Penny

Expensive pennies The Better Business Bureau is warning consumers to be wary of so-called penny auction websites, which advertise electronic products such as Apple Inc. iPads at bargain prices. Many people have complained about being charged fees as high as $150 after signing up for what was promoted as a free trial, the bureau said in a recent bulletin. Other customers have alleged that the sites use computer-programmed bots to place fake bids that drive up prices. The customers who have complained to the bureau also said they had been unable to obtain refunds, the bulletin said.

Accor Hotels, which operate Novotel, Ibis, Pullman and other brands in India , is offering a 15% discount on rooms this summer as well as breakfast for two for just 1 rupee (roughly a penny). The sale is good at 15 hotels, including properties in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The deal: You might recognize the name Accor because the company operates Motel 6 and other properties in the U.S. The Early Breaks offer requires reservations at least three days in advance to receive 15% off the standard room rate and breakfast for two for the equivalent of a penny.

It would be a mockery of justice and a waste of resources to force criminal defendants to trial without counsel. Not knowing rules of evidence, not realizing they are waiving their rights, unaware of the pitfalls of pleading to lesser charges, lawyerless defendants would be lost in a system that purports to grant equal justice. They would needlessly consume jurors' time as they flounder through trials, then would clog appellate courts while pursuing the justice they were denied in lower courts.

Hollywood's usual last-minute heroics don't factor in "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. " In writer-director Lorene Scafaria's opening scene, a space mission to prevent a 70-mile-wide asteroid from hitting Earth fails spectacularly, giving everyone on the planet just three weeks to live. With the clock ticking, Dodge (Steve Carell) and Penny (Keira Knightley) try to figure out how to do just that. Romance and the apocalypse don't seem like obvious movie partners, which is precisely why Scafaria (who wrote "Nick and Norah's Infinite Play List")

Re "Penny Here, and There," editorial, Oct. 22: I agree with your editorial. While cleaning the carpet at my rental, I find pennies enough for a Pepsi. Why am I picking up pennies? I'm a property owner with a Depression mentality. Yet it's my luck to lack a penny and have to break a dollar. I remember when five pennies could buy a burger, another five a Coke. Now a penny can't even buy a Tootsie Roll--a fistful might. Years ago, Congress wanted to do away with the penny.

Accor Hotels, which operate Novotel, Ibis, Pullman and other brands in India , is offering a 15% discount on rooms this summer as well as breakfast for two for just 1 rupee (roughly a penny). The sale is good at 15 hotels, including properties in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The deal: You might recognize the name Accor because the company operates Motel 6 and other properties in the U.S. The Early Breaks offer requires reservations at least three days in advance to receive 15% off the standard room rate and breakfast for two for the equivalent of a penny.

Re "A Penny Exposes Jail's Weak Points," June 28: When Francisco Puemas used a penny to make his escape from jail you could certainly say that he got his money's worth! Donald J. Crowell Huntington Beach

Re "California Bans Spam, Sets Fines," Sept. 24: A penny per e-mail postage for e-mail delivered in the U.S. would bring spam to a halt. If you asked the public to pay postage fees for e-mail, considering the trade-off, I think most would embrace it. Jim Ketcham Malibu

Although children are taught that the lyrics of "Pop Goes the Weasel," refer to an animal being chased around by a mischievous monkey, the original English song referred to pawnbrokers, according to the book "God Bless Pawnbrokers," by Peter Schwed. When the song was written in 1853, "pop" meant to hock or pawn. "Weasel" was slang for the heavy iron used for pressing garments, a valuable item at the time.

Re "Thought for your penny," editorial, Sept. 23 I agree with The Times' editorial, but it didn't go far enough. The nickel should be eliminated also. After all, in the past we got by without any coin smaller than the half-cent. Inflation has reduced the value of the U.S. dollar by about a factor of 20 since the 19th century, so we should be able to get by now with no coin less than the dime. That way, one digit could be eliminated from all prices, and we wouldn't have to carry bulky nickels of very little value.

When Sparks General Manager Penny Toler learned last fall her team had landed the top overall pick in Monday's WNBA draft, she jumped and laughed. "I was real surprised," said Toler, whose team had a sparse 104 chances out of 1,000 to receive the first overall selection, the fewest of any of the four teams in the lottery mix. It was much-needed good fortune for a team that has recently teetered toward the unlucky. Superstar Candace Parker has missed more than half of the Sparks' games over the last two seasons because of injury, playing in 27 of 68 regular-season games.

The painful rise of gasoline prices across the U.S. may have reached its end, according to two national surveys. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline on Monday slipped two-tenths of a penny to $3.927 since Sunday, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report, which uses prices compiled from more than 100,000 retail outlets by the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. Prices fell in all but one of the 23 states with per-gallon averages of $3.90 or above, according to AAA. Two of those 23 states — Michigan and Indiana — saw prices drop below $4 a gallon, reducing the number of states above $4 to eight.

Just because the state says the public can't enter a park doesn't make it so, and that's the chief reason officials should reexamine their plan to close up to 70 parks starting in July. It's not that open space is sacrosanct; as much as we love them, parks are fair game for budget cuts along with almost everything else. But the question that Gov. Jerry Brown must answer is whether California will really save any money, even in the short run, by closing so many parks. The closures were originally supposed to save about $11 million a year, a small item in the budget.

Here's your walking-on-sunshine Wednesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web: --The Obama administration thinks pennies and nickels cost too darn much. So it's asked Congress for permission to change the mix of metal that goes into making the coins -- a recipe that's remained unchanged for more than 30 years. It currently costs 2.4 cents to make one penny and about 11.2 cents for each nickel. Given the number of coins that the U.S. Mint produces -- 4.3 billion pennies and 914 million nickels last year alone -- those costs add up quickly.

By all accounts, Americans are becoming heavier. The number of people deemed to be obese continues to grow. The remedy is obviously proper diet and exercise, but getting enough exercise is not always easy. People need incentive, and I've got one to suggest. Having had some issues with my heart, the medicos strongly suggested that I get regular exercise. I've always enjoyed walking, so I embarked on regular walks of approximately two miles in the vicinity of my home in Downey. In the course of walking, I would occasionally find coins lying on the ground.

If anyone needs a piece of good luck, it's Herman Cain. And on Wednesday, maybe he got one. Cain was already having a tough day. A campaign appearance earlier Wednesday in northern Virginia had ended in a small shouting match with reporters after Cain refused to answer questions about the sexual harassment allegations that have dogged him all week. Another phalanx of reporters awaited him in a corridor of the Rayburn House office building, where Cain was scheduled to deliver some remarks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that it had charged the nation's biggest penny stock broker, Stuart-James Co., and its two owners with defrauding clients by creating artificial markets and markups of up to 200% on the first day of trading in two new stock issues. The SEC staff also charged the Denver-based company and its owners with causing salesmen to use misleading scripts to pitch stocks by phone. The scripts included illegal, bullish predictions for speculative low-priced securities, the commission charged.

Congressional moves to eliminate the one-cent coin go back to the 1960s ("Days of Penny Pinching May Be Numbered," July 29). When copper prices rose to $1.50 a pound, the lowly cent was worth more for its copper content than one cent. Also, when silver was eliminated from our dime, quarter and half dollar in 1965, the idea of dropping the cent once again was considered. In 1982 the cent was reduced in content and weight--it has been 99% zinc with a copper plating and only 2.5 grams versus 3.1 grams.

Clint Eastwood knows how to set a scene on screen or at Mission Ranch, his strikingly handsome hotel and restaurant in Carmel. The hotel, a historic property, has a multimillion dollar view of the sea and beautiful grounds to match. Magenta bougainvillea spills from balconies, flowering pots decorate porches, huge cypress trees shade buildings and lawns. You'd expect a room to cost $500 a night or more. So how about $120 a night? Hard to believe, especially in a pricey tourist area like Carmel.

Here is roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Burglary season — The summer months of July and August typically have the highest rate of home burglaries, in part because many people leave town for vacations, the Better Business Bureau said in a recent alert. Homeowners should consider installing security systems before they vacation this summer, the BBB said. Homes without such systems are about three times as likely to be burglarized as those with the systems, it said.