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Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits. Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.  Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come. (

Today's Handel on the News "Big Pile' Selections




After resigning as president and CEO of General Motors in December, Fritz Henderson might have gone into hiding or decided to sit out the harsh Michigan winter on a Florida beach. Instead, here he is popping up again, this time as a consultant to GM on international operations at the very fancy fee of $59,090 a month for 20 hours of work a month. That works out to almost $3,000 an hour for a CEO who was ousted after just eight months on the job. (

Voter unhappiness with Congress has reached the highest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports as 71% now say the legislature is doing a poor job.

That’s up ten points from the previous high of 61% reached a montha ago. Only 10% of voters say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. (READ MORE)




Sluggerrr the Lion -- the mascot for the Kansas City Royals -- is accused of poking a fan's eye out with a steaming hot wiener during a Major League Baseball game last year ... and now the team is being sued over it.  It's all in a lawsuit filed in Jackson County, Missouri in which John Coomer claims he was just chillin' at a game on September 8, 2009 -- when Slugger "climbed atop the third base dugout and started shooting hotdogs into the stands from an air gun." Coomer claims Slugger eventually put the air gun down -- and started firing off the wieners by hand ... when, according to the suit, things went horribly wrong. In the docs, Coomer claims "Slugger lost control of his throw or was reckless with his throw, and threw the hotdog directly into the Plaintiff." Coomer claims the dog hit him right in his left eye -- leaving him with a detached retina and the development of cataracts. (READ MORE)




A violent criminal used a spoon to dig her way out of a Dutch prison, officials said on Tuesday. The 35-year-old woman, held for an unspecified "violent crime,” fled Saturday night through a tunnel she had dug with a spoon, prosecution spokesman Wim de Bruin, told AFP. The tunnel linked the inside of the prison in Breda in the southern Netherlands to the outside world, he said, without specifying if it started in the woman's cell. Justice ministry spokesman Jochgem van Opstal would not say what sentence the woman was serving or for what specific crime. She was still on the run Tuesday.

An Italian court has convicted three Google executives of violating the privacy of a boy with Down syndrome by allowing the Web site to air a video of him being bullied. The case began in 2006 when four classmates at a school in Turin, Italy, used a mobile phone to film themselves bullying a boy with Down syndrome. They then uploaded the clip to Google Video. The boy's father filed a complaint, which was backed by an Italian advocacy group for people with Down syndrome, and a lawsuit was filed.  A judge in Milan today gave three Google executives six-month suspended prison sentences for privacy violation, but cleared them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant was acquitted altogether. They'd faced up to a year in prison. (READ MORE)