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Republicans in the House of Representatives on Tuesday blocked a Democratic effort to extend unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.

Democrats brought up the measure under special rules that require a two-thirds majority for passage. But they failed to win sufficient support from Republicans, who expressed concern about the measure’s $33 billion cost to the federal treasury.

The bill would help as many as 1.7 million people whose unemployment insurance benefits have run out. It would extend an emergency unemployment compensation program through November 30.

Democrats said the spending was justified to help the unemployed pay their bills and to boost the economy.

“When you provide unemployment insurance to people, they spend it,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin said. “If Republicans are worried about growth and consumer demand, they should work to put money in the pockets of people who are desperate, who are out of work, who are looking for work.”

The U.S. unemployment rate, currently 9.7 percent, has remained stubbornly high even as the economy has begun to recover from deep recession sparked by the financial crisis.

The government is due on Friday to report the jobless rate for June. Analysts are expecting a slight increase due to temporary U.S. government census workers being laid off.

But Republicans said the $33 billion price tag was too much to add to an already bloated federal deficit.

“Look around the world. Countries are sinking in debt,” said Representative Dave Camp, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, adding that “this reckless spending cannot go on forever.”

The $1.4 trillion deficit and $13 trillion debt are becoming issues in the run-up to the November U.S. congressional elections in which Republicans hope to make substantial gains against the Democrats, who control Congress.

The extension of jobless aid for the long-term unemployed has run into solid Republican opposition in the Senate as well. A measure was attached to a bill that would extend popular business tax breaks, which stalled last week over Republican concerns about deficit spending.

 

 

PROSPER, Texas — Advised by a Walgreens superior that a promotion was “very highly likely” if he transferred to the drugstore chain’s Dallas division, Chris Cummings uprooted his family and bought a spacious house in this hopefully named suburb.

“The sky’s the limit,” he was told.

But instead of a promotion, the company for which Cummings had been an assistant manager three and a half years cut his hours so drastically that he had to take a second job. In March, he was laid off, and his part-time second job became full-time.

And so that is how a 40-year-old father of four with a master’s in business administration from the University of Notre Dame finds himself bagging groceries at Sprouts, a local health-food store.

“I never thought I’d be here with the education that I have and that I’d worked hard on,” Cummings said before a recent shift in the checkout lane at the Sprouts in nearby Frisco. “Probably where the frustration comes most is when I get the alumni magazine and I see what my classmates are doing. And that’s not a good feeling.”

The federal government says the “Great Recession” is over — has been for months now — and that we’re well into the recovery. But don’t tell that to Cummings, who has seen his income cut by three-quarters and can’t afford health insurance for his family.

Or Af Shirinzadeh, who went from a $100-an-hour chiropractic job to part-time work as a docent in an Atlanta museum that features plasticized human cadavers.

Or welder Mark Sepeda, who had to move his family of six from a spacious home in Nevada’s lush Carson Valley to a two-bedroom apartment when the Las Vegas building boom came to a screeching halt.

Or Paul Lechner, who, with a mixture of gratitude and dejection, accepted a job stocking shelves at a Super Target after two years and hundreds of applications failed to land him a position in advertising, the field for which he trained.

Yes, the stock markets have largely rebounded. Housing and car sales are back up. And though job creation can’t quite keep up with new unemployment claims, the economy is growing again.

But, if “recovery” means getting back to where you were before things fell apart, many aren’t even close. To people like Lechner, 43, who came to North Carolina’s Research Triangle full of hope for a bountiful future, it’s meant resigning himself to lower expectations:

That any mental stimulation he gets will come from crossword puzzles, conversations with his wife or the weekly pub trivia nights with the guys — not from his work. That if he ever manages to get another job in advertising, it’ll probably be too late for any awards or recognition. And that his 4-year-old son, Jerry, will likely be his only child.

“An optimist sees the glass as half full. A pessimist sees the glass as half empty. I see the glass as twice as big as it needs to be,” Lechner says.

The American landscape is littered with huge and half-empty glasses, and men and women like Paul Lechner.

___

Af Shirinzadeh holds out a preserved human lung and smiles as two young women make grossed-out faces.

“Step on up,” he says. “There is no teeth on this one. It doesn’t bite.”

The joke draws the women in, and within seconds they are holding actual human organs while Shirinzadeh talks to them about the science behind what they are feeling. He beams.

As a docent in the “touch booth” at “Bodies … The Exhibition,” Shirinzadeh gets to lay his hands on human bodies, albeit dead ones.

“I’m so grateful for this job,” says the 38-year-old suburban Atlanta man, who was laid off last year from his job as a chiropractor and spent six months on unemployment looking for any kind of work. “I’m able to educate others, and share my knowledge, and keep myself sharp.”

The job pays a tenth of what Shirinzadeh made as a chiropractor, and it’s only three or four days a week. The layoff has forced him to rethink his plans for the future — and re-evaluate his past choices.

Shirinzadeh’s wife, an elementary school teacher, has gone back to graduate school to get a credential that will give her a bump in pay. Shirinzadeh would do the same, if he wasn’t already saddled with considerable college debt — and if the couple could afford regular day care for their 2-year-old son.

His father had wanted him to become a medical doctor. The son wonders if he made the right choice in becoming a chiropractor.

“I didn’t think it was going to be like this,” he says. “I thought, `I’ll be a doctor of chiropractic. I’ll work hard, save up a bunch of money, maybe retire early.’ Now it’s like, work until you die.”

___

When the economy was up, so was Mark Sepeda.

The 50-year-old welder walked the iron atop some of Sin City’s newest skyscrapers. The Encore Las Vegas Casino and the Mandarin Oriental hotel at the massive $8.5 billion CityCenter are among the more recent pleasure palaces he’s helped to soar.

These days, Sepeda’s view on the world is strictly earthbound.

Since being laid off in January 2009, Sepeda has been reduced to soliciting freelance auto mechanic work through online classifieds and word-of-mouth referrals. His family’s tiny apartment is just east of the Las Vegas Strip, within sight of the skyscrapers he helped build.

They used to live in a house in Gardnerville, a Carson Valley town not far from the 24/7 casinos of Reno and the serene beauty of Lake Tahoe. “We had a huge backyard over there, too,” he says. “You could park your boat and your RV back there and still be able to drive your vehicle around it.”

Now, the kids sleep two to a room (two of Sepeda’s daughters share a bed with the family pit bull, Milo). At night, Sepeda and his wife, Sue, bunk on the living-room floor.

When Sepeda was working iron, it was a matter of pride that his wife could stay at home and focus on the kids. She recently took a job at a car wash that pays $15 an hour.

“Now is when the wife and the kids step up to help me, because I can’t do it all by myself no more, like I used to,” he says. “They used to want for nothing.”

When Sepeda isn’t working on cars, he spends his days training for other hands-on jobs and trying to find steady work anywhere he can.

He’s been close to getting hired as an apartment maintenance person at a couple of complexes, but needs certification in pool maintenance. And after some night school, he’s seeking to become a card-carrying smog technician.

“I’ve learned this town is about cards,” he says. Another thing he’s learned: In this economy, you make your own luck.

___

Joe Lechner was a plumber, Betty Lechner was a secretary, and they drilled a simple truth into their elder son’s head: A college degree was the key to success. It had taken him 16 years and three different schools, but Paul Lechner finally got it — a bachelor’s degree in advertising, with a concentration in copywriting and minor in marketing.

Lechner had a half-dozen good years in his chosen field before he was laid off in 2006. His wife, Julie, had just given birth to their son, and it seemed a perfect time to move closer to the grandparents, to start anew.

After much scouting, they decided on Holly Springs, N.C. — a Research Triangle bedroom community halfway between his parents’ home in upstate New York and their winter retreat in Florida.

“Looking back on it, … the horizons were WIDE open,” he says. “There was a lot of promise and prospect. We bought a very nice house in a really nice neighborhood in a great section of town.”

They landed just as the boom was going bust. Agencies were downsizing, not hiring; the freelance work that had kept him afloat slowed to a trickle, then dried up completely.

Finally, after two years of fruitless searching, Lechner took a job stocking shelves at a Super Target, because it offered affordable health insurance for Julie and Jerry.

“It was intended to be something that was a way to stop the bleeding,” he says.

If his father didn’t hold the mortgage on their house, Lechner says, “we’d have been living in a cardboard box six months ago.” The last movie he and his wife saw at the theater was “The Dark Knight” — two summers ago.

The trivia nights at Woody’s Sports Tavern in nearby Cary are Lechner’s only “extravagance.” He doesn’t just enjoy them — he needs them.

When the waitresses come around for beer orders, they know not to bother asking Lechner. He always has iced tea — not because he’s a teetotaler, but because the refills are free.

Two hours and several baskets of Buffalo wings later, Lechner and team “Vernon T. Money” have scored their second straight victory. The $50 pot goes onto the table to help cover the tab.

“It’s $14, $15 that I don’t need to spend, but the effects, psychologically, are immeasurable,” Lechner says. “It just FEELS good … an opportunity for me to feel like I’m actually contributing to something.”

___

As head of human resources for Nationwide Auction Systems, it was Wivory Bell’s job to travel around California in late 2008 and tell people they were being let go. By last April, there were so few humans left, her own services were no longer required.

The 43-year-old single mother threw herself into the job search. But she didn’t just sit around the house waiting for the offers to come rolling in.

Bell volunteered with the career renewal ministry at Huntington Beach’s St. Simon and St. Jude Catholic Church.

She led a 2 1/2-hour Advanced Career Strategies class at the church every Thursday, and taught Step 3 — managing your online profile — of the “Eight Steps to Career Renewal.”

Bell began coaching two unemployed people each week, going over “power stories” and “elevator pitches,” refining resumes and practicing job interview questions.

She also managed to boost her own resume, using her “free” time to earn her Global Professional Human Resources certification, her Corporate Wellness certification and her coaching certification. She even started classes to get her master’s degree in business administration.

After hundreds of applications and 20 face-to-face interviews, the hard work paid off. On May 6, a year and a week after her layoff, the Orange County woman started a full-time human resources job at an assisted living facility just down the road from her Aliso Viejo home.

It’s just a contract job, so there are no benefits. But there’s a chance it could become permanent, and Bell is over the moon about having a paycheck again.

Bell — whose e-mails end with the phrase, “Make It A Results-Driven Day” — says her 14-year-old daughter, Rian, is her inspiration and biggest cheerleader. Each morning before she leaves for school, Rian tells her mother, “Make me proud today.”

“If nothing else, I’m showing her that when you do reach times of adversity, it’s how you handle yourself and how you’re going to come out of it,” she says. “Not wallowing, not self-pity. That’s not how you’re going to get to the next level.”

___

William Marshall didn’t have nearly as far to fall as some. But that doesn’t make the pain any less keen.

After five years in the warehouse of a Milwaukee heating and cooling equipment wholesaler, the 43-year-old father of three had worked his way up to $14.90 an hour. In January 2009, he and his wife, Janet, emerged from a painful bankruptcy and were hoping for a fresh start.

Five months later, the company let him go, leaving the couple strapped to pay thousands of dollars in uncovered medical costs from their daughter’s hip surgery.

It took Marshall seven months to land another job, with a company that locates utility lines. It paid just $12 an hour.

That job lasted about six weeks. Luckily, Janet Marshall knows how to handle money.

The 45-year-old bank payment specialist has had to get creative with meals — using less expensive foods like macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, hamburger and chicken. She’s become expert at finding coupons and watching for sales.

The couple have had to put off replacing their oven, box spring and television, and they only buy the necessities. They spend little, if anything, on entertainment or clothes.

“It’s sad when your kids say, ‘Mom, Do you have $5?’ And you can’t even give them $5 because every dollar is … allocated to go somewhere that is more important than them having $5 at the mall,” Janet Marshall says.

In March, William Marshall finally landed a new job, in shipping and receiving. He’s making $13.25 an hour.

The ups and downs, false starts and backward slides have taken their toll. Like many Americans, Marshall was taught that the man was the breadwinner, and he confesses to struggling with depression.

“It is hard,” he says. “It’s in the back of your mind all the time, like ‘Man we could be doing better. We SHOULD be doing better.’”

But his Pentecostal faith tells him that things happen for a reason. Although his salary isn’t quite where it was, he’s with a good company, one where he seems to fit.

“I think I really have to experience the things I’ve had to experience to get me where I’m going,” he says. “I can’t really explain it, but I’m a whole lot happier than I’ve been in a long time.”

As if on cue, the couple’s dilapidated van died recently. They bought a replacement, meaning their hopes of socking away some money will have to wait a bit longer.

“Just once I want to catch a break,” Marshall says.

___

Chris Cummings knew a “reduction in force” was coming at Walgreens. But with a marketing degree from a prestigious university, he thought he was insulated.

Then he heard the words, “This is going to be your last day.” For a moment, he thought he might faint.

His wife, Kristie, stays home to care for the kids — Kelsie, 13; Meghan, 10; Spencer, 7; Tyler, 5. Chris Cummings is the sole breadwinner.

The folks at Sprouts gave Cummings more hours, but he still didn’t qualify for benefits. Even if he was eligible, he’d be hard pressed to afford the coverage.

Something as simple as the purchase of four new tires so his wife’s car could pass inspection can throw the family’s finances into turmoil. Cummings doesn’t want to think where he’d be without occasional financial help from his family and church (a member who owns a ranch made an anonymous gift of beef).

“I feel like we’re RIGHT on the edge financially of being able to make it and generally avoid having incurred too much debt to get over this bridge time,” says Cummings, clad in his bright-red “Team Sprouts” T-shirt.

Bagging groceries is not exactly mindless work, but it is hardly intellectually taxing. Cummings confesses that his mind sometimes wanders to the job applications he’s sent out, the positions he’s competing for.

“What if they don’t come up?” he asks himself. “What if they don’t happen?”

Cummings has heard other out-of-work professionals scoff at such menial jobs as being “beneath” them. But his parents taught him that all work is meaningful.

Besides, he has a wife and four children to feed. He can’t afford such airs.

“It DOES feel good to be doing what I can and feeling like this isn’t permanent, that this is gonna end, and there will be something better,” he says.

Cummings doesn’t regret his decision to move to Prosper. The school district is great, and he loves the community.

“The only missing piece is the employment that matches my education and experience,” he says. “And I’m confident it will happen soon, and we will, indeed, prosper in Prosper.”

It’s a gamble taken all too frequently by Wisconsin residents: Getting behind the wheel of car while drunk.

To combat the problem, the state has raised the ante with the most ambitious package of drunken-driving reforms in decades. One of the primary aims of the law, which takes effect Thursday, is to persuade impaired motorists to stay off the roads.

But there is considerable debate about whether the target audience will get the message.

“Many people simply think that they won’t get caught,” Neenah Police Chief Kevin Wilkinson said. “Until we can intrude in the psychology of that, that portion won’t change.”Many police officials, lawmakers, researchers and safety advocates are taking a wait-and-see approach on whether the stiffer drinking-and-driving penalties will make a significant impact.

Even with the changes, Wisconsin’s law is not among the nation’s toughest.

Still, state Rep. Tom Nelson, D-Kaukauna, said, the law marks the first major upgrade in how Wisconsin treats drunken driving in 20 years. It incorporates ideas that were subject to debate for years before Gov. Jim Doyle signed the law in December.

In striving for meaningful reform, lawmakers worked to incorporate provisions on punishment, prevention and treatment, Nelson said.

“It’s not just a criminal justice issue or a prevention issue,” he said. “We chose to take a different approach: Let’s bring everything to the table. Let’s bring all these approaches into this law.”

Bad habit

Meanwhile, police and experts say Wisconsin’s alcohol-driven culture puts it in a uniquely difficult position when it comes to improving roadway safety.

Nina Emerson, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Resource Center on Impaired Driving, said drunken driving carries a certain degree of social acceptance in the Badger State.

A 2008 federal survey placed Wisconsin highest in the nation for driving while intoxicated. More than 26 percent of those questioned acknowledged having done so in the previous year.

Emerson said potential consequences don’t often sway drunken drivers when the party winds down or the bartender makes the last call.

“They’re not thinking, and they’re definitely not thinking they’re impaired,” Emerson said. “Time after time, they’ll say, ‘I didn’t think I was that bad.’ They’ve also done it so many times without repercussions that it reinforces that behavior. That behavior becomes more entrenched.”

Beginning Thursday, a fourth-offense drunken-driving conviction will be a felony if it occurs within five years of the previous offense. Currently, drunken drivers are treated as felons after a fifth conviction.

A first offense will be a misdemeanor if someone younger than 16 is in the car. Today, it’s a traffic ticket.

Repeat offenders and first-timers with high blood-alcohol concentrations will have to get ignition interlocks on all vehicles they drive.

In addition, judges will have the power to place more drunken drivers on probation.

State Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, said he is confident Wisconsin drivers will take notice once they start encountering others who have been stung by the tougher penalties.

“It was a compromise and we’ve taken another step forward,” said Kaufert, who owns a bar. “In some people’s eyes we didn’t go far enough, and in other people’s eyes, we went too far. The bottom line is that we coalesced on something that could pass.”

More felonies

History provides a sense of the new law’s potential impact on prosecutors’ caseloads.

Last year, Outagamie County registered 57 convictions for fourth-offense drunken driving and 26 convictions for fifth or subsequent offenses, which were felonies. Another 16 felony drunken-driving cases from 2009 remain open.

In Winnebago County, 73 drivers were convicted on a fourth offense and 44 were convicted for fifth or subsequent offenses. Six cases from 2009 cases remain open.

Bottom line: More felony cases would mean more time spent per case.

Felonies require a preliminary hearing, to determine if there is sufficient cause to send the case to trial, which misdemeanors don’t carry. And defendants are more apt to fight a felony charge because they stand to lose more, including the potential of going to prison and the right to own firearms.

Despite possibly larger caseloads and related expenses, adopting the tougher threshold made sense particularly when comparing Wisconsin to other states, UW’s Emerson said. In 21 states, a third offense is considered a felony. In Indiana and New York, drunken driving is a felony on the second offense if it occurs within five years of the previous conviction. Oklahoma considers a second offense a felony if it occurs within 10 years of a previous conviction.

Only seven states have laws weaker than Wisconsin’s fourth-offense standard.

“I don’t think it’s by any stretch unreasonable,” Emerson said of Wisconsin’s new law.

Focus on treatment

Some police wonder whether any degree of punishment is enough to break the behavior of those who’ve reached or exceeded the felony threshold.

“I think punishment has very little to do with it, frankly,” Outagamie County Sheriff Brad Gehring said. “At that stage, they’ve demonstrated they have incredibly strong addictions.”

That’s where another portion of the law shows promise, he said.

“Legislatively, I understand the need to get tough, but with more alcohol addiction treatment we’re hoping to have more positive results.”

The new law offers counties the option to use a treatment-based program now available only in Winnebago County. Outagamie County will open its version of the Safe Streets Treatment Options Program to drunken drivers arrested after the law takes effect.

The program is available to those charged with second and third offenses. Participants who complete the Wisconsin alcohol rehab program receive less jail time than they would have under traditional sentencing. They would be placed on probation with alcohol treatment and community service among the conditions.

Annie Levknecht, alternative treatment coordinator for Outagamie County, said the initial benefit of the program is urgency.

Offenders don’t have time to consider whether they’re ready or willing to undergo treatment because they have just three days to get an alcohol assessment.

Those who complete the program similar to alcoholics anonymous will have two-thirds of their sentence stayed.

“There’s incentive,” Levknecht said. “Another key benefit is they get to stay with their families.”

Winnebago County Judge Scott Woldt, who instituted the program with Judge Barbara Key in 2006, said it has benefited taxpayers by saving on jail costs and it is giving offenders the tools they need to avoid further offenses.

Winnebago’s program has produced 266 graduates. Of them, 26 have re-offended.

Woldt said measuring success goes beyond facts and figures.

“I get letters from time to time saying, ‘I didn’t want to get into it, my lawyer talked me into it, but it was the best thing I ever did,’” Woldt said. “I don’t typically get letters from people I’ve sentenced to prison. People are turning their lives around.”

Woldt said he’s given about a half-dozen presentations on the program since it was included in the state’s new drunken-driving law. In addition to Outagamie, Waukesha County plans to incorporate the program into its alcohol treatment court, he said.

“It’s going to be a slow process, but it’ll slowly build,” Woldt said.

Counties that decline to use Safe Streets still have better opportunities to keep closer watch on offenders.

The new law will make probation an option for those convicted of second and third offenses. Currently, probation is only available to judges for four-time offenders.

Winnebago County Dist. Atty. Christian Gossett said allowing probation earlier in the process is a laudable step, because it’s vital to reach drunken drivers early and address the behavior before it worsens.

However, Wisconsin’s probation agents are already overburdened, and it’s likely drunken drivers wouldn’t get the attention that would make it worthwhile, Gossett said, due to any given agent’s higher-priority clientele.

“Make it a meaningful probation,” he said. “If you can’t, it’s feel-good legislation only.”

Mandatory interlocks

If stricter penalties can’t stop drunken drivers from repeat offenses, there’s hope that technology will.

Judges now have the discretion to order use of ignition interlock devices for repeat offenders. Beginning Thursday, the devices will be mandatory for repeat drunken drivers and for first-timers arrested with a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 percent or higher. The state’s legal limit is 0.08 percent.

The interlock devices require drivers to take a breath test before they can start their vehicles.

Kaufert was among the lead Assembly proponents for toughening the interlock requirement. He said it was crafted to better assure that those ordered to use the devices follow through.

“People are always going to try to find a way to circumvent it,” he said, “but I think it’s a pretty good law.”

Currently, the clock starts when a judge orders a driver to have the device in place for a certain length of time. The offender can ignore the order and drive illegally until the time expires, then get a new license.

Under the new law, a driver won’t be able to get a license without proof that the interlock was installed. The clock on an order won’t start ticking until an offender applies for a license and officials see the paperwork.

Wisconsin’s interlock provision places it in the top half of the country in terms of the strength of the law.

Judges in 12 states are required to order interlock use for any drunken driving offense. Wisconsin will join eight states that require the devices with a 0.15 percent blood-alcohol content. Another six states have mandatory interlocks only for repeat offenses.

New Mexico has had success with provisions to assure drivers follow through with the interlock orders, Kaufert said.

“The compliance is way up, and the recidivism has gone way down,” he said.

 

Foul smells from some Kellogg Co breakfast cereals prompted the world’s largest cereal maker to voluntarily pull millions of packages from store shelves around the United States.

Kellogg said on Friday it noticed “an uncharacteristic off-flavor and smell” from the box liners of its popular Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks products.

The company said the chance of serious illness from the smell was low, but the products could cause nausea and diarrhea among sensitive consumers.

Only U.S. products marked with the letters “KN” following the “better if used before” date notice were affected, the company said.

No other products are a part of this recall, Kellogg added.

U.S. regulators are under fire this year following high-profile recalls involving products for children.

Johnson & Johnson recalled 40 widely used nonprescription products for children and infants, such as Tylenol and Motrin, earlier this year after Food and Drug Administration inspectors found filthy equipment and contaminated ingredients at a Pennsylvania factory.

“When foods that are popular among kids are being recalled in large volumes, it is clear that our food safety system is not working,” U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro said in an email.

DeLauro, a Democrat, chairs a House of Representatives subcommittee that funds the FDA and frequently has criticized its response to dangerous food and medicines.

The lawmaker said 28 million boxes of Kellogg cereal were being recalled after about 20 people, including five who reported nausea and vomiting, complained about the “waxy” smell and flavor coming from the box liners.

Kellogg shares fell 0.8 percent to close at $52.42 on the New York Stock Exchange.

You might think that the only ones following your online musings are your mom and college pals. But if they include a gripe about a hotel, the front-desk clerk at the offending property may be listening, too.

Hotels and resorts are amassing a growing army of sleuths whose job it is to monitor what is said about them online—and protect the hotels’ reputations. These employees search social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for unhappy guests and address complaints. They write groveling apologies in response to negative reviews on TripAdvisor. And they keep tabs on future guests who post about upcoming stays—and sometimes offer them extra perks or personalized attention at check in.

For travelers, the upshot is that if you use social media, your complaints could have more power. In years past, guests unhappy about a lumpy bed, grimy bathroom or an awful view had to take their frustrations to the front desk or hotel manager and hope for some restitution. Now, with some guests having hundreds—and even thousands—of followers on Twitter and Facebook, complaints can have a big audience. It’s like every guest has a virtual megaphone.

If you want to increase the odds that your complaint will be heard, include the full name of the hotel and your real name. Those moves got Paul Horan upgraded from a room with a view of air conditioning ducts to one overlooking the pool at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort in Florida.

Mr. Horan, a 47-year-old who works in sales at a software company, tweeted, “At the Orlando Marriott World Center for RIM WES 2010 [a technology conference]. But I have the crappiest room in the hotel.” Front-desk employee Zachary Long saw Mr. Horan’s comments while searching Twitter and went into damage-control mode. Mr. Long had a note of apology for the “current room situation” slipped under Mr. Horan’s door and offered to move him to a pool-view room the next day.

“It was on Twitter, so it could spread,” Mr. Long says.

“It was a complete shock” that Marriott saw the message and reacted, Mr. Horan says.

Guests that reach out to hotels through social media channels may find themselves getting freebies and better service. Mr. Long, along with his colleague Sarah Pribila, have handed out wine, milk and cookies, and better rooms to guests they know are coming because they interacted with them on Twitter in advance. “No doubt we do go out of our way a little bit for Twitter and Facebook” commenters, says Mr. Long, in part because it’s only a small number of people. For now, only about 1% of their guests are active on Twitter, Mr. Long says.

During a recent technology conference at the hotel, an attendee who moderates and edits an influential website about BlackBerry news mused about his desire for a cold beer over Twitter. Already identified by Mr. Long and Ms. Pribila as an active blogger with more than 1,000 Twitter followers, the hotel responded over Twitter, “Can I buy you a beer? Stop by the “actual” Front Desk and ask for Sarah!”

The recipient, 29-year-old Chris Parsons from Halifax, Nova Scotia says, it “kind of took me by surprise. I’ve never had that kind of customer service—just out of the blue.” The hotel bought him a bucket of 10 Coronas to share with friends on the hotel’s outdoor patio.

Sometimes using social media to lodge a complaint or request can be more effective than calling the front desk. In March, a guest at the Atlantis, Paradise Island in the Bahamas needed a roll-away bed and some extra towels. It was a “high, high occupancy time for us,” and the guest had called around for help to no avail, said Dean Sullivan, vice president of digital marketing at Kerzner International Holdings Limited, which owns and operates hotels including the Atlantis, Paradise Island, a 3,414 room resort. The guest posted about it on the hotel’s Facebook page. “We got in touch with the GM [general manager] and handled it within the hour,” said Mr. Sullivan.

Savvy hotels are using social media to boost their ratings on TripAdvisor. Earlier this year, front desk employees at the Roger Smith Hotel, a 130-room boutique hotel in midtown Manhattan, started mentioning TripAdvisor to guests checking out. And sometimes employees will send guests a link to TripAdvisor over Twitter or email, encouraging them to leave a review.

Since the beginning of last year, the hotel jumped about 100 places in New York City hotel rankings on the review site, says Brian Simpson, director of social hospitality for the hotel.

Hotels know that many travelers now use the Web—and specifically the reviews, blog posts and other online missives of past guests—to decide where to stay. About 41% of leisure travelers and 50% of business travelers say user reviews influence their travel decisions, according to a survey from comScore Inc., a firm that tracks online traffic, and Google Inc.

At the Orlando World Center Marriott, Mr. Long and Ms. Pribila track what is said about their 2,000-room hotel every day, and often into the night.

One recent afternoon, Mr. Long peered at the computer in his small windowless office and opened up HootSuite, a program that lets users organize the millions of comments passing through Twitter at any given moment. He scanned the lists he has permanently set up on the software: current guests, past guests, people tweeting about Orlando hotels (so he can send notes to try to drum up business.), people tweeting about his specific hotel, and people tweeting about a conference currently at the resort. He checks HootSuite at least once an hour on his iPhone, often glancing at it while roaming the sprawling resort dotted with palm trees.

Via the hotel’s @TheFrontDesk account on Twitter, he and Ms. Pribila chat with future, current, and past guests. They answer questions and confront complaints. Then Mr. Long moves on to FourSquare, a website where people can use their mobile device to broadcast their physical location to friends, known as “checking in” at a location. “We monitor these people as well,” says the 28-year-old.

Some hotels are hiring outside consultants like StepChange Group, a division of Powered Inc.. The Portland, Ore., company develops social media strategies for companies, and will also help staff watching online commentary and respond. More hotels are employing new services like those offered by Revinate LLC that track online comments and reviews and send out electronic reports for corporate mangers, front-desk staff and even housekeeping to gauge a property’s online reputation. Hotels are also increasingly using social media to market their properties, too, by, for example, sending out special discounts via Twitter.

“Our day has sort of gone into a 24-hour cycle because we are constantly monitoring” online comments, says Mr. Sullivan of Kerzner. Mr. Sullivan—who often checks online commentary around midnight before going to bed—helped train what internally is called “the Twitter Army,” at the Atlantis, Paradise Island. Staff that had previously showed an interest in social media got tips on what content to post, like updates on the resort’s dolphin interaction programs, and some will start monitoring and responding to guests. Headquarters’ staff, hotel employees and top executives already monitor the company’s Facebook pages and online reviews as part of their jobs, Mr. Sullivan says. The company also hired StepChange last year to work on strategy and fill in gaps, such as monitoring middle-of-the-night missives.

You’re unlikely to get into an online brawl with a hotel. Most hotels tend to shy away from back-and-forth public confrontation. Instead, they usually respond to negative comments by apologizing, pointing out recent improvements made at the hotel and asking the guest to contact staff over email or phone to privately solve the problem. The Ritz-Carlton, owned by Marriott International Inc., for example, doesn’t allow its properties to respond publicly to TripAdvisor reviews, but does read them and make an effort to track down guests to fix problems, says Allison Sitch, senior corporate director of public relations for Ritz-Carlton.

Of course, to get better service from a hotel using social media, the hotel has to be listening. For now, hotels’ approaches to social media vary widely—even among hotels of the same brand. While the Marriott Orlando World Center is very active on Twitter and Facebook, for example, the New York Marriott Downtown doesn’t have either up and running.

With more properties paying attention to social media outlets, here’s how to use them to snare better service:

    * Find out how to reach your hotel online. Search Twitter and Facebook to see if it has an account.

    * If there’s no account for the individual hotel, search for the company that owns the brand. For a Westin, search for Starwood. For a Courtyard, look for Marriott.

    * Before you check-in: Post a comment on the hotel’s Facebook page or send a tweet saying you’re looking forward to your stay. A savvy hotel will put you on its radar and may dole out perks or give specialized service.

    * When tweeting a complaint, be specific. Don’t say “I hate my hotel,” say “I hate X hotel for Y reason.”

    * Use the hotel’s specific “handle,” or Twitter name in your message, like @StarwoodBuzz for a Starwood property

    * Use your real name so a hotel can find you in their reservation system. You can’t get your complaint addressed or extra perks if you can’t be tracked down.

    * Have a lot of online friends or followers. Hotels will pay more attention to your requests.

    * Don’t be unreasonable. If the hotel senses you’re a lost cause, it may spend less time trying to fix the problem.

 

SK Energy Co., South Korea’s biggest refiner, said it will focus on producing oil and gas overseas, developing electric-car batteries and making petrochemicals with emissions-reduction technology to drive future earnings.

“The current business model may not be able to boost the company’s operating profit a lot from now,” Chief Executive Officer Koo Ja Young told reporters on June 18. “Innovations in the business model, and in technology, are needed.”

Refiners in South Korea, Asia’s largest fuel exporter, are seeking new growth engines as expanding Chinese and Indian suppliers cut profitability. SK Energy took the first step toward reorganizing in October by turning its lubricants division into a wholly owned unit.

“This is very positive in the long term,” said Cho Seung Yeon, an analyst at HMC Securities Co. “The reorganization will let each division focus resources on its own business while the parent boosts investment in new sectors.”

Starting next year, SK Energy will spin off petroleum and chemicals divisions that accounted for 98 percent of overall revenue in the first quarter. Ahead of the change, the refiner has completed its first electric-car battery production line to supply Daimler AG’s Japanese unit. SK Energy has also signed up for 38 oil and natural-gas projects in 17 countries.

The petroleum and chemicals divisions, as they start off as wholly owned units, may sell assets or form partnerships with overseas companies to raise funds, Koo said.

The petroleum division posted an operating loss for three consecutive quarters last year as the global financial crisis cut demand and China and India increased shipments.

New Growth Engines

SK Energy has fallen 11 percent in Seoul trading this year, compared with the 1.7 percent gain by the benchmark Kospi index. The stock closed unchanged at 104,500 won on June 18.

The company’s smaller rival GS Caltex Corp. bought an unlisted waste-treatment company in April, while S-Oil Corp. may seek opportunities in alternative energy.

SK Energy plans to start up a 30 billion won ($25 million) trial plant in October that can produce more olefins while emitting less carbon dioxide than current facilities, Koo said. The refiner is also developing technology to use carbon dioxide as a raw material for producing plastics, he said.

“The technologies will help SK Energy reach its target of 100 trillion won in revenue before 2020, up from 35 trillion won currently,” Koo said.

In energy exploration, the company is seeking rights to overseas projects and may acquire exploration companies, the chief executive said. SK Energy is producing 71,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day currently.

The chemicals division may build ethane-based ethylene plants in Latin America, including Peru and Colombia, Koo said at the company’s Daejeon research & development center. SK Energy has a stake in a gas project in Peru.

The company’s lubricants unit is in talks with a European company and an Asian company to form joint ventures, he said.

 

As first reported in the New York Times, a team of Pentagon officials and U.S. geologists have identified nearly $1 trillion worth of mineral deposits in Afghanistan.

The most alluring of these are vast deposits of lithium that transfer the title of “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” away from Chile, where the Salar de Atacama was thought to contain 27 per cent of the world’s known deposits of the mineral, and place it squarely on Afghanistan.

Why is lithium so important? Because it is the key material in the manufacture of the rechargeable batteries that power your Apple iPad, Research In Motion BlackBerry, insulin pump, Amazon Kindle, Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf.

But what if the world is approaching a glut of batteries? As part of the 2009 stimulus package, the Feds handed out $2 billion to manufacturers of batteries for “green” cars. By 2015 the factories will have the capacity to produce enough batteries for 15 million hybrids, or 1.5 million fully electric car batteries. The only way there will be enough buyers for all those cars is if oil prices soar and battery prices plunge.

Which might happen as improvements continue to be made to the traditional lithium-ion battery by researchers like A123′s Yet-Ming Chiang and the team at IBM’s Battery 500 Project, which hopes to use lithium-air to push a family of four 500 miles on one charge.

Aside from cost and weight, there’s also a danger associated with lithium-ion batteries that might increase their costs even as the cost of production falls: transportation. The U.S. Department of Transportation is looking to enact a new rule that would classify the batteries as hazardous materials. If that rule doesn’t pass, House Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D–Minn.) would impose similar restrictions.

 

FORGET about desperate housewives. To witness true frustration, watch desperate PC users trying to type, send e-mail or work on a spreadsheet, only to be delayed by those pesky hourglass icons for seconds or even minutes until their computers finally respond.

Now Soluto, a company based in Tel Aviv, aims to help these PC owners with an unusual program intended to minimize irritating slowdowns. The software runs in the background on PCs, collecting data on delays in program responses and sending the information to company servers for analysis, said Tomer Dvir, a co-founder and the chief executive.

As its first service, the company is offering a free program intended to solve a classic computer problem: a slow boot or start-up time. (The program is at the company’s Web site, www.soluto.com.)

Roee Adler, the chief product officer, said the program analyzed the boot-up process, recording how long it took and suggesting ways to trim the time. “Often you can cut your boot in half, or even more,” he said.

I tried the Soluto program, and by following its recommendations, cut my boot time to 1.44 minutes from 2.40 minutes. I removed some applications from the boot sequence, letting them run after the boot was over. I “paused” other applications that I don’t use on a daily basis — for instance, an application that automatically updates Google products. Instead, I’ll wait until the company lets me know when there is an update. (Soluto divides the possible changes in the boot into “no brainers,” “potentially removable apps” and “required, cannot be removed.”)

The company is also working on solutions to other slowdowns, like interruptions while working on Excel or typing in Word when another application suddenly commands Windows resources, causing a timeout. Finding the source of delays is often tricky, Mr. Adler said, because Windows runs on many different computer models; each has its own complement of downloads and devices, all jockeying for attention.

To find the source of each slowdown, Soluto uses a statistical approach, Mr. Dvir said. “Over millions of machines and millions of users, the problems start to repeat themselves,” he said. “There may be 10,000 people with the identical problem, and one of them will find a solution.”

Those millions of users are still in the future, as are their solutions to Windows problems. To acquire those users, Soluto plans to offer free versions of all its products, Mr. Adler said. As it runs on users’ machines, the program will analyze problems and publish solutions. The program won’t reach in and fix the problem directly; the user will have to do that. But if the initial program for boot optimization is any guide, Soluto will be offering suggestions for fixes, letting users know what others have chosen. A premium version that fixes problems automatically will be available for a charge, he said.

Soluto’s approach to PC frustration is novel and highly promising, said Robert Scoble, a video blogger and a former Microsoft employee. “This is innovation at a deep level; they are bringing in the crowd to augment solutions to Windows problems,” Mr. Scoble said.

If Soluto realizes its plans, he said, large companies will be likely to pay for its services. “If each employee saves a few minutes on each machine,” he said, “the hours saved will be worth a fee.”

Soluto also plans to publish lists of machines and software configurations that cause PC problems. That, too, he said, would be worth paying for.

The company has raised $7.8 million in two rounds of financing, Mr. Adler said. Large investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Giza Venture Capital.

Once the initial, boot-optimization program is in full swing — it is now in a beta or test phase — the company will move on to the next slowdown problem on the agenda — for example, delays in using spreadsheets — Mr. Dvir said.

Soluto, he said, does not require users to register, or provide an e-mail address or any demographic information, he said. “All the information is gathered anonymously,” he said.

SO far, the company is doing an intriguing job, said Ed Bott, author of many books about Windows. “The need they’ve identified among users really resonates with me,” he said. “They have a long-range plan to address many issues of frustration. It’s an original and promising approach.”

The program now has a limited user base, he said. “But the more people who use it, the more valuable it will become,” he said, both to them and to the company.

Many other services, including, for example, PC Pitstop, are already on the market to optimize boot-ups and other processes. The PC Pitstop scan is free, said Dave Methvin, the chief technology officer, “and will tell you what it thinks needs to be done.”

“If you decide you want us to do the work,” and fix problems automatically, he said, “you purchase the product,” either for optimization (Optimize, $29.99) or a complete tune-up (PC Matic, $49.99).

Typically, delays on PCs occur because applications like vendor updates are battling for resources. “When you have 10 of those running in the background,” said Mr. Adler at Soluto, “they add up.”

 

Two vacuum salesmen didn’t exactly close the deal at a recent home demonstration in central New York. State police charged the Syracuse men with a misdemeanor after a $1,300 Sealy latex foam mattress was damaged. Trooper Andy Davis said the damage occurred during a demonstration Monday at a home in Richfield Springs. Davis wouldn’t elaborate on what was done to the mattress.

Davis said the men were both at the home when police arrived and were trying to save the situation. They were charged with reckless endangerment of property.

The mattress owner is looking for reimbursement.

 

The California Nurses Association vowed to continue its fight with the University of California over staffing levels, saying it won’t be deterred by a San Francisco judge’s ruling Friday that bars nurses from staging a one-day strike.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter J. Busch prohibited the union from staging strikes at the university’s five medical centers until at least Sept. 30, when the current contract between the union and the university ends.

Two days before the union was to stage a June 10 walkout at UC-run hospitals, Busch intervened by issuing a temporary restraining order requested by the state Public Employment Relations Board on behalf of the university.

On Friday, the judge made his ruling permanent, saying that there was reasonable cause for PERB to believe that a strike would violate state labor laws.

The CNA walkout was intended to protest what the union said are unsafe nurse staffing levels – a charge the university denies.

At the center of the dispute is whether the university is complying with state-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, which require at least one nurse for every five patients – and even more for patients with higher levels of need.

The dispute over staffing levels has long been a sticking point in negotiations.

“I’m hopeful that because of the judge’s ruling, the CNA will sit down at the table so we can work out a really good contract for the nurses. We can do this in earnest instead of posturing,” said Carol Robinson, chief nursing officer for UC Davis Medical Center.

The CNA represents nearly 11,000 registered nurses employed by the university, including 1,800 at the UC Davis Medical Center.

University officials commended the judge’s decision, but the setback upset union officials.

“We’re going to continue fighting for proper staffing levels. We’re not going to stop,” said Beth Keane, the CNA’s lead negotiator for the union’s university labor contracts.

She said the union plans to file complaints with the state Department of Public Health. The state agency, however, has yet to act on a complaint filed by the union in November over staffing levels at the UC Davis Medical Center.

The university said it had already spent $8.4 million preparing for a possible walkout by nurses.