Wage

Neil Young recently described writing his first book, “Waging Heavy Peace,” as “really a different trip,” invoking the vocabulary reflected in the subtitle of his tome: “Hippie Dream.” The phrase is written on a card tucked into the band of the ragged-edged fedora he wears on the book's cover photo. Young's book does move more like a dream than a linear autobiography, bouncing without warning from past to present and back again. He hopscotches from in-the-moment projects like the current Crazy Horse recordings and his passionate pursuit of a new high-fidelity audio playback system called Pono all the way back to details about his childhood in Omemee, Ontario, his parents' divorce and his brief tenure in an R&B band called the Mynah Birds, which also featured one Ricky James Matthew, who later became '80s funk and R&B star Rick James.

CAIRO - The mother, barely past girlhood, was the first to die in Dr. Ahmed Eldin's care. Her heart would not stir beneath his compressions. He walked, distraught, out of the intensive care unit that day, past the mother's child, only a week old, sleeping in the lap of a relative in a dirty corridor of a public hospital, where patients often buy their own syringes, doctors run out of surgical gloves and the pharmacy sometimes lacks medicines that...

Waging Heavy Peace A Hippie Dream Neil Young Blue Rider Press: 502 pp., $30 Back in high school (a long time ago, but bear with me), my mother and I had an argument about Neil Young. I'd been blaring one of his albums - "Rust Never Sleeps"? "Zuma"? - and she came to my room to tell me to turn it down. When I protested that Young was a genius, my mother looked at me as if I were speaking a language she didn't understand. "If he was a genius," she told me, "he wouldn't be playing electric guitar.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Last month, it was South African platinum miners out on strike. This month they have been followed by other platinum miners, gold miners, coal miners and truck drivers, as workers race to match last week's 22% wage gain won by Lonmin platinum workers after a wildcat strike at the company's Marikana facility. Analysts warned Wednesday of more rogue strikes, increasing union militancy and pressure for matching wage gains, with workers abandoning existing wage agreements and their unions, as the Lonmin miners did. Every year, South Africa's "strike season" sees millions of working days lost, usually shrugged off by international investors as the price of doing business here.

California lost $3 billion in wages from 2004 to 2011 because of film and TV production flocking to other states and countries, a new study concludes. Burbank-based Entertainment Partners, the industry's largest payroll service company, which specializes in advising companies on how they can take advantage of film tax credits around the world, says its own research has found that California lost 90,000 jobs and saw its share of overall production wages in the U.S. decline 10% during the period as film producers took their business elsewhere.

NEW YORK - With no labor negotiations Monday and no imminent resolution to the dispute that led the NHL to lock players out late Saturday, teams began tightening their economic belts by laying off some employees and reducing the hours and wages of others. The Ottawa Senators let go more than 10 people, the Montreal Canadiens and Vancouver Canucks instituted a four-day work week and 20% pay cut, and the Minnesota Wild - which committed $196 million to free agents Ryan Suter and Zach Parise on each player's 13-year contract - will cut some executives' pay. Players continued to look overseas for the duration of the lockout, led by Ilya Kovalchuk arranging to play in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Joe Thornton and Rick Nash heading to Davos, Switzerland.

WASHINGTON — Whereas 6 in 10 jobs lost during the Great Recession paid mid-level wages, the majority of jobs created in the recovery — positions such as store clerks, laborers and home healthcare aides — pay much less, according to a new study. The findings highlight concerns about a shrinking middle class and pose another obstacle to getting the economy back on track, said Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project, which conducted the study.

BEALLSVILLE, Ohio -- Visiting Appalachian coal country on Tuesday, Mitt Romney accused President Obama of “waging a war on coal,” and pledged to pursue all forms of domestic energy so the nation would no longer be dependent on sources outside of North America. “We have 250 years of coal, why in the heck wouldn't we use it?” Romney said, speaking in front of hard-hat-wearing miners who roared in approval. “We're going to take advantage of our energy resources to save your jobs, to create more jobs.” Romney spoke in the parking lot of the American Energy Corp.

SAO PAULO, Brazil — If the Brazilian economic boom is over, that's news to Maria da Conceicao Souza, who is standing in the scorching winter sun in Paraisopolis, Sao Paulo's largest slum. In the last six months, Souza has been able to set up her own beauty salon in the favela , shortly after bagging her first real job in her 36 years. Business has been increasing steadily, she says, driven by customers from Brazil's new middle class, whose rise out of poverty has been one of the most potent symbols of the country's emergence as an economic power.

California labor regulators are seeking $635,000 in back wages, penalties and damages from a San Joaquin County farm-labor contractor. Labor Commissioner Julie Su said Tuesday she is filing a lawsuit in Fresno County Superior Court against Javier Diaz and his company, Diaz Contracting, for alleged multiple wage-and-hour violations, including failure to pay minimum wage and overtime to 129 employees. The lawsuit is the result of an extensive investigation, according to Su's office, the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement at the California Department of Industrial Relations.