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marketwatch.com — Consumer spending, industrial output and homebuilding are all expected to weaken further, pushing the economy deeper into recession territory. Consumer prices are expected to show the steady and discomforting increases that will keep the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates again soon.

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usatoday.com — About 2.3% of prime loans were 60 days past due in February, the highest level in at least a decade. That's up from 1.4% a year ago. The figures remain relatively small so far. But if they rise further, delinquencies on prime loans — given only to those with good credit — could prolong the housing crisis.

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usatoday.com — The Bush administration urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease. The government seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy demand from overseas customers in Japan and elsewhere. Less than 1% of slaughtered cows are tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines. The agency argues that widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

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latimes.com — The number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army involuntarily under the military's controversial "stop-loss" program has risen sharply since the Pentagon extended combat tours last year. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was briefed about the program by Army officials who said that thousands of new stop-loss orders were issued to keep soldiers from leaving the service after Gates ordered combat tours extended from 12 to 15 months last spring. The Army has resorted to involuntary extensions of soldiers' enlistment terms to prevent them from leaving immediately before a combat tour or in the middle of a deployment.

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nytimes.com — As they lose their homes to foreclosure, people are turning to storage centers to store their belongings. But some people cannot keep up with their storage bills any better than they could handle their mortgage payments, and storage companies are auctioning off their property for a pittance.

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hosted.ap.org — Increasing numbers of U.S. troops have left the military with damaged bodies and mind — even as the total population of America's vets shrinks. Despite the decline in total vets — as soldiers from World War II and Korea die — the government expects to be spending $59 billion a year to compensate injured warriors in 25 years, up from today's $29 billion, and the Veterans Affairs Department concedes the bill could be much higher.

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iht.com — With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more U.S. commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead. Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing.

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iht.com — Two months after announcing Major General Jay Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, the Pentagon has quietly canceled the assignment. Hood, a 33-year army veteran, was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The withdrawal of Hood's assignment has not been announced, but it reflects the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantánamo is casting over American foreign policy.

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ap.google.com — Workers in the Mariana Islands will receive the protection of U.S. labor law under a bill signed by President Bush. Debate over whether to extend federal labor and immigration law to the Marianas, in the northwestern Pacific, had been sullied by reports of sweatshop labor and past associations with the lobbying scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff, whose firm was hired by the islands to oppose the changes. The measure creates a federally run guest-worker program in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

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reuters.com — U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said that President George W. Bush will veto the farm bill agreement reached by law makers in Congress. The administration said the farm bill was too costly and failed to deliver the reforms that the administration was seeking. House and Senate negotiators agreed on a $285 billion farm bill that puts more money into public feeding programs and denies one crop subsidy program to the wealthiest Americans.

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