Now is a particularly bad time. Yet the federal minimum wage is scheduled to rise to $7.25 on July 24, the third step of a $2.10 increase enacted in 2007. In more than half the states, the minimum wage already exceeds the current national minimum of $6.55 an hour.

Al-Qaeda has vowed to avenge the deaths of Muslims in China's Urumqi city by targeting the country's workforce in northwest Africa.

The call for reprisals against China has come from Algerian-based Al-Qaeda, the South China Morning Post said, summarising the intelligence report by London-based risk analysis firm Stirling Assynt.

On Wednesday, Breaking the Silence released its most ambitious project to-date: A 110-page collection of testimony from more than two dozen soldiers who fought in Gaza during lsrael's 22-day military offensive last winter.

When an Air Force command in north Florida sought new battlefield technologies,  Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) steered millions in federal dollars its way to hire defense contractors.

The research effort at the Pensacola Air Force base fell apart, however, when investigators found evidence that it was used to improperly pay a series of companies linked to Murtha. A handful of defense firms were paid for work that was never done or not called for in the contracts. Some of the companies involved, based in Wyoming, Florida and Murtha's district in Pennsylvania, had hidden owners, prosecutors allege; one was secretly owned by the Air Force official who helped approve the payments.

And then one day the stop sign was gone.

It was the very stop sign one block from my house that was oddly stationed at a low-traffic, 3-way intersection, tempting every driver to slow down but not come to a complete stop.

How the city cleaned up on that one! I have personally coughed up in excess of $1,000 for tickets there, one time receiving two tickets in as many days. This sign was even the reason that I spent a day in jail for failing to fork over when the judge said I should.

Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea.

Hunters started noticing the stuff last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters.

The U.S. Coast Guard found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.

As he rode along with a very confused Billy Crystal, Palance, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, said, “You know what the secret of life is?”  Crystal said, “What?”  Palance raised his finger saying, “This!”  Crystal said, “Your finger?”  Palance said, “One thing, just one thing…you stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.”  Crystal said, “That’s great, but what’s the one thing?”  Palance said, “That’s what you gotta’ figure out.”