Down to the wire: A fiscal deadline all but blown, President Barack Obama says he once again wants to seek a big fiscal deal that would raise taxes and trim billions from expensive and ever-growing entitlement programs. But with automatic federal spending cuts ready to start taking their toll, the path toward that grand bargain Obama campaigned on last year has significantly narrowed. The president has summoned the top bipartisan congressional leadership to the White House today, a meeting designed to give all sides a chance to stake out their fiscal positions with a new threat of a government shutdown less than four weeks away. There are no expectations of a breakthrough. The full story is here.
More than 1,000 words: A grieving Oregon mother who battled Facebook for full access to her deceased son’s account has been pushing for years for something that would prevent others from losing photos, messages and other memories—as she did. “Everybody’s going to face this kind of a situation at some point in their lives,” says Karen Williams, whose 22-year-old son died in a 2005 motorcycle accident. That’s because a 1986 federal law and voluntary terms of service agreements prohibit companies from sharing a person’s information, even if such a request were included in a last will and testament. Read the full story here.
Cashing out: Mobile money may seem like a hot concept, but consumers aren’t warming to it. At the world’s largest cell phone trade show, held in Barcelona, Spain, this week, the 70,000 attendees are encouraged to use their cell phones—instead of their keycards—to get past the turnstiles at the door. But very few people took the chance to do that. The process of setting up the phone to act as a keycard proved too much of a hassle. It’s a poor omen for an industry that’s eager to have cell phones replace both tickets and credit cards. The full story is here.
