National News

The Florida senator has joined in the joking about his big stretch for a big drink as he was giving the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address.

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Also: An award for the year's most cutting book review; how it feels to hold Sylvia Plath's hair; and Donna Tartt's new book will be out this fall.

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As investigators work to determine whether the charred body inside a California mountain cabin is that of former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner, dramatic reports are emerging about what authorities hope were the last hours of the massive manhunt for the accused killer.

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In last night's State of the Union address, President Obama declared he wants to make pre-school available to every child in America:

"Every dollar we invest in high quality early-childhood education, can save more than $7 later on -- by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime."

Marketplace's education reporter Amy Scott shares her thoughts on universal pre-school access, high-school funding, and Obama's plans for higher education.

In last night's State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a new trade deal with Europe:

"Tonight I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive transatlantic partnership with the European Union."

Marketplace's Europe bureau chief Stephen Beard breaks down the specifics of the deal, gauges EU reaction, and explains the obstacles ahead.
 

From climate change to the federal deficit, President Barack Obama covered a lot of ground in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. But he got very specific when addressing minimum wage.

“Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour,” he said.

The $1.75 raise from the current hourly rate would affect about 15 million people, according to the White House. Additionally, President Obama wants to tie the minimum wage to the cost of living.

That’s the part of his speech that struck Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

“Minimum workers are one group of people in this country who literally have to wait for an act of Congress to get a raise,” she says.

She adds that by making future increases automatic, the government could take a “fix it and forget it” approach that would benefit that entire economy, because when people have more money in their pockets, they spend more.

But there are two sides to this argument.

Unemployment is still hovering around 8 percent. That shows companies have been slow to bring on new workers.

“You have to worry about whether firms are close to the margin of letting workers go anyway,” says Hoyt Bleakley, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “It’s going to be hard to encourage them to hire people if what we’re doing is cranking up what they’re required to pay workers.”

He says companies may decide that workers who are worth $7.25 per hour now might not be worth $9.00 an hour.

But Paul Sonn, the legal co-director of the National Employment Law Project, says the President is following the lead of many states legislatures.

“Since the recession, there’s been a surge activity in the states [around minimum wage],” Sonn says.

Nineteen states have minimum wage requirements that are higher than the federal rate. Washington State is the tops the list at $9.19 an hour.

From climate change to the federal deficit, President Barack Obama covered a lot of ground in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. But he got very specific when addressing minimum wage.

“Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour,” he said.

The $1.75 raise from the current hourly rate would affect about 15 million people, according to the White House. Additionally, President Obama wants to tie the minimum wage to the cost of living.

That’s the part of his speech that struck Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

“Minimum workers are one group of people in this country who literally have to wait for an act of Congress to get a raise,” she says.

She adds that by making future increases automatic, the government could take a “fix it and forget it” approach that would benefit that entire economy, because when people have more money in their pockets, they spend more.

But there are two sides to this argument.

Unemployment is still hovering around 8 percent. That shows companies have been slow to bring on new workers.

“You have to worry about whether firms are close to the margin of letting workers go anyway,” says Hoyt Bleakley, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “It’s going to be hard to encourage them to hire people if what we’re doing is cranking up what they’re required to pay workers.”

He says companies may decide that workers who are worth $7.25 per hour now might not be worth $9.00 an hour.

But Paul Sonn, the legal co-director of the National Employment Law Project, says the President is following the lead of many states legislatures.

“Since the recession, there’s been a surge activity in the states [around minimum wage],” Sonn says.

Nineteen states have minimum wage requirements that are higher than the federal rate. Washington State is the tops the list at $9.19 an hour.

How did you hear the news the Pope is quitting? Whether on a TV screen in the back seat of a taxi cab or on a gossip website, chances are technology was involved.

But what was the technology the last time a Pope resigned -- Gregory XII in 1415 at the end of the Great Schism?

With the Gutenberg press, invented in 1453, still decades off, widespread dissemination of printed information was mere technological fantasy.

According to Michael Sizer, who has a background in medieval studies and teaches history at MICA in Baltimore, a church body called the Counsel of Constance would have been the central news source.

"Institutions had agents there who were eager to spin information and to report back to their superiors to strategize," says Sizer. "And the way that they did that was they either went in person and they would send letters with messengers, and messengers would go on horseback."

From there, news of Gregory XII's resignation might have been read aloud in far off counsel meetings across Europe and then copied by hand. Sizer says by that time, the West had the technology of inexpensive paper which made the task of copying news and spreading it much easier.

"In the early Middle Ages, most of the writing was done on expensive manuscript paper made from animal hide. When access to Asia was opened up after the Mongol invasions of the 13th and 14th centuries, the west got the technology of paper -- cheap paper. Because paper was cheap people didnt feel any financial restraint about copying things down," says Sizer.

Apple is due to respond today to a lawsuit by a hedge fund that alleges the company is hoarding cash -- which it should be distributing to shareholders. Apple CEO Tim Cook has called the legal squabble a "silly sideshow," but pressure is mounting on Apple to share its $137 billion cash pile.

You'd think rewarding shareholders would be an easy call. But Brian Colello, an equity analyst with Morningstar, notes that Apple has a reputation for being conservative with its cash.

“I think that goes back to its days struggling in the PC space, 10 or 15 years ago,” he says.

Because Apple’s stock price has declined, Colello says investors want to be rewarded in other ways. David Einhorn, who runs the Greenlight Capital hedge fund, even sued the company. He wants Apple to issue preferred shares -- a kind of stock that pays regular dividends.

"The shareholders, particularly Einhorn, are saying, 'We would like more of that back, because you don't need it and your businesses is going to keep generating cash,'" says Steve Kaplan, who teaches finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “I think Apple’s response is -- we’re starting to give you the cash back.”

Apple has opened its purse to some degree. In the past year, the company has returned $10 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks. Apple has pledged to give back another $35 billion in the next two years.

When Apple's CEO Tim Cook called the shareholder suit a quote "silly sideshow," he was speaking at a big Technology and Internet conference in New York full of institutional investors, venture capitalists, and the media. With the bloom off of the Apple in recent months, Cook needed to do some fancy talking. The Apple CEO doesn't think his company has lost its "innovation mojo," taken by some as a hint Apple's working on something big, but who knows what. 

"Tim Cook, who's known for having a pretty flat affect, was speaking in these lyrical terms about how when he goes to an Apple store and he's depressed, all of the sudden it's like Prozac," says Heidi Moore, the Guardian's U.S. Finance and Economics Editor. "It was pretty funny, but it was also pretty interesting because he has to make a really strong case for his company right now. A lot of the guys in that audience are investors -- they think in terms of money, in terms of profit -- and here he's making an argument about how much people should have a spiritual element of their engagement with Apple."

In the ashes of a Boston-area pizza chain that wronged them, some former pizzeria workers are trying to get their just desserts. They’re opening their own restaurant, hoping to show up the previous owners with even bigger success.

The restaurant sits on a busy shopping street just off Harvard’s campus. Carpenters have been busy renovating the space before the scheduled opening next month.

“We’re trying to have the business continue,” says architect Alex van Praagh of the redesign, “but give it -- give it a new life.”

The restaurant’s old life was part of a once fast-growing Massachusetts chain Upper Crust Pizzeria. But its owners may have been taking the “upper crust” name too literally. They may have been trying to get rich on the backs of workers. In 2009, the federal government investigated and ordered Upper Crust to pay its employees $341,000 in back wages for uncompensated overtime. After that, workers accused ownership of taking that money right back out of their paychecks. Boston worker rights attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of workers. But before the case was settled, the pizzeria chain went bankrupt last year.

“And it was when that happened that the wheels started spinning in my head," Liss-Riordan says, “that something should be done here, somewhat dramatic.”

In the bankruptcy auction last month, Liss-Riordan partnered with a local businessman to plunk down more than $220,000 to buy the remaining lease of one of the chain’s locations, the one at Harvard Square. That’s close to where Liss-Riordan went to Harvard Law School. It’s not a coincidence that it’s also close to the campus where students once boycotted Upper Crust.

“The goals are to set up a restaurant where the workers are paid correctly,” Liss-Riordan says. “And do something even further. So that it really is a place for the workers, and the workers could have a feeling of ownership.”

Liss-Riordan and her investor partner are hiring around a dozen former Upper Crust workers to run the pizza shop. One of them is Mehmet Ali. He started out at the old pizza parlor as the deliveryman.

“I’m gonna be the manager,” Ali says, smiling.

Ali’s not just because getting his job back. He’s not just getting a promotion. He’s also getting an equity stake in the business. All of the workers will.

The details of this shared ownership with workers have yet to be worked out. But offering workers equity makes sense to the local businessman who partnered with lawyer Liss-Riordan to buy the shop. Haluk Özek runs a clothing boutique down the street, and he shares the profits there, too. After all, that store is a family business.

“You know my son and my nephew and my wife are working for me,” Özek says laughing. “So if I don’t share the money with them, I’m in deep trouble!”

The pizzeria is set to open next month, only a few months after the Upper Crust location closed. That’s when former worker Mehmet Ali had to tell his pregnant wife that the chain had declared bankruptcy and that he lost his job. He’s hoping to be back to work before the baby is born.

“My wife’s so excited,” Ali says. “I’m really excited. This is new career for me.”

Ali hopes he and the other workers make the joint so successful that it expands and grows bigger than the old Upper Crust chain ever was. He wants to show the former owners how far a business can go when you work with the employees rather than stealing from them. How far a business can go when you focus on growing the pie, instead of fighting over how to slice it.

This new pizzeria has a new name: The Just Crust.

John David, 73, is one of the many faces of a growing group of Americans: seniors who work. The former TV producer switched careers in his 50s, becoming a fitness instructor. "This turned out to be the real calling," he says.

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John David, 73, is one of the many faces of a growing group of Americans: seniors who work. The former TV producer switched careers in his 50s, becoming a fitness instructor. "This turned out to be the real calling," he says.

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Some affected private companies are so frustrated by their inability to defend against attacks that they have opted to go on the offense themselves. Some cybersecurity firms are now marketing cyberweapons and attack strategies to companies that want to go after their adversaries.

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The killing of Chokri Belaid, a prominent politician and human rights activist, is pitting Tunisians against each other. Just two years after overthrowing a dictator, Tunisians are increasingly divided over their government and the country's future.

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The raids comes as stores in Britain, Ireland, France and Sweden have had to pull products suspected of containing horsemeat off their shelves. The scandal has shown just how long and winding the food chain really is, and how little oversight is exercised within Europe's open borders.

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The scandal has shown just how long and winding the food chain really is, and how little oversight is exercised within Europe's open borders. In Britain, local butchers are among the beneficiaries of this crisis.

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The manhunt for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected of going on a killing spree converged Tuesday on a mountain cabin. Authorities believe he barricaded himself inside, engaged in a shootout that killed a deputy and then never emerged as the home went up in flames.

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Last month, Brent Musburger was accused of being sexist when he gushed about "what a beautiful woman" Miss Alabama was during the BCS Championship game. Commentator Frank Deford says if Musburger was guilty of anything, it was failing to note what a cliche he was perpetuating.

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President Obama called repeatedly on Congress to address issues of paramount importance to the country during his State of the Union address Tuesday. But he also made it clear that when Congress fails to act or agree with his policies, he intends to push ahead on his own.

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Five-year-old Banana Joe beat out Swagger, the old English sheepdog, and five others. More than 2,700 dogs too part in the competition.

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