USA
During the first quarter of 2008, the median US home price of $196,300 was down 7.7 percent from the same period a year ago, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. Prices for existing single-family homes dropped in 100 of 149 metropolitan areas.
Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest maker of personal computers, reached an agreement Tuesday to buy Electronic Data Systems Corp. for about $12.6 billion in cash. EDS provides technology services to governments and companies.
In the largest such raid in Iowa history, federal agents arrested more than 300 people Monday at the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, The raid was aimed at seeking evidence of identity theft and illegal immigration.
Exxon Mobil Corp. asked for $800 million from Alaska Monday for what the company claims was a breached deal to lease North Slope gas and oil fields.
The number of disabled veterans has jumped by 25 percent since 2001, to 2.9 million, the Associated Press reports. Through Veterans Affairs Department documents, the AP has learned that annual compensation to war-injured soldiers will be $59 billion 25 years from now, compared with $29 billion today.
With improved technology, changes and expansion of power-line systems, and a major expansion of markets, wind energy could account for 20 percent of US electricity by 2030, according to a new Energy Department/industry report. Wind turbines, such as those in Palm Springs, Calif., currently account for only 1 percent of US electricity.
Students attending Yale in New Haven, Conn., but operating independently of the university, are providing small loans and tech support mostly to struggling, low-income entrepreneurs in the nation's first student-run microfinancing program. The Elmseed Enterprise Program has sparked a similar effort at Harvard and interest in startups on several other campuses.
The Northwest Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste has closed a loophole in its eight-state alliance in order to ban EnergySolutions from burying 1,600 tons of Italian nuclear waste at the company's Utah landfill, The Salt Lake Tribune has reported. Until now, overseas shipments could skirt a ban by first being processed at the company's Tennessee plant.
"In the Heights," an original musical written by a university student about life in a working-class New York neighborhood, led nominations for Broadway's top theater honors, the Tony Awards, Tuesday.
