Your customized news for Thu, Feb 16, 2012

The Federal Reserve is actively considering major new action to boost the economy, but it still may not pull the trigger unless the fledging economic recovery stalls, according to minutes of the central bank's January meeting released Wednesday.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on Wednesday urged greater cooperation with the United States on trade and security issues, what he called a "new type of relationship between major countries."

Xi, Expected to rise to the presidency of a country emerging as a world economic and political power, spoke in Chinese before an audience of 600 top U.S. corporate and political leaders at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington.

An Ohio investment manager is in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the second time in three years.

First, he was accused of defrauding clients and was ordered to give up his ill-gotten gains.

For a country seemingly obsessed with reality television and tabloid journalism, the United States is suddenly very worried about privacy. And I'm not talking about celebrity privacy; I'm talking about your privacy.

Federal regulators have announced that they would give borrowers who have faced foreclosure since early 2009 an additional three months to have their cases reviewed for potential wrongdoing.

Borrowers will now have until July 31 to apply for the free review, which stems from a deal last year in which 14 servicers agreed to hire independent consultants to evaluate whether homeowners suffered financial injury during the foreclosure process. If a review finds errors or abuses by the financial firms, the consultants will determine what recompense wronged homeowners deserve.

For years, politicians have delivered the same grim message to the nation's long-suffering manufacturing heartland: Many of the jobs are gone, shipped overseas, never to be seen again.

In his 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) famously — and ill-advisedly — told Michigan voters that the jobs "are not coming back. . . . And I am sorry to tell you that." President Obama said as much during a 2009 visit to the state.

— Ideas for tackling inequality from 100 years ago.

— Global toilet-paper demand is rising, which is good news for one New Hampshire mill.

— The Charles Dickens novels that students read in school today were the least popular back when the author was alive.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding comes not from Congress but from the Federal Reserve, which has a fixed formula for doling out the funds. Victoria McGrane explains:

Under the Dodd-Frank law, the CFPB gets its money from transfers from the Federal Reserve System, up to specific caps set by the law. The Fed can't turn down requests under that cap.

William Thierfelder is president of Belmont Abbey College, a private Catholic college in North Carolina. In November, the college joined with the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty to file the first lawsuit against the health reform law's mandated coverage of contraceptives, a suit that two additional parties have since joined.

This week of lovers, On Faith is talking to William Broad, author of "The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards," about the sensual side of yoga.