NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City and the state both want to cut expenses by trimming public employees but so far they are using different strategies. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is encouraging agencies to prune workers by giving them credit for saving money on health care and pension benefits, ...

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (Reuters) - Minnesota businessman Tom Petters made a final push on Friday to convince a federal jury he was not responsible for a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme that bankrupted his company. Petters testified for a little over half an hour on Friday, after previously testifying for ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pandemic of swine flu may be hitting a peak in the United States, health experts said on Friday. But they stressed that influenza, especially a pandemic, could hit several peaks in a single season. They said weeks or months more of disease could be expected.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, said businesses served with audit notices were selected for inspection because they have connections to "public safety and national security." The agency declined to identify the businesses because of what it said was the ...

DIMOCK, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Residents of a small rural Pennsylvania town sued Cabot Oil & Gas Corp on Friday, claiming the company's natural-gas drilling has contaminated their water wells with toxic chemicals, caused sickness and reduced their property values. The lawsuit accuses the ...

The survey by Rasmussen Reports, a polling and electronic publishing firm, found that 20 percent rated Geithner's performance in these areas as "good" or "excellent", while 16 percent were not sure how he was performing. Twenty-two percent rated his performance as ...

State and local governments will have to raise taxes and cut spending in the current and next two fiscal years to cover shortfalls totaling $469 billion, according to an Economic Policy Institute report. The think tank -- where White House adviser Jared Bernstein spent years developing ideas found ...

Android has won attention in the mobile industry lately, with Motorola and Sony Ericsson choosing it for their new top models. "We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others," Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor ...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - New Google Inc software will start up a computer as fast as a television can be turned on, the search company said on Thursday as it showed off its Chrome operating system designed for PCs that do their work on the Web. Google gave the first public look at its ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New electronic record systems installed in thousands of U.S. hospitals have done little to rein in skyrocketing healthcare costs, Harvard University researchers said in a study released on Friday. A review of roughly 4,000 hospitals from 2003 to 2007 found that while many ...