Today I’ve posted numerous releases regarding businesses expanding and creating jobs in North Carolina. Although they aren’t here, the large number of businesses announcing hiring and expansion is a telling sign that our economy is growing.
While February 14th may not be an official holiday, Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular in the year’s calendar. Its origins are a mix of legends involving two Christian martyrs, a roman fertility rite, and the old notion that this is the time of year when the birds choose their mates. What is sure is that Esther Howland of Massachusetts began selling the first mass-produced valentines in the 1840s. To help find recipients for today’s valentine’s cards, there are around 400 dating service establishments nationwide. Successes in these ventures are among the 53 percent of U.S. adults currently joined in matrimony. The median ages for first marriages is 28.7 years for men and 26.5 for women.
The highest recognition of a lawyer’s abilities is to be admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. The first African-American to achieve that honor was John Rock, admitted to practice before the highest court in 1865. Rock was an M.D. who practiced both medicine and dentistry, as well as an attorney. Active in the abolitionist movement, he died at the age of 41, just a year after being admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court. The first African-American woman lawyer admitted to practice before the Supreme Court was Violette Anderson of Chicago, who was admitted in 1926. Today in the U.S., there are just over 1 million lawyers, 31.5 percent of them female, and more than 4 percent African-American. This special edition of Profile America is a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
House-Senate talks on renewing a payroll tax cut that delivers about $20 a week to the average worker yielded a tentative agreement Tuesday, with lawmakers planning to unveil the pact Wednesday and sending the measure to President Barack Obama as early as this week.
Under the outlines of the emerging agreement, a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax would be extended through the end of the year, with the nearly $100 billion cost added to the deficit. Jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed would be renewed as well, with the $30 billion cost paid for in part through auctioning broadcast spectrum to wireless companies and requiring federal workers to contribute more toward their pensions. (read more)
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