Finances

Distancing himself from Republicans on housing issues, President Obama pitched a $5-billion to $10-billion plan to help a key segment of struggling homeowners — those still making monthly payments, but on underwater mortgages. Obama proposed Wednesday to help about 3.5 million people with good credit who are unable to refinance at historically low rates because their homes are worth less than their mortgages. He argued that those homeowners — and the country — couldn't afford to let the housing market bottom out, as many Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have advocated.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — For a fourth day Wednesday, the jury in the John Edwards trial deliberated without reaching a verdict in a case focused on an illicit affair and federal campaign finance laws. The jury of eight men and four women must decide whether Edwards violated election laws when payments from two wealthy donors were used to cover up his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter during Edwards' failed run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Prosecutors contend that Edwards solicited $925,000 in illegal contributions from the donors in order to hide the affair and keep his campaign from collapsing in scandal.

California's budget deficit may be more than $1 billion larger than even Gov. Jerry Brown's latest estimate, the Legislature's financial advisor said Friday. Brown announced last weekend that the deficit had swelled from $9.2 billion to almost $16 billion. But the nonpartisan legislative analyst's office said there may be less money available than the governor assumed, possibly increasing the budget gap to at least $17 billion. The bulk of the difference lies in questions over money from defunct local redevelopment agencies.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a long-awaited federal financing agreement that will help ensure a vital transportation corridor doesn't become a drain on the finances of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The vote — 13 to 0 in favor, with two council members absent — allows the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority to accept $83.7 million from the Federal Rail Administration to help fund operations of the Alameda Corridor, a 20-mile freight rail expressway linking the ports to transcontinental rail lines.

Three Museum of Contemporary Art officials with key financial roles -- the chief operating officer, fundraising director and a trustee who chaired the board's finance committee -- have left MOCA in the last three months. They had been at their posts less than a year. Meanwhile, since Jeffrey Deitch became MOCA's director in mid-2010, efforts have stalled to pay down large deficits the museum incurred from 2000 to 2008 by illegally raiding its endowment. A source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of MOCA's finances, said it has projected a deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The spate of recent departures and two others in mid-2011 is "a turnover that begins to look like turmoil," MOCA's former chief executive, Charles E. Young, said this week.

The Trinity Broadcasting Network, which bills itself as the world's largest Christian network, is embroiled in a legal battle involving allegations of massive financial fraud and lavish spending, including the purchase of a $100,000 motor home for family dogs. Brittany Koper, a former high-ranking TBN official and the granddaughter of its co-founder, Paul Crouch Sr., was fired by the network in September after discovering "illegal financial schemes" amounting to tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court.

Helen Jones sits in a wheelchair, surrounded by strangers who control her life. She is not allowed to answer the telephone. Her mail is screened. She cannot spend her own money. A child of the Depression, Jones, 87, worked hard for decades, driving rivets into World War II fighter planes, making neckties, threading bristles into nail-polish brushes. She saved obsessively, putting away $560,000 for her old age.

Thousands more California students will have to find their own way to school this fall, as districts slash bus routes to cope with budget shortfalls and high fuel costs. Critics worry that the cuts will increase traffic around schools, shift costs to parents already struggling with rising gas prices and prompt more absenteeism, hurting students' academic achievement. But paramount is the fear that the reductions will endanger students as more walk or drive to school.

If you're renting a car over the holidays, chances are a clerk at the counter will try to sell you some pricey insurance options. Should you fork out the extra cash? Probably not, experts say. That's because there's a very good chance the auto insurance policy you already have would kick in if you had an accident while driving a rental. And sometimes the credit card you use to rent the car offers coverage too.

It's familiar news by now that America's obesity epidemic is both dangerous and costly. Obesity significantly increases the risk of many diseases, including heart disease and diabetes, and is associated with at least 112,000 deaths a year. The economic impact is equally startling: Obese patients add an estimated $75 billion a year to the nation's medical bill.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - A third day of jury deliberations in the campaign finance trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards passed without a verdict Tuesday, with the jurors due back in federal court Wednesday morning. The jury of eight men and four women requested two more prosecution exhibits, bringing to more than a dozen the number of exhibits sought by jurors since deliberations began Friday. The documents requested Tuesday were letters to or about Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, now 101, a billionaire heiress and Edwards supporter who gave $725,000 that was used to help hide the candidate's mistress during his failed campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

WASHINGTON - Effectively clinching the Republican presidential nomination last month allowed Mitt Romney's campaign to marshal larger checks and chip into President Obama's huge lead in the money chase heading into the general election. Romney still has a long way to go. According to campaign finance records filed with the Federal Election Commission during the weekend, Obama maintains an expansive advantage in cash on hand. His reelection effort ended April with $147 million in the bank, compared with $61.4 million for Romney and the Republican National Committee.

California's budget deficit may be more than $1 billion larger than even Gov. Jerry Brown's latest estimate, the Legislature's financial advisor said Friday. Brown announced last weekend that the deficit had swelled from $9.2 billion to almost $16 billion. But the nonpartisan legislative analyst's office said there may be less money available than the governor assumed, possibly increasing the budget gap to at least $17 billion. The bulk of the difference lies in questions over money from defunct local redevelopment agencies.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Both sides in the John Edwards trial gave detailed closing arguments Thursday to a federal jury that will decide whether the former presidential candidate knowingly violated campaign finance laws in a scheme to hide an extramarital affair. Prosecutors told jurors that testimony and evidence in the nearly four-week trial prove that Edwards solicited and orchestrated secret payments of $925,000 from two wealthy benefactors to save his campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination from scandal.

Gov. Jerry Brown is testy. He's defensive. He's very frustrated. He's only human, after all - not a demigod, not the all-wise, powerful supergov he portrayed himself to be when running for the office. It's hard to know who believed that portrayal the most: the voters, the Sacramento insiders or the candidate himself. Regardless, it hasn't panned out the way most people had hoped, and certainly not the way Brown had envisioned. So on Monday, he was in the governor's press conference room - built by his father, incidentally - trying to explain why the state budget hole had grown 71% deeper since January, expanding from $9.2 billion to $15.7 billion.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - His political career is wrecked, his reputation is destroyed. He poisoned his marriage, and his martyred wife died knowing he cheated on her and lied about it to the world. And yet Johnny Reid Edwards has behaved as if he owns the courtroom where the Justice Department has been prosecuting him the last three weeks. He strides into court, his face tanned, his hair perfectly in place, his suit crisp. He grabs his counsel's arm and orders him to object to a prosecutor's question.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Both sides in the John Edwards trial gave detailed closing arguments Thursday to a federal jury that will decide whether the former presidential candidate knowingly violated campaign finance laws in a scheme to hide an extramarital affair. Prosecutors told jurors that testimony and evidence in the nearly four-week trial prove that Edwards solicited and orchestrated secret payments of $925,000 from two wealthy benefactors to save his campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination from scandal.

The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones. At the county coroner's office -- which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths -- 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers' expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.

The ratings agency Standard & Poor's warned on Tuesday that it could downgrade California's financial outlook if lawmakers don't pass a credible budget plan this year. A final budget is due June 15, and lawmakers' task has become increasingly difficult as the state's deficit has swelled to nearly $16 billion. "We could change the outlook to negative or lower the rating if we believe the state's credit quality weakens through the budget process," said a report from Standard & Poor's.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - After weeks of riveting and often salacious testimony about an extramarital affair and the elaborate lies that once kept it hidden, testimony in the John Edwards trial turned Monday to a more prosaic topic: campaign finance law. As Edwards' legal team opened his defense, the finance director for his failed 2008 presidential run testified that more than $900,000 from two wealthy benefactors was not reported as campaign contributions...