Keeping you up with the top stories of the day and the hour:
- Mubarak ‘fears chaos if he quits’ (BBC) — Yeah, ’cause you know, everything is going so well now.
- As Islamist Group Rises, Its Intentions Are Unclear (NYT) — The uprising’s dark side, which up to now has been relatively quiet during the protests. It’s starting to step forward, though.
- Probe faults FBI, Army in Fort Hood attack (WashPost) — Senate investigation blames authorities for missing warning signs.
- Verizon says it will add 500 jobs (thestate.com) — This is because of the iPhone. I’m doing my part. I’m running out there to order mine as soon as I finish this post.
- Pakistan MP drops effort to repeal blasphemy laws (BBC) — Don’t know if you’ve been following this, but it was on the front pages while I was in England (British media cover the world). Pretty horrific story that we should all be following.
- Religious Groups Tackle An X-Rated Secret (NPR) — Super Bowl Sunday will be Porn Sunday in many of the nation’s churches.
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Columbia economic director Jim Gambrell is all excited about jobs in Elgin! What is he doing to lure jobs to COLUMBIA!
What, if anything, did he do to land these jobs?
@Kathryn
Most of the workers at Verizon will be coming from Columbia I would guess. The facility is basically just across the border, across the street from an elementary school that is in Richland 2 district. Columbia extends beyond Bull St. 🙂
And like The State newspaper facility, they probably located it in Elgin for tax reasons.
Here’s an interesting topic from today’s headlines: Unemployment rate drops to 9.0% in December. Job growth was stunted with only an additional 36k jobs. The low job growth number is in part due to weather issues.
One intersting aspect of the BLS report was the breakdown of jobs between the public and private sectors. Government job numbers actually declined by 14k last month. This puzzles me. Why does the government sector continue to shed jobs during these hard times? Shouldn’t it be a function of government to add jobs as a boost to the recover? Once we get rolling again we can cut the deficit.
Right now it just doesn’t seem like the deficit should be the priority that the GOP has made it out to be. But of course it was never much of an issue during either the Reagan or Bush spending orgies. So it really depends on who is in the White House when it comes to their concern with over spending.
Here’s a headline Brad will love:
WikiLeaks nominated for 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
OSLO (AFP) – A Norwegian member of parliament said Wednesday he had nominated WikiLeaks for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, insisting the whistleblower website was a gauge of transparency in the world, including in democratic societies.