Your customized news for Fri, Feb 17, 2012

World leaders continue to wrangle over proposals to give the International Monetary Fund hundreds of billions of dollars to battle the European financial crisis, with a top U.S. official insisting Thursday that the money isn't needed.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday sought to bring debt collectors and credit bureaus under its purview, marking the first time the often controversial industries would be subject to federal supervision.

In recent years, many top universities have tried to guide their students into careers other than finance.

In 2008, Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, went so far as to give a speech to graduating seniors asking them to stand fast against Wall Street's "all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut." Tufts University is paying the student loans of graduates who go into public service.

Javier Garcia Martinez is vice-chair of the The Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies of The World Economic Forum, Professor at the University of Alicante (Spain) and founder of Rive Technology, an MIT spin-off commercializing nanomaterials for energy applications. Sang Yup Lee is chair of the Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, Distinguished Professor and Dean at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker III said Thursday that he wants to see a billion-dollar casino on the banks of the Potomac River, arguing that a "high-end" gaming destination at National Harbor would be a catalyst for economic development and generate much-needed tax revenue.

World leaders continue to wrangle over proposals to give the International Monetary Fund hundreds of billions of dollars to battle the European financial crisis, with a top U.S. official insisting Thursday that the money isn't needed.

— The economics of Jeremy Lin.

— How Target learns all your deep, dark secrets.

— A lot of foreign companies are keen on investing in North Korea.

— A depressing choose-your-own-adventure for Greece. Not a whole lot of good solutions here.

Recently, the DesmogBlog got its hands on a trove of alleged internal fund-raising documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit that spends a lot of time trying to dispute mainstream climate science. Do they actually tell us anything?

This morning, Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) rolled out a Medicare reform proposal that they estimate would save the program at least $300 billion to $500 billion over a decade. Their plan would, like the Ryan-Wyden proposal, have private plans compete against traditional Medicare for seniors' business. It would, however, do so faster--launching in 2016, rather than 2022--while also raising Medicare's eligibility age and increasing premiums that higher-income seniors pay.