Shoppers hit Black Friday sales with pared budgets
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Americans headed to department stores in droves in the dead of night on Friday to kick off the holiday shopping season, though many said they had pared back how much they would spend on family members and on themselves. Black Friday, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, is often the single busiest shopping day of the crucial holiday season, which accounts for nearly one-fifth of the retail industry's annual sales.
A U.S. mine debate centers on water, jobs
BIG BAY, Michigan (Reuters) - Standing on the marshy ground at Eagle Rock in the remote woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it's hard to imagine that beneath one's feet is a lump of nickel worth billions of dollars. "This is where the money is," said Chauncey Moran, vice chairman of the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve conservation group, whose mission is to protect the Yellow Dog River and surrounding watersheds.
Adam Lambert furor spreads to gay community
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "American Idol" runner-up Adam Lambert on Wednesday admitted he got carried away during his racy American Music Awards performance, as furor over his singing and dancing stoked a wider controversy in the U.S. gay community. More than 14 million people watched the gay, glam rocker close the live AMA telecast on Sunday with a performance that included Lambert kissing a male keyboard player and pushing the head of another performer into his crotch.
Uninvited guests crash White House dinner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Secret Service is investigating how an uninvited couple was admitted to U.S. President Barack Obama's White House state dinner, penetrating layers of security, a spokesman said on Wednesday. The agency charged with protecting the president and other high-level officials is conducting a comprehensive review of the security breach on Tuesday at the dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, U.S. Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said.
U.S. diabetes cases to double, costs triple by 2034
CHICAGO (Reuters) - By 2034, nearly twice as many Americans will have diabetes and spending on the disease will triple, further straining the U.S. health system and testing the viability of Medicare and other government health insurance programs, U.S. researchers said on Friday. "We forecast that in the next 25 years, the population size of people with diabetes -- both diagnosed and undiagnosed -- will rise from approximately 24 million people to 44 million people by the year 2034," said Dr. Elbert Huang of the University of Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Diabetes Care.
Fannie Mae to tighten lending standards: report