Now You Can Own Your Very Own ‘Perfusor’! 

One press of a button and you can end your life with a swift injection of potassium chloride. That is the boast of Roger Kusch, once one of Germany’s most promising conservative politicians and now the improbable promoter of a mercy-killing machine.

If the “Perfusor”, designed to sidestep strict laws banning assisted suicide, goes into production then Germany rather than Switzerland could soon become the destination of choice for those seeking to kill themselves. Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942 providing a doctor has been consulted and the patient is aware of the consequences of his decision.

The machine would be lent or rented so that the patients could insert the needles themselves and then push the button releasing the potassium chloride, used to execute Death Row prisoners in some US states. How much and do they take credit cards?

Yahoo’s First Site Aimed At A Single Demographic 

Yahoo Inc. on Monday launched a site for women between ages 25 and 54, calling it a key demographic underserved by current Yahoo properties. The site, Shine, is aimed largely at giving the struggling Internet company additional opportunities to sell advertising targeted to the key decision-maker in many households.

With Shine, Yahoo plans to expand its offerings in parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology.

Yahoo is entering a market already served by Glam Media Inc. and iVillage, a unit of General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal. It is Yahoo’s first site aimed at a single demographic, although other Yahoo sites like Finance and Sports already draw specific audiences.

So far, Crest Whitestrips looks like the largest (showing 2 advertisements on the home page).

Workers in certain industries can have more comfort in knowing that, even if they are fired, there is so much demand they should be able to find another job very quickly.

Talk of a recession and creeping unemployment rates are enough to make you wonder: Where can you find stability in unstable times? Kiplinger consulted career experts and combed through job trend data to come up with five industries that should provide safer havens to workers, no matter what the economy is doing. No matter what field you work in, you have the possibility of losing your job. But there are things you can do to protect yourself and increase your odds of getting another job, just in case.

Healthcare  
Many of the nation’s fastest-growing careers are in the health care industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. An increasingly aging population fuels demand in this field. Some specific jobs with stable prospects include doctor, nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist and physician assistant.

Education
Teachers for any grade level who specialize in high-demand fields such as math, science or bilingual education should have an easier time finding and keeping a job. And the outlook for college instructors looks stable, too. College enrollment is rising as the number of 18- to 24-year-olds increases. Some areas of the country are more stable than others for teachers because education jobs follow population trends. So teachers in fast-growing states in the South and West, such as Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Georgia, will have more opportunity than in slower-growth areas in the Midwest and Northeast.

Security
Crime doesn’t stop in a recession. That makes security jobs, such as police officers, detectives, private security guards and international security experts, a good bet. Layoffs in this industry are rare. In the off-chance law enforcement officers lose their jobs to budget cuts, they have little difficulty finding jobs with other agencies because demand is so high.

Environmental Sciences
The current “green” movement reaches far beyond changing your light bulbs to fluorescents. It’s also translating into a solid career choice. The BLS expects environmental careers, including ecologists, hydrologists, environmental chemists and others, to grow 25% over the next decade.

Government
Some of the most stable jobs around are within the federal government, where firings and lay-offs happen at just one-quarter the rate in the private sector. One reason: Even in hard economic times when big businesses are forced to downsize, the government must carry on. And only one in every 5,000 non-defense workers is ever fired for poor performance each year. Crazy odds! Due to an increasingly aging workforce, the government is doing a lot of hiring lately, especially among the 20-something crowd.

What perks would drive a normal person to consider the graveyard shift? 

Money money money! Yet money isn’t the only benefit. There are other intangibles, like greater autonomy, fewer meetings (all the higher-ups are sleeping!) and the likelihood of getting promoted sooner since there are less people to compete against.

1. Registered Nurse (RN)
Day Shift: $54,500 annually
Night Shift: $55,700 annually

2. Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)
Day Shift: $36,300
Night Shift: $38,400

3. Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA)
Day Shift: $22,200
Night Shift: $22,600

4. Truck Driver
Day Shift: $31,300
Night Shift: $36,000

5. Bartender
Day Shift: $24,600
Night Shift: $31,200

6. Waiter/Waitress
Day Shift: $16,500
Night Shift: $22,500

7. Verizon telephone operator
Day shift: $890 weekly
Night shift: $979 weekly

8. Television writer/ news writer
Writers on the night shift get a 15% differential hourly rate.

9. Nanny
Night nannies generally start their shift at 2 p.m. and work until 10 p.m. They receive about 20% more than daytime nannies

10. Pharmacist
Median Total Cash Compensation: $97,700
Night Shift: differential varies significantly, from 2% to 10%

Embellishing your resime is one thing; lying is another.

Most bosses are pretty forgiving if you come clean about a minor brush with the law or a supervisor so nutty he sent you running for the door. Yet resume tinkering is practically an epidemic. Superheated competition for jobs, especially those with big paychecks, tempts many to pump air into their resumes. A gig as an administrative assistant expands into a management title. A mail-order MBA is passed off as the real deal. Most bosses are pretty forgiving if you come clean about a minor brush with the law or a supervisor so nutty he sent you running for the door.

An annual employer survey turned up “inconsistencies” in the work histories of nearly half of job-seekers last year, with 20% of applicants providing false or misleading information about their educational credentials. Discrepancies in verifying past employment were up 13% over 2005 and up 7% involving education. Job hunters should be forgiven for feeling like they are criminals before they even get to the interview. But increasingly, employers are looking to protect their reputations and deflect any liability if they unwittingly hire a crook or a fraudster. So job offers routinely come with a big string attached — passing a background screen.

With No Summer Job, What Are Teenagers Going To Get Themselves Into

Nearly half of hiring managers say they have no plans to hire any seasonal workers this year, according to a study of 1,100 companies released today.  When asked why they wouldn’t be hiring, 31% of those polled said they didn’t have the budget. During the recession of 2001, the teen employment rate plummeted maintaining that teens are typically the hardest hit group during tough economic times. 

Adding to the problems is the growing number of older workers going after traditional teen jobs in retail and food services, and also the increase in illegal and legal immigrants vying for those jobs.

Overall, the numbers of teens working in the United States has been on the decline, as parents from all socioeconomic groups have wanted their children to focus on academics and extracurricular activities instead of paying work. This summer, enrollment in enrichment camps and travel plans may decline because of the economy, and that means more teens potentially looking for work.

Acknowledging A Loss Is The Most Difficult Thing To Do

Americans owe a staggering $1.1 trillion on home equity loans — and banks are increasingly worried they may not get some of that money back. To get it, many lenders are taking the extraordinary step of preventing some people from selling their homes or refinancing their mortgages unless they pay off all or part of their home equity loans first. In the past, when home prices were not falling, lenders did not resort to these measures.

Such tactics are impeding efforts by policy makers to help struggling homeowners get easier terms on their mortgages and stem the rising tide of foreclosures. But at a time when each day seems to bring more bad news for the financial industry, lenders defend the hard-nosed maneuvers as a way to keep their own losses from deepening.

When borrowers default on their mortgages, lenders foreclose and sell the homes to recoup their money. But when homes sell for less than the value of their mortgages and home equity loans (a situation known as a short sale) lenders with first liens must be compensated fully before holders of second or third liens get a dime. In places like California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, where home prices have fallen significantly, second-lien holders can be left with little or nothing once first mortgages are paid.

People with weak, or subprime, credit could be hurt the most. More than a third of all subprime loans made in 2006 had associated second-lien debt, up from 17% in 2000. And many people added second loans after taking out first mortgages, so it is impossible to say for certain how many homeowners have multiple liens on their properties.

Gone are the days when U.S. companies hired locally

The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India. “We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” says AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson.

So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000. Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50%.

“If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn’t put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down,” he said. Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs.

The Department of Education (DOE) announced Thursday that the Commonwealth’s dropout rate is at an all-time high. The annual dropout rate rose from 3.3% in 2006-2007 to 3.8% this year. Among all students,

9.1% of Hispanic students, 6.4% of African American students, 2.7% of white students and 2.6% of Asian students drop out each year. While Hispanics have the highest population of dropouts within their demographic, white students actually had the most dropouts last year, 51.2% of the total number.

Consumers still face at least 10 years of more expensive food

From subsistence farmers eating rice in Ecuador to gourmets feasting on escargot in France, consumers worldwide face rising food prices in what analysts call a perfect storm of conditions. Freak weather is a factor. But so are dramatic changes in the global economy, including higher oil prices, lower food reserves and growing consumer demand in China and India. While the price of spaghetti has doubled in Haiti, the cost of miso is packing a hit in Japan.

In the long term, prices are expected to stabilize, but consumers still face at least 10 years of more expensive food. The Chinese middle class is starting to change the traditional thought process of beef as a luxury. Attempts to control prices in one country often have dire effects elsewhere. China’s restrictions on wheat flour exports resulted in a price spike in Indonesia this year, according to the FAO. Ukraine and Russia imposed export restrictions on wheat, causing tight supplies and higher prices for importing countries.

Gas prices are exploding in Germany at $8.60 per gallon

Record prices on the international oil markets have driven gas prices across Europe sky high, with a gallon of unleaded gas costing about $8.60 per gallon in Germany.  (In Germany, gas is sold by the liter with one liter of unleaded fuel selling for an average of $2.29).  Hopefully, we are seeing oil in its last days as a use for energy.

As our economy worsens, middle-aged Americans move in with their parents.

Taking shelter with parents isn’t uncommon for young people in their 20s, especially when the job market is poor. But now the slumping economy and the credit crunch are forcing some children to do so later in life — even in middle age. Financial planners report receiving many calls from parents seeking advice about taking in their grown children after divorces and layoffs.

Parents “jeopardize their financial freedom by continuing to subsidize their children,” says one financial planner. “We have a hard time saying no as a culture to our children, and they keep asking for more.” Plenty of well-meaning parents must delay retirement or scale back their dreams because they have to help their children.

A new survey by retiree-advocacy group American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) found that one-fourth of Generation Xers, those 28 to 39 years old, receive financial help from family and friends.

Many homeowners who were subject to predatory lending practices - including brokers who misrepresented payments - are trying to rework their loans. Few are having any luck.

Most mortgages aren’t owned by a single bank. Instead, they are packaged and sold to investors on the secondary market, which means that loan servicers are actually beholden to investors, not borrowers. Borrowers may be offered a temporary repayment plan, which keeps foreclosure at bay, but tacks the owed money onto to the back of the loan.

“The payments in this kind of workout are unaffordable to the homeowner,” said Diane Cipollone of the National Fair Housing Alliance. “And sometimes homeowners sign it anyway. They don’t know what to do. They know that if they don’t agree their home will go right into foreclosure. But soon they default on the repayment plan, and that’s counterproductive.”

And it’s much harder for troubled borrowers to get a deal that permanently lowers their mortgage payments. The Hope Now Alliance of mortgage lenders and servicers, including Citigroup, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan , says it has kept over one million borrowers out of foreclosure since July. But only about one quarter of them - 278,000 - have actually had the terms of their mortgages modified.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the events leading up to the collapse of Bear Stearns, specifically a surge in options contracts betting that the investment bank’s share price would fall sharply. Citing people familiar with the matter, the paper reported the SEC probe focuses on a surge last week in “put” options that came days before the firm’s proposed sale to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. for stock now valued at about $278.5 million, or $2.32 a share.

Dysfunctional capital markets, frantic central banks, stressed-out consumers, fear and uncertainty — all these are alarming echoes of the global economic cataclysm of the 1930s. Which raises the inevitable question: Could another Great Depression be lurking over the horizon?

On the surface, there are some disquieting parallels between economic conditions in the early 1930s and those of today. There was the popping of an enormous asset bubble — stocks then, housing now. And, as in the Great Depression, the financial system is in disarray. It was symbolized back then by the failure of thousands of banks, mostly small local outfits — 2,300 in 1931 alone.The parallel today is the crippling ofone-time giantssuch as Bear Stearns Cos., Countrywide Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Co.

But there are vast differences between the 1930s and today. U.S. unemployment reached 25% during the Depression; last month it was reported at 4.8%. The worldwide industrial economy was in a shambles in the ’30s, thanks to World War I. Today it is coming off a global boom.

“I’ve been asked many times whether we will have another Great Depression,” says David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University history professor and the author of “Freedom From Fear,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Depression and World War II. “My standard answer is that we won’t have that one again — I’d be surprised to have one of that seriousness and duration. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have a catastrophe we haven’t seen before.”

Economists and historians say the most important difference between today’s economic environment and that of the old days is the governmental response.

Have you ever flipped through a Men’s Health magazine?  

The book, “Eat This, Not That!” by Men’s Health editor-in-chief David Zinczenko writes about food choices at favorite restaurants, supermarkets and holiday items. The book includes a clever ranking of the country’s 20 worst foods in various categories. Here are some of them: