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WASHINGTON - Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the second-longest-serving senator in U.S. history and winner of the Medal of Honor for combat heroics in World War II, has died, his office announced in a statement. He was 88. "His last words were, 'Aloha,'" his office said. Inouye died at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, with his wife, Irene, and his son, Ken, at his side. Last rites were performed by Senate Chaplain Dr. Barry Black, his office said. A senator since 1963, Inouye in 2009 became chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he continued a long record of helping fund projects in his home state.

When Daniel K. Inouye was 17, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. An aspiring surgeon, he spent much of the next week helping care for the wounded at an elementary school in his native Honolulu. He wanted to enlist immediately but couldn't. Japanese Americans were classified as "enemy aliens. " Two years later, once restrictions were lifted in 1943, he joined the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team, whose motto was "Go for broke. " PHOTOS:  Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii The Japanese American soldiers became the most decorated unit in U.S. history.

It's keeping up with the Joneses, retail edition. Toys R Us says its stores will be open for 88 straight hours in the days leading up to Christmas, following in the footsteps of other retailers opening for shop-til-you-drop marathons to woo procrastinating consumers. The retail marathon will start at 6 a.m. on Dec. 21 and conclude at 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Troy Rice, executive vice president of stores and services, said the extended hours will allow people to shop "whenever it is convenient to them.

Evelyn Ackerman, a California artist and designer known for her highly regarded work across a range of media, including mosaics, tapestries and wood carvings, and for her creative collaboration of more than six decades with her husband, artist Jerome Ackerman, has died. She was 88. Ackerman died Wednesday at her home in Culver City of complications of old age, said her daughter, Laura Ackerman-Shaw. Originally from Detroit, Evelyn Ackerman was a prolific designer who, together with her husband, became part of the mid-century movement known as California modernism.

The salesmen at the Spring Street Arcade spend their day gazing out at a city that's passing them by. All around, a trendy downtown is on the rise - pet stores selling gourmet dog chews, chic bars with ginger and juniper soda cocktails, a new generation of mostly young residents jogging in spandex and cruising on bikes. But inside the 88-year-old shopping arcade, with its giant curved skylight, arched Spanish Renaissance entryways and Beaux Arts exterior, many of the stores are vacant, and the remaining merchants seem stuck in another era. Bargain-rate clothes, toys, suitcases and DVDs share shelf space with dusty boomboxes and T-shirts from '90s rock bands like Korn and Nirvana.

Former President George H.W. Bush is being treated for bronchitis in Houston's Methodist Hospital, officials there confirmed Thursday. Bush, 88, has been in and out of the Texas Medical Center for treatment and is scheduled to be released within the next 72 hours, his representatives said in a statement. The 41st president is listed in stable condition. The Houston Chronicle reported Bush has been in the hospital for about a week. The former director of the CIA has been known for his vitality in spite of his advanced age. He celebrated his 75th, 80th, and 85th birthdays by going skydiving and joined President Clinton on a humanitarian trip overseas after the 2004 tsunami and visited New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Could it get any worse for hobbling Hewlett-Packard Co.? HP's stock plummeted 12% on Tuesday to its lowest price in a decade after the company said it was writing off $8.8 billion because it was duped into overpaying for a British software maker. The surprise revelation came as HP reported another quarterly loss and gave a weak first-quarter outlook. "The magnitude of the charge is pretty enormous," said Jayson Noland, senior analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. "It's really bad and it's really expensive and it's really distracting.

Hewlett-Packard Co. reported a hefty $8.8-billion charge in its fourth quarter, largely due to serious accounting problems stemming from its 2011 purchase of a British software maker. The Palo Alto company released its earnings Tuesday and revealed that it had to take a massive charge to align the accounting value of Autonomy Corp., which it bought for $10 billion last year, with its real value. The writedown, combined with a weak first-quarter outlook for struggling HP, caused shares to plunge in morning trading.

A year ago Cal State Northridge-based radio station KCSN-FM (88.5) began to promote its "Smart Rock" format, programming that incorporates the eclecticism of the far more established public station KCRW-FM (89.9) with regular doses of pop music's "heritage" acts. Within months, audience donations nearly doubled. Now if only the station's signal, which barely makes it from the San Fernando Valley campus to Griffith Park, had increased by as much. "If I get one more email from somebody who tells me precisely the corner they're at, people literally telling me the precise longitude and latitude where they lose the signal…," said KCSN general manager Sky Daniels.

WASHINGTON — Fueled by major improvements in California and Arizona, the percentage of homeowners nationwide who were behind on their mortgage payments dropped significantly in the third quarter from the same period last year, according to credit reporting company TransUnion. The national mortgage delinquency rate — the percentage of borrowers 60 days or more late on their payments — fell to 5.41% in the three months ended in September from 5.88%, TransUnion said Tuesday. The rate last quarter was the lowest since the first quarter of 2009, when it was 5.22%.