Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Obama says he cannot guarantee Social Security checks will go out on August 3 - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.

The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.

Google+ Users: 20 Million by the Weekend? | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

If the Google+ invites keep flowing, the search giant's social-networking site could reach 10 million users by day's end and 20 million by the end of the weekend, according to Tuesday analysis.

In an attempt to get a rough estimate of Google+ users, Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen (not to be confused with the Microsoft co-founder) has been comparing US Census Data with last names of certain Google+ members. Early estimates released over the weekend put Google+ at about 4.5 million users, but that has since exploded, Allen said.

"My surname-based analysis shows that the number of Google+ users worldwide reached 7.3 million yesterday (July 10)—up from 1.7 million users on July 4th," Allen wrote in a Google+ post. "That is a 350% increase in six days. The userbase is growing so quickly that it is challenging for me to keep up, since the number of users of any given surname (even the rare ones I am tracking) seems to be climbing every day."

More impressive, he said, is that it appears approximately 2.2 million people have joined Google+ in the last 32 to 34 hours, for a total of about 9.5 million people on Monday, Allen speculated.

As a result, he expects user numbers to grow to 10 million today and 20 million by the weekend, provided invites remain open. "As one G+ user put it, it is easy to underestimate the power of exponential growth," Allen wrote.

How exactly is Allen getting these numbers? He said he looked at US Census Bureau data about the popularly of last names in the U.S. and the compared it with the number of Google+ users who had the same last names.

Chart of the Day: Just 58.2% of American Adults Are Employed - Daniel Indiviglio - Business - The Atlantic

Stifling heat forecast for half the U.S. | Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) -Excessive heat was forecast to blanket half of the continental United States on Tuesday.

The National Weather Service issued heat warnings or advisories for 24 states stretching from parts of Texas and Oklahoma to the plains, the Mississippi Valley and the east coast.

"It's going to stay hot in the central to southern plain states," said Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the weather service.

The heat on the east coast is not expected to be as intense.

"For the most part it's a one day heat wave," Vaccaro said.

But there was no reprieve from the heat in sight for Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Yesterday was the 13th consecutive day temperatures hovered at or above 100 degrees, according to the weather service. And the heat was expected to continue through next weekend.

Air quality alerts were also in effect on the east coast from Virginia to New Jersey.