Move will hurt employee retirements: Major employers such as FedEx, General Motors and Motorola have eliminated matching contributions to employee 401(k) plans, The New York Times reports. Retirement policy specialists say the move comes at a bad time because traditional pensions are disappearing, and there’s no guarantee the Social Security trust fund will remain solvent as more baby boomers leave the workforce. The cuts will have a permanent effect since workers won’t get the years of compound interest on the missed contributions.
Hormone imbalance to blame for gaunt appearance: Apple Inc. founder and Chief Executive Steve Jobs, a survivor of pancreatic cancer, says a hormone imbalance is to blame for the weight loss that has prompted worries about his health. Jobs, 53, said he will undergo a “relatively simple” treatment and will remain in charge of Apple. “A hormone imbalance … has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy,” Jobs says in a public letter. “Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.” Speculation about his health percolated in 2008 as Jobs appeared gaunt at public events. Those worries intensified after Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple said in December that Jobs would not be making his annual keynote address Tuesday in San Francisco at the Macworld conference.
Spreading the word: Juanita Constible, a coastal Louisiana outreach coordinator with the local offices of the National Wildlife Federation, is one of the authors of a new textbook on climate change. Climate Change From Pole to Pole, which was written along with an Ohio high school biology teacher and a zoology professor at Miami (Ohio) University, is published by the National Science Teachers Association Press and aimed at high school and college students. The NSTA is the largest professional group of science teachers, with more than 60,000 instructors, supervisors, administrators and business representatives.
