Obama more popular than U.S. among Arabs: survey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's popularity in leading Arab countries far outstrips that of the United States, suggesting he could be able to boost goodwill in the region toward his country, a survey showed on Sunday.

Obama, set to give a major speech to the Muslim world in Egypt next month, "currently enjoys widespread optimism among citizens of that region that he will have a positive effect on their own country, the Middle East, the United States and indeed the world," the polling outfit Ipsos said.

Ipsos said its poll, conducted in March, involved 7,000 adults in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.

Of those surveyed, 33 percent had a favorable view of the United States, 43 percent had a negative view, 14 percent were neutral and 10 percent said they did not know, Ipsos said.

In contrast, Obama received favorable ratings averaging 48 percent in the region as a whole. Approval ran as high as 58 percent in Jordan and was lowest among Egyptians, who gave Obama favorable ratings of 35 percent, Ipsos said.

Only 22 percent of Egyptians expressed a favorable view of the United States, the lowest of the six countries surveyed.

Regionwide, only one in 10 residents thought Obama would have a negative effect on their country, the poll showed.

The gulf between Obama's popularity and that of the United States indicated "there is an opportunity for the president to literally 'bridge the gap' where his reposit goodwill lifts the goodwill toward America," Ipsos said in statement.

The White House announced on Friday that Obama would deliver a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world in Egypt on June 4, seeking to repair ties that were damaged under his predecessor George W. Bush.

Many Arab and Muslim nations were angered by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Bush's initial reluctance to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Ipsos said the survey had a margin of error ranging from 2.6 to 3 percentage points depending on the country.

The London Evening Standard says “sorry”

Bleary-eyed commuters passing through Clapham Junction station in southwest London on their way to work this week were among the first to witness the opening blast of one of the most remarkable advertising campaigns to have hit the capital in recent years.

No, not Flu Man sneezing his germs all over us but a short message in huge black lettering that simply says: “Sorry for losing touch.”

The only clue as to who is so publicly donning the hair shirt is a small drawing tucked away in the corner of the hoarding featuring the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus, the logo of London’s only paid-for evening paper, the Evening Standard.

The message is an attempt by the paper to reconnect with its readership now that it is under new ownership and will appear in the next few weeks on the side of buses and on the underground. Other slogans will say Sorry for being negative, for taking you for granted, for being complacent and for being predictable.

Not the hardest word at all then, though one that seems likely to cause considerable offence to the paper’s former editor Veronica Wadley.

The campaign comes in response to market research, commissioned by the newspaper’s new editor, Geordie Greig, which found that Londoners felt the paper was too negative and did not meet the capital’s needs.

Russian tycoon and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev bought the loss-making Standard from the Daily Mail and General Trust in February and media analysts have long predicted it will become less right-wing in its political stance. Some expect it to go more upmarket in an attempt to distance itself from the free sheets which have cut so badly into its circulation.

But few can have predicted such a public confessional as this. The “Sorry” campaign will run for three weeks in the run-up to the 181-year-old paper’s relaunch later this month.

If "sorry" helps, why we need laws and police? Citizens are feeling more and more sick for this word.

U.S. forces shoot Iraqi boy dead after grenade attack

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Saturday its troops had shot dead a 12-year-old Iraqi boy suspected of throwing a grenade at them, and said it believed insurgents were paying children to help them.

Iraqi police, speaking on condition of anonymity, said however the boy, whom they named as Omar Moussa Salih, had not been involved in the grenade-throwing.

U.S. and Iraqi forces came under grenade attack Thursday in the western part of Mosul, the northern city seen as a final stronghold of al Qaeda and other insurgents, said Major Derrick Cheng, a U.S. spokesman in northern Iraq.

U.S. forces responded by firing at several people, killing the boy. He was found with 10,000 Iraqi dinars, or around $8.50, in his hand.

"We have every reason to believe that insurgents are paying children to conduct these attacks or assist the attackers in some capacity, but undoubtedly placing the children in harm's way," Cheng said.

Iraqi police in Mosul said the boy, who had sold sweets in the street, was shot more than once in the head. His eight-year-old brother ran away when Omar was shot, police said.

Cheng said another boy was briefly detained but released.

The incident in Mosul comes less than two months before U.S. combat forces are due to withdraw from Iraqi cities, including stubbornly violent Mosul, as part of a bilateral security pact that envisages a full U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011.

Two weeks ago a U.S. raid in southern Iraq triggered a storm of condemnation from the Iraqi government, which demanded that U.S. soldiers be tried for the killings of "innocent citizens."

Violence has declined sharply in Iraq since the peak of sectarian killing unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but suicide bombings and other attacks continue, especially in ethnically and religiously mixed areas.

More than 30K ordered to flee Santa Barbara fire

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) - More than 30,000 people have been ordered to flee a wildfire that burned a five-mile-long front above wealthy coastal communities by Friday, after another hot, windy night in which the fire chief said "all hell broke loose."

Towering columns of brown smoke roiled off the face of the Santa Ynez Mountains after a fierce overnight battle as the 3,500-acre blaze repeated its pattern of relative calm in daylight and explosive behavior when evening winds arrive. It had been estimated at only about 1,300 acres Thursday afternoon.

"Literally last night, all hell broke loose," Santa Barbara city Fire Chief Andrew DiMizio said. Officials predicted Friday night would bring the same destructive mix of hot weather and strong wind gusts.

It was unknown how many homes were lost overnight on top of the estimated 75 houses destroyed earlier in the week in canyon neighborhoods along the north edge of Santa Barbara. Firefighters put out roof fires and kept the blaze from spreading into Santa Barbara proper, and many homes were saved, DiMizio said.

The blaze jumped a highway and pushed west toward neighboring Goleta and east toward tony Montecito, and evacuation orders more than doubled in less than a day.

A statement from the fire joint information center at late morning Friday estimated that more than 12,000 properties were under mandatory evacuation orders, affecting 30,500 people. It said more than 9,000 properties were under warning for potential evacuation, affecting 23,000 people.

Oscar Funez, 39, his wife, Patricia, 42, and their son, Augustin, 4, were watching the fire on television Thursday night when they noticed other tenants leaving their Santa Barbara apartment building. They packed a suitcase and fled, too.

"It's our fourth fire in Santa Barbara. We know we have to have everything—paperwork, clothes, everything—ready to go," Oscar Funez said.

The family spent the night on cots in a recreation center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Authorities said more than 800 people were in evacuation shelters.

"Right now, if you're not evacuated in the Santa Barbara area, you are sheltering evacuees," DiMizio said.

More than 2,300 firefighters, aided by 14 air tankers and 15 helicopters, were fighting the blaze. Containment was estimated at 10 percent and the cause was under investigation.

Santa Barbara and adjacent communities, pinched between the coast on the south and the rugged mountains on the north, are subject to fierce local winds known as "sundowners" that sweep down from the slopes over this coastal city of about 90,000. In November, a wind-driven fire burned 200 houses in the area.

Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Tom Franklin predicted Friday would be a copy of Thursday's fire conditions, including low humidity and winds gusting to 50 mph or more.

Highs could hover around 100 degrees. A National Weather Service "red flag" forecast for extreme fire conditions continued.

The fire was burning along steep slopes in brush that is unusually dry so early in the fire season, Franklin said.

When the wind isn't blowing, the fire is being driven by terrain, authorities said.

Officials requested a DC-10 jumbo jet tanker capable of carrying much larger loads of retardant or water than helicopters or other aircraft, said assistant incident commander Kelley Gouette of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Officials said 11 firefighters had been injured to date, including three who were burned in a firestorm Wednesday.

They were reported in good condition at a Los Angeles burn center, but two will need skin grafts and surgery. Other injuries ranged from smoke inhalation to sprained ankles.

Let's pray that loss of the innocent victims will be paid soon. Government should improve the precautions in city design.

Oil below session highs, economic data positive

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil retreated from session highs below $58 a barrel on Friday, but stayed within sight of six month highs after positive data on the U.S. economy.

U.S. crude was up 58 cents to $57.29 a barrel by 1454 GMT (10:54 a.m. EDT). It touched a six-month high of $58.57 on Thursday. Brent crude was up 48 cents at $56.95.

"We believe that crude prices are being driven higher by a combination of rising expectations for a faster economic recovery, increased fund flows into commodities and higher utilization at U.S. refineries," said Adam Sieminski at Deutsche Bank in a research note.

The pace of job losses slowed in April in the United States, according to government data, providing further evidence to support the view that the economic climate might be improving.

Wall Street opened higher after the results of stress tests on U.S. banks showed no unexpected weaknesses.

Oil has gained more than 70 percent from a low of $33.55 in February, rallying with equity markets on hopes of economic recovery and also in response to oil supply cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Macro-economic data on major economies has begun to look less gloomy.

U.S. retailers on Thursday posted better-than-expected monthly sales results for a second straight month in April.

German exports posted their first rise in 6 months in March, according to the country's Federal Statistics Office on Friday.

"The risk for investors is that some markets have got ahead of themselves and could be vulnerable should the flow of positive economic data start to deteriorate," Barclays Capital said in a research note.

The bank noted that data on oil demand remains mixed and the market's inventory overhang is still huge.

"If the recent bout of positive sentiment subsides, prices might well go through a phase of consolidation in the mid-50s," it said.

The god smiles.

What a feeling: how emotions may yet save the economy

An influential Democrat who was also one of the world’s top-ten, highest-paid hedge fund managers last year thinks he knows which book is at the top of the White House reading list this spring: Animal Spirits, the powerful new blast of behavioural economics from Nobel prize-winner George Akerlof and Yale economist Robert Shiller.

Judging by the upbeat economic message we have been hearing from the White House, the Treasury and even the Federal Reserve over the past six weeks, that is a shrewd guess. The authors argue that “we will never really understand important economic events unless we confront the fact that their causes are largely mental in nature”. Our “ideas and feelings” about the economy are not purely a rational reaction to data and experience; they themselves are an important driver of economic growth – and decline.

Since mid-March President Barack Obama and his team have mounted a sophisticated effort to brighten those “ideas and feelings”, reassuring the nation with “glimmers of hope across the economy” and the assertion that “we’re starting to see progress”. The much bally-hooed stress tests – whose comprehensively leaked results were fully unveiled after the markets closed on Thursday – are both an important example of this confidence-building campaign and its toughest challenge.

The sunnier rhetoric of recent weeks marked a sharp shift both from the bleak mood of the fin de regime administration of George W. Bush and from the first weeks of the Obama White House. The outgoing president’s political capital was so low in his final months in office that the mere fact of his public appearances seemed to have a depressing effect on the markets. His secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, enjoyed greater confidence, but he needed to convince lawmakers the situation was dire enough to merit his $700bn Tarp programme.

Likewise, Mr Obama needed the nation to be worried enough about the economy to pass his nearly $800bn stimulus plan. And too much good cheer in the first days of his administration could have wasted one of his most powerful trump cards – the country’s belief that this recession is owned by president number 43, not number 44.

But once the stimulus bill was passed, the White House calculated that, as Mr Obama told the Financial Times, lawmakers and US voters had reached their limits. No new money to rev up the economy or revive the banks would be forthcoming until the president and his team could demonstrate concrete results from the first instalment.

Since then Americans have been hearing a decidedly more optimistic vibe from Washington. It has seemed to work. A Google search for the term “economic recovery” turned up 6,991 references to the term in January and 7,831 in February. In the first week of May the phrase occurred 24,443 times.

More traditional yardsticks show the same result. According to a recent ABC/Washington Post poll, Americans’ belief that their country is heading in the right direction has soared from 19 per cent, just before Mr Obama’s inauguration, to 50 per cent, the highest in six years. In what could be a textbook example of behavioural economics, the stock market has followed the same curve, recovering from what rightwing commentators were calling “the Obama bear market” at the beginning of the year to a healthy rally.

Thursday night’s verdict on banks’ balance sheets will also be a stress test of the administration’s experiment in behavioural economics.

Washington has clearly learned the lesson of one of its rare, early failures. In contrast with the disastrous media management of Treasury secretary Tim Geithner’s maiden economic speech, the results of the stress tests have been so thoroughly previewed that by Thursday financial pundits and punters seemed almost bored with the exercise. Ennui is not the same thing as conviction – one of America’s biggest money managers on Thursday described the exercise to me as “the feather tests” and it is hard to find anyone who doesn’t work for the government, or one of the banks, who believes the tests have been rigorous.

But, like Washington, Wall Street really does want the scheme to work and the markets to recover. Over the next few weeks the administration will be hoping those feelings are powerful enough to drive the economic data.

The economy is being paid by the damned debts instead of credits. The only way out is to eliminate the over-debts faster.

Health Care Professionals Offer Free Consultations for National Stroke Awareness Month

For the 22nd consecutive year, May 2009 has been designated Stroke Awareness Month. During this thirty-one day period, health care professionals and health promotion experts across the country will join forces to increase public awareness about both the causes and cures for our modern stroke epidemic. Sponsored by The National Stroke Association, a non-profit health education organization, Stroke Awareness Month is a national, cooperative effort to raise public awareness about the full continuum of stroke by managing stroke risk factors, facilitating better understanding of stroke symptom recognition and response and improving the quality of life during stroke recovery for millions of stroke survivors in the United States.

"Even though we've learned a lot about strokes in the past twenty years," says Ann Marie Amicarelli, a hypnotherapist specializing in health related issues, "Stroke is the third leading cause of death in America. It causes many people to become disabled each year. Up to 80% of strokes can be prevented. Each one of us can prevent a stroke by being responsible for the lifestyle choices we make. There are many effective techniques available that could help millions of Americans stop suffering. For instance, the risk factor of smoking damages blood vessels, raises blood pressure and makes the smoker's heart work very hard. Research has shown that smoking doubles the risk of stroke. Women need to be extremely careful. If a woman smokes, has a history of migraines, and takes birth control pills, her stroke risk is increased as much as 34 times. If you stop smoking today, you can significantly reduce your risk of stroke. Quitting smoking is an important step to living a longer, healthier life."

As part of an effort by leading health care organizations across the country to disseminate helpful educational materials and other information about strokes during the month of May, Amicarelli is offering free Stroke Education consultations and group workshops at her Smoking Cessation program locations. Amicarelli is an affiliate of Healthy Life Centers, a national network of providers that specialize in helping smokers that want to quit the habit. She offers free nationwide smoking cessation referrals by visiting Healthy Life Centers Referral Site.

For additional information on stroke prevention and smoking cessation, contact Ann Marie Amicarelli or visit The Smoking Cessation Program at the Marriage Center

Amicarelli is a certified hypnotherapist and relationship counselor with over 17 years of experience in helping individuals and families to improve their health and reach their full potential. She specializes in individual and corporate consultations for health and wellness issues.

Smoking is a very bad habit that not only harms the smokers but also harms others' health. All is driven by the damned money. The entire world is suffering from people's bad habits.

Obama to hold town hall meeting on credit cards

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will hold a town hall meeting next week in New Mexico to promote congressional efforts to reform credit card practices, the White House said on Friday.

Banks such as Bank of America Corp (BAC.N)>, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N) face a new set of rules issued by the Federal Reserve last year aimed at reining in abusive credit card practices.

The rules are to be implemented by July 2010, a date some lawmakers and consumer groups complain is too far away to help struggling consumers.

U.S. lawmakers are trying to codify those rules in legislation and send it to Obama this month to sign into law. Legislative efforts are aimed at stopping credit card companies from imposing certain late fees, restricting retroactive rate increases, as well as other questionable billing practices and marketing to minors.

The Senate is expected to begin debating on Monday on legislation. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved its own legislation last month.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday that Obama will focus on legislation and urge lawmakers to "get something done on an issue of tremendous importance to middle class families.

"For many people credit cards provide an opportunity to finance purchases," Gibbs said. "But we think there's a more equitable way to do that and I think that those reforms are on their way through Congress."

In 2007, Americans used an estimated 694.4 million credit cards with Visa Inc (V.N), MasterCard Inc (MA.N), American Express Co (AXP.N) and Discover Financial Services (DFS.N) logos, according to industry data.

The American Bankers Association trade group, which represents many of the biggest credit card issuers, have warned that legislation could reduce the amount of credit available and make it more expensive for card users going forward.

"We're in a difficult lending environment," Ken Clayton, the ABA's senior vice president for card policy, said during a conference call with reporters.

Are you in difficulty to borrow money since this year?

Job losses slow, but is it from government hiring?

WASHINGTON — Friday's better-than-expected employment report from the Labor Department gave another sign that the U.S. economy may be bottoming out, but the jump in the unemployment rate is a reminder for millions of Americans that the outlook for jobs will remain bleak for some time.

The pace of job losses eased in April, with employers shedding 539,000 jobs, bringing the total jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007 to more than 5.7 million. April's employment numbers were better than expected by most mainstream economic forecasters, who'd projected upward of 620,000 lost jobs.

Even as those numbers were seen as trending positive, they were offset by the uptick of the unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, the highest level since 1983, from 8.5 percent in March.

"The job market is bad, but as bad as expected, and headed in the right direction. Monthly job losses averaged 700,000 in the first quarter and appear on track to lose (an average of) 500,000 in the second quarter," said Mark Zandi, the chief economist for forecaster Moody's Economy.com. "There will be another 2.5 million in job losses and unemployment will peak at 10 percent by this time next year."

April's net job loss total actually was somewhat misleading: Private-sector employment actually fell by 611,000 jobs, but government hiring, which added 66,000 jobs, mostly for the upcoming census, offset some of them.

Although April's job numbers reflect a welcome slowing of the downturn, a deeper look suggests that it will be a long, hard climb back to full employment. The number of long-term unemployed — those out of work for 27 weeks or longer — continues to rise alarmingly.

Some 498,000 more Americans moved into the ranks of the long-term unemployed in April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, bringing the total to 3.7 million. Of that large pool, some 2.4 million joined those ranks since the recession began in December 2007.

"It really points to the nation's economic challenge, this big idled work force and most people have been out of work for a very long time," said Andrew Stettner, the deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group that promotes expanded unemployment benefits. "It means they really haven't been able to find anything. For many people it's a mismatch between skills and (available) jobs. It's going to take a really major approach to get these workers back to work."

The long-term jobless now are more than 27 percent of all the unemployed, the highest ever since records began in 1948, Stettner said.

In response, President Barack Obama announced a plan Friday to help the unemployed enter college for retraining without losing unemployment benefits, which usually happens when they enter school. This plan will depend on state participation. Obama said he also wants colleges to consider using their federal Pell Grants to help unemployed workers retool for the new economy.

"The idea here is to fundamentally change our approach to unemployment in this country, so that it's no longer just a time to look for a new job, but to prepare yourself for a better job," Obama said, adding that a new Web site, www.opportunity.gov, would be a resource for the unemployed to find out what options are available to them.

Obama tapped the vice president's wife, Jill Biden, a longtime community college teacher who has a doctorate in education, to lead a national publicity campaign about community colleges. The president also said he was asking every American to commit to at least one year of higher education or job training. "Every American will need to get more than a high-school diploma," he said.

Obama said that those without college degrees are now more than twice as likely as degree-holders to be unemployed, and that "so many of the Americans who have lost their jobs can't find new ones because they simply don't have the skills and training they need for the jobs they want."

Unstated but implied in the Obama initiative is the fact that the U.S. economy will look much different once it emerges from this recession. There will be fewer construction jobs and far fewer financial sector jobs, and numerous other shifts. The economy is always in a state of transition to something new, and more so after a deep downturn such as the one gripping the nation now.

On another economic front, the Commerce Department reported Friday that wholesalers reduced inventories by another 1.6 percent in March, the seventh straight month that they've done so. That's a drag on growth but carries a silver lining: The more inventories are reduced, the closer the nation comes to a rebound in production as retailers and manufacturers restock to meet new consumer demand.

"At some point once we clear out excess inventory and sales pick up, and employment will have to pick up," said Kim Whelan, an economic analyst for Wachovia. "It will hopefully start adding to GDP slowly going forward," she said.

In addition to government, health care was another rare sector that added jobs, up 17,000.

Employment in manufacturing fell by 149,000 jobs in April, while construction companies shed another 110,000 jobs. The professional and services industry saw employment fall by 122,000 last month, and retailers cut 47,000 positions. Transportation and warehousing fell by 38,000.

"The hiring of census workers is obscuring a continued steep decline in private-sector jobs. I think we have to start facing up to the fact we're headed for an unemployment rate above 10 percent that will stay high for quite a while," said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Some Wall Street analysts agreed.

"Taking into account the downward revisions to the prior months and the sharp increase in government employment . . . this is a weaker-than-expected report," wrote John Ryding and Conrad DeQuadros, partners in the research firm RDQ Economics, in a research note. "The employment data do not yet corroborate the extent of the diminishment of the intensity of the recession suggested by other economic indicators."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised job losses reported in February downward by 30,000, while losses in March were revised upward by 36,000.

Still, taken together with rising consumer confidence, manufacturing indexes getting close to levels seen during economic expansion and even a slight rise in construction, Friday's jobs report gives support to analysts who see the glass as half full.

"Large pools of 'pent up demand' are forming and will soon begin to be transformed into actual spending. First quarter (growth) estimates indicate that consumer spending is coming back," William Dunkelberg, the chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, said in a survey of small businesses released Friday. "Growth could be positive in the third quarter and 4 percent higher in the fourth (compared with the third quarter). It would appear that the reduction in employment . . . has gone too far, raising the possibility of a faster-than-expected recovery in employment later this year."

(Margaret Talev contributed to this article.)

The winner of this financial crisis has become more and more obviously the governments. But the better growth chances will lie in the survived companies.

Evidence piling up that worst of recession is over

Evidence growing that worst of recession over, but recovery will be slow as unemployment grows

• Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
• On Friday May 8, 2009, 5:12 pm EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Evidence is piling up that the worst part of the recession has ended. But that doesn't mean the pain is over.

A better-than-expected unemployment report Friday -- job losses declined to the lowest level in six months -- capped a week of encouraging news, including firmer home sales, a revival in consumer spending and fresh optimism about the biggest U.S. banks.

The economy remains vulnerable to further shocks, and 13.7 million people are unemployed. The jobless rate rose to 8.9 percent in the new report and still seems headed for a stinging 10 percent.

Yet confidence is building that the recession, the longest since the Great Depression, will end this summer or fall, setting the stage for a slow recovery.

Pointing to recent improvements, President Barack Obama said Friday "the gears of our economic engine do seem to be slowly turning once again."

By some measures, the darkest months have passed. The plunges in economic activity and rising waves of layoffs, seen from the end of 2008 through the start of this year, seem to have subsided.

"The winds are still howling, but I think we can see the sunlight on the distant horizon," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "Clearly, the job losses are moderating."

Wall Street investors could see the sunlight, too. The Dow Jones industrials gained nearly 165 points and finished 4.4 percent higher for the week. It was the eighth gain for the index in nine weeks.

The economy probably is still shrinking in the current quarter but only at about half the pace -- around 3 percent -- that it had in the prior six months, the worst in 50 years. Businesses are expected to be cutting back far less on things like home building, commercial construction, equipment and software. And factories could then boost production to replenish razor-thin stockpiles of goods.

Many believe the economy could start growing again by summer or, more likely, by the final quarter of this year, as the impact of tax cuts and increased government spending on big public works projects contained in Obama's $787 billion stimulus package takes hold.

Job losses are expected to continue through the rest of the year, but are likely to be smaller in number.

Losses averaged 700,000 a month in the first quarter but dropped to 539,000 in April, according to Friday's Labor Department report. They should average around 500,000 in the current quarter and taper off to 250,000 a month in the final quarter of the year, according to some projections.

That's probably cold comfort to Tara Barrone, 28, of McLean, Va., who was checking out job prospects at the Secret Service at a career fair Friday.

"Government jobs are popular because of the sense of stability," she said. "I know I'm looking for a sense of security and permanency after being laid off twice in the last year." The lines at the Secret Service booth were much longer than at other recruiters.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke earlier this week gave his most optimistic prediction yet about the end of the recession. He said he expects the economy to start growing again this year -- though the comeback could be weak and more jobs will disappear even after a recovery takes hold.

A burst of hiring by the federal government to prepare for the 2010 Census played a big role in the April improvement. Smaller payrolls cuts at construction companies, factories, retailers and financial services also factored in.

The unemployment rate, however, climbed to 8.9 percent, the highest since late 1983. It will probably keep rising the rest of the year, even if monthly job losses continue to slow. Companies won't spring into hiring mode until they feel confident that an economic recovery is firmly rooted.

The Fed says unemployment will remain elevated into 2011. Economists say the job market may not get back to normal -- meaning a 5 percent unemployment rate -- until 2013.

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate in April would have been 15.8 percent, the highest in records dating back to 1994. The total number of unemployed now stands at 13.7 million.

Still, a string of reports out this week suggested the recession is finally starting to lose its bite and the economy is stabilizing.

-- The number of newly laid-off workers filing applications for jobless benefits plunged to the lowest level in 14 weeks.

-- Sales at many retailers fared better in April, with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. leading the way.

-- Construction spending rose in March, the first increase after five straight months of declines. An index of pending home sales also ticked up.

-- The U.S. services sector contracted in April at a slower pace than the prior month.

-- Government exams of the nation's biggest banks helped lift a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over the economy.

Those "stress test" results -- a key administration effort to boost confidence in the financial system -- showed nine of the 19 biggest banks have enough capital to withstand a deeper recession. Ten must raise a total of $75 billion in new capital to withstand possible future losses.

Taken altogether, the recent news provides "very clear signs that we are making progress toward reaching a bottom, which is the first step you need to accomplish before you can achieve a turnaround," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. "A recovery is now in sight."

However, the housing, credit and financial crises -- the worst since the 1930s -- have racked up a lot of damage, and it could take years to get back to normal.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 5.7 million jobs. The 741,000 lost in January were the most since the fall of 1949.

Job cuts have continued this week. Steelmaker Severstal International said it's idling plants in West Virginia and Ohio, resulting in 3,100 layoffs. Microsoft Corp. said it was starting thousands of the 5,000 job cuts it announced earlier this year and left the door open to even more.

As the recession eats into sales and profits, companies have turned to other cost-cutting measures, too. Those including holding down workers' hours and freezing or cutting pay.

The average work week in April stayed at 33.2 hours, matching the record low set in March. And workers' wages barely budged, meaning consumers will probably stay somewhat cautious in the months ahead. Average hourly earnings nudged up to $18.51, a 0.1 percent rise.

Slower job losses across a number of industries -- along with 66,000 more federal jobs -- helped to temper the overall payroll reductions in April. The pickup in federal employment was mainly due to the hiring of 63,000 temporary Census workers.

By fall, the Census Bureau expects to have hired 1.4 million workers. Stephen L. Buckner, a Census Bureau spokesman, said turnover and finding qualified applicants haven't been a problem, "with the economy the way that it is."

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, wouldn't speculate on the future pace of layoffs but warned that some of the jobs lost "may not come back." She urged jobseekers to get training and education to be contenders for work in growing industries, such as health care, which added nearly 17,000 jobs in April.

Obama asked states and colleges to help jobless people pursue education and training without losing their unemployment benefits. States generally require people who collect unemployment to be actively looking for work, which can make it difficult to sign up for school or job training. Under Obama's plan, going to school would satisfy the requirement that they were seeking new employment.

"We're still in the midst of a recession that was years in the making and will be months or even years in the unmaking," Obama said. But he added: "Step by step, we are making progress."

AP Photojournalist Jacquelyn Martin in Washington and Frank Bass in East Dover, Vt., contributed to this report.

Let's expect Obama will make this world better, give more jobs to people, make money flow faster and persuade more people to buy stocks, while everybody knows that the quickest way is to push down real estate prices to the bottom quickly.