Internships

How bad is the current job market? At least 74,040 people would like to work for Charlie Sheen. Internships.com said Wednesday that's how many people have applied for Sheen's internship position since he posted it Monday. The actor said he would pay someone to help leverage his social media network this summer. The application wasn't exactly extensive: It limited applicants to 75 characters or fewer. ?Associated Press 50 Cent donates Kadafi payment 50 Cent is the latest artist to make a donation to charity after it was revealed he performed at an event linked to the clan of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

For top law school students, summer-internship programs at major law firms have helped open the golden door to lucrative full-time employment. But at some firms, that door is starting to swing shut. Many prominent law firms report substantially smaller internship programs this summer, as firms cope with the downturn in the legal marketplace and clients' demands that only seasoned lawyers be assigned to their matters. What's more, firms are shortening their programs and paying summer associates less.

Hundreds of low-income and unemployed residents in Los Angeles County are receiving job training and placement at local hospitals, clinics and pharmacies in an ambitious effort that taps into the growing need for healthcare workers. The Youth Policy Institute, a local nonprofit managing the program, opened its doors to applicants in March and has already enrolled about 400 trainees. There is room for 1,200 participants total. "The demand is so great for this," said Dixon Slingerland, executive director of the institute.

Summer is the peak season for educational internships of all kinds — paid and unpaid. For small businesses, the unpaid ones are gaining in popularity. Designer Raven Kauffman, owner of Raven Kauffman Couture in downtown Los Angeles, is seeking an unpaid intern, her first time offering a formal summer internship since launching the high-end handbag business almost three years ago. "I believe in offering internships because I was an intern," said Kauffman, who updated Rolodexes, made coffee and learned the business as an intern in the mid-1990s.

When I was a college student, a summer internship at a big-city newspaper seemed just the thing to boost my nascent journalism career. But instead, I spent the summers as a big-city doorman, filling in for the regulars while they were on vacation. The reason was simple: Being a doorman paid a lot more, and I needed the money for tuition. A generation later, for a student in my shoes, the situation is quite a bit worse. Nowadays many internships don't pay anything at all, yet landing an internship has come to seem almost essential.

As if Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis hasn't been reminded enough, a billboard a half mile from his office provided another indication of his on-the-hot-seat status. It reads: "Best wishes to Charlie Weis in the 5th year of his college coaching internship. -- Linebacker Alumni." "Everything was great until the last word," Weis said, laughing with reporters. "So tell them, 'Thanks a lot for wishing me best wishes.' " That won't happen yet. Though the billboard sits above the Linebacker Inn near the Notre Dame campus, the hotel's general manager told WSBT of South Bend, Ind., they had nothing to do with the sign.

Every childhood visit to Disneyland provoked the same argument between Patricia L. Caplette and her brother over which ride to hit first. He wanted to head straight for the Haunted Mansion; she insisted on Pirates of the Caribbean. So they bargained: If she could start the day with her favorite scurvy crew, he could end it getting spooked.

An intern with the National Archives stole about 165 Civil War documents -- including the War Department's announcement of President Lincoln's death -- and sold most of them on EBay, prosecutors charged Thursday. Denning McTague, who runs a website that sells rare books, worked at a National Archives and Records Administration site in Philadelphia last summer, prosecutors said.