan, an analyst with Needham and Company. “That’s great and it’s worked phenomenally well.”

But McGowan also says that early attempts to attract more female customers could be summed up as making men’s clothes smaller and pink.

Now the new store, which also has men’s and kids' gear, is a lighter, cheerier store experience.

Chelsea Castner, a brand planner with Just Ask A Women, says brighter colors are a good start.

“If they can bring a little element of surprise to make her feel like she’s having a glamorous moment in a sweaty gym, that’s key,” she says.

It’s also key to the company’s growth prospects. Women’s sales were less than half of men’s sales last year.

Gov. Sam Brownback plans to get rid of Kansas' income tax and cut the size of state government. Some lawmakers say it's a great experiment that will show that lower tax rates and streamlined bureaucracy can stimulate growth; others are concerned about overreaching.

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The celebrated double-amputee Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius now faces a murder charge in the shooting death of his girlfriend in South Africa. Before this recent turn, his compelling story brought him corporate sponsors like Nike.

Now he’s the latest in a long line of athletes in legal jeopardy, moral trouble or both. Companies that sponsor athletes have an evolving playbook for dealing with incidents like these, and communications professionals give Nike high marks for its response.

Shortly after Pistorius was arrested, a Nike ad with the unfortunate slogan “I am the bullet in the chamber” disappeared from his website. Nike put out a brief statement expressing sympathy for the families and saying it won’t comment while police investigate.

“An A+ response” is how legal crisis communicator Rich Nichols, with PRO Sports Communications, describes Nike’s move. As an attorney, his clients include Marion Jones, the track athlete who lost her Olympic medals after admitting performance-enhancing drug use. Nichols says Nike is among the best at managing scandal smartly.

“That’s why they’re number one at what they do,” he says.

Nike has certainly got plenty of experience with scandal, from Lance Armstrong to Tiger Woods, to name a few. Like on the track, becoming number one is about speed.

“Sponsors are expected to have a reply much more rapidly than they were in the past,” says Steve Dittmore, a sports management professor at University of Arkansas and former communications staffer for the Olympics.

Nike’s statement was brief. The terseness of a response is key to removing the brand from the bad headlines.

“More talking equals more coverage,” says crisis PR consultant Eric Dezenhall. “So what you’re getting is very simple statements and that’s it. We’re not gonna say anything more.”

A key feature of the response at this stage, before a court’s judgment or the athlete’s admission of wrongdoing, is that the sponsor won’t criticize or support the athlete. Withholding judgment gives the company options.

If a star is rehabilitated, sponsors can continue their multimillion-dollar investment. But if things get worse, they’re still free to dump the athlete.

Mark Garrison: After Pistorius was arrested, a Nike ad with the unfortunate slogan “I am the bullet in the chamber” disappeared from his website. Nike put out a brief statement expressing sympathy for the families and saying it won’t comment while police investigate. The terseness is key to removing the brand from the bad headlines.

Eric Dezenhall: More talking equals more coverage. So what you’re getting is very simple statements and that’s it. We’re not gonna say any more.

PR crisis consultant Eric Dezenhall gives Nike high marks for its strategy and he’s not the only one.

Rich Nichols: That’s an A+ response.

Attorney Rich Nichols is with PRO Sports Communications. His clients include Marion Jones, the track athlete who lost her Olympic medals after admitting performance-enhancing drug use. Nichols says Nike has a long record of managing scandal smartly.

Nichols: Nike’s always been that way. That’s why they’re number one at what they do.

They’ve certainly got plenty of experience, from Lance Armstrong to Tiger Woods, to name a few. Like on the track, becoming number one is about speed. Steve Dittmore is a sports management professor at University of Arkansas.

Steve Dittmore: Sponsors are expected to have a reply much more rapidly than they were in the past.

Sponsors tell the athletes they’ve invested in, and the world, they’re withholding judgment. Again, Eric Dezenhall.

Dezenhall: We will neither embrace you or chastise you, but we will go into suspended animation pending the resolution of a certain situation.

That way the sponsor retains the option to keep the star if things turn out all right, or dump him if they don’t. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

"It was horrible, just horrible" said one passenger, tears welling in her eyes. Tales of hoarding and gross conditions make the five-day experience in the Gulf of Mexico sound like one very unpleasant trip.

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The Federal Reserve reported this morning that factory production in the U.S. fell by 0.4 percent in January following two months of gains. 

Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, shares his thoughts on the decrease and why the Chevy Silverado might have something to do with it. 

Also: The erotic writings of John Donne; Randi Zuckerberg gets a two-book deal; and the whimsical world of book sculpting.

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When Ted Brass visits the homes he manages, he expects them to be vacant.

"Wow! Somebody's here. You know, put the key in the door, the key didn't work," says Brass.

Brass works with foreclosures and bank-owned properties in Inglewood, California, southwest of Downtown Los Angeles. About once a month, he finds someone living in a home he's trying to sell: "And a young man came to the door, and says, yeah -- they actually had a lease agreement from the person they paid cash to. And I said uh, this property is not for rent."

This is what's known as a foreclosure rental scam, where con artists list bank-owned properties as rentals, usually on Craigslist. They put unsuspecting tenants in the homes, and collect rent until they're found out. That's exactly what happened to Vance Pritchett. He's a 27-year-old tattoo artist who recently found a great deal on Craigslist. It turned out to be the same house that Brass was trying to sell.

"A house, which was a two story house. The guy came, he gave receipts to the individuals that was paying rent," says Pritchett.

His housemates agreed to pay cash for a break on the rent. Pritchett worked out a deal to fix up the place in exchange for a room.

"We went to Home Depot, bought rakes, lawn equipment, towels, toilet paper. A couple days after that, I went to school, and when I came back, I was met by Ted Brass," says Pritchett.

Brass says that scammers prey on people who might have trouble getting a lease otherwise. They conduct their negotiations via email and disposable cell phones, and weed out tenants who ask too many questions. These fake landlords collect first and last month's rent in cash. And then, they vanish.

"Ted said we had to move out, that the police was there. I packed up the same day and moved out, because there was nothing I could do about it," says Pritchett.

Since the housing crisis began, Brass has hired inspectors to check in on the properties he manages.

"So, I do weekly inspections to these homes to make sure that nobody has actually moved in," says Vance Pritchett, Sr. He came to help his son move out of Brass's property. Brass was impressed with the way Pritchett handled a tense situation, and he offered him a job as a home inspector. Together, we're driving from foreclosure to foreclosure in an area of L.A. County where nearly 8 percent of homes are vacant.

"We come into a vacant home, and it echoes," says Pritchett, Sr.

Most of the homes that Pritchett inspects have for-sale signs out front, and many are owned by the mortgage lender Freddie Mac. He takes pictures, checks the lights and water, and locks up again. Rob Hagberg is associate director of fraud investigations at Freddie Mac. He described foreclosure rental scams as a "crime of opportunity."

"Florida, Nevada, California -- it would seem that any area of the country where there's a large inventory of foreclosed properties is going to be vulnerable," says Hagberg.

In Los Angeles, these crimes have been on the rise. Scams relying on foreclosed properties now account for close to half the real estate fraud cases in the county. Even so, Hagberg says that this type of fraud often goes unreported. Wait a minute, unreported?

"Calling law enforcement is a double-edged sword," says Adam O'Neill, a real estate investor who buys bank-owned homes throughout Los Angeles.

"What often happens is that law enforcement will ask for a lease, and when they see that lease, they'll determine that it's a civil matter," says O'Neill.

If police aren't confident the lease is fake -- and usually they aren't -- they may decline to get involved.

"In this situation, there's a couple things we can do. We can try to evict them and go through a legal process, which is costly and time consuming, or you can negotiate a cash for keys situation," says O'Neill.

Cash for keys is another type of foreclosure rental scam. Con artists occupy a house just as it sells, and demand several thousand dollars from the new owners before agreeing to move out. O'Neill says that he and other investors almost always decide to pay up.  

"You make a business decision, even though you know this is really criminal activity," says O'Neill.
 
O'Neill and his partners buy and remodel up to 20 "distressed" homes at once. They do whatever they can to avoid scams: they board up homes within hours of buying them, install alarm systems, even pay their own employees to live in them, moving from house to house to house. O'Neill says new homeowners should try to secure their homes or move in as soon as possible. As for renters, Freddie Mac's Rob Hagberg says,

"If it looks too good to be true, it just might be," says Hagberg.

Some basic tips? Google a property's address to see if it's for sale, don't pay cash, and ask a lot of questions.

Fried chicken and waffles is a delicious combo — but is it a traditional Southern one? A lot of readers objected to the idea that this dish originated in the South. We look into the roots of the dish — and the objections to calling it Southern.

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Authorities in South Africa intend to purse a case of premeditated murder against the Paralympic and Olympic sprinter. He's accused of killing his girlfriend on Thursday. The athlete's agent says Pistorius disputes the charge "in the strongest possible terms."

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The sights and sounds across Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday as a meteor came roaring in were awesome. There are reports of more than 900 people being injured, most when windows shattered. But European Space Agency experts say there's no connection to the large asteroid that's whizzing past Earth later in the day.

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