The House Republican leadership upped the ante Thursday in the ongoing debate over the size and scope of the federal budget, unveiling a proposal to cut spending by $375 billion over the next five years. The bulk of the GOP's proposed savings would come from capping nondefense discretionary spending at the level of inflation. Among other things, the GOP proposal would also create a government spending review commission and eliminate retirement payments for federal workers who retire before the age ...

Commercial real estate may soon bulldoze the green shoots. A coming wave of defaults on loans to developers of condominiums, office buildings and malls could do significant damage to the already deflating economy. That was the overwhelming concern expressed at a public hearing of the Congressional Oversight Panel on Thursday that focused on corporate and commercial real estate lending. The COP was set up last fall as part of legislation that gave the Treasury Department ...

Rafael Nadal breezed into the last 32 of the French Open with a straight sets 6-1 6-4 6-2 win over Teimuraz Gabashvili of Russia on Wednesday. It was a routine victory for the top-seeded Spaniard who was securing his 30th straight win at Roland Garros and is bidding for a record fifth straight French Open crown. Nadal was only troubled in the first game of the match on the Suzanne Lenglen show court, saving three break points title his fifth ...

Correction appended: July 15, 2008 What exactly is going awry in the brains of people who have autism The answer is very slowly coming into focus. A paper published in the current issue of Science by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and members of the Boston-based Autism Consortium identifies five new autism-related gene defects. Already, more than a dozen genetic defects have been found to be associated with autism spectrum disorders, which affect about 1 in 150 children, according ...

Financial stocks — banks, brokers, asset managers — led the stock market down earlier this year, and almost left the stage as many shares sank into single digits. In recent weeks, however, the group has reversed course, rallying strongly, and even led the market to a robust gain on Monday, with the Dow rising 235 points. So is this the sign of a true financial-stock recovery, or a seductive bear trap? TIME contributing editor John Curran caught up with ...

Ten years ago, Facebook didn't exist. Ten years before that, we didn't have the Web. So who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now? Though unemployment is at a 25‑year high, work will eventually return. But it won't look the same. No one is going to pay you just to show up. We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with ...

Last week, while the financial world was obsessing over stress tests for fragile banks, the environmental and agricultural worlds were watching the results of the Obama Administration's stress tests for renewable fuels. An outgrowth of the 2007 energy bill, the tests were supposed to document whether corn ethanol and other biofuels designed to replace fossil fuels would accelerate or alleviate global warming overall. But like the much-criticized bank checkups, these stress tests don't seem particularly stressful. The draft conclusions announced ...

India's giant Tata conglomerate, whose subsidiary Tata Motors just successfully launched the $2,000 Nano, the world's cheapest car, is ready for an encore: ultra-cheap homes. Tata Housing Development, the real estate arm of the giant Tata group, is poised to start building apartment-style homes priced from $7,800 to $13,400 in a township being planned at Bhoisar, an industrial suburb located 31 miles north of Mumbai. Like the Nano, which was designed to bring some middle-class comforts to the ...

Toyota reported a first-ever annual net loss of $4.4 billion on Friday, the latest automobile maker to be battered by the credit crisis. Net revenue for the fiscal year ending March 31 was down nearly 22 percent, with total sales of 7.6 million vehicles -- 1.3 million fewer than the previous year. The company dividend will be reduced to 100 yen per share, down from 140 yen per share last year The appreciation of the yen against major currencies, rise ...

The White House will unveil reforms to the nation's international tax code on Monday intended to close loopholes for overseas tax havens and end incentives for creating jobs overseas. Senior administration officials briefed reporters Sunday evening in a conference call ahead of the announcement that will be made by President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The two components of the president's plan include reforms that ensure the tax code does not handicap companies seeking to create jobs at home, ...