Financial life in a big town

A friend of mine recently told me about a break- in at her home. The front door was smashed off the frame and all her jewellery was stolen. The loss of heirloom pieces that had belonged to her mother was devastating. As a result, she installed an expensive burglar alarm system including cameras at both the front and the back of the house. While Statistics Canada reports that alarm systems and motion detectors have led to a steady reduction in home break-ins in recent years, they may not deter a determined thief. They should be combined with other measures that help keep burglars from finding your home an attractive target. Here are some things you can do at little or no cost: 1.    Take your name off your mailbox: This will prevent thieves from calling 411 to get your phone number. Many thieves will call a house they are planning to rob first to see if you are home. 2.    Never leave a note on the door: If you are going out and expect a delivery, resist the temptation to leave a note on the door asking the post office to leave the package with your neighbour. 3.    Stop mail or newspapers: Before you go on vacation, stop mail and newspapers. Even if you leave town for a weekend, have a neighbour pick up these items plus unsolicited fliers. 4.    Get a yappy dog: Dogs are not free, but if you have one that barks when people come to the door, pay attention. He may know something you do not. Even the most affectionate puppy like mine can scare away bad guys. 5.    Prune trees or shrubs: If you have verdant greenery close to the house, tame it regularly so burglars do not have a place to hide. 6.    Hide you spare key carefully: A key left under the door mat, on the ledge over the door or under a flower pot is an “open door” invitation to a dishonest person. Be more creative, or leave it with a neighbour. 7.    Doors and windows: Always lock doors and windows and change the locks if you move into a new home or lose the key. Combination locks are becoming more popular because it is easier to change the code than replacing the whole lock. Put security bars on basement windows and secure sliding doors with a stick or a metal bar. 8.    Don’t leave valuables in the open: If a thief can see valuables like art, electronics, jewellery or silver through a door or window, you could become a target. Consider a bolted down, fireproof safe. 9.    Make the house look lived in: Have the grass cut and the driveway shovelled when you are away. Keep a car in the driveway. Use timers on lights, radios and TVs. Don’t put a message on your voice mail announcing your absence. 10.    Put neighbours on alert: Let your neighbours know how long you will be away and if someone is coming to feed the cat. Make sure they have a way to contact you in case they see something strange happening around your home. 11.    Don’t widely advertise your plans: Never mention you are going to be away to strangers or tweet your plans to all of your 10,000 followers. 12.     Hire a house-sitter: Getting a friend to house-sit while you are away is a great way to keep your house safe from burglars. And if you have pets that need care, in-house care for them could be an added bonus. Desperate, dishonest people are hard to deter. But they may also take the path of least resistance. With a little preparation, you may be able to prevent that path from leading to your front door. Also see: How to protect your password from hackers and 7 ways to protect your credit cards on vacation.

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The New York City subway is to resume some services Monday.

The city’s public transit system, the country’s largest, has been down because of the threat of the approaching Hurricane Irene. Subways, trains and buses are slowly coming back on after inspectors look for any damage.

Officials said commuters should expect long lines and long waits.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Many travelers heading to and from the East Coast still face days of delays even as airlines start flying again Monday at major airports that closed for Tropical Storm Irene.

More than 11,000 flights were canceled nationwide over the weekend, and hundreds more will be scrubbed Monday morning, a flight-tracking service said.

There’s no easy way to squeeze all those displaced passengers onto scheduled flights, especially if airports around New York _ the nation’s busiest airspace _ encounter delays reopening Monday. And ground transport alternatives remain limited, with bus and train service disrupted into Monday as well along the East Coast.

Airlines won’t say how many passengers have been grounded since Irene came ashore in North Carolina on Saturday.

FlightAware, which tracks cancelations, put the total around 650,000, noting that many of the 11,800-plus flights canceled so far were on regional airlines that use small planes. Some travel experts suggested much larger numbers _ 1 million or more.

Finding open seats will be especially difficult this week because it’s the last gasp of the summer vacation season.

“We’re coming into the Labor Day holiday weekend, so a lot of those flights are already full,” said Todd Lehmacher, a spokesman for US Airways.

Airlines resumed flights Sunday at airports around Washington, Philadelphia and Richmond, Va. But the longer closure of the New York area’s Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J., airports means travel delays will continue rippling across the country.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the three airports, said late Sunday that Kennedy and Newark would open to arriving flights at 6 a.m. Monday, with departures beginning at noon. LaGuardia was to reopen at 7 a.m.

New York City officials said they weren’t sure Sunday evening when mass transit would be fully restored after shutting down Saturday, though some local bus service has resumed. The subways remained closed, and downed trees and high water still covered commuter train tracks across the region. Airline officials said those disruptions would affect their ability to get back into gear.

“It’s really dependent upon mass transit and the airport being ready to support the start-up,” JetBlue CEO Dave Barger told NBC.

Long-distance bus and train companies also saw lingering effects from Irene, which was downgraded early Sunday from a hurricane to a tropical storm as high winds ebbed.

Greyhound scrubbed bus travel between Richmond, Va., and Boston all weekend. A spokeswoman said buses would begin to roll north out of Richmond Monday morning and the company hoped to be running in New York by midday.

Amtrak said trains from New York to Florida will be canceled Monday, as will the car train between Lorton, Va., and Sanford, Fla. Some lines in North Carolina and Florida will be open.

Amtrak said in a statement Sunday evening that many routes south of Philadelphia will resume operation, while it canceled many trains between New York and points north. The railroad said separately that its inspections are revealing problems with wiring and signals, as well as trees blocking the tracks. Passengers with paid tickets on canceled trains can rebook or receive refunds by calling 800-872-7245 or visiting Amtrak.com.

But United, Continental, Delta, American, JetBlue, Southwest, AirTran and US Airways canceled hundreds of Monday-morning flights to the New York and Boston area.

Airlines said passengers should call ahead and make sure they have a confirmed seat before going to the airport, but the 670 flights that FlightAware said airlines had canceled for Monday is a small share of the nation’s daily flights.

Airlines also moved several hundred planes out of the storm’s path to avoid damage, which will further slow the return to normal service.

When blizzards hit the East Coast in December and February, it took some passengers days to get home. That could happen again.

Sara Hesselsweet of Norwalk, Conn., and her family were to fly home Sunday from vacation at Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. After their flight was canceled, American Airlines told her it couldn’t find seats for her, her husband and 2-year-old son until next Saturday.

So the family decided to fly from Reno, Nev., to Dallas and on to Chicago, where they would rent a car to drive back to Connecticut.

“We checked Philadelphia, D.C., Boston, the Carolinas _ we couldn’t get a flight anywhere,” said Hesselsweet, sitting amid a pile of carry-on bags in the Reno airport.

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Thousands of extra police officers were stationed on Britain’s streets Friday, as the country faced its first weekend since riots raged through suburbs and town centers, leaving a scarred landscape of broken glass and torched buildings.

Police in London, which saw the worst violence, have charged almost 700 people with violence, disorder and looting, and the city’s mayor said Londoners wanted to see tough sentences handed out to the guilty. Hundreds of stores were looted, buildings were set ablaze and five people died amid the mayhem that broke out Saturday in London and spread over four nights across England.

Police, meanwhile, hit back against claims they were too soft in their initial response to the disorder.

Prime Minister David Cameron said officers had been overwhelmed at first, outmaneuvered by mobile gangs of rioters. He said “far too few police were deployed onto the streets. And the tactics they were using weren’t working.”

That changed Tuesday, when 16,000 officers were out on London’s streets _ almost three times the number of the night before. Cameron said the extra officers will remain on patrol through the weekend.

Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, acknowledged that police had faced “an unprecedented situation, unique circumstances” _ but said it was police themselves, rather than “political interference,” that got the situation under control.

“The more robust policing tactics you saw were not a function of political interference,” he told the BBC. “They were a function of the numbers being available to allow the chief constables to change their tactics.”

Cameron vowed “swift justice” for perpetrators, and courts were struggling to cope with a flood of defendants.

Across the country, more than 1,700 people have been arrested. Courts in London, Birmingham and Manchester have stayed open around the clock since Wednesday to deal with hundreds of alleged offenders.

The alleged looters and vandals included an 11-year-old boy, a teenage ballerina, a university English student from a prosperous commuter town, and Natasha Reid, a 24-year-old university graduate who admitted stealing a TV from a looted electronics store. Her lawyer said she had turned herself in because she could not sleep for guilt. A judge told her she would probably go to jail when she is sentenced later.

Another was Chelsea Ives, an 18-year-old chosen as a volunteer ambassador for next year’s Olympic Games. She is accused of burglary, violent disorder and throwing bricks at a police car during riots in north London on Sunday.

Newspapers reported that Ives was charged after her parents saw her rioting on TV and turned her in. She was ordered detained until a court appearance on Wednesday.

Mayor Boris Johnson said it was fitting that “significant sentences” were being handed down.

“That is, frankly, what Londoners want to see,” he said.

Although the rioters came from all Britain’s ethnic communities, the violence stirred fears of heightened racial tensions _ especially in Birmingham, where three South Asian men were killed Tuesday when they were hit by a car, reportedly driven by black youths.

Hours later Tariq Jahan, whose 21-year-old son Haroon was killed, urged calm guaranteed approval cash advance loans. So far, he has been heeded.

“This is not a race issue,” he said. “The family has received messages of sympathy and support from all parts of the community _ all races, all faiths and backgrounds.”

Home Secretary Theresa May said she was banning a march planned for Saturday by the far-right English Defense League in the central England town of Telford amid fears of violence.

The violence was triggered by fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was gunned down in north London’s Tottenham area on Aug. 4 under disputed circumstances. A protest demanding justice on Saturday devolved into a riot, which spread to other parts of London and beyond.

Britain’s police watchdog apologized Friday for “inadvertently” giving the impression immediately after the shooting that Duggan had fired at officers. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said, “We may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged.”

A gun was found in the car Duggan was traveling in, but ballistic tests showed that a bullet found lodged in an officer’s radio was police issue.

Britain’s Parliament was called back from its summer break for an emergency debate on the riots Thursday, with Cameron promising authorities would get strong powers to stop street mayhem from erupting again.

He said authorities were considering new powers, including allowing police to order thugs to remove masks or hoods, evicting troublemakers from subsidized housing and temporarily disabling cell phone instant messaging services.

He told lawmakers that he would look to cities like Boston for inspiration, and mentioned former Los Angeles, New York and Boston Police Chief William Bratton as a person who could help offer advice.

Bratton said he received a phone call Friday from Cameron asking him whether he would consider becoming a consultant for British police. He said he thanked Cameron for the opportunity and will continue speaking with British officials to formalize an agreement.

“This is a prime minister who has a clear idea of what he wants to do,” Bratton told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “He sees this crisis as a way to bring change. The police force there can be a catalyst for that. I’m very optimistic.”

Cameron also said the government, police and intelligence services were looking at whether there should be limits on the use of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook or services like BlackBerry Messenger to spread disorder.

BlackBerry’s simple and largely cost free messaging service was used by rioters to coordinate their activities, Cameron’s office said. An 18-year-old woman was charged Friday with using BlackBerry messaging to encourage others to take part in violence. Several others have been charged with inciting violence on Facebook and Twitter.

The government said it planned to hold talks with police chiefs, Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd.

But any move to disable the services temporarily is likely to be strongly opposed by civil libertarians.

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The Toronto stock market headed sharply higher following a bruising series of losses as traders look to an afternoon announcement by the U.S. Federal Reserve for direction.

The S&P/TSX composite index gained 120.57 points to 11,791.53.

The Canadian dollar was down 0.2 of a cent to 100.72 cents US after earlier moving below parity, going as low as 99.95 cents US.

The Fed is holding its regularly scheduled meeting on interest rates and while the central bank won’t be moving on rates, investors will be looking for any hint about plans for any further stimulus measures to soften the blow of a slowing economy.

The main Toronto index has fallen almost 14 per cent just since July 22, reflecting a lack of confidence that political leaders and central bankers can manage Europe’s debt crisis and mounting expectations of the U.S. going back into recession.

A downgrade of U.S. government debt by Standard and Poor

For weeks this spring, a coalition of Missouri power companies and consumer groups worked to hammer out compromise legislation that would pave the way for a second nuclear plant in Callaway County.

Though the bill never made it to a vote in the session’s final hours, it raised hopes that, after years of planning and debate, the bill could move forward. The compromise, which some hoped could be ratified in a special session, would allow Ameren Missouri to charge customers up to $45 million for an early site permit in exchange for certain consumer protections.

But two months later, the supposed compromise has apparently evaporated.

“I think we are stuck,” said Sen. Brad Lager, R-Savannah, who sponsored the legislation that ultimately died online payday loan lenders. “I think it will take time and term limits to potentially bring the change needed to break through the gridlock.”

The impasse seemingly has little to do with nuclear power or the $45 million that Ameren wants to pursue a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The main obstacle, rather, is a separate proposal to overhaul the state’s renewable energy mandate, which legislators combined with the nuclear permit issue as the session wound down.

The proposed measure would have reduced the amount of clean energy that utilities are required to add and capped the rate impact for industrial power users at $100,000

Libya on Thursday barred Italy from future participation in its oil sector because of Rome’s role in the NATO airstrikes on the country, a move that raised serious questions about investments by Italian oil giant ENI SpA in the OPEC member state.

But the North African nation’s prime minister left the door open for other alliance nations to re-evaluate their roles in the strikes or risk facing the same fate.

“The Italian government needs to totally forget about Libyan oil and every agreement we signed in the past,” Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi told reporters in the Libyan capital. “ENI will have to look elsewhere for business.”

NATO has been striking forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and regime-linked military sites under a U.N. resolution aimed at protecting civilians. But the civil war pitting the Tripoli government against rebel fighters has hit a virtual stalemate, with neither side able to make significant advances over the past few weeks.

Libyan officials have warned nations involved in the NATO campaign that they could be barred from investing or participating in the country’s oil sector if they continue to side with the rebels. But Italy _ Libya’s former colonial master _ appears to be the first country to be formally barred.

“If (Italian premier) Silvio Berlusconi says he was pressured (by the coalition) to attack Libya, I was pressured by the Libyan people to cut ties with Italy,” said Al-Mahmoudi. “The countries that attacked us should not expect us to deal with them in the future, especially with regard to oil payday loans with no fax.”

Al-Mahmoudi said Italy was singled out because Rome had signed a friendship agreement with Tripoli in the past that barred any aggressive acts. Italy’s position is that the treaty is “suspended” as a result of the Libyan regime’s attacks on its own population.

Libya sits atop Africa’s largest proven reserves of conventional crude. But months of fighting between pro-Gadhafi forces and the rebels have essentially halted what was once about 1.6 million barrels per day of oil output _ a drop that helped propel crude prices well beyond $100 per barrel earlier in the year.

In the years since Libya re-emerged from more than a decade of international isolation for Tripoli’s support of terrorism, Western oil giants rushed to tap into the country’s reserves, with ENI among the most active in the country.

But the outbreak of fighting in February led to new international sanctions that targeted, among other things, Libya’s oil sector. International companies have largely pulled out their foreign workers and fields are idling well below their production capacity because of the exodus of workers.

“Those who come one step toward us, we will come two steps toward them,” he said. “But Italy is finished.”

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If you don’t have enough money saved for retirement, you’ve got a few ways to close the gap between what you have and what you need in your nest egg: Save more, invest more aggressively, and/or work longer.

Working longer is indeed an option, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s latest study; the only problem is that you may have to work much longer than you anticipated.

In fact, many Americans will have to keep on working into their 70s and 80s to afford retirement, according to the study, titled “The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy.”

What’s more, it’s even worse for low-income workers, according to Jack VanDerhei, one of the study’s co-authors. Those who earned (on average over the course of their careers) less than $11,700 per year, the lowest income quartile, would need to defer retirement till age 84 before 90 percent of those households would have just a 50 percent chance of affording retirement.

Those who earned between $11,700 and $31,200 will need to work till age 76 to have a 50 percent chance of covering basic expenses in retirement Payday Loan for Bad Credit. Those who earned between $31,200 and $72,500 will need to work to age 72 to have a 50 percent chance.

Finally, those who earned more than $72,500, those in the highest income quartile, catch a break: They get to stop working at age 65 to have a 50/50 chance of funding their retirement.

So what can be done to make sure you have enough? The sad truth is that not working is no longer an option and working past age 65 is fast becoming a fact of life, at least for those in the lowest three income quartiles.

One bright spot, according to John Nelson, co-author of “What Color is Your Parachute? For Retirement” is that working works: “For those in the lower half of the income spectrum, delaying retirement from 65 to 69 has a profound effect,” he said.

“It increases retirement income adequacy by 25 percent to 50 percent! That’s a powerful incentive.”

The reality about EBRI’s findings is that many Americans

Consumers spent less on cars in May, sending retail sales down for the first time in nearly a year.

The Commerce Department says retail sales dropped 0.2 percent last month. It was the first decline after 10 straight increases.

A cutback on incentives and supply disruptions stemming from the Japan crises pushed auto sales down 2.9 percent. It was the biggest setback for the industry in three years. When excluding autos, retail sales rose 0.3 percent.

The slump in retail sales was the latest report signaling that the economy lost momentum in May. Consumers are struggling to deal with high gasoline prices and a slowdown in hiring. While the surge in gas prices eased in May, pump prices are still significantly higher than a year ago.

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The rotating strikes have already hit Canada Post hard, with mail volumes falling by half to 20 million items a day from the usual 40 million.

Uganda’s economy may grow 6.6 percent in the 2011-12 fiscal year, boosted by spending on the country’s energy infrastructure, the Finance Ministry said.

Growth may accelerate from 6.4 percent in the current financial year that ends on June 30, the ministry said in a budget document handed to Bloomberg News today in Kampala, the capital. The East African nation’s government is scheduled to present its annual budget on June 8.

Uganda, East Africa’s third-biggest economy, is on the cusp of an oil boom with Tullow Oil Plc (TLW), the U.K.-based energy company, expected to start pumping crude and gas from the Lake Albert Basin in 2012. The country has an estimated 2.5 billion barrels of oil, with about 1 billion barrels in proven reserves, according to Tullow.

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